Search Results (10,991)

This study reports the synthesis and characterization of a dinuclear zinc(II) complex, [Zn₂(L1)₂(L2)]·DMF·Et₃N (C₄₅H₅₄F₂N₁₀O₅S₂Zn₂), constructed from a fluoro-substituted thiosemicarbazone Schiff base ligand (2-(3-fluoro-5-hydroxybenzylidene)-N-methylhydrazine-1-carbothioamide, L1) and a rigid bipyridine auxiliary ligand (1,4-di(pyridin-4-yl)-2,5-dimethoxybenzene, L2) under solvothermal conditions. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis reveals that the complex crystallizes in the monoclinic space group C2/c, featuring discrete dinuclear [Zn₂] units in which each Zn(II) center adopts a distorted square pyramidal geometry. These dinuclear units are extended into one-dimensional zigzag chains along the crystallographic c-axis via bridging L2 ligands, and further assembled into a two-dimensional supramolecular layer through hydrogen-bonding interactions involving lattice triethylamine and DMF molecules, ultimately forming a three-dimensional network. Both DMF and triethylamine molecules are disordered about a twofold rotation axis. This work highlights the structural directing roles of the fluoro-substituted multidentate Schiff base ligand and the rigid auxiliary ligand in the assembly of zinc(II) coordination polymers. Full article

Musculoskeletal fatigue precedes much of the injury burden in manufacturing, yet most monitoring schemes register an injury only once it has occurred, which becomes critical where operators share a workspace with collaborative robots. This paper presents a wearable sensing platform and a learning pipeline that track operator fatigue continuously during human–robot collaborative assembly, evaluated in silico. Eight surface electromyography (sEMG) channels, six inertial measurement units, and four force-sensitive resistors feed a 127-dimensional descriptor computed over 30$\mathrm{s}$ windows. Eight classifiers were trained on 1536 simulated working hours from 24 anthropometrically diverse synthetic operators. Under leave-operators-out cross-validation, a 1D-CNN–LSTM hybrid reached 89.3% three-class accuracy and 87.1% balanced accuracy with 73.9 k parameters and 22$\mathrm{m}$$\mathrm{s}$ inference on a Jetson Nano; a CNN–BiLSTM–attention model gained 0.3 percentage points for 1.6 times the parameters, a difference that was not statistically significant. Ablation attributed 7.0 points of balanced accuracy to sEMG and 5.0 points to three contextual variables requiring no sensor. Alerts preceded severe fatigue by roughly 12$\min$, and alert-triggered task reallocation cut peak shoulder load by 43% while retaining 94% of baseline throughput. Every result characterizes a simulated environment: the study establishes internal consistency, latency feasibility, and design trade-offs, and prospective validation with human operators remains a prerequisite for deployment. Full article

Hydrolates are aqueous co-products of aromatic-plant distillation whose composition and functionality differ from those of the corresponding essential oils. This critical review links botanical source, distillation conditions, chemical composition, quantitative biological performance, food or agricultural application, and readiness for nano-enabled formulation. Direct hydrolate studies show marked heterogeneity: reported antimicrobial performance ranges from minimum inhibitory concentrations of 5.69–500 μL mL⁻¹ to approximately 1–3.5 log reductions in food models, while antioxidant results depend strongly on the assay and reporting unit. Evidence in foods is most developed for fresh produce, seafood, dairy, meat, and beverages, but direct bakery validation remains a gap. Hydrolates offer aqueous compatibility and generally lower sensory intensity than essential oils, yet low active-compound concentrations, batch variability, microbiological susceptibility, and limited shelf stability restrict reproducible use. Among nano-enabled solutions, one direct lavender-hydrolate nanoemulsion study reported a diameter of 225.4 ± 3.2 nm and a polydispersity index of 0.098 ± 0.011, together with improved antibacterial activity; however, hydrolate-specific encapsulation efficiencies, release kinetics, long-term stability, food validation, and field trials are largely unreported. Liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles, nanogels, and active films therefore remain mostly transferable concepts supported by essential-oil, extract, or isolated-compound studies rather than established hydrolate technologies. Future work should use standardized production and quality markers, free-hydrolate and unloaded-carrier controls, realistic matrices, safety and non-target testing, scale-up analysis, and quantitative sustainability assessment. Hydrolates are promising sustainable phytochemical resources, but claims of nano-enabled advantage require direct comparative evidence. Full article

