Studies on the detection of layers with elevated black carbon aerosol (BC) concentrations and the formation conditions of these layers help understand the vertical distribution of BC concentrations, which will provide a basis for the assessment of climate effects and early BC pollution warnings. By using the Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) numerical model, we performed a numerical simulation analysis on the authenticity of strong elevated BC concentration layers that were detected by an aircraft in the mixing layer over Harbin, China, which is a high-emission area, on a clear sunny afternoon in the early heating period of 2016. We then discuss possible problems and solutions when non-vertical paths are used to detect the vertical distribution of BC concentrations. Finally, we discuss the favorable conditions for the formation of elevated BC concentration layers by weak vertical flow. The results show that the horizontal variability of BC concentration in the mixing layer in the observation area in Harbin was sufficiently large during the measurement. This produced a false elevated layer, as detected by the aircraft during one round of spiral flight in the mixing layer. The root mean square of the horizontal distribution of BC concentration did not change with height in the mixing layer during the daytime, but it decreased with the thickness of the mixing layer and was higher in the mixing layer than in the free atmosphere. Therefore, the thinner the mixing layer, in which the vertical distribution of the BC concentration is detected in an inclined path, the stronger interference of the horizontal variability on the detected results. When a spiral flight detection path is used, the aircraft should fly at least two rounds in the mixing layer. In the daytime, due to strong turbulence in the mixing layer, weak vertical uplift is not favorable for the occurrence of elevated BC concentration layers in the mixing layer. In the nighttime, if weak vertical uplift is well matched with the BC concentration or its vertical gradient, elevated BC concentration layers can be formed in the atmosphere. Compared with upper layers far from the ground, nighttime elevated layers are easier to form in lower layers near the ground because high BC concentrations or large vertical gradients are more likely to occur in the lower layers. Both cases facilitate the occurrence of large vertical upward transport rates of BC.

Background: Infections caused by E. coli cause considerable disease burden and range from frequently occurring and relatively innocent urinary tract infection (UTI) to severe bloodstream infection (BSI). The incidence of infections caused by ESBL-producing E. coli (ESBL-PEc) is increasing, justifying surveillance and development of preventive strategies in several domains. Faecal carriage is universal and believed to be the most important reservoir for E. coli from which infections can originate. It is currently unknown to what extent Dutch E. coli carriage strains in the community reflect isolates causing disease. In this study, we will perform comparative genomics to infer the population structures of human-derived ESBL-PEc from community- and hospital-acquired infections and from community-based faecal carriage samples in the Netherlands. Furthermore, we will describe the molecular epidemiology of E. coli isolates causing invasive disease (BSI). Methods: This study uses four different microbiological data sources: 1) ESBL-PEc from patients with community-acquired UTI tested in primary care between May and November 2017, 2) ESBL-PEc from urine cultures obtained from patients hospitalized between January 2014 and December 2016, 3) E. coli from blood cultures obtained from patients hospitalized between January 2014 and December 2016, and 4) ESBL-PEc from faecal samples collected in a national population- prevalence study performed between January 2014 and January 2017. Clinical epidemiological data was collected from all patients and all isolates were subjected to whole genome sequencing. Discussion: The EPIGENEC study (EPIdemiology and GENetics of E. coli) will describe the molecular epidemiology of E. coli BSI and assess the genomic population structure of ESBL-PEc strains from community-acquired and nosocomial infections, and of ESBL-PEc reflecting community-based faecal carriage. Information from these studies may assist in optimizing surveillance strategies and determining targets and potential impact of future new preventive measures.

Currently, various issues on environment have been discussed, whether the importance, destruction or ways to prevent the destruction of the environment. This paper will explore the issue from the conventional viewpoint as well as from the Islamic perspective. Destruction of the environment in recent times has worsened due to the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources by human beings in order to generate profits. In view of the increasing technological development in Malaysia presently, this matter should not have occurred because the citizens intellectual abilities can be considered advanced. In other words, these people should be able to weigh between positive and negative consequences of voraciously exploiting natural resources. However, the greed that engulfs some of these people has obscured their view from grasping the future consequences of their acts. Based on the Islamic perspective in which the Quran is the ultimate reference, destruction of the environment can actually be prevented if every individual is aware of his or her trustworthiness or responsibility as His caliphate in this universe. Nevertheless, is there any specific verse in the Quran which explains about preservation of the environment? Can lessons from the Quran provide solutions to the environmental crises in Malaysia? This study provides explanations to the questions based on literature surveys and content analyses. By interpreting some selected verses that relate to preservation of the environment, findings from the discussions have identified that the Quranic verses are valuable resources for the sustainability of the environment.

Uranium isotopes actively investigated as mechanistic or time scale tracers of natural processes. This paper describes the occurrence and redistribution of U in the Vendian aquifer of the paleo valley at NW Russia. Forty-four rock samples were collected from boreholes, and twenty-five groundwater samples. The U, Fe concentration, and 234U/238U activity ratio were determined in the samples. We estimated the 14C and 234U-238U residence time of groundwater in an aquifer. It has been established that the processes of chemical weathering of Vendian deposits led to the formation of a strong oxidation zone, developed above -250 m.a.s.l. The inverse correlation between the concentrations of uranium and iron is a result of removal of U from paleo valley slopes in oxidizing conditions and accumulation of U at the bottom of the paleo valley in reducing conditions, and accumulation of Fe on the slopes and removal from bottom. Almost all U on the slopes replaced by a newly formed hydrogenic U with a higher 234U/238U activity ratio. After that dissolution and desorption of hydrogenic U was occurred from the slopes during periods without any glaciations and marine transgressions. Elevated concentrations of U preserved in not oxidized lenses at the paleo valley bottom.

The majority of urban inhabitants in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) cities live in deprived urban areas. However, statistics and data (e.g., local monitoring of Sustainable Development Goals - SDGs) are hindered by the unavailability of spatial data at metropolitan, city and sub-city scales. Deprivation is a complex and multidimensional concept, which has been captured in existing literature with a strong focus on household-level deprivation while giving limited attention to area-level deprivation. Within this scoping review, we build on existing literature on household- as well as area-level deprivation frameworks to arrive at a combined understanding of how urban deprivation is defined with a focus on LMIC cities. The scoping review was enriched with local stakeholder workshops in LMIC cities to arrive at our framework of Domains of Deprivations, splitting deprivation into three different scales and nine domains. (1) Socio-Economic Status and (2) Housing Domains (Household scale); (3) Social Hazards & Assets, (4) Physical Hazards & Assets, (5) Unplanned Urbanization and (6) Contamination (Within Area scale); and (7) Infrastructure, (8) Facilities & Services and (9) city Governance (Area Connect scale). The Domains of Deprivation framework provides a clear guidance for collecting data on various aspects of deprivation, while providing the flexibility to decide at city level which indicators are most relevant to explain individual domains. The framework provides a conceptual and operational base for the Integrated Deprived Area Mapping System (IDEAMAPS) Project for the creation of a data ecosystem, which facilitates the production of routine, accurate maps of deprived “slum” areas at scale across cities in LMICs. The Domains of Deprivation Framework is designed to support diverse health, poverty, and development initiatives globally to characterize and address deprivation in LMIC cities.

In scientific research, there is a noticeable lack of specific studies focused on inconclusive results, in contrast to the abundance of studies dedicated to conclusive or positive outcomes. While conclusive results offer definitive answers, inconclusive results, often viewed less favorably, do not provide such clarity. However, they play a vital role in the scientific process by identifying gaps and inspiring future research. This paper introduces the pioneering Integrated Inconclusive Results Framework, a significant development that addresses the challenges associated with inconclusive results. The Framework aims to shift the perception of inconclusive results from setbacks to crucial components of scientific progress, ultimately enhancing scientific inquiry's rigor, transparency, and overall quality. The paper delves into the historical treatment of inconclusive results, causes, and strategies for handling them, offering insights into utilizing them to inspire and guide future research, thereby strengthening the scientific community and instilling confidence and reassurance in the direction of scientific research.

The article analyzes the transitional mode of movement of a passenger train caused by emergency braking by the driver. To study the possibility of derailment of passenger cars, a simulation model of the movement of a train consisting of a locomotive and twenty passenger cars was developed in the Universal Mechanism software environment, designed to study the dynamics and kinematics of mechanical systems, which include railway rolling stock. The developed model allows taking into account the longitudinal, transverse and vertical vibrations of all cars and locomotive. All bodies in the model are assumed to be absolutely rigid. The assumption of non-deformability of the bodies is based on the fact that the stiffness of the spring suspension and elastic connections is significantly less than the structural rigidity of the bogie frames and the bolster structure, and the frequency of elastic vibrations of these bodies is much higher than the frequency of their vibrations on the spring suspension. Passengers and cargo in a wagon are considered to be non-deformable and integral with the wagon body, similarly in the case of a locomotive body. Between the elements of the system, connections are involved that regulate certain relative movements of these elements.

The primary purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview about the notion of the \textit{Mertens Function} $M(n)$ and \textit{Redheffer Matrices} $\mathbb{A}_{n}$ and, to derive specific order estimates for $M(n)$, in order to analyze the location of the non-trivial zeros of the \textit{Riemann Zeta function} $\zeta(s)$. A priori using the above concepts, the article aims at establishing a necessary and sufficient condition for the \textit{Riemann Hypothesis} to hold true.

The present work is focused on the numerical solution of the complete energy equation used in fluid film lubrication. The work was motivated by the fact the complete energy equation has no analytic solution that could be used for validations. Its accuracy and computation time are related to the employed numerical method and to the grid resolution. The natural discretization method (NDM) applied on different grids is systematically compared with the spectral method (the Lobatto Point Colocation Method or LPCM) with different polynomial degrees. A one dimensional inclined slider is used for the numerical tests and the energy equation is artificially decoupled from Reynolds. This approach enables to focus all the attention on the numerical solution of the energy equation. The results show that the LPCM is one or two orders of magnitudes more efficient than the NDM in terms of computation time. The energy equation is then coupled with Reynolds equation in a thermo-hydrodynamic analysis of the same 1D slider; the numerical results confirm again the efficiency of the LPCM. A thermo-hydrodynamic analysis of a two-lobe journal bearing is then presented as a practical application.

Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease incidence has risen mainly due to poor control of preventable risk factors and still constitutes a significant financial and health burden worldwide. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language-based model developed by OpenAI. Due to the model’s unique cognitive capabilities beyond data processing and the production of high-quality text, there has been a surge of research interest concerning its role in the scientific community and contemporary clinical practice. To fully exploit ChatGPT's potential benefits and reduce its possi-ble misuse, extreme caution must be taken to ensure its implications ethically and equitably. In this article, we explore the language model's possible applications and limitations while empha-sizing its potential value for diagnosing, managing, and prognosis cardiovascular and cerebro-vascular disease.

The digital economy (DE) has become a major force driving the optimization and upgrading of industrial structures (ISOU), and research on the driving mechanism has yet to be verified. To this end, the driving influence of DE on the ISOU is targeted, and the role played by economic resilience (ER) and innovation is explored. Based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2011 to 2020, the driving influence of the DE on the ISOU is analyzed using a two-way fixed-effects model. The empirical study finds that the DE presents a positive driving effect on both industrial structure advancement and rationalization, and the driving effect is still significant after the addition of control variables and the robust-type test with one period of lag; the DE presents regional differences in ISOU, with the driving effect of the DE on industrial structure advancement in the eastern region having a more significant performance than that of the central and western regions, and the driving influence on the rationalization of industrial structure in the eastern and western regions exceeds that in the central region; the impact of DE on the ISOU has a mediating role through innovation, ER has a moderating role in the process, and innovation as a partial mediator also has a threshold effect, and finally countermeasure suggestions are put forward.

As shown earlier, the algorithmic complexity, like Shannon information and Boltzmann entropy, tends to increase in accordance with the general law of complification. However, the algorithmic complexity of most material systems does not reach its maximum, i.e. chaotic state, due to the various laws of nature that create certain structures. The complexity of such structures is very different from the algorithmic complexity, and we intuitively feel that its maximal value should be somewhere between order and chaos. I propose a formula for calculation such structural complexity, which can be called - structuredness. The structuredness of any material system is determined by structures of three main types: stable, dissipative, and post-dissipative. The latter are defined as stable structures created by dissipative ones, directly or indirectly. Post-dissipative structures, as well as stable, can exist for an unlimited time, but at the micro level only, without energy influx. The appearance of such structures leads to the “ratchet” process, which determines the structuregenesis in non-living and, especially, in living systems. This process allows systems with post-dissipative structures to develop in the direction of maximum structuring due to the gradual accumulation of these structures, even when such structuring contradicts the general law of complification.

