Search Results (670)

Sustainable energy management in grid-connected AC microgrids is investigated through a comparative assessment of centralized, distributed, and decentralized multi-agent-system-based load management control architectures integrating photovoltaic (PV) generation and battery energy storage system. A sustainability-oriented rule-based load scheduling strategy is implemented to efficiently utilize available renewable energy while maintaining grid power consumption within the prescribed demand limits and ensuring priority support for critical loads. Multi-agent-system (MAS)-based load agents coordinate centralized, distributed, and decentralized load management operations. The control architectures are evaluated under identical load profiles, PV generation patterns, and demand-limit constraints to ensure a fair comparison of sustainability-oriented energy management performance. Their resilience is further assessed under agent failures, communication losses, and delays. The comparative analysis employs sustainability-oriented performance metrics, including load served percentage, load curtailment percentage, demand-limit violation duration, and PV utilisation, to assess reliable energy delivery, demand-side efficiency, grid compliance, and effective renewable-energy utilisation. The results reveal distinct architectural trade-offs in sustainable energy management: decentralized control offers greater resilience to agent failures and achieves the highest average load-served percentage (64.83%) and lowest demand-limit violation duration (40.61 ms). Distributed control provides enhanced coordination and priority-based load management, with intermediate performance (64.10%, 41.17 ms), whereas centralized control is constrained by single-point failures and scalability, exhibiting the lowest performance (58.52%, 43.33 ms). PV utilisation remains approximately 99% across all architectures, indicating near-complete utilisation of available solar generation for load supply and battery charging with minimal curtailment. Full article

Management accounting systems (MASs) are essential to organisations because they provide high-quality information that supports planning and decision-making when it is relevant, timely and reliable. The effectiveness of MAS depends on the delivery of relevant, timely, and understandable information, yet organisations often fail to evaluate the quality of these services systematically, thereby limiting their strategic impact. Our study addresses the underexplored area of MAS service quality, focusing on internal dynamics within accounting departments and gaps in service provision. We conduct a gap analysis within a single consistent cultural environment (Slovenia) to assess the functioning of accounting services. In our study, the statistically significant preparer–user mismatch is concentrated in the reliability dimension. The findings suggest that reliability should be prioritised in efforts to improve MAS service quality. We discuss practical implications for strengthening MAS service quality, particularly through data integrity, reporting reliability, process standardisation and user expectation management. Full article

In regulated cross-institution electronic health record (EHR) sharing, access control may need to respect patient consent while also providing issuance accountability and revocation correctness. Existing multi-authority ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (MA-CP-ABE) schemes provide decentralized attribute management but generally do not bind key issuance and ciphertext use to explicit patient-authorized sharing episodes, nor do they provide proactive verification that accepted key packages are consistent with authenticated user requests and the current revocation state. In this paper, we propose a verifiable, consent-bound MA-CP-ABE scheme for cloud-assisted EHR sharing. The scheme binds ciphertexts and attribute key packages issued to a patient-signed consent identifier, supports request-consistent and verifiable key issuance, integrates revocation freshness and stale-key detection, and provides a two-layer accountability framework consisting of proactive issuance verification together with reactive tracing and audit. In addition, each issued package is bound to the enrolled user public key and to a user-originated commitment, supporting restricted designated-user delivery. Theoretical and experimental evaluations indicate that, under the stated trust and non-collusion assumptions, the proposed design strengthens consent-scoped access control and accountability while maintaining competitive computational efficiency for cloud-based EHR systems. Full article

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) communication networks are an important component of non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) in sixth-generation (6G) communication systems. LEO satellites are characterized by low propagation delay and highly time-varying topology. Space-based mobility management can effectively reduce transmission delay; however, rapid network variation makes space-based control node deployment and reconfiguration difficult to model and solve. Focusing on dual-layer LEO Walker constellations, this paper investigates the joint optimization of control node deployment and dynamic reconfiguration, and formulates a 0–1 mixed-integer linear programming model with multiple practical constraints, aiming to minimize the total handover and migration delay. The model incorporates practical constraints such as the CN resource budget, unique management of access layer satellites, inter-layer reachability, feeder link connectivity, non-empty control node (CN) management, and onboard resource capacity. To support online deployment, we propose a rolling-horizon migration-aware dynamic greedy control node placement algorithm (RH-MA-DGCNP), which updates the CN placement and the affiliation between access-layer satellites and CNs at each reconfiguration epoch while jointly considering the handover delay and the migration delay caused by transferring control-affiliation states from previous serving CNs to new serving CNs. A comparison with exact current-epoch MILP solutions obtained by CPLEX on validation instances shows that RH-MA-DGCNP achieves small optimality gaps with shorter computation time. Simulation results show that RH-MA-DGCNP achieves the lowest mean handover delay among all benchmark schemes and the lowest cumulative total delay cost among the quasi-dynamic and dynamic benchmark schemes. The CDF of handover delay further indicates that RH-MA-DGCNP has a higher proportion of low-delay handover events and effectively suppresses extremely high-delay handover cases. Sensitivity analyses under different elevation angle thresholds and ground station deployments further show that RH-MA-DGCNP maintains its performance advantage over the benchmark schemes under different network settings. Full article

