Search Results (101,586)

All-solid-state lithium–sulfur batteries (ASSLSBs) couple the high theoretical energy density of sulfur (2600 Wh kg⁻¹) with the safety and polysulfide-shuttle suppression advantages of solid electrolytes (SEs). In practice, however, sluggish solid-state conversion kinetics, chemo-mechanical degradation in composite cathodes, and large solid–solid interfacial resistance remain the principal barriers to practical implementation. This review systematically examines recent progress across the three key components of ASSLSBs: cathodes, solid electrolytes, and interfaces. For cathodes, S/C composite design strategies and alternative active materials—including Li₂S, metal sulfides, and organosulfur compounds—are discussed. For solid electrolytes, inorganic (sulfide, oxide, halide, and hydride), polymer, and hybrid composite systems are compared. For interfaces, physical strategies (stack pressure, compliant interlayers, three-dimensional cathode architectures) and chemical strategies (cathode–SE and Li metal–SE interphase engineering, in situ stabilization) are evaluated. Outstanding challenges and design guidelines for next-generation ASSLSBs are discussed. Full article

Spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) are pivotal in surrogate broodstock technology. However, species-specific protocols for the efficient enrichment and long-term preservation of SSCs in olive flounder (Paralichthys olivaceus) are not yet fully established. In this study, we evaluated and optimized methods for the isolation and cryopreservation of P. olivaceus SSCs. First, we compared two enrichment methods, including Percoll density gradient centrifugation (PDGC) and differential plating (DP). Although SSCs enriched by both methods showed increased expression of SSC-specific marker genes, PDGC resulted in significantly greater enrichment than DP. A combination of PDGC and DP did not further improve enrichment efficiency, suggesting that PDGC alone is sufficient in P. olivaceus. Second, we optimized cryopreservation conditions according to various cryoprotectants. Among the conditions, SSCs cryopreservation using 1.3 M propylene glycol (PG) as a permeating agent and 0.2 M raffinose (Raf) as a non-permeating cryoprotectant provided the highest cell viability (56.1%), demonstrating a synergistic protective effect. Finally, preliminary in vivo migration and localization ability of the cryopreserved SSCs was confirmed through xenotransplantation into zebrafish (Danio rerio) larvae. PKH26-labeled donor cells exhibited successful initial localization and short-term persistence within the presumptive gonadal ridge of the recipients at 5 days post-transplantation. These findings provide an optimized protocol for the handling and preservation of P. olivaceus germline resources, contributing to the technical advancement of surrogate reproduction strategies in this species. Full article

Background/Objectives: Computer-aided surgical planning (CASP) technologies, including virtual surgical planning (VSP), 3D printed cutting guides, and patient-specific implants, have been increasingly applied to deep circumflex iliac artery (DCIA) free flap reconstruction of maxillofacial defects. Despite growing adoption, no systematic review has specifically evaluated their accuracy and clinical outcomes. This study aimed to comprehensively assess the impact of CASP on reconstruction accuracy, operative efficiency, flap survival, and implant rehabilitation in DCIA flap surgery. Methods: A systematic search of PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar was conducted following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines. Studies reporting CASP-assisted DCIA free flap reconstruction with three or more patients were included. Methodological quality was assessed using the Methodological Index for Non-Randomized Studies (MINORS) checklist and the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2.0 tool for the randomized controlled trial (RCT). Results: Thirty studies (1 RCT, 13 comparative, and 16 non-comparative) involving 844 patients were included. VSP with 3D-printed cutting guides was the most frequently used technology (n = 22). Mean linear deviations between planned and actual outcomes ranged from 0.40 to 4.4 mm, with most studies reporting 0.7–2.7 mm. The sole RCT demonstrated significantly better accuracy (1.3 vs. 5.5 mm, p < 0.001) and shorter reconstruction time (16 vs. 39 min, p < 0.001) with CASP. Flap survival ranged from 90% to 100%. Conclusions: CASP technologies, particularly VSP with 3D-printed cutting guides, appear to improve the accuracy and predictability of DCIA flap reconstruction. However, the evidence base is predominantly retrospective and heterogeneous; prospective multicenter studies with standardized outcome measures are needed before definitive clinical guidelines can be established. Full article

Fourier Neural Operators (FNOs) exhibit mode saturation on high-contrast inhomogeneous media, and recent multi-scale extensions (MscaleFNO) further worsen out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization. We introduce the Helmholtz Neural Operator (HNO), a physics-informed, FFT-free branch–trunk operator in the DeepONet family, with a hybrid SIREN+learnable-Fourier trunk and a dual-path rank-32 hypernetwork branch, with bounded multiplicative gating on per-mode coefficients. At a matched parameter count (∼1.05 M, five seeds), HNO achieves a 2.6× lower OOD generalization gap than FNO (19.6% vs. 50.6%, $p=1.7\times {10}^{-3}$, Cohen’s $d=5.1$), 5.1× lower than vanilla DeepONet (19.6% vs. 99.9%, $p=8.2\times {10}^{-3}$), and 6.0× lower than MscaleFNO (19.6% vs. 117.4%, $p=2.4\times {10}^{-6}$); MscaleFNO’s deficit grows at 4.2× more parameters, ruling out capacity starvation. HNO is 4.6×/16.4× faster than FNO/MscaleFNO and 64×–245× faster than multi-threaded FD-PML (MKL PARDISO, 12 cores; 183×–698× vs. single-thread scipy.spsolve), making it suitable as a forward surrogate inside many-query workflows. Absolute accuracy on extreme-contrast (15:1) OOD samples is limited (relative $L^2\approx 1$), so HNO is positioned as a many-query surrogate or warm start for refinement loops, not a stand-alone replacement for direct solvers. A scope limitation is that HNO underperforms FNO on elliptic Darcy Flow, confirming specialization for hyperbolic/wave equations rather than universal operator learning. Full article

Massive Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor-network services in 5G/6G systems increasingly rely on network slicing to support large-scale sensing, monitoring, and mission-critical applications. In such sliced infrastructures, Proportional Fair (PF) allocation assigns resources according to slice-reported demands. This reliance on trusted demand reporting makes coexisting slices, including mMTC-based IoT sensor slices, vulnerable to resource exhaustion attacks, where a malicious slice inflates its demand to monopolize shared resources and induce Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations. Existing unsupervised defenses mainly focus on anomaly detection, while the translation of detection results into resource-level mitigation remains insufficiently addressed. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes AutoGuard-Hybrid, an unsupervised detection-to-mitigation framework that combines complementary anomaly detectors with allocation-aware mitigation policies to preserve slice-level service availability. Unlike prior detection-only approaches, AutoGuard-Hybrid converts unsupervised anomaly evidence into allocation-aware demand purification before PF scheduling. Its key design is a closed-loop integration of Isolation Forest (IF) and Long Short-Term Memory Autoencoder (LSTM-AE) as spatial and temporal front-end detectors with Adaptive Clipping and a Safety Cap, which translate anomaly scores into demand purification actions. Experiments show that AutoGuard-Hybrid remains comparable to Isolation Forest under Continuous attacks and improves the mean system-wide SLA violation rate by 27.6% under Adaptive Probing attacks. Stage activation analysis further shows that LSTM-AE activations increase from 9.3 under Continuous attacks to 29.4 under Adaptive Probing attacks. Ablation results show that Adaptive Clipping alone reduces the system-wide SLA violation rate by 75.0%, while the full mitigation pipeline achieves an 84.6% total reduction. AutoGuard-Hybrid operates within the 1 ms Transmission Time Interval (TTI) constraint and provides a practical defense framework for next-generation network slicing-enabled IoT and sensor-network services. Full article

To evaluate the effects of three different 3D printers, two clear aligner resins, two specimen thicknesses, two lengths, and two geometric designs on the tensile strength and elastic modulus of directly printed clear aligners. Specimens were produced from two orthodontic aligner resins, Clear A (Senertek, Izmir, Turkey) and Tera Harz TA 28 (Graphy Inc., Seoul, Republic of Korea), using three different 3D printers: Ackuretta SOL (LCD), Asiga MAX (DLP), and UNIZ NBEE (LCD). Specimens were designed in two forms (dumbbell, in accordance with ISO 527 3, and flat strip), in two thicknesses (0.5 mm and 1 mm), and in two lengths (short and long), yielding 24 groups with 5 specimens each (n = 120). All specimens were post processed using the Tera Harz Spinner and cured for 25 min under nitrogen atmosphere in the THC 2 MC unit, followed by a 1 min boiling water treatment. Tensile tests were performed on a universal testing machine (Shimadzu Corp., Kyoto, Japan) up to fracture. Maximum force (N) and elastic modulus (N/mm²) were recorded. Data were analyzed using Kruskal–Wallis, Mann–Whitney U, and Aligned Rank Transform ANOVA tests with Dunn post hoc and Bonferroni correction (p < 0.05). Printer type had no significant effect on maximum force (p = 0.357) or elastic modulus (p = 0.052). Resin type (p < 0.001), thickness (p < 0.001), and specimen geometry (p < 0.001) showed significant effects on both parameters. TA 28 specimens exhibited higher mechanical performance than Clear A. Increased thickness produced higher maximum force and elastic modulus values. Flat geometries showed the highest maximum force, while the short dumbbell exhibited the lowest. The long thin dumbbell geometry yielded the highest elastic modulus values. Resin composition, thickness, and specimen geometry are the primary determinants of mechanical performance in directly printed clear aligners, whereas printer type appears to play a limited role. Full article

This paper presents a multibeam hybrid beamforming (MHBF) architecture for microwave power transfer (MPT), enabling wireless power delivery to multiple receivers with a reduced number of RF chains. The proposed architecture decouples beam control into the horizontal and vertical dimensions, where horizontal multibeams are generated in the baseband through digital precoding, while the vertical beam direction is controlled by a Butler-matrix-based analog beamformer. In particular, multibeam transmission is achieved using multi-tone signals with distinct phase weights assigned to each tone, enabling beams to be steered toward different directions, while the Butler-matrix-based analog beamformer provides vertical beam-steering capability. Compared with fully digital beamforming (DBF), MHBF enables simultaneous multibeam formation in the horizontal domain with fewer RF chains, thereby reducing hardware overhead and system complexity. To validate the proposed architecture, a 5.8 GHz prototype was designed and fabricated. The experimental results demonstrate three-beam and four-beam operation under a transmit power of 30.57 dBm, while the average received RF power in the single-beam case was 12.11 dBm at a distance of 1 m. In the three-beam and four-beam cases, average received RF power levels of 7.3 dBm and 6.1 dBm per beam were achieved, respectively. RF-to-DC conversion measurements under 430 $\Omega$ and 680 $\Omega$ load conditions further showed average PCE values of up to 38.77% and 35.05% for the three-beam and four-beam cases, respectively. These results confirm the feasibility of simultaneous multibeam wireless power delivery and its potential as an effective solution for multi-receiver operation with reduced RF-chain requirements. Full article

Future wireless systems such as 5G-Advanced and 6G are expected to rely increasingly on multi-user MIMO and distributed multi-antenna transmission, where accurate channel direction information (CDI) is essential for interference management. In limited-feedback downlink systems, however, finite-rate CDI feedback introduces quantization error, resulting in residual interference and rate loss in zero-forcing beamforming. This paper proposes a quantization-error-threshold-based user admission scheme for limited-feedback MU-MIMO downlink systems. In the proposed scheme, each user feeds back its quantized CDI and channel quality information only when its CDI quantization error is below a predefined threshold, and the base station performs semi-orthogonal user selection and zero-forcing beamforming over the admitted users. The proposed threshold controls the tradeoff between feedback-overhead reduction and candidate-user availability while improving the reliability of the CDI used for precoding. An analytical framework is developed to characterize the threshold-dependent scheduled-user count, ergodic sum-rate, and feedback overhead. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves the sum-rate compared with conventional SUS and substantially reduces the feedback overhead, especially as the number of users increases. Full article

A blockchain-based framework is proposed for secure vehicle registration and real-time authenticity verification in vehicular networks. To mitigate the risks of fake and stolen license plates, vehicle identification data is protected using a modular arithmetic-based cryptographic mechanism and indexed within an on-chain hash table structure. Role-based access control ensures system integrity by restricting all registration and modification operations to authorized government entities, while enabling public verifiers to validate vehicle legitimacy through privacy-preserving verification. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the system achieves low verification latency, minimal storage overhead, and stable throughput. Furthermore, scalability and denial-of-service (DoS) resilience analyses confirm consistent performance under high verification demand. This framework offers an efficient and privacy-preserving solution for the secure and real-time verification of vehicle legitimacy in vehicular networks. Full article