Hydrogels have attracted considerable attention due to their ability to undergo rapid and reversible phase transitions in response to external stimuli. In this work, a novel multi-responsive hydrogel (PT-Gel) was synthesized via the crosslinking of a linear poly(PEGDGE-co-PPGDGE) prepolymer (designated polyPEMPP, where PEMPP stands for Poly(Ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether-co-Poly(Propylene glycol) diglycidyl ether) with trimethylolpropane tris(2-methyl-1-aziridinepropionate) (T-403), a trifunctional amine crosslinker. The phase transition behavior was evaluated by UV–Vis transmittance measurements at 600 nm as a function of temperature. The phase transition temperature (T_T) of PT-Gels can be precisely tuned from 11.8 ± 0.5 °C to 76.3 ± 1.2 °C by adjusting the hydrophilic poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether (PEGDGE) content (0–35%), pH (5.0–10.5), NaCl concentration (0–0.9 wt%), and urea concentration (0–0.7 wt%). Specifically, T_T exhibits a nearly linear positive correlation with PEGDGE content and a linear negative correlation with pH, decreasing by 4.8 ± 0.6 °C per pH unit. The addition of 0.9 wt% NaCl lowers T_T by 11.7 ± 0.8 °C through charge screening, while 0.7 wt% urea elevates T_T by 36.5 ± 1.5 °C through hydrogen bond disruption. For the optimal formulation (15% PEGDGE, pH 7.7), T_T and transition width (ΔT) are 34.2 ± 0.6 °C and 4.2 ± 0.3 °C, respectively. PT-Gels demonstrate excellent reversible phase transition behavior, maintaining stable transmittance cycles between 98.7 ± 0.5% and 1.2 ± 0.3% over five consecutive heating–cooling cycles without significant degradation. The main driving forces for the phase transition are identified as hydrophobic interactions, electrostatic repulsion, and hydrogen bonding. This proof-of-concept study provides a rational design strategy for multi-responsive hydrogels with tunable phase transition for applications in smart drug delivery, sensors, and separation systems, while the current limitations include the need for further structural characterization and mechanical property evaluation for specific biomedical applications. Full article

This work presents the design, construction and operation of the SKD-1, a modular skid-steer unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) developed as a low-cost research platform for mobile robotics applications. The platform integrates a differential skid-steer drive system, a Raspberry Pi-based onboard computer, and a microcontroller-based control layer implemented using an STM32 microcontroller. The sensing system includes light detection and ranging (LiDAR), global navigation satellite system (GNSS), and an inertial measurement unit (IMU), enabling experiments in localization, mapping, and autonomous navigation. The software architecture is based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) 2 framework, relying on standard ROS 2 packages for perception, mapping, and path planning, with the custom hardware-interface layer being the only non-standard software component. The mechanical and electronic subsystems were designed with a modular architecture that facilitates maintenance, sensor replacement, and hardware upgrades. The primary contribution of this work is the open-hardware design, integration, and documentation of a reproducible robotics testbed, motivated by the prohibitive cost of commercial platforms in resource-constrained research contexts. Indoor and outdoor experiments—covering velocity-tracking, SLAM, and waypoint-navigation trials—demonstrate the functional integration of the sensing, actuation, and computing subsystems. Full article

Understanding niche differentiation and interspecific coexistence patterns of macrobenthos provides critical references for ecological assessment of bivalve aquaculture. Seasonal field surveys (Autumn 2023–Summer 2024) across 12 sampling sites were conducted in an intensive Meretrix meretrix tidal flat farm in Rudong, Jiangsu. Synchronous water depth, sediment grain size and total organic carbon (TOC), and salinity were measured at each station to characterize habitat gradients; no unfarmed reference tidal flats were included, so all community patterns only reflect within-farm variation. The study area has sustained 10-year continuous bottom culture with baseline juvenile stocking density of 250 ind./m² and twice-yearly manual harvesting. A total of 58 macrobenthic taxa were identified, and 13 dominant species were screened with a dominance index threshold Y > 0.02. All abundance data were fourth-root-transformed before Bray–Curtis community analysis to reduce bias of hyper-abundant taxa. Standardized Shannon niche breadth (0–1 normalized, r = 48 site–season composite units) and permutation-tested (999 replicates) Pianka niche overlap/similarity coefficients were calculated to quantify resource utilization similarity. Niche breadth ranged from 0.018 to 0.971, with farmed M. meretrix showing the maximum value, indicating broader seasonal resource adaptation. High niche overlap (>0.50) was detected between M. meretrix and four wild dominant species (Nephtys californiensis, Moerella iridescens, Lingula anatina, Umbonium thomasi). Notably, niche metrics derived solely from spatial abundance data cannot directly confirm interspecific competition or trophic segregation; the stable coexistence observed in our assemblage is tentatively hypothesized to be driven by vertical sediment partitioning and divergent feeding guilds based on published functional studies, without direct in situ trophic or stratified sediment evidence from this work. Hierarchical UPGMA clustering (0.35 Bray–Curtis distance threshold) and corrected NMDS ordination (48 site–season units, dominant-species fitted vectors) illustrated distinct functional groups. Based on the observed niche convergence among filter-feeding bivalves under local farming conditions, the range of 230–280 ind./m² is presented as an observational reference. Controlled manipulative experiments with gradient stocking densities are needed to test whether this range can balance aquaculture yield and benthic biodiversity. Full article

