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Soft robots provide a pathway to accurately mimic biological creatures and be integrated into their environment with minimal invasion or disruption to their ecosystem. These robots made from soft deforming materials possess structural properties and behaviors similar to the bodies and organs of living creatures. However, they are difficult to develop in terms of integrated actuation and sensing, accurate modeling, and precise control. This article presents a soft-rigid hybrid robotic fish inspired by the Pangasius fish. The robot employs a flexible fin ray tail structure driven by a servo motor, to act as the soft body of the robot and provide the undulatory motion to the caudal fin of the fish. To address the modeling and control challenges, reinforcement learning (RL) is proposed as a model-free control strategy for the robot fish to swim and reach a specified target goal. By training and investigating the RL through experiments on real hardware, we illustrate the capability of the fish to learn and achieve the required task.

This paper examines the effect of geopolitical risk (GPR) on return and volatility dynamics in Middle East and North African (MENA) countries by using an ADCC-GARCH model and a spillover approach. Unlike previous studies, we include the GPR index to capture risk associated with wars, terrorist acts, and political tensions. Moreover, we test for both static and dynamic analysis using a rolling window. In brief, the findings highlight that GPR does not contribute to the return spillovers among MENA financial markets. However, the dynamic analysis provides evidence of the high level of responsiveness of the total spillover index to major political events (e.g., the Arab Spring uprising and political tension between Qatar and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries). More interestingly, Qatar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are identified as the main transmitters of return spillovers to the rest of the MENA markets. Overall, our results are essential in understanding the impact of the GPR on return spillover among MENA countries, and are of particular importance to policymakers, market regulators, portfolio managers and investors.

Climate literacy is pivotal for preparing future leaders to address global climate challenges and build a sustainable future. Higher education institutions (HEIs) play a central role in embedding sustainability principles, particularly Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 (Climate Action), into curricula to cultivate responsible leadership. This study examines the integration of SDG 13 within the business curriculum at Delta University (UAE), assessing undergraduate students’ perceptions of climate education and how teaching methods shape sustainability leadership. Using a mixed-methods approach—a closed-ended survey and Q-methodology—the research analyzes students’ awareness, engagement, and subjective perspectives on pedagogical strategies. The results reveal a disconnect between theoretical knowledge and students’ ability to apply these principles in real-world business contexts. While students acknowledged climate action’s importance and supported active learning pedagogies (e.g., case studies, simulations), skepticism persisted about SDG 13’s applicability to business operations. The findings highlight the need for curricular reforms, aligning curricula with national sustainability strategies (e.g., UAE Net Zero 2050) to bridge theory and practice. This research advocates for HEIs to prioritize climate competencies, ensuring that graduates can address environmental challenges through actionable frameworks. By transcending symbolic commitments, HEIs can empower students to lead regionally and globally, advancing sustainability education’s role in achieving equitable, low-carbon societies.

Background Given the sparse data on the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) and its biological effector molecules ACE1 and ACE2 in pediatric COVID-19 cases, we investigated whether the ACE1 insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism could be a genetic marker for susceptibility to COVID-19 in Egyptian children and adolescents. Methods This was a case-control study included four hundred sixty patients diagnosed with COVID-19, and 460 well-matched healthy control children and adolescents. The I/D polymorphism (rs1799752) in the ACE1 gene was genotyped by polymerase chain reaction ( PCR ), meanwhile the ACE serum concentrations were assessed by ELISA . Results The ACE1 D/D genotype and Deletion allele were significantly more represented in patients with COVID-19 compared to the control group (55% vs. 28%; OR = 2.4; [95% CI: 1.46–3.95]; for the DD genotype; P  = 0.002) and (68% vs. 52.5%; OR: 1.93; [95% CI: 1.49–2.5] for the D allele; P  = 0.032). The presence of ACE1 D/D genotype was an independent risk factor for severe COVID-19 among studied patients (adjusted OR: 2.6; [95% CI: 1.6–9.7]; P  < 0.001. Conclusions The ACE1 insertion/deletion polymorphism may confer susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection in Egyptian children and adolescents. Impact Recent studies suggested a crucial role of renin-angiotensin system and its biological effector molecules ACE1 and ACE2 in the pathogenesis and progression of COVID-19. To our knowledge, ours is the first study to investigate the association of ACE1 I/D polymorphism and susceptibility to COVID-19 in Caucasian children and adolescents. The presence of the ACE1 D/D genotype or ACE1 Deletion allele may confer susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection and being associated with higher ACE serum levels; may constitute independent risk factors for severe COVID-19. The ACE1 I/D genotyping help design further clinical trials reconsidering RAS-pathway antagonists to achieve more efficient targeted therapies.

Artificial Water Bodies (AWBs) are human-made and require continuous monitoring due to their artificial biological processes. These systems necessitate regular maintenance to manage their ecosystems effectively. Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) offers a collaborative approach for monitoring these environments, working alongside human operators such as boat skippers to identify specific locations. This paper discusses a weed harvesting scenario, demonstrating how human-robot collaboration can be achieved, supported by preliminary results. The USV mainly utilises multibeam SOund NAvigation and Ranging (SONAR) for underwater weed monitoring, showing promising outcomes in these scenarios.

Artificial Water Bodies (AWBs) are human-made systems that require continuous monitoring due to their artificial biological processes. These systems demand regular maintenance to manage their ecosystems effectively. As a result of these artificial conditions, underwater vegetation can grow rapidly and must be harvested to preserve the ecological balance. This paper proposes a two-step approach to support targeted weed harvesting for the maintenance of artificial lakes. The first step is the initial detection of Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV), also referred to in this paper as areas of interest, is performed using satellite-derived indices, specifically the Aquatic Plants and Algae (APA) index, which highlights submerged vegetation in water bodies. Subsequently, an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) equipped with multibeam SOund NAvigation and Ranging (SONAR) performs high-resolution bathymetric mapping to locate and quantify aquatic vegetation precisely. This two-stage approach offers an effective human-robot collaboration, where satellite data guides the USV missions and boat skippers leverage detailed SONAR maps for targeted harvesting. This setup narrows the search space and reduces manual workload from human operators, making the harvesting process less labour-intensive for operators. Preliminary results demonstrate the feasibility of integrating satellite imagery and underwater acoustic sensing to improve vegetation management in artificial lakes.

Using daily data over the period August 5, 2013–September 27, 2019, this study investigates the dynamic spillovers between international monetary policies across four major economies (i.e. Eurozone, Japan, UK and US) and three key cryptocurrencies (i.e. Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ripple). In doing so, we apply a Time-Varying Parameter Vector Auto-Regression (TVP-VAR) model, a dynamic connectedness approach and network analysis. The empirical results indicate that cryptocurrency returns and monetary policy spillovers were particularly large when shadow policy rates became negative, moderated during the Fed's ‘tapering process’, and sharpened again more recently as cryptocurrency buoyancy returned. Gross directional spillovers suggest that shadow policy rates have more ‘to give than to receive’, while those from and to cryptocurrency returns are naturally volatile. There is also strong interconnectedness between monetary policy in either the US or the Eurozone and the UK, and between Bitcoin and Litecoin. However, the spillovers across monetary policy and cryptocurrencies tend to be muted. Finally, spillovers were only slightly larger during the Fed's ‘unconventional’ policy compared to the ‘standard’ era, but their composition qualitatively changed over time.

Policymakers in MENA Region face several choices to increase levels of renewable energy production under various risks and obstacles, including technological and financial severe constraints. This article investigates a crucial question, which has risen in the last few years both in policy and economic literature; that is, the role of various factors in shaping renewable energy production. The core message of this article is that political stability, governance quality and financial development may play an important role to spur renewable energy development in MENA countries. Accordingly, an innovative panel quantile regression model with non-additive fixed effect has been developed to analyse the main drivers of renewable energy production in selected MENA countries over the period 1984-2014. Our findings confirm that the effect of the political stability index on renewable energy production is clearly heterogeneous and supports earlier claims about the importance of political stability to foster the investments in renewable energy sector. Furthermore, we highlighted that governance effectiveness is a significant determinant of the renewable energy production in MENA countries. We notice that the effect is more pronounced at the lower quantile, indicating that impact of governance effectiveness has higher impact in low renewable energy production countries. Our results also argue that the development of financial sector has a positive and statistically significant impact on renewable energy production, across the renewable energy production distribution. It also argues that there is a complementarity relationship between government effectiveness and financial development in promoting the production of renewable energy production. From policy perspectives, our research allows the identification of possible ways of fostering the rate of renewable energy production in MENA Region.

Over the past 30 years, no consistent survival benefits have been recorded for anticancer agents of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), except for the multikinase inhibitor sorafenib (Nexavar ), which clinically achieves only ~3 months overall survival benefit. This modest benefit is attributed to limited aqueous solubility, slow dissolution rate and, consequently, limited absorption from the gastrointestinal tract. Thus, novel formulation modalities are in demand to improve the bioavailability of the drug to attack HCC in a more efficient manner. In the current study, we aimed to design a novel sorafenib-loaded carbon nanotubes (CNTs) formula that is able to improve the therapeutic efficacy of carried cargo against HCC and subsequently investigate the antitumour activity of this formula. Sorafenib was loaded on functionalized CNTs through physical adsorption, and an alginate-based method was subsequently applied to microcapsulate the drug-loaded CNTs (CNTs-SFN). The therapeutic efficacy of the new formula was estimated and compared to that of conventional sorafenib, both in vitro (against HepG2 cells) and in vivo (in a DENA-induced HCC rat model). The in vitro MTT anti-proliferative assay revealed that the drug-loaded CNTs formula was at least two-fold more cytotoxic towards HepG2 cells than was sorafenib itself. Moreover, the in vivo animal experiments proved that our innovative formula was superior to conventional sorafenib at all assessed end points. Circulating AFP-L3% was significantly decreased in the CNTs-SFN-MCs-treated group (14.0%) in comparison to that of the DENA (40.3%) and sorafenib (38.8%) groups. This superiority was further confirmed by Western blot analysis and immunofluorescence assessment of some HCC-relevant biomarkers. Our results firmly suggest the distinctive cancer-suppressive nature of CNTs-SFN-MCs, both against HepG2 cells in vitro and in a DENA-induced HCC rat model in vivo, with a preferential superiority over conventional sorafenib.

As important cancer therapeutic agents, macrocyclic peptides have recently drawn great attention, mainly because they are synthetically accessible and have lower toxicity towards normal cells. In the present work, we synthesized newly macrocyclic pyridoheptapeptide derivatives. The synthesized derivatives were characterized using standard chemical and spectroscopic analytical techniques, and their anticancer activities against human breast and hepatocellular cancer cells were investigated. Results showed that compounds 1a and 1b were the most effective against hepatocellular (HepG2) and breast (MCF-7) cancer cell lines, respectively.