Search Results (3,153)

The origin of effective porosity in the Permian volcanic reservoirs of the Sichuan Basin remains poorly understood, particularly regarding the contribution of deep-sourced hydrothermal fluids. This study presents an integrated analysis of the Emeishan basalts, combining petrography, fluid-inclusion microthermometry, and laser Raman spectroscopy. Three broad hydrothermal fluid characteristics were identified, ranging from low-temperature CH₄-H₂S-bearing to medium–high-temperature hydrocarbon-rich alkaline fluids. Their influence on porosity was tectonically modulated: fluids associated with the Indosinian and Yanshanian orogenies primarily degraded the pore system through clay infill and siliceous cementation. In contrast, the Himalayan orogeny may have driven a constructive shift. Sodic (Na-rich) fluids channeled along deep faults drove extensive local dissolution, creating secondary, micron-scale pore occurrence. Simultaneously, the temperatures recorded by this medium–high-temperature hydrothermal system fall within a range permissive for in situ hydrocarbon thermal alteration. This is tentatively consistent with models of vertical hydrocarbon migration and accumulation, but does not constitute direct evidence for in situ cracking or charging. Therefore, the Himalayan tectono-hydrothermal event is regarded as a possible contributor to the development of potential volcanic gas reservoirs. This work proposes a unified interpretive genetic model that couples late-stage alkaline-fluid dissolution with possible hydrocarbon alteration effects, offering a predictive framework for exploring volcanic reservoirs in similar geodynamic settings. Full article

This study provides a comprehensive assessment of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) conditions in selected government primary schools of Dhaka, Bangladesh, using an integrated methodology combining the WASH Index, Water Quality Index (WQI), and Heavy Metal Pollution Index (HPI). A systematic questionnaire survey, on-site observations, and laboratory analyses of water samples were conducted across the selected schools, and the collected data were thoroughly analyzed to assess the status of WASH services and identify critical gaps. Results reveal that while basic infrastructure exists, significant gaps persist in hygiene practices, facility functionality, and microbiological water safety. The WASH Index ranged from 34% to 63%, with two schools (PS1, PS5) classified as “Basic Service” and three schools (PS2, PS3, PS4) as “Limited Service”; none of the schools achieved “Advanced Service” levels, and hygiene was identified as the most critical deficiency, with two schools scoring 0% on hygiene indicators. WQI values (33–38) classified all schools as having “Good” physicochemical water quality, and HPI values (37–43) indicated low heavy metal pollution. However, E. coli was detected at 6000 and 30,000 CFU/100 mL in two schools (PS4 and PS5), far exceeding the permissible limit of 0 CFU/100 mL. In addition, lead (Pb) concentrations (0.04–0.05 mg/L) exceeded the WHO guideline value of 0.01 mg/L in all five schools, indicating potential health risks to students. The findings highlight that infrastructure provision alone is insufficient; sustainable WASH outcomes require integrated interventions encompassing behavior change, routine monitoring, fecal sludge management, and institutional governance. This study provides actionable insights to guide evidence-based policy and targeted interventions for improving WASH services in urban primary schools. Full article

