Search Results (886)

Background/Objectives: Patient experience is increasingly recognised as a key dimension of healthcare quality, yet most tools fail to capture its temporal and processual nature, limiting its contribution to system improvement. This study aimed to demonstrate how a biographical approach to patient experience can generate actionable insights for improving care pathways. Specifically, we sought to: (i) identify and characterise distinct types of prehospital care pathways among patients hospitalised for COVID-19; (ii) identify patient-perceived significant events and safety issues; and (iii) generate structured variables to inform a subsequent quantitative phase. Methods: We conducted semi-structured biographical interviews with 31 patients hospitalised for COVID-19 in two French university hospitals. Data were collected using a life-events calendar (LEC), enabling day-by-day reconstruction of symptoms, healthcare contacts, and decision-making processes. Thematic analysis was performed with multidisciplinary triangulation. The qualitative phase identified three pathway types and the key mechanisms underlying each; these patterns were subsequently confirmed in a separate quantitative follow-up study (n = 312) using state sequence analysis. Results: Three distinct pathway types emerged: short (≤3 days), intermediate (4–9 days), and long (≥10 days). Delayed pathways were associated with repeated false-negative tests, underestimation of severity, and silent hypoxaemia. Across all pathways, patient experience suggested critical system-level failures, including diagnostic delays and inadequate escalation of care. Notably, in many cases, hospitalisation was triggered by a relative rather than a healthcare professional. These findings highlight the role of patient and social context as key components of care pathways. Conclusions: When captured longitudinally, patient experience may provide actionable insights into healthcare system functioning, suggesting structural mismatches between clinical trajectories and care responses. The life-events calendar method offers a replicable framework for transforming patient experience data into clinically and organisationally relevant knowledge. Integrating such approaches into healthcare evaluation could enhance patient safety, improve care coordination, and support more responsive care systems beyond COVID-19. Full article

Paralympic water polo requires classification systems that reflect sport-specific functional performance under ecologically valid conditions. This pilot study proposes a task-specific kinematic profiling framework for deriving objective, biomechanically interpretable descriptors of residual motor function. Five male national-level water polo athletes—three with eligible motor impairments and two able-bodied reference participants—performed standardized sport-specific tasks comprising upright floating, vertical propulsion, unilateral passing, non-contested shooting, and contested shooting under physical opposition. Stereoscopic video, OpenPose-based three-dimensional reconstruction, and phase-based analysis were used to extract features and composite indices of postural control, propulsion capacity, upper-limb residual function, and resistance to perturbation. Automatic ball-release detection matched manual frame-level verification in all 128 analyzed ball-related trials. Within the task-specific indices, where higher scores indicate greater functional burden, core values ranged from 0.05–0.15 for upright floating, 0.29–0.68 for combined arm-and-leg vertical propulsion, and 0.040–0.148 for contested shooting across the available subject–side combinations. The profiles showed task- and side-specific differences in stabilization, propulsion, and post-contact motor reorganization. The framework uses pose estimation as a quantitative measurement tool and treats visibility interruptions as functionally meaningful events rather than noise. It is not intended to replace official classification procedures, but to provide transparent and interpretable candidate descriptors for future evidence-based classification research in Paralympic water polo. Full article

Copper and its alloys are widely used in electrical, automotive, aerospace, and energy applications because of their excellent thermal and electrical conductivity. However, the low hardness and poor wear resistance of pure Cu limit its use under tribologically demanding sliding conditions. In this study, Cu matrix composites reinforced with 1 wt.% boron carbide (B₄C), boron (B), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co), alumina (Al₂O₃), and graphite (Gr) were fabricated by powder metallurgy and comparatively evaluated under identical processing and testing conditions. Phase constitution and microstructural characteristics were analyzed by XRD, SEM, and EDS, while mechanical and tribological behavior was assessed by Vickers hardness and dry sliding wear tests. All reinforcements improved the hardness of the Cu matrix compared with unreinforced Cu. The hardness increase followed the order Cu–B₄C (68.91%) > Cu–B (66.43%) > Cu–Gr (63.97%) > Cu–Al₂O₃ (61.79%) > Cu–Cr (42.69%) > Cu–Co (36.04%). Dry sliding wear tests, performed under a 10 N normal load, 0.05 m s⁻¹ sliding speed, and 1000 m sliding distance against a 316L stainless-steel ball, showed that all reinforced composites exhibited lower mass loss and more stable sliding behavior than pure Cu. Among all samples, Cu–B₄C displayed the best wear performance, with a 154.8% improvement in wear resistance relative to pure Cu. SEM analysis of the worn surfaces revealed that reinforcement addition reduced severe plastic deformation, groove formation, and delamination, leading to a more stable wear regime. Graphite- and boron-containing composites benefited from interfacial lubrication and contact stabilization, whereas B₄C and Al₂O₃ improved wear resistance through rigid-particle strengthening and enhanced load-bearing capacity. By comparing ceramic, metalloid, metallic, oxide, and solid-lubricating reinforcements at the same low addition level and under identical processing and testing conditions, this study provides a reinforcement-selection framework for Cu-based composites requiring improved hardness and dry-sliding durability. Full article

