Search Results (11,010)

Background/Objectives: Recent investigations point to red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) as a very potent sentinel species for monitoring the dissemination of antimicrobial bacteria in wildlife habitats. Methods: This study investigated antimicrobial resistance in red foxes from 16 hunting grounds (peri-urban and peri-rural) in western Romania, between 2022 and 2024, in order to evaluate the species as “One Health” sentinels at the wildlife–human–animal interface. During this period, 137 bacterial strains previously identified from 216 samples were phenotypically tested using both the Kirby–Bauer disk diffusion method and the Vitek 2 Compact system. Results: Among the Gram-negative isolates, particularly Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica, notable antimicrobial resistance and multidrug-resistant (MDR) phenotypes were observed, including resistance to third-generation cephalosporins (ceftazidime) and reduced susceptibility to carbapenems. Resistance patterns observed in Proteus spp. largely reflected intrinsic resistance traits. Methicillin-resistant and MDR staphylococci (Staphylococcus aureus, S. pseudintermedius and S. sciuri) were detected in both peri-urban and peri-rural hunting grounds, with higher frequencies observed in peri-rural areas. Although MDR prevalence was slightly higher in peri-urban compared to peri-rural sites, no statistically significant association was identified between area of isolation and antimicrobial resistance or MDR status. Antimicrobial susceptibility results obtained by disk diffusion and the Vitek 2 Compact system showed a high level of concordance for antibiotics tested in common. Conclusions: Overall, these findings support the use of red foxes as effective One Health sentinels for monitoring environmental antimicrobial resistance occurrence across wildlife, domestic animals, and human-impacted habitats. Full article

Coal mine drill pipes are subjected to periodic impacts and high-intensity loads in complex underground environments, making them prone to developing micro-cracks that gradually expand, leading to equipment failure and major safety accidents. To address this issue, this paper proposes a framework for ultrasonic crack detection in drill pipes, which leverages a sliding-window root mean square (SWRMS) index for feature representation and a convolutional neural network for accurate classification in noisy environments. The influence mechanism of cracks on ultrasonic echoes was studied, and the SWRMS index was introduced to characterize the ultrasonic signal features. This index reflects the spatial position of the crack through the peak position and reveals the crack size through the amplitude, achieving a unified representation of both crack position and size. Furthermore, to address challenges such as spurious echoes and noise interference caused by the drill pipe’s threaded structure in practical engineering applications, convolutional neural network (CNN) was constructed to achieve intelligent identification of drill pipe cracks in high-noise environments. A data augmentation method using alternating noise levels was designed to simulate the scattering effect caused by the drill pipe’s threads and actual noise interference. The results show that CNN exhibits superior recognition performance under different noise levels, maintaining a classification accuracy of 94.4% even at a 75% noise level. The research results verify that the proposed method has significant advantages in crack detection accuracy and noise robustness, providing effective support for real-time monitoring and intelligent diagnosis of key components such as coal mine drill pipes. Full article

Biofloc technology (BFT) is based on the reutilization of nitrogenous waste generated by cultured organisms through the biotransformation of these compounds primarily into microbial biomass, allowing a reduction in water exchange. The aim of this study was to evaluate BFT as a water-saving culture strategy, using two carbon sources (chancaca and molasses), and to assess its effects on water-use efficiency, growth performance, digestive enzyme activity, and physiological responses in juvenile northern river shrimp (Cryphiops caementarius). The experiment was conducted in triplicate using 400 L fiberglass tanks, with an initial stocking density of 75 shrimp m⁻² and an average individual weight of 0.85 ± 0.65 g, over a 157-day rearing period. Water quality parameters were maintained within suitable ranges throughout the study. Significant differences were observed in the composition of bacterial and plankton communities among the biofloc treatments, whereas no significant differences were detected in growth performance or digestive enzyme activities. Heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70), a stress-related biomarker indicative of physiological responses, exhibited higher levels in the biofloc treatment supplemented with molasses. Overall, BFT treatments reduced water exchange by 81.6% while maintaining comparable biological performance to the control, indicating that biofloc technology represents a water-efficient and environmentally sustainable culture approach for juvenile Cryphiops caementarius, an endemic freshwater shrimp species, particularly in water-limited regions of northern Chile. Full article