In this study, the concentrations of thirteen trace elements (aluminum (Al), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), lead (Pb), manganese (Mn), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni), selenium (Se), and zinc (Zn)) were determined in the edible muscle tissues of three commonly consumed fish species (Oncorhynchus mykiss, Dicentrarchus labrax, and Sparus aurata). Specimens were obtained from farmed stocks harvested and delivered to fish markets in Sinop, Türkiye, on the day of collection, with sampling carried out on a monthly basis throughout April, May, and June 2024. Zinc and iron exhibited the highest concentrations across all species, while toxic trace elements remained at notably low levels, with Cd (0.005–0.006 mg/kg), Hg (0.015–0.018 mg/kg), and Pb (0.010–0.011 mg/kg) remaining strictly below the European Union maximum permissible limits of 0.05, 0.5, and 0.3 mg/kg, respectively. In addition, a comprehensive human health risk assessment was performed based on a mean daily per capita fish consumption of 19.72 g. The Target Hazard Quotient (THQ) for all evaluated elements and the cumulative Hazard Index (HI), which ranged from 0.0794 to 0.0818 across species, were well below 1.0, indicating negligible non-carcinogenic risk. Carcinogenic risks, evaluated via the Risk Index (RI), were negligible for Cr (1.35–2.35 × 10⁻⁷) and well within acceptable bounds for iAs (2.77–4.13 × 10⁻⁶). The quantitative outcomes of this investigation suggest that under the evaluated conditions, trace element concentrations in these aquaculture products remain within safe baseline levels, contributing meaningful data on food safety and ecological monitoring within the southern Black Sea region. Full article

IoT deployments handle credential hygiene reactively: cloned, replayed, or stale credentials are typically discovered only after misuse, and revocation state is often propagated through centralized lists whose integrity cannot be independently verified. This article introduces the Yang–Baxter IoT Consistency Gateway (YB-IoT-CG), a Zero-Trust admission-control framework that pushes an algebraic layer of credential screening to the edge and anchors security evidence on a modeled permissioned-ledger architecture. YB-IoT-CG operates after conventional secret-based authentication and Yang–Baxter equality is used as an execution-consistency invariant rather than as proof of device identity or message authenticity. Each authenticated message is hashed into a digest and reduced to an algebraic transcript that is verified over two Yang–Baxter traversal paths. Beyond equality checking, chain-proximity metrics inspired by time–memory trade-off analysis, nonce and timestamp freshness heuristics, and contextual risk scoring identify credentials that should be proactively challenged or revoked before telemetry is admitted. The proactive risk component is deterministic and policy-based rather than a learned predictive model. Decisions are batched into Merkle trees whose roots are represented through a permissioned-ledger model, credential revocation is propagated through a modeled on-chain registry, and device identities are bound to W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) with verifiable credentials. This design provides tamper-evident audit support while keeping ledger interaction off the packet decision path. Validation is based on a controlled Python 3.13.7 packet-level simulation and a parameterized ledger model, not on a physical IoT or live Hyperledger Fabric deployment. Across 60 seeded simulation runs, the complete post-authentication screening pipeline obtained a median incremental decision time of 7.8 $\mathsf{\mu }$s, 99.4% aggregate decision accuracy for the modeled attack classes, a 0.43% false rejection rate, and a 31.4 ms amortized ledger service-time equivalent per decision for a batch size of 64. The 99.4% value is a property of the composed freshness/context/registry/YB policy and is not a YB-only detection rate; the YB-specific positive guarantee is limited to the isolated fault class of Proposition 7. These results provide simulation-based evidence supporting a lightweight, explainable, auditable, and proactive approach to credential hygiene at the edge. Full article

Agentic AI can interpret information, plan, make workflow decisions, and use enterprise tools. Yet technical capability does not establish authoritative meaning, legitimate process state, organisational permission, or accountable execution. The challenge is to preserve adaptability while ensuring that consequential actions remain governed. This article develops a domain-independent conceptual framework for governed agentic AI in enterprise workflows based on bounded autonomy, delegated authority, and controlled execution. A consequential action or workflow decision selected by an agent is treated as a proposed action. It may change enterprise state only after independent controls confirm semantic validity, procedural admissibility, policy compliance, and delegated authority. Actions that pass these controls and remain within a task envelope may proceed automatically through controlled enterprise tools. Those exceeding thresholds for consequence, irreversibility, uncertainty, data sensitivity, value, or organisational policy are escalated to an accountable human. Human oversight is therefore risk-proportionate rather than required for every action. The framework integrates enterprise ontologies, governed knowledge graphs, Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) orchestration, policy and decision services, controlled tool execution, and provenance within explicit responsibility and authority boundaries. A review-informed design-science process synthesises evidence into five connected control gaps and derives ten design requirements, operationalised through task envelopes, capability and authority relations, lifecycle states, exception paths, and conformance criteria. An illustrative online-shopping order exception demonstrates the control logic, while a control-loop walkthrough and ten failure and adversarial conditions trace requirements-to-control mappings, responsibility separation, and defined recovery paths. The framework provides a systematic basis for governing agentic AI as an adaptable enterprise participant. It supports risk-proportionate autonomy, auditability, accountability, and regulatory evidence. The analytical walkthrough supports conceptual coherence and design plausibility but does not establish deployed effectiveness or legal compliance. Full article

