Search Results (1,280)

Urban underground spaces are increasingly developing toward large-scale and multifunctional configurations, imposing higher requirements on the large span and ultimate load-bearing capacity of protective doors for critical infrastructure. To address the low load-bearing efficiency and susceptibility to local instability of conventional large protective doors, this study proposes a novel double-leaf, double-arched, bidirectionally supported protective door incorporating a rear grillage and horizontal coupling beams, based on a spatially coordinated load-bearing system. First, the dynamic response of a rib-stiffened double-leaf arched protective door, designated Type I, was investigated using the finite element code LS-DYNA. To address its closely spaced higher-order modal frequencies and insufficient stiffness, a preliminary optimization was conducted by adding a rear grillage, resulting in the Type II configuration. The stress concentration and localized connection damage caused by stiffness incompatibility in Type II were then examined, and a final optimized design incorporating horizontal coupling beams was proposed (Type III). The results indicate that the coordinated restraint provided by the rear grillage and horizontal coupling beams effectively mitigates the reduction in the fundamental frequency and the local stress concentrations observed in the Type II structure. The fundamental frequency of the Type III structure is 7.9% higher than that of the Type I structure. Under severe blast loading, the Type III structure exhibits a substantially improved load-transfer path. Compared with the Type I and Type II structures, respectively, its maximum displacement is reduced by 7.30% and 14.09%, and its peak equivalent plastic strain by 19.15% and 22.84%. Consequently, the Type III structure exhibits improved global deformation compatibility and effectively suppresses local instability. This study elucidates the spatially coordinated load-bearing mechanism of the double-leaf, double-arched, bidirectionally supported protective door under severe dynamic loading and represents a promising structural candidate for the innovative design and optimization of large protective doors for critical underground infrastructure. Full article

Event-based vision sensors (EVSs) offer an innovative approach to optical sensing by responding solely to changes in photon flux with asynchronous pixels. This enables high-speed imaging with minimal data throughput and a large dynamical range > 120 dB. Despite their growing use in edge detection and the observation of Earth science phenomena such as lightning and transient luminous events (TLEs), optimizing EVS performance specifically for high-speed observations on microsecond timescales, where the photon flux is key, remains challenging. This is due to the unitless, non-intuitive nature of their bias settings, which drives the working principles of the sensor. In this study, we perform a comprehensive calibration of an event-based camera, focusing on three critical parameters: contrast thresholds, refractory period, and corner frequency of the inherent low-pass filter. Using a pre-calibrated LED source and newly developed event generation code, we establish physical relationships between these raw digital bias settings and the camera’s response characteristics. Our results show tunable ranges of 5–190% for on contrast thresholds, 5–65% for off contrast thresholds, 12–480 μs for refractory periods, and 1–11 kHz for corner frequencies. These calibrations provide the fundamental camera characteristics for accurate optical signal reconstruction and improved detection of fast transient phenomena. The approach is demonstrated on a Prophesee EVK4; however, the proposed calibration method can be applied to any EVS camera that employs similar hardware components and bias settings and thus provides a necessary framework for the quantitative use of EVS cameras in atmospheric remote sensing. Full article

Objective: Advanced fibrosis is the best predictor of future severe liver outcomes in patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). Our study aims to determine the association between cardiovascular disease (CVD) with time to a high-risk Fibrosis-4 Index (FIB-4) in patients with low-risk MASLD. Methods: This retrospective cohort study was conducted at a primary care clinic between 2012 and 2021. The cohort included patients with MASLD and a FIB-4 score at low risk for advanced fibrosis (<1.3). Patients were followed for the outcome of having a high-risk FIB-4 (≥2.67) or until the end of the study period. The primary predictor variable was CVD, a composite of ICD-9/10 codes for coronary artery, cerebrovascular, and peripheral arterial disease. Covariates included demographic and comorbidity variables. Unadjusted and adjusted Cox regression models were developed for the outcome of time to a high-risk FIB-4 score. Results: The cohort included 859 patients with a mean age of 49.6 years (± 13.7) and mean body mass index of 34.1 (± 8.3) kg/m². The included patients were 70% female and 41% non-white. Of the cohort, 32%, 36%, and 74% had CVD, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and hypertension, respectively. During a mean follow-up of 3.8 (± 2.7) years, 9.3% (80) of the sample had a subsequent high-risk FIB-4 score. The multivariable Cox regression model demonstrated a significant association between CVD (HR 2.13; 95%CI 1.33–3.40) and chronic kidney disease (HR 2.05; 95%CI 1.23–3.42) with the time to transition to a high-risk FIB-4 score. Conclusion: Our study showed that CVD is associated with an increased risk of progression of FIB-4 scores at low to high risk for advanced fibrosis in MASLD patients. Future research investigating how control of cardiometabolic comorbidities impact fibrosis progression in MASLD is warranted. Full article

