Search Results (366)

Despite its many important health benefits, fish consumption is associated with a growing risk of toxicity due to increasing levels of environmental pollution. Therefore, this study compared the potential risks to human health associated with the consumption of imported fish and locally produced fish, which may be contaminated with toxic elements. A selection of the most commonly consumed fish in Poland, imported and domestic, was assayed for 11 trace elements in muscle tissue using ICP-AES, CV-AAS and GF-AAS. In general, the levels of toxic elements decreased according to the following sequence: As > Hg > Cd > Pb; however, the values of lead were slightly higher than those of cadmium in cod. All imported fish contained significantly more cadmium than the Polish species. Our assessment of EDI, THQ, TTHQ, TWI, PTMI and BMDL₀₁ indicates that typical levels of consumption of fish do not pose a risk based on the assumed intake. The highest TTHQ was observed in tilapia, but it did not exceed 0.169. This was well below the acceptable value. Hence, the consumption of these fish does not appear to entail any non-carcinogenic or carcinogenic health risks. In addition, the estimated consumer risk parameters indicate no risk to consumer health in the short term; however, the presence of these elements may present a long-term hazard due to the potential for bioaccumulation. Continuous monitoring of trace element concentrations, especially toxic ones, is recommended for the protection of communities in both local and global contexts. Our findings provide a clearer picture of the health risk associated with the consumption of fish in the Polish market. Full article

This work presents a systematic literature review of powder-gas jet stream (PGJS) characterisation techniques for coaxial nozzles in the laser directed energy deposition process (L-DEDp). The analysis includes thirty-four camera-based and four weight-based techniques. In weight-based techniques, the mapping of powder concentration is made by measuring the powder flow rate in certain areas within the PGJS. Despite being cost-effective, these methods are time-consuming, invasive, and less suitable for real-time monitoring. Camera-based techniques use laser light and a camera to capture particle intensities, allowing for the non-intrusive measurement of powder distribution. Despite its advantage, limitations are reported in the literature regarding the techniques. Detecting dense or fine powder flows accurately is challenging. Two-dimensional images cannot fully represent the jet’s three-dimensional structure, relying on image processing algorithms for the results. However, the non-existence of a common standard metric for evaluating and comparing results across various setups is a significant gap, as each characterisation often needs to be performed on a case-by-case basis. To address these challenges, a basic reporting structure is suggested to enable a standardised assessment of PGJS measurements, thereby supporting process control and quality assurance in L-DEDp applications. Full article

Geological Disasters (Geo-disasters) are common in the Ili River Basin, with extreme precipitation being a major triggering factor. As the frequency and intensity of these events increase, the associated risks also rise. This study proposes a hazard assessment framework that integrates extreme precipitation recurrence periods with Geo-disaster susceptibility. Furthermore, based on a comprehensive risk assessment model encompassing hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and disaster mitigation capacity, the study evaluates Geo-disaster risk in the Ili River Basin under extreme precipitation conditions. Hazard levels are assessed by integrating geo-disaster susceptibility with recurrence periods of extreme precipitation, resulting in hazard and risk maps under various conditions. The susceptibility indicator system is refined using K-means clustering, the certainty factor (CF) model, and Pearson correlation to reduce redundancy. Key findings include: (a) Geo-disasters are influenced by a combination of factors. High-susceptibility areas are typically found in moderately sloped terrain (8.5–17.64°) at elevations between 1412 m and 2234 m, especially on east- and southeast-facing slopes. Lithology, soil, hydrology, fault proximity, and the topographic wetness index (TWI) are the primary influences, while high NDVI values reduce susceptibility. (b) The hazard pattern varies with the recurrence period of extreme precipitation. Shorter periods lead to broader high-hazard zones, while longer periods concentrate hazards, particularly in Yining City. (c) Exposure is higher in the east, vulnerability aligns with transportation networks, and disaster mitigation capacity is stronger in the north, particularly in Yining. (d) Low-risk areas are found in valleys and flat terrains, while medium to high-risk zones concentrate in southeastern Zhaosu, Tekes, and Gongliu counties. Some economically active regions require special attention due to their high exposure and vulnerability. Full article

