Search Results (2,098)

Myoglobin (Mb), a heme-containing protein, plays crucial roles in storing and transporting oxygen in muscle cells. Various Mb structures have been extensively determined using conventional cryogenic crystallography, providing valuable information for understanding the molecular mechanisms of the protein. However, this approach has limitations attributable to cryogenic temperatures and radiation damage. Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) using X-ray free-electron lasers is an emerging technique that enables the determination of biologically relevant room-temperature structures without causing radiation damage. In this study, we assessed the crystallization, collection, and processing of SFX diffraction data of Mb from equine skeletal muscle. Needle- and needle cluster-shaped Mb crystals were obtained using the microbatch method. Fixed-target SFX data collection was performed at the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory X-ray Free Electron Laser, yielding 1389 indexed diffraction patterns. The phase problem was solved by molecular replacement. The preliminary Mb structure determined at 2.3-Å resolution in this study exhibited subtle structural differences in the heme environment compared with previously reported Mb structures determined by SFX. These results both confirm the feasibility of myoglobin SFX experiments and establish a foundation for future time-resolved studies aiming to visualize ligand binding and oxygen transport. Full article

This study presents the development, construction, and implementation of a portable meteorological station. An ESP8266 microcontroller was used as the control system. Temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure were measured. The UV index, thermal sensation, dew point, altitude above sea level, and air density were measured indirectly. An interface was created to retrieve the data in real time via the internet. The information can also be stored on a micro-SD memory device. The first results were collected over a period of 29 days. The data is sampled every 10 s. The data was compared with that of a commercial meteorological station and yielded similar results. The design of the meteorological station will be further improved by adding new measurement variables and installing a few portable stations in different regions of the state. Full article

Accidental opioid overdose and Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) represent major forms of preventable mortality, often involving sudden-onset catastrophic events that could be survivable with rapid detection and intervention. The current physiological monitoring technologies are potentially applicable, but face challenges, including complex setups, poor patient compliance, high costs, and uncertainty about community-based use. Paradoxically, simple clinical observation in supervised injection facilities has proven highly effective, suggesting observable changes in central body motion may be sufficient to detect life-threatening events. We describe a novel wearable biosensor for continuous central body motion monitoring, offering a potential early warning system for life-threatening events. The biosensor incorporates a low-power, triaxial MEMS accelerometer within a discreet, chest-worn device, enabling long-term monitoring with minimal user burden. Two system architectures are described: stored data for retrospective analysis/research, and an in-development system for real-time overdose detection and response. Early user research highlights the importance of accuracy, discretion, and trust for adoption among people who use opioids. The initial clinical data collection, including the OD-SEEN study, demonstrates feasibility for capturing motion data during real-world opioid use. This technology represents a promising advancement in non-invasive monitoring, with potential to improve the outcomes for at-risk populations with multiple health conditions. Full article

Hollow heart, and other crop defects, can be devastating to farmers. Hollow heart is not a disease but a physiological disorder affected by temperature, soil moisture, plant density, and other factors. These defects can cause substantial annual losses for farmers. Currently, potatoes are shipped and inspected from producers to shipping points and markets. At these facilities, samples are inspected for defects. Detection of hollow heart consists of halving potatoes and visually inspecting for defects. The defect size is compared to USDA hollow heart classification charts for acceptance or rejection. An automatic, non-destructive system to identify hollow heart has the potential to improve quality. Two methods have been developed to collect data for such a system: acoustic signal capture and visual/vibration signal capture. Data is collected and stored for one potato at a time. The procedure includes the collection of weight, proportional size, and volume, as well as the generation of an acoustic sound signal through a drop test and a motion signal captured through a vision system. To simulate hollow heart, potatoes are cored and retested by producing a new set of data. Each potato is manually cut and inspected for true hollow heart. The generated data includes over 1000 samples, each comprising proportional volume, weight, proportional size, motion, and acoustic data. Such a dataset does not exist in the current literature and can serve for the development of machine learning algorithms to detect hollow heart nondestructively. In this paper, the data is also analyzed in terms of its statistical properties, as applied for possible feature engineering in machine learning. Full article

In this study, a carbon felt (CF)-based ternary composite anode was developed through the decoration of nickel cobaltite (NiCo₂O₄) nano-needles and subsequent in situ electropolymerization of polypyrrole (PPy). The structural and electrochemical properties of the modified electrodes were systematically characterized. The CF/NiCo₂O₄/PPy anode demonstrated significantly enhanced bioelectrochemical activity, achieving a peak current density of 96.0 A/m² and a steady-state current density of 28.9 A/m², which were 4.85 and 5.90 times higher than those of bare carbon felt, respectively. Geobacteriaceae is a type of electrogenic bacteria. It was hardly detected on the bare CF substrate; however, in the ternary CF/NiCo2O4/PPy electrode, the relative abundance of Geobacteriaceae significantly increased to 43%. Moreover, the composite electrode exhibited superior charge storage performance, with a total charge (Q_t) of 32,509.0 C/m² and a stored charge (Q_s) of 3609.0 C/m² measured under a 1000 s charging/discharging period. The MFC configured with the CF/NiCo₂O₄/PPy anode reached a maximum power density of 1901.25 mW/m² at an external resistance of 200 Ω, nearly six times that of the unmodified CF-based MFC. These improvements are attributed to the synergistic interaction between the pseudocapacitive NiCo₂O₄ and conductive PPy, which collectively facilitate electron transfer, promote microbial colonization, and enhance interfacial redox kinetics. This work provides an effective strategy for designing high-performance MFC electrodes with dual functionality in energy storage and power delivery. Full article

The neuropeptide calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), especially α-CGRP, is central in migraine pathophysiology. Although CGRP is a therapeutic target and potential biomarker, inconsistencies in measurement procedures need to be further studied for reliable results. This study aims to analyze factors influencing plasma CGRP measurement. Chronic migraine (CM) patients were recruited in our Headache Unit. Blood samples were collected before and during treatment with CGRP monoclonal antibodies, processed and stored. Levels of CGRP were measured with isoform-specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests. Statistical tests were used to assess concentration changes and group differences. The addition of protease inhibitors (PIs) to plasma samples significantly increased α-CGRP level detection, with a smaller effect on β-CGRP. No correlation was found between the α- and β-CGRP levels in plasma. The plasma-PI samples showed higher CGRP concentrations than in serum. The α-CGRP levels decreased during treatment while the β-CGRP levels remained stable. α-CGRP and age correlated negatively, but no sex-related differences were observed either for α- or β-CGRP. PI improved CGRP detection in plasma. The α-CGRP levels, which were influenced by age, decreased with specific treatment, suggesting its potential role as a biomarker. In contrast, β-CGRP remained stable, suggesting independent regulation of both isoforms. Full article

The lion’s paw scallop (Nodipecten subnodosus) is a commercially valuable pectinid whose postharvest quality strongly depends on storage and handling conditions. This study investigated the combined effects of seasonality, postmortem time, and storage temperature on energy metabolism in the adductor muscle, focusing on metabolites associated with rigor mortis and freshness. Adult scallops (~10 cm shell height) were harvested in four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter), transported under commercial conditions for approximately 2 h, and stored at 0, 5, and 10 °C for 48 h. Muscle samples were collected every 8 h and analyzed for ATP, ADP, AMP, glycogen, arginine phosphate (Arg-P), and free arginine using HPLC and enzymatic assays. In addition, the adenylate energy charge (AEC) was determined in freshly harvested and post-transport specimens. Initial ATP concentrations ranged from 4.2 to 6.5 µmol/g, with higher levels in winter, while Arg-P varied from 3.1 to 4.8 µmol/g. Seasonality significantly influenced all metabolites except arginine, and transport markedly reduced ATP and AEC, particularly in spring and autumn. Storage at 0 °C resulted in rapid ATP depletion (<1.0 µmol/g within 12 h) and AMP accumulation (>3.0 µmol/g), indicating accelerated energy collapse. In contrast, scallops stored at 5 and 10 °C maintained ATP levels above 2.5 µmol/g for up to 24 h, delaying rigor mortis, reducing postmortem contraction, and preserving muscle texture and appearance. Overall, these findings demonstrate that moderate refrigeration represents a physiologically suitable and technologically advantageous strategy to optimize scallop postharvest handling, extend shelf life, and enhance product quality for the fresh seafood market. Full article

The integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into public healthcare enables continuous monitoring and sustainable health management. However, conventional frameworks often depend on transmitting and storing raw personal data on centralized servers, posing challenges related to privacy, security, ethical compliance, and long-term sustainability. This study proposes a privacy-preserving framework that avoids the exposure of true health-related data. Sensor nodes encrypt collected measurements and collaborate with a secure computation core to evaluate health indicators under homomorphic encryption, maintaining confidentiality. For example, the system can determine whether a patient’s heart rate within a monitoring window falls inside clinically recommended thresholds, while the framework remains general enough to support a wide range of encrypted computations. A compliance verification client generates zero-knowledge range proofs, allowing external parties to verify whether health indicators meet predefined conditions without accessing actual values. Simulation results confirm the correctness of encrypted computation, controllability of threshold-based compliance judgments, and resistance to inference attacks. The proposed framework provides a practical solution for secure, auditable, and sustainable real-time health assessment in IoT-enabled public healthcare systems. Full article

Background: Cryopreservation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) at −80 °C using uncontrolled-rate freezing is frequently employed in resource-constrained settings, yet concerns remain regarding long-term viability and clinical efficacy. Reliable post-thaw assessment is essential to ensure graft quality and engraftment success. Methods: This single-center, retrospective study evaluated 72 cryopreserved stem cell products from 25 patients stored at −80 °C for a median of 868 days. Viability was assessed using both acridine orange (AO) staining and 7-AAD (7-aminoactinomycin D) flow cytometry at three time points: collection (T0), pre-infusion (T1), and delayed post-thaw evaluation (T2). Associations between viability loss, storage duration, and clinical engraftment outcomes were analyzed. Results: Median post-thaw viability remained high (94.8%) despite a moderate time-dependent decline (~1.02% per 100 days; R² = 0.283, p < 0.001). Mean viability loss at T2 was 9.2% (AO) and 6.6% (flow cytometry). AO demonstrated greater sensitivity to delayed degradation, with a significant difference between methods (p < 0.001). Engraftment kinetics were preserved in most patients, with neutrophil and platelet recovery primarily influenced by disease type rather than product integrity. Notably, storage duration and donor age were not significantly associated with engraftment outcomes or CD34⁺ cell dose. Conclusions: Long-term cryopreservation at −80 °C maintains HSC viability sufficient for durable engraftment, despite gradual decline. While transplant outcomes are primarily dictated by disease biology and remission status, AO staining provides enhanced sensitivity for detecting delayed cellular damage. Notably, our viability-loss model offers a practical framework for predicting product quality, potentially supporting graft selection and clinical decision-making in real-world, resource-constrained transplant settings. Full article

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes additional demands and obligations on service providers that handle and process personal data. In this paper, we examine how advanced cryptographic techniques can be employed to develop a privacy-preserving solution for ensuring GDPR compliance in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) systems. The primary objective is to ensure that sensitive data from IIoT devices is encrypted and accessible only to authorized entities, in accordance with Article 32 of the GDPR. The proposed system combines Decentralized Attribute-Based Encryption (DABE) with smart contracts on a blockchain to create a decentralized way of managing access to IIoT systems. The proposed system is used in an IIoT use case where industrial sensors collect operational data that is encrypted according to DABE. The encrypted data is stored in the IPFS decentralized storage system. The access policy and IPFS hash are stored in the blockchain’s smart contracts, allowing only authorized and compliant entities to retrieve the data based on matching attributes. This decentralized system ensures that information is stored encrypted and secure until it is retrieved by legitimate entities, whose access rights are automatically enforced by smart contracts. The implementation and evaluation of the proposed system have been analyzed and discussed, showing the promising achievement of the proposed system. Full article

Recent research has focused on energy recovery and storage technologies. One of the materials allowing the recovery of dissipated energy is the piezoelectric material (PE). These functional materials perform reversible energy conversion, transforming electrical energy into mechanical and vice versa. In this study, we investigate the recovery of vibratory energy in vehicle suspension systems—energy traditionally dissipated by conventional shock absorbers—using piezoelectric materials to capture this wasted energy and redirect it to the vehicle’s auxiliary power supply network. We propose an integrated electromechanical model incorporating piezoelectric actuators in parallel with the suspension mechanism. The collected energy is processed and stored for later use in powering accessories such as windows and mirrors. The idea is to integrate renewable energy sources to optimize the performance of the vehicle. We proposed a Multiphysics model of the system under a software used to this type of modeling (Simcenter AMESim v1610_student). The simulation results of the system and its various sub-systems are presented for studying the piezo-actuator response to reduce consumption and increase energy performance in a vehicle. These findings will undergo experimental validation in the project’s subsequent phase. Full article

Egg quality plays a crucial role in determining shelf life, consumer acceptability, and economic value in commercial egg production systems. This study evaluated the effects of season, storage temperature, and duration on internal and external egg quality. A total of 256 freshly laid eggs were collected during winter and spring, and stored at four temperatures (0 °C, 10 °C, 20 °C, and 30 °C) for 0, 10, 20, and 30 days. The experimental design was a 2 × 4 × 4 factorial design (season × temperature × duration), with 128 eggs collected each in both seasons. Each treatment combination included 8 eggs (2 eggs × 4 replicates). External quality (egg weight and shell thickness) and internal quality (yolk and albumen height, width, pH, Haugh units, and yolk colour) parameters were evaluated at 10-day intervals. Egg weight significantly decreased (p < 0.05) from 67.67 g on Day 0 to 59.39 g on Day 30. Similarly, shell thickness decreased (p < 0.05) from 40.00 mm to 36.00 mm over the same period. Yolk pH increased from 6.68 to 7.16 (p < 0.05), and albumen pH rose (p < 0.05) from 7.30 to 7.60, particularly at higher storage temperatures (20 °C and 30 °C). Yolk and albumen heights decreased significantly (p < 0.05), from 2.03 cm to 1.23 cm and 6.65 cm to 3.88 cm, respectively, indicating structural degradation. Yolk width increased from 2.58 cm to 3.49 cm (p > 0.05), and albumen width expanded (p < 0.05) from 5.33 cm to 9.21 cm, with a notably greater spread observed at 30 °C (14.68 cm). Haugh unit values declined markedly from 98.46 to 60.00 over 30 days (p < 0.05), indicating a significant deterioration in internal egg quality. Seasonal effects were also evident: spring eggs had greater shell thickness (40.60 mm vs. 38.45 mm in winter; p = 0.01) and brighter yolk colour, whereas winter eggs had higher yolk pH values (6.47 vs. 6.28; p = 0.009), and superior yolk and albumen heights. These findings indicate that storage beyond 10 days, particularly above 20 °C, compromises egg quality and that seasonality significantly affects multiple quality parameters. Cold storage and seasonally optimized management strategies are recommended to preserve egg integrity and marketability in commercial poultry systems. Full article

