Search Results (714)

Passive sit-to-stand (STS) assistive devices provide an affordable and reliable alternative to powered rehabilitation systems; however, their effectiveness depends on the kinematic compatibility between the mechanism and the user. Existing studies primarily focus on specific mechanism implementations, whereas systematic methodologies that translate human morphology and motion into conceptual mechanism designs remain limited. This paper proposes an integrated framework combining Human Kinematic Modeling (HKM) and Anthropometry-informed Mechanism Design (AMeD) for the conceptual design of passive STS assistive mechanisms. The HKM reconstructs the STS motion from user anthropometric dimensions using a simplified sagittal-plane kinematic model to derive hip trajectories, center-of-mass progression, and critical assistance phases. These motion descriptors are transformed into engineering requirements through motion abstraction and hierarchical engineering mapping, enabling the generation of alternative linkage concepts, virtual mechanism instantiation, motion compatibility assessment, and preliminary mechanism specification. For the illustrative reference case, based on a stature-derived anthropometric parameterization ($H=1.73$ m), the reconstructed hip trajectory exhibits horizontal and vertical excursions of approximately $0.422$ m and $0.461$ m, respectively, defining the target motion envelope for the virtual mechanism. The proposed HKM-AMeD framework establishes a traceable methodology that transforms user anthropometry and human motion into engineering design knowledge, providing a reproducible foundation for the early-stage development and evaluation of passive assistive mechanisms before detailed optimization and physical prototyping. Full article

Official statistical indicators are essential for monitoring progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, indicator data, metadata, source datasets, producing agencies, and global SDG references are often managed and disseminated in separate structures, limiting semantic integration, traceability, and machine-readability. This study proposes an indicator-centric knowledge graph model for integrating and tracing SDG indicators in Indonesia. The model positions StatisticalIndicator as the central entity that connects SDGs, SDG targets, global indicator references, national and proxy indicator metadata, source datasets, publishing agencies, controlled codelists, and statistical observations. Following a reuse-first design principle, the model was implemented using established semantic web vocabularies, extended with only seven custom properties. The model is instantiated and evaluated through a purposively selected case of 16 child-related SDG indicators in Indonesia, chosen to maximize structural heterogeneity across producing agencies, data sources, and indicator–framework relationships, including nationally adapted and proxy indicators. The knowledge graph was evaluated using SPARQL-based competency questions with predefined ground truth and query execution time measurement, SHACL structural validation complemented by mutation-based negative testing, traceability coverage analysis with source verification, and supplementary expert judgement. The findings demonstrate that the proposed indicator-centric knowledge graph model can support semantic integration, metadata access, and end-to-end traceability of official statistical indicators with a minimal, interoperable vocabulary extension. While the empirical evidence is limited to a single-country, single-domain instantiation, the model itself is domain-agnostic; its layers and relations are defined independently of the thematic content of the indicators. Full article

Process-oriented BIM research has documented coordination workflows and design decisions, but project records rarely show how technical evidence becomes a basis for joint judgment and how confirmed outcomes become controlled project information for subsequent tasks. This study develops an auditable event-level framework and applies a retrospective explanatory embedded single-case design to a 266 m mixed-use supertall building. It reconstructs 31 collaborative decision events from 266 evidence fragments across 41 archival records. Within the case, scheme decision-making and specialist design centered on establishing a defensible design basis; design development linked joint review, responsibility assignment, and controlled updates of models, drawings, and issue records to establish a shared cross-disciplinary baseline; and construction detailing and implementation emphasized translating site and procurement changes into the current executable project state. Changed conditions could reopen joint judgment before controlled project information was updated. Comparable events revealed distinct evidentiary discontinuities: analytical outputs were sometimes retained without traceable use in joint judgment, decisions without traceable controlled write-back, and updated records without documentation of the preceding judgment process. Separating these transitions clarifies why similar digital tools and organizational arrangements produce different information outcomes and provides a traceable, stage-conditioned basis for design justification, baseline formation, implementation control, and cross-stage continuity. Full article