This paper draws on interviews with a large and diverse cross-section of youth (N = 81) in the Twin Cities of Minnesota to explore how American young people understand, experience, and act upon ideals of meritocracy and fairness in youth sports. Qualitative thematic coding yields four sets of findings. First, we document what American youth value about participation in organized sports activities: friendship, fun, and growth. A second set of findings shows that the ideals about meritocracy in sports are widely embraced by youth of all backgrounds. These ideals are grounded in beliefs about individual skill development, hard work, competition, and a fair distribution of rewards; they also emphasize accountability of coaches. The limitations of these ideals in practice constitute a third set of results. These include uneven access, differential treatment, and racism for low-income youth and youth of color as well as how competition can displace other benefits of involvement. A fourth and final section explores how youth exercised agency to enact meritocratic ideals when their expectations of fairness were violated via building solidarity, enlisting adult support, or simply dropping out. The paper concludes with a discussion of the novelty and significance of these findings for future research and in practice. Full article

Tasks related to relational understanding are useful for arguing about basic mathematical structures and relationships, and for encouraging long-term mathematical thinking. It has been determined that learners in primary school have considerable difficulties arguing about these relationships. Based on these findings, a study was conducted in which the written argumentations of tasks targeting relational understanding provided by 72 learners aged ten to thirteen were evaluated. The tasks covered various mathematical topics and were divided into tasks involving pattern continuation, explorative argumentation and persuasive argumentation. Responses were evaluated by an inductive-deductive coding scheme. The results showed that learners can describe the relationships, but often struggle to explain the underlying reasons for their occurrence. In comparison to exploring and describing the relationships, the quality of the persuasive argumentations in particular was low. There were no substantial weaknesses in any specific aspect of the argumentations, such as structure or linguistic precision. Nevertheless, performance differed to some extent between tasks addressing different mathematical content, which may point to argumentation as a more domain-specific than domain-general competence. However, given the limited number of tasks per content area, this interpretation remains tentative and warrants further investigation. The findings provide tentative indications of variation across mathematical content areas, but do not allow firm conclusions about the domain-specificity of argumentation competence. Future research should employ multiple tasks per domain and longitudinal designs to disentangle content-related from task-specific effects and to examine how persuasive argumentation competence develops over time. Full article

Against the backdrop of the concurrent processes of tourism development, spatial commercialisation, and architectural heritage conservation, identifying tourists’ cognitive images of destinations and differences in textual valence provides an important basis for evaluating the quality of tourism built environments and implementing fine-grained spatial governance. Taking Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province as the study area, this study analyses 32,992 Ctrip attraction reviews using high-frequency term identification, two-level theoretical coding, a semantic co-occurrence network, and affective analysis to construct an attraction-level image-affect analytical framework. The results show that, under a theory-guided codebook, review content can be organised into four dimensions: natural landscapes, built heritage, ethnic culture, and services and accessibility. Natural mountain–lake scenery has the broadest review coverage, while strong semantic associations among architectural character, Bai vernacular dwellings, and Bai culture indicate that built heritage is an important spatial representation through which tourists recognise local culture. Textual valence is predominantly positive: positive, neutral, and negative affective terms account for 71.87%, 22.65%, and 5.48%, respectively. Positively coded propositions mainly concern natural and ecological landscapes, accounting for 44.12%, whereas 71.92% of negatively coded propositions concern services and accessibility, particularly prices and commercialisation, crowding and order, transport routes, and staff service. The complete corpus covers 228 attractions, five of which lack classifiable valence text. Using 43.49% for high-attention text and 88.44% for high-valence text as internal benchmarks, the remaining 223 attractions are classified as high-attention-high-valence, high-attention-low-valence, low-attention-high-valence, and low-attention-low-valence, accounting for 37.67%, 26.01%, 21.52%, and 14.80%, respectively. These categories reflect relative textual focus and textual valence rather than absolute levels of tourist satisfaction. The study identifies an asymmetric distribution between positive resource-related expressions and negative issues associated with the visiting process, providing a basis for architectural heritage conservation, tourism-service improvement, commercial-development regulation, and subsequent stratified on-site verification at representative places. Full article

