Brain–computer interface game applications for combined neurofeedback and biofeedback treatment for children on the autism spectrum

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show deficits in social and communicative skills, including imitation, empathy, and shared attention, as well as restricted interests and repetitive patterns of behaviors. Evidence for and against the idea that dysfunctions in the mirror neuron system are involved in imitation and could be one underlying cause for ASD is discussed in this review. Neurofeedback interventions have reduced symptoms in children with ASD by self-regulation of brain rhythms. However, cortical deficiencies are not the only cause of these symptoms. Peripheral physiological activity, such as the heart rate, is closely linked to neurophysiological signals and associated with social engagement. Therefore, a combined approach targeting the interplay between brain, body and behavior could be more effective. Brain-computer interface applications for combined neurofeedback and biofeedback treatment for children with ASD are currently nonexistent. To facilitate their use, we have designed an innovative game that includes social interactions and provides neural- and body-based feedback that corresponds directly to the underlying significance of the trained signals as well as to the behavior that is reinforced

Placental histopathology associated with preeclampsia: A systematic review and Meta-Analysis.

OBJECTIVES: Preeclampsia is associated with impaired trophoblast invasion and typical villous and vascular placental lesions. The primary aim was to conduct a systematic review in order to quantify the prevalence of placental histopathological lesions in pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia. METHODS: MEDLINE, EMBASE and CINAHL were searched electronically and relevant articles reporting placental histopathological lesions were assessed according to the following criteria: study design, number of pregnancies, type of preeclampsia and whether the pathologist was blinded to the clinical information. Prospective and retrospective case-control studies, including 100 pregnancies or more in total, were included. The number of the most prevalent histological lesions according to the Perinatal Section of the Society for Pediatric Pathology classification was extracted and categorized in two main groups, "villous lesions" and "vascular lesions". Random-effect meta-analysis of proportions was used for analysis. Between-study heterogeneity was assessed using the I(2) statistic. RESULTS: The search yielded 717 citations and a total of 8 studies were included in the review. In unblinded studies, the pooled prevalence of villous lesions was 11.6% (95% CI 6.4-18.1%) and 48.2% (95% CI 19.1-77.9%) in normal and preeclamptic pregnancies, giving a pooled odds ratio (OR) of 7.59 (95% CI 2.16-26.62). In blinded studies, the pooled prevalence of villous lesions was 18.5% (95% CI 1.4-48.7%) and 42.0% (95% CI 13.3-74.2%) in normal and preeclamptic pregnancies, giving a pooled OR of 4.28 (95% CI 1.16-15.76). In unblinded studies, the pooled prevalence of vascular lesions was 8.1% (95% CI 4.5-13.2%) and 37.3% (CI 3.1-82.4%), giving a pooled OR of 20.34 (95% CI 11.53-35.89). In blinded studies, the pooled prevalence of vascular lesions was 9.8% (95% CI 0.7-27.8%) and 38.9% (24.1-54.8%), giving a pooled OR of 7.08 (95% CI 2.55-19.61). CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of both placental villous and vascular histopathological lesions is higher, by a factor of four to seven-fold, in preeclampsia compared to normal pregnancies in blinded studies. Greater differences are reported in unblinded studies. Despite the fact that the probability (point prevalence) of finding abnormal placenta pathology is higher in preeclampsia, placental lesions are not specific to the diagnosis of preeclampsia

Information exposure from consumer IoT devices: a multidimensional, network-informed measurement approach

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are increasingly found in everyday homes, providing useful functionality for devices such as TVs, smart speakers, and video doorbells. Along with their benefits come potential privacy risks, since these devices can communicate information about their users to other parties over the Internet. However, understanding these risks in depth and at scale is difficult due to heterogeneity in devices' user interfaces, protocols, and functionality. In this work, we conduct a multidimensional analysis of information exposure from 81 devices located in labs in the US and UK. Through a total of 34,586 rigorous automated and manual controlled experiments, we characterize information exposure in terms of destinations of Internet traffic, whether the contents of communication are protected by encryption, what are the IoT-device interactions that can be inferred from such content, and whether there are unexpected exposures of private and/or sensitive information (e.g., video surreptitiously transmitted by a recording device). We highlight regional differences between these results, potentially due to different privacy regulations in the US and UK. Last, we compare our controlled experiments with data gathered from an in situ user study comprising 36 participants

Mesenchymal stem cell-conditioned medium reduces disease severity and immune responses in inflammatory arthritis

We evaluated the therapeutic potential of mesenchymal stem cell-conditioned medium (CM-MSC) as an alternative to cell therapy in an antigen-induced model of arthritis (AIA). Disease severity and cartilage loss were evaluated by histopathological analysis of arthritic knee joints and immunostaining of aggrecan neoepitopes. Cell proliferation was assessed for activated and naïve CD4+ T cells from healthy mice following culture with CM-MSC or co-culture with MSCs. T cell polarization was analysed in CD4+ T cells isolated from spleens and lymph nodes of arthritic mice treated with CM-MSC or MSCs. CM-MSC treatment significantly reduced knee-joint swelling, histopathological signs of AIA, cartilage loss and suppressed TNFα induction. Proliferation of CD4+ cells from spleens of healthy mice was not affected by CM-MSC but reduced when cells were co-cultured with MSCs. In the presence of CM-MSC or MSCs, increases in IL-10 concentration were observed in culture medium. Finally, CD4+ T cells from arthritic mice treated with CM-MSC showed increases in FOXP3 and IL-4 expression and positively affected the Treg:Th17 balance in the tissue. CM-MSC treatment reduces cartilage damage and suppresses immune responses by reducing aggrecan cleavage, enhancing Treg function and adjusting the Treg:Th17 ratio. CM-MSC may provide an effective cell-free therapy for inflammatory arthritis

AI trustworthiness in manufacturing: challenges, toolkits, and the path to Industry 5.0

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into manufacturing is transforming the industry by advancing predictive maintenance, quality control, and supply chain optimisation, while also driving the shift from Industry 4.0 towards a more human-centric and sustainable vision. This emerging paradigm, known as Industry 5.0, emphasises resilience, ethical innovation, and the symbiosis between humans and intelligent systems, with AI playing a central enabling role. However, challenges such as the “black box” nature of AI models, data biases, ethical concerns, and the lack of robust frameworks for trustworthiness hinder its widespread adoption. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of AI trustworthiness in the manufacturing industry, examining the evolution of industrial paradigms, identifying key barriers to AI adoption, and examining principles such as transparency, fairness, robustness, and accountability. It offers a detailed summary of existing toolkits and methodologies for explainability, bias mitigation, and robustness, which are essential for fostering trust in AI systems. Additionally, this paper examines challenges throughout the AI pipeline, from data collection to model deployment, and concludes with recommendations and research questions aimed at addressing these issues. By offering actionable insights, this study aims to guide researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in developing ethical and reliable AI systems that align with the principles of Industry 5.0, ensuring both technological advancement and societal value

Dual-frequency sweeping light source based on four-wave mixing in silicon-on-insulator nano-waveguide

Four-wave mixing (FWM) is a well-known technique to achieve all-optical control wavelength conversion. We propose a well-designed silicon nano-waveguide based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) to achieve FWM conversion. Particularly, the original signal light continuously sweeps along the C band, and the generated idler light is correspondingly sweeping as the original signal is swept. The wavelengths of the idler and signal lights are symmetric with respect to the pump light wavelength. Simulation and experimental results of the FWM conversion properties are well-matched. With the pump light filtered out, a dual-frequency continuously sweeping laser source is achieved, which could be applied in dual-frequency scanning interferometry to eliminate dynamic errors in practical use

Advances in phase change building materials: An overview

Efficient and sustainable thermal management of buildings is critical since the building sector is considered as the largest energy contributor contributing around 40% of the total energy consumption which is responsible for about 38% of greenhouse gas emission. Utilisation of phase-change material (PCM) in building energy systems can enhance the overall energy performance of buildings, thereby making drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The major shortcoming of organic PCM is their leakage problem; however, this can be overcome through the employment of either encapsulation or shape stabilisation technology. Numerous papers have prepared unlimited number of form stable PCMs for various applications ranging from textiles to thermal energy storage (TES); however, the factors to consider when selecting PCM for an intended application are not clear and the influence of synthesis techniques and processing parameters on the performance of stabilised PCM is yet to be understood. Also, majority of the publications have focused mainly on the encapsulation of paraffins for TES by employing different encapsulation techniques. Therefore, selecting a suitable technique for the synthesis of form stable PCM is the most challenging. This review aims at providing a comprehensive database addressing these issues, focusing mainly on PCMs, processing techniques, performance of encapsulated and composite PCMs, and phase change building materials prepared in previous studies, since this is the most critical information required to widen the potential usage of PCM technology in building applications. A concise summary of environmentally friendly poly(ethylene glycol)-based composite PCMs is also included.European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 86989

Thermal transformation of bamboo sawdust for its advanced cementitious composites

Data availability: Data will be made available on request.Copyright © 2023 The Authors. This paper investigates a vacuum heat treatment (VHT) technology at 160℃, 200℃ and 240℃ for 6–14 h to modify bamboo sawdust (BS) and then BS/cement composites for the development of low carbon construction materials. The hydration process, thermal stability, micro-morphology and crystallinity, and chemical and mechanical changes for both VHT BS and composites are examined by FTIR, TG-DTG, XRD and SEM analyses. The mechanism of improving the mechanical properties of modified BS on composite materials is further elaborated together with the physical and mechanical properties and durability. The results show that the flexural strength and compressive strength of the modified BS/cement composites after VHT at 200℃ for 10 h are increased by 61.2% and 13.8%, respectively, compared with those in the untreated group, and the composites have better durability in the modified group. VHT resulted in cellulose and hemicellulose degradation to certain degrees, lignin undergoes cross-linked condensation reaction and cellulose crystallinity increases. These changes reduce the number of BS hydrophilic groups and result in changes in BS microstructure and surface topography, providing favorable conditions for the bonding and interface development of BS/cement composites. The impact of BS/cement composites on the carbon footprint in the production stage was analyzed, showing that the carbon emissions of BS/cement composites after VHT were reduced by 5.7% compared with that of the corresponding OPC composites.Forestry Science and Technology Project of Fujian (KLB18007A); EU-NWE, Interreg IV B project ‘Grow2Build’

A real-time olive fruit detection for harvesting robot based on YOLO algorithms

Deep neural network models have become powerful tools of machine learning and artificial intelligence. They can approximate functions and dynamics by learning from examples. This paper reviews the state-of-art of deep learning-based object detection frameworks that are used for fruit detection in general and for olive fruit in particular. A dataset of olive fruit on the tree is built to train and evaluate deep models. The ultimate goal of this work is the capability of on-edge real-time olive fruit detection on the tree from digital videos. Recent work in deep neural networks has led to the development of a state-of-the-art object detector termed You Only Look Once version five (YOLOv5). This paper builds a dataset of 1.2 K source images of olive fruit on the tree and evaluates the latest object detection algorithms focusing on variants of YOLOv5 and YOLOR. The results of the YOLOv5 models show that the YOLOv5 new network models are able to extract rich olive features from images and detect the olive fruit with a high precision of higher than 0.75 mAP_0.5. YOLOv5s performs better for real-time olive fruit detection on the tree over other YOLOv5 variants and YOLOR