Division of Industrial Innovation & Partnerships

Anemia affects over 800 million women and children globally. Defined as a limited or insufficient functional red blood cell supply in peripheral blood, anemia causes a reduced oxygen supply to tissues and can have serious health consequences for women and children. Hemoglobin (Hb) concentration is most commonly measured for anemia diagnosis. Methods to measure Hb are usually invasive (requiring a blood sample); however, advances in diagnostic and clinical chemistry over the past decade have led to the development of new noninvasive methods. Accurate diagnosis at the individual level is important to identify individuals who require treatment. At the population level, anemia prevalence estimates are often the impetus for national nutrition policies or programs. Thus, it is essential that methods for Hb measurement are sensitive, specific, accurate, and reproducible. The objective of our narrative review is to describe the basic principles, advantages, limitations, and quality control issues related to methods of Hb measurement in clinical and field settings. We also discuss other biomarkers and tests that can help to determine the severity and underlying causes of anemia. In conclusion, there are many established and emerging methods to measure Hb concentration, each with their own advantages, limitations, and factors to consider before use.

Abstract Effects of thermo-physical and operating parameters influencing the combustion of a cigarette were systematically studied using a three-dimensional first-principles-based mathematical model. Thermo-physical properties include packing density and thermal conductivity of materials forming the packed bed in the cigarette, and operating parameters include ambient oxygen concentration, air flow rate through the cigarette, and the ambient cross flow. The model was first validated with the existing experimental data which provided a satisfactory result. Increasing the ambient cross flow while increasing the burn rate and temperatures in the cigarette column, decreases the delivery of gaseous products owing to air infiltration through the paper into the column and enhances diffusion of gases out of column. Reducing the oxygen concentration reduces the burn rate to a point at which burning would be extinguished during the smoldering step. Increasing the air flow monotonically increases the burn rate, temperature and delivery of products in a burning cigarette. While thermal conductivity in the range varied here (50% above and 50% below the base case) it did not significantly affect the outcomes of the burning process; decreasing the packing density increases the heat generated and solid and gas temperatures, and decreases the delivery of some gaseous products. Keywords: Combustion modellingair flowcigarette smolderingthermo-physical propertiesoperational parameters Acknowledgement Saidi Partnership would like to acknowledge the support provided by Philip Morris USA to accomplish this work.

Education in Ecuador is undergoing a process of change led and supported by the country's government leaders. In this study, researchers use a wide-angle lens informed by governmental mandates to investigate English language teaching. They examine how English language teachers are trained for the K-12 Ecuadorian context within one university's region. The 40 participants, students completing a school-based internship during the last year of their training to become teachers, represent a sample of Ecuador's cultural and linguistic diversity. This work is informed by findings from a previous study, consisting of observations and interviews of practicing teachers Using mixed methods, this research includes surveys and focus groups conducted before and after delivery of instructional workshops centered on topics related to English language instruction and teacher training. Findings indicate mixed-results from pre to post for teachers' cultural beliefs; however, positive change was found regarding participants' attitudes toward multicultural students. Data revealed that teachers require more support to deliver instruction that is appropriate for monolingual and multilingual student populations.

