Search Results (317)

The cryopreservation of Chengde polled goat semen plays a critical role in conserving genetic resources, enhancing the utilization efficiency of superior breeding bucks, and advancing artificial insemination techniques. However, spermatozoa are vulnerable to oxidative stress during the freezing process, which can significantly compromise sperm motility. In this study, pooled ejaculates from multiple bucks were divided into six groups, including a control group cryopreserved with conventional extender and five treatment groups supplemented with sericin at concentrations of 0.2%, 0.4%, 0.6%, 0.8%, and 1.0% (w/v). The results demonstrated that supplementation of the semen cryoprotectant with 0.6% sericin significantly improved post-thaw sperm viability to 65.25% in Chengde hornless goats, while concurrently reducing both the sperm abnormality rate (p < 0.05) and intracellular ROS levels (p < 0.05). Integrated TMT proteomics and LC/MS metabolomics further compared the 0.6% sericin group with the frozen control group and identified 162 differentially expressed proteins and 109 differential metabolites between the sericin supplementation and frozen control groups. Functional analysis revealed the significant enrichment of differential metabolites, such as glutamine, in the alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism pathway, concomitant with the marked upregulation of antioxidant proteins including LRP8, GSTM3, and SIRT2. Thus, 0.6% sericin enhances cryotolerance primarily by improving sperm viability, reducing oxidative damage, and sustaining energy metabolism. These findings indicate that sericin enhances cryotolerance by reducing oxidative damage and supporting metabolic function, providing preliminary molecular insights for improving goat semen cryopreservation. Full article

Network monitoring is becoming increasingly challenging as networks grow in scale, speed, and complexity. The evolution of monitoring approaches reflects a shift from device-centric, localized techniques toward network-wide observability enabled by modern networking paradigms. Early methods like SNMP polling and NetFlow provided basic insights but struggled with real-time visibility in large, dynamic environments. The emergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) introduced centralized control and a global view of network state, opening the door to more coordinated and programmable measurement strategies. More recently, programmable data planes (e.g., P4-based switches) and in-band telemetry frameworks have allowed fine grained, line rate data collection directly from traffic, reducing overhead and latency compared to traditional polling. These developments mark a move away from single point or per flow analysis toward holistic monitoring woven throughout the network fabric. In this survey, we systematically review the state of the art in network-wide monitoring. We define key concepts (topologies, flows, telemetry, observability) and trace the progression of monitoring architectures from traditional networks to SDN to fully programmable networks. We introduce a taxonomy spanning local device measures, path level techniques, global network-wide methods, and hybrid approaches. Finally, we summarize open research challenges and future directions, highlighting that modern networks demand monitoring frameworks that are not only scalable and real-time but also tightly integrated with network control and automation. Full article

Smart logistics systems generate massive amounts of data, such as images and videos, requiring real-time processing in edge clusters. However, the edge cluster systems face performance bottlenecks in reception and forwarding high-concurrency data streams from numerous smart terminals, resulting in degraded processing efficiency. To address this issue, a novel high-performance data stream model called CBPS-DPDK is proposed. CBPS-DPDK integrates the DPDK framework from Intel corporations with a content-based publish/subscribe model enhanced by semantic filtering. This model adopts a three-tier optimization architecture. First, the user-space data plane is restructured using DPDK to avoid kernel context switch overhead via zero-copy and polling. Second, semantic enhancement is introduced into the publish/subscribe model to reduce the coupling between data producers and consumers through subscription matching and priority queuing. Finally, a hierarchical load balancing strategy ensures reliable data transmission under high concurrency. Experimental results show that CBPS-DPDK significantly outperforms two baselines—OSKT (kernel-based data forwarding) and DPDK-only (DPDK). Relative to the OSKT baseline, DPDK-only achieves improvements of 37.5% in latency, 11.1% in throughput, and 9.1% in VMAF; CBPS-DPDK further increases these to 51.8%, 18.3%, and 11.2%, respectively. In addition, compared with the traditional publish–subscribe system NATS, CBPS-DPDK maintains lower delay, higher throughput, and more balanced CPU and memory utilization under saturated workloads, demonstrating its effectiveness for real-time, high-concurrency edge scenarios. Full article

