Search Results (683)

Vanillin (4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde) is widely recognized for its aromatic flavor and established pharmacological properties, including antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer effects. While these biological activities underpin its therapeutic potential, recent advances have expanded the application of vanillin into the field of biomaterials. In particular, vanillin’s unique chemical structure enables its use as a multifunctional building block for the development of innovative hydrogels with dynamic covalent bonding, injectability, and self-healing capabilities. Vanillin-based hydrogels have demonstrated promising applications in wound healing, drug delivery, tissue engineering, and antimicrobial platforms, combining structural support with intrinsic bioactivity. These hydrogels benefit from vanillin’s biocompatibility and functional versatility, enhancing mechanical properties and therapeutic efficacy. This review provides an overview of vanillin’s pharmacological effects, with a primary focus on the synthesis, properties, and biomedical applications of vanillin-derived hydrogels. By highlighting recent material innovations and their translational potential, we aim to position vanillin as a valuable natural compound bridging bioactivity and biomaterial science for future clinical and therapeutic advancements. Full article

Temperature-responsive hydrogels are sophisticated stimuli-responsive biomaterials that undergo rapid, reversible sol–gel phase transitions in response to subtle thermal stimuli, most notably around physiological temperature. This inherent thermosensitivity enables non-invasive, precise spatiotemporal control of material properties and bioactive payload release, rendering them highly promising for advanced biomedical applications. This review critically surveys recent advances in the design, synthesis, and translational potential of thermo-responsive hydrogels, emphasizing nanoscale and hybrid architectures optimized for superior tunability and biological performance. Foundational systems remain dominated by poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm), which exhibits a sharp lower critical solution temperature near 32 °C, alongside Pluronic/Poloxamer triblock copolymers and thermosensitive cellulose derivatives. Contemporary developments increasingly exploit biohybrid and nanocomposite strategies that incorporate natural polymers such as chitosan, gelatin, or hyaluronic acid with synthetic thermo-responsive segments, yielding materials with markedly enhanced mechanical robustness, biocompatibility, and physiologically relevant transition behavior. Cross-linking methodologies—encompassing covalent chemical approaches, dynamic physical interactions, and radiation-induced polymerization are rigorously assessed for their effects on network topology, swelling/deswelling kinetics, pore structure, and degradation characteristics. Prominent applications include on-demand drug and gene delivery, injectable in situ gelling systems, three-dimensional matrices for cell encapsulation and organoid culture, tissue engineering scaffolds, self-healing wound dressings, and responsive biosensing platforms. The integration of multi-stimuli orthogonality, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence-guided materials discovery is anticipated to deliver fully programmable, patient-specific hydrogels, establishing them as pivotal enabling technologies in precision and regenerative medicine. Full article

Injectable hydrogels (IHs) have gained considerable interest in biomedical and aesthetic applications due to their minimally invasive delivery, selective localization, and sustained release of bioactive agents. They exhibit flowability during administration and undergo in situ gelation under physiological conditions. These behaviors are influenced by their tunable structural, physical, mechanical, and viscoelastic properties, modulating performance. Rheological parameters, including viscosity (η), storage modulus (G′), loss modulus (G″), and yield stress (τ_y) of IHs with time (t), shear rate ($\stackrel{·}{\gamma }$), and frequency (f), explaining their shear thinning, thixotropy, viscoelasticity, and gelatin kinetics, serve as key quantitative indicators of their injectability, self-healing capability, and structural and mechanical stability. The rheological characteristics reflect molecular interactions and crosslinking mechanisms within IH networks, thereby linking formulation to provide overall performance, including injectability, biodegradability, and controlled release. This review summarizes recent advances in IHs for diverse applications, with a primary focus on their rheological properties. It also briefly addresses their composition, intermolecular interactions, and correlated function and performance. The applications discussed include hemostatic and wound dressings, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine scaffolds, drug delivery systems, reconstructive and aesthetic materials, and functional bioinks for 3D printing. Overall, this review demonstrates that rheological characterization provides an essential framework for the rational engineering of next-generation IH systems. Full article

