Search Results (18,064)

Private tutoring has become an increasingly popular approach for improving academic performance by providing individual or group support outside regular school hours to enhance student outcomes. In the context of mathematics tutoring, we introduce the eMath4All platform, designed to replicate traditional teaching methods through virtual tools for distance learning. Despite the growing prevalence of private tutoring, research on online tutoring platforms and their use in practice remains limited. Accordingly, this study explores the application of the eMath4All platform in two different private tutoring scenarios involving secondary school students from Romania. Study A examines group tutoring with five eighth-grade students preparing for a national examination over a three-month period, while Study B explores individual tutoring with ten students from various secondary education levels over a 12-month period. The paper analyzes how the key components of the eMath4All platform (such as the virtual whiteboard, mathematical editor, real-time audio–video communication, virtual library, assessment tool, and personal student profile) support tutoring activities. The platform is examined through a combination of platform usage data, descriptive analysis of student progression, and student-reported experience collected via questionnaires. The results of the exploratory study indicate consistent usage patterns, high engagement with platform features, and high usability ratings, highlighting the platform’s potential for supporting both individual and group mathematics tutoring. Full article

The increasing integration of intermittent renewable energy sources (RESs) into islanded Hybrid Power Systems (HPSs) is a critical step towards global energy sustainability; however, it poses significant challenges to frequency stability owing to low system inertia and stochastic power fluctuations. To address these challenges and enable higher penetration of green energy, this study proposes a novel and robust Load Frequency Control (LFC) strategy based on the Crested Porcupine Optimizer (CPO). A customized Mode-Dependent Adaptive Balloon (MDAB) controller is developed, wherein the virtual control gain is dynamically tuned based on the real-time operating modes and disturbance severity. Furthermore, to optimize communication resources and mitigate actuator wear in networked microgrids, an intelligent event-triggered (ET) mechanism is seamlessly integrated into the adaptive logic. The proposed control framework is rigorously validated through comprehensive nonlinear simulations and comparative analyses with state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithms (GTO, GWO, JAYA, and GO). The evaluation encompasses step load disturbances, severe parametric uncertainties (+25%), realistic 24-h diurnal cycles with solar cloud shading and wind turbulence, and extended practical constraints, including Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) integration and Internet of Things (IoT) communication delays. The results demonstrate the superiority of the CPO-tuned framework, which achieved the fastest transient recovery (settling time of 3.4367 s) and the lowest absolute Integral Absolute Error (IAE). Additionally, the proposed ET-based strategy not only reduced the communication burden but also improved the overall control performance by 37% in terms of IAE compared with continuous approaches. By inherently filtering measurement noise, mitigating control signal chattering, and maintaining resilience under nonideal latency, the proposed architecture offers a highly robust and resource-efficient solution that directly guarantees the operational sustainability and reliability of modern smart microgrids. Full article

Grasslands are key terrestrial ecosystems in which root dynamics regulate soil carbon and nutrient cycling. Although grazing constitutes the predominant land use practice in grassland ecosystems, its impacts on root dynamics remain inadequately elucidated, particularly across a gradient of grazing intensities. In this two-year field experiment, an improved root window method was applied to investigate the effects of four grazing intensities (no grazing, light grazing, moderate grazing, heavy grazing) on root production, root mortality, root standing crop, root turnover, and root lifespan in the saline–alkaline grassland in northern China. The results showed that root production and root mortality exhibited pronounced seasonal dynamics, with peaks in June and August for root production and in September for root mortality. These seasonal patterns were primarily driven by precipitation and were not significantly altered by grazing intensity. Moderate grazing significantly increased root production by 51.2% through changes in soil bulk density and selective livestock grazing, supporting the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. Root turnover was predominantly shaped by plant community composition and interannual precipitation, as opposed to grazing intensity. Overall, these findings indicate that moderate grazing promotes root growth, providing important insights into the sustainable utilization of saline–alkali grassland resources. In other words, appropriate measures must be taken to effectively manage grazing activities in the fragile saline–alkaline grasslands of northern China. Full article