Austenitic–ferritic stainless steels are frequently selected for components in seawater-cooling pumps in power plants and nuclear stations due to their generally superior resistance to localized and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in comparison with austenitic grades. However, during operation, these cast components are exposed to combined applied/residual stresses and chloride-rich seawater. This work addresses the research gap by investigating the SCC susceptibility of X6CrNiMoCu25-6 in the hyper-quenched state (45% ferrite–55% austenite) using slow strain-rate tensile (SSRT) tests in synthetic seawater at 70 °C at five imposed strain rates ranging from 2.38 × 10⁻⁷ s⁻¹ to 10⁻⁴ s⁻¹. The work is complemented by macrographic examination of crack initiation and SEM microfractographic analysis of the fracture surfaces. The findings indicate that the grade demonstrates only negligible susceptibility to SCC with respect to permissible stress, exhibiting a maximum reduction in tensile strength that is constrained to 5% relative to a neutral reference medium. However, a distinct critical strain rate of approximately 10⁻⁶ s⁻¹ has been identified. Further fractographic and microstructural analysis demonstrates that the susceptibility at this critical rate is governed by a localized mechanism. This mechanism is characterized by repeated pitting nucleation at slip-step emergence sites in the ferrite, selective ferrite dissolution, and progressive α/γ interfacial decohesion. These processes result in mixed intergranular/transgranular crack propagation, rather than by bulk mechanical softening. These findings address a particular lacuna in the duplex-steel SCC literature by providing a quantitative strain-rate/damage criterion, in conjunction with elongation-based rather than stress-based susceptibility indicators, for the assessment and management of the SCC risk of this cast duplex grade in real seawater-cooling pump service. From a fundamental standpoint, these findings indicate that the susceptibility of SCC in this duplex grade is governed by a competition between plastic-deformation kinetics and electrochemical dissolution kinetics. This competition reaches a maximum at an intermediate critical strain rate, thereby providing further experimental support for a general strain-rate/dissolution-competition model of SCC applicable to duplex steel. Full article

The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis is the central neuroendocrine system that controls physiological stress responses and maintains homeostasis through the coordinated interactions among the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal cortex. Dysregulation of the HPA axis is associated with stress-related psychiatric conditions and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Chronic stress creates a detrimental environment in the brain, inducing structural changes and accelerating brain aging and the loss of neurons. Receptor tyrosine-protein kinase ERBB4 (ERBB4), a member of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) family, is activated primarily by neuregulin ligands and plays an essential role in neuronal development, synaptic plasticity, and cell survival. Emerging evidence suggests that ERBB4 signaling influences neuroendocrine regulation and stress responsivity. While further studies are needed to provide direct mechanistic evidence linking ERBB4-mediated HPA axis dysregulation to neurodegenerative cell death, this manuscript critically evaluated the preclinical models and proposes a possible feed-forward framework wherein ERBB4 served as a permissive homeostatic modulator at the intersection of stress endocrinology and neuroinflammation. Furthermore, the impact of ERBB4 dysregulation and its mutations on neurodegenerative diseases has been presented, focusing on potential mechanisms of oxidative stress, synaptic dysfunction, and neuronal apoptosis. Taken together, ERBB4 represents an important molecular interface between stress signaling and neurodegenerative pathology. Understanding the regulation of ERBB4 in the HPA axis has provided new insights into the mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases and could identify novel therapeutic targets for stress-associated neurological disorders. Full article

