Filetype
Water and energy are two intimately interconnected issues of strategic relevance for a sustainable industrial development. Herein, we integrated light-harvesting/self-heating membranes and salinity gradient technology with the aim to implement the innovative concept of light-to-heat-to-power conversion. Novel photothermal membranes, prepared by immobilizing silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) on the top
The effectiveness of Salinity Gradient Power - Reverse Electrodialysis (SGP-RE) in real practice is still not clearly defined due to the lack of specific studies in literature, being investigations in large part limited to pure NaCl solutions or aqueous mixtures of two salts. In this work, we experimentally assessed the impact of natural feed streams (collected from Licetto river and Tyrrenian sea
As a complex hydrological problem, rainfall-runoff (RR) modeling is of importance in runoff studies, water supply, irrigation issues, and environmental management. Among the variety of approaches for RR modeling, conceptual approaches use physical concepts and are appropriate methods for representation of the physics of the problem while may fail in competition with their advanced alternatives. Co
To promote human flourishing throughout society, opportunities for arts participation must encompass all citizens. A primary means to promote this is arts education and activities for schoolchildren. Equal opportunities for participation are currently not enjoyed by students with disabilities. In a population-based and cross-sectional study carried out on a 2016 public-health survey including 27,3
Freight transport in urban areas needs to become more sustainable. There is much potential to reduce emissions by transitioning to electric freight vehicles (EFVs). The context of this study is Sweden, a country with ambitious goals for transitioning to fossil-free road transport that incentivizes the adoption of EFVs through regulations, subsidies and environmental zones. However, it seems that f
This paper introduces the first minimal solvers that jointly estimate lens distortion and affine rectification from the image of rigidly-transformed coplanar features. The solvers work on scenes without straight lines and, in general, relax strong assumptions about scene content made by the state of the art. The proposed solvers use the affine invariant that coplanar repeats have the same scale in
A growing body of observations has revealed rapid changes in both the total inventory and the distribution of marine oxygen over the latter half of the 20th century, leading to increased interest in extending oxygenation records into the past. The use of paleo-oxygen proxies has the potential to extend the spatial and temporal range of current records, constrain pre-anthropogenic baselines, provid
The European Spallation Source (ESS) is a research facility under construction aiming to be the world’s most powerful pulsed neutron source. It is powered by a complex particle accelerator designed to provide a 2.86 ms long proton pulse at 2 GeV with a repetition rate of 14 Hz. Protons are accelerated via cavity fields through various accelerating structures that are powered by Radio-Frequency (RF
Solid dispersions are promising drug delivery forms which offer the possibility to disperse a hydrophobic drug in a hydrophilic matrix and thereby improve the dissolution behavior and the bioavailability of the drug. One important aspect and a prerequisite in understanding the drug dissolution mechanism from solid dispersions is a better analytical monitoring of the solid dispersion surface proper
Quantum technologies and experiments often require preparing systems in low-temperature states. Here we investigate cooling schemes using feedback protocols modeled with a quantum Fokker-Planck master equation (QFPME) recently derived by Annby-Andersson et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 050401 (2022)0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.129.050401]. This equation describes systems under continuous weak measure
This paper deals with the centroid and formation control problem of multi–agent robotic systems. The proposed solution is based on a leader–follower scheme, where only a subset of agents, i.e., the leaders, knows the desired trajectories for the centroid and the formation of the system, while the other agents, i.e., the followers, are required to estimate them through a dynamic consensus scheme. T
Bayesian optimization is a widely used method for optimizing expensive black-box functions, with Expected Improvement being one of the most commonly used acquisition functions. In contrast, information-theoretic acquisition functions aim to reduce uncertainty about the function's optimum and are often considered fundamentally distinct from EI. In this work, we challenge this prevailing perspective
Mitochondrial replacement therapy has been developed in order to prevent the transmission of mitochondrial mutations, yet it raises ethical concerns, particularly regarding the involvement of third-party DNA and the risks associated with donor procedures. This paper explores an alternative approach using synthetic DNA (synDNA) to construct mitochondrial organelles, thereby bypassing the need for d
A central feature of internalizing mental disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety disorders, is the avoidance of rewarding situations to prevent the risk of experiencing distressing emotions. Previous research has shown that obsessive and anxious individuals avoid situations where rewards come at the cost of aversive experiences, a phenomenon termed costly avoidance. Cos
Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that offers near real-world experiences in various fields. With the widespread use of virtual environments designed to provide VR experiences, the amount of data collected from these environments has increased rapidly. However, as the volume of data grows, there is a need to develop analysis processes and advance the data-driven development model. In this study
Climate change and land-use change represent a dual threat to terrestrial ecosystem functioning. In the tropics, forest conversion to agriculture is occurring alongside warming and more pronounced periods of drought. Rainfall after drought induces enormous dynamics in microbial growth (potential soil carbon storage) and respiration (determining carbon loss), affecting the ecosystem carbon budget.
The emergence of cyber mistreatment among frontline workers in their digital interactions with customers, clients and patients represents a significant but relatively new work environment risk within the service sector. Human resource management has a key role in digital transformation, which includes securing safe and healthy workplaces and fostering sustainable practices for handling cyber mistr