Several contributions demonstrate how innovative participatory approaches can advance learning and transformation within LHSs. Aghabayli and colleagues (2025), describe a study codesigned, implemented, and disseminated by individuals with lived experience using the Patient and Community Engagement Research (PaCER) SET-COLLECT-REFLECT process (Aghabayli et al., 2025). Examining healthcare navigation programs, the study centres perspectives of both navigators and those being navigated. Identified challenges including limited training, inconsistent funding, communication gaps, and unmet mental health needs and highlight opportunities for system-level improvements, particularly in addressing complexity and equity-related barriers within Alberta's LHS.Focusing on sustainability and scale, Shahid and colleagues (2025) present a mission-driven approach to patient-oriented commercialization (Shahid et al., 2025). Through extensive codesign with patients and families, the authors developed and evaluated a family-integrated care model for neonatal intensive care units (FICare, now Merge™). Recognizing that traditional research funding was insufficient for long-term sustainment, a social enterprise model was adopted to ethically commercialize the intervention. This approach prioritized transparency, reinvestment, and stewardship, illustrating commercialization as a viable, though complex, pathway for sustaining POR informed innovations in LHSs.Participatory design methods are further explored by Lin and colleagues (2025), who describe the use of storytelling and a Design Jam within a large health authority in British Columbia to co-develop a vision for a community-centred LHS (Lin et al., 2025). Across two sessions involving multidisciplinary stakeholders, these methods supported idea generation, convergence, and collective sense-making, resulting in actionable strategies to strengthen community involvement. The authors offer practical recommendations to enhance participation, foster equity, and embed community responsiveness in LHS transformation efforts.LHS Infrastructure to Advance POR Beyond methods, several articles emphasize the role of infrastructure and governance in sustaining POR within LHSs. Giacomantonio and colleagues (2025) present a narrative review of engagement activities across existing and emerging LHSs, identifying 192 distinct activities involving patients, caregivers, communities, and the public (Giacomantonio et al., 2025). While the review highlights a lack of detailed reporting on engagement practices, it demonstrates considerable diversity in theoretical perspectives, timing, and contributor roles, underscoring multiple pathways for institutionalizing POR.At a national level, Alhuseini et al. (2025) illustrate how a government-mandated patient experience survey has been leveraged for system monitoring and improvement in Saudi Arabia (Alhuseini et al., 2025). Capturing patient experiences across multiple care domains, the survey has informed targeted initiatives to enhance professional skills through training and education, demonstrating how patient feedback can function as a core learning mechanism within an LHS. Mork et al. (2025) examine a provincial, integrated LHS that has embedded patient engagement and POR across planning, co-design, implementation, and decision-making (Mork et al., 2025). Key enablers include provincial networks, executive sponsorship, and an integrated electronic medical record. Persistent challenges remain, particularly in advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion and sustaining engagement during periods of significant organizational change.Complementing these system-level perspectives, Wilson and colleagues (2025) reflect on the co-development of a validated parent experience measure in neonatal intensive care units (Wilson et al., 2025). Their findings highlight the importance of governance, reflexivity, adaptive workflows, and constructive approaches to dissent. Reciprocity and long-term partnership emerge as central to sustaining POR within LHSs.Engaging marginalized, equity-deserving, and underserved populations remains a critical challenge for POR and LHSs. Several studies in this Topic explicitly centre these groups, demonstrating how inclusive approaches can enhance relevance, equity, and system learning. Naqvi and colleagues (2025) use a James Lind Alliance approach to prioritize research uncertainties related to mental health among immigrant populations (Naqvi et al., 2025). By engaging immigrant youth as research partners, the study identifies culturally specific experiences and structural barriers, including language, stigma, and limited awareness of resources. These findings illustrate how POR can inform more responsive and adaptive LHSs.Addressing another underrepresented population, Nagra and colleagues (2025) focus on injured workers experiencing delays in return to work (RTW) (Nagra et al., 2025). The authors argue that POR approaches can better align RTW programs with workers lived experiences, improve coordination across service providers, and enhance the effectiveness and durability of RTW initiatives.Hecker and colleagues (2025) examine person-centred and integrated care among individuals living with chronic kidney disease using the Rainbow Model of Integrated Care Measurement tool (Hecker et al., 2025). Comparing perspectives of patients, providers, and caregivers, the study underscores the importance of including caregivers-often underrepresented in POR-to strengthen integrated care and outcomes.Finally, Kemp and colleagues (2025) explore the experiences of adults who leave hospital against medical advice (LAMA) through co-designed patient-centred quality indicators (Kemp et al., 2025). LAMA patients report consistently poorer experiences across multiple dimensions of care and are more likely to belong to marginalized groups. The findings highlight the need for respectful, flexible, and empathetic strategies to reduce the frequency and adverse outcomes of LAMA dischargesTaken together, the contributions to this Research Topic demonstrate that embedding POR within LHSs produces meaningful outcomes for system learning, performance, and equity, while also revealing ongoing implementation challenges. Across diverse contexts, POR enhances the relevance and usability of evidence, strengthens feedback loops, and supports more adaptive and legitimate decision-making.Critically, the studies show that impact depends on moving beyond episodic engagement toward sustained partnerships supported by governance, resources, and accountability. Innovative methods, enabling infrastructures, and inclusive approaches, particularly those centring marginalized and equity-deserving populations, emerge as key levers for translating POR into improved health system outcomes. Collectively, these contributions advance the evidence base for building LHSs that learn with, and from, the people they serve, aligning closely with the mission to promote impactful, open, and patient-centred health research.

