Search Results (35,291)

To investigate the respective contributions of cations (Na⁺, K⁺, Zn²⁺, Fe³⁺) and anions (Cl⁻ and SO₄²⁻) to the formation of whey protein isolate (WPI)-based nanofibrils, eight salts with a 4 × 2 factorial design were added to WPI solutions. The morphology and aggregation process of the fibril aggregates were examined under fixed low salt concentration (10 mmol/L) to isolate ion-specific effects. The salts altered the pH, conductivity, and fibril yield. Notably, the Na⁺, K⁺, and Zn²⁺ salts increased fibril production, whereas Fe³⁺ salts reduced it. Mechanistically, Fe³⁺ strongly suppressed fibrillation via strong electrostatic interaction and accelerated protein hydrolysis, while SO₄²⁻ partially alleviated this inhibition. All the ions altered the kinetic parameters. Compared with Cl⁻ salts, SO₄²⁻ salts induced shorter, clustered fibrils and stronger kinetic suppression, preserving elongated fibrils. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirmed anion incorporation, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed secondary structural changes. These results demonstrate that while cations contribute to fibril formation, anions play a deterministic role in regulating assembly kinetics and morphological outcomes, independent of cation valence. In this study, we establish a mechanistic basis for tailoring WPI fibril aggregation states through anion-specific salt selection. Full article

Photosynthetic biogas upgrading (PBU) using microalgae is a promising biological approach for converting raw biogas into biomethane while recovering nutrients and fixing part of the biogenic CO₂ into algal biomass. Unlike conventional physicochemical technologies, which mainly separate CO₂ from CH₄, PBU can combine gas upgrading with wastewater or digestate treatment, nutrient recycling, and biomass production. This review assesses the current state of PBU technology, with particular emphasis on high-rate algal ponds, absorption columns, and closed photobioreactors. It examines the main operating parameters that control gas–liquid mass transfer, carbonate buffering, and photosynthetic activity, including the liquid-to-gas ratio, pH, alkalinity, temperature, light regime, light intensity, and gas retention time. Special attention is given to the combined effects of the L/G ratio, pH, and alkalinity, as these parameters strongly influence CO₂ absorption, CH₄ enrichment, and O₂ contamination of the upgraded gas. The use of wastewater or anaerobic digestate instead of synthetic growth media is identified as an important sustainability advantage, particularly at wastewater treatment plants with existing anaerobic digestion and nutrient-rich side streams. However, digestate use may also create operational challenges related to turbidity, ammonium inhibition, solids, and variable composition. Available studies indicate that PBU may reduce operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions under favorable conditions while creating additional value from algal biomass. Nevertheless, wider deployment is still limited by high land requirements, seasonal variability, O₂ contamination, biomass harvesting, and limited evidence from large-scale systems. Future development should therefore focus on improved oxygen management, more efficient reactor designs, nanoparticle-assisted enhancement of photosynthetic activity, better integration with wastewater treatment, and AI-supported monitoring and control to improve process stability and support scale-up. Full article

Background/Objectives: Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) and occupational stress substantially affect workforce health and productivity. This systematic review aimed to synthesize evidence regarding the effectiveness of the Pilates method as a biopsychosocial intervention for employees, examining its impact on physical, psychological, and occupational outcomes. Methods: A systematic search was conducted across major electronic databases and search engines (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, PEDro, and Google Scholar) following PRISMA 2020 guidelines. The review protocol was prospectively registered in PROSPERO (CRD420261390771). Eligible studies included randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental, and observational designs involving employees participating in Pilates programs. Outcomes were categorized into three domains: physical health, mental well-being, and occupational performance. Results: Twenty-three studies (n = 1179 participants) met the inclusion criteria. The evidence indicates that Pilates may reduce pain intensity and disability in workers with chronic low back or neck pain, with moderate certainty based on randomized controlled trials. Improvements in psychological outcomes, including anxiety and job-related stress, were also reported, although the certainty of evidence was lower. Occupational benefits included enhanced job satisfaction and, in limited cases, favorable cost-utility findings. Conclusions: Pilates appears to be a feasible multidimensional intervention for workplace health, with potential benefits across physical and psychosocial domains. Further high-quality trials are needed to clarify long-term effects, economic impact, and optimal implementation strategies within occupational settings. Full article

