Search Results (1,669)

Africa is experiencing erosion of mourning traditions across the continent, and this is a metaphysical and ethnographical phenomenon worth documenting. This study investigated the traditional mourning and funeral practices among three different tribes, namely the Nyakyusa of the Southern Highlands of Tanzania and the Jita and Kerewe of the Mara Region and Ukerewe Islands, to document them and discuss the implications of the erosion. All three ethnic groups belong to the Bantu group of African tribes and therefore bear some similarities in cultural values. Among all three ethnic groups, death, burial and mourning for dead relatives occupied an important place, which included observing certain customs and rituals. These included observance of several days of mourning, cessation of work and reflections on the meaning of life and death, including the fate of the deceased in the afterlife and the responsibilities of the bereaved. This study employed grounded theory because the researchers could not establish the existence of sufficient written sources to support the inquiry and act as a basis for investigation. The researchers used grounded theory, which meant no predetermined hypotheses or theories were employed. Instead, this study investigated the lived experiences of the persons being studied and analysed the data gathered in that manner. This study established that mourning and funeral rituals, which provided both a moment for reflection and mutual support in the groups studied, have been eroded over the years and extensively influenced by economic pressures and declining empathy. This study concludes that this situation highlights the need to recover the traditional positive values in mourning in the communities. Full article

A novel Pseudomonas strain, designated S9268^T, was isolated from the rhizosphere soil of wheat in Yongnian District, Handan City, Hebei Province, PR China. Cells were Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, rod-shaped, and motile by means of multiple polar flagella. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene and multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) of four housekeeping genes (16S rRNA gene, gyrB, rpoB, and rpoD) placed strain S9268^T within the genus Pseudomonas but as a distinct lineage separated from its closest relatives, Pseudomonas asturiensis LMG 26898^T, Pseudomonas avellanae LMG 21662^T, and Pseudomonas lijiangensis JCM 35177^T. The average nucleotide identity (ANI) and digital DNA–DNA hybridization (dDDH) values between strain S9268^T and three reference strains ranged from 83.1% to 83.5% and from 24.9% to 25.6%, respectively, which were below the recommended thresholds for prokaryotic species delineation. The strain can grow at 4–37 °C (optimum, 28 °C), at pH 6.0–9.0 (optimum, pH 7.0), and with 1–4% (w/v) NaCl (optimum, 1%). The major cellular fatty acids (>10% of the total) were C_16:0, summed feature 3 (C_16:1 ω7c and/or C_16:1 ω6c), summed feature 8 (C_18:1 ω7c and/or C_18:1 ω6c), and C_17:0 cyclo. The polar lipid profile consisted of phosphatidylethanolamine, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, three unidentified aminophospholipids, an unidentified phosphoglycolipid, and an unidentified polar lipid. The predominant respiratory quinone was ubiquinone Q-9. The draft genome of strain S9268^T was 5,250,102 bp in length with a DNA G+C content of 61.2 mol%. Genome analysis revealed T3SS-related genes and a terpene biosynthetic gene cluster showing similarity to carotenoid biosynthetic clusters. Based on the polyphasic taxonomic evidence, strain S9268^T represents a novel species within the genus Pseudomonas, for which the name Pseudomonas yongnianensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is S9268^T (=ACCC 64339^T = JCM 38183^T). Full article

Nowadays, humanity is facing a paradigm change in the productive model, switching from fossil-based carbon sources and a linear economy, to more sustainable and circular alternatives. In this regard, lignocellulosic biomass is considered as a perfect substitute for fossil-based carbon sources. Opuntia ficus-indica (OFI) is a crassulacean acid metabolism species, capable of growing in arid places that are not suitable for food production. In this work, a systematic fractionation process combined with analytical techniques (nuclear magnetic resonance, thermogravimetric analysis, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy) unveiled the extraordinarily high carbohydrate content of OFI fruit. Therefore, OFI fruit is a perfect feedstock for the obtention of high-value-added chemicals, namely levulinic acid (LA) and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF). By microwave-assisted thermochemical treatment of the most suitable fraction, LA was obtained in a 22.1 wt. % yield in an aqueous monophasic system, and 5-HMF in an 11.5 wt. % yield in a biphasic system. Reuse of the catalyst and co-catalyst in a monophasic system led to 5-HMF in a 14.3 wt. % yield after five cycles, avoiding the need for an organic co-solvent. This work demonstrates the potential of this feedstock to obtain high-value-added chemicals, employing marginal land in environments where other crops are unable to grow. Full article

Two novel bacteria, designated strain G1-8^T and J1-3^T, were isolated from estuarine sediment samples collected from Jinjiang Estuary, Fujian Province, China, using the dilution-to-extinction method. Cells of strain G1-8^T were Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, rod-shaped with a single polar flagellum, and had a surface layer. Cells of strain J1-3^T were also Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, and short rod-shaped, yet the flagellum and the surface layer were not observed. Reduction of nitrate to nitrite under aerobic conditions was positive for both stains. Strains G1-8^T and J1-3^T shared the highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities with Oleiphilus messinensis ME102^T of 94.45% and 93.77%, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis placed the two strains into two different monophyletic lineages, affiliated with the family Oleiphilaceae of the class Gammproteobacteria. The digital DNA-DNA hybridization, average nucleotide identity, and average amino acid identity between the two strains and O. messinensis ME102^T were 21.2–22.6%, 68.6–68.8%, and 58.2–59.3%, respectively. The major fatty acids (>10%) of strain G1-8^T were C_16:0 (24.9%), C_16:1 ω9c (14.9%), C_18:1 ω9c (14.2%), and summed feature 3 (13.1%), and the major fatty acids (>10%) of strain J1-3^T were summed feature 3 (39.6%) and C_16:0 (37.0%). The isoprenoid quinone of both strains was Q-9. The polar lipids of strain G1-8^T consisted of phosphatidylglycerol and two unidentified phospholipids, and the polar lipids of strain J1-3^T consisted of phosphatidylethanolamine and two unidentified lipids. Based on the above polyphasic taxonomic study, strains G1-8^T and J1-3^T were considered to represent two novel species within two novel genera of the family Oleiphilaceae. Thus, two species names were proposed: Neooleiphilus portus gen. nov., sp. nov., with the type strain G1-8^T (=MCCC 1K10098^T=KCTC 18326^T), and Paroleiphilus aggregans gen. nov., sp. nov., with the type strain J1-3^T (=MCCC 1K10092^T=KCTC 18325^T). Full article

Enterocytozoon bieneusi is an important microsporidian pathogen with a broad host range and potential zoonotic relevance, yet molecular data from cattle in Romania are lacking. This study investigated, for the first time, the molecular prevalence, genotype diversity, and phylogenetic relationships of E. bieneusi in young dairy cattle in western Romania. A total of 190 fecal samples were collected from young dairy cattle, comprising pre-weaned calves and post-weaned cattle up to 12 months of age from 28 farms in Arad and Timiș counties and examined by nested PCR targeting the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the rRNA gene. E. bieneusi DNA was detected in 27/190 cattle, corresponding to an overall prevalence of 14.2% (95% CI: 10.0–19.9%). Pre-weaned cattle showed a higher prevalence than post-weaned animals (18.1% vs. 8.1%), but the difference was not statistically significant (OR = 2.51, 95% CI: 0.96–6.54; p = 0.058). High-quality ITS sequences were obtained from 20 positive samples, revealing five established genotypes, namely BEB4 (45.0%), I (25.0%), J (10.0%), BEB8 (10.0%), and BEB17 (10.0%), among the genotyped isolates (n = 20). Phylogenetic analysis placed all Romanian isolates within Group 2, predominantly associated with ruminants but also containing genotypes reported in humans. These findings establish the first molecular baseline for E. bieneusi in young dairy cattle in western Romania and provide initial information on their epidemiological relevance within a One Health framework. Full article