With the increasing deployment of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms in scenarios such as disaster response, environmental monitoring, and military reconnaissance, the need for secure and scalable formation control has become critical. Traditional centralized architectures face challenges such as limited scalability, communication bottlenecks, and single points of failure in large-scale swarm coordination. To address these issues, this paper proposes a blockchain-based decentralized formation control framework that integrates smart contracts to manage UAV registration, identity authentication, formation assignment, and positional coordination. The system follows a leader–follower structure, where the leader broadcasts formation tasks via on-chain events, while followers respond in real-time through event-driven mechanisms. A parameterized control model based on dynamic angle and distance adjustments is employed to support various formations, including V-shape, line, and circular configurations. The transformation from relative to geographic positions is achieved using Haversine and Euclidean methods. Experimental validation in a simulated environment demonstrates that the proposed method achieves lower communication latency and better responsiveness compared to polling-based schemes, while offering enhanced scalability and robustness. This work provides a feasible and secure decentralized control solution for future UAV swarm systems. Full article

Three-level non-inverting buck–boost converters are promising for electric vehicle charging stations due to their wide voltage regulation capability and bidirectional power flow. However, the number of three-level operating states is four times that of two-level operating states, and the lack of a unified switching state selection mechanism leads to serious challenges in its application. To address these issues, a finite control set model predictive control (FCS-MPC) strategy is proposed, which can determine the optimal set and select the best switching state from the excessive number of states. Not only does the proposed method achieve fast regulation over a wide voltage range, but it also maintains the input- and output-side capacitor voltage balance simultaneously. A further key advantage is that the number of switching actions in adjacent cycles is minimized. Finally, a hardware-in-the-loop experimental platform is built, and the proposed control method can realize smooth transitions between multiple operation modes without the need for detecting modes. In addition, the state polling range and the number of switching actions are superior to conventional predictive control, which provides an effective solution for high-performance multilevel converter control in energy systems. Full article

Social media promotion of harmful products (e.g., combustible tobacco) poses a public health threat. However, strategies that amplify exposure to and engagement with such content remain understudied. This study aims to characterize strategies boosting cigar, little cigar, and cigarillo (CLCC) marketing visibility, referrals, and engagement on Instagram. Using keyword rules, we collected publicly available CLCC-related Instagram posts from CrowdTangle for a six-year period from August 2016 to October 2021. Posts were categorized as commercial (e.g., posts by tobacco brands or vendors) or organic and were coded for consumer engagement (CE) strategies (e.g., presence of prompts to like/share) using a combination of machine learning methods and human coding. Temporal engagement trends were analyzed using metadata. A total of 320,488 CLCC-related public posts were collected, with 44.6% (n = 142,875) identified as overtly commercial. Of these, 33.5% (n = 47,832) contained CE cues, including discounts and giveaways for tagging peers, liking, commenting, or following CLCC brands and spokesperson/influencers accounts, as well as calls to participate in contests and polls. Overtly commercial CE messages consistently garnered more comments per post and likes per post than non-CE commercial posts. There was a significant upward trend in the rate of comments on CE posts, suggesting growing effectiveness in eliciting user interaction. The proliferation of and high level of engagement with cigar-related promotional messages on Instagram demonstrate the need for public health surveillance and regulation of the evolving strategies promoting CLCC marketing exposure, reach, and engagement on social media. Full article

Horns in Bovidae, including bovines, sheep, and goats, are evolutionarily conserved cranial structures derived from cranial neural crest cells and composed of a bony core, dermis, epidermis, and keratinous sheath. Their development follows a shared trajectory across species, progressing through placode, fleshy, and mature stages. Genetic regulators such as RXFP2, FOXL2, HOXD1, and TWIST1 have been identified as pivotal determinants controlling horn morphogenesis, sexual dimorphism, and the polled phenotype. This review synthesizes current advances in the evolutionary origins, morphological progression, and genetic regulation of horn formation in bovines, sheep, and goats to provide a comprehensive understanding of horn formation and variation. These findings lay the groundwork for future efforts to manipulate horn traits through genetic selection or genome editing, with implications for animal welfare and breeding. Full article

This paper explores the concept of ephemeral cultural landscapes through the lens of public election advertising during the 2025 Australian Federal election in the regional city of Albury, New South Wales. Framing election signage as a transient cultural landscape, the study assesses the distribution of election signage (corflutes) disseminated by political candidates against demographic and socio-economic criteria of the electorate. The paper examines how corflutes and symbolic signage reflect personal agency, spatial contestation, and community engagement within urban and suburban environments. A detailed windscreen survey was conducted across Albury over three days immediately prior to and on election day, recording 193 instances of campaign signage and mapping their spatial distribution in relation to polling booth catchments, population density, generational cohorts, and socio-economic status. The data reveal stark differences between traditional party (Greens, Labor, Liberal) strategies and that of the independent candidate whose campaign was marked by grassroots support and creative symbolism, notably the use of orange corflutes shaped like emus. The independent’s campaign relied on personal property displays, signaling civic engagement and a bottom-up assertion of political identity. While signage for major parties largely disappeared within days of the election, many of the independent’s symbolic emus persisted, blurring the temporal boundaries of the ephemeral landscape and extending its visual presence well beyond the formal campaign period. The study argues that these ephemeral landscapes, though transitory, are powerful cultural expressions of political identity, visibility, and territoriality shaping public and private spaces both materially and symbolically. Ultimately, the election signage in Albury serves as a case study for understanding how ephemeral landscapes can materially and symbolically shape public space during moments of civic expression. Full article

