Search Results (128,594)

Macrophages play a central role in joint inflammation and bone destruction in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). While activator protein-1 (AP-1) transcription factors have been implicated in RA pathogenesis, the specific roles of individual AP-1 members in regulating synovial macrophages remain unclear. To address this, two public single-cell transcriptomic datasets were first analyzed to profile synovial macrophages, and then to identify AP-1 family members and associated pathways via differential expression and gene set enrichment analyses. JUND, FOSL2, and FOSB were found to be highly enriched in the RA synovium, and a distinct CXCL3⁺FOSL2⁺ macrophage subset was identified, characterized by pro-inflammatory, metabolic, and differentiation-related pathways. Intercellular communication analysis further revealed that this CXCL3⁺FOSL2⁺ macrophage subset interacted with ACKR1⁺ endothelial cells within the synovial microenvironment. Validation in a large-cohort bulk transcriptomic dataset, together with functional assays using in vitro FOSL2 knockdown in U937 cell lines, further confirmed FOSL2’s role in promoting macrophage-driven inflammation. Collectively, these findings indicate that CXCL3⁺FOSL2⁺ macrophages drive RA synovitis via the FOSL2/AP-1 axis, highlighting a potential therapeutic target. Full article

This article illuminates the cosmology of Raa Haqi (often called Dersim Alevism or Kurdish Alevism), a rarely examined strand within Alevi Studies. Existing scholarship’s emphasis on identity politics and sparse ethnography has left Raa Haqi’s mythological and cosmological dimensions underexplored. This paper approaches Raa Haqi through a dual authority framework: (1) Ocak lineages and Ocak–talip relations—sustained by kinship institutions like kirvelik, musahiplik, and communal rites such as the cem—and (2) jiares, non-human agents from the Batın realm that manifest in Zahir as sacred places, objects, and animals. Methodologically, I conduct a close, motif-based reading of folktales compiled by Caner Canerik (2019, Dersim Masalları I), treating them as ethnographic windows into living theology. The analysis shows that tales encode core principles—rızalık (mutual consent), ikrar (vow), sır (the secret knowledge), fasting and calendrical rites, ritual kinship, and moral economies involving humans, animals, and Batın beings. Dreams, metamorphosis, and jiare-centered orientations structure time–space, ethics, and authority beyond the Ocak, including in individual re-sacralizations of objects and sites. I conclude that these narratives do not merely reflect belief; they actively transmit, test, and renew Raa Haqi’s cosmological order, offering Alevi Studies a theory-grounded, source-proximate account of Kurdish Alevi mythic thought. Full article

This paper aims to conduct a gap analysis and explore the potential for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction in the tourism sector of Chiang Mai province, with the goal of promoting sustainable tourism. Chiang Mai is a major tourism hub in Thailand, located in the Northern Economic Corridor (NEC). The gap analysis of small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises will be examined across four dimensions: (1) management, (2) socio-economy, (3) cultural, and (4) environmental. In 2024, Chiang Mai’s tourism revenue accounted for 46.97% of the northern region’s total tourism revenue and 3.73% of Thailand’s total tourism revenue. Given this economic significance, the development of sustainable tourism should be accelerated to meet the expectations of new tourists who are increasingly concerned about the environment. To address this need, this study analyzes the gaps in small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises and assesses GHG emissions through interviews and surveys of 90 tourism-related establishments across nine sectors: hotels, restaurants and beverages, tour agencies, transportation, souvenirs, attractions and activities, spas and wellness, community-based tourism, and farm tourism. The total GHG emissions from these establishments were found to be 15,303.72 tCO₂eq. Moreover, if renewable energy from solar power were adopted, an installation capacity of 21,866.84 kWp would be required. Such a transition would not only reduce emissions, but also support low-carbon development in small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises and ultimately contribute to achieving net-zero tourism. Finally, this study contributes to the advancement of STGs 1–17, adapted from the SDGs 1–17, with particular emphasis on SDG 7 on clean energy and SDG 13 on climate change. Full article

