The UCO paves the way toward more sustainable air conditioning based on water evaporation

University of Córdoba

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Researchers Paula Conrat, Francisco Comino and Manuel Ruiz de Adana, from the University of Cordoba

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Credit: University of Cordoba

Rising global temperatures are driving the need for more efficient cooling systems, one of today’s key sustainability challenges. According to a Eurostat report, the need for air conditioning in buildings has nearly quadrupled since 1979, with Spain ranking as the fourth European country with the greatest increase. This translates into a significant rise in the demand for energy,not only directly impacting household bills, but extending far beyond the residential sector. Cooling needs at industrial facilities and data centers lead to increases in energy demands, with the environmental damage that this entails.

To address this problem it is essential to devise alternative systems that cool air at lower ecological and economic costs. This is the focus of the Research in Applied Thermal Engineering (RATE) group, which is developing and optimizing new systems that cool air using a natural process: water evaporation. These evaporative cooling systems use only air and water as working fluids, require no refrigerants or compressors, and can reduce energy consumption by up to 70% compared to conventional air conditioning units.

University of Cordoba researcher Paula Conrat explained this work. Together with researchers Manuel Ruiz de Adana (Department of Applied Chemistry and Thermodynamics) and Francisco Comino (Department of Mechanics), and the Andaltec Plastics Technology Center, she has headed up a study focused on improving these systems’ performance through material selection. Specifically, the researcher explained:“we selected polymeric materials in the form of films or thin sheets with different water retention capacities, porosity, and surface roughness.” These materials are then processed using lamination techniques and used to manufacture what is known as a “wet channel”—the element responsible for the heat and mass exchange that occurs in these systems and, therefore, constituting the “engine” for cooling.

By analyzing the performance of each channel manufactured with different materials, the team verified how their properties directly influence air cooling capacities. Testing showed that the best-performing channel was able to reduce air temperature by 16 degrees Celsius. According to the research group, these results represent a direct contribution to optimizing these systems, which are destined to replace or complement traditional cooling methods.

The search for more sustainable air cooling solutions is a key challenge on a planet suffering ever-higher temperatures and rising demand for energy: according to International Energy Agency (IEA) data, a 25% global increase is expected by 2050. In this context, science has begun exploring ways to reduce electricity consumption and CO2 emissions associated with the need to survive heat, and― the most difficult part ―to do so without compromising the population’s well-being or productive needs.

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Journal

Energy

DOI

10.1016/j.energy.2025.139370 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Experimental and numerical analysis of wet channels for evaporative cooling systems manufactured with polymeric film materials

 

A new study refines the dating of human past on the Cantabrian coast 18,000 years ago

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

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A new study refines radiocarbon dating of marine remains and significantly improves the precision with which the human past of the Magdalenian period in the Cantabrian region of Spain can be reconstructed, a key phase of European prehistory dating to around 18,000 years ago.

An international study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) provides new correction values for the radiocarbon dating of marine remains—such as shells—recovered from archaeological sites in the northern Iberian Peninsula. This represents a major advance for more accurately interpreting the chronology of prehistoric human occupations in coastal areas. The study also involved researchers from the universities of Salamanca and Cantabria, the Aranzadi Society of Sciences, and the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Radiocarbon dating, or carbon-14 dating, is one of the most widely used tools in archaeology for determining the age of archaeological sites. All living organisms incorporate carbon-14 while they are alive, but once they die, this isotope begins to decay progressively. Because its amount is reduced by half every 5,730 years, it is possible to calculate the time elapsed since the death of the organism and place it within a chronological framework.

Radiocarbon dating is most commonly applied to charcoal, human bones, and terrestrial animal remains. However, in many coastal archaeological sites the only available materials are of marine origin—shells, fish, or marine mammals—making it necessary to rely on these remains to establish site chronologies.

