The association between video game play and cognitive ability: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Highly sensitive superhydrophobic SERS substrate combined with machine learning for precise identification and classification of nanoplastics.

Artificial intelligence in diagnostic software: validation, safety, and lifecycle challenges in Europe.

This article describes the fundamental restructuring of the tools, methods, models, and institutional foundations of the functioning of socio-economic systems, which is taking place as a result of the integration of digital technologies into all spheres of modern society. The author regards the active use of the terms “digital”, “virtual”, and “real” economy is evidence of attention to the research of the processes taking place. At the same time, he notes that there are significant differences in the understanding of these concepts. The author seeks to examine the role and significance of some of them as key factors of economic development. As he points out, this leads to ignoring the complex socio-economic and technical-technological essence of the processes taking place in the modern economy under the influence of the introduction of digital technologies. The purpose of this work is to determine their place and role in forming a holistic view of transformations in the modern economy as a holistic system. The article focuses on analysing the impact of the introduction of digital technologies on the comprehensive transformation of economic systems. Attention is focused on the relationship between physical, digital, virtual and real components of the modern economy as complementary elements of a single process of socio-economic interaction. The methodological basis of the study is a systemic, structural, comparative, institutional analysis of the features of the impact of digitalisation on the transformation of technical and technological and socio-economic components of economic systems. The evolution of views on the impact of digitalisation and the transformation of key characteristics of economic systems is traced. The specifics of the “digital”, “virtual”, “real”, and “physical” elements of the modern economic system are presented. The author regards them as the constructive foundations of the modern economy, corresponding to its resource, technological, motivational, and social components. Their complementarity as integral parts of a single process of social reproduction within an economy based on digital technologies is substantiated.

ABSTRACT Air transport plays a critical role in the movement of people and goods in modern society, and the socio-economically and environmentally sustainable development of cities and regions. There is a variety of mechanisms by which air transport affects urban development in direct, indirect, spillover and combined ways. The paper reviews the research undertaken over the last two decades relating to the direct, indirect, spillover and combined impacts of air transport on the three pillars of sustainable development namely, economic, environmental and social development of cities and regions, and on the factors that moderate these effects. We identified that the impacts of air transport on all three pillars, although examined in recent studies, are not balanced across the different effects of air transport, i.e. direct, indirect, spillover and combined effects. Key directions for further research are proposed.

Green minds, sharp thoughts: How grass contact enhances cognitive performance and well-being in young adults.

In modern society, due to rapid urbanization and industry growth, different types of pollutants are accumulating in the environment and making it polluted. The excessive discharge of organic toxins into water bodies is a major contributor to environmental pollution and poses significant health risks to society and the environment. Organic toxins from various chemical and textile industries pollute our water resources, forming breeding centers for different disease pathogens and adversely affecting the natural water cycle. Therefore, to protect and sustain life on the planet, it should be our prime mandate to preserve, manage, and remediate our limited available water resources. Organic pollutant decomposition is a difficult task due to their complex nature; therefore, it is important to understand the structures of different pollutants to decompose them perfectly. This review highlights the classification of various pollutants, their structural properties, and their possible detoxification processes through the advanced photocatalytic processes. In addition, the elaboration for the decomposition mechanism of the different toxins, ranging from azo dyes, phenols, pesticides, and nitrogen-based compounds to halo-compounds, has been explained. This review also briefly explains the underlying charge transfer mechanism used by different photocatalysts, such as metal oxide semiconductors and 2D-layered nanostructures. A brief description of this mechanism is mentioned in the review, along with the fundamental principle, the role of active redox radicals, such as superoxides and hydroxyl ions, in facilitating the photocatalytic degradation process. Lastly, the creation of robust and scalable photocatalytic systems for practical environmental applications is discussed along with the knowledge gaps and future research goals. This review provides invaluable insight into developing the advanced photocatalyst materials for the targeted pollutants.

