bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Super Tough Multifunctional MXene/PAA‐CS Double Network Hydrogels with High Mechanical Sensing Properties and Excellent EMI Shielding Performance
Authors: Mei Lin , Ouyang Wenchong , Xu Limin , Huang Yuanlong , Liu Qi , Bai Yu , Lu Quanming , Luo Tianzhi , Wu Zhengwei 
Published: December 2024

AbstractHydrogels present significant potential in flexible materials designed for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, attributed to their soft, stretchable mechanical properties and water‐rich porous structures. Unfortunately, EMI shielding hydrogels commonly suffer from low mechanical properties, deficient fracture energy, and low strength, which limit the serviceability of these materials in complex mechanical environments. In this study, the double network strategy is successfully utilized along with the Hofmeister effect to create MXene/PAA (polyacrylic acid)‐CS (chitosan) hydrogels and further strengthen and toughen the gel with (NH4)2SO4 solution. The gel exhibits enhanced functionalities such as outstanding stretchability, excellent strain sensitivity (11.66), and super fracture energy (≥9 kJ m−2). Notably, it demonstrates outstanding shielding effectiveness of 73.8 dB in the terahertz (THz) range, and the shielding properties can be effectively tuned by varying the MXene content, the (NH4)2SO4 concentration, and the thickness of the hydrogel. Additionally, the gel shows robust and superior shielding effectiveness after repeated stretching and long‐term dehydration. The MXene/PAA‐CS double‐network (DN) hydrogels would be an excellent candidate for EMI shielding materials in advanced flexible electronic equipment and soft robots.
A New Feature‐Based Biometric Identification System in IoT‐Powered Smart Cities Using a Hybrid Optimization Algorithm
Authors: Darbandi Mehdi , Ehsani Ali , Bahrami Farzad , Moghadamnia Elham , Abnoosian Karlo , Mohammed Bayan Omar 
Published: December 2024

ABSTRACTThe pervasive expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) year after year has facilitated widespread sensing capabilities across various domains. Consequently, heightened concerns have arisen regarding authentication and security measures. There is a growing focus on biometrics in the realm of human identification applications, particularly in the context of advancing biometric‐enhanced IoT applications. This trend is garnering increasing attention as it unfolds. As new technologies have developed, biometric‐based identification has been seen as an effective way to automatically identify people because of its uniqueness and impossibility of fabricating it. Biometric identity systems make secure authentication and access management possible. However, due to their almost identical physical traits, one of the biggest problems with conventional systems is being able to tell between identical twins. This fact frequently results in high false acceptance rates, putting the system's security at risk. Thus, a solution is addressed in this work by applying a multi‐biometric identification method based on unique feature levels. Moreover, the accuracy and robustness of the biometric identifications are further enhanced both with Real Coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA) and Fish Swarm Algorithm (FSA). RCGA is employed as a global search to explore the promising solution space and guide the solution toward the global optimal region. The algorithm exploits the capability of AFSA, serving as a local search to secure the final optimal solution. Besides, the proposed method enhances the system's discriminative power, enabling an identification more precise and trustworthy. Therefore, this work greatly contributes to the advancement of biometric identification systems and the increase of accuracy in various fields.
Berberine Attenuates Cerulein‐Induced Acute Pancreatitis by Modulating Nrf2/NOX2 Signaling Pathway via AMPK Activation
Authors: Bansod Sapana P. , Saifi Mohd Aslam , Chilvery Shrilekha , Doijad Nandkumar , Godugu Chandraiah 
Published: December 2024

ABSTRACTAMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) is the master regulator of cellular energy which gets activated during energy stress and restores tissue homeostasis. AMPK is widely expressed in the pancreas and is involved in protein synthesis. In cerulein‐induced acute pancreatitis (AP), diminished AMPK activity in the pancreatic tissue may be associated with pancreatic inflammation and oxidative stress. Our results demonstrated that berberine (BR) treatment produced significant decrease in plasma amylase and lipase levels and improved histopathological features in AP mice model. Myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity indicated that BR suppressed the infiltration of neutrophils in pancreas. BR treatment markedly decreased the levels of proinflammatory cytokines including interleukins (IL)‐6, IL‐1β, and tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α) via inhibition of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate oxidase 2 (NOX2) expression. In addition, BR activates the nuclear factor erythroid 2–related factor 2 (Nrf2) signaling and inhibits cerulein‐induced oxidative‐nitrosative stress. Mechanistically, we found inhibition of AMPK activity in cerulein‐induced AP, while BR‐treated animals showed marked increase in the AMPK expression. Together, our study indicated that BR‐mediated AMPK activation in pancreatic tissues demonstrated attenuation of cerulein‐induced oxidative stress and inflammation. Based on our observations, further exploration of this promising natural product against AP and associated complications may lead to promising therapeutic options.
Exploring Pristine Tucumã (Astrocaryum aculeatum) Waste as a Sustainable Adsorbent for Textile Dye Removal
Authors: Vasconcelos Wolney Monteiro , Mulinari Jéssica , Leal Tarcísio Wolff , de Oliveira Carlos Rafael Silva , da Silva Júnior Afonso Henrique , Lourenço Luis Antonio , Lenzi Cecília 
Published: December 2024

ABSTRACTTextile dyes are one of the main industrial contaminants, and their removal from wastewater using environmentally friendly alternatives has been a challenge for decades. In this context, this study aimed to analyze the use of tucumã (Astrocaryum aculeatum) seed residue as a novel and low‐cost adsorbent material for the decolorization of a textile dye solution. The seed shell was disinfected, dried, ground, and sieved. Its physical and chemical characteristics were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and point of zero charge (pHPZC). The influence of initial pH (4.2–9.8) and dye concentration (95–745 mg/L) in the color removal was analyzed through a central composite rotatable design (CCRD) using 10 g/L of tucumã seed shell at 150 rpm for 4 h. Both pH and dye concentration linearly influenced color removal. Lower pH values and higher dye concentrations resulted in color removals above 40%. When pH 5 and 700 mg/L of dye were used, the adsorption capacity was higher than 50 mg/g. The adsorption isotherm that best fitted the data was Freundlich isotherm, indicating that the adsorbent has a heterogeneous surface and that multilayer adsorption occurs in the tucumã residue. These results indicate that pristine A. aculeatum seed residue can potentially be used as an adsorbent in the textile industry with no chemical or thermal activation.
A Review on Characterization, Treatment, and Impact of Tannery Wastewater in Ethiopia
Authors: Faye Gezahegn , Sibali Linda Lunga 
Published: December 2024

ABSTRACTThe leather industry stands out as a notable contributor to national and global economic growth. In Ethiopia, the tannery sector is important for exports, economic growth, and employment. However, the tannery industry is the most pollutant generating and environmentally unfriendly industry in the world and recognized as a significant source of pollution of surface waters in Ethiopia. This review aims to assess the characterization, treatment, and impact of tannery wastewater. The authors reviewed 117 published materials, including articles and theses, related to the research area. The review results reveal that Ethiopian tannery effluents contribute to elevated levels of chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD), total dissolved solids (TDS), chromium (Cr), sulfide (S2−), and total nitrogen, which exceed national discharge limits and compromise water quality in rivers, notably the Little Akaki River. The adverse effects extend to soil and agricultural produce, posing significant risks to public health. Conventional treatment methods are widely used in the treatment of tannery wastewater but have limited effectiveness in meeting regulatory standards. This review emphasizes the urgent need for strengthened policy enforcement and investment in modern treatment technologies to develop sustainable solutions that mitigate the environmental and health impacts of tannery wastewater in Ethiopia. Additionally, nanomaterial‐based adsorption and photocatalysis have shown promising results in efficient pollutant removal, further research is recommended in this area.
Diagnostic approach and transpalatal extraction of a chronic nasopharyngeal ballistic foreign body in a cat
Authors: Ziobro Paulina , Brás Inês , Heathcote Natalie , Rubiños Carlos , Warland James 
Published: December 2024

