Elsevier Research Articles

Transformative science–policy interfacing: the case of biodiversity and ecosystem services

AbstractScience–policy interfaces (SPI), such as IPCC and IPBES, are key mechanisms by which scientists can contribute to policy making to tackle socio-environmental problems. To capture recent and ongoing developments, we examine the evolution of global and European SPI landscapes in the biodiversity domain grounding a novel concept of “transformative science–policy interfacing”, which is a collective effort to enable fundamental societal change by enhancing connectivity between co-production of knowledge and policy implementation. We consider that transformative science–policy interfacing is not in conflict with, but rather extends the currently prevailing co-production paradigm into directions that rethink the relationships between science, SPI, and policy. It shifts the balance of knowledge co-production from “making sense together” towards “enabling transformative change”. It employs the Science & Technology Studies concept of “co-production of science and social order” by focusing on orchestration of the science–policy interface landscape with a normative agenda leaning towards transformative change. Based on the overview of the evolution of SPI landscape in global and European biodiversity domains, we identify and discuss eight key directions for transformative science–policy interfacing. Further work will be needed to test whether the development towards transformative science–policy interfacing can be observed also in domains beyond environmental topics.

ENHANCING NURSE-PATIENT COMMUNICATION: A COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES

Background: Practical communication skills are imperative in nursing to ensure patient safety and comfort. Studies reveal that nurses often fail to implement therapeutic communication fully, resulting in dissatisfaction from beginning to end patient care. Objective: This study seeks to pinpoint strategies to enhance nurses' communication proficiency with patients. Method: Employing a systematic review approach, this research delved into journals archived in the EBSCO E. Journal, Elsevier Science Direct, Pubmed, CINAHL Complete, and Google Scholar databases, alongside nursing management and leadership literature. The operational definition encapsulates the endeavors undertaken by nurses to refine communication strategies with their patients. The study was conducted across diverse clinics and hospitals, encompassing all nurses within these settings, with the research sample comprising those lacking robust communication strategies. Data was gathered through the administration of questionnaires and the utilization of observation sheets. Results: Findings underscored that training initiatives bolstered nurses' confidence in delivering comprehensive patient care. Furthermore, culturally sensitive communication skill guides proved instrumental in augmenting nurse-patient communication and patient satisfaction. Moreover, tailored therapeutic communication programs designed for pediatric nurses yielded favorable outcomes, fostering secure and healthy interactions, nurturing trust, and expediting recovery. Short workshops emerged as another effective avenue for refining nurses' communication skills. Consequently, implementing training sessions, comprehensive guides, specialized programs, and brief workshops is pivotal in elevating communication between nurses and patients.

Development of the Cluster Chemistry, Supramolecular Chemistry and Chemistry of Metal-Organic Frameworks by Professor Vladimir P. Fedin and His School

The article briefly summarizes the main scientific directions contributed to and developed by the outstanding scientist—a leader in the field of coordination chemistry, cluster chemistry, supramolecular chemistry and chemistry of metal-organic coordination polymers, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Petrovich Fedin.

Mapping the integration of adult friends into the study of close relationships and health

AbstractClose relationships are associated with many positive outcomes throughout life, including improved physical health and well‐being. Traditionally, theory and research on the health benefits of close relationships have focused on either the total amount of support perceived available within a person's entire social network or the support provided by romantic partners (Shankar et al. in Psychology and Health, 30(6), 686–698; 2015). Limited work has examined the impact of distinct relationship types, particularly friends. In this article, we address this critical gap in our current knowledge. First, we identify the features of friends and friendship networks that distinguish them from other types of adult relationships, especially romantic relationships. Second, we use the strength and strain model (Slatcher & Selcuk in Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(1), 16–21; 2017) as a framework to consider how adult friendships might impact physical health in ways similar to but also distinct from romantic partners. Utilizing this specific model, we identify features of friendships—the size and structure of friendship networks, the norms that define friendships, and the levels of interdependence in friendships—and discuss how each feature can amplify or blunt the strengths and strains afforded by friends, including their impact on health. Finally, we provide a roadmap and identify priorities to advance research on friendships and physical health.