An archaeological exposure near Hachum, featuring a ditch profile interpreted as part of a Neolithic earthwork, was characterized using DNA analyses of bacterial 16S rRNA from soil samples. The NGS data from 13 sampling points at different positions and depths within the trench profile were compared with regard to the percentage distribution of phyla and the frequency of occurrence of individual bacterial types (genera or operational taxonomic units, OTUs). Characteristic differences between parts of the trench profile became apparent based on correlations of OTU abundances as well as the occurrence of specific types. In particular, a high similarity in bacterial communities was observed among samples from intermediate trench depths, while a markedly different composition was found in the area of the central trench bottom. These findings indicate that the trench must have remained open for a certain period of time and was later filled relatively homogeneously. The results showed that the middle and lower parts of the ditch fill could be clearly distinguished from each other and from the surrounding area based on the composition of soil bacterial DNA. Genera detected predominantly in the lower part of the ditch suggest that, after the ditch was completed, organic matter, animal dung, and possibly even human feces were accumulated at the bottom. The investigations demonstrate that analyses of soil bacterial communities can provide valuable insights into the history and function of a Neolithic earthwork and, more generally, represent an important additional source of information for interpreting archaeological contexts that are devoid of or poor in finds. Full article

Historical landfills in coastal environments are at increasing risk of erosion under changing climate conditions. Various studies have highlighted pollutant release associated with potentially toxic elements and flame retardants from such erosional processes, but there has been little focus on per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) release as a result of physical erosion at such sites, despite landfills being highlighted as a key source of PFAS to the water environment. This study presents a rapid screening approach that could be adopted at scale by regulators to assess the presence and potential flux of PFAS released at three historical municipal waste landfill sites in the UK. The sites selected cover a range of epochs prior to rigorous environmental regulation from the second half of the twentieth century. At the older waste deposits (Withernsea: 1950s–1960s; Hessle: 1930s–1970s), all 52 PFAS analysed in solid materials were below the detection limits except for two samples where modest concentrations (0.92–1.98 ng/g) of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluoroethylcyclohexane sulfonate (PFecHS) were detected. At the more recently operational site (Crosby: 1970s–1980s), the legacy PFAS chemicals, PFOS and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), were present in all samples in modest concentrations (6.01–8.22 ng/g for PFOS; 0.62–1.20ng/g for PFOA) below contaminated land thresholds. At this site, it was possible to model the flux of PFAS release based on LiDAR surveys of the eroding waste terrace over an 18-year period. This showed an annualised total solid phase PFAS (PFOS plus PFOA in this case) flux in the region of 2.5–16.9 g/yr, which is towards the lower end of the reported landfill leachate flux at inland sites. While such releases are relatively modest on an individual site basis, in transitional and coastal waters in heavily urbanised and (post-)industrial regions, the aggregated solid phase PFAS flux from the large number of eroding historical landfills (n = 114) could be significant. Full article

Multitrack music transcription is the task of converting music recordings into symbolic music representations that are assigned to individual instruments. This task requires simultaneous transcription of note onset and offset events for individual instruments. In addition, the limited resources of many transcription datasets make multitrack music transcription challenging. Thus, even state-of-the-art transcription systems are inadequate for applications requiring high accuracy. In this paper, we propose a framework to jointly transcribe onsets and frames for multiple instruments by integrating a deep learning architecture based on U-Net with an architecture based on Perceiver, which is a variant of the Transformer architecture. The proposed framework effectively detects the pitches of different instruments by employing the multi-layer combined frequency and periodicity (ML-CFP) with multilayered frequency-domain and quefrency-domain features as the input data representation. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed multitrack music transcription system outperforms existing systems on five transcription datasets, including low-resource datasets. Furthermore, we evaluate the proposed system in terms of instrument type and show that the system provides high-quality transcription results for the predominant instruments. Full article

