Search Results (1,458)

Vessel port stay time is a key indicator for berth allocation, crane planning, and short-term operational coordination in container terminals. However, existing prediction approaches often rely mainly on numerical operational data and assume complete information availability, limiting their reliability when localized visibility constraints or incomplete sensing occur. This study develops and evaluates an availability-aware multimodal prediction framework for vessel port stay time estimation. The framework adapts cross-attention-based fusion to integrate structured operational variables, numerical marine weather observations, and image-derived visibility information extracted from port monitoring images under incomplete monitoring image availability. In the framework, operational and numerical weather variables form the structured predictive state, whereas image-derived visibility information is conditionally incorporated as an auxiliary visual signal only when a matched and usable monitoring image is available. The proposed approach was evaluated using long-term vessel call data from a major container terminal. Compared with commonly used machine learning and deep learning baselines, the proposed model improved prediction accuracy, while residual analyses indicated reduced systematic prediction bias. These findings suggest that the proposed framework can support more reliable short-term berth planning under practical data-collection constraints. Full article

A novel acidic polysaccharide (WDP) was purified from walnut dregs, and its structural characteristics and immunomodulatory function were investigated. WDP had a weight-average molecular weight (Mw) of 351.94 kDa and consisted mainly of rhamnose, arabinose, galactose, glucose, xylose, mannose, galacturonic acid, and glucuronic acid. Methylation and NMR analyses further demonstrated that the backbone of WDP comprised →4)-α-D-GalpA-(1→, →3,6)-β-D-Galp-(1→, →6)-β-D-Galp-(1→, →4)-β-D-Galp-(1→, and →4)-α-D-Glcp-(1→ residues, with branched chains consisting of terminal α-L-Araf-(1→ residues or α-L-Araf-(1→5)-α-L-Araf-(1→ fragments attached to the O-3 position of →3,6)-β-D-Galp-(1→ residues. In vitro assays indicated that WDP modulated immune responses in RAW264.7 cells by enhancing their phagocytosis; increasing NO release and the secretion of IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α; and activating the MAPK signaling pathway, suggesting its potential as an immunomodulatory agent. These results provide a scientific foundation for the development of walnut dregs-derived functional foods with immune-enhancing properties. Full article

To understand glycan–protein interactions at biological interfaces, designing surfaces modified with structurally controlled glycans is highly important. In particular, naturally occurring glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) possess periodic sugar arrangements that play important roles in protein recognition, highlighting the need for the development of periodic glycopolymer model systems that can serve as GAG mimics for quantitative interaction analysis. In this study, sequence-controlled periodic glycopolymers were synthesized by reversible addition–fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerization and immobilized onto gold surfaces to construct glycan-modified interfaces. The synthesized material was a terminally functionalized periodic glycopolymer with the most basic structure, consisting of alternating maltose-containing vinyl ether (MalVE) units and ethyl maleimide (EtMI) units, with a trithiocarbonate group at the ω-terminal. This trithiocarbonate group was converted to a thiol group for immobilization through Au–S bond formation. Structural characterization by ¹H NMR spectroscopy, size exclusion chromatography (SEC), MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, and UV–vis spectroscopy confirmed the structure as designed. Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) measurements verified the stable immobilization of thiol-terminated periodic glycopolymers on the gold surface, and allowed for estimation of graft density and quantitative analysis of glycan-protein interactions at the modified interface. The periodic glycopolymer-modified surfaces exhibited selective binding behavior toward concanavalin A (ConA) compared to bovine serum albumin (BSA), with apparent binding constants on the order of 10⁶–10⁷ L mol⁻¹. This enhanced binding behavior indicated that specific and multivalent interactions with proteins also occurred at periodic pendant maltose residues along the main chain. These results demonstrate that the gold surface modified with end-functional periodic glycopolymers synthesized by RAFT polymerization provides a versatile platform for quantitative analysis of glycan-protein interactions and suggests potential applications for periodic glycopolymers as functional materials. Full article