Older adults face unique challenges related to hydration, particularly within the context of psychosocial determinants. This study aimed to examine the associations between total water intake (TWI), beverage variety, social capital, and health-related quality of life. We hypothesized that their ability to access, purchase, prepare, and drink a variety of beverages towards optimal TWI is affected by their physical/mental health and social support. To test the hypothesis, a cross-sectional design was implemented. We evaluated TWI, social capital, and Health-Related Quality Of Life, using the Water Balance Questionnaire, Social Capital Questionnaire, and SF-36, respectively, in 890 free-living participants (49.6% male), aged >65 years, recruited in Metropolitan Athens and Crete, Greece. TWI, 80% from beverages, was 2.6 ± 0.7 L in men and 2.4 ± 0.8 L in women and was associated with beverage variety (4.1 ± 1.0 in men, 3.9 ± 1.1 in women). Social capital, mental health, and variety of beverages were significant predictors of TWI; for each increased unit of the aforementioned predictors, TWI increased to 9.1, 6.8, and 183.5 mL, respectively. Spatial and gender differences were observed in social capital score and its components and in Health-Related Quality Of Life and its components, thus reflecting differences in social support and in functional health, plausibly linked to barriers/enablers to TWI. These findings highlight the potential importance of addressing psychosocial factors to support hydration in older adults. Full article

In the course of digitalization, the importance of modeling and simulating real-world processes in a computer is rapidly increasing. Simulations are now in everyday use in many areas. For example, simulations are used to gain a better understanding of the real experiment, to plan new experiments, or to analyze existing experiments. Simulations are now also increasingly being used as an essential component of a real measurement, usually as part of an inverse problem. To ensure confidence in the results of such virtual measurements, traceability and methods for evaluating uncertainty are needed. In this paper, the challenges and benefits inherent to virtual metrology techniques are shown using three examples from different metrological fields: the virtual coordinate measuring machine, the tilted-wave interferometer, and the virtual flow meter. Full article

This study examines the use of a spatial multi-criteria approach based on GIS and AHP techniques to model landslide risk in the Utcubamba river basin, Peru. The methodology consisted of selecting twelve triggering variables: slope angle, geology, precipitation, distance to faults, drainage density, TWI, relative relief, profile curve, land use, elevation, distance to roads, and distance to population centers. These variables were then analyzed using the AHP method and then integrated into a GIS environment, where the weighted linear combination (WLC) method was used to map landslide risk. The risk was categorized into five classes, ranging from very low (1) to very high (5). The main results indicate that 32.81% of the area analyzed in the Utcubamba river basin presents a high and very high risk of landslides. The high-risk areas are mainly located in the southern part of the basin and coincide with areas with steep slopes, high rainfall, and proximity to population centers or communication routes. The model generated was highly accurate (AUC of 0.82), confirming that the integration of the AHP method with GIS allows for the precise identification of critical areas, which is useful for territorial planning, the prioritization of interventions, and emergency management, making it a reliable and replicable methodology in other parts of Peru. Full article

Background: Adequate hydration for preschool children (36–72 months) is critical for their healthy growth, cognitive development, and long-term well-being. However, there is still a lack of reliable baseline data in China to inform water intake guidelines for this age group. Methods: In this study, a cross-sectional analysis was conducted using data from the 2018–2019 Dietary Survey of Infants and Young Children in China, including 676 healthy preschool children. Water and energy intake were estimated using four-day food diaries. Their daily total water intake (TWI) and total energy intake (TEI) were evaluated, and the contributions of beverages and foods to TWI and TEI were analyzed, respectively. The TWI was compared with the adequate intake (AI) set by the Chinese Nutrition Society, and the correlations between water and energy intake were explored. Results: The results show that the median daily TWI was 1218 mL, with 667 mL (55.7%, r = 0.824) from beverages and 520 mL (44.3%, r = 0.691) from foods. Among beverages, plain water (74.4%, r = 0.903) and milk and milk derivatives (MMDs, 20.9%, r = 0.443) were the main contributors, while staple foods, dishes, and soup contributed the majority of the water from foods. Only 19.4% of children’s TWI met the AI level, and their water and energy intake was significantly higher than those who did not. The median daily TEI was 994 kcal, with 739 kcal (77.2%, r = 0.806) from foods and 198 kcal (22.8%, r = 0.644) from beverages. MMDs accounted for 83.1% of beverage energy (r = 0.880). Boys consumed more beverages than girls, especially in the 37–48 months group. Conclusions: As the first nationally representative study of TWI among Chinese preschool children, these findings reveal a substantial gap between actual intake and current recommendations, and highlight the need to revise reference values and improve hydration guidance in early childhood. Full article

