马萨诸塞大学

Accurate remaining useful life (RUL) prediction of electronic components is of paramount importance for maintaining the long-term reliability and safety of complex systems exposed to highly variable and demanding operational environments. However, most existing physics-informed machine learning (PIML) approaches for electronics reliability still suffer from a key limitation: they typically incorporate fixed physical priors while assigning static importance to multivariate degradation indicators throughout the component’s lifetime. Consequently, the predicted and actual degradation trajectories tend to become misaligned, and the models often lack adequate uncertainty estimates required for robust decision-making in the presence of distribution shifts. To address these limitations, this paper proposes the Self-Attention-Guided Quantum Assimilation with Bayesian Updated Nonlinear Wiener process (SAQ-BUNW), a physics-inspired quantum-Bayesian Wiener framework for RUL prediction. Rather than embedding a closed-form degradation equation, the framework injects physical knowledge through an energy-landscape prior built from a quantum-mechanical analogy, while a nonlinear Wiener process models the stochastic degradation dynamics and quantifies predictive uncertainty. SAQ-BUNW integrates quantum state-based feature assimilation with a self-attention mechanism that emphasizes degradation-sensitive variables, while Bayesian updating within a nonlinear Wiener process enables uncertainty estimation. We validate the method on SF158MD operational amplifiers under accelerated degradation. Tested by leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV) against a broad range of baselines, SAQ-BUNW improves point-prediction accuracy while also producing better-calibrated uncertainty estimates.

Plant-based (PB) milk alternatives often fail to accurately replicate the physicochemical properties and functionality of dairy milk, restricting their application in PB-dairy products. In this study, PB-milk analogs were constructed using a bottom-up approach by integrating PB-milk fat globule (PB-MFG) and PB-casein micelle (PB-CM) analogs. The mixed systems exhibited characteristics resembling those of whole dairy milk, including physicochemical properties, storage stability, and pH-responsive behavior. Polysaccharide incorporation and pasteurization significantly affected the properties and stability of the milk analogs, exhibiting both positive and negative effects depending on the type used. Notably, pasteurization consistently improved the stability of the milk analogs. Pasteurized PB milks containing high-acyl gellan gum exhibited the highest creaming stability, showing no visible phase separation after 28 days of storage. Moreover, these samples exhibited pH-dependent behavior similar to whole milk, with aggregation near pH 4 and stable dispersions formed from pH 6 to 9. These findings provide insights into the design of PB-milk analogs with improved functionality and highlight their potential for application in plant-based yogurt and cheese products.

Abstract Despite increasing investments in smart city initiatives, a key research gap remains in aligning technological development with citizen-centric values and preferences. This study aims to (1) identify the smart city domains that residents in Taiwan perceive as most critical; (2) evaluate how consumer values—functional, social, emotional, novelty, and contextual—affect perception; (3) determine which values influence willingness to live in smart cities; and (4) offer policy recommendations aligned with public expectations. A structured questionnaire was designed, incorporating Likert-scale items across five smart city domains and five consumer value categories. Responses from 450 residents across all six municipalities in Taiwan were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The model tested 15 hypotheses, examining relationships between smart city components, perceived values, and behavioral intention. The SEM analysis involved confirmatory factor analysis, path modeling, and bootstrapping for mediation effects. The findings indicated that smart transportation and smart governance most strongly drove positive perceptions of smart city development. Among consumer values, only functional and contextual value significantly influenced residents’ willingness to live in or recommend smart cities. This study contributes a value-based framework to smart city planning, providing empirical insights for designing resident-driven, sustainable urban environments.

Oral administration of lipophilic bioactives remains challenging because systems that provide effective protection during food processing and gastrointestinal exposure may also restrict subsequent lipid digestion and absorption. In this study, we fabricated beta-carotene-loaded core-shell microgels consisting of a lipid core and a biopolymer shell. The core-shell microgels were prepared by coaxial extrusion of a lipid inner phase (beta-carotene and corn oil) and a biopolymer outer phase (potato protein and sodium alginate), followed by Ca2+-induced gelation. This procedure generated uniform spherical core-shell microgels with a lipid core diameter of around 653-671 mu m and a biopolymer shell thickness of around 95-109 mu m. Shell thickness increased slightly with increasing potato protein (PP) concentration. Confocal microscopy and protein loading analysis confirmed the successful incorporation of the potato protein into the alginate shell. The beta-carotene encapsulation efficiency increased from around 88.9% in the PP-free control to 96.3% at 3.0% PP, with clear improvement from 1.0% PP onward. PP incorporation also altered shell responsiveness by enhancing acid-induced contraction and suppressing swelling at neutral pH (p < 0.05), indicating changes in shell structure and water uptake. Compared with alginate-only microgels, PP-incorporated microgels exhibited improved accelerated storage stability, slower beta-carotene degradation, and higher beta-carotene retention after gastric digestion, with degradation behavior best described by the Weibull model (R-2 >= 0.9885). PP incorporation did not impair intestinal digestion but instead promoted free fatty acid release and moderately increased beta-carotene bioaccessibility. These findings indicate that PP can serve as a shell-structuring co-biopolymer to improve beta-carotene protection while maintaining intestinal lipid digestion and micellar solubilization in plant-based core-shell delivery systems.

The James Webb Space Telescope has ushered in an era of abundant high-redshift observations of young stellar populations characterized by strong emission lines, motivating us to integrate nebular emission into the new Maraston stellar population model which incorporates the latest Geneva stellar evolutionary tracks for massive stars with rotation. We use the photoionization code CLOUDY to obtain the emergent nebular continuum and line emission for a range of modelling parameters, then compare our results to observations on various emission line diagnostic diagrams. We carry out a detailed comparison with several other models in the literature assuming different input physics, including modified prescriptions for stellar evolution and the inclusion of binary stars, and find close agreement in the H beta, H alpha, [N II]lambda 6583, and [S II]lambda 6716, 6731 luminosities between the models. However, we find significant differences in lines with high ionization energies, such as He II lambda 1640 and [OIII]lambda 5007, due to large variations in the hard ionizing photon production rates. The models differ by a maximum of Delta Q([OIII]lambda 5007) approximate to 10(44) s(-1) M-circle dot(-1) ,where these differences are mostly caused by the assumed stellar rotation and effective temperatures for the Wolf Rayet phase. Interestingly, rotation and uncorrected effective temperatures in our single star population models alone generate [O III ] ionizing photon production rates higher than models including binary stars with ages between 1 to 6 Myr. These differences highlight the dependence of derived properties from SED fitting on the assumed model, as well as the sensitivity of predictions from cosmological simulations.