Lei Wang

Lateral force blind spots frequently trigger airway injuries during robotic bronchoscopy. Traditional sensing approaches lack fine spatial resolution, and single-segment robots suffer poor posture adjustment flexibility, worsening unmonitored tissue contact. We integrate a snake-scale-inspired 64-channel gradient piezoelectric film with a dual-segment manipulator to resolve lateral blind spots for secure bronchial navigation. The conformally wrapped sensor delivers fast ( 0.98, RMSE < 0.145 N, CV < 2%) and filters bending pseudo-forces. The dual-segment design enables coordinated proximal-distal motion to avoid overcontact in tortuous lumens. Phantom and ex vivo porcine lung tests confirm real-time force localization, 5.0 N safety alarms, and autonomous tuning to keep contact forces below 3.0 N. This synergistic robot-sensor design supplies a translatable safety control strategy for flexible surgical manipulators.

Background/Objectives: Indocyanine green fluorescence angiography (ICG-FA) images bowel perfusion during colorectal cancer resection. Randomised trials have not established a consistent reduction in anastomotic leak (AL), so attention has shifted to how the test should be deployed. We examined the determinants of ICG-driven intraoperative decision change. Methods: Retrospective analysis of 379 consecutive patients (273 colorectal cancer, 106 benign disease) undergoing elective colorectal resection with primary anastomosis and intraoperative ICG-FA at six Spanish centres. The outcome was an ICG-prompted change of the intended transection line. Associations were examined by logistic regression, with permutation testing and case-mix adjustment for between-centre comparisons. Results: ICG-FA changed the operative plan in 46 patients (12.1%), identically in cancer and benign disease (12.1% versus 12.3%). No patient-level preoperative characteristic was associated with decision change (all ten candidates p > 0.20); odds ratios for malignant diagnosis, rectal location and neoadjuvant therapy were within 0.03 of unity. Two factors did predict it: left-sided or rectal resection versus right hemicolectomy (15.0% versus 4.3%; OR 3.96, 95% CI 1.38-11.37) and treating centre (0-18.1%; p = 0.021), both persisting in a mutually adjusted model (adjusted OR 6.75, 2.21-20.60 and 5.25, 2.38-11.58). AL occurred in 25 patients (6.6%); neoadjuvant therapy (adjusted OR 3.73) and rectal location (2.64) were independent predictors, decision change was not (1.88, 0.65-5.41). The higher crude leak rate after revision (10.9% versus 6.0%) reflects confounding by indication and must not be read as harm. Conclusions: Whether ICG-FA changes a colorectal cancer operation is determined by anatomical segment and treating centre, not by the patient's preoperative risk profile. Patient-level selection is therefore not feasible whereas segment-based targeting is, and the between-centre variation indicates that the intervention as delivered is not uniform.

1. Landslides are among the most widespread and destructive geological hazards, posing serious risks to human lives, infrastructure, and economic systems (Huang and Fan 2013; Tang, Wasowski, and Ju...

Robotic percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) remains predominantly teleoperated, while the most demanding part of the procedure, guidewire navigation through a moving coronary tree under fluoroscopy, still depends on the continuous human interpretation of vessel anatomy, cardiac phase, guidewire position, and target location. We present a preclinical perception-to-action framework for AI-driven robotic PCI that integrates fluoroscopic perception, dynamic coronary vessel memory, vessel-coordinate state estimation, and robot-executable guidewire command generation on a robotic PCI platform. During contrast angiography, phase-indexed vessel–catheter templates and a dynamic vessel-coordinate coronary map are generated. During guidewire manipulation without contrast injection, live fluoroscopy is segmented into catheter and guidewire structures, cardiac phase is estimated by overlap between the live catheter–guidewire skeleton and stored vessel–catheter templates, the guidewire is assigned to the most likely vessel branch, and the distal tip is projected to a vessel-coordinate target representation for robotic action generation. The segmentation dataset contained 6269/1567/957 vessel images, 3857/964/537 guidewire images, and 4796/1199/667 catheter images for training/validation/test splits, respectively. Test-set Dice scores were 90.7% for vessels, 92.6% for catheters, and 89.0% for guidewires. In 623 real-time fluoroscopy frames from physician-supervised animal experiments, phase selection accuracy was 589/623 (94.6%; 95% CI, 92.5–96.1%) and vessel assignment accuracy was 575/623 (92.3%; 95% CI, 89.9–94.1%). Across 34 scenario-level episodes and their associated command-level decisions, correct-command rates ranged from 83.6% to 95.6% across target navigation and safety scenarios. These results provide preclinical evidence that live fluoroscopic perception can be converted into robot-executable coronary guidewire actions within an integrated AI-robotic PCI workflow. The study was designed to establish early system feasibility rather than to prove clinical superiority, large-scale generalization, or comparative advantages over manual or teleoperated robotic PCI.

