Search Results (6,194)

Recovering oil by fracturing fluid imbibition has demonstrated significant potential for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in tight oil reservoirs. White mineral oil (WMO), kerosene, or saturated alkanes with matched apparent viscosity have been widely used as “crude oil” to investigate imbibition mechanisms in light shale oil or tight oil. However, the representativeness of these simulated oils for low-maturity crude oils with higher viscosity and greater content of resins and asphaltenes requires further research. In this study, imbibition experiments were conducted and T₂ and T₁–T₂ nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra were adopted to investigate the oil recovery characteristics among resin–asphaltene-rich Jimusar shale oil and two WMOs. The overall imbibition recovery rates, pore scale recovery characteristics, mobility variations among oils with different occurrence states, as well as key factors influencing imbibition efficiency were analyzed. The results show the following: (1) WMO, kerosene, or alkanes with matched apparent viscosity may not comprehensively replicate the imbibition behavior of resin–asphaltene-rich crude oils. These simplified systems fail to capture the pore-scale occurrence characteristics of resins/asphaltenes, their influence on pore wettability alteration, and may consequently overestimate the intrinsic imbibition displacement efficiency in reservoir formations. (2) Surfactant optimization must holistically address the intrinsic coupling between interfacial tension reduction, wettability modification, and pore-scale crude oil mobilization mechanisms. The alteration of overall wettability exhibits higher priority over interfacial tension in governing displacement dynamics. (3) Imbibition displacement exhibits selective mobilization characteristics for oil phases in pores. Specifically, when the oil phase contains complex hydrocarbon components, lighter fractions in larger pores are preferentially mobilized; when the oil composition is homogeneous, oil in smaller pores is mobilized first. Full article

Background/Objective: Exertional rhabdomyolysis (ER) is primarily driven by mechanical stress on muscles during strenuous or unaccustomed exercise, often exacerbated by environmental factors like heat and dehydration. While the general cellular pathway involving energy depletion and calcium overload is understood in horse ER models, the underlying mechanisms specific to the ER are not universally known within humans. This study aimed to evaluate whether patients with ER exhibited transcriptional signatures that were significantly different from those of healthy individuals. Methods: This study utilized RNA sequencing on skeletal muscle samples from 19 human patients with ER history, collected at a minimum of six months after the most recent ER event, and eight healthy controls to investigate the transcriptomic landscape of ER. To identify any alterations in biological processes between the case and control groups, functional pathway analyses were conducted. Results: Functional pathway enrichment analyses of differentially expressed genes revealed strong suppression of mitochondrial function. This suppression included the “aerobic electron transport chain” and “oxidative phosphorylation” pathways, indicating impaired energy production. Conversely, there was an upregulation of genes associated with adhesion and extracellular matrix-related pathways, indicating active restoration of muscle function in ER cases. Conclusions: The study demonstrated that muscle tissue exhibited signs of suppressed mitochondrial function and increased extracellular matrix development. Both of these facilitate muscle recovery within several months after an ER episode. Full article

Skeletal muscle regeneration depends on muscle stem cells, which give rise to myoblasts that drive muscle growth, repair, and maintenance. In bats—the only mammals capable of powered flight—these processes must also sustain contractile performance under extreme mechanical and metabolic stress. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying bat muscle physiology remain largely unknown. To enable mechanistic investigation of these traits, we established the first myoblast cell lines from the pectoralis muscle of Pteronotus mesoamericanus, a highly maneuverable aerial insectivore. Using both spontaneous immortalization and exogenous hTERT/CDK4 gene overexpression, we generated two stable cell lines that retain proliferative capacity and differentiate into contractile myotubes. These cells exhibit frequent spontaneous contractions, suggesting robust functional integrity at the neuromuscular junction. In parallel, we performed transcriptomic and metabolic profiling of native pectoralis tissue in the closely related Pteronotus parnellii to define molecular programs supporting muscle specialization. Gene expression analyses revealed enriched pathways for muscle metabolism, development, and regeneration, highlighting supporting roles in tissue maintenance and repair. Consistent with this profile, the flight muscle is triglyceride-rich, which serves as an important fuel source for energetically demanding processes, including muscle contraction and cellular recovery. Integration of transcriptomic and metabolic data identified three key metabolic modules—glucose utilization, lipid handling, and nutrient signaling—that likely coordinate ATP production and support metabolic flexibility. Together, these complementary tools and datasets provide the first in vitro platform for investigating bat muscle research, enabling direct exploration of muscle regeneration, metabolic resilience, and evolutionary physiology. Full article