Background/Objectives: Atrasentan is a selective endothelin A receptor antagonist (SERA) developed as a potential therapy for chronic renal diseases, including diabetic nephropathy and immunoglobulin A nephropathy. Despite this potential, understanding its metabolic bioactivation is essential for assessing the risks of drug-induced liver injury (DILI). However, the metabolic profile of atrasentan remains poorly characterized, and the mechanisms underlying its potential hepatotoxicity remain underexplored. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the metabolic pathways of atrasentan in human liver microsomes (HLMs) in the presence of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP⁺), uridine diphosphate glucuronic acid (UDPGA), or glutathione (GSH). Methods: A liquid chromatography–high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) coupled with a feature-based molecular networking approach was used to characterize metabolites. Characterization of the major metabolites was achieved through cytochrome P450 (P450) phenotyping with human recombinant P450 isoforms. Results: A total of eighteen metabolites were characterized through phase I and II metabolic reactions, including demethylenation, N-dealkylation, O-demethylation, hydroxylation, dehydrogenation, and glucuronidation. Atrasentan acyl glucuronide (M8) was confirmed as the predominant metabolite, and we also putatively annotated a catechol intermediate (M5) and its corresponding GSH conjugate (M15). Characterizing the GSH conjugate (M15) indicates that catechol intermediate (M5) can be further oxidized to a reactive ortho-quinone intermediate, which is subsequently trapped by GSH, suggesting the potential for a bioactivation mechanism. Reaction phenotyping demonstrated that the formation of M5 is catalyzed almost exclusively by the CYP3A subfamily. However, its direct translation to in vivo oxidative stress or covalent protein binding requires further studies. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that feature-based molecular networking is a valuable strategy for metabolite characterization, underscoring the urgent need for further in vivo metabolism studies to definitively assess hepatotoxic risks associated with these reactive metabolites. Full article

The photophysical properties of the designed molecules were investigated by theoretical calculations. The introduction of thiophene units into the DABNA-1 core reduces both S₁ and T₁ energies, whereas the derived ∆E_ST values become larger. As revealed by normal mode analysis for all designed molecules, the designed molecule, including the S···S interaction, exhibits the lowest reorganization energy during the excitation and de-excitation. Vibrationally resolved emission spectra further show that S···S interaction plays a pivotal role in reducing the spectrum width. Comprehensively, it is evident that the S···S interaction is a useful chemical design strategy to suppress the k_nr and enhance the color purity for OLED emitter. Full article

Objective: This study aimed to compare the clinical and radiological outcomes between microscopic and unilateral biportal endoscopic (UBE) posterior cervical foraminotomy (PCF). Methods: This study included 73 patients who underwent microscopic PCF (n = 40) or UBE PCF (n = 33) for single-level cervical foraminal disc herniation or stenosis between January 2018 and December 2021. Clinical outcomes were measured using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and Neck Disability Index (NDI). Radiologic outcomes were evaluated with cervical range of motion (ROM) using computed tomography and flexion-extension dynamic radiography. Results: The mean follow-up period for microscopic and UBE PCF was 33.0 ± 7.6 months and 29.9 ± 5.9 months, respectively. The postoperative neck VAS until postoperative 2 weeks was significantly lower in the UBE PCF group than in the microscopic PCF group (p < 0.05). The estimated blood loss and operative time were significantly lower in the UBE PCF group than in the microscopic PCF group, while the length of hospital stay was numerically shorter but did not reach statistical significance. The two groups had no significant difference in the NDI on the preoperative and postoperative 3 months. The recurrence occurred in 1 patient (2.5%) of the microscopic PCF group and 1 patient (3%) of the UBE PCF group. The revision surgery was performed in 2 patients (5%) of the microscopic PCF group and in 1 patient of the UBE PCF group. There were no significant differences in motion and instability between the two groups. Conclusions: Both microscopic and UBE PCF are effective and safe procedures for treating cervical radiculopathy due to cervical foraminal disc herniation or stenosis. The UBE approach may provide advantages mainly in early postoperative recovery, including lower early postoperative neck pain, while long-term clinical and radiologic outcomes appear comparable to those of microscopic PCF. Full article

This paper presents Resilient Edge-IVA (Intelligent Video Analytics), an integrated framework designed to ensure real-time inference stability and high-speed embedding-based similarity search in resource-constrained edge computing environments. Conventional systems often face Quality of Experience (QoE) degradation caused by computational overhead and hardware-level bottlenecks. To address these challenges, this study proposes a “Whole-cycle” methodology employing a perception-driven, three-tier adaptive control algorithm. This algorithm dynamically modulates encoding parameters, such as resolution and bitrate, by utilizing real-time inference latency and CPU utilization as feedback signals. Furthermore, the framework incorporates an event-density-based Data Diet mechanism. This mechanism selectively adjusts video quality based on object detection results, preserving high-fidelity imagery for critical events while significantly reducing data volume during static intervals. The backend implements a hybrid storage architecture combining the Milvus vector database for CLIP-based high-dimensional visual embeddings with a PostgreSQL relational database for structured metadata. These systems are linked via a deterministic hash key to ensure data atomicity and facilitate high-speed, multi-dimensional embedding-based retrieval. Experimental evaluations conducted on a Raspberry Pi 5 and Hailo-8 NPU demonstrate that the proposed framework maintains a frame drop rate below 0.3% even under extreme workloads, providing a 13-fold improvement in operational stability over static configurations. The results also confirm a 54.2% reduction in total storage occupancy and a Hash Mapping Consistency (HMC) score of 0.89. These findings validate the framework’s effectiveness in reconciling real-time processing stability with storage efficiency. Building upon this baseline, future research will extend the framework to multi-class environments, targeting applications such as Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Full article

Improving land green utilization efficiency (LGUE) is essential for achieving sustainable development in China. This study investigates the spatiotemporal evolution and localized driving mechanisms of land green utilization efficiency across 127 cities in six major Chinese urban agglomerations from 2011 to 2023. Previous research frequently overlooks the spatial non-stationarity and structural interactions within regional land governance. To address this theoretical gap, a comprehensive multiscale framework is employed. This framework integrates the Super-SBM model, Dagum Gini decomposition, Spatial Markov chains, and Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression. The empirical results reveal an overall upward efficiency trajectory alongside persistent spatial inequalities. A pronounced scale-efficiency inversion is observed between developed eastern coastal and developing central-western inland regions. Furthermore, spatial interaction analysis identifies a significant backwash effect. This mechanism constrains the upward mobility of peripheral cities adjacent to high-efficiency core nodes. The multiscale regression demonstrates substantial spatial heterogeneity in the effects of key driving factors. Elements such as industrial structure and financial development exhibit highly localized associations dependent on regional institutional contexts. These findings bridge macroeconomic growth models with micro-environmental governance. The study provides critical empirical evidence for shifting from uniform administrative management to spatially targeted regional policy frameworks. Full article

Robust manipulation of small, densely stacked objects remains a challenging problem due to severe occlusions and geometric ambiguities, particularly under single-view sensing conditions. When observed using a single RGB-D sensor, adjacent surfaces of featureless cuboid objects, such as Jenga blocks, often merge in depth measurements, making reliable instance separation and pose estimation difficult. This paper presents a strategy-driven perception and manipulation framework for the robotic rearrangement of randomly stacked Jenga blocks under single RGB-D sensor constraints. The proposed approach employs a heightmap-based perception pipeline that integrates color filtering with geometric reasoning to segment individual blocks and estimate manipulation-compatible poses. Beyond perception, the proposed system determines robot actions through a structured manipulation policy consisting of region-wise search for directly executable grasps, grasp candidate evaluation based on accessibility and collision risk, selective local regrasping for workspace reconfiguration, and placement mode selection between direct insertion and sliding-assisted placement. In this framework, controlled grasp-and-release actions are applied only when no directly executable candidate is found within the currently scanned region and a suitable recovery target can be identified, thereby transforming cluttered local arrangements into more executable states without requiring additional sensing modalities. Experimental results, conducted under competition-equivalent conditions, demonstrate a high task success rate of 99.02%, confirming the robustness and reliability of the proposed framework. The results show that strategy-driven manipulation can effectively compensate for perception limitations in single RGB-D sensor environments, enabling stable and efficient pick-and-place operations in dense clutter. Full article