Despite the progressing standardization of the Japanese language, regional dialects persist, particularly among older generations, causing communication gaps, which results in problems especially in healthcare and emergency contexts. This study proposes a text-to-text normalization method to convert eight Japanese dialects into standard Japanese using a fine-tuned mT5-small architecture. We evaluate the impact of learning rate schedulers, training duration, and data preprocessing on model performance. Our results demonstrate that the CharacTER (Character Translation Edit Rate) metric provides a more accurate evaluation than BLEU, which is practically ill-suited for the unsegmented nature of Japanese text. The optimal configuration minimizes character error rates by aligning input data with natural, unspaced Japanese orthography. Furthermore, we observe a statistically significant correlation between the model’s conversion error rate and the physical distance of the source dialect from Tokyo. This finding suggests that the model’s performance effectively serves as a proxy for measuring linguistic distance between dialectal variations and the standard language. Full article

This study addresses national shortages in school-based mental health (SBMH) providers, particularly in rural and high-needs areas, by examining two innovative training models designed to expand the school psychology workforce. The Grow Your Own (GYO) program respecializes practicing educators in rural communities to become school psychologists, while the Dual-Credentialing Clinical Training (DCT) model integrates school psychology training with supervised clinical experiences, leading toward educational certification and state mental health licensure. Program evaluation data were used to assess early implementation, feasibility, and success of both programs. In the GYO program, nine educators completed training, with eight employed in rural schools one to two years post-graduation, and average supervisor ratings meeting or exceeding the program’s competency expectations across all ten domains. In the DCT program, five trainees completed internship, four earned provisional mental health licenses, two progressed to independent licensure, and four became certified school psychologists. Together, findings indicate that place-based respecialization can strengthen rural retention, while dual-credentialing can expand clinical capacity and funding flexibility, creating complementary training models to help grow the SBMH workforce. Continued scaling and evaluation may enhance access to comprehensive SBMH services for students in under-resourced settings. Full article

Computer numerical control (CNC) machining process simulation is increasingly central to intelligent manufacturing, yet its deployment in brownfield environments remains constrained by legacy controllers, heterogeneous data semantics, limited computational resources, and rising cybersecurity requirements. While digital twins (DTs), artificial intelligence (AI), and multi-physics simulation have matured conceptually, practical adoption, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), continues to lag behind theoretical capability. This paper presents a PRISMA-guided systematic review of peer-reviewed literature, standards, and industrial reports published between 2019 and 2025, focusing on CNC machining simulation, digital twin architectures, interoperability standards, and intelligent optimisation under brownfield constraints. Rather than proposing new simulation algorithms, the review synthesises fragmented evidence into a deployable, standards-aligned integration perspective. The review consolidates prior work into a seven-layer architecture grounded in ISO 23247, explicitly separating sensing, communication, digital twin entities, analytics, and human–machine interaction. It derives practical decision rules for middleware selection, edge-cloud compute placement under latency constraints, and modelling strategy selection, ranging from mechanistic and finite-element methods to hybrid reduced-order and machine-learning surrogates. An SME-oriented implementation and validation roadmap links staged retrofitting to measurable operational indicators, including overall equipment effectiveness, first-pass yield, downtime, cycle time, and energy intensity. Full article

