Search Results (10,355)

The objective of this study was to compare technical–tactical, physical, and goal-timing indicators in the group stages of the FIFA World Cup 2022 and FIFA Club World Cup 2025 and to determine whether associations between performance indicators and match outcome differed between the tournaments. A retrospective observational analysis included 192 team-match observations from 96 group-stage matches. Goal distribution by match half was examined using a chi-square test, while 15 performance indicators were analysed using mixed-effects models with Tournament, Match Outcome, and Tournament × Match Outcome as fixed effects and random intercepts for Team ID and Match ID. Benjamini–Hochberg correction was applied separately to each effect family. Goal distribution by half differed between the tournaments, with a greater proportion of second-half goals in the FIFA World Cup 2022 and a more even distribution between halves in the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 (Cramér’s V = 0.135) After false discovery rate correction, significant Tournament effects were identified for final-third receptions, defensive pressures, and forced turnovers, while significant Tournament × Match Outcome interactions were observed for possession, total and completed passes, final-third receptions, and defensive pressures. Full-data negative binomial sensitivity analyses retained the three Tournament effects and all five interactions, although four Match Outcome classifications changed. Within the FIFA Club World Cup 2025, winners showed higher possession and passing volumes than losing teams, while final-third receptions and defensive pressures also differed according to tournament and match outcome context. These findings indicate that performance–outcome associations varied according to tournament context rather than reflecting a universal profile of success. Full article

This study investigates the effect of a brand-new tank-mix adjuvant, Spray Adjuvant—Paraffinic Hydrocarbon Surfactant Complex (SA-PHSC), in enhancing the efficacy of commonly used insecticides and acaricides against two significant pests of tea plantations, the black looper (Hyposidra talaca) and the red spider mite (Oligonychus coffeae). Given the pest’s major influence on tea cultivation, which can result in output reductions of up to 55%, this study addresses mounting concerns of pesticide resistance and climate change. Laboratory bioassays showed that the combination of SA-PHSC with the insecticides quinalphos, deltamethrin, and emamectin benzoate, and acaricides etoxazole and fenpyroximate, significantly increased the mortality rates of H. talaca larvae (76.67–100.0%) and O. coffeae adults (100.0%). Additionally, enhancements were noted in the mechanisms of pest cuticular penetration and contact toxicity. These observations were corroborated by field trials, which demonstrated enhanced control of H. talaca (70.47–97.63%) and O. coffeae (75.87–96.59% reduction) populations, as well as increased green tea leaf yields, as a result of SA-PHSC treatment in conjunction with the evaluated pesticides. In addition, the study evaluated the phytotoxicity and organoleptic attributes of the made tea after application, confirming the safety and absence of any off-flavors in the final product (scoring 6.6–7.0). These findings indicate that SA-PHSC could serve as a valuable adjuvant for sustainable pest management in tea cultivation, as it has the ability to optimize the application of currently recommended insecticides and acaricides and restore pest susceptibility. Full article

During software testing, memory errors in C/C++ can silently corrupt the program state. Address-based memory sanitizers, while offering practical performance and compatibility, are fundamentally unable to distinguish spatial errors that skip redzones or temporal errors that occur after memory reuse. Moreover, their reuse-delay quarantine mechanisms impose significant space and time overhead. We propose a taxonomy of memory sanitizers based on validity encoding and violation detection. Guided by this taxonomy, we introduce fused metadata, a single 8-byte word that encodes an object’s end address and a 6-bit identity tag. MixSan, a prototype built on RangeSanitizer (RSan), stores the same identity tag in pointer high bits through Intel Linear Address Masking (LAM) U57 and validates both the tag and the spatial bound with a unified 3-ALU-op check. On SPEC CPU2006, MixSan incurs a 1.58× geomean runtime overhead, comparable to RSan’s 1.61× overhead. On the Larson allocator benchmark, MixSan and the uninstrumented tcmalloc both scale with thread count, whereas RSan throughput falls; MixSan’s multi-thread plateau is more than 30× that of RSan. In a custom 97-test suite targeting post-reuse temporal errors and redzone-skipping spatial errors, MixSan’s mean single-run detection rate is 98.41% over ${10}^4$ independent executions per program, matching the theoretical $63/64$ rate given a uniform 6-bit tag distribution, whereas ASan and RSan do not detect these constructed cases. Full article

