Advancing Open Science

Ecological restoration of waste slag sites is often constrained by topsoil scarcity and nutrient deficiency. Therefore, this study investigated organic acid-matured granite rock powder (M-GRP) to evaluate its mineral nutrient-release behavior and structural evolution, with the aim of developing it as a compost mineral additive. The results showed that 0.2 mol/L malonic acid, a solid-to-liquid ratio of 1:75, and maturation at room temperature for 8 h provided effective nutrient release from granite rock powder. Characterization analysis showed that protons and organic groups in malonic acid promoted the dissolution of feldspar and illite in granite rock powder, accompanied by the substantial dissolution of clinochlore and calcite. Feldspar and illite exhibited severe dissolution at edges and protrusions, forming pits and pores. Malonic acid treatment decreased the unit-cell volume and interplanar spacing of the surviving mineral phases and interplanar spacing, and increased surface roughness, lattice defects, and surface disorder. Quartz remained comparatively stable, with its morphology and crystal structure preserved. In addition, the specific surface area of M-GRP increased, accompanied by changes in its pore structure and pore-size distribution. These results provide a theoretical basis and technical support for the resource utilization of rock powder.

Rice irrigation management influences soil conditions, crop physiology, productivity, and environmental outcomes, but the links among these responses remain incompletely understood. This review critically integrates evidence on continuous flooding (CF), alternate wetting and drying (AWD), controlled irrigation (CI), saturated soil irrigation (SSI), and rainfed supplementary irrigation (RAI) within a soil–root–canopy–production–environment framework. Changes in soil moisture and redox conditions affect nutrient and potentially toxic element availability, root development, canopy photosynthesis, and assimilate allocation, thereby influencing grain yield and quality. Under moderate, appropriately timed water-saving irrigation, selected studies report 10–35% reductions in irrigation water input while maintaining or increasing yield and improving water use efficiency (WUE). However, responses vary with drying intensity and timing, cultivar, soil, and climate; severe deficits can reduce yield and impair grain quality. Coordinated water–nitrogen management may improve partial factor productivity of nitrogen (PFPN) and internal nitrogen-use efficiency (IE), although responses vary. AWD generally reduces methane (CH₄) emissions but may increase nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions and cadmium availability; net global warming potential (GWP) and greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI) depend on site-specific conditions. Future research should prioritize validated irrigation thresholds, long-term monitoring, and integrated management of productivity, resource efficiency, greenhouse gases, and grain safety.

The rapid expansion of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination has raised concern about the effects of brine discharges on coastal marine ecosystems. This study evaluated stress biomarkers in two benthic species with contrasting physiological strategies, the red seaweed Rhodymenia corallina and the sea anemone Anthothoe chilensis, following field transplantation near a desalination brine discharge in northern Chile. Biomarkers of photosynthetic performance, oxidative stress, antioxidant defense, and osmoregulation were assessed after 24 h, 48 h, and 5 d of exposure. R. corallina showed limited photosynthetic changes, moderate oxidative damage, and reduced antioxidant reserves, whereas A. chilensis showed reduced oxidative damage and maintained antioxidant and osmotic homeostasis. The Biomarker Response Index (BRI) revealed moderate alteration at 24 h followed by lower scores at later times. These distinct response patterns reveal marked species-specific sensitivity to brine exposure and support the value of integrating multiple biomarkers to characterize physiological responses. Given their ecological relevance and suitability for field transplantation in desalination-impacted areas, these findings support the evaluation of R. corallina and A. chilensis as candidate biomonitors for desalination environmental monitoring.