This systematic review synthesises the qualitative literature on Māori leadership to examine how leadership is conceptualised, enacted, and constrained, and what this implies for Aotearoa New Zealand’s health system. Across included studies, Māori leadership is grounded in whakapapa-based legitimacy, tikanga and mātauranga Māori, and collective responsibility for relational, cultural, and intergenerational wellbeing; these foundations persist across “traditional” and “contemporary” settings, with differences reflecting institutional conditions rather than shifts in core values. Interpreting the literature through a Māori cultural lens, the review shows that leadership is often exercised within Crown-dominated organisations where Māori authority is not the default, requiring leaders to navigate multiple accountabilities to iwi and communities, organisational mandates, and statutory obligations. Hybridity emerges as a structurally produced feature of practice, integrating Māori relational ethics with bureaucratic, professional, and governance requirements and ongoing translation work to make Māori priorities legible within institutional systems. Health-sector evidence illustrates how commissioning, funding, and accountability arrangements can limit Māori decision-making, increase leadership burden, and constrain sustainability and leadership pipelines. The review concludes that strengthening Māori leadership in health requires organisational and system change—such as clearer Māori decision rights, resourced Māori-led priority setting, and accountability mechanisms that operationalise equity and anti-racism—alongside targeted research on governance, commissioning, and system design. Full article

In the history as well as historiography of Chinese Buddhism, the tradition has often been closely associated with death-related cultural practices and ideas, an association that has frequently carried negative connotations. Early twentieth-century reformers such as Taixu famously criticized Buddhism as a religion of ghosts and funerals and sought to redirect Mahāyāna Buddhism toward engagement with an urban, modernizing society. Contemporary Taiwanese Buddhists have realized many aspects of this socially engaged vision. Yet concern with death remains deeply embedded in Buddhist life. Far from standing in contradiction to social engagement, this concern has become one of its central expressions, most visibly in the emergence of modern Buddhist palliative care. Focusing on the writings of the scholar-monk Shi Huimin, this article examines the development of Buddhist palliative care in Taiwan in response to a secular, multireligious, and rapidly aging society, with primary attention to Huimin’s conceptual work. Rather than treating death in isolation, Huimin situates dying within a broader ethical horizon that links good death to good aging, good living, and community formation. Through his reinterpretation of the Five Śīlas and his notion of a Community Pure Land, he extends prevailing concerns with dying well toward a more comprehensive reflection on everyday moral cultivation, healthy lifestyles, and communal responsibility. In this sense, the study reads Buddhist palliative care as a site that “provincializes” dominant Euro-American frameworks of spiritual and palliative care, highlighting their particular historical and Christian-inflected origins while tracing how they are reconfigured and made productive in a multireligious, secular context. By foregrounding Huimin’s conceptual contributions, this study highlights how palliative and spiritual care are localized and reworked within Taiwanese Buddhism, connecting end-of-life care to broader questions of life, aging, and community well-being. Full article

Purpose: This study provides a critical examination of the literature on applying artificial intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (XR) in restaurant settings and related foodservice operations. It focuses on how AI and XE influence consumer nutrition awareness and decision-making about food choices, and their implications for customer satisfaction, loyalty, and service delivery in foodservice environments. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts a systematic literature review (SLR) approach following the PRISMA method. An initial search identified over 3900 academic papers published between 2016 and 2025. Studies were selected on the basis of predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria, and 26 peer-reviewed articles were analyzed. The review provides a conceptual synthesis and develops propositions for practical applications and future research directions. Findings: The review reveals a shift from static systems that rely on optimization, toward adaptive and user-centered solutions that are behavior-oriented. AI applications predominate in the case of calorie tracking, personalized recommendations, and menu planning. Though deployment of XR technologies (e.g., AR and VR) is less prevalent, they offer potential for immersive, and real-time interventions. A key distinction emerges between studies demonstrating empirical effectiveness (e.g., improved understanding and healthier choices) and those focused on technical and/or conceptual developments. To date, there has been limited validation of behavioral impacts in foodservice settings. Originality: This study offers a theory-informed conceptualization of AI and XR applications in restaurant and foodservice contexts by integrating three perspectives: hospitality (menus and dining experience), nutrition (dietary awareness and healthier choices), and human–technology interaction (technology acceptance and user engagement). The study reconceptualizes AI- and XR-enabled systems as behavioral intervention tools and outlines a focused research agenda for advancing nutritional communication in foodservice environments. Full article

This study examines the roles of startup hubs within the cultural and creative industries (CCIs) and their implications for cultural innovation and tourism in European cities. Despite the growing importance of CCIs in urban development and destination branding, few studies have explored the organisational, social and communicative dynamics of cultural startup hubs. To address this gap, a comparative mixed-methods approach is applied to analyse 91 incubated startups in three European hubs: 104factory (Paris, France), Makerversity (London, UK) and A Lab (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). This study integrates structural variables (sustainability and institutionalisation), social variables (gender representation in leadership) and communication variables (activity and engagement on Instagram). The results reveal distinct organisational models, from highly institutionalised structures to more flexible, community-oriented approaches, with notable differences in terms of sustainability and gender distribution. In terms of communication, greater engagement is associated with content focused on community, identity and collective creativity, rather than promotional strategies. These findings highlight the role of startup hubs as hybrid intermediaries that not only support cultural entrepreneurship, but also contribute to the symbolic positioning and tourist appeal of the cities in which they are located. This study offers theoretical and practical insights for the development of more inclusive, sustainable and effectively communicative cultural ecosystems. Full article

Culturally unsafe mental health services contribute to persistent inequities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, yet existing cultural safety frameworks lack clear, prioritised, community-endorsed implementation guidance. This study aimed to establish Aboriginal consensus on cultural safety principles, implementation priorities and practical actions for culturally safe mental health services. A three-round modified Delphi study was conducted with 37 Aboriginal participants from Western Australia with expertise in mental health, social and emotional wellbeing and lived experience. In Round 1, participants completed an online survey rating the importance of cultural safety principles and identifying those requiring urgent action. In Rounds 2 and 3, facilitated yarning sessions reviewed findings, refined principles, grouped them into implementation domains, and identified priority actions. Aboriginal Participatory Action Research ensured Aboriginal leadership and governance throughout. All principles achieved strong consensus for importance. The most urgent priorities were trustworthiness, Aboriginal governance, trauma-informed care, addressing racism and strengthening the Aboriginal workforce. Participants organised the refined principles into six implementation domains, with Leadership and Governance identified as foundational to reform. Trustworthiness was reframed as an aspirational outcome requiring structural change. This study provides a community-endorsed, prioritised framework for translating cultural safety principles into mental health service practice and policy. Full article

This study addresses the growing necessity to understand how artificial intelligence (AI) competency and soft skills jointly influence organizational innovation and performance in the era of digital transformation. Despite the rapid adoption of AI technologies across industries, organizations continue to face significant challenges in effectively integrating technical AI capabilities with essential human-centric soft skills such as communication, adaptability, and leadership. This gap often limits the realization of AI-driven value and sustainable competitive advantage. The primary challenge in this research area is the lack of comprehensive models that simultaneously examine AI competency and soft skills within a unified framework, particularly in emerging economies where digital maturity varies widely. Existing studies tend to focus either on technical competencies or behavioral factors in isolation, leading to fragmented insights. To address these challenges, this study proposes a novel integrated research model that examines the combined effects of AI competency and soft skills on innovation outcomes and organizational performance. The model is empirically validated using structural equation modeling (SEM), providing robust evidence of the interrelationships among key constructs. The findings reveal that both AI competency and soft skills significantly contribute to innovation capability, which in turn enhances organizational performance. The study offers important theoretical and practical implications by bridging the gap between technical and human dimensions of AI adoption, thereby providing a more holistic understanding of digital transformation success. Full article

