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Salubriousness, sustainability, low environmental footprint, and low production cost make seaweed an exciting food source for meeting food security and nutritional challenges. Seaweeds are increasingly being utilized in various food systems to avail dietary benefits for human health. The supplementation of seaweed with foods imparts its nutritional, techno-functional, and sensory functionalities to the food product. Thus, seaweeds present an interesting prospect to design tailor-made novel food products which are healthy, palatable, and at the same time ‘convenience food’. The utilization of seaweeds for the development of food products is an excellent opportunity for food scientists, technologists, and phycologists for optimal exploitation of this food resource. The appropriate usage of seaweed in food systems could possibly give rise to a novel segment of seaweed-based composite/hybrid health foods. The review briefly summarises the trend and opportunities of seaweed utilization in functional food systems and the modifications occurring in food products upon supplementation with seaweed. Further, the review also discusses food safety concerns such as the presence of toxins, microplastics, heavy metals, and micropollutants in seaweed and challenges in adoption due to neophobia.

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are emerging crystalline polymeric materials with highly ordered intrinsic and uniform pores. Their synthesis involves reticular chemistry, which offers the freedom of choosing building precursors from a large bank with distinct geometries and functionalities. The pore sizes of COFs, as well as their geometry and functionalities, can be pre-designed, giving them an immense opportunity in various fields. In this mini-review, we will focus on the use of COFs in the removal of environmentally hazardous metal ions and chemicals through adsorption and separation. The review will introduce basic aspects of COFs and their advantages over other purification materials. Various fabrication strategies of COFs will be introduced in relation to the separation field. Finally, the challenges of COFs and their future perspectives in this field will be briefly outlined.

Graphene is a two-dimensional (2D) material with over 100-fold anisotropy of heat flow between the in-plane and out-of-plane directions. High in-plane thermal conductivity is due to covalent sp2bonding between carbon atoms, whereas out-of-plane heat flow is limited by weak van der Waals coupling. Herein, we review the thermal properties of graphene, including its specific heat and thermal conductivity (from diffusive to ballistic limits) and the influence of substrates, defects, and other atomic modifications. We also highlight practical applications in which the thermal properties of graphene play a role. For instance, graphene transistors and interconnects benefit from the high in-plane thermal conductivity, up to a certain channel length. However, weak thermal coupling with substrates implies that interfaces and contacts remain significant dissipation bottlenecks. Heat flow in graphene or graphene composites could also be tunable through a variety of means, including phonon scattering by substrates, edges, or interfaces. Ultimately, the unusual thermal properties of graphene stem from its 2D nature, forming a rich playground for new discoveries of heat-flow physics and potentially leading to novel thermal management applications.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1591763.].

Atmospheric cold plasma (ACP) is an emerging technology which has increased attraction due to the consumers’ tendency toward fresh and minimally processed food products. This non-thermal technology has been considered as a promising tool for decontamination of foods, modification of food components as well as food packaging. The potential interactions of cold plasma species with food components and consequently its effect on food quality is of high importance. Proteins are the main food constituent in food formulations regarding both nutritional and technological points of view. The susceptibility of native proteins to reactive species created through ACP treatment should be considered regarding the power supply, type of feeding gas and its pressure, exposure time, input voltage and current flow. However, the protein characteristics and the manner in which they are exposed are also important to be considered. This review article is aimed to investigate the technological and nutritional characteristics of proteins during atmospheric cold plasma treatment.

An efficient integration of electrochromic and electrochemical devices into one flexible entity enables both energy storage and energy‐saving dual‐functionalities. For this purpose, achieving both high electrochromic and electrochemical performance is the key aspect. Herein, a new 3D architecture is successfully made by knotting W17O47@PEDOT (poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene)):PSS (poly(styrenesulfonate)) nanowires with NaWO3 nanoknots, and interestingly, the 3D W17O47/(NaWO3‐knots)@PEDOT:PSS cathode thus‐made simultaneously exhibits a large optical modulation (79.7% at 633 nm), an ultra‐long cycling life (76% of original optical modulation retained after 12 400 cycles), and a high areal capacitance (55.1 mF cm−2 at 0.1 mA cm−2). Our density functional theory (DFT) calculations demonstrate that the much improved dual‐functional performance is correlated to the raised electronic conductivity and ion adsorption at the W17O47/(NaWO3 nanoknots) interface, together with the ion adsorption of PEDOT:PSS in the 3D‐knotted architecture. As a proof‐of‐concept application, different‐sized flexible dual‐functional electrochromic/electrochemical devices (FDEDs) were assembled and investigated for various application scenarios, including a smart window (15 cm × 10 cm), a wearable wristband (20 cm × 2.5 cm), and a smart eyeglass. The smart window made of the FDED enables a large temperature difference of 27.6°C confirm‐tested in model houses, where the energy source also powers three light‐emitting diodes (LEDs). The understandings of the key governing principles in the electrodes and dual‐functionalities provide a timely foundation for the new generation flexible multifunctional devices. Flexible dual‐functional electrochromic/electrochemical devices possessing energy‐saving and energy storage functionalities have been spotlighted in wearable electronics, internet of things (IOT) and smart windows.

