This review deals with the adaptive mechanisms that plants can implement to cope with the challenge of salt stress. Plants tolerant to NaCl implement a series of adaptations to acclimate to salinity, including morphological, physiological and biochemical changes. These changes include increases in the root/canopy ratio and in the chlorophyll content in addition to changes in the leaf anatomy that ultimately lead to preventing leaf ion toxicity, thus maintaining the water status in order to limit water loss and protect the photosynthesis process. Furthermore, we deal with the effect of salt stress on photosynthesis and chlorophyll fluorescence and some of the mechanisms thought to protect the photosynthetic machinery, including the xanthophyll cycle, photorespiration pathway and water-water cycle. Finally, we also provide an updated discussion on salt-induced oxidative stress at the subcellular level and its effect on the antioxidant machinery in both salt-tolerant and salt-sensitive plants. The aim is to extend our understanding of how salinity may affect the physiological characteristics of plants.

Despite being a rare disease worldwide, rabies has the highest morbidity and mortality rates, with nearly all symptomatic cases leading to coma and death. Rabies represents an infectious disease caused by the Rabies virus (RABV), which is part of the Lyssavirus group and the Rhabdoviridae family, and it mainly spreads through the bite and scratch of an infected mammal, but particularly of wild animals, such as bats, foxes, wolves and racoons, and of domestic animals, such as dogs and cats, in rabies-prone areas of the world. Airborne transmission has been deemed as extremely rare, and no clinical case as such has been recorded worldwide yet, except in the enclosed environment, such as research laboratories and caves where infected bats are present. Domestic mammals, such as dogs and ferrets, represent other important reservoirs of disease transmission, and the human cases of Asia and Africa amount approximately 95% of all human cases worldwide. Infected animals most commonly start transmitting the virus once the first symptoms have occurred, and if they experience disease aggravation and death within 10 days, a case of rabies is registered, more easily if the incidence occurred in the urban area and then, any person or animal that had been potentially exposed are strongly recommended to receive the inoculation. It is rare for asymptomatic mammals to transmit the illness. Most First-World and several Second-World countries have recently been declared dog rabies-free by the World Health Organization. The disease can only be treated prophylactically, with three doses of a vaccine containing an inactivated form of RABV, or with five doses of the vaccine and two doses of anti-RABV immunoglobulins within 28 days if the patient is believed to have been exposed to the virus beforehand. It has been projected that, once the viral load reaches elements of the central nervous system, prophylactic approaches are no longer effective, even if symptoms have not begun yet, and this highlights the urgent trait of the medical condition, strongly recommending exposed people to receive the prophylactic doses immediately after the potential exposure to the virus. The pathogen first infects the bodily fluids, before reaching the peripheral nervous system, from where it will gradually move toward the spinal cord or the encephalon, at a speed of movement ranging from 1 to 40 cm per day. It was also found, in extremely rare circumstances, to infect the nasopharyngeal cavity and the lungs. The primary cause of a successful, gradual advance of the viral load toward the point of clinical no-return for the patient - the CNS - is a complex mechanism of induced innate immune evasion, with the interferon system being heavily targeted and silenced by RABV proteins. The ‘Milwaukee’ protocol is locally believed to decrease the mortality rate of the clinical illness to approximately 80%, although significantly more research is required in this sense. First-line immune evasion represents the central mechanism developed by viruses during their evolutionary process to gain control over human immunity, so it could be the development and adjustment of a counter-offensive to this evolutionary operating system that could address the core elements of the problem. Human recombinant Type I and Type III Interferons were found to be significant vaccine adjuvants and to considerably delay the clinical onset of the disease. Despite their central role in natural immunity-based prophylaxis, vaccine support and, in often cases, vaccination per se, a local administration of IFNs as such may not be enough to tackle the core problem of the endemic disease, and a specific and systemic treatment of potential host cells with IFN I and III, as well as IFN-stimulating proteins, may constitute a major research requirement in the coming years of disease investigation, as the inoculation efforts with the inactivated virus and immunoglobulin administration continue. The administration of a relatively low dosage of somatic Natural Killer cells, gamma-interferon and perhaps, of somatic helper CD4+ and somatic cytotoxic CD8+ T-lymphocytes treated with alpha-, beta- and lambda-interferon could be merged with the administration of a similar dosage of alpha-, beta- and lambda-interferon during the efforts to develop an effective and less costly prophylactic vaccine against rabies. A combination of a nasal substance containing a low dosage of IFN I and III with a reduced concentration of neutralized RABV copies, and/or with a low dose of anti-RABV IgA antibodies, could also be tested for humans for the purposes of pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis.

The combination of humans’ cognitive skills and dexterity with the endurance and repeatability of robots is a promising approach to modern assembly. However, planning an assembly sequence and efficiently allocating tasks between humans and robots is a manual, complex, and time-consuming challenge. This work presents a framework named “Extract-Enrich-Assess-Plan-Review" that facilitates holistic planning of human-robot assembly processes. The framework uses heterogeneous data sources to feed a planning algorithm that generates assembly sequences according to various boundary conditions such as resource capability, part dependency, sequencing, and adaptability to human behavior. An expert remains in the loop to enrich the data, review, and modify the automatically generated sequences. As an output, the framework creates assembly sequences with different ways in which humans and robots work together that can be selected depending on the purpose of the subsequent use. For our experimental results, we compare the achieved degree of automation using three different CAD formats. We also demonstrate and analyse multiple assembly sequence plans that are generated by our system. Those assembly plans incorporate different human-robot interaction modalities that are synchronised, cooperative, or collaborative.

Gastrointestinal (GI) cancers are the most common causes of global cancer burden and cancer-related deaths. Chronic inflammation is a hallmark feature of GI tumors and plays an important role in tumor initiation, progression, and therapeutic response. The genetic makeup of cancer cell, as well as epigenetic alterations, and biological processes constitute an inflammatory tumor microenvironment (TME) that provides an essential nich for cancer initiation and progression. Cancer-associated inflammation, a key component of TME, displays protumoral or antitumoral activity depending on the composition, spatial distribution, and functional status of the immune cells involved, thus adversely affecting response to cancer treatment and clinical outcomes, whereas acute inflammation supports T-cell priming, activation, and infiltration into malignant tissues, thereby conferring anti-tumoral immunity. Inflammatory cells and proinflammatory molecules within the TME act as a bridge between inflammation and cancer. The majority of cells involved in the inflammatory process in the TME are innate immune cells, which play a critical role in shapping both the cellular composition of the TME and the plasticity of cancer cells and stromal cells. Activation of innate immune cells in the TME initiates the production of inflammatory, regenerative, and anti-inflammatory soluble molecules, resulting in adaptive immune response to the cancer. Additionally, aberrant activation of intracellular signaling pathways, inflammatory molecules, and metabolites have critical roles in the development and healing of inflammation during carcinogenesis. Cancer-associated inflammation may inhibit the effectiveness of anti-cancer agents by causing enzymatic degradation of drugs and modulating the immun activity, thus affecting survival of patient. In this review article, we highlight the genetic and cellular mechanisms involved in the formation of the inflammatory component of the TME in GI cancers, the soluble molecules, the cancer cell-immune cell interactions, and the implications of all these for clinical outcomes. We also comprehensively address the mechanisms linking chronic inflammation to cancer, with a focus on the most frequent GI cancers.

Whilst Model Reference Adaptive Control theory provides mathematical techniques for achieving the performance of the system without undue dependence upon dynamic systems models, its applicability may not be suitable for systems that are crucial to safety due to suboptimal transient and error convergence performance. In this article, our approach enhances the performance of MRAC by utilizing a Generalized Dynamic Inversion (GDI). Two control actions are permitted under the GDI control law. One control is the particular part that is responsible for enforcing the reference system-constrained behaviors. Another control action is carried out by the control law’s auxiliary component and is incorporated into the standard MRAC control law. This augmented part is referred to as a null control vector, and it is used to enhance the performance of MRAC. The classic MRAC control law, when supplemented with a null vector term consisting of an adaptive gain that changes in response to tracking errors, forces the dynamical system to behave similarly to the reference model. This null vector, in particular, restricts the oscillation intensity of the tracking errors, which is employed to generate the adaptive parameters. It is demonstrated that this critical element of our approach enhances transient performance and ensures that error dynamics vanish asymptotically. Extensive simulations have been conducted to prove the efficacy of the proposed method.

This paper investigates the strategic dimensions influencing the adoption of environmental inno-vations (EIs) in small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in Mexico City. The study aims to understand the fundamental strategic dimensions defining eco-innovation and ex-amine how SMEs manage the complexities of incorporating these practices. Employing a mixed methods approach with documentary analysis and expert interviews; the study identifies key factors influencing EI adoption through causal maps and the Viable System Model. Findings high-light the significance of external and internal factors such as competitive pressure, economic con-straints, technological capabilities, political support, and social influence. This integrative approach emphasizes the importance of adaptability and responsiveness, presenting eco-innovation as a source of sustainable competitive advantage for SMEs.

DNA damage causes the mutations that are the principal source of genetic variation. DNA damage detection and repair mechanisms therefore play a determining role in generating the genetic diversity on which natural selection acts. Speciation, it is commonly assumed, occurs at a rate set by the level of standing allelic diversity in a population. The process of speciation is driven by a combination of two evolutionary forces: genetic drift and ecological selection. Genetic drift takes place under conditions of relaxed selection, and results in a balance between rates of mutation and rates of genetic substitution. These two processes, drift and selection, are necessarily mediated by a variety of mechanisms guaranteeing genome stability in any given species. One of the outstanding questions in evolutionary biology concerns the origin of the widely varying phylogenetic distribution of biodiversity across the tree of life, and how the forces of drift and selection contribute to shaping that distribution. The following examines some of the molecular mechanisms underlying genome stability and the adaptive radiations that are associated with biodiversity and the widely varying species richness and evenness in the different eukaryotic lineages.

Designing high-voltage underground transmission lines poses complex challenges in heat management, trench optimization, and determining cable ampacity. This article introduces an innovative proposal that focuses on adjusting the dimensions of the thermal backfill as a primary strategy to enhance ampacity compared to the traditional approach of increasing the cross-sectional area of the cable core. The methodology employs a particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique with adaptive penalization, restart strategies, and parameter self-adaptation implemented in MATLAB. The objective of this approach is to provide more efficient solutions than traditional MATLAB PSO, demonstrating improved convergence and more accurate results with a success probability of 66.1\%. Although traditional PSO is 81\% faster, the proposed PSO stands out for its precision. Additionally, the incorporation of thermal backfill results in an 18.45\% increase in cable ampacity. Variations in the thermal resistivity of the soil, backfill, and ambient temperature are highlighted as sensitive factors affecting ampacity and backfill dimensions. This method is presented as a crucial tool in the early stages of the project and underground installation in operation with maximum ampacity, contributing to the continuous improvement of energy efficiency.

In recent years, the viability of employing multi-agent reinforcement learning technology for adaptive traffic signal control has been extensively validated. However, owing to restricted communication among agents and the partial observability of the traffic environment, the process of mapping road network states to actions encounters numerous challenges. To address this problem, this paper proposes a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning model with an emphasis on communication content (CMARL). The model decouples the complex relationships between multi-signal agents through centralized training and decentralized execution. Specifically, we first pass the traffic state through an improved deep neural network to achieve the extraction of high-dimensional semantic information and the learning of the communication matrix. Then the agents selectively interact with each other based on the learned communication matrix and generate the final state features. Finally, the features are inputted to the QMIX network to achieve the final action selection. We compare the CMARL model with 6 other baseline algorithms in real traffic networks. The results show that CMARL can significantly reduce vehicle congestion, and run stably in various scenarios.

Waste heat recovery stands out as a promising technique to tackle both energy shortages and environmental pollution. Currently, this valuable resource, generated from processes like fuel combustion or chemical reactions, is often dissipated into the environment, despite its potential to significantly contribute to the economy. To harness this untapped potential, a travelling-wave thermo-acoustic generator has been designed and subjected to comprehensive experimental analysis. Fifty-two data corresponding to different working conditions of the system were extracted to build ANN, ANFIS and ANN-PSO models. Evaluation of performance metrics reveals that the ANN-PSO model demonstrates the highest predictive accuracy (R^2=0.9959), particularly in relation to output voltage. This research demonstrates the potential of machine learning techniques for the analysis of thermo-acoustic systems. By doing so, it is possible to get an insight into nonlinearities inherent to thermo-acoustic systems. This advancement empowers researchers to forecast the performance characteristics of alternative configurations with a heightened level of precision.

Fiber coupling efficiency is one of the key technical indicators of atmospheric laser communication, which directly affects the communication system BER. According to the optical fiber coupling efficiency model, the optical fiber coupling model under atmospheric slant link is established, and the relationship between wavelength, zenith angle, receiving aperture, altitude and coupling efficiency is studied through numerical simulation. Based on the principle of adaptive optics turbulence correction, the relationship between fiber coupling efficiency and adaptive optics order is established. A fast method for estimating the coupling efficiency based on Strehl ratio is proposed. According to the principle of laser communication system, the semi-physical simulation experimental system of atmospheric slant-range channel coupling efficiency is constructed, and the coupling efficiency test and analysis are completed.

