Impact assessment of climate and land use change on the water-energy-food nexus: An application to the Ping River Basin, Thailand.

Despite growing recognition of the water-energy-food nexus (WEFN), understanding the combined impacts of climate and land use changes on these resources and their interdependencies remains limited. This study introduces a framework to evaluate these impacts and applies it to the Ping River Basin, Thailand. The framework is systematic and adaptable to river basins worldwide, with models tailored to regional climate conditions, data availability, and resource interactions.

Depth-sensor-based shared control assistance for mobility and object manipulation: toward long-term home-use of BCI-controlled assistive robotic devices.

Assistive robots can be developed to restore or provide more autonomy for individuals with motor impairments. In particular, power wheelchairs can compensate lower-limb impairments, while robotic manipulators can compensate upper-limbs impairments. Recent studies have shown that Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) can be used to operate this type of devices.

Cross-Linguistic Phonetic Variation in Bilingual Speech: Cantonese /n/ > [l] Merger in Early Cantonese-English Bilinguals.

/n/ is merging with /l/ in Cantonese, as well as in several other Chinese languages. The Cantonese merger appears categorical, with /n/ becoming /l/ syllable-initially. This project aims to describe /n/ and /l/ in Cantonese and English speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals to better understand the status of the merger in Cantonese and its potential for cross-linguistic mutual influence.

Nature-based solutions for improving food security: A systematic global review.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been promoted as a holistic way to solve a variety of societal issues while benefiting biodiversity at the same time. To date, applications of NBS approaches that help ensure food security have yet been systematically reviewed. In this paper, we critically review the specific NBS for food security, highlighting their limitations, to provide recommendations that promote their applications for improving global food security.

Language-general versus language-specific processes in bilingual voice learning.

Language experience confers a benefit to voice learning, a concept described in the literature as the language familiarity effect (LFE). What experiences are necessary for the LFE to be conferred is less clear. We contribute empirically and theoretically to this debate by examining within and across language voice learning with Cantonese-English bilingual voices in a talker-voice association paradigm.

Evaluating the impacts of climate change and land-use change on future droughts in northeast Thailand.

The impacts of climate change (CC) on droughts are well documented, but the effects of land-use change (LUC) are poorly understood. This study compares the projected individual and combined impacts of these stressors on future droughts (2021-2050), with respect to baseline (1981-2010) in one of the major tributaries of the Mekong River. LUC impacts on hydrological droughts are minimal compared to CC, with the latter expected to shorten the recurrence interval of a 20-year return period event to every 14 years.

Evaluation of power wheelchair driving performance in simulator compared to driving in real-life situations: the SIMADAPT (simulator ADAPT) project-a pilot study.

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate users' driving performances with a Power Wheelchair (PWC) driving simulator in comparison to the same driving task in real conditions with a standard power wheelchair.

Methods: Three driving circuits of progressive difficulty levels (C1, C2, C3) that were elaborated to assess the driving performances with PWC in indoor situations, were used in this study. These circuits have been modeled in a 3D Virtual Environment to replicate the three driving task scenarios in Virtual Reality (VR).

Discovery of GLPG2737, a Potent Type 2 Corrector of CFTR for the Treatment of Cystic Fibrosis in Combination with a Potentiator and a Type 1 Co-corrector.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is caused by mutations in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein. This epithelial anion channel regulates the active transport of chloride and bicarbonate ions across membranes. Mutations result in reduced surface expression of CFTR channels with impaired functionality.

Receptive vocabulary predicts multilinguals' recognition skills in adverse listening conditions.

Adverse listening conditions are known to affect bilingual listeners' intelligibility scores more than those of monolingual listeners. To advance theoretical understanding of the mechanisms underpinning bilinguals' challenges in adverse listening conditions, vocabulary size and language entropy are compared as predictors in a sentence transcription task with a heterogeneous multilingual population representative of a speech community. Adverse listening was induced through noise type, bandwidth manipulations, and sentences varying in their semantic predictability.

Lapse rate-adjusted bias correction for CMIP6 GCM precipitation data: An application to the Monsoon Asia Region.

Bias correction (BC) of General Circulation Models (GCMs) variables is a common practice when it is being used for climate impact assessment studies at regional scales. The present study proposes a bias correction method (LR-Reg) that first adjusts the original GCM precipitation for local lapse rate corrections and later bias corrects the lapse rate-adjusted GCMs precipitation data with linear regression coefficients. We evaluated LR-Reg BC method in comparison to Linear Scaling (LS) and Quantile Mapping (QMap) BC methods, and NASA's downscaled NEX data for Monsoon Asia region.

Quantitative, not qualitative, differences in word classification errors as a function of language dominance.

This paper reports the results of a Cantonese word categorization task that maximized lexical competition. Cantonese-English early bilinguals were presented with a Cantonese word, followed by four images depicting the target word and a tone, rhyme, and onset competitor. English-dominant listeners made more errors than Cantonese-dominant listeners, but the proportions of error types were equivalent across language dominance profiles.

Model-Based Upper-Limb Gravity Compensation Strategies for Active Dynamic Arm Supports.

NeuroMuscular Disorders (NMDs) may induce difficulties to perform daily life activities in autonomy. For people with NMDs affecting the upper-limb mobility, Dynamic Arm Supports (DASs) turn out to be relevant assistive devices. In particular, active DASs benefit from an external power source to support severely impaired people.

SWADAPT2: benefits of a collision avoidance assistance for powered wheelchair users in driving difficulty.

Purpose: In France, tens of thousands of people use a wheelchair. Driving powered wheelchairs (PWCs) present risks for users and their families. The risk of collision in PWC driver increases with severity of disability and may reduce their independence to drive.

Robotics at the Service of Wheelchair Mobility for People with Disabilities: Story of a Clinical-Scientific Partnership.

The mobility of people with motor disabilities combined with sensory or cognitive disabilities, sometimes leads to safety issues that make independent travel impossible. In this context, teams based in Rennes in the west of France have been working together for several years to design two devices: - an power wheelchair simulator to promote learning to drive in an immersive virtual environment - a driving assistance module that can be added to an power wheelchair to pass and avoid obstacles. This transdisciplinary work was made possible by the geographical and human proximity of the scientific, technical and clinical teams in order to best meet the needs of the end users who were integrated into this co-design approach.

Language Contact Within the Speaker: Phonetic Variation and Crosslinguistic Influence.

A recent model of sound change posits that the direction of change is determined, at least in part, by the distribution of variation within speech communities. We explore this model in the context of bilingual speech, asking whether the less variable language constrains phonetic variation in the more variable language, using a corpus of spontaneous speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals. As predicted, given the phonetic distributions of stop obstruents in Cantonese compared with English, intervocalic English /b d g/ were produced with less voicing for Cantonese-English bilinguals and word-final English /t k/ were more likely to be unreleased compared with spontaneous speech from two monolingual English control corpora.

The structure of acoustic voice variation in bilingual speech.

When a bilingual switches languages, do they switch their voice? Using a conversational corpus of speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals (n = 34), this paper examines the talker-specific acoustic signatures of bilingual voices. Following the psychoacoustic model of voice, 24 filter and source-based acoustic measurements are estimated. The analysis summarizes mean differences for these dimensions and identifies the underlying structure of each talker's voice across languages with principal component analyses.

Investigating the Haptic Perception of Directional Information Within a Handle.

This paper studies the perception of 2-dimensional directional cues presented on a hand-held tangible interface that resembles a cylindrical handle. The tangible interface is designed to be comfortably held with one hand and houses five custom electromagnetic actuators composed of coils as stators and magnets as movers. We carried out a human subjects experiment enrolling 24 participants, analysing the recognition rate of directional cues using the actuators either to vibrate or tap in sequence across the user's palm.

Does Multi-Actuator Vibrotactile Feedback Within Tangible Objects Enrich VR Manipulation?

Rich, informative and realistic haptic feedback is key to enhancing Virtual Reality (VR) manipulation. Tangible objects provide convincing grasping and manipulation interactions with haptic feedback of e.g.

Analysis of potential nature-based solutions for the Mun River Basin, Thailand.

Despite the growth in research and applications of nature-based solutions (NBS) within the literature, there are limited applications in South East Asia, moreover studies which quantitatively assess the impacts of NBS could have on hazard reduction are scarce. This paper addresses this gap by developing and validating MCDA-GIS analysis to map how potential nature strategies could mitigate flood hazard if applied within the Mun River Basin, Thailand. Through a literature review, the top three solutions for flood and drought hazards were found: wetlands, re/afforestation, and changing crop types.

Macrophages: From Simple Phagocyte to an Integrative Regulatory Cell for Inflammation and Tissue Regeneration-A Review of the Literature.

The understanding of macrophages and their pathophysiological role has dramatically changed within the last decades. Macrophages represent a very interesting cell type with regard to biomaterial-based tissue engineering and regeneration. In this context, macrophages play a crucial role in the biocompatibility and degradation of implanted biomaterials.

Evaluating aquifer stress and resilience with GRACE information at different spatial scales in Cambodia.

Unlabelled: Groundwater exploitation for different sectors in Cambodia is expanding. Groundwater levels have already begun to decline in some parts of the country. Monitoring and assessing groundwater storage (GWS) change, aquifer stress and aquifer resilience will support the proper planning and management of the country's groundwater resources; however, information regarding groundwater in Cambodia is currently scarce.

SWALKIT: A generic augmented walker kit to provide haptic feedback navigation assistance to people with both visual and motor impairments.

Feedback solutions are a privileged form of assistance in order to increase mobility and independence of people with both motor and visual impairments. Indeed, it empowers the ability of the person to make decisions and take actions based on the provided information. Moreover, it maintains the use of the walker, and thus the residual locomotor skills.

In Vivo Comparison of Synthetic Macroporous Filamentous and Sponge-like Skin Substitute Matrices Reveals Morphometric Features of the Foreign Body Reaction According to 3D Biomaterial Designs.

Synthetic macroporous biomaterials are widely used in the field of skin tissue engineering to mimic membrane functions of the native dermis. Biomaterial designs can be subclassified with respect to their shape in fibrous designs, namely fibers, meshes or fleeces, respectively, and porous designs, such as sponges and foams. However, synthetic matrices often have limitations regarding unfavorable foreign body responses (FBRs).

The own-voice benefit for word recognition in early bilinguals.

The current study examines the self-voice benefit in an early bilingual population. Female Cantonese-English bilinguals produced words containing Cantonese contrasts. A subset of these minimal pairs was selected as stimuli for a perception task.

A disaggregated assessment of national water security: An application to the river basins in Thailand.

Achieving water security is a global concern in the age of changing climate, population increase, urbanization, intensive socio-economic development, and land-use change. Addressing water security challenges is most appropriate at the river basin scale since hydrological boundaries at which water flows differ from administrative boundaries, and it can provide policymakers and decision-makers key insights to better support water management practices. This study carries out a disaggregated assessment of national water security by applying an indicator-based framework to evaluate water security conditions in all twenty-five river basins of Thailand from 2007 to 2015.