Wood is a unique natural resource widely utilized for various applications, and its processing has a significant role in enabling its sustainable development. Laser technology has emerged as a powerful and precise tool for the functionalization and processing of wood materials, offering flexibility and sustainability benefits. This article explores the principles of laser–wood interactions, covering photothermal, photochemical, and photomechanical processes. We identified key parameters that influence laser processing efficiency, such as laser pulse, laser wavelength, and wood material composition. It highlights novel applications of laser processing, from enhancing permeability through laser cutting or drilling, to enabling it with new properties or functions via surface laser treatment technologies such as laser-induced graphene. Furthermore, the review discusses future perspectives of laser-assisted wood engineering, highlighting its critical role in driving sustainable practices and innovations in wood materials technology.
Agile software development frameworks such as Scrum were designed around structured communication ceremonies intended to keep teams aligned. Yet the alignment fostered by ceremonies does not automatically translate into a shared understanding, leaving a gap that remains a major source of communication-related process inefficiency. This case study investigates how a lack of common ground undermines effective collaboration-a key driver of project success in Agile settings. Based on semi-structured interviews with experienced Agile team leaders, the study reveals that Agile ceremonies alone are indeed insufficient to ensure the knowledge sharing and common ground necessary for efficient collaboration. The findings highlight the need to distinguish communication purposes across stakeholder roles, introducing the concept of role-based communication interfaces as a means of strengthening shared understanding of objectives, requirements, and priorities. By viewing Agile teams as social systems, this study identifies targeted strategies to mitigate process loss through structured, purpose-driven communication frameworks. The study contributes to the understanding of how Agile practices can evolve to better address communication challenges, offering practical guidance for improving software development processes in real-world team environments.
Solar flares release a tremendous amount of magnetic energy that subsequently manifests in several forms; the bulk of this energy is transported through the Sun’s atmosphere and explosively heats the chromosphere. While hard X-ray observations have pointed to flare-accelerated electrons as a primary means by which energy is transported following flares, alternative processes undoubtedly act alongside, or even instead of, those energetic electrons. To shed light on this we analysed flare-optimized, high-cadence Solar Orbiter observations. Footpoints from two flare ribbons were observed by the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument. Curiously, those footpoints exhibited contrasting behaviour: one had short-lived yet strong decreases in the Lyman β/Lyman γ line intensity ratio, whereas the other exhibited a more prolonged, moderate dip in that ratio. These observations were compared to synthetic spectra from radiation hydrodynamic simulations of flares driven by various energy transport mechanisms. This revealed that one footpoint was driven by energetic particle precipitation, while the other was driven by enhanced thermal heat flux. The implication is that energetic particles do not dominate along the entirety of flare ribbons. Critically, we must now focus on understanding where, when and why different mechanisms dominate in solar flare energy transport. High-resolution flare footpoint observations in the extreme ultraviolet and X-rays were taken by Solar Orbiter. Combined with simulations, the results reveal that the dominant mechanism carrying flare energy through the Sun’s atmosphere can vary on small spatial scales.
Recent wide-field galaxy surveys have led to an explosion in the number of galaxy-scale strong gravitational lens candidates. However, the vast majority of them feature massive luminous red galaxies as the main deflectors, with late-type galaxies being vastly under-represented. This work presents a dedicated search for lensing by edge-on late-type galaxies in the Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS). The search covers 3600 deg2 of r-band observations taken from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. We considered all sources with magnitudes in the range 17 < r < 20.5, without any colour pre-selection, yielding a parent sample of seven million sources. We characterised our parent sample via the visual inspection of 120 000 sources selected at random. From it, we estimate, with a 68% confidence interval, that 1 in every 30 000 sources is an edge-on lens candidate, with at least eight high-quality candidates in the parent sample. This corresponds to one candidate per 17 000 edge-on late-type galaxies. Our search relied on a convolutional neural network (CNN) to select a reduced sample of candidates, which we followed with a visual inspection to curate the final sample. The CNN was trained from scratch using simulated r-band observations of edge-on lenses, and real observations of non-lenses. We found 61 good edge-on lens candidates using the CNN. Moreover, combining the CNN candidates with those found serendipitously and those identified while characterising the parent sample, we discovered 4 grade A, 20 grade B, and 58 grade C edge-on lens candidates, effectively doubling the known sample of these systems. We also discovered 16 grade A, 16 grade B, and 18 grade C lens candidates of other types. Finally, based on the characterisation of the parent sample, we estimate that our search found around 60% of the bright grade A and B edge-on lens candidates within the parent sample.
The Epoch of Reionization (EoR), when the first luminous sources ionized the intergalactic medium, represents a new frontier in cosmology. The Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) will offer unprecedented insights into this era through observations of the redshifted 21-cm signal, enabling constraints on the Universe's reionization history. We inves-tigate the information content of the average neutral hydrogen fraction ((x) over bar (HI)) in several Gaussian (spherical and cylindrical power spectra) and non-Gaussian (Betti numbers and bispectrum) summary statistics of the 21-cm signal. Mock 21-cm observations are generated using the AA* configuration of SKAO's low-frequency telescope, incorporating noise levels for 100 and 1000 h. We employ a state-of-the-art implicit inference framework to learn posterior distributions of (x) over bar (HI) in redshift bins centred at z = 8 7.2, and 6.5, for each statistic and noise scenario, validating the posteriors through calibration tests. Using the figure of merit to assess constraining power, we find that Betti numbers alone are on average more informative than the power spectra, while the bispectrum provides limited constraints. However, combining higher-order statistics with the cylindrical power spectrum improves the mean figure of merit by similar to 0.25 dex (similar to 33 per cent reduction in sigma((x) over bar (HI))). The relative contribution of each statistic varies with the stage of reionization. With SKAO observations approaching, our results show that combining power spectra with higher-order statistics can significantly increase the information retrieved from the FoR, maximizing the scientific return of future 21-cm observations.