This study examines whether the annual green-bond share of relevant corporate and government bond issuance is associated with circular material use and resource productivity in the EU-27. The accounting problem is the traceability gap between labelled issuance, allocated expenditure, and realised material outcomes. A balanced 2014–2024 panel contains 297 country-year observations. Two-way fixed-effects models with six controls use 270, 243, and 216 observations for contemporaneous, one-year-lagged and two-year-lagged specifications, respectively. Inference uses country-clustered standard errors and restricted wild cluster bootstrap-t tests with 9999 repetitions, with Driscoll–Kraay sensitivity estimates. None of the six baseline specifications, 18 additional robustness specifications, or 54 leave-one-country-out re-estimations has a wild-bootstrap p-value below 0.10. Circular material use coefficients are negative but imprecise; resource-productivity coefficients change sign. Neither directional hypothesis is supported. These conditional associations do not identify causal circular finance additionality, instrument ineffectiveness, or reporting failures. Incomplete allocation traceability, issuer composition, and implementation delays are possible mechanisms requiring disaggregated evidence. This study distinguishes issuance penetration from market size and links its findings to the need for comparable allocation reporting and verifiable circular outcomes. Full article

Accurate time dissemination is essential for telecommunications, scientific instrumentation, industrial control, and distributed computer systems, motivating the development of cost-effective timing solutions. This work presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of low-cost Network Time Protocol (NTP) Stratum-1 servers based on Raspberry Pi platforms disciplined by a pulse-per-second (PPS) signal derived from a UTC(k) reference. The proposed systems were configured and optimized to provide traceable time synchronization services and were assessed through long-term comparisons against institutional Stratum-1 reference servers. Time offset and network delay were continuously monitored over extended observation periods, while synchronization stability was characterized using Time Deviation (TDEV) analysis. The findings indicate that Raspberry Pi-based NTP servers provide a practical and economical platform for the performance monitoring of industrial NTP servers, supporting the long-term evaluation of time dissemination services. Full article

Compiler security instrumentation is portable only when the compiler, application binary interface, runtime, loader, operating system, and hardware preserve the same security contract. We present Evidence-Carrying Portability Contracts (ECPC), a machine-readable method that binds each versioned configuration to seven return-integrity obligations, typed cross-layer facts, authoritative decision rules, executable transition witnesses, and field-level provenance. We retrospectively evaluated eight shadow call stack configurations across x86_64, AArch64, and RISC-V. Three implications emerge: pointer publication order determines whether asynchronous handlers can corrupt slot ownership; capture, edge coverage, and slot ownership are independent properties; and hardware enforcement relocates obligations into loader, lifecycle, and non-local-control-flow support rather than eliminating them. The reconstruction distinguishes two ownership defects in the LLVM RISC-V D84414 draft, one in the landed 2020 form and none after D149099; a glibc commit-interval case identifies restore token search and RSTORSSP as decisive for cross-context longjmp. The Compact TLS x86_64 configuration is evaluated only as a specified design because its submitted artefacts conflict and implementation source is unavailable; we make no performance or production-readiness claim for it. Artefact version 2.1.0 and 30 semantic tests make every reported classification regenerable. The study demonstrates traceable retrospective discrimination among known states, not prospective defect-discovery accuracy. Full article

With increasing system complexity and attack sophistication, autonomous cyber defense has become essential in edge–cloud Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, requiring intelligent, secure, and scalable agent communication frameworks. This paper proposes FMAD (Federated Multi-Agent Defense), a conceptual federated multi-agent framework that enables intelligent agent communication for autonomous cyber defense through collaborative sensing and federated learning, with a design emphasis on security and privacy preservation. The proposed framework defines a set of specialized intelligent agents responsible for distributed traffic sensing, threat intelligence analysis, federated model optimization, secure agent-to-agent communication, and adaptive mitigation. As an initial proof of concept, the Threat Intelligence Agent (TIA) was implemented using an xLSTM-based temporal intrusion detection model developed in this study and trained on the CIC-IoT-2023 dataset, achieving a detection accuracy of 99.89% while efficiently identifying temporal traffic anomalies at edge nodes. The FMAD framework integrates multiple collaborative agents for secure communication, federated learning, and coordinated cyber defense in edge–cloud IoT environments. The experimental evaluation focuses on the xLSTM-based Threat Intelligence Agent (TIA) for DDoS detection, while the remaining components are assessed at the design level. However, empirical validation in the current study is limited solely to the TIA. To support trustworthy collaboration among distributed agents, the framework further proposes a secure communication architecture based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) key agreement, ChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption, and a permissioned blockchain ledger, which are designed to provide secure interaction management and traceability within the stated security assumptions. This federated multi-agent approach provides a promising foundation for intelligent agent communication and scalable autonomous cyber defense in real-world edge–cloud IoT environments. Full article

Reliable structural monitoring for smart buildings and construction sites requires more than sensor acquisition; it requires sensing and communication paths that remain traceable, recoverable, and compatible with platform-side data processing under heterogeneous field constraints. This study presents a dual-path IoT sensing and communication framework that deliberately separates high-data-rate vibration monitoring from low-data-rate inclination-status monitoring while maintaining common requirements for preservation of available time information, data-source identification, and backend interpretability. The smart-building path integrates an ADXL355 triaxial accelerometer, ESP32-S3, Power over Ethernet (PoE), and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) for 200 Hz vibration acquisition, together with a second-order 10 Hz low-pass filter, 40-record batching, and a Flash LittleFS-based store-and-recovery mechanism that interleaves live and replayed records after reconnection. The construction-site path combines an SCL3300-D01 inclinometer with LoRaWAN, baseline-referenced relative-angle estimation, and a hysteresis state machine with distinct alarm and recovery thresholds. In a 24 h validation, four vibration nodes delivered all 69,120,000 expected records, and four forced-outage trials recovered all offline records while live transmission continued. Frequency-domain analysis confirmed attenuation of high-frequency components while retaining the dominant low-frequency response. The inclination path demonstrated quantifiable angle accuracy, correct alarm/recovery transitions, continuous LoRaWAN frame delivery over the observed interval, and correct backend decoding. The results show that path-specific communication design, combined with a common traceability concept, supports prototype functionality under the reported test conditions, not immediate construction-site deployment. Full 3D visual synchronization, BIM/GIS asset mapping, and digital-twin platform interfacing were not implemented and remain future development tasks. Full article

Blockchain can make Internet of Things (IoT) records tamper-evident after submission, but sensor measurements still require quality assessment before ledger admission. We formulate this task as continuous estimation of a rule-derived data-quality trust proxy and propose PreTrust-TCA for multivariate sensor streams. Each sample contains 48 consecutive observations encoded by a two-block residual causal temporal convolutional network with additive temporal attention. The shared representation feeds a continuous score head and an auxiliary risk head; the score supports FULL $\left(0.80<s_i\le 1.00\right)$, HASH $\left(0.60<s_i\le 0.80\right)$, and REJECT $\left(0\le s_i\le 0.60\right)$, while the risk head can conservatively redirect nominal FULL cases. Using Intel Lab data, we applied chronological expanding-window validation, training-only preprocessing, ten random seeds, injection-ratio sensitivity, and ablation analyses. Across the evaluated 5% lower-bound, 10%, and 15% training-only injection conditions, performance showed no monotonic trend as the injection ratio increased; 10% was retained as the validation-selected working configuration (MAE 0.063683; Spearman 0.681112). Removing continuous-score supervision increased MAE to 0.334102, while the attention and mean-pooling variants showed broadly comparable overall performance with different operating characteristics. On the final holdout, conservative OR gating increased risk recall from 0.990087 to 0.999044 at the cost of more non-risk review. The framework targets blockchain-supported environmental monitoring and agricultural traceability, with FULL/HASH/REJECT treated as admission-support recommendations rather than implemented transactions. Full article