AbstractA 4‐year‐old, female, neutered, domestic shorthair cat was referred for treatment of acute worsening of chronic upper respiratory signs after radiographic diagnosis of a metallic foreign body in the nasopharynx before referral. Computed tomography confirmed the presence of a metallic airgun pellet in the nasopharynx and shrapnel in the nasal bone and nasal cavity. The airgun pellet was successfully removed via a midline staphylotomy with no complications. The owner recalled a wound to the left of the nasal cavity that had been noticed approximately 2 years prior and had healed before any clinical signs developed. This case report describes the surgical management and long‐term outcome of a nasopharyngeal ballistic foreign body in a cat.
A deadly mix‐up: The incorrect dispensing of cyclophosphamide for cyclosporine resulting in a pancytopaenia and haemorrhagic cystitis
Authors: Caldwell Matthew A. , Black Annalise , Struthers Jason D. 
Published: December 2024

AbstractA 10‐year‐old, male, Staffordshire bull terrier was presented to a veterinary hospital for a suspected snake envenomation. Three weeks prior, the patient was diagnosed with discoid lupus erythematosus and was prescribed cyclosporine. A complete blood count and chemistry panel revealed severe thrombocytopaenia, severe leukopaenia and mild anaemia of unknown aetiology. Severe thrombocytopaenia and leukopaenia persisted for 13 days. The patient developed severe haematuria, despite receiving intravenous fluids, vitamin K1, B12 injections and Yunnan Baiyao. Over subsequent hospital visits, the patient became recumbent and anuric. Due to poor prognosis and lack of clinical response, the patient was euthanased and submitted for a postmortem examination. Postmortem examination suggested a myelotoxic insult leading to pancytopaenia and sterile haemorrhagic cystitis. Cyclophosphamide toxicity was considered, which is known to cause these two conditions. When presented with the findings, the owner realised that the retail pharmacy had erroneously dispensed cyclophosphamide instead of cyclosporine.
Digital Innovations for City Sustainability Analysis and Decision-Making
Authors: Newton Peter , Pettit Chris , Barr Stuart , Bruns Loren 
Published: December 2024

AbstractThis chapter examines the potential for accelerating a convergence between fields of research associated with digitalisation (incorporating disciplines of sensing, data science, data analytics, and information technology) and urban-sustainability transition (relating to disciplines such as planning, design, environmental science, economics, transport, and politics), acknowledging that the threads of such linkages have been emerging over decades. Convergence research is a fundamental underlying principle of scientific progress that assembles and integrates all relevant capabilities to answer contemporary grand challenges. It is a frontier area for applied research that is critical for an accelerated transition to a green economy and sustainable urban development—two mission-scale challenges of the twenty-first century. The framework for this chapter comprises four interconnected innovation arenas associated with digitalisation that together constitute a basis for more rapidly advancing urban-sustainability research and development. These are information and communications technologies and digital infrastructure platforms that enable stakeholder engagement across distributed collaborative networks, advances in data science, and advanced urban analytics that support integrated urban analyses and decision-making.
Embedding Transformative Innovation into Mission-Oriented Policy and Innovation Districts: The Case of Melbourne
Authors: Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong , Davidson Kathryn , Farrelly Megan 
Published: December 2024

