Search Results (431)

Circadian–behavioral misalignment, defined as a mismatch between internal circadian timing and daily sleep activity behavior, is associated with sleep quality, daytime function, cognitive performance, and long-term health risks. However, practical approaches for integrating circadian-phase-related physiological markers with behavioral and environmental sensing under free-living conditions remain limited. This study presents a multimodal wearable and lifelog monitoring workflow that combines a heat-flux-based wearable temperature-estimation sensor, a wrist-worn actigraph, melanopic equivalent daylight illuminance (EDI) measurement, and web-based lifelog entries. Ten healthy young adults were monitored for approximately one week in daily life. The midpoint between the descending and ascending mid-level crossings of the nocturnal temperature rhythm was extracted as a circadian-phase-related temperature rhythm marker. In a practical comparison with gastrointestinal temperature measured using an ingestible capsule, the wearable-derived rhythm marker showed a mean absolute difference of 27.1 ± 16.6 min. The temporal difference between the two markers was defined as the phase angle, and coupling stability was evaluated using phase angle variability and the correlation between the markers. After excluding one participant who traveled overseas, clustering and principal component analyses were used to visualize exploratory participant-level differences in circadian–behavioral coupling. Integrated analysis with melanopic EDI, activity, and lifelog-derived features suggested that light exposure, activity timing, and behavioral timing may provide contextual information for interpreting coupling patterns in this small cohort. These findings support the feasibility of a sensing system application that integrates physiological, behavioral, environmental, and lifelog data for the exploratory assessment of circadian–behavioral coupling under free-living conditions, rather than the development of new sensor hardware. Full article

Conventional forest inventories provide standardized but temporally discrete DBH observations, whereas some research and management applications require continuous observations of diameter dynamics between remeasurement campaigns. This study designed and implemented a Smart Tree Monitoring Network based on Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud storage technologies as a complementary intensive-monitoring approach for selected forest plots. The system enables automatic, continuous, networked observation of standing-tree diameter growth and consists of Tree Sensor Nodes (TSNs), Stand Gateways (SGs), and a cloud management platform. The independently designed tree diameter growth monitoring instrument senses micro-variations in DBH and conducts scheduled data acquisition. Low-power wireless transmission from TSNs to gateways is achieved through LoRa/LoRaWAN, while stand gateways aggregate multi-node data and environmental parameters and upload them to the cloud platform via a 4G network. Field deployment involved 426 devices in 10 sample plots with different terrain and climatic conditions in Hubei Province. The results showed that (1) with a 3.6 V, 19,000 mAh lithium battery and a 5 min sampling interval, daily power consumption was 5.37 mAh, corresponding to a theoretical battery-life estimate of 9.69 years under the tested duty-cycle assumptions; (2) at initial deployment, device-measured DBH showed strong agreement with manual measurements, with R² = 0.9996, RMSE = 0.215 cm, MAE = 0.170 cm, and Bias = −0.089 cm, while subgroup analyses indicated larger underestimation for large-diameter trees; and (3) monthly mean RSSI and SNR remained above the adopted reference thresholds throughout 2025, while rainfall and temperature were associated with limited variation in signal quality. These results support the technical feasibility of the system for high-frequency DBH monitoring in selected plots, while long-term measurement drift, end-to-end data completeness, battery life under field aging, and physical durability require further validation. Full article

