Hard point-of-interconnection (POI) export limits can strand otherwise-available photovoltaic (PV) energy unless battery storage is dispatched with sufficient anticipation and under physically consistent constraints. This study evaluates a constraint-audited receding-horizon dispatch framework for curtailment recovery at an anonymized 230 MW utility-scale PV plant with a modeled 195.5 MW export cap and a nominal 30 MW/140 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). The mixed-integer model predictive controller enforces BESS power and energy limits, charge–discharge exclusivity, no grid charging, forecast-dependent discharge headroom, first-action receding-horizon execution, and a common 50%-to-50% terminal-energy protocol. Twelve rolling monthly folds from September 2024 to August 2025 are evaluated against cap-only operation and a protocol-matched perfect-information Oracle. Cap-only operation curtails 26,279 MWh (4.9872% of evaluated PV energy). A transparent 72 h Diurnal model predictive control (MPC) reduces curtailment to 11,719.454 MWh, recovers 14,559.546 MWh, and closes 98.450% of the modeled cap-only-to-Oracle recoverable-energy opportunity; the matched Oracle curtails 11,490.175 MWh. All 3 h closed-loop trajectories satisfy the modeled export cap, BESS limits, terminal equality, charge–discharge exclusivity, discharge-headroom rule, and no-grid-import condition. A matched information-sensitivity analysis then compares History-CatBoost and Weather-CatBoost under the same controller. Weather-CatBoost lowers daylight mean absolute error (MAE) by 2.225 MW at 24 h and 1.175 MW at 72 h relative to History-CatBoost, while annual curtailment is 288.601 MWh higher at 24 h and 99.699 MWh lower at 72 h; the monthly block-bootstrap intervals include zero in both cases. Histogram gradient boosting (HGB) robustness and BESS-sensitivity results further show that the incremental control value of weather information is model- and configuration-dependent. Under the tested plant, cap, BESS, 3 h resolution, horizon, and terminal protocol, physically constrained anticipatory dispatch captures most of the modeled recoverable curtailed energy, leaving comparatively limited residual opportunity for additional forecast sophistication.

Marine diesel engines are major contributors to atmospheric pollution, emitting SO₂, CO₂, NOₓ, and CO in quantities subject to increasingly stringent International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations. Wet scrubbers are a cost-effective exhaust gas cleaning option, yet most existing systems employ either immersion (dipping) or spray (shower) gas–liquid contact in isolation, and experimental data on a structurally combined dipping–shower contact pattern under marine diesel conditions remain scarce. In this study, the term “hybrid” denotes this structural combination of bubble-immersion and spray contact, not the open-loop/closed-loop switching systems commonly called hybrid scrubbers in shipping. A prototype hybrid wet scrubber was fabricated from recycled industrial oil-storage drums and tested on a Dongfeng diesel engine at four engine-speed settings (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of rated speed). Concentrations of CO₂, SO₂, NO₂, and CO were measured at the scrubber inlet and outlet with an Internet of Things (IoT)-based multi-gas sensor node under three configurations: dipping-only, shower-only, and hybrid (dipping + shower), with five consecutive sensor readings per condition, and removal efficiency (η) was reported as mean ± standard deviation. Averaged over the four engine speeds, the hybrid configuration gave the highest removal of all four gases, with mean gains of about 6 and 10 percentage points for SO₂ and about 3 and 10 percentage points for CO relative to dipping-only and shower-only operation, respectively; it was not superior at every individual condition (e.g., CO at 100% and CO₂ at 75% of rated speed). SO₂ achieved the highest removal (75–79% in hybrid mode, coefficient of variation below 7%), and CO peaked at 78% at 25% rated speed, declining at higher speeds because of reduced gas–liquid contact time. By contrast, CO₂ removal remained inherently limited (8–11%) owing to its low aqueous solubility, and NO₂ removal was below 10%, reflecting the poor water solubility of NO that dominates NOₓ. The overall efficiency trend was SO₂ > CO > CO₂ > NO₂. These results indicate that the hybrid dipping–shower scrubber is best regarded as a low-cost, transitional emission-control device suited mainly to SO₂ and partial CO abatement; it cannot meet deep CO₂ capture or stringent NOₓ-control requirements without alkaline absorbents, oxidants, or multi-stage treatment. Future work should address chemically enhanced scrubbing liquids, repeated long-duration testing, and characterization of the wash water to manage the risk of transferring pollution from air to water.

