Neurotechnology in Stroke Neurorehabilitation: Towards Precision and Personalized Rehabilitation Treatment

Given the large global population of stroke survivors and limited rehabilitation resources, efficient treatments are urgently needed to help patients regain independence and reintegrate into society. In this review, we discuss how artificial intelligence and neurotechnology can be used to accelerate neurorehabilitation after stroke. First, we introduce neurorehabilitation mechanisms that provide the basis for neurotechnology development. Next, we describe how neurophysiological and neuroimaging biomarkers can be used for multimodal assessment and prognostic prediction. We then provide examples of brain-computer interface (BCI)-driven rehabilitation robots and BCI-triggered transcranial and peripheral neuromodulation for closed-loop rehabilitation training.

Trait Number and Coding Shape Estimates of Functional Diversity

Functional diversity estimates increasingly inform ecological research, yet how methodological choices such as trait number and coding affect common metrics remains poorly quantified. Here, we systematically evaluate the effects of trait number and coding strategy on functional diversity metrics using benthic macroinvertebrate traits. Across 14 functional diversity indices representing functional richness, evenness, dispersion, and redundancy, we showed that metric responses to trait number are highly facet-dependent. Functional richness and evenness indices were particularly sensitive to trait number, whereas dispersion and redundancy metrics were comparatively stable. Estimation uncertainty was minimized at intermediate trait number, indicating a potential balance between functional space resolution and statistical robustness. Despite broad consistency between binary and fuzzy coding approaches for several metrics, redundancy metrics showed substantial divergence between coding schemes. These results demonstrate that hidden methodological decisions can substantially influence functional diversity indices. Our study provides a quantitative framework for evaluating metric robustness and reveals that widely used indices differ fundamentally in their response to dimensionality—a mathematical behaviour that must be understood before ecological interpretation. We recommend reporting trait number alongside functional diversity values and exercising caution when comparing communities assessed with different trait sets, particularly for richness and evenness metrics.

What Should Ecology Study for Watershed?

Microalgae as a Sustainable Bioresource for Bioplastic Production

Bioplastics are biomaterial-derived plastics and are superior to petrochemical-based plastics in terms of resource renewability, planetary sustainability, and environmental biodegradability. Extensive research has been carried out over the last decades to identify and characterize desirable biomaterials for bioplastic manufacturing, and among those explored, microalgal biomass has received special attention due to its numerous advantages over other bioresources, including high areal productivity, the potential to use non-arable land, and the ability to reduce waste. Nonetheless, the cultivation and biorefinery processes for microalgae still need innovative development to make microalgal bioplastics economically viable. The primary focus of this review is to examine the established and emerging technologies for manufacturing bioplastics from microalgal biomass, starting from the exploration of bioresource availability and outlining technical routes of production. In particular, both upstream and downstream processes of microalgal cultivation pertinent to bioplastic production are reviewed in detail, analyzed in depth, and evaluated from the perspective of economic viability. The technical challenges and research opportunities, as well as prospects of current approaches and future methodologies for microalgal production of bioplastics, are also discussed, mostly based upon our research experiences in microalgal bioengineering, and it is our opinion that, despite these existing challenges, microalgal biomass could still be one of the most promising feedstocks for sustainable manufacturing of bioplastics.

Electromagnetic Tracking for Rehabilitation Applications—A Survey

Motion tracking plays a crucial role in the quantitative assessment and clinical rehabilitation of motor symptoms. While optical tracking and inertial sensing are mainstream, they are frequently limited by line-of-sight occlusions or data drift. Electromagnetic tracking (EMT) technology offers a powerful complementary solution due to its unique capabilities in full-pose tracking and occlusion-free measurements. To facilitate the integration of this technology into medical settings, this paper presents a structured overview of EMT approaches within rehabilitation applications. We systematically review the field from foundational physics and hardware architectures to advanced algorithmic frameworks. Particular emphasis is placed on recent breakthroughs in interference compensation and data-driven methods that enhance tracking robustness. Furthermore, we categorize representative clinical applications by scenario and target population, ultimately outlining key research trends and open opportunities to guide future development in this expanding domain.

An Overview for Optimal Planning and Reliable Operations of Multi Vector Energy Systems for On-Grid and Standalone Applications

The increasing global demand for electricity has accelerated the integration of renewable energy sources, including solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, wind energy conversion systems (WECS), and battery energy storage systems (BESS), into modern power networks. Although these resources improve sustainability and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, their intermittent and variable nature introduces significant challenges related to system reliability, power quality, operational costs, and energy management, particularly in standalone and off-grid applications. This study presents a comprehensive review and analysis of both standalone and grid-connected renewable energy systems employed in distributed generation. Special emphasis is placed on evaluating the impact of renewable energy variability on system performance and reliability. Furthermore, the study investigates the role of green hydrogen technologies, including electrolyzes and fuel cells, as long-term energy storage solutions in hybrid renewable energy systems. The findings indicate that integrating green hydrogen with solar and wind resources can significantly enhance energy reliability, improve system flexibility, and ensure a continuous power supply in off-grid environments. The study highlights hybrid green hydrogen-based renewable energy systems as a promising pathway toward sustainable, reliable, and resilient future energy infrastructures.