This paper proposes an intelligent time-series early warning framework based on a production LSTM–Transformer network for petrochemical refining processes. A cascaded encoder–decoder architecture is designed, where the LSTM extracts local temporal patterns and medium-term memory from noisy industrial data, while the Transformer models global dependencies and cross-unit interactions via multi-head self-attention. An adaptive feature fusion layer bridges the representational gap between the two networks. A multi-stage preprocessing pipeline tailored for refining MES data handles missing values, outliers, and mixed operating conditions. Using 120 variables from five units of a fluid catalytic cracking unit, the framework predicts the regenerator bed temperature up to 8 h (48 steps) ahead. Comparative experiments show that the production LSTM–Transformer achieves a mean MAE of 0.088, a mean RMSE of 0.113, and the lowest median MAPE of 19.91% among all models, outperforming standalone LSTM (MAE 0.095, MAPE 20.85%) and Transformer (MAE 0.088, MAPE 20.49%). Robustness analysis confirms stable performance under strong noise (down to 5 dB) and missing rates up to 50%, with a median MAE of 0.1027 across tags. This work provides an effective, end-to-end predictive early warning solution that balances accuracy, production importance coverage, and industrial robustness, offering a generalizable data-driven paradigm for process industries. Full article

Electric vehicle (EV) transport by ship is expanding beyond industrial logistics centred on automobile production, trade, and pure car and truck carriers (PCTCs) into daily transportation for island tourism, commuting, and essential mobility. According to Korea Maritime Transportation Safety Authority (KOMSA) vessel status data as of March 2026, 104 of 146 domestic passenger ships were car-ferry passenger ships, accounting for 71.2% of the fleet and operating on 75 of 99 designated routes nationwide. Korea Shipping Association (KSA) operational records show that the EV transport rate on these routes increased from 0.76% in 2024 to 1.21% in 2025, with some routes exceeding 2.0–4.7%. Unlike enclosed multi-deck PCTC vehicle spaces, Korean coastal car-ferry passenger ships generally have single-tier open vehicle decks and bow ramp gates. Crosswinds on open decks may reduce smoke detector activation probability by 60–75%. Although Article 97 of the Standard for Ship Fire-Fighting Appliance newly requires dedicated EV fire-fighting equipment for car-ferry ships, it remains primarily equipment-prescriptive and does not yet provide open-deck-specific performance requirements for wind-resistant detection, fixed EV-zone cooling, EV-designated stowage arrangements, or passenger–operator safety management obligations. This study applies the five-step International Maritime Organization (IMO) Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) procedure to support improvements to EV fire-fighting equipment standards for coastal car-ferry passenger ships. Hazard identification (HAZID) was conducted with a 15-member advisory panel, and probability elicitation was performed through a Delphi survey with 10 core experts, showing strong consensus (Kendall’s W = 0.74, p < 0.01). Fault tree analysis (FTA) and event tree analysis (ETA) probabilities were derived from the Delphi results and the international literature. H-07, representing wind-induced smoke dilution, was identified as the dominant single-point vulnerability within the detection-failure branch. Monte Carlo-based FTA–ETA analysis (n = 10,000) estimated annual fire frequencies of 5.9 × 10⁻², 1.8 × 10⁻¹, and 2.9 × 10⁻¹ yr⁻¹ at EV loading ratios of 10%, 30%, and 50%, respectively, with 2.47 expected fatalities per fire. Risk entered the IMO ALARP band above a 30% EV loading ratio and exceeded the maximum tolerable crew risk above 50%. The combined application of risk control options (RCOs) 2, 3, and 4 reduced annual expected fatalities by 85.6%. Based on these results, six RCOs and institutional recommendations are proposed, including strengthened safety management obligations for passenger ship operators. Full article