Evolving research themes in six selected wood science journals: insights from text mining and latent dirichlet allocation

This study analyzes the status, trends, and future directions in wood science research using text-mining techniques. We applied these techniques to a textual dataset constructed from metadata of six major wood science journals, covering the period from 2002 to 2024. The research explores publication trends, international collaborations, keywords, and research networks, and it employs topic modeling using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model. The descriptive analysis reveals a consistent increase in publication volume throughout the study period, unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, international collaboration declined after 2020, likely due to the pandemic. In addition, a network analysis identified key research areas, including surface treatments, structural composites, and high-performance wood products, with lignin, mechanical properties, and moisture content emerging as central keywords. Topic modeling reveals a growing interest in wood modification technologies and an increased focus on studying wood as a sustainable material. The study confirms a shift of the field towards sustainable innovations while also highlighting the enduring relevance of traditional research areas. Future research should adapt to these evolving trends and address emerging challenges to maximize the potential of wood for carbon neutrality and sustainable development. This analysis provides a concise overview of current research trends and future directions in wood science.

DEPARTMENT OF METALURGY NAMED AFTER PROFESSOR VOLODIMIR LOGINOV - 95

The article presents the history of creation, development and dynamics of scientific interests of the Department of Metallurgy of the Dnipro State Technical University during the 95-year period of its existence. Reorganization and unification of the Department of Metallurgy of Ferrous Metals with departments of related specialties contributed to the expansion of scientific directions of research and opportunities for the implementation of developments in the practice of metallurgical enterprises. The scientific developments of the department's employees received a positive assessment from experts, were tested and implemented both in Ukraine and abroad.Thanks to the use of proprietary methods and laboratory equipment for isothermal and high-temperature modeling of metallurgical processes, innovative technologies and devices for sintering, blast furnace and steelmaking industries were proposed and mastered. The long-term scientific experience of the department's employees made it possible to substantiate the expediency and carry out a cycle of scientific research in the directions of theoretical and technological foundations of increasing the energy efficiency of agglomeration production and the quality of cast iron; development of methods for selecting slag and optimizing slag modes of blast furnace smelting, including when blowing pulverized coal fuel; substantiation of the priority directions for the further development of the design of devices and equipment for blasting into the blast furnace, improvement of its profile, systems for measuring process parameters and the condition of furnace enclosures;resource-saving technologies and devices for desulfurization and complex refining of recycled cast iron in ladles before converter smelting; dutt devices for conducting converter melting, including using low-slag technology, preliminary heating of scrap metal and elements of liquid-phase recovery of raw materials; new methods and devices for applying slag garnish to the lining of the oxygen converter; methods and devices for optimization of steel deoxidation and pouring technologies.

Multistep photovoltaic power forecasting based on multi-timescale fluctuation aggregation attention mechanism and contrastive learning

The integration of photovoltaic (PV) power into electrical grids introduces significant uncertainty due to the inherent volatility and intermittency of solar energy, underscoring the need for precise short and medium-term PV power forecasting. Despite the superior performance of Transformer-based time series methods, their application to PV power prediction remains suboptimal. In response to this deficiency, this paper proposes a novel attention mechanism that aggregates fluctuations across multiple time scales. This mechanism enhances the segmentation and extraction of nonlinear correlations between PV power outputs and meteorological factors, assigning variable weights to patterns of change across different time scales. Furthermore, a novel approach for selecting similar days is also developed based on contrastive learning, which enables self-supervised identification of similarities among PV power samples and enhances the model’s attention to local dynamic variations. Comparative analysis with eight state-of-the-art benchmark methods shows that the proposed MFA-attention model achieves lower prediction errors and improved effectiveness.© 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

HFF-Net: A hybrid convolutional neural network for diabetic retinopathy screening and grading

