Search Results (18,620)

Beet necrotic yellow vein virus (BNYVV), the causal agent of rhizomania, is a major threat to sugar beet production worldwide. In Serbia, during a three-year monitoring period (2023–2025) conducted across 31 localities (72 fields) representing the main sugar beet production areas, BNYVV was detected in 26.5% of analyzed samples. Of the 88 ELISA-positive samples, 60 originated from cultivars carrying the Rz1, whereas 28 were obtained from cultivars carrying the combined Rz1+Rz2 resistance genes. This study presents the first analysis of the genetic diversity and population structure of BNYVV in Serbia, based on P25 tetrad variability and RNA5 sequence analysis. Sequence analysis revealed five distinct P25 tetrad variants, with the ALHG tetrad being the most prevalent. Moreover, in one locality in the Bačka region, the VHHG variant, previously associated with Rz1-resistance-breaking isolates, was also detected. Phylogenetic analysis based on p25 sequences grouped all Serbian isolates within the P25-I cluster, corresponding to the A-type virus population, and showed close relationship with European isolates, particularly those from Italy. Importantly, RNA5 was detected in all selected isolates, representing the first report of RNA5 in Serbia. The results of the p26sequence analysis revealed high conservation among Serbian isolates, which clustered within the J-type in phylogenetic analysis. Overall, the results demonstrate that Serbian BNYVV populations are genetically diverse and include variants associated with Rz1-resistance breaking. These findings highlight the need for continuous molecular surveillance to monitor the emergence and spread of virulent strains and to support effective disease management strategies in sugar beet cultivation. Full article

City-scale microscopic traffic simulation is increasingly used for policy evaluation, operational planning, and disruption analysis, where repeated scenario runs must retain vehicle-level trajectories rather than only aggregate traffic indicators. This requirement creates an efficiency–consistency trade-off: single-node simulators preserve centralized state ownership but become inefficient for million-vehicle tasks, whereas distributed execution reduces runtime but may disrupt vehicle updates at partition boundaries. Cross-partition movement can cause trajectory breaks, duplicate or missing updates, and inconsistent local interaction states if boundary events, vehicle context, and update ownership are not coordinated. To address this problem, this study proposes DiCoSim, a distributed coordination framework for boundary-consistent large-scale microscopic traffic simulation. DiCoSim integrates incremental spectral-clustering partitioning, spatio-temporal event aggregation, and acknowledgment-controlled state handoff to coordinate workload balance, boundary communication, and vehicle handoff. Experiments on a 483 km${}^2$ Tianjin network with 1.5 million agents show that DiCoSim achieved a $14.49\times$ strong-scaling speedup on 16 compute nodes while maintaining close agreement with centralized execution. For the fixed boundary-crossing evaluation cohort, the trajectory interruption rate was reduced to 0.06%. In addition, a single 72 h continuous high-load run achieved 99.96% availability. These results indicate that, under the tested Tianjin conditions, coordinated boundary management supports efficient million-agent microscopic simulation while maintaining vehicle-state continuity across partitions. Full article

Timely vehicular sensing is important for traffic monitoring, cooperative driving, and road-safety management. High mobility, time-varying wireless conditions, and limited edge resources nevertheless make information freshness difficult to maintain. This paper studies age of information (AoI) minimization in a three-layer UAV-assisted edge network comprising vehicle devices (VDs), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and a cloud center (CC). VDs periodically generate sensor-data packets, UAVs provide mobile edge processing and data-relaying services, and the CC coordinates system-wide resource allocation. The joint optimization of sensor-data transmission, UAV movement, packet processing, computation offloading, and bandwidth allocation is formulated within a cooperative multi-agent framework. To solve this problem, we propose a collaborative heterogeneous federated actor–critic (CHFAC) framework. Its significance-aware federated learning mechanism evaluates local model updates according to update significance, alignment with the global learning direction, and training stability and uses the resulting contribution scores for non-uniform agent selection and contribution-weighted aggregation. In the considered simulation setting, evaluation over 1000 test episodes yields an average AoI of $7.45\pm 1.65$ and a worst-case AoI of $38.72\pm 24.06$. The average AoI is $79.0\%$, $63.9\%$, and $29.2\%$ lower than that obtained by the implemented HF-MARL, H-MAAC, and non-federated baselines, respectively. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of CHFAC for freshness-aware vehicular sensing in dynamic UAV-assisted edge environments. Full article