Electronic voting allows people to participate more easily in their country’s electoral events. Nevertheless, its adoption is still far from widespread. In this paper, we provide a detailed survey of the state of adoption worldwide and investigate which socio-economic factors may influence such an adoption. Its usage is wider in North and South America, while remaining considerably lower in Europe and Asia and practically absent in Africa. We distinguish between e-voting, which maintains the traditional polling station structure while adding technological components, and i-voting, which enables remote participation from any location using personal devices. Five factors (country’s surface and population, Gross Domestic Product, Internet Usage, and Democracy Index) are investigated to predict adoption, and an accuracy of over 79% is achieved through a machine learning random forest model. Larger, wealthier, and more democratic countries are typically associated with a larger adoption of internet voting. Full article

Saudi Vision 2030 seeks to improve social sustainability in the Kingdom through comprehensive economic and social reforms. This study investigates whether these reforms are associated with changes in subjective well-being (SWB), commonly understood as individuals’ experienced quality of life. Using Gallup World Poll data from 2013 to 2023 on Cantril ladder scores and affect balance in Saudi Arabia, we find increases in SWB following the implementation of Vision 2030 reforms, particularly for the affective component of SWB. While positive changes in SWB are observed across the entire population, the gains in affective well-being are especially pronounced among women. Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions show that improvements are associated with enhanced community basics, followed by greater income sufficiency, improved perceptions of social life, and an increased sense of personal freedom. Full article

The poll gland, a specialized tissue of male Bactrian camels, undergoes seasonal enlargement and marked metabolic activation during the rutting season. However, the metabolic mechanisms of the poll gland and its role in rutting activities and inducing estrus are still not fully understood. This study aimed to investigate the contribution of fatty acid metabolic pathways, specifically those mediated by carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1A (CPT1A), in poll gland activity during the breeding season; poll gland tissue, neck mane, and urine samples were systematically collected from healthy male Bactrian camels stratified into breeding and non-breeding season groups for integrated proteomic, metabolomic, and biochemical assays. Histological and immunohistochemical analyses revealed reduced adipocytes but elevated ATP production in rutting camels, suggesting increased mitochondrial activity and enhanced oxidative phosphorylation. Proteomic analyses identified 119 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) linked to fatty acid metabolism, with CPT1A, a key regulator of mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation, emerging as a central hub. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis further confirmed enrichment in fatty acid biosynthesis, degradation, and PPAR/AMPK signaling. The metabolomic analysis identified 14 metabolites, including acetylcarnitine and glycine, that were closely correlated with CPT1A expression, suggesting their potential involvement in regulating fatty acid metabolism during the breeding season. Quantitative expression analyses revealed that CPT1A in glandular acini was significantly upregulated in the breeding group compared to the non-breeding group across all assays: qPCR (2.53-fold, p < 0.05), Western blot (3.5-fold, p < 0.05), and immunohistochemistry (1.5-fold, p < 0.05). This demonstrated that CPT1A-mediated fatty acid metabolism plays a pivotal role in energy provision for reproductive activities. The results suggested that CPT1A-mediated fatty acid oxidation sustains poll gland function and reproductive behaviors in male Bactrian camels. This study provided a theoretical basis for understanding the role of CPT1A-mediated fatty acid oxidation in maintaining poll gland function and supporting reproductive activities in male Bactrian camels. Full article

This paper investigates the growing political alignment of Latino Evangelicals with the Republican Party, particularly their support for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Historically, Latino political behavior has been studied with an assumption of religious homogeneity, largely focusing on the Catholic majority. However, the rise of the Latino Evangelical population has coincided with increasing Latino support for the GOP. Former President Obama attributed this shift in support to the growing Evangelical demographic. Building on Chaturvedi’s (2014) work, which found that Evangelical Latinos’ conservative views on issues like same-sex marriage vary by age, this study tests Obama’s assertion using data from the 2020 USC Dornsife Presidential Poll. Logistic regressions show that older Latino Evangelicals were significantly more likely to support Trump, driven by their desire to elect officials who align with their Evangelical policy preferences. The findings explain that the political behavior of older Latino Evangelicals is more strongly related to religious values compared to their younger counterparts. These results highlight the importance of considering religious diversity within Latino politics, pointing to religious identity as a key factor in shaping Latino political behavior and emphasizing the need for further exploration of religious variation in Latino voting patterns. Full article

With heavy trucks being more widely used in the logistics industry, more and more lorry drivers are frequently exposed to the acoustic-thermal dynamically coupled cockpit environment for a long time. The comfort in the cockpit directly affects driving safety and occupational health. However, the existing research lacks a multi-parameter fusion prediction method for occupant annoyance in this scenario. In this paper, we studied the effect of an acoustic-thermal composite environment on the annoyance level of truck occupants and predicted the annoyance level of the human body by combining environmental parameters and physiological parameters. A total of 20 adult males participated in the subjective annoyance evaluation test, and 60 sets of sample data were obtained under four working conditions by collecting environmental parameters and monitoring physiological parameters, and the effect of acoustic-thermal composite environments was explored using statistical analysis in combination with the subjects’ annoyance polls. The results showed that the human physiological parameters were significantly correlated with the thermal environment, and the correlation coefficient between PMV value and skin temperature was r₁ = 0.99, with p < 0.05. The subjective annoyance level was more sensitive to the thermal environment than noise. The correlation coefficient between PMV and annoyance level was r₂ = 0.931, and the correlation coefficient between the noise parameter roughness R and annoyance level was r₃ = 0.545. The results of this study were based on the screened predictor variables, the annoyance prediction model using the random forest algorithm showed high accuracy on the test set (R² = 0.941, root mean square error RMSE = 0.259, mean absolute error MAE = 0.201). The study showed that the annoyance prediction model incorporating environmental and physiological parameters could estimate subjects’ annoyance more accurately. Full article

The Loess Plateau (LP), the cradle of Chinese civilization, has a long history of agricultural activities closely linked to ecological changes. This study addresses a fundamental question: what was the maximum sustainable cropland area threshold for the LP prior to modern soil and water conservation measures? To answer this, we analyzed the historical data to investigate changes in the cropland area and their ecological impacts over the past 4000 years, with the specific aim of examining the long-term interactions between land exploitation and the ecosystem that defined sustainable thresholds. Three key stages of cropland area development were identified: slow growth (2000–500 BC), a fluctuating phase (500 BC–1000 AD), and rapid expansion (1000–2000 AD). During the slow-growth and rapid-expansion stages, the cropland areas were estimated at 34.9 ± 23.4 and 117.9 ± 34.1 thousand km², with growth rates of 2.9 and 8.7 thousand km²/100 years, respectively, while the fluctuating period stabilized at 62.1 ± 18.1 thousand km². Population growth was the primary driver of cropland expansion (56.9%), followed by agricultural technology and policy adjustments (27%) and climate change (16.1%). Particularly over the past 1000 years, climate deterioration and a population surge due to the abolition of the poll tax accelerated cropland expansion, resulting in deforestation, intensified soil erosion specific to the LP, and frequent flooding of the lower Yellow River (YR). In contrast, during the fluctuating period, rapid social development did not lead to major ecological issues, suggesting that moderate cropland expansion can balance social development and ecological sustainability. Based on the historical conditions, without modern soil and water conservation measures, this study determined that the upper limit of the cropland area during the fluctuating period (80.2 thousand km²) is the maximum sustainable cropland area for the LP, establishing a scientific basis to guide future land-use strategies. Especially in the face of population pressure and climate deterioration, developing agriculture and adjusting policies to increase grain production will be essential to balance the ecological risks and maintenance of food security while remaining within this threshold. These findings offer insights into the agricultural history and ecological management of the LP and can serve as a reference for similar studies of other regions. Full article

This study introduces a novel framework for intelligent unmanned BVR maneuver control within the context of adversarial games. The emphasis lies on three pivotal aspects: situational awareness, maneuver decision-making, and precise maneuver control. Within this paradigm, our unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can assimilate crucial situational information through constructed situational vectors and execute sophisticated maneuvers, effectively addressing the intricacies of dynamic flight environments and various unpredictable scenarios within the game setting. To achieve granular maneuver control, this research introduces the Priority Heading Polling–Random Observation Weight (PHP-ROW) method, underpinned by deep reinforcement learning. This approach integrates two primary components: (1) the priority heading polling (PHP) mechanism, which governs the extent of flight trajectories while emphasizing heading control, and (2) the random observation weight (ROW) technique, which adeptly moderates the influence of roll angle rewards during the learning phase. The superiority of the PHP-ROW method is showcased by contrasting it against the conventional proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm. Conclusively, the utility and efficacy of the presented framework are corroborated through human–machine adversarial game simulations in a hyper-realistic environment. This investigation provides foundational theoretical and empirical contributions to the realm of intelligent unmanned aerial maneuver control, promising significant implications for the evolution of aviation technology in adversarial game contexts. Full article