1. Land cover classification is vital for applications like environmental monitoring (Gong, Wang, and Huang 2024; Li et al. 2023) and urban planning (Mansour, Al-Belushi, and Al-Awadhi 2020; Yu et ...

Physical health and mental well-being are bidirectionally linked. While the impact of somatic health on mental well-being is extensively investigated, the reciprocal “mind-to-body” trajectory—how psychological distress contributes to multi-system physical disease—remains underexplored, particularly in general populations. Here, we systematically investigated the biological pathways linking internalizing psychopathology to chronic disease onset by comparing the relative contributions of central (brain structural) and peripheral (multi-system biomarker) mediators. Using 14-year longitudinal data from 158,435 UK Biobank participants, we derived a transdiagnostic internalizing factor that prospectively predicted the onset of 28 chronic diseases across six physiological systems, with the highest-risk individuals experiencing disease onset up to 3.1 years earlier. Comprehensive phenotyping across 363 biomarkers revealed that peripheral biological dysregulation—particularly in the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems—exhibited associations with internalizing symptoms comparable to or stronger than brain structural alterations. Mediation analyses indicated that brain structure primarily mediated risks for neurological and cardiometabolic conditions, whereas peripheral biomarkers served as broad mediating pathways for a wider range of somatic outcomes, involving inflammation, metabolic dysregulation, and cardiovascular dysfunction. These findings reframe internalizing psychopathology as a systemic biological state, suggesting that integrating peripheral biological monitoring with dimensional psychopathology assessment could enhance risk stratification for chronic multimorbidity.

Bangladesh is an extremely climate-exposed country, with erosion, accretion, tidal surges, and cyclones continuously modifying coastal districts. Shoreline change in Bangladesh is crucial for sustainable coastal management and disaster resilience. Therefore, the objectives of this research are as follows: (i) to assess accretion- and erosion-based shoreline changes of the Bangladesh delta adjacent to the Bay of Bengal for 2021–2025 using a fixed 2021 reference shoreline and a 2025 shoreline proxy extracted from Landsat 8/9 imagery, and (ii) to explore onshore change dynamics from satellite-derived NDVI, NDBI, and NDWI for 2022–2025. The study covers 14 coastal districts and integrates the 2021 baseline shoreline, Survey of Bangladesh geospatial datasets, and 17,055 Ground Reference Points (GRPs) to support geometric consistency and spatially explicit reporting at the delta scale. Three spectral indices—Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI)—were applied to assess vegetation health, surface water distribution, and built-up/exposed land characteristics. Results indicate spatial variability in coastal change, with 383.49 km² of land gained through accretion and 124.12 km² lost to erosion, resulting in a neat accretion of 259.37 km² between 2021 and 2025; 8747.91 km² remained geomorphologically stable. Spectral index trends show minimal inter-annual NDVI and NDWI variability, suggesting stable vegetation cover and no long-term expansion of surface water. In contrast, a slight increase in NDBI indicates localized exposure of new sediments or small-scale land-use transitions along emerging coastal zones. Spearman correlation analysis highlights consistent negative relationships between NDVI and NDWI and moderate contrasts between NDVI and NDBI, reinforcing the coexistence of vegetation recovery, water withdrawal, and sediment-driven land emergence. The novelty of this study lies in the provision of consistent, near-real-time coastal change inventory for the full ~710 km Bangladesh delta coastline by combining a common 2021 baseline shoreline with harmonized Landsat 8/9 OLI surface reflectance (2022–2025) and linked onshore spectral-index dynamics over the same period. Overall, this short-term assessment reveals a sedimentary system that is active but balanced, with accretion surpassing erosion despite cyclone-affected disturbances, underscoring the value of operational satellite monitoring for coastal management, hazard preparedness, and climate-adaptive planning.

1. Landslides, particularly in mountainous and geologically unstable regions, cause significant loss of life, displacement of communities, and extensive damage to infrastructure (Lacroix, Handwerge...