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A review of the ground seismic vibrations induced by wind-turbines: controls, issues and opportunities
No full textTo meet our Net Zero commitments, the past decade has seen a dramatic increase in wind power, with hundreds of thousands of wind turbines already in place. Many studies have focused on the environmental impact of windfarms; however, wind turbine-induced ground seismic vibrations have received less attention. Prior seismic observations near wind turbines show apparently contradictory spatio-temporal noise patterns and complex relationships to operational parameters. Here, we investigate these contradictions, categorizing seismic observations from wind farms worldwide, and explain the causes for this variation. We link the ground seismic response to the fundamentals of wind, the structural response of wind turbines, and the interactions of their foundations with variable geology. We summarise these approaches and discuss potential implementation in noise management, alongside noise suppression technologies. We finally explore the use of wind turbine noise as a seismic source to potentially monitor the structural health of wind turbine structures, and the subsurface. The latter is highly relevant to measurement, monitoring and verification of CO2 and H2 storage, where cost-effective and long-term monitoring solutions are necessary
Deep ultraviolet ultrashort laser pulses for precise ablation of soft biological tissue
No full textLaser ablation offers the potential for precisely removing pathological tissue without damaging surrounding healthy structures. Among the existing laser types, deep ultraviolet ultrashort pulsed lasers offer the highest axial precision and reduced collateral damage, yet their application for ablating soft tissues apart from the cornea remains underexplored. Here, ablation of ex vivo lamb liver using laser pulses at 206 nm wavelength and 250 fs pulse duration is investigated. Laser parameters that enable clean, controlled tissue removal are identified by systematically varying the laser pulse energy, spot size, and pulse repetition rate, and the ablated tissues are analysed using histological analysis and surface profilometry. With optimised settings, tissue removal with axial precision down to 10 microns is demonstrated. Ablation threshold fluence of 38.7 ± 2.1 mJ·cm−2 is determined for lamb liver tissue, and fluence windows yielding precise ablation with no observable collateral damage are defined for different laser spot sizes. The ablation responses of tissues with different physical properties are also investigated. These results advance understanding of laser-tissue interaction in the deep ultraviolet ultrashort pulse regime and demonstrate the potential of the proposed tissue removal method for high-precision surgical applications
Social identification and relational efficacy beliefs in sports teams and training groups
No full textSparse research has been conducted to investigate the link between social identification and relational efficacy beliefs, variables consistently associated with performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which (1) social identification with one’s team or training group relates to perceptions of self-efficacy, group-focused other-efficacy, and relational inferred self-efficacy (RISE); (2) social identification and self-efficacy are indirectly associated through group-focused other-efficacy and RISE; and (3) assess whether any associations differed for team and individual sport athletes. Athletes from a range of individual (n = 98) and team sports (n = 101) participated in the study. Results from structural equation modelling demonstrated that social identification was significantly related to RISE (β =.51) and other-efficacy (β =.60) for all athletes. Social identification was also significantly related to self-efficacy (β =.40) for individual sport athletes only. Support for the indirect role of RISE in the relationship between social identity and self-efficacy (β =.43) for team sports athletes and individual sports athletes (β =.26) was also observed. Overall results demonstrate the unique relationship that social identification has with athlete self-efficacy and RISE for individual and team sports athletes.</p
A Dual-Branch Super-Deep MambaPlusResGCN for Node Classification: Achieving Robustness Against Over-Smoothing
No full textGraph neural networks (GNNs) have become the standard paradigm for learning on non-Euclidean, graph-structured data. However, performance of modern GNN models deteriorates rapidly along with increment of depth due to the well-known over-smoothing effect, whereby node representations converge to nearly identical values. The prior methods proposed to tackle this problem employ neighbor sampling schemes, attention-based aggregation, or, most recently, selective state-space layers. In this work, we introduce a new dual-branch architecture, named MambaPlusResGCN, which combines the popular state-space backbone, Mamba, with a residual GraphSAGE branch, thereby preserving both global and local information flow in arbitrarily deep networks. Vanilla Graph Convolutional layers behave as fixed low-pass filters, while our model adaptively modulates signal frequencies while explicitly guarding against representational collapse. Experiments on seven node-classification benchmarks show that the proposed method can effectively maintain competitive accuracy with increasing depths and outperforms GCN, GraphSAGE, and recent deep-GNN baselines. Source codes are available at https://github.com/EchoAnxue/HW_UKCI35.git
Ghana’s Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Industries: Exploring the Relationship Between Supply Chain Collaboration and Operational Performance
No full textThe global FMCG industries have been vital in supporting both workforce employment and business expansion around the world. The global FMCG industry output has contributed to multiple United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by working on poverty elimination and worldwide equality promotion. Efficient supply chain systems show positive effects across all business sectors and sizes while transcending cultural boundaries. Research on supply chain collaboration and its effects on business operational performance remains scarce, particularly in the FMCG sector in the West Africa region. This study aims to explore the connection between supply chain collaboration and operational performance in FMCG businesses operating in Ghana. This research selects Ghana as its geographic focus because it is West Africa’s second-largest population centre and holds a leading position as an exporter of gold and lumber which reveals its emerging economic potential. The survey questionnaire research with 300 FMCG industry participants in Ghana took place between 11th March and 30th March 2024. Purposive sampling was adopted to finalise the research participants and SPSS was adopted to analyse the data. The findings indicate an important link between knowledge management strategies and operational performance through resource sharing, information sharing, synchronous decision-making and collaborative knowledge generation. The paper concludes with implications and recommendations based on the key findings from this research
Good practices of artificial intelligence in biosystems engineering research
No full textThe use and integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies into biosystems engineering create unprecedented opportunities for modelling, optimisation, and decision support across agriculture, livestock, food systems, environmental management, and related domains. However, the increasing complexity and often opacity of these methods is raising concerns regarding scientific rigour, reproducibility, transparency, generalisation and ethical responsibility. This letter establishes a set of good practice principles for authors submitting AI-driven research to Biosystems Engineering journal. The guidelines outline essential requirements for data quality, documentation of methodologies, experimental protocols, model selection, evaluation, interpretability, and reproduction of results. They emphasise the importance of open datasets and code availability, appropriate validation strategies, meaningful novelty, and clear evidence of relevance to the Biosystems Engineering scope
Towards reliable subsea object recovery: a simulation study of an auv with a suction-actuated end effector
No full textAutonomous object recovery in the hadal zone is challenging due to extreme hydrostatic pressure, limited visibility and currents, and the need for precise manipulation at full ocean depth. Field experimentation in such environments is costly, high-risk, and constrained by limited vehicle availability, making early validation of autonomous behaviors difficult. This paper presents a simulation-based study of a complete autonomous subsea object recovery mission using a Hadal Small Vehicle (HSV) equipped with a three-degree-of-freedom robotic arm and a suction-actuated end effector. The Stonefish simulator is used to model realistic vehicle dynamics, hydrodynamic disturbances, sensing, and interaction with a target object under hadal-like conditions. The control framework combines a world-frame PID controller for vehicle navigation and stabilization with an inverse-kinematics-based manipulator controller augmented by acceleration feed-forward, enabling coordinated vehicle - manipulator operation. In simulation, the HSV autonomously descends from the sea surface to 6,000 m, performs structured seafloor coverage, detects a target object, and executes a suction-based recovery. The results demonstrate that high-fidelity simulation provides an effective and low-risk means of evaluating autonomous deep-sea intervention behaviors prior to field deployment
Irrigation scheduling of crops under the influence of shallow groundwater table
No full textThis study aims to develop irrigation schedules for Indian mustard, wheat, pea, and maize by evaluating root zone soil moisture dynamics under the influence of a shallow groundwater table (SGT) with capillary rise. Field-based Lysimeter experiments conducted at NIT Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, under sub-humid subtropical conditions were combined with a numerical model to capture soil moisture variations. The model showed strong agreement with observed data (R2 = 0.70–0.85; NSE = 0.72–0.85; MBE within ±0.05), confirming its predictive reliability. Irrigation schedules were derived for crop root zones with SGT (CRZSGT) and compared with gravity drainage (CRZGD). The number of irrigation events decreased from 6 to 4 for Indian mustard and wheat, from 8 to 6 for pea, and from 3 to 2 for maize. This resulted in water savings of 30.5%, 36.8%, 25%, and 33.3% for the respective crops. Crop yields were consistently higher under CRZSGT, with percentage increases of 8%, 12%, 10%, and 3% in Indian mustard, wheat, pea, and maize, respectively, compared to CRZGD. The findings demonstrate that incorporating SGT into irrigation scheduling can save water while sustaining or slightly enhancing crop yields, offering a practical framework for water-scarce regions
Fish Diversity and Invasive Species Detection in the Perak River, Malaysia, Through eDNA Metabarcoding
No full textFreshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened globally, facing rapid biodiversity declines due to habitat degradation, pollution, overexploitation, and invasive species introductions. Southeast Asia, recognized as a global freshwater biodiversity hotspot, is experiencing some of the highest extinction risks. The Perak River, Malaysia’s second-longest river, supports diverse fish communities critical for regional ecological stability and food security, but comprehensive biodiversity assessments have been lacking. This study used environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding targeting the 12S rRNA gene to comprehensively assess fish diversity and detect invasive species across the Perak River. Water samples from five locations were analyzed using high-throughput sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform. We identified 16 orders, 32 families, 51 genera, and 57 species, with Cyprinidae being the dominant family (15.78% of species). Invasive species such as Micropterus salmoides, Oreochromis spp., and Gambusia affinis recognised as invasive either globally or in Malaysia were also detected, raising ecological concerns. Our results highlight the efficiency of eDNA metabarcoding for non-invasive biodiversity monitoring in tropical river systems and demonstrate its potential for early detection of invasive species. This pioneering baseline study provides essential data to guide conservation strategies, inform management policies, and contribute to broader efforts addressing freshwater biodiversity loss in Southeast Asia
Switching cost and cognate facilitation between two signed languages
No full textThis study investigated language switching and cognate facilitation in deaf bilinguals fluent in two signed languages—Irish Sign Language (ISL) and British Sign Language (BSL). Ten participants, who were all deaf and were educated in ISL and later exposed to BSL, completed a picture-naming task requiring them to switch between the two languages based on visual cues. The study aimed to establish whether a switching cost—typically observed in unimodal spoken language bilingualism—also exists in unimodal signed language bilingualism, and whether language dominance and cognate status mediated this effect. Results confirmed a general switching cost: participants were slower to respond on switch trials than during a baseline block with no switching. Both language dominance and cognate status affected the switching cost, such that switching costs were greater in the dominant language, and non-cognates were significantly slowed by switching but cognates were not. Accuracy rates were high and did not vary significantly by switching condition or language. As the first investigation to provide evidence of a switching cost in deaf bilinguals who use two signed languages, this study provides an important foundation for future work exploring how language modality and language ecology shape the cognitive control systems underlying language switching
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