Abstract While autonomous ships are said to be an enabler for modal shift in Europe, they require a broader transformation of the transport and business ecosystems to be effective. That is, current logistics paradigms and rapid advancements in zero-emission road transport may inadvertently incentivise a shift away from waterborne transport. This study explores this conundrum, by looking at the role of ports as integrated logistics and energy hubs, the revitalization of abandoned transhipment sites, and the reduction of transport waste as potential solutions. Conceptualizations of novel transport components are proposed, aimed at enhancing the flexibility, sustainability, and efficiency of intermodal transport ecosystems using IWT and thus potentially unlocking progress toward Europe’s modal shift goals.

Ground segmentation from LiDAR point cloud data plays a critical role in both civil engineering and autonomous vehicle systems. However, real-world LiDAR data often suffers from geometric distortions, occlusions, and dense clutter, which limit the reliability and accuracy of ground segmentation. To overcome these challenges, we introduce KPU-Net. This deep neural network architecture employs: 1) T-Net module, which handles geometric distortions by aligning point clouds into a canonical pose, 2) KPConv-augmented U-Net encoder-decoder, which handles occlusions, clutter, and irregular terrain by capturing fine-grained, hierarchical features through learned kernel point convolutions over local neighborhoods. In addition to above, KPU-Net offers following advantages: 3) KPU-Net features high speed processing (approximately 231K points per second making it well-suited for scalable deployment in mapping and perception systems), while 4) preserving the original point cloud density (i.e no loss in point cloud data, avoiding sparsification that can compromise precision in various applications). The framework was trained and tested on a benchmark dataset and diverse point cloud data collected by the Timmons group, covering urban, vegetation, and complex terrain environments. The presented KPU-Net was evaluated against five widely used LIDAR data segmentation methods: Random Forest, PointNet, GndNet, RandLA-Net, and KPConv. The proposed KPU-Net demonstrated better performance on mean Intersection over Union (mIoU, up to 33%), mean accuracy (mAcc, up to 25%), and overall accuracy (OA, up to 19%), over the five compared state-of-the-art methods.

This study was sponsored by a grant from the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology's Space Research Fund, to provide an assessment of current activities in the design and development of small satellites and potential commercial markets for these satellites and the services they could provide. Our research methods included a review of: a) the history of the satellite industry, b) current activities of satellite manufacturers, c) complementary inputs to small satellites such as launchers and ground control, d) functional requirements that could be met using small satellites, e) potential users of small satellites, f) availability of various technologies, g) existing market projections, and h) other factors that could enable small satellites to be commercially successful. We also addressed potential limits of small satellite development and production including the difficulties of the satellite in providing the services required because of technological or political constraints, and the inability to exploit economies of scale or scope compared to current and anticipated methods of providing the service. The study was conducted through a review of the existing literature and interviews with satellite manufacturers and customers, with other industry officials, with government officials, and with academicians. The data contained in this report have largely been obtained from them. However, the conclusions are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Education in Ecuador is undergoing a process of change led and supported by the country's government leaders. In this study, researchers use a wide-angle lens informed by governmental mandates to investigate English language teaching. They examine how English language teachers are trained for the K-12 Ecuadorian context within one university's region. The 40 participants, students completing a school-based internship during the last year of their training to become teachers, represent a sample of Ecuador's cultural and linguistic diversity. This work is informed by findings from a previous study, consisting of observations and interviews of practicing teachers Using mixed methods, this research includes surveys and focus groups conducted before and after delivery of instructional workshops centered on topics related to English language instruction and teacher training. Findings indicate mixed-results from pre to post for teachers' cultural beliefs; however, positive change was found regarding participants' attitudes toward multicultural students. Data revealed that teachers require more support to deliver instruction that is appropriate for monolingual and multilingual student populations.

