Search Results (192)

User requirements are the core driving force behind the iterative development of complex products. Their comprehensive collection, accurate interpretation, and effective integration directly affect design outcomes. However, current practices often depend heavily on single-source data and designer intuition, resulting in incomplete, biased, and fragile design decisions. Moreover, multi-source heterogeneous user requirements often exhibit inherent asymmetry and imbalance in both structure and contribution. To address these issues, this study proposes a symmetric and balanced optimization method for multi-source heterogeneous user requirements in complex product design. Multiple acquisition and analysis approaches are integrated to mitigate the limitations of single-source data by fusing complementary information and enabling balanced decision-making. Firstly, unstructured text data from online reviews are used to extract initial user requirements, and a topic analysis method is applied for modeling and clustering. Secondly, user interviews are analyzed using a fuzzy satisfaction analysis, while eye-tracking experiments capture physiological behavior to support correlation analysis between internal preferences and external behavior. Finally, a cooperative game-based model is introduced to optimize conflicts among data sources, ensuring fairness in decision-making. The method was validated using a case study of oxygen concentrators. The findings demonstrate improvements in both decision robustness and requirement representation. Full article

This article re-examines Julio Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” (1956) and “Instructions for John Howell” (1963) through the lens of reader-response theory, hermeneutics, and cognitive narratology. Traditionally viewed as examples of the fantastic, these stories are interpreted here as complementary explorations of passive and active reading, offering a literary dialectic that parallels the reflections articulated in Cortázar’s Rayuela [Hopscotch] (1963). Drawing on Wolfgang Iser’s theories of textual gaps and reader cooperation, Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of appropriation, and more recent approaches to cognitive immersion and narrative engagement, this study argues that both stories dramatize reading as an ethical and political act. “Continuity of Parks” illustrates the dangers of uncritical textual consumption, culminating in the protagonist’s epistemic and existential annihilation, while “Instructions for John Howell” presents a model of insurgent readership, where the spectator’s appropriation of the play foregrounds the risks and possibilities of narrative intervention. By analyzing the use of metalepsis, destabilized focalization, and narrative layering in these stories, this article highlights how Cortázar anticipates contemporary concerns regarding reader agency, interpretive autonomy, and the sociopolitical implications of literary engagement. Full article

Background/Objectives: Dental anxiety in children is a common issue that can hinder the delivery of effective dental care. Traditional approaches to managing this are often insufficient or involve pharmacological interventions. This study shows the potential of virtual reality (VR) to aid in reducing anxiety in children undergoing simple dental procedures. By immersing children in relaxing VR environments (such as beaches, forests, mountains, or underwater scenes with calm music), the objective is to assess VR’s effectiveness in calming pediatrics patients during these procedures. Methods: Children scheduled for minor dental treatments wore a wearable device that monitored pulse, perspiration, and stress levels. Each child’s baseline data was collected without the VR headset, followed by data collection during VR exposure before and during dental procedures. VR scenarios ranged from soothing nature scenes to animated cartoons, designed to foster relaxation. Results: The data collected showed a reduction in physiological indicators of stress, such as lower heart rate and reduced perspiration, when the VR headset was used. Children appeared more relaxed, with a calmer response during the procedure itself, compared to baseline levels without VR. Conclusions: This study provides preliminary evidence supporting VR as an effective tool for reducing anxiety and stress in pediatric dental patients. By offering an engaging, immersive experience, VR can serve as an alternative or complementary approach to traditional anxiety management strategies in pediatric dentistry, potentially improving patient comfort and cooperation during dental procedures. Further research could determine if VR may serve as an alternative to local anesthesia for non-intrusive pediatric dental procedures. Full article

