This study presents a microbial activation strategy to repurpose coal gangue (CG) for enhancing soil quality in aeolian sandy soil. Phosphate-solubilizing bacteria (20−3) and nitrogen-fixing bacteria (SGD06) were employed to produce two microbially activated CGs (CG20-3 and CGSGD06). Adsorption experiments elucidated their colonization mechanisms on CG, while seed germination and pot trials with pakchoi validated remediation efficacy. Even after pakchoi harvest, both CG20-3 and CGSGD06 significantly increased soil bioavailable nutrients by 1.13–6.86-fold. CGSGD06 exhibited superior nitrogen delivery through biological fixation, providing 82.39% higher available nitrogen than CG20-3. Conversely, CG20-3 showed faster adsorption kinetics and stronger binding capacity. Both strains mediated nutrient liberation via acid-driven dissolution of CG clay minerals, including kaolinite, muscovite, and phosphates. Treated soils enhanced pakchoi germination (3.08%) and biomass (1.14–1.89-fold) through improved plant resistance and biochemical indicators, namely ascorbic acid, chlorophyll, and soluble sugar. The activated CGs reshaped the rhizosphere bacterial community and stimulated the secretion of organic acids, phytohormones, and key enzymes, collectively establishing a synergistic growth-promoting system. Additionally, rhizospheric micronutrient bioavailability increased 4.52–43.15-fold, and key soil enzyme activities were upregulated 1.42–267-fold. This work provides a preliminary basis for using microbially activated CG as a potential amendment for aeolian sandy soil, highlighting opportunities for solid waste valorization and soil restoration under controlled conditions.
Existing steganalysis methods based on deep neural networks often rely on first-order statistical representations or generic attention mechanisms to amplify embedding disturbances, which may show limited sensitivity to weak, spatially distributed steganographic perturbations. Prior studies also focus on local feature extraction and underutilize broader spatial information. To address these challenges, we propose VADNet, a statistical representation framework for spatial-domain steganalysis that enhances weak embedding disturbances through variance-guided feature recalibration and multi-scale spatial dependency extraction with low overhead. We analyze the statistical characteristics of steganographic embedding, emphasizing the limitations of first-order-statistics-based attention mechanisms in characterizing weak embedding-induced feature fluctuations. A Variance Attention Module (VAM) based on second-order statistics is introduced in the preprocessing stage to recalibrate channel weights by calculating spatial channel-feature variance, thereby enhancing embedding-disturbance-related features and suppressing irrelevant channel features. A multi-scale feature extraction structure with dilated convolutions enlarges the receptive field and captures embedding-disturbance distribution characteristics at different spatial scales, improving discriminative ability. Experiments on BOSSBase-1.01 and BOWS2 demonstrate effectiveness across various payloads. The proposed approach improves detection accuracy by 0.4%-18.22% for WOW, 0.37%-15.89% for S-UNIWARD, and 0.5%-13.18% for HILL. Compared with representative attention mechanisms, VADNet achieves the highest detection accuracy while maintaining competitive computational efficiency.
Regional non-uniform decay of membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) is a critical factor causing fuel cell performance degradation. This study conducts a 5000-h accelerated stress test under dynamic driving conditions on a 30 kW PEMFC stack, analyzing the regional decay behavior of the catalyst layer (CL). The results show that MEAs exhibit non-uniform decay along the gas flow channel, with the performance decay rate of MEAs at the air inlet (38.6% voltage loss at 1 A cm−2) significantly higher than that at the hydrogen inlet (18.1%). Tests indicate that the electrochemical active surface area of the cathode CL at the air inlet decreases by up to 56%, with carbon support corrosion far exceeding that of Pt catalysts. Accompanied by mesoporous structure collapse, mass transfer processes are severely hindered, leading to a 118.7% increase in mass transfer resistance at the air inlet. Further analysis indicates that electrochemical oxidation processes within the cathode CL is a major contributor to ionomer side-chain degradation. This study reveals the influence of the synergistic mechanism between regional carbon corrosion and ionomer decay in CLs on fuel cell performance, providing a theoretical basis for enhancing PEMFC durability.
Brand activism is a major way companies are getting involved in societal issues, but the conditions on the consumer side that drive engagement are not well understood. This research focuses on the effects of social disconnection, the perception of disruption or weakening of meaningful relationships, on consumer intentions to engage with activist brands. In this paper, we argue that social disconnection also inspires people to actively re-construct and re-anchor their sense of self, which we call identity reconstruction, and that this reconstruction results in consumers' interactions with activist brands as symbolic platforms for the expression of values and self-reconstruction. In four experiments with controlled stimuli and fictitious brands, we found that social disconnection was associated with increased self-reported intentions to engage with activist brand content via digital media, a relationship mediated by identity reconstruction. The relationship between identity reconstruction and engagement intentions was also moderated by the construct of perceived message authenticity, indicating that the credibility of the brand is an important factor in determining whether activist brands can serve as a suitable platform for identity reconstruction. These results add to the research on brand activism and consumer identity by proposing social disconnection as an antecedent factor at the consumer level and by revealing the reconstructive process through which it operates. From a managerial perspective, findings suggest that authentic, value-congruent activism is more effective when consumers are experiencing social instability. Because the studies relied on controlled experimental stimuli and self-reported engagement intentions, future research should examine whether these effects extend to real brands, observed digital behaviors, and diverse cultural contexts.
We are concerned with the following fractional p-Laplace equation(−Δp)su=ups*−1inRn,where 0 < s < 1, max{2nn+2s,1}<p<ns and ps*=npn−ps. We establish decay estimates at infinity for non-trivial nonnegative weak solutions. Based on this, we derive that any nonnegative weak solution is radially symmetric and monotone decreasing about some point in Rn. As a result, the optimal decay at infinity for nonnegative weak solutions follows.