An evolutionary knowledge update framework—self-training with confidence-gated pseudo-labels, elastic weight consolidation, and a rollback rule—was implemented for intracranial region segmentation in Time-of-Flight MR Angiography (TOF-MRA). A DeepLabV3+ model trained on 16 labeled cases consumed 1000 unlabeled examinations from the Japan Medical Image Database over ten generations; six configurations on two separately trained seeds gave eight runs, each evaluated on a four-case training holdout that also drove candidate selection. Seven runs produced no candidate above their seed; the eighth retained a model +0.0007 above it—not distinguishable from re-training stochasticity and not matched by consistent improvement in task-relevant maximum-intensity-projection measures. The rollback rule itself did not protect the deployed model: acceptance is tested against the highest recorded score, whereas what acceptance replaces is the stored checkpoint. With a tolerance of 0.005, in the permissive Naive configuration, the two separated—8 of 10 and 10 of 10 degraded candidates were admitted, and the deployed model fell by 0.0046 and 0.0033 while the recorded best never moved; with a tolerance of zero, the two moved together. The confidence score gating pseudo-labels is confounded by foreground fraction (r = −0.370) and on labeled slices tended to rank less accurate model-generated labels higher; the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) aggregation convention alone moves the absolute score of identical predictions by 0.0152. Acceptance criteria for continual updating must be stated in terms of the checkpoint that is retained. Full article

Domestic pigs are susceptible to avian, swine, and human influenza A viruses (IAVs). This facilitates co-infections of different IAVs that result in genetic reassortment. In combination with husbandry practices such as high-density farming and frequent human–pig interactions, pigs serve as efficient zoonotic hosts for IAV. Despite significance in zoonotic transmission, factors influencing IAV pathogenesis, evolution, and transmission in pigs remain poorly studied. One factor that may alter IAV dynamics in pigs is co-infection with endemic swine viruses such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV; Betaarterivirus; Nidovirales) that causes widespread disease in pigs on farms globally. During initial outbreaks, PRRSV triggers transplacental infections and massive fetal loss in naïve herds. Once herd immunity or vaccination is established, PRRSV may persist in affected herds, resulting in transplacental infections and the birth of piglets that appear normal or weak. These piglets are concerning from a zoonotic perspective because they may be immunocompromised and potentially serve as more efficient hosts for IAV, characterized by prolonged IAV shedding, enhanced viral replication, impaired seroconversion, and consequently extended co-infection windows that favor reassortment. Here, I summarize studies supporting the hypothesis that fetal exposure to PRRSV can alter IAV pathogenesis in surviving piglets, potentially enhancing IAV pathogenesis and transmission. I also highlight key experiments that need to be conducted to validate or invalidate a causal relationship between fetal PRRSV infection, persistent immunopathology in surviving piglets, and the resulting permissive environment for enhanced IAV evolution and transmission. Addressing this knowledge gap is essential for advancing our understanding of PRRSV and IAV biology in its zoonotic pig host and for developing effective strategies to mitigate the risk of IAV spillovers to humans. Full article