Background: Integrating Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology into storage areas within the wiring harness manufacturing industry enables real-time component traceability and supports the implementation of fully automated inventory processes. While RFID systems provide continuous data regarding component type, quantity, and location, periodic inventory validation is still required to verify and correct records in the warehouse management system. Methods: This study examines the feasibility of passive ultra-high-frequency (UHF) RFID technology for automatic inventory management in a components warehouse. It also reviews relevant scientific literature on autonomous RFID signal measurement and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)-based localization methods, which are subsequently adapted for inventory applications. An experimental setup is developed to characterize the reading field, hysteresis effects, and the influence of distance and tag orientation on detection performance. Results: The findings indicate that RFID-based automatic inventory is achievable with high accuracy and stability, especially when tag trajectories correspond to areas of high detection probability and antenna polarization is optimally configured. Conclusions: The proposed RFID-based system can be implemented with minimal hardware changes and low investment, thereby improving stock accuracy, traceability, and operational efficiency in automotive component logistics. Full article

Bait costs constitute 40–50% of the total expenditure in river crab aquaculture, highlighting the critical need for accurately assessing crab growth and scientifically determining optimal feeding regimes across different farming stages. Current traditional methods rely on periodic manual sampling to monitor growth status and artificial feeding platforms to observe consumption and adjust bait input. These approaches are inefficient, disruptive to crab growth, and fail to provide comprehensive growth data. Therefore, this study proposes a machine vision-based monitoring system for river crab feeding platforms. Firstly, the Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) algorithm is applied to enhance underwater images of river crabs. Subsequently, an improved YOLOv11 (You Only Look Once) model is introduced and applied for multi-target detection and counting in crab ponds, enabling the extraction of information related to both river crabs and bait. Concurrently, underwater environmental parameters are monitored in real-time via an integrated environmental information sensing system. Finally, an information processing platform is established to facilitate data sharing under a “detection–processing–distribution” workflow. The real crab farm experimental results show that the river crab quality error rate was below 9.57%, while the detection rates for both corn and pellet baits consistently exceeded 90% across varying conditions. These results indicate that the proposed system significantly enhances farming efficiency, elevates the level of automation, and provides technological support for the river crab aquaculture industry. Full article

Peripartum depression (PPD) represents one of the most prevalent and disabling psychiatric conditions among women, yet its underlying biology remains poorly integrated across medical disciplines. Emerging evidence highlights PPD as a prototypical disorder of the heart–brain axis, where neuroendocrine changes, immune activation, and cardiovascular dysregulation converge to shape maternal vulnerability. During pregnancy and the postpartum period, abrupt fluctuations in estrogen, progesterone (P4), and placental corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) interact with a sensitized hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, altering neural circuits involved in mood regulation, stress reactivity, and maternal behavior. Parallel cardiovascular adaptations, including endothelial dysfunction, altered blood pressure variability, and reduced heart rate variability (HRV), suggest a profound perturbation of autonomic balance with potential long-term implications for maternal cardiovascular health. Neuroinflammation, microglial activation, and systemic cytokine release further mediate the bidirectional communication between the heart and the brain, linking emotional dysregulation with vascular and autonomic instability. Evidence also indicates that conditions such as preeclampsia and peripartum cardiomyopathy share biological pathways with PPD, reinforcing the concept of a unified pathophysiological axis. This review synthesizes current knowledge on the neurobiological, cardiovascular, endocrine, and inflammatory mechanisms connecting PPD to maternal heart–brain health, while discussing emerging biomarkers and therapeutic strategies aimed at restoring integrative physiology. Understanding PPD as a multisystem heart–brain disorder offers a transformative perspective for early detection, risk stratification, and personalized intervention during one of the most biologically vulnerable periods of a woman’s life. Full article

Coral reefs provide immense ecosystem and economic value, supporting biodiversity, fisheries, tourism, and coastal protection worth billions annually. However, widespread degradation from thermal stress, storms, disease, and human impacts has caused significant coral cover and reef structure loss, increasing coastal vulnerability and economic risks. While coral loss is well-documented, degradation of underlying reef infrastructure and surrounding seafloor changes remain poorly understood. This study addresses this knowledge gap by quantifying seafloor elevation and volume changes across 234.2 km² of the Upper Florida Keys (UFK) reef tract using historical bathymetric and modern lidar (light detection and ranging) data collected from two periods with distinctly different disturbance regimes: 1935–2002 (frequent storms and major coral loss) and 2002–2016 (few storms and persistently low coral cover). Analysis of over 25,000 data points revealed substantial elevation and volume loss during 1935–2002 (−0.1 ± 0.8 m; 13.6 × 10⁶ m³ net loss), shifting to minimal gains by 2002–2016 (0.0 ± 0.3 m; 1.6 × 10⁶ m³ net gain). Despite this shift, benthic cover data showed continued declines in stony coral, with increases in macroalgae and octocorals, indicating that limited reef accretion persists even with reduced storm activity. Spatial analyses highlighted variable accretion and erosion patterns across habitats and subregions, underscoring the limitations of localized measurements for ecosystem-wide assessments. Our findings demonstrate the value of integrating historical and modern datasets for regional reef monitoring, establishing baselines for restoration planning, and emphasizing the need for continued high-resolution monitoring to guide adaptive management amid ongoing environmental change. Full article

