Search Results (5,608)

Agricultural carbon emissions represent a major source of greenhouse gases and play a critical role in achieving global climate mitigation and sustainable agricultural development targets. In China, the rapid transformation of agricultural production systems has led to substantial spatial heterogeneity in emission patterns and driving mechanisms of agricultural carbon emissions, while the underlying processes at the county scale remain insufficiently understood. This study investigated the spatiotemporal evolution and potential influencing factors of agricultural carbon emissions at the county level from 2000 to 2022 in Guangdong Province, China. First, agricultural carbon emissions were estimated based on a multi-source accounting framework covering land management, crop cultivation, animal production, and straw burning based on internationally recognized emission accounting methods and IPCC global warming potentials. Then, spatial clustering characteristics were analyzed using local spatial autocorrelation (LISA) to identify heterogeneous emission patterns. Finally, an interpretable machine learning framework combining Random Forest (RF) and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) was employed to quantify the nonlinear effects and relative contributions of multiple socioeconomic and agricultural drivers. The results showed that agricultural carbon emissions in Guangdong Province exhibited a fluctuating but overall decreasing trend, declining from 50.89 Mt CO₂-eq in 2000 to 39.24 Mt CO₂-eq in 2022, with an overall reduction of 22.9%. High-emission clusters were primarily concentrated in western and northern Guangdong, while low-emission areas were mainly located in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). The RF models demonstrated satisfactory predictive performance, with spatial cross-validated R² values ranging from 0.75 to 0.91 across different years. SHAP analysis suggested that ploughing area, fertilizer and pesticide usage, agricultural machinery power, and primary industry GDP were the dominant factors associated with agricultural carbon emissions, whereas urbanization consistently showed a negative association. Furthermore, these drivers exhibited pronounced nonlinear responses and distinct regional heterogeneity, particularly between the PRD and the western and northern parts of Guangdong Province. These findings suggested that agricultural carbon emissions are jointly influenced by agricultural production intensity, mechanization, and socioeconomic transition and can provide a scientific basis for developing region-specific low-carbon agricultural policies and promoting the sustainable transformation of agricultural systems. Full article

As cryptocurrency adoption accelerates globally, cities face a critical question: can digital currencies be adapted by different agencies without compromising financial stability? This paper develops an agent-based modeling framework that enables transit authorities to systematically explore cryptocurrency integration strategies. We simulate 1000 heterogeneous agents with varying risk tolerance, technological proficiency, and social influence susceptibility over 365 days, testing five policy regimes across a comprehensive scenario matrix comprising four risk-attitude compositions, four technology-adoption levels, four social-influence intensities, and three market conditions (bullish, neutral, bearish)—creating 192 distinct population-market configurations evaluated across all five policies with 15 independent replications per configuration (14,400 total simulation runs). The framework produces adoption outcomes ranging from near-zero to over 49% depending on scenario assumptions, with technology familiarity emerging as the dominant driver. The framework provides transit authorities with a practical tool for scenario-based planning: testing policy interventions, stress-testing financial stability under various market conditions, identifying potential vulnerabilities before deployment, and comparing alternative strategies across diverse demographic contexts. This simulation-based approach enables data-driven decision-making in the absence of real-world precedent, offering a structured methodology for evaluating cryptocurrency integration while managing financial stability risks. Full article

Coastal wetlands are important sinks for heavy metals, yet the linkage between vertical redistribution, quantitative source contributions, and ecological–health risk drivers remain insufficiently understood. This study collected the stratified sediment samples from three depth intervals (0–20, 20–40, and 40–60 cm) from 28 representative sites in the coastal wetlands of western Bohai Bay, and evaluated the spatial distribution, vertical variation, pollution status, potential sources, and ecological–human health risks of eight heavy metals (Cr, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Cd, Hg, and Pb). The mean concentrations were below the Class I limits of the Marine Sediment Quality Standard. Most metals were close to or slightly below regional background values, whereas Cu and As showed mild enrichment and Cr was higher than values reported for Bohai Bay and Hangzhou Bay. Vertical profiles were generally homogeneous, with weak enrichment of specific metals, probably due to sediment resuspension, tidal disturbance, and bioturbation. Pollution assessment based on the geoaccumulation index (Igeo), Nemerow pollution index (P_N), and pollution load index (PLI) consistently indicated low contamination levels, with Hg and Pb as the main contributors to the regional pollution load. Source apportionment indicated that heavy metals were jointly influenced by lithogenic background (38.9%), atmospheric deposition (31.1%), and local anthropogenic activities (30.0%). Ecological risk assessment showed that the integrated risk index (RI) remained within the low-risk category, although Hg consistently fell within the moderate-risk range and Cd approached the moderate-risk threshold. Health risk assessment showed that both non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic risks were within acceptable limits for all receptor groups. Children had higher risks in core residential areas, whereas adults showed higher risks in non-core industrial–agricultural zones because of increased exposure frequency. The source–risk analysis indicates that non-carcinogenic risk is mainly associated with background-derived Cr, whereas carcinogenic risk is primarily linked to anthropogenic As inputs. These findings indicate that source contributions and risk contributions are not necessarily consistent, highlighting the need for source-oriented risk management in industrialized coastal wetlands. Full article

Objectives: Hospital efficiency provides a systems-level perspective for identifying unrealized capacity to improve care delivery, quality, and patient safety. This study evaluated relative technical efficiency among U.S. short-term acute care hospitals (2018–2024) and evaluated how structural IT operating investments are converted into clinical service volume and quality-related performance. Methods: A longitudinal panel of 8589 hospital-year observations was utilized to estimate technical efficiency with an output-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) under variable returns to scale. A secondary Simar–Wilson double-bootstrapped truncated regression (n = 2147 complete casesexamined associations with bias-corrected efficiency, clinical quality, case mix, and operational scale. Results: Mean DEA efficiency was 0.567, with 7.38% (n = 634) operating on the annual efficiency frontier and a mean output expansion potential of 102.49%. Efficient hospitals maintained higher IT operating spending. Stage 2 regression showed that higher Hospital Value-Based Purchasing quality performance was significantly associated with greater inefficiency. Conversely, higher case mix complexity and larger operational scale were associated with higher efficiency. Conclusions: Most hospitals operated below the best-practice frontier, indicating gaps in converting resources into service volume and quality. Because core operational drivers were included in the primary DEA model, observed associations show descriptive structural patterns rather than direct cause-and-effect relationships. Full article

Water temperature is a key driver of microbial succession in aquaculture ponds and may indirectly influence fish intestinal homeostasis, nutrient metabolism, and pathogen risk. This study investigated temperature effects (16 °C vs. 30 °C) on microbial communities in both the intestines of octoploid allogynogenetic gibel carp (Carassius gibelio) (Experiment I, with fish) and the rearing water-column (Experiment II, without fish) over a 20-day experimental period under controlled conditions. The results showed that temperature affected water-column microbiota more strongly than fish intestinal microbiota. In the water-column, diversity indices (Shannon, Simpson, Chao1, and Sobs) decreased over time at both 16 °C and 30 °C, while fish intestinal microbiota showed no significant overall change in alpha diversity. Functional prediction suggested that low-temperature (16 °C) was associated with higher relative abundance of pathways related to amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, and genetic information processing in the fish intestine. In contrast, the enrichment of predicted potentially pathogenic phenotypes in the water-column occurred earlier at 30 °C than at 16 °C. These findings indicate that, compared with 30 °C, 16 °C was associated with potentially transient changes in microbial community diversity, slower enrichment of predicted potentially pathogenic phenotypes, and higher predicted nutrient-metabolism potential in intestinal microbiota of allogynogenetic gibel carp during the 20-day experimental period. Full article

Although mAbs have great therapeutic potential, their use in medicine is currently limited by the high cost of their manufacturing. Significant developments in upstream processing technologies have caused downstream processing (DSP) to become the manufacturing cost-driver. DSP consists of a number of operations included in the capture, polishing, and formulation steps that contribute to excessive material and buffer consumption. This is particularly true for the capture and polishing steps, in which tedious and costly chromatographic operations are involved to ensure an adequate purity level of the medical product. The final formulation step also increases the burden of buffer consumption. This review focuses on those time- and material-consuming DSP operations and describes key issues and challenges related to their realization. In each of the steps, capture, polishing, and formulation, the platform processing approaches are presented as well as directions for their development. In addition, we present alternative nonchromatographic approaches that can potentially be used in the capture and polishing steps, such as precipitation or extraction. Furthermore, we describe mAb processing by crystallization, which can potentially serve as an alternative platform in both polishing and formulation steps. Full article

In the context of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and current regional development strategies, tourism is increasingly viewed as a potential driver of economic and infrastructural transformation across regions. While the literature has largely focused on the influence of infrastructure on tourism growth, the reverse relationship—in which tourism may stimulate infrastructure development—remains insufficiently conceptualized. This article therefore examines the tourism–infrastructure development (TLID) thesis through two research questions: (1) To what extent can tourism growth contribute to the development of regional infrastructure beyond strictly tourism-related infrastructure? (2) What theoretical mechanisms explain the relationship between tourism dynamics and infrastructure investment? The study employs a bibliometric analysis of the recent literature, combined with a theoretical synthesis inspired by Grounded Theory, to identify emerging conceptual relationships in recent scientific contributions. The results highlight three main contributions. First, they confirm the bidirectional nature of the relationship between tourism and infrastructure. Second, the analysis identifies several key explanatory mechanisms, notably economic incentives, territorial competitiveness strategies, and public governance dynamics. Third, the study proposes an integrative conceptual framework for tourism-led infrastructure development. These findings enrich the literature on tourism and territorial development and have useful implications for the design of public policies related to infrastructure investment. Full article

Background: Cultured meat (CM) has emerged as a promising, albeit controversial, alternative to conventional livestock production, offering potential benefits in terms of sustainability, animal welfare, and resource efficiency. Despite these potential advantages, consumer acceptance remains uncertain, particularly in countries where CM is not yet commercially available. Objectives: this study investigates the determinants of willingness to try (WTT) cultured meat among Italian university students (n = 335), with particular attention to the role of product-related perceptions and personal values and motivations. Methods: data were collected through an online survey and analyzed using binary logistic regression to identify the main drivers of respondents’ willingness to try CM. Results: the findings suggest that acceptance of CM among university students is driven primarily by familiarity, perceived safety, and ethical considerations, particularly those related to animal welfare, rather than by demographic characteristics or resistance to novel food technologies. Conclusions: these findings offer practical implications for policymakers and industry stakeholders, highlighting the importance of transparent communication strategies emphasizing product safety and animal welfare benefits as a means of increasing familiarity with and acceptance of CM among younger consumers. Full article

Storm-cast macroalgae represent a vast, underutilized biomass in the Arctic. This study evaluates the mineral composition, safety, and nutritional potential of storm-cast versus attached macroalgae from the Barents and White Seas to determine their suitability for commercial application. Mineral profiles (K, Na, Ca, Mg, As, Zn, Fe, Cu, Hg, Pb, and Cd) were determined by atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), while iodine (I) was analysed via iodometric titration. All elemental data were subsequently evaluated using ANOVA, principal component analysis (PCA), and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). Human health risks were assessed via Hazard Index (HI) and Lifetime Cancer Risk (LTCR) models based on the inorganic arsenic fraction. Storm-cast macroalgae exhibited a senescent post-detachment profile characterized by significant potassium and iodine leaching (p < 0.05) and iron enrichment from sediment entrapment. Despite leaching, iodine levels (up to 3.8 mg/g d.w.) satisfied pharmacopoeial minimums, though autumn White Sea samples exceeded the upper limit, necessitating blending with lower-iodine material. Toxic heavy metals remained below quantification limits, and total arsenic was well within regulatory thresholds. PCA confirmed that biomass physiological state is the primary driver of elemental variance. Adult consumption of storm-cast macroalgae was safe, whereas the pediatric HI exceeded 1.0. Overall, Arctic storm-cast macroalgae exhibit a high level of elemental purity, representing a promising raw material with a low chemical health risk for potential functional food and pharmaceutical applications. Full article

Vegetation dynamics are key indicators of climate change and ecological risk in cold regions. This study investigated vegetation–climate interactions in Heilongjiang Province, China, using an integrated analytical framework that combined the Mann–Kendall test, Pettitt test, Hurst exponent, Continuous Wavelet Transform, and Wavelet Transform Coherence with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and meteorological data from 1990 to 2024. The dominant vegetation comprises cold–temperate coniferous forests, mixed broadleaf–conifer forests, meadow steppes, and croplands. Results showed that (1) the climate system experienced asynchronous abrupt changes, with potential evapotranspiration, precipitation, and temperature changing in 2008, 2011, and 2013, respectively. Accordingly, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index reversed in 2011, with greening rates in the range of 0.009–0.022 yr⁻¹ in the northwestern and central regions and browning rates in the range of −0.010 to −0.025 yr⁻¹ in the southwestern and eastern regions. (2) The Hurst exponent ranged from 0.23 to 0.48 for temperature and potential evapotranspiration, indicating strong anti-persistence and high future ecological vulnerability. (3) Wavelet coherence analysis identified precipitation as the dominant climatic driver at 6–9-year scales, whereas temperature shifted from a short-term positive driver to a long-term stressor, and potential evapotranspiration mainly regulated vegetation at 5–8-year scales. These findings provide scientific support for ecological risk assessment and climate-resilient cold regions engineering. Full article

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) remains one of the most devastating gastrointestinal disorders affecting preterm infants, with substantial mortality and long-term morbidity despite advances in neonatal care. Increasing evidence implicates intestinal dysbiosis, impaired intestinal barrier function, and dysregulated immune responses as central drivers of NEC pathogenesis, making microbiome-targeted interventions a promising preventive strategy. Collectively termed “biotics,” these interventions include probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, and postbiotics, each aimed at modulating the developing gut ecosystem. This narrative review summarizes current evidence on the efficacy, safety, and clinical applicability of biotics for NEC prevention in very preterm and very-low-birth-weight infants. Randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses involving more than 10,000 infants demonstrate that specific multi-strain probiotic formulations, particularly those combining Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species, reduce NEC incidence and all-cause mortality, although benefits are less consistent in extremely low-birth-weight infants. Prebiotics alone showed a limited impact on NEC prevention, while emerging evidence suggests synbiotics may offer additive or superior protection compared with probiotics alone. Postbiotics represent a novel and potentially safer alternative, especially for the most vulnerable infants, though clinical data remain limited. Despite favorable effectiveness in meta-analyses, probiotics adoption remains variable due to strain heterogeneity, variable product quality, regulatory challenges, and rare but serious safety concerns. Precision microbiome approaches, pharmaceutical-grade formulations, personalized therapies informed by multi-omics profiling, and next-generation delivery systems may drive the future in this field. Full article

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) can exhibit perception limitations involving large or stationary vehicles, occluded downstream hazards, and the finite detection range of onboard radar. This study proposes a microwave signal conversion based support framework comprising a vehicle-mounted V2V–V2V system and a roadside I2I–I2V system. The algorithms convert and retransmit radar signals according to vehicle speed and spacing states or downstream congestion, while longitudinal responses were behaviorally represented in VISSIM-COM through conditional Desired Speed modification for equipped trucks and buses. A calibrated 12-km Seoul Tollgate corridor was evaluated using V2V–V2V market penetration rates of 0–100%, a binary I2I–I2V condition, and a combined full-deployment scenario. Run-level TTC and conflict frequency were summarized using means, standard deviations, and 95% confidence intervals, and both measures were compared using two-sided paired t-tests. Increasing V2V–V2V penetration was associated with higher TTC and fewer conflicts. Within the tollgate influence area, combined deployment increased mean TTC from 0.72 to 1.27 s and reduced mean conflict frequency from 1486 to 764; both paired comparisons were statistically significant (p < 0.001). These findings suggest potential surrogate-safety benefits from coordinating vehicle- and infrastructure-based recognition support and advance speed adjustment. Full article

Oxidative stress is a central mechanism underlying the toxicity of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5); however, the source-specific chemical drivers of particle-associated oxidative potential remain incompletely understood. In this study, the oxidative potential (OP) of ambient PM_2.5 in Xi’an was investigated during winter and summer using the dithiothreitol (DTT) assay, with particular emphasis on the toxicological roles of water-soluble metals and emission sources. PM_2.5 exhibited significantly higher volume-normalized OP (DTT_v) in winter, indicating an enhanced particle-associated oxidative stress burden during the heating period. Notably, although water-soluble metals accounted for only a minor fraction of PM_2.5 mass, interpretable machine learning analysis (XGBoost–SHAP) identified potassium and manganese as dominant contributors to OP, highlighting the importance of biomass burning tracers and redox-active transition metals in particle-mediated reactive oxygen species generation. Source apportionment further revealed pronounced seasonal contrasts: dust sources contributed substantially to wintertime OP primarily due to their large mass loading, whereas traffic-related emissions dominated OP in summer owing to their high intrinsic oxidative toxicity. Overall, these findings suggest that variations in PM_2.5 oxidative potential are more closely associated with chemical composition and source-specific oxidative activity than with particle mass alone, providing additional insight into the factors influencing PM-related health risks. Full article

Sustainable hydrogen policy and national strategy documents are rich in qualitative information whose systematic evaluation still relies largely on subjective SWOT frameworks. This study proposes a reproducible hybrid methodology that couples expert-supervised Natural Language Processing (NLP) with a stochastic techno-economic model of the Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) to convert policy discourse into quantitative, evidence-based recommendations. TF-IDF vectorization, K-Means clustering, Shannon entropy and Correspondence Analysis (CA) are applied to a manually annotated corpus of 107 sentences drawn from Türkiye’s national hydrogen strategy documents (Cohen’s κ = 0.81, substantial agreement). CA positions Regulation/Legislation and Financing near the Weakness quadrant, Renewable Resource Potential in the Strength quadrant, and Export/Demand Risk near Opportunity—revealing structural bottlenecks that challenge the sustainable energy transition. These qualitative findings are subjected to a quantitative consistency check via a Monte Carlo simulation (N = 10,000 iterations) propagating joint uncertainty in CAPEX, electricity price, electrolyzer efficiency, annual operating hours, discount rate and plant lifetime. The deterministic 2025 LCOH baseline of 4.89 €/kg H₂ carries a P10–P90 interval of [3.95; 5.92] €/kg. Global Sobol sensitivity analysis identifies electricity price as the dominant driver (S₁ ≈ 0.52), suggesting that financing is discursively surfaced by the textual layer. Under business-as-usual technological learning, the probability of reaching a globally competitive LCOH (≤2 €/kg H₂) by 2050 is only 17.8%; a stylized proactive policy intervention (carbon pricing + subsidies) raises this probability to 78.4%. The framework is adaptable to other countries and languages (though the current implementation is Turkish-specific), providing a scalable, open methodology for evidence-based sustainable clean energy planning. Full article

Vascular dementia (VaD) represents a spectrum of neurodegenerative disorders driven by chronic or acute cerebral hypoperfusion, converging on the structural collapse of the neurovascular unit (NVU). While vascular mechanics and neuroinflammation have been extensively characterized, the extracellular matrix (ECM) remains an under-appreciated driver of this pathology. Far from being a passive scaffold, the ECM serves as a dynamic regulator of brain homeostasis, governing the integrity of the blood–brain barrier (BBB), supporting synaptic plasticity via Perineuronal Nets (PNNs), and facilitating the glymphatic clearance of metabolic waste. This review and perspective examines the pivotal role of the ECM within the “tripartite” NVU, the interface connecting vascular cells, CNS glia, and perivascular nerves. We discuss how the dysregulated activity of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and the alteration of basement membrane components compromise the architectural defenses of the NVU. We describe how these structural failures can transform vascular insults into progressive neurodegenerative decline by unmasking inflammatory binding sites and disrupting cell–matrix signaling. Specifically, we highlight (1) the physiological architecture of the NVU and its dependence on specific collagen organization, (2) the mechanistic pathways of ECM disruption in VaD pathogenesis, including the feedback loop between ischemia and proteolysis, (3) the emerging therapeutic potential of targeting matrix components to restore neurovascular stability, and (4) a novel mechanochemical hypothesis framing pathological collagen functionalization as an epidemiological bimodal switch. Uncovering the interplay between structural remodeling and vascular function offers novel targets to halt the progression of dementia. Full article