Angiogenesis is a major determinant of tumor growth, progression and metastatic potential, and its persistent activation is closely intertwined with chronic inflammation. This relationship is particularly relevant in malignancies that arise through a prolonged inflammation-to-carcinogenesis continuum, where pathological vascular remodeling can sustain tissue hypoxia, immune-cell recruitment and the establishment of a tumor-permissive microenvironment. Colorectal cancer (CRC), especially in inflammation-associated settings, represents a paradigmatic example in which the inflammatory–angiogenic axis contributes to disease progression and unfavorable prognosis. Accordingly, identifying well-tolerated strategies capable of restraining pathological angiogenic pressure before overt neoplasia is established may have important preventive and therapeutic implications. This perspective focuses on palmitoylethanolamide (PEA), an endogenous N-acylethanolamine and prototypical autacoid local injury antagonist amide (ALIAmide) generated on demand as part of tissue homeostasis. PEA may act within a proposed multilevel intestinal homeostatic framework by preserving epithelial barrier integrity, limiting inflammatory amplification, modulating PPARα-dependent signaling and mast-cell reactivity, and restraining pro-angiogenic pathways, with context- and compartment-dependent effects on Akt/mTOR–HIF-1α/VEGF signaling. Importantly, direct preclinical evidence now supports PEA-related chemoprevention at two complementary levels: ultramicronized PEA reduced colon cancer cell proliferation and migration and decreased preneoplastic lesions and tumors in the murine azoxymethane model, whereas NAPE-PLD-engineered Lactobacillus paracasei F19 (pNAPE-LP) increased local PEA and reduced tumor burden, epithelial proliferation and angiogenesis in AOM/DSS colitis-associated CRC while modulating Akt/mTOR/p70S6K–HIF-1α signaling. These findings move the PEA–CRC relationship beyond a purely hypothetical association while remaining preclinical. We therefore propose that reinforcement of PEA signaling, through supplementation, PEA-oriented pharmacological strategies or engineered local biosynthesis, deserves investigation as a cancer-interception approach aimed at maintaining angiogenic and inflammatory homeostasis before autonomous tumor biology becomes established. This concept should not be interpreted as established clinical CRC prevention or as a substitute for conventional anticancer therapy. Full article

Women’s entrepreneurship is embedded in family, community, and gender relations in marginalized contexts. This convergent mixed-methods study examined predefined business persistence and development status, subjective business success, and relational support among Bedouin women entrepreneurs. The quantitative component included 175 matched woman–man dyads who independently evaluated the businesses. The qualitative component included 24 linked dyads, with women’s and men’s interviews analyzed separately and then compared. Unadjusted comparisons showed higher subjective business-success ratings among both women and men associated with continuing/developed businesses; after demographic adjustment, the group difference remained significant for women’s ratings but not for men’s ratings. Women in the continuing/developed group also reported greater entrepreneurial empowerment, socioeconomic benefits, and immediate family support after adjustment, whereas the unadjusted group difference in men’s positive attitudes toward women’s entrepreneurship did not persist. Stronger endorsement of the importance of husband support was positively associated with subjective success among continuing/developed businesses, whereas the corresponding association was absent or reversed among early-closed businesses. Qualitative accounts portrayed family and male support as providing assistance, legitimacy, and resources while also operating through conditional approval, supervision, and restrictions on autonomy. Active-business accounts emphasized interconnected family, community, professional, and institutional resources, whereas closed-business accounts emphasized accumulating personal, familial, market, and structural vulnerabilities. Participants’ accounts portrayed support as more enabling when it expanded women’s autonomy and capacity to act, and as potentially constraining when tied to permission, monitoring, or conditional access to resources. Full article

Despite the importance of adaptive reuse for urban renewal, municipal records of changes in property destinations remain an untapped resource for understanding regulatory barriers. This study develops an interpretable machine learning (ML) framework to screen historical administrative non-approval using 42,350 municipal records from a mid-sized city in southern Chile spanning 2010 to 2025. Historical memory features were constructed exclusively from outcomes available before each application, thereby preventing temporal leakage. Records from 2010–2022 were used for training, 2023 was reserved for validation, and 2024–2025 constituted a locked test set. A logistic regression model combining auditable risk flags derived from GIRO (declared economic or functional activity) with historical property, address, and activity category information was selected by maximizing the F1-score (the harmonic mean of precision and recall) subject to a recall ≥ 0.85. At the validation-selected threshold of 0.285, the model achieved a receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (ROC-AUC) of 0.778, a precision–recall area under the curve (PR-AUC) of 0.720, an F1-score of 0.719, recall of 0.887, and precision of 0.604. The model flagged 66.8% of applications for prioritized review. The proposed framework supports human-in-the-loop screening and institutional learning; it neither determines regulatory compliance nor automates municipal decisions. Full article

