Sound source localization and identity tracking are fundamental tasks in acoustic scene analysis, enabling machines to determine what, where, and when sound events occur. While deep attractor-based networks have demonstrated improved performance under an unknown number of sources, maintaining continuous source tracking over longform audio remains challenging due to memory limitations and permutation ambiguities across adjacent segments. In this paper, we propose a Recursive Attractor Network (RANet) for long-form sound source localizationand identity tracking with a variable number of sources. RANet explicitly represents attractors as transferable embeddings and recursively propagates them across adjacent audio segments using a LSTM-based model, thereby preserving source identity continuity over time. Experimental results on simulated datasets demonstrate that RANet achieves robust long-form localization and consistent source identity tracking, outperforming baseline approaches.
Global climate change is an increasing challenge to healthy aging because extreme heat, air pollution, sleep disruption, and ecological instability can weaken physiological homeostasis in older adults. As aging reduces thermoregulatory, cardiovascular, immune, endocrine, and autonomic reserves, repeated climate stress may lead to delayed recovery and a biological resilience cascade that increases the risk of frailty, cognitive decline, cardiovascular events, hospitalization, and reduced healthspan. This Perspective proposes an integrative framework that situates biological resilience within psychosocial and cultural contexts. We argue that cultural ethics do not directly alter physiological biomarkers, but may shape upstream social and psychological conditions, including stress appraisal, help seeking, community care, adaptive behavior, and recovery after exposure. Drawing on planetary health and cultural ethics, we examine how Zhi Wei Bing, Ren, Yi, and Tian-Ren-He-Yi can inform climate adaptation for older adults. These concepts support preventive action, care for vulnerable groups, fair distribution of resources, resilience literacy, and ecological planning. By linking physiological mechanisms with psychosocial resources and cultural values, this article offers a hypothesis-generating framework for climate-resilient aging and for policies that protect vulnerable older adults in a warming world.
We fabricated self-aligned quasi-vertical trench p-NiO/GaN merged p-n Schottky diodes with p-NiO guard-rings and investigated the effects of trench depth (dt) and n-region width (Wn) on the electrical characteristics. The MPS diode with Wn of 2 μm and dt of 1 μm exhibited a high forward current density of 1 kA cm−2 and a low differential Ron,sp of 1.4 mΩ·cm2. Guard-rings edge termination was introduced to improve the breakdown voltage from 330 V to 430 V. The average breakdown electric field was calculated to be 1.1 MV cm−1 for the MPS diode on a sapphire substrate.
Ensuring equitable access to healthcare services safeguards individual wellbeing and enhances society’s overall happiness. This study investigates the complex relationships between spatial hospital accessibility, spatial inequality, and urban wellbeing, focusing on the physical dimension of access measured by travel time. Using geospatial and economic data from 13,776 hospitals, this study reveals that inequality in hospital accessibility, as measured by the Gini coefficient, significantly and negatively impacts urban happiness. Additionally, the results reveal a nonlinear, inverted U-shaped relationship between hospital accessibility and city-level happiness, indicating an optimal threshold beyond which marginal benefits decline. Additionally, the results indicate a key mediating mechanism: unequal access drives population out-migration and reduces the permanent resident population. This outcome, in turn, partially transmits adverse effects to city-level wellbeing. These findings demonstrate substantial spatial and contextual heterogeneity, underscoring the need for policymakers to tailor urban health policies that prioritize enhancing accessibility and ensure equitable distribution to foster sustainable demographic stability and overall urban wellbeing.
Implementing Higher-Order Ambisonics (HOA) on consumer devices is hindered by their sparse, irregular microphone arrays, which challenge conventional methods with issues like spatial aliasing and ill-conditioning. This paper proposes a unified Spherical Harmonic Beamforming (SHB-AE) framework that recasts HOA encoding as a spatial filtering problem, enabling robust, signal-independent solutions. We develop two approaches: a frequency-domain (FD) method with compensation for high-frequency artifacts, and a time-domain (TD) methodthat holistically optimizes broadband FIR filters for enhanced stability. The framework is inherently scalable, allowing on-demand order expansion. Using a measured smartphone array, comprehensive objective and subjective evaluations demonstrate the clear superiority of theTD method. It excels in signal fidelity, spatial accuracy, and temporal consistency, outperforming baseline and FD approaches. The TD method also maintains its advantage in adverse conditions, showing remarkable robustness against noise, reverberation, and multi-source environments.It provides a practical, high-performance pathway for enabling high-fidelity spatial audio capture on ubiquitous consumer devices without requiring complex signal analysis or large datasets.
Awe, a self-transcendent emotion, has been theoretically posited as a precursor to wise reasoning. However, direct empirical evidence supporting this relationship and the underlying mechanism has been limited. In four studies (N = 3700), we examined the relationship between awe and wise reasoning, as well as the mediating effect of self-transcendence, employing cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental designs. We consistently found that awe had a lagged effect on (Study 1), enhanced (Studies 2 & 3), and was associated with (Study 4) wise reasoning. Furthermore, self-transcendence mediated this relationship (Studies 3 & 4). The impact of awe on wise reasoning and mediating effect of self-transcendence could not solely be attributed to awe’s predominantly positive nature, and the mediation model was established beyond the influence of self-smallness (Studies 3–4). These findings contribute to understanding the emotional trigger of wise reasoning, the cognitive implications of awe, and its role in promoting wise conflict resolution.
Spiders are renowned for their ecological versatility and silk-based innovations in materials science, yet marine environments remain virtually uncolonized by this predominantly terrestrial lineage. A striking exception is the obligate intertidal spider genus Desis, whose members have evolved extraordinary physiological and behavioural adaptations to persist in wave-swept, saline habitats that oscillate between land and sea. However, the molecular basis of these adaptations has remained largely unexplored. Here, we present a high-quality, chromosome-scale genome of the intertidal spider Desis jiaxiangi, together with a reference genome of the water spider Argyroneta aquatica, integrated with transcriptomic and proteomic data. This multi-omics framework reveals the genomic architecture underlying adaptation to life at the ocean's edge. We uncover expansions of gene families linked to hormone biosynthesis and DNA repair, alongside signatures of adaptive evolution in genes involved osmoregulation, the rate-limiting step of glycolysis, mitochondrial regulation, epithelial tube morphogenesis and circadian rhythm. Notably, we characterize a novel silk spidroin enriched with a unique GVGAKV motif, which may enhance silk hydrophobicity, and detect the duplication burst of hemocyanin genes likely supporting oxygen transport during submersion. Together, these findings reveal convergent molecular strategies for coping with extreme and fluctuating environments, and demonstrate how genomic innovation enables terrestrial lineages to invade marine-influenced ecosystems. Our study establishes Desis as powerful model for understanding adaptation at terrestrial–marine interface.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic-resistant genes (ARGs) pose global threats to human health and ecological safety. Activation of percarbonate (PC) by eco-friendly bismuth oxyiodide (BiOI) is a promising ARB/ARGs removal technique, yet its efficiency is hindered by the insufficient exposure of reactive Bi sites. Herein, we provide a facile protocol to fabricate BiOI with remarkable PC activation efficiency (BOI-C) for the ultrafast ARB/ARGs removal via modulating reactive Bi sites through introducing optimal Bi3-oxygen vacancy (OV) sites on the unsaturated facets. We show that BOI-C with optimal amount of Bi3-OV site can efficiently activate 50 µM PC to rapidly disinfect 7-log ARB to the limit of detection within only 4 min. Moreover, this reaction system can effectively degrade the released ARG and suppress the horizontal gene transfer process, greatly decreasing the risks of ARG dissemination. Negligible toxic halogen-containing disinfection byproducts is generated during the disinfection process, indicating the outstanding ecological safety of BOI-C/PC system. The reaction system can also effectively disinfect ARB under complex water chemistries including a broad pH range (3–9), high ionic strengths (up to 150 mM), copresence of natural organic matter (up to 10 mg L−1), and diverse actual water samples including tap water, lake water, groundwater and aquaculture tailwater. Furthermore, it can also be assembled into a filtration system for successive ARB disinfection, demonstrating the feasibility for practical application. The catalytic system also exhibits excellent ARB disinfection performance across various bacterial strains and effective degradation performance towards different types of emerging organic pollutants, suggesting its universal decontamination capability. Combining in-situ characterizations and theoretical calculations, we reveal that Bi3-OV sites on the unsaturated facets of BOI-C facilitate the p-p interaction with peroxy O atoms of PC molecules and trigger the electron transfer as well as the subsequent cleavage of peroxy bonds, generating abundant CO3•− for the ultrafast ARB disinfection. The results of this study show that BOI-C/PC system can be employed to effectively remove antibiotic resistance in real water.