Agile software development relies on frequent interaction, short feedback cycles, and adaptation, yet these practices do not automatically create shared understanding, visible assumptions, timely validation, or coordinated action. Relevant evidence is distributed across requirements engineering, teamwork, project uncertainty, traceability, domain-specific representation, prototyping, flow management, and leadership. This PRISMA 2020-guided critical integrative review connects these streams to explain how collaboration can support uncertainty management throughout iterative development. The initial evidence corpus was assembled between February and July 2026 and was subsequently checked through six structured Scopus searches. After deduplication, 2658 database records were screened against concept-driven eligibility criteria. Thirteen sources identified through the structured Scopus update and 87 sources from the initial corpus formed the 100-source review corpus. Two additional recent sources were incorporated during revision for targeted analytical updating, yielding a final analytical registry of 102 sources. Because source selection was concept-driven and aimed at explanatory coverage, the synthesis does not estimate the prevalence or frequency of the identified themes. Problem–mechanism–outcome–boundary coding produced six evidence streams and seven connected findings. The synthesis develops a collaborative learning loop linking stakeholder intent, uncertainty, early evidence, consequential decisions, and adaptation. The combined uncertainty-ownership-and-inquiry mechanism remains a low-confidence design proposition rather than a demonstrated effect. It then positions the Collaborative Development Method (CDM) as a literature-grounded configuration of established mechanisms rather than a validated replacement for existing agile frameworks. The review clarifies supported foundations, provisional rules, boundary conditions, and testable propositions for comparative and longitudinal evaluation. Full article

Background: Adolescents and young adults in Jordan experience high levels of psychological distress amid persistent stigma, limited mental health literacy, and shortages of specialist services. Although task-shared interventions have expanded access, their dependence on in-person delivery and sustained human resources constrains scalability. Guided digital interventions may extend reach, but evidence regarding their system integration and sustainability in low- and middle-income countries remains limited. Purpose: This study explored how the WHO-developed Scalable Technology for Adolescents and youth to Reduce Stress (STARS), a non-generative, rule-based chatbot intervention supported by trained e-helpers, was experienced and implemented in Jordan. It also examined the system-level tensions shaping its potential for sustainable scale-up. Methods: We conducted a qualitative multiple-case study nested within a randomized controlled trial of STARS in Jordan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 individuals, including STARS completers and non-completers, trained non-specialist e-helpers, a clinical supervisor, and policy and implementation stakeholders. Data were analyzed using a hybrid approach combining inductive thematic analysis with deductive coding informed by a system-innovation perspective and the culture–structure–practice framework. Results: Participants described STARS as culturally resonant, accessible, and adaptable to everyday life. Four recurring system-level tensions emerged: individualized support versus standardized protocols; privacy and anonymity versus institutional and parental trust; non-specialist support versus expectations for professionally qualified providers; and innovation within research settings versus integration into routine service systems. These tensions reflected competing priorities shaping implementation and perceptions of sustainable scale-up. Conclusions: STARS shows promise as a scalable guided digital mental health intervention for young people in Jordan. However, scale-up will require navigating recurring tensions across cultural, structural, and practice domains rather than addressing implementation barriers in isolation. This will require policy alignment, sustained investment in digital infrastructure and supervision, and cross-sector collaboration. Full article

Environmental conditions such as inadequate lighting, excessive noise, and poor indoor air quality can negatively affect students’ health, comfort, and academic performance. Although recent Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have enabled low-cost environmental monitoring systems, most studies provide limited validation of the embedded firmware responsible for deterministic multi-sensor acquisition and real-time operation. This paper proposes and virtually validates an energy-efficient embedded firmware architecture for a low-cost IoT environmental monitoring node for smart classrooms. The system integrates ESP32-based firmware with MQ-135, LDR, and KY-037 sensors, local alarm management, LCD visualization, and HTTP-based wireless communication. Hardware–software co-simulation was performed in Proteus Virtual System Modeling (VSM) before physical implementation. Ten experimental scenarios evaluated firmware execution, sensor integration, alarm coordination, fault handling, IoT communication, and power consumption. The proposed architecture maintained stable deterministic execution under all scenarios, with instantaneous current consumption ranging from 100 mA to 280 mA, 100% successful HTTP transmissions (HTTP status code 200), and an average communication latency of 378 ms. These results demonstrate that virtual prototyping provides an effective framework for early firmware verification, reducing development risks while supporting the deployment of reliable and scalable IoT environmental monitoring systems for smart classroom applications. Full article