Aircraft taxiing speed control along predefined airport surface routes is a constrained single-aircraft longitudinal control problem involving heterogeneous route geometry, action smoothness, and terminal velocity feasibility. Existing learning-based taxiing controllers commonly use a unified policy for the whole route, which may be insufficient for handling straight-segment propulsion, curved-segment speed regulation, and action discontinuities near straight–curve transitions. This paper proposes SegCoord-Taxi, a geometry-aware segmented deep reinforcement learning framework for taxiing speed control. The route is decomposed into straight segments, curved segments, and transition boundary zones. A Straight-Segment Policy (SSP) and a Curved-Segment Policy (CSP) generate geometry-dependent base acceleration commands, a Switch Residual Adapter (SRA) provides local residual correction near transition regions, and a Route-Level Feasibility Projection (RFP) maps the coordinated action into an executable acceleration satisfying route-level feasibility constraints. Experiments on departure taxiing routes at Chengdu Tianfu International Airport (ZUTF) included baseline comparison, ablation analysis, projection diagnostics, sensitivity analysis, and a trajectory-level case study. On the evaluated ZUTF case-study routes, SegCoord-Taxi achieves the lowest final velocity on the test set, $0.336\pm 0.017 \mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$, compared with $0.732\pm 0.061 \mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$ for the unified Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) controller and 0.586 m/s for the curvature-aware constrained optimizer. The complete framework also reduces switch action jump from $1.022\pm 0.017 \mathrm{m}/{\mathrm{s}}^2$ to $0.429\pm 0.004 \mathrm{m}/{\mathrm{s}}^2$ in the ablation study. These results indicate improved terminal feasibility and transition-region smoothness in the evaluated single-airport case-study setting under an explicit efficiency–smoothness–feasibility trade-off. Future work will extend the framework to multi-aircraft and multi-airport settings under operational uncertainty. Full article

Ganoderma lucidum spores protein (GLSP) holds significant potential for providing antioxidant peptides. We employed in silico enzymatic hydrolysis to generate small peptide fragments by specific proteins. Through fast computer screening and molecular docking with Keap1 receptor, we identified two potential antioxidant peptides, KAF (Lys-Ala-Phe) and NDSF (Asn-Asp-Ser-Phe), from 1171 candidates after efficient hydrolysis by pepsin and proteinase K. Molecular docking result showed both of them could bind onto the Leu557, Ala 510 and Val512 of bioactive pockets of Keap1 through hydrogen bonds and NDSF had lower docking energy (−85.6073 kcal/mol). The in vitro antioxidant validation indicated both of them could eliminate DPPH and ABTS radicals dramatically, and NDSF had a stronger scavenging capacity on DPPH (IC₅₀ = 35.1 μg/mL) and ABTS (IC₅₀ = 55.9 μg/mL), respectively. Quantitative chemical analysis further revealed that the key antioxidant active sites of NDSF were located at O18 of Ser amino side chain, and N9 of Lys terminal amino residue for KAF. Furthermore, in the cellular experiments, NDSF and KAF effectively increased the activities of antioxidant enzymes such as SOD, CAT, and GPx, while also reducing the level of MDA. Together, these findings highlight the potential of Ganoderma lucidum spore proteins as a source for the rapid identification of antioxidant peptides. The two selected peptides, therefore, s hold promising prospects for applications in functional foods and health products. Full article

The iminosugar N-butyldeoxynojirimycin (Miglustat) is clinically used for the inhibition of ceramide glucosyltransferase for treating Type 1 Gaucher and Niemann–Pick type C diseases. This drug also inhibits glycogen debranching enzyme (GDE), the enzyme responsible for terminal glycogen catabolism via coordinated glucotransferase and amylo-α-1,6-glucosidase (GC) activities, although the structural basis for inhibition has been undefined. Here, we report the crystal structure of Candida glabrata GDE in complex with Miglustat, revealing inhibitor engagement at the conserved GC domain in an area that was previously hypothesized to accommodate the α-1,6-linked glucose moiety of glycogen. Structure-guided mutagenesis demonstrates that alanine substitution of residues at the GC site abolishes Miglustat binding, functionally validating the pocket and defining the interaction hot spots. To assess the possible relevance of these observations to the human enzyme, in silico docking predicts that Miglustat binds to the human enzyme in a pose close, albeit not identical, to our structure. These findings provide an opportunity to determine the molecular basis of GDE–inhibitor recognition, rationalize reported off-target effects of Miglustat, and provide a template for designing iminosugar therapies with reduced off-target binding. Full article

Gate definition is a major challenge in p-GaN gate AlGaN/GaN HEMT structures because of the high selectivity and low plasma damage required during the etching process. In this work, self-terminated etching, developed to limit surface damage and loss of the underlying AlGaN layer, is investigated. A comparison of two over-etch chemistries (Cl₂/O₂/N₂ and BCl₃/SF₆) revealed that the oxygen-based process yields superior results in terms of AlGaN surface morphology, producing a smoother surface and a more conformal p-GaN profile, while the fluorine-based process exhibited more anisotropic behavior, leading to p-GaN residues and surface pitting. To address across-wafer non-uniformity, a temperature gradient strategy using the tunable electrostatic chuck was developed. The optimized process was evaluated through automatic defect control and device robustness under drain bias-stress. A total reduction in defectivity and reliable HEMT devices across the wafer under high drain-source bias were achieved. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution, offering significant improvements in process efficiency and manufacturability. Full article

Based on their domain organisation, four proteins from the protist Dictyostelium discoideum have been assigned to the IQGAP family of scaffold proteins. Although these proteins are shorter than animal IQGAPs, their involvement in the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton in cell motility, macroendocytosis, cytokinesis, and adhesion appears to be broadly conserved between these evolutionarily distant organisms. In this article, we show that the putative three-dimensional structure of Dictyostelium IQGAP-related proteins, as predicted by AlphaFold 3, closely corresponds to the C-terminal half of human IQGAP1, thus supporting their common origin. IqgD is the largest IQGAP-related protein in Dictyostelium, with an overall domain organisation similar to human IQGAPs. IqgD is localised in the cell cortex, interacts with F-actin and Rac1 GTPases, and primarily supports cell adhesion to the underlying surface and cell growth on bacterial lawns. DGAP1 and GAPA are truncated proteins that have retained a 700-residue-long C-terminal region of homology compared to their animal relatives. They play important, yet opposite, roles in regulating contractile cortical assemblies comprising F-actin, myosin II, and the actin-bundling proteins cortexillins, which are especially important for cytokinesis and epithelial morphogenesis. Finally, IqgC, although structurally resembling other IQGAPs, turns out to be more closely related to GAP1 proteins from fungi. This multifaceted protein carries RasGAP activity, interacts with several other small GTPases, and positively regulates macroendocytosis and cell–substratum adhesion. Full article

Multi-UAV formation control in low-altitude urban environments faces critical challenges from atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) disturbances, including turbulence, wind gusts, and communication inefficiency in resource-constrained swarms. This paper proposes an adaptive dynamic event-triggered formation control (ADETFC) strategy integrated with a finite-time disturbance observer (FTDO) for multi-agent hexarotor UAV formations operating under ABL conditions. The novelty of the proposed ADETFC lies in employing dual adaptive parameters to simultaneously account for tracking error magnitude and inter-agent formation geometry, dynamically adjusting communication frequency. A nonsingular terminal sliding mode manifold ensures rapid transient convergence and robustness against nonlinearities and inter-agent coupling. The FTDO estimates lumped disturbances with finite-time convergence to a bounded residual neighborhood, enabling reduced control gains that mitigate chattering and actuator wear. Lyapunov-based analysis establishes finite-time reachability of the sliding manifold and guarantees that the tracking error converges to a bounded residual set in finite time. The Zeno-free operation is guaranteed by a strictly positive minimum inter-event time analytically derived from system dynamics. Simulations under three ABL scenarios, including Dryden turbulence, wind gusts, and sinusoidal disturbances, demonstrate formation tracking RMSE reductions of up to 29.4%, disturbance estimation RMSE reductions of up to 54.3%, and communication-event reductions of 46.4–63.2% compared with benchmark schemes. These results confirm accurate formation tracking, efficient communication, and robust multi-agent networking under challenging wind conditions, making the framework suitable for networked UAV applications in complex environments. Full article

Microbial α-L-rhamnosidases are increasingly recognised as selective biocatalysts in food biotechnology, nutraceutical production, and health-related applications. These glycoside hydrolases catalyse the hydrolysis of terminal alpha-L-rhamnose residues from flavonoids, terpenoids, saponins, and other glycosylated natural products, thereby modulating sensory properties, solubility, intestinal absorption, and biological activity. While their traditional uses include debittering citrus juice and enhancing wine aroma, recent evidence demonstrates their wider value in selective flavonoid biotransformation, production of rare mono-glycosylated derivatives, probiotic fermentations, and microbiome-associated metabolism. This review summarises microbial sources, catalytic mechanisms, CAZy classification, substrate specificity, structure–function relationships, analytical methods, industrial process engineering, and emerging applications in functional foods and targeted nutraceutical applications. Particular attention is given to the distinction between alpha-(1→2)- and alpha-(1→6)-linked substrates, the production of isoquercitrin and prunin, recombinant enzyme platforms, immobilised biocatalysts, and potential future opportunities arising from metagenomics, synthetic biology, and AI-assisted protein engineering. Full article

We study whether the semantic category of a hidden display terminal can be inferred from a wall-mediated indirect observation when the display remains outside the camera field of view under a controlled and calibrated scene configuration. This setting provides a security-motivated feasibility test for indirect optical semantic leakage, but it remains challenging for two reasons. First, indirect propagation makes the wall pattern dominated by the occluder contour, while category-bearing evidence survives only as weak radiometric variations, making stable extraction difficult. Second, even after front-end recovery, low-frequency support is relatively stable, whereas the mid- and high-frequency details required for class separation remain weak and distortion-prone; as a result, the classifier may drift toward dominant but weakly informative coarse-grained patterns and fail to consistently accumulate fine-grained discriminative cues. We propose SCISA-Net, which combines scene-constrained inversion with multi-stage Haar-subband attention to reorganize indirect observations, compensate residual feature degradation, and aggregate class-relevant subband evidence. Experiments on a paired 31-class benchmark show stable recognition, robustness to illumination attenuation and ambient background interference, matched scene-operator re-parameterization capability, and clear degradation when key inverse or subband components are disrupted. These results support the feasibility of category-level semantic inference from calibrated wall-mediated indirect observations. Full article

Series–series (S–S) compensated wireless power-transfer (WPT) systems are increasingly deployed where connector-free and reliable energy delivery is required, but practical monitoring becomes ambiguous when receiver-resonance drift and magnetic-coupling variation produce similar transmitter-side impedance changes. This paper addresses that ambiguity by separating the two effects without receiver-side sensing. During a low-power diagnostic interval, the receiver terminal is briefly placed in open and short states, and only the fundamental phasors of the inverter output voltage and primary current are processed together with the known compensation capacitances. After the open-state measurement identifies the primary self-impedance, the short-state residual is mapped to an affine D–${\omega }^2$ line; its zero crossing gives the receiver resonant frequency and secondary self-inductance, while its slope gives the mutual inductance and coupling coefficient. The routine is implementable as a start-up or periodic diagnostic function in WPT hardware that already measures the primary voltage and current and can impose the required receiver terminal states; it requires no receiver-side measurement, auxiliary sensing coil, short-loop resistance measurement, or iterative zero-phase search. In simulation, the coupling-coefficient error remained below $0.014\%$ under receiver-inductance tolerance and mutual-inductance variation. In a prototype, the short-state data followed the predicted linear relation with $R^2=0.9979$, and the extracted coupling coefficient agreed with the reference within about $5\%$. The identified receiver resonance was also used to guide operating-frequency adjustment in a practical power-transfer test. Full article