Water utilities increasingly manage residual chlorine, conductivity, turbidity and water temperature in district metered areas (DMAs) from continuous on-line analyzers rather than from grab samples. Every decision that follows, from adjusting booster chlorination to ordering a flush or sending a crew, assumes that the analyzers are reporting the truth. In the Incheon network studied here, one year of hourly data from five DMAs contained a network-wide telemetry outage, water-temperature readings of up to 4913 °C, negative chlorine values and a turbidity channel frozen for 46 h, none of which the supervisory system had flagged. This paper asks whether such sensor and telemetry faults can be detected automatically, within the hour, at an alarm rate a control room will accept, using only the hourly data the utility already archives. Eleven unsupervised detectors from three families, statistical charts on the current reading or on time-series residuals (Hotelling T², MEWMA, seasonal profile, VAR residual, dynamic PCA), general-purpose outlier detectors (Isolation Forest, one-class SVM, local outlier factor) and small neural networks (LSTM autoencoder, prediction-residual LSTM, a compact Transformer autoencoder), were run under one protocol and judged against the real faults and 900 injected faults of four types, with performance expressed as the operator sees it: events caught, hours to detection, and false alarms per week, counted both as alarm hours and as separate alarm episodes, with bootstrap intervals. Every family caught the real faults (seven events from three independent incidents) within the hour. They differed on the injected faults (recall 0.28–0.63) and above all on false alarms: the two LSTM models raised 0.5–0.8 alarm hours per DMA-week, and the current-reading control charts raised 9–10; counted as separate episodes, the spread was only 0.4–1.5. The prediction-residual LSTM, the Transformer autoencoder and the VAR residual chart were on the recall–false-alarm frontier in 100%, 91% and 60% of bootstrap resamples, which places the advantage in the use of the signal’s recent history rather than in any model family, and the ordering held under tuning of the baselines, other thresholds and other window lengths. Frozen-sensor faults escaped every model and were recovered by a one-parameter constancy rule. Models trained on four DMAs transferred to the fifth with a recall loss of 0.02 provided the alarm threshold was set from at least one month of local data, and the autoencoder’s error decomposition named the faulted sensor in 84% of detected injected faults. The result is a monitoring layer that flags a failed analyzer or telemetry link within the hour, names the sensor, and separates a data problem from a genuine water-quality change before dosing, flushing or field visits are decided on; it does not see flow or pressure and cannot detect leaks or shutdowns. Full article

A rhizosphere-derived bacterial isolate, GYB4201^T, was subjected to taxonomic and functional characterization. The strain consisted of Gram-stain-negative, strictly aerobic rods and was positive for both catalase and oxidase activities. Core-genome phylogeny placed GYB4201^T within the Pseudomonas putida group, in which it occupied an independent and well-supported branch. Pairwise ANI and dDDH values relative to the most closely related type strains were below the accepted species boundaries. Its phenotypic and chemotaxonomic profiles provided additional evidence for taxonomic distinction. The cellular fatty acid composition was dominated by C_16:0, Summed Feature 8 and Summed Feature 3. Phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol were the principal polar lipids, while ubiquinone-9 was the predominant respiratory quinone. Functional assays demonstrated phosphate and potassium solubilization, indole-3-acetic acid production, CAS-positive siderophore-related activity, and inhibitory activity against Sclerotium rolfsii. Pot experiments further showed that inoculation with GYB4201^T reduced peanut southern blight severity and promoted peanut growth. Positive but non-significant trends were observed in several root architectural traits. These taxonomic and functional data support the recognition of GYB4201^T as a novel species of the genus Pseudomonas, for which the name Pseudomonas gilva sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is GYB4201^T (=CFCC 17085^T = ICMP 25013^T). Full article

