Search Results (3,270)

Introduction: Negative legal emotion refers to the affective component of negative orientations toward legal norms, institutions, and procedures. It is closely related to, but not synonymous with, the broader construct of legal cynicism, which more often emphasizes generalized skepticism toward the fairness, legitimacy, and effectiveness of the law. This study examined the association between negative legal emotion and prosocial behavior among university students, with peer attachment as a mediator and social exclusion as a moderator. Method: A total of 404 undergraduates from mainland Chinese universities were included in the final analysis after predefined data screening, including attention-check items and response-time cutoffs. Participants completed an online survey assessing negative legal emotion, prosocial behavior, peer attachment, and social exclusion. Descriptive statistics, correlation analyses, and Hayes’s PROCESS macro (Model 7) were used to test the moderated mediation model, controlling for gender, grade, and parental educational attainment. Results: Negative legal emotion was negatively associated with prosocial behavior. Peer attachment statistically accounted for this association, such that higher negative legal emotion was associated with lower peer attachment, which was in turn associated with lower prosocial behavior. Social exclusion moderated the first stage of the indirect pathway: the negative association between negative legal emotion and peer attachment was weaker at higher levels of social exclusion. Accordingly, the indirect association between negative legal emotion and prosocial behavior via peer attachment also varied across levels of social exclusion. Conclusions: The findings suggest that peer attachment is an important relational correlate linking negative legal emotion with prosocial behavior and that social exclusion is associated with variation in the strength of this indirect pathway. These results extend research on legal socialization and contribute to understanding prosocial behavior among university students. Full article

Gender-based and sexual violence are major public health concerns, and norms about consent are central to their prevention. This study examines how attitudes toward sexual consent relate to digital sexual consent and to the occasional feeling of distrust in public consent campaigns and institutions. We conducted a cross-sectional online survey embedded in the evaluation of a municipal consent campaign in Zaragoza (Spain). Adults (N = 404; 56.7% women) completed a 14-item short version of the Sexual Consent Scale–Revised, two items on digital sexual consent, and three items on institutional reluctance (perceived “sermonizing” tone, distrust in effectiveness, and lack of personal identification with the message). Correlation and multiple regression models with robust standard errors were estimated, controlling for gender, age, education, income, relationship status, and social media use. Attitudes toward sexual consent were strongly and positively associated with digital sexual consent. Gender was the most consistent sociodemographic correlate: men showed less egalitarian attitudes than women across all consent measurements. Institutional reluctance was systematically related to less supportive consent attitudes: perceiving institutional messages as exaggerated or personally irrelevant predicted lower support for sexual and digital consent norms, whereas trust in the campaign’s effectiveness was associated with more egalitarian attitudes. The findings support the continuity between sexual and digital consent and highlight gender and institutional trust as key determinants for the prevention of gender-based and sexual violence. Public health and social policies should integrate digital consent into consent education and co-design campaigns that minimize defensive reactions and rebuild trust in institutions. Full article

This article proposes a novel time-space two-grid high-order compact difference scheme for the one-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation subject to Dirichlet boundary conditions. In comparison with the fully nonlinear compact difference scheme, the proposed methodology combines a small-scale nonlinear fourth-order compact difference algorithm on a time-space coarse grid and a large-scale linearized correction compact difference algorithm on a fine grid. In contrast to the time two-grid compact difference method, the proposed scheme applies the two-grid technique in both the spatial and temporal domains, thereby further improving computational efficiency. Solutions from the coarse grid are projected onto the fine grid via a temporally linear and spatially cubic Lagrange interpolation operator. Unconditional stability and optimal convergence rates, which are fourth-order in space and second-order in time, are proven in both the discrete $L^2$ and $L^{\infty }$ norms, without any constraints on the grid ratio. In addition to the standard techniques of the energy method, a discrete Sobolev inequality and an a priori error estimate are employed to demonstrate stability and high-order convergence. Finally, the theoretical results are validated through numerical experiments, which confirm the robustness and reliability of the proposed approach. A single-soliton experiment demonstrates that, compared with the fully nonlinear compact difference scheme, the proposed method achieves a significant reduction in CPU time while maintaining a comparable level of accuracy. Additional experiments further illustrate the algorithm’s effectiveness in simulating two-soliton interactions and soliton birth. These findings establish the proposed scheme as a highly efficient alternative to conventional nonlinear approaches. Full article