The institutional processes through which public debt audit findings are translated into corrective action remain insufficiently understood, particularly where fragmented administrative records and fiscal stress coexist with established debt-reporting practices. This study examines the evolution of public debt reporting in Ghana between 2016 and 2025 and traces the institutional response to a substantial discrepancy identified in the Auditor-General’s 2024 Whole-of-Government Accounts (WGA). A longitudinal embedded single-case study design was employed, combining systematic coding of Annual Public Debt Reports (APDRs) across eight disclosure domains with process tracing of the subsequent institutional response. Debt indicators were examined to contextualise the findings rather than to establish a causal relationship between audit intervention and fiscal outcomes. The analysis shows that annual debt reporting became an established practice, accompanied by broader disclosure of debt portfolio characteristics, costs, risks, guarantees, on-lending and contingent liabilities. Nevertheless, a GH¢138.91 billion difference was reported between the debt balance consolidated by the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) and the corresponding Ministry of Finance record. Subsequent parliamentary scrutiny indicated that a substantial part of this discrepancy arose from differences in consolidation boundaries, following which the institutions reconciled their figures. This sequence illustrates how an audit finding can progress through detection, disclosure, deliberation and correction, although limited publicly documented evidence was identified of sustained improvements in preventive controls. Meanwhile, Ghana’s debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 56.8% in 2016 to approximately 80% in 2020 before declining to 44.7% by the end of 2025, providing fiscal context without demonstrating that audit contributed to these changes. An Audit–Accountability Transmission Mechanism (AATM) is developed to distinguish the identification of audit findings from their institutional uptake and potential governance consequences. The framework highlights inter-agency reconciliation, parliamentary scrutiny and recommendation follow-up as critical mechanisms through which audit findings may be translated into corrective action and institutional accountability. The findings also demonstrate the importance of distinguishing discrepancies arising from different reporting boundaries from errors in underlying debt records. Effective public debt oversight therefore requires not only transparent reporting and independent scrutiny but also documented reconciliation procedures, traceable corrective actions and verifiable improvements in preventive controls.

This study investigates the determinants of household intention to adopt solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in an island community using a stimulus organism response (SOR)-based framework informed by selected concepts from the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Data were collected from 100 households in Pulau Tidung, Seribu Islands, Indonesia, using purposive sampling and analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to examine the effects of economic, environmental, social, regulatory, technical, and market stimuli on attitude and adoption intention. The results indicate that attitude toward solar PV exhibited the largest positive association with adoption intention (β = 0.827, p < 0.001), while economic stimulus was positively associated with attitude (β = 0.411, p = 0.018). Regulatory stimulus directly increases adoption intention (β = 0.349, p = 0.042), whereas technical barriers significantly reduce it (β = −0.306, p = 0.036). Environmental, social, and market stimuli do not exhibit statistically significant effects. The model explains 95.5% of the variance in adoption intention (R² = 0.955), indicating substantial explanatory power within the study context. These findings demonstrate that favorable attitudes, supportive regulatory conditions, and reduced technical barriers are central to strengthening household solar PV adoption intentions in island communities. Accordingly, policies should combine targeted economic incentives and regulatory support with accessible technical assistance and community-based implementation mechanisms to facilitate renewable energy uptake in geographically constrained areas.

Exposure to heavy metals during pregnancy poses significant risks to maternal and child health. This study aims to analyze trends in research on heavy metal exposure in pregnant women using bibliometric analysis and systematic review. A total of 125 publications from the Scopus database (1973–2023) were analyzed. The bibliometric analysis examined publication trends, geographical distribution, and researcher collaboration. A systematic review assessed statistical methods, focusing on advanced models like Bayesian Kernel Machine Regression (BKMR) and Weighted Quantile Sum (WQS) regression, as well as traditional methods like linear and logistic regression. The bibliometric analysis showed an increasing number of studies, with the United States leading in publications, followed by China and India. The systematic review found that advanced models such as BKMR and WQS regression are increasingly used to evaluate interactions between heavy metal mixtures and pregnancy outcomes. However, many studies still rely on traditional regression models, highlighting a gap in the adoption of more advanced techniques. The study highlights the particular analytical capabilities of advanced statistical models in examining complex interactions between heavy metal mixtures and pregnancy outcome in understanding complex interactions between heavy metal mixtures and pregnancy outcomes. It also points to the need for greater adoption of these methods to improve risk assessments and inform public health policies. In conclusion, advanced modeling techniques, particularly BKMR and WQS regression, are crucial for understanding the risks of heavy metal exposure during pregnancy and guiding public health interventions.

Reliable and timely vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication is essential for safety-critical applications in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Distributed time-division multiple access (TDMA) supports deterministic channel access in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), but contention during slot reservation and mobility-induced merging collisions remain major obstacles to reliable communication under dense and rapidly changing traffic conditions. This study investigates these limitations and proposes a backoff-based partitioned-reservation medium access control protocol (BPR-MAC), a distributed TDMA protocol that integrates reservation-phase contention control with mobility-aware slot allocation. A mini-slot carrier-sensing backoff mechanism was introduced to resolve competing reservation attempts within individual slots, while an adaptive slot-partitioning mechanism was developed to allocate transmission resources according to driving direction and vehicle speed relative to the surrounding traffic stream. The protocol was evaluated using MATLAB-based discrete-event simulations of a 3 km two-way highway, with vehicle speeds ranging from 40 to 120 km/h. Performance was assessed in terms of slot-reservation delay and merging-collision rate under different traffic densities, slot-occupancy conditions, and protocol parameter settings. At 90% two-hop-neighborhood slot occupancy, BPR-MAC reduced the merging-collision rate from 0.778 for a Vehicular Media Access Control (VeMAC)-like baseline to 0.017, a reduction of 97.8%. For 100 vehicles, the reservation delay decreased from approximately 31 to 2 frames. Ablation results showed that mobility-aware slot partitioning accounted for most of the reduction in merging collisions, while reservation-phase backoff provided complementary collision suppression and faster slot acquisition. Sensitivity analysis further showed that the principal performance trends remained stable under moderate variations in the relative-speed threshold and contention-window size. These findings indicate that combining localized contention control with relative-motion-based slot allocation can improve the predictability of distributed channel access in dense vehicular networks. BPR-MAC provides a communication-layer approach to supporting time-sensitive safety messaging and cooperative V2V/V2I communication in ITS.

Rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems are a practical option for Baghdad, but their performance depends on module technology, mounting strategy, row spacing, and near-shading. This study integrates SketchUp/Skelion and PVsyst to evaluate grid-connected rooftop PV systems on the College of Education building at Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad. Seventeen configurations were simulated using monocrystalline and heterojunction (HJT) modules, fixed, seasonal, and two-axis mounting strategies, portrait and landscape layouts, row spacings of 0, 0.5, and 1.0 m, and practical losses including soiling, aging, unavailability, and auxiliary consumption. The objective was to combine a realistic 3D rooftop model with PVsyst near-shading analysis and compare technical, economic, and environmental performance. HJT modules outperformed comparable monocrystalline cases under Baghdad's hot conditions because of their lower power temperature coefficient. The two-axis HJT case achieved the highest annual energy production (272,308 kWh/yr), while the seasonal HJT case achieved the highest performance ratio (85.22%). The fixed landscape HJT system provided a strong practical balance, producing 244,305 kWh/yr and 1,871 kWh/kWp/yr with a performance ratio of 85.19%. Under the stated 25-year economic assumptions, its discounted levelized cost of energy (LCOE) was 0.0291 USD/kWh, with a simple payback period (PBP) of 3.1 years. Increasing row spacing improves specific yield by reducing self-shading, but total rooftop output decreases because fewer rows fit on the roof. Over the 25-year study period, the simulated systems avoid approximately 1,840.6–4,043.8 tCO$_2$ relative to grid electricity. Overall, the fixed landscape HJT arrangement is a practical candidate for rooftop PV deployment in Baghdad and similar hot, dry urban environments.