The absence of industrially viable, fully automated transplanting systems for grafted melon-watermelon tray plug transplants stems primarily from intrinsic biomechanical constraints—namely hypocotyl brittleness, suboptimal stem erectness, and excessive plug volume—that collectively hinder reliable, non-traumatic automated manipulation. To overcome this bottleneck in mechanical automated transplanting, we propose a theory-informed and empirically validated framework for designing, optimizing, and implementing a pneumatically actuated, row-wise pick-and-place system. Its two-finger, four-needle end-effector employs sequential substrate penetration followed by controlled radial constraint. First, geometric metrology and quasi-static testing determined a mean tray detachment force of 2.99 ± 0.51 N (n = 30); a nonlinear viscoelastic model of peat-vermiculite compression enabled physics-guided parametrization of kinematic and force-control profiles. Second, EDEM-RecurDyn co-simulation integrated with a Box–Behnken design (three velocities × three levels) supported global multi-objective optimization. Performance was quantified via microstructural integrity (bond breakage density) and macrostructural coherence (substrate mass retention). Damage evolution was mapped across the oblique insertion-parallel clamping-vertical extraction sequence. Pareto-optimal settings were: insertion = 400 mm/s, holding = 100 mm/s, lifting = 300 mm/s. Third, a prototype using medical-grade stainless-steel needles (Φ = 3 mm) and a 50 mm-stroke pneumatic cylinder achieved a 96.33 ± 1.53% success rate, 2.33 ± 1.53% seedling injury rate, and 0.67 ± 0.58% plug pot failure rate (n = 300) under standardized conditions. This work provides a theoretical basis for the design and optimization of automated, low-loss transplanting equipment for grafted melon-watermelon tray pot seedlings. Full article

Reuben is the least studied of the displaced firstborn sons of Genesis whose material can sustain a reading of character, and his scenes have been read piecemeal. This article reads every scene in which he acts (30:14a; 35:22a; 37:21–22, 29–30; 42:22; 42:37), with the verdict of 49:3–4, as one arc within the Jacob family narrative. One constant runs through these scenes, measured by a norm the narrative itself states in Reuben’s own words, in the narrator’s gloss, and in Judah’s act: the eldest answers for his brothers, and Reuben never stands in that place. In the first movement his standing is built on his mother’s and secured against another woman’s; in the second he steps aside or puts someone else in his place. Against the sympathetic reading of the commentaries, I argue that the text records a disposition rather than ineffectiveness, and that Jacob’s word for it, paḥaz (פחז), names a man who holds his place as a possession to be secured rather than as a charge to be kept. The birthright passes to Joseph, but Reuben is the firstborn whose loss the narrative grounds most explicitly in his own conduct: it is passed on because it was first vacated. Full article

Housing tokenisation usually reaches the public as a story about technological innovation. The account offered here starts elsewhere, from its legal form and its data architecture, and situates the phenomenon among the infrastructures of the smart city. Chilean evidence gathered between 2022 and 2026 points to a specific conclusion about what actually changes hands. The object that circulates as a housing token is a contractual claim on the income a dwelling can generate, and neither the building nor any real right over it moves with the token; for retail buyers, that claim is dressed in the language of a real-time investment dashboard. Because Chile’s registry regime still runs on nineteenth-century demands of solemnity and inscription, title cannot be tokenised at all. The workaround adopted by industry actors is to lodge legal ownership inside a special-purpose vehicle and peel off the economic rights, which then circulate as fractions priced through internal rates of return (IRRs). How that interface presents investment opportunities to prospective retail buyers was examined through a headless-browser extraction of the public marketplace of Reity, a Chilean platform seeking registration under the Fintec Law. The procedure converted a JavaScript-rendered single-page application into a structured cross-sectional dataset of the 35 listings active on 31 August 2026 with complete financial fields. Two findings stand out. Across the 29 listings that report both metrics, the advertised internal rate of return exceeds the displayed current yield (actualised Cap Rate) by a mean of 7.70 percentage points, a gap between a prospective metric and a current-performance metric that the interface places side by side. In addition, 32 of 35 listings carry a ‘100% funded’ label while offering tokens; on all of them, the card switches from ‘tokens available’ to ‘tokens for sale’ and departs from the CLP 100,000 issue price, signals consistent with resale by existing holders that the interface leaves unexplained. Three moments organise the argument that follows, namely, speculation, fiction, and dematerialisation. The dataset, codebook and extraction code are openly released. Full article