Background/Objectives: Whether country-level sexual norms, religious salience and belief, and HIV-related social distancing are independently associated with HIV and non-HIV STI burden beyond economic conditions remains uncertain. Methods: We analyzed harmonized cross-national data from 68 countries (WVS waves 1996–2021; outcomes matched through 2022) using hierarchical OLS with HC3 robust standard errors, PCA-derived normative components, and GDP-adjusted inequality (Net GINI). Results: Higher GDP was associated with lower burden (HIV: b = −1.063; STI: b = −0.537; both p < 0.001), whereas higher inequality was independently associated with HIV (b = 0.074, p = 0.014) but not STI burden (p = 0.381). The religious salience-and-belief component showed no independent association after economic factors and HIV-related social distancing were included (HIV: p = 0.791; STI: p = 0.101). Sexual-attitude permissiveness was associated with HIV before social distancing entered the model (b = 0.461, p = 0.014) but not afterward (p = 0.922). Greater social distancing was inversely associated with measured burden (HIV: b = −3.157, p = 0.002; STI: b = −1.561, p < 0.001), but these associations attenuated to non-significance after adjustment for World Bank region (HIV: p = 0.745; STI: p = 0.187). Conclusions: Lower social distancing may facilitate testing and disclosure, increasing epidemiological visibility rather than true transmission. Programs should integrate stigma reduction into confidential testing and clinician training, anticipating short-term rises in recorded cases where testing improves.

Background: Biomarkers reflecting innate immune activation may complement clinical severity scores in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). This study evaluated serum presepsin and pentraxin-3 (PTX3) concentrations in patients with CAP and healthy controls and examined their associations with pneumonia severity. Methods: Ninety participants were analyzed, including 45 patients with CAP and 45 healthy controls. Pneumonia severity was assessed using the Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) and CURB-65. Group comparisons, Spearman correlation analyses, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses, and an exploratory multivariable logistic regression model were performed. Results: Presepsin concentrations were higher in patients with CAP than in healthy controls (2157 [1824–2524] vs. 1749 [1652–1879] pg/mL; p < 0.001), as were PTX3 concentrations (2.15 [1.76–2.87] vs. 1.67 [1.40–2.11] ng/mL; p < 0.001). For discrimination of CAP from healthy controls, the AUC was 0.822 (95% CI 0.728–0.902) for presepsin and 0.706 (95% CI 0.598–0.810) for PTX3. Among patients with CAP, presepsin correlated with PSI (rho = 0.552, p < 0.001) and CURB-65 (rho = 0.600, p < 0.001), while PTX3 showed stronger correlations with PSI (rho = 0.691, p < 0.001) and CURB-65 (rho = 0.668, p < 0.001). For identifying PSI classes IV–V, the AUC was 0.647 for presepsin and 0.742 for PTX3. Conclusions: Both presepsin and PTX3 were elevated in CAP and were associated with increasing disease severity. Within this pilot sample, presepsin showed a numerically higher AUC for discrimination between CAP and healthy controls, whereas PTX3 showed stronger associations with severity. Larger prospective studies are required to validate these findings.

This paper presents a systematic study of active polarization imaging in turbid water, focusing on the comparison between circular and linear polarization and the independent separation of forward and backward scattering contributions. Underwater imaging experiments with turbidity levels ranging from 0 to 30 NTU demonstrated that the circular polarization scheme has comprehensive imaging performance significantly superior to the linear polarization scheme, such as more uniform background, lower residual speckle, and higher structural fidelity, because circularly polarized light has the physical advantage of slower depolarization in multiple scattering, enabling it to maintain a high polarization contrast between target signals and background noise. The independent contributions of forward scattering and backward scattering are derived by blackbody substitution difference method (BSDM). Grayscale histogram analysis results reveal that the dominant factor limiting imaging quality in high-turbidity water is the convolution distortion caused by forward scattering, rather than backward scattering, and the convolution distortion cannot be eliminated through simple polarization difference. By experimentally comparing circular and linear polarization schemes and applying BSDM to separate forward and backward scattering, this work confirms the superiority of circular polarization scheme and proposes BSDM as a reliable and easily implementable analytical method for turbid water polarization imaging.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder, and its pathology accumulates for years before symptoms appear, which places the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) stage at the centre of early detection. Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) applied to structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) report high classification accuracy, yet these figures are usually measured within a single cohort and are rarely tested for transfer to an independent cohort, so whether they translate into clinical usefulness remains unresolved. The objective of this study is to address that gap directly. Six classifiers, three classical learners (Extra Trees, LightGBM and CatBoost) and three deep networks (ConvNeXt, CoAtNet and an introduced bidirectional Vision Mamba model, MambAD) were trained and tested on identical hippocampal slices from three publicly available datasets, namely ADNI, OASIS and a public Kaggle collection, for the three-class staging of cognitively normal (CN), MCI and AD. Every model was evaluated within cohorts and, more importantly, across cohorts, with subject-level scoring on the two clinical datasets. Within the primary ADNI cohort, the introduced model reached the highest balanced accuracy (BAC) at 0.578, although this lead was not statistically significant; across the six models, none dominated on every task, and no pairwise difference between models reached significance. BAC fell from about 0.55 within-cohort to between 0.38 and 0.45 across cohorts for every model, and the deep models transferred better on the ranking metric than the classical learners. The results show that a lightweight state-space model can match far larger pretrained backbones under matched conditions, and they confirm that single cohort accuracy overstates readiness, with cross-dataset generalisation remaining the binding constraint on clinical use.

Introduction: Congenital heart defects (CHDs) are the most frequent group of major congenital anomalies and impose a disproportionate burden on neonatal services. Antenatal detection determines where and how an affected newborn is delivered, yet reported detection rates differ several-fold between European countries. We aimed to quantify the postnatal occurrence and the antenatal detection of CHDs in a tertiary obstetric center in Western Romania and to place both figures in a comparable international context. Material and Methods: Retrospective observational study of all 10,113 births registered at the “Pius Brînzeu” County Clinical Emergency Hospital, Timișoara, between 2018 and 2022. Newborns with at least one cardiac lesion recorded on indication-based postnatal echocardiography were identified from the hospital electronic record. Interatrial communications and ductal patency recorded at the neonatal-index examination were counted inclusively and are analyzed separately from structural defects. A defect was classified as antenatally detected when it had been reported at any prenatal ultrasound scan and was subsequently confirmed postnatally. Proportions are reported with Wilson score 95% confidence intervals (CIs), separately at the level of the newborn and at the level of the individual lesion. Results: A total of 541 newborns carried at least one recorded cardiac lesion, giving an occurrence of 5.35% of births (95% CI 4.93–5.81); 670 individual lesions were recorded, a mean of 1.24 per affected newborn. Interatrial communication (n = 319; 47.6% of lesions) and ductal patency (n = 90; 13.4%) accounted for 61.0% of lesions; among the 261 structural defects, ventricular-septal defect was the most frequent (n = 121; 46.4%). An antenatal diagnosis had been made in 151 of 541 newborns (27.9%; 95% CI 24.3–31.8). Detection was highest for lesions distorting the four-chamber view, hypoplastic left-heart syndrome 4/5, and ventricular septal defect 80/121 (66.1%; 95% CI 57.3–73.9), and lowest for lesions requiring outflow-tract or arch views, including pulmonary stenosis 3/27 (11.1%; 95% CI 3.9–28.1) and aortic stenosis 0/12. Restricting the count to structural defects gives 13.1 to 25.8 affected newborns per 1000 births, against a EUROCAT total prevalence of 8.0 per 1000. Conclusions: The occurrence recorded here reflects tertiary referral, indication-based echocardiography, and an inclusive case definition rather than a genuine population excess, and is not interchangeable with registry prevalence. The antenatal detection rate of 27.9% sits between European settings without organized screening and those performing two or three routine scans per pregnancy. The detection deficit is concentrated in lesions that require outflow-tract or arch views. Because the views obtained at each scan were not recorded and detection was not stratified by prenatal-care status, the contribution of examination protocol and of access to care is inferred rather than demonstrated; both are testable hypotheses for a prospective, protocolized study.