Advancing Open Science

The transition towards a circular economy has significantly increased the use of recycled construction materials, including products intended for interior applications. While the environmental benefits of material recycling are well recognised, considerably less attention has been devoted to the potential impact of recycled interior finishing materials on indoor air quality through volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. The objective of this study is to critically review current scientific knowledge, European regulatory frameworks, testing methodologies, and national approaches governing VOC emissions from recycled interior finishing materials, while identifying existing regulatory gaps and proposing directions for future improvement. The study was conducted as a structured literature review and comparative analysis of peer-reviewed scientific literature, European Union legislation, harmonised standards, technical guidance documents, and national VOC emission control systems implemented in selected European countries. Particular attention was given to the Construction Products Regulation (CPR), EN 16516, the ISO 16000 series, EU-LCI values, and national emission classification schemes used in Germany, France, Belgium, Finland, and Latvia. The review demonstrates that Europe has established a comprehensive technical framework for evaluating VOC emissions from construction products. However, current regulatory approaches primarily assess the emission performance of finished products and generally do not explicitly address uncertainties associated with recycled raw materials, including feedstock variability, material traceability, contamination history, manufacturing consistency, and long-term emission behaviour. Furthermore, substantial differences remain between Member States regarding emission classification, product labelling, market surveillance, and practical implementation of VOC control measures. To address these identified gaps, this paper proposes an integrated conceptual framework for VOC risk management in recycled interior finishing materials that combines material traceability, manufacturing quality assurance, emission testing, health-based assessment, regulatory compliance, and market surveillance within a unified decision-making approach. The proposed framework complements existing European legislation by addressing challenges associated with the increasing use of recycled construction materials while supporting both circular economy objectives and the protection of indoor environmental quality. The findings indicate that the principal challenge is not the absence of VOC emission assessment methodologies but the need to adapt existing regulatory approaches to the growing use of recycled construction materials. Strengthening traceability, quality assurance, harmonised emission classification, and market surveillance may improve confidence in recycled construction products while ensuring a high level of chemical safety and human health protection across the European Union.

Agricultural compression-ignition engines require decarbonization strategies that can reduce fossil-diesel demand without replacing robust power units already operating in the field. This study experimentally evaluates an autonomous hydrous-ethanol port-fuel-injection retrofit applied to a John Deere PowerTech™ Plus 6068 engine, a six-cylinder, turbocharged, 6.8 L agricultural diesel engine with high-pressure common-rail direct injection and MAR-1/Tier 3 equivalent emission compliance. Brazilian Diesel S10/B14 was retained as the directly injected pilot fuel, while commercial hydrous ethanol was supplied upstream of the cylinders through a FuelTech FT550-controlled low-pressure injection system. Tests were performed at 1200 and 1600 rpm, under 200 and 800 N·m, using ethanol injection pulse widths of 0, 10, and 20 ms. The analysis combines fuel consumption, brake-specific fuel consumption (BSFC), diesel substitution ratio (DSR), energy substitution ratio (ESR), fuel conversion efficiency (FCE), and regulated emissions. The strategy achieved substantial diesel displacement at low load, with DSR and ESR reaching 61.9% and 71.6%, respectively. The most balanced operating point occurred at 1600 rpm and 800 N·m with 20 ms ethanol injection, where DSR and ESR reached 21.1% and 22.9% while FCE varied by only $+0.03$ percentage points relative to the diesel-only baseline (35.83% versus 35.80%). CO₂ emissions decreased in all dual-fuel cases, with reductions up to 18.0%, and NOx generally decreased by as much as 35.2%. However, CO increased in all dual-fuel cases, and HC increased strongly at low load. At high load, NOx decreased by 7.1% and 13.0% with 10 and 20 ms injection at 1200 rpm, whereas at 1600 rpm, it increased by 23.3% with 10 ms and returned to the baseline level ($-0.5\%$) with 20 ms. These results demonstrate that hydrous-ethanol fumigation is a technically promising retrofit route for Brazilian agricultural diesel engines, provided that future calibration manages the incomplete-combustion penalties while preserving the CO₂ and NOx benefits.

Conventional indicators such as out-of-pocket expenditure (OOP), catastrophic health expenditure (CHE), and impoverishing health expenditure (IHE) capture important dimensions of financial hardship but do not fully represent the structural conditions, healthcare-related exposures, access constraints, and institutional mechanisms through which health-related financial vulnerability develops and persists. This study developed an evidence-informed integrative framework by combining bibliometric science mapping with systematic integrative evidence synthesis. Scopus and Web of Science searches identified 3702 records, of which 2300 remained after deduplication and 367 met the eligibility criteria. Bibliometric analysis characterized scientific production and conceptual structure, while evidence synthesis examined structural inequalities, healthcare-related financial exposure, institutional protection mechanisms, and financial and access outcomes. Keyword co-occurrence mapping revealed three broad, interconnected thematic groupings related to health financing and policy, economic burden, and healthcare delivery. The synthesis showed that financial vulnerability reflects interactions among socioeconomic disadvantage, healthcare-related costs and access constraints, and heterogeneous institutional protection. The resulting framework extends expenditure-based approaches by conceptualizing financial vulnerability as a multidimensional process shaped by structural disadvantage, healthcare-related exposure, and the effectiveness of institutional protection.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increased in popularity in recent years, providing enhanced experiences to users and advancing many fields [...]

