Search Results (656)

Background/Objectives: Children with cerebral palsy, a permanent neurodevelopmental condition that primarily affects movement and posture, exhibit higher rates of behavioral problems. This study examined the cross-sectional associations linking child functional independence in motor and cognitive domains and maternal self-blame to family adaptation and child behavioral presentations within an integrated analytical framework. Methods: In a cross-sectional design, 79 child–mother dyads in the cerebral palsy group and 62 dyads in a typically developing control group involving children aged 6 to 18 years were evaluated using the Child Behavior Checklist, Functional Independence Measure for Children, Parental Bonding Instrument, Parent–Child Relationship Scale, Impact on Family Scale, and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Path analysis using full-information maximum likelihood examined the relational structures exclusively within the cerebral palsy group. Results: Group comparisons indicated that the cerebral palsy group scored significantly higher on child behavioral total problems and all syndrome subscales than the controls. Sensitivity analyses revealed that while elevated child behavioral difficulties remained robust after adjusting for demographic imbalances, differences in parental overprotection and maternal self-blame attenuated to non-significance. Within the structural model, maternal self-blame was the only exogenous variable significantly associated with adverse family impact. Direct and indirect relational pathways from child cognitive functional independence and motor parameters to child behavioral total problems through family impact did not reach statistical significance. Conclusions: Child behavioral difficulties and family-level adaptation challenges in cerebral palsy represent cross-sectional patterns organized through distinct parallel systems rather than a single interconnected pathway. These findings suggest the potential utility of routine clinical screening for maternal cognitive emotion regulation patterns and identify maternal self-blame as a hypothesis-generating target for future longitudinal intervention trials. Full article

James Denney’s insistence that the church’s confession of faith “should be sung, not signed” encapsulates a theology of confession that is as provocative as it is neglected. This essay retrieves Denney (1856–1917)—conservative Scottish Calvinist, pastor, and Principal of the United Free Church College in Glasgow—not as a curiosity of Scottish church history but as a theologian whose work offers a coherent and still-urgent account of the church’s confessional vocation. Organized around Christ’s cross, Denney’s ecclesiology resists every temptation to deploy creeds and confessions as instruments of theological gatekeeping or institutional self-definition. Against such tendencies, he proposes their reorientation: from boundary markers to acts of doxological witness, from mechanisms of exclusion to expressions of trust in a gospel that exceeds the church’s own imagining. The essay traces Denney’s biography and pastoral career before examining his mature ecclesiology—on the nature and unity of the church, the function of creeds and confessions, and the promise and limits of ecumenism—setting his confessional minimalism in conversation with the Barmen Declaration (1934) and the Belhar Confession (1982). Together, these documents illuminate a pattern of Reformed confessional faithfulness in which the church’s identity remains open to the disturbing freedom of the gospel. Full article

(1) Background: Adolescence is a critical period for the development of health-related behaviors, including dietary habits and physical activity. This cross-sectional study examined the associations between participation in organized sports, nutrient intake, and body composition in a sample of Greek adolescents. (2) Methods: A total of 224 adolescents aged 12–18 years from schools in the Attica region, Greece, participated in the study. Physical activity and organized sports participation were assessed using a validated questionnaire. Body composition was estimated using bioelectrical impedance analysis, and dietary intake was evaluated using three-day self-reported food records analyzed with Cronometer^® nutrition analysis software. (3) Results: Boys had higher fat-free mass and basal metabolic rate and lower fat-mass percentage than girls. Organized sports participation was common and differed by sex, with boys reporting higher participation and greater adherence to physical activity recommendations than girls. Organized sports participation was associated with differences in selected nutrient intakes, particularly among late adolescents; however, several differences were attenuated when nutrient intake was standardized per 1000 kcal, suggesting that part of the observed pattern may reflect differences in total energy intake. (4) Conclusions: These cross-sectional findings suggest that age-defined adolescent stage and organized sports participation are associated with differences in sports involvement, body composition, and nutrient intake among Greek adolescents; however, causal relationships cannot be established, and the findings should be interpreted as associations. Full article

The Brazilian Cerrado, a global biodiversity hotspot, is under increasing pressure from agricultural expansion and native vegetation conversion, underscoring the need for efficient monitoring to support conservation and environmental policies. In heterogeneous landscapes, land use and land cover (LULC) mapping using supervised classification methods faces a major bottleneck: the need for extensive and high-quality training datasets. To address this challenge, we propose a semi-automated, clustering-based methodology for mapping secondary vegetation within previously deforested areas, reducing training-sample requirements and enabling scalable mapping through the clustering of satellite image time series. In the first stage, an unsupervised process integrates graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated Self-Organizing Maps and hierarchical clustering with Dynamic Time Warping to produce spectro-temporal clusters. In the second stage, specialists label and refine these clusters by visual interpretation, transferring expert knowledge from individual pixels to grouped spectro-temporal patterns. Applied to 692,000 km² of previously deforested land in the Cerrado biome, the methodology produced a mapped secondary vegetation area of 81,209 km² (11.74%). The design-based estimated area was 98,683 ± 10,071 km², with an overall accuracy of 96.45 ± 1.52%, a user’s accuracy of 96.27 ± 2.40%, a producer’s accuracy of 79.22 ± 7.94%, and an F1-score of 86.90%. The initial cluster labeling accounted for 86.3% of the final secondary vegetation area and limited the interpretation task to approximately 3000 cluster-level decisions. Implemented in the TerraClass Cerrado 2024 cycle, the workflow reduced the secondary vegetation mapping phase from approximately two years to six months while maintaining the thematic accuracy required for large-scale operational monitoring. Full article

Biopreservatives are emerging as a promising alternative to conventional food preservation methods. However, there is limited empirical evidence integrating validated psychometric instruments with advanced unsupervised segmentation techniques to identify heterogeneous consumer profiles regarding biopreserved chicken consumption. To address these limitations, self-organizing maps (SOMs) have been widely used as unsupervised learning tools that reduce dimensionality, preserve topological relationships, and facilitate the visualization of latent structures in multivariate datasets. This study aims to analyze the factors influencing the acceptance of biopreservation in chicken consumption through a strategic segmentation based on unsupervised machine learning and behavioral dimensions. This methodological design enables the capture of behavioral heterogeneity, the identification of strategic consumption profiles, and the generation of empirical evidence to support future research and communication strategies related to biopreservation technologies in similar consumer contexts. In this study, 323 instances were topologically organized into 16 clusters, grouping individuals with similar behavioral patterns. The descriptive analysis of clusters revealed highly differentiated consumer profiles in terms of Consumer acceptance, cold chain practices, and Knowledge of food microorganisms. The high-acceptance exploratory segment achieved the maximum score (5.00) in knowledge of beneficial microorganisms (V14), acceptance of their use in chicken preservation (V15), and familiarity with lactic acid bacteria (V16). The three-dimensional structure identified through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) not only provided statistical validation of the instrument but also established a conceptual framework for interpreting the SOM’s topology. From a practical perspective, the findings highlight the relevance of consumer heterogeneity and suggest that consumer knowledge may play an important role in the acceptance of biopreservation technologies. These findings provide useful insights for future studies aimed at understanding the factors that influence consumer acceptance of biopreservation technologies. Full article

This exploratory cross-sectional study examined whether pandemic-related family well-being responses differed across North Carolina’s 2021 county economic tiers among 178 Black parents. Survey responses were linked to county tier and included reported stress, emotional symptoms, food hardship, self-rated health, sleep change, work and parenting disruption, and parent–child interaction items. Primary analyses used the Kruskal–Wallis and chi-square tests; within-tier correlations and tier-stratified linear probability models were used for supplementary and descriptive purposes. Respondents across all tiers reported pandemic-related burdens, but most cross-tier comparisons were not statistically significant. One food-hardship item (p = 0.050) and one parent–child interaction item (p = 0.042) met the nominal 0.05 threshold, while one emotional symptom item approached significance (p = 0.074); these isolated findings did not form a consistent cross-domain pattern. The findings indicate that the county-tier classification was useful for organizing place-based comparisons but did not consistently differentiate response patterns in this sample. Larger, longitudinal studies using neighborhood- and household-level measures are needed before tier-specific or causal conclusions can be drawn. Full article

The general objective of this study is to test an integrative PLS-SEM model that simultaneously explains thesis quality and process efficiency among undergraduate students through the affective-motivational mediators of research self-efficacy and project management. Students who stall in the final stage of their degree rarely do so because they lack technical skill. More often, confidence erodes under sustained uncertainty, motivation shifts from intrinsic engagement to anxious compliance, and the demands of organizing months of research exceed what willpower alone can sustain. This study examines those emotional and motivational dynamics directly, treating research self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation not as background variables but as the affective-motivational core of thesis performance. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) grounded in self-determination theory and social cognitive theory, we tested an integrative model with data from 396 undergraduate students actively completing theses at public and private universities in the northern region of Peru. Four enabling factors—methodological competencies, intrinsic motivation, tutorial support, resources and conditions—were linked to thesis quality and process efficiency through two mediating mechanisms: research self-efficacy (the confidence to face methodological difficulty without retreating) and project management (the behavioral self-regulation that converts motivation into organized work). Resources and conditions showed the strongest associations in the model, with the largest effects on both project management (β = 0.533) and research self-efficacy (β = 0.418). Self-efficacy, in turn, showed the strongest association with thesis quality (β = 0.518), while project management and quality were jointly associated with process efficiency. The model explained 70.5% of variance in thesis quality and 81.4% in process efficiency. These patterns point to a concrete institutional lever: securing the material and temporal conditions that allow students to do the work, rather than attributing delays solely to failures of individual motivation. Because the design is cross-sectional and based on self-report, these relationships are interpreted as theory-consistent associations rather than causal effects. Full article

Multi-temporal ecosystem-type maps for 1945, 1996, and 2022 were developed to examine how long-term ecosystem-type change influences regulating ecosystem services (ESs) across five Natura 2000 sites in Greece. We quantified three regulating ESs: climate regulation, hydrological regulation, and soil erosion regulation, using InVEST, and assessed multifunctionality using the combined Comprehensive Ecosystem Services Index (CESI). ES dynamics were assessed through a multi-metric framework of change indices comprising the Ecosystem Services Change Index (ESCI) and the Ecosystem Service Status Index (ESSI). In addition, we explored ES synergies and trade-offs and identified ES bundles using Self-Organizing Maps. The results showed pronounced spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Sites characterized by gradual woody expansion generally exhibited stable ES structures and modest improvements in regulating service status. In contrast, sites affected by disturbances and anthropogenic pressures (notably wildfire and urban expansion), showed persistent declines and an expansion of low-performing zones. Hydrologically dynamic systems characterized by land–water shifts exhibited persistent trade-offs between hydrological regulation and the other regulating services. Overall, ecosystem-type change analysis, combined with ES metrics quantification and spatial bundling, provided valuable insights for the assessment of the spatio-temporal dynamics of ESs. Study findings can also facilitate the preliminary translation of ES patterns into functional zones, serving as decision-support indicators for spatially targeted and adaptive Natura 2000 management measures and actions. Full article