Ficus deltoidea Jack (Moraceae), locally known as Mas Cotek, is a medicinal plant traditionally used throughout Southeast Asia for the management of diabetes mellitus. This review summarises the available evidence on the antidiabetic properties of F. deltoidea based on eleven in vitro, nine in vivo and one clinical study identified through a structured literature search. In vitro investigations show that F. deltoidea inhibits α-glucosidase and α-amylase, stimulates insulin secretion in pancreatic β-cells via both K⁺-ATP channel-dependent and -independent pathways, enhances glucose uptake in hepatocytes and adipocytes, promotes adiponectin secretion and inhibits protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B). Vitexin and isovitexin, the predominant C-glycosyl flavonoids in F. deltoidea leaves, appear to be the main bioactive compounds responsible for these effects. Meanwhile, in vivo studies in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rodents report dose-dependent reductions in fasting blood glucose, improved glucose tolerance, restoration of pancreatic islet architecture, modulation of hepatic gluconeogenic and glucose-metabolic genes, and protection against diabetic nephropathy and bone loss. Inter-varietal differences in chemical composition and biological activity were observed, with var. trengganuensis and var. intermedia reported as the most active. The only available clinical trial in adults with prediabetes (1000 mg/day for 8 weeks) showed a reduction in LDL and total cholesterol but no significant change in fasting blood glucose or insulin. The discrepancy between preclinical and clinical findings highlights the need for standardised extracts, pharmacokinetic studies and adequately powered clinical trials in patients with established type 2 diabetes mellitus. Full article

Block 116 has an annual oil production of 10.2 × 10⁴ t, yet the increasing edge-water encroachment has raised the natural decline rate from 7.8% to 11.4%, significantly deteriorating production performance. The field data shows an edge-water rise rate of 0.4 m/a. Since 2023, 11 flank wells have experienced water breakthrough, resulting in a daily loss of 12.6 t and contributing 4.6% to the overall decline. To address these challenges, this study systematically evaluates development characteristics, identifies key influencing factors, and establishes optimal injection–production parameters through an integrated experimental and numerical approach. The research results show that a novel combined flooding formulation—water + foaming agent + polymer (viscoelastic) + N₂—is proposed and validated, achieving the highest recovery efficiency of 63.09%, which is 22.99% higher than conventional waterflooding. This confirms that switching to a multimedium injection strategy at mid- to high-water-cut stages can substantially improve ultimate recovery. Numerical simulation quantitatively delineates the remaining oil distribution across individual sublayers, revealing that residual recoverable reserves (76.6 × 10⁴ t) are predominantly concentrated in five specific sand bodies, providing precise targets for infill drilling. A comprehensive field-scale adjustment strategy is formulated—integrating optimized technical policies, planar and vertical injection–production improvements, and coordinated end-to-end management—which, over the 15-year forecast period, is projected to increase cumulative oil output from 149.4 × 10⁴ t to 168.1 × 10⁴ t, raising the recovery factor by 3.3%. These findings offer both theoretical insights and practical guidance for sidetracking and effective reserve utilization in analogous low-permeability reservoirs within the Changqing Oilfield and beyond. Full article