Solar-driven hydrogen cycling, which enables efficient coproduction of fine chemicals, holds significant importance for advancing the sustainable development of modern society. Here, we demonstrate the highly efficient coproduction of N-benzylidenebenzylamine (N-BBA) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) from benzylamine and air on well-designed benzotrithiophene-based mesoporous covalent organic frameworks (BTT-COFs). Linkers with an intertwined spatial distribution of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) were carefully explored for the construction of BTT-COFs. This design inherently establishes short-range charge transfer (SRCT) states, promoting localized cooperative activation for the proposed hydrogen cycling reactions. The optimized BTT-COF exhibited exceptional photocatalytic hydrogen cycling performance, with high N-BBA and H2O2 yields of approximately 20.5 and 24.4 mmol g-1 h-1, respectively, accompanied by high apparent quantum efficiencies of 9.4 and 12.6% at 450 nm. Mechanism investigations revealed that the excellent hydrogen cycling performance originated from the synergistic combination of well-designed electronic microenvironment and optimal reactant/intermediate adsorption behaviors. This work highlights the BTT-COFs as efficient photocatalysts for fine chemical coproduction, providing a molecular-level design strategy for the exploration of advanced catalysts for various photocatalytic applications.

Silk-ionic liquid lactate biosensor with a diffusion layer for wide-range and high-sensitivity sweat analysis.

ABSTRACT Circadian disruption and social isolation are increasingly prevalent stressors in modern societies, each known to impair behavioral and physiological homeostasis. However, their concurrent influence remains poorly characterized. This study investigated the effects of social isolation and chronic circadian misalignment on affective behavior, neuroinflammatory signaling, endocrine function, and antioxidant defense in male AKR mice. Animals were housed either in groups or isolation under a stable 12:12 h light-dark cycle or subjected to six successive 8 h phase delays or advances every fourth day, modeling rotational shiftwork/jetlag exposure. Behavioral analyses revealed that isolated mice displayed pronounced anhedonia and anxiety-like behavior across all lighting regimens, with maximal impairment under phase advances. Molecular and biochemical assessments revealed significant elevations in pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β) in the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and serum, accompanied by reduced melatonin levels, elevated corticosterone, and decreased antioxidant enzyme activity (SOD, CAT). These effects were observed across lighting conditions, indicating that circadian disruption and social isolation independently contribute to neuroendocrine stress, inflammation, and oxidative imbalance. Collectively, the results underscore the importance of social synchrony in maintaining circadian and physiological stability and highlight the impact of concurrent social and temporal desynchronization on health risks associated with chronic shiftwork/jetlag.

Noise exposure is pervasive in modern society and a major contributor to hearing loss across the lifespan. This study examined how cumulative lifetime noise exposure, measured using the Noise Exposure Structured Interview (NESI), associates with age to affect audiometric thresholds. Fifty-four adults (23-82 years; 25 female) completed the NESI (occupational, recreational, and firearm noise exposure), hearing function self-reports, pure-tone audiometry, and speech-reception testing. Multivariate regression analyses evaluated independent and interactive effects of age and noise exposure on auditory outcomes. Age significantly predicted elevated thresholds across all audiometric frequencies (p < 0.001). Higher NESI scores independently associated with poorer low frequency pure tone average binaurally (p ≤ 0.02). Frequency-specific analysis showed significant noise-related contributions at 0.25-4kHz in the worse ear and at 1.5, 2, and 6kHz in the better ear (p < 0.03). Higher NESI scores were also associated with poorer speech reception thresholds in the worse ear (p = 0.007). These findings suggest that cumulative noise burden may accelerate age-related auditory decline. The NESI provides a practical measure of lifetime noise exposure contributing to presbycusis.

E-InfertilityTest: Implementing an explainable AI framework for male infertility assessment.

This article examines the digital representation of piety in the Islamic content of the @Hawaariyyun account on social media, exploring how it embodies the transformation of piety in the digital age. Through Robert N. Entman’s framing analysis approach and the visual piety perspective, this study explores how Islamic spiritual values are mediated by the visual, algorithmic, and consumptive logic of social media. The results show that @Hawaariyyun frames the spiritual crisis of modern society as a moral problem caused by ego and hedonistic digital culture, and offers solutions in the form of reflective preaching that emphasizes sincerity, simplicity, and self-introspection. The visualization of piety plays a dual role, expanding the space for participatory preaching while placing spirituality within the logic of popularity and media consumption. This article contributes to the development of digital Islam studies by providing a critical framework for understanding piety as a cultural phenomenon that negotiates religious values with media aesthetics and algorithmic influences. These findings enrich the literature on the relationship between religion, gender, and media, and encourage ethical and authentic digital da’wah practices.