In this study, we aimed to address the lack of systematic research on key collision dynamics parameters (elastic restitution coefficient) in the full mechanization of rapeseed operations, which hinders the development of precision agriculture. In this present work, the restitution coefficient of rapeseed was systematically investigated, and a predictive model (R² = 0.959) was also established by using Box–Behnken design response surface methodology (BBD-RSM). The results show that the collision restitution coefficient varies in the range of 0.539–0.649, with the key influencing factors ranked as follows: moisture content (M_c) > material layer thickness (L) > drop height (H). The EDEM simulation methodology was adopted to validate the experimental results, and the results show that there is a minimal relative error (−1% < δ < 1%) between the measured and simulated rebound heights, indicating that the established model shows a reliable prediction performance. Moreover, by comprehensively analyzing stress, strain, and energy during the collision process between rapeseed and Q235 steel, it can be concluded that the process can be divided into five stages—free fall, collision compression, collision recovery, rebound oscillation, and rebound stabilization. The maximum stress (1.19 × 10⁻² MPa) and strain (6.43 × 10⁻⁶ mm) were observed at the beginning of the collision recovery stage, which can provide some theoretical and practical basis for optimizing and designing rapeseed machines, thus achieving the goals of precise control, harvest loss reduction, and increased yields. Full article

The 1.9 billion metric tons of steel globally manufactured in 2023 justify the steel industry’s pivotal role in modern society’s growth. Considering the rapid development of countries that have not fully taken part in the global market, such as Africa, steel production is expected to increase in the next decade. However, the environmental burden associated with steel manufacturing must be mitigated to achieve sustainable production, which would align with the European Green Deal pathway. Such a burden is associated both with the GHG emissions and with the solid residues arising from steel manufacturing, considering both the integrated and electrical routes. The valorisation of the main steel residues from the electrical steelmaking is the central theme of this work, referring to the steel electric manufacturing in the Dalmine case study. The investigation was carried out from two different points of view, comprising the action of a plasma electric reactor and a RecoDust unit to optimize the recovery of iron and zinc, respectively, being the two main technologies envisioned in the EU-funded research project ReMFra. This work focuses on those preliminary steps required to detect the optimal recipes to consider for such industrial units, such as thermodynamic modelling, testing the mechanical properties of the briquettes produced, and the smelting trials carried out at pilot scale. However, tests for the usability of the dusty feedstock for RecoDust are carried out, and, with the results, some recommendations for pretreatment can be made. The outcomes show the high potential of these streams for metal and mineral recovery. Full article

This study systematically investigates 50 μm-diameter 631 stainless steel fine wires subjected to both sequential and simultaneous electrothermomechanical loading to simulate probe spring conditions in microelectronic test environments. Under cyclic current loading (~10⁴ A/cm²), the 50 μm 631SS wire maintained electrical integrity up to 0.30 A for 15,000 cycles. Above 0.35 A, rapid oxide growth and abnormal grain coarsening resulted in surface embrittlement and mechanical degradation. Current-assisted tensile testing revealed a transition from recovery-dominated behavior at ≤0.20 A to significant thermal softening and ductility loss at ≥0.25 A, corresponding to a threshold temperature of approximately 200 °C. These results establish the endurance limit of 631 stainless steel wire under coupled thermal–mechanical–electrical stress and clarify the roles of Joule heating, oxidation, and microstructural evolution in electrical fatigue resistance. A degradation map is proposed to inform design margins and operational constraints for fatigue-tolerant, electrically stable interconnects in high-reliability probe spring applications. Full article