Lanyin Mandarin is a major regional variety of Mandarin Chinese with phonological characteristics that interact with the acquisition of the codified Standard Mandarin norm. This study examined the pronunciation of Standard Mandarin by 67 native speakers from the Lanyin Mandarin area using a large-scale subjective listening experiment (12 listeners, 6700 tokens), with deviations analyzed across initial consonants, finals, and tones. Based on the perceptual results, a pronunciation deviation database was established (N = 20,100 monosyllabic tokens), enabling targeted acoustic comparisons with Standard Mandarin. The results reveal several systematic patterns with quantified deviation rates. For initial consonants, the highest deviation rates were observed for /l/→/n/ (30.5%), /s/→/ts/ (25.5%), and /ts^h/→/ts/ (20.2%), significantly exceeding their reverse substitutions (/n/→/l/: 13.3%, /ts/→/s/: 0.0%, /ts/→/ts^h/: 15.4%; all p < 0.001). For finals, /iŋ/→/in/ showed the strongest asymmetry (61.2% vs. 21.9% for the reverse), followed by /əŋ/→/ən/ (40.2%) and /ən/→/əŋ/ (39.2%). Tonal deviations were dominated by Tone 3 identified as Tone 2 (31.7%), with Tone 1→Tone 2 at a lower rate (8.4%). These deviations exhibited significant directional asymmetries (e.g., /l/→/n/ vs. /n/→/l/: χ²(1) = 768.06, p < 0.001). Acoustic analyses indicated that consonant confusions corresponded to F2/F3 formant convergence (e.g., Lanyin-biased /l/ F2 values approached Standard Mandarin /n/), while nasal finals showed F2 fronting (higher F2 values approaching Standard Mandarin /in/). Tonal analyses revealed a compressed pitch range (2.4 semitones narrower than Standard Mandarin), with flattened Tone 3 contours contributing to Tone 2 confusion. Together, these findings demonstrate quantifiable, systematic, and directional phonetic patterns in the acquisition of Standard Mandarin by Lanyin dialect speakers, supported by converging perceptual and acoustic evidence. Full article

Understanding lighting practices is crucial for ensuring social robustness and sensitivity to context when implementing technical solutions in real-life settings. As lighting can create functional, sustainable, and aesthetically pleasing environments, it is important to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and social and physical situations. Domestic lighting is no exception; however, the sociocultural, perceptual, and sensory qualities of light have been neglected in engineering-oriented practices, while ethnographic approaches to domestic lighting seldom cover the material and technical aspects of the phenomenon. The role of light evolves according to people’s changing needs and abilities, as seen in age-related changes and incipient vision loss, so a broader understanding of domestic lighting practices can help in preparing for senior life. Combining methods from ethnography, architecture, and engineering, this article provides new knowledge on the dynamics of the socio-technical elements of domestic lighting. Interviews, lighting measurements, and field observations conducted in 37 Danish homes revealed that the mundane, everyday practices of the home environment embody patterns as well as diverging conventions and norms. People navigate their domestic lighting in accordance with specific activities and orchestrate micro-atmospheres between light and darkness, resulting in a composite palette of task light, isles of light, and lightscapes. Full article

Traditional journalists now utilize social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok to disseminate information. With the emergence of TikTok as a prominent social network for entertainment and information, many journalists worldwide, including in Israel, have begun leveraging it to create and share short video content. This study presents a qualitative case study of journalists operating within the Israeli media system, examining why and how journalists use TikTok, the professional challenges they face on the platform, and how they address these challenges. Specifically, it focuses on how journalists perceive TikTok as a journalistic space and their professional role within it. Focusing on the Israeli context, which is both digitally advanced and characterized by a democratic and pluralistic media environment, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 prominent journalists from traditional Israeli media outlets who are extensively active and considered at least micro-influencers on TikTok. The findings reveal several key themes regarding journalists’ use of TikTok. These include the platform’s role as a tool for reaching younger audiences and maintaining relevance; and the journalists’ self-perception as gatekeepers combating fake news. However it was found that they face ethical dilemmas and an absence of the structural and ethical foundations necessary for serious investigative journalism. This is the result of adapting their work to the platform’s light, fast-paced, and visually engaging format, favoring content that is entertaining and often sensational, to meet the expectations of TikTok audiences. While grounded in the Israeli case, the findings contribute to broader discussions on the platformization of journalism and the transformation of professional norms in media environments. Full article

