Journals
2026 EN
Radhakrishnan Nita · Chandra Jagdish · Manglani Mamta
+3 more
Abstract Background and Objectives India, home to the largest population of patients with thalassaemia major (TM), has made notable progress in the care through the National Health Mission, National Rare Disease Registry and Thalassaemia Bal Sewa Yojana. This study aimed to assess the infrastructure, support systems and human resources across thalassaemia treatment centres in India to map current service availability and guide policy enhancements for its prevention and comprehensive management. Materials and Methods A nationwide survey was conducted between January 2023 and March 2024 among centres managing TM. The survey was disseminated through professional groups, civil societies and non‐governmental organizations. Results Sixty‐eight centres participated (government 26, private 28, charitable 14). About 85% of patients were from low‐income families, highlighting the dependence on government support. Transfusion services with leukodepleted red cells were available in 97% of centres, with most maintaining adequate pre‐transfusion haemoglobin. Chelation service was accessible in the majority of centres, and 87% provided prenatal diagnostics. Bone marrow transplantation was offered in 60 centres and comprehensive care services in 58 centres. Despite free transfusions and chelation, monthly out‐of‐pocket costs ranged from Indian rupees (INR) ₹500 to ₹16,000 (US$ 5.92–189.49). Conclusion Government initiatives have expanded thalassaemia services and reduced financial barriers. Continued efforts to strengthen the national registry and unify policy frameworks will help ensure equitable access across all regions.
Journals
2026 EN
Woock Philipp · Zube Angelika
The Düsseldorf district government commissioned the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronik, Systemtechnik, and Information Technology (IOSB) to conduct a bathymetric measurement of a six-km section of the Ruhr River by an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV). The ASV is based on the Otter Pro vehicle and is equipped with multibeam sonar, inertial sensors, RTK GNSS, LiDAR, and cameras. The ROS-based algorithm toolbox (ATB) from Fraunhofer IOSB provided the autonomy and multi-sensor fusion functionality such as navigation, mission planning, obstacle avoidance, data acquisition, and preprocessing. A fully georeferenced 3D model of the riverbed and partially of the bank structures was generated from the data of a four-day measurement campaign. The article elaborates on the technical characteristics of the platform, the sensor technology employed, the autonomy capabilities of the platform, the software components utilized, the encountered challenges, and the ensuing outcomes.
Journals
2026 EN
Cesa Mark C. · Chiu Mei-Hung · Forman Jonathan E.
+12 more
IUPAC has launched a new set of Guiding Principles of Responsible Chemistry (GPs), marking an important milestone in its mission to promote ethical, inclusive, and sustainable science worldwide. These eight principles, created by a project task group under the leadership of the Committee on Ethics, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CEDEI), provide a shared framework to guide chemists, educators, students, and organizations toward responsible innovation and practice.
Journals
2026 EN
Zaher Ismail · Zeidan Zaki · Rabah Mostafa
+1 more
The growing availability of ground and space-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observations has significantly enhanced our ability to monitor ionospheric variability with improved spatial and temporal resolution. The FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 (F7/C2) mission provides a comprehensive database of high vertical resolution radio occultation (RO) profiles, enabling detailed long-term ionospheric studies. This work presents a three-dimensional ionospheric electron density model over Egypt, developed using Deep Neural Networks (DNN) trained on F7/C2 RO data from 2020 to 2024, designated as 3D-DNN Ion-EG. The optimized DNN architecture captures complex nonlinear relationships between electron density and nine geophysical and temporal inputs: latitude, longitude, altitude, universal time, day of year, year, solar flux (F10.7), and geomagnetic indices (ap and Dst). The 3D-DNN Ion-EG model demonstrates high predictive accuracy for ionospheric electron density, achieving an R 2 of 0.93 and RMSE of 121,000 el/cm 3 during independent testing on 36,856 F7/C2 observations. Comprehensive validation shows that the model outperforms the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI-2020 and IRI-Plas) across multiple parameters including electron density, total electron content (TEC), F2-layer peak density (NmF2), and complete vertical profile reconstructions. The model successfully captures ionospheric variability under both quiet and disturbed geomagnetic conditions, demonstrating superior performance in Egypt’s complex low-latitude environment near the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA). These results highlight the model’s potential for high-resolution ionospheric modeling over Egypt, with promising applications in GNSS error correction, space weather forecasting, and upper atmospheric research.
Journals
2026 EN
Li Xuetao · Schmidt-Glintzer Helwig
This article presents a series of dialogues between Xuetao Li and Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer on five themes of Sinology, and aims to rethink the significance and future of Sinology in the 21st century. From their respective cultural traditions, the two scholars explore the transcultural mission of Sinology in the context of information technology, cultural identity, and global ethics. They discuss issues of epistemic representation, the philosophical limits of language, the reconstruction of global ethics, and the methodological potential of Sinology as a “humanistic laboratory”. The article critically examines the institutional instrumentalization and diplomatic appropriation of Sinology, and advocates for its role as a “processual humanities” – not serving domination but constructing an epistemic platform for shared human futures. Drawing on intellectual resources such as Mozi, Heidegger, Deleuze–Guattari, and Waldenfels, the article illuminates the cultural-philosophical dimensions of Sinology as both an “open diapositif ” and a “habitable foreignness” ( be-wohnbare Fremde ), showing that transcultural Sinology is not merely about China, but fundamentally about humanity’s response to the future.
Journals
2026 EN
Xu Huimin · Lankes David · Rieh Soo Young
+1 more
Data storytelling serves as a powerful tool for public libraries to move from measurement to demonstrating impact. This article reports findings from an exploratory focus group conducted at the Austin Public Library followed by individual interviews with 11 staff members from six large urban public library systems. The data demonstrates that libraries have made progress in data management and public narrative, particularly in short-term goals such as data-informed decision-making, promoting special programs, or securing funding. But the data also indicates that public libraries have room to grow in terms of identifying and articulating main narratives that define the library’s mission and long-term value. These main narratives are critical for guiding internal operations and strengthening connections with the external communities that public libraries serve. Public libraries are still facing a long journey from big data to bigger and more impactful stories. The data from these librarians offers broader insights for the field about how to translate data into narratives that demonstrate how public libraries work to serve the public good.
Journals
2026 EN
Esquivel Carreón Guadalupe · Marzal García-Quismondo Miguel Ángel
The goal of this article is to identify how publicness is shaped in the library context, with a view to creating a rough analytical framework to use as the basis for the subsequent creation of a model for evaluating the publicness of public access libraries. The article is based on a review of the literature. The results show that a library shapes its publicness in the three ways in which it presents itself as public: 1) as a public space; this incorporates elements that go beyond open access for all and involves processes of space use, space management, and space design; 2) as an object of representation through art, commerce, and social manifestations, and as an object of public debate that roughly converges on the library’s mission, value, public and staff; and 3) as a collective subject, which can be split into the community as agent, the library staff, and legitimating and regulating institutions. What makes this study original is that it frames the library as public from stances that look beyond the issue of public or private ownership, thus shifting the focus from government-run public libraries to public access libraries.
Journals
2026 EN
Luo Yi · Song Wenyan · Jiao GuiQian
+4 more
In addressing the “thrust matching” issue during the mode transition process of the Ma 0–4 parallel TBCC combined engine, an integrated analysis of flight performance and engine performance was conducted, in alignment with the mission requirements of hypersonic aircraft. Thrust matching refers to the thrust transition smoothly during the mode transition between turbine and ramjet. This analysis determined the TBCC combined engine scheme and performance indicators that meet the mission requirements. Computational models for mode transition of the TBCC combined engine and performance calculation of high Mach number turbine engines were established, delving into the mode transition characteristics of the TBCC combined engine and proposing corresponding transition strategies and control laws. The control laws were optimized using the Hooke-Jeeves Direct Search Method within the Isight optimization software. Prior to optimization, the maximum relative error between total thrust and the desired value during the mode transition process of the combined engine was 0.6 %. After optimization, the maximum relative error decreased to 0.35 %. During the mode transition process, the most significant total thrust fluctuation occurs as the turbine transitions from windmill state to idled state.
Journals
2026 EN
Jensz Felicity
In Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novels set in German East Africa, German colonialism is portrayed as violent, with administrators, military personnel, plantation overseers, and missionaries all engaging in acts of violence towards East Africans. Of these groups, the figure of the missionary is the most ambivalent, given that Christianity had both protective as well as culturally damaging functions in colonial spaces. This article provides a historical contextualisation of German missionary presence in German East Africa around 1900 and thereby productively complicates the role of missionaries and places them within the broader context of colonial violence in German East Africa. It examines the use of German within mission schools to contextualise the use of the German language in the novel as well as the ways in which missionaries were engaged in epistemic violence. In a third section, the article examines some of the ways in which German missionary societies contributed to the colonial revisionist movement – a movement that is described in the last chapter of Afterlives . This article reflects on how German missionary groups tried to keep their legacies alive in post-war Germany by creating memories of the former German colonies and thus provides context for the transnational and multilingual entanglements of the novel Afterlives .
Journals
2026 EN
Zhao Jiawei · Zhang Xiang · Chang Yuqing
+15 more
Pyroxene is a primary constituent mineral in basaltic lunar regolith. These minerals form through the cooling and crystallization of lunar basaltic magma and are subsequently altered by impact events. Thus, pyroxene can serve as a significant indicator for interpreting lunar magmatic processes and impact phenomena. For lunar samples that are mostly mafic and frequently shocked to various degrees, deciphering the effect of shock on pyroxene is necessary for a better understanding of the primary magmatic processes. However, previous studies have neglected to investigate the impact metamorphism of pyroxene in lunar regolith and the potential compositional changes that may result from such impacts. Lunar regolith samples returned by the Chang’E-5 (CE-5) mission are reworked from a monolithic mafic protolith with well-constrained compositions and record strong to mild shock effects that are widespread in the samples. The returned samples provide an excellent chance to distinguish the signatures of impact processes from magmatic activities. Here we report microstructural and compositional variations in a shocked pyroxene within a basaltic clast from CE-5 lunar regolith, which were analyzed by Raman spectroscopy, analytical scanning electron microscopy, electron probe microanalysis, and scanning transmission electron microscopy. The shock microstructures are characterized by the glide system of dislocation [001](100), pigeonite formation induced by shock-related deformations, and solid-melt partitioning and localized frictional melting at grain boundaries or within pyroxene. Combined with the occurrence of shock twins in ilmenite adjacent to the shock melt vein, these shock phenomena are approximately indicative of low-to-moderate shock pressure (9–17 GPa). Most parts of the pyroxene have abnormal Raman peaks at ∼822 cm −1 , suggesting the substitution of Si 4+ by Al 3+ in the tetrahedral site of this shocked pyroxene structure, and this characteristic is recognized as a shock indicator. Evidence from the morphology and elemental distribution of pigeonite within host augite suggests that the Si-Al substitution is consistent with the pigeonite formation, which is triggered or modified by shock-induced deformations and local frictional melting under the fast shear stress. The multiple trends of composition evolution in this single shocked pyroxene reflect sequential processes of magma crystallization, shock-related exsolution, and frictional melting. Our findings indicate that shock effects in pyroxene under low-to-moderate shock conditions can induce changes in composition and structure, and may obscure the evidence of magmatic evolution in pyroxene.