Population aging has become a major demographic process in modern societies, with its course varying considerably across space. This study examined the scale and dynamics of population aging across Poland’s voivodeships in 2015–2024 and identified its regional patterns. The analysis used data from Statistics Poland’s Local Data Bank for 16 voivodeships and included indicators capturing age composition, demographic dependency, and fertility. The analysis was conducted for 16 Polish voivodeships using data from Statistics Poland’s Local Data Bank for 2015–2024 and indicators describing age structure, demographic dependency, and fertility. An analysis of changes in indicator values over time and Kohonen self-organizing maps (SOM) were applied in two model variants, differing in the measure of population aging adopted. To ensure a consistent direction of interpretation, the variables were appropriately transformed and then standardized. The results indicate spatial variation in the level of population aging and differing dynamics of change during the study period. Four regional profiles were identified, reflecting different patterns of indicators describing age structure, demographic burden, and fertility. Kohonen self-organizing maps were used as an exploratory tool to organize voivodeships according to the similarity of their demographic profiles and to describe changes in their profile assignment over time. From the perspective of sustainability, the identified profiles make it possible to capture territorially differentiated demographic conditions that may be relevant to healthcare, long-term care, regional labor markets, social services, and family policy. The results may support sustainable regional development by providing a basis for designing public policy tailored to the specific characteristics of individual voivodeships. Thus, the study links a multidimensional typology of demographic aging with the need for socially sustainable regional policy. The results suggest that SOM can serve as a useful exploratory tool for visualizing and classifying regional demographic aging profiles. Full article

In this study, we propose a biologically inspired Self-Organizing Map-based Artificial Visual System (SOM-AVS) for unsupervised orientation detection in static images. By combining a biologically motivated front-end visual processing module with an unsupervised SOM layer, the proposed system captures key characteristics of early-stage visual processing, including localized orientation-sensitive responses and structured feature organization. The model enables the structure of distinct orientation-related representations without requiring labeled data, forming organized response patterns across the neural map. Experimental results demonstrate robustness under various conditions, including noise corruption, restricted perceptual experience, and limited training samples. Furthermore, the model shows adaptive behavior when exposed to new stimuli after initial training, indicating its potential to reflect experience-dependent adjustments in representation. These findings suggest that SOM-AVS provides a useful framework for exploring self-organization mechanisms in artificial visual systems and for developing biologically inspired perception models. Full article

The formation of direction-selective visual circuits is thought to involve the progressive refinement of synaptic connections during development. In biological visual systems, patterned spontaneous activity, such as retinal waves, has been proposed to provide structured spatiotemporal activity that contributes to the refinement of visual pathways before mature sensory experience is fully established. Motivated by this view of activity-dependent circuit organization, this study develops a Self-Organizing Map-Based Artificial Visual System, termed SOM-AVS, to examine how organized connectivity may emerge in a motion direction-detecting circuit. In the proposed model, local motion-detecting units extract elementary direction-related responses from visual input and project them to a global motion direction layer represented by a self-organizing map. Connections are progressively reshaped by winner selection and local cooperative updating, allowing initially unstructured connections to gradually acquire organized direction preference. After repeated exposure to generated retinal-wave-like activity data, the SOM layer develops topographically arranged regions corresponding to distinct motion directions. This organization suggests that direction-related response domains can emerge from activity-dependent self-organization without externally imposed labels. The proposed model should be regarded as a biologically motivated computational abstraction rather than a direct physiological reproduction of retinal-wave-driven circuit development. Within this scope, the model provides a computational framework for examining how retinal-wave-like activity and self-organizing plasticity may contribute to the formation of motion direction-related connectivity, offering a possible developmental interpretation for bio-inspired visual motion processing. Full article

The adoption of healthier dietary behaviors has become a critical public health concern, particularly among young populations facing structural and economic constraints. Within this context, organic food consumption can be understood not only as a market choice but as a form of health-related behavior influenced by psychological factors. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study examines how health consciousness and core cognitive determinants shape dietary health behavior through their influence on behavioral intention and self-reported consumption patterns. A cross-sectional quantitative design was employed using data from 384 young consumers in an emerging market context (Ambato, Ecuador). The proposed model was tested using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM). The findings indicate that perceived behavioral control is the strongest predictor of intention to engage in organic food consumption, followed by attitude and subjective norms. Health consciousness is positively associated with attitude and indirectly influences behavioral intention through this pathway. No significant relationship was found between perceived behavioral control and attitude. Behavioral intention shows a strong association with self-reported consumption behavior. These results highlight the central role of perceived feasibility in shaping health-related dietary behaviors in constrained contexts, where structural barriers may limit the translation of positive attitudes into action. The study contributes to the health psychology literature by providing context-sensitive evidence on how cognitive and motivational factors interact within the TPB framework to influence dietary behavior. Implications for promoting healthier consumption patterns emphasize the need to address both psychological drivers and structural constraints. Full article