Indigenous territories in Amazonia sustain forest cover through the practice of swidden-fallow agriculture, yet declining land availability threatens both the ecological sustainability of this agricultural system and its contributions to community livelihoods. While scholars recognize land scarcity’s potential to drive transformations in shifting cultivation systems, we lack a systematic understanding of how local institutional frameworks shape heterogeneous responses to resource constraints. This study examines how land access mechanisms, distribution dynamics and property regimes among Indigenous communities mediate experiences of and adaptations to land scarcity in the Peruvian Amazon. We conducted a comparative case study of Solidaridad and Tamboruna, two land-scarce Indigenous communities in Peru’s Napo River basin, employing mixed methods including household surveys (n = 74), plot-level assessments, and qualitative interviews with community leaders. Our findings reveal three critical pathways through which institutions mediate scarcity outcomes. First, land access mechanisms determine whether scarce resources produce equitable constraint or acute land inequality. Second, land use intensification emerges not from scarcity alone but from accumulated inequality and household labor capacity, with land accumulated over lifecycles showing stronger associations with management practices than initial endowments. Third, where scarcity manifests as extreme polarization, it precipitates renegotiation of land property norms shaped by Indigenous sociability and moral economies, defying straightforward trajectories toward either resource privatization or collective governance. These results demonstrate that land scarcity produces divergent trajectories mediated by community-specific institutions, with swidden-fallow systems likely diminishing their capacity to sustain forest regeneration in Indigenous communities where scarcity leads to acute land inequality. Rather than uniform solutions, sustainability policy must therefore tailor interventions to local institutional contexts—prioritizing territorial expansion, facilitating communities’ own governance development, and supporting household adaptive capacity to resource scarcity. Full article

Background/Objectives: Poor bone quality is strongly associated with adverse surgical events. Although dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) remains the gold standard for bone mineral density (BMD) assessment, logistical barriers may limit its preoperative application. The Endplate Bone Quality (EBQ) score is an MRI-derived metric quantifying subchondral bone quality at the vertebral endplate with demonstrated predictive value for cage subsidence following lumbar interbody fusion. However, EBQ has been measured exclusively at the operative level in surgical cohorts. This study aimed to assess level-specific EBQ scores across the entire lumbar spine and compare distributions across age, sex and osteoporosis subgroups. Methods: A single-institution retrospective review of T1-weighted lumbar MRI studies from patients evaluated for lower back pain from 2020 to 2025 was performed. EBQ was independently scored by two blinded raters at each disc space from L1–L2 to L5–S1 using 3 mm endplate ROIs normalized to a CSF ROI at L3. Interrater reliability was assessed via ICC, Pearson correlation, and RMSE. Patients were stratified by age (≤60 vs. >60 years), sex, and osteoporosis status, and subgroup comparisons were performed for overall and level-specific EBQ score. Results: A total of 96 patients with an average age of 61.0 ± 9.42 years were included in this study. The majority of patients included were female (87.5%), and 18.8% had been diagnosed with osteoporosis. EBQ scores demonstrated a progressive caudal increase across all subgroups from L2–L3 to L5–S1. Overall interrater reliability was acceptable (ICC = 0.76), with level-specific ICCs ranging from 0.70 to 0.83. No significant differences were observed between age or sex subgroups. Osteoporotic patients demonstrated significantly higher EBQ at L1–L2, L2–L3, and overall (all p < 0.05), with no significant differences at L3–L4 through L5–S1. Conclusions: This study provides normative, level-specific EBQ reference data throughout all levels of the lumbar spine. The increase in EBQ scores seen among caudal levels and reduced osteoporotic discriminatory power support the importance of level-specific context when interpreting EBQ thresholds. These findings may support future studies evaluating threshold development for EBQ. Full article