This article aims to investigate the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in revolutionizing the education sector and further advancing the vision of Education 6.0. This study explores how AI can foster personalized learning experiences and adaptive pedagogy. By analyzing recent developments and real-world applications of AI in education, this article offers insights into how AI can support educators in tailoring instruction to individual students' needs, promoting engagement, and optimizing learning outcomes. The article also discusses ethical considerations and challenges associated with the integration of AI in education, emphasizing the importance of responsible implementation and human supervision.

Channel estimation is an important module to enhance the performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. However, the presence of a large amount of noise in multipath fading time-varying channels significantly affects the channel estimation accuracy and thus the recovery quality of the received signals. Therefore, this paper proposes a double-threshold (DT) channel estimation method based on adaptive frame statistics (AFS). The method first adaptively determines the number of statistical frames based on the temporal correlation of the received signals, and preliminarily detects the channel structure by analyzing the distribution characteristics of multipath sampling points and noise sampling points during adjacent frames. Subsequently, a multi-frame averaging technique is used to expand the distinction between multipath and noise sampling points. Finally, the DT is designed to better recover the channel based on the preliminary detection results. Simulation results show that the proposed adaptive frame statistics-double-threshold (AFS-DT) channel estimation method is effective and has better performance compared with many existing channel estimation methods.

This study posits that for appropriately explaining the complex charland (mid-channel island) processes and formulating policy and planning measures, a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic characteristics of the geomorphological, ecological, and human systems holistically is essential. This is also valid for the territorial and maritime areas of Bangladesh. The objectives of this study are: (i) to analyze the salient features and characteristics of the geomorphological and riparian systems of the Bengal Delta; (ii) to analyze the evolutionary discourse of the legal systems concerning eroded (diluvion) and accreted (alluvion) land in Bangladesh; and (iii) to assess characteristics of coping and adaptation strategies of the charland inhabitants. The findings reveal that the delta-building processes, characterized by the dynamic shifts of river channels, and erosion and accretion of charlands have made the land and water systems of the territory very dynamic and unstable – resulting in consistent displacement of settlers and serious deterioration of their socioeconomic status. The historical evolution of land laws and regulations concerning the accreted land favoured vested interests. As no effective institutional framework and structure presently exists in Bangladesh for resettlement planning, formulation of a comprehensive national resettlement policy is therefore urgently needed.

Lithium batteries are widely used due to their advantages such as high energy density, stable performance, low pollution, and long recyclable life. Accurate SOC estimation is important for the use of lithium batteries. To address the problem of low accuracy of SOC estimation by traditional methods, this paper proposes a joint method of fractional order robust unscented Kalman filter (FORUKF) and robust unscented Kalman filter (RUKF) to estimate SOC. The method is based on a fractional order model (FOM) that combines the unscented transformation (UT) technique, the H∞ observer and the joint estimator. Specifically, an adaptive genetic algorithm (AGA) was first used to identify the parameters of the FOM for lithium batteries and to verify the accuracy of the model. Estimation and updating of the ohmic resistance R0 and the capacity QN in the model in real-time by RUKF and then estimation of the SOC by FORUKF. Finally, the accuracy of FORUKF-RUKF was verified under the Federal Urban Driving Schedule (FUDS), US06 Highway Driving Schedule and Beijing Dynamic Stress Test (BJDST). According to the results, the FORUKF-RUKF estimated SOC was found to have better accuracy and robustness than the RUKF, FOUKF and EKF.

Galls are characteristic plant structures formed by cell size enlargement and/or cell proliferation induced by parasitic or pathogenic organisms. Insects are a major inducer of galls, and insect galls can occur on plant leaves, stems, floral buds, flowers, fruits, or roots. Many of these exhibit unique shapes, providing shelter and nutrients to insects. To form unique gall structures, gall-inducing insects are believed to secrete certain effector molecules and hijack host developmental programs. However, the molecular mechanisms of insect gall induction and development remain largely unknown due to the difficulties associated with the study of non-model plants in the wild. Recent advances in next-generation sequencing have allowed us to determine the biological processes in non-model organisms, including gall-inducing insects and their host plants. In this review, we first summarize the adaptive significance of galls for insects and plants. Thereafter, we summarize recent progress regarding the molecular aspects of insect gall formation.

Protected areas, such as natural World Heritage sites, RAMSAR wetlands, and Biosphere reserves are ecosystems within landscapes. Each site meets certain criteria that allow it to qualify as heritage or protected. Both climate change and human influence (e.g., incursion, increased tourist visitation) are altering biophysical conditions at many such sites. As a result, conditions at many sites are falling outside the criteria for their original designation. The alternatives are to change the criteria, remove protection from the site, change site boundaries such that the larger or smaller landscape meets the criteria, or manage the existing landscape in some way that reduces the threat. This paper argues for adaptive heritage, an approach that explicitly recognizes changing conditions. We discuss the need to view heritage areas as parts of a larger landscape, and to take an adaptive approach to management of that landscape. We offer five themes of adaptive heritage: 1) treat sites as living heritage, 2) employ innovative governance, 3) embrace transparency and accountability, 4) invest in monitoring and evaluation, and 5) manage adaptively. We offer the Australian Wet Tropics as an example where aspects of adaptive heritage currently are practiced, highlighting the tools being used. This paper offers guidance supporting decisions about natural heritage in the face of climate change and non-climatic pressures. Rather than delisting or lowering standards, we argue for adaptive approaches.

The international debate on the adaptive re-use of cultural heritage sites following the Sustainable Development Goals becomes more central than ever in the implementation of circular economy models for urban policies. The new values that characterise the cultural assets, considered as the result of a collaborative process, can enhance both the manufactured capital and the human capital, and to carry out the system of relationships that bind them. At the same time, the values of historical-artistic assets and produced by community-based regeneration processes are particularly relevant when they characterise abandoned commons and cult buildings, to which communities attribute an identity and symbolic value. Starting from the definition of the concept of Complex Social Value, we propose a methodological process that combines approaches and techniques typical of deliberative evaluations and collaborative decision-making processes. The aim is to identify the complex value chains generated by adaptive re-use, in which intrinsic values can play a driving role in the regeneration strategies of discarded cultural heritage. The experimentation, tested with the project “San Sebastiano del Monte dei Morti Living Lab” (SSMOLL), activates a creative and cultural Living Lab in the former church of “Morticelli”, in the historic centre of Salerno, in southern Italy. The re-use project is part of a more comprehensive process of social innovation and culture-led urban regeneration triggered in Salerno starting from SSMOLL.

We applied evolutionary game theory to extend a resource constrained security game model for confidentiality attacks in an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), which is a component of IoT-enabled Smart Grids. The AMI is modelled as a tree structure where each node aggregates the information of its children before encrypting it and passing it on to its parent. As a part of the model, we developed a discretization scheme for solving the replicator equations. The aim of this work is to explore the space of possible behaviours of attackers and to develop a framework where the AMI nodes adaptively select the most profitable strategies. Using this model, we simulated the evolution of a population of attackers and defenders on various cases resembling the real life implementation of AMI. We discuss in depth how to enhance security in AMI using evolutionary game theory either by a priori analysis or as a tool to run dynamic and adaptive infrastructure defence.

During recent decades, contextual computing applications have emerged in the field of healthcare and particularly in the field of telemonitoring of patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). According to WHO rankings, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death worldwide. Various research works are therefore carried out to improve the health of patients and the monitoring of patients in the comfort of their home environment. To this end, several telemonitoring systems are designed to COPD patients. These systems are connected to health center. Emergency physicians follow the patients subscribed to these systems remotely. These systems focus mainly on prediction, decision-making and the requirements of the healthcare profession, and do not address the quality control aspects of services or QoS based on service level agreements (SLAs). This situation can be dangerous for patients in case of extreme exacerbation of COPD patients. For example, the unavailability of the monitoring system can lead to the death of the patient because the emergency physician could not have access to the patient's data in real time in the context of COPD Patient Monitoring. In addition, Remote medical monitoring platforms are manipulating large volumes of data and the risks of data lost or data quality are real. It is therefore important to have the mechanisms to continuously improve the quality of service of these monitoring platforms in general and COPD patients particularly. In this article, we propose an ontology that uses SLA information from COPD monitoring platforms with dynamic data from the patient context. The purpose of this article is to propose a dynamic mechanism model for evaluating SLA violations. This solution allows retrieving knowledge from the main items of the SLA document based on XML and the COPD patient context data dynamically from a COPD SLA ontology. These data retrieved in real time allow the calculation of SLO-based metrics and display a SLA template available on the supplier and consumer interfaces. The information of the SLA violation control Interface changes dynamically depending the context-aware system and SLA document data. The SLA parties can dynamically control their Key Performance Indicators (KPI) Target.

Visual-inertial integrated navigation system (VINS) has been extensively studied over the past decades to provide accurate and low-cost positioning solutions for autonomous systems. Satisfactory performance can be obtained in an ideal scenario with sufficient and static environment features. However, there are usually numerous dynamic objects in deep urban areas, and these moving objects can severely distort the feature tracking process which is fatal to the feature-based VINS. The well-known method mitigates the effects of dynamic objects is to detect the vehicles using deep neural networks and remove the features belongs to the surrounding vehicle. However, excessive exclusion of features can severely distort the geometry of feature distribution, leading to limited visual measurements. Instead of directly eliminating the features from dynamic objects, this paper proposes to adopt the visual measurement model based on the quality of feature tracking to improve the performance of VINS. Firstly, a self-tuning covariance estimation approach is proposed to model the uncertainty of each feature measurements by integrating two parts: 1) the geometry of feature distribution (GFD), 2) the quality of feature tracking. Secondly, an adaptive M-estimator is proposed to correct the measurement residual model to further mitigate the impacts of outlier measurements, such as the dynamic features. Different from the conventional M-estimator, the proposed method effectively alleviates the reliance of excessive parameterization of M-estimator. Experiments are conducted in a typical urban area of Hong Kong with numerous dynamic objects, and the results show that the proposed method could effectively mitigate the effects of dynamic objects and improved accuracy of VINS is obtained when compared with the conventional method.

Background: Cytokines and chemokines are critical regulators of innate and adaptive immunities during viral infection. We examined innate and adaptive immune responses to hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) at baseline and against controls. Methods: Twenty-seven cytokines were evaluated before treatment in 27 patients with chronic hepatitis C(CHC) [genotype1 (n=20), genotype2 (n=7), HCVRNA 5.72IU/ml] and 12 chronic hepatitis B(CHB) [e-antigen (Ag) (+) (n=5), e-Ag (-) (n=7), HBVDNA 6.191.31Logcopies/ml] and against controls(n=5). Results: Th1 and Th2 cytokines were significantly higher (p<0.05) in CHB than in CHC. The levels of IL-IL10 in CHC and CHB, and IL15 in CHC(genotype2) and CHB were significantly lower (p<0.05) than in controls. The levels of CXCL8 in CHC and CHB, IL12 in CHC and CHB [e-Ag (-)] and CXCL10 in CHC and CHB were significantly higher (p<0.05) than in controls. IFN-γwas higher in CHB than in controls. Conclusion: Cytokines levels differed between CHB and CHC before treatment. Innate immune responses were impaired in CHB with HBeAg(-) and CHC, but not in CHB with HBeAg(+) with high viral loads. Adaptive immune responses were impaired in CHB and CHC and appear to reflect the distinct state of virus-host immune interactions between CHB and CHC.

Cryptococcal meningitis remains a significant opportunistic infection among HIV-infected patients, contributing 15%-20% of HIV-related mortality. A complication of initiating Antiretroviral therapy (ART) following opportunistic infection is Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome (IRIS). IRIS afflicts 10-30% of HIV-infected patients with cryptococcal meningitis (CM), but its immunopathogenesis is poorly understood. We compared circulating T cell memory subsets and cytokine responses among 17 HIV-infected Ugandans with CM: 11 with and 6 without CM-IRIS. At meningitis diagnosis, stimulation with cryptococcal capsule component, glucuronoxylomannan (GXM) elicited consistently lower frequencies of CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cell memory subsets expressing intracellular cytokines (IL-2, IFN-γ and IL-17) among subjects who subsequently developed CM-IRIS. After ART initiation, T cells evolved to show a decreased CD8⁺ central memory phenotype. At the onset of CM-IRIS, stimulation more frequently generated polyfunctional IL-2⁺/IL-17⁺ CD4⁺ T cells in patients with CM-IRIS. Moreover, CD8⁺ central and effector memory T cells from CM-IRIS subjects also demonstrated more robust IL-2 responses to antigenic stimulation vs. controls. Thus, ART during CM elicits distinct differences in T cell cytokine production in response to cryptococcal antigens both prior to and during the development of IRIS, suggesting an immunologic foundation for the development of this morbid complication of CM infection.