Tropical cyclones can rapidly alter watershed chemistry by shifting hydrologic pathways and mobilizing stored nutrients, yet these disturbances often remain undetected when storms cause little visible flooding or geomorphic damage. During Hurricane Helene 2024, intense rainfall across the Oconee River watershed in Georgia generated sharp increases in discharge that triggered substantial nutrient export despite minimal physical alteration to the landscape. High-frequency measurements of nitrate, phosphate, and sulfate in urban, forested, and recreational settings revealed pronounced and synchronous post-storm increases in all three solutes. Nitrate showed the strongest and most persistent response, with mean concentrations increasing from approximately 1–3 mg/L during pre-storm conditions to 6–14 mg/L post-storm across sites, and remaining elevated for several months after hydrologic conditions returned to baseline. Phosphate concentrations increased sharply during the post-storm period, rising from pre-storm means of ≤0.3 mg/L to a post-storm average of 1.5 mg/L, but declined more rapidly during recovery, consistent with sediment-associated mobilization and subsequent attenuation. Sulfate concentrations also increased substantially across the watershed, with post-storm mean values commonly exceeding 20 mg/L and maximum concentrations reaching 41 mg/L, indicating sustained dissolved-phase release and enhanced temporal variability. Recovery trajectories differed by solute: phosphate returned to baseline within weeks, nitrate declined gradually, and sulfate remained elevated throughout the winter. These findings demonstrate that substantial chemical perturbations can occur even in the absence of visible storm impacts, underscoring the importance of event-based, high-resolution monitoring to detect transient but consequential shifts in watershed biogeochemistry. They also highlight the need to better resolve solute-specific pathways that govern nutrient mobilization during extreme rainfall in mixed-use watersheds with legacy nutrient stores and engineered drainage networks. Full article

Social security systems constitute a structurally significant component of public finance in developing economies and often generate persistent fiscal pressures through budgetary transfers. Demographic transformation, widespread informality in labor markets, and weaknesses in contribution-based financing increase the dependence of social security systems on public resources. The objective of this study is to examine whether budget transfers to the social security system affect fiscal sustainability in Turkey by analyzing their relationship with the budget deficit and the public sector borrowing requirement. The analysis employs annual data for Turkey covering the period of 1984–2024. A comprehensive time-series econometric framework is adopted, incorporating conventional and structural-break unit root tests, the ARDL bounds testing approach with error correction modeling, and the Toda–Yamamoto causality method. The empirical findings provide evidence of a stable long-run relationship among the variables. The results indicate that social security budget transfers exert a statistically significant and persistent effect on the public sector borrowing requirement, while no direct long-run effect on the headline budget deficit is detected. Causality results further confirm that fiscal pressures associated with social security financing materialize primarily through borrowing dynamics rather than short-term budgetary imbalances. By explicitly modelling social security budget transfers as an independent fiscal channel over a long historical horizon, this study contributes to the literature by offering new empirical insights into the fiscal sustainability implications of social security financing in Turkey. The findings also provide policy-relevant evidence for developing economies facing similar institutional, demographic, and fiscal challenges. Full article

