Search Results (263)

Water hardness, an important factor influencing both human health and aquatic ecosystems, is controlled by natural processes and human activities. This study examined spatiotemporal variations in water hardness in Jinshu Port (JP) and Yuyang Mountain (YM) water sources in Suzhou from 2011 to 2023. The JP source exhibited a higher total hardness (92–182 mg/L) than the YM source (87–179 mg/L), and both sites showed clear seasonal patterns. Long-term trends diverged: the JP source remained stable, while the YM source declined significantly. Carbonate hardness increased, whereas non-carbonate hardness decreased in both sites. These changes were associated with the acid rain frequency, which correlated positively with non-carbonate hardness but negatively with carbonate hardness. Land use also strongly affected hardness: farmland-dominated rivers in Huxi (90–210 mg/L) had higher levels than forest-dominated rivers in Zhexi (76–164 mg/L). Water-soluble calcium and magnesium in farmland soils were about 4.5 times higher than those in forest soils and roughly doubled with fertilization. Overall, human activities—including land use, fertilizer application, and acid rain—strongly influenced hardness patterns. Over the past decade, the hardness in both regions has generally remained stable with a slight decrease, suggesting that the strict environmental protection in the Taihu Lake Basin effectively mitigated anthropogenic impacts on water sources. Full article

The acquisition, processing, and monitoring of biomechanical variables in dynamic environments require sensor network architectures capable of handling high concurrency and large data volumes. This study aims to develop, validate, and deploy a robust asynchronous network architecture of Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) utilizing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 5.0 for real-time biomechanical signal acquisition, overcoming the range, speed, and stability limitations of prior implementations. A network of six IMUs was implemented, with communication managed by a hybrid Python 3.10–LabVIEW 2022 Q3 framework. This architecture ensures concurrent, asynchronous data acquisition while maintaining stable sensor interconnection through virtual port emulation. System evaluation demonstrated superior technical performance, exhibiting high acquisition efficiency (close to 100%) and data loss below ±2% across 75 assessments per sensor. These assessments were obtained by evaluating the posture of 25 participants during three postural experiments, with a maximum indoor range of 40 m and an outdoor range of 105 m, validating the system’s scalability and robustness for motion capture. The approach was applied in a case study using a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) to assess the upper limb via the Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) method. The system successfully quantified the temporal distribution of injury risk bilaterally, overcoming the limitations of observational methods and providing objective metrics crucial for occupational health in seated tasks. Full article

Oil spills threaten marine ecosystems and hinder progress toward Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 on ocean conservation and sustainable marine resource use. Coastal ecosystems in Myanmar face growing risks from expanding maritime infrastructure, including ports, special economic zones, and offshore projects. This study aims to develop a spatial Environmental Sensitivity Index (ESI) map for the Tanintharyi region by integrating biological, socio-economic, and physical factors. Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), weighting values were derived from local conservation and livelihood experts to ensure regional relevance. The inclusion of chlorophyll-a as a biological indicator improves the assessment of marine productivity and ecosystem health, linking ESI mapping to ocean acidification. The results showed that 8% of the area was very highly sensitive, 25% was highly sensitive, and 23% was moderately sensitive. The most sensitive zones were concentrated along the southern coastline, particularly in Thayetchaung Township, due to dense mangroves, critical habitats, and resource-dependent fisheries. This study presents the first spatial ESI assessment for Tanintharyi, providing a practical framework for oil spill preparedness and ecosystem protection, with potential for future enhancement through integration with oil spill simulation modeling. Full article

Time-series water-quality forecasting plays a crucial role in sustainable environmental monitoring, early-warning surveillance, and data-driven water-resource governance. Degradation of river ecosystems poses significant risks to public health, biodiversity, and long-term socio-economic resilience, particularly in rapidly developing regions. In this study, a multi-scale diffusion forecaster (MDF) is introduced to enhance predictive accuracy and uncertainty quantification for river water-quality dynamics in Thailand. The proposed framework integrates seasonal-trend decomposition with a hierarchical denoising diffusion process to model stochastic environmental fluctuations across multiple temporal resolutions. Experiments conducted using real water-quality datasets from the Mae Klong, Khwae Noi, and Khwae Yai Rivers, and the Port Authority of Thailand, demonstrate that MDF achieves superior probabilistic calibration under noise and data incompleteness compared to conventional deterministic baselines. The forecasting capability supports proactive pollution control, sustainable resource allocation, and climate-resilient water-policy design, directly contributing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation; SDG 13: Climate Action; and SDG 14: Life Below Water). The findings highlight the potential of diffusion-based learning as an enabling technology for sustainable aquatic ecosystem governance and long-term environmental planning. Full article

Maritime transportation plays a vital role in international trade and commerce, with ports serving as critical points of connection between land and sea transportation systems. The operational efficiency of port facilities is essential to ensure the uninterrupted flow of goods and services, making port safety a top priority for governments, authorities, and shipping companies. Due to the importance of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) within port environments, it is crucial to develop a structured framework in order to collect and analyze port accidents data. Today there are several different national agencies, private organizations, and/or local regulatory bodies taking charge of these data over different areas, each with variations in how they document and classify the events; in addition these are frequently limited to only major disasters and/or summary statistics. This paper aims to create a general framework to collect and fuse open-source port accident data from different sources in a structured way and to analyze the safety conditions of port facilities by conducting a comparative evaluation based on design of experiment (DoE). Through this analysis, we identify common causes of accidents and injuries in port facilities, as well as any differences in safety conditions across regions, types of port facilities, and other relevant factors. This information can be used to inform policies and practices aimed at improving port safety, reducing accidents and injuries, and ultimately enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of maritime transportation systems. The motivation to develop this research relies on the necessity to define requirements for the development of innovative solutions to be developed by the authors using modeling and simulation (M&S) and XR (extended reality) in order to increase safety in these contexts. Full article

HIV remains a significant public health challenge in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), with vulnerable communities disproportionately affected and further marginalised by the COVID-19 pandemic. HIV self-testing (HIVST) has emerged as a transformative, empowering tool to bridge testing gaps and promote health equity. This study examined post-COVID-19 strategies for leveraging HIVST to empower vulnerable populations and advance health promotion in SSA. Analysis was performed using secondary Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data (2015–2022) collected across 24 SSA countries. In addition, qualitative interviews were conducted with female sex workers in Port Harcourt, Nigeria (18–31 May 2023). The study adopted an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. Quantitative analysis using complex sample logistic regression revealed low awareness (16.3%) and uptake (2.5%) of HIVST among the 594,639 respondents. Key predictors of uptake included higher education (aOR, 7.36; 95% CI, 6.62–8.18), wealth (richest quintile aOR, 3.28; 95% CI, 2.95–3.65), and knowledge of HIV transmission (aOR, 33.43; 95% CI, 11.03–101.24). Thematic analysis highlighted privacy, autonomy, and convenience as key benefits, while cost, stigma, and fear of testing alone were major barriers. The participants emphasised peer-led outreach and integration of HIVST into public health systems as effective strategies. The findings were integrated interpretively, linking macro-level testing disparities with community-level experiences to inform post-pandemic policy and programme design. The study concludes that HIVST holds strong potential to empower marginalised groups and strengthen community-driven HIV prevention post-COVID-19, but success will depend on equity-driven policies and sustainable implementation frameworks, guided by affordability and community participation. Full article

As port operations rapidly evolve toward intelligent and heavy-duty applications, fault diagnosis for core equipment demands higher levels of real-time performance and robustness. Deep learning, with its powerful autonomous feature learning capabilities, demonstrates significant potential in mechanical fault prediction and health management. This paper first provides a systematic review of deep learning research advances in rotating machinery fault diagnosis over the past eight years, focusing on the technical approaches and application cases of four representative models: Deep Belief Networks (DBNs), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Auto-encoders (AEs), and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). These models, respectively, embody four core paradigms, unsupervised feature generation, spatial pattern extraction, data reconstruction learning, and temporal dependency modeling, forming the technological foundation of contemporary intelligent diagnostics. Building upon this foundation, this paper delves into the unique challenges encountered when transferring these methods from generic laboratory components to specialized port equipment such as shore cranes and yard cranes—including complex operating conditions, harsh environments, and system coupling. It further explores future research directions, including cross-condition transfer, multi-source information fusion, and lightweight deployment, aiming to provide theoretical references and implementation pathways for the technological advancement of intelligent operation and maintenance in port equipment. Full article

Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) is a promising carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy that accelerates mineral dissolution, sequestering atmospheric CO₂ while improving soil health. This study builds on prior applications of soil calcimetry by investigating its ability to resolve short-term carbonate fluxes and rainfall-modulated weathering dynamics in wollastonite-amended croplands. Conducted over a single growing season (May–October 2024) in temperate row-crop fields near Port Colborne, Ontario—characterized by fibric mesisol soils (Histosols, FAO-WRB)—this study tests whether calcimetry can distinguish between dissolution and precipitation phases and serve as a proxy for weathering flux within the upper soil horizon, under the assumption that rapid pedogenic carbonate cycling dominates alkalinity retention in this soil–mineral system. Monthly measurements of soil pH (Milli-Q and CaCl₂) and calcium carbonate equivalent (CCE) were conducted across 10 plots, totaling 180 composite samples. Results show significant alkalinization (p < 0.001), with average pH increases of ~+1.0 unit in both Milli-Q and CaCl₂ extracts over the timeline. In contrast, CCE values showed high spatiotemporal variability (−2.5 to +6.4%) without consistent seasonal trends. The calcimetry-derived weathering proxy, log (Σ ΔCCE/Δt), correlated positively with pH (r = 0.652), capturing net carbonate accumulation, while the kinetic dissolution rate model correlated strongly and negatively with pH (r ≈ −1), reflecting acid-promoted dissolution. This divergence confirms that the two metrics capture complementary stages of the weathering–precipitation continuum. Rainfall strongly modulated short-term carbonate formation, with cumulative precipitation over the previous 7–10 days enhancing formation rates up to a saturation point (~30 mm), beyond which additional rainfall yielded diminishing returns. In contrast, dissolution fluxes remained largely independent of rainfall. These results highlight calcimetry as a direct, scalable, and dynamic tool not only for monitoring solid-phase carbonate formation, but also for inferring carbonate migration and dissolution dynamics. In systems dominated by rapid pedogenic carbonate cycling, this approach captures the majority of alkalinity fluxes, offering a conservative yet comprehensive proxy for CO₂ sequestration. Full article

The integration of renewable energy systems and electrified transportation requires advanced energy storage solutions capable of providing both high energy density and fast dynamic response. Hybrid energy storage systems offer a promising approach by combining complementary battery chemistries, exploiting their respective strengths while mitigating individual limitations. This study presents the design, modeling, and optimization of a hybrid energy storage system composed of two high-energy lithium nickel manganese cobalt batteries and one high-power lithium titanate oxide battery, interconnected through a triple dual-active multi-port converter. A nonlinear model predictive control strategy was employed to optimally distribute battery currents while respecting constraints such as state of charge limits, current bounds, and converter efficiency. Equivalent circuit models were used for real-time state of charge estimation, and converter losses were explicitly included in the optimization. The main contributions of this work are threefold: (i) verification of the model predictive control strategy in diverse applications, including residential renewable energy systems with photovoltaic generation and electric vehicles following the World Harmonized Light-duty Vehicle Test Procedure driving cycle; (ii) explicit inclusion of the power converter model in the system dynamics, enabling realistic coordination between batteries and power electronics; and (iii) incorporation of converter efficiency into the cost function, allowing for simultaneous optimization of energy losses, battery stress, and operational constraints. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed model predictive control strategy effectively balances power demand, extends system lifetime by prioritizing lithium titanate oxide battery during transient peaks, and preserves lithium nickel manganese cobalt cell health through smoother operation. Overall, the results confirm that the proposed hybrid energy storage system architecture and control strategy enables flexible, reliable, and efficient operation across diverse real-world scenarios, providing a pathway toward more sustainable and durable energy storage solutions. Full article

Background: Dental anxiety is a common challenge in paediatric dentistry, often leading to avoidance of treatment and compromised oral health. Non-pharmacological interventions such as music therapy have gained increasing attention as safe and cost-effective alternatives to pharmacological approaches. Although several clinical studies have examined the impact of music on children’s dental anxiety, the evidence has not yet been systematically summarised with quantitative synthesis. Objective: This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of music therapy in reducing dental anxiety and fear among paediatric patients. Methods: A comprehensive literature search was conducted in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library from inception to August 2025. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating music therapy for dental anxiety in children were included. Primary outcomes were self-reported dental anxiety/fear scales and physiological measures (heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation). Risk of bias was assessed using the revised Cochrane risk of bias tool (RoB 2, version 2019; Cochrane Collaboration, London, UK) Meta-analyses were performed using a random-effects model with Review Manager (RevMan, version 5.4; Cochrane Collaboration, London, UK). Results: Seven randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving 476 children aged 4–14 years were included. Music therapy significantly reduced self-re-ported dental anxiety compared with control groups (SMD = −0.48, 95% CI: −0.72 to −0.25, p < 0.001). Heart rate was also significantly reduced (SMD = −0.42, 95% CI: −0.68 to −0.16, p = 0.002), whereas changes in blood pressure and oxygen saturation were not statistically significant. The overall risk of bias was moderate, with most concerns related to blinding. Conclusions: Music therapy is an effective non-pharmacological intervention to reduce dental anxiety in children, particularly improving subjective anxiety and physiological arousal as measured by heart rate. Its integration into paediatric dental practice may enhance cooperation and treatment outcomes, offering a safe, inexpensive, and child-friendly approach. Full article

Background: Sturge–Weber syndrome (SWS) typically presents with a port-wine stain on the face, accompanied by leptomeningeal capillary malformations and ocular vascular anomalies. The aim of our study was to evaluate retinal vascular density and vessel diameter to better characterize the presence of vascular alterations. Methods: 15 patients diagnosed with Sturge–Weber syndrome and 15 healthy controls underwent comprehensive ophthalmologic evaluation, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA), to evaluate the microvascular architecture of the retina and choroid. Results: Analysis of the processed images revealed a significant increase (p < 0.05 *) in the density of the deep capillary plexus in patients with SWS compared to healthy controls. Vascular diameter was found to be increased overall in several retinal vascular plexuses in SWS patients compared to controls, reaching statistical significance (p < 0.05 *) in the deep vascular complex. Conclusions: The findings from our analysis highlight the potential role of OCTA in predicting the progression or worsening of ocular diseases over time. The introduction of new assessment parameters offers additional perspectives in evaluating ocular health. Since this examination allows for the detection of changes in the morphology and density of blood vessels as revealed by OCTA, these changes can be correlated with disease progression and the effectiveness of therapies. Full article

The hyperinsulinemic–euglycemic clamp technique is considered the gold standard for measuring insulin sensitivity in large animals. We developed a practical method for conducting concurrent glucose clamp experiments in a pair of sedated farm swine positioned in a sling. Descriptions of customized equipment and central venous access surgical procedures for blood collection are provided. Personnel functions are described for execution of the clamp protocol. A total of 24 hyperinsulinemic–euglycemic clamp studies were performed over 6 weeks. Infusaports remained functional for 1454 blood samples. There were three CSII catheter occlusions during bolus administration, and the swine showed no signs of infection or disease. IM telazol at 1.0 mg/kg, administered 1–2 h prior (mean of 3.26 mL ± 1.59) was effective in keeping animals comfortable. SpO₂ and heart rate remained within normal ranges. Means ± SD total infused volumes for octreotide, 10% dextrose, and saline were 9.7 ± 0.93 mL, 2328.0 ± 672.8 mL, and 690.3 ± 206.8 mL. Mean blood glucose was maintained between 75.7 and 87.8 mg/dL (CV 3.17%) for the 24 experiments. The GIR infusion rate peaked between 15 and 60 min after insulin bolusing, with insulin C_max of 108.5 pmol/L and t_max at 10 min. All aspects of the protocol were effectively carried out. The animals remained in good health, and the implanted infusion ports remained patent for over 700 blood draws per animal. This method could potentially reduce the number of animals used and the costs of other similar experiments. Full article

Atmospheric aerosols impact environmental quality and health, requiring accurate quantification. This study employed the PMeye scanning LiDAR, a UV system operating at 355 nm by Raymetrics S.A. for continuous, high-resolution monitoring in two campaigns: May 2024 (Vasilikos Power Station, Cyprus) and June 2024 (Port of Piraeus, Greece). Measurement days with dust presence were selected via AERONET-based aerosol classification and validated using a SKIRON model. A novel horizontal scanning method at 355 nm distinguished dust from anthropogenic emissions. Results showed higher pollution in Cyprus (~500 μg/m³) due to dust and chimney emissions, versus ~150 μg/m³ in Piraeus from dust and ship exhausts. Full article

The Port of Veracruz, the main port in the Gulf of Mexico, has experienced a significant increase in its import and export operations, such as petroleum coke (Petcoke), a solid waste, mainly used in the steel industry. During the period of 2010–2023, approximately 7,401,594 tons of coke were stored outdoors, generating PM₁₀ particulate emissions due to wind erosion. These particles were dispersed to urban areas, reaching an estimated total emission of 5077 tons. The study used geospatial analysis and environmental modeling tools (ALOHA^®) to evaluate the dispersion and concentration of PM₁₀ in the atmosphere, comparing them with the limits established by the Mexican Official Standard NOM-025-SSA1-2021. The results indicate that in years with high port activity, such as 2014, PM₁₀ concentrations exceeded the normative values, representing a potential risk to public health and urban infrastructure. This study provides critical evidence on the environmental impacts of coke handling in ports and suggests mitigation strategies, including processes for the confinement of materials and the implementation of advanced emissions monitoring systems. Full article

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) pose an immense global health burden, and developing effective treatments is hindered by the blood–brain barrier (BBB). Intrathecal (IT) administration of therapeutics directly into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) bypasses the BBB, offering a promising avenue for antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs), gene therapies, antibodies, and stem cells for these disorders. This review synthesizes the current landscape of IT therapies for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis based on the current literature and ClinicalTrials.gov. We highlight key trials and approaches, including the success of ASOs in spinal muscular atrophy and recent progress in other NDDs. However, the efficacy of these novel treatments is often constrained by the limitations of first-generation IT delivery systems, which struggle with uneven distribution, systemic leakage, and the demands of modern biologics. Drawing from recent analyses, we underscore the critical shortcomings of current devices and point out the innovations needed in shaping next-generation systems: subcutaneous access ports, CSF flow platforms, AI-driven adaptive dosing, nanoporous membranes, intrathecal pseudodelivery, and hydrogel scaffolds. We conclude by emphasizing the urgent need for these advanced IT drug delivery systems, alongside rigorous comparative assessments, cost–benefit analyses, and clear regulatory pathways to fully realize the potential of emerging CNS therapies and transform NDD management. Full article