Apart from vigilance and flight, anti-predator defense behavior in horses has not been well documented despite its importance during natural selection. In this study, observations of a feral herd (around 140) of Venezuelan horses sympatric with puma and jaguar divided such defense into precaution and reaction. Group living and the avoidance of danger areas are precautionary measures enhanced by the stallion’s vigilance and his actions to keep small foals with the band. Reactions to perceived threats comprise communication of alarm; bunching, or cohesion, as a primary response; massed flight following self-organizing principles; and reassembly of bands. Stallions usually initiated this behavioral process. Stallions’ initial reactions to perceived threats were “investigation”, “move away”, “run away”, and “stampede”, and resulting herd behavior was categorized into 27 responses. Data analysis through Observation Oriented Modeling indicated that each category of initial stallion response to perceived threats was associated with a recurring pattern of subsequent herd behavior. Prominent behaviors enhanced cohesion and synchrony, as well as velocity and direction matching. A fourth observed category was the cohesive “run to band” of a startled outlying member, in which the individual’s alarm might transmit to the band or the band’s calm transmit to the individual. The results emphasize the importance of communication, social cohesion, and synchronous action in times of perceived threats, their continuous practice during maintenance activities, and the social needs and understanding management of domestic horses. Full article

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading global cause of death, with approximately 17.9 million mortalities annually. Studies have shown that adopting healthy behaviors, i.e., a balanced diet, regular physical activity, and weight management, can reduce CVD risk. However, evaluating their long-term impact requires extensive data collection and analysis, which are both time-consuming and challenging. This study developed a novel mathematical framework integrating an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate CVD risk progression and established clinical guidelines into synthetic training data for machine learning (ML) classification. The ML model was trained entirely on synthetic data generated from World Health Organization/International Society of Hypertension cardiac risk indications, and validated using outcomes from a NetLogo simulation. The workflow does not use real patient data; instead, the expected simulation results serve as a reference to assess the ML model and synthetic data. The ABM, designed in NetLogo, exchanges agent characteristics with a trained ML model to classify individuals into appropriate CVD risk levels based on lifestyle and clinical parameters. The simulation indicated measurable risk progression (5–12%) by year 20 in individuals with both smoking and diabetes. A combined effect of high dietary intake and low physical activity showed over 20% risk increase, demonstrating the model’s capacity to capture dynamic risk interactions. The relationship between CVD risk and systolic blood pressure was also effectively reproduced. Additional scenarios confirmed the alignment of model outcomes with real-world trends, showing model self-consistency, identifying critical thresholds and population-level risk shifts through detailed tabular analysis. Beyond confirming known associations, the findings support the internal consistency of the model, highlighting its potential as a simulation based tool for studying cardiovascular risk patterns and supporting risk monitoring within controlled settings. Full article

Topologically chiral molecular knots and links represent a unique class of stereochemical architectures in which handedness is encoded by the global crossing pattern of an entangled framework rather than by a local stereogenic element. Their configurational robustness and shape-persistent chiral environments make them promising platforms for molecular recognition, catalysis, chiroptical response, and spin-selective transport. This review summarizes recent progress in the stereoselective synthesis of topologically chiral knots and links, with emphasis on chirality transfer from point, axial and helical elements into persistent topological handedness. Major synthetic strategies are organized into helicity-driven approaches, template-free dynamic systems, coordination-driven self-assembly, and chiral self-sorting. The applications of knots in host–guest confinement, asymmetric catalysis, chiral recognition, and spin-selective transport are also discussed. Full article