This paper proposes a novel approach, based on the adaptive rate processing and analysis, for the isolated speech recognition. The idea is to smartly combine the event-driven signal acquisition and windowing along with adaptive rate processing, analysis and classification for realizing an effective isolated speech recognition. The incoming speech signal is digitized with an event-driven A/D converter (EDADC). The output of EDADC is windowed with an activity selection process. These windows are later on resampled uniformly with an adaptive rate interpolator. The resampled windows are de-noised with an adaptive rate filter and their spectrum are computed with an adaptive resolution short time Fourier transform (ARSTFT). Later on, the magnitude, Delta and Delta-Delta spectral coefficients are extracted. The Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) technique is employed to compare these extracted features with the reference templates. The comparison outcomes are used to make the classification decision. The system functionality is tested for a case study and results are presented. An 8.2 times reduction in acquired number of samples is achieved by the devised approach as compared to the classical one. It aptitudes a significant computational gain and power consumption reduction of the proposed system over the counter classical ones. An average subject dependent isolated speech recognition accuracy of 96.8% is achieved. It shows that the proposed approach is a potential candidate for the automatic speech recognition applications like rehabilitation centers, smart call centers, smart homes, etc.

This study aims to understand the current state of research in urban resilience and to open a discussion about multi-level perspectives for this concept. Starting with the history of the concept of resilience, we identify three main stages in resilience concept’s evolution: conceptualization, contextualization and operationalization. Confusion occurs between sustainability and resilience, therefore we clearly separate these two concepts by creating conceptual maps. Such maps also underline the specificities of urban and regional resilience discourses. We illustrate that urban resilience research, operating within intra-urban processes, is oriented towards natural disasters, while regional resilience research, operating mostly within inter-urban processes, is oriented towards economic shocks. We show that these two approaches to resilience – urban and regional – are complementary, and we propose to integrate them into a multi-level perspective. By combining these two discourses, we propose a multi-level approach to urban resilience that takes into account both top-down and bottom-up resistance processes. In the discussion section, we propose to take the panarchy perspective as a theoretical framework for multi-level urban resilience, that explains the interactions between different levels through adaptive cycles, relationships between which can help to explain urban resilience.

Speckle noise corrupt the major part of ultrasound image, because of which the quality deteriorate and loss of valuable information leads to false diagnosis. A large community of images like synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image, Synthetic image, and simulated ultrasound image, require despeckling at pre-processing stage for better processing. Cleaning the speckle from image and preserving the edge details is a vital task. Nowadays not only despeckling is considered as an important process but also preserving information at boundary and edges of image is also important. As most of the algorithms able to remove speckle noise but fails to preserve the details of edges. This paper covers several recent methods for removal of speckle noise along with various metrics opted for comparisons. The distinctive part of this paper is, a mathematical and parametric review has been done. Also a table is also included which summarizes the entire paper.

LLC resonant converters have emerged as essential components in DC charging station modules, thanks to their outstanding performance attributes such as high power density, efficiency, and compact size. The stability of these converters is crucial for vehicle endurance and passenger experience, making reliability a top priority. However, malfunctions in the switching transistor or current sensor can hinder the converter’s ability to maintain a resonant state and stable output voltage, leading to a notable reduction in system efficiency and output capability.This article proposes a fault diagnosis strategy for LLC resonant converters utilizing a reduced order interval sliding mode observer. Initially, an augmented generalized system for the LLC resonant converter is developed to convert current sensor faults into generalized state vectors. Next, the application of matrix transformations plays a critical role in decoupling open-circuit faults from the inverter system’s state and current sensor faults. To achieve accurate estimation of phase currents and detection of current sensor faults, a reduced-order interval sliding mode observer has been designed. Building upon the estimation results generated by this observer, a diagnostic algorithm featuring adaptive thresholds has been introduced. This innovative algorithm effectively differentiates between current sensor faults and open switch faults, enhancing fault detection accuracy. Furthermore, it is capable of localizing faulty power switches and estimating various types of current sensor faults, thereby providing valuable insights for maintenance and repair. The robustness and effectiveness of the proposed fault diagnosis algorithm have been validated through experimental results and comparisons with existing methods, confirming its practical applicability in real-world inverter systems.

With the development of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), the quality and anti-jamming capability of satellite navigation signals are crucial. Binary Offset Carrier (BOC) modulation faces issues of false locking due to multi-peak ambiguity in its autocorrelation function, limiting its application. This paper examines FH-BOC modulation, which integrates BOC with frequency hopping technology, significantly improving anti-jamming, anti-multipath performance, and spectral efficiency. To meet the high dynamic tracking demands of FH-BOC signals, this study explores three types of carrier tracking loops: the traditional second-order frequency-locked loop assisted a third-order phase-locked loop, a linear Kalman filter-based tracking algorithm, and an adaptive Kalman filter-based tracking algorithm. A composite code tracking loop is also proposed. Simulations show that the adaptive Kalman filter algorithm achieves high-precision carrier tracking in dynamic environments and quickly converges during transitions. The composite code tracking loop, aided by the carrier loop, ensures precise synchronization of pseudocode and frequency-hopping subcarrier phases, demonstrating the superior performance of FH-BOC modulation in dynamic environments.

Airborne Frequency Diversity Array (FDA) radar operating at a high pulse repetition frequency encounters severe range-ambiguous clutter. The slight frequency increments introduced by the FDA result in angle and range coupling. Under these conditions, conventional space-time adaptive processing (STAP) often exhibits diminished performance or fails, complicating target detection. This paper proposes a method combining elevation oblique subspace projection with azimuth-Doppler STAP to suppress range-ambiguous clutter. By analyzing the relationship between elevation frequency and range, the proposed method compensates for quadratic range dependence. Through the construction of an elevation oblique subspace projection technique, an elevation adaptive filter is used to separate clutter from ambiguous regions. Residual clutter suppression is achieved through azimuth-Doppler STAP, enhancing target detection performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively addresses range dependence and ambiguity issues, improving target detection performance in complex airborne FDA radar environments.

Background: Liver failure profoundly affects the immune system, leading to dysregulation of innate and adaptive immune responses. Body: This review explores the intricate relationship between liver function and immune homeostasis. The role of the liver as a central hub in immune response initiation is elucidated, emphasizing its involvement in hepatic inflammation induction and subsequent systemic inflammation. Cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, and lipid mediators orchestrate these immune processes, serving as both prognostic biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets in liver failure-associated immune dysregulation. Furthermore, the review delves into the mechanisms underlying immunosuppression in liver failure, encompassing alterations in innate immune cell functions such as neutrophils, macrophages, and natural killer cells (NK cells), as well as perturbations in adaptive immune responses mediated by B and T cells. Conclusion: Understanding the immunological consequences of liver failure is crucial for developing targeted therapeutic interventions and improving patient outcomes in liver disease management.

This research provides an in-depth analysis of drought impacts in West Pokot, Kenya, utilizing both remote sensing surveys and focus group discussions. The study commenced by assessing the impact of drought on vegetation health via spatial sensors. It then utilized surveys and focus group discussions (FGDs) to engage farmers from the most drought-affected areas in Kacheliba and Sigor sub-counties. The analysis of remote sensing data from 1990 to 2022 highlighted that Sigor and Kacheliba experienced significant drought events during the years 1995, 2000, 2002, 2005, and 2009, and 1991, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2019, respectively. This study delves into both the meteorological and socio-economic effects on local communities. Using the Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR) model with the glm function, the research uncovered the impacts of so-cio-economic factors and agricultural practices on household livestock production. Additionally, the study employed Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to explore the dynamics between livestock production, community resilience, and crop production. The findings underscore the urgent need for tailored interventions to enhance community resilience in the face of increasing climatic extremes, serving as a blueprint for similar arid and semi-arid regions worldwide.

This qualitative research study delves into the intricate dynamics of how organizations adapt to supply chain disruptions during crises, offering profound insights into the strategies, practices, and challenges encountered in enhancing supply chain agility. Through in-depth interviews with supply chain managers across diverse industries, key themes such as proactive risk management, technological integration, collaboration with supply chain partners, and adaptive leadership have emerged as crucial determinants of agility and resilience. Additionally, the study highlights the significance of organizational culture, effective communication, and external factors such as regulatory requirements and market dynamics in shaping supply chain agility. By embracing a holistic approach that integrates these multifaceted factors, organizations can bolster their capacity to anticipate, detect, and respond to disruptions, thereby maintaining or enhancing overall performance even in the face of uncertainty and complexity. The insights gleaned from this research are poised to inform theory development, guide managerial practice, and influence policy-making in the realm of supply chain management, equipping organizations with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate future disruptions successfully.

This research presents the Cross-Cultural Intelligent Language Learning System (CILS), a novel approach integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into language education to enhance cross-cultural communication. CILS utilizes advanced AI technologies to provide adaptive, personalized learning experiences that cater to the unique linguistic and cultural backgrounds of each learner. By dynamically adjusting content and methodology, CILS significantly improves linguistic proficiency and cultural understanding, essential for effective global interactions. The implementation of CILS in platforms such as Busuu and HelloTalk has demonstrated marked improvements in engagement and communication skills among learners. Empirical studies validate the system's effectiveness in real-world settings, showing enhanced learner performance and increased intercultural competence. Additionally, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) applied confirms that the usability and perceived usefulness of AI-driven systems strongly influence learner acceptance and sustained use. This study not only underscores the potential of AI in transforming language education but also highlights the critical role of cultural sensitivity in designing educational technologies.

(1) Context: Cancer triggers significant changes in family dynamics. It is noteworthy that coping and problem-solving skills, particularly in situations involving cancer in children and adolescents, have not been adequately explored in the context of family adaptation. This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of family interventions in coping to improve problem-solving skills in parents and/or caregivers of children and adolescents during and after oncological treatment. (2) Methods: This is a scoping review following the recommendations of the Joanna Briggs Institute and the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Review (PRISMA-ScR), from 2014 to 2024, in the databases LILACS, CINAHL, SCOPUS, Web of Science, and PUBMED. (3) Results: Forty-five studies were eligible. Coping strategies were categorized as follows: (1) positive attitudes (including a sense of courage and hope, family support to enhance resilience, and future planning), (2) caregiver empowerment (involving acceptance of diagnosis, emotional distancing, and coping through religiosity), and (3) communication skills (encompassing professional communication, horizontal dialogue with healthcare teams, and sincere communication with friends and family). (4) Conclusions: Over time, families develop coping and problem-solving strategies that influence changes in family functioning patterns, aiding them in accepting, reinterpreting, and reframing ideas and feelings associated with neoplasia.

Input noise causes inescapable bias to the weight vectors of the adaptive filters during the adaptation processes. Moreover, the impulse noise at the output of the unknown systems can prevent bias compensation from converging. This paper presents a robust bias compensation method for a sparse normalized quasi-Newton least-mean (BC-SNQNLM) adaptive filtering algorithm to address this issue. We have mathematically derived the biased-compensation terms in an impulse noisy environment. Inspired by the convex combination of adaptive filters' step sizes, we propose a novel variable-mixing-norm method to accelerate the convergence for our BC-SNQNLM algorithm, which is referred to as BC-SNQNLM-VMN. Simulation results confirm that the proposed method significantly outperforms other comparative works regarding normalized mean-squared deviation (NMSD) in the steady state.

The result of the multidisciplinary collaboration of researchers from different areas of knowledge to validate a solar radiation model is presented. The MAPsol is a 3D local-scale adaptive solar radiation model that allows to estimate direct, diffuse and reflected irradiance for clear sky conditions. The model includes the adaptation of the mesh to complex orography and albedo, and considers the shadows cast by the terrain and buildings. The surface mesh generation is based on surface refinement, smoothing and parameterisation techniques and allows the generation of high quality adapted meshes with a reasonable number of elements. Another key aspect of the paper is the generation of a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM). This high-resolution DEM is constructed from LiDAR data and its resolution if two times more accurate than the publicly available DEMs. The validation process uses direct and global solar irradiance data obtained from pyranometers at the University of Salamanca located in an urban area affected by systematic shading from nearby buildings. This work provides an efficient protocol for studying solar resources, with particular emphasis on areas of complex orography and dense buildings where shadows can potentially make solar energy production facilities less efficient.

In swarm-robotics foraging, the purpose of task allocation is to adjust the number of active foraging robots dynamically based on the task demands and changing environment. It is a difficult challenge to generate self-organized foraging behavior in which each robot can adapt to environmental changes. To complete the foraging task efficiently, this paper presents a novel self-organized task allocation strategy known as the dynamic response threshold model (DRTM). To adjust the behavior of the active foraging robots, the proposed DRTM newly introduces the traffic flow density, which can be used to evaluate the robot density. First, the traffic flow density and the amount of obstacle avoidance are used to adjust the threshold which determines the tendency of a robot to respond to a stimulus in the environment. Then, each individual robot uses the threshold and external stimulus to calculate the foraging probability that determines whether or not to go foraging. Simulation and physical experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the DRTM is superior to and more efficient than the adaptive response threshold model (ARTM) in swarm foraging.

