Search Results (1,058)

The practical deployment of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Networks (OFDM-PONs) is hindered by the lack of a Medium Access Network (MAC) protocol capable of managing their flexible, distance-dependent data rates, despite their high spectral efficiency. This paper proposes and validates a novel rate-adaptive, Time Division Multiplexing ( TDM )-based MAC protocol for OFDM-PON systems. A key contribution is the design of a three-layer header frame structure that supports multi-ONU data scheduling with heterogeneous rate profiles. Furthermore, the protocol incorporates a unique channel probing mechanism to dynamically determine the optimal transmission rate for each Optical Network Unit (ONU) during activation. The proposed Optical Line Terminal (OLT) side MAC protocol has been fully implemented in hardware on a Xilinx VCU118 FPGA platform, featuring a custom-designed ring buffer pool for efficient multi-ONU data management. Experimental results demonstrate robust upstream and downstream data transmission and confirm the system’s ability to achieve flexible net data rate switching on the downlink from 8.1 Gbit/s to 32.8 Gbit/s, contingent on the assigned rate stage. Full article

This study investigates the impact of the self-heating effect (SHE) on single-event transient (SET) sensitivity in triple-layer stacked nanosheet transistors, using technology computer-aided design (TCAD) simulations. The results demonstrate that SHE significantly elevates the channel lattice temperature under DC bias, leading to notable degradation in DC performance metrics, including the drive current (I_ON) and the on/off current ratio. By employing a finer time resolution in the AC simulation, we observed that the device reaches thermal equilibrium on a picosecond timescale. Crucially, SHE is found to exacerbate SET sensitivity markedly. Compared to simulations without SHE, the presence of self-heating increases both the peak transient current and the collected charge at the drain terminal following heavy-ion strikes. Furthermore, the transient response is shown to depend on the thermal history; longer pre-strike heating times amplify the SET peak magnitude, whereas longer cooling times attenuate it. These findings underscore the critical importance of co-optimizing thermal management and radiation hardening in the design of advanced nanosheet technologies. Full article

The present review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current literature on Adams–Oliver syndrome (AOS), synthesizing information on its clinical features, genetic and molecular underpinnings, nutritional aspects, and key nursing care considerations. AOS is a rare congenital disorder. Its genetic basis is heterogeneous, involving mutations in at least six key genes (ARHGAP31, RBPJ, NOTCH1, DLL4, DOCK6, and EOGT), which primarily affect vascular development through pathways like Notch signaling and Rho GTPase regulation. The management of AOS is complex and requires a multidisciplinary approach. The clinical presentation of AOS is highly variable, ranging from mild to severe and includes a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations, most notably aplasia cutis congenita and terminal transverse limb defects. The underlying molecular mechanisms predominantly point towards vasculopathy, disrupting embryonic development. Emerging evidence also highlights the presence of nutritional issues, such as poor feeding and growth failure, which are often overlooked. Management demands an integrated, multidisciplinary management approach, requiring coordinated effort from specialists in pediatrics, genetics, molecular biology, cardiology, surgery, and nutrition. Specialized nursing care is crucial for managing complex symptoms, particularly wound care for aplasia cutis, and for providing family support. Full article

Branching traits play a critical role in shaping the tree structure of fruit crops and directly influence both yield and fruit quality. Effective and well-managed branching is crucial for maximizing productivity. However, loquat trees typically exhibit weak branching ability, characterized by fewer and longer bearing shoots, along with terminal flower buds, which collectively result in lower yields per unit area. Despite their significance, research on branching characteristics in loquat remains limited. To clarify the factors influencing branching and to provide a rational and effective direction for improving the inherently weak branching performance of current loquat cultivars, we selected the loquat varieties ‘Dawuxing’ and ‘Chunhua 1’, which exhibit significant differences in leaf and branch growth. Compared to ‘Dawuxing’, ‘Chunhua 1’ has longer branches, wider stem and leaf angles, fewer lateral branches, and a looser leaf cell structure. Transcriptome analysis of terminal buds at different developmental stages revealed that differentially expressed genes in the terminal buds of central branches from the spring and summer shoots of the two cultivars were enriched in the plant hormone signal transduction pathway. Hormone-targeted metabolomics identified significant differences in the levels of abscisic acid, auxins, cytokinins, gibberellins, jasmonic acid, and strigolactones in the terminal buds of both cultivars. Through integrated analysis, two candidate genes were identified as potential regulators of branching differences between the two cultivars: EVM0025028 (EjSAPK1), SnRK2 gene a core component of the abscisic acid signaling pathway, and EVM0040331 (EjRMS3), a D14 gene involved in encoding a strigolactone receptor. These findings provide valuable genetic resources for future research on branching regulation in Eriobotrya species and offer a theoretical foundation for enhancing branching management in loquat cultivation. Full article

To effectively mitigate risks in highway construction and thereby ensure the sustainable development of the transportation sector, this study identifies 27 risk factors across five dimensions—human–machine–environment–process–management—through a combination of literature review, construction accident case analyses, and expert interviews. The Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method, combined with the Maximum Mean Deviation Entropy (MMDE) approach for threshold determination, quantifies centrality and causality of these factors. An Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) is employed to construct a multi-level hierarchical framework. The research reveals that highway construction safety risks follow a seven-tier structure: “risk characterization-process assurance-source governance-driven”. Safety education and regulatory systems serve as fundamental drivers, while hazard identification and mitigation, extreme weather response protocols, and equipment compliance form critical safeguard mechanisms. Building on this framework, the study proposes a risk control pathway of “source governance–process interruption–terminal response”, offering practical recommendations for safety management and providing new perspectives for engineering risk assessment and method optimization. Full article

To address the challenges in simulating nonpoint source pollution inflow, pollutant source distribution, and migration pathways in plain river network regions, this study innovatively proposes an optimized technical framework based on the NDR module of the InVEST model. Through land use data reconstruction, DEM negative value correction, and flow accumulation threshold optimization, the framework effectively resolves key issues including pollutant receiving water identification, runoff path simulation, and pollutant migration termination determination, significantly enhancing the model’s applicability to complex river systems. Using the Taipu River as a case study, this research investigates the spatial distribution characteristics of nonpoint source pollution load inflow and its sources in major rivers within plain river network regions. Results show that in 2023, total nitrogen and total phosphorus inflows into the Taipu River were 1004.11 t/a and 83.80 t/a, respectively, with pollution loads primarily originating from the Wangning Polders in the midstream, Chengnan New District Small Watersheds and Chang Yang River Small Watersheds, mainly entering the Taipu River through tributaries such as the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and Nanzha Port. Calculations based on measured data indicate total nitrogen and total phosphorus inflows into the Taipu River were approximately 1300 t/a and 90 t/a, respectively, consistent with model predictions. Building on environmental capacity assessment results, this study proposes targeted recommendations for precision-based nonpoint source pollution control in the Taipu River basin. The findings provide scientific evidence and technical paradigms for nonpoint source pollution management and sustainable management in plain river network regions. Full article

Background: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TTC), also known as stress-induced cardiomyopathy, is an acute but reversible form of left ventricular dysfunction, most commonly triggered by physical or emotional stress. Although well documented in cardiology practice, its occurrence following hepatobiliary surgery is rarely reported. Case presentation: We describe the case of a 67-year-old woman with a history of arterial hypertension and prior cholecystectomy who was admitted for elective hepatobiliary surgery due to choledocholithiasis complicated by a liver abscess. She underwent laparotomy with choledocholithotomy, hepaticojejunostomy, and abdominal drainage. The postoperative course was complicated by intra-abdominal bleeding, requiring reoperation, and subsequent intestinal leakage, necessitating a second re-laparotomy. On the tenth postoperative day after the second surgery, she developed chest discomfort and dyspnea upon minimal exertion. Electrocardiography revealed T-wave inversions in leads V3–V6, while echocardiography demonstrated a reduced ejection fraction of 45% with apical akinesis. Plasma levels of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT–proBNP) were elevated, whereas troponin remained within normal limits. Coronary angiography excluded obstructive coronary artery disease, and ventriculography confirmed apical ballooning consistent with Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Conclusions: This case highlights Takotsubo cardiomyopathy as a rare but important postoperative complication of major hepatobiliary surgery. Awareness of this condition in surgical patients presenting with acute chest symptoms is essential, as timely recognition and differentiation from acute coronary syndrome directly influence management and prognosis. Full article

With the large-scale integration of new energy and power electronic devices into power systems, frequency stability has become an increasingly critical concern. To maintain frequency stability while mitigating the high capital expenditure of energy storage systems (ESSs), this paper develops a control framework centered on edge energy management terminals (EEMTs). The design is based on a demonstration project in which distributed energy resources (DERs) and flexible loads collaboratively provide frequency regulation. A monitoring station is implemented to make fast frequency response (FFR) resources dispatchable, detectable, measurable, and tradable. Furthermore, a control strategy tailored for building- and factory-level applications is proposed. This strategy enables real-time optimal scheduling of DERs and flexible loads through coordinated communication between EEMTs and net load units (NLUs). Two field tests further demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed approach. In addition, this paper proposes a coordinated scheme in which wind farms and NLUs jointly participate in frequency regulation, aiming to mitigate the response delay of NLUs and the secondary frequency drop observed in wind farms. The feasibility and benefits of this scheme are validated through experimental tests. Full article

HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) system in buildings is a major component of energy consumption, and realizing high-precision energy consumption prediction is of great significance for intelligent building management. Aiming at the problems of insufficient modeling ability of nonlinear features and insufficient portrayal of long time-series dependencies in prediction methods, this paper proposes an HVAC energy consumption prediction model that combines time-sequence convolutional network (TCN), bi-directional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU), and Attention mechanism. The model takes advantage of TCN’s parallel computing and multi-scale feature extraction, BiGRU’s bidirectional temporal dependency modeling, and Attention’s weight assignment of key features to effectively improve the prediction accuracy. In this work, the HVAC load is represented by the building-level electricity meter readings of office buildings equipped with centralized, electrically driven heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems. Therefore, the proposed method is mainly applicable to building-level HVAC energy consumption prediction scenarios where aggregated hourly electricity or cooling energy measurements are available, rather than to the control of individual terminal units. The experimental results show that the model in this paper achieves better performance compared to the method on ASHRAE dataset, the proposed model outperforms the baseline by 2.3%, 22.2%, and 34.7% in terms of MAE, RMSE, and MAPE, respectively, on the one-year time-by-time data of the office building, and meanwhile it is significant 54.1% on the MSE metrics. Full article

Background and Clinical Significance: Carcinosarcomas are highly aggressive tumors with both carcinomatous and sarcomatous components, typically arising from the female genital tract. Primary retroperitoneal carcinosarcomas are extremely rare, and their occurrence during pregnancy presents major clinical and ethical challenges. Case Presentation: We report a case of a 24-year-old primigravida diagnosed with a large encapsulated retroperitoneal mass at 12 weeks of pregnancy, initially presenting with abdominal pain. The patient declined medical advice for pregnancy termination and chose to continue despite oncological risks. A multidisciplinary team planned delayed surgery after delivery. At 34 weeks, a cesarean section resulted in a healthy newborn, but surgical exploration revealed an inoperable, invasive tumor. The patient died two days later from postoperative complications. Autopsy confirmed widespread tumor invasion and lung metastases consistent with primary retroperitoneal carcinosarcoma. Conclusions: This case highlights the challenges of managing aggressive malignancies during pregnancy, emphasizing early diagnosis, multidisciplinary care, and ethical decision-making while respecting patient autonomy. Full article

Specialized terminals in coastal ports play an increasingly important role in maritime transport. To enhance the resilience of specialized terminals, it is vital to increase their ability to maintain a certain level of function under various emergencies. This effort is fundamental to ensuring the handling efficiency of coastal ports and the stability of the shipping network. In this paper, from the perspective of the coastal port transportation system, we developed a resilience evaluation framework considering micro-level, meso-level, and macro-level influencing factors on specialized terminals. To evaluate the comprehensive resilience of the specialized terminal, we quantitatively calculated each evaluation indicator and proposed an improved Ranking Based on Optimal Points (RBOP) method. The application results were obtained from a study on specialized container terminals at eight hub ports in coastal China. The improved RBOP method takes into account both the current status and future development trends of specialized terminals. As a result, compared with TOPSIS, VIKOR, Multi-MOORA, and WASPAS, the ranking results of the improved RBOP and the latest method (i.e., WASPAS) are the closest, which only differ in the seventh and eighth ranking, while the outcomes of the improved RBOP align more closely with expert expectations. The proposed method enables the resilience evaluation of specialized terminals from a holistic perspective of the coastal port transportation system. This helps port managers identify bottlenecks in the resilience of specialized terminals and can enhance the efficiency and stability of port operations. Full article

To prevent swine fever transmission, swine farms in China adopt enclosed management, making strict farm personnel biosecurity essential for minimizing the risk of pathogen introduction. However, current shower-in procedures and personnel movement records on many farms still rely on manual logging, which is prone to omissions and cannot support enterprise-level supervision. To address these limitations, this study develops a digital personnel management system designed specifically for the changing-room environment that forms the core biosecurity barrier. The proposed three-tier architecture integrates distributed identification terminals, local central controllers, and a cloud-based data platform. The system ensures reliable identity verification, synchronizes templates across terminals, and maintains continuous data availability, even in unstable network conditions. Fingerprint-based identity validation and a lightweight CAN-based communication mechanism were implemented to ensure robust operation in electrically noisy livestock facilities. System performance was evaluated through recognition tests, multi-frame template transmission experiments, and high-load CAN/MQTT communication tests. The system achieved a 91.4% overall verification success rate, lossless transmission of multi-frame fingerprint templates, and stable end-to-end communication, with mean CAN-bus processing delays of 99.96 ms and cloud-processing delays below 70.7 ms. These results demonstrate that the proposed system provides a reliable digital alternative to manual personnel movement records and shower duration, offering a scalable foundation for biosecurity supervision. While the present implementation focuses on identity verification, data synchronization, and calculating shower duration based on the interval between check-ins, the system architecture can be extended to support movement path enforcement and integration with wider biosecurity infrastructures. Full article

Cover cropping serves as a promising technique with great potential to enhance soil organic carbon (SOC), boost crop productivity, and improve soil quality. The implementation of cover crops as a sustainable agricultural practice has gained popularity worldwide. To further evaluate the role of cover cropping, this systematic review examines empirical evidence from 38 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2025 to assess the impact of cover cropping on these key outcomes. Studies were selected based on strict inclusion criteria requiring original field data or validated modeling results that evaluated all three outcomes, following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Data on cropping system, duration, type of cover crop, and outcome metrics were extracted. More than 80% of the literature reported benefits. Multi-species cover crop mixtures that were managed long-term enhanced SOC by 5–30%, with 87% and 55% of studies demonstrating enhanced soil quality and yield, respectively. However, some studies recorded yield reductions in drought-prone regions or when cover crops were terminated at inappropriate times. In some studies, improvements in microbial function and nutrient cycling were observed while several United States (U.S.) studies focused more on physical and biological indicators under dryland conditions. Although outcomes vary by context, cover crops are widely recognized as a viable strategy for climate-smart agriculture and sustainable soil management. To optimize benefits, there is a need for region-specific incentives, targeted agricultural policies, and standardized agronomic guidelines. Cover crops represent a key strategy for climate change mitigation and sustainable soil management. This review reveals that species diversity and long-term adoption are crucial for achieving reliable results. With the integrative focus of this review on the tripartite relationship between SOC, crop yield, and soil quality, as well as its comparative lens on global versus U.S. practices, it is novel because it offers crucial insights for evidence-based policy development and region-specific cover cropping strategies. Full article

This research examines the persistent shoreline erosion along the Damietta coast and the problem of sediment buildup in the navigation channel of Damietta Port, both of which pose major obstacles to navigation efficiency and coastal balance. To address these issues, this study uses the LITPACK numerical model to forecast shoreline evolution along the Damietta coast over the next 20 years; the coast is divided into two sections of 3.3 km each. Considering both planned and existing coastal constructions, two realistic alternatives were proposed: extending the existing detached breakwaters by adding two additional offshore breakwaters west of the current field and the implementation of reclamation between the Y-groins, accompanied by a new protruding seawall. The Coastal Modeling System (CMS) was then used to perform a two-dimensional simulation in order to examine sediment transport and hydrodynamic behavior in the port region. This phase concentrated on examining the effects of sedimentation rates following the most recent port development plan, which included building a massive western jetty (5560 m long) and a new navigation channel with a depth of 9 m to service the dirty ballast terminal. In comparison to the benchmark case, the simulation results showed a 93% decrease in sedimentation rates within the navigation channel. The study’s final phase evaluated the impact of changing the crest levels of the current detached breakwaters along the Ras El-Bar coastline on reducing coastal erosion. The study’s conclusions promote the creation of effective and sustainable coastal protection plans in the Damietta area by providing detailed information for future coastal zone management and planning. Full article

This review focuses on the molecular pathogenesis of Type 1 diabetes (T1D), specifically on the key autoantigens targeted by the autoimmune response and the clinical implications of their epitope specificity. T1D is characterized by the destruction of insulin-producing pancreatic β-cells. The autoimmune attack is directed against a defined set of autoantigens, primarily insulin, glutamic acid decarboxylase 65, tyrosine phosphatase-like protein, zinc transporter 8, as well as several minor autoantigens. A critical advancement in understanding the disease has been the analysis of epitope specificity, revealing that immunodominant epitopes are conformational and often localized to C-terminal protein regions, exposed during β-cell degradation. The introduction of sensitive multiplex assays for the simultaneous detection of T1D-associated autoantibodies represents a major diagnostic breakthrough. These platforms enable early diagnosis, risk stratification, and the identification of a “therapeutic window” for intervention. At this preclinical stage, antigen-specific immunotherapies aimed at restoring immune tolerance show significant promise. Ultimately, the combination of personalized diagnostic profiles, epitope mapping, and targeted therapies forms the basis for a new T1D management paradigm focused on halting the autoimmune process itself and preserving functional β-cell mass. Full article