Elsevier Research Articles

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.

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.

Evaluation of outcomes of psychological interventions in terminally ill family caregivers: a brief overview

BackgroundFamily caregivers play a crucial role in supporting patients with incurable diseases, but often experience significant stress and anxiety. This study aimed to investigate the impact of psychological interventions on family caregivers, with a focus on reducing the burden of care, improving mental health and quality of life, and promoting family communication.MethodThis study conducted a brief overview of quantitative and qualitative research on assessing the impact of psychological interventions on family caregivers. A comprehensive literature search was conducted in PUBMED, SCOPUS, EMBASE, SCIENCE DIRECT and WEB OF SCIENCE to identify relevant papers, resulting in 20 articles being included. The included studies focused on evaluating the outcomes of psychological interventions on family caregivers.ResultUltimately, 20 relevant articles were retrieved from a pool of 500 articles, focusing on the evaluation of the primary outcomes of psychological interventions on family caregivers. The review of 20 articles revealed that interventions such as expressive writing and reminiscence therapy had a positive and significant impact on reducing the burden of care and fostering a positive care environment. Additionally, these interventions were found to be effective in improving self-esteem, family communication, and overall wellbeing.ConclusionThe study emphasizes the need for further research to confirm the benefits of these interventions and their role in promoting family resilience. These findings highlight the potential of psychological interventions in alleviating the challenges faced by family caregivers of patients with incurable diseases.

Digital forensics in the provision of crime prevention activities

Digital forensics in the provision of crime prevention activities

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

Gene Therapy in Cardiovascular Disease: Recent Advances and Future Directions in Science: A Science Advisory From the American Heart Association.

Cardiovascular disease remains the foremost cause of morbidity and mortality globally, affecting millions of individuals. Recent discoveries illuminate the substantial role of genetics in cardiovascular disease pathogenesis, encompassing both monogenic and polygenic mechanisms and identifying tangible targets for gene therapies. Innovative strategies have emerged to rectify pathogenic variants that cause monogenic disorders such as hypertrophic, dilated, and arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathies and hypercholesterolemia. These include delivery of exogenous genes to supplement insufficient protein levels caused by pathogenic variants or genome editing to correct, delete, or modify mutant sequences to restore protein function. However, effective delivery of gene therapy to specified cells presents formidable challenges. Viral vectors, notably adeno-associated viruses and nonviral vectors such as lipid and engineered nanoparticles, offer distinct advantages and limitations. Additional risks and obstacles remain, including treatment durability, tissue-specific targeting, vector-associated adverse events, and off-target effects. Addressing these challenges is an ongoing imperative; several clinical gene therapy trials are underway, and many more first-in-human studies are anticipated. This science advisory reviews core concepts of gene therapy, key obstacles, patient risks, and ongoing research endeavors to enable clinicians to understand the complex landscape of this emerging therapy and its remarkable therapeutic potential to benefit cardiovascular disease.

NEW ASPECTS OF CORE MICROTOMOGRAPHY

Compared to many other technologies of laboratory studies of core samples, the modern «digital core» technology is a rather young scientific and industrial direction, but for decades it has attracted close attention of a wide range of scientists and specialists of the oil and gas industry (geologists, sedimentologists, lithologists, geophysicists, developers, geological modelers, hydrodynamicists, physicists). For many specialists of practical sphere new methodical techniques and methods of such researches remain little known. If earlier computer X-ray microtomographs in the Russian Federation were the prerogative of only academic structures or service organizations, nowadays many subsoil users have started to equip their own laboratory and research centers with the corresponding specialized equipment, understanding that without these data it is hardly possible to build high-quality geological, petrophysical, tectonic-physical, rheological, hydrodynamic and geological-field models of the studied sediments, as well as to prepare progragmatic models of the studied sediments. In this article the authors made an attempt to study and analyze the current state of development of «digital core» technology.Using extensive factual material the accumulated experience of special studies in the field of full-size core tomography is summarized, estimates of absolute permeability of low-permeability complex sediments are made, results of studying cores in frozen and unfrozen state are given, detailed analysis of fracturing at different stages of sample preparation and ongoing studies is carried out, and specific problems for which a solution using the technology is expected in the near future are formulated In this article the positive and negative sides of poroset and direct methods of modeling of filtration properties by digital core model are studied. Particular attention is paid to the need for large-scale studies to obtain statistically reliable data samples, which can be used to select the most qualitative methods of research and application of algorithms for processing of initial geological and geophysical information.

Decision Support System for the Design Process of Apatite Biopolymer Composite Parts

Abstract In connection with the increase in the number and severity of various types of bone tissue injuries received as a result of wounds during military operations in Ukraine, an important issue in orthopedics and traumatology is making informed decisions about the possibility of restoring the integrity and functions of bone tissue when using different types of composition, porosity and strength of apatite-biopolymer composites. The scientific direction of research is the development of principles and methods for making scientifically based decisions in the design and additive manufacturing of bone substitutes based on apatite-biopolymer composites with functional properties depending on the nature of the localization of the cavity bone defect and its size. A set of methods for analyzing images of bone tissue, taking into account its spatial structure, which are obtained by sensors of different physical nature, with the use of neural network models, development of methods of their design, optimization and training is proposed. The new knowledge obtained as a result of the project will become the necessary basis for making optimal decisions in practice for the introduction of the latest methods of treatment and prosthetics in trauma surgery, oncology, cranio-maxillofacial surgery, dentistry, taking into account the risks of biocompatibility of apatite-biopolymer composites. Software development of an intelligent decision support system will be used to design bone substitutes with controlled composition, structure, porosity and mechanical strength for the further selection of additive technology for its production from apatite-polymer composites, which will contribute to increasing the efficiency of treatment and prosthetics in orthopedics and traumatology.

Cardiotoxicity following thoracic radiotherapy for lung cancer.

Radiotherapy is the standard of care treatment for unresectable NSCLC, combined with concurrent chemotherapy and adjuvant immunotherapy. Despite technological advances in radiotherapy planning and delivery, the risk of damage to surrounding thoracic tissues remains high. Cardiac problems, including arrhythmia, heart failure and ischaemic events, occur in 20% of patients with lung cancer who undergo radiotherapy. As survival rates improve incrementally for this cohort, minimising the cardiovascular morbidity of RT is increasingly important. Problematically, the reporting of cardiac endpoints has been poor in thoracic radiotherapy clinical trials, and retrospective studies have been limited by the lack of standardisation of nomenclature and endpoints. How baseline cardiovascular profile and cardiac substructure radiation dose distribution impact the risk of cardiotoxicity is incompletely understood. As Thoracic Oncology departments seek to expand the indications for radiotherapy, and as the patient cohort becomes older and more comorbid, there is a pressing need for cardiotoxicity to be comprehensively characterised with sophisticated oncology, physics and cardio-oncology evaluations. This review synthesises the evidence base for cardiotoxicity in conventional radiotherapy, focusing on lung cancer, including current data, unmet clinical needs, and future scientific directions.

Методические аспекты межкультурной коммуникации в преподавании русского языка в иранской аудитории

The article outlines the main stages of the formation and development of intercultural communication as a scientific direction and academic discipline in universities, clarifies some concepts. The difficulties of communication between Iranian students and Russians in the aspect of intercultural communication (based on a questionnaire) are revealed. The authors consider the issues of using comparative regional studies material with a single thematic content in the process of teaching RCT in an Iranian audience, pretext, pre-text and post-text tasks are presented. A typology of tasks and exercises on intercultural communication in the process of teaching Russian as a foreign language has been developed.

TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN A MASTER’S DEGREE PROGRAMME IN TERMS OF USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The use of artificial intelligence by students learning a foreign language is becoming more common. The paper presents the results of a survey conducted among master’s students on the use of artificial intelligence in the educational process. The survey showed that 12 out of 17 undergraduates use neural networks, while seven master’s students use neural networks in preparation for foreign language classes. The article offers certain tasks: a critical review of a scientific paper in a certain field of study, writing an abstract/theses, as well as a presentation of a scientific direction.