Numerous elements, such as the composition and characteristics of carbon nanomaterials, the composition and characteristics of the matrix material, moisture levels, temperature, and loading circumstances, influence the piezoresistive behaviour of self-sensing cementitious composites. While some past research has explored the impact of some of these factors on the performance of self-sensing cementitious composites, additional investigations need to be conducted to delve into how loading conditions affect the sensitivity of self-sensing cement-stabilized composites. Therefore, this study explores the influences of various loading conditions (i.e., location of loading regarding the location of recording electrodes, and loading level) on the electromechanical performance of self-sensing cement-stabilized sand. To this end, firstly, the evaluation of the percolation threshold based on 10% cement-stabilized sand specimens containing various multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) was performed. Then, 10% cement-stabilized sand containing 4% MWCNTs/GNPs was tested under various cyclic compressive stresses. The results suggested that the distance between the loading area and the electrode location used for recording the electrical resistance significantly impacts the sensitivity of cement-stabilized sand. Optimal sensitivity was achieved when the electrodes were positioned directly beneath the loading area. Moreover, the study yielded that the stress sensitivity of self-sensing cement-stabilized sand increases proportionally with the stress level. Examination through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) demonstrated that the loading condition influences the bridging characteristics of carbon nanomaterials in cement-stabilized sand, leading to diverse electromechanical behaviors based on the loading condition. This study underscores the importance of considering specific parameters when designing the application of self-sensing cement-stabilized sand for practical field use.

Heating films were prepared by using poly(methyl methacrylate) and polybutadiene composites containing graphite. The heating film was prepared by casting the as-made polymer composite on PET film. Copper electrodes were attached to both ends of the as-prepared film, and the heating characteristics of the film was analyzed while applying DC voltage. The electrical conductivity and the heating temperature of the heating films depended on the size, the structure, the content and the dispersion characteristics of the graphite in the composite. The electrical resistance of the heating film was controlled to adjust the heating temperature of the film. The relationship between the physical/chemical structure and the heating characteristics of the composite film was studied by measuring the heating temperature as functions of film thickness and resistance by using an infrared thermal imaging camera. The lower the film resistance, the higher the heating temperature of the film. The surface temperature was uniform throughout the film.

China promotes nature-based solutions (NbS) as key approaches to addressing climate change, ecosystem damage, and biodiversity loss. However, indigenous and local knowledge (ILK), which is recognized by international scholars as an essential element of successful NbS, has not been thoroughly studied in the Chinese context. By conducting a comprehensive review of Chinese central governmental policies and semi-structured interviews with typical cases, this study finds out diversified sources of ILK and five pathways of ILK integration, including education, supervision, participation, knowledge preservation, and knowledge adoption. An increasing emphasis on community engagement has been driven by central policies such as the ecological civilization, carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals. From a practical perspective, consistent core ideas of ILK exist in selected typical Chinese cases and studies in other countries, namely co-existence and reciprocity with nature. While supportive central policies can set the scene, ILK integration could not be realized without local governmental endorsement, context-based implementation, and long-term multi-stakeholder participation. Furthermore, this study also figures out a potential deficiency in terms of realizing effective ILK integration in mainstream and conventional practices, which can be further investigated by future studies.

. In this article, a search for a calculation method and an analysis of performance indicators of mutual investment funds is carried out. Many factors can influence the return on investments in portfolio investments, which makes the choice of the fund incredibly difficult. However, in addition to the fact that it is difficult to determine which indicators should be given more attention and which should be omitted, it is not so easy to get these data. Some of them are publicly available on the Internet, while others can only be found in trading systems that are not accessible to people outside of this area. The article proves that a well-trained neural network can easily find existing patterns between risk and expected return on investment. It is a well-trained neural network that provides the ability to use the "what-if" function to justify your choice on real factors, as well as the ability to download available data and calculate the estimated income and its changes. This makes it much easier to choose a Fund, especially for inexperienced investors. The article also presents the results of a study of the dependence of estimated income on correlation, standard deviation, and volatility using a trained neural network. According to the theory, higher values of these three factors correspond to a higher amount of income. The obtained graphs of the calculated income dependence on correlation, standard deviation, and volatility confirmed the correctness of the neural network training and compliance with the relations described in the theory. The paper presents graphs of the dependence of the estimated income on the beta and alpha coefficients. The higher the beta and alpha indicators, the higher the expected return on investment. This corresponds to the dependency accepted in the model. When the values of the beta and alpha coefficients increase, the income also increases, which is completely consistent with the theory.

In this article, a search for a calculation method and an analysis of performance indicators of mutual investment funds is carried out. Many factors can influence the return on investments in portfolio investments, which makes the choice of the fund incredibly difficult. However, in addition to the fact that it is difficult to determine which indicators should be given more attention and which should be omitted, it is not so easy to get these data. Some of them are publicly available on the Internet, while others can only be found in trading systems that are not accessible to people outside of this area. The article proves that a well-trained neural network can easily find existing patterns between risk and expected return on investment. It is a well-trained neural network that provides the ability to use the "what-if" function to justify your choice on real factors, as well as the ability to download available data and calculate the estimated income and its changes. This makes it much easier to choose a Fund, especially for inexperienced investors. The article also presents the results of a study of the dependence of estimated income on correlation, standard deviation, and volatility using a trained neural network. According to the theory, higher values of these three factors correspond to a higher amount of income. The obtained graphs of the calculated income dependence on correlation, standard deviation, and volatility confirmed the correctness of the neural network training and compliance with the relations described in the theory. The paper presents graphs of the dependence of the estimated income on the beta and alpha coefficients. The higher the beta and alpha indicators, the higher the expected return on investment. This corresponds to the dependency accepted in the model. When the values of the beta and alpha coefficients increase, the income also increases, which is completely consistent with the theory.

Background: On Dec 19, 2019, the public health department of China reported that an outbreak of pneumonia was caused by a novel Coronavirus. The virulence of the new virus COVID-19 was much greater than either the SARs and MERSs viruses and on March 11, 2020, the World Health Department (WHO) declared a worldwide pandemic. Understanding the pathophysiology of virulence of the SARS-COV-2 virus is absolutely necessary for understanding the transmission, virulence factors, reduce risk factors, clinical presentation, predict outcomes of the disease and provide guidance for any current or future treatment protocols. Methodology: A comprehensive PubMed search was performed during December 20, 2019 and April 03, 2020, utilizing the words: Wuhan Virus, COVID-19, SARs coronavirus, ACE2, S-protein, virulence, clinical presentation, epidemiology, genome, treatment, structure, MERs, pathogenesis and/or pathology alone and in combination with other terms. Each paper was evaluated by three content experts for quality, reproducibility, credibility and reputation of the journal. Results: The SARS-COV-2 virus is much more virulent than either the SAR’s or MER’s virus and its ability to cause serious disease inversely corresponds to the person’s ability to produce T-cells which declines linearly with age. The ACE2 receptor binding site does not vary among different ethnic groups but do in ACE-2 expression levels. This variance in expression level may explain for different infectivity rates among men and women and predict and explain different susceptibilities to infection by different ethnic groups. Furthermore, by understanding the underlying pathophysiology one can explain and provide guidance to the clinical effectiveness of any treatment. Conclusions: The underlying pathophysiology of COVID-19 explains not only the virulence, and clinical presentation, but, explains at a molecular level the comorbidity risk factors such as hypertension, sex, and age. Ethnic and anatomic expression patterns of ACE-2 and associated pathophysiology suggests that Native Americans and Asians may be particularly susceptible to this disease.

Pakistan relies mostly on fossil fuel for fulfilling its energy demand which is expensive as 11 well as not friendly for the environment. The need of the hour is to shift from fossil fuels to renew-12 able energy resources like geothermal, wind, solar etc. to cater for global warming issues. Pakistan 13 has a lot of potential geothermal sites because of several fault lines and hot springs. A sound 14 knowledge of ground temperature is essential to use geothermal energy, which is obtained by drill-15 ing boreholes and putting sensors making it an expensive procedure. Thus, to avoid huge cost for 16 drilling bore holes, particularly for ground temperature analysis, a numerical approach has been 17 considered for determining ground temperature. Furthermore, correlation charts between air and 18 ground temperatures have been developed as there were no proper studies on the ground temper-19 ature of Pakistan. Then, with the help of a boreholes drilled in National University of Sciences and 20 Technology Islamabad Pakistan, the actual ground and numerically calculated temperatures have 21 been compared which shows an error margin in the range between 0.27% for higher depths to 7.3% 22 near surface. Thus, it is shown that the proposed method is easy to implement and better than large 23 scale testing methods for the depths at which geothermal energy is extracted.

The paper proposes a human explainable artificial intelligence approach for mapping the status of environmental phenomena from multisource geo data. It is both knowledge and data driven: it exploits remote sensing expert’s knowledge to define the contributing factors from which partial evidence of the environmental status can be computed. Furthermore, it aggregates the partial evidences to compute a map of the environmental status by adapting to a region of interest through a learning mechanism exploiting Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), both from in situ observations and photointerpretation. The approach is capable to capture the specificities of local context as well as to cope with the subjectivity and incompleteness of expert’s knowledge. The proposal is exemplified to map the status of standing water areas (i.e. water bodies and river, human driven or natural hazard flooding) by considering satellite data and geotagged observations. Results of the validation experiments were performed in three areas of Northern Italy, characterized by distinct ecosystems. Results of the proposed methodological framework showed better performances than traditional approaches based on single spectral indexes thresholding. The use of expert’s knowledge, possibly imprecise/uncertain and incomplete, the need of few ground truth data for learning, and finally the explainability of learned rules are the distinguishing characteristics of the proposal with respect to traditional machine learning methods.

Pakistan is one of the few countries where poliovirus transmission still persists, despite intensive efforts to eradicate the disease. Adequate vaccination coverage is essential to achieve polio eradication, but misconceptions about polio vaccines have hindered vaccination efforts. To address this issue, we conducted a mixed-methods study to explore knowledge and perceptions regarding polio disease and immunization in high-risk areas of Pakistan. We collected quantitative data from 3780, 1258, and 2100 households in Karachi, Bajaur, and Pishin, respectively, and supplemented this with qualitative data from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. Our findings reveal a high level of awareness about polio and its immunization; however, misperceptions about the polio vaccine persist, leading to vaccine refusal for both polio and routine immunization. Our study provides up-to-date data on knowledge and perceptions of polio and its immunization and identifies critical gaps. These findings can inform the development of future strategies and innovative approaches to improve the success of the polio program in Pakistan.

In this nano era, nanomaterials and nanostructures are popular in developing novel functional materials. However, the combinations of nanoproducts with materials at micro and macro scale can open new routes for conceiving novel materials with an improved or even new functional performances. In this study, a brand-new hybrid, containing both nanofibers and particles having a microsize, was fabricated using a sequential electrohydrodynamic atomization (EHDA) process. Firstly, the microparticles loaded with drug (berberine hydrochloride, BH) molecules in the cellulose acetate (CA) were fabricated using a solution electrospraying process. Later, these microparticles were suspended into a co-dissolved solution containned BH and a hydrophilic polymer (polypyrrolidone, PVP), and were co-electrospun into the nanofiber/microparticle hybrids. The EHDA processes were clearly recorded, and the resultant products showed a typical hybrid topography, with microparticles distributed all over the nanofibers, which was demonstrated by SEM assessments. FTIR and XRD demonstrated that the components within the hybrids were presented in an amorphous state and have fine compatibility with each other. In vitro dissolution tests verified that the hybrids were able to provide the designed dula-step drug release profiles, a combination of the fast release step of BH from the hydrophilic PVP nanofibers through an erosion mechanism and the sustained release step of BH from the insoluble CA microparticles via a typical Fickian diffusion mechanism. The present protocols pave a new way for developing trans-scale functional materials.

Strawberries (garden strawberries) belong to the most valuable berry crops and are an excellent dietary low-calorie product. This favorite berry is grown everywhere in Azerbaijan. The main objective of this study was a comparative study of 4 imported English strawberry cultivars Cupid, Fenella, Christine and Flamenco by productivity and its components, and on this basis, the selection of the most productive and adaptive. The study was conducted in a pilot production area (0.62 ha) of the Research Institute of Fruit and Tea Growing of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Azerbaijan Republic, which is located in the lowland part of the Guba district at an altitude of 400 m above sea level. Strawberry seedlings were planted on this site in the fall of 2020. The site was divided into paired rows repeated every 80 cm, and in each such pair the distance between the rows was 30 cm. The distance between the plants in each row was 15 cm. Mulching and drip irrigation were used as the main elements of the technology. When evaluating varieties by productivity in June 2022, when it reached its maximum level, the Fenella cultivar stood out. The productivity of this cultivar was 0.81 kg per bush or 40.2 tons per hectare. The same cultivar was distinguished by its large fruit (length 4.07 ± 0.42 cm, width 3.61 ± 0.55 cm, weight 20.96 ± 6.21 g), which indicates the prospect of its cultivation in the region.