Many streams in western Tennessee (United States) are heavily modified, altering stream morphology and microbial community dynamics. Given the interest in restoring degraded streams, integration of microbial communities and processes is needed to inform restoration efforts. We investigated community assembly dynamics of biofilm microbial communities in a degraded and undisturbed stream within the same watershed; the degraded stream is scheduled to be restored. We established biofilm sampling plots, which included the factors light exposure, length of biofilm development, and temporal variation. We conducted metabarcoding targeting bacteria and eukaryotes, investigating community dynamics of 13 functional or taxonomic groups. We also collected stream chemical data including pH, dissolved oxygen, oxygen reduction potential, total dissolved solids, K⁺, NO₃⁻, electrical conductivity, and temperature. We observed greater diversity and higher abundances in the more natural stream, but these patterns are taxonomically context-dependent. Using a community assembly analytical framework, we identified strong temporal effects of community structure and stream chemistry. These dynamics also highlighted biomarkers that are potential indicators of stream conditions. This work highlights the need to integrate aquatic microbial communities into conversations around stream restoration. Full article

Polymer donors occupy a vital position within the active layer of organic solar cells (OSCs), and their rational molecular design and structural modulation are indispensable for the advancement of OSCs. Designing electron-withdrawing units with fused-ring skeletons is an effective strategy for constructing promising polymer donors. Herein, we report a wide-bandgap donor–acceptor (D-A)-type polymer donor, PBDQB-TF, constructed using a seven-membered fused-ring bis[1,2,5]thiadiazolo[3,4-a:3′,4′-c]dithieno[3,2-h:2′,3′-j]phenazine as the electron-withdrawing moiety. This fused aromatic skeleton exhibits strong electron-deficient character and a large conjugated plane. Benefiting from the structural merits, PBDQB-TF features a deep highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy level, broad visible-light absorption, and tunable aggregation behavior, enabling excellent spectral complementarity and energy-level alignment with classic non-fullerene acceptors BTP-eC9 and L8-BO. Photovoltaic devices fabricated from PBDQB-TF blended with either acceptor achieve promising power conversion efficiency near 10%. The PBDQB-TF:BTP-eC9 device delivers a favorable short-circuit current density of 20.03 mA cm⁻², while the PBDQB-TF:L8-BO system affords a higher open-circuit voltage of 0.964 V and a fill factor of 52.15%. Overall, this work validates the great potential of this new seven-membered, fused-ring electron-withdrawing unit and offers a reliable design principle for the development of next-generation potential polymer donor materials. Full article

Background: Saudi Arabia’s healthcare system serves an increasingly diverse patient population, yet limited qualitative evidence exists regarding how pediatric nurses navigate cultural complexity in their daily practice. Understanding nurses’ day-to-day experiences of cross-cultural care is essential for strengthening culturally sensitive pediatric services. Purpose: This study explored the experiences of pediatric nurses in providing culturally sensitive care to children and their families in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted in pediatric units of tertiary hospitals in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia. Eighteen pediatric nurses participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis, and reporting followed the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) guidelines. Results: Four themes emerged: navigating cultural landscapes, describing nurses’ encounters with diverse cultural beliefs and health practices; communication as a bridge and a barrier, reflecting language challenges and strategies for meaningful engagement; balancing professional standards with cultural respect, highlighting the tension between evidence-based care and cultural accommodation; and the emotional labor of cross-cultural caregiving, capturing the personal toll and resilience involved in culturally diverse practice. Conclusions: Pediatric nurses engage in complex interpretive, relational, and emotional work when providing culturally sensitive care. Institutional support through cultural competence training, multilingual resources, and organizational policies is essential for enhancing culturally responsive pediatric nursing practice in diverse healthcare settings. Full article