This introduces a key challenge: dates obtained from marine organisms may appear older than they actually are when dated using radiocarbon methods. This occurs because marine organisms contain less carbon-14 than their contemporary terrestrial counterparts, as oceanic carbon includes a component of carbon-14 that is already partially depleted. This offset, known as the marine reservoir effect, means that when a marine organism dies, it starts with a lower carbon-14 concentration than a terrestrial organism. If not properly corrected, this effect can make radiocarbon ages appear several hundred years too old.

To correct this offset, a global marine calibration curve is used, to which a local correction factor known as ΔR is added. ΔR varies depending on the region and the time period. “Accurately determining these values is essential for obtaining reliable radiocarbon dates, especially at archaeological and palaeontological sites that contain marine remains, or when dating human remains from populations whose diet included large amounts of marine resources”, explains Asier García-Escárzaga, who conducted this research at ICTA-UAB and the Department of Prehistory of the UAB.

The study, recently published in the journal Radiocarbon, presents new ΔR values that allow radiocarbon dates obtained from marine remains from Magdalenian sites dating to around 18,000 years ago in the northern Iberian Peninsula to be corrected more accurately. To calculate these values, the research team compared radiocarbon dates from marine and terrestrial remains recovered from the Tito Bustillo cave site (Ribadesella), renowned for its rock art and Palaeolithic engravings. “This advance does not mean that archaeological sites are older or younger than previously thought, but rather that we can date them more precisely, fine-tuning the ‘clock’ archaeologists use to reconstruct the history of Palaeolithic human populations”, García-Escárzaga concludes.

 

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Journal

Radiocarbon

DOI

10.1017/RDC.2025.10175 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animal tissue samples

Article Title

Bayesian estimates of the marine radiocarbon reservoir effect during the Magdalenian in northern Iberia

 

Expert consensus outlines a standardized framework to evaluate clinical large language models

Consensus proposes retrospective workflows, metrics, multidisciplinary teams, design principles, feedback, and reporting standards for safe deployment of models in healthcare

Intelligent Medicine

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Researchers develop a retrospective evaluation process of LLM applications in medical scenarios.

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Credit: Credit: Dr. Zhenchang Wang from Capital Medical University, China; Dr. Jiahong Dong from Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, China; Dr. Junbo Ge from Fudan University, China; Dr. Junmin Wei from Key Laboratory of Knowledge Mining and Service for Medical Journals, China Image source link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667102625001044

A new expert consensus made available online on 10 October 2025 and published in Volume 5, Issue 4 of the journal Intelligent Medicine on 1 November 2025, sets out a structured framework to assess large language models (LLMs) before they are introduced into clinical workflows. The guidance responds to the rapid uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for diagnostic support, medical documentation, and patient communication, and the corresponding need for consistent evaluation of safety, effectiveness, and fairness.

The consensus formalizes retrospective evaluation—testing fully trained models on real or simulated clinical data in specific care contexts, without further modifying the models—to verify performance, ethical compliance, and operational readiness prior to deployment.

Developed in line with World Health Organization guideline methods and registered on the Practice Guideline Registration for Transparency (PREPARE) platform (ID: PREPARE-2025CN503), the consensus draws on literature review, Delphi procedures, and multidisciplinary expert deliberation. In the final round, 35 experts achieved agreement on six recommendations.

What does the framework include?

• Evaluation workflows prioritizing scientific rigor, objectivity, comprehensiveness, and ethics (e.g., double-blind procedures, conflict-of-interest transparency).
• Integrated metrics combining quantitative measures (accuracy, recall, F1-score; BLEU/ROUGE for generation) with structured qualitative ratings (e.g., mean opinion scores for accuracy, completeness, safety, practicality, professionalism).
• Multidisciplinary teams spanning clinicians, data and computer engineers, ethicists, legal experts, and statisticians, with standardized training and role definitions.
• Dataset design principles centered on clinical authenticity, broad representativeness across diseases, populations, and institutions, and fairness for vulnerable groups, with modular versioning and privacy/compliance safeguards.
• Feedback and versioning mechanisms to update standards as technology, regulations, or application scope evolve, including transparent dispute-resolution processes.
• Standardized reporting templates to improve transparency, reproducibility, and comparability across evaluations.