The primary objective of this study is to assess the techno-economic feasibility of an innovative solar energy generation system with a rainwater collection feature to generate electrical energy and meet irrigation needs in agriculture. The proposed system is designed for an agricultural area (Gonyeli, North Cyprus) with high solar potential and limited rainfall. In the present study, global rainfall datasets are utilized to assess the potential of rainwater harvesting at the selected site. Due to the lack of the measured rainfall data at the selected site, the accuracy of rainfall of nine global reanalysis and analysis datasets (CHIRPS, CFSR, ERA5-LAND, ERA5, ERA5-AG, MERRA2, NOAA CPC CMORPH, NOAA CPC DAILY GLOBAL, and TerraClimate) are evaluated by using data from ground-based observations collected from the Meteorological Department located in Lefkoşa, Northern Cyprus from 1981 to 2023. The results demonstrate that ERA5 outperformed the other datasets, yielding a high R-squared value along with a low mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE). Based on the best dataset, the potential of the rainwater harvesting system is estimated by analyzing the monthly and seasonal rainfall patterns utilizing 65 different probability distribution functions for the first time. Three goodness-of-fit tests are utilized to identify the best-fit probability distribution. The results show that the Johnson and Wakeby SB distributions outperform the other models in terms of fitting accuracy. Additionally, the results indicate that the rainwater harvesting system could supply between 31% and 38% of the building’s annual irrigation water demand (204 m³/year) based on average daily rainfall and between 285% and 346% based on maximum daily rainfall. Accordingly, the system might be able to collect a lot more water than is needed for irrigation, possibly producing an excess that could be stored for non-potable uses during periods of heavy rainfall. Furthermore, the techno-economic feasibility of the proposed system is evaluated using RETScreen software (version 9.1, 2023). The results show that household energy needs can be met by the proposed photovoltaic system, and the excess energy is transferred to the grid. Furthermore, the cash flow indicates that the investor can expect a return on investment from the proposed PV system within 2.4 years. Consequently, the findings demonstrate the significance of this system for promoting resource sustainability and climate change adaptation. Besides, the developed system can also help reduce environmental impact and enhance resilience in areas that rely on water and electricity. Full article

This submission is focused on the implementation of a system that acquires data from various types of sensors and securely stores them after encryption on a chip with a reconfigurable architecture. The system has the unique capability of encrypting the input data with a single secret cryptographic key, which is stored only inside the hardware of the system itself, so the key remains unrecognizable upon completion of the system synthesis for any unauthorized user. Being stored as a part of the whole system architecture, the cryptographic key cannot be attained. It is not stored separately on the system RAM or any other supported memory, making the collected data fully protected. The reported work shows a data acquisition system which measures temperature with a high level of precision, transforms it to degrees Celsius, stores the collected data, and transfers them via serial interface when requested. Before storage, the data are encrypted with a 256-bit key, applying the AES algorithm. The data which are stored in the system memory and sent as UART packets towards the main computer do not include the cryptographic key in the data stream, so it is impossible for it to be retrieved from them. We show the flexibility of such kinds of data acquisition systems for sensing different types of signals, emphasizing secure storage and transferring, including data from meteorological sensors or highly confidential or biometrical data. Full article

This paper presents the design and implementation of a blockchain-secured system for monitoring driver sobriety and real-time geolocation. The proposed platform integrates a Modular Sensor Battery (MSB) for detecting alcohol concentration in exhaled air, a centralized Data Collection Platform (DC Platform) for real-time data visualization and storage, and a complementary physiological monitoring device—the IoT Fit-Bit Smart Band (IFSB)—which captures heart rate and blood oxygen saturation as alternative indicators when breath-based sensing may be compromised. The MSB, the DC Platform, integration with the IoT FitBit Smart Band, and the blockchain-based data management architecture represent the authors’ direct contribution to both the conceptual design and technical implementation. These elements are introduced as part of a unified, fully integrated system designed to enable non-invasive sobriety monitoring and secure data integrity in vehicular contexts. To ensure data authenticity, a custom Ethereum smart contract stores cryptographic hashes of sensor readings, enabling decentralized, tamper-evident verification without exposing sensitive medical information. The system was validated in a controlled experimental environment, confirming its operational robustness and demonstrating its potential to improve road safety through secure, real-time sobriety detection and geolocation tracking. Full article