Wild edible mushrooms are increasingly recognised for their nutritional and therapeutic potential, owing to their richness in bioactive compounds and antioxidant properties. This study assessed the chemical composition, antioxidant capacity, and bioaccumulation of heavy metals (Cd, Pb, Ni) in Boletus edulis, Imleria badia, and Leccinum scabrum collected from two forested regions of north-western Poland differing in anthropogenic influence and soil characteristics. The analysis encompassed structural polysaccharides (β- and α-glucans, chitin), carotenoids, L-ascorbic acid, phenolic and organic acids. B. edulis exhibited the highest β-glucan and lycopene contents, but also the greatest cadmium accumulation. I. badia was distinguished by elevated ascorbic and citric acid levels and the strongest DPPH radical scavenging activity, while L. scabrum showed the highest ABTS and FRAP antioxidant capacities and accumulated quinic acid and catechin. Principal component analysis indicated strong correlations between antioxidant activity and phenolic acids, while cadmium levels were inversely associated with antioxidant potential and positively correlated with chitin. Although all metal concentrations remained within EU food safety limits, B. edulis showed consistent cadmium bioaccumulation. From a practical perspective, the results highlight the importance of species selection and sourcing location when considering wild mushrooms for consumption or processing, particularly in the context of nutritional value and contaminant load. Importantly, regular or excessive consumption of B. edulis may result in exceeding the tolerable weekly intake (TWI) levels for cadmium and nickel, which warrants particular attention from a food safety perspective. These findings underscore the influence of species-specific traits and environmental conditions on mushroom biochemical profiles and support their potential as functional foods, provided that metal contents are adequately monitored. Full article

Wet areas, which are locations in the landscape that consistently retain moisture, and channel networks are important landscape compartments, with key hydrological and ecological functions. Hence, defining their spatial boundaries is an important step towards sustainable watershed management. In catchments of developing countries, wet areas and small order channels of river networks are rarely mapped, although they represent a crucial component of local livelihoods and ecosystems. In this study, topographic attributes generated with a 30 m SRTM DEM were used to map wet areas and stream networks of two tropical catchments in Central Brazil. The topographic attributes for wet areas were the local slope and the slope curvature, and the Topographic Wetness Index (TWI) was used to delineate the stream networks. Threshold values of the selected topographic attributes were calibrated in the Santa Maria catchment, comparing the synthetically generated wet areas and drainage networks with corresponding reference (map) features, and validated in the nearby Santa Maria basin. Drainage network and wet area delineation accuracies were estimated using random basin transects and multi-criteria and confusion matrix methods. The drainage network accuracies were 67.2% and 70.7%, and wet area accuracies were 72.7% and 73.8%, for the Santa Maria and Gama catchments, respectively, being equivalent or higher than previous studies. The mapping errors resulted from model incompleteness, DEM vertical inaccuracy, and cartographic misrepresentation of the reference topographic maps. The study’s novelty is the use of readily available information to map, with simplicity and robustness, wet areas and channel initiation in data-scarce, tropical environments. Full article

Landslide susceptibility assessment is critical for hazard mitigation and land-use planning. This study evaluates the impact of two different non-landslide sampling methods—random sampling and sampling constrained by the Global Landslide Hazard Map (GLHM)—on the performance of various machine learning and deep learning models, including Naïve Bayes (NB), Support Vector Machine (SVM), SVM-Random Forest hybrid (SVM-RF), and XGBoost. The study area is a 2 km buffer zone along the Duku Highway in Xinjiang, China, with 102 landslide and 102 non-landslide points extracted by aforementioned sampling methods. Models were tested using ROC curves and non-parametric significance tests based on 20 repetitions of 5-fold spatial cross-validation data. GLHM sampling consistently improved AUROC and accuracy across all models (e.g., AUROC gains: NB +8.44, SVM +7.11, SVM–RF +3.45, XGBoost +3.04; accuracy gains: NB +11.30%, SVM +8.33%, SVM–RF +7.40%, XGBoost +8.31%). XGBoost delivered the best performance under both sampling strategies, reaching 94.61% AUROC and 84.30% accuracy with GLHM sampling. SHAP analysis showed that GLHM sampling stabilized feature importance rankings, highlighting STI, TWI, and NDVI as the main controlling factors for landslides in the study area. These results highlight the importance of hazard-informed sampling to enhance landslide susceptibility modeling accuracy and interpretability. Full article

The presence of lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) can have considerable effects on the environment and on humans. The present study examines their levels in two lakes with different trophic levels located in northwestern Poland; their concentrations were determined in water and the bottom sediments, in common reed and in the organs of pike, bream and roach. The work also evaluates Pb and Cd bioavailability in bottom sediments, their potential for biomagnification, their bioaccumulation in the food chain and risk to human consumers. Metal concentrations were determined by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS). The geochemical fractions of the metals were isolated by sequential extraction. Both Pb and Cd demonstrated low bioavailability, with the carbonate fraction playing a key role in their bioconversion. The concentrations of Pb and Cd in some organs and tissue types of fish and reeds correlated with their levels in water and sediments. No biomagnification was observed between the studied fish species. Calculations based on BMDL, TWI and THQ concentrations found Pb and Cd levels in the edible parts of fish to be within permissible limits and not to pose any threat to consumer health. Full article