The increasing complexity of next-generation wireless systems challenges the scalability and generalization capabilities of traditional model-driven physical layer (PHY) design, which relies on analytically derived channel models and optimization frameworks. This paper presents a comprehensive survey and critical review of deep learning (DL) architectures enabling the transition toward AI-native PHY design. A unified optimization perspective is developed in which all PHY tasks—including channel estimation, channel state information (CSI) feedback, massive MIMO processing, signal detection, channel coding, beamforming, resource allocation, and semantic-aware transmission—are formulated under a common empirical risk minimization (ERM) framework. Neural architectures such as autoencoders, convolutional and recurrent networks, transformers, and reinforcement learning models are examined through their underlying optimization formulations, loss functions, training methodologies, and representation learning mechanisms. The review compares model-driven and AI-native approaches in terms of performance metrics, computational complexity, robustness, generalization capability, and practical deployment constraints, including hardware limitations, energy efficiency, and real-time feasibility. The analysis highlights the conditions under which AI-native architectures provide adaptability and performance improvements while identifying trade-offs in complexity, latency, and interpretability. The study concludes by outlining prioritized research directions toward fully adaptive and self-optimizing wireless communication systems. Full article

In recent years, sustainability reporting has taken on an increasingly important role in corporate strategy discussions. Initially a voluntary tool, it has become a benchmark for measuring and communicating the environmental, social, and economic impacts of organizations in a structured way. In light of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the research assumes that reporting is a lever for change and organizational innovation. To test the hypothesis, the authors chose to use what is known as a ‘natural experiment’: they observed the experience of a particular type of company, benefit corporations, which are required to publish an annual impact report. The empirical investigation was conducted using content analysis methodology to read the impact reports, websites, and social media channels of the companies, as well as case studies through semi-structured interviews. The findings of this study suggest that sustainability reporting can play a role that goes beyond transparency and compliance. In the cases analyzed, the preparation of the sustainability or impact report appears to function as an organizational coordination mechanism that mobilizes internal and external stakeholders. Through this process, companies progressively develop shared interpretations of sustainability objectives, experiment with measurement practices and introduce organizational changes affecting work organization, production processes and value-chain relationships. Full article

Pharmaceutical care provides the conceptual foundation for integrating pharmacogenetics into everyday pharmacy practice. Defined by Hepler and Strand as “the responsible provision of drug therapy for the purpose of achieving specific outcomes that improve a patient’s quality of life”, pharmaceutical care emphasizes a patient-centered approach in which the pharmacist collaborates with the patient, physician, and other healthcare professionals to design, implement, and monitor individualized therapeutic plans. In this context, pharmacogenetics can be regarded as an extension of pharmaceutical care: while the traditional model relies on monitoring patient outcomes and adherence, PGx adds a genetic dimension that allows treatment to be optimized from the very beginning. The pharmacist’s role therefore evolves from not only ensuring safe and effective use of medicines, but also interpreting genetic test results, supporting adherence to genetically guided therapy, and educating patients about the implications of their personal genetic profile. The introduction of pharmacogenetics testing as one of the potential services offered by community pharmacies is a promising proposition that may revolutionize the approach to drug therapy. Pharmacogenetics, a subset of pharmacogenomics, focuses on the study of DNA sequence variations that influence response to drugs. Thanks to advances in the field of genomics, it has become possible to study the genetic basis of variability in drug response. The identification of alleles responsible for the rapid or slow metabolism of xenobiotics has ushered in a new era in pharmacology. The aim of this interdisciplinary field, combining genetics and pharmacology, is to adapt treatment to a specific patient based on the analysis of their genome and gene polymorphism. Throughout the world, pharmacogenetics is gaining importance as a tool for personalizing medicine. In countries such as the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, programs integrating pharmacogenetics with healthcare are being developed. Clinical trials and the implementation of genetic tests into medical practice allow for better matching of medications and reducing the risk of side effects. Pharmacists will play a key role in integrating pharmacogenetics into healthcare. As specialists in the field of pharmacotherapy, they will support physicians in interpreting the results of genetic tests and adapting drug therapy to the individual needs of the patient. Additionally, pharmacists can educate patients and healthcare professionals about the benefits of pharmacogenetics and monitor the effects and safety of medications. Their involvement in the process of personalization of treatment may contribute to improving the effectiveness and safety of pharmacological therapies. Full article