Polymeric coatings play a pivotal role in enhancing the durability, functionality, and sustainability of structural materials exposed to harsh environmental conditions. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have transformed the development, optimization, and evaluation of these coatings by enabling data-driven material discovery, predictive performance modeling, and autonomous inspection. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview on AI-driven polymeric coating strategies for structural applications, emphasizing the integration of machine learning, computer vision, and multi-physics simulations into traditional materials engineering frameworks. The discussion encompasses AI-assisted material selection methods for polymers, fillers, and surface modifiers; predictive models for corrosion, fatigue, and degradation; and intelligent evaluation systems using digital imaging, sensor fusion, and data analytics. Case studies highlight emerging trends such as self-healing, smart, and sustainable coatings that leverage AI to balance mechanical performance, environmental resistance, and carbon footprint. The review concludes with identifying current challenges—including data scarcity, model interpretability, and cross-domain integration—and proposes future research directions toward explainable, autonomous, and circular coating design pipelines. Full article

This paper addresses the Sensor Deployment Optimization Problem (SDOP) by presenting a novel hybrid metaheuristic algorithm designed to create resilient and self-healing wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We introduce the Dynamic Multi-Pack Adaptive Grey Wolf Optimizer (DMPA–GWO++), which effectively balances network performance with durability against sensor failures. The core innovation is a hybrid structure that combines multi-pack GWO exploration with PSO-style local exploitation and memory, avoiding local optima while converging fast. This combination allows the algorithm to avoid local optima while rapidly converging on highly efficient solutions. A multi-objective fitness function explicitly accounts for network robustness by integrating a Monte Carlo simulation framework, pre-conditioning deployment layouts to withstand realistic sensor dropouts. Post-failure recovery is enhanced through an auto-suggest relay placement mechanism that strategically adds nodes to repair connectivity gaps. The approach is validated through the development of reliable sensor layouts that maintain high coverage and connectivity under diverse failure scenarios, demonstrating its utility for real-world WSN applications. Full article

Eutectogels, obtained from the combination of deep eutectic systems (DESs) or natural deep eutectic systems (NADESs) with polymers, represent a new class of sustainable soft materials. Combining the tunable properties of DESs, such as low volatility, ionic conductivity, and biocompatibility, with the structural integrity of gels, these materials can be designed to have improved mechanical flexibility, self-healing ability, and environmental stability. Recent research focused on understanding how the composition of DESs, polymer type, or crosslinking mechanisms influence the physicochemical behavior and performance of eutectogels. Advances in this field enabled their use in diverse biotechnological applications, particularly in drug delivery, transdermal systems, wound healing, and tissue engineering, where they demonstrate improved biofunctionality and adaptability compared to traditional hydrogels. Nevertheless, challenges related to scalability, reproducibility, long-term stability, and toxicity must be addressed to reach their full potential. Progress in this area relies on multidisciplinary efforts between green chemistry, materials science, and bioengineering. Overcoming these hurdles could allow eutectogels to evolve from academic concepts into a new generation of sustainable, high-performance soft materials with broad applicability in the biotechnology field. Full article

The prebiological anomeric selectivity of ribonucleosides is a key phenomenon in the understanding of the RNA world hypothesis and the origin of life. While each ribonucleoside can have two anomers (α or β), ribonucleosides naturally occur in the β form, while α anomers are extremely rare. Guanosine, a canonical ribonucleoside, binds to borate and self-assembles into G4-quartets, enabling the formation of borate–guanosine hydrogels. These macrostructures, exhibiting elevated thermal robustness and self-healing properties, have been suggested as plausible frameworks for the syntheses of prebiological molecules. Moreover, their external layers could have prevented degradation of compounds by aggressive primitive radiation and reduced molecular dispersion. Herein it is proposed that anomeric selectivity may have occurred due to the different 3D organization and stereochemical environment formed by each borate–guanosine anomer and subsequent formation of borate–guanosine hydrogels. DFT was applied to the optimization of α and β anomeric structures in four steps, from borate–guanosine diesters to G4 structures. The results obtained suggest that β-syn-guanosine (the most stable structure) is the only anomer that forms a planar G4-quartet with borate, capable of self-assembling into a hydrogel. Given the properties of borate–guanosine hydrogels, this could explain why β-guanosine is currently the sole anomer present in living organisms. Full article

Silicon is widely recognized as a next-generation anode owing to its exceptional theoretical capacity, yet its practical deployment in lithium-ion batteries is constrained by severe volume expansion, particle fracture, loss of electrical percolation, and solid electrolyte interphase layer instability. Polymer-based strategies have emerged as accessible solutions to engineer extensive volume changes and interfacial compatibility, while preserving pathways for charge transport. Viscoelastic polymer binders dissipate stress, catechol-inspired chemistries strengthen adhesion and tailor interphases, and conductive polymers can function simultaneously as binder, electronic additive, and artificial SEI. This review describes these approaches through a structure–process–performance perspective, emphasizing practically relevant metrics, such as initial capacity, initial Coulombic efficiency, and long-term cycling stability. We organize the main section into (i) dopamine-derived interfacial engineering, (ii) self-healing three-dimensional network binders, and (iii) conductive-polymer-based designs. In the last section, we articulate the functional requirements of polymers in silicon anodes, outline the ideal structural designs, and provide forward-looking avenues for future lithium-ion battery anode research. Full article

A special class of complex adaptive systems—biological and social—thrive not by passively accumulating patterns, but by engineering coherence, i.e., the deliberate alignment of prior knowledge, real-time updates, and teleonomic purposes. By contrast, today’s AI stacks—Large Language Models (LLMs) wrapped in agentic toolchains—remain rooted in a Turing-paradigm architecture: statistical world models (opaque weights) bolted onto brittle, imperative workflows. They excel at pattern completion, but they externalize governance, memory, and purpose, thereby accumulating coherence debt—a structural fragility manifested as hallucinations, shallow and siloed memory, ad hoc guardrails, and costly human oversight. The shortcoming of current AI relative to human-like intelligence is therefore less about raw performance or scaling, and more about an architectural limitation: knowledge is treated as an after-the-fact annotation on computation, rather than as an organizing substrate that shapes computation. This paper introduces Mindful Machines, a computational paradigm that operationalizes coherence as an architectural property rather than an emergent afterthought. A Mindful Machine is specified by a Digital Genome (encoding purposes, constraints, and knowledge structures) and orchestrated by an Autopoietic and Meta-Cognitive Operating System (AMOS) that runs a continuous Discover–Reflect–Apply–Share (D-R-A-S) loop. Instead of a static model embedded in a one-shot ML pipeline or deep learning neural network, the architecture separates (1) a structural knowledge layer (Digital Genome and knowledge graphs), (2) an autopoietic control plane (health checks, rollback, and self-repair), and (3) meta-cognitive governance (critique-then-commit gates, audit trails, and policy enforcement). We validate this approach on the classic Credit Default Prediction problem by comparing a traditional, static Logistic Regression pipeline (monolithic training, fixed features, external scripting for deployment) with a distributed Mindful Machine implementation whose components can reconfigure logic, update rules, and migrate workloads at runtime. The Mindful Machine not only matches the predictive task, but also achieves autopoiesis (self-healing services and live schema evolution), explainability (causal, event-driven audit trails), and dynamic adaptation (real-time logic and threshold switching driven by knowledge constraints), thereby reducing the coherence debt that characterizes contemporary ML- and LLM-centric AI architectures. The case study demonstrates “a hybrid, runtime-switchable combination of machine learning and rule-based simulation, orchestrated by AMOS under knowledge and policy constraints”. Full article

Current research on Daoist neidan (內丹, Internal Alchemy) has primarily focused on its philosophical frameworks, practical methods, and therapeutic benefits; however, systematic inquiry into the mechanisms of failure during practice remains limited. This study investigates the long-neglected yet pivotal phenomenon of zouhuo rumo (走火入魔, fire deviation and entry into demonic states) within Daoist cultivation, especially as it emerges in the context of dual cultivation of xing and ming (性命雙修). Through textual and hermeneutical analysis, this study traces the historical evolution, semantic transformation, and causal structure of the term, revealing its dual function as both a technical deviation and a religious warning. Findings indicate that zouhuo rumo arises from the interplay of impure self-refinement, loss of mental focus, improper fire phases (火候), and illusory disturbances, reflecting a profound psychosomatic imbalance rooted in the practitioner’s mind-nature (心性). Daoism interprets this state as mokao (魔考, demonic trials in Daoist cultivation), a transformative mechanism designed to refine inner alignment. On this basis, this study proposes a three-stage healing pathway—Spirit Preservation and Breath Stabilization (存神定息), Inner Vision and Self-Reflection (內觀返照), and Transformation of Form and Refinement of Essence (化形改質)—and constructs a Daoist cultural healing model that integrates moral cultivation, breath regulation, and introspection. This model provides a non-pathologizing cultural framework for enhancing psychological resilience, reconstructing meaning, and addressing contemporary spiritual and psychological crises. Full article

Cracks can reduce the durability of concrete structures. To mitigate the damage caused, self-healing technologies using bacteria and cement-based materials can be utilized. For self-healing, bacteria contained within the matrix are advantageous because they can heal cracks upon introducing oxygen and water under favorable conditions. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that Lysinibacillus fusiformis isolated from waste concrete induces calcite precipitation in a cement-based material. Replacing 5–20% of the mixing water with the bacterial solution increased mortar flow, and the initial compressive strength increased with the bacterial content. After long-term aging, the compressive strength of the sample with 20% bacterial solution was ~45.6 MPa, the highest among all samples. In terms of durability, the bacterial solution reduced the carbonation depth compared with that of a control sample without added bacteria, and the 20% sample showed 53% higher carbonation resistance than the control. In terms of the self-healing performance, the bacteria-loaded samples showed higher compressive strength recovery rates than the control sample, with the 20% sample showing the highest rate of approximately 131%. Therefore, L. fusiformis derived from waste concrete is a promising candidate bacterium for enhancing the durability and self-healing efficiency of cement composites. Full article

Ionomers are promising materials because ionic interactions and their reversible clustering provide sensitivity to stimuli and facilitate energy dissipation, polymer miscibility, and ion transport. The existence of a wide variety of interacting ionic groups and their associated macromolecular structures provides the basis for considering the supramolecular organization of ionic polymeric materials as a factor determining the emergence of specific properties. The main structural elements of ionomers are ionic clusters, and the properties of ionomers are determined by their sizes and size distribution. Ionomers are attractive for use in composites, actuators, coatings, dyed textiles, adhesives, shape-memory and self-healing materials, water purification membranes, and ion-exchange membranes for fuel cells and batteries. This paper presents a review of the macromolecular structure and supramolecular organization of ionomers and their properties, depending on the basis of their ionic functionalization. The ionic functions of ionomers are determined primarily by the type of ion (cations or anions) that serves as the basis for their functionalization. Ionomers containing both anionic and cationic pendant ions are considered, with attention given to the influence of the nature of the counterions used on the properties of ionomers. Full article