Adolescence is a developmental stage characterised by identity formation, increasing independence, and a strong need for belonging. For adolescents in foster care, these developmental tasks are often complicated by unresolved trauma arising from abuse, neglect, abandonment, or the loss of primary caregivers. Frequent placement disruptions and difficulty establishing secure attachments with foster parents may further exacerbate emotional distress and risk behaviours. Despite these challenges, little research has examined foster parents’ experiences of caring for adolescents exhibiting risk behaviours. This qualitative study explores foster parents’ perspectives on the challenges they encounter, the coping strategies they employ, and the support systems they utilise while caring for adolescents exhibiting risk behaviours. Face-to-face semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in English and Setswana with eight purposively selected foster parents receiving services at the Joe Morolong Local Municipality in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa. Conducting the interviews in the participants’ home languages enhanced rapport and generated richer, more nuanced data. Data collection continued until saturation was reached. The participants described managing a range of behavioural challenges, including truancy, absconding, aggression, defiance, dishonesty, stealing, association with negative peer groups, and refusal to attend to household responsibilities. These behaviours contributed to considerable emotional strain and caregiving stress. Foster parents also reported inadequate professional and psychosocial support, leading to feelings of isolation, being overwhelmed, and burnout. Although compassion and cultural values strengthened resilience, caregiving capacity was constrained by poverty, unemployment, and limited support services. The findings underscore the need for strengthened supervision of foster care placements and sustained professional support, including counselling and caregiver support groups, to enhance foster parents’ well-being, improve coping capacity, and promote stable foster care placements for adolescents. Full article

Fruit thinning concentrates nutrients and serves as an essential procedure for cultivating high-quality strawberries with exceptional palatability. It is established that controlling the number of fruits per peduncle to three to five significantly increases the proportion of large fruits and enhances sweetness while effectively reducing the risks of disease infection. Consequently, pesticide application is minimized, thereby ensuring food safety and improving overall product quality. Although precise execution baselines are a prerequisite for automated thinning, current research is largely restricted to isolated fruit recognition, leaving the direct detection of peduncle–fruit topological associations under complex occlusions unaddressed. To address this gap, a lightweight, three-stage (“coarse-to-fine”) detection method tailored for automated thinning is proposed. The pipeline comprises global localization, local cropping with background suppression, and fine secondary inference, which effectively mitigates environmental interference. To support this investigation, a dedicated dataset comprising 1131 high-quality images was constructed. For efficient edge deployment, YOLOv11n was adopted as the baseline architecture, integrated with structural Re-parameterized Convolution (RepConv), Coordinate Attention (CoordAtt), and a dynamic re-weighting loss. This configuration ensures robust feature extraction of slender peduncles with an extremely low parameter overhead. The experimental results demonstrate that with only 2.77 M parameters, the proposed model achieves an mAP@0.5 of 75.73% and an F1-score of 73.85%. Notably, the average false positive (FP) detections per image in complex scenarios were significantly reduced from 1.53 to 0.23. Following deployment on a Jetson Orin Nano Super edge device utilizing TensorRT and FP16 quantization, the end-to-end system inference speed stabilized at 15.58 frames per second (FPS) with near-lossless precision. Ultimately, this method provides a reliable technical foundation for automated thinning decisions, facilitates sustainable greenhouse management, and secures the supply of high-quality food from the source. Full article