This paper contributes to the current debate about Benefit Corporations, presenting the development of this organisational model in Italy, the first country to introduce this hybrid form after the US. Grounded on an institutional logic perspective, it provides a picture of the institutional dynamics that have characterised the rise of this new entrepreneurial form outside the US. The analysis provides an in-depth foundational study of the Italian case and highlights the relevant influence of different institutional pressures in explaining the rise of and constraints in the diffusion of Benefit Corporations. Empirically, it combines secondary data, available from different public sources, and primary data collected through interviews with a series of knowledgeable informants. Based upon the analysis, two aspects appear peculiar for the development of Benefit Corporations in Italy: the interplay between the Benefit Corporation legal form and the certified B Corp model, and the rise of tensions between social entrepreneurship and the third sector ecosystem. This paper concludes that the peculiar institutional pressures leading to the birth of Benefit Corporations in Italy may be source of permanent tensions and of concern for the diffusion of the model.

Research on early stages of corrosion of steel bars, together with the formation and development of cracks induced in the surrounding concrete and caused by chloride penetration, is relevant in improving the durability of reinforced concrete structures. This paper uses integration of the analytical models examined in the published literature, combined with experimental research in corrosion induced at the concrete/steel interface, in estimating the time-to-crack initiation of reinforced concrete subjected to corrosion. This work studies the influence of the porous network and electric current density on the cracking process at early ages. The experimental campaign was performed by using an accelerated corrosion test on a conventional concrete (CC) and a concrete with silica fume (SFC) by submitting them to a current density of 50μA/cm² and 100μA/cm². Examination performed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) provided both qualitative and quantitative information on the penetration of the rust layer in the surrounding concrete porous network. Strain gauges were used to measure corrosion-induced deformations between steel and concrete matrices, as well as the formation of corrosion-induced cracks. A good correlation between the rate of penetration of the rust products in the surrounding pores and the delay of the cracking pressure in concrete was observed from the experimental results. This phenomenon is incorporated into the analytical model by using a reduction factor, which mainly depends on the pore size of the concrete. The crack width obtained exhibited a significant dependency on electric current density at the beginning of the test, depending mainly on the pore size of the concrete later.

This work considers the existence of heteroclinic solutions for second order differential equations with ϕ-Laplacians and generalized impulsive conditions on the real line. For the construction of the results, it was only imposed that ϕ is a homeomorphism and the Schauder’s fixed point theorem allied with the concepts of L1-Carathéodory functions and sequences together with the equiconvergence on infinity and on each impulsive moments. Finally, a practical part illustrates the main theorem.

Sub-micro dislocation cellular structures formed during rapid solidification break the strength-ductility trade-off in laser powder bed fusion (LPBF)-processed 316L stainless steel through high-density dislocations and segregated elements or precipitates at the cellular boundaries. The high-density dislocation entangled at the cellular boundary accommodates solidification strains among the cellular structures and cooling stresses through elastoplastic deformation. Columnar grains with cellular structures typically form along the direction of thermal flux. However, the ultra-low misorientations between the adjacent cellular structures and their interactions with the cellular boundary formation remain unclear. In this study, we revealed the ultra-low misorientations between the cellular structures in LPBF-processed 316L stainless steel using conventional electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), transmission Kikuchi diffraction (TKD), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The conventional EBSD and TKD analysis results could provide the misorientation angles smaller than 2° while the resolution mainly depends on the specimen quality and scanning step size, and so on. TEM technique with higher spatial resolution provides accurate information between adjacent dislocation cells with misorientation angles smaller than 1°. This study presents that TEM method is the better and more precise analysis method of the misorientation measurement of the cellular structures and provides insights into measuring the small misorientation angles between adjacent dislocation cells and nanograins in nanostructured-metals and alloys with ultrafine-grained microstructures.

Healthcare leaders are faced with many financial challenges in the contemporary environment, leading to many bankruptcies in recent years. What is not well understood are the specific conditions that lead to organizational economic failure. Ideally, hospital leaders could examine the literature for guidance to predict bankruptcy before it occurs. However, existing regression methods have proven inadequate, especially when the finance variables follow a nonnormal frequency pattern. Furthermore, the regression approach encounters difficulties due to multicollinearity and nonnormality issues. Therefore, an alternate stochastic approach for predicting the probability of hospital bankruptcy is warranted. This new method includes computing and interpreting the correlations between the hospital’s revenue and expenses for bivariate lognormal data, calculating the risk of bankruptcy due to the mismatch between revenues and expenses, determining the likelihood of a hospital’s expense exceeding the state’s median expense level, and evaluating a hospital’s financial memory level. Ultimately in our research, we demonstrate a novel approach to anticipate hospital bankruptcy, which can be particularly useful for health policy analysts and hospital leaders in making informed financial decisions and proactively managing risks to ensure the sustainability and stability of their institutions.

Abstract Background: Hypochlorous acid (HA) is a potent disinfectant with broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the factors that influence the stability of hypochlorous acid (HOCl) and their impact on its disinfectant properties Methods: This study explored the stability of hypochlorous acid, emphasizing factors that affect its disinfectant efficiency, such as pH level, temperature, and the presence of organic materials. Findings: Our investigation revealed that HOCl is the most stable and effective disinfectant under weakly acidic conditions, where the undissociated form of hypochlorous acid is predominant. Although it is stable under various conditions, its efficacy is compromised by the presence of heavy metals, organic matter, and UV radiation. Conclusions: This comprehensive analysis concludes that, while hypochlorous acid is a highly effective disinfectant, understanding and maintaining the optimal conditions for its stability is crucial for maximizing its disinfection potential. Implications: The findings can be used to formulate new guidelines and regulations to guide the proper formulation, storage, and use of stable HOCL as disinfectants.

Background: Immersive and non-immersive VR technology has been increasingly employed in training. This has encouraged physicians working in skill development to try using it to improve the learning, emotional recognition, and social skills of various disorders. This study aimed to explore the controlled trials employing VR in autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. Methodology:A literature review has been conducted, on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Any controlled trial in the pediatric age group, involving the comparison of VR training with other types of therapies in autism, ADHD, and dyslexia was included. Results:Only four controlled trials were identified, comprising a total of 208 patients, with ages ranging from 6-16 years. Out of these studies, two involved patients with autism, one with ADHD, and one with dyslexia. VR was successful in improving emotional recognition but not social interaction in autism. All trials did not mention thoroughly possible complications of prolonged use of VR. Conclusion: Despite being a promising technology, there is still a long road to prove the validity of using VR in skills development. Few controlled trials have been tailored to explore VR advantages over conventional training and therapies, most of them have a limited sample size, a short training course, and no mention of possible setbacks, such as ocular effects and social isolation.

We investigated the development of a simple and sensitive assay for the identification of minute amounts of animal and human biological material. The suggested system uses isothermal amplification of DNA in a rapid assay format, which returns the results in as little as 40 minutes from sampling. The assay used for the proof of concept employs the novel handheld SaLux19 device (Max-Planck Innovation prototype, Germany). This well-established infield detection system could also be utilized for forensic scenarios. The results presented here demonstrated that the assay is sufficiently specific and sensitive and can detect the presence of Sus scrofa nucleic acids.

In this paper, we investigate the generalized Padovan sequences and we deal with, in detail, four special cases, namely, Padovan, Perrin, Padovan-Perrin and modified Padovan sequences. We present Binet's formulas, generating functions, Simson formulas, and the summation formulas for these sequences. Moreover, we give some identities and matrices related with these sequences.

Number is based in special edges, is introduced. The kind of natural extension from edges toward vertex and the set of vertices in the way that, the final notion is number, is studied. The result is obtained which is about the study on the classes of graphs in the matter of new notions. There is the extended notion about having edge amid two vertices toward having some edges in the word of neighbor and in another stage going into the atmosphere of having consecutive edges in the terminology of path and in the upper vision going on the notion about path with jargon and buzzword of distance as if the minimal vertices has concluded the new notions with the word, number.

Collecting and recording physiological parameters and forwarding this data via telemedicine or remote surveys may significantly increase the health and safety of people working under extreme environmental conditions, like firefighters, mountain rescuers, disaster control employees, military personnel, etc. First, ruggedized systems, as small, lightweight, and flexible as possible, are needed to optimize the goal of increasing occupational health and safety of persons at risk and maximizing their performance during missions. Previous systems could only record a very limited number of parameters, and a few could forward the data online to return information to the user. Therefore, in order to record several meaningful, valid, and reliable physiological parameters synchronized, an extension of existing systems is required. This review highlights this problem and gives an overview of the historical development. The actual status of the systems available was listed and described comparatively. In the end, a proven, promising, and innovative solution is presented that can solve the problem and allow people to work more safely in extreme environments, which may represent the future.

Development and implementation of safe natural alternatives to synthetic pesticides are urgent needs that will provide ecological solutions for control of plant diseases, bacteria, viruses, nematodes, pests, and weeds, to ensure economic stability of the farmers and food security as well as protection of the environment and human health. Unambiguously, production of botanical pesticides will allow sustainable and efficient use of natural resources and finally decrease the use of chemical inputs and burden. This is underlined by the strict regulations on pesticide residues in agricultural products and harmonized with the Farm to Fork strategy aimed to reduce pesticide use by 55%, by 2030. Recognizing the urgent need for natural pesticides development, this work is an overview of the current research on the valorization of Mediterranean plants as potential source of biopesticides. More specifically, the extraction methods, the chemical composition, the biopesticidal activity, the commonly used assays for evaluating the antimicrobial, the pesticidal, the repellant and the herbicidal activity of plant extracts as well as toxicological and safety aspects of biopesticides formulation are discussed in detail. Finally, the aspects that have not yet been investigated or are under- investigated and future perspectives are highlighted.

To evaluate genetic variability and seedling plant response to a dominated Warrior (-) race of yellow rust in Northern and Central European germplasm, we used a population of 229 winter wheat cultivars and breeding lines for genome-wide association study (GWAS). A wide variation in yellow rust disease severity (based on infection types 1-9) was observed in this panel. Four breeding lines TS049 (from Austria), TS111, TS185, and TS229 (from Germany) and one cultivar TS158 (KWS Talent) from Germany were found to be resistant to Warrior (-) FS 53/20 and Warrior (-) G 23/19. GWAS identified five significant SNPs associated with yellow rust on chromosomes 1B, 2A, 5B, and 7A for Warrior (-) FS 53/20, while one SNP on chromosome 5B was associated with disease for Warrior (-) G 23/19. For Warrior (-) FS 53/20, we discovered a new QTL for yellow rust resistance associated with the marker Kukri_c5357_323 on chromosome 1B. The resistant allele G at the marker locus Kukri_c5357_323 on chromosome 1B and the susceptible allele T at the marker locus Excalibur_c17489_804 on chromosome 5B showed the largest effects (1.21 and 0.81, respectively) on the severity of yellow rust detected in Warrior (-) FS 53/20 and Warrior (-) G 23/19. Among 144 putative genes within the flanking sequence of the significant SNPs detected by GWAS, the function of the best candidate genes was determined as protein kinase activity and oxidoreductase activity. Our results provide the basis for knowledge-based resistance breeding in the face of the enormous impact of the Warrior (-) race on wheat production in Europe.

During the production of furniture, large amounts of waste of these materials are generated, which are most often stored in warehouses without a specific purpose for their subsequent use. In highly developed countries, as many as 25 million tons of textile waste are produced annually, of which approximately 40% is non-clothing waste, such as carpets, furniture and car upholstery. The aim of the research was to produce and evaluate the dry-formed high-density fiberboards (HDF) with various shares of recycled particles of natural leather used in upholstery furniture production at different contents (1, 5 and 10% by weight). Mechanical properties (modulus of rupture, modulus of elasticity and screw withdrawal resistance) and physical properties (density profile, thickness swelling after water immersion, water absorption, surface absorption) were tested. The density profile and contact angle of natural leather have been also characterized. The results show that increasing the content of leather particles in HDF mostly has a positive effect on mechanical properties, especially screw withdrawal resistance and water absorption. It can be concluded, that, depending on the further use of HDF, it is possible to use recovered upholstery leather particles as a reasonable addition to wood fibers in HDF technology.

The present paper investigates the determinants of the country’s modernisation through the lens of its citizens. A combination of the ‘hard’ determinants of country’s modernisation (effectiveness of digitisation, infrastructure, environment and interoperability of natural resources; behaviour in line with environmental trends of the EU) and ‘soft’ (interest in opportunities and benefits of renewable energy) was investigated. It was revealed that even for some developed countries, the ‘hard’ determinants have a greater impact on country’s modernisation compared to the ‘soft’ ones. A representative cross-sectional survey of 1015 respondents and a factor coupled with a network analysis served as the main research instruments. Lithuania served as a geographic setting for the research.

Technological developments, as a result of globalization, indirectly affect human lifestyles, one of which is the Indonesian people. In a situation of change towards the Industrial Revolution 4.0, Pancasila has a role as a guide for the Indonesian people to be what by the noble values ​​of the nation. However, the role of the millennial generation in maintaining these noble values ​​is important considering that they are the spearhead of the country's development. From this statement, this study aims to identify and formulate steps to maintain the noble values ​​of Pancasila among the millennial generation so that it does not eliminate national identity and understand the urgency of implementing the Pancasila lifestyle in the era of globalization. By using the literature review method, it can be seen that "grounding" and strengthening the essence of Pancasila values ​​can be a solution so that the existence of Pancasila continues to shine. The Pancasila lifestyle deserves to be implemented because it regulates all behaviors of speech, thought, behavior, action, and good manners so that it must be expressed in the life of the nation and state as well as our everyday life.