: Electric air conditioning and heating systems capacity is growing rapidly. So does the nameplate capacity of PV power plants. While demand in cooling has a positive correlation with solar irradiationirradiance, the demand in heating has an opposite relation. In this study, different approaches of to design (aggregation; energy storagethermal, battery and implicit systems storage) and control (frequency conversion; variable and adaptive load) and their effects on the efficiency of an off-grid active thermal stabilisation system based on a solar-powered heat pump are analysed. The case considered is permafrost thermal stabilisation system in Norway. It is shown that proper layout and control of the system with an adaptive load can reduce the capital expenses expenditures and the total cost of ownership by 30-40%. Increase in the efficiency capacity factor and cooling stability of the systems with the aggregated and threshold power consumervariable load due to the principle of aggregation is studied. The downside of that is the increase in compressors operation time by 50% with variable load and by 25% per unit with aggregation which means more frequent replacement in terms of motor-hours. But The the feasibility of this approaches considered are applicable for a wide range of solar-powered facilities, but the results are is quite case sensitive and depends on the prices for low-power heat pumps. The prospects of using the excess refrigerant and soil for thermal energy storage instead of traditional electrochemical batteries are considered.

In the leading/trailing edge’s adaptive machining of the near-net-shaped blade, a small portion of the theoretical part is retained for securing aerodynamic performance by manual work. However, this procedure is time-consuming and depends on the human experience. In this paper, we defined retained theoretical leading/trailing edge as the reconstruction area. To accelerate the reconstruction process, an anchor-free neural network model based on Transformer was proposed, named LETR (Leading/trailing Edge Transformer). LETR extracts image features from an aspect of mixed frequency and channel domain. We also integrated LETR with the newest meta-Acon activation function. We tested our model on the self-made dataset LDEG2021 on a single GPU and got an mAP of 91.9\%, which surpassed our baseline model, Deformable DETR by 1.1\%. Furthermore, we modified LETR’s convolution layer and named the new model after GLETR (Ghost Leading/trailing Edge Transformer) as a lightweight model for real-time detection. It is proved that GLETR has fewer weight parameters and converges faster than LETR with an acceptable decrease in mAP (0.1\%) by test results.

In this article, the main building of the former Uto City Hall, which was severely damaged in the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, is investigated as a case study for the retrofitting of an irregular Reinforced Concrete building using the base-isolation technique. Its peak response is predicted via mode-adaptive bidirectional pushover analysis (MABPA), which was originally proposed by the authors. In the prediction step of MABPA, the peaks of the first and second modal responses are predicted considering the energy balance during a half cycle of the structural response. The numerical analysis results show that the peak relative displacement can be properly predicted by MABPA. The results also show that the performance of the retrofitted building models is satisfactory for the ground motion considered in this study, including the recorded motions in the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake.

Modelling errors, robust stabilization/tracking problems under parameter and model uncertainties complicate the control of the flexible underactuated systems. Chattering-free sliding-mode based input-output control law realizes robustness against the structured and unstructured uncertainties in the system dynamics and avoids excitation of unmodeled dynamics. The main purpose is to propose a robust adaptive solution for stabilizing and tracking direct-drive (DD) flexible robot arms under parameter and model uncertainties, as well as external disturbances. A lightweight robot arm subject to external and internal dynamic effects was taken into consideration. The challenges are compensating actuator dynamics with the inverter switching effects and torque ripples, stabilizing the zero dynamics under parameter/model uncertainties and disturbances while precisely track the predefined reference position. The precise control of this kind of system demands an accurate system model and knowledge of all sources that excite unmodeled dynamics. For this purpose, equations of motion for a flexible robot arm were derived and formulated for the large motion via Lagrange’s method. The goals were determined to achieve high-speed, precise position control, and satisfied accuracy by compensating the unwanted torque ripple and friction that degrades performance through an adaptive robust control approach. The actuator dynamics and their effect on the torque output were investigated due to the transmitted torque to the load side. The high-performance goals, precision&robustness issues, and stability concerns were satisfied by using robust-adaptive input-output linearization-based control law combining chattering-free sliding mode control (SMC) while avoiding the excitation of unmodeled dynamics.

Nowadays, model checking is applied as an accurate technique to verify software systems. The main problem of model checking techniques is the state space explosion. This problem occurs due to the exponential memory usage by the model checker. In this situation, using meta-heuristic and evolutionary algorithms to search for a state in which a property is satisfied/violated is a promising solution. Recently, different evolutionary algorithms like GA, PSO, etc. are applied to find deadlock state. Even though useful, most of them are concentrated on finding deadlock. This paper proposes a fuzzy algorithm in order to analyze reachability properties in systems specified through GTS with enormous state space. To do so, we first extend the existing PSO algorithm (for checking deadlocks) to analyze reachability properties. Then, to increase the accuracy, we employ a Fuzzy adaptive PSO algorithm to determine which state and path should be explored in each step to find the corresponding reachable state. These two approaches are implemented in an open-source toolset for designing and model checking GTS called GROOVE. Moreover, the experimental results indicate that the hybrid fuzzy approach improves speed and accuracy in comparison with other techniques based on meta-heuristic algorithms such as GA and the hybrid of PSO-GSA in analyzing reachability properties.

Adaptive mechanisms, such as channel hopping and packet replication, are used in low-power wireless networks to deal with the spatial and temporal variations in the link quality, and meet the reliability requirements of industrial applications (i.e., PDR>99%). However, the benefits of such mechanisms are limited and may have a large impact on end-to-end latency and energy consumption. Hence, in this paper we propose using adaptive modulation diversity, which allows to dynamically select different modulations, to improve link reliability. We present three adaptive modulation diversity selection strategies and validate them using the data derived from a real-world deployment using the IEEE 802.15.4g SUN modulations (i.e., SUN-FSK, SUN-OQPSK and SUN-ODFM) in an industrial environment. The results show that by using adaptive modulation diversity it is possible to improve link reliability regardless of node conditions.

The state of charge estimation is an important part of the battery management system, the estimation accuracy of which seriously affects the working performance of the lithium ion battery pack. The unscented Kalman filter algorithm has been developed and applied to the iterative calculation process. When it is used to estimate the SOC value, there is a rounding error in the numerical calculation. When the sigma point is sampled in the next round, an imaginary number appears, resulting in the estimation failure. In order to improve the estimation accuracy, an improved adaptive square root - unscented Kalman filter method is introduced which combines the QR decomposition in the calculation process. Meanwhile, an adaptive noise covariance matching method is implied. Experiments show that the proposed method can guarantee the semi-positive and numerical stability of the state covariance, and the estimation accuracy can reach the third-order precision. The error remains about 1.60% under the condition of drastic voltage and current changes. The conclusion of this experiment can provide a theoretical basis of the state of charge estimation in the battery management of the lithium ion battery pack.

One of the most crucial and economically beneficial tasks for energy customer is peak load curtailment. On account of the fast response of renewable energy resources (RERs) such as photovoltaic (PV) units and battery energy storage system (BESS), this task is closer to be efficiently implemented. Depends on the customer peak load demand and energy characteristics, the feasibility of this strategy may warry. When adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is exploited for forecasting, it can provide many benefits to address the above-mentioned issues and facilitate its easy implementation, with short calculating time and re-trainability. This paper introduces a data driven forecasting method based on fuzzy logic for optimized peak load reduction. First, the amount of energy generated by PV is forecasted using ANFIS which conducts output trend, and then, the BESS capacity is calculated according to the forecasted results. The trend of the load power is then decomposed in Cartesian plane into two parts, left and right from load peak, searching for BESS capacity equal. Network switching sequence over consumption is provided by a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) with respect to BESS capacity and PV energy output. Finally, to prove the effectiveness of the proposed ANFIS-based peak shaving method, offline digital time-domain simulations have been performed on a real-life practical test micro grid system in MATLAB/Simulink environment and the results have been experimentally verified by testing on a practical micro grid system with real-life data obtained from smart meter and also, compared with several previously-reported methods.

In this paper, we propose an adaptive duty-cycled hybrid X-MAC (ADX-MAC) protocol for energy-efficient forest fire prediction. The X-MAC protocol acquires the additional environmental status collected by each forest fire monitoring sensor for a certain period. And, based on these values, the length of sleep interval of duty-cycle is changed to efficiently calculate the risk of occurrence of forest fire according to the mountain environment. The performance of the proposed ADX-MAC protocol was verified through experiments the proposed ADX-MAC protocol improves throughput by 19% and was more energy-efficient by 24% compared to X-MAC protocol. As the probability of forest fires increases, the length of the duty cycle is shortened, confirming that the forest fires are detected at a faster cycle.

Land-cover classification that uses very-high-resolution (VHR) remote sensing images is a topic of considerable interest. Although many classification methods have been developed, there is still room for improvements in the accuracy and usability of classification systems. In this paper, a novel post-processing approach based on a dual-adaptive majority voting strategy (D-AMVS) is proposed for improving the performance of initial classification maps. D-AMVS defines a strategy for refining each label of a classified map that is obtained by different classification methods from the same original image and fusing the different refined classification maps to generate a final classification result. The proposed D-AMVS contains three main blocks. 1) An adaptive region is generated by extending gradually the region around a central pixel based on two predefined parameters (T1 and T2) in order to utilize the spatial feature of ground targets in a VHR image. 2) For each classified map, the label of the central pixel is refined according to the majority voting rule within the adaptive region. This is defined as adaptive majority voting (AMV). Each initial classified map is refined in this manner pixel by pixel. 3) Finally, the refined classified maps are used to generate a final classification map, and the label of the central pixel in the final classification map is determined by applying AMV again. Each entire classified map is scanned and refined pixel by pixel based on the proposed D-AMVS. The accuracies of the proposed D-AMVS approach are investigated through two remote sensing images with high spatial resolutions of 1.0 and 1.3 m, respectively. Compared with the classical majority voting method and a relatively new post-processing method called general post-classification framework, the proposed D-AMVS can achieve a land-cover classification map with less noise and higher classification accuracies.

This paper attempts at applying adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for analysis of the resonant frequency of a microstrip rectangular patch antenna with two equal size slots which are placed on the patch vertically. The resonant frequency is calculated as the position of slots is shifted to the right and left sides on the patch. As a result , the antenna resonates at more than one frequency . Commonly, machine algorithms based on artificial neural networks are employed to recognize the whole resonant frequencies. However ,they fail to estimate the resonant frequencies correctly as in some cases variations are not very sensible and the resonant frequencies overlap each other . It can be concluded that artificial neural networks could be replaced in such designs by the adaptive network-based fuzzy Inference system due to its high approximation capability and much faster convergence rate.

Multiple studies reported a negative relationship between the Honesty-Humility factor of the HEXACO model and psychopathy. The Durand Adaptive Psychopathic Traits Questionnaire (DAPTQ), which was developed to assess adaptive traits known to be related to psychopathic traits, has previously demonstrate positive relationships with all factors of the Big Five Model, at the exception of a negative relationship with neuroticism. The current study aims to validate the previously reported association between the DAPTQ and the five major components of the personality, while also examining its relationship with the Honesty-Humility factor as defined by the HEXACO model. The results (N = 171) support the good internal consistency, two weeks test-retest validity and inter-correlation of the DAPTQ. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis further supports the nine-factor model of the DAPTQ. When compared to the HEXACO, the DAPTQ did not display any relationship with the Honesty-Humility factor, nor the Agreeableness and Openness factors, but kept its similar association to Emotionality, Extroversion, and Conscientiousness as initially reported in its development phase. Overall, the results support the discriminant validity of the DAPTQ to assess adaptive traits related to the psychopathic personality without overlapping with psychopathic personality traits. Results are discussed in terms of implications and further improvements to validate the DAPTQ.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are highly efficient tools for underwater exploration, capable of carrying various payloads to perform specific missions as needed. To ensure the success of these missions and the spatiotemporal accuracy of sampled data, integrated navigation systems and appropriate filtering algorithms are essential. These systems process and merge motion data to provide accurate positioning information. The most commonly used algorithms in integrated navigation systems are Kalman filter and its nonlinear derivatives. Of these, the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is particularly notable for its ability to handle nonlinear systems by incorporating Monte Carlo methods. This study proposes an enhanced adaptive EnKF algorithm to improve the smoothness and accuracy of the filtering process. Instead of the conventional Gaussian distribution, this algorithm employs a Laplace distribution to construct the system state vector and observation vector ensembles, enhancing stability against non-Gaussian noise. Additionally, the algorithm dynamically adjusts the number of vector members in the ensemble using adaptive mechanism by specifying thresholds during filtering, to adapt the requirements of real-world observational settings. Using measured data from field trials, including DVL, GPS, and electronic compass data, we examine the effects of various parameter settings on the algorithm's performance. Optimal parameter settings are identified to fine-tune and verify the filtering algorithm as well as its adaptive capability. The results demonstrate that the enhanced adaptive EnKF algorithm exhibits superior filtering performance in terms of both accuracy and smoothness compared to the conventional EnKF and EKF algorithms. This indicates the significant advantages of our proposed algorithm for AUV navigation.

The integration of Genetic Algorithms (GAs) into Serious Games (SGs) has gained traction as a method to optimize game mechanics and personalize user experiences. While GAs are well-known for their effectiveness in solving complex optimization problems, their application in SGs remains relatively under-explored. This review aims to address this gap by systematically mapping the existing literature on the intersection of these two fields. The primary objective of this scoping review is to identify and synthesize the existing research on the application of GAs in SGs, with a focus on understanding the current state of the field, identifying common applications, challenges, and potential future directions. The review includes studies published in English that focus on the use of GAs within SGs. The search encompassed articles from academic journals and conference proceedings without restrictions on publication dates. Exclusion criteria included studies that did not specifically address the integration of GAs in SGs. A systematic search was conducted in databases such as ACM Digital Library, Web of Science, Scopus and Inspec in July 2024. The search terms used included "genetic algorithm," "evolutionary algorithm," "computational algorithm," and "serious games." Unpublished data and articles were not considered. Data were charted using a PRISMA flowchart developed by the author VV. Key categories for data extraction included study objectives, methods, outcomes, type of study and GA used and the specific applications of GAs in SGs. Data charting was conducted independently by two reviewers, with disagreements resolved through discussion and consensus. The search identified 154 studies, of which 23 met the inclusion criteria. The included studies highlight the diverse applications of GAs in SGs, ranging from optimizing game scenarios to personalizing learning experiences. Challenges identified include the computational complexity of GAs and difficulties in their integration into existing game frameworks. The findings of this review suggest that while the use of GAs in SGs is a promising area of research, it remains in its nascent stages. Future research should focus on addressing the technical challenges of integrating GAs into SGs and exploring their application across a wider range of game genres and educational contexts. Limitations of the review include the potential for publication bias and the exclusion of non-English language studies.

Due to the manufacturing process of Additive Manufacturing (AM) Parts the mechanical properties cannot be predicted. The scope of the present work is to propose a predictive tool for the mechanical properties of AM parts through the use of Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS). The Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) combines neural networks with fuzzy logic to generate a mapping between the inputs and the output. Real data experiments from different AM technologies and materials compose the initial dataset so a detailed investigation is conducted to gain knowledge of how different parameters affect the UTS, the elongation and the Young modulus of each experiment. Experimental data were also use to train, check and verify the methodology. The method is tested for FFF technology, PLA material and 3 point bending stress, with interesting results.

In the field of adaptive building technologies, this research introduces the development of a self-regulating solar shading actuator, that utilizes the thermal shape memory effect. The study places its focus on addressing the actuator’s performance under diverse environmental conditions. Thermal simulations were carried out during the development of the individual components of the actuator and for the prediction of specific switching temperatures. The investigation includes an analysis of the sunshade’s response to varying environmental conditions, emphasizing its effectiveness on clear summer days and identifying challenges during overcast periods. The critical coordination between the solar collector and the shape memory alloy (SMA) wire is examined, shedding light on the impact of SMA temperature dynamics on the actuation performance. Through the integration of simulation data and real-world measurements, the study validates the thermal model for the solar collector, establishing the robustness of the system’s operation. This research work contributes significantly to the development of intelligent actuators and outlines the importance of validation of SMA-based applications under real conditions.

Gesture recognition technology has been quickly developed in the field of human-computer interaction. The multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar has been widely adopted in gesture recognition because of its notable spatial resolution. In this work, a highly accurate MIMO radar-based hand gesture recognition algorithm with very low complexity is proposed. To make the proposed system applicable in the industry and work well even when the size of the training data is limited, we applied several low-complexity adaptive signal processing methods to extract features and reduce the noise effect. First, spectrum analysis is applied to range-Doppler maps (RDMs) and a cell-averaging constant false alarm rate (CA-CFAR) with mirror filters is applied to improve the robustness to noise. Afterward, the features related to the distance, speed, direction, and the elevation angle of the moving object are determined by the proposed adaptive signal analysis techniques and the random forest is applied for classification. The proposed system has the capability to precisely distinguish and identify eight motions, including waving, moving to the left or right, patting, pushing, pulling, and rotating clockwise or anticlockwise, with an accuracy of 95%. Experiments demonstrate the capability of the proposed hand gesture recognition system to classify different movements precisely.

To ensure high-quality care, operationalize resilience and fill the knowledge gap regarding how to improve the prerequisites for resilient performance, it is necessary to understand how adaptive capacity unfolds in practice. Coronavirus 2019 stress-tested complex healthcare systems, and intensive care was driven to an unprecedented escalation. The main aim of this research was to explain the escalation process of intensive care from a microlevel perspective, including expressions of resilient performance, intervening conditions at the micro-meso-macrolevels and short- and long-term consequences. A secondary aim was to provide clinical recommendations regarding how to optimize the prerequisites for resilient performance in intensive care. A grounded theory methodology was used. First-person stories from different healthcare professionals (n70) in two Swedish regions were analyzed using the constant comparative method. A novel conceptual model of the escalation process of intensive care emerged, and 41 clinical recommendations concerning the optimal prerequisites for resilient performance were identified. Escalation was conceptualized as a transition from threatening chaos to temporary order through a complex process of adaptation. To prepare for the future, the components space, stuff, staff, system and science with associated continuity plans must be implemented, anchored and communicated to actors at all levels of the system.

Compared to wide-field telescopes, small-field detection systems have higher spatial resolution, resulting in stronger detection capabilities and higher positioning accuracy. When detecting by small-field in synchronous orbit, both space debris and fixed stars are imaged as point targets, making it difficult to distinguish them. In addition, with the improvement of detection capabilities, the number of stars in the background rapidly increases, which puts higher requirements on recognition algorithms. Therefore, star detection is indispensable for identifying and locating space debris in complex backgrounds. To address these difficulties, this paper proposes a real-time star extraction method based on adaptive filtering and multi frame projection. We use bad point repair and background suppression algorithms to preprocess star image. Afterwards, we analyze and enhance the target signal-to-noise ratio(SNR). Then, we use multi frame projection to fuse information. Subsequently, adaptive filtering, adaptive morphology, and adaptive median filtering algorithms are proposed to detect trajectories. Finally, the projection is released to locate the target. Our recognition algorithm has been verified by real star images, and the images were captured using small-field telescope. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm proposed in this paper. We successfully extracted hip-27066 star, which has magnitudes about 12 and SNR about 1.5. Compared with existing methods, our algorithm has advantages in both recognition rate and false-alarm rate, and can be used as real time target recognition algorithm for space-based synchronous orbit detection payload.

Discretization is the process of converting a continuous function or model or equation into discrete steps. In this work, adaptive and learning methods are implemented to control DC motors that are used for actuating control surfaces of unmanned underwater vehicles. Adaptive control is a method in which the controller is designed to adapt the system with parameters which vary or are uncertain. Parameter estimation is the process of computing the parameters of a system using a model &amp; measured data. Adaptive methods have been used in conjunction with different parameter estimation techniques. Deterministic artificial intelligence, a learning-based approach that uses the process dynamics defined by physics, is also applied to control the output of the DC motor to track a specified trajectory. This work goes further to evaluate the performance of the adaptive &amp; learning techniques based on different discretization methods. The results are evaluated based on the absolute error mean between the output &amp; the reference trajectory and the standard deviation of the error. The first order-hold method of discretization and surprisingly large sample time of seven tenths of a second yields over sixty percent improvement over the results presented in the prequel literature.

This study examined the association between pressure injuries and complexity of abdominal temperature measured in residents of a nursing facility. The temperature served as a proxy measure for skin thermoregulation. Refined multiscale sample entropy and bubble entropy were used to measure the complexity of the temperature time series measured over two days at 1-minute intervals. Robust summary measures were derived for the multiscale entropies and used in predictive models for pressure injuries that were built with adaptive lasso regression and neural networks. Both types of entropies were lower in the group of participants with pressure injuries (n=11) relative to the group of non-injured participants (n=15). This was generally true at the longer temporal scales, with the effect peaking at scale τ=23 minutes. Predictive models for pressure injury on the basis of refined multiscale sample entropy and bubble entropy yielded 92% accuracy, outperforming predictions based on any single measure of entropy. Combining entropy measures with a widely used risk assessment score led to the best prediction accuracy. Complexity of abdominal temperature series could therefore serve as an indicator of risk of pressure injury.

In this paper, the problem of observer-based adaptive sliding mode control is discussed for nonlinear systems with sensor and actuator faults. The time-varying actuator degradation factor and external disturbance are considered in the system simultaneously. In this study, the original system is described as a new normal system by combining the state vector, sensor faults and external disturbance into a new state vector. For the augmented system, a new sliding mode observer is designed, where a discontinuous term is introduced such that the effects of sensor and actuator faults and external disturbance will be eliminated. In addition, based on a tricky design of the observer, the time-varying actuator degradation factor term is developed in the error system. On the basis of the state estimation, an integral-type adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controller is constructed to ensure the stability of the closed-loop system. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control methods can be illustrated with a numerical example.

The issue of workplace toxicity constitutes a major problem for employers, employees and society at large. Toxicity in a workplace context relates to damaging behaviours perpetrated by individuals and organisations that netatively impact on the health and wellbeing of others. Workplace toxicty is habitually associated with activities such as bullying, harrassment, unethical and even illegal acts. In this article, today’s workplace is likenened to a cage where ambition and greed drive people to engage in toxic behaviour to fight for whatever scarce rewards are on offer. Set against a backdrop of continuous demands on employees in a era of constant change and challenge, leadership practice in the 21st century is understandably seeped in complexity. Whilst conditions of scarcity are in fact constructed by employers in today’s lean environments, workplace toxicity has significant implications for organisational leaders in terms of work place disputes, absenteeism and litigation etc. Twentieth century hierarchial and autocratic leadership models are now deemed to be both obsolete and wholly inadedgate to inform leadership practice in the knowledge era. This conceptual article looks at the efficacy of complexity leadership theory (CLT) in empowering today’s leader to better understand and address 21st century workplace toxicity.

Expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is a powerful mathematical tool for estimating statistical parameter when data sample contains hidden part and observed part. EM is applied to learn finite mixture model in which the whole distribution of observed variable is average sum of partial distributions. Coverage ratio of every partial distribution is specified by the probability of hidden variable. An application of mixture model is soft clustering in which cluster is modeled by hidden variable whereas each data point can be assigned to more than one cluster and degree of such assignment is represented by the probability of hidden variable. However, such probability in traditional mixture model is simplified as a parameter, which can cause loss of valuable information. Therefore, in this research I propose a so-called conditional mixture model (CMM) in which the probability of hidden variable is modeled as a full probabilistic density function (PDF) that owns individual parameter. CMM aims to extend mixture model. I also propose an application of CMM which is called adaptive regressive model (ARM). Traditional regression model is effective when data sample is scattered equally. If data points are grouped into clusters, regression model tries to learn a unified regression function which goes through all data points. Obviously, such unified function is not effective to evaluate response variable based on grouped data points. The concept “adaptive” of ARM means that ARM solves the ineffectiveness problem by selecting the best cluster of data points firstly and then evaluating response variable within such best cluster. In order words, ARM reduces estimation space of regression model so as to gain high accuracy in calculation.

In this article, the research team has systematically developed a method to model the kinematics and dynamics of a 3-wheeled robot subjected to external disturbances and sideways wheel sliding. These models will be used to design control laws that compensate for wheel slippage, model uncertainties, and external disturbances. These are control algorithms developed based on Dynamic Surface Control (DSC). Adaptive trajectory tracking DSC algorithm using fuzzy logic system (AFDSC) and radial neural network (RBFNN) with fuzzy logic system to overcome the disadvantages of DSC and expand the application domain for wheeled Mobile Robots (WMR). However, this Adaptive Fuzzy Neural Network Dynamic Surface Control (AFNNDSC) adaptive controller ensures the closed system is stable and follows the preset trajectory in the presence of wheel slippage model uncertainty and is affected by significant amplitude disturbances. The stability and convergence of the closed-loop system are guaranteed based on the Lyapunov analysis. The AFNNDSC adaptive controller is evaluated by simulation on MATLAB/Simulink software and in a steady state. The maximum position error on the right wheel and left wheel is 0.000572 (m) and 0.000523 (m), and the angular velocity tracking error in the right and left wheels of the control method is 0.000394 (rad/s). The experimental results show the correctness of the theoretical analysis, the effectiveness of the proposed controller, and the possibility of practical application.

Differential Evolution (DE) is an evolutionary algorithm that has become increasingly popular due to its effectiveness and efficiency. However, its adaptation for multi-objective optimization requires further investigation. To address this issue, a novel algorithm called ILSDEMO has been proposed, which incorporates indicator-based selection and local search into a self-adaptive DE. ILSDEMO employs an archive population to store non-dominated solutions, generating an initial population uniformly distributed over the feasible solution space using orthogonal design. Additionally, two variants of DE are used to expedite convergence, while q-Gaussian mutation is utilized to exploit better trial individuals. The k-nearest neighbor rule is used to eliminate crowded solutions, and indicator-based selection is employed to generate a new parent population without diversity preservation. The performance of ILSDEMO was investigated on the test instances from the ZDT series and DTLZ series in terms of the selected indicators. The results suggest that ILSDEMO accurately and evenly approximates the true Pareto front compared to NSGAII, IBEA, and DEMO.

To address the trajectory tracking issue for quadrotors working under the influence of external disturbances, a control scheme is designed for position and attitude trajectory tracking. Firstly, the quadrotor dynamic model is derived for control design. Secondly, adaptive integral backstepping control (AIBS) is employed in the position loop in which adaptive estimation is used to estimate the upper bounds of disturbances. Subsequently, a new adaptive backstepping fast nonsingular integral terminal sliding mode control (ABFNITSM) is proposed to follow desired Euler angles. The intro-duction of fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode and integral element is to realize fast convergence and accurate tracking. Dead zone technique is applied to minimize estimation errors. Besides, a saturation function is utilized to eliminate chattering phenomenon. Finally, simulation experiments are conducted under the Simulink environment. The proposed control is verified by comparing it with traditional integral terminal sliding mode control (ITSM) and integral backstepping control (IBS).

Low-intensity noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS) can improve static and dynamic postural deficits in patients with bilateral vestibular loss (BVL). In this study, we aimed to explore the neurophysiological and neuroanatomical substrates underlying nGVS treatment effects in a rat model of BVL. Regional brain activation patterns and behavioral responses to repeated 30-min nGVS treatment in comparison to sham stimulation were investigated by serial whole-brain [18F]-FDG-PET measurements and quantitative locomotor assessments before and at 9 consecutive time points up to 60 days after chemical bilateral labyrinthectomy (BL). [18F]-FDG-PET revealed a broad nGVS-induced modulation on regional brain activation patterns encompassing biologically plausible brain networks in the brainstem, cerebellum, multisensory cortex and basal ganglia during the entire observation period post-BL. nGVS broadly reversed brain activity adaptions occurring in the natural course post-BL. Parallel behavioral locomotor assessment demonstrated a beneficial treatment effect of nGVS on sensory-ataxic gait alterations, particularly in the early stage of post-BL recovery. Stimulation-induced locomotor improvements were finally linked to nGVS brain activity responses in the brainstem, hemispheric motor and limbic networks. In conclusion, combined [18F]-FDG-PET and locomotor analysis discloses the potential neurophysiological and neuroanatomical substrates that mediate previously observed therapeutic nGVS effects on postural deficits in patients with BVL.

This work presents a new scheme for autonomous control and obstacle detection of a catamaran unmanned surface vessel. Based on the Newtonian mechanics, hydrodynamics, and maneuvering modelling group modelling principles in the attached coordinate system, a three-degree-of-freedom motion model of the catamaran unmanned surface vessel is constructed. The fuzzy inference method is used to overcome the drawback that the traditional PID control cannot tune the PID parameters online, and the trajectory controller is designed. Meanwhile, 3D LIDAR is used to achieve obstacle detection. The results of the trajectory tracking simulations and experiments verify the accuracy of the model design and the effectiveness of the autonomous control design.

Traveling salesman problems (TSPs) are well-known combinatorial optimization problems, and most existing algorithms are challenging for solving TSPs when its scale is large. To improve the efficiency of solving large-scale TSPs, this work presents a novel adaptive layered clustering framework with improved genetic algorithm (ALC\_IGA). The primary idea behind ALC\_IGA is to break down a large-scale problem into a series of small-scale problems. First, the $k$-means and improved genetic algorithm are used to segment the large-scale TSPs layer by layer and generate the initial solution. Then, the developed two phases simplified $2$-opt algorithm is applied to further improve the quality of the initial solution. The analysis reveals that the computational complexity of the ALC\_IGA is between $O(n\log n)$ and $O(n^2)$. The results of numerical experiments on various TSP instances indicate that, in most situations, the ALC\_IGA surpasses the state-of-the-art algorithms in convergence speed, stability, and solution quality. Specifically, the ALC\_IGA can solve instances with $2 \times 10^5$ nodes within 0.15h, $1.4 \times 10^6$ nodes within 1h, and $2 \times 10^6$ nodes in three dimensions within 1.5h.

Motivated for improving the efficiency and reliability of wind turbine energy conversion, this paper presents an advanced control design that enhances the power regulation efficiency and re-liability. The constrained behaviour of the wind turbine is taken into account, by using the barrier Lyapunov function in the analysis of the Lyapunov direct method. This, consequently, guarantees that the generated power remains within the desired bounds to satisfy the grid power demand. Moreover, a Nussbaum-type function is utilized in the control scheme, to cope with the unpre-dictable wind speed. This eliminates the need for accurate wind speed measurement or estimation. Furthermore, via properly designed adaptive laws, a robust actuator fault-tolerant capability is integrated into the scheme, handling the model uncertainty. Numerical simulations are performed on a high-fidelity wind turbine benchmark model, under different fault scenarios, to verify the effectiveness of the developed design. Also, a Monte-Carlo analysis is exploited for the evaluation of the reliability and robustness characteristics against the model-reality mismatch, measurement errors and disturbance effects.

This paper develops a Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory (GLOSA) system for buses (B-GLOSA). The proposed B-GLOSA system is implemented on diesel buses, and field tested to validate and quantify the potential real-world benefits. The developed system includes a simple and easy to calibrate fuel consumption model that computes instantaneous diesel bus fuel consumption rates. The bus fuel consumption model, a vehicle dynamics model, the traffic signal timings, and the re-lationship between vehicle speed and distance to the intersection are used to construct an optimi-zation problem. A moving-horizon dynamic programming problem solved using the A-star algo-rithm is used to compute the energy-optimized vehicle trajectory through signalized intersections. The Virginia Smart Road test facility was used to conduct the field test on 30 participants. Each participant drove three scenarios including a base case uninformed drive, an informed drive with signal timing information communicated to the driver, and an informed drive with the recom-mended speed computed by the B-GLOSA system. The field test investigated the performance of using the developed B-GLOSA system considering different impact factors, including road grades and red indication offsets, using a split-split-plot experimental design. The test results demonstrated that the proposed B-GLOSA system can produce smoother bus trajectories through signalized in-tersections producing fuel consumption and travel time savings. Specifically, compared to the uninformed drive, the B-GLOSA system produces fuel and travel time savings of 22.1% and 6.1% on average, respectively.

Biological technologies are fundamentally unlike any other because biology evolves. Bioengineering therefore requires novel design methodologies with evolution at their core. Knowledge about evolution is currently applied to the design of biosystems ad hoc. Unless we have a unified engineering theory of evolution, we will neither be able to meet evolution’s potential as a design tool, nor understand or limit its unintended consequences on our designs. Our concept of the evotype offers a conceptual framework for engineering the evolutionary potential of biosystems. We show how a biosystem’s evolutionary properties might be rationally designed by engineering aspects of genetic variation, designed function, and natural selection. This idea could apply to all biosystems – from individual proteins to communities of whole-cells or even entire ecosystems – whether the goal is to direct evolution in the design process, or to limit its impacts during application. These principles could even be used beyond the realm of bioengineering to design entirely synthetic evolving auto-adaptive technologies.

Frequent flooding from sea-level rise (SLR) is one of the immediate climate change impacts affecting low-lying and exposed coastal communities. These communities rely upon the delivery of three-waters services for wastewater, stormwater and water supply. Due to ongoing SLR, managing these networks will increasingly be a challenge. This raises the issue of how local government can reconcile maintaining levels of service as the impacts of climate change and their uncertainties worsen over the coming decades (and beyond). Can they be adapted over time to retain levels of service or will they eventually require retreat and if so at what adaptation threshold? This paper explores managed retreat of two-waters infrastructure (wastewater and stormwater) as an adaptation option using a Dynamic Adaptive Pathway Planning (DAPP) approach. In the study, we use DAPP to frame the retreat of two-water networks, developing a combination of an area specific retreat strategy, pathway portfolios, retreat phases, land use change signaling and identify pathway conflicts and synergies. Repurposing retreated areas by utilizing Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) options was found to extend retreat thresholds for adjacent areas. A systematic ’routine’ developed in this study provides a structured approach for managed retreat of two-water infrastructure with the aim to reduce future disruption from flooding, signal land use changes early and allow for gradual budget adjustments by the agencies to manage expenditure over time. This approach helps inform and improve the decision-making process for the agencies and the communities they serve, by providing a stepwise process that can be communicated spatially and visually, thereby making a retreat adaptation option more manageable.

Wireless Body Area Networks are composed of sensor nodes that may be implanted in the body or worn on it. A node is composed of a sensing unit, a processor and a radio unit. One of the nodes, the sink, acts as a gateway between the body area network and other networks such as the Internet. We propose a routing protocol that constructs paths between nodes such that the final network topology is a tree rooted at the sink. The protocol's aim is to increase network lifetime and reliability, and to adapt to network conditions dynamically. Moreover, the protocol enables communications between nodes and sink both in the upstream direction, from nodes to sink, and in the downstream direction from sink to nodes. When the network tree is constructed, a node chooses its parent, i.e., next hop to sink, by using one of various criteria. Namely, these are the number of hops between parent and sink, energy level of parent, received signal strength from parent, number of current parent's children, and a fuzzy logic function that combines multiple criteria. Moreover, as time progresses the tree structure may dynamically change to adapt to conditions such as the near-depletion of a routing node's energy. Simulation results show improvements in network lifetime and energy consumption over the older version of the protocol.

In this paper we describe a nonparametric maximum likelihood (NPML) method for estimating multivariate mixing distributions. Given $N$ independent observations, convexity theory shows that the NPML estimator is discrete with at most $N$ support points. The original infinite NPML problem then becomes the finite dimensional problem of finding the location and probability of the support points. The probability of the support points is found by a Primal-Dual Interior-Point method; the location of the support points is found by an Adaptive Grid method. Our method is able to handle high-dimensional and complex multivariate mixture models.An important application is discussed for the problem of population pharmacokinetics and a non-trivial example is treated.Our algorithm has been successfully applied in hundreds of published pharmacometric studies. In addition to population pharmacokinetics, this research also applies to empirical Bayes estimation and many other areas of applied mathematics.

Reservoir computers (RCs) are a biology inspired computational framework for signal processing typically implemented using recurrent neural networks. Recent work has shown that Boolean networks (BN) can also be used as reservoirs. We analyze the performance of BN RCs, measuring their flexibility and identifying factors that determine effective approximation of Boolean functions that are applied in a sliding-window fashion over a binary signal, either non-recursively or recursively. We train and test BN RCs of different sizes, signal connectivity, and in-degree to approximate 3-bit, 5-bit and 3-bit recursive binary functions. We analyze how BN RC parameters and function average sensitivity, a measure of function smoothness, affect approximation accuracy as well as the spread of accuracies for a single reservoir. We found that approximation accuracy and reservoir flexibility are highly dependent on RC parameters. Overall, our results indicate that not all reservoirs are equally flexible and RC instantiation and training can be more efficient if this is taken into account. The optimum range of RC parameters opens up an angle of exploration for understanding how biological systems might be tuned to balance system restraints with processing capacity.

Ovarian Cancer (OC) is a type of cancer that affects ovaries in women, and is difficult to detect at initial stage due to which it remains as one of the leading causes of cancer death. The ovarian cancer data generated from the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) was used and a novel approach was proposed for distinguishing the ovarian cancer by utilizing Self Organizing Maps (SOM) and Optimal Recurrent Neural Networks (ORNN). SOM algorithm was utilized for better feature subset selection and was also utilized for separating profitable, understood and intriguing data from huge measures of medical data. In supervised learning techniques, the SOM-based feature selection seems to be a tougher challenge because of the absence of class labels that would guide the search for relevant information to the classifier model. The classification approach can identify ovarian cancer data as benign/malignant. The ovarian cancer detection process can be improved by optimizing the weights of RNN structure using Adaptive Harmony Search Optimization (AHSO). The proposed model in this study can be used to detect cancer at early stages with high accuracy and low Root Mean Square Error (RMSE).

Since the electro-hydraulic servo shaking table exists many nonlinear elements, such as, dead zone, friction and blacklash, its acceleration response has higher harmonics which result in acceleration harmonic distortion, when the electro-hydraulic system is excited by sinusoidal signal. For suppressing the harmonic distortion and precisely identify harmonics, a combination of the adaptive linear neural network and least mean M-estimate (ADALINE-LMM), is proposed to identify the amplitude and phase of each harmonic component. Namely, the Hampel’s three-part M-estimator is applied to provide thresholds for detecting and suppressing the error signal. Harmonic generators are used by this harmonic identification scheme to create input vectors and the value of the identified acceleration signal is subtracted from the true value of the system acceleration response to construct the criterion function. The weight vector of the ADALINE is updated iteratively by the LMM algorithm, and the amplitude and phase of each harmonic, even the results of harmonic components, can be computed directly online. The simulation and experiment are performed to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm. According to the experiment result, the above method of harmonic identification possesses great real-time performance and it has not only good convergence performance but also high identification precision.

There is increasing demand from stakeholders for tools to support outcome-based approaches in environmental management. For such tools to be useful, understanding user requirements is key. In Scotland, UK, stakeholders were engaged in the development of an Environmental Decision Support System (EDSS) to support the management of land and freshwater resources for multiple policy outcomes. A structured participatory engagement process was employed to determine stakeholder requirements, establish development principles to fulfil these requirements and road-test prototypes. The EDSS specification that emerged from this bottom-up process was spatially-explicit, free at the point of use, and touch and mobile device compatible. This application, which is under development, does not closely resemble most existing published EDSS. We suggest that there is a mismatch between the way scientists typically conceptualise EDSS and the kinds of applications that are likely to be useful to decision-makers on the ground. Interactive mobile and web-based geospatial information services have become ubiquitous in our daily lives, but their importance is not reflected in current literature on EDSS. The current focus in environmental management on adaptive, stakeholder-centred strategies based on outcomes offers an opportunity to make better use of these new technologies to aid decision-making processes.