Public Food Procurement can shape diets, markets, and territorial food systems, yet its strategic potential depends on how policy objectives are translated into tender design, contract management, and territorial food policy governance. The study draws on a predominantly international literature-based review of recommendations and selected country experiences to contextualize the analysis and identify relevant good practices. At the European Union and Portuguese levels, it systematically compares the applicable policy and legal frameworks and examines how they are translated into Portuguese procurement practice. It also situates Public Food Procurement within recent Portuguese debates on food transition, metropolitan food-system planning, and multifunctional agrifood parks. A qualitative documentary and regulatory analysis was conducted using a four-pillar framework—health, environmental, social and economic—operationalized through 28 criteria. The empirical corpus comprised 53 school food procurement procedures published in Portugal in 2023. Technical specifications or equivalent documents were unavailable for 15 procedures; the cases were retained in the fixed denominator of every criterion and pillar index, so the results shown are conservative full-corpus measures of publicly observable documentary incorporation. The reliability matrix retained all 53 procedures, but ordinal Krippendorff’s alpha was estimated from the 1064 units containing pairable ratings and was 0.625 (95% bootstrap CI: 0.576–0.667). Health achieved the highest aggregate index (37%), followed by environmental (17%), social (15%), and economic criteria (8%). Although 58% used Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) terminology, only 13% applied genuine multi-factor evaluation, while approximately four in five procedures were effectively price-only. The findings should therefore be interpreted as evidence of documentary incorporation and observability rather than supplier compliance or direct health and environmental outcomes. They indicate that a major documented weakness lies not in lack of legal authority, but in weak translation into measurable award criteria, contract clauses, monitoring mechanisms, and integrated local or regional food-policy strategies. Full article

To reduce the communication and centralized-computation burden associated with frequent intraday upper-level updates under renewable-energy uncertainty, this paper proposes an edge-autonomous multi-objective energy management strategy with an offline–online architecture. In the day-ahead stage, Gaussian Copula modeling and trajectory screening generate temporally correlated photovoltaic (PV) scenarios. The conventional Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA2) first constructs a base library C0. A dual-space coordinated selection mechanism then retains every C0 strategy exactly and adds complementary trajectories according to their objective responses and differences in energy storage system power trajectories. In the intraday stage, the edge controller combines current local measurements with preloaded PV, load, and price profiles, propagates every stored candidate over a receding horizon, and applies the first action of the strict minimum-composite-cost candidate. The case-study results show that, without relying on intraday upper-level communication, the proposed method achieves a composite-objective value close to that of the perfect-information centralized reference. Full article

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is a national icon, World Heritage Area, and under sustained threat from climate change and terrestrial land-use. It is also a complex AUD 95 billion asset generating 77,000 jobs and contributing AUD 9 billion annually to Australia’s economy, a 69% increase over the 2017 valuation despite climate pressures and coral bleaching events. With 1.2 million residents in the GBR catchment, reef health directly impacts local economies and communities. We propose that alignment of reef investments with collaborative regional resilience through a Great Barrier Reef Economic Zone will improve the resilience of the regions sustained by and who care for the GBR. More inclusive than standard linear mechanistic thinking, this circular approach will leverage the GBR’s international status to attract continuing investment in regional resilience and sustainable growth and improve GBR management outcomes. Full article

Increasing anthropogenic pressures and nutrient inputs threaten the ecological status of coastal ecosystems along the Aegean coast of Türkiye. This study evaluated coastal water quality and trophic conditions using physicochemical parameters, nutrient concentrations, chlorophyll-a, national eutrophication criteria, the Trophic Index (TRIX), and multivariate statistical analyses across 25 coastal stations monitored during 2022–2023. While basic physicochemical variables showed limited spatial variability, nutrient concentrations, chlorophyll-a, and TRIX values exhibited pronounced spatial differences among stations (p < 0.05), identifying Bostanlı (Inner İzmir Bay) as the principal eutrophication hotspot. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) revealed two dominant environmental gradients: a Nutrient Enrichment Gradient associated with total phosphorus (TP), ammonium, nitrite, and nitrate nitrogen (32.6% of total variance), and a Hydrographic–Thermal Gradient associated with salinity, conductivity, total dissolved solids, temperature, and dissolved oxygen (30.4%). Hierarchical and k-means clustering analyses further distinguished environmentally coherent coastal sectors and confirmed the clear separation of Bostanlı from the remaining sampling stations. The close agreement among nutrient distributions, chlorophyll-a concentrations, TRIX values, and multivariate analyses indicates that localized anthropogenic nutrient enrichment, rather than basin-scale hydrographic variability, drives trophic differentiation along the coast. These findings demonstrate the value of integrated monitoring approaches combining physicochemical, trophic, and multivariate indicators for identifying eutrophication hotspots and supporting ecosystem-based management in Mediterranean coastal ecosystems. Full article