The consensus also defines six key LLM capability domains for assessment: medical knowledge question and answer; complex medical language understanding; diagnosis and treatment recommendation; medical documentation generation; multi-turn dialogue; and multimodal dialogue.

Emphasizing essential safeguards for patient data protection, bias mitigation, and the need for AI outputs to remain clinically explainable, the authors of the consensus are positioned to support the advancement of safer, more reliable, and ethically governed LLM applications within healthcare systems globally.

 

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Reference
DOI: 10.1016/j.imed.2025.09.001

 

About the journal
Intelligent Medicine is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal focusing on the integration of artificial intelligence, data science, and digital technology in clinical medicine and public health. It is published by the Chinese Medical Association in partnership with Elsevier. To learn more about Intelligent Medicine, please visit https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/intelligent-medicine

Funding information
The authors received no financial support for this research.

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Journal

Intelligent Medicine

DOI

10.1016/j.imed.2025.09.001 

Method of Research

Literature review

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

2025 Expert consensus on retrospective evaluation of large language model applications in clinical scenarios

 

Intelligent Medicine recognized among China’s top internationally influential journals

Journal ranks 66th in 2025 national evaluation highlighting growing global impact

Intelligent Medicine

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Intelligent Medicine has been named to the 2025 list of China’s Internationally Influential Excellent Academic Journals, ranking 66th, following the release of the China Academic Journal International Citation Annual Report (2025). The recognition highlights the journal’s growing international reach in bridging artificial intelligence, data science, digital technology, and clinical medicine.

The annual report, co-released by CNKI and the Tsinghua University Library, is a key benchmark of global reach for Chinese scholarship. The 2025 analysis evaluated 7,240 Chinese journals based on citations from 27,117 international source journals indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, EI, and Medline. More than 3 million international citations were documented in the past year, underscoring the significance of Intelligent Medicine’s inclusion among the top tier.

Intelligent Medicine’s growth is underpinned by its editorial leadership and publishing model. The journal is led by Editor-in-Chief Professor Jiahong Dong, MD, PhD, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Dean of the Tsinghua University School of Clinical Medicine, and President of Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital. His vision is supported by an international editorial board of more than 60 experts from Asia, North America, Europe, and Oceania, covering disciplines including intelligent surgery, medical imaging, health data science, and AI ethics. This structure ensures rigorous peer review and a multidisciplinary perspective.

The journal is sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association and published in partnership with Elsevier as a fully open-access title. Intelligent Medicine is indexed in DOAJ, ESCI, EI, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and other major services. According to the journal’s official Insights page, it reports an Impact Factor of 6.9 (JCR 2025) and a CiteScore of 10.1 (Scopus), reflecting its performance across medical informatics and related fields.

Building on this momentum, Intelligent Medicine invites submissions that translate intelligent technologies into real-world healthcare impact, including clinical AI, health data science, medical informatics, and intelligent devices. The journal emphasizes implementation studies, prospective and real-world validation, and practice-shaping reviews. Article types include Research Articles, Reviews, Editorials, Perspectives, Case Reports, and Letters.

To lower barriers for contributors worldwide, the Article Publishing Charge (APC) is covered for all articles submitted by December 31, 2025, ensuring immediate open access upon acceptance.

In parallel with its international expansion, Intelligent Medicine also welcomes expressions of interest from established scholars to join its Editorial Board and contribute to advancing interdisciplinary, translational research at the intersection of technology and medicine.

 

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About Intelligent Medicine
Intelligent Medicine (ISSN 2667-1026) is a fully open-access journal publishing high-quality research on the application of artificial intelligence, data science, and intelligent technologies in clinical medicine, biomedicine, and public health. The journal is sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association and published in partnership with Elsevier.

Website: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/intelligent-medicine

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Journal

Intelligent Medicine

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial