Octacalcium phosphate (OCP) is a precursor of bone mineral, but its phase purity is difficult to quantify because of strong peak overlap with biomimetic hydroxyapatite (HAp) in X-ray diffraction (XRD). Here, we present an indirect quantification approach based on the bulk molar Ca/P ratio after controlled calcination. Upon thermal treatment, OCP, HAp, and amorphous calcium phosphate decompose into a binary mixture of β-calcium pyrophosphate (β-CPP) and β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP), which can be reliably quantified by XRD. From their relative amounts, the bulk Ca/P ratio and an equivalent OCP phase content can be calculated. Because phosphate evaporation during calcination alters the β-CPP/β-TCP equilibrium and biases the derived Ca/P ratio, we demonstrate that stabilizing the furnace atmosphere is essential for reproducible results. Saturating the atmosphere with sacrificial monetite effectively suppresses phosphate loss and preserves the original composition. By varying dwell time between 2 and 24 h at two temperatures, we delimit the processing window within which the derived phase content is independent of the treatment conditions. At 1000 °C, this approach yields stable and reproducible OCP phase contents with negligible compositional drift over dwell times up to 24 h. The method is simple to implement and provides a robust tool for assessing OCP phase purity in both research and quality control settings. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Octacalcium phosphate (OCP) is an important precursor of bone mineral, yet its phase purity is difficult to quantify due to strong X-ray diffraction peak overlap with biomimetic hydroxyapatite. In this study, we present a simple and reproducible indirect method to assess OCP phase purity based on the bulk Ca/P ratio after controlled calcination and quantitative phase analysis of the resulting high-temperature phases. We demonstrate that phosphate evaporation during calcination can significantly bias the calculated Ca/P ratio and show that stabilizing the furnace atmosphere using sacrificial monetite effectively suppresses this effect. At 1000 °C, the method yields stable and reproducible OCP phase purity values over extended dwell times, making it suitable for both research and quality control applications.

Point-of-care (POC) diagnostics can revolutionize current medicine by enabling rapid, at-home molecular testing for early disease detection and treatment monitoring. Though several mainstream POC technologies exist, such as paper-based lateral flow assays (LFAs) and microfluidic cartridges, they either lack quantification capability or require a dedicated reader for electrical readout. Miniaturization enabled by high-performance CMOS integrated circuits (ICs) has been proposed to address these limitations, but complex CMOS/microfluidics packaging due to the need for electrical connections remains a significant challenge. In this work, we present a fully wireless solution based on near-field inductive coupling. By enabling wireless power and data communication through a 1.5-mm on-chip coil operating at 700 MHz, the CMOS chip can be seamlessly embedded into standard microfluidics fabrication flows. The proposed CMOS bio-analyzer supports electrochemical, pH, and temperature sensing. The electrochemical front end performs highly sensitive readout from immunosensors, while the pH and temperature sensors are used to mitigate environmental effects. Implemented in TSMC 180-nm CMOS technology, the system consumes 2 mA from a rectified 2.5-V supply. The electrochemical sensor employs a fully differential capacitive transimpedance amplifier (TIA) and achieves 0.24-pArms input-referred current noise and 128.8 dB of extended dynamic range. Immunosensing of C-reactive protein (CRP) and a prototype vacuum-driven microfluidics device are demonstrated.

In recent decades, underwater noise from maritime traffic has increased, affecting key ecological processes in marine ecosystems. Invertebrate larvae use acoustic cues to identify suitable habitats for settlement, suggesting that anthropogenic noise may influence early life stages. This study evaluated the effect of vessel noise on the larval settlement of the invasive bryozoan Bugulina flabellata. Larvae were exposed for 1 h to three acoustic treatments: control (no sound), low-level, and high-level traffic noise (∼95, 130 and 150 dBRMS in 200-24.000Hz respectively). Each treatment was replicated five times using recordings from different vessels. Settlement percentages were quantified for each treatment. Results showed a consistent increase in larval settlement under all sound treatments compared with the control, suggesting that underwater noise may facilitate colonization on artificial substrates in port areas. These findings highlight the ecological relevance of underwater acoustics and suggest that anthropogenic noise can influence early stages of marine biofouling and biological invasions.

Separating world-relative object motion from retinal motion requires an estimate of self-motion. We examined how experimentally degrading one vestibular observation channel alters this attribution in a recurrent state-space observer. We reduced effective otolith reliability by increasing generative otolith noise and held canal and visual noise fixed. The observer jointly estimated self-motion and object motion and used otolith prediction errors to form an approximate belief over two internal reliability contexts. Across 30 paired realizations, reduced otolith reliability increased false-positive world-motion RMS by 47.61% and object-motion RMSE by 48.77%, compared with a 4.37% increase in angular self-motion RMSE. An instantaneous residual-only model captured part of the object-event error but not the object-free false-positive increase. Supplying oracle self-motion largely eliminated the latter effect. Two independent nonrecurrent baselines also produced more false-positive motion under noisier otolith input. Both had higher object-motion RMSE than the recurrent observer and lacked a mechanism for history-dependent recovery. The principal recurrent effect persisted with reliability inference fixed, adaptation removed, and the two adaptation rates replaced by one. Degraded otolith evidence can therefore shift ambiguous retinal evidence toward external-motion estimates. Recurrent estimation improves object-motion recovery and makes this attribution dependent on predictive history.

Event-based particle image velocimetry (PIV) offers a promising approach for high-speed flow diagnostics. However, conventional processing pipelines, constrained by fixed event accumulation times and uniform inter-frame intervals, do not fully leverage the asynchronous nature of event data, compromising the fidelity of reconstructed velocity fields. This Letter presents a time-adaptive event-based PIV framework (TA-EB-PIV) whose core mechanism dynamically adjusts event accumulation time and sampling interval based on local velocity estimates. This approach overcomes the constraints of fixed temporal parameters, effectively suppresses near-wall reflection interference, and improves particle image density. Experiments on flow past a NACA0012 airfoil at a 12° angle of attack (Re ≈ 6800) demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared to conventional fixed-interval PIV, TA-EB-PIV reduces the RMS divergence by 26.1%, standard deviation by 26.3%, and mean absolute divergence by 31.0%; outlier vectors by 24.8%; random error δ(U)/U0 from 1.10% to 0.46%; and Reynolds shear stress uncertainty by nearly 30%; free-stream fluctuating velocity overestimation is reduced by 30.4% with near-wall noise markedly suppressed. POD analysis further reveals a more prominent spectral peak and an energy decay consistent with the -5/3 Kolmogorov scaling law. By decoupling the correlation window from fixed time steps, this method achieves self-adaptive temporal parameters, establishing a novel, to the best of our knowledge, framework for high-fidelity velocity reconstruction in complex flows.

To non-invasively assess the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the pulsatile activity of arteries in the perirenal dorsal lumbar regions, electrical bioimpedance (BI) and biopotentials (BP) were recorded in healthy volunteers and patients with arterial hypertension (AH). Signals were processed using harmonic (Fourier) analysis to determine the effective values (rms) of spectral peaks for BI (MR, THR) and BP (MV, THV) in the Mayer (M) frequency range (0.03-0.2 Hz) and the Traube-Hering (TH) frequency band of a controlled respiration rate (0.3-0.4 Hz), which presumably reflect sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, respectively. The pulsatile activity of arteries was determined by the total effective value (TPrms) of four pulsatile harmonics. The indices of the sympathetic-parasympathetic balance were calculated as the ratios of MR/THR (for BI) and MV/THV (for BP). In healthy participants, the active orthostatic test significantly increased THR, MR, TPrms[-1], and MV, which reflected increased activity of sympathetic (MR, TPrms[-1], MV) and parasympathetic (THR) systems while maintaining overall autonomic balance. The spectral parameters of BI and BP were presented with normalized radar charts (RC). In patients with controlled AH, the median RCs were located within the interquartile range of RC of the healthy group indicating adequate drug therapy. In contrast, individual RCs of some patients with uncontrolled or refractory AH were outside this range, indicating the need to correct drug therapy or feasibility of renal denervation if pharmacotherapy fails. The advanced method enables the assessment of ANS activity in patients with AH of varying severity. It is concluded that harmonic analysis of electrical signals in human perirenal regions is a valuable non-invasive tool for evaluating local activity of ANS under physiological conditions and in AH patients.

Timely feedback on whole-body vibration (WBV) exposure requires standardised metrics during measurement, yet many workflows record raw acceleration for offline processing, delaying feedback and increasing the data burden for bandwidth-constrained deployment. This paper presents a sensing node computing ISO 2631-1/AS 2670.1 exposure metrics on-device and transmitting metric records, not waveforms. The node combines an LIS2DH microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometer with an RP2040 microcontroller to calculate weighted root-mean-square (RMS) acceleration, daily exposure A(8), vibration dose value, maximum transient vibration value and crest factor. Algorithm-level verification showed that the implemented Wk filter reproduced the tabulated ISO 2631-1 response within 1.1% across 0.5-80 Hz. The node was compared under laboratory conditions with a CEM DT-178A datalogger whose 20 Hz recordings were reprocessed through a method-matched causal pipeline. Across ten trials per configuration under vertical excitation in the 6.3 Hz one-third-octave band, mean Z-axis A(8) differences were -4.5% (wired) and -7.9% (wireless). The datalogger's 20 Hz sampling was included within the comparison chain, and the lower realised Wk gain was consistent with the direction and approximate magnitude of the observed offset. Metric-level telemetry reduced the sustained payload rate by up to four orders of magnitude at the summary cadence, supporting bandwidth-constrained uplinks.