Stroke often results in impaired gait, which can limit community ambulation and the quality of life. Recent works have shown the feasibility of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) as an adjuvant treatment to facilitate gait rehabilitation. Since the cerebellum plays an essential role in balance and movement coordination, which is crucial for independent overground ambulation, so, we investigated the effects of cerebellar tDCS (ctDCS) on the post-stroke overground gait performance in chronic stroke survivors. Fourteen chronic post-stroke male subjects were recruited based on convenience sampling at the collaborating hospitals where ten subjects finally participated in the ctDCS study. We evaluated the effects of two ctDCS montages with 2mA direct current, a) optimized configuration for dentate stimulation with 3.14cm² disc anode at PO10h (10/5 EEG system) and 3.14cm² disc cathode at PO9h (10/5 EEG system), and b) optimized configuration for leg lobules VII-IX stimulation with 3.14cm² disc anode at Exx8 (electrodes defined by ROAST) and 3.14cm² disc cathode at Exx7. We found ctDCS to be acceptable by all the exposed subjects. The ctDCS intervention had an effect on the 'Normalised Step length Affected side' (p=0.1) and 'Gait Stability Ratio' (p=0.0569), which was found using Wilcoxon signed-rank test at 10% significance level. Also, ctDCS montage specific effect was found using a two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test at a 5% significance level for 'Step Time Affected Leg' (p=0.0257) and '%Stance Time Unaffected Leg' (p=0.0376). Moreover, the changes in the quantitative gait parameters across both the montages were found to be correlated to the mean electric field strength in the lobules based on partial least squares regression analysis (R² statistic = 0.6574) where the mean electric field strength at the cerebellar lobules, Vermis VIIIb, Ipsilesional IX, Vermis IX, Ipsilesional X, had the most loading. In conclusion, our feasibility study indicated the potential of a single session of ctDCS to contribute to the immediate improvement in the balance and gait performance in terms of gait-related indices and clinical gait measures.

Extrauterine growth restriction (EUGR) is a common complication and a known risk factor for impaired development in very low birth weight (VLBW) preterms. We report a population of 288 patients with no or with low grade MRI lesions scanned at term equivalent age (TEA) born between 2012 and 2018. Griffiths mental development scale II (GMDS II) at 2 and 3 years, preterm complications and weight growth were retrospectively analysed. EUGR was defined for weigth z-score ˂10th percentile at TEA, 6 and 12 months of correct age or as z-score decreased by 1-point SDS from birth to TEA and from TEA to 6 months. Multivariate analysis showed that a higher weight z-score at 6 months is protective for global developmental quotient (DQ) at 2 years (OR 0.74; CI 95% 0.59-0.93; p=0,01). EUGR at 6 months was associated with worse locomotor, personal-social, language and performance DQ at 2 years and worse language and practical reasoning DQ at 3 years. In conclusion a worse weight z-score at 6 months of age seems to be an independent risk factor for significantly reduced GMDS in many areas. These results suggest to better invest on post-discharge nutritional, optimizing family nutritional education.

Gender has been a rarely addressed aspect in digital game-based learning (DGBL). Likewise, mixed results have been presented regarding the effects according to gender and the conditions that generate these effects. The present work studies the effects of a drill-and-practice mathe-matical game on primary students. The study focused on an analysis by gender, measuring learning performance, and motivation in the practice activity. Also, two instructional mechanics were considered regarding the question answering, a multiple-try (MTF) and a single-try (STF) condition, to search for possible differences. A total of 81 students from 4 courses and 2 schools participated in the experiment. The study's main findings were that: (a) the girls outperformed boys in terms of students' learning gains, (b) girls presented lower levels of competence and autonomy than boys, (c) in the MTF, girls presented lower levels of autonomy but no differences in competence contrasted to boys, (d) in the STF, girls presented lower levels of competence but no differences in autonomy against boys, and (e) no differences existed in interest, effort and value among gender overall o per instructional condition. This study enhances the knowledge of gender differences under diverse instructional settings, in particular providing insights into possible differences by gender when varying the number of attempts provided to students.

Aging is a major risk factor for the higher incidence and prevalence of chronic conditions, such as cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases. Closely linked with the onset of all these age-related diseases is immunosenescence, a condition defined as progressive reconfiguration of the immune functions leading to an increased susceptibility to infectious diseases, poorer response to vaccination, increased prevalence of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and other chronic diseases characterized by a pro-inflammatory state named inflammaging. Given that immunosenescence frames age-related diseases, it is natural to ask how these illnesses are related under the context of innate and adaptative components of the immune system. Knowledge processing by Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) of age-related diseases framed in an immunosenescence multivalued context shows that a hierarchy among these diseases emerges with a subconcept-superconcept nested structure, with two clusters, first made of metabolic diseases, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. Second metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases and rheumatoid arthritis. Metabolic diseases seem to be a pivot illness and they must be a primary target given their global incidence and prevalence and their cost-effective treatments like regular physical activity, weight loss, healthy diet, stopping smoking, and reducing or managing stress. Another implication of the ontological analysis of age-related diseases is about the nature of immunosenescence, suggesting that initial symptoms of age-related diseases are mainly related to innate immune mechanisms, and developing of severe symptoms of age-related diseases like cancer, cardiovascular or neurodegenerative diseases depends on the activation of acquired immunity processes.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) remains a challenge in Kenya, while the extent remains unknown. To assess the knowledge, cultural beliefs, practices, and behavioral patterns among multisectoral stakeholders in Kenya. The cross-sectional survey was conducted in August 2021 among farmers, animal health service providers and AMR researchers. Regional digital data collection tool developed by FAO was shared and responses obtained through mail, phone calls and direct interviews. Descriptive and inferential analysis were conducted. Antimicrobials were mostly sourced from agro-veterinary shops and from veterinary professionals. Farmers, often implement self-treatment and reported overuse, unnecessary use, and sometimes fail to complete the dosage in livestock. More farmers reported to have heard about antibiotics as compared to antimicrobials, mostly from friends and radio program, however only 9.2% could correctly differentiate the two. Animal Health Service Providers (AHSP) were the source of information to farmers regarding AMR. AHSPs mainly relied on suppliers and distributors for information about antibiotics. Both farmers and AHSPs treated viral infections with antibiotics. One Health Partners (OHPs) had higher knowledge and largely favorable attitudes towards AMR. Up to 72.7% of OHPs from training institutions had AMR included in training curriculum however, they were optimistic livestock farmers and government were less concerned about AMR. Gaps in knowledge and practice on Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) were observed in all categories of stakeholders. Given the documented knowledge-practice gap, innovative solutions are needed for both AHSPs and farmers to promote good antimicrobial stewardship practices and to mitigate burdens of AMR. Outcomes of this research should deepen the understanding of critical information and trigger behavioral change in usage and stewardship of antimicrobials.

With the increasing utilization of intelligent mobile devices for online inspection of electrical equipment in smart grids, the limited computing power and storage capacity of these devices pose challenges for deploying large algorithm models and it’s hard to obtain a substantial number of images of electrical equipment in public. In this paper, we propose a novel distillation method that compresses the knowledge of teacher networks into a compact few-shot classification network, employing a global and local knowledge distillation strategy. Central to our method is exploiting the global and local relationship between the features exacted by the backbone of the teacher network and student network. We compare our method with recent state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods on three public datasets and achieve superior performance. Additionally, we contribute a new dataset, namely EEI-100, which is specifically designed for classification of electrical equipment. We validate our method on this dataset and demonstrate its exceptional prediction accuracy of 94.12% when utilizing only 5-shot images.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) envisaged under Agenda 2030 are a set of seventeen goals which envisage a holistic approach towards attaining certain targets keeping humankind and the planet at center. There are total 169 targets spread across seventeen goals covering wide ranging issues and challenges the world is facing in the twenty-first century. And they are to be achieved by 2030. Concerted efforts of all the stakeholders ranging from indigenous communities, common citizens, scientists, policy makers, world leaders are needed to achieve all the goals and targets Of the seventeen goals, at least seven goals are of interest to the ethnobotanists and are associated with traditional ethnobotanical knowledge. Therefore to achieve those set of goals, a thorough understanding is required to disentangle the intricacies involving traditional ethnobotanical knowledge, indigenous people as traditional knowledge holders and their future role. Understanding relationships between traditional ethnobotanical knowledge and indigenous communities, seeking cooperation from and establishing partnerships with them would help us design policies to achieve intended outcomes of SDGs. In this paper, particular attention is attracted towards the potential role of traditional ethnobotanical knowledge in achieving select sustainable development goals and targets.

The reinforcement learning problem of complex action control in the Multi-player wargame is a hot research topic in recent years. In this paper , a game system based on turn-based confrontation is designed and implemented with the state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning models. Specifically, we first design a Q-learning algorithm to achieve intelligent decision-making, which is based the DQN(Deep Q Network) to model the complex game behaviors. Then, a priori- knowledge based algorithm PK-DQN(Prior Knowledge- Deep Q Network) is introduced to improve the DQN algorithm, which accelerates the convergence speed and stability of the algorithm. The experiments demonstrate, the correctness of the PK-DQN algorithm is validated and its performance surpass the conventional DQN algorithm. Furthermore, the PK-DQN algorithm shows effectiveness in defeating the high level of rule-based opponents, which provides promising results for the exploration of the field of smart chess and intelligent game deduction.

Fire accidents are common accidents amongst residential house occupants in Libya. Some of the factors that can mitigate fire accidents in Libyan residential houses include fire safety awareness and knowledge. This study investigated the level of awareness and knowledge of fire safety amongst residential house occupants in Libya. The possibility and consequences of fire hazards and risk existing in residential houses in Libya were also studied. Experimental data obtained for 1.5 m/s and 3.5 m/s as walking and running evacuation time, respectively amongst residential house occupants in Libya were also compared. The sample consist of 90 respondents with instruments of fire safety awareness and knowledge, fire hazard and consequences, and the involvement of residential house occupants in fire emergency. Statistical analysis was performed at p < 0.05 to determine the levels of residential awareness and knowledge regarding fire safety and the hazard and consequences. The findings illustrated that the items were highly reliable (α > 0.7) and normally distributed. Also, the results illustrated that the majority of residential house occupants in Libya have fair level of fire safety awareness and knowledge with overall percentage of 80% and 90%, respectively. On the other hand, the results further showed that majority of residential house occupants have good level of fire emergency involvement with 90%. This paper proposes a fire safety assessment method which may form the basis of future fire safety practice in Libya.

Government support plays an important role in Chinese economy. New energy industries, concerning innovation-driven source and environmental protection, are also supported by government. This paper aims to study the effects of the traditional government support at supply side on firms’ innovation and development. In this paper, we propose enterprise behavior model including characteristics of new energy industries, and study the innovation reaction of firms to government support in different situation. We further use propensity score matching to verify the results in theoretical model, and conduct robustness analysis. Our main conclusions include: (1) In the normal years government support can only promote the innovation output of firms which have innovated, however, can not promote the innovation probability of firms which have not innovated. That is to say, government support can only enhance the intensive margin of innovation, but can not enhance the extensive margin of innovation with less competition. (2) In the situation of bad economic environment and intense competition, firms’ innovation probability rises as the government support increase. Therefore, government should provide more R&D special subsidies and implement strict financial supervision to make the effectiveness of support policies especially in the normal years.

Hospital indebtedness is a complex and very diverse phenomenon. Thus, the goal of this study is the comparison of the financial performance of public hospitals in accordance with their ownership and size. The results of the research lead to the conclusion that the vast majority of public hospitals are indebted, and their ownership structure does not affect their financial condition. What is more, the statistical analysis depicted that large Marshall hospitals are less indebted than poviat-commune ones. In the group of medium-size hospitals, the situation was the opposite. Moreover, the study did not confirm the significant relationship between the size or ownership and the financial status of the hospital. The analysis conducted in the article is aimed at filling in the gap in studies comparing the indebtedness between different types of public hospitals.

The Reactive Spark Plasma Sintering (R-SPS) method is compared in this work with the two-steps SHS-SPS route, based on combination of the Self-propagating High-temperature Synthesis (SHS) with the SPS process, for the fabrication of dense (Hf0.2Mo0.2Ti0.2Ta0.2Nb0.2)B2-SiC and (Hf0.2Mo0.2Ti0.2Ta0.2Zr0.2)B2-SiC ceramics. A multiphasic and inhomogeneous product, containing various borides, is obtained at 2000°C/20min by R-SPS, from transition metals, B4C and Si. In contrast, if the same precursors are first reacted by SHS, and then processed by SPS under the optimized condition of 1800°C/20min, the desired ceramics are successfully attained. Both High-Entropy-Boride/SiC products display densities > 97%, uniform microstructures and contained only small amounts of residual oxides (<2.4 wt.%). The presence of SiC makes the sintering temperature milder, i.e. 150°C below to that needed by the corresponding additive-free system. Fracture toughness is also markedly improved, particularly when considering the Nb-containing system processed at 1800°C/20min, whereas KIC progressively decreases (from 7.35 to 5.36 MPa m1/2) as the SPS conditions become more severe. SiC addition is found to inhibit the volatilization of metal oxides like MoO3 formed during oxidation experiments, thus avoiding mass loss in the ceramics. The benefits above also likely take advantage of the fact that the two composite constituents are synthesized in parallel, according to the SHS-SPS approach, rather than being produced separately and combined subsequently, so that strong interfaces between them are formed.