AbstractThis chapter presents key interventions to provide a step-change in the understanding of innovation, from orthodox to transformative, in the development of local government public policy in the Melbourne Innovation District (MID) City North, Australia. Innovation refers to the introduction of new technological, organisational, and social solutions in response to problems and challenges that arise in existing social, economic, and environmental settings. A step-change is necessary as traditional innovation practice is not currently fit for purpose to deliver a more inclusive and sustainable society. To illustrate this step-change, we reference the MID City North with the key actors including the City of Melbourne (CoM) and two universities (University of Melbourne and RMIT). The MID City North, established in 2017, is a maturing initiative that has evolved over a period of time punctuated by considerable disruptions, particularly the Australian bushfire (Black Summer 2019–2020) catastrophe and the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue these disruptions are a catalyst for change and therefore an important context for the social shaping of the evolving policy discourse relevant to the MID City North. Both disruptions were powerful pressures, as well as windows of opportunity, to effect policy reform mainly by the key actor: the CoM. We propose four key interventions to build on the policy-reform momentum to better develop pathways to deliver on transformative innovation in policy, specifically for the MID City North and the CoM. These interventions are key because they foster the establishment of favourable policy mixes supporting innovation for the transformative change required for cities transitioning towards sustainability.
Healthy Cities: Transitioning to Polycentric Cities Can Enhance Population Health
Authors: Chandrabose Manoj , Hadgraft Nyssa , Owen Neville , Sugiyama Takemi 
Published: December 2024

AbstractCities around the world are recognising the need for innovative solutions to address the growing chronic disease burden in the context of urban population growth. In this chapter, we propose transitioning from monocentric to polycentric city models as a solution to this contemporary challenge, particularly in the context of Australia. Such transitions will bring fundamental changes to the way people move across the city: from car dependency to active mobility. Essential features of the polycentric city for enhancing population health include improving walkability and bikeability, reducing driveability, promoting public transport use, and integrating greenspaces. We discuss the importance of some key aspects of urban planning and public-health research for providing a strong evidence base to guide the implementation of the polycentric transition, including identifying specific thresholds for planning attributes that are optimal for population health and understanding community preferences for attributes of polycentric urban forms.
A New Paradigm for Resilient Urban Infrastructure Planning: Game-Changing Interventions, Tipping Points, and Capacities
Authors: Moglia Magnus , Wise Russell M. , Meharg Seona 
Published: December 2024

AbstractWhat infrastructure do Australian cities need over the next century? Planning for, delivering, and maintaining infrastructure that is usually long-lived and expensive in a rapidly changing environment is difficult. Complexity and uncertainties are at play, with potentially serious consequences to be considered. Specifically, current infrastructure-investment risks are not fit for purpose and would fail to meet the rapidly evolving needs of communities and economic activities. This may create lock-in situations that are difficult to adapt to or reverse; they therefore close down opportunities for the transformation needed to reduce systemic risks. In this chapter, we argue that the key to cities’ resilience lies in the people and organisations having capacity, competencies, and governance for systemic interventions based on adaptive learning and decision-making. We outline a method for changing the planning of infrastructure to meet urgent urban challenges, such as climate change, rapid technological change, and pandemics. This is based on a mission-oriented programme of innovation that guides, underpins, and supports inclusive and robust infrastructure decisions. Finally, we introduce principles that can trigger a set of tipping points that can promote necessary shifts in infrastructure planning, policies, and practices that encourage more resilient, sustainable and equitable outcomes.
Delivering Sustainable, Resilient, and Low-Carbon-Built Environments
Authors: He Bao-Jie , Prasad Deo 
Published: December 2024

AbstractThe current climate emergency is now a matter of urgent attention, as evidenced by the growing number of scientific reports on the subject and media generally. In response, there is a global movement within the built environment sector to explore how net-zero carbon targets can best be met for this sector, globally, by 2030. Many businesses, governments, and other organisations have released their commitments with benchmarks, targets, and pathways to achieve net-zero carbon-built environments. Such commitments have mainly prioritised carbon pollution metrics, while urban liveability indicators related to cooling, comfort, health, and well-being of communities have often not been well integrated into built environment decarbonisation goals. This chapter aims to present pathways for achieving climate-linked goals for resilient planning and design systems for built environments. It analyses global guides, plans, and actions designed to lead to sustainable, resilient, and low-carbon-built environments and presents a robust, comprehensive, and integrative discussion of the findings of the CRC for low-carbon living to inform strategic decision-making for built environments in Australia.
The difference between the weak core and the strong core from the design point of view
Authors: Korpela Ville , Lombardi Michele , Savva Foivos 
Published: December 2024

AbstractFrom a normative viewpoint, there is no compelling reason for preferring the weak over the strong core, and vice versa. However, the situation changes significantly from a mechanism design perspective. We work in a rights structures environment, where the role of the social planner is to allocate rights to individuals or coalitions which allow them to change the status-quo state. While coalitions are irrelevant for implementation in weak core (Koray and Yildiz in J. Econ. Theory 176:479-502, 2018; Korpela et al. in J. Econ. Theory 185:104953, 2020), our results show that they are fundamental for implementation in strong core. We fully characterize the implementation of social choice rules in strong core to outline this distinction. For robustness, we also characterize double implementation in weak and strong core which we show to be equivalent to implementation in weak core. Finally, we show that this equivalence breaks down in the more realistic case of implementation by codes of rights, where the set of states coincides with the set of outcomes.
Optimizing last-mile delivery: a dynamic compensation strategy for occasional drivers
Authors: Schur Rouven , Winheller Kai 
Published: December 2024

AbstractAmid the rapid growth of online retail, last-mile delivery faces significant challenges, including the cost-effective delivery of goods to all delivery locations. Our work contributes to this stream by applying dynamic pricing techniques to effectively model the possible involvement of the crowd in fulfilling delivery tasks. The use of occasional drivers (ODs) as a viable, cost-effective alternative to traditional dedicated drivers (DDs) prompts the necessity to focus on the inherent challenge posed by the uncertainty of ODs’ arrival times and willingness to perform deliveries. We introduce a dynamic programming framework that offers individualized bundles of a delivery task and compensation to ODs as they arrive. This model, akin to a reversed form of dynamic pricing, accounts for ODs’ decision-making by treating their acceptance thresholds as a random variable. Therefore, our model addresses the dynamic and stochastic nature of OD availability and decision-making. We analytically solve the stage-wise optimization problem, outline inherent challenges such as the curses of dimensionality, and present structural properties. Tailored to meet these challenges, our approximation methods aim to accurately determine avoided costs, which are a key factor in calculating optimal compensation. Our simulation study reveals that the savings generated by involving ODs in deliveries can be significantly increased through our individualized dynamic compensation policy. This approach not only excels in generating savings for the firm but also provides a utility surplus for ODs. Additionally, we demonstrate the applicability of our approach to scenarios with time windows and illustrate the trade-off that arises from time window partitioning.
Unravelling vegetation and human dynamics during the first millennium ad in Brandenburg, north-eastern Germany: insights from lake sediments
Authors: Alinezhad Khadijeh , Feeser Ingo , Schneeweiß Jens , Dreibrodt Stefan , Jahns Susanne , Dörfler Walter 
Published: December 2024

AbstractDuring the first millennium ad, Germany, like other European regions, witnessed dynamic interactions between human populations and the environment, resulting in effects on landscapes and vegetation. Despite their significance, the detailed changes and links between vegetation and population dynamics in Germany during this period are not yet fully understood. This study addresses this gap in an interdisciplinary approach combining high resolution pollen analysis, varve counts and AMS radiocarbon dating on a partially annually laminated lake sediment core from Kleiner Tornowsee, in Brandenburg, north-eastern Germany. Archaeological evidence of the region and available pollen data from another lake, Sacrower See, also in Brandenburg, were used for comparison and allowed the identification of regional developments. The results suggest that the Germanic tribes living there during the Roman Iron Age (ca. ad 1–375) were adept at maintaining an economy based on crop growing and the keeping of livestock. During the Migration period (ad 375–600) there was a relatively slow but continuous expansion of woodland, coinciding with two phases of depopulation. A low but constant presence of indicators of human activity in the pollen profiles, however, suggests that these areas were not completely abandoned. Evidence for an early phase of human activities starting again in the late 6th or early 7th century ad at both sites is striking, because of a lack of archaeological evidence for any settlements in this period. During the High Middle Ages (ad 1000–1300), a further increase in farming activities resulted in intensified clearance of woodland for farmland and led to more crop growing than grazing in the 11th and 12th centuries.