Use of anticholinergic and sedative medications is potentially inappropriate in older adults due to associated adverse effects, including impaired cognitive and physical function. This study evaluated anticholinergic and sedative burden in Croatian community-dwelling older adults using the Drug Burden Index (DBI) and examined its association with self-reported health and healthcare utilization over 12 months. This observational, cross-sectional study, part of the EuroAgeism H2020 ESR 7 project, included conveniently sampled adults ≥ 65 years from community pharmacies in three Croatian regions. Data were collected using a standardized research questionnaire. DBI was used to quantify exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medications. Multivariate regression analyses examined associations between DBI and health outcomes, using logistic regression for binary outcomes and linear regression for self-reported health. Among 388 participants (63.7% female, median age 73), most had multimorbidity (median five diagnoses) and polypharmacy (63.9%), while 57% used at least one DBI medication—most commonly diazepam (15.5%) and tramadol (14.7%). High DBI (≥1) independently predicted more emergency department (ED) visits (OR = 2.45) and worse self-rated health (B = −0.26), but not hospitalization. High DBI in older adults was associated with more ED visits and poorer self-rated health, highlighting the need for targeted interventions to reduce anticholinergic and sedative use in this vulnerable population. Full article

Atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition and climate warming significantly influence soil nitrogen transformation processes. Nitrification, a key step in the N cycle, is primarily driven by ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB). However, their responses to environmental changes in warm-temperate shrub tussock grasslands—a major grassland type in China—remain poorly understood. In this study, we examined the effects of N addition and warming on the community composition of ammonia oxidizers and soil nitrification potential (NP) through pot experiments simulating field conditions. Our results demonstrated that (1) the AOB community was more responsive to N addition and warming than AOA, with the genus Nitrosospira increasing by 6.30–21.75% under treatments; (2) soil pH increased significantly under warming (from 6.53 to 6.86) but remained unchanged under N addition; (3) NP increased significantly under all treatment conditions, most markedly under warming alone (2.83-fold increase compared to the control); and (4) NP was positively correlated with both soil pH and the relative abundance of Nitrosospira. These findings suggest that warming and N deposition enhance nitrification in shrub tussock soil by altering AOB community structure and increasing soil pH. This study provides new insights into the microbial mechanisms driving N cycling in warm-temperate grasslands under global change. Full article

Background/Objectives: This cross-sectional study aimed to identify predictors of parent-reported health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in young children with early brain damage and severe motor dysfunction. It used baseline data from the PIH Multi Study, a randomized controlled trial evaluating an intensive, family-centered habilitation program for preschool children and their parents. Methods: Parent-reported HRQOL were measured using the CPCHILD questionnaire. Potential predictors included adaptive function (PEDI-CAT), gross motor function (GMFM-66), postural control and balance (ECAB), and communication function (FOCUS). These were selected to reflect the domains of the ICF-CY framework. Data were collected by professionals and by parents. Linear regression analyses were conducted to identify significant predictors. Results: Analyses included 65 children. Better adaptive skills, gross motor function, postural control, and communication all predicted higher parent-reported HRQOL. Adaptive skills—particularly in self-care and mobility—and gross motor function emerged as the strongest predictors. Conclusions: The study highlights the importance of targeting basic functional skills in early habilitation efforts for children with severe disabilities. The findings support a multidimensional understanding of health in line with the ICF-CY framework and underline the value of early, individualized, and family-centered interventions. Future research should investigate these predictors longitudinally and explore ways to integrate children’s own perspectives in assessment of HRQOL. Full article