With the ongoing trend of miniaturization and intelligent power transmission equipment, the compact design of environmentally friendly gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) has emerged as a critical technical challenge. This study presents a detailed case study of a 40.5 kV dry air-insulated switchgear under specific dimensional constraints. Specifically, the cabinet width was reduced from 1000 mm to 800 mm, significantly narrowing the phase-to-phase and phase-to-ground clearances. A high-fidelity three-dimensional electric field model was established using the finite element method to evaluate the dielectric stress distribution within the enclosure. Numerical results indicate pronounced electric field concentrations at critical regions—including copper busbar joints, disconnector contacts, and the inlet bushing shielding rings—where local intensities exceeded the insulation safety threshold. To mitigate these issues, integrated design refinement strategies were evaluated, encompassing the structural modification of shielding rings, the application of silicone rubber coatings, and insulation reinforcement via heat-shrinkable tubing. Comparative analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the refined configuration effectively suppressed the peak electric field intensity. Finally, the design was validated through comprehensive dielectric tests, including a 215 kV lightning impulse withstand voltage test. This work may offer useful engineering references and quantitative data for the ultra-compact design of eco-friendly switchgear under similar constraints. Full article

This paper investigates the magnetization reversal processes in spring-exchange magnetic composites featuring irregular, dendritic structures. A disorder-based cluster Monte Carlo method combined with a Diffusion-Limited Aggregation (DLA) algorithm was used to model a fractal-like soft magnetic phase (Fe) embedded in a high-coercivity hard matrix (Fe-Nb-B-Dy). A multiparameter analysis was performed by varying the soft phase volume fraction (10–30%), intergrain exchange coupling via contact bridges (25–100%), system scale factors (1–20), surface-to-volume anisotropy ratios (K_S/K_V = 1–20), and the degree of random anisotropy contribution (RAC = 0–100%). The simulations reveal that highly branched fractal structures enhance the interfacial contact area, which accelerates the nucleation of domain reversal driven by the soft phase, paradoxically lowering the overall coercivity compared to compact morphologies. Furthermore, a lack of easy magnetization axis coherent alignment triggers a cascading reversal mechanism through local “weak links”, severely degrading the coercive field from approximately 4.2 T to below 0.4 T in extreme cases (at 30% Fe, 25% coupling and high K_S/K_V ratio). These findings suggest potentially the most important factors and their impact that should be taken into account in the design and optimization of next-generation powder-sintered permanent magnets. Full article

Essential oils (EOs) are widely studied as natural antimicrobial and antioxidant agents in food systems. However, their high volatility, low water solubility, instability, phytotoxicity, and strong aroma often limit their consistent applicability for food preservation. This review critically examines the literature and synthesizes current essential oil stabilization and delivery strategies in food systems, integrated with a bibliometric analysis of Scopus-indexed literature published before June 2025. The bibliometric findings showed an expanding research field, supported by 543 authors and 54 journals, revealing the disciplinary diversity of research on essential oil-based preservation systems. In addition, the review highlights a significant focus of studies on nanoemulsions, encapsulation, and active packaging in essential oil applications. Interestingly, the study also reveals the emergence of non-contact, or vapor-phase, technologies with improved release management. Furthermore, the review shows that essential oils’ functionality depends not only on major bioactive compounds but also on chemical class, oxidative sensitivity, release behavior, interactions with the food matrix, and the delivery platform. Mechanistically, stabilization technologies such as emulsions, encapsulation, and coatings/films can improve the protection, dispersion, and release of essential oils; however, their effectiveness strongly relies on formulation variables, matrix composition, and the regulatory framework. Emerging platforms such as nanofibers, zeolites, and metal–organic frameworks offer promising routes for vapor-phase or non-contact delivery systems, ensuring improved release control, functionality, and sensory quality, but may be limited by their scalability and production cost. However, a major research gap identified by this review is the imbalance between extensive “in vitro” studies and limited studies on real food matrices, which impedes understanding of the impacts of food matrices and packaging materials on essential oil release kinetics, antimicrobial efficacy, and sensory quality. Therefore, future research should integrate real-food applications, consumer acceptability, shelf-life performance, release-kinetic modeling, and techno-economic analysis to advance essential-oil-based technologies in food systems. Full article

