Search Results (30,217)

Bread texture and flavor are largely governed by the development of its internal microstructure and the migration dynamics of water and volatile compounds. In this study, a bamboo shoot shell superfine powder/κ-carrageenan composite gel system (KCS) was developed, and the effects of different addition levels (0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%) of KCS on bread performance, structure, and flavor were investigated. Compared with κ-carrageenan (KC), KCS formed a denser and more continuous composite network structure with higher elasticity, freeze–thaw stability, and thermal stability. Bread with KCS showed improved color, reduced hardness, and chewiness. Electronic nose and tongue indicated that KCS effectively suppressed the release of undesirable volatiles and taste-active substances. The addition of 10% KCS promoted the formation of a uniform fine honeycomb gluten network structure, inhibited starch retrogradation, and improved the thermal stability of bread. During storage (1–5 d), KCS reduced the water loss rate of bread, delayed the increase in hardness and chewiness, and maintained good springiness. Metabolomic analysis showed that KCS increased the precursors of small peptides involved in the Maillard reaction, thereby enriching flavor. KCS can effectively improve bread quality, enrich bread flavor, and delay aging, providing a new strategy for the high-value utilization of bamboo shoot processing by-products. Full article

Background: Tumor heterogeneity arises from complex interactions among diverse biological factors, posing a major challenge for the development of robust multi-omics data integration methods. While the existing Tumor Multi-Omics pre-trained Network (TMO-Net) enables the fusion of multi-omics features into unified representations, its practical utility is constrained by issues such as missing modalities, incomplete within-omics data, and high-dimensional noise. To overcome these limitations, we propose TMO-Net+, an enhanced architecture specifically designed to improve the robustness and reliability of multi-omics modeling. Methods: TMO-Net+ introduces several coordinated architectural enhancements. First, a feature attention encoder is applied to each omics data type to reduce the influence of modality-dependent input variation. Second, we combine a gated Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) module with a Product-of Experts (PoE) mechanism to capture sample-specific contributions and enable robust inference even when partial omics data are available. Additionally, a supervised deep classification head with a tailored loss function is incorporated to enhance the separability of learned embeddings in the latent space. Results: Extensive experiments on pan-cancer datasets demonstrate that TMO-Net+ consistently outperforms the original TMO-Net, as measured by LogME scores. Furthermore, in various downstream tasks (e.g., pan-cancer classification, primary/metastatic site prediction, and prognostic modeling), TMO-Net+ achieves superior performance under partial-omics settings, which proves that it enhances the robustness and cross-cancer transferability of the multi-omics representations. Conclusions: The proposed TMO-Net+ improves the robustness and cross-cancer transferability of multi-omics representations within the evaluated TCGA cohorts. Biological interpretability analyses further show that TMO-Net+ prioritizes established cancer-driver genes, preserves cancer-dependent molecular-state information, and adaptively redistributes relative modality contributions across molecular states. By addressing modality-level missingness and modality-dependent input variation, it offers a reliable framework for integrative tumor analysis within the evaluated TCGA cohorts. Full article

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries are promising candidates for large-scale energy storage as high-safety, low-cost, and abundant zinc resources. Compared with conventional zinc foil, zinc powder (Zn-P) anodes display controllable capacity by regulating zinc powder loading, electrode thickness and pore structure, providing opportunities to improve zinc utilization, reduce costs and enhance manufacturing compatibility. However, Zn-P anodes are dynamic particle-composite electrodes in which reaction interfaces, pore channels, particle contacts, and electronic networks continuously evolve during cycling and storage. Their electrochemical behavior therefore reflects coupled effects of Zn²⁺ plating/stripping, hydrogen evolution, corrosion, by-product-induced pore blockage, stress evolution, contact loss, and calendar aging. This review focuses on the structural characteristics, failure mechanisms, interfacial reaction regulation, electrode engineering, and practical evaluation of zinc powder anodes. It subsequently analyzes the application boundaries of zincophilic metals, carbon materials, MXene, Meta–Organic Frameworks/Covalent Organic Frameworks (MOFs/COFs), artificial interphases, electrolyte additives, slurry engineering, current collectors, and manufacturing strategies. Then, it points out their mechanisms for regulating reaction selectivity, ion/electron transport, and structural stability. Further, the practical evaluation criteria are given, including Zn loading, the negative/positive capacity ratio (N/P ratio), Zn utilization, electrolyte dosage, calendar life and pouches/large-scale cells under limited zinc conditions. Overall, Zn-P anode development should focus on interfacial reaction selectivity, powder structure, electrode manufacturing and limited-zinc evaluation. Full article