Sustainability is increasingly recognised as a key priority in tourism development. Based on stakeholder theory, sustainable tourism implicates the involvement of diverse destination stakeholders. However, the roles of local residents and tourism providers as stakeholders who play an important role in achieving sustainability have largely been examined separately. This study addressed the dual role of local resident tourism providers operating in rural areas by exploring their perceptions, implementation, and recommendations related to sustainable tourism practices (STPs). By integrating stakeholder theory with systems theory, the study considered local resident tourism providers as embedded within a complex destination system. Data were collected through an online and offline survey of local resident tourism providers in the rural area of Istria County, Croatia, with 82 valid responses obtained. A qualitative approach based on an interpretive research paradigm was applied, and reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) was used to analyse the data. The findings indicate that respondents have an understanding of the concept of STPs and implement them, mainly in an environmental context, in their tourism activities. A focus on the quality of tourism services, presentation of local identity and heritage, and relationships and communication with guests emerged as important to respondents, while stakeholder cooperation between providers was limited in their responses. These findings suggest that resident tourism providers may be unaware of the importance of stakeholder collaboration, including their own role, in achieving sustainable tourism development. However, the findings also highlight the importance of adopting a systems approach: respondents’ identification of STPs and recommendations for improving their implementation point to the need for appropriate enabling conditions at destination system level. The findings are intended to be of interest to researchers, destination management organisations, local authorities, and tourism policymakers working in the field of sustainable tourism. Full article

Freshwater ecosystems are increasingly affected by habitat alteration and reduced connectivity, which can influence the genetic structure of aquatic organisms. This study investigated the population genetic structure of Eurasian perch (Perca fluviatilis L.) in major river systems of Latvia (Daugava River) and Lithuania (Nemunas and Neris rivers) using nine microsatellite loci. The quantitative parameters of genetic diversity were assessed using standard population genetic analyses. The evaluation of population genetic structure was also based on Bayesian clustering and phylogenetic reconstruction. All of the studied populations exhibited relatively high genetic diversity, with the number of alleles per locus ranging from 4 to 24 and observed heterozygosity ranging from 0.536 to 0.716. Genetic differentiation among populations was low to moderate but significant, with F_ST values ranging from 0.021 to 0.079 within the Daugava River basin and reaching 0.034 between the Nemunas and Neris rivers. Bayesian clustering and Neighbor-Joining analyses revealed genetic structuring at both regional and local scales, including pronounced substructuring within the Daugava River, which is divided into a few fragments due to three hydroelectric plants. The observed patterns indicate that population connectivity is not uniform across the study area and likely reflects the combined influence of historical and contemporary processes. These findings improve our understanding of perch population structure in Baltic river systems and provide relevant information relevant for the conservation and management of freshwater fish genetic resources. Full article

Grazing exclusion is a widely implemented restoration strategy for degraded grasslands, but its effects on soil organic carbon (SOC) remain highly variable, and the ecological pathways associated with these changes—particularly the roles of soil microorganisms—are still insufficiently understood. To investigate context-dependent SOC responses, we conducted a 12-year grazing exclusion study across three contrasting grassland sites representing an environmental gradient (temperate desert, temperate steppe, and mountain meadow) on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains. By integrating multidimensional vegetation–soil–microbe observations with microbial network analysis and community assembly approaches, we examined how plant, soil, and microbial characteristics were associated with SOC variation under grazing exclusion. Our results showed that grazing exclusion was associated with significant increases in surface SOC content across all three investigated sites (16–81%), but these increases corresponded to distinct site-specific ecological association patterns. At the temperate desert site, SOC variation was mainly associated with soil conditions and microbial characteristics, where soil moisture and nutrient availability, together with fungal network complexity, showed significant associations with SOC content. At the temperate steppe site, vegetation recovery represented an important ecological component associated with SOC variation, while bacterial community assembly patterns were also related to SOC differences. At the mountain meadow site, plant, soil, and microbial characteristics showed multiple associations with SOC variation. Across all sites, grazing exclusion was consistently associated with changes in microbial network structure and community assembly processes, and these microbial ecological characteristics showed significant statistical relationships with SOC content. Our findings indicate that SOC responses to grazing exclusion are context-dependent and involve different ecological association pathways across contrasting grassland ecosystems, highlighting the importance of considering local environmental conditions when evaluating grassland restoration outcomes and carbon management strategies. Full article