Plant viruses are major plant pathogens and account for nearly half of emerging plant diseases worldwide. To date, few effective management measures are available for the efficient control of plant viral diseases. Cross-protection based on attenuated vaccine is an effective strategy to prevent plant viral diseases. The primary requirement for the development of attenuated vaccines is a vector with excellent characteristics, such as low pathogenicity, genetic stability, and the capacity for stable insertion of exogenous fragments. In this study, the cucumber mosaic virus (Fny strain) was genetically modified to serve as an attenuated vaccine vector. Based on pre-termination of the 2b protein-coding region and deletion of the 3′ UTR in CMV RNA2, six RNA2 mutants, designated R2-2bPTI, R2-2bPTII, R2-2bPTIII, R2-2bPTIV, R2-2bPTV, and R2-2bPTVI, were constructed. Experiments with different lengths tobacco phytoene desaturase (PDS) fragment insertion evaluated the capacity of each mutant to accommodate exogenous fragment. Based on the R2-2bPTIV, a viral fragment insertion mutant R2-2bPTIV-TMPYTVPX targeting cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), potato virus Y (PVY), tobacco vein banding mosaic virus (TVBMV), and potato virus X (PVX) was constructed. This mutant provided effective cross-protection against these targeted virulent viruses. This study developed a series of CMV-based vaccine vector, providing materials and data for the development of plant viral diseases attenuated vaccines. Full article

Long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) are key epigenetic regulators of genome function, yet their evolutionary dynamics following whole-genome duplication (WGD) events remain poorly understood. Salmonids, which underwent a lineage-specific autotetraploidization (salmonid-specific WGD, ~88–100 million years ago), provide an excellent model to investigate the retention, divergence, and functional potential of recently duplicated non-coding elements. LincRNA repertoires were compared across five genome-annotated salmonids (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, O. kisutch, O. mykiss, Salmo salar, and S. trutta) and their closest non-duplicated relative, northern pike (Esox lucius). LincRNAs represented ~5–7% of annotated genes in all salmonids except S. salar (18%). Sequence conservation was low relative to coding genes, with only 11–68 highly similar (e-value < 1 × 10⁻³⁰; similarity > 70% and alignments > 100 nucleotides) putative orthologues shared between salmonids and northern pike, and 161–338 among salmonids alone. Synteny conservation was modest in lincRNAs, with lower conservation in putative orthologues (8–16%) compared to putative ohnologues (8–33%). Secondary structure conservation was associated with sequence similarity (ρ = −0.45; p = 2.2 × 10⁻¹⁶), and the association was stronger among WGD ohnologues than orthologues. In S. salar and O. mykiss, lincRNA putative ohnologues showed weaker expression correlations than coding genes, suggesting widespread regulatory divergence, possibly through neo- and subfunctionalisation. Conserved salmonid lincRNAs showed enriched predicted interactions with miRNAs involved in tumour suppression, brain, bone, and muscle development (e.g., miR-455, miR-365, miR124, miR-133a, miR-140, and miR-9), a finding supported by limited transcriptomic data. Although salmonid WGD expanded lincRNA repertoires, lincRNAs have undergone rapid sequence and transcriptional divergence, with limited conservation across species based on sequence similarity, chromosomal position, synteny, and secondary structure. A subset of conserved lincRNAs retains structural features and regulatory signatures consistent with roles as miRNA sponges in brain, skeletal, and muscle development and tumour suppression, potentially acting within conserved regulatory networks. These findings provide new insights into lincRNA evolution following genome duplication and highlight the need for experimental validation of their regulatory functions. Full article

As urban development in China shifts toward improving existing areas, the focus of evaluation is moving from availability to quality, yet assessments of the neighborhood built environment and living circles still stop at facility provision. This study decomposes the conversion from spatial supply to need fulfillment into three links—availability, reach-and-visibility, and need fulfillment. Encounterability (E) captures how far a spatial element enters everyday experience through physical reach or visual exposure; perceptual affordance (P) captures how well an encountered element supports six perceptual needs: social interaction, recreation and leisure, aesthetic experience, emotional experience, broad learning, and humanistic enrichment. Taking Xi’an’s historic old city as a typical case, public needs were translated through grounded coding into auditable elements, which trained assessors evaluated at the city, district, and neighborhood levels, with a four-quadrant diagnosis locating the gaps. The results show that, within this context of comparatively rich provision, the principal experiential gaps arise at the encounter and support links: encounterability is similar across levels while perceptual affordance diverges, and the share of synergy categories differs significantly across levels (p = 0.007), forming resource–encounter, node–route, and frequency–support mismatches; the principal mismatch patterns are robust to equal weighting and to moderate shifts in the quadrant thresholds. Basic needs fail on quality and advanced needs fail on encounter and interpretation, pointing to three renewal actions: retrofitting, opening, and interpretation. This study extends evaluation objects from facilities to a fuller spectrum of spatial elements, extends encounter to reach and visibility together, and extends output from ranking to gap localization, offering a low-cost diagnostic tool for the human-centered assessment of the built environment, applicable to living-circle evaluation, urban physical examination, and livability improvement in historic neighborhoods. Full article