Water quality management in large-scale institutional infrastructures faces significant challenges due to the high latency of manual sampling and the energy–connectivity trade-offs in traditional IoT deployments. This paper proposes HydroSense AI, a robust three-tier IoT framework designed for real-time multi-parameter water quality monitoring and predictive analytics. The system integrates a heterogeneous sensing layer (pH, TDS, turbidity, and temperature) with a hybrid communication architecture, utilising Long Range (LoRa) technology for low-power transmission over long ranges (manufacturer-rated for line-of-sight distances of up to 16 km, and validated up to 2 km within a dense campus environment in this study), bridged via an ESP32-based gateway to the cloud. To address the critical issue of energy autonomy in remote sensing nodes, we implement a hardware-synchronised duty-cycling mechanism using a DS3231 Real-Time Clock (RTC), enabling precise deep-sleep scheduling and significantly extending battery operational life. Beyond data acquisition, the framework incorporates AI-driven trend-forecasting and anomaly-detection models to provide early warnings of water degradation through a Telegram-integrated alert system. Experimental validation over an extended deployment period demonstrates high measurement stability, with the forecasting model achieving a one-step (10-min) normalised RMSE of 0.0063 (equivalent to 0.033 pH units) for pH and 0.0298 (17.0 ppm) for TDS on a held-out test partition; a benchmark against persistence and ARIMA baselines is also provided. A complete measured energy decomposition of the deployed node is reported: hardware-synchronised duty cycling reduces the quiescent current to 18.2 μA, and with a 12 s acquisition window at 112 mA on a 10-min cycle, the mean current is 2.26 mA, corresponding to an estimated 46 days of unattended operation on a 2500 mAh cell. Critically, the acquisition window accounts for 99.2% of the per-cycle energy budget and the sleep interval for only 0.8%, so quiescent current—the figure of merit most often reported as evidence of low-power design—is shown not to be the binding constraint for sensor-dominated nodes of this class. The results indicate that the proposed hybrid architecture offers a 99.8% packet delivery ratio for sustainable water management. Full article

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are critical parts of new-age green hydrogen energy systems where reactant distribution and water management determine performance and reliability. A three-dimensional, steady-state, and single-phase model of a self-humidified low-temperature PEMFC was developed in COMSOL Multiphysics to compare parallel, single-serpentine and double-serpentine bipolar plate flow fields under identical active area membrane electrode assembly, material properties and operating conditions, so that flow field geometry was the only variable. The model is verified via grid independence and validated in terms of published experimental polarization data with mean absolute deviation under 2%. At 0.1 relative humidity of the cathode inlet, the single-serpentine flow field provides 717 mA cm⁻² current density at 0.6 V and 595.7 mW cm⁻² peak power density in contrast to 582 mA cm⁻² and 492.3 mW cm⁻² for the double-serpentine and 577 mA cm⁻² and 463.2 mW cm⁻² for the parallel flow field. These two designs therefore behave almost identically in electrochemical terms but differ hydraulically; their peak channel pressure drops, being 3.8 and 0.8 kPa against 14 kPa for the single-serpentine design. Once pumping power is included, the single-serpentine design remains the best net power choice below an active area of approximately 54 cm². Full article

This study examines the relatively underexplored phenomenon of hostile takeovers within the insurance industry, a sector that played a significant role in the events surrounding the 2008 global financial crisis. Using a sample of 754 insurance merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions completed between 2008 and 2021, we investigate the determinants of hostile takeover activity. The dataset comprises acquiring and target firms from 46 countries and special administrative regions (SARs), providing a broad international perspective on post-crisis insurance-sector M&A dynamics. The findings reveal that several transaction- and firm-specific factors significantly affect the likelihood of hostile takeovers. In particular, a target firm’s prior M&A experience, increases in target book value, higher bidder research and development expenditures, bid revisions, and acquisition premia are positively associated with takeover hostility. While descriptive analyses document notable variation across jurisdictions, the primary empirical evidence is derived from pooled regression models incorporating country fixed effects. The results contribute to the literature on insurance-sector consolidation by identifying industry-specific factors associated with hostile acquisition activity and enhancing understanding of how information asymmetries, strategic considerations, and governance mechanisms shape takeover outcomes. These findings offer valuable implications for corporate managers, investors, and policymakers operating within a globally interconnected and highly regulated insurance industry. Full article

Chinese wolfberry (Lycium chinense Miller) is a vital medicinal plant and a key species for ecological restoration. While Species Distribution Models (SDMs) are commonly used to predict habitat suitability, they often rely exclusively on native occurrence data, potentially underestimating a species’ climatic niche breadth under assumptions of niche conservatism. This study aims to evaluate the global climatic tolerance of Chinese wolfberry by integrating occurrence data from both native and introduced ranges. We assess the impact of climate change on its potential range shifts in China and determine whether native-only models underestimate the species’ climatic tolerance. We compiled 984 high-quality global distribution points (536 native, 448 introduced). We compared climatic niche breadth derived from native-only data with that from global data. Using MaxEnt modeling, we projected the global niche model onto China under current conditions and under four future Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP126, SSP245, SSP370, and SSP585) for the year 2070 to analyze changes in habitat suitability and centroid migration. The study confirms that relying solely on native data significantly underestimates the climatic tolerance of Chinese wolfberry, particularly for thermal variables (e.g., mean temperature of the warmest/coldest month). The global model, driven primarily by the coldness index, annual biotemperature, and humidity index, showed excellent performance (AUC = 0.952). Currently, highly suitable habitats cover approximately 44% of China’s land area. However, future projections indicate a severe decline in habitat quality. While the total suitable area remains relatively stable, the proportion of highly suitable habitat within the total habitat is projected to drop from 62.6% to as low as 19% under high-emission scenarios. The centroid of highly suitable habitats is expected to migrate multidirectionally at an annual rate of 0.97–2.42 km·a⁻¹, while the altitudinal centroid shows a drastic upward shift of up to 7.24 m·a⁻¹ under the SSP585 scenario. Integrating global occurrence data provides a more robust estimate of the ecological tolerance of Chinese wolfberry. Future climate change poses a significant threat to the quality of suitable habitats in China, necessitating adaptive management strategies such as assisted migration to northern refugia and the implementation of climate-smart agricultural practices to sustain the economic and ecological value of this species. Full article

Background and Clinical Significance: Anti–myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG) antibody polyneuropathy is a rare, chronic IgM-mediated demyelinating peripheral neuropathy predominantly affecting sensory nerves in older adults, commonly in association with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. Reports describing anesthetic management in patients with this condition remain extremely limited, and no specific guidelines currently exist regarding neuromuscular blocking agent (NMBA) use or neuromuscular monitoring in this population. Case Presentation: A 79-year-old man with anti-MAG antibody polyneuropathy (diagnosed in 2007) and IgM monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance developed disproportionate progressive lower-extremity weakness and became wheelchair-dependent following COVID-19 infection in 2020. Preoperative evaluation revealed mildly reduced left ventricular function (ejection fraction 49%), mild chronic kidney disease, and marked intrinsic hand muscle atrophy with absent deep tendon reflexes. He was scheduled for robot-assisted radical cystectomy with ileal conduit diversion under combined general and thoracic epidural anesthesia. Before NMBA administration, neuromuscular monitoring was systematically attempted at the ulnar nerve (electromyography and acceleromyography, up to 60 mA/300 μs) and the corrugator supercilii; despite visible muscle contractions following peripheral nerve stimulation, neither modality produced reliable responses at either site. Given the inability to establish reliable monitoring, the administration of NMBAs was considered to carry an unacceptable risk of a prolonged, undetectable blockade. Anesthesia was maintained with deep sevoflurane (2.0–2.5% end-tidal) and remifentanil infusion without NMBAs, titrated to a bispectral index of 40–60. Tracheal intubation was accomplished via video laryngoscopy without NMBA. The 7 h and 30 min surgery was completed without patient movement or surgical compromise. Postoperatively, the patient developed transient upper airway obstruction attributed to glossoptosis, managed successfully with head elevation and nasopharyngeal airway insertion; supplemental oxygen was required until postoperative day 3, and the patient was discharged from the high-dependency unit on postoperative day 5. Conclusions: No measurable quantitative neuromuscular response could be obtained in this patient with advanced anti-MAG antibody neuropathy, despite appropriate application of electromyography- and acceleromyography-based monitoring and the presence of visible muscle contractions following peripheral nerve stimulation. In such circumstances, avoiding NMBA administration in favor of deep volatile or intravenous anesthesia with opioid supplementation may represent a reasonable, hypothesis-generating approach in carefully selected patients; this observation does not establish the general superiority of an NMBA-free strategy, and caution is warranted before generalizing it to procedures such as robotic surgery, in which profound neuromuscular blockade is often considered desirable. Full article

Background: Pain affects 50–75% of individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) and is more common than in the general population. Chronic pain is difficult to manage and may involve motor cortical and sensorimotor network alterations. Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the primary motor cortex (M1) has been explored as a neuromodulatory approach, although its effects and mechanisms remain unclear. Objective: This case series describes longitudinal changes in pain and anxiety following repeated anodal tDCS over left M1 in six individuals with MS-related chronic pain and descriptively reports concurrent changes in transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-derived neurophysiological measures. Methods: Six adults with MS and chronic pain (≥4/10) received 1 mA anodal tDCS over M1 (10 min stimulation, 25 min interval, 10 min stimulation) in two 5-day blocks separated by 2 weeks (10 sessions total), with usual care maintained. Pain and anxiety (0–10) were assessed before and after sessions and at follow-up. TMS assessed corticospinal excitability and intracortical inhibition and facilitation at baseline, post blocks, and at follow-up. Results: Marked inter-individual variability was observed in clinical and neurophysiological trajectories following repeated anodal tDCS. Response patterns included immediate improvement after stimulation blocks, delayed improvement after the second block, and transient rebound during the inter-block interval. TMS-derived measures showed heterogeneous changes, with no consistent correspondence with clinical outcomes. Conclusions: This case series describes variable changes in pain, anxiety, and neurophysiological measures following repeated anodal tDCS over M1 in MS-related chronic pain. The findings are observational and highlight inter-individual variability, supporting further controlled studies. Full article