Carbon/inorganic hybrid composites have evolved from filler-reinforced materials into design platforms for coupled electromagnetic, thermal, sensing, environmental, protective and energy-related functions. Their distinctive value lies in the possibility of combining a conductive, polarizable or porous carbon phase with an inorganic phase that contributes dielectric, magnetic, catalytic, ionic, thermally conductive or barrier behavior. This review examines carbon/inorganic hybrid multifunctional composites from the viewpoint of structure–property relationships, with emphasis on interfacial design, percolation, anisotropy, hierarchical architecture, processing and metrology. Selected graphitic composite studies are discussed as case studies for broadband dielectric spectroscopy, microwave shielding, high-frequency contact metrology, thermal diffusivity analysis and impedance-monitored graphene filters; these case studies are integrated with the broader international literature on CNT and graphene polymer composites, MXene films and foams, graphene/metal oxide photocatalysts, boron nitride/carbon thermal networks, biochar–graphene adsorbents, smart coatings, sensors, supercapacitors and water remediation systems. The central argument is that credible multifunctionality requires more than measuring several properties on the same material. It requires simultaneous or service-relevant co-optimization under constraints of thickness, density, processability, aging, humidity, corrosive media, regeneration, toxicity, economic feasibility and scalable fabrication. The review concludes with design rules and reporting recommendations intended to help move the field from impressive property demonstrations toward application-ready hybrid material systems. Full article

This study investigates anion–anion assemblies involving perhalate anions, XO₄⁻ (X = Cl, Br, I), in crystal structures retrieved from the Cambridge Structural Database to clarify the nature of the intermolecular interactions frequently interpreted as halogen bonds. Molecular electrostatic surface potential analysis demonstrates that isolated XO₄⁻ anions do not exhibit electrophilic σ-holes on the halogen or oxygen atoms along the O–X bond extensions, thereby precluding their role as conventional halogen- or chalcogen-bond donors. Gas-phase calculations further show that direct anion–anion assemblies are intrinsically repulsive and unstable in isolation. However, when dielectric screening is introduced through implicit solvation models, metastable dimeric and oligomeric arrangements consistent with crystallographic motifs become accessible. Complementary QTAIM, IGMH, NBO, and SAPT analyses show that the observed X···O and O···O contacts are weak, environment-assisted anti-electrostatic interactions arising from a combination of dielectric screening, polarization, dispersion, and donor–acceptor contributions. The results demonstrate that the structural organization of perhalate anions in crystalline environments is governed primarily by collective environmental and crystal-packing effects rather than intrinsic attractive interactions between isolated anions. Full article

Poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) is a biodegradable polyester that has garnered widespread attention for its potential applications as a replacement for conventional petroleum-based plastics. However, PLLA’s prolonged biodegradation is a significant limitation in its applications, particularly in single-use packaging, as it can lead to environmental accumulation and hinder the sustainability goals of reducing plastic waste. This paper examines the effect of incorporating thermoplastic chitosan (TPC) on the mechanical and biodegradation properties of PLLA. TPC was prepared using lactic acid as a plasticizer. PLLA/TPC composites were produced by thermo-mechanical processes. TPC contents of 1%, 2.5%, 5%, and 10% were investigated. The PLLA/TPC films exhibited distinct phase separation, as verified by scanning electron microscopy analysis. The incorporation of 2.5% TPC led to a 20.8% enhancement in elongation at break and a 7.4% improvement in tensile toughness relative to pure PLLA film. Nonetheless, both values diminished when the TPC content surpassed 2.5 wt%. The surface wettability of the PLLA/TPC films, assessed via water contact angle measurements and weight loss from soil burial tests, enhanced with greater TPC content. The PLLA/TPC films showed significantly greater weight loss after being buried in soil for 12 months compared to pure PLLA film. The increases in weight loss were 4, 11, 14, and 72 times greater for the TPC contents of 1%, 2.5%, 5%, and 10%, respectively. Incorporating TPC in this study improved the flexibility and biodegradability of PLLA, leading to PLLA-based composites with enhanced potential for environmentally sustainable single-use packaging. Full article