Background: Meeting the spiritual needs of older adults receiving palliative care requires culturally sensitive and psychometrically sound assessment instruments. This study aimed to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Spiritual Needs Scale (SNS) for older adults receiving palliative care. Methods: The primary version of the SNS was developed through a scoping review, in-depth interviews, Rodgers’ concept analysis, and expert consultation. A consecutive sample of 395 older adults receiving palliative care was recruited from the inpatient wards of two university-affiliated hospitals to evaluate the psychometric properties of the SNS. Validity assessment included content, face, and construct validity, while reliability was evaluated through Cronbach’s alpha and test–retest measures. Additionally, ceiling and floor effects were examined. Results: The SNS consists of 40 items. The scale demonstrated excellent content validity, with an S-CVI/Ave of 0.98 and an S-CVI/UA of 0.77. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed six factors that explain 65.595% of the total variance, which included connection with oneself and others, transcendence, connection with nature, reflection on life’s meaning, seeking life’s meaning, and a sense of belonging. The overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the scale was 0.963, with coefficients for the six factors ranging from 0.852 to 0.920. The scale’s retest reliability was 0.853. Conclusions: The SNS demonstrated satisfactory validity and reliability for assessing the spiritual needs of older adults receiving palliative care. Further studies are needed to validate the scale in different cultural and clinical populations. Full article

The Weibull distribution is one of the most versatile and widely applied continuous probability distributions in reliability engineering, survival analysis, wind-energy modelling, and extreme-value theory. Classical parameter estimation relies on maximum likelihood estimation or method-of-moments using integer-order moments, both of which may suffer from instability or high variance in small to moderate samples. This paper develops a rigorous framework for estimating Weibull parameters by combining the maximum-entropy principle with fractional-order moment constraints, i.e., constraints of the form $E\left[X^r\right]$ for non-integer $r>0$. A central theme of the paper is symmetry: we show that the maximum-entropy density subject to a finite set of fractional-moment constraints uniquely recovers the Weibull family, and that the underlying moment-matching system, while not symmetric in every sense considered in an earlier draft (see Remark 3), possesses a precisely characterised duality under joint rescaling and relabelling of the exponent pair, together with a log-moment map whose local curvature is strictly positive and increasing with exponent spacing rather than symmetric about a fixed midpoint. We derive closed-form expressions relating the Lagrange multipliers to the shape and scale parameters, establish new sound theoretical results on the symmetric behaviour of the moment-ratio function and its sensitivity, and propose a numerically stable algorithm for solving the resulting moment-matching system. Extensive Monte Carlo experiments demonstrate that the proposed maximum-entropy fractional-moment estimator achieves a bias and root-mean-square error that are comparable to, and for small-to-moderate samples somewhat better than, maximum likelihood estimation, with the size of the advantage depending on how closely the chosen exponent pair tracks the true shape parameter. Applications to real wind-speed data and composite-material fatigue life data illustrate the practical utility of the method. The paper contributes both to the information-theoretic foundations of distribution fitting and to applied statistical methodology, with symmetry serving as both a diagnostic tool and a unifying structural principle throughout. Full article

The transition toward decentralized renewable energy systems creates monitoring problems that current digital infrastructures do not solve: sustainability claims are produced by the same actors they evaluate, environmental evidence is reported periodically rather than observed continuously, and the communities most affected by deployment cannot inspect the data used to represent their territories. Existing integrated platforms combine subsets of the blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) sensing and life cycle assessment (LCA) at the data layer, but they do not organize that integration through an explicit governance structure. This paper contributes a cybernetic governance framework in which the Viable System Model (VSM) supplies the organizing structure of a blockchain–IoT–LCA monitoring architecture, so that sensing, distributed trust, strategic intelligence and participatory governance are recursively coupled rather than sequentially chained. The framework was developed and evaluated under the Design Science Research paradigm, and instantiated in the IMPACT Energy.CO platform across two technology routes, wind and solar, in La Guajira, Cesar, Atlántico and Magdalena, Colombia. Evaluation against six pre-declared criteria reports 45 executed test cases with a 100% pass rate, 90% unit and 87% integration code coverage, load tests up to 5000 concurrent users with zero errors and sub-second mean response, an operating hash-chained provenance layer issuing verifiable LCA certificates, 14 participatory validation workshops, 199 users trained and 166 technicians certified. We use traceability in a deliberately narrow sense throughout: the property whereby a committed record can be linked to the ingested data series, model version and computation that produced it, and its integrity and ordering checked by a party that does not trust the producer. It is provenance and integrity traceability from the point of ingestion onward, and it is not metrological traceability: the architecture cannot verify that an original sensor measurement corresponds to the physical quantity it purports to represent. We accordingly make explicit what the architecture does not guarantee: a ledger protects records after commitment but cannot certify measurement at the point of capture, and we present a threat model, a set of implemented controls and the residual risk that remains. This study contributes an architecture, a reproducible development and evaluation method, and a calibrated account of what verifiable environmental monitoring can and cannot deliver in contested Global-South territories. Full article