This paper describes the development of a new hybrid composite for the metal joints of aluminium and glass fibre composite adherents. The aluminium adherend is manufactured using friction stir-formed studs that are inserted into the composite adherend in the through-thickness direction during the composite manufacturing process, where the dry fibres are displaced to accommodate the studs before the resin infusion process. The materials used were AA6082-T6 aluminium and plain-woven E-glass fabric reinforced epoxy, with primary applications in naval vessels. This joining approach offers a cost-effective solution that does not require complicated onsite welding. The joint design was developed based on a simulation test program with finite element analysis, followed by experimental characterisation and validation. The design solution was analysed in terms of the force displacement response, sequence of load transfer, and characterisation of the joint failure modes. Full article

Groundwater systems are intrinsically linked to climate, with changing conditions significantly altering recharge, storage, and discharge processes, thereby impacting water availability and ecosystem integrity. Critical knowledge gaps persist regarding groundwater equilibrium timescales, water table dynamics, and their governing factors. This study develops a novel remote sensing framework to quantify factor controls on groundwater–climate interaction characteristics in the Heihe River Basin (HRB). High-resolution (0.005° × 0.005°) maps of groundwater response time (GRT) and water table ratio (WTR) were generated using multi-source geospatial data. Employing Geographical Convergent Cross Mapping (GCCM), we established causal relationships between GRT/WTR and their drivers, identifying key influences on groundwater dynamics. Generalized Additive Models (GAM) further quantified the relative contributions of climatic (precipitation, temperature), topographic (DEM, TWI), geologic (hydraulic conductivity, porosity, vadose zone thickness), and vegetative (NDVI, root depth, soil water) factors to GRT/WTR variability. Results indicate an average GRT of ~6.5 × 10⁸ years, with 7.36% of HRB exhibiting sub-century response times and 85.23% exceeding 1000 years. Recharge control dominates shrublands, wetlands, and croplands (WTR < 1), while topography control prevails in forests and barelands (WTR > 1). Key factors collectively explain 86.7% (GRT) and 75.9% (WTR) of observed variance, with spatial GRT variability driven primarily by hydraulic conductivity (34.3%), vadose zone thickness (13.5%), and precipitation (10.8%), while WTR variation is controlled by vadose zone thickness (19.2%), topographic wetness index (16.0%), and temperature (9.6%). These findings provide a scientifically rigorous basis for prioritizing groundwater conservation zones and designing climate-resilient water management policies in arid endorheic basins, with our high-resolution causal attribution framework offering transferable methodologies for global groundwater vulnerability assessments. Full article

Flood susceptibility modeling (FSM) plays a key role in advancing proactive disaster risk reduction and spatial planning. This research developed FSM for the Buzău River catchment in Romania—a region historically vulnerable to recurrent flood events—using four state-of-the-art ensemble boosting algorithms: AdaBoost, CatBoost, LightGBM, and XGBoost. Initially, a comprehensive set of 13 flood conditioning factors was assessed, which was subsequently narrowed down to 9 essential factors through multi-tier feature selection strategies. Analysis of performance via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) andprecision–recall curves showed only marginal differences between the models; however, CatBoost excelled with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.972 and an average precision (AP) of 0.971, with XGBoost following closely behind. The SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) analysis of the CatBoost model indicated that the Slope, Distance from Rivers, Topographic Wetness Index (TWI), and Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) are the key contributing factors. The novelty of this research is found in its comparative analysis of AdaBoost alongside three gradient boosting algorithms—CatBoost, LightGBM, and XGBoost—while utilizing explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) and a multi-tier feature selection strategy to create FSM that are precise and comprehensible. These strategies deliver robust tools for managing flood risks and reinforce the viability of data-driven modeling in the various catchments of Europe. Full article

The proliferation of malicious social bots poses severe threats to cybersecurity and social media information ecosystems. Existing detection methods often overlook the semantic value and emotional cues conveyed by emojis in user-generated tweets. To address this gap, we propose ESA-BotRGCN, an emoji-driven multi-modal detection framework that integrates semantic enhancement, sentiment analysis, and multi-dimensional feature modeling. Specifically, we first establish emoji–text mapping relationships using the Emoji Library, leverage GPT-4 to improve textual coherence, and generate tweet embeddings via RoBERTa. Subsequently, seven sentiment-based features are extracted to quantify statistical disparities in emotional expression patterns between bot and human accounts. An attention gating mechanism is further designed to dynamically fuse these sentiment features with user description, tweet content, numerical attributes, and categorical features. Finally, a Relational Graph Convolutional Network (RGCN) is employed to model heterogeneous social topology for robust bot detection. Experimental results on the TwiBot-20 benchmark dataset demonstrate that our method achieves a superior accuracy of 87.46%, significantly outperforming baseline models and validating the effectiveness of emoji-driven semantic and sentiment enhancement strategies. Full article