This article presents a practical framework for implementing, collecting, and interpreting inertial measurement unit (IMU) foot pod data to improve diagnostic understanding of baseball base running mechanics. Linear sprinting is used as a baseline, whereas the home-to-second-base sprint trial is used to examine how that capacity is expressed when athletes negotiate curvilinear running demands. The purpose is not to establish generalized performance outcomes, but to illustrate how IMU-derived spatiotemporal variables may be interpreted across successive base running segments in applied settings. Three competitive baseball players were selected from a larger dataset of n = 54 base runners tested using the same protocol with distinct home-to-second-base performance profiles as follows: the fastest case (Player X), an intermediate case (Player Y), and the slowest case (Player Z) were selected based on total home-to-second-base time. The cases were selected purposively to demonstrate the application of the IMU interpretation framework, including ground contact time (GCT), stride length (SL), push-off acceleration, and impact acceleration. Particular emphasis is placed on how curvilinear demands alter inside- and outside-foot function, and how segment-to-segment comparisons may help practitioners identify phases in which base runners maintain, reorganize, or lose mechanical efficiency. Compared with broader velocity-based approaches, the IMU framework provides complementary step-level information that may help practitioners generate hypotheses about how base runners organize movement across linear and curvilinear segments. These examples are intended to demonstrate a workflow for applied interpretation rather than to establish causal mechanisms. As a result, IMU foot pod analysis may offer practitioners a structured and portable method for interpreting curvilinear sprint mechanics, yet these case examples should be understood as descriptive rather than prescriptive. Full article

As declared in the European Green Deal, the decarbonization of the EU energy system is essential for achieving Europe’s climate neutrality targets, demanding a substantial expansion of renewable energy sources and the rapid phase-out of coal and gas. It is therefore essential that newly installed PV products within the EU are designed to avoid creating additional environmental burdens due to environmental impacts during production and at the end of life (EOL) of photovoltaic (PV) modules. This study presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of sustainable/green PV module designs in terms of recyclability using advanced high-quality recycling technologies. It compares two product systems both based on mono c-Si PV technology and the glass–glass (G–G) module design: 1. Passivated Emitter and Rear Contact (PERC) and 2. Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact (TOPCon) cell technologies, which are assessed under production scenarios in China and Germany, and two recycling scenarios (hypothetical high-recovery recycling and partial recycling) using inventory data from eco-invent and literature sources. The results across most impact categories show that the PERC and TOPCon module designs produced in Germany with high-recovery recycling as the end-of-life strategy exhibit lower impacts than those produced in China with partial recycling as the end-of-life strategy under the adopted assumptions such as electricity mix and end-of-life modelling choices for module-only impacts (excluding BOS components). The climate change results show that TOPCon cell design under high-recovery recycling yields 10.4% lower emissions than the PERC cell design under partial recycling in Germany and 9.7% lower in China. However, both module designs emit 26.6% and 27.2% less GHG emissions when produced in Germany compared to production in China, respectively, which is line with earlier studies. With the exception of human toxicity, both PERC and TOPCon cell technologies perform better in this study than previously reported in reviewed LCA studies, reflecting the use of more recent state-of-the-art industry data concerning manufacturing requirements. The sensitivity analysis carried out on the design changes and electricity grid mix available shows that any improvements in the design process and increases in renewable energy penetration into the grid corresponds to a proportional reduction in environmental impacts across all impact categories. Full article

In a planetary gear system, the planet phasing depends on the number of teeth in the sun and the ring and the number of planets. When the tooth numbers are both multiples of the number of planets, all planets mesh at the same relative position—which is called synchronous configuration—and the input torque is shared evenly among them. Otherwise, the configuration is asynchronous, or sequentially phased, and the torque sharing is uneven. This directly influences the instantaneous load sharing between the external planet–sun and internal planet–ring meshes, consequently altering both load-induced tooth deflections and the resulting transmission error. The profile relief, frequently used to avoid the mesh-in impact, influences the teeth contact along the interval of relief, which also affects the load distribution, mesh stiffness, and transmission error. Since the transmission error is a source of dynamic load, noise, and vibrations, its peak-to-peak amplitude should be controlled, and the geometry of the profile modification provides an efficient tool. In this paper, the transmission error of spur planetary gears is studied with an analytical model previously developed, based on the minimum elastic potential energy. The study also assesses the influence of the depth and length of the tip relief and compares the behavior of synchronous and asynchronous configurations. As a result of this analysis, it has been found that the variation in the amplitude of transmission error is significantly lower in sequentially phased configurations and reaches the minimum variation for the adjusted depth of relief and medium length of relief. Furthermore, an odd number of teeth on the planets results in a higher mesh stiffness than an even number, which induces a slightly lower peak-to-peak transmission error. Full article

