Search Results (359)

The industrial Internet of Things (IoT) allows traditional electromechanical systems to be connected to digital monitoring and control platforms, especially when field devices use industrial protocols that must be integrated into web services without modifying their main operation. This work implements an IoT architecture based on the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model to interconnect two Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) through a LOGO! Programmable Logic Controller (LOGO! PLC), a Human–Machine Interface (HMI), a ZLAN5143D gateway, Node-RED, Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), and Adafruit IO. The communication integrates RS485/Modbus RTU at the field level and Modbus TCP/IP over Ethernet at the upper network level using the gateway as the protocol conversion element. The validation was performed through Modbus Poll, variable acquisition, MQTT publication, and web visualization. The results show local communication response, acquisition of frequency, voltage, current, and revolutions per minute (RPM), together with remote control of start, stop, frequency setpoint, and rotation direction. The architecture is presented as a modular solution for electromechanical applications with IoT projection. Full article

SQL Injection is a well-known vulnerability that has persisted in web applications for decades. A widely held assumption among developers is that even when SQL Injection is present, hashing or encrypting sensitive data using SQL-provided cryptographic functions, such as sha256() or md5(), renders stolen data unrecoverable. This paper challenges that assumption directly. We demonstrate that invoking cryptographic functions within SQL statements does not protect plaintext credentials against an attacker who already has SQL Injection access, not because the hash functions are weak but because their plaintext arguments are transiently exposed in DBMS in-memory monitoring views before the hash function executes. We exploit this window using a technique that we call SQLSnoop, which repurposes built-in SQL looping constructs to poll the monitoring view at high frequency within a single injected statement. We demonstrate SQLSnoop against four major RDBMS platforms: MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL. Systematic quantitative evaluation is conducted on MySQL, while feasibility on MSSQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL is confirmed through working Proof-of-Concept implementations against each platform’s respective in-memory monitoring view. Our evaluation on MySQL shows attack success rates consistently above 90%, reaching 100% at 1.2 or more virtual CPU cores, and holding across all four Data Manipulation Language operations. The key practical implication is that SQL-layer hashing is fundamentally insufficient as a defense against SQL Injection, and sensitive data must be hashed at the application layer before the SQL statement is constructed. Full article

Genetic screening of monogenic traits is important for improving genetic health and increasing favorable milk protein in dairy cattle. This study developed and applied an amplification refractory mutation system PCR (ARMS-PCR) assay to simultaneously screen 21 causal variants underlying 18 monogenic traits in Holstein cattle, including 13 recessive genetic defects, 2 milk protein loci, and 3 morphological loci. The assay was designed as a unified multiplex PCR-capillary electrophoresis workflow, enabling clear detection of allele-specific products distinguished by fragment size and fluorescent color. Sanger sequencing validation of newly incorporated loci supported the accuracy of the assay. A total of 1656 cows from 12 commercial farms were genotyped using the multiplex ARMS-PCR panel, and amplicons were analyzed by capillary electrophoresis. Carriers were detected for all genetic defects except DUMPS, with carrier frequencies ranging from 0.12% to 6.64%. The highest frequencies were observed for HH5 (6.64%) and MWS (6.58%), whereas HH3, HH1, and HCD showed intermediate frequencies of 1.81% to 3.08%; all the remaining defects were below 1%. Overall, 22.10% of sampled cows carried at least 1 defect allele, including 20.47% carrying 1 defect, 1.51% carrying 2, and 0.12% carrying 3. For milk protein loci, the desirable β-casein A2A2 and κ-casein BB genotypes occurred at frequencies of 45.83% and 14.13%, respectively, and the favorable A2A2/BB combination was present in 6.22% of sampled cows. Dominant red, recessive red, and polled alleles were rare. These results indicate that multiplex fluorescent ARMS-PCR can serve as a practical targeted screening tool for the simultaneous management of known deleterious alleles and selection of favorable monogenic variants in dairy cattle breeding. Full article

This paper presents a closed-loop, CPU-aware traffic-control framework for SDN in 5G/6G multi-tenant edge environments based on commodity KVM/OVS infrastructures. It couples fine-grained data-plane telemetry via eBPF with adaptive XDP rate limiting, coordinated by a PID controller in the OVS datapath. Unlike control-plane polling, it provides real-time feedback between CPU utilization and traffic regulation. Experiments in a virtualized multi-tenant OVS testbed (KVM/virtio-net) keep CPU below per-slice CPU targets (e.g., 1.02% for a 3% setpoint), with an under-target bias that avoids overshoot while preserving stable forwarding. We attribute this bias, at light load, to a supply-limited regime, conservative per-slice CPU accounting, and stability-oriented PID tuning, and introduce a low-latency profile that mitigates this bias for latency-sensitive slices. The XDP datapath achieves 1–3 $\mathsf{\mu }$s per-packet processing with 5–10% additional CPU overhead relative to an uninstrumented baseline, while using less CPU than OVS policing at comparable throughput. A 3% per-slice CPU target balances isolation and throughput, while 2% yields stricter isolation at the cost of higher packet loss. Software-based rate limiting can induce cross-slice interference; effective isolation holds below 1 Gbps aggregate load. Above this, shared Linux kernel overhead degrades isolation, causing significant loss; thus, XDP alone cannot ensure line-rate isolation, motivating SmartNICs. The design improves efficiency, predictability, and isolation, laying a foundation for intelligent traffic management in future resource-intensive applications. Full article

This current study aimed to determine the impact of Mitoquinone (MitoQ) on the quality of frozen–thawed donkey semen. Ejaculates were collected from six male donkeys (Equus asinus), and ejaculates were polled and aliquoted into 12 samples. Samples were diluted with TRIS–egg yolk glycerol extender that reached 200 million sperm/mL. After centrifugation, the pellet was diluted at 1:15 with TRIS–egg yolk glycerol extender and divided into the five main groups containing MitoQ with different concentrations: 0 nmol/mL (control; MitoQ0), 100 nmol/mL (MitoQ1), 150 nmol/mL (MitoQ2), 200 nmol/mL (MitoQ3), and 250 nmol/mL (MitoQ4). After thawing, semen quality was evaluated using CASA kinematic parameters, fluorescence microscopy, and biochemical markers such as alanine and aspartate aminotransferase levels (ALT and AST). Malondialdehyde (MDA) and catalase (CAT) levels were also measured. MitoQ1 with 100 nmol/mL significantly increased total motility (p = 0.04), progressive motility (p = 0.04), viability (p = 0.03), kinetic parameters (p = 0.04), linearity (p = 0.02), and straightness (p = 0.04). A significant decline in MDA (p = 0.02), ALT (p = 0.03), and AST (p = 0.03) levels in MitoQ1 with 100 nmol/mL was found, with an elevation of CAT levels (p = 0.02) compared to other concentrations and the control in TRIS–egg yolk glycerol extender. Different concentrations of MitoQ did not affect acrosome and DNA integrity. In conclusion, the addition of MitoQ during cryopreservation has a positive effect on sperm motility, viability, and kinetic parameters, especially at a concentration of 100 nmol/mL when used with a TRIS–egg yolk glycerol extender for frozen–thawed donkey sperm. Full article

Digital technologies make it possible to combine multiple technical functionalities within applications that address practical and organizational needs. This paper presents Cozzmo, an Android mobile prototype for supporting communication and coordination in shared households. The system combines chat, polls, chores, shopping support, photo albums, presence awareness, mood indicators, and location-based alerts in one application. The prototype was implemented in native Java for Android using Firebase services and an MVVM architecture with LiveData. Its real-time behavior was evaluated on two physical Android devices under mixed connectivity conditions, including mobile data, hotspot use, and temporary connection loss. The evaluation examined end-to-end propagation delay, recovery after reconnection, and state convergence during concurrent user actions. In the reported test sessions, the prototype preserved update order in baseline scenarios, recovered queued messages after short interruptions, and reached a consistent final state in the concurrent voting and task-update tests. The time needed for updates to appear in the interface was less than the propagation delay, suggesting that the measured response path was shaped mainly by network and backend propagation. These findings indicate that the prototype is technically viable and can serve as a basis for further work on mobile systems for household collaboration. Full article

Objectives: To investigate current Canadian physicians’ practice patterns of treating upper limb post-stroke spasticity (PSS) and hemiplegic shoulder pain (HSP) acutely after a stroke. In addition, by examining Canadian physicians’ diagnostic capabilities, time till treatment, minimum criteria to begin treatment, mechanisms of treatment, targeting of muscles, and benefits and adverse effects of treatment, we aim to learn about areas of improvement to optimize PSS management for Canadians. Design: The present study was a cross-sectional survey, polling practicing Canadian physicians. Results: A total of 17 physicians completed the survey, all PM&R specialists, save one neurologist. Four provinces were represented in the responses. Participants had, on average, over ten years of experience managing post-stroke spasticity in outpatient and inpatient clinics. All 17 perform botulinum neurotoxin A (BoNT-A) injections for HSP associated with PSS. Most participants reported that they will begin BoNT-A treatments 2–3 weeks post-stroke, most commonly targeting the pectoralis major, subscapularis, and latissimus dorsi. Participants reported the mean median dosage they use as onabotulinum toxin A (169.12 units, SD = 73.70), incobotulinum toxin A (178.13 units, SD = 65.75), and abobotulinum toxin A (470.83 units, SD = 171.17). For injection guidance, participants responded that they use ultrasound for the largest percentage of their caseload, followed by electromyography, then electrical stimulation, then palpation. Very seldom did participants use palpation alone. Conclusions: From the limited sample included in analyses, the Canadian physicians respondents seem to be treating HSP and associated PSS with variable strategies. Further research is required to align dosages, targets, and guidance strategies as they vary considerably. Full article

In this paper, the factors linked to happiness are analyzed on the basis of the World Happiness Report (WHR) model, introducing a methodological approach that differs from traditional econometric techniques. More specifically, this study examines how the core variables of the WHR model interact in relation to happiness and whether some of them also emerge as necessary conditions within the framework of necessary condition analysis (NCA) for attaining higher happiness levels. Using Gallup World Poll data for the 2022–2024 period, the Cantril Ladder is employed as a measure of subjective well-being, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and perceived corruption are considered explanatory variables. This study makes two contributions. First, it applies a decision tree regression model to identify interactions among the correlates of happiness while also facilitating the classification of countries into homogeneous groups according to their well-being configurations. This approach improves interpretability relative to linear models because it does not require prior specification of those interactions. Second, this paper incorporates necessary condition analysis to distinguish between factors that are merely influential and those that emerge as necessary conditions for attaining certain levels of happiness. These assessments make it possible to identify minimum thresholds in key variables, introducing a necessary-condition logic. The results show that social support and GDP per capita emerge as the main structuring variables in the tree and are strongly associated with differences in happiness, whereas freedom emerges as a prominent condition in the NCA results. The findings also show that some factors with low correlation may still play a relevant role in specific contexts because of nonlinear effects and interactions. Overall, the results of this study offer an analytical reinterpretation of the WHR model by combining structural segmentation and threshold identification, advancing the understanding of happiness as a multidimensional, nonlinear phenomenon associated with specific configurations of factors. Full article

In HPC systems and hyper-scale data centers, the adoption of high-performance NVMe SSDs and high-speed networks has shifted storage bottlenecks to the network stack. Under high-concurrency workloads, frequent interrupt processing exhausts CPU resources while protocol-level control–data dependencies in the NVMe over TCP write path introduce additional serialization penalties. Existing optimizations either require specialized hardware, dedicate CPU cores to user-space polling, or apply semantically blind batching that delays time-sensitive control messages. We present SENS, a Semantic-aware NVMe over TCP Scheduler embedded within the NVMe over TCP driver of the Linux kernel. SENS combines two mechanisms: (1) PDU vectorization, which aggregates discrete Protocol Data Units into memory vectors before network transmission, amortizing per-I/O system call overhead and reducing soft-interrupt frequency; and (2) instruction-aware dispatch, which detects control PDUs such as R2T and triggers an early flush of the aggregation window, mitigating the serialization penalty on the write path. A prototype evaluation with physical NVMe SSDs and 100 GbE networks shows that SENS saturates the SSD throughput ceiling using 4–5 CPU cores, halving the host-side core budget compared to the native TCP driver. With a RAMDisk backend that removes storage-media constraints, SENS sustains up to 2.5× higher concurrent IOPS. These results show that exposing storage-protocol semantics to the batching layer improves the scalability of NVMe over TCP without additional hardware. Full article

Since his inception, Luke Cage’s superhero mission has explored themes related to justice, interpersonal relations, and institutional integrity. This paper draws on examples from comics and his television series to explicate these themes through the lens of social and moral development. In doing so, it suggests lessons for improving the recent landscape of American civil discourse. The Overview introduces the character against the backdrop of the social role of superheroes, moral development scholarship, and recent polling data related to civil discourse. The Heroic Journey examines his superhero mission further, highlighting his attempts to promote a sense of mutual trust and shared obligations across varied social interactions. Lastly, the Super Takeaway discusses the potential of Luke Cage narratives to keep disagreeing persons “at the table” long enough to come to some (civil) agreement. Full article

Yanhuang cattle is a specialized beef breed independently developed in China with high economic value. However, the effects of the horned/polled trait on its production performance and the underlying genetic markers are poorly understood. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of horn status and to validate candidate genetic markers for the polled trait in this breed. A total of 60 Yanhuang cattle (30 horned and 30 polled) were used for comparative analysis of growth, carcass, and meat quality traits. Additionally, blood samples from 200 individuals (100 horned and 100 polled) were collected for molecular screening of seven candidate genetic markers previously associated with polledness in cattle. The polled cattle showed significantly higher body weight from 12 months onward. Body height and hip height were significantly greater at 12, 18, and 24 months, while body length displayed significant advantages at 6, 18, 24, and 30 months. Polled cattle also outperformed in chest girth (18 months), abdominal circumference (significant at 18–30 months), and ischial end width (significant at 6–12 months). Regarding slaughter traits, polled cattle exhibited higher carcass weight, along with significantly improved slaughter and net meat rates, though no differences were observed in meat quality. At the molecular level, the P_202ID indel marker was successfully validated in the polled Yanhuang population. Our findings demonstrate that the polled trait is associated with superior production performance in Yanhuang cattle, and the P_202ID marker represents a reliable molecular tool for polled selection, providing a theoretical and technical basis for the genetic improvement and breeding of this breed. Full article

This paper presents a dual-core RISC-V architecture designed for energy-efficient AI acceleration at the edge, featuring dynamic MAC unit sharing, frequency scaling (DFS), and FIFO-based resource arbitration. The system comprises two RISC-V cores that compete for shared computational resources—a single Multiply–Accumulate (MAC) unit and a shared external memory subsystem—governed by a channel-based arbitration mechanism with CPU-priority semantics, while each core maintains private instruction and data caches. The architecture implements a tightly coupled Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with CONV, GEMM, and POOL operations that execute opportunistically in the background when the MAC unit is available. Dynamic frequency scaling (DFS) with three levels (100/200/400 MHz) is applied to the shared MAC unit, allowing the dynamic acceleration of CNN workloads. The arbitration mechanism uses SystemC sc_fifo channels with CPU-priority polling, ensuring that CPU execution is minimally impacted by background AI processing while the NPU makes progress during idle MAC slots. The NPU supports 3 × 3 convolutions, matrix multiplication (GEMM) with 10 × 10 tiles, and pooling operations. The implementation is cycle-accurate in SystemC, targeting FPGA deployment. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the dual-core architecture achieves 1.87× speedup with 93.5% efficiency for parallel workloads, while DFS enables 70% power reduction at low frequency. The system successfully executes simultaneous CPU and AI workloads, with CPU-priority arbitration ensuring no CPU starvation under contention. The proposed design offers a practical solution for embedded AI applications requiring both general-purpose computation and neural network acceleration, validated through comprehensive SystemC simulation on modern FPGA platforms. Full article

The United States has undergone rapid and, at times, unprecedented political changes in 2025. Recent national polling indicates that many Americans—across political parties—believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction. In a preregistered study with more than 7000 adults residing in the United States, we explored the implications of these widespread concerns for individuals’ psychological functioning. As theorized, individuals who believed that the political climate was worsening and viewed the United States as failing to live up to its core national values experienced lower efficacy, both in terms of their personal ability to influence politics (i.e., individual efficacy) and their confidence in the government to uphold its obligations to the nation and its residents (i.e., government efficacy). In turn, these individuals reported worse overall well-being and less effective coping in response to stressors related to the political climate. These relationships persisted after accounting for the participants’ 2024 presidential vote choice and political party affiliation. Together, these findings suggest that the political turbulence Americans are experiencing exerts a measurable, bipartisan toll on Americans’ psychological and social health. Full article

The ongoing digital revolution is reshaping human communication and collaboration. Immersive technologies and artificial intelligence are opening new avenues for interaction, raising the question of whether these innovations can support Deliberative Polling^®, a social science method of engaging the public, in virtual environments. This study aims to explore the feasibility of conducting Deliberative Polling^® in the Metaverse. Thirty individuals from 10 nationalities participated in three experiences conducted on two different platforms. The first experience, conducted on Meta Horizon Worlds, served as a preliminary test to evaluate the platform’s usability and interaction dynamics. The second and third experiences, following the Deliberative Polling methodology, were conducted on Meta Horizon Worlds and Spatial, respectively. Each experience lasted approximately two hours. Across sessions, opinion changes were observed, and participants displayed virtual social dynamics similar to those in face-to-face deliberation. The results suggest that Deliberative Polling^®-like deliberations appear feasible in social VR under these exploratory conditions, as reflected in balanced discussions and topic-focused engagement. However, current VR hardware and software still require improvements to enhance accessibility, usability, and inclusivity for broader adoption. Future research with larger and more diverse participant pools is needed to assess not only feasibility but also effectiveness relative to traditional approaches. Full article

Yaks are important livestock in high-altitude regions, and their polled trait can effectively improve breeding and management efficiency. In this study, whole-genome resequencing combined with a GWAS was employed to identify a significantly associated region of approximately 273.6 kb on chromosome 1 (36,313,286–36,586,879 bp) in Xueduo yaks. This region contains 1001 significant single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) loci and is located within a long intergenic non-coding RNA (lincRNA) region. Candidate genes EPCIP, OLIG1 and PAXBP1 adjacent to this region were identified. Among these, the PAXBP1 gene plays a crucial role in neural crest development, suggesting that it may be a core gene regulating horn development in yaks. Further analysis of Ashdan yaks (a polled breed developed from Datong yaks) indicated that the two breeds share the same candidate genes and a subset of associated genetic variants for the polled trait, suggesting a degree of genetic conservation underlying this trait across yak breeds. This study provides a theoretical basis for polled yak breeding. Full article