The valorization of agro-industrial residues is essential for advancing circular bioeconomy systems. This study integrated the natural colorant and edible mushroom industries by evaluating annatto (Bixa orellana) residues as substrates for Pleurotus ostreatus cultivation. Two experiments were conducted, testing field and industrial residues at three incorporation levels (32.5%, 42.5%, and 52.5%, w/w on a dry weight basis) combined with different supplementation strategies (corn bran, wheat bran, and their mixture) in a completely randomized design. Field residues showed greater yield and biological efficiency, while industrial residues exhibited higher variability. Total yield reached 38.92%, while the lowest value was 24.28%, representing an increase of up to 65% depending on residue origin and supplementation strategy. Biological efficiency exceeded 140% under optimal conditions, with gains above 70% compared to the lowest-performing treatments. Field residues also promoted a higher number of bunches and greater average bunch mass. Overall, substrate origin, supplementation, and residue proportion were decisive for fungal performance, demonstrating that annatto residues are promising low-cost substrates for scalable mushroom production within circular economy systems. Full article

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the most widely used plastics for single-use applications, with annual global production exceeding 80 Mt. Enzymatic degradation of PET has emerged as a promising and sustainable alternative to conventional recycling methods, enabling the hydrolysis of PET into its constituent monomers. While amorphous PET can be efficiently degraded by polyester hydrolases identified from environmental sources, crystalline PET remains highly recalcitrant to enzymatic attack and constitutes a major bottleneck for the industrial implementation of enzymatic PET recycling. Although physicochemical pretreatments can increase PET amorphicity, these approaches often require substantial energy input, thereby compromising the overall sustainability of the process. Consequently, the development of enzymes capable of directly degrading crystalline PET has long been sought; however, currently engineered enzymes exhibit insufficient catalytic activity toward highly crystalline PET owing to multiple factors, including limited substrate surface accessibility, highly ordered polymer morphology, incompatible binding-pocket geometries, restricted chain mobility, and unfavorable conformational energetics at the polymer–enzyme interface. This review aims to evaluate the factors limiting the enzymatic degradation of crystalline PET and to assess current strategies for overcoming low degradation rates. Specifically, it examines advances in substrate modification as well as enzyme- and process-engineering approaches designed to improve the depolymerization of crystalline PET. The advantages and limitations of these strategies are critically compared and discussed, highlighting the remaining challenges and future directions toward efficient and scalable biocatalytic PET recycling. Full article

Climate change, rapid urbanization, land-use changes, and the creation of a multi-layered risk environment by multiple disaster hazards have made interdisciplinary educational models—capable of integrating resilience knowledge into planning and design education—all the more essential. Nevertheless, the systematic and competency-based integration of scientific knowledge generated in the fields of ecological planning, nature-based solutions, multi-hazard analysis, and digital planning tools into higher education curricula remains limited. This study aims to develop a competency-based curriculum model for ecological planning and disaster-resilient cities by adapting the resilience literature into a modular educational model. Literature mapping, thematic clustering, gap identification, competence framework building, and curricular architecture development are the steps of the study’s design-based analytical framework. Studies published between 2015 and 2025 were examined in terms of disaster types, analytical tools, and planning approaches; they were then reorganized based on three competency areas: green skills, digital skills, and resilience skills. The findings have resulted in a modular curriculum comprising 35 modules and 105 topics, structured within a three-tiered framework consisting of conceptual content, practical application, and case-based learning. The original contribution of this study is its proposal of a structured educational model that bridges the gap between the production of scientific knowledge and curriculum design. The proposed framework provides a scalable and adaptable foundation for undergraduate, graduate, and professional education contexts; it also establishes a foundation for AI-supported personalized learning pathways in ecological planning and disaster resilience education. Full article

Recently, the Quality by Design (QbD) principle has been implemented in the pharmaceutical industry to enhance product and process understanding through a science- and risk-based approach. This study aimed to apply QbD principles to the formulation development of felodipine push–pull osmotic pump (PPOP) capsules. The quality target product profile (QTPP) and critical quality attributes (CQAs) were established. A Box–Behnken experimental design was employed to optimize the formulation variables, including the amounts of Polyox WSR N80, Polyox WSR Coagulant, and sodium chloride, selected based on the initial risk assessment. Four responses were monitored: lag time, release rate and R² based on zero-order release kinetics, and drug release at 24 h. Results indicated that the optimal formulation consisted of 125 mg Polyox WSR N80, 26 mg Polyox WSR Coagulant, and 30 mg sodium chloride. This formulation met the predefined criteria for lag time (≤6 h) and release kinetics (R² ≥ 0.95), while drug release at 24 h remained below the target value (≥80%). Because most fitted response surface models were not statistically significant, the generated regression equations and response surfaces were interpreted qualitatively to identify formulation trends rather than as predictive models. Experimental verification showed reasonable consistency in overall response trends, although substantial deviations between predicted and observed values were observed for some responses, particularly drug release at 24 h. Therefore, the present work should be considered a formulation-development and QbD feasibility study rather than a definitive optimization study. These findings demonstrate that the QbD-based approach enabled systematic, multivariate optimization and design space establishment, providing a more structured framework for formulation refinement compared with prior exploratory development and supporting controlled drug release characteristics of felodipine PPOP capsules. Full article

As hybrid work arrangements become more established in organisations, the need for effective design and implementation strategies has grown significantly. Evidence indicates that employee wellbeing and engagement in hybrid work environments are declining and this presents a critical challenge for human resource management (HRM) professionals. This presents HRM professionals with a critical imperative of improving wellbeing, while maintaining engagement and productivity at work. This aligns closely with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those that promote wellbeing and decent work. Through a systematic synthesis of 78 studies, this research investigates the key determinants of employee engagement and wellbeing in hybrid work contexts. The conceptual framework for this study is grounded in existing theoretical perspectives from the Job Demands–Resources model, Saks Frameworks and wellbeing perspective presented by Guest. The analysis identifies five critical factors that influence engagement and wellbeing outcomes in hybrid work, accompanied by evidence-based propositions for practice. These recommendations encompass: establishing well-equipped workspaces with appropriate flexibility in both location and time; developing organisational culture and leadership through enhanced communication and collaboration mechanisms; strategically allocating jobs and tasks whilst fostering effective networks and collaboration tools and implementing targeted training interventions to mitigate technostress and burnout associated with digital workloads. We advocate for future research to develop comprehensive models, frameworks and wellbeing interventions to guide HRM professionals in addressing these challenges at both the local and global levels. Full article

Treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) remains a major medical challenge due to the lack of safe and effective therapeutic agents. JAK1 has been validated as a key therapeutic target that modulates the pathological progression of IBD. In this study, using tofacitinib as the lead compound, we adopted a scaffold growth strategy to design and synthesize a series of pyrrolo [2,3-b] pyridine derivatives as novel JAK1 inhibitors for the treatment of IBD. Among them, compound 15 exerted potent inhibitory activity against JAK1 with an IC₅₀ value of 0.48 nM. Western blot results showed that compound 15 significantly inhibited LPS-induced STAT1/3 phosphorylation in RAW264.7 cells. In addition, 15 exhibited satisfactory metabolic stability and oral bioavailability. In the DSS-induced colitis model, 15 remarkably ameliorated inflammatory symptoms, promoted epithelial repair, and inhibited the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α and IL-6. Therefore, compound 15 is regarded as a promising candidate for the treatment of IBD. Full article

As one of the most economically important cucurbit crops, melon (Cucumis melo L.) is extensively cultivated in semi-arid and tropical regions where high evaporative demand frequently intensifies salt accumulation. These conditions promote the evaporative concentration of salt, leading to salt accumulation in soil and irrigation water, which can impair crop development. Therefore, identifying approaches capable of maintaining seedling establishment under saline conditions is crucial for sustainable melon production. This study evaluated tolerance and antioxidant responses in different melon cultivars using seed treatments to mitigate salt stress effects. The experiment was conducted in two stages under a completely randomized design with four replicates of 50 seeds. In the first stage, a 3 × 5 factorial design tested three salinity levels (0, 60, and 120 mM NaCl) and five cultivars (‘Dali’, ‘Premier’, ‘Supreme’, ‘Imperial 45’, and ‘Asturia’), assessing morphological, physiological, and biochemical traits. In the second stage, two contrasting cultivars (‘Imperial 45’ (sensitive) and ‘Asturia’ (tolerant)) were exposed to salinity combined with stress attenuators, including hydropriming, gibberellic acid, ascorbic acid, salicylic acid, and hydrogen peroxide. Additional biochemical markers and antioxidant enzyme activities were analyzed. Results showed that gibberellic acid and ascorbic acid enhanced antioxidant activity and reduced oxidative damage, particularly in Imperial 45, whereas hydrogen peroxide was more effective in Asturia. Based on their physiological and biochemical responses during germination and early seedling development, Asturia and Imperial 45 were identified as tolerant and sensitive to salt stress, respectively. These findings indicate that the effectiveness of seed treatments depends on cultivar-specific physiological characteristics at the seedling stage. Full article

Genetic cardiomyopathies (GCMs) are chronic heart muscle disorders requiring lifelong monitoring and treatment. Although quality of life (QoL) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) are increasingly recognized as important outcomes in cardiomyopathy care, their conceptualization and measurement remain inconsistent. This scoping review aims to (a) identify the tools most commonly used to assess QoL and HRQoL in adults with genetic cardiomyopathies and (b) map the thematic areas of existing studies, including symptom burden, psychological distress, diagnostic challenges, and the impact of medical and psychological interventions. PubMed, Scopus, and PsycINFO were systematically searched, and the final search was completed in November 2025. Seventeen peer-reviewed studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in this scoping review. The review followed the PRISMA extension for Scoping Reviews and included both quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods designs. Most studies employed standardized tools such as EQ-5D (N = 5), SF-36/SF36v2 (N = 5), and the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (N = 3), while others included the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (N = 2) and disease-specific or ad hoc measures. The most frequently investigated themes included impairments in physical functioning, emotional well-being, symptom burden, psychological distress, and social participation. Several studies showed that patients’ perceived QoL was more closely associated with symptom burden and psychological adjustment than with objective clinical indicators alone. Clinical interventions showed mixed or limited effects on QoL and HRQoL outcomes, even when clinical parameters improved. Qualitative research further emphasized the lived experiences of patients and families, highlighting unmet needs in care. Less commonly addressed findings concerned caregiver perspectives, patient–provider communication, treatment adherence, socioeconomic disadvantage, healthcare costs, productivity loss, and the experiences of patients with rarer cardiomyopathy-related conditions. The results highlight how QoL and HRQoL are central but still inconsistently assessed outcomes in cardiomyopathy research. This review calls for greater conceptual clarity between QoL and HRQoL, greater standardization in measurement tools, broader inclusion of psychosocial variables, and more patient-centred research approaches to better support individuals living with cardiomyopathies. Full article

Industrial energy consumption in shift-based manufacturing exhibits pronounced temporal asymmetry—here defined as direction-dependent conditional dynamics in which the transition from production to shutdown states follows a systematically different temporal trajectory than the reverse transition. At the facility studied, this asymmetry also manifests in the marginal distribution of hourly consumption values: pooling all 4724 observations yields a bimodal, right-skewed histogram (skewness ≈ −0.4) comprising two sub-populations corresponding to production hours (14–19 kWh/h) and shutdown hours (0–2 kWh/h). Although individual hourly observations are serially dependent and therefore not i.i.d., the marginal distributional shape is consequential because ARIMA-class models assume approximately Gaussian innovations, and residuals from models fit to this bimodal series inherit its non-Gaussianity. More fundamentally, the conditional distribution P(E_t|E_{t − 1}, …) is direction-dependent: the production-to-shutdown transition is abrupt (1–2 h, 18:00–20:00), while the shutdown-to-production ramp is slower and more variable (2–4 h, 05:00–07:00). Symmetric ARMA models, applying identical autoregressive coefficients regardless of transition direction, cannot represent this directional asymmetry, rendering their assumptions and associated error metrics structurally unreliable for this class of data. This paper addresses this asymmetry directly by presenting and evaluating two hybrid forecasting architectures—Prophet+LSTM and SARIMA+LSTM—for 24 h-ahead energy prediction at an industrial bread factory in Kazakhstan, instrumented with 15 IoT energy meters. The two-stage design exploits the complementary asymmetry-handling properties of each component: the statistical model (Prophet or SARIMA) captures deterministic seasonal structure, while the LSTM corrects asymmetric residuals that the statistical model systematically misrepresents. In a rigorous 14-day holdout evaluation, Prophet+LSTM achieves an MAE of 3.39 kWh—outperforming the Seasonal Naïve baseline by 12.3% and reducing Prophet-alone error by 32.7%—with statistical significance at the 10% level confirmed via Diebold–Mariano testing (DM = +1.747, p = 0.081). The LSTM residual correction reduces Prophet’s systematic negative bias by 69% (from −3.60 to −1.13 kWh), as confirmed by ablation testing. In eight weeks of production operation with incremental retraining, MAE improved 35% (7.02 → 4.58 kWh). These results demonstrate that explicitly modelling temporal asymmetry through hybrid statistical-neural architectures substantially improves industrial energy forecasting accuracy. Full article

Oxidative stress has been recognized as a repeatedly validated pathophysiological factor in schizophrenia, but its mechanistic role and translational relevance remain incompletely defined. Prior work has advanced redox dysregulation, neuroinflammation, and NMDA receptor hypofunction as a putative central hub in schizophrenia. This narrative review proposes an evidence-weighted redox–mitochondria–immune framework that integrates peripheral biomarkers, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, postmortem findings, and preclinical mechanisms while explicitly distinguishing established observations from candidate pathways. Existing studies support increased oxidative damage and altered antioxidant buffering in schizophrenia, particularly involving the glutathione system. However, these abnormalities are neither uniform across disease stages nor equally represented across patient subgroups, and may be markedly prominent only in certain biological subgroups. Mechanistically, redox imbalance may interact with mitochondrial bioenergetic deficits and innate immune signaling; however, pathway-specific links such as cGAS-STING activation, nitrosative/peroxynitrite stress, and GPx4-ferroptosis should currently be treated as testable extensions rather than validated human mechanisms in schizophrenia. Importantly, the pathological consequences of oxidative stress are unlikely to be cell-type neutral. Parvalbumin-positive interneurons and oligodendrocyte lineage cells are more vulnerable because of their high metabolic load, limited antioxidant buffering capacity, and lipid/iron-related susceptibility, thereby providing a mechanistic bridge to excitation–inhibition imbalance, myelin abnormalities, and reduced circuit synchrony. Microglial redox–inflammatory signaling may further exacerbate these processes. On the basis of this framework, we argue that the key for future research is not to continue demonstrating the universality of oxidative stress, but to improve the translational efficiency. Biomarker-guided stratification, stage-sensitive study designs, and cell-type-informed therapeutic strategies may therefore provide a more productive path toward redox-targeted interventions in schizophrenia. Full article