This paper presents a comprehensive review of ground agricultural robotic systems and applications with special focus on harvesting that span research and commercial products and results, as well as their enabling technologies. The majority of literature concerns the development of crop detection, field navigation via vision and their related challenges. Health monitoring, yield estimation, water status inspection, seed planting and weed removal are frequently encountered tasks. Regarding robotic harvesting, apples, strawberries, tomatoes and sweet peppers are mainly the crops considered in publications, research projects and commercial products. The reported harvesting agricultural robotic solutions, typically consist of a mobile platform, a single robotic arm/manipulator and various navigation/vision systems. This paper reviews reported development of specific functionalities and hardware, typically required by an operating agricultural robot harvester; they include (a) vision systems, (b) motion planning/navigation methodologies (for the robotic platform and/or arm), (c) Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) strategies with 3D visualization, (d) system operation planning & grasping strategies and (e) robotic end-effector/gripper design. Clearly, automated agriculture and specifically autonomous harvesting via robotic systems is a research area that remains wide open, offering several challenges where new contributions can be made.

Silicone foam materials have attracted considerable interest in both academic and industrial fields owing to their non-petroleum source, wide temperature flexibility, chemical resistance, environmental stability, and electrical insulation. A recent increasing trend is to develop multifunctional silicone polymer foams and their composite materials for multiple emerging applications. However, an incisive and comparative overview of such an advanced silicone foam system is still lacking. This review reports a detailed summary of recent research progress on advanced silicone polymer foam composites for emerging applications. Besides, this review will systematically review and discuss various fabrication strategies, including physical templating, chemical foaming, and mixed foaming methods, and their structural features. Subsequently, physical and chemical properties of density, hydrophobicity, electrical conductivity, and flame retardancy, as well as mechanical properties, are compared and analyzed to better understand their structure-property interrelationships. Finally, the foams’ emerging applications based on evaluating some typical examples are also discussed. Overall, this review illustrates that silicone polymer foam composites are promising as one of the next-generation advanced polymer foam composite materials with a cost-effective fabrication process, superior hydrophobicity, environmental reliability, and new functionalities.

Thin-film electrocaloric and pyroelectric sources for electrothermal energy interconversion have recently emerged as viable means for primary and auxiliary solid-state cooling and power generation. Two significant advances have facilitated this development: (1) the formation of high-quality polymeric and ceramic thin films with figures of merit that project system-level performance as a large percentage of Carnot efficiency and (2) the ability of these newer materials to support larger electric fields, thereby permitting operation at higher voltages. This makes the power electronic architectures more favorable for thermal to electric energy interconversion. Current research targets to adequately address commercial device needs including reduction of parasitic losses, increases in mechanical robustness, and the ability to form nearly freestanding elements with thicknesses in the range of 1–10 μm. This article describes the current state-of-the-art materials, thermodynamic cycles, and device losses and points toward potential lines of research that would lead to substantially better figures of merit for electrothermal energy interconversion.

Background Soil organic matter (SOM) supports multiple soil ecosystem functions, underpinned by processes such as C sequestration, N mineralization, aggregation, promotion of plant health and compound retention. We know little about the relationship between these functions and SOM quality. Scope We aimed to develop “eco-functionality” as a framework to address questions on the relation between SOM properties and soil ecosystem functions. Conclusions Paradigm shifts in SOM research have not led to metrics for eco-functionality beyond decomposability and C:N ratio. Recalcitrant OM is under-researched despite its essential role in aggregation and C sequestration, especially in C-saturated soils. Most soil functions are dependent on SOM decomposition and require labile compounds. We conclude that eco-functionality is context-dependent and needs to take time scales into account. We plea for attempts to link operationally defined SOM fractions to functions in order to make SOM research more applicable.