The problem of land degradation has become a global issue. It is primarily caused by direct destruction of the natural ecosystems, irrational use and depletion of the land resources, and the growing agro-technogenic load on soils. The current state of sloped agricultural landscapes is characterized by a significant increase in the area of soils with varying degrees of erosion that require the development of scientifically based measures to protect against the erosion processes for the purpose of their further environmentally safe use, taking into account the requirements of sustainable development of the land use and farming systems, and the agricultural sphere, as a whole. There has been obtained and summarized modern scientific information on the development of adaptive-ecological and organizational-economic measures for the conservation (establishment) of erosion-degraded and low-productivity soils of arable sloped lands through the environmentally sound use of agricultural lands, the development and implementation of a soil-protective adaptive-landscape farming system. Contemporary scientific research has been carried out by means of field route studies and land inventory to determine the geomorphological and soil characteristics of the studied polygons, taking into account the basic principles of application in the geospatial analysis and practical use in the landscape studies by means of the Auto CAD computer program, the boundaries of the polygons - watersheds on raster topographic maps being determined, digitized in the local coordinate system (SK-63). The research methodology included the collection and analysis of cartographic and field experimental materials to determine the geoecological situation of the formation and manifestation of spatio-temporal erosion-hydrological processes in the area studied, conducting scientific research to study the erosion and washout of soils in the key areas, agricultural landscape polygons, determining the influence of natural and anthropogenic factors upon the estimated intensity of the erosion processes, and office processing of the results, obtained in the field. The reliability and validity of the results are confirmed by the large volume of data obtained and their statistical processing, based on the software: Office 2016, "Statistika 13", "Statgraphics 19" and "MapInfo Pro v12.5.5". It has been established that the introduction of a set of measures for the conservation of the degraded lands of the sloped agro-landscape systems by stopping intensive economic activity with subsequent use of the land plots as hayfields and pastures, ensured a significant reduction in soil loss due to erosion, while the soil loss on heavily and moderately eroded soils of the studied sites amounted to 2.38-4.19 t ha-1, which differs slightly from the maximum permissible standard indicators of soil loss for the heavily and moderately eroded soils. The main characteristics of the agrochemical, agrophysical and other properties of the washed-out chernozems have stabilized during the conservation period. At the same time, the humus content in the cultivated soil layer has increased to 3.85%, the optimal values are characterized by the soil acidity pH 7.1 - 7.3 (close to neutral). Attention has been focused on the specifics of the land conservation by excluding it from economic circulation with its subsequent use as pasture and hay lands.

Batched network coding (BNC) is a practical realization of random linear network coding (RLNC) designed for reliable network transmission in multi-hop networks with packet loss. By grouping coded packets into batches and restricting the use of RLNC within the same batch, BNC resolves the issue of RLNC that has high computational and storage costs at the intermediate nodes. A simple and common way to apply BNC is to fire and forget the recoded packets at the intermediate nodes, as BNC can act as an erasure code for data recovery. Due to the finiteness of batch size, recoding strategy is a critical design that affects the throughput, the storage requirements and the computational cost of BNC. The gain of the recoding strategy can be enhanced with the aid of a feedback mechanism, however the utilization and development of this mechanism is not yet standardized. In this paper, we investigate a multi-phase recoding mechanism for BNC. In each phase, recoding depends on the amount of innovative information remained at the current node after the transmission of the previous phases was completed. Relevant information can be obtained via hop-by-hop feedback, then a more precise recoding scheme that allocates networking resources can be established. Unlike hop-by-hop retransmission schemes, the reception status of individual packets does not need to be known, and packets to be sent in the next phase may not be the lost packets in the previous phase. Further, due to the loss-tolerance feature of BNC, it is unnecessary to pass all innovative information to the next node. This study illustrates that multi-phase recoding can significantly boost the throughput and reduce the decoding time as compared with the traditional single-phase recoding approach. This opens new window in developing better strategies for designing BNC, rather than sending more batches in a blind manner.

This study examines a new approach to hybdrid neuromorphic devices by studying the impact of omeprazole-proteinoid complexes on Izhikevich neurone models. We investigate the influence of these metabolic structures on five specific patterns of neuronal firing: accommodation, chattering, triggered spiking, phasic spiking, and tonic spiking. By combining omeprazole, a proton pump inhibitor, with proteinoids, we create a unique substrate that interfaces with neuromorphic models. The Izhikevich neurone model is used because it is computationally efficient and can accurately simulate various behaviours of cortical neurones. The results of our simulations show that omeprazole-proteinoid complexes have the ability to affect neuronal dynamics in different ways. This suggests that they could be used as adjustable components in bio-inspired computer systems. We have noticed a notable alteration in the frequency of spikes, patterns of bursts, and rates of adaptation, especially in chattering and triggered spiking behaviours. The findings indicate that omeprazole-proteinoid complexes have the potential to serve as adaptable elements in neuromorphic systems, presenting novel opportunities for information processing and computation that have origins in neurobiological principles. This study makes a valuable contribution to the expanding field of biochemical neuromorphic devices and establishes a basis for the development of hybrid bio-synthetic computational systems.

Small peptides are an important component of the vertebrate immune system. They are important molecules for distinguishing proteins that originate in the host from proteins derived of a pathogenic organism, such as a virus or bacterium. Consequently, these peptides are central for the vertebrate host response to intracellular and extracellular pathogens. Computational models for prediction of these peptides have been based on a narrow sample of data with an emphasis on the position and chemical properties of the amino acids. In past literature, this approach has resulted in higher predictability than models that rely on the geometrical arrangement of atoms. However, protein structure data from experiment and theory are a source for building models at scale, and, therefore, knowledge on the role of small peptides and their immunogenicity in the vertebrate immune system. The following sections introduce procedures that contribute to theoretical prediction of peptides and role in immunogenicity. Lastly, deep learning is discussed as it applies to immunogenetics and the acceleration of knowledge by a capability for modeling the complexity of natural phenomena.

This paper explores the application of fisheries management theories to broader environmental issues, including climate change and biodiversity conservation. It underscores the inherent trade-off in fisheries between yield and resource conservation, identifying harvesting as a significant environmental burden. Early recognition of the sustainability concept aimed to address challenges like economic discounts and the tragedy of the commons, contributing to the issue of overfishing. These insights extend beyond fisries to other environmental concerns, particularly climate change. The development of adaptive management, initially tailored to address uncertainties and non-stationarity in fisheries, has found application in diverse environmental issues. Recognizing humans as integral parts of ecosystems highlights the impossibility of achieving zero environmental impact when utilizing natural resources. The paper advocates for passive restoration to prevent overfishing, leveraging nature's resilience. While goals like complete biodiversity restoration are inherent in fisheries, their relevance may not be immediately apparent to other environmentalists. Despite ongoing discussions on the sustainability of ecosystem services, legislation often tends to favor the long-term maximization of fisheries yield. The paper calls for mutual understanding of theories and experiences across various environmental fields, including fisheries, to enhance collaborative efforts in each field.

The nursing home (NH) population becomes increasingly frail, suffering several chronic ill-nesses, high symptom severity, and short remaining lifespan after admission; all this requires skilled, well-organized professional care. Little is known about how NH managers influence the caring and learning environment (CLE) to ensure competencies in meeting NH patients’ needs. The aim of this study is to explore how NH managers influence the CLE to provide basic nursing education for students and apprentices, in order to improve it. This study applies a qualitative design, using multiple methods and focusing on NHs as a context involving complex adaptive systems and on basic nursing as a complex issue. NH managers express a constant struggle to keep workloads manageable, and NHs come across as exhausted organizations with little surplus. Both managers and staff look for ways to execute the work with as little effort as pos-sible and mainly stick to well-established routines. Not participating directly in either daily caring or placement learning, NH managers influence the CLE indirectly through taming and coping strategies, largely using taming strategies that lead to serious unintended outcomes. Coping strategies involve leading collaborative processes in holding environments that are feasible with their workload and roles as managers.

In a complex working environment, the fault signal of the gearbox is greatly affected by the outside world, and fault feature recognition is difficult, so the fault diagnosis accuracy is difficult to meet the expected requirements. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a gearbox fault diagnosis method based on an optimized stacked denoising auto encoder (SDAE) and kernel extreme learning machine (KELM). Firstly, the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm in Adaptive Weight (SAPSO) was adopted to optimize the SDAE network structure, and the number of hidden layer nodes, learning rate, noise addition ratio and iteration times were adaptively obtained to make SDAE obtain the best network structure. Then, the best SDAE network structure was used to extract the deep feature information of weak faults in the original signal. Finally, the extracted fault features are fed into KELM for fault classification. Experimental results show that, compared with existing commonly used methods of fault diagnosis, the fault diagnosis model proposed in this paper can reduce the influence of noise in the original signal can better learn the deep-level features in the original signal and has higher diagnosis accuracy, faster diagnosis speed and good generalization in fault diagnosis.

An adaptive deep neural network is used in an inverse system identification setting to approximate the inverse of a nonlinear plant with the aim of constituting the plant controller by copying to the latter the weights and architecture of the converging deep neural network. This deep learning (DL) approach to the adaptive inverse control (AIC) problem is shown to outperform adaptive filtering techniques and algorithms normally used in adaptive control, especially when the plant is nonlinear. The deeper the controller the better the inverse function approximation, provided that the nonlinear plant have an inverse and that this inverse can be approximated. Simulation results prove the feasibility of this DL-based adaptive inverse control scheme. The DL-based AIC system is robust to parameter change of the nonlinear plant in that, under such change, the plant output reassumes the value of the reference signal considerably faster than with the adaptive filter counterpart of the deep neural network. Settling times and rise times of the step response are shown to improve in the DL-based AIC system.

Malaria comprises a spectrum of disease syndromes and the immune system is a major participant in malarial disease. This is particularly true in relation to the immune responses elicited against blood stages of Plasmodium-parasites that are responsible for the pathogenesis of infection. Mouse models of malaria are commonly used to dissect the immune mechanisms underlying disease. While no one mouse model of Plasmodium infection completely recapitulates all the features of malaria in humans, collectively the existing models are invaluable for defining the events that lead to the immunopathogenesis of malaria. Here we review the different mouse models of Plasmodium infection that are available, and highlight some of the main contributions these models have made with regards to identifying immune mechanisms of parasite control and the immunopathogenesis of malaria.

The IgM and IgT classes were previously identified and characterized in the Antarctic teleost Trematomus bernacchii, a species belonging to the Perciform suborder Notothenoidei. Herein we characterized the gene encoding the polymeric immunoglobulin receptor (pIgR) in the same species and compared it to pIgR of multiple teleost species belonging to five perciform sub-orders, including 11 Antarctic and one non-Antarctic (Cottoperca gobio) notothenioid species, the latter living in less cold periantarctic sea. Antarctic pIgR genes displayed particularly long in-trons marked by sites of transposable elements and transcription factors. Furthermore, analysis of T. bernacchii pIgR cDNA unveiled multiple amino acid substitutions unique to Antarctic species, all introducing adaptive features, including N-glycosylation sequons. Interestingly, C. gobio shared most features with the other perciforms rather than with the cold adapted relatives. T. bernacchii pIgR transcripts were predominantly expressed in mucosal tissues, as indicated by q-PCR and in situ hybridization analysis. These results suggest that in cold adapted species pIgR preserved its fundamental role in mucosal immune defense, although remarkable gene structure modifications occurred.

High efficacy LED lamps combined with adaptive lighting control and greenhouse integrated photovoltaics (PV) could enable the concept of year-round cultivation and become a feasible option even in the harsh climate of the Nordic countries. Meteorological satellite data of this region was analyzed in a parametric study to evaluate the potential of these technologies. The generated maps showed monthly average temperatures fluctuating from -20°C to 20°C throughout the year. The natural photoperiod and light intensity also changed drastically, resulting in monthly average daily light integral (DLI) levels ranging from 45-50 mol·m-2·d-1 in summer and contrasting with 0-5 mol·m-2·d-1 during winter. To compensate, growth room cultivation independent from outdoor conditions could be used in winter. Depending on the efficacy of the lamps, the electricity required for sole-source lighting at 300 µmol·m-2·s-1 for 16 hours would be between 1.4 and 2.4 kWh·m-2·d-1. Greenhouses with supplementary lighting could help start the cultivation earlier in spring and extend it further into autumn. The energy required for lighting highly depends on several factors such as the natural light transmittance, the light threshold settings and the lighting control protocol, resulting in electric demands between 0.6 and 2.4 kWh·m-2·d-1. Integrating PV on the roof or wall structures of the greenhouse could offset some of this electricity, with specific energy yields ranging from 400 to 1120 kWh·kWp-2·yr-1 depending on the region and system design.