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has emerged as a transformative technology for intelligent transportation systems. Index modulation (IM), recognized for its high robustness and energy efficiency (EE), has been successfully incorporated into ISAC systems. However, most existing IM-based ISAC schemes overlook the spatial multiplexing potential of millimeter-wave channels and remain confined to single-hop vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) setups, failing to address the challenges of energy consumption and noise accumulation in real-world multi-hop V2V networks with complex road topologies. To bridge this gap, we propose a spatial scattering modulation-based ISAC (ISAC-SSM) scheme and introduce it to multi-hop V2V networks. The proposed scheme leverages the sensed positioning information to select maximum signal-to-noise ratio relay vehicles and employs a detect-amplify-and-forward (DAF) protocol to mitigate noise propagation, while utilizing sensed angle data for Doppler compensation to enhance communication reliability. At each hop, the transmitter modulates index bits on the angular-domain spatial directions of scattering clusters, achieving higher EE. We initially derive a closed-form bit error rate expression and Chernoff upper bound for the proposed DAF ISAC-SSM under multi-hop V2V networks. Both theoretical analyses and Monte Carlo simulations have been made and demonstrate the superiority of DAF ISAC-SSM over existing alternatives in terms of EE and error performance. Specifically, in a two-hop network with 12 scattering clusters, compared with DAF ISAC-conventional spatial multiplexing, DAF ISAC-maximum beamforming, and DAF ISAC-random beamforming, the proposed DAF ISAC-SSM scheme can achieve a coding gain of 1.5 dB, 2 dB, and 4 dB, respectively. Moreover, it shows robust performance with less than a 1.5 dB error degradation under 0.018 Doppler shifts, thereby verifying its superiority in practical vehicular environments. Full article

Background: An epidemiological survey of Onchocerca volvulus infection and onchocerciasis in Igbo-Eze North Local Government Area, Enugu State, Nigeria, was undertaken to assess its distribution and risks among individuals in the area. Methods: A total of 201 residents who have lived in the study area for at least one year were recruited. At recruitment, they were examined using a rapid assessment method. Their demographic information and risk factors were obtained using a structured questionnaire. Results: The overall prevalence for onchocerciasis was 3.5% (7/201). The prevalence of onchocerciasis was observed to be non-significantly (p = 0.689) different among the studied communities. The sex and age-related prevalence differences were non-significant (p > 0.05); however, onchocerciasis was more prevalent among males and those between 30 and 39 years of age. The prevalence of onchocerciasis was higher (p = 0.001) among farmers/fishermen. The significant risk associated with onchocerciasis is the proximity of the water body to houses (p = 0.034). Conclusions: The onchocerciasis prevalence was low and not dependent on sex or age but rather occupation. Risks to onchocerciasis are environmental and occupational, with chances of scaled up prevalence and burden overtime if unchecked. There is a need for awareness campaigning to enable proper education of the people about onchocerciasis in the area and neighboring communities. Full article

The research investigated how science education through integrated sustainability practices helps primary school students develop environmental identity while studying sustainability practices in their daily schoolwork. The research investigated methods to incorporate sustainability principles into regular school operations, which would lead students toward environmentally responsible conduct. The research used qualitative methods to achieve its goals. The research team conducted 60 sessions of semi-structured interviews and school observations in private schools located in Riyadh and Al-Ahsa regions of Saudi Arabia. The Grounded Theory method enabled researchers to generate concepts that directly stem from the collected data. The research results demonstrated that schools need to implement sustainability practices to teach students about nature-human connections and develop environmental values and sustainable practices and improve daily environmental practices and establish sustainable practices as school examples. The study demonstrated that students developed stronger environmental identity through daily school activities that incorporated sustainability education. Furthermore, students’ environmental behaviors improved through participation in activities such as waste sorting and tree planting. Based on these findings, the study recommends strengthening the role of science education in promoting sustainability through practical activities, training teachers in integrative environmental education strategies, developing curricula that emphasize sustainable practices, and involving parents in raising environmental awareness within the school community. Full article

This paper focuses on the efficient fine-tuning of large language models within the federated learning framework. To address the performance bottlenecks caused by multi-source heterogeneity and structural inconsistency, a structure-aware federated fine-tuning method is proposed. The method incorporates a graph representation module (GRM) to model internal structural relationships within text and employs a segmentation mechanism (SM) to reconstruct and align semantic structures across inputs, thereby enhancing structural robustness and generalization under non-IID (non-Independent and Identically Distributed) settings. During training, the method ensures data locality and integrates structural pruning with gradient encryption (SPGE) strategies to balance privacy preservation and communication efficiency. Compared with representative federated fine-tuning baselines such as FedNLP and FedPrompt, the proposed method achieves consistent accuracy and F1-score improvements across multiple tasks. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, extensive comparative experiments are conducted across tasks of text classification, named entity recognition, and question answering, using multiple datasets with diverse structures and heterogeneity levels. Experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms existing federated fine-tuning strategies on most tasks, achieving higher performance while preserving privacy, and demonstrating strong practical applicability and generalization potential. Full article

