Advancing Open Science

Agricultural and livestock activities play a central role in global food production and economic development but are also associated with environmental impacts such as deforestation, land-use conversion, and fires. Agroforestry systems (AFSs) can reduce these impacts by integrating agricultural, livestock, and forestry activities within the same area. The African species Megathyrsus maximus (syn. Panicum maximum) is the second most widely used forage grass in Brazil and performs well under shaded conditions, making it suitable for AFSs. This review synthesizes evidence from experimental and on-farm studies across nine countries on the benefits and impacts of integrating M. maximus into AFSs, with emphasis on Brazil, and discusses research gaps and priorities for improving its use in these systems. The strongest evidence is available for livestock–forest integrated systems, while the Mombasa cultivar has the broadest experimental support across different AFSs and environmental conditions. Reported benefits include improved forage and animal productivity, soil quality, erosion control, and reduced fertilizer requirements. However, system performance depends strongly on cultivar selection, tree density, shading, and long-term management. Overall, M. maximus-based AFSs represent a promising strategy for diversifying agricultural production while contributing to environmental sustainability and climate-change mitigation.

The long-term inclusion of migrant-background youth can be framed, following the social-sustainability literature, as part of the social pillar of sustainability and of the Sustainable Development Goals on inclusive quality education (SDG 4) and reduced inequalities (SDG 10), yet the relational resources surrounding these young people have rarely been modelled at the individual level over more than a few years. This theory-guided descriptive study fits multilevel linear growth models to the 12 released waves (waves 1–10, 12, and 14; 2011–2024) of the first-cohort Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study of the Korean National Youth Policy Institute, following 1635 children of multicultural families from the fourth grade of elementary school in 2011, of whom 892 (54.6%) provided a valid composite at the final released wave; model-specific person-wave observations range from 6593 to 12,237. Six constructs are modelled as seven measurement series, because the self-esteem instrument was replaced in 2017 with no overlap wave; each series is analysed strictly within its own window: perceived peer support, teacher support, and acculturative stress from late elementary school to the final year of middle school (2011–2016); bicultural acceptance and family support from late elementary school to the final year of high school (2011–2019); and self-esteem as two separate series (2011–2016; 2017–2024). Across late elementary and middle school, perceived peer and teacher support rose—peer support fastest, with growth concentrated before the middle-school years and a reversal in the final middle-school year—while acculturative stress declined. Family support, observed through the end of high school, showed no robust directional change, and an equivalence test bounds any change below the magnitude of the acculturative-stress decline, the smallest trend interpreted substantively. Individuals differed reliably in their rates of change on every construct, and bivariate latent growth models show that those rates covaried within persons: young people with larger estimated gains in school-based support also tended to show larger gains in self-esteem and larger decreases in acculturative stress. The between-person spread of perceived school-based support narrowed across waves, although regression to the mean cautions against a strong compensatory reading. The direction of every trend was unchanged under person fixed effects and inverse-probability-of-retention weighting, and re-estimation from the item subset common to all waves yielded larger, not smaller, school-based support increases; a reliability audit established that the post-2017 self-esteem instrument requires reverse-scoring of its four negatively worded items; under the released, unreversed scoring, the resulting composite has effectively no internal consistency. The design is observational and no causal inference is warranted, but the results give an individual-level baseline, bounded by each construct’s measurement window, for monitoring the relational resources of migrant-background youth as a candidate social-sustainability indicator under SDG 4 and SDG 10, a possible application rather than a validated indicator framework.

Thermostatically controlled appliances are major electricity consumers in residential buildings, yet conventional home energy management systems (HEMSs) often model them as fixed-power loads, neglecting thermal dynamics. This paper presents a multi-objective HEMS that integrates the NSGA-III evolutionary algorithm with physics-based thermal models, data-driven meteorological forecasting, and electric vehicle smart charging (unidirectional, grid-to-vehicle) considering battery degradation. Air-conditioning demand is estimated using a resistance—the capacitance thermal model of the room, while tankless water-heater demand is calculated from the required temperature rise. Both models are driven by weather forecasts generated using a stacking ensemble of three deep learning models. User preferences are represented through a comfort matrix, while rooftop photovoltaic (PV) generation and hourly grid carbon emission factors are incorporated. The HEMS simultaneously minimizes daily electricity cost and ${\mathrm{CO}}_2$ emissions while maximizing user comfort over a 24 h horizon under two time-of-use tariff schemes. The results show that under the Brazilian White Tariff, the knee-point solution reduces the daily electricity cost by 27.1% and the emissions by 28.3% with respect to a non-optimized household while keeping 90.2% of the theoretical maximum comfort; within the Pareto front, the minimum-cost solution costs 22.2% less than the maximum-comfort schedule. The minimum-emission solution reduces emissions to about 1.09 kgCO₂eq/day, and PV self-consumption rises from 50.7% to 94.0%, while grid import in the peak tariff block falls by 67%.

Energy-powered spore-launching strategy is an evolved feature of many fungal species, facilitating dispersal into the surrounding environment, thereby contributing to reproductive success and completing their life cycle. With a focus on the underlying biophysical principles and their broader implications for fungal ecology, this review explores current knowledge of spore discharge biomechanics across different fungal groups. Additionally, it discusses how each step of spore launching relates to fundamental physical principles of energy and motion. Literature was collected through iterative searches in Web of Science and Google Scholar. Additional documents were retrieved through manual searches of key publications’ reference lists and citation tracking. The widely investigated fungal groups regarding spore launching include sporangia squirters (like Pilobolus), ballistospore catapulters (like Agaricus), and ascospore launchers (like Neurospora). Osmotic pressure, surface tension, and cavitation are among the major energy-generating mechanisms responsible for propelling spores at extreme acceleration, thus enabling spores to travel distances of up to several meters. Spore discharge mechanisms can be categorized based on how energy is generated, stored, and transformed into mechanical motion. Thanks to advances in biophysical modeling and high-speed imaging, the century-old mystery of fungal launching strategies has been understood to involve principles of fluid mechanics, optics, and projectile dynamics by investigating many fungal groups.

Rice–frog co-culture is an organic farming practice known to effectively reduce nitrogen (N) loss from paddy fields. Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) mediate the rate-limiting step of nitrification; however, their relative contributions to this process remain unclear in certain soil types. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of rice–frog co-culture on N leaching and the associated AOA and AOB communities. A two-year field experiment was conducted in Shanghai, comparing three cultivation patterns: conventional rice (CR), green rice–frog (GR) co-cultivation, and organic rice–frog co-cultivation (OR). Nitrogen leaching was monitored, soil properties were analyzed, and the abundance and community composition of AOA and AOB were assessed. Nitrogen leaching losses were significantly lower in GR and OR than in CR, by 14.82% and 28.45%, respectively. Ammonium (NH₄⁺) was the predominant form of leached N, accounting for 58.10%, 56.20%, and 49.02% of the total N in CR, GR, and OR, respectively. Rice–frog co-culture significantly increased amoA gene copy numbers of AOA but suppressed those of AOB. The community structures of both AOA and AOB were strongly influenced by soil properties, including NH₄⁺, soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), and pH. Specifically, the AOA community was primarily shaped by NH₄⁺ and SOC, whereas the AOB community was mainly driven by SOC content. These findings indicate that integrated rice–frog co-cultivation systems mitigate nitrogen leaching losses, modify soil physicochemical properties, and shift the abundance and community composition of ammonia-oxidizing archaea and bacteria.

Quantum dot light emitting diodes (QLEDs) have attracted considerable attention as next-generation display devices because of their high color purity, wide color gamut, and high luminous efficiency. Their performance is governed not only by the quantum dot emissive layer but also by the electron transport layer (ETL), which controls electron injection and transport, hole blocking, and interfacial recombination. In particular, metal oxide nanoparticles are widely used as ETL materials because of their high electron mobility, favorable energy level alignment with quantum dots, and compatibility with low temperature solution processing. QLEDs with ETLs based on metal oxide nanoparticles, however, suffer from excessive electron injection and surface defects such as oxygen vacancies and hydroxyl groups, which allow charge to accumulate at the interface and quench excitons, causing efficiency roll-off and limiting operational stability. Here, we review strategies developed to address these limitations, categorized into materials engineering (doping and surface treatment) and device structure engineering (interlayer insertion and double-layer ETLs).

The growing importance of identifying environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks is driven by increasing regulatory requirements and stakeholder expectations. However, information asymmetry, disclosure–performance gaps and potential greenwashing may limit the reliability of sustainability disclosures. This study examines the potential of financial statements as an additional source for screening ESG risk exposures and proposes an ESG Proxy Mapping Approach based on financial statement indicators. The empirical analysis covers companies listed on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (68 in total), combining content analysis of publicly available financial and non-financial information with quantitative proxy indicators, comparative analysis and cross-report verification. The findings indicate that the feasibility of identifying potential signals varies across indicators, companies, and sectors. Proxies based on conventional accounting items tend to be more observable than those that require disclosing ESG-specific amounts. However, the mere existence of an observable accounting item or computable ratio does not establish an ESG-related cause. Missing disclosures also constrain the assessment. The findings suggest that, when combined with contextual disclosure analysis, financial-statement-based proxy mapping can support preliminary ESG risk screening, but cannot independently confirm the existence or magnitude of ESG risks.

Dendritic cells (DCs) coordinate antigen presentation and immune-effector activation, but vaccine-induced immune responses have not consistently translated into clinical benefit. This focused narrative review evaluates therapeutic vaccination in established pancreatic cancer and potential adjuvant use after resection, with emphasis on CD34+ progenitor-derived allogeneic DCs engineered to express CD93, CD40 ligand (CD40L), and CXCL13. We develop an integrated framework linking the proposed functions of individual transgenes to donor–recipient–tumor human leukocyte antigen (HLA) compatibility, the strength of the preclinical evidence, and product-specific requirements for translation. Humanized-mouse studies report lymphocyte activation and reduced tumor burden with the complete construct; they do not establish the independent contribution of each transgene. In the advanced-disease experiment, only three animals were included per group, and the late absence of detectable bioluminescence was observed in one surviving treated animal. Tumor-antigen-specific killing has not been conclusively separated from alloreactivity, and CXCL13 expression does not establish functional tertiary lymphoid structures. Clinical studies are compared by cell source, antigen preparation, treatment strategy, and outcome, with RNA vaccines identified separately as contextual comparators. Priorities include controlled component testing, recipient-compatible antigen recognition, reproducible post-thaw potency, and pancreatic-model evaluation of chemotherapy sequencing and conditional checkpoint combinations. These findings support further investigation, while safety and clinical benefit of the three-gene product remain unestablished.