Protecting-group-free glycosylation reduces the steps needed to convert native sugars into glycosides, but selectivity and product isolation remain major limits. This review examines methods published mainly from 2024 to August 2026. It compares donor preparation, activation conditions, linkage scope and stereochemical control. Glycosyl sulfonyl hydrazides can be prepared directly from reducing sugars and used in nickel-mediated arylation or copper-mediated C-, S- and Se-glycosylation. These donors can be isolated in large quantities by crystallization, but coupling often requires chromatography and high catalyst or reagent loadings. Ligand choice can give access to both anomers, although some methods require temporary hydroxyl protection. Photochemical thioglycoside activation, aqueous S-glycosylation and direct anomeric activation provide routes to other products. Selected examples are compared by reaction scale, isolated yield, purification and protection requirements. The comparison shows how simpler donor preparation can shorten a synthesis and why selectivity, reagent use and product isolation still affect method choice.

Accurate prediction of anchorage support parameters is important for the design of underground caverns. However, the limited availability of engineering cases makes it difficult to establish reliable data-driven prediction models. In this study, a neural-network-based framework was developed to predict anchorage support parameters using geological and engineering information from 121 underground cavern cases. Five input variables, including rock mass classification, excavation span, excavation height, uniaxial compressive strength, and maximum principal stress, were used to predict five support parameters. CNN and MLP models were established, and a variational information bottleneck (VIB) strategy was introduced to reduce redundant information and mitigate overfitting under small-sample conditions. The prediction performance of conventional and VIB-enhanced models was evaluated using mean relative error. The results show that the introduction of VIB improves the prediction accuracy of both CNN and MLP models, with the IB-CNN model achieving the best overall performance. An engineering application example further demonstrates the potential of the proposed method for preliminary anchorage parameter estimation. The proposed framework provides an auxiliary data-driven approach for underground cavern support design under limited data conditions.

High-frequency transient events in power systems are becoming increasingly significant due to lightning impulses, growing penetration of renewable energy sources, high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems, and power-electronic-interfaced equipment. Transformers operating in modern power systems, particularly those connected to power-electronic converters, HVDC systems and renewable-energy applications, may be exposed to steep-front voltage waveforms and high dv/dt stresses. These non-sinusoidal and repetitive transient conditions may cause severe dielectric stresses within transformer windings and insulation systems. High-frequency transformer models are therefore essential for analyzing transient behavior both at transformer terminals and within the windings. Such models consider winding geometry, electrostatic and electromagnetic couplings, and frequency-dependent parameters to represent transient voltage distributions with sufficient accuracy. Their reliability is critical for insulation coordination, transient overvoltage assessment, and transformer design. This paper presents a review of high-frequency transformer modeling approaches reported in the literature. White-Box, Gray-Box, and Black-Box models are examined together with analytical, finite element method (FEM)-based and measurement-based parameter extraction techniques. Time-domain and frequency-domain validation strategies are also discussed. Finally, the applicability, limitations, operational requirements, research gaps and future trends of existing modeling approaches are evaluated.

Objective: To explore the incremental prognostic information of fetal Doppler measurements beyond maternal and fetal biometric characteristics for adverse perinatal outcomes in pregnancies with suspected fetal smallness. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included 606 singleton pregnancies assessed for suspected or diagnosed fetal growth restriction. The principal analysis was restricted to 429 pregnancies with estimated fetal weight (EFW) or abdominal circumference (AC) below the 10th percentile at the index examination. A composite adverse perinatal outcome comprised five-minute Apgar score < 7, umbilical arterial pH < 7.10, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission, respiratory support, neonatal death, or stillbirth. Baseline clinical–biometric, Doppler-integrated, and delivery-week sensitivity logistic models were assessed using stratified 10-fold out-of-fold predictions. Additional robustness analyses evaluated component frequencies, a hard-outcome sensitivity composite less directly influenced by clinical management, paired uncertainty in out-of-fold performance differences, and model performance across alternative cohort definitions. Results: Among 429 pregnancies in the principal cohort, 111 (25.9%) met the composite adverse perinatal outcome, and 206 (48.0%) had abnormal Doppler findings. Event rates were 85/206 (41.3%) among pregnancies with abnormal Doppler and 26/223 (11.7%) among those with normal Doppler. The baseline and Doppler-integrated out-of-fold areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUCs) were 0.642 and 0.690, respectively; corresponding Brier scores were 0.183 and 0.174. Elevated umbilical artery pulsatility index with forward flow and absent or reversed end-diastolic flow (AEDF/REDF) were independently associated with the composite outcome, with adjusted odds ratios of 2.61 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.58–4.32) and 6.60 (95% CI, 2.40–18.18), respectively, compared with normal umbilical artery flow. The adjusted estimate for the AEDF/REDF subgroup was imprecise because this subgroup included only 19 pregnancies. The paired out-of-fold AUC increment for the Doppler-integrated model was 0.049 (95% CI, 0.005–0.094); the corresponding Brier-score improvement was 0.009 (95% CI, −0.0004 to 0.0179). Sensitivity analyses supported a modest incremental contribution but did not establish the superiority of the integrated model over alternatives based on the cerebroplacental ratio (CPR) or umbilical artery (UA) Doppler. Conclusions: In pregnancies with suspected fetal smallness defined by EFW or AC below the 10th percentile, fetal Doppler assessment provided modest incremental prognostic information beyond maternal and fetal biometric characteristics. Umbilical artery abnormalities were associated with the composite adverse perinatal outcome, although this association should be interpreted in the context of delivery timing and clinical management. External validation and assessment of clinical utility are required before clinical implementation of the model.