Spasticity is a common and disabling consequence of upper motor neuron lesions, and its follow-up relies largely on clinical scales that may not fully reflect daily-life mobility. This prospective single-arm exploratory pilot study examined wearable-derived daily-life mobility metrics around a scheduled botulinum neurotoxin type A (BoNT-A) injection cycle and assessed their associations with established clinical measures. Thirteen patients with focal spasticity secondary to stroke (n = 11) or multiple sclerosis (n = 2) underwent baseline and 6-week follow-up assessment using the Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), Motricity Index (MI), the Timed Up and Go test (TUG) and a multi-sensor wearable monitoring system. Device-derived outcomes included gait impairment, gait speed, stride length, angular velocity, and lack of movement. Clinical scales generally changed in the expected post-treatment direction, with reduced MAS scores and descriptive or directional improvements in MI scores and TUG performance. Wearable metrics captured descriptive changes in daily mobility, notably a reduction in lack of movement. Furthermore, in exploratory pooled analyses, selected gait-related metrics tended to be associated with TUG performance and lower-extremity MAS. These findings highlight the potential of wearable telemonitoring to complement conventional clinical scales by providing objective, real-world data, supporting its further validation as a tool for longitudinal spasticity management and neurorehabilitation. These device-derived metrics should be interpreted as mobility-related digital biomarkers rather than direct surrogate measures of spasticity. Full article

Historic facade classification is generally based on qualitative assessments, limiting reproducibility and quantitative comparison. This study introduces the Heritage DNA (HDNA) framework, a descriptor-based approach integrating Morphological DNA (MDNA) and Material DNA (MaDNA) for the quantitative characterization of historic facades. Thirty-one facades from the Tepebağ Historic District (Adana, Türkiye) were documented using close-range photogrammetry and represented through a nine-dimensional HDNA vector. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering were employed to identify facade patterns and typological relationships. The first two principal components explained 50.38% of the total variance, while the four-cluster solution produced a silhouette coefficient of 0.256. Hierarchical clustering identified four facade clusters, which were subsequently interpreted as four facade families characterized by distinct morphological and material compositions. The results demonstrate that facade identity can be represented through measurable descriptor combinations, providing a reproducible framework for facade classification. The proposed HDNA approach offers a potentially transferable descriptor-based methodology for comparative heritage studies and data-driven heritage management, subject to further validation across different historic contexts. Full article

Background and Clinical Significance: Severe pediatric spastic equinovarus may significantly impair positioning, orthotic tolerance, hygiene management, caregiver-assisted mobilization, and assisted standing activities. In children with severe cerebral palsy, clinically meaningful outcomes frequently include reduction in caregiver burden and facilitation of daily care rather than restoration of autonomous gait. Ultrasound-guided cryoneurolysis has recently emerged as a minimally invasive option for focal spasticity management, although procedural workflow and tolerability remain challenging in severe deforming patterns. Case Presentation: We report a CARE-compliant same-patient bilateral technical comparison in a 9-year-old child with severe spastic cerebral palsy and bilateral dynamic equinovarus refractory to intensive rehabilitation and repeated botulinum toxin treatment. Baseline severity was consistent with GMFCS level IV. One lower limb was treated using the proposed posterior single-window ultrasound-guided cryoneurolysis approach through a single posterior proximal-calf window, whereas the contralateral limb underwent a conventional multi-point supine strategy. The posterior single-window approach enabled sequential targeting of multiple motor branches through a single posterior access corridor under continuous ultrasound guidance. The procedure required approximately 1 mL of 2% lidocaine without additional sedation and was completed in approximately 4 min, whereas the conventional supine strategy required multiple access points, repeated probe repositioning, minimal conscious sedation with midazolam, and approximately 20 min. At follow-up, lower-limb spasticity improved from approximately MAS 3 toward MAS 2, passive ankle angle, measured as the tibia–foot angle with 90° corresponding to the neutral ankle position, improved from approximately 80° to 95°, and semitendinosus-related hypertonia was reduced. Clinically meaningful improvement in positioning, hygiene management, assisted standing, and rehabilitation handling was observed. Caregiver-reported satisfaction and procedural tolerability were qualitatively perceived as better with the posterior single-window approach. Conclusions: The proposed posterior single-window cryoneurolysis strategy may represent a technically simplifying and clinically relevant minimally invasive approach for severe pediatric spastic equinovarus. Further prospective studies are required to confirm reproducibility, safety, and long-term outcomes. Full article