Background/Objectives: Adults at high risk of type 2 diabetes frequently show concurrent dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, and central adiposity before overt diabetes develops. We evaluated cardiometabolic responses to standardized whole-grain staple replacement and examined grain-quality patterns in free-living and country-level settings. Methods: This secondary exploratory analysis included 144 participants (48 per group) from a 12-week, three-arm randomized dietary trial. Participants were analyzed according to their randomized assignments to 100 g/day, 50 g/day, or control. Lipid, anthropometric, body composition, and composite cardiometabolic phenotypes were evaluated. Longitudinal and time-weighted cumulative effects were estimated using linear mixed-effects and regression models, with Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) correction applied within the corresponding multiplicity domains. Complementary analyses included 30,769 NHANES adults without diabetes, including 12,169 with prediabetes, and descriptive country-level data on whole-grain intake, high-FPG-attributable diabetes burden, and cereal supply. Results: Within the extended phenotype panel, HWG versus control time-weighted cumulative effects included triglycerides (β = −0.220, 95% CI −0.397 to −0.043; FDR-adjusted p = 0.047), the atherogenic index of plasma (β = −0.125, −0.191 to −0.060; FDR-adjusted p = 0.002), and the triglyceride–glucose index (β = −0.301, −0.429 to −0.173; FDR-adjusted p < 0.001). Conventional lipid components showed distinct temporal responses. In NHANES, higher whole-grain exposure and more favorable grain-quality ratios were associated with lower adiposity- and insulin resistance-related phenotypes, whereas refined-grain exposure generally showed the opposite pattern. Country-level analyses showed marked heterogeneity in whole-grain intake, diabetes burden, and cereal supply context. Conclusions: Standardized whole-grain staple replacement was associated with short-term changes across several cardiometabolic dimensions in adults at high risk of type 2 diabetes, with the clearest extended-phenotype signals involving triglyceride-related and glucose–triglyceride coupling measures. NHANES identified cross-sectional grain-quality associations in free-living adults; country-level analyses described heterogeneity in whole-grain intake, diabetes burden, and cereal supply context. Full article

Polyphenol oxidase (PPO) is a key enzyme responsible for enzymatic browning in fresh-cut fruits and vegetables, severely compromising their quality and shelf life. This study aimed to investigate the combined inhibitory mechanism of oxyresveratrol (OXY) and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) on PPO through multi-spectroscopic analyses, molecular docking, TEM, and XRD, with the goal of developing a natural and effective anti-browning strategy for fresh-cut fruits. The results showed that the optimal combined effect was achieved at an OXY:EGCG ratio of 1:2, where the inhibition rate was significantly enhanced by 43.72% and 14.36% compared to using OXY or EGCG single treatment, respectively. The combined treatment exhibited enhanced chelation capacity of copper ion and DPPH radical scavenging activity, and enhanced hydrogen-bonding interactions while lowering binding energy, exhibiting characteristics of mixed inhibition kinetics. Structural characterization showed that the combined treatment drastically reduced the enzyme’s fluorescence intensity to 39.81% of that of the native enzyme, induced rearrangements in α-helix and random coil structures, triggered obvious protein aggregation, and weakened the intensity of crystal diffraction peaks. Importantly, the combined treatment effectively delayed browning in fresh-cut pear slices, demonstrating its practical application potential. These findings provide a promising natural combined approach for controlling enzymatic browning and extending the shelf life of fresh-cut produce. Full article

Off-grid photovoltaic (PV) hydrogen production systems must coordinate rapidly varying PV power, battery energy, and the operating states of multiple alkaline water electrolyzers. Inappropriate coordination may lead to PV curtailment, frequent unit switching, and persistent workload concentration on a small number of electrolyzers. This paper develops an efficiency- and load-balanced operation (ELBO) scheme as an improved rule-based supervisory strategy rather than an online optimization method. ELBO adopts a two-level decision structure. A planned number of online electrolyzers is first determined from the moving-average PV power and the reference power associated with high single-unit efficiency. This planned count is then corrected using real-time PV power, battery state of charge, and the previous electrolyzer states. The controller adjusts the powers of the online units before changing their number, uses the battery to bridge temporary power deficits, and distributes the remaining adjustable power under the operating and ramp-rate constraints. Five representative PV profiles selected from one year of measured data were used to compare ELBO with PV-following operation (PFO), multi-electrolyzer coordinated operation (MECO), and an offline mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) benchmark. ELBO produced 1328 kg of hydrogen, which was 8.85% and 6.07% higher than PFO and MECO, respectively. Its overall PV-to-hydrogen efficiency and PV utilization reached 65.2% and 94.9%, respectively, with 36 start–stop events. MILP produced 1345 kg of hydrogen, only 1.28% more than ELBO, but required the complete future PV sequence. Ablation analysis further shows that the planned-count layer, moving-average filtering, battery-supported retention, and load-balancing allocation contribute to different and complementary aspects of capacity matching, operating continuity, and workload distribution. The results indicate that the benefit of ELBO arises from the ordered coordination of these supervisory functions and that it provides a practical compromise between operating performance, workload distribution, information requirements, and computational complexity under the representative conditions considered. Full article