The increasing penetration of distributed energy resources has strengthened the operational coupling between transmission and distribution grids, intensified voltage fluctuations, and reduced static voltage stability margins under bidirectional power-flow conditions. In transmission–distribution coordinated operation, conventional scheduling methods have difficulty simultaneously addressing boundary power interaction, renewable generation forecasting errors, real-time corrective control, and static voltage stability constraints. To address these issues, this paper proposes a transmission–distribution coordinated multi-time-scale rolling optimal control method considering static voltage stability. First, based on local network equivalencing, a static voltage stability index (SVSI) calculation method is developed for scenarios with bidirectional power-flow variations, enabling fast online assessment of static voltage stability boundaries. Second, the transmission–distribution boundary exchange power is selected as the key coordination variable, and a multi-time-scale rolling optimization framework is established to coordinate main-grid operational requirements with distribution-side flexible resources. At the long time scale, a baseline scheduling plan is generated by considering economic operation, renewable energy accommodation, and transmission–distribution boundary power exchange. At the short time scale, model predictive control (MPC) is adopted to perform closed-loop correction of control variables using rolling forecast information and real-time measurements, thereby achieving rolling coordinated control of distributed generation, energy storage systems, flexible regulation resources, and boundary exchange power. Furthermore, the SVSI is embedded into the rolling optimization model as a security constraint, forming a multi-objective coordinated control method that jointly considers economic performance, renewable energy accommodation capability, transmission–distribution interaction, and static voltage security margin. Case study results show that the proposed method can effectively improve renewable energy accommodation and reduce network losses while enhancing the static voltage stability margin. In addition, it improves the adaptability of the coordinated transmission–distribution system to operating-condition variations, forecasting deviations, and boundary power fluctuations. Full article

Clostridium tyrobutyricum is a major cause of late blowing defects (LBDs) in cheese, resulting in substantial economic losses. Early detection is critical for maintaining product quality. In this study, we developed a rapid detection approach integrating genome-scale metabolic modeling (GEM) with systematic culture optimization. Three media were evaluated, identifying RCM at 38.5 °C as the optimal condition for reducing the lag phase. Flux Balance Analysis (FBA) revealed that targeted supplementation with magnesium, zinc, Vitamin B6, and L-tryptophan significantly enhanced metabolic flux through nucleotide biosynthesis and energy transfer pathways, particularly reaction rxn01219_c0. Validation using artificially contaminated milk confirmed that the optimized 0.5× supplementation mixture synergistically reduced detection time by approximately 35 h compared to conventional MPN methods. This study demonstrates that bridging systems biology with traditional microbiology provides a cost-effective and mechanistic framework for rapid pathogen detection in the dairy industry. Full article

Desiccation cracking in expansive soils on slopes accelerates soil erosion and reduces water retention capacity, posing significant threats to agricultural sustainability. This study investigates the combined effects of organic fertilizer (OF), slow-release fertilizer (SRF), and rice straw (RS) on crack inhibition in expansive soil under wet–dry (W-D) cycles. A three-factor Box–Behnken design (BBD) was used with OF at 5–15%, SRF at 0.3–0.9 kg/m³, and RS at 0.25–0.75%, and crack development was followed through 20 W-D cycles. The quadratic response-surface model fitted to the BBD crack-ratio data was significant (R² = 0.952, adjusted R² = 0.865, p = 0.008), with significant linear effects of OF, SRF, and RS, whereas the two-factor interaction terms were not statistically significant as a group (p = 0.701). The lowest observed crack ratio in the BBD matrix was 1.7% at 10% OF + 0.9 kg/m³ and SRF + 0.75% RS; this is therefore reported as an observed low-response combination rather than evidence of a statistically confirmed SRF–RS interaction. An LSTM model was retained as a complementary dynamic predictor and yielded R² = 0.927, MAE = 0.325, and RMSE = 0.478 for the evaluated dataset; however, divergence between training and validation losses indicated overfitting, so external generalizability remains to be established. The results support agricultural-waste-based amendment as a promising crack-control strategy while emphasizing the need for independent replication and field validation. Full article

This paper discusses a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) carried out on 630 kVA liquid-immersed distribution transformers with different winding conductor materials and energy performance levels. The LCA methodology for power transformers is still under development. Most LCA projects only take the manufacturing phase and its upstream value chain into account. If the transformer use phase is incorporated, assessments are conducted with the electricity mix of today, and usually only for the climate change impact category. This paper provides an LCA approach taking the manufacturing phase, use phase, and end-of-life phase into account, for several major impact categories, calculated with a projection of the electricity mix in the EU-27 over a 40-year period. Compared to existing approaches, this approach has the advantage of providing insights for determining the environmental trade-off between material use in the transformer and energy losses during transformer usage, while also taking into account the ongoing decarbonisation of the electricity supply. Full article

This article asks how Basarwa communities of Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) came to be represented as populations requiring protection, development, conservation management and relocation, and what those shifts meant for land, gender and cosmological life. It presents a critical genealogical review of a purposively assembled corpus of 45 legal, policy, ethnographic, historical and theological sources. The analysis traces four formations: colonial protection, post-independence development and sedentarisation, conservation-led relocation, and rights-based recognition accompanied by administrative restriction. CKGR-specific evidence documents the loss of access to land, water, hunting and services even after important court victories. Evidence on gender is narrower. Studies of New Xade and other Botswana San communities suggest that relocation could devalue women’s foraging knowledge and reduce autonomy, but comparative research also shows that sedentarisation alone does not determine gender inequality. Missionary discourse is therefore treated as part of a longer representational archive, not as a proven direct cause of contemporary relocation policy. The article argues that “exile in ancestral lands” is best understood as an interpretive description of material and relational estrangement. A decolonial theological reading makes visible the moral and spiritual significance of land while avoiding claims that all Basarwa communities share a single cosmology. Full article

Millimeter wave (mmWave) Massive MIMO is a cornerstone technology for sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks, providing the directional gain necessary to overcome high path loss. However, the acquisition of high-fidelity Channel State Information (CSI) and the associated beamforming overhead remain significant bottlenecks, particularly in dynamic environments with frequent blockages. In this paper, we propose a fast and robust beamforming strategy enabled by a digital twin (DT) framework. Specifically, we develop a Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (cGAN)-based DT module that serves as a high-fidelity virtual surrogate for site-specific ray-tracing. By processing environmental 3D geometry and dynamic obstacle data, the cGAN predicts real-time Beam-Power Maps (BPM) with minimal computational latency. Building upon these predictions, we introduce a Graph Neural Network (GNN)-based resource allocation agent that models the network as a spatial interference graph to perform coordination and power control. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed DT-assisted approach significantly reduces online interaction overhead by shifting the computational burden of ray-tracing to an offline generative phase. Furthermore, the framework achieves superior sum-rate performance and link robustness under dynamic blockages compared to conventional deep learning and heuristic benchmarks. Full article

Ultra-deep fractured carbonate reservoirs suffer severe fluid loss and formation damage, requiring accurate characterization of natural fracture parameters and contamination behavior. Current field evaluation methods rely solely on logging data, which cannot obtain parameters such as the number and width of fractures. Taking the Shunbei Block as an example, this study integrates laser particle size analysis, HTHP flooding experiments, and a fracture loss model incorporating dynamic mud cake growth to clarify single-fracture loss behavior for fractures of different widths. Using fracture parameters interpreted from field logging, together with loss data and simulation results, we developed a method to determine fracture parameters and characterize contamination. Experiments reveal that effective plugging becomes difficult when fracture width exceeds 138 μm. Simulations indicate that cumulative loss volume increases with fracture width. The field loss volumes of 40–6600 m³ correspond to single-fracture widths of 0.9–6.2 mm. Based on the simulated width–loss volume relationship, correction coefficients for fracture count and width for two wells were calibrated. The method was applied to 9 wells, yielding an R² of 0.86 between predicted and measured loss volumes. The method effectively identifies fracture parameters and assesses contamination, supporting lost circulation control in fractured carbonate reservoirs. Full article

Desertification is a major environmental problem in drylands, resulting from the interaction between climatic and anthropogenic factors and involving processes such as vegetation loss and soil erosion. In northeastern Brazil, long-term land-use pressure has intensified the vulnerability of semi-arid landscapes, leading to severe degradation and reduced environmental resilience. Within this context, the Salitre River Basin (Bahia State) represents a particularly relevant area for investigating desertification, as it combines a history of intense human pressure and soil degradation with arid climatic conditions recently recognized through climatological assessments. This study investigates the micromorphological organization, hillslope dynamics, and environmental degradation of carbonate soils of the Salitre river basin, aiming to reconstruct pedogeomorphological evolution and identify indicators of desertification. A toposequence-based approach was applied using ten soil profiles distributed across sectors with contrasting erosion intensity. Soil horizons were characterized through field descriptions, physical and chemical analyses, and micromorphological observations of thin sections. Soils are predominantly eutrophic, carbonate-rich, shallow Calcisols, with very high CaCO₃ contents (500–900 g kg⁻¹), alkaline pH, and low total organic carbon. The spatial organization of profiles results from strong lithological and geomorphological controls, with well-developed horizons in stable sectors, whereas truncated and homogeneous profiles occur in areas affected by severe erosion. Micromorphological features, including planar and moldic voids, Fe–Mn nodules, calcite coatings, and needle calcite infillings, indicate active carbonate dissolution/redistribution processes under increasing seasonality and aridity (calcification). The coexistence of inherited dissolution and recent precipitation features suggests polyphasic pedogenesis linked to Holocene climatic oscillations. The preservation of well-developed needle-fiber calcite is consistent with prolonged water-deficit conditions, although its precise chronological significance remains unconstrained in the absence of direct dating. At landscape scale, these processes are associated with hillslope retreat and dense networks of linear erosion, defining a scenario of severe land degradation. Full article

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus is a major pathogen that causes massive economic losses in the global swine industry. Lysine propionylation and malonylation are metabolism-sensitive post-translational modifications, yet their coordinated regulatory roles during PRRSV pulmonary infection remain unknown. This study combined quantitative proteomics, propionylome and malonylome to characterize host molecular alterations between healthy and PRRSV-infected porcine lung tissues (three piglets per group). Quantitative proteomics identified 1467 significantly downregulated proteins and only 129 upregulated proteins, indicating a profound host protein shutoff during PRRSV pulmonary infection. The two acyl modifications displayed opposite regulatory patterns independent of global protein expression changes: 51 propionylation sites (24 proteins) were upregulated with only 1 downregulated, while 37 malonylation sites (30 proteins) were downregulated and only 5 upregulated. Functional enrichment and PPI network analysis revealed clear functional divergence: hyper-propionylated hub proteins were exclusively enriched in mitochondrial energy metabolism pathways, whereas hypo-malonylated core proteins were mainly involved in lipid metabolism and cell fate regulation. Integrated multi-omics analysis confirmed that protein expression and lysine acylation constitute two coordinated but independent regulatory layers, with histone H4 identified as a candidate target of competitive propionylation/malonylation. This work reports the comprehensive landscape of lysine propionylation and malonylation upon PRRSV infection, reveals a dual-PTM remodeling strategy for viral hijacking of host homeostasis, and provides candidate targets for future functional investigation and antiviral development. Full article

Riverbank erosion threatens settlements, infrastructure, and river-dependent livelihoods along the Bassac River in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. This study examines long-term bankline change from 2001 to 2025 and develops expert-informed priorities for assessing livelihood vulnerability within the Can Tho reach. Six Landsat images were analysed in QGIS using the Linear Regression Rate method, while present-day hydraulic conditions were investigated through Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler measurements at five representative locations. An Analytic Hierarchy Process based on interviews with 10 experts was used to derive relative weights for livelihood sensitivity and adaptive-capacity indicators and variables. Accretion was more spatially extensive than erosion along both banks; however, the left bank experienced a greater total extent and magnitude of erosion. Spatially extensive erosion was identified in Binh Thuy, whereas more intense but localised hotspots occurred near Cai Rang and Cai Von. The exploratory hydraulic observations varied among the five selected locations but showed no consistent correspondence with historical erosion magnitude and are therefore interpreted only as a snapshot of conditions on the survey date. Experts assigned weights of 0.547 to sensitivity and 0.453 to adaptive capacity. Savings capacity, decreased food production, extent of land loss, and the ability to shift livelihoods were among the highest-ranked variables. The physical and expert-derived findings support a differentiated and staged approach to riverbank-risk management, but they should be interpreted as complementary evidence rather than as a household-level vulnerability assessment. Future research should combine repeated seasonal hydraulic and bathymetric surveys, bank-material investigations, exposed-asset mapping, and household-based vulnerability assessments. Full article

Background/Objectives: Dental caries remains one of the most prevalent chronic diseases affecting children worldwide and continues to pose a substantial challenge to healthcare systems. Although the clinical consequences of paediatric dental caries are well documented, the associated economic burden has not been comprehensively synthesised. This systematic review aimed to evaluate and summarise the available evidence regarding the costs associated with dental caries in children and adolescents under 18 years of age. Methods: A systematic review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020 guidelines and registered in PROSPERO (CRD420251138979). MEDLINE via PubMed, Scopus, and Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source (EBSCOhost) were searched for studies published between January 2012 and July 2025. The MEDLINE and Scopus searches were conducted on 22 July 2025, and an additional search of Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source (EBSCOhost) was conducted on 19 August 2026. Eligible studies included peer-reviewed cost-of-illness studies, economic evaluations, cost analyses, cross-sectional studies, retrospective studies, and randomised controlled trials reporting economic outcomes related to the prevention or management of dental caries in individuals under 18 years of age. Methodological quality was assessed using the Drummond 10-item checklist. Data were extracted on study characteristics, population demographics, cost components, study perspective, and key findings. Reported costs were categorised as direct, indirect, and intangible costs where applicable. Due to substantial methodological heterogeneity among studies, a narrative synthesis was performed. Results: Seventeen studies met the inclusion criteria. Most studies focused on direct medical costs associated with restorative treatment, hospital-based dental care, and emergency services. Direct costs were consistently substantial across different healthcare settings, particularly for cases requiring advanced treatment or general anaesthesia. Preventive interventions were generally reported to be more cost-effective than curative approaches. Indirect costs, including caregiver productivity losses, were infrequently assessed, while no study comprehensively evaluated intangible costs. Considerable variation in study design, costing perspective, and reporting methodology limited direct comparison across studies. Conclusions: Dental caries in individuals under 18 years of age imposes a considerable economic burden, driven primarily by direct treatment costs. Preventive oral health strategies appear to provide greater economic value than treatment-focused approaches. The limited assessment of indirect and intangible costs suggests that the overall societal burden of paediatric dental caries is likely underestimated. Future research should adopt standardised and comprehensive costing methodologies to better support policy development and resource allocation in paediatric oral healthcare. Full article

Multi-frame fusion is standard for converting frame-by-frame license plate character detections into stable, reliable readings. Character Time-Series Matching (CTM), a leading approach, associates characters across frames using the Hungarian algorithm with a fixed Euclidean distance threshold and a translation-only motion model, reporting 96.7% accuracy on the UFPR-ALPR dataset. In this work, we demonstrate that this high performance is protocol-dependent: when ground-truth static plate crops and pre-segmented tracks are used, CTM performs strongly. However, in real-world scenarios involving moving cameras (such as drone-mounted cameras, helmet-mounted cameras, and mobile platforms) where inter-frame geometry changes dynamically, baseline multi-frame association frameworks that combine fixed spatial gates with unconstrained translation propagation fail. In these cases, temporal fusion provides no benefit and degrades plate recognition performance below the single-frame baseline. Indeed, under its own Intersection over Union (IoU) tracker, this literature method correctly reads only 15.1% of plates in traffic videos recorded with a real moving camera (86 human-verified tracks). To address this vulnerability, we propose Geo-CTM (Geometry-Constrained CTM), an association pipeline integrating height-scaled adaptive matching gates, inter-frame similarity estimation via Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC), transform-guided character coasting, and co-occurrence-constrained duplicate track elimination. Systematic motion-model ablation demonstrates that while the complete association pipeline provides the primary foundation for robustness (raising mean accuracy from 85.40% to over 91.5%), estimating a similarity transform (91.82%) delivers the most physically grounded and identifiable representation on planar plates without estimation degeneration. While our method performs comparably to CTM on ideal data when using the same detector and detections, it minimizes performance loss under geometric distortion conditions where CTM is inadequate. For instance, a statistically significant improvement is achieved under a 0 → 60° perspective change; in real traffic videos, with the tracker held fixed so that the fusion layer is the only variable, performance rises from 15.1% to 26.7% under the IoU tracker of the original system and from 16.3% to 29.1% under ByteTrack ($+11.6$ and $+12.8$ points; exact McNemar $p=0.021$ and $p=0.013$), whereas changing the tracker alone while holding the fusion layer fixed moves accuracy by only 1–2 points and is not statistically significant. Finally, our error taxonomy analysis demonstrates that on the undistorted benchmark all residual errors correspond to zero-evidence cases beyond the reach of decision-level fusion, while under dynamic perspective distortion errors are dominated by association misalignment, highlighting the specific development areas that future performance improvements must target. Full article