Multimodal sentiment analysis (MSA) faces key challenges such as incomplete modality inputs, long-range temporal dependencies, and suboptimal fusion strategies. To address these, we propose MGMR-Net, a Mamba-guided multimodal reconstruction and fusion network that integrates modality-aware reconstruction with text-centric fusion within an efficient state-space modeling framework. MGMR-Net consists of two core components: the Mamba-collaborative fusion module, which utilizes a two-stage selective state-space mechanism for fine-grained cross-modal alignment and hierarchical temporal integration, and the Mamba-enhanced reconstruction module, which employs continuous-time recurrence and dynamic gating to accurately recover corrupted or missing modality features. The entire network is jointly optimized via a unified multi-task loss, enabling simultaneous learning of discriminative features for sentiment prediction and reconstructive features for modality recovery. Extensive experiments on CMU-MOSI, CMU-MOSEI, and CH-SIMS datasets demonstrate that MGMR-Net consistently outperforms several baseline methods under both complete and missing modality settings, achieving superior accuracy, robustness, and generalization. Full article

The ongoing degradation of global forests has severely weakened ecosystem service functions, and traditional judicial remedies have struggled to quantify intangible ecological losses. China has become an important testing ground for restorative justice through the establishment of specialized environmental courts and the practice of environmental public interest litigation. Since 2015, China has actively explored and institutionalized the application of the concept of restorative justice in its environmental justice reform. This concept emphasizes compensating environmental damages through actual ecological restoration acts rather than relying solely on financial compensation. This shift reflects a deep understanding of the limitations of traditional environmental justice and an institutional response to China’s ecological civilization construction, providing critical support for forest ecosystem restoration and enabling ecological restoration activities, such as replanting and re-greening, habitat reconstruction, etc., to be enforced through judicial decisions. This study conducts a qualitative analysis of judicial rulings in forest restoration cases to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of restorative justice in compensating for losses in forest ecosystem service functions. The findings reveal the following: (1) restoration measures in judicial practice are disconnected from the types of ecosystem services available; (2) non-market values and long-term cumulative damages are systematically underestimated, with monitoring mechanisms exhibiting fragmented implementation and insufficient effectiveness; (3) management cycles are set in violation of ecological restoration principles, and acceptance standards lack function-oriented indicators; (4) participation of key stakeholders is severely lacking, and local knowledge and professional expertise have not been integrated. In response, this study proposes a restorative judicial framework oriented toward forest ecosystem services, utilizing four mechanisms: independent recognition of legal interests, function-matched restoration, application of scientific assessment tools, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. This framework aims to drive a paradigm shift from formal restoration to substantive functional recovery, providing theoretical support and practical pathways for environmental judicial reform and global forest governance. Full article

Soil degradation resulting from intensive agricultural practices, the excessive use of agrochemicals, and climate-induced stresses has significantly impaired soil fertility, disrupted microbial diversity, and reduced crop productivity. Plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) represent a sustainable biological approach to restoring degraded soils by modulating plant physiology and soil function through diverse molecular mechanisms. PGPB synthesizes indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) to stimulate root development and nutrient uptake and produce ACC deaminase, which lowers ethylene accumulation under stress, mitigating growth inhibition. They also enhance nutrient availability by releasing phosphate-solubilizing enzymes and siderophores that improve iron acquisition. In parallel, PGPB activates jasmonate and salicylate pathways, priming a systemic resistance to biotic and abiotic stress. Through quorum sensing, biofilm formation, and biosynthetic gene clusters encoding antibiotics, lipopeptides, and VOCs, PGPB strengthen rhizosphere colonization and suppress pathogens. These interactions contribute to microbial community recovery, an improved soil structure, and enhanced nutrient cycling. This review synthesizes current evidence on the molecular and physiological mechanisms by which PGPB enhance soil restoration in degraded agroecosystems, highlighting their role beyond biofertilization as key agents in ecological rehabilitation. It examines advances in nutrient mobilization, stress mitigation, and signaling pathways, based on the literature retrieved from major scientific databases, focusing on studies published in the last decade. Full article

The cement sheath is critical for ensuring the long-term safety and operational efficiency of oil and gas wells. However, complex geological conditions and operational stresses during production can induce cement sheath deterioration and cracking, leading to reduced zonal isolation, diminished hydrocarbon recovery, and elevated operational expenditures. This study investigates the development of a novel microbial self-healing well cement slurry system, employing fly ash as microbial carriers and sustained-release microcapsules encapsulating calcium sources and nutrients. Systematic evaluations were conducted, encompassing microbial viability, cement slurry rheology, fluid loss control, anti-channeling capability, and the mechanical strength, permeability, and microstructural characteristics of set cement stones. Results demonstrated that fly ash outperformed blast furnace slag and nano-silica as a carrier, exhibiting superior microbial loading capacity and viability. Optimal performance was observed with additions of 3% microorganisms and 3% microcapsules to the cement slurry. Microscopic analysis further revealed effective calcium carbonate precipitation within and around micro-pores, indicating a self-healing mechanism. These findings highlight the significant potential of the proposed system to enhance cement sheath integrity through localized self-healing, offering valuable insights for the development of advanced, durable well-cementing materials tailored for challenging downhole environments. Full article

Background/Objectives: This study aimed to compare the effects of low- and medium-frequency NMES, combined with a standard physical therapy (SPT) program, on functional capacity in critically ill patients. Methods: Fifty-four critically ill patients admitted into Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and on mechanical ventilation participated in this randomized, single-blinded, experimental study. Participants were randomly assigned to a Control group, who received a lower limb SPT program; the Low-frequency NMES group received lower limb SPT + NMES at 100 Hz; and the Medium-frequency NMES group received lower limb SPT + NMES at 100 Hz with a carrier frequency of 2500 Hz. The outcomes, encompassing functional capacity in the hospital, included muscle strength, handgrip strength, functional status, degree of independence for activities of daily living, functional and dynamic mobility, quality of life, and total days hospitalized. Results: Both NMES protocols combined with SPT improved functional capacity compared to the control group. Medium-frequency NMES provided additional benefits on dynamic balance, in the degree of independence to perform activities of daily living and quality of life (all p < 0.001) prior to hospital discharge. It also promoted larger gains on functional status prior to ICU discharge and on knee extension strength (both p < 0.05) prior to intermediate care unit discharge. Medium-frequency NMES also enhanced handgrip strength earlier than low-frequency NMES when compared to the control group. Notably, medium-frequency NMES was the only intervention associated with a significant reduction in total hospital stay duration (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Medium-frequency NMES, along with an SPT program in critically ill patients, showed greater benefits on functional capacity during recovery than low-frequency NMES. (Trial registration: This trial is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05287919). Implications for rehabilitation: 1. Medium-frequency NMES may enhance physical functionality and quality of life in critically ill patients with ICU-acquired weakness. 2. Medium-frequency NMES can reduce the number of hospitalization days. 3. NMES combined with SPT represents a feasible and effective option for patients unable to engage in active rehabilitation during critical illness. Full article

The sustainable recovery of valuable metals such as Cu and Co from ores is a pressing need considering environmental and economic challenges. Therefore, this study evaluates the effectiveness of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) as alternative leaching agents for Cu and Co extraction. Four DESs were prepared using choline chloride (ChCl) as a hydrogen bond acceptor (HBA) and oxalic acid (OA), ethylene glycol (EG), urea (U) and thiourea (TU) as hydrogen bond donors (HBDs). Leaching experiments were conducted with DESs supplemented with 30 wt.% water at varying temperatures, various solid-to-liquid ratios, and time durations. The ChCl:OA DES demonstrated the highest leaching efficiencies among the DESs tested on pure CuO and CoO, achieving 89.2% for Cu and 92.4% for Co (60 °C, 400 rpm, 6 h, −75 + 53 µm particle size, and 1:10 solid-to-liquid ratio). In addition, the dissolution kinetics, analysed using the shrinking core model (SCM), showed that the leaching process was mainly controlled by surface chemical reactions. The activation energy values for Cu and Co leaching were 46.8 kJ mol⁻¹ and 51.4 kJ mol⁻¹, respectively, supporting a surface chemical control mechanism. The results highlight the potential of ChCl:OA as a sustainable alternative for metal recovery. Full article