Municipal sewage sludge contains considerable amounts of protein, making protein recovery a viable route for sludge valorization. In this work, sludge disintegration was achieved by cyclone cutting coupled with ozone oxidation, and the mixed liquor of foam standing liquid and supernatant was used as the feedstock for protein recovery via isoelectric point precipitation. Pretreatment tests showed that under 60 mg/L ozone concentration, 10 °C and 60 min, alkaline conditions enhanced sludge lysis; the mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) removal rate reached 87.65% at pH 9, and the protein concentration in the foam layer reached 1530.14 mg/L at pH 11, yielding a protein-rich feedstock suitable for subsequent extraction. In the isoelectric point precipitation stage, single-factor and L9(3⁴) orthogonal experiments were conducted to examine the effects of pH, temperature and centrifugal speed on extraction rate, and four ensemble learning algorithms (GBR, RF, XGBoost and CatBoost) were employed to build prediction models. The results showed that the factor influence order was pH > centrifugal speed > temperature, with pH being extremely significant (p < 0.01). Under leave-one-out cross-validation, the XGBoost model performed best (R² = 0.9243, MAE = 2.78%, RMSE = 3.52%). Response surface analysis determined the optimal parameters as pH 4.0, 5 °C and 3500 r/min, with both predicted and measured precipitation-stage extraction rates of 86.19%. Amino acid analysis indicated that essential amino acids accounted for 39.9% of the extracted protein, with good rehydration and foaming stability. Ensemble learning algorithms can reveal the multi-factor nonlinear coupling in isoelectric point precipitation, providing data support for process optimization of sludge protein recovery. Full article

In this study, an adhesive wear model for a gear drive in mixed elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) is proposed. The mixed-EHL model combines the average Reynolds equation with the ZMC rough-surface contact model to determine the asperity contact pressure. By incorporating the fractional film defect into the Archard wear equation, a wear rate model under mixed EHL is developed and verified against published experimental data. This wear-rate model is subsequently coupled with a transient line-contact mixed-EHL model for gears to establish a tooth-surface wear prediction model that iteratively updates the tooth geometry and contact pressure. The evolution of tooth-surface wear under mixed EHL is investigated, and the resulting wear characteristics are compared with those under dry-contact conditions. The influence of tooth-surface roughness is also systematically evaluated. The results indicate that tooth-surface wear is substantially reduced under mixed EHL and that the maximum wear occurs between the lowest point of single-tooth contact and the pitch point. Increasing surface roughness intensifies wear and shifts the maximum-wear location toward the tooth root. These findings demonstrate that appropriate lubricant selection and effective control of tooth-surface roughness are important for improving the wear resistance of gear drives. Full article

The introduction of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) into the existing traffic system represents one of the greatest challenges of modern road traffic engineering. Beyond their role as active traffic participants, CAVs can also be regarded as mobile (floating) sensors, effectively turning the vehicle fleet itself into a distributed, city-wide and motorway-wide sensing infrastructure. The transition from fully human-driven vehicles to fully autonomous vehicles will take decades, giving rise to a prolonged mixed-traffic period in which vehicles with different levels of automation share the same road space. This paper analyses the parameters and measures used for evaluating the throughput, environmental impact, and safety of traffic networks at different CAV penetration rates. It further reviews studies that rely exclusively on data collected from CAVs acting as mobile sensors, examining data-aggregation and traffic-state-estimation methods used to reconstruct macroscopic traffic parameters such as flow, density, headway, and speed. Additionally, measures for evaluating specific use cases for CAVs including mobility-on-demand services and their cost comparison with human-driven taxi operations are also addressed. The energy and emissions implications of CAV deployment, including the added burden of sensing hardware and system-level rebound effects, are also examined. Based on the synthesis performed, a set of representative CAVs penetration rates is proposed as a standardised framework for future mixed-traffic flow evaluations. Full article