Museums face a conflict between energy-efficient gallery lighting and protecting light-sensitive collections from photochemical damage: increasing the luminous efficacy of white LEDs requires shifting spectral power toward the high-energy blue band, accelerating degradation of organic materials. Prior work treated these separately; this study links them via a shared spectral property, the blue-to-yellow emission balance. For four artifact classes (water colors on paper rag, oil colors on canvas, textile materials, and rag paper), luminous efficacy is calculated from spectral radiant power distributions, alongside a material-specific damage factor per unit of useful light derived from first-order kinetics. For each class and color temperature (CCT), this factor is benchmarked against a reference halogen source, yielding a relative photochemical damage index—a relative comparison rather than a computed permissible dose or exposure time—that flags spectra with lower hazard than current practice. Across the database, the blue-to-yellow spectral balance shifts faster than efficacy gains above 4000–5000 K, so higher CCTs carry a growing conservation cost; class-specific limits cut radiant power input in robust material galleries without compromising sensitive ones. Evaluated on nearly 2850 commercial LED spectra, the index gives lighting engineers and conservators a quantitative tool for selecting energy-efficient, conservation-safe LED products. Full article

Driving assistance and autonomous driving are among the fastest-evolving domains of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs). However, visually impaired pedestrians (VIPs) remain weakly protected by roadsides or vehicle perception systems, especially when the right of way must be communicated in an accessible and auditable manner. In this paper, we describe a safety-constrained vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) architecture designed for VIP crossing assistance. The system creates a time-bounded interaction state between pedestrians, roadside infrastructure, and vehicles at the Fog level to avoid permissive instructions before all the safety conditions are satisfied. Our objective is not to design a new detector, tracker, or MLLM model. Instead, we combine edge tier descriptors, Fog-tier multi-view descriptors, and multi-camera multiple-object tracking (MC-MOT) within a latency-constrained V2P loop. Our main empirical focus is WildTrack multi-camera continuity with novel multi-camera consensus gating (MCCG), a geometric-support safety gate. The reproduced Fog-tier continuity branch reaches MOTA = 88.8%, IDF1 = 91.7%, and HOTA = 65.5%. MCCG with M = 4 retains 95% permissive eligibility while withholding permissive guidance in three of the four ID-switch frames (75%). These findings support component-level feasibility, while leaving field deployment, V2X stack validation, and user studies for future work. Full article

Trusted data spaces support privacy-preserving computation, but existing credentials leave an execution-time gap when task parameters or cumulative resources change. We present a task-bound lifecycle and state model instantiated by a quantum-safe task passport (QTP). Its signed schema binds purpose, scope, computation type, participants, validity, evidence-key metadata, and an initial governed-resource profile. At admission, QTP matches an independently reconstructed request, queries authoritative state, and atomically reserves units before mediated execution; Commit/Result evidence is bound to the admitted version. ML-DSA protects the credential, and ML-KEM establishes an off-chain evidence key. ML-DSA-44 signing and verification averaged 0.295 and 0.079 ms; a complete QTP occupied 4150 B. Fifteen field-correctness cases and ten additive-resource checks passed. In a four-node FISCO BCOS deployment co-located with one sequential client in a single virtual machine, state queries averaged 0.737 ms for 100 synthetic tasks, and all 71 negative transactions were rejected without state changes. The experiments do not characterize concurrent contention or an operational FL, PSI, or MPC runtime. Merkle-path measurements assume a supplied authenticated root; checkpoint authentication and finality verification remain deployment requirements. The quantum-safe claim covers credential and evidence-key layers; the ledger remains conventionally authenticated. Full article