Against the backdrop of a multi-tiered governance system and increasingly institutionalized norms, China’s historical and cultural preservation policies have long emphasized institutional standardization and hierarchical uniformity. Local policy texts are typically viewed as localized replicas of central institutional logic, overlooking internal variations and differences in information structure. Accordingly, this study examines the Regulations on the Protection of Historical and Cultural Cities, Towns, and Villages issued by 13 provincial-level administrative regions in China. It conceptualizes provincial regulatory texts as institutionalized policy information systems, constructs a cross-regional corpus, and develops a comparative information structure analytical framework based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model. This study operationalizes LDA-derived topic-weight distributions into a comparative analytical framework that captures structural prominence, dispersion, concentration, and priority hierarchy in provincial policy texts. The findings reveal that provincial-level historical and cultural preservation regulations in China exhibit a highly institutionalized information backbone, centered on administrative procedures, legal norms, and macro-level planning controls, and demonstrate significant institutional similarity across provinces. However, within this unified institutional framework, provinces exhibit structural differences in the distribution of thematic weights, information prioritization, and internal textual sequencing, resulting in multiple distinguishable information organization patterns. Consequently, this study highlights the coexistence of formal institutional uniformity and structural differentiation in provincial regulatory texts, providing a more precise basis for understanding variation in local policy expression within China’s historical and cultural governance field. Full article

In the context of advancing communication technologies and digital spaces, Moroccan youth are increasingly engaging with concepts of mobility, presenting both opportunities and challenges in a liquid modern digital landscape. While digital identities and mobility have been extensively studied among Western youth, non-Western youth, including those in Morocco, are often viewed through a lens of being “at risk,” which biases objective analysis. This study addresses this gap by examining how digital mobility fosters culturally hybrid identities among Moroccan youth in a globalised world. Methods: An interdisciplinary ethnographic content analysis was conducted on youth digital productions and interactions on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The study draws on Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity and Stuart Hall’s theory of representation to explore identity formation. Results: Digital mobility enables Moroccan youth to navigate between local cultural influences (Amazigh, Islamic, African, and Arab) and global Western narratives, leading to hybrid identities. Challenges include cultural erosion through practices like Western-style dating shows and sexual freedoms that challenge social norms, potentially widening generational gaps. Opportunities arise from platforms like SAWT, where youth discuss taboo topics, create hybrid cultural artefacts, and engage in glocalisation, enhancing agency and global integration. Conclusions: Digital mobility acts as a catalyst for cultural hybridity, supporting global integration while highlighting the need for addressing accessibility disparities and unsupervised interactions. This framework contributes to digital youth studies by emphasising mobility’s role in identity evolution, advocating for balanced glocality over cultural protectionism or homogenisation. Full article

This article examines Max Nordau’s Entartung (Degeneration) (1892/93) at the intersection of fin-de-siècle cultural critique and contemporary psychopathology. It argues that Nordau did not simply denounce modern art, but transferred an established psychiatric vocabulary—centred on degeneration, hysteria, and neurasthenia—into the sphere of aesthetic judgement. Interpreting a range of literary and cultural phenomena as symptoms of pathological degeneration, Nordau sought to diagnose the psychological condition of modern culture through the works of contemporary writers and intellectuals. Situating Entartung within the broader nineteenth-century degeneration paradigm and within contemporary evolutionary debates, the article analyses how scientific discourse was mobilised to authorise cultural evaluation. Rather than assessing the validity of Nordau’s diagnoses, it reconstructs the epistemic logic through which psychiatric categories were transformed into instruments of cultural criticism. In doing so, it repositions Nordau within the history of the human sciences, highlighting his role in the consolidation of expert authority in late nineteenth-century cultural debates. By foregrounding the structural migration of psychiatric categories into cultural criticism, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the alliance between scientific knowledge and normativity at the fin de siècle. Full article

This article examines contemporary forms of algorithmic governance through a biopolitical framework grounded in Michel Foucault’s analysis of security, risk, and governmentality. Rather than treating algorithmic systems as a rupture with earlier modes of power, the article argues that they intensify a security-based rationality already oriented toward probabilistic reasoning, anticipatory intervention, and the indirect regulation of conduct. Governance increasingly operates by organizing environments in advance, shaping the conditions under which action becomes possible rather than correcting behavior after the fact. Situating transhumanism within this framework, the article approaches enhancement-oriented projects not as speculative or external developments, but as an extension of biopolitical governance from the regulation of life toward its optimization and redesign. Human capacities become objects of assessment and intervention, shifting the biopolitical subject from a bearer of risk to an upgrade-eligible profile oriented toward projected futures. To conceptualize the form of subjectivity produced at the intersection of algorithmic prediction and transhumanist optimization, the article introduces the heuristic figure of Homo virtualis. This figure describes a form of subjectivity in which individuals are approached through predictive profiles rather than stable identities, and responsibility shifts toward managing expected outcomes rather than accounting for past actions. By examining these shifts, the article contributes to debates on algorithmic governance by clarifying how biopolitics, prediction, and subjectivity are reconfigured as futures become increasingly organized in advance. This article adopts a descriptive and analytical approach rather than a normative one. Full article