RFID is usually used for product recognition, object-level tracking, inventory visibility, logistics monitoring, authentication, and automated data capture for various supply chain industries. RFID can enable traceability, authentication (anti-counterfeiting), order allocation, inventory control, warehouse efficiency, logistics monitoring, safety management and sustainability information in apparel, fashion, and product-based supply chains. The current evidence, however, is quite diverse, ranging from fashion supply chains and manufacturing analytics to inventory systems, logistics, asset tracking, environmental monitoring, worker safety, privacy, cyber and other aspects of digital transformation. The purpose of the scoping review is to chart evidence on RFID deployment in apparel, fashion, textile, and transferable product contexts, focusing on traceability, anti-counterfeiting, product visibility, and implementation conditions in apparel, fashion, and textile supply chains, as well as in sustainability contexts. The review process followed scoping review guidance and its protocol. Evidence was found in the following formats: EndNote XML/export records, Covidence screening (title/abstract), Covidence screening outputs (included study exports), and uploaded full-text PDFs. Documents were classified by source type, study design, context, technology focus, purpose, key findings, relevance to sustainability, limitations, and role in the synthesis. The results show that RFID evidence is strongest in product identification, item-level visibility, secure inventory search, manufacturing data capture, logistics tracking, asset traceability, and operational efficiency. Full article

Forensic research may involve living persons, deceased persons, human tissues, genetic data, records and images, judicial exhibits, animals, and artificial-intelligence systems. Although existing ethical instruments establish essential principles, they provide limited operational guidance for determining what must be authorised, protected, and documented before a specific study begins. FORETHICS was developed through a normative functional analysis of internationally recognised ethical instruments and selected forensic literature. Requirements were organised according to the governance function performed and examined across object-specific research scenarios. The resulting framework translates general principles into a common decision grammar comprising five foundational components, seven independent ethical axes, eight object-specific modules, cross-cutting modifiers, fifteen Hard Stops, a ten-gate decision pathway, and ten study-specific Decision Cards. Its Core Rule requires every project to establish who lawfully controls access for the proposed use, why the research is scientifically necessary, which safeguards are required, and what minimum documentation demonstrates decision readiness. The ethical object assessed is therefore the proposed research use rather than the specimen, record, or dataset in isolation. FORETHICS does not replace national law, ethical review, judicial authority, data-protection assessment, or animal-welfare oversight. It provides a candidate architecture for making forensic research governance more explicit, traceable, and comparable across jurisdictions while preserving locally lawful pathways. The framework has undergone internal scenario-based examination but has not yet been externally or empirically validated. Multidisciplinary consensus, inter-rater testing, cross-jurisdictional evaluation, and prospective usability studies are therefore required before implementation as an international decision-support standard. Full article

Repurposing aging offshore platforms into liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification or CO₂ injection facilities has been gaining attention as a viable alternative in the energy transition. However, a single systematic criterion for determining which equipment of the existing power system should be reused, retrofitted, or replaced is lacking. This study proposes a standards-attributed reuse–retrofit–replacement evaluation framework that utilizes provisions from established international standards and classification society regulations for ships and individual electrical equipment. Power system items are evaluated for functional adequacy, integrity, and regulatory compliance, then classified based on predefined decision rules. Item-level assessments are aggregated into a platform-level assessment (suitable, conditionally suitable, or not suitable) based on criticality tiers such as safety critical, operationally critical, and nonessential items. Criteria directly specified in the cited standards are distinguished from standard-based quantitative interpretations and from author-defined screening thresholds and decision rules; the quantitative interpretations are not themselves numerical limits directly prescribed by the cited standards, and the author-defined elements are not mandatory requirements of those standards. The operation of the framework is illustrated on a synthetic reference platform as a proof of concept, showing how the procedure yields differentiated reuse–retrofit–replacement (R–R–R) outcomes under the two conversion scenarios. The same power system was assessed as “conditionally suitable” and “not suitable” for LNG regasification and CO₂ injection conversions, respectively. This variance stems from the different load requirements and risk characteristics, particularly the higher safety-critical auxiliary load associated with CO₂ injection. Accordingly, the framework is intended as a screening and decision-support procedure that provides traceable rationale at the power-system level after high-level repurposing decisions; validation on actual platforms remains necessary before practical implementation. Full article