Background: Exposure to environmental pollutants, especially endocrine-disrupting chemicals, disproportionately affects vulnerable populations like pregnant women, lactating mothers, and preterm infants. This study aimed to assess the detection patterns of DiNP-, DEP-, and DEHP-related metabolites in maternal urine and breast milk, examine agreement between matrices, and explore maternal factors associated with phthalate exposure. Methods: Fifty-five mothers who delivered at ≤32 gestational weeks and whose infants were hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) were enrolled. Breast milk and urine samples were analyzed using a validated isotope-dilution LC–MS/MS method. Urinary phthalate metabolite concentrations were adjusted for specific gravity. Linear mixed-effects models with a random intercept for mother were used to examine associations between urinary and breast milk phthalate metabolite concentrations, assess temporal changes, and evaluate the influence of breast milk lipid content. Results: DEHP and DiNP metabolites were detected in nearly all maternal urine samples. Breast milk contained predominantly primary metabolites (MEHP and MiNP), while secondary oxidative metabolites were rarely detected. Urine concentrations consistently exceeded breast milk concentrations. Urinary and breast milk phthalate concentrations were not correlated across sampling periods, indicating limited matrix concordance. Conclusions: Mothers of very preterm infants experience sustained phthalate exposure in the postpartum period; however, limited metabolite transfer to breast milk indicates that maternal urine remains the preferred biomonitoring matrix for assessing systemic phthalate exposure. Breast milk phthalate profiles exhibit compound-specific temporal changes and appear largely independent of concurrent urinary exposure biomarkers. Full article

Hospital environments are recognized as significant reservoirs of nosocomial pathogens, contributing to the onset of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Timely microbiological monitoring is essential to mitigate infection risks. However, gold-standard methods based on culture and biochemical techniques are time-consuming and may underestimate microbial contamination, potentially delaying interventions. This study proposes a novel approach for surface monitoring using loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) for the rapid detection of key nosocomial pathogens, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, and Enterococcus spp. A total of 145 surface samples were collected from six Italian hospitals and analyzed by both standard culture and LAMP methods, following two different incubation times (6 and 9 h) using pre-enrichment medium. Comparison with the reference method revealed that the LAMP assay achieved a sensitivity of 1.00 for all target pathogens at both 6 and 9 h of incubation. Specificity values were slightly higher at 6 h compared to 9 h: 0.93 vs 0.90 for P. aeruginosa, 0.91 vs 0.89 for Enterococcus spp., while remaining 0.92 for S. aureus, at both incubation times. These results suggest that a 6-h incubation period offers an optimal balance between speed and diagnostic accuracy, making LAMP a promising tool for rapid microbiological surveillance in healthcare settings. Full article

In regions lacking sufficient data, remote sensing (RS) offers a reliable alternative for precipitation estimation, enabling more effective drought management. This study comprehensively evaluates four commonly used RS datasets—Climate Hazards Center InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS), Tropical Applications of Meteorology using Satellite data (TAMSAT), Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks–Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR), and Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation (MSWEP) against ground-based data—with respect to their performance in detecting precipitation and drought patterns in the Great Ruaha River Basin (GRRB), Tanzania (1983–2020). Statistical metrics including the Pearson correlation coefficient (r), mean error (ME), root mean square error (RMSE), and bias were employed to assess the performance at daily, monthly, seasonal (wet/dry), and annual timescales. Most of the RS products exhibited lower correlations (r < 0.5) at daily timestep and low RMSE, bias, and ME. Monthly performance improved substantially (r > 0.8 at most stations) particularly during the wet season (r = 0.52–0.82) while annual and dry-season performance declined (r < 0.5 and r < 0.3, respectively). Performance under RMSE, bias, and ME declined at higher timescales, particularly during the wet season and annually. CHIRPS, MSWEP, and PERSIANN generally overestimated precipitation while TAMSAT consistently underestimated it. Spatially, CHIRPS and MSWEP reproduced coherent basin-scale patterns of drought persistence, with longer dry-spells concentrated in the northern, central, and western parts of the basin and shorter dry-spells in the eastern and southern regions. Trend analysis further revealed that most products captured consistent large-scale changes in dry-spell characteristics, although localized drought events were more variably detected. CHIRPS and MSWEP showed superior performance especially in capturing monthly precipitation patterns and major drought events in the basin. Most products struggled to detect extreme dry conditions with the exception of CHIRPS and MSWEP at certain stations and periods. Based on these findings, CHIRPS and MSWEP are recommended for drought monitoring and water resource planning in the GRRB. Their appropriate use can help water managers make informed decisions, promote sustainable resource use, and strengthen resilience to extreme weather events. Full article