An introductory course of Arka Dhyana, also known as Intuitive Meditation (IM), consisting of five sessions, was offered to an international audience via Zoom technology. Participants were shown how to connect to their deeper self, essence or soul by bringing their I-ego-awareness from the thinking mind, often associated with the frontal part of the brain, to 19 energetic stations in the body including the heart centre. In this limited study, evaluation was both process and outcome orientated and included HeartMath (HM) Inner Balance or emWave2 electronic technology to measure mean coherence and achievement before and after each session. A highly significant increase in both coherence and achievement in six participants was found, which was also reflected in a reported increase in wellbeing related to feelings in qualitative statements indicating changes in levels of consciousness and individual transformative experiences as predicted by the Theory of the Six Main Levels of Consciousness.

Background: Mental health has a special relevance in adolescence. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze the possible association between emotional distress and suicidal ideation among adolescents. Methods: The article presents the results of a survey of secondary school students (N=1419) in the city of Tarragona, Spain. The aim of the analysis was to verify the existence of an association between suicidal ideation and risk factors such as emotional distress and low self-esteem. All the data were also analysed to determine the existence of statistically significant differences between girls and boys. Bivariate analyses were performed with chi-square, point-biserial coefficient and non-parametric tests for independent groups. Logistic regression analysis was also performed to calculate the probability of suicidal ideation. Results: These analyses showed that both emotional distress and low self-esteem increase the likelihood of suicidal ideation among adolescents. This was more evident among boys with high levels of emotional distress. Conclusion: Schools should develop suicide ideation prevention programs for adolescents based on situations that cause emotional distress.

The implementation of management systems has become a strategic advantage in achieving business goals, especially in industrial organizations, but the implementation of social responsibility requirements is especially ethical. Large multinational companies have long been developing and, in particular, implementing their own codes of conduct, which include their suppliers, to demonstrate their commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The compliance with CSR requirements from stakeholders is thus extended or intertwined with requirements in established management systems (MSs). The objectives of the study were to (1) analyze the different approaches to CSR in internationally recognized cross-industry and industry-specific standards and codes in different industries; (2) select the most appropriate framework for assessing the degree of applicability of CSR in the selected management systems and develop a methodology for its assessment; (3) apply the proposed methodology (referred to as SRIMS) in the selected areas: automotive industry, research organization, and metallurgical industry; (4) through ANOVA, validate its use for assessing the overall level of CSR applicability in an organization's established management systems. The application of the Bonferroni method confirmed the hypotheses that the developed SRIMS model is a sufficiently appropriate tool for assessing the overall level of applicability of CSR requirements to established MSs.

Gastric cancer is an aggressive disease with increasing global incidence in recent years. Human epidermal growth receptor 2 (HER2) is overexpressed in approximately 10-20% of gastric cancers. The implementation of targeted therapy against HER2 as part of the standard of care treatment in metastatic disease has improved the prognosis of this subset of patients. However, gastric cancer still has high mortality rates and urgently requires new treatment strategies. The combination of immunotherapy with HER2-targeted therapies has shown synergistic effects in preclinical models, being the rationale behind exploring this combination in clinical trials in locally advanced and metastatic settings. Additionally, the irruption of antibody-drug conjugates and other novel HER2-targeted agents has led to the development of numerous clinical trials showing promising results. This review presents the molecular mechanisms supporting the use of HER2-targeted drugs in combination with immunotherapy and provides an overview of the therapeutic scenario of HER2-positive disease. We focus on the role of immunotherapy but also summarize emerging therapies and combinations under clinical research that may change the standard treatment in HER-2 positive disease in the future.

Scholars of the English Literature unanimously say that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis influenced each other writings. For the first time we have investigated this issue mathematically by using an original multi–dimensional analysis of linguistic parameters, based on surface deep–language variables and linguistic channels. To set our investigation in the framework of the English Liter-ature, we have considered some novels written by earlier authors, such as C. Dickens, G. Mac-Donald and others. The deep–language variables and the linguistic channels, discussed in the paper, are likely due to writers’ unconscious design and have revealed connections between texts far beyond writers’ awareness. In summary, the capacity of the extended short–term memory required to readers, the universal readability index of texts, the geometrical representation of texts and the fine tuning of linguistic channels within texts – all tools largely discussed in the paper – have revealed strong connections between The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien), The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy (Lewis) and novels by MacDonald, therefore in agreement with what scholars of the English Literature say.

The dependence of the width of annual rings of woody plants on the characteristics of the snow cover is analyzed in various natural zones of the West Siberian Plain and adjacent mountainous areas: the maximum thickness and water reserve for the entire winter period and for individual months, the dates of disappearing, establishment, and duration of the occurrence of a stable snow cover. It has been shown that the role of the thickness and water content of snow cover for the radial growth of trees is differentiated by geographical location. On the plain, it intensifies in the forest-tundra and dry steppe. The response of radial growth to snow cover in the upper and lower parts of the forest belt is often opposite. Dates of establishment of stable snow cover are more important for tree growth compared to dates of disappearance. Dates of disappearance of stable snow cover are more significant in the southern regions than in the northern ones. The value of the duration of the period with stable snow cover for tree growth is higher in the southern regions.

The article discusses determinants of living environment in Central and Eastern Europe. As an example, the city of Radzionkow was chosen, with 16 thousand inhabitants, located in the Silesia agglomeration in southern Poland, in the area where hard coal has been mined for almost two hundred years, which largely serves as a source of heating for houses and flats. 360 buildings in 6 groups of 60 buildings were examined in the selected city, which allowed to distinguish 3 different areas in terms of the quality of the living environment depending on the technical condition of buildings, the method of heating and location. To a large extent, determinants are the existing spatial and geophysical conditions of a given location. Many research and reports on the living environment do not take into account the factors mentioned, focusing only on the statistical data of pollution, excluding spatial factors. In the research presented, the author, taking into account location variables, shows differences in the measurements of air pollution in relation to the designated location zones depending on the morphological structure of the building, the degree of its modernization and the types of heating used in buildings.

Nitrogen and phosphorous loading drives eutrophication of aquatic systems. Lakes and reservoirs are often effective N and P sinks, but information is needed on the variability of their biogeochemical dynamics, especially for tropical systems. A long-term N and P mass balance (2003-2018) in a small tropical eutrophic reservoir lake, Valle de Bravo (VB), Mexico, showed it is a net sink of N (-41.7 g N m-2 y-1), and P (-2.7 g P m-2 y-1), mainly through net sedimentation, equivalent to 181% and 68% of their respective loading (23.0 g N m-2 y-1 and 4.2 g P m-2 y-1). N mass balance showed that VB has a high net N atmospheric influx (31.6 g N m-2 y-1), which was 1.3 times the external load, and likely dominated by N2 fixation. During a period of high water level fluctuations (WLF), the net N atmospheric flux decreased by half compared to high level years. WLF can be a useful management tool to improve the trophic status of water bodies by decreasing anoxic conditions and net atmospheric fluxes, possibly through decreasing nitrogen fixation and/or promoting denitrification and other microbial processes that alleviate the N load.

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship of the distance between the apex tip of the upper central tooth (U1A) and the anterior nasal spine (ANS) and the nasal floor (NF) with the vertical cephalometric values using cone-beam computerized tomography (CBCT). A total of 122 patients who applied to Department of Orthodontics between January 2011-June 2019 were included. On the CBCT’s, distances between the U1A and the NF and ANS were measured. Statistical significance was considered as p&lt;0.05. Of 122 individuals 73.8% (n=90) were female and 26.2% (n=32) were male with an mean age of 22,8±3,3 years. A statistically significant moderate positive correlation was found between the NF-U1A mean values and the measurements of N-Me, ANS-Me and ANS-Gn, S-Go, and N-ANS measurements (p &lt;0.01). A statistically significant positive correlation was found between the ANS-U1A mean values and Ar-Go-Me, total posterior angles, N-Me, SN/GoGn and Y-axis angle, ANS-Me and ANS-Gn (p &lt;0.01). In this study, we found that the distance of U1A from ANS and NF points was related to orthodontic vertical direction parameters. It was demonstrated that the ANS-U1A and NF-U1A points can serve as reference points for identifying the orthodontic vertical growth pattern on CBCT scans.

In this paper, the authors consider the influence of the type of power supply and the internal parameters of the DC-DC converter on the stability of the system at constant power load. The stability of the system under consideration is important in the design and development of the power supply system for an autonomous consumer. Such a typical system can be a DC microgrid. In the work, when analyzing the stability of the system, the power source is not considered an ideal voltage source, but the active-inductive nature of the voltage source is taken into account, which is equivalent to using a synchronous machine with permanent magnets. The Rauss-Hurwitz algebraic criterion was used as a criterion for analyzing the stability of the system. This will make it possible to build and analyze the areas and boundaries of the system's stability. As a result, the areas and boundaries of the stability of the system were presented. The general trend towards the behavior of the zone of instability of the system was given. At the same time, dependences describing the boundaries of instability are presented, which are combinations of parameters of the DC-DC converter, beyond which the system becomes unstable. The presented definitions of the instability limits can be used as a corrective device of the control system to ensure the stability of the system in the upper limits of the power consumption.

Candida boidinii NAD+-dependent formate dehydrogenase (CbFDH) has gained significant attention for its potential applications in the production of biofuels and various industrial chemicals from inorganic carbon dioxide. In this study, we present an atomic X-ray crystal structure of the apo CbFDH to 1.4 Å resolution determined at cryogenic temperature at the Turkish Light Source, “Turkish DeLight”. This structure offers a comprehensive view of the apo enzyme's dynamics, filling the gaps in our understanding from previous studies. Also, comparison of our high-resolution apo and previously available holo enzyme structures reveals major conformational changes of this dynamic enzyme in the absence and presence of the coenzyme and substrate/inhibitor complexes. Collectively all these information may provide invaluable insights into future protein engineering efforts that could enhance enzymatic activity and stability, potentially increasing its efficiency and effectiveness of CbFDH in industrial processes.

In this article, we analyse the computer aid screening method of COVID19 using Xray and CT scan images. The main objective is to set an analytical closure about the computer aid screening of COVID19 among the X-ray image and CT scan image. The computer aid screening method includes deep feature extraction, transfer learning and traditional machine learning image classification approach. The deep feature extraction and transfer learning method considered 13 pre-trained CNN model. The machine learning approach includes three sets of features and three classifiers. The pre-trained CNN models are alexnet, googlenet, vgg16, vgg19, densenet201, resnet18, resnet50, resnet101, inceptionv3, inceptionresnetv2, xception, mobilenetv2 and shufflenet. The features and classifiers in machine learning approaches are GLCM, LBP, HOG and KNN, SVM, Naive bay’s respectively. In addition, we also analyse the different paradigms of classifiers. In total, the comparative analysis is carried out in 65 classification models, i.e. 13 in deep feature extraction, 13 in transfer learning and 39 in machine learning approaches. Finally, all the classification models perform better in X-ray image set compare to CT scan image set.

To make low-cost catalytic materials that mimic the activity of tyrosinase enzymes (Catechol oxidase) is an exciting challenge of biochemical technology. Herein, we report the synthesis of a series of acylhydrazone-pyrazoles based biomolecule materials (L1-L7) with superior catecholase activity. These biomolecules were synthesized by a one pot chemical condensation between 5-methyl-1H-pyrazole-3-carbohydrazide and benzaldehyde derivatives. The X-ray single crystal diffraction (XRD) for two ligands L1 and L2 have been studied and the molecular structures were optimized and confirmed using the density functional theory (DFT/B3LYP) method. Copper (II) complexes of the biomolecules (L1-L7), generated in-situ, and were studied for their catalytic activities towards the oxidation reaction of catechol to ortho-quinone according to two parameters: the nature of the ligand and the nature of counter anion. The L7-CuSO4 was found to have an excellent catalytic activity (105.42 μmol·L−1·min−1) among the catalysts recently reported in the existing literature.