Alternating glycopolymers bearing periodically arranged pendant carbohydrate residues were synthesized by reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) copolymerization of maltose-containing vinyl ether (MalVE) and ethyl maleimide (EtMI). The resulting trithiocarbonate-terminated polymers were subsequently converted into thiol-terminated glycopolymers through post-polymerization end-group transformation. These structurally well-defined alternating glycopolymers were immobilized onto gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) via Au–S interactions to construct glycopolymer-functionalized glycointerfaces. Surface functionalization of the AuNPs was confirmed by an increase in hydrodynamic diameter from approximately 42 to 59 nm after polymer immobilization. The resulting glycopolymer-functionalized AuNPs exhibited concentration-dependent lectin-mediated aggregation behavior in the presence of concanavalin A, accompanied by characteristic red shifts and broadening of the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) band arising from multivalent carbohydrate–lectin interactions at the nanoparticle interface. Although the apparent association constants obtained for free alternating glycopolymers using fluorescently labeled lectin cannot be directly compared with those obtained from LSPR-based aggregation assays of AuNP-immobilized glycopolymers, the values increased from the order of 10⁵ L mol⁻¹ in solution to the order of 10⁷ L mol⁻¹ at the nanoparticle interface. This trend suggests that immobilization onto AuNPs enhances multivalent carbohydrate–lectin interactions through multivalent presentation of the glycopolymer chains at the nanoparticle interface. As a control experiment, peanut agglutinin (PNA), which does not recognize maltose residues, was added to the glycopolymer-functionalized AuNPs. No significant LSPR shift or spectral broadening was observed, indicating that nanoparticle aggregation was not induced by nonspecific lectin addition but arose from specific interactions between maltose residues and Con A. Quantitative analysis suggested that polymer chain length may influence the aggregation behavior. These results demonstrate that alternating glycopolymers provide a useful platform for constructing sequence-regulated glycointerfaces and for investigating multivalent biomolecular interactions at nanoparticle surfaces. Full article

Distributed photovoltaic (PV) power stations are core enablers for dual-carbon goals in modern power systems, with IoT-based monitoring systems serving as their nerve center for real-time data collection and grid dispatch. However, PV monitoring nodes operate in harsh, unattended outdoor environments with severe computational resource constraints, exposing them to critical hardware security risks that can trigger cross-domain cascading hazards. Existing research focuses primarily on communication and software security, lacking systematic hardware security modeling and lightweight defense designs. Generic IoT hardware security solutions are also inapplicable due to excessive overhead. To address these gaps, this paper proposes LHSF, a lightweight hardware security framework tailored for resource-constrained PV edge nodes. It integrates an on-chip OTP-based lightweight hardware root of trust (L-HROT) with an SRAM-PUF-driven non-resident key management protocol, which implements full-lifecycle key management via a “power-on generation, on-demand usage, post-use destruction, zero-residue storage” paradigm. Experiments on ESP32 and Raspberry Pi 4B show that LHSF provides robust resistance to side-channel recovery, physical extraction, malicious firmware boot and rollback attacks, reducing fault injection bypass rate to 6.8%. Compared to standard TPM 2.0, it cuts boot delay by 60.7%, power consumption by 18.6% and memory footprint by 72.7% with negligible performance overhead. This work fills the hardware security gap for PV monitoring systems and provides a reusable technical pathway for distributed energy IoT terminals. Full article

The Lysobacter capsici XL1 β-lytic protease (Blp) is a bacteriolytic enzyme that hydrolyzes peptide bonds in the interpeptide bridge of the peptidoglycan of Gram-positive bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant strains of pathogenic bacteria. The Blp has been extensively characterized. The only unexplored aspect is the mechanism by which this enzyme recognizes target cells. In this work, we demonstrated for the first time that the Blp structure contained a C-terminal subdomain that can be responsible for this interaction. Molecular modeling suggested a hydrophobic nature of the interaction between the Blp and peptidoglycan. Model mutant forms of the Blp, which have fewer hydrophobic areas in the C-terminal subdomain, also had fewer sites for potential interaction with the ligand. Wet lab experiments showed that these mutant Blp forms exhibited poorer binding to peptidoglycan and living Staphylococcus aureus 209P cells, resulting in decreased bacteriolytic and proteolytic activity. Amino acid residues N136 and Y160 in the C-terminal subdomain were identified and can be important for the interaction of the enzyme with target cells. Further research into the mechanism of target cell recognition by bacterial bacteriolytic proteases will enable the use of this knowledge to expand the specificity of action of these enzymes, including as antimicrobial agents for medical applications. Full article