Transnational higher education (TNE) partnerships between Chinese and UK universities continue to expand. However, the structural conditions that shape teaching quality and the governance arrangements through which they are managed remain under-theorised from a faculty-centred perspective. Drawing on a survey-based mixed-methods cross-sectional study of 56 teaching staff (80% response rate) at a Sino-British dual-degree engineering programme in western China, this study provides single-case evidence that teaching workload was the strongest observed negative correlate of perceived institutional support/satisfaction. Total weekly teaching load was moderately and negatively associated with the overall support/satisfaction composite (Spearman’s ρ = −0.49, p < 0.001). Non-parametric paired comparisons showed that teaching facilities were the only support dimension that differed significantly between the two institutional contexts, with a moderate effect; the remaining dimensions showed no significant differences. Internal consistency was acceptable to good. Qualitative thematic analysis identified three faculty adaptation strategies: simplifying and contextualising course materials, using bilingual instructional resources, and scaffolding peer-based discussion. Exploratory teaching-method comparisons involving 13 paired tests, interpreted descriptively, indicated higher reported use of reflection exercises and project-based learning at the joint school campus. An exploratory, perception-based engagement paradox also emerged: faculty reported a higher proportion of students showing >75% active participation at the joint school campus (85.7%) than at the parent institution (70.4% of valid responses), despite rating joint-school infrastructure lower. This finding requires student-level validation. The study contributes an empirically grounded, faculty-centred account of workload governance in transnational partnerships, using the Sino-British case as an illustrative test site. Full article

The decarbonization of maritime transportation requires shipboard energy systems to coordinate conventional generators, renewable energy sources, energy storage devices, and thermal energy units under voyage-dependent operating constraints. This paper develops a configurable hybrid multienergy ship system for coordinated electrical and thermal energy scheduling. The proposed framework functionally separates the propulsion subsystem from the service and thermal subsystem while retaining system-level coordination among photovoltaic generation, wind generation, diesel generators, micro gas turbines, energy storage batteries, and thermal energy units. A convolutional neural network is employed to provide short-term photovoltaic power forecasts for day-ahead scheduling. The resulting scheduling problem simultaneously considers voyage completion, power balance, equipment operating limits, ramp-rate constraints, battery charging and discharging restrictions, operating costs, and pollutant emission treatment costs. The nonlinear operating logic is reformulated as a mixed-integer optimization problem and solved using CPLEX. A representative coastal voyage case study is used to evaluate the proposed framework. The results demonstrate that the method can coordinate multiple shipboard energy sources, satisfy the prescribed electrical and thermal demands, and provide a set of Pareto-optimal solutions describing the trade-off between operating cost and emission-related cost. The proposed framework provides a system-level scheduling approach for supporting the economic and low-carbon operation of hybrid multienergy ships under increasingly stringent maritime emission reduction requirements. Full article

Background: Candidozyma auris (C. auris) is an emerging multidrug-resistant yeast that has become an important cause of healthcare-associated outbreaks, particularly in intensive care units (ICUs). Colonization frequently precedes invasive infection, yet the epidemiology, progression to candidemia, and mortality among critically ill patients remain incompletely characterized. Methods: We conducted a narrative review of published studies evaluating C. auris colonization and infection in ICU populations. Studies reporting colonization rates, progression to invasive infection, and mortality were synthesized. Descriptive pooled proportions were calculated from aggregated data across eligible observational studies. Results: Colonization rates varied widely according to local epidemiology, ranging from 0.2 to 0.4% in routine surveillance studies to over 50% during outbreaks. Across 17 observational studies including 1879 colonized ICU patients, 616 developed invasive infection, yielding a descriptive pooled incidence of 32.8% (95% CI, 30.7–34.9%), predominantly candidemia. The median interval from ICU admission to candidemia was 25.8 days. Among 13 studies including 1354 colonized and/or infected ICU patients, the descriptive pooled 30-day in-hospital mortality was 36.4% (95% CI, 33.8–39.0%). In 12 studies comprising 396 patients with C. auris candidemia, the descriptive pooled 30-day mortality was 45.9% (95% CI, 41.0–50.8%), significantly higher than that observed in mixed colonized/infected ICU populations. Conclusions: C. auris represents a major threat in ICUs because of its ability to establish persistent colonization, progress to invasive candidemia, and cause high mortality among critically ill patients. Early identification of colonized patients, rigorous infection prevention measures, and prompt antifungal management are essential to reduce transmission and improve clinical outcomes. Full article