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping skill expectations across media, marketing, and journalism, however, university curricula are not evolving at a comparable speed. To quantify the resulting curriculum–skill gap in communication-related programs, two synchronous corpora were assembled for the period July 2024–June 2025: 66 course descriptions from six leading UK universities and 107 graduate-to-mid-level job advertisements in communications, digital media, advertising, and public relations. Alignment around AI, datafication, and platform governance was assessed through a three-stage natural-language-processing workflow: a dual-tier AI-keyword index, comparative TF–IDF salience, and latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling with bootstrap uncertainty. Curricula devoted 6.0% of their vocabulary to AI plus data/platform terms, whereas job ads allocated only 2.3% (χ² = 314.4, p < 0.001), indicating a conceptual-critical emphasis on ethics, power, and societal impact in the academy versus an operational focus on SEO, multichannel analytics, and campaign performance in recruitment discourse. Topic modeling corroborated this divergence: universities foregrounded themes labelled “Politics, Power & Governance”, while advertisers concentrated on “Campaign Execution & Performance”. Environmental and social externalities of AI—central to the Special Issue theme—were foregrounded in curricula but remained virtually absent from job advertisements. The findings are interpreted as an extension of technology-biased-skill-change theory to communication disciplines, and it is suggested that studio-based micro-credentials in automation workflows, dashboard visualization, and sustainable AI practice be embedded without relinquishing critical reflexivity, thereby narrowing the curriculum–skill gap and fostering environmentally, socially, and economically responsible media innovation. With respect to the novelty of this research, it constitutes the first large-scale, data-driven corpus analysis that empirically assessed the AI-related curriculum–skill gap in communication disciplines, thereby extending technology-biased-skill-change theory into this field. Full article

The aim of this paper is to highlight Tribes’ efforts to Indigenize their child welfare systems through the instrument of Tribal law. Since its founding, the United States has strategically focused on Native children in its efforts to assimilate Native Peoples. By the mid-twentieth century, federal and state governments removed nearly one in four Native children from their homes—and permanently placed most in non-Native care. In 1978, Congress recognized Tribes’ inherent authority to protect their children through the Indian Child Welfare Act. Tribal nations responded by creating their own child welfare laws and programs, but at least initially, most were not predicated on their respective Tribes’ cultures, values, and worldviews. This article considers the more recent shift among Tribal nations toward Indigenization of their child welfare systems and points to examples of this shift found in Tribal law. It reviews statements of purpose within the codes, which lay the groundwork for culturally infused child protection; statements about “best interests,” which communicate Tribal concepts about the foundations of children’s wellbeing; and definitions of “family,” which can vary greatly from western views. Reflection on these changes yields several lessons for U.S.-based Tribal nations in their ongoing efforts to promote their own visions of child wellbeing and, more generally, for other governments whose responsibilities include improving child welfare. Full article

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of numerous battery-powered sensor nodes that operate with limited energy, computation, and communication capabilities. Designing routing strategies that are both energy-efficient and attack-resilient is essential for extending network lifetime and ensuring secure data delivery. This paper proposes Adaptive Federated Reinforcement Learning-Hunger Games Search (AFRL-HGS), a Hybrid Routing framework that integrates multiple advanced techniques. At the node level, tabular Q-learning enables each sensor node to act as a reinforcement learning agent, making next-hop decisions based on discretized state features such as residual energy, distance to sink, congestion, path quality, and security. At the network level, Federated Reinforcement Learning (FRL) allows the sink node to aggregate local Q-tables using adaptive, energy- and performance-weighted contributions, with Polyak-based blending to preserve stability. The binary Hunger Games Search (HGS) metaheuristic initializes Cluster Head (CH) selection and routing, providing a well-structured topology that accelerates convergence. Security is enforced as a constraint through a lightweight trust and anomaly detection module, which fuses reliability estimates with residual-based anomaly detection using Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) on Round-Trip Time (RTT) and loss metrics. The framework further incorporates energy-accounted control plane operations with dual-format HELLO and hierarchical ADVERTISE/Service-ADVERTISE (SrvADVERTISE) messages to maintain the routing tables. Evaluation is performed in a hybrid testbed using the Graphical Network Simulator-3 (GNS3) for large-scale simulation and Kali Linux for live adversarial traffic injection, ensuring both reproducibility and realism. The proposed AFRL-HGS framework offers a scalable, secure, and energy-efficient routing solution for next-generation WSN deployments. Full article