Background and Objectives: Pediatric pulmonary medicine relies heavily on accurate lung function assessment, yet conventional spirometry presents challenges in children due to cooperation requirements. In this context, the interrupter resistance technique (Rint), a method used in pediatric pulmonology, offers a potentially more feasible alternative for evaluating airway resistance in younger populations. This study aimed to assess the feasibility and clinical concordance between expiratory interrupter resistance (Rint(e)) and standard spirometry in healthy children under 8 years, thus contributing to the development of age-appropriate pulmonary function testing in pediatric medicine. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 healthy children (aged 2–8 years) in Tunisia. Pulmonary measurements were taken using a handheld device for both Rint(e) and spirometry. Feasibility rates were calculated, and correlations between the techniques were statistically analyzed. Results: Rint(e) showed significantly higher feasibility than spirometry (82.5% vs. 34.5%, p < 0.05). While older children had higher success rates with both techniques, feasibility was independent of sex, BMI, and passive smoking exposure. Moderate negative correlations were found between log Rint(e) and FEV1/FVC indices. Conclusions: In pediatric pulmonary assessment, Rint(e) demonstrated higher feasibility than spirometry among young children, making it a practical complementary method in clinical settings. However, due to only moderate correlation with spirometric indices, Rint(e) cannot yet replace spirometry in diagnostic use. Its integration into pediatric medicine may help address the gap in functional respiratory evaluation for children under the age of 8. Full article

Designing sustainable farming systems in mountainous regions is particularly challenging because of complex economic, social, and environmental factors. Production models prioritizing sustainability and environmental protection require integrated assessment methodologies that can address multiple criteria and incorporate diverse stakeholders’ perspectives while ensuring accuracy and applicability. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and multi-actor multi-criteria analysis (MAMCA) are two complementary approaches that support “eco-design” strategies aimed at identifying the most sustainable options, including on-farm transformation processes. This study presents an integrated application of LCA and MAMCA to four supply chains: rye bread, barley beer, cow cheese, and goat cheese. The results show that cereal-based systems have lower environmental impacts than livestock systems do, although beer’s required packaging significantly increases its footprint. The rye bread chain emerged as the most sustainable and widely preferred option, except under high-climatic risk scenarios. In contrast, livestock-based systems were generally less favorable because of greater impacts and risks but gained preference when production security became a priority. Both approaches underline the need for a deep understanding of production performance. Future assessments in mountain contexts should integrate logistical aspects and cooperative models to enhance the resilience and sustainability of short food supply chains. Full article

Water’s unique physicochemical properties arise from its dynamic hydrogen-bonding network, yet the precise molecular threshold at which these cooperative behaviors emerge remains a key question. This study employed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and density functional theory (DFT) calculations to investigate the evolution of hydrogen bonding strength in small water clusters, ranging from dimers to pentamers. The observed exponential increase in NMR chemical shift up to the pentamer reflects growing hydrogen bond cooperativity, identifying the (H₂O)₅ cluster as a critical structural and energetic threshold. At this size, the network achieves sufficient connectivity to support key bulk-like phenomena such as proton transfer and dielectric relaxation. These conclusions were corroborated by complementary FT-IR and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements of bulk water. Our results position the water pentamer as the molecular onset of emergent solvent behavior, effectively bridging the divide between discrete clusters and the macroscopic properties of liquid water. Full article

In the context of rapid global digitalization and evolving media ecologies, sustainable cultural communication has become central to both museum transformation and the theoretical renewal of iconology. Images, as vital carriers of cultural memory and identity, are shifting from static, linear presentations to generative, interactive, and participatory modes enabled by digital platforms. This shift calls for a new paradigm in image communication—one that integrates meaning construction with technological and user-centered logics. This study adopts a “technology–culture–user” framework, drawing on constructivism, cultural memory theory, and symbolic interactionism to construct a digital-era iconological system. Through comparative analysis of the Chinese Palace Museum and the National Museum of Korea, the research reveals complementary approaches: the former emphasizes structured, authoritative knowledge dissemination, while the latter prioritizes immersive, user-driven interaction. These differences provide a basis for cross-cultural cooperation. Accordingly, the paper proposes five collaborative strategies: integrating advanced technologies, building shared image resource systems, enhancing user engagement mechanisms, expanding East Asian visual symbol networks, and adapting institutional frameworks to diverse cultural contexts. These strategies aim to support both theoretical innovation in iconology and sustainable regional cultural communication in the digital age. Full article