Coordinated participation of interconnected microgrids in day-ahead spot markets requires dispatch and profit allocation to be evaluated under a common modeling convention. This study develops an evidence-bounded multi-agent coordination and bidding framework that combines a repaired mixed-integer scheduling model, empirical best-response diagnostics, model-consistent standard Shapley allocation, and a post-dispatch settlement layer. The scheduling model uses aggregate internal exchange and a common-cyclic terminal state-of-charge condition; the allocation is computed from seven independently solved non-empty coalitions. For the deterministic three-microgrid case, the cooperative value is CNY 49,037.9741, compared with CNY 45,293.9055 for the unified non-cooperative baseline, corresponding to an 8.2662% increase. The nominal cooperative case has a recorded maximum power-balance residual of approximately 1.46 × 10⁻¹³, while photovoltaic (PV) curtailment is 2.3258 source units. The Gauss–Seidel best-response procedure reaches an empirical fixed-point diagnostic after 18 iterations with a maximum unilateral deviation gain of approximately 3.64 × 10⁻¹²; this is not a theoretical pure-strategy Nash result. Varying θ ∈ {0.1, 0.5, 0.9} changes settlement outcomes without changing physical dispatch. Synthetic 5- and 10-microgrid tests characterize computational behavior, with the 10-microgrid case returning a feasible time-limited incumbent rather than a proven optimum. The results support the proposed integration under the tested deterministic settings, while uncertainty-aware, network-constrained, and real-time validation remain future work. Full article

Executive dysfunction (EFD) represents a transdiagnostic construct encompassing deficits in inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, mediated primarily by the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Despite a robust neurobiological literature, the psychodynamic dimensions of EFD remain undertheorized and clinically underutilized. Moreover, the implications of EFD for the parent–child relationship, both when the deficit resides in the child and when it characterizes the parent, have received insufficient integrative attention. This paper adopts an integrative neuro-psychodynamic framework, examining EFD across three clinical presentations, namely Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and chronic procrastination, and exploring their neurobiological substrates in parallel with their psychoanalytic correlates. A dedicated section examines the bidirectional relationship between EFD and the quality of the parent–child dyad, drawing on developmental neuroscience, attachment theory, and object-relational thinking. Evidence suggests that top-down regulatory failures, indexed by disrupted PFC-amygdala circuitry, may be conceptually mapped onto classical psychoanalytic constructs including Hartmann’s ego functions, Bion’s container-contained model, and Freudian theories of narcissistic withdrawal. The parent–child relationship emerges as a critical bidirectional system in which executive capacities and relational quality mutually regulate one another: parental EFD compromises the scaffolding function essential to the child’s developing self-regulation, while the child’s EFD severity independently predicts elevated parental stress and dysfunctional interactional patterns. An integrated neuro-psychodynamic model of EFD offers clinicians a richer diagnostic and therapeutic framework. Awareness of the neurobiological underpinnings of EFD may meaningfully inform treatment sequencing, particularly regarding the timing of psychodynamic interventions relative to the structural and regulatory capacity of the patient’s ego apparatus. The family system emerges as a primary unit of clinical attention, inasmuch as EFD rarely operates in isolation but rather within, and in recursive interaction with, the relational field. Full article

The planning-stage estimation of fuel-related carbon emissions from construction equipment is constrained by a mismatch between the detailed operational data required for high-resolution methods and the limited information available before construction begins. This study develops a transparent, deterministic framework that converts basic project information and bill of quantities (BOQ) data into equipment workloads, operating hours, fuel consumption, and fuel-related carbon emissions. Standardized productivity values from the 2025 Standard Production Unit System for Construction Works, hourly fuel-consumption rates from the 2025 Construction Equipment Cost Estimation Table, the IPCC fuel-combustion methodology, and an ecoinvent-based upstream fuel factor are integrated through process-level conversion rules. The methodological contribution lies in operationalizing these existing data sources as a traceable low-data estimation chain rather than introducing new productivity or emission factors. In a residential-building case study, earthwork and retaining works and reinforced concrete works accounted for most of the recorded diesel consumption. The predicted fuel-consumption intensity was 10.5 L/m² compared with an actual value of 13.9 L/m², while the excavator estimate showed a substantially larger equipment-level deviation. Analytical sensitivity analysis indicates that workload and fuel-rate assumptions affect estimates proportionally, whereas productivity assumptions have an inverse effect. The framework is therefore intended as a preliminary planning and screening tool; equipment-level calibration requires higher-resolution operating-hour and refueling records. Full article