Climate change impacts and adaptations is subject to ongoing issues that attract the attention of many researchers. Insight into the wind power potential in an area and its probable variation due to climate change impacts can provide useful information for energy policymakers and strategists for sustainable development and management of the energy. In this study, spatial variation of wind power density at the turbine hub-height and its variability under future climatic scenarios are taken under consideration. An ANFIS based post-processing technique was employed to match the power outputs of the regional climate model with those obtained from the reference data. The near-surface wind data obtained from a regional climate model are employed to investigate climate change impacts on the wind power resources in the Caspian Sea. Subsequent to converting near-surface wind speed to turbine hub-height speed and computation of wind power density, the results have been investigated to reveal mean annual power, seasonal, and monthly variability for a 20-year period in the present (1981-2000) and in the future (2081-2100). The results of this study revealed that climate change does not affect the wind climate over the study area, remarkably. However, a small decrease was projected for future simulation revealing a slightly decrease in mean annual wind power in the future compared to historical simulations. Moreover, the results demonstrated strong variation in wind power in terms of temporal and spatial distribution when winter and summer have the highest values of power. The findings of this study indicated that the middle and northern parts of the Caspian Sea are placed with the highest values of wind power. However, the results of the post-processing technique using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) model showed that the real potential of the wind power in the area is lower than those of projected from the regional climate model.

This paper presents a novel adaptive fault-tolerant neural-based control design for wind turbines with unknown dynamic and unknown wind speed. By utilizing the barrier Lyapunov function in the analysis of the Lyapunov direct method, the constrained behavior of the system is provided in which the rotor speed, its variation and generated power remain in the desired bounds. In addition, input saturation is also considered in terms of smooth pitch actuator bounding. Furthermore, by utilizing a Nussbaum-type function in designing the control algorithm, the unpredictable wind speed variation is captured without requiring accurate wind speed measurement, observation or estimation. Moreover, with the proposed adaptive analytic algorithms, together with the use of radial basis function neural networks, a robust adaptive and fault-tolerant control scheme is developed without the need for precise information about the wind turbine model nor the pitch actuator faults. Additionally, the computational cost of the resultant control law is reduced by utilizing a dynamic surface control technique. The effectiveness of the developed design is verified using theoretical analysis tools and illustrated by numerical simulations on a high-fidelity wind turbine benchmark model with different fault scenarios. Comparison of the achieved results to the ones that can be obtained via an available industrial controller shows the advantages of the proposed scheme.

This paper presents a method to detect and classify the high impedance fault that occur in the medium voltage distribution network using discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The network is designed using Matlab software and various faults such as high impedance, symmetrical and unsymmetrical fault have been applied to study the effectiveness of the proposed ANFIS classifier method. This is achieved by training the ANFIS classifier using the features (standard deviation values) extracted from the three phase fault current signal by DWT technique for various cases of fault with different values of fault resistance in the system. The success and discrimination rate obtained for identifying and classifying the high impedance fault from the proffered method is 100% whereas the values are 66.7% and 85% respectively for conventional fuzzy based approach. The results indicate that the proposed method is more efficient to identify and discriminate the high impedance fault accurately from other power system faults in the system.

Some vessels do not comply with maritime rules, particularly in port and safety zones; they must be detected to avoid incidents. Due to background noise and congestion interference at the sea surface, it is difficult to accurately detect these vessels when it is getting dark, especially smaller ones. For these reasons, this paper proposes and develops an improved multi-structural mor-phology (IMSM) approach to eliminate all this noise and interference. The vessel target is sepa-rated from the sea surface backdrop using weighted morphological filtering of many groups of structural components. Then, the neighborhood-based adaptive fast median filtering is used to filter out impulse noise. Finally, the characteristic morphological model of the vessel target is established using the connected domain; this permits eliminating the sea surface congestion and locating vessels movement in real-time. Multiple tests were carried out in a small and discon-tinuous area of the vessel’s inter-frame motion. The results of many groups of data collected show that the proposed approach can effectively eliminate the background noise and congestion in-terference in the monitoring video. The detection accuracy rate and the processing time have increased by approximately 3.91% and 1.14s, respectively.

The increasing urbanization of cities worldwide has driven a parallel rise in resource consumption, waste generation, and environmental degradation. The transition to a circular economy (CE) offers a sustainable alternative, shifting from traditional linear systems of resource use and disposal to regenerative systems that prioritize material reuse, resource efficiency, and ecological restoration. Urban design and planning play an essential role in facilitating this shift by creating the physical and regulatory infrastructure necessary to implement CE principles in cities. This paper explores the role of urban design in promoting circular economy strategies, with a focus on adaptive reuse of buildings, green architecture, and the integration of nature-based solutions (NBS) into urban environments. Through detailed analysis of these strategies and case studies from cities around the world, this paper demonstrates that regenerative design is essential for closing material and resource loops and creating more sustainable, resilient cities.

The rapid advancement of technology has revolutionized language learning, introducing innovative methods that depart from traditional instructional approaches. This study employs a mixed-methods research design to examine the impact of chatbot-based language learning support, adaptive learning algorithms, and virtual reality language immersion on the language learning proficiency and self-regulated learning skills of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. The research design includes quantitative analysis of language proficiency scores and qualitative exploration of learner experiences with the technological interventions. The theoretical implications of this study are rooted in constructivist and socio-cultural learning theories, which underpin the design and implementation of the technological interventions. The triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data revealed that the participants' positive perceptions of the effectiveness of chatbot-based language learning support were supported by the quantitative results, with the variable "chat-bot based support" demonstrating a substantial mean difference compared to other groups. This convergence of findings reinforces the positive influence of chatbot-based support on language learning outcomes and highlights the importance of integrating theoretical perspectives with empirical evidence to gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of technological interventions on language learning outcomes for EFL learners. The study's findings provide insights into the potential of these technological interventions to optimize language learning outcomes for EFL learners and promote autonomous learning behaviors.

We performed electronic research for articles published in PubMed, MEDLINE, and ScienceDirect databases from January 2004 to January 2023. The systematic review of twenty (20) peer-reviewed articles about dosimetric parameters and eight (8) articles about clinical outcomes confirmed the dosimetric advantages of ART through better target coverage and Organs at Risk (OARs) sparing, with subsequent benefits on decreased toxicity and improved clinical outcome, specifically local control of the disease. ART replanning is a sustainable strategy for minimizing toxicity by improving normal tissue sparing. Furthermore, it enhances target volume coverage by correctly determining the specific amount of dose to be delivered to the tumor. In conclusion, this review confirms that ART benefits dosimetric, clinical/therapeutic, and toxicity outcomes.

Abstract: The Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) LiDAR point cloud in autonomous vehicles has a large deflection range, which results in slow registration speed and poor applicability. To maximize speed, an improved NDT (Normal Distribution Transform) method that integrates point cloud density features has been proposed. First, the point cloud is reduced using a modified voxel filter and a pass-through filter. Next, the ISS (Intrinsic Shape Signature) algorithm is utilized to analyze the point cloud features and extract keypoints, the 4PCS (4-Point Congruent Sets) algorithm is then employed to calculate the initial pose under the constraints of the keypoint set to complete the coarse registration. Finally, the self-adaptive segmentation model is constructed by using KD-tree to obtain the density features of keypoints, and the NDT algorithm is combined with this model to form an SSM-NDT algorithm, which is used for fine registration. Each algorithm was compared on the autonomous vehicle dataset PandaSet and actual collected data sets, the results show that the novel method increases the speed by at least 60% and takes into account good registration accuracy and strong anti-interference.

In January and February 2001, El Salvador was hit by two strong earthquakes that triggered thousands of landslides, causing 1,259 fatalities and extensive damage. The analysis of aerial and SPOT-4 satellite images taken a few days after the events allowed us to map 6,491 coesismic landslides, which occurred in 14 study areas extending for about 400 km2. Four different Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) models were produced by using different covariate sets and landslide inventories, the latter containing the slope failures triggered by an extreme rainfall event of November 2009 and those induced by the earthquakes of 2001. Moreover, two validation scenarios were employed, including the 25% and 95% of the mapped landslides, respectively. The results of our experiment revealed that: (i) MARS algorithm provides reliable predictions of coesismic landslides; (ii) models calibrated with rainfall-induced landslides predict with acceptable accuracy landslides caused by deep earthquakes and distributed over vast areas; (iii) the best accuracy is achieved by models trained with both preparatory and trigger variables; (iv) a small portion of the landslides produced by an earthquake can be used to calibrate MARS predictive models that help to identify slopes where yet unreported landslides may have occurred.

Maternal infectious disease may pose considerable challenges to the fetal health due to the distribution of important elements of the sanguine and lymphatic system from the mother via the umbilical cord. The mother and the fetus have a degree of interdependence that is similar to the one between the eukaryotic cell and the mitochondrion, particularly during the first half term of the pregnancy, which explains the increased appetite of the expecting mother during the first stages of the fetal development. There is a solid bridge between the adaptive immune system and the encephalon that was only discovered a few decades ago. As a result, scientists may still be in the introductory stages of research, and there might be a significant and profound degree of association between the immune system and a healthy neurological development. There is a significant link between the onset of significant maternal infectious disease and the onset of neurodevelopmental disease in the fetus, and virtually all immune cells play major roles in the promotion and inhibition of neurogenesis alike. Likewise, there is a probability that maternal infectious diseases during pregnancy represent a risk factor of fetal neurodevelopmental disease, as a pressurised development of the adaptive immune memory could result in a pressurised or inhibited neurological development, which both can result in a delayed development of certain sub-regions of the brain. For example, the fetus may display poorer social abilities and sharp analytical skills later in life, which is an important sign of neurodevelopmental disease. A pressurised development of the adaptive immune memory could not require the development of a significant form of disease, but rather just a sharp rate of immune preparation against several important pathogenic agents during the introductory stages of life, when the encephalon experiences the sharpest increase rate in development. The problem per se is not the process of immunisation, but a much sharper process of immunisation over the first stages of life in case of an exposure to one dangerous pathogen or more numerous kinds of pathogens and antigens that normally cause moderate disease morbidity. The more dangerous the microbe is, the sharper the development of the adaptive immune memory will be, and the same happens in the case of an increased number of infectious microbes and antigens that infected the cells of the mothers and the fetuses in cause, and this may, in the majority of the situations, still be the case even if the pathogens are already significantly weakened or lifeless, given that the gain of adaptive immune memory alone constitutes an important factor of neurogenesis and an increased rate of neurological development, and that the infant will become almost or fully protected against the pathogens in cause, despite not having had experienced the disease beforehand. In this case, neurodevelopmental delays are possibly not caused by an impaired neurogenesis, but by an excessive one, whilst maternal infection-associated neurodevelopmental delays may be caused by an impaired neurogenesis. Nevertheless, the aetiology of immunity-related neurodevelopmental delays may be more complex in nature and implicate a chronological and spatial sequence of induced excedentary and deficitary rates of neurogenesis, hence reflecting the incredibly complex nature and various forms of neurodevelopmental disease. It is important to mention that a single dose of infant immunisation brings significantly lower risks of adverse neurological events than the onset of a significant maternal infectious disease during pregnancy. The objective of paediatric neuro-immunological studies may be to improve the understanding of the association between a healthy immune developmental rate and a balanced ratio of the developmental rates of important brain regions and sub-regions.

Hyper-radiosensitivity (HRS) is the increased sensitivity to low doses of ionizing radiation observed in most cell lines. We previously demonstrated that HRS is permanently abolished in cells irradiated at a low dose rate (LDR), in a mechanism dependent on transforming growth factor β3 (TGF-β3). In this study, we aimed to elucidate the activation and receptor binding of TGF-β3 in this mechanism. T-47D cells were pre-treated with inhibitors of potential receptors and activators of TGF-β3, along with addition of small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) from LDR primed cells, before their radiosensitivity was assessed by the clonogenic assay. The protein content of sEVs from LDR primed cells was analyzed with mass spectrometry. Our results show that sEVs contain TGF-β3 regardless of priming status, but only sEVs from LDR primed cells remove HRS in reporter cells. Inhibition of the matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) family prevents removal of HRS, suggesting an MMP-dependent activation of TGF-β3 in the LDR primed cells. We demonstrate a functional interaction between TGF-β3 and activin receptor like kinase 1 (ALK1), by showing that TGF-β3 removes HRS through ALK1 binding, independent of ALK5 and TGF-βRII. These results are an important contribution to a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanism behind TGF-β3 mediated removal of HRS.

Researchers have reported various impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on small-scale fishers, such as stagnating market demands, reduction of market price and income, etc. While literature have heeded to these impacts in a relatively short time frame, scant evidence exists on the changing impacts over time and on the detailed processes of how fishers have been coping with the challenges in a longer time period. Furthermore, few studies have comprehensively analysed the impacts and strategies from multiple perspectives. This study aims to explore the perceived impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on small-scale fishing communities and to highlight the coping strategies adopted by fishers over a year since the initial outbreak, through a case study in Trang Province, Thailand. Analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data obtained through semi-structured interviews indicated that fishers wisely utilised natural, financial and social capitals at the early stages of the outbreak, while human capitals were essential for recovering from the impacts in the later stages. Our findings suggest that the adaptive capacity to flexibly change livelihood strategies are crucial, while alternative income source may not necessarily help small-scale fishers under stagnating global economy.