How commemorative school titles coexist with administrative names remains underexplored in critical toponymy. This study examines naming patterns and reported name use in Yan’an, China, to explore how Red Army School designation contributes to revolutionary heritage-making. Documentary analysis and descriptive coding of 34 institutions are supplemented by one interview with a municipal education administrator. Drawing on critical toponymy and critical heritage studies, the framework connects scaling and institutional toponymic layering with hybrid authorization: project designation combined with local administrative acceptance. Revolutionary places and events predominate, and 25 records explicitly pair a commemorative title with an administrative name. The informant describes administrative names serving routine governance and Red Army titles supporting commemoration and moral education, with parallel plaques displaying both identities. These accounts suggest functionally differentiated institutional toponymic layering as a provisional interpretation, while nine single-name presentations indicate variation in naming arrangements and delimit its scope. The study contributes to research on place naming and heritage-making in the Global East by identifying an additive institutional naming arrangement. Comparative research should examine how these naming arrangements are used and interpreted within school communities, and whether they involve tensions. Full article

Jobs–housing balance is an important goal of urban sustainable development, and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is widely regarded as an effective pathway to optimize the jobs–housing relationship. However, station-area-scale jobs–housing studies remain limited, and existing jobs–housing typologies have not been linked to regulable TOD characteristics, leaving jobs–housing optimization without a basis for differentiated regulation. Using 72 built subway station areas in Shenzhen’s Density Zone 1 as samples, this study draws on three dimensions, namely transport supply (Node), land use (Place), and jobs–housing, and applies hierarchical clustering, multiple linear regression, and Lasso regression to examine jobs–housing typologies, land use and building distribution characteristics, and the effects of transport supply and land use on the jobs–housing relationship in TOD station areas. Regression analysis uses jobs–housing value, a weighted score derived from the employment–residential area ratio (JH1) and the employment–residential population ratio (JH2), as the dependent variable. The main findings are as follows. (1) TOD station areas can be classified into four types, which differ significantly in land use and building distribution; planning strategies should therefore be differentiated according to the characteristics of each type. (2) The four types exhibit a concentric spatial structure comprising an employment-oriented core, a jobs–housing balanced middle ring, and a residential-oriented periphery, with the mean betweenness centrality increasing gradually, indicating that TOD intensity rises in tandem with subway network hub status. (3) Across the full sample, the interaction term between transport supply and land use is significantly and positively associated with jobs–housing value, a result supported by spatial econometric robustness checks; the main effects of Node and Place are significantly negative only in ordinary least squares. (4) Subway line direction, bus stop density, floor area ratio, and maximum planned floor area ratio are positively associated with jobs–housing value, whereas shared bike density, POI density, total road length, and building mixing entropy are negatively associated with it. This study provides a quantitative basis and actionable planning pathways for the differentiated regulation of the jobs–housing relationship in TOD station areas. Full article

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger names preservation (Bewahrung) as essential to the artwork, yet says comparatively little about what it requires of those who undertake it. This essay offers a textual reconstruction of preservation as a task of articulation, reading the artwork essay alongside GA 80.2, GA 82, GA 100, and GA 104. Heidegger’s formulation of truth setting itself into work indicates that neither artist nor preserver produces or completes the truth that happens in the work. The preserver participates in a disclosure that remains underway through finite and historically situated forms of saying. I develop this interpretation through Er-stellung and Er-sagen and consider its measure and temporal structure through Grundton, Er-schweigen, and Gespräch. On this reading, preservation places an onto-hermeneutical demand upon the preserver: to articulate and hand on what the work opens without claiming mastery over it. The essay closes by turning to Cao Jun’s painting to ask whether such articulation may continue across historical worlds, a possibility that must be weighed against the communal and linguistic boundedness of Heidegger’s own account. Full article

Two novel bacterial strains, designated YIM B11945^T and YIM B11997^T, were isolated from soil samples collected in the Napahai Plateau wetland, Yunnan Province, China. The cells were aerobic, Gram-stain-positive, motile and non-spore-forming rods. The strains YIM B11945^T and YIM B11997^T showed the highest 16S rRNA sequence similarity with Planococcus shixiaomingii N022^T (97.5%) and Planococcus koreensis JG07^T (98.3%), respectively. The phylogenomic analyses based on the core genome sequences placed the two strains within the genus genus Planococcus. The average nucleotide identity and the digital DNA–DNA hybridization values between the two novel strains and their closest relatives were below the species delineation thresholds of 95% and 70%, respectively. The strains YIM B11945^T and YIM B11997^T possessed major fatty acids, which were anteiso-C_15:0 and C_16:1ω7c alcohol, and anteiso-C_15:0, iso-C_14:0, C_16:1ω7c alcohol and iso-C_16:0, respectively. The major polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, and diphosphatidylglycerol, and the respiratory quinones detected were menaquinone-7 and menaquinone-8. The genomic DNA G+C contents of YIM B11945^T and YIM B11997^T were 45.0% and 49.2%, respectively. Based on the phenotypic, genotypic and phylogenetic analyses, the strains YIM B11945^T and YIM B11997^T are considered to represent two new species of the genus Planococcus, for which the names Planococcus terreus sp. nov. and Planococcus flavus sp. nov. are proposed, respectively. The type strains are YIM B11945^T (=CGMCC 1.64737^T=KCTC 43683^T) and YIM B11997^T (=KCTC 43680^T=NBRC 116630^T). Full article

Air-source heat pumps suffer from the formation of frost on their outdoor coils while operating under cold and humid conditions, and the resulting periodic defrost cycles interrupt the heat supply and degrade both thermal comfort and efficiency. This study extends the hybrid air conditioner previously proposed by the authors, in which a ground heat exchanger is placed downstream of the outdoor heat exchanger, employing a shallow-buried water tank as a supplementary ground heat source to mitigate defrosting. A quasi-steady R32 vapor-compression cycle model was developed, coupled with lumped-capacitance thermal models of the room, the water tank, and the ground, including a frosting/defrosting model. Considering 2.2 kW heating at an outdoor temperature of +3.5 °C (with a relative humidity of 80%), the simulation predicted that the cumulative defrost time over 6 h would be reduced from 35 min (five events) to 0, the time required to reach the 20 °C set point would be shortened from 120 to 72 min, and the integrated coefficient of performance (COP) over 6 h would improve from 5.4 to 7.1. A preliminary one-hour winter heating experiment on a minimally modified commercial unit—one run per operating mode—showed that no defrosting occurred during hybrid operation, despite a higher outdoor relative humidity (74% vs. 46%), whereas two defrost events (inferred from the indoor outlet air velocity) totaling 12% of the run occurred in conventional operation, and the average COP increased from 1.8 to 3.0. An additional simulation with the as-built parameters of the prototype (300 L tank, tank-side conductance of about 60 W/K) reproduced this qualitative pattern under the hybrid-run weather, although with a small, nonzero predicted frost accumulation that remained below the defrost threshold. Because the two runs were conducted under different ambient conditions and the model was not calibrated against the tested system, the experiment provides qualitative rather than quantitative support for the simulated behavior; nevertheless, the simulation and the experiment consistently indicated the same relative advantage of the hybrid system, namely, the absence of defrosting and a higher COP. Future work will address repeated and extended experiments under matched conditions, model calibration, the optimization of the tank’s geometry and capacity, and the necessity of water agitation inside the tank. Full article