This study constructs a neural-network-inspired multi-layer machine learning model (RQLNet) to measure and analyze the effects of tail risk spillover and its associated sensitivities to macroeconomic factors among petroleum supply chain enterprises. On this basis, the study constructs a tail risk spillover network and analyzes its network-level structural features. The results show the following: (1) The proposed model improves the accuracy of tail risk measurement while addressing the issue of excessive penalization in spillover weights, offering enhanced interpretability and structural stability and making it particularly suitable for high-dimensional tail risk estimation. (2) Tail risk spillovers propagate from up- and midstream to downstream and ultimately to end enterprises. Structurally, the up- and midstream are the main sources, whereas the downstream and end enterprises are the primary recipients. (3) The tail risk sensitivities of Chinese petroleum supply chain enterprises exhibit significant differences across macroeconomic factors and across types of enterprises. Overall, the sensitivities to CIMV and LS are higher. (4) The network evolves in stages: during trade frictions, spillovers accelerate and core nodes strengthen; during public-health events, intra-community cohesion increases and cross-community spillovers decline; in the recovery phase, cross-community links resume and concentrate on core nodes; and during geopolitical conflicts, spillovers are core-dominated and cross-community transmission accelerates. Full article

In agricultural systems, excessive application of nitrogen fertilizer often leads to low nitrogen use efficiency and environmental pollution. In order to solve this problem, we studied the synergistic effect of biochar and nitrogen fertilizer on pepper yield, quality and rhizosphere soil health. This study was conducted under a temperate continental monsoon climate in Changchun, China. Using ‘Jinfu 803’ pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) as the test material, biochar was prepared from corn straw under oxygen-limited conditions at 500 °C. the comprehensive effects of the combined application of biochar (0, 0.7% soil mass ratio) and nitrogen fertilizer (0, 75, 375, 675 kg/hm² pure nitrogen) on pepper yield, fruit quality, rhizosphere soil physicochemical properties, and microbial community structure were studied. Redundancy analysis (RDA), high-throughput sequencing, and multivariate statistical methods were used to analyze the association patterns between soil environmental factors and microbial functional groups. The results showed that the combined application of biochar and nitrogen fertilizer significantly improved soil porosity (increased by 12.3–28.6%) and nutrient content, increased yield, and improved quality, among which the treatment of 0.7% biochar combined with 375 kg/hm² nitrogen fertilizer (B1N2) had the best effect. Under this treatment, the pepper yield reached 24,854.1 kg/hm², which was 42.35% higher than that of the control (B0N0). Notably, the nitrogen partial factor productivity (PFPN) of the B1N2 treatment (66.3 kg/kg) was significantly higher than that of the corresponding treatment without biochar and was not significantly lower than that of the high-nitrogen B1N3 treatment. The contents of soluble sugar and vitamin C in fruits increased by 51.18% and 39.16%, respectively. Redundancy analysis (RDA) revealed that the bacterial community structure was primarily shaped by soil pH, organic matter, and porosity, while the fungal community was predominantly influenced by alkaline hydrolyzable nitrogen and total nitrogen. Furthermore, the B1N2 treatment specifically enriched key functional microbial taxa, such as Chloroflexi (involved in carbon cycling) and Mortierellomycota (phosphate-solubilizing), which showed significant positive correlations with improved soil properties. In conclusion, B1N2 is the optimal treatment combination as it improves soil physical conditions, increases nutrient content, optimizes microbial community structure, and enhances pepper yield and quality. Full article