Considering the need to adopt more sustainable agricultural systems, it is important that sweet potato breeding programs seek to increase not only root productivity, but also the productivity and quality of branches for silage production. The objective was to evaluate the genetic divergence and the importance of traits associated with the production and quality of branch silage in sweet potato genotypes. The experiment was conducted on the JK Campus of the Federal University of Vales do Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys in a randomized block design with 12 treatments and four repetitions. Twelve characteristics of branches and silage were evaluated. There was genetic variability between the genotypes, making it possible to select parents divergent for future breeding programs for silage production. The genotypes BD-54 and BD-31TO were the most divergent in relation to the others, being indicated its use in crossbreeding aiming the improvement of the culture for silage, once the high performance per se of all genotypes evaluated has already been verified in previous works. The characteristics Na, TDN and NDF were those that most contributed to the divergence.

This study delves into the dynamic landscape of pension funds in Colombia, examining both its current research status and practical implications. Understanding the state of pension systems is crucial for individuals' financial security and a country's overall economic stability, especially given factors such as an aging population and evolving socio-economic dynamics. By comprehensively analyzing scholarly publications on Colombian pension funds using the Scopus database, this research sheds light on key trends and contributors shaping policy formulation and financial planning. The analysis covers a period from 1987 to 2023, identifying 71 relevant articles through keyword searches and filters. Various metrics, including publication trends, citations, international collaboration, and authorship dynamics, were quantitatively assessed. The results reveal an annual growth rate of 5.37%, with research articles comprising 81.69%, review articles 7.04%, and other formats like books, book chapters, and conference papers making up 11.27% of the total documents. Notably, countries such as the UK, the USA, Spain, and Colombia emerge as key contributors to the literature. Among authors, Mesa-Lago, L., stands out as a significant figure, with one of the earliest publications on the topic. The findings underscore the growing importance of pension funds in Colombia, particularly in the context of fund performance research amid financial crises. The prevalence of international collaboration suggests a global interest in understanding and contributing to the development of Colombian pension systems. Furthermore, the study identifies research gaps, particularly in areas concerning the socio-economic impact of pension policies, providing a roadmap for future investigations. Policymakers, financial practitioners, and researchers can leverage these insights to inform strategic decision-making and address critical challenges in optimizing pension fund management in Colombia.

The integration of medical images is the process of registering and fusing them to obtain a greater amount of diagnostic information. In this work an analysis is performed for the integration of images obtained through computed axial tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, for which a tool was developed in the Matlab program, where the registration is implemented through equivalent features; in addition, the pairs of images are compared by several fusion rules, with a view to identify the best algorithm in which the resulting fused image contains the most information from the original representations.

Distributed biomass energy technology has strong adaptability to the types of raw materials, flexible project scale, can meet the needs of special users, better economy in small scale, easier commercial development, in line with the characteristics of biomass resources and China’s national conditions. The distributed utilization of biomass energy mainly includes biomass briquette fuel and biogas. The key technologies include biomass briquette fuel processing and combustion, large and medium-sized biogas engineering technology, biomass gasification pyrolysis and gas utilization. At present, China’s distributed biomass energy technology is mainly in the stage of technological improvement and application demonstration. It is expected that by 2030, most of the key technologies will be basically mature and have the conditions for industrialization. The main development direction of China’s distributed biomass energy industry is the replacement of traditional coal-fired gas, urban/rural clean living energy supply, and rural ecological environmental protection. The pollution caused by burning coal/fuel oil, and at the same time centering on the national new urbanization strategy, provide sustainable clean energy for the construction of new rural areas, and improve the level of rural ecological and environmental protection. At present, the main bottleneck restricting the development of distributed biomass energy industry is economy and reliability. The state should increase investment in technological innovation and policy support, convert the environmental and social benefits of biomass energy into cost benefits, and promote biomass energy. The development of the industry can be distributed and utilized.

Based on 898 English documents and 363 Chinese documents citing the Rising of Network Society, it studied that the knowledge contribution of citation content analysis and citation context analysis methods, and the knowledge contribution of Chinese and foreign quotations to human geography. The study found that “mobile space” is the most quoted theoretical view in domestic and foreign literature, and the proportion of domestic research is significantly higher than foreign research; the focus of domestic and foreign research focuses on the external spatial form and its transformation, while foreign research pays more attention on the internal spatial dynamics of network society and three types of knowledge contributions, reflecting the influence of “network social theory” on human geography. Among them, critical references reveal the shortcomings of “network social theory” point out the abstraction of “spatial duality” the importance of local space, and the limitations of research data, methods, and time background, which provides new enlightenment for the future application and innovation of “network social theory” in the field of human geography.

Richard’s equation was approximated by finite-difference numerical scheme to model water infiltration profile in variably unsaturated soil^[1]. The published data of Philip’s semi-analytical solution was used to validate the simulated results from the numerical scheme. A discrepancy was found between the simulated and the published semi-analytical results. Morris method as a global sensitivity tool was used as an alternative to local sensitivity analysis to assess the results discrepancy. Morris method with different sampling strategies were tested, of which Manhattan distance method has resulted a better sensitivity measures and also a better scan of input space than Euclidean method. Moreover, Morris method at p = 2 , r = 2 and Manhattan distance sampling strategy, with only 2 extra simulation runs than local sensitivity analysis, was able to produce reliable sensitivity measures (μ^*, σ). The sensitivity analysis results were cross-validated by Sobol’ variance-based method with 150,000 simulation runs. The global sensitivity tool has identified three important parameters, of which spatial discretization size was the sole reason of the discrepancy observed. In addition, a high proportion of total output variance contributed by parameters β and θ_s is suggesting a greater significant digits to reduce its input uncertainty range.