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a leading cause of vision loss among diabetic patients, necessitating effective screening and grading for timely intervention. Regular screening significantly increases the workload of ophthalmologists, and accurate grading into stages—mild, moderate, severe, and proliferative—is crucial for monitoring disease progression. While Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems can alleviate this burden, existing Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based frameworks use fixed-size kernels in a linear feed-forward manner. This approach can lead to information loss in the initial stages due to limited feature utilization across adjacent layers. To address this limitation, we propose a Hierarchical Features Fusion Convolutional Neural Network (HFF-Net) within a Diabetic Retinopathy Screening and Grading (DRSG) framework. The framework includes preprocessing to extract regions of interest from fundus images (FIs), enhancement using Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE), and data augmentation for class balancing and overfitting mitigation. HFF-Net extracts multiscale features that fused at multiple levels within the network, utilizing the swish activation function for improved learning stability. We evaluated HFF-Net against several state-of-the-art CNN classifiers within the DRSG framework. Experimental results demonstrate that HFF-Net achieves a grading accuracy of 73.77 ​%, surpassing the second-best model by 3.51 percentage points (a relative improvement of approximately 5 ​%), and attains a screening accuracy of 98.70 ​% using only 1.18 million parameters. These findings highlight HFF-Net's potential as an efficient and effective tool in CAD systems for DR screening and grading.©2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mihhail Kurotškini panus udmurdi folkloristikasse

The work presents little-known and new facts from the life and work of the educator and teacher Mikhail Alekseevich Kurochkin. He made a valuable contribution to the preservation and popularization of the folklore heritage of the Udmurt people and the development of musical culture. Hardly accessible and interesting factual stories about his creative and life biography have been introduced into scientific circulation; these were identified during work with newspaper materials, documents from the archives of the Administration of Sarapul and the archives of the Mozhginsky Pedagogical College by Trofim Kuzmich Borisov. Some features of the song collection Kubyz (1925) with notes by Mikhail Kurochkin are described. The book was compiled by him on the basis of folkloric field materials collected together with students of the Mozhginsky Technical School. His pedagogical and cultural activities contributed to the development of children’s interest in their native culture, the formation of a musical direction in Udmurt science, and the education of new national personnel. The study of the life and creative biography, educational and folklore activities of Mikhail Kurochkin made it possible to determine his significant contribution to the cultural life of the Udmurt people at the beginning of the 20th century.

The role of regulatory agencies in public health emergencies: A critical review of global approaches and challenges

Regulatory agencies play a pivotal role in public health emergencies by ensuring that medical products, including vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics, are rapidly available while maintaining safety and efficacy standards. The COVID-19 pandemic, along with past crises such as the Ebola and Zika outbreaks, exposed both strengths and vulnerabilities in global regulatory frameworks. This paper critically reviews the role of regulatory agencies in public health emergencies, synthesizing existing literature to present new insights into their operational challenges and the reliance strategies employed to bridge capacity gaps. By examining case studies, such as the reliance on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) by low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), this paper highlights the importance of global cooperation and reliance mechanisms in managing crises. Furthermore, it addresses challenges such as resource constraints, disparities in regulatory capacity, and ethical dilemmas faced when approving products based on limited data. The paper also explores the future direction of regulatory science, emphasizing the need for greater global regulatory convergence, capacity building, and the adoption of innovative digital tools. Ultimately, the paper argues that while reliance strategies are vital, long-term investment in national regulatory systems and global harmonization efforts are essential for a more equitable and effective response to future public health emergencies.