This study analyzed 27 publications on material passports (MPs) in construction, published between 2019 and 2025. Literature-derived keywords were extracted using predefined criteria, normalized, classified into four analytical dimensions, and examined through co-occurrence networks generated with VOSviewer. Based on their prominence and associations, the authors propose a four-dimensional framework linking MP development objectives, information requirements, enabling technologies, and implementation challenges. This framework is an author-developed conceptual synthesis grounded in the literature; it is neither automatically generated by VOSviewer nor an empirically validated implementation model. Within the dataset, reuse emerges as the most prominent objective, associated with lifecycle management, traceability, information continuity, and decision support. BIM occupies a central position among enabling technologies, while interoperability represents a major implementation challenge. By integrating these findings, the framework explains how MP objectives guide information selection, how information requirements influence technology choices, and how implementation constraints provide feedback that may reshape other dimensions. Its contribution lies in transforming fragmented evidence into an interconnected, objective-driven analytical structure and providing a conceptual basis for minimum viable information implementation. Future pilot projects and comparative case studies are necessary to validate its engineering applicability. Full article

Secure programming and secure design are often managed as separate activities, leaving a gap between architectural intent and the implementation that reaches production. This paper presents a structured conceptual synthesis of twenty core publications, supplemented by standards and recent work on AI-assisted development. It makes three contributions. First, it frames secure programming as the implementation-facing realization of secure design within a closed feedback loop. Second, it uses an explicit 0–5 rubric to produce an illustrative comparison of Waterfall, Iterative, Spiral, and Agile with DevSecOps across six security-integration dimensions. These profiles are structured author judgments, not empirical measurements of security effectiveness. Third, it proposes an operational Secure SDLC–DevSecOps framework that links six stages through named artifacts, accountable roles, traceability rules, release gates, exceptions, and outcome measures. A comparison with NIST SSDF, OWASP SAMM, Microsoft SDL, ISO/IEC 27034, and OWASP implementation guidance shows that the individual practices are established; the framework’s intended contribution is the project-level control loop that connects design decisions to pipeline evidence and production feedback. The illustrative profiles place Spiral and Agile with DevSecOps close together under the baseline weights, while sensitivity scenarios show that their ordering depends on whether design-time risk analysis or delivery-time verification is emphasized. The synthesis therefore supports contextual tailoring rather than a universal ranking. Full article

This article examines when a gender-responsive public procurement obligation becomes institutionally verifiable. It analyzes Brazil’s federal policy reserving jobs for women experiencing domestic and family violence, established by Law No. 14.133/2021 and regulated by Decree No. 11.430/2023 and No. 12.516/2025. The study uses the empirical legal design documented in the underlying doctoral thesis and preserves four non-interchangeable evidentiary layers: an audit of 163 records; a retained corpus of 74 documentary units; a comparative matrix of 67 cases and 335 evidence records; and aggregate official and administrative information. The expanded matrix identified 16 cases with high density across all four dimensions, five with partial intersectoral integration, and 51 that were not verifiable through the documentary proxy. These figures describe the expanded corpus and are not used as a federal compliance denominator. Official aggregate data documented localized implementation involving 20 women; a later administrative update reported 143 women hired across five federative units, without contract-level granularity. The findings indicate that contractual enforceability, intersectoral connectivity, and protected verifiability are necessary institutional conditions—although not sufficient evidence of social impact—for converting the mandate into a monitorable practice. The article distinguishes direct federal evidence, normative diffusion, documentary absence, and non-verifiability without inferring a national effectiveness rate. Full article