This study presents a comparative analysis of the annual performances of stationary and dual-axis sun-tracked photovoltaic–thermal (PVT) systems. The experimental research was conducted at a demonstration site in Oświęcim, Poland, where both systems were evaluated in terms of electricity and heat production. The test installation consisted of thirty stationary PVT modules and five dual-axis sun-tracking systems, each equipped with six PV modules. An innovative cooling system was developed for the PVT modules, consisting of a surface-mounted heat sink installed on the rear side of each panel. The system includes embedded tubes through which a cooling fluid circulates, enabling efficient heat recovery. The results indicated that the stationary PVT system outperformed a conventional fixed PV installation, whose expected output was estimated using PVGIS data. Specifically, the stationary PVT system generated 26.1 kWh/m² more electricity annually, representing a 14.8% increase. The sun-tracked PVT modules yielded even higher gains, producing 42% more electricity than the stationary system, with particularly notable improvements during the autumn and winter seasons. After accounting for the electricity consumed by the tracking mechanisms, the sun-tracked PVT system still delivered a 34% higher net electricity output. Moreover, it enhanced the thermal energy output by 85%. The findings contribute to the ongoing development of high-performance PVT systems and provide valuable insights for their optimal deployment in various climatic conditions, supporting the broader integration of renewable energy technologies in building energy systems. Full article

Accurate accounting of residual film recovery operation areas is essential for supporting targeted implementation of white pollution control policies in cotton fields and serves as a critical foundation for data-driven prevention and control of soil contamination. To address the reliance on manual screening during preprocessing in traditional residual film recovery area calculation methods, this study proposes a DBSCAN-MFI field-road trajectory segmentation method. This approach combines DBSCAN density clustering with multi-feature inference. Building on DBSCAN clustering, the method incorporates a convex hull completion strategy and multi-feature inference rules utilizing speed-direction feature filtering to automatically identify and segment field and road areas, enabling precise operation area calculation. Experimental results demonstrate that compared to DBSCAN, OPTICS, the Grid-Based Method, and the DBSCAN-FR algorithm, the proposed algorithm improves the F1-Score by 7.01%, 7.13%, 7.28%, and 4.27%, respectively. Regarding the impact on operation area calculation, segmentation accuracy increased by 23.61%, 25.14%, 20.71%, and 6.87%, respectively. This study provides an effective solution for accurate field-road segmentation during mechanical residual film recovery operations to facilitate subsequent calculation of the recovered area. Full article

Construction and demolition byproducts include substantial amounts of wood panel waste (WPW) that pose environmental challenges. They also create opportunities for sustainable resource recovery. This study investigates the potential of WPW-derived biochar as an efficient adsorbent for phenol removal from aqueous solutions. Biochar was produced via pyrolysis at 450 °C and subsequent activation at 750, 850, and 950 °C. The biochar’s physicochemical properties, including surface area, pore volume, and elemental composition, were characterized using advanced methods, including BET analysis, elemental analysis, and adsorption isotherm analysis. Activated biochar demonstrated up to nine times higher adsorption capacity than raw biochar, with a maximum of 171.9 mg/g at 950 °C under optimal conditions: pH of 6 at 25 °C, initial phenol concentration of 200 mg/L, and biochar dosage of 1 g/L of solution for 48 h. Kinetic and isotherm studies revealed that phenol adsorption followed a pseudo-second-order model and fit the Langmuir isotherm, indicating chemisorption and monolayer adsorption mechanisms. Leaching tests confirmed the biochar’s environmental safety, with heavy metal concentrations well below regulatory limits. Based on these findings, WPW biochar offers a promising, eco-friendly solution for wastewater treatment in line with circular economy and green chemistry principles. Full article