AI-powered conversational agents are becoming part of the everyday Internet information ecosystem, reshaping how users seek, interpret, and act on health-related information outside clinical encounters. As large language model (LLM)-based chatbots are increasingly used as on-demand digital health information tools, understanding how users perceive their credibility, usefulness, and limitations is essential for the responsible design of future Internet-based health services. This mixed-method survey study examined how general adults evaluated healthcare-related question–answer pairs provided by physicians and generated by AI chatbots. A sample of U.S.-based adults recruited through Prolific (N = 62) rated each answer on clarity, usefulness, appropriateness of detail, trustworthiness, and perceived evidence, and provided open-ended explanations of their judgments. Primary mixed-effects analyses showed that both ChatGPT- and Claude-generated responses received higher overall participant ratings than physician-provided responses, although the estimated difference was substantially larger for Claude (ChatGPT–physician estimate = 0.250, 95% CI [0.135, 0.364]; Claude–physician estimate = 0.825, 95% CI [0.710, 0.939]). ChatGPT received higher ratings on four of the five dimensions but not on clarity, whereas Claude received higher ratings across all five dimensions. However, physician, ChatGPT, and Claude responses were always presented first, second, and third, respectively. Response source was therefore confounded with presentation position, and the observed differences cannot be attributed exclusively to source. The responses were also not matched for length or format. Qualitative findings showed that participants valued detailed, specific, and evidence-like explanations. Participants also expressed concerns about hallucination, privacy, over-reliance, and the need for clinician verification. These findings suggest that LLM-based chatbots may be perceived as useful supplemental information tools within future Internet health ecosystems, but their deployment should include safeguards that support transparency, verification, and appropriate reliance. Full article

Deciduous dipterocarp forests (DDFs), widespread in mainland Southeast Asia, are potentially important yet poorly quantified sources of isoprene, a dominant biogenic VOC and ozone/aerosol precursor, and observation-based estimates are essentially absent for DDFs in northern Thailand. We present a pilot study estimating canopy isoprene over a DDF at the University of Phayao using a zero-dimensional (0-D) Guenther (G93) box model, benchmarked against tree-based machine learning (ML). Modeled concentrations were compared with 30 wet-season tower samples (parts per trillion; thermal-desorption GC–MS) at three heights (12, 27, and 42 m) over four days. An effective mixing height was calibrated per level and evaluated by strict leave-one-day-out cross-validation. The model reproduced the mean daytime level and diurnal accumulation shape (cross-validated R² = 0.64–0.68; MAPE ≈ 11%); because the clear-sky forcing is near-invariant, this reflects the within-day signal rather than day-to-day skill. A sensitivity analysis showed that the emission factor, loss rate, and mixing height are confounded through the ratio E_s/(kH). In this exploratory comparison, supplying the box-model output as an ML feature recovered skill otherwise lost (ΔR² up to +1.16), but an hour-of-day feature did the same, so the box model matches a diurnal-climatology baseline and its advantage is interpretability. This exploratory workflow offers a simple, low-data approach for tropical BVOC estimation. Full article

Background/Objectives: Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is the leading global cause of years lived with disability, but long-term real-world evidence for non-surgical management remains scarce, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to describe 5-year trajectories of pain, disability, healthcare utilization, patient satisfaction, and surgical conversion among patients with non-specific CLBP initially managed non-surgically at a tertiary spine center in Northwest China. We also compared long-term outcomes between unimodal therapy and multidisciplinary biopsychosocial care and examined baseline demographic, clinical, and psychosocial predictors of treatment success and conversion to surgery. Methods: We conducted a 5-year retrospective cohort study of consecutive patients with non-specific CLBP at a tertiary spine center in Northwest China. Of 485 consecutive patients screened for eligibility, 420 were enrolled and were compared on the basis of unimodal therapy with multidisciplinary biopsychosocial care. Primary outcomes were pain (Numerical Pain Rating Scale, NPRS) and disability (Oswestry Disability Index, ODI), analyzed using linear mixed-effects models; predictors of surgical conversion were identified via multivariable Cox regression. Results: Of the 420 patients, 352 (83.8% retention) completed the 5-year follow-up. Both pain and disability improved substantially during the first 12 months. Thereafter, pain intensity increased slightly (NPRS from 4.8 to 5.4), whereas functional disability continued to improve (ODI from 31.7 to 26.5). Early multidisciplinary care was associated with sustained superior outcomes (adjusted functional disability (ODI) difference: −8.2 points at 5 years) and a 42% lower observed risk of surgery (HR = 0.58). The cumulative 5-year surgical rate was 14.2%, with high pain catastrophizing as the strongest independent predictor (HR = 3.10). Conclusions: In patients with non-specific CLBP, non-surgical management yields substantial 12-month gains; function continues to improve through 5 years, while pain shows partial recurrence. Early multidisciplinary biopsychosocial care was associated with more durable outcomes and lower surgical conversion; because treatment was not randomized, these associations warrant confirmation in pragmatic trials and support routine psychosocial screening and stratified care. Full article