Whilst early debridement and autologous skin grafting remain the cornerstones of treatment for deep burns, there has been a shift towards a more selective and regenerative medicine-oriented approach in the topical management of burn wounds. The most critical issue is whether the wound can achieve epithelialization within approximately 2 to 3 weeks. This timeframe is of clinical significance due to the strong association between delayed epithelialization and hypertrophic scarring, which can result in contractures and functional impairment. However, given that the likelihood of epithelialization is influenced by factors such as the mechanism of injury, anatomical location and skin thickness at that site, age, and blood flow, its prediction remains incomplete and relies heavily on experience. The second challenge is to remove necrotic tissue while preserving as much healthy tissue as possible, thereby creating a wound bed with an adequately controlled microbial burden. Excessive excision should be avoided. The cytotoxic effects of several topical antimicrobial agents can inhibit the migration of keratinocytes, fibroblasts and other cells, as well as damaging the extracellular matrix. In order to address these issues, a range of methods are employed, including enzymatic debridement. The third challenge pertains to the reconstruction of the dermis in full-thickness burns, and the role of dermal and matrix-based materials is expanding. In addition to conventional artificial dermis, acellular fish skin matrices, synthetic biodegradable temporary matrices, and recombinant biomaterials are now being used. These materials can be regarded not solely as wound dressings, but also as instruments for preserving or re-establishing a biologically functional dermal matrix prior to epithelialization. Once these conditions are achieved, autologous skin cell suspension or cultured epidermal autografting may become appropriate options in selected wounds. This Perspective proposes a framework for precision-oriented local burn wound care structured around four sequential but iterative objectives. Full article

Oxidative stress and persistent inflammation can compromise tissue repair and the performance of locally delivered biomaterials. Here, we developed an aqueous alginate–lysozyme–tannic acid biohybrid hydrogel designed to combine injectability, antioxidant functionality, and extrusion-based printability. A composition screen varying alginate and lysozyme at a fixed tannic acid concentration identified a clear balance between flowability and structural integrity. An intermediate formulation provided shear-thinning and elastic-dominant rheological behavior, controlled hydration, cytocompatibility, antioxidant activity, and practical syringe/nozzle extrusion. The selected formulation was transferable to an approximately 80 mL batch and could be deposited into a multilayer structure. The findings are consistent with the formation of a cooperative polysaccharide–protein–polyphenol network and demonstrate the feasibility of integrating redox functionality with material processability. Future studies should focus on quantitative print fidelity validation, molecular interaction analysis, lysozyme activity retention, longer term stability, and application-relevant in vivo evaluation. Such development may support the future translation of injectable and printable antioxidant biomaterials for chronic wound management and tissue regeneration applications. Full article

Aneurysmal bone cysts (ABCs) are benign but locally aggressive osteolytic lesions that are rarely reported in dogs and may progress or recur following surgical treatment. This case report describes the diagnosis, surgical management, postoperative progression, and long-term outcome of an ABC affecting the left ulna of a four-month-old Labrador Retriever. Radiography and computed tomography revealed a rapidly progressive, expansile osteolytic lesion with marked cortical thinning. Histopathological examination supported the diagnosis of ABC, with no evidence of malignancy. Initial treatment consisted of corticotomy, intralesional curettage, autologous bone grafting, and stabilization of the cortical segment with lag screws. Despite complete clinical resolution of lameness, surveillance radiographs six weeks postoperatively demonstrated progression of the lesion proximal to the original surgical site. Revision surgery involving a larger cortical window and more extensive curettage was subsequently performed, followed by bone grafting. Histopathology again confirmed ABC without malignant transformation. The dog regained normal limb function, and serial radiographic and computed tomographic examinations demonstrated progressive osseous remodeling with no evidence of further progression or recurrence through 35 months of follow-up. This case highlights the importance of adequate surgical excision and scheduled postoperative imaging, as ABC progression may occur despite apparent clinical recovery. Full article