Succinoglycan (SG), a rhizobial exopolysaccharide produced by Sinorhizobium meliloti, has attracted increasing attention as a sustainable biomaterial due to its unique molecular structure and versatile physicochemical properties. Over the past decade, an expanding number of studies have explored SG in biomedical, pharmaceutical, and materials-science contexts; however, a comprehensive understanding linking its biosynthetic mechanisms, structural features, chemical modifications, and functional performances has not yet been systematically summarized. This review therefore aims to bridge this gap by providing an integrated overview of recent advances in SG research from biosynthesis and molecular design to emerging multifunctional applications, while highlighting the structure, property, and function correlations that underpin its material performance. This review summarizes recent advances in SG biosynthesis, structural characterization, chemical modification, and multifunctional applications. Progress in oxidation, succinylation, and phenolic grafting has yielded derivatives with remarkably enhanced rheological stability, antioxidant capacity, antibacterial activity, and multi-stimuli responsiveness. These developments have supported the creation of biodegradable and bioactive smart films possessing superior barrier, mechanical, and optical properties, thereby extending their potential use in bio-medical and biotechnological applications such as food packaging and wound dressings. In parallel, SG-based hydrogels exhibit self-healing, adhesive, and injectable characteristics with tunable multi-stimuli responsiveness, offering innovative platforms for con-trolled drug delivery and tissue engineering. Despite these advances, industrial translation remains hindered by challenges including the need for scalable fermentation, reproducible quality control, and standardized modification protocols to ensure batch-to-batch consistency. Overall, the structural tunability and multifunctionality of SG highlight its promise as a next-generation platform for polysaccharide-based biomaterials. Full article

Conflict-related sexual violence against men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has profound psychological, emotional, relational, and spiritual consequences. Nevertheless, male survivors can achieve post-traumatic growth through processes that rebuild fractured identities, foster resilience, and cultivate renewed purpose. This article adopts a comparative framework by combining (a) original Canadian qualitative data—an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) study entitled “Silent No More: Surviving Male Rape,” conducted with survivors and trauma-informed practitioners—and (b) a phenomenologically informed synthesis of peer-reviewed studies, NGO/UN reports, and survivor testimonies from the DRC. The Canadian component focuses on the journey from victimhood to survivorship, demonstrating how breaking silence, being believed, and receiving compassionate, trauma-informed care foster meaning-making, resilience, and post-traumatic growth. The DRC component foregrounds culturally rooted pathways to recovery—especially communal and music-based practices—within conflict-affected settings. Across contexts, we identify convergent themes: beauty as a relational and embodied experience that regulates affect and restores safety; creative practices (music, visual arts, storytelling, ritual, and nature-based activity) as vehicles for dignity, connection, and purpose; and self-transcendent emotions (awe, gratitude, and wonder) that support the transition from threat to contemplation and agency. Divergences reflect cultural and structural conditions: in the DRC, healing often unfolds through community-embedded practices amid insecurity and stigma; whereas in Canada, clinical resources are more accessible, but masculine norms and isolation can impede disclosure. We argue that aesthetic and communal practices can complement clinical care and propose practice implications for arts-based, culturally grounded interventions, as well as a comparative research agenda. Full article

Self-healing polymer-based coatings have emerged as a new generation of adaptive protective materials capable of restoring their structure and function after damage. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of current strategies enabling autonomous or externally triggered repair in polymeric films, including encapsulation, reversible chemistry, and microvascular network formation. Emphasis is placed on polymer–inorganic hybrid composites and vitrimeric systems, which integrate barrier protection with stimuli-responsive healing and recyclability. Comparative performance across different matrices—epoxy, polyurethane, silicone, and polyimine—is discussed in relation to corrosion protection and biomedical interfaces. The review also highlights how dynamic covalent and supramolecular interactions in hydrogels enable self-repair under physiological conditions. Recent advances demonstrate that tailoring interfacial compatibility, healing kinetics, and trigger specificity can achieve repeatable, multi-cycle recovery of both mechanical integrity and functional performance. A representative selection of published patents is also shown to illustrate recent technological advancements in the field. Finally, key challenges are identified in standardizing evaluation protocols, ensuring long-term stability, and scaling sustainable manufacturing. Collectively, these developments illustrate the growing maturity of self-healing polymer coatings as multifunctional materials bridging engineering, environmental, and biomedical applications. Full article