We describe a GPU-resident execution pipeline for explicit large-deformation finite element analysis in which every stage of the timestep—internal force evaluation, contact processing, nodal update, time integration, and minimum edge-length reduction—operates on arrays that remain in device memory, so per-step bulk transfers across PCIe are avoided. Contact is handled on the device through a shared-memory brute-force proximity search with warp-ballot stream compaction. We exercise the solver on a hemisphere compression benchmark at six mesh resolutions (83 K–1.89 M elements). On an NVIDIA L40, per-step speedups over a single CPU core range from about 99× to 138×, increasing with problem size and approaching a plateau near 137× for the largest meshes (above roughly 1 M elements); the contact-enabled configuration adds a net ON/OFF overhead of +13% to +21% to the step time. Against LS-DYNA running in SMP mode on the same problem, the proposed solver is roughly 94× faster than the best 8-core configuration, a margin consistent with the multicore saturation observed in the SMP measurements. The remaining limitations—single-GPU execution, FP32 arithmetic, and rigid-body contact search without a BVH broad phase—are identified as specific targets for multi-GPU, mixed-precision, and scalable-contact extensions. Full article

Collision detection is the core of collision analysis which is a vital fundamental work in computational particle mechanics. Collision detection algorithms can be divided into direct and indirect algorithms. Among them, the indirect algorithms transform the collision detection between two 2D objects into the position judgment of a reference point and a 2D object by constructing the no-fit polygon (NFP). However, the existing NFP algorithms are either not suitable for concave objects, or their time complexity is too high. This has hindered the development of indirect algorithms. Almost unknown to researchers interested in NFP, in the field of discontinuous mechanics calculation, there exists an ‘entrance block’ in Contact theory. Since NFP is the outline of the entrance block, the entrance block also has the potential to develop into a collision detection algorithm like NFP. The entrance block is suitable for arbitrary objects but ignores the rotation in each time step, which restricts it from becoming a collision detection algorithm. In this study, we improve this limitation and propose a 2D collision detection algorithm that is suitable for arbitrary objects. This algorithm can distinguish collision and contact, which reduces the calculation of late collision response. In addition, the algorithm has the potential to be transformed into a continuous algorithm and a new narrow-phase 3D collision detection algorithm. Finally, we propose a potential NFP algorithm that can be applied to arbitrary objects, which has an important influence on many NFP-related fields like computer graphics, operations research, computational mechanics, etc. Full article

Phase misalignment between periodic pollutant emissions and receptor inhalation can fundamentally bias exposure estimations, yet it is rarely quantified in transient assessments. Here we propose Phase-Independent Pollutant Exposure (PIPE), a general exposure metric that removes this temporal randomness by integrating phase-resolved exposure over a phase-difference probability distribution. The phase-dependent exposure function is reconstructed efficiently using a Fourier series surrogate built from sparse samples, enabling deterministic calculation of the expected exposure without resource-demanding Monte Carlo sampling. We demonstrate the framework using a short-range indoor exposure case representative of periodic human emissions resolved by transient computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Results showed that across multiple breathing intensities, breathing/coughing waveforms, interpersonal distances (0.5–1.5 m), and exposure durations, phase-dependent variability was consistently pronounced and accurately captured by the proposed model. Phase differences increased cumulative inhaled exposure by up to 9.58 times, with the largest amplification occurring at close range (0.5 m) under intense breathing. Flow-field analysis indicates that specific phase relationships can suppress turbulent kinetic energy in the inter-person region, limiting dispersion and thereby elevating near-field concentrations and intake. Although phase effects attenuate with time due to accumulation and mixing, they remain non-negligible even over extended contact (up to 60 s). Notably, PIPE is generally lower than exposure under perfectly synchronized phases, but becomes 1.20–4.97 times higher in close-range, high-intensity scenarios. By explicitly accounting for phase uncertainty, PIPE provides a transferable and computationally efficient methodology to stabilize exposure assessment for periodic sources, improving the robustness of process-based risk metrics relevant to environmental and human exposure evaluation. Full article