The article provides a comprehensive criminological analysis of alcoholization and drug addiction as background phenomena of crime that significantly influence the formation of individual criminogenic behavior and the overall trends of contemporary criminality. It is substantiated that the consumption of alcohol and narcotic substances should not be considered solely as a medical or social issue, since their criminogenic potential manifests itself through profound deformation of the motivational, value- based and volitional spheres of personality, reduction of self-control, and impairment of the ability to critically assess one’s own actions. The study emphasizes that alcoholization, being a socially tolerated phenomenon, acts as one of the most widespread catalysts of violent and domestic crime, especially under conditions of urbanization and increased social tension. It is demonstrated that a state of alcohol intoxication contributes to the escalation of interpersonal conflicts, transformation of antisocial behavior into criminal acts, and reproduction of deviant behavioral patterns at the intergenerational level. Special attention is paid to drug addiction as a more dangerous criminogenic factor characterized by the formation of persistent dependence and a specific motivation for criminal behavior. It is argued that drug dependence leads to a systemic nature of criminal activity, a high level of recidivism, and involvement of individuals in criminal environments, including offenses related to illicit drug trafficking. Based on the analysis of scientific approaches and official statistical data, the article reveals criminological characteristics of offenders who commit crimes under the influence of alcohol or drugs and highlights the role of psychoactive substances in the structure of serious and especially serious criminal offenses. Considerable attention is devoted to the criminal law assessment of intoxication, particularly to the analysis of Articles 21 and 67 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which establish a coherent model of criminal liability and punishment individualization for offenses committed in a state of intoxication. The author concludes that effective counteraction to crime associated with alcoholization and drug addiction is impossible solely through criminal law measures. Instead, it requires the implementation of a comprehensive prevention system combining general social, special criminological, and individual preventive mechanisms aimed at reducing the criminogenic impact of psychoactive substances and enhancing public safety in modern society.

Visual narrative comprehension is essential for navigating modern society, where information, rules, and news are frequently communicated through images, diagrams, and visual stories. Encoding a coherent narrative from disparate elements is critical for all age groups. Although recent studies report a significant rise in stress and anxiety levels, driven by factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and recent geopolitical conflicts, the impact of stress on visual narrative comprehension remains largely underexplored. This study explored how acute stress affects narrative comprehension in younger (N = 203, 18-57 years; M = 23 years; Experiment 1) and older adults (N = 212, 60-85 years; M = 67 years; Experiment 2). Participants were assessed under both acute stress and neutral conditions. A tool for inducing acute stress online employed mathematical and logical tasks under time pressure, along with elements that simulate social stress. Participants were presented with pictorial stories consisting of three panels, with the second panel intentionally left blank. Their task was to comprehend the storyline despite the missing information. On the following page, an image representing a possible bridging event was shown, either depicting the correct or an incorrect inference. Participants were asked to judge whether or not the presented image accurately reflected the missing event in the story. Results revealed that acute stress negatively impacted narrative comprehension in younger adults, while the older adults' comprehension remained unaffected by acute stress. Similarly, younger adults demonstrated reduced confidence in their responses under stress, whereas older adults' confidence levels remained unaffected. These findings highlight the relationship between visual narrative comprehension, stress, and aging, suggesting that, with age and experience, comprehenders may develop more differentiated event schemas, which makes their comprehension processes more resilient to stress.Understanding how cognitive and perceptional processes function under stress is crucial for daily life across all age groups. Our research demonstrates that younger adults exhibit poorer visual narrative comprehension under acute stress, whereas older adults' performance remains stable. This finding suggests that older adults may employ more differentiated event schemas, which help maintain their narrative comprehension in the face of stress. Consequently, narrative comprehension appears to be more resilient compared to other fundamental cognitive skills. These insights could inform interventions and strategies to support cognitive health across different age groups.

Non-physical social exposure to neighboring ICR mice alters physiological and behavioral profiles in Male C57BL/6N mice.

ABSTRACT Witch tourism, referring to tourism associated with witchcraft, witch hunts and witch trials, is a form of dark tourism with roots in heritage tourism. Although Sweden is rarely recognized for its history of extensive witch hunts during the seventeenth century, a growing number of heritage tourism sites emerged that interpret this darker chapter of the nation’s past. Building on the limited research on Swedish witch tourism and the growing field of studies on witch tourism sites and visits by female tourists, this study addresses this gap by exploring how such visits may contribute to processes of empowerment. By using semi-structured interviews with female visitors to witch tourism sites in Sweden, this paper examines, through a feminist approach, how female tourists construct empowerment and develop critical understandings of contemporary gender dynamics through witch tourism as a transformative, embodied heritage experience. Through thematic analysis, several recurring themes were identified in relation to empowerment: emotional involvement; education and reflection on modern society; community building and sharing; feeling of responsibility; reclamation of the figure of the witch. By using witch tourism as a lens to study empowerment through tourism, the paper concludes by stating that heritage tourism is a suitable context for empowerment.