Maritime vision sensing can be applied to maritime unmanned systems to perform search and rescue (SAR) missions under complex marine environments, as multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) are able to conduct vision sensing through the air, the water-surface, and underwater. However, in these vision-based maritime SAR systems, collaboration between UAVs and USVs is a critical issue for successful SAR operations. To address this challenge, in this paper, we propose a long-endurance collaborative SAR scheme which exploits the complementary strengths of the maritime unmanned systems. In this scheme, a swarm of UAVs leverages a multi-agent reinforcement-learning (MARL) method and probability maps to perform cooperative first-phase search exploiting UAV’s high altitude and wide field of view of vision sensing. Then, multiple USVs conduct precise real-time second-phase operations by refining the probabilistic map. To deal with the energy constraints of UAVs and perform long-endurance collaborative SAR missions, a multi-USV charging scheduling method is proposed based on MARL to prolong the UAVs’ flight time. Through extensive simulations, the experimental results verified the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and long-endurance search capabilities. Full article

The Visegrád Group (V4), as China’s key economic and trade partner in Central and Eastern Europe, plays a pivotal role in enhancing the effectiveness of sustainable development within the China-Central and Eastern Europe cooperation (China-CEEC) framework through its comprehensive green initiatives. This study analyzes export data and environmental product classifications from major countries in the CEPII-BACI database, covering the period from 2003 to 2022, to construct a green product space network. The analysis reveals the evolutionary patterns of the green industry and the collaborative transformation mechanisms between China and the V4 countries. The findings indicate the following: (1) The green product space network displays a “core-periphery” structural framework, wherein China has expanded its core product offerings by leveraging technological advancements in the photovoltaic sector, while the V4 countries enhance their resource allocation by systematically phasing out peripheral products. (2) The Green Complexity Index (GCI) suggests that China’s green production capacity has significantly improved, thereby narrowing the technological gap with Poland and Slovakia. (3) According to the Green Competition Index, a strategic complementary space exists between the two parties in the domain of medium- to high-complexity products. This study recommends extending green cooperation to higher value chain segments by establishing a collaborative innovation network for green technologies, developing a dynamic capacity optimization mechanism, and deepening the joint research and development of core products. This article offers a decision-making framework based on production capacity endowments to facilitate multinational collaborative transformations in the green industry. Full article

Gait recognition, as a non-contact biometric technology, offers unique advantages in scenarios requiring long-distance identification without active cooperation from subjects. However, existing gait recognition methods predominantly rely on single-modal data, which demonstrates insufficient feature expression capabilities when confronted with complex factors in real-world environments, including viewpoint variations, clothing differences, occlusion problems, and illumination changes. This paper addresses these challenges by introducing a multi-modal gait recognition network based on channel shuffle regulation and spatial-frequency joint learning, which integrates two complementary modalities (silhouette data and heatmap data) to construct a more comprehensive gait representation. The channel shuffle-based feature selective regulation module achieves cross-channel information interaction and feature enhancement through channel grouping and feature shuffling strategies. This module divides input features along the channel dimension into multiple subspaces, which undergo channel-aware and spatial-aware processing to capture dependency relationships across different dimensions. Subsequently, channel shuffling operations facilitate information exchange between different semantic groups, achieving adaptive enhancement and optimization of features with relatively low parameter overhead. The spatial-frequency joint learning module maps spatiotemporal features to the spectral domain through fast Fourier transform, effectively capturing inherent periodic patterns and long-range dependencies in gait sequences. The global receptive field advantage of frequency domain processing enables the model to transcend local spatiotemporal constraints and capture global motion patterns. Concurrently, the spatial domain processing branch balances the contributions of frequency and spatial domain information through an adaptive weighting mechanism, maintaining computational efficiency while enhancing features. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed GaitCSF model achieves significant performance improvements on mainstream datasets including GREW, Gait3D, and SUSTech1k, breaking through the performance bottlenecks of traditional methods. The implications of this research are significant for improving the performance and robustness of gait recognition systems when implemented in practical application scenarios. Full article

The emergence of the new retail model of community group buying (CGB) has brought a significant impact on the traditional retail of community nanostores while community nanostores, as the leaders of the community, have the natural advantage of becoming the pick-up points of the CGB platform. Therefore, as the two core formats in the new community retail ecosystem, the CGB platform and community nanostore exhibit both competitive and complementary characteristics. Aiming at the community retail market composed of the CGB platform and the community nanostore, this study constructed a Hotelling game model to portray the competition and cooperation between these two channels and explored the impacts of different operational strategies on the equilibrium decisions and optimal profits of community retail market participants through comparative analysis. The research revealed that when retailers adopt the non-cooperation strategy, the community nanostore will occupy a larger market share, and the spillover effect between channels brought by the cooperation strategy is the main factor influencing retailers’ operation strategy. In addition, the type of pick-up point operated by the community nanostore will also affect the cooperation willingness of the CGB platform. Full article

This article explores the integration of “Ayatutu”, a communal philosophy from Nigeria’s Tiv people, into mathematics education frameworks. Ayatutu—embodying collective responsibility and mutual assistance—aligns with contemporary cooperative learning approaches while offering unique cultural dimensions. Through analysis of the ethnomathematics literature, indigenous knowledge systems, and cooperative learning theories this article develops a theoretical framework for Ayatutu-based mathematics instruction built on the following five core elements: collective problem-solving, resource sharing, complementary expertise, process orientation, and intergenerational knowledge transfer. The framework demonstrates significant alignment with sociocultural learning theory, communities of practice, and critical pedagogy while also offering potential benefits including enhanced mathematical engagement, positive identity development, stronger learning communities, and cultural sustainability. Implementation challenges involving teacher preparation, structural constraints, cultural translation, and balancing individual with collective learning are examined. This research contributes to decolonizing mathematics education by positioning indigenous philosophical systems as valuable resources for creating culturally responsive and mathematically powerful learning environments that serve diverse student populations while honoring cultural wisdom. Full article

The bioeconomy and biotechnology sectors present transformative opportunities for sustainable development by harnessing biological resources and promoting innovation. This study investigates the potential for bilateral collaboration between Colombia and China, highlighting their complementary strengths: Colombia’s remarkable biodiversity and China’s advanced technological capabilities and policy frameworks. This article aimed to analyze the current landscape of bioeconomy and biotechnology in both countries, identify key areas for cooperation, evaluate regulatory frameworks, and propose strategies to strengthen bilateral efforts. This paper combines a qualitative approach with an extensive literature review, secondary data analysis, and case studies. The findings indicate that Colombia’s rich biodiversity offers significant opportunities in bioprospecting, biofuels, and agricultural biotechnology. Meanwhile, China’s expertise in bioeconomic innovation can facilitate technological advancements and capacity building. However, these opportunities remain despite challenges such as trade imbalances, regulatory gaps, and cultural differences. Collaborative initiatives focused on bioplastics, bioenergy, and circular economy principles have the potential to diversify Colombia’s exports and enhance its global competitiveness. This study emphasizes that integrating Colombia’s natural resources with China’s technological advancements has the potential to drive innovation, improve participation in global value chains, and foster sustainability. Effective governance, inclusive policies, and strategic investments are crucial to fully realizing this partnership’s transformative potential in tackling global challenges like climate change and food security. Full article

Multimodal amed entity recognition (MNER) is a natural language-processing technique that integrates text and visual modalities to detect and segment entity boundaries and their types from unstructured multimodal data. Although existing methods alleviate semantic deficiencies by optimizing image and text feature extraction and fusion, a fundamental challenge remains due to the lack of fine-grained alignment caused by cross-modal semantic deviations and image noise interference. To address these issues, this paper proposes a dual-enhanced hierarchical alignment (DEHA) framework that achieves dual semantic and spatial enhancement via global–local cooperative alignment optimization. The proposed framework incorporates a dual enhancement strategy comprising Semantic-Augmented Global Contrast (SAGC) and Multi-scale Spatial Local Contrast (MS-SLC), which reinforce the alignment of image and text modalities at the global sample level and local feature level, respectively, thereby reducing image noise. Additionally, a cross-modal feature fusion and vision-constrained CRF prediction layer is designed to achieve adaptive aggregation of global and local features. Experimental results on the Twitter-2015 and Twitