Search Results (5,467)

The determination of pesticide residues in citrus fruits remains analytically challenging due to their high acidity and complex chemical compositions, which can compromise extraction efficiency and promote significant matrix effects, particularly for acidic compounds. In this study, an acidified acetonitrile-based QuEChERS method was developed and validated for the multiresidue determination of 136 pesticides in Tahiti lime (Citrus latifolia) using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS/MS). The proposed approach employs 1% formic acid in acetonitrile and omits the conventional clean-up step, aiming to improve analyte recovery and analytical throughput. Method validation was performed according to SANTE guidelines, demonstrating satisfactory linearity (R² ≥ 0.99 for all analytes), limits of quantification of 0.01 mg kg⁻¹, and recoveries within 70–120%, with relative standard deviations ≤ 20% for the vast majority of compounds. Notably, the method achieved consistent and reliable performance for 12 acidic pesticides, which are typically problematic in conventional QuEChERS approaches. Application to 22 real samples revealed the presence of 14 pesticide residues, with some compounds exceeding European Union (EU) maximum residue limits. The proposed method provides a simple, efficient, and robust alternative for comprehensive pesticide monitoring in citrus fruits, with particular advantages for the determination of acidic compounds in highly complex matrices. Full article

Global hydrological models (GHMs) are essential for assessing water resources and flood risk, yet systematic evaluations of ISIMIP3a models remain limited. We evaluated eight standard ISIMIP3a GHM configurations against observed discharge at four principal Yangtze mainstem gauges using a multi-metric framework covering daily and monthly discharge, the seasonal cycle (defined as the mean annual cycle of monthly discharge), flow percentiles, and annual peak discharge. Metric-based model performance generally increased from daily to monthly and seasonal-cycle scales, partly reflecting the smoothing of short-term errors through temporal aggregation, whereas annual peak discharge remained more difficult to reproduce. WaterGAP2-2e achieved the strongest overall performance across the daily, monthly, and seasonal-cycle evaluations. However, this result was not fully independent of its inherited global discharge calibration, because three evaluation gauges (Yichang, Hankou, and Datong) spatially coincide with gauges in its calibration-station dataset. WaterGAP2-2e also systematically overestimated peak flows, with peak-flow Relative Bias (RBpeak) reaching 30.14%. Among the remaining configurations, WEB-DHM-SG showed the strongest overall performance and a relatively small station-averaged absolute peak-flow bias (|RB_peak| = 15.52%). However, this advantage did not extend to low-flow conditions. H08 and ORCHIDEE-MICT showed the weakest overall performance, with negative NSE values down to −3.61 and peak-flow biases reaching −99.10%, whereas MIROC-INTEG-LAND, CWatM, HydroPy, and JULES-W2-DDM30 showed intermediate performance. Overall, model suitability depended on temporal scale and flow regime, and apparent rankings should be interpreted in light of inherited calibration and configuration differences. These results provide a diagnostic basis for model selection and targeted improvement in regional discharge simulation and peak-flow-related applications. Full article

Urban streets are important heat-exposure environments, yet the relationships of two-dimensional (2D) planar plant morphology and three-dimensional (3D) vegetation structure with land surface temperature (LST) remain insufficiently integrated at a continuous street scale. We analyzed 42,603 street-scale study units in the central urban area of Wuhan, defined at 50 m sampling intervals with a 150 m radius. The 2D variables comprised green-space area (A), mean patch perimeter (P_mean), and perimeter–area ratio (P_A), while the 3D variables comprised green view index (GVI), mean 3D green volume (NV_mean), mean canopy height (CH_mean), and canopy-height variability (CH_sd). Anselin Local Moran’s I identified High–High (HH) and Low–Low (LL) zones; linear regression (LR), random forest (RF), and SHAP characterized linear, nonlinear, and model-based contributions; and buffered spatial cross-validation and spatial resampling evaluated robustness. Under the original random 80–20% train–test split, LR/RF R² values were 0.2153/0.4002 for the overall study area, 0.1940/0.3539 for the HH zone, and 0.0488/0.4853 for the LL zone. Under five-fold buffered spatial cross-validation, the corresponding pooled out-of-fold R² values were 0.1940/0.2237, 0.1427/0.0965, and −0.0942/−0.0231, showing that the RF advantage weakened after spatial separation and did not persist in the HH and LL zones. In the original fitted RF models, A, P_mean, and NV_mean had the largest mean absolute SHAP contributions overall; A, P_A, and P_mean ranked highest in the HH zone; and GVI, CH_sd, and CH_mean ranked highest in the LL zone. Repeated buffered spatial validation showed no stable overall 2D predominance because the median 2D share of 52.1% had a 46.5–58.8% percentile range, but it supported stable 2D relative predominance in the HH zone (61.0% [55.5–66.7%]) and stable grouped 3D relative predominance in the LL zone (61.9% [52.3–70.3%]), despite unstable LL variable-level rankings. SHAP relationships were nonlinear and zone-dependent: A and P_mean showed clearer directional transitions overall and in the HH zone, whereas the LL zone and most 3D variables exhibited multiple directional changes. Spatial-block bootstrap analysis examined 40 full-sample zero-crossing candidates, of which 39 met the predefined stability criteria; these ranges represent model-derived directional transitions rather than ecological thresholds or causal planning standards. The findings demonstrate thermal-context-dependent, model-based associations between 2D and 3D plant morphology and street-scale LST, while emphasizing that model performance and some importance rankings are spatially sensitive and require local validation. Full article

Objective: To examine the reliability, construct validity, and discriminative capacity of the Spanish version of the Economic Living Standards Index Short Form (ELSI_SF) in a sample of older adults in Spain. Methods: This analysis was conducted using baseline data from 133 participants (mean age = 66.2 years, SD = 5.6; 53.8% women) recruited from community health and social centers in the provinces of Cuenca, Albacete, and Toledo within the PEPE cohort. Participants completed the ELSI_SF (25 items), sociodemographic measures, the SF-12 Health Survey, and the International Fitness Scale (IFIS). Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. Convergent validity was examined through correlations between ELSI_SF scores and education, occupation, physical and mental health, and perceived fitness. Discriminative ability for health-related variables was analyzed using ANOVA and partial η². The internal structure was explored using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and subsequently examined against the original four-factor theoretical model using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), based on polychoric correlations and estimation methods appropriate for ordinal data. Results: The mean ELSI_SF score was 23.0 ± 3.9, with most participants classified as having comfortable or good living standards. Internal consistency was acceptable for the total scale (α = 0.779), whereas the ownership restrictions (α = 0.441) and self-rating (α = 0.319) subscales showed low reliability. Significant associations were observed between the ELSI_SF total score and selected socioeconomic and health-related measures. Factor-analytic findings provided only partial support for the original four-domain structure. Although CFA showed favorable CFI, TLI, and RMSEA values, the elevated SRMR and instability of the self-rating factor warrant cautious interpretation of the factorial solution. Conclusions: The Spanish ELSI_SF provides preliminary psychometric evidence supporting the use of its total score among relatively socioeconomically advantaged older adults. However, limitations in subscale reliability, factorial stability, and the restricted socioeconomic variability of the sample preclude definitive validation across the full spectrum of material living standards. Further evaluation in larger, independent, and more socioeconomically heterogeneous samples, particularly including older adults experiencing material deprivation, is required. Full article

Retrieval-augmented fine-tuning (RAFT) can improve small language models (sLMs) on retrieval-grounded question answering, but the synthetic training data produced by commercial large language models (LLMs) vary in quality. This paper contributes a quality-aware selection protocol—rather than a new RAFT or QLoRA method—that scores LLM-generated alternatives along four embedding-based dimensions (question relevance, answer faithfulness, QA coherence, and semantic similarity) and selects one alternative per task before parameter-efficient fine-tuning. Under pre-specified paired-bootstrap contrasts with Holm correction, the parameter-free faithfulness-based selector only-AF significantly exceeds random selection on Gemma-2-9B-IT (ΔF1 = +0.106, 95% CI [+0.043, +0.174], Holm-corrected p = 0.019), and its pre-specified weighted companion af-70 (w_AF = 0.70) shows the same confirmed pattern (Holm-corrected p = 0.002). Both effects persist under a Korean character-level F1 that removes particles and punctuation (Holm-corrected p = 0.004 and p = 0.042), indicating robustness to the choice of lexical metric. Relative to training on the full 150-row augmented pool, the quality-selected 50-row sets are statistically indistinguishable while using one third of the training data, which we interpret as data efficiency rather than superiority. Across six instruction-tuned models (2B–27B), a significant selector-by-model interaction indicates that the optimal quality axis is model-dependent, and the two smallest models show no benefit from selection. The study’s confirmatory contrasts use a small controlled Korean corpus under a transductive design; two pre-registered validation experiments probe external validity. On an independent five-fold larger corpus with a passage-level train/test split, fine-tuning transfers strongly and the selected one-third subsets show no significant difference from the full pool, while the advantage over random selection is directionally positive but small and not significant; under controlled corruption of 35% of the pool, the metrics detect the damaged rows, and for the score-sum selector the selection-versus-random benefit is significantly larger than on the clean pool (difference-in-differences p = 0.0014; directionally consistent but not significant for the faithfulness selectors). Within this scope, quality-aware selection is a promising, data-efficient safeguard for synthetic RAFT data—performing comparably to full-pool training at one third of the cost, with growing value as pool quality degrades—and larger-scale external validation remains future work. Full article

Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)–bentonite composite coatings combine a hydrophilic polymer with a naturally abundant clay mineral, offering potential advantages for modifying the physicochemical and film-forming characteristics of polymer–clay coatings. However, the combined influence of PVA–bentonite composition and total solids content on drying behavior and film evolution remains insufficiently explored. This study investigates the particle size, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), surface morphology, rheology, thixotropy, zeta potential, drying behavior, solvent transport, and film evolution of PVA–bentonite coatings prepared at total solids contents of 5 and 10 wt.% with different PVA to bentonite ratios. The drying profiles exhibited an initial relatively rapid solvent-removal stage followed by a slower stage associated with progressively restricted solvent transport during film consolidation. A lower total solids content (5 wt.%) generally accelerated drying but was associated with greater microcracking, whereas a higher total solids content (10 wt.%) produced more consolidated and comparatively uniform films with reduced solvent mobility. The combined physicochemical, rheological, drying, and morphological results demonstrate that both PVA–bentonite composition and total solids content substantially influence the structural organization and drying behavior of the coatings. Pure PVA formed a relatively uniform film but exhibited prolonged drying, while pure bentonite required the longest drying time (1083 min). Among the investigated formulations, the 50:50 PVA–bentonite coating demonstrated the shortest drying time, reaching equilibrium in approximately 480 min, while also exhibiting comparatively good film uniformity. During drying, its thickness decreased from approximately 1745 to 440 µm, corresponding to a reduction of about 1305 µm. Overall, under the investigated laboratory conditions, the 50:50 PVA–bentonite formulation provided the most favorable balance of drying behavior, film formation, and rheological characteristics among the compositions studied. These findings provide composition–structure–drying relationships that can guide further development of PVA–bentonite coating systems. At the same time, additional evaluation of mechanical, adhesion, barrier, durability, and economic performance is required to establish broader practical applicability. Full article

Functionally graded concrete (FGC) is an advanced building technique that allows structural components to satisfy diverse mechanical and durability specifications. In this study, hybrid geopolymer concrete (HGC) was used in constructing reinforced FGC beams to improve their flexural performance and sustainability. One HGC mix was used and compared with the corresponding control cement-based concrete mixture. The HGC mix was made of FA, slag, and dolomite powder (DP) binders. The structural performance of ten reinforced FGC beams, with different cross-sections and varying concrete layer configurations, was evaluated by four-point bending tests. The results indicated that beams utilizing HGC in the tensile zone showed improved ductility and load-carrying capacity relative to those constructed with the corresponding cement-based concrete. The functionally graded configuration, particularly when HGC is placed in the crucial tension zone, markedly enhanced both the ultimate deflection by 30% and ductility by 73%. These findings highlighted the advantages of using HGC in constructing FGC beams for sustainable, high-performance concrete structures, facilitating diminished cement usage, reduced carbon emissions, and enhanced structural resilience. Full article

To address the mismatch between agricultural development and water resource conditions, this study examined 22 provinces and four municipalities in China over the period 2014–2023 and incorporated terrain factors into the analytical framework. An integrated evaluation system was developed for the Agricultural Development Index (ADI) and Water Resource Condition Index (WCI). The entropy weight method, coupling coordination degree model, standard deviation ellipse model, spatial difference coefficient, and two-way fixed-effects model were employed to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics and coordination between agricultural development and water resource conditions. The results indicate that the ADI increased steadily throughout the study period, whereas the WCI remained relatively stable, reflecting distinct evolutionary trajectories of the two systems. Although the coordination level of the Agriculture–Water Resources System improved overall, pronounced regional disparities persisted. Plain regions exhibited stronger coordination, whereas mountainous and plateau regions showed lower coordination levels because of terrain constraints and limited resource endowments. Spatial mismatches between agricultural and water resource advantage regions were evident, although the overall matching relationship between the two systems gradually strengthened. The proposed evaluation framework provides a scientific basis for optimizing regional agricultural layouts, improving water resource allocation, and promoting coordinated agricultural and water resource development. Full article

Objective: It is commonly believed in the public health community that the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna were broadly similar in preventing COVID-19 mortality, with perhaps a small advantage for Moderna. We revisit this question, using a research design that controls for healthy-vaccinee bias. Methods: We studied deaths among persons aged 15 years or greater from January 2021 through December 2022 in Indiana, linked to vaccination records, using an outcome measure, namely COVID-19 Excess Mortality Percentage (CEMP), which uses non-COVID natural mortality to control for HVB. Results: We find both large healthy-vaccinee bias for both vaccines, and larger bias for Pfizervaccinees: Pfizer recipients were healthier and thus would have faced lower COVID-19 mortality without vaccination. For ages 60+, we find almost 50% higher COVID-19 remaining mortality risk (RMR) for Pfizer vaccinees receiving primary vaccination over a “core period” from 2Q2021 through 1Q2022: the average Pfizer/Moderna RMR ratio was 1.49. For ages 15–59, this ratio was 1.25, but was not statistically significant. For booster dose for ages 60+, the average Pfizer/Moderna RMR ratio was 1.34. For 2Q2022 through 4Q2022, after the major Omicron wave, we find much lower vaccine effectiveness and no significant Pfizer–Moderna difference. Conclusions: During the period with both good vaccine availability and high COVID-19 mortality (2Q-2021–1Q2022), the Moderna vaccine was associated with lower COVID-19 mortality, relative to the Pfizer vaccine. A possible explanation is the higher Moderna dose (100 μg vs. 30 for Pfizer). After that period, a high percentage of the population had natural immunity from prior COVID-19 infection; we find only small mortality gains from vaccination, with no significant Pfizer–Moderna difference. Policy Implications: Controlling for healthy-vaccinee bias, Moderna was associated with lower COVID-19 mortality, relative to Pfizer. This difference was not known in real-time due to the failure of the available studies to address healthy-vaccinee bias. Controlling for such bias is vital when making vaccination policy. Full article

The present study investigated whether retrieval practice facilitates memory retention and the rapid identification of newly learned French word components under attentional blink (AB) conditions. Specifically, a total of 107 native Chinese speakers participated in the study, and 103 were included in the final analyses after exclusions. In Experiment 1, participants studied novel, semantically opaque French compound words under two learning conditions: retrieval practice and repeated study. Experiment 2 was conducted 15 min after the completion of Experiment 1. Participants performed a two-target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task in which the morphemic components of the learned compound words were presented as the first target (T1) and the second target (T2) at critical lags (Lag 3 and Lag 7). Experiment 1 confirmed the classical testing effect, with the retrieval practice condition showing higher accuracy and faster response times than the repeated study condition. Experiment 2 revealed that participants in the retrieval practice condition exhibited significantly higher T2 identification accuracy at Lag 7 and a numerical advantage at Lag 3 compared with those in the repeated study condition. These findings indicate that retrieval practice facilitates T2 identification, particularly when attentional resources are relatively recovered at Lag 7. Overall, retrieval-based learning appears to strengthen newly acquired lexico-semantic representations and support the rapid identification of newly learned word components under RSVP conditions. Full article

Contextual meaning can influence art evaluation even when viewers encounter images within a structured visual stimulus family. This exploratory questionnaire-version study examined whether value-oriented textual descriptions were associated with aesthetic ratings of AI-generated variants of classical paintings in three Chinese-language questionnaire versions emphasising cultural value, artistic value, or social value. The available dataset contained 61 participants, each rating 40 images on a 1–10 aesthetic scale, yielding 2440 complete observations. A post hoc three-rater manipulation check of 30 image–description pairs found that all evaluated pairs satisfied the applied validation criterion; inter-rater reliability across item–dimension judgments was high at ICC(2,k) = 0.936. The primary analysis used a linear mixed-effects model with crossed random intercepts for participant and stimulus identity, and a fuller by-stimulus random-slope model was estimated as a diagnostic response to review. Relative to social-value descriptions, artistic-value descriptions were associated with higher ratings in the random-intercept model, where b = 1.74, SE = 0.57, z = 3.03, p = 0.002, 95% CI [0.62, 2.87], and this contrast also persisted in the diagnostic by-stimulus random-slope model, although that model converged with a non-positive-definite Hessian. Cultural-value descriptions were intermediate and should not be interpreted as showing a stable general advantage over social-value descriptions. The results therefore provide qualified evidence for an artistic-versus-social framing association, not a confirmed causal effect of all value-cue conditions. Interpretation remains bounded by the modest sample, undocumented allocation procedure, rapid-completion records, incomplete prompt metadata, and post hoc validation of a representative rather than exhaustive stimulus set. Full article

Multi-view fringe projection profilometry systems that integrate a telecentric projector with multiple oblique-view cameras offer unique advantages for inspecting high dynamic-range surfaces featuring densely packed, intricate microstructures. Nevertheless, such systems encounter fundamental calibration challenges, namely, sign ambiguity in the rotation matrices and truncated extrinsic parameters inherent to telecentric projector models, as well as difficulties in multi-view point cloud registration. This paper introduces a novel calibration framework with three principal contributions. First, we resolve the sign ambiguity by calibrating the telecentric projector under a quasi pinhole model and directly transferring the extrinsic sign conventions, thereby obviating the need for costly precision displacement stages or elaborate virtual targets. Second, we fix the axial-gauge freedom by constraining the origin of the projector coordinate system to lie on the XY-plane of the camera coordinate system. Third, we establish precise relative poses between all cameras and a designated reference camera, enabling unified multi-view point cloud registration directly within the projector coordinate frame, which substantially reduces alignment errors and accelerates data processing. Experimental results demonstrate marked improvements in accuracy: reprojection root-mean-square errors of 0.084 pixels for the cameras and 0.106 pixels for the projector, corresponding to in-plane spatial resolutions of 0.21 µm and 0.26 µm, respectively. The proposed method offers a robust solution for micron-level inspection in semiconductor packaging and precision manufacturing. Full article

Environmental pollution, particularly water contamination, requires the continuous development of robust, effective monitoring technologies. While chemical optical sensors offer significant advantages for environmental monitoring, many traditional devices rely on complex combinations of chemical dyes with specific acid dissociation constants. To overcome these limitations, this study presents a dye-free approach centered on a fiber-optic pH sensor based on a TiO₂ thin film. The protective coating of multimode optical fibers was successfully removed using a controlled hydrofluoric acid (HF) treatment, enabling deposition of TiO₂ films via a low-cost sol–gel dip-coating method. Structural characterizations through X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy confirmed the preferential growth and high purity of the anatase phase. Furthermore, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) confirmed the presence and relatively uniform distribution of Ti on the fiber surface. The optical performance of the sensor was evaluated using a 940 nm light source over a broad pH range (4–14), where the device exhibited distinguishable stepped optical-power responses at four pH conditions spanning pH 4–14. A preliminary analysis yielded an apparent average slope of 0.40 µW/pH. These results support the feasibility of using sol–gel derived TiO₂ coatings in the preliminary development of dye-free optical devices for aqueous pH monitoring. Full article

In order to solve the problems of stratification, segregation, and insufficient mixing uniformity of glass fiber raw materials in the process of pneumatic mixing, the binary particles of pyrophyllite and limestone, the core raw materials of E-glass fiber, were taken as the research object, and the influence of nozzle inclination angles (0°, 45°, 60°, 75°) on the gas–solid flow, particle motion and mixing performance in the pneumatic mixing tank was systematically investigated by using the CFD-DEM coupling method. The flow field evolution and mixing mechanism at different inclination angles were compared and analyzed by visualization of particle motion, gas flow streamlines, turbulent kinetic energy distribution, and quantitative characterization of Lacey mixing index (LMI) and particle axial concentration distribution. The results show that the nozzle inclination angle significantly regulates the flow field structure in the tank, the 0° vertical nozzle forms a single axial jet, with a low-speed dead zone at the top and particle accumulation, and the mixing index stabilizes only at 0.92. The 45°~75° inclined nozzle can induce the formation of a stable and symmetrical double-vortex circulation flow field, which strengthens the radial mixing of particles and the turbulent disturbance in the whole region. The LMI is stable above 0.97, and the mixing uniformity and stability are significantly improved. In particular, under the 45° inclination angle, the volume-averaged turbulent kinetic energy shows a counter-trend increase, with a relatively low flow dead zone and a uniform axial concentration distribution. The advantages of the oblique jet in reducing segregation, optimizing flow field, and improving mixing efficiency are clarified. It can provide a theoretical basis and numerical reference for the pneumatic mixing of glass fiber raw materials and the improvement of relevant equipment structure and process optimization. Full article

To enhance critical infrastructure protection against low-cost UAV impacts, this study proposes a novel ring lattice sandwich structure (RLSS) fabricated via an economical interlocking-assembly-brazing method. Its quasi-static compressive behavior is systematically investigated through experiments, numerical simulations, and theoretical analysis. Theoretical models for relative density and initial yield stress are validated against experiments, with errors of 7.1% and 6.6%, respectively. Quasi-static tests show that the one-layer RLSS exhibits a specific energy absorption (SEA) of 8.67 J/g, while the two-layer structure drops to 5.66 J/g due to inter-layer torsional instability. SHPB impact tests at strain rates of 750–1369 s⁻¹ demonstrate a pronounced strain-rate effect, with dynamic increase factors ranging from 1.14 to 1.43. Numerical simulations accurately reproduce the experimental deformation modes and reveal that multi-layer (2–5 layers) RLSSs reduce SEA by 46.9% compared with the one-layer simulated value of 9.43 J/g. Adding a 0.3-mm inner panel in simulations restores the crushing mode and raises the SEA of the two-layer structure to 7.19 J/g, surpassing the non-panel counterpart (6.03 J/g). Hybrid core configurations provide additional advantages: Mode I (ring–pyramid with inner panel) enhances total energy absorption with a limited ring-layer count, while Mode II (alternating layers) achieves minimal plateau stress fluctuation (PSF = 0.09). These findings confirm that the proposed RLSS, especially when optimized with thin inner panels or hybrid designs, offers great potential as protective cladding against impact and blast threats. Full article