Transgender and nonbinary (TNB) people experience marginalization due to gender minority stigma. Research has demonstrated that many TNB people seek therapy to manage these stressors as well as more general distress. Given psychology's complex history with TNB care, it is of particular importance to facilitate therapy experiences for TNB clients that are fulfilling and affirming. In this longitudinal study, we investigated TNB peoples' perceptions of how their therapists responded to ongoing contextual factors related to systems of power (e.g., current events, political climate) in TNB peoples' lives and positive and negative experiences in therapy. Participants included 70 TNB people in therapy at the time of the study, intentionally sampled from states with a range of sociopolitical climates (Oregon, Michigan, Tennessee, and Nebraska). On a monthly basis, participants answered a series of questions about their experiences in therapy. Using longitudinal qualitative data analysis matrices, we examined how each participant's therapy experiences changed-or remained consistent-over time. These data were woven into three primary assertions: (a) fulfilling, long-lasting therapy for TNB clients is TNB-affirming, entails insight and guidance, and provides practical support; (b) contextual factors may motivate TNB clients to remain in unfulfilling therapy relationships; and (c) TNB-affirming therapy facilitates multiple paths forward for TNB clients. Findings indicate that a combination of TNB-affirming therapy, therapeutic insight, and practical support can facilitate richer therapy relationships across a variety of trajectories. These findings shed light on how to foster an environment wherein long-lasting, fulfilling therapeutic relationships with TNB clients can thrive. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

This paper presents lessons learned through intensive workforce development projects with the USDOT ITSJPO PCB initiative connected and automated vehicle education (CAVe). With the support of Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and DriveOhio Student Transportation Advancement Research (STAR) program, the University of Cincinnati Infrastructure Institute (UCII) team has assembled CAVe-in-a-Box and CAVe-Lite Infrastructure and Mobile kits. In this project, CAVe-in-a-Box assembly integrated with latest computer vision based detection technology has been utilized as a demonstration tool to showcase real-world benefits such as the vulnerable road user (VRU) safety at intersections. Furthermore, CAVe-Lite module has been utilized to actively engage 5–12 grade students in a scaled, hands-on desktop level smart mobility technology deployment.

Herein, we present the successful synthesis of Co doped Ceria nanofiber catalysts. The synthesized catalysts exhibit uniform distributions of monomodal pore sizes and demonstrate high catalytic activities for the epoxidation of cyclooctene with high selectivity for cyclooctene epoxide and cyclooctene conversion without using any hazardous sacrificial oxidizing agents. Notably, they achieve exceptional selectivity toward cyclooctene epoxide and substantial cyclooctene conversion under aerobic conditions without using any hazardous sacrificial oxidizing agents. Additionally, this epoxidation process is both economically favorable and environmentally friendly, owing to low catalyst loading, ease of catalyst separation, and excellent reusability, yielding a unique catalyst system compared to those previously reported in the literature. Characterization of the synthesized catalysts was carried out using various analytical techniques, including Powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), X-ray Fluorescence (XRF), Nitrogen (N 2 ) sorption studies, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). These analyses provided a comprehensive understanding of the structural and chemical properties of the catalysts. Among the catalysts studied, the 5CoCe nanofiber catalyst (5 wt% Co-doped) exhibited the highest catalytic efficiency under aerobic conditions, achieving ≥99% selectivity for cyclooctene epoxide and 96% conversion of cyclooctene in the present study. • CoCe nanofibers with varying Co were synthesized for cyclooctene epoxidation. • Cyclooctene epoxidation occurred under aerobic conditions without using peroxides. • 5.0 wt% Co-doped Ce (5CoCe) exhibited the highest catalytic activity. • High epoxide selectivity (≥99%) and high cyclooctene conversion (96%) were achieved. • The catalyst displayed excellent reusability with no loss in activity or mesoporosity.

In our introduction, we showcased a new type of public private partnership emerging to better meet the needs and development of cities. While traditional public private partnerships were driven by urbanisation and the goal to fund and finance physical infrastructure like bridges and roads to support the growing population, community-centred public private partnership also sees a rapid digital transformation and climate change to couple urbanisation. These additional drivers mean that traditional public private partnerships are less effective in supporting cities.Digital transformation accounts for the rapid expected and unexpected technological evolution. The speed and complexity of the technology, from digital, multichannel communications to air quality sensors, have created new ways of working and collaborating. For public private partnerships, this means that more actors are entering the space that may not have existed previously, and they are bringing new skills and assets to the partnership. We saw this in some of our case studies, like Smart Docklands where there are marketing communications firms that are driving stakeholder engagement. Digital transformation also exposes new risks, such as cybersecurity, that require more actors to come together to provide understanding, training, regulations and enforcement of the digital platforms.The other driver for this new type of public private partnership is climate change. Similar to the new risks that digital transformation exposed, the fossil fuel-intensive way of living from rapid urbanisation and growth has exacerbated climate change. The greater frequency and severity of climate change impacts, like sea level rise and hurricanes, often mean that cities may need additional resources and expertise to tackle these problems. Climate change impacts the most vulnerable and they often have poorer physical and social infrastructure to begin with.The impacts of climate change and digital transformation do not fall neatly within geopolitical lines, and local governments often need to coordinate support and resources from national or state governments like the Malaysia Think City. Or they find actors that do not have geopolitical limits like global corporations like Reckitt for Hull Net Zero, universities like University of Melbourne for Melbourne or foundations like Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for AIR Louisville. Opening up borders allows for more actors to work with local partners to ground the goal into local context and goals, but bring in wider ideas, and more resources.The difference in structures, approaches and ways of working across the eight models varies significantly - even though they may have common drivers and objectives. Given the distinct features of each case study, how then can city leaders, policymakers and stakeholders determine what might be appropriate to a local area? A comparative analysis was undertaken of the characteristics of each case study as well as their collective lessons learned to highlight and contrast key elements and identify how and why case studies may have evolved in a certain direction. City leaders and policymakers may want to consider these elements to help them in assessing the relevance and appropriateness of different models.The partnership model used by urban stakeholders will need to consider how wide and fixed the scope of the initiative needs to be. If there are multiple drivers and diverse needs, then a broader approach and potentially more complex and resource-intensive partnership will be required. Similarly, if the scope has a narrow or singular focus, a more simple structure or approach may be what is needed.

Our aim is to showcase different models for community-centred public private partnerships that demonstrate strong collaboration and innovation towards addressing urban challenges and societal goals. We identify case studies from across the world that highlight different approaches and structures for collaborative partnerships between public and private actors and emphasise the important role of public leadership in driving and shaping them. Some partnerships are short-lived with a time-bound intention, while others represent long-term commitments to collaboration. The case studies each have their own unique drivers and motivations that spurred their creation and defined their missions. They vary in terms of governance, complexity, stakeholders and levels of funding. We have sought examples that include smaller cities and larger cities, as well as partnerships that work at a national level to drive local action. While all case studies are about driving collaboration aligned with a local vision, some case studies are strongly led by the public sector, one is strongly private sector-oriented and others are mixed or with little private participation. Climate change and digitalisation are two key drivers present across the spectrum of case studies; in some cases, both factors have driven the emergence of partnerships.