Shearer trailing cable faults are difficult to distinguish from terminal measurements because their signatures coexist with changes in load, source imbalance, cable temperature, and sensor error. This study presents a physics-guided categorical Mamdani framework supported by a distributed-parameter source, cable, and load model. A total of 180 simulations cover normal operation, phase-to-ground faults, A-B inter-phase short circuits, conductor-resistance degradation, and insulation-path deterioration over multiple severities, locations, motor loads, source imbalance levels, and temperatures. Paired pre-fault and post-fault changes in load-terminal voltage unbalance, source-terminal zero-sequence current ratio, and source-to-load voltage attenuation are mapped to fault path-based membership functions and diagnostic rules. Twenty repeated 70/30 holdouts grouped by base operating condition compare the proposed method with a deterministic threshold tree, radial-basis-function support vector machine, and k-nearest-neighbor classifier. Across these repeated grouped holdouts, the proposed method achieves 99.80% mean accuracy with a standard deviation of 0.63 percentage points on noise-free test cases. Accuracy remains 81.12% and 74.71% under 1% and 2% RMS waveform noise, respectively. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for interpretable diagnosis of shearer power-core cable faults across the investigated simulated operating conditions and waveform-noise levels.

Currently, the time-averaged root-mean-square RF field (B1+rms) and specific absorption rate (SAR) are being evaluated to monitor and control RF-induced heating near conductive metallic implants, such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) leads, during MRI. However, experimental methods to assess the relationship between RF power, B1+rms, and SAR are lacking for RF coils, RF pulse sequences, metallic implants, and ionic solutions. A method is developed to evaluate the variation in RF power, B1+rms, and SAR with RF coils, metallic implants, and ionic solutions using phantoms consisting of water (H2O) and sodium chloride (NaCl) with four ionic concentrations (0, 1, 2, 3%), four metallic wavelengths (0, λ/2, λ, 2λ), two RF coils (body, head), transmit/receive (Tx/Rx) combinations, and five RF pulse flip angles (30, 45, 60, 75, 90 degrees) in two B0 fields (1.5T and 3T). The scanner-reported RF power and SAR varied with RF pulse sequences, RF coils, Tx/Rx, metallic implants, and ionic solutions, whereas B1+rms varied only with RF pulse sequences. The RF power, B1+rms, and SAR relationship depends on RF pulse sequences, RF coils, Tx/Rx, metallic implant wavelengths, and ionic concentrations. SAR (whole-body, head) scaled with RF power by absorption ratios (α) variable with experimental conditions.

In static acrobatic gymnastics pyramids, maintaining stability in a multi-person system is critical, yet unconstrained floor baselines and base-to-top pairing mechanics remain poorly quantified. This study evaluated postural stability in shoulder-stand pyramids, examining the interplay of two specific top-athlete variations (lighter Pyramid T1 vs. heavier Pyramid T2) and base-athlete stances (parallel vs. tandem). Five elite base-athletes were monitored while supporting two top-athlete variations, a lighter (Pyramid T1) and a heavier (Pyramid T2) during a standard static shoulder-stand pyramid across parallel and tandem foot placement configurations (three trials in each Pyramid variation). Unconstrained free floor-standing baselines were also recorded for base-athletes and for tops prior to and following pyramid trials. The root mean square (RMS) of the resultant 3D free acceleration (Xsens MTw Awinda inertial sensors sampling at 100 Hz, Xsens MT Manager version 4.6.5 software) positioned at the bases' and the tops' shanks (right and left) was used to assess postural stability. A five-point median filter followed by a zero-phase, 2nd-order forward and reverse Butterworth low-pass filter (yielding an effective 4th-order response at 5 Hz and 10 Hz cutoffs) was applied to all signals (MATLAB R2025b). Stance-envelope dimensions were calculated from rectangular boundaries fitted to the base's foot outlines. Non-parametric Spearman rank correlations (ρ) and parametric correlations (r,R2) were used to test the interbase-consistency and base-to-top coupling. Two-way repeated measures ANOVAs (pyramid x stance configurations) were applied with primary analytical emphasis placed on descriptive effect sizes alongside exact p-values (SPSS v30, p < 0.05). The acrobatic tandem stance expanded the parallel stance-envelope area by 148.3% and its width by 24.7%. When base-athletes transitioned from free standing to pyramids there was a substantial acceleration RMS increase (Pyramid T1: +24.3% to 83.6%, Pyramid T2: 47.2% to 166.2%). Supporting the heavier top-athlete (Pyramid T2) significantly increased the bases' resultant acceleration RMS by +37% to +48% across both filter cutoff thresholds (p<0.05). Furthermore, top athletes exhibited differential behaviors: while Top 2 displayed lower acceleration RMS than Top 1, she experienced a greater acceleration surge when in Pyramid (+238.4% to +266.2%). The bases' and the tops' acceleration profiles did not exhibit parallel responses, indicating decoupled rather than mirrored stability adjustments. Furthermore, when the acceleration RMS was normalized to stance-envelope dimensions, significant pyramid x stance interaction (p<0.05) was observed in the anteroposterior but not the mediolateral acceleration. Base-athlete stability varies significantly across top-athlete variations and stance geometries. Evaluating unconstrained floor baselines alongside spatial stance boundaries is essential for capturing structural loading dynamics in multi-person athletic tasks.