Background/Objectives: This study aimed to identify and categorise the educational, training, and support needs of informal caregivers of stroke survivors in order to inform the development of an Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) intervention within the European caregIVR project (Project No. 101129454; EU4Health Programme). Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted using three focus groups involving informal caregivers, healthcare professionals and other stakeholders, and academics and healthcare students in Portugal (n = 33). Discussions explored everyday caregiving challenges, priority educational needs, and expectations regarding digital support tools. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis with an inductive–deductive coding strategy supported by NVivo software (version 14). Results: Participants identified the transition from hospital to home as the most critical stage of the caregiving journey, characterised by poor continuity of care and insufficient preparation before hospital discharge. Major challenges included limited stroke-related health literacy, difficulties adapting the home environment, and substantial emotional, financial, and social burdens that frequently resulted in social isolation and caregiver burnout. Participants regarded IVR as a promising educational strategy for delivering practical, repetitive, and low-risk skills training. Conclusions: The findings suggest that caregiver empowerment should be promoted through progressive, person-centred, and non-judgemental educational programmes tailored to caregivers’ evolving needs. Caregivers should be supported by multidisciplinary teams capable of addressing the clinical, practical, and psychosocial complexity of post-stroke home care. Rather than replacing professional support, IVR should be considered a complementary educational tool with the potential to improve caregivers’ preparedness, confidence, and safety in the home-care setting. Full article

Background: Single-shock exposure to the hand–arm system is a distinct form of occupational mechanical exposure that is rarely assessed separately from continuous vibration. Due to methodological challenges and the lack of standardized definitions, epidemiological evidence on its prevalence and health relevance remains limited. Objectives: This study aimed to explore the occurrence of occupational single-shock exposure in a general working population and to examine its association with self-reported hand–arm health problems. A secondary objective was to assess the usefulness of an exploratory ISCO-08-based job–exposure matrix (JEM). Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among workers from diverse occupational backgrounds. Participants reported the use of predefined hand-held tools emitting single shocks, as well as additional tools identified via free text. Job titles were coded according to ISCO-08 and combined with expert-based exposure assessments to develop an exploratory JEM. Associations between exposure and health outcomes were analyzed descriptively and analytically in three exposure regression models. Results: Overall, 35% of participants (N = 162) reported occupational exposure to single shocks across a wide range of occupations, including technical and mixed-task jobs, indicating broader exposure than expected from ISCO-based classifications. Although exposure was generally of low to moderate intensity, it was associated with reported hand–arm health problems, particularly in distal regions (fingers, hand, and wrist (FHW); OR 4.32, 95% CI 1.38–13.44), where high forces seemed to be the main risk aspect (OR 6.26, 95% CI 1.67–23.50). Conclusions: Single-shock exposure appears to be common and may be associated with adverse hand–arm outcomes even at relatively low levels. The exploratory JEM was useful for identifying underestimated occupations and heterogeneity but cannot replace detailed task- or measurement-based assessment. Improved exposure definitions, assessment methods, and longitudinal studies in larger cohorts are needed to clarify health risks. Full article

Software-defined radio (SDR) has become an attractive platform for radar research due to its flexibility, compact size, and ability to reconfigure radar methods for different situations. However, achieving high-resolution time-domain radar with SDR remains challenging due to demanding requirements for data throughput, sampling rate, and hardware configuration. Frequency-modulated radar implementations face similar limitations, often suffering from slow data acquisition and increased system complexity including exact waveform linearity, phase coherence, frequency-stepping control, and computationally intensive signal processing. In this work, a high-resolution impulse radar is implemented on a USRP X310 equipped with a UBX-160 daughterboard. The system fully exploits the hardware’s wide instantaneous bandwidth, enabling high range resolution in real time. Detailed hardware requirements and software configurations are presented step-by-step to ensure reliable operation at high data rates. To maximize performance and flexibility, the radar system is implemented using the low-level USRP Hardware Driver C++ API rather than graphical programming frameworks. This enables improved memory handling, reduced processing overhead, and precise timing control. The resulting modular design permits adaptability for different radar modalities with minimal code modification. The proposed platform provides a practical and reproducible framework for developing wideband, real-time SDR-based radar systems. Full article