The accelerating use of algorithmic systems in public administration exposes a standardization gap between technical AI assurance and institutional accountability. This article develops a tiered accountability and reporting standards framework for decisions made under public authority. A qualitative design science method combines comparative institutional analysis, structured absence analysis, and standards architecture design. The empirical basis comprises international standards, the United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)–Treasury access episode as an institutional control precursor, Australia’s Robodebt scheme as an automated-decision failure, and public sector governance arrangements in Estonia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and the United States. A replicable coding protocol traces documented accountability gaps to five auditable primitives: provenance tracking, decision logging, role attribution, contestability, and post-deployment audit. The primitives are organized into minimum, heightened, and systemic/constitutional tiers according to material influence, rights and essential service effects, civil service integrity, institutional independence, and substitutive capacity. The article also specifies a Public Sector Algorithmic Accountability Statement (PAAS), crosswalks its ten disclosure fields to GRI 1, GRI 2, and GRI 3, and demonstrates its operation through a fully worked hypothetical benefits eligibility application. A tier assignment decision aid, an assurance cycle, and a cost–feasibility model support implementation, including in small institutions. The framework’s novelty lies not in claiming new lifecycle controls, but in consolidating those controls around the public decision configuration, escalating them according to public authority consequences, and joining internal evidence to comparable public reporting. The proposal shifts standardization from AI system certification alone toward auditable institutional answerability, governance sustainability, and constitutional integrity. Full article

Stabilized proposal pricing may reduce exact subproblem work, but it cannot by itself certify branch-and-price node termination. A conditional, tolerance-adjusted node-pricing bound is developed for deterministic unit commitment. At the unstabilized restricted-master dual, CSDW-S applies a Phase-II cascade comprising a period-separable operational-envelope bound (Tier E), a chronology-preserving ramp-relaxed dynamic-programming bound (Tier D), and exact mixed-integer-programming pricing fallback. Relaxed optimizers are proof objects rather than master columns; CSDW-X prices every Phase-II unit exactly. The mechanism was evaluated in a prespecified 79-task study with a 600 s scientific deadline per task. In the primary 24-pair, 24 h horizon set, accepted root endpoints were returned by CSDW-S and CSDW-X in 15 and 24 conditions, respectively. Across the 15 jointly accepted pairs, the maximum absolute bound difference was $2.24\times {10}^{-8}$. Exact true-dual unit solves were reduced by CSDW-S in all 15 pairs (median paired difference, $-29,228$), although CSDW-S was slower in 14 pairs (median paired difference, $+20.7$ s). The previously submitted 10-cell assessment did not conform to the primary acceptance criteria. It is therefore retained separately as historical evidence, with completion flags of 0/10 for CSDW-S and 9/10 for CSDW-X, and is not pooled with the new study. Mechanism, tolerance, horizon stress, and two small full tree contrasts support a qualified interpretation. Exact pricing workload can be reduced by the selective cascade when an endpoint is completed. Full article

Monitoring environmental degradation requires robust solutions capable of capturing the complex dynamics of ecosystems. This study presents VISW (Verona Image, Sound, and Weather), a low-cost autonomous platform designed for long-term operation in remote areas, developed with support from the MANNA and LEEB research groups. The system employs a multimodal sensing approach, integrating weather data acquisition, multispectral imaging, and environmental acoustic monitoring. VISW was engineered for continuous autonomous operation, incorporating dedicated energy management, data acquisition, and storage subsystems suitable for adverse field conditions. This work was developed in the context of the Fundão dam collapse (2015), one of the largest environmental disasters in Brazil’s history. To monitor biodiversity recovery in the impacted areas, nine VISW Station units were deployed throughout the Doce River basin (Minas Gerais, Brazil). Data collection has been continuously carried out since September 2024, creating a valuable multimodal dataset composed of environmental sounds, multispectral images, and meteorological data from the affected regions. This dataset enables the investigation of complex relationships among vegetation dynamics, climatic patterns, and local soundscapes, providing a comprehensive understanding of ecological processes in areas impacted by disasters. Finally, field tests validated the VISW as a robust, scalable, and cost-effective solution for long-term environmental monitoring. Full article