In the current manuscript we assess to what extent X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy is a suitable tool for probing the dipoles formed at interfaces between self-assembled monolayers and metal substrates. To that aim, we perform dispersion-corrected, slab-type band-structure calculations on a number of biphenyl-based systems bonded to a Au(111) surface via different docking groups. In addition to changing the docking chemistry (and the associated interface dipoles), also the impacts of polar tail-group substituents and varying dipole densities are investigated. We find that for densely-packed monolayers the shifts of the peak positions of the simulated XP-spectra are a direct measure for the interface dipoles. In the absence of polar tail-group substituents they also directly correlate with adsorption-induced work-function changes. At reduced dipole-densities this correlation deteriorates, as work function measurements probe the difference between the Fermi-level of the substrate and the electrostatic energy far above the interface, while core level shifts are determined by the local electrostatic energy in the region of the atom from which the photoelectron is excited.

In this study, I will present some documentary evidence that Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s poem “A Máquina do Mundo” [The Machine of the World] (1949) was based on prior reflections contained in a forgotten newspaper article entitled “Poesia e Pesadelo” [Poetry and Nightmare] (1949). In that article, Drummond critically analyzed some of the theses of Stephen Spender's essay “What Is Modern in Modern Poetry” (1948), which had just been published in The Tiger's Eye magazine. As soon as he read Spender's text, Drummond wrote “Poetry and Nightmare” and began to elaborate a narrative poem whose protagonist would be a machine. All the documentary evidence indicates that Drummond took Spender's lessons as touchstones for the elaboration of the narrative and allegorical structure of “The Machine of the World.” According to the interpretation I am proposing here, Drummond, in writing the machine poem, put into practice at least six lessons drawn from Spender’s essay, namely: 1) the modern poet must represent the tension between the external machinelike landscape and the landscape of the inner world of the creative imagination; 2) he must also represent the machinelike, ugly, and urban world around him in a beautiful and poetic way; 3) he must avoid the misconceptions of excessive utopian visionarism, as well as creeping realism; 4) he must reject the imperative of political engagement, whose principle of action states that poetry has a transformative mission in society; 5) he must free himself from the obsession with free verse as the only form of modern poetry and start using the traditional fixed forms; 6) he must understand machines as poetic symbols of human passions, and not just as exotic objects foreign to human reality. My conclusion is that, after reading Spender’s essay, Drummond changed his aesthetic and philosophical understanding of what defines the essence of modern poetry, both in terms of form and content.

The debate about the meaning of life in the literature has been around for a while and portraits a fundamental human need to find a personal path of existence. The meaning of life phenomenon purpose lies in its impact on the psychological wellbeing. Knowing your purpose in life can make it more structured and in balance, therefore more meaningful and comprehensible. However, in the existing body of the academic literature meaning of life is discussed more from the philosophic perspective rather than a practical area, which is not helping to solve the global issues of increasing mental health problems. When social and emotional wellbeing is being affected, it is urgent to apply a practical approach to effectively overcome these states. Introduction of a new, holistic meaning of life model is an attempt to offer a practical solution for society to maintain their mental health through awareness of their life’s purpose. Previously in the pilot study (Dombrovskis, 2017) in a sample group of 100 citizens of Latvia who self-reported being in a crisis situation at the given moment, using qualitive analysis the first component for the model structure was identified – antecedent. In our research antecedent is defined as something that triggers certain action, so in crisis situation person can regain a structure and stability in life. We found 8 different antecedents that trigger behavior of those affected by crisis: achievements; power; success; development; freedom; uniqueness; interesting life and fleeing. To continue to explore other components for our model in the setting of Latvia, this study aims to investigate the demographic and personality related variables that may serve as antecedents and as such become one of component in our model structure. The study used a sample of residents of Latvia representing the total population of 1,110 respondents (633 women, 57%, and 477 men, 43%) who have completed the self-assessment questionnaire Meaning of life scale (MOLS) (online and frontally) designed by the authors on their satisfaction with different factors regarding the meaning of life. Average age of respondents (M=33.88; SD=8,527) varied from 18 to 67. The exploratory and confirmatory analysis confirms the data regarding existence of totally 16 factors: 8 antecedents identified in the pilot study and 8 new antecedents identified in the present study - family relations; level of income; relations with friends/acquaintances; state of health; organization of free time; career growth (achievements); sexual life quality and quality of education. Findings confirm a model’s structure to be complex phenomenon consisting of various components. However, findings suggest that more research should be done to fill the following gaps: 1) identify actions, which are triggered by 16 antecedents; 2) figure out F1, F2 and F3 factor role in the model structure.

In this work, we present a model of the atom that is based on a nonclassical logic called paraconsistent logic (PL), which has the main property of accepting the contradiction in logical interpretations without the conclusions being annulled. The proposed model is constructed with an extension of PL called paraconsistent annotated logic with annotation of two values (PAL2v), which is associated with an interlaced bilattice of four vertices. We use the logarithmic function of the Shannon entropy H_(s) to construct the paraconsistent equations and thus adapt a probabilistic model for representations in quantum physics. Through analyses of the interlaced bilattice, comparative values are obtained for some of the phenomena and effects of quantum mechanics, such as superposition of states, quantum entanglement, wave functions, and equations that determine the energy levels of the layers of an atom. At the end of this article, we use the hydrogen atom as a basis of the representation of the PAL2v model, where the values of the energy levels in six orbital layers are obtained. As an example, we present a possible method of applying the PAL2v model to the use of Raman spectroscopy signals in the detection of lubricating mineral oil quality.

The industry of the counterfeit goods is one of the largest underground business in the world and it is rapidly growing. Counterfeits can lead not only to loss of profit for honest producers but also have a negative impact on consumers who receive poor quality goods at an excessive price and may be exposed to health damages and safety issues. Perfume industry is constantly exposed to the problem of counterfeits with the fast developing parallel market of inspired perfumes being an important issue. It prompts for the identification of methods that classify the quality of this type of products. In this paper the application of proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is employed for the authentication of perfumery products for the first time. Molecular composition of several types of authentic brand fragrances for women were compared with their cheaper inspired equivalents and fake products. Our approach offers the prospect of a fast and simple method for discrimination and counterfeit detection of perfumes using 1H NMR spectroscopy.

This article is based on the findings of a mapping project of portions of the runoff agricultural system in the Levant in during the Byzantine period, the purpose of which was to study the resemblance between the components of that system in the desert and those in the sedentary land. These include dammed wadis, specific agricultural installations and settlement sites, among them chapels and livestock pens. The focus on agricultural installations has led to the possibility of dating the peak of the agricultural system’s functioning to the second half of the sixth century CE. Two assumptions will be put to the test: (1) that the establishment of the agricultural system overlapped the climate crisis in Europe that compromised food production in most areas of the Byzantine Empire – but not in the Levant, which for a certain period became a food supplier; (2) that the Church, as the emissary of the empire, stood at the head of the system.

Taste and smell function decline with age, with robust impairment in the very old. Much less is known about taste and smell function in young and middle old. We investigated taste and smell sensitivity via thresholds in a sub-sample of the NutriAct Family Study (NFS), the NFS Examinations cohort (NFSE; N=251, age M=62.5 years). We examined different aspects relating to taste and smell function: the degree to which taste and smell sensitivity relate to another and to taste and smell preferences, the role of gender and age, as well as effects on Quality of Life (QOL). Taste thresholds were highly correlated but no correlation was observed between taste and smell thresholds and between thresholds and preference. Women were more sensitive for both taste and smell than men. We found no effect of age on sensitivity and no effect of sensitivity on QoL. All null-findings were corroborated with Bayesian statistics providing evidence for the null hypotheses. Together our results indicate the independence of taste and smell despite their overlap during sensorial experiences. We found no evidence for age-related sensory decline, which could be due to our sample´s characteristics of non-clinical volunteers with good dental health and 93% non-smokers.

In this paper we will provide a new equation that explains why there are three generations or families of leptons and quarks, respectively. We will also explain why all those particles have the known mass ratios amongst their three respective generations and flavors. We will also tackle the problem of Yukawa couplings being arbitrary parameters in the Standard Model Higgs mechanism, which is a long standing problem do to their formulaic dependence on the Higgs Vacuum Expectation Value (VEV). We will attempt to solve this problem and provide a strong argument through an equation for Yukawa couplings of all leptons and quarks via a new methodology that depends on the running of the fine-structure constant on the Q scale, quantum numbers and the Weinberg angle (also on the Q scale). We will also make predictions for all three left-chiral neutrino mass eigenstates and we will provide upper limits for the three right-chiral neutrino mass eigenstates

The boosted interest in the use of rare earth elements (REEs) in modern technologies had also increase the necessity of their recovery from various sources, including raw materials and wastes. Though Hydrometallurgy plays a key role in these recovery processes, some drawbacks (apparent or not) of these processes, had led to the development of a more environmental friendship subclass named Solvometallurgy, in which non-aqueous solvents substituted to the aqueous media of the hydrometallurgical processing. The non-aqueous solvents chosen for these usages are, besides ionic liquids (ILs), the so-named Deep Eutectic Solvents (DEEs). The utilization of DEEs included the leaching of REEs from the different sources containing them, and also in the separation-purification steps necessary for the yielding of these elements, normally as oxides or salts, in the most purified form. This work reviewed the most recent literature (2023 year) about the utilization of deep eutectic solvents in the recovery of REEs from various sources, and in the coupling of these two (DESs and REEs) to derived compounds to be used in other fields.

Knowledge graphs (KGs) play a crucial role in many applications, such as question answering, but incompleteness is an urgent issue for their broad application. Much research in knowledge graph completion (KGC) has been performed to resolve this issue. The methods of KGC can be classified into two major categories: rule-based reasoning and embedding-based reasoning. The former has high accuracy and good interpretability, but a major challenge is to obtain effective rules on large-scale KGs. The latter has good efficiency and scalability, but it relies heavily on data richness and cannot fully use domain knowledge in the form of logical rules. We propose a novel method that injects rules and learns representations iteratively to take full advantage of rules and embeddings. Specifically, we model the conclusions of rule groundings as 0-1 variables and use a rule confidence regularizer to remove the uncertainty of the conclusions. The proposed approach has the following advantages: 1) It combines the benefits of both rules and knowledge graph embeddings (KGEs) and achieves a good balance between efficiency and scalability. 2) It uses an iterative method to continuously improve KGEs and remove incorrect rule conclusions. Evaluations on two public datasets show that our method outperforms the current state-of-the-art methods, improving performance by 2.7% and 4.3% in mean reciprocal rank (MRR).

Accurate treatment planning in radiotherapy essentially decreases secondary damage to healthy tissue surrounding the tumor. Due to plans to use a direct, highly collimated, narrow beam with high intensity to treat small area tumors, researchers have studied microbeam radiation therapy extensively. Using a synchrotron beam as the radiation source may help to limit secondary damage, but treatment planning using computerized simulations and dosimetry is still necessary to achieve optimal results. For this purpose, PDA-gel dosimeters were developed and their sensitivity around a 150 keV induced synchrotron X-ray radiation beam was examined via Monte Carlo simulations using the EGS5 code system. The microbeam development is now at the animal study stage. In this study, we simulate the irradiation of a rat's brain. The simulation results obtained spectra for two types of PDA-gel dosimeters that were compared with the spectrum obtained in a modelized brain tumor of a rat. Additionally, percentage depth dose curves were calculated for the brain tissue and the two gels. Correction equations for the dosimeters were obtained from the dose-difference plots. For further references, these equations can be used to calculate the actual dose in a brain tumor in a rat. The Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that PDA-gel dosimeters can be used as a reference technique in planning treatment using synchrotron irradiations and in other medical treatment planning methods.

Bats play important ecosystem roles. Anthropogenic activities cause the decrease and loss of biological diversity and, consequently, the loss of these ecosystem services. One way of measuring local habitat conditions and relating the landscape to biodiversity. Our objective is to investigate how the bat community is influenced by this change in the landscape. Collections were carried out at five points and 76 individuals of 12 species are sampled. Although the points present a high variation in relation to land use, we did not observe any correlation between species richness and guilds with land use. However, the difference in the composition of the guilds is related to the variation in land use, in which 74% of the variation in the abundance of guilds is related to the different patterns of land use. At SENAI, even though it was the place with the greatest anthropic impact, it was the one with the greatest abundance of species, while the points Module two and Sítio Jaburu had the greatest abundance of guilds. This result corroborates the idea that ecosystem services are dependent on habitat maintenance, since the greater the heterogeneity the greater the difference in the composition of the trophic guilds.

Hand hygiene is among the most important factors of infection control in healthcare settings. Healthcare workers are considered the primary source of hospital acquired infection. We assessed the current state of hand hygiene knowledge, perception and practice among the healthcare workers in Qassim, Saudi Arabia. In this cross-sectional study we used the hand hygiene knowledge and perception questionnaire developed by the World Health Organization. Knowledge and perceptions were classified into good (80 – 100%), moderate (60 – 79%) and poor (<60% score). Majority of the healthcare workers had moderate knowledge (57.8%) and perception (73.4%) of hand hygiene. Males were less likely to have moderate/good knowledge compared to females (OR: 0.52, p<.05). Private healthcare workers were less likely (OR: 0.33, p<0.01) to have moderate/good perception compared to the government healthcare workers. Healthcare workers who received training on hand hygiene were 3.2 times likely (p<.05) to have good/moderate perception and 3.8 times likely (p<0.05) to routinely use alcohol-based hand-rub than the ones without such training. Physicians were 4.9 times likely (p<0.05) to routinely use alcohol-based hand-rub than the technicians. Our research highlighted gaps on hand hygiene knowledge and perception and practice among healthcare workers in Qassim and importance of training in this regard.

One of factors causing decline of paleo fauna is related to the hunting activities and the use of tools by early hominin. This study aims to observe the relationships of tools and abundances of mammals in early hominin occupancy in Pawon cave for the period of 6000-9000 year ago (ka). The results show low abundances of medium to large mammals. While obsidian tools numbers were observed high. From 8 to 9 ka there were abrupt reductions and followed with the disappearance of medium-large sized mammals included Tragulidae and Bovidae in 6 ka. Simultaneously, uses of obsidian tools in 8-9 ka were common. The reconstructed paleo climate may contribute to the decline of paleo mammal abundances. The temperatures were increasing from 27 0C in 9 ka to 28 0C in 6 ka. Periods of 6-7 ka were indicated by declines of Bovidae and obsidian tools as well. Nonetheless in these periods, there were increase in numbers of pottery and Suidae remains indicated the transition from hunting-gatherer to sedentary prehistoric life

The experiment was carried out during October 2022 to January 2023 at Mae Hea Agricultural Research, Demonstration and Training Center, Faculty of Agriculture, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand; latitude: 18° 44′ 36″ North, Longitude: 98° 57′ 50″ East, and an al-titude 304 msl. Evaporative greenhouse, 9.6 x 40 square meters, with 8 planting troughs was prepared, Sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) system were installed to monitor continuously vital parameters, collect data, and send timely alerts to facilitate problem resolution. The data were displayed via IoT platform dashboard. An average air temperature, light intensity, media moisture and CO2 concentration in the greenhouse during 4 months was 21.1 ◦C, 12,948 Lux, 2 kPa and 495 ppm, respectively. The average maximum temperature in the evaporative greenhouse was 29.6 ◦C, which 4.2 ◦C lower than outside; 33.8 ◦C. Root-zone cooling of the strawberry planting was de-signed as factorial 3x4 in completely randomized design (CRD). Factor A was the short-day strawberry cultivars: 1) “Pharachatan 88” 2) “Pharachatan 80” and 3) “Akihime”. Factor B was the root-zone cooling treatments: 1) normal water dripping (NWD) 2) cold water dripping (CWD) 3) cold water dripping + cold water piping (CWD+CWP) and 4) normal water dripping + cold water piping (NWD+CWP). The results revealed that there was an interaction between the two factors on canopy width, leave width, crown diameter, number of flowers, fruit qualities and fruit color, whereas plant height, leaves length, SPAD and number of inflorescences were not affected by the interaction between the two factors. Four months after the experiment, the root-zone cooling treatments had no effect on chlorophyll contents, whereas “Pharachatan 80” had lower chlorophyll content than others. The CWD+CWP treatment could reduce 2 °C of root-zone temperature and leading to promote vegetative and reproductive growth in strawberry plants. Anyhow, without the root-zone cooling treatment, “Akihime”and “Pharachatan 88” still could produce flowers and yield, but “Pharachatan 80” could not. Furthermore, “Akihime” seemed appreciable in flowering, TSS and yield as compared to others.

Background: Neonatal sepsis associated with severe morbidity and mortality defines the systemic condition arising from the bacterial, viral, fungal origin associated with hemodynamic and clinical alterations. Symptomatology can be different, from subclinical to severe, focal or systemic disease. The causal agent comes from maternal flora or can be of community/hospital origin. Material and method: Our retrospective study evaluated 121 newborns (both preterm and term), divided into three groups: early onset sepsis (35), late onset sepsis (39), and control group (47), from 0 to 28 days old. Blood samples and cultures were collected at admission, after 24 hours, and 72 hours. Results: The two-sample Wilcoxon signed rank test revealed a statistically significant difference between the initial and final measures of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and ferritin within the early onset sepsis (EOS) and late onset sepsis (LOS) groups. No significant differences were observed for those two variables within the control group. There were significant differences for first and last measurements of C-Reactive Protein (CRP) (p = 0.029), leukocyte count (p = 0.002), and platelets (TR) (p = 0.00001). Conclusions: Ferritin is a potential biomarker that can be associated with systemic response and sepsis in both cases of early and late onset sepsis.

Food allergy (FA) affects approximately 6–8% of children worldwide causing a significant impact on the quality of life of children and their families. In the years, the possible role of weaning in the development of FA has been studied. According to recent studies, the role of weaning in its development is still controversial and influenced by several factors, such as the type of food, the age at food introduction and family history. In this narrative review, we aimed to collected the most recent evidence about weaning and its role in FA development, organizing the gathered data based on both the type of study and the food.

The genus Clostridium is an important group of pathogenic and nonpathogenic Gram-positive anaerobic bacteria with sporulation capacity and wide distribution in different environments, including the gastrointestinal tract of healthy and diseased animals and humans. Among the pathogenic species of the genus, Clostridium chauvoei stands out as a histotoxic agent. It causes important myonecroses such as blackleg, a disease with high lethality and mortality, especially in young cattle, and is responsible for significant losses to livestock worldwide. The pathogenic-ity of the disease is complex and has not yet been fully elucidated. The hypotheses cover pro-cesses from the initial absorption to the transport and deposition of the agent in the affected tis-sues. The virulence factors of C. chauvoei were divided into somatic and flagellar antigens and soluble antigens/toxins, which are the main antigens involved in vaccines against blackleg in Brazil and worldwide. This review provides important information on the first and current ap-proaches to the agent C. chauvoei and its virulence factors, as well as provides a compilation of data on Brazilian studies related to blackleg.

(1) Background: The study presents an assessment of the psychometric properties of the Polish version the Short Schema Mode Inventory (SMI) adaptation. (2) Methods: First, the original version of the scale was translated. Subsequently, a validity and reliability study was conducted on a sample of 240 patients and 400 non-patients. In particular: the factor structure of the inventory was checked, internal reliability and intercorrelations between subscales were tested, differences between the clinical and non-clinical groups in terms of the severity of each factor were examined, and construct validity was assessed by comparing the association of results with external variables. (3) Results: The results did not conclusively confirm the 14-factor structure postulated in the original scale. Nevertheless, relatively the best fit indices were obtained for such a model. Internal reliability for the 14 subscales was in the acceptable to excellent range. Correlations between subscales took moderate to high values. The existence of differences between the clinical and non-clinical groups and the construct validity were confirmed. (4) Conclusions: The psychometric evaluation performed is mostly similar to the results obtained for other adaptations, and the results entitle the inventory to be used for research and clinical purposes with the knowledge of its limitations.

As education continues to evolve in response to technological advancements, the concept of Education 5.0 has gained prominence. However, it is crucial to critically analyze the limitations and challenges of this model. This article presents a comprehensive examination of Education 5.0, identifies its drawbacks, and proposes a vision for Education 6.0. Through insightful case studies and discussions, this article aims to provide a nuanced perspective on the future of education.

Gliomas are aggressive, primary central nervous system tumours arising from glial cells. Glioblastomas are the most malignant. They are known for their poor prognosis or median overall survival. Current standard of care is overwhelmed by the heterogeneous, immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment promoting immune evasion and tumour proliferation. The advent of immunotherapy with its various modalities – immune checkpoint inhibitors, cancer vaccines, oncolytic viruses, chimeric antigen receptor T cells and NK cells have shown promise. Clinical trials incorporating combination therapies of the above have overcome the microenvironment resistance and yielded survival and prognostic benefit. Rolling these new therapies out in the real-world scenario in a low cost, high throughput manner is the unmet need of the hour. These will bring practice changing implications to the glioma treatment landscape. In this review article, we focus on describing the hallmarks of the glioma microenvironment and its interplay with the different emerging modalities of immunotherapy.

A simple line of reasoning, based on the most fundamental concepts of thermodynamics, yields some intriguing results for a better understanding of the processes occurring in the observable Universe. Gravitational mass must be continuously generated within an expanding thermodynamic system for this system to remain closed. The Second Law is a direct consequence of this production of mass. Simple expressions for the entropy and temperature of the Universe were obtained and the results agree well with observable values. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the conservation laws within the Universe are independent of its energy density. Based on the solution for the quantum state of the Universe, it is conjectured that the Second Law is incomplete and must be complemented to a conservation law, which takes into account the growth of the amount of information within the Universe. Once the Second Law is complemented to a conservation law, the importance of mass generation within the Universe becomes well pronounced – not only gravitational effects play the role of an organising force, but also the amount of mass within the Universe defines both the amount of information within the Universe and the level of the Universe’s complexity.

The paper considers the symmetries of a bit of information corresponding to one, two or three qubits of quantum information and identifiable as the three basic symmetries of the Standard model, U(1), SU(2), and SU(3) accordingly. They refer to “empty qubits” (or the free variable of quantum information), i.e. those in which no point is chosen (recorded). The choice of a certain point violates those symmetries. It can be represented furthermore as the choice of a privileged reference frame (e.g. that of the Big Bang), which can be described exhaustively by means of 16 numbers (4 for position, 4 for velocity, and 8 for acceleration) independently of time, but in space-time continuum, and still one, 17th number is necessary for the mass of rest of the observer in it. The same 17 numbers describing exhaustively a privileged reference frame thus granted to be “zero”, respectively a certain violation of all the three symmetries of the Standard model or the “record” in a qubit in general, can be represented as 17 elementary wave functions (or classes of wave functions) after the bijection of natural and transfinite natural (ordinal) numbers in Hilbert arithmetic and further identified as those corresponding to the 17 elementary of particles of the Standard model. Two generalizations of the relevant concepts of general relativity are introduced: (1) “discrete reference frame” to the class of all arbitrarily accelerated reference frame constituting a smooth manifold; (2) a still more general principle of relativity to the general principle of relativity, and meaning the conservation of quantum information as to all discrete reference frames as to the smooth manifold of all reference frames of general relativity. Then, the bijective transition from an accelerated reference frame to the 17 elementary wave functions of the Standard model can be interpreted by the still more general principle of relativity as the equivalent redescription of a privileged reference frame: smooth into a discrete one. The conservation of quantum information related to the generalization of the concept of reference frame can be interpreted as restoring the concept of the ether, an absolutely immovable medium and reference frame in Newtonian mechanics, to which the relative motion can be interpreted as an absolute one, or logically: the relations, as properties. The new ether is to consist of qubits (or quantum information). One can track the conceptual pathway of the “ether” from Newtonian mechanics via special relativity, via general relativity, via quantum mechanics to the theory of quantum information (or “quantum mechanics and information”). The identification of entanglement and gravity can be considered also as a ‘byproduct” implied by the transition from the smooth “ether of special and general relativity’ to the “flat” ether of quantum mechanics and information. The qubit ether is out of the “temporal screen” in general and is depicted on it as both matter and energy, both dark and visible.

In recent years, music education in Ibero-America has been losing ground within the school environment in favor of the development of curricular systems that benefit academic results in standardized tests. Despite this, several studies in the field of cognitive neurosciences have found evidence of great relevance and in which it can be observed how music education can favor cognitive development and performance in practically all stages of human development, with important results in language tasks, attention, and executive functions such as planning, inhibition, cognitive flexibility and working memory.

The models used to estimate disease transmission, susceptibility and severity determine what epidemiology can (and cannot tell) us about COVID-19. These include: ‘model organisms’ chosen for their phylogenetic/aetiological similarities; multivariable statistical models to estimate the strength/direction of (potentially causal) relationships between variables (through ‘causal inference’), and the (past/future) value of unmeasured variables (through ‘classification/prediction’); and a range of modelling techniques to predict beyond the available data (through ‘extrapolation’), compare different hypothetical scenarios (through ‘simulation’), and estimate key features of dynamic processes (through ‘projection’). Each of these models: address different questions using different techniques; involve assumptions that require careful assessment; and are vulnerable to generic and specific biases that can undermine the validity and interpretation of their findings. It is therefore necessary that the models used: can actually address the questions posed; and have been competently applied. In this regard, it is important to stress that extrapolation, simulation and projection cannot offer accurate predictions of future events when the underlying mechanisms (and the contexts involved) are poorly understood and subject to change. Given the importance of understanding such mechanisms/contexts, and the limited opportunity for experimentation during outbreaks of novel diseases, the use of multivariable statistical models to estimate the strength/direction of potentially causal relationships between two variables (and the biases incurred through their misapplication/misinterpretation) warrant particular attention. Such models must be carefully designed to address: ‘selection-collider bias’, ‘unadjusted confounding bias’ and ‘inferential mediator adjustment bias’ – all of which can introduce effects capable of enhancing, masking or reversing the estimated (true) causal relationship between the two variables examined. Selection-collider bias occurs when these two variables independently cause a third (the ‘collider’), and when this collider determines/reflects the basis for selection in the analysis. It is likely to affect all incompletely representative samples, although its effects will be most pronounced wherever selection is constrained (e.g. analyses focusing on infected/hospitalised individuals). Unadjusted confounding bias disrupts the estimated (true) causal relationship between two variables when: these share one (or more) common cause(s); and when the effects of these causes have not been adjusted for in the analyses (e.g. whenever confounders are unknown/unmeasured). Inferentially similar biases can occur when: one (or more) variable(s) (or ‘mediators’) fall on the causal path between the two variables examined (i.e. when such mediators are caused by one of the variables and are causes of the other); and when these mediators are adjusted for in the analysis. Such adjustment is commonplace when: mediators are mistaken for confounders; prediction models are mistakenly repurposed for causal inference; or mediator adjustment is used to estimate direct and indirect causal relationships (in a mistaken attempt at ‘mediation analysis’). These three biases are central to ongoing and unresolved epistemological tensions within epidemiology. All have substantive implications for our understanding of COVID-19, and the future application of artificial intelligence to ‘data-driven’ modelling of similar phenomena. Nonetheless, competently applied and carefully interpreted, multivariable statistical models may yet provide sufficient insight into mechanisms and contexts to permit more accurate projections of future disease outbreaks.

Herein, we reported a case of complete excision of the jejunum for the treatment of esophageal cancer. A 62-year-old male was admitted with complaints of “difficulty in eating for one month and chest pain for 10 days". For complete gastrectomy and colonic polyposis, we chose the jejunum. We completely excised the jejunum and its vessels, anastomosed to the esophageal tumor resection, with no significant complications. This case showed that complete excision of the jejunum with bowel and vessels is an alternative surgical method for the treatment of esophageal cancer with free bowel shortage and no torsion of blood vessels.

Commercial sleep devices and mobile-phone applications for scoring sleep are gaining ground. In order to provide reliable information about the quantity and/or quality of sleep, their performance needs to be assessed against the current gold-standard, i.e. polysomnography (PSG; measuring brain, eye and muscle activity). We here assessed some commercially available sleep trackers, namely; a commercial activity tracker: Mi band (Xiaomi, BJ, CHN), a scientific actigraph: Motionwatch 8 (CamNTech, CB, UK), and a much used sleep application: Sleep Cycle (Northcube, GOT, SE). We recorded 27 nights in healthy sleepers using PSG and these devices. Surprisingly, all devices had very poor agreement with the gold standard. Sleep parameter comparisons revealed that specifically the Mi band and the sleep cycle application had difficulties in detecting wake periods which negatively affected the total sleep time and sleep efficiency estimations. However, all 3 devices were good in detecting the most basic parameter, the actual time in bed. In summary, our results suggest that, to-date; available sleep trackers do not provide meaningful sleep analysis but may be interesting for simply tracking times in bed. A much closer interaction with the scientific field seems necessary if reliable information shall be derived from such devices in the future.

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most common gastrointestinal diseases in humans. It is characterized by visceral pain and/or discomfort, hypersensitivity and abnormal motor responses along with change in gut habits. Although the etio-pathogenesis of IBS is only partially understood, a main role has been attributed to psychosocial stress of different origin. Animals models such as neonatal maternal separation, water avoidance stress and wrap restraint stress have been developed as psychosocial stressors in the attempt to reproduce the IBS symptomatology and identify the cellular mechanisms responsible for the disease. The study of these models has led to the production of drugs potentially useful for IBS treatment. This review intends to give an overview on the results obtained with the animal models; to emphasize the role of the enteric nervous system in IBS appearance and evolution and as a possible target of drug therapies.

BRCA1 and 2 pathogenic variants increase lifetime risks of breast (50-75%) and ovarian cancer (15-20%). Guidelines recommend breast screening (MRI and mammogram) or risk-reducing mastectomy with salpingo-oophorectomy for ovarian cancer prevention. We sought to 1) characterize the population of BRCA1/2 carriers in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) 2) evaluate risk-reducing interventions 3) identify factors influencing screening and prevention adherence. Methods: This is a retrospective study from a population-based provincial cohort of BRCA1/2 carriers. Eligibility criteria for risk-reducing interventions were defined for each case and patients were categorized based on their level of adherence with recommended screening or prevention. Chi-squared and regression analyses were used to determine which factors influenced uptake and level of adherence. Results: 276 BRCA1/2 carriers were identified; 156 living NL females composed the study population. Unaffected females were younger at testing than those with a cancer diagnosis (44.4 y versus 51.7 y; p=0.002). Categorized by eligibility, 61.0%, 61.6%, 39.0% and 75.7% of patients underwent MRI, mammogram, risk-reducing mastectomy, and risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy, respectively. Individuals with breast cancer were more likely to have risk-reducing mastectomy (64.7% versus 35.3%; p<0.001), and those who attended specialty hereditary cancer clinic were more likely to be adherent with breast/ovarian cancer recommendations (73.2% versus 13.4%; p<0.001) and to undergo risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy(84.1% versus 15.9%; p<0.001). Conclusions: Nearly 40% of female BRCA1/2 carriers were not receiving breast surveillance according to evidence-based recommendations. Cancer risk reduction and uptake of breast imaging and prophylactic breast and pelvic surgeries are significantly higher in patients who receive dedicated specialty care. Organized hereditary cancer prevention programs will be a valuable component of Canadian health care systems and have the potential to reduce the burden of disease country-wide.

Primary cutaneous B-cell lymphomas (PCBCLs) are B-cell lymphomas that can occur in the skin without evidence of extracutaneous involvement. The 2005 WHO/EORTC classification of cutaneous lymphomas and its 2018 update have distinguished three main categories based on clinicopathological, immunohistochemical and genetic characteristics: primary cutaneous marginal zone lymphoma (PCMZL), primary cutaneous follicle centre lymphoma (PCFCL), and primary cutaneous diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, leg type (PCDLBCL-LT). PCMZL and PCFCL are clinically indolent, while PCDLBCL-LT is an aggressive lymphoma. Due to its low incidence and lack of prospective studies, it is difficult to establish a standard treatment for each subgroup. The objective of our study was to describe the clinical and pathological characteristics of 103 patients with cutaneous B-cell lymphoma from 12 centres belonging to the Spanish Lymphoma Oncology Group. The median age was 53 years (40-65). According to skin extension, 62% had single site lymphoma, 17% had regional lymphoma and 20% had multifocal lymphoma. Histology: 66% had PCMZL, 26% had PCFCL, and 8% had PCDLBCL-LT. Twenty-three percent of the patients were treated exclusively with surgery, 26% with radiotherapy only, 21% with surgery plus radiotherapy, 10% with polychemotherapy, and 5% with rituximab monotherapy. Overall, 96% of patients achieved a complete response, and 44% subsequently relapsed, most of them relapsing either locally or regionally. The 10-year OS was 94.5% for the entire cohort, 98% for the PCMZL cohort, 95% for the PCFCL cohort and 85.7% for the PCDLBCL-LT cohort. Our data are comparable to those of other published series, except for the high frequency of PCMZL. The expected heterogeneity in therapeutic management has been observed.

This paper addresses the study of the stress field in composites continua with the multiscale approach of the DECM (Discrete Element modeling with the Cell Method). The analysis focuses on composites consisting of a matrix with inclusions of various shapes, to investigate whether and how the shape of the inclusions changes the stress field. The purpose is to provide a numerical explanation for some of the main failure mechanisms of concrete, which is precisely a composite consisting of a cement-based matrix and aggregates of various shapes. Actually, while extensive experimental campaigns detailed the shape effect of concrete aggregates in the past, so far it has not been possible to model the stress field within the inclusions and on the interfaces accurately. The reason for this lies in the limits of the differential formulation, which is the basis of the most commonly used numerical methods. The Cell Method (CM), on the contrary, is an algebraic method that provides descriptions up to the micro-scale, independently of the presence of rheological discontinuities or concentrated sources. This makes the CM useful for describing the shape effect of the inclusions, on the micro-scale. When used together with a multiscale approach, it also models the macro-scale behavior of periodic composite continua, without losing accuracy on the micro-scale. The DECM uses discrete elements precisely to provide the CM with a multiscale approach.

One of the key issues in sustainable tourism research is the gap between tourists' expressed friendly attitudes towards sustainable behaviors and their actual behaviors. Although many "low-carbon" themed restaurants have emerged during the low-carbon transformation of the Chinese tourism industry, low-carbon food services have not been significantly improved. This study takes food as the entry point to explore tourists' behavior and attitudes towards low-carbon tourism in relation to food. We conducted two interviews. The first interview was a semi-structured contextual interview with 120 tourists who had experiences in food streets, aim-ing to identify the core user group: low-carbon attitude-friendly tourists with high-carbon food behaviors. The second interviews was an in-depth interview based on grounded theory with 29 core users, analyzing the four main reasons for their high-carbon food behaviors and their re-quirements for low-carbon food services in tourism. Based on this, we extracted four design ele-ments for low-carbon tourism food services: low-carbon information show service, low-carbon service product attractiveness improvement, low-carbon food environment atmosphere creation, and service providers' low-carbon behaviors. Through these four service elements, we constructed a low-carbon tourism food service design framework based on the core users' needs, discussed the mechanism of service elements, and provided service design suggestions accordingly. The re-search results serve tourism providers, low-carbon tourism researchers, and designers.

Tree peony flowers are traditional ornamental and medicinal materials in China. In this study, 23 tree peony flowers at a broad color spectrum were analyzed. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) revealed that tree peony flowers are rich in sugars and organic acids. Up to 18 amino acids were identified by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer (LC-MS), including all essential amino acids, except for methionine. The majority of amino acids were significant positively correlated with each other and were significant negatively correlated with glucose, fructose and galactose. A total of 11 polyphenols were identified in these tree fresh peony flowers by LC-MS. There was a high consistency in grouping peony flowers by using sugars and organic acids and amino acids, which differed from that based on color components and polyphenols. Tree peony flowers are also rich in K, Ca, Mg and Fe. In together, peony flowers can be a good resource of health-promoting compounds.

Objective To explore the endoscopic anatomical structures of lumbar surgery. Methods A total of 290 patients who underwent lumbar endoscopic surgery due to lumbar intervertebral disc (IVD) herniation from September 2020 to September 2022 were retrospectively reviewed in our hospital,179 patients had complete surgical video recordings, including 108 males and 71 females, aged from 19 to 65 years, with an average age of 41±16 years. The endoscopic structures through the intervertebral foramen and interlaminar space were independently identified by 3 doctors with more than 3 years of related surgery experience. When there were differences of opinions, the three doctors would discuss and come to a consensus. The probability, location, and neighboring structures of each specific structures were statistically analyzed. Results The anatomical structures observed through the lumbar foramen under endoscopy include muscles and ligaments attached to the superior articular process (SAP), main blood vessels inside the intervertebral foramen, blood vessels on the surface of IVD, and blood vessels on the surface of the dural sac and nerve root. The major anatomical structures observed through interlaminar space are multifidus, the conjugated ligament of ligament flavum and capsule ligament (capsule part of flavum ligaments), edges of the lamina, specific vessel bundle to facet with exit nerve root. Conclusion The anatomical structures under spinal endoscopy have certain characteristics, which are grossly different from those under open surgery. Familiarity with these anatomical structures has important clinical significance.

The paper analyses how between 1956 and 2009 the agrarian metabolism of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (BMR) has become less functional, losing circularity in biomass flows and in relationship to its landscape. We do so by adopting a Multi-EROI and flow-fund (MuSIASEM) analyses and its nexus with landscape functional structure. The study of agricultural flows of Final Produce, Biomass Reused and External Inputs is integrated with that of land use, livestock, power capacity and population changes between 1956 (at the beginning of the Green Revolution) and 2009 (fully industrialized agriculture). A multi-scale analysis is conducted at the landscape scale (seven districts within the Barcelona metropolitan region) as well as for the functions deployed, within an agroecosystem, by the mutual interactions between its funds (land-uses, livestock and farming population). A complex nexus between land, livestock, dietary patterns and energy needs is shown; we conclude that from the perspective of the circular bioeconomy the agrarian sector has gone worse hand in hand with the landscape functional structure. Therefore, a novel perspective in landscape agroecology is opened

A proper transmission of the orientation between surface and underground workings, by means of vertical shafts, is an important challenge in the mining industry, especially when the mine exceeds 200 meters deep. In fact, this study is developed in a mine located to 700 meters deep. Likewise, this paper assesses the accuracy of this operation, in a case study, using the two shafts plumbing and gyroscope methods in order to compare and analyse the planimetric displacement of the base line due to different source of errors in each one. Upsides and downsides of both methods are analysed in the paper. Some disadvantages in each method have been reduced thanks to the technological progress, especially in the two shaft plumbing method. The different sources of error that affect the measures are thoroughly analysed in the study with the aim to compensate them and achieve the required precision for an underground infrastructure. Mine ventilation has been found as one of the most important sources of error in the plumbing method due to intake and return airflow. In this direction, the paper unfolds some measures to reduce the ventilation influence and details a compensation method to reduce ventilation errors.