Background: Engaging diverse populations, including Muslims, in research activities is important to support patient-centered research and improve health equity. Objectives: The research aimed to describe the community engagement steps that informed conducting research with five distinctively diverse U.S. Muslim communities. Methods: This work provides methodological reflections on engaging diverse Muslim communities in the U.S. Researchers built trust-based partnerships with community healthcare organizations and engaged with administrative leaders, advisory members, and people from five diverse communities. Strategies to support sampling, recruitment, multi-language interpretation methods, and how to engage communities and address their concerns are discussed. Results: A total of 22 participants were included in the original study. The research team successfully engaged five of the six planned communities, utilizing multiple interpretation methods and participating in community events to support recruitment and relationship-building. Direct-to-participant recruitment efforts were strengthened by personal connections with trusted community members. Conclusions: Flexibility and adaptability are integral in recruitment and data collection, as diverse communities may respond differently to methods successfully used elsewhere. Attention to gender-related cultural norms, the inclusion of language-concordant researchers, and respect for communities’ autonomy in deciding whether and how to participate collectively contributed to more effective and culturally grounded engagement with Muslim communities. Full article

Tasmania has some of Australia’s worst potentially preventable hospitalisation (PPH) rates linked to chronic illness. This means that people are living with increasing pain and incapacity. PPHs are also an unnecessary social and financial cost and signal a failure to address the drivers of chronic illness, disproportionally experienced by people with poor access to the social determinants of health. Systems thinking (ST) is increasingly being applied to understanding such problems and designing solutions from a whole system perspective. This case study describes a novel, exploratory application of ST tools in four communities with high chronic disease risk to better understand and develop place-based interventions in the prevention approach known as ‘Anticipatory Care’ (AC). With community members, recruited through four community bodies, we used causal loop diagrams (CLDs) to implement three of the WHO’s recommended steps to ST in health systems: collectively brainstorm, conceptualise effects, and adapt and redesign. Community stakeholders developed CLDs to understand the locally relevant AC system, determine boundaries and priorities, and identify barriers to and opportunities for change. Opportunities focused on the relationship between safe access, place, belonging, relationships and culture, health information, and health services. At the project’s end, a second set of CLDs identified indicators of changes to local AC systems. Given a ‘blank slate’ for chronic disease prevention, communities developed unique, place-based responses orientated towards strengthening resources, connections, and collaboration. We argue that ST can be used to support community understanding of the behaviour of the local chronic disease prevention system, surface the interdependence of system parts, and identify formerly unrecognised opportunities for and consequences of intervention. The impact of place-based approaches is constrained by structural forces, including policies, norms, institutions, and resourcing. Full article

The Beiyue Temple in Quyang County, Hebei Province, served as the host temple for worshipping the Northern Peak Deity (Beiyue shen) from its establishment during the reign of Emperor Xuanwu (483–515) of Northern Wei until the reign of Emperor Shunzhi (1638–1661) of the Qing dynasty. The temple currently houses over 200 inscribed stone steles that predate the founding of the Republic of China in 1912. This study addresses how the sacrificial space inside the Beiyue Temple evolved and transformed. By examining historical and archaeological evidence—including archival documents, epigraphic texts, diagrams, and architectural remnants—and focusing on the ‘front altar, rear garden’, the ‘hall for presenting sacrificial offerings of the common people’, and the ‘overhanging eave’, it demonstrates that the temple’s ritual space developed a dual character shaped by both official and folk practices. This duality reflects the interaction between official and folk practices against the backdrop of ‘the downward diffusion of ritual norms’ (lizhi xiayi) from the Tang and Song dynasties onwards. The findings challenge the conventional view that there was no specific space for folk ritual worship inside state-sanctioned temples during the Northern Song dynasty. It also provides vital evidence for the historical development of the sacrificial hall (xiandian) and the layout of pavilion-style stages (wuting) immediately in front of the main hall in temples built during the Song and Jin dynasties. Full article