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IntroductionPrecise semantic segmentation of microbial alterations is paramount for their evaluation and treatment. This study focuses on harnessing the SegFormer segmentation model for precise semantic segmentation of strawberry diseases, aiming to improve disease detection accuracy under natural acquisition conditions.MethodsThree distinct Mix Transformer encoders - MiT-B0, MiT-B3, and MiT-B5 - were thoroughly analyzed to enhance disease detection, targeting diseases such as Angular leaf spot, Anthracnose rot, Blossom blight, Gray mold, Leaf spot, Powdery mildew on fruit, and Powdery mildew on leaves. The dataset consisted of 2,450 raw images, expanded to 4,574 augmented images. The Segment Anything Model integrated into the Roboflow annotation tool facilitated efficient annotation and dataset preparation.ResultsThe results reveal that MiT-B0 demonstrates balanced but slightly overfitting behavior, MiT-B3 adapts rapidly with consistent training and validation performance, and MiT-B5 offers efficient learning with occasional fluctuations, providing robust performance. MiT-B3 and MiT-B5 consistently outperformed MiT-B0 across disease types, with MiT-B5 achieving the most precise segmentation in general.DiscussionThe findings provide key insights for researchers to select the most suitable encoder for disease detection applications, propelling the field forward for further investigation. The success in strawberry disease analysis suggests potential for extending this approach to other crops and diseases, paving the way for future research and interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra, situated within Russia’s Far North, has undergone substantial industrialization and economic development. However, it is confronted with considerable environmental challenges, notably soil contamination. This study examines the presence of heavy metals (lead, cadmium, copper and zinc) in medicinal and berry plants from the forest ecosystem of this region. The following plant species were analyzed: Hypericum perforatum, Rubus arcticus, Origanum vulgare and Thymus vulgaris. The samples were taken from both open ground and hydroponic cultivation under artificial lighting. The findings indicate that the levels of lead present in all samples remain below the permissible limit of 10 mg/kg. Cadmium levels exhibited variability, with hydroponically grown plants containing 0.01 to 0.5 mg/kg and open ground Hypericum and Rubus perforatum containing up to 0.8 mg/kg. The combination of hydroponic cultivation and specific lighting conditions has been demonstrated to reduce lead and cadmium accumulation by a minimum of 1.6 times in comparison to open ground cultivation. The copper content of the samples ranged from 3 to 8 mg/kg, while the zinc content was 1.2–1.5 times higher in the plants grown in the open compared to those grown hydroponically. Notwithstanding these variations, the heavy metal content of all plant samples remains below the threshold values, thus rendering them safe for harvesting and utilization. This research serves to illustrate the environmental impact of industrial activities and to identify hydroponics as a potential strategy for their mitigation.

The relevance of the study is caused by the increasing consumption of petroleum products and increasing amount of oil waste, which contains asphaltenes, the heaviest components of oil. Asphaltenes are poorly biodegradable. In many countries landfill is traditionally the method of oily waste disposal, but this method of disposal is undesirable as it requires the use of new land and may ultimately be harmful to the environment. The need has therefore arisen to find a new way of disposing oil waste, with the possibility of obtaining valuable products from it that can be used in various industrial and economic activities, which will ultimately increase the depth of oil processing. The main aim of the research is to synthesize carbon graphite-like nanomaterials by plasma recycling of asphaltenes to produce a potentially useful gas mixture containing hydrogen and methane. Objects: high molecular weight fraction of asphaltenes isolated by hot acetone extraction from natural asphaltite. Methods: plasma recycling, X-ray phase analysis, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy. Results. This paper presents the results of experimental studies on plasma recycling of asphaltenes (the main components of heavy and residual oils, most oil wastes) combined with obtaining carbon graphite-like micro- and nanostructures. In the course of plasma processing, carbon material with graphite structure is formed. Based on the data of transmission electron microscopy, three main nanoscale morphological types are identified in the synthesis products: carbon nanotubes, polyhedral graphite and onion-like structures. In this way, the work contributes to the development of decarbonization technologies in the life cycle of hydrocarbon wastes and technologies for the production of carbon nanomaterials.

Hydrophilic molecularly imprinted resins (MIR), which are produced using hydrophilic monomers such as phenols, aldehydes, melamine or urea, have recently attracted increasing attention for use in separation and preconcentration. Among their obvious advantages are good sorption capacity, high recovery and selectivity, as well as their reusability in aqueous solutions. In this work we applied the bulk molecular imprinting method to produce quercetin-imprinted phenol-amino-formaldehyde resin. For this purpose, phloroglucinol and melamine solutions were mixed with formaldehyde and then polyethylene glycol and quercetin (Qu) were added to the obtained solution as a porogen and a template, respectively. The mixture was stirred under heating, then left in the thermostat for a continuous time. The optimum ratio of phloroglucinol to melamine was 3:1. The average molecular mass of porogen (Mw) varied between 4000–10000 Da. The obtained MIR were eluted with ethanol-water mixture (4:1, v/v) in the Soxhlet extractor for 36 h to remove the template. The MIR were characterized by FTIR-spectroscopy, laser diffraction spectroscopy and differential thermal analysis. The maximum recovery and sorption capacity of MIR synthesized in the presence of a porogen with Mw 10000 were 47% and 4.7 μmol Qu/g, respectively. The maximum imprinting factor was 1.41. The sorption kinetics of quercetin by a non-imprinted resin (NIR) is best described by a pseudo-second-order model, while MIR has a mixed pseudo-first-second-order mechanism.

Dispersion and aggregation of nanoparticles in aqueous solutions are important factors for safe and effective application of nanoparticles, for instance, in the oil industry. As conventional oil reserves are depleted, it is necessary to advance chemical enhanced oil recovery (cEOR) techniques to develop unconventional oil reservoirs. Nanoparticles modified by surfactants can be a promising reagent in cEOR. These nanomaterials can reduce interfacial tension and change the wettability of reservoir rock, which leads to an increase in oil recovery. However, the application of nanoparticles is limited by their substantial aggregation in aqueous solutions. The purpose of this work is to select nanoparticles for obtaining stable sols in water in the presence of an anionic surfactant and to optimize the conditions (pH) for further modifying the nanoparticles with the anionic surfactant. Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) is used as an anionic surfactant. The aggregation of oxide and carbon nanoparticles in water and anionic surfactant solutions was studied by laser diffraction, dynamic and electrophoretic light scattering methods. Most of the studied nanoparticles in water form aggregates with bi-, three- and polymodal particle size distributions. TiO2 nanoparticles obtained by plasma dynamic synthesis form the most stable sols in anionic surfactant solutions. The range of 5–7 pH is defined as optimal for their modification with surfactants. The stability of carbon nanoparticles in aqueous solutions increases significantly in the presence of a surfactant. The obtained results form the basis for further research on the modification of marked nanoparticles in surfactant solutions.