Reflections on the axiological paradigm of medical education

On September 23–25, 2024, the XII International Interdisciplinary Scientific and Practical Symposium “Man and (co) societies in the context of health care: problems of medical anthropology in the past, present, and challenges of the future” was held in Moscow. The symposium was organized by the Association of Medical Anthropologists (AMA) and the Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (IEA) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This traditional event gathered a huge audience this time, which is not surprising, because it was about the highest values – health and life. The issues of presentations and discussions are reflected in the names of sections and Round tables, for example: “Health care in the past and present”, “Healthcare in the context of health care in modern communities”, “Medical anthropology as an interdisciplinary scientific field: problems of interaction and research methods”, “Reproductive models and practices in the context of multicultural societies” “Medical Anthropology – medical psychology: problems and research in an interdisciplinary field”, “Relevance of Ayurveda approaches in modern health care and healthcare”, “Medical aspects of biological anthropology”, “Mental health in a sociocultural context”, “Modern healthcare and patient trust: new bioethical challenges”, “Biofacturing of human organs and tissues”. The final plenary session was of the greatest interest, the topic of which was: “Medical anthropology: problems of profession formation, development of scientific direction, teaching of educational discipline, as well as professional (re)training of specialists in medical and assisting professions”. In this context, the problem of the relationship between medical anthropology and bioethics in higher education was discussed. In this article, we express our opinion on this issue.

Digital forensics in the provision of crime prevention activities

Digital forensics in the provision of crime prevention activities

Вариативность проявления авторского начала в научной аннотации: сравнение гуманитарного и естественно-научного дискурсов

The article deals with the problem of the intradiscursive variability of the speech genre of the abstract. The article aims to identify the variability of the manifestation of the author's principle in the verbal genre of abstract functioning in academic discourse. 38 Russian-language abstracts to linguistic academic articles published in the journal “Genres of Speech” in 2023 and 34 Russian-language abstracts to biological academic articles published in the “Journal of General Biology” in 2022 were selected as the base of the study. The main research methods were general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, comparison, juxtaposition, content analysis, statistical analysis), as well as methods of complex linguistic research – lexico-semantic, component, grammatical, discursive, stylistic, linguistic and pragmatic analyses. It was revealed that the pronouns “we” and “our” (in 13 % of linguistic and 21 % of biological annotations) and the self-designation “author” (in 11 % of linguistic and 3 % of biological abstracts) are used in abstracts as explicit markers of the authorʼs presence. Biologists are more actively using indirect designation through pronouns to emphasize personal contribution to solving a scientific problem and present results reflecting new knowledge. There are no differences in the use of implicit authorization tools (passive and impersonal constructions) in the abstracts belonging to the humanitarian and natural science discourse. To express an evaluative attitude towards the components of an epistemic situation, qualitative adjectives are used in the abstracts of both scientific directions, but in linguistic abstracts the set of adjectives is much richer. It was found that in the abstracts of natural science discourse the strengthening of evaluation using qualitative adverbs is more common (50 %) than in linguistic abstracts (29 %), as well as the weakening of evaluation – 32 % and 10 %, respectively. This indicates the desire of the linguistic authors to be more accurate and selective in expressing the strengthening or weakening of the assessment and, if possible, to avoid such speech strategies. Ii is concluded that the variability of the authorʼs presence in the verbal genre of abstract, functioning in academic discourse, is due to differences in research approaches, scientific tradition and the dissimilarity of the worldview of scientists.

The Mechanism of Formation and Display of Sacral-value Relations in the Language of Culture

The issue of mutual understanding of cultures is today more relevant than ever and requires careful, deep and comprehensive consideration. This issue does not lie in the plane of one knowledge's direction, but is located in the interdisciplinary field in a complex interweaving of different scientific directions. Today it is an obvious fact that cultures touch each other by ideas and the way of worldview. The world picture of any cultural community is built on clots of ideas. Ideas arise in the human psychic field and are reflected in language through a special mechanism created by a culture, which stores and transmits the way of its worldview for the next generations. The psychic field, unlike the external environment, which consists of a multitude of random factors, is a field of certainty. In the field of certainty, the first sacred-value links between man and the world around him began to emerge and to be established at the dawn of the culture's origin. The first connections were unprecedented, because they formed basic thought-forms and served as an impetus for the creation of a mechanism for their fixation and transmission. This mechanism is based on thought forms, thought images, mental templates and language. If thought-forms are universal for any culture, then the filling of thought-forms with thought images and the formation of mental templates on their basis, as samples for perception and understanding of the culture's value reality, occurs individually in each culture. Acting together they create a special way of worldview, which is represented in any form of culture: language, painting etc. All subsequent ideas in a culture are realised through the way of worldview created by it and arise on the basis of the world's value picture, which was built on the first sacral-value relations. In non-written languages, ideas are not conceptualised. They may exist disparately, but within a value picture of the world. Ideas are conceptualised in written language, which leads to the emergence of the ideology's prototype. The first written languages, while extending to cultures that were in contact proximity, or that were part of one large community, it was not able to fully conceptualise the value systems already existing within the culture. Written language was able to absorb such meanings, but was unable to assimilate or change the mental templates, and the value picture of the world built on them, of these cultures. Mental templates and ways of worldview are not influenced from outside and individualise cultures.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors for glioblastoma: emerging science, clinical advances, and future directions.