The article reflects on the care for the work of creation within Benedictine spirituality and within the broader tradition of the Cistercian Order. It seeks to demonstrate that monastic spirituality, though developed in a pre-modern context, contains enduring theological and ethical intuitions that remain relevant for contemporary ecological reflection. The starting point of the analysis is the Rule of Saint Benedict written by Benedict of Nursia, which, although it does not employ the modern vocabulary of ecology or environmental ethics, nevertheless articulates a coherent vision of human life characterized by reverence, moderation, and responsibility toward the created world. Particular attention is given to key spiritual and anthropological dimensions of the Benedictine tradition, such as attentive listening (obsculta), humility, moderation, stability, and responsible work, expressed synthetically in the principle ora et labora. These elements are interpreted not only as monastic disciplines shaping individual and communal life, but also as forming a relational anthropology in which the human person is understood as fundamentally embedded within a network of relationships with God, other people, and creation. In this sense, Benedictine spirituality already implies a non-exploitative attitude toward the natural world. The article then examines how concern for creation has been deepened and concretized in the spirituality, institutional practice, and historical development of the Cistercian Order. Drawing on selected Cistercian documents as well as contemporary monastic reflections, the study shows that care for the natural environment is inseparably linked with spiritual attentiveness to God, interior silence, openness of heart, and readiness to serve. The Cistercian tradition, with its emphasis on simplicity of life, manual labor, and harmonious integration with the surrounding environment, develops these Benedictine intuitions in a particularly concrete and historically embodied form. From this perspective, a pro-ecological attitude is not interpreted merely as a reactive response to contemporary environmental crises, but rather as a structural consequence of a theologically grounded vision of reality. It emerges from a deep relationship with God as Creator and from a sense of entrusted responsibility for creation understood as a gift rather than as an object of domination. Ecological sensitivity is thus presented as an intrinsic dimension of monastic spirituality rather than an external adaptation to modern concerns. The main research question of the article is: to what extent and in what way do Benedictine and Cistercian spiritual traditions provide theological, anthropological, and ethical foundations for an ecological attitude toward creation within the framework of contemporary integral ecology. To address this problem, the study employs qualitative research methods grounded in theological inquiry. The primary method is textual analysis of the Rule of Saint Benedict and selected Cistercian documents, complemented by theological–hermeneutical interpretation aimed at identifying key spiritual principles and their implicit ecological implications. In addition, the study applies a historical–critical perspective in order to situate monastic sources within their original cultural and theological context, as well as a comparative theological approach, which enables a dialogue between classical monastic spirituality and contemporary ecological theology. These methods are used not only to reconstruct historical meanings, but also to interpret monastic texts in light of contemporary debates on integral ecology, sustainability, and the ethics of responsibility for our common home. In this way, the article highlights a significant continuity between monastic wisdom and modern ecological reflection, showing their mutual capacity for enrichment. Full article

Veterans transitioning out of full-time military service to civilian life face unique challenges which may adversely shape their wellbeing, including complex changes in a veteran’s sense of identity and experiences of meaning and purpose in life. There is an evidence-synthesis gap regarding how transition affects veterans’ sense of identity, life meaning, purpose and overall wellbeing. A pre-registered scoping review of empirical studies was conducted using the Joanna Briggs Institute Scoping Review methodology. Overall, fifteen studies met the inclusion criteria. Key themes were identified in the evidence relating to the role of identity and life meaning and purpose in veteran wellbeing. The review found that veterans frequently report identity disruption and loss of meaning or purpose in life after transition, and these experiences were associated with lower wellbeing. Strongly held military identity, particularly viewing the military as family, was also associated with poorer wellbeing and adjustment in several studies. The review highlights the complex nature of transition and how it influences a veteran’s sense of identity, life meaning and purpose, and wellbeing. Military service can provide a strong sense of meaning and purpose to life, but transition may require veterans to renegotiate identity and develop new sources of life meaning and purpose. Further research is required to deepen understanding of veterans’ wellbeing needs, thereby informing the development of targeted supports that facilitate a successful transition to civilian life. Full article

In aerospace applications, structural vibration can cause fatigue accumulation and shorten the service life of aircraft. This makes vibration suppression based on Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) piezoelectric composites an important research topic. Considering the asymmetric high-voltage operating range of the M-8557-P1 MFC from −500 V to 1500 V and its capacitive impedance characteristics within the 1000 Hz operating frequency band, this paper designs a laboratory prototype of a high-voltage driver. The prototype adopts a voltage–current dual closed-loop structure and a current-tracking PWM control strategy. Under the tested laboratory conditions, the prototype exhibited a relatively fast transient response and a certain dynamic driving capability for capacitive loads. Based on the laboratory prototype, an auxiliary signal-conditioning module and a digital control module equipped with an active control algorithm were further developed. These modules were integrated with the laboratory prototype to form a high-voltage closed-loop control system for MFC piezoelectric sensing and actuation. Ground laboratory tests were conducted on a high-aspect-ratio unmanned aerial vehicle wing. The experimental results show that, when the dominant vibration frequency is approximately 3.6 Hz, the response converges to a steady state within 4.77 s after control is applied. In the steady state, the root-mean-square displacement decreases from 15.57 mm to 4.28 mm, corresponding to a reduction of 72.52%. This result demonstrates the effectiveness of the active vibration control system under this representative application scenario. Full article

Bereavement in Southern Africa is not a private event. It is rather a shared and communal experience, shaped by rituals, faith, and relationships. In Botswana, mourning is influenced by Botho, a way of life that says, “I am because we are,” where a whole community carries the pain of loss together and takes responsibility for the bereaved. These communal rituals bring comfort, meaning and a sense of belonging, helping families accept death and move towards healing. Yet research also shows a harder side: many mourning practices are gendered and favors male gender. Widows often face long, strict rituals, social isolation and suspicion, rooted in patriarchy and ideas about impurity or danger, which can harm their emotional, social, and economic well-being. This article uses conceptual/theological analysis within pastoral theology and African relational ethics to examine these practices and to explore how churches and caregivers can honor culture while resisting injustice. Drawing on work of Botho African pastoral care and gender, it shows that the same communal systems that care can also exclude and marginalize widows. The article proposes a Gendered Botho Pastoral Care Model that calls Christian communities to sustain communal solidarity and shared mourning, challenge patriarchal and violent widowhood rites, reinterpret rituals in life-giving ways, and build resilience, dignity and agency for widows, so that mourning spaces become places of healing, justice and restored humanity Pastors for widows in Botswana and across Southern Africa. Full article

Spiritual care is central to palliative care. It helps patients nearing the end of life to maintain a sense of meaning, hope, and dignity, while alleviating existential anxiety and emotional distress as they face death. This study analyzes spiritual care practice in palliative care in China. It explores how religion supports spiritual healing by adapting and reconfiguring localized rituals. These adaptations are particularly important where overt religious expression and formal rituals are hard to include in healthcare settings. Based on semi-structured interviews with 14 professional carers in Shanghai, this paper examines how religious resources are translated into spiritual care in the Chinese healthcare context and analyzes the mechanisms behind their therapeutic effects. Research finds, first, that spiritual care in Chinese palliative care is not usually labeled as “spirituality” but is more often called “psychological care.” Second, religion in practice has not disappeared; instead, it has moved from public ritual and belief to the private sphere. Its roles (providing meaning, reconciling relationships, and supporting the transition from life to death) are transformed into care practices such as life reviews, the “Si Dao Ren Sheng” (the “Four Themes of Life”: expressing gratitude, offering an apology, expressing love, and saying farewell), family support, body donation, and end-of-life planning. Third, these therapeutic practices are effective not because of religious dogma, sacred stories, or explanations of the afterlife, but because they reconnect the patient to the “past–present–future.” Looking to the past, life reviews help patients integrate their narratives and affirm self-worth. In the present, repairing family relationships and expressing emotions help patients feel seen, accompanied, and needed. Looking to the future, end-of-life planning and the assignment of responsibilities give patients some control and peace of mind. Based on the thematic analysis, this paper therefore inductively constructs a “past–present–future” model of meaning-making in Chinese spiritual healing. Drawing on the Chinese cases examined, it offers a theoretical contribution to the global study of spiritual care. Full article

The central objective of this study is to demonstrate the possibility of constructive dialogue between Christianity and Islam through a comparative examination of two concepts closely related to the transmission and expansion of religious faith: mission and da’wah. Although both terms refer fundamentally to the communication of one’s faith to others—and may, therefore, appear to be associated with a logic of competition between religions—each also contains an intrinsic dimension of respect for the other. This dimension becomes particularly evident when their authentic meaning is understood not in terms of coercion or violence, but as a form of witness expressed through one’s way of life. Moreover, these concepts should not be interpreted solely as activities directed toward those outside the religious community. They also function as dynamics addressed to the believing community and to the individual believers themselves, with the purpose of deepening, renewing, and revitalizing faith. In this sense, the Christian notion of first proclamation—understood qualitatively as a renewed encounter with the Gospel—and the Islamic understanding of da’wah directed to the umma as a call to spiritual conversion reveal a significant point of convergence. This shared perspective may, therefore, provide an important foundation for constructive dialogue between the two religious traditions. Full article

Water quality management in large-scale institutional infrastructures faces significant challenges due to the high latency of manual sampling and the energy–connectivity trade-offs in traditional IoT deployments. This paper proposes HydroSense AI, a robust three-tier IoT framework designed for real-time multi-parameter water quality monitoring and predictive analytics. The system integrates a heterogeneous sensing layer (pH, TDS, turbidity, and temperature) with a hybrid communication architecture, utilising Long Range (LoRa) technology for low-power transmission over long ranges (manufacturer-rated for line-of-sight distances of up to 16 km, and validated up to 2 km within a dense campus environment in this study), bridged via an ESP32-based gateway to the cloud. To address the critical issue of energy autonomy in remote sensing nodes, we implement a hardware-synchronised duty-cycling mechanism using a DS3231 Real-Time Clock (RTC), enabling precise deep-sleep scheduling and significantly extending battery operational life. Beyond data acquisition, the framework incorporates AI-driven trend-forecasting and anomaly-detection models to provide early warnings of water degradation through a Telegram-integrated alert system. Experimental validation over an extended deployment period demonstrates high measurement stability, with the forecasting model achieving a one-step (10-min) normalised RMSE of 0.0063 (equivalent to 0.033 pH units) for pH and 0.0298 (17.0 ppm) for TDS on a held-out test partition; a benchmark against persistence and ARIMA baselines is also provided. A complete measured energy decomposition of the deployed node is reported: hardware-synchronised duty cycling reduces the quiescent current to 18.2 μA, and with a 12 s acquisition window at 112 mA on a 10-min cycle, the mean current is 2.26 mA, corresponding to an estimated 46 days of unattended operation on a 2500 mAh cell. Critically, the acquisition window accounts for 99.2% of the per-cycle energy budget and the sleep interval for only 0.8%, so quiescent current—the figure of merit most often reported as evidence of low-power design—is shown not to be the binding constraint for sensor-dominated nodes of this class. The results indicate that the proposed hybrid architecture offers a 99.8% packet delivery ratio for sustainable water management. Full article

Reliable remaining useful life (RUL) estimation is important for the safe and efficient use of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in electric vehicles (EVs) and energy-storage systems. Most data-driven RUL models are trained under controlled laboratory conditions, but their performance can weaken during field operation, where usage, sensing quality, and degradation paths are less predictable. This study proposes a physics-informed laboratory-to-field (L2F) deep learning framework for battery RUL prediction under limited or unavailable target labels. The framework combines three components: a six-channel laboratory cycle representation comprising voltage, current, temperature, cumulative charge throughput, cumulative energy throughput, and voltage derivative; a gated Transformer–Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN) Fusion backbone for modeling long-range and local degradation patterns; and a staged adaptation policy based on paired-view consistency and covariance alignment. The Fusion backbone achieved the lowest held-out XJTU laboratory root mean square error (RMSE) of 46.67, compared with 48.27 for TCN and 48.85 for the Transformer. In the Tsinghua University (Tsinghua) deployment experiment, measured target RUL labels were unavailable after preprocessing and window construction. Therefore, the direct field-side mean absolute error (MAE), RMSE, and coefficient of determination $R^2$ were not computed. The Tsinghua results are interpreted as an unlabeled deployment-credibility and trajectory-regularity assessment, showing operational continuity, finite vehicle-specific predicted trajectories, and reduced local trajectory volatility after staged adaptation. The S2a + S2b policy reduced Fusion RUL volatility from 8.376 to 0.632. In the XJTU laboratory source representation, Integrated Gradients showed that physics-aware channels contributed 30.98% of the attribution mass, increasing from 19.50% in early-life windows to 31.86% in late-life windows. These attributions explain the laboratory six-channel waveform model and are not used as direct evidence of Tsinghua field-feature importance. Full article

In modern Jewish thought in Eastern Europe, the biblical narratives of the Flood (Mabul) and Noah’s Ark took on new symbolic meanings. Although these narratives had long occupied a place in religious interpretation and storytelling, they gained renewed significance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in Yiddish literature and modern Jewish intellectual discourse. This article examines how the Flood transformed from a biblical episode into a modern symbol through which Jewish writers, historians, and synagogue painters conceived of disaster, revolution, exile, and the fragile continuity of communal existence. In Yiddish literature, the Flood became a metaphor for pogroms, political upheaval, and social collapse, expressing a profound sense of historical instability and collective disorientation. By contrast, Noah’s Ark came to symbolize an uncertain refuge whose ability to preserve Jewish life was repeatedly questioned. In synagogue painting, however, representations of Noah’s Ark and the Flood softened these catastrophic meanings, transforming them into images of suspended survival and fragile continuity amidst ongoing historical turmoil. By examining literary and visual responses together, this article argues that modern Jewish culture in Eastern Europe reinterpreted biblical imagery as a means of coping with uncertainty, vulnerability, and the ongoing struggle for communal survival. Full article

Drawing on social acceleration theory, this study examines how two perceived dimensions of acceleration in working life—technological acceleration and acceleration of social change—are associated with sense of agency and meaning in life among employed young adults in contemporary China. These two dimensions capture perceived increases in communication and information flow, as well as changing knowledge and skill demands in working life. Empirical evidence remains limited on how these perceived acceleration experiences are associated with agency and meaning in life, particularly across urban and rural contexts. Using data from the 2024–2025 Chinese Social Mentality Survey, we analyzed 5178 employed adults (aged 18–45). Structural equation modeling and multi-group analyses were used to examine the associations among technological acceleration, acceleration of social change, sense of agency, and meaning in life. The results showed that both measured acceleration dimensions were positively associated with presence of meaning and search for meaning, and these associations were partially statistically mediated by sense of agency. Notably, acceleration of social change shows stronger associations with sense of agency and search for meaning among rural participants, whereas sense of agency is more strongly associated with presence of meaning among urban participants. These findings suggest that the two measured dimensions of perceived acceleration in working life are not necessarily associated with lower meaning in life among employed young adults. Instead, they may be linked to meaning in life partly through sense of agency, highlighting the importance of considering urban–rural contexts. Full article