ABSTRACT Modern society demands higher seismic resilience in structures. This study applies machine learning models to evaluate the Seismic Resilience Index (SRI) of a hospital building using nonlinear analysis-derived structural performance levels. Rather than proposing new algorithms, it integrates structural damage and recovery assumptions into a system-level resilience metric approximated via ensemble learning. Predictive models using Random Forest (RF) and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) assess SRI for a seismic hazard level with a 2475-year return period. For this hazard level, RF predicted an SRI of 0.3015 (R² = 0.974), while XGBoost yielded 0.3658 (R² = 0.986). The near-perfect R² scores demonstrate exceptional variance explanation, with XGBoost performing marginally better. The approach effectively links structural performance parameters to resilience metrics, providing a powerful tool for seismic assessment of essential facilities.

Circadian rhythm disruption (CRD) is highly prevalent in modern society and contributes to numerous disorders, including erectile dysfunction (ED). Melatonin (MT) possesses well-established functions in regulating circadian rhythm and demonstrating antioxidant ability; however, whether MT could preserve CRD-induced ED and the underlying mechanism has never been reported. A rat model with CRD-induced ED was designed by changing light-dark cycle (2h:2h alteration) and then intraperitoneally administering MT with low (5 mg/kg/day) and high (10 mg/kg/day) dosages. A total of 4 weeks later, rats' erectile function was measured and penile corpus cavernosum was subsequently harvested for analysis. In addition, bioinformatics analysis was performed to filter the possible molecular target, while lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were selected to imitate CRD stimulation in vivo to further verify the underlying molecular mechanism. CRD significantly reduced rats' maximal intracavernous pressure (mICP) and mICP/mean arterial pressure (MAP) ratio, it also inhibited endothelial nitric oxide synthase/nitric oxide/cyclic guanosine monophosphate concentrations and injured normal penile corpus cavernosum structure, suggesting rats' normal erectile function was impaired; however, this CRD-induced ED was preserved by MT. The in vivo and in vitro experiments respectively proved that CRD increased oxidative stress of penile corpus cavernosum and HUVECs by reducing nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2)/heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) production, while MT increased Nrf2/HO-1 to inhibit the oxidative stress. Meanwhile, CRD promoted pyroptosis in penile corpus cavernosum and HUVECs by increasing NLR family pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) activation, which was relieved by MT through the attenuation of oxidative stress. Moreover, the reactive oxygen species inhibitor (NAC) inhibited CRD-induced pyroptosis of HUVECs to preserve normal function, which confirmed that MT alleviated NLRP3-mediated pyroptosis to preserved CRD-induced ED by reducing oxidative stress. In conclusion, it was demonstrated that CRD-induced ED by triggering an oxidative stress-pyroptosis cascade. Conversely, MT treatment effectively counteracts this pathology by activating the Nrf2/HO-1 pathway to suppress oxidative stress, thereby attenuating NLRP3-mediated pyroptosis and ultimately restoring erectile function. These results provide the first systematic evidence for the central role of the oxidative stress-pyroptosis axis in CRD-induced ED, establishing a solid theoretical foundation for MT as a promising therapeutic strategy for CRD-related ED.

The scientific worldview is divided into an ever-increasing number of sections. The disorder and fragmentation of connections between them lead to a loss of predictability of complex systems and crises of governance in the economy, culture, science, and technology. The article presents a solution to this problem based on the cross-cutting concepts of algorithm and subject. An algorithm describes the laws of nature and the transformation of corresponding information, which allows for considering natural and humanitarian processes from a common perspective. The launch and interruption of these algorithms are carried out by control subjects corresponding to the arbitrary-creative behaviour of living systems. These categories made it possible to reveal the natural hierarchy of the patterns of nature and the subjects controlling them, from the atomic to the planetary-ecosystem level. The integration of the natural, humanitarian, and information fields achieved in this way provides a basis for a holistic picture of the world, which is necessary for the predictable and sustainable self-governance of modern society.