Glioblastoma (GBM), the most common and aggressive primary central nervous system (CNS) tumor in adults, continues to have a dismal prognosis. Across hundreds of clinical trials, few novel approaches have translated to clinical practice while survival has improved by only a few months over the past three decades. Randomized controlled trials of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), which have seen impressive success for advanced or metastatic extracranial solid tumors, have so far failed to demonstrate a clinical benefit for patients with GBM. This has been secondary to GBM heterogeneity, the unique immunosuppressive CNS microenvironment, immune-evasive strategies by cancer cells, and the rapid evolution of tumor on therapy. This review aims to summarize findings from major clinical trials of ICIs for GBM, review historic failures, and describe currently promising avenues of investigation. We explore the biological mechanisms driving ICI responses, focusing on the role of the tumor microenvironment, immune evasion, and molecular biomarkers. Beyond conventional monotherapy approaches targeting PD-1, PD-L1, CTLA-4, we describe emerging approaches for GBM, such as dual-agent ICIs, and combination of ICIs with oncolytic virotherapy, antigenic peptide vaccines, chimeric antigenic receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, along with nanoparticle-based delivery systems to enhance ICI efficacy. We highlight potential strategies for improving patient selection and treatment personalization, along with real-time, longitudinal monitoring of therapeutic responses through advanced imaging and liquid biopsy techniques. Integrated radiomics, tissue, and plasma-based analyses, may potentially uncover immunotherapeutic response signatures, enabling early, adaptive therapeutic adjustments. By specifically targeting current therapeutic challenges, outcomes for GBM patients may potentially be improved.

Popular assemblies as historical prototypes of parliamentarism

Relevance. The emergence of parliamentary mechanisms in the European space is the result of a strong political and legal tradition. Before parliaments acquired the status of state structures, society developed special representative institutions - prototypes of parliamentarism, which are rightly considered popular assemblies. The analysis of their legal status and functionality is a promising scientific direction, as it allows us to generate regularities and factors of parliamentarism as a unique category. Purpose: generalization of retrospective experience of people’s assemblies in the context of their positioning as proto-parliamentary models. Objectives: to study the empirical basis for the functioning of popular assemblies in the format of ecclesia, commissions, tings and veche, to determine the «points of influence» of these structures on the fixation of parliamentary values in national legal orders.Methodology. The methodology of the research is represented by a combination of general scientific, private scientific and special legal methods, among which the comparative legal method is of particular importance.Results. The results of the study are of theoretical and applied nature and consist in a summarized view of the competence toolkit of popular assemblies operating in different historical periods on the territory of the European continent and their role in the subsequent establishment of parliamentary principles.Conclusions. Popular assemblies in the format of ecclesia, commissions, tings and veche, accompanying the development of the state system of various countries and epochs, were peculiar stimuli for the formation of parliamentarism, which acquired a stable reputation as the social architecture became more complex and deliberative structures were introduced into the managerial conjuncture. The experience of people's assemblies largely predetermined the further emergence of parliaments as a natural result of the development of social relations.