Case Studies of Acute Care of Ventilatory Pump Failure: A Medicolegal Interpretation of When Conventional Care Is Negligent

Ventilatory pump failure is respiratory insufficiency caused by weakness of the inspiratory and expiratory muscles, leading to hypoventilation, hypercapnia, and ineffective cough rather than primary lung disease. This article analyzes five medicolegal cases in which conventional acute-care management of ventilatory pump failure resulted in death, anoxic injury, prolonged tracheostomy mechanical ventilation, or avoidable institutionalization. The cases were reviewed to identify recurrent clinical and legal failures, including removal of continuous noninvasive ventilatory support, administration of supplemental oxygen without correction of hypoventilation, inadequate low-pressure noninvasive ventilation, failure to use mechanical insufflation-exsufflation for airway clearance, and refusal to consider extubation to continuous noninvasive ventilatory support despite available published protocols. Across the cases, tracheostomy or death was often framed as inevitable, although feasible noninvasive alternatives existed. From a medicolegal perspective, these omissions raise concerns about breach of duty, failure to obtain informed consent, and loss of chance. The analysis suggests that customary practice is not necessarily reasonable practice when evidence-based alternatives are available and clinically applicable. For cognitively intact patients with ventilatory pump failure, acute-care teams should consider and document noninvasive ventilatory support and mechanical insufflation-exsufflation before proceeding to invasive or palliative pathways.

Simulating Repetition Suppression and Enhancement in Infancy: An Interactive Approach

Experience-related neural dynamics in infants may be understood from a prediction-based perspective that incorporates bidirectional interactions between perception and expectation, modulated by sleep-wake states. This simulation study addresses two seemingly contradictory sets of fNIRS findings, which exhibit repetition-induced suppression or enhancement of neural response over trials, accompanied by correspondingly opposing surprise-induced responses. The simulation study demonstrates that, by interacting with tasks of varying complexity, a unified implicit, error-driven learning mechanism that engages both bottom-up perception and top-down expectation can simulate experience-related enhancements in perceptual and frontal responses. The distinction between trial-by-trial neural suppression and enhancement is then interpreted based on differing rates of neural attenuation influenced by the involvement of on- and/or off-task resources. In sleep states, a highly familiarized outcome with higher activation is responded to with shorter latency (decreasing on-task involvement), thus suppressing the overall neural response. In wakeful states, however, neural responses may be maintained by sustained attention but can still be subject to neural attenuation through novelty seeking (increasing off-task involvement). The simulation study raises questions about the interplay between the implicit prediction mechanism and (un)conscious states that contribute to experience-related neural dynamics in infants.

Dynamic Mechanics of Carbon Containing Alumina Refractories and the Effect of Carbon Resource and Cyclic Thermal Exposure

Dynamic thermo-mechanical stresses caused by sudden temperature changes and molten steel impact, etc., accelerate the degradation of Al₂O₃-C refractories during service. To investigate the dynamic degradation behavior, dynamic mechanical tests were conducted using the Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB), systematically examining the effects of partial substitution of flake graphite by expanded graphite and thermal degradation. The results show that the Al₂O₃-C refractories exhibit a significant strain-rate hardening effect, with strength increasing with impact velocity and the failure mode progressively transitioning from crack propagation to pulverization. Cyclic prolonged thermal exposure to 1500 °C contributes to the SiC whiskers formation and densification, and results in the increase strength and brittleness. The phenomenon of specimen after 5 cycles having the optimal impact resistance proves the both the strength and energy dominated failure process. The introduction of expanded graphite effectively suppresses crack propagation and enhances energy dissipation capacity through interlayer sliding and stress buffering related to the myrmekitic texture, which provides a rationale for the development of low-carbon materials.

Nanosecond Laser-Driven Proton FLASH Spares Normal Tissue Cells by Sustaining Mitochondrial Homeostasis and Attenuating Ferroptosis

Radiotherapy’s clinical utility remains fundamentally constrained by the collateral damage to healthy tissues. Ultra-high dose rate (UHDR) irradiation, or FLASH-radiotherapy (FLASH-RT) has emerged as a transformative paradigm to mitigate such toxicity. However, the biological effects of FLASH-RT on the high-efficiency of tumor killing and normal tissue sparing remain poorly understood. In this work, we utilized a petawatt-class laser-plasma acceleration (LPA) platform to deliver discrete 12.9-nanosecond proton pulses at an extreme instantaneous dose rate of 1.94 × 10⁷ Gy/s. This temporal singularity achieved a profound sparing effect in normal bronchial epithelial cells, evidenced by a nine-fold reduction in the lethal α coefficient (from 0.47 to 0.05 Gy⁻¹), while maintaining full tumoricidal potency against lung adenocarcinoma. Mechanistically, we demonstrated that LPA-FLASH could effectively bypass the ATF3-mediated stress response and circumvent the subsequent ferroptotic cascade. This molecular evasion could preserve the mitochondrial cristae integrity and trigger an adaptive bioenergetic ATP surge—a hallmark of metabolic resilience exclusively in healthy tissue cells. Therefore, our findings identify ferroptosis-mediated mitochondrial integrity as a unifying framework for selective normal-tissue protection at the physical limits of radiation delivery, and establish LPA-FLASH-RT as a potent, compact modality for next-generation oncology.