Мирон Пилипович Деркач (1931–2012). Той, що почав розмовляти з комп’ютером…

Myron Derkach is a world-class scientist in the field of biophysics and informational aspects of speech communication – analysis, synthesis and recognition of speech signals. He is the founder of the scientific direction, who formulated the principles of the deductive strategy of auditory language perception. In 1976, he created one of the first biophysics departments in Ukraine on the basis of the biological faculty of Ivan Franko University of Lviv. Dr. Myron Derkach is the author of the first university textbooks in Ukrainian on biophysics and mathematical methods in biology, which have not lost their relevance to this day.

Contradictions of sustainable development urban planning form (on the example of Irkutsk)

Problem: the city absorbs the natural and historical and cultural resources of the territory, due to which it is growing. The technical and economic growth of the city does not coincide with the preservation and prosperity of nature and culture. The quality of life with the growth of the city is deteriorating as a result of the predominance of the commercial interests of developers over the environmental and historical values of the townspeople. Purpose: to identify the features of the growth of the city of Irkutsk, environmental and historical-cultural problems accompanying this growth, and to develop a design tool that allows you to protect the environmental and historical-cultural values of the city. Methods: fixing planning forms of conflicts by comparative analysis of design and actual morphotypes of construction; use of configurations of natural and historical-cultural frames of a kind to assess conflict situations; finding a compromise in conflicts of city development motivations. Results: scientific directions for resolving conflicts of sustainable development of the city were identified: the principle of landscape-like planning and construction; the principle of continuity in the development of development; the principle of distinguishing between public and private morphotypes; the principle of ordering random processes in different-time buildings.

A new FEM-based approach on the modeling of stress-induced velocity shift of piezoelectric surface acoustic wave resonators

A novel methodology is introduced for the computation of stress-induced surface acoustic wave velocity shifts in piezoelectric resonators including quartz, lithium niobate and langasite resonators. The numerical framework has been verified through a comparative analysis of experimental and Finite Element Method (FEM) results for quartz resonators. This approach introduces the combined capabilities of COMSOL Multiphysics and MATLAB, facilitated by LiveLink, to systematically calculate all parameters contributing to the perturbation integral. The findings have a better accuracy using the LiveLink methodology in this study compared to prior approaches that rely on average stress and strain calculations in the central point of the resonator. Moreover, the utilization of LiveLink not only enhances accuracy but also establishes MATLAB as a fundamental software platform for interfacing with COMSOL Multiphysics. The proposed approach in this paper can extend to complex strain sensors or investigations into the influence of temperature and imbalanced loading effects in future research endeavors. Furthermore, the LiveLink approach introduced herein can be extended to optimize crystal orientation and identify premium wave directions, thereby contributing to the enhanced design of Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) resonators. This innovative methodology is used to advance the understanding and application of stress-induced velocity shifts in SAW devices, presenting future developments in sensor technologies and resonator designs. © 2024 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved.

Macrocycle-based self-assembled amphiphiles for co-delivery of therapeutic combinations to tumor

For tumor treatment, the efficiency of single chemotherapeutic agent is generally limited and the traditional combination chemotherapies frequently result in the aggravation of side effects. Herein, an amphiphilic pillararene-based self-assembled nanoparticle (APSN) composed of hydrazide-pillar[5]arene (HP5A-6C) that achieve effective co-delivery of therapeutic combinations was reported. Through integrating multitudinous macrocyclic cavities into a single nanoparticle, the APSN could co-load two antitumor drugs, cisplatin (CP) and nitrogen mustard (NM) via host-guest interactions. A serious of safety tests preliminary demonstrated that blank carrier APSN had good biocompatibility. Cytotoxicity assay verified that co-delivery system CP+NM@APSN could exert a synergistic antitumor effect at the cellular level. In vivo studies demonstrated that CP+NM@APSN could not only improve chemotherapeutic outcomes in tumor-bearing model mouse but also alleviate two medications-related side effects. These favorable findings were attributed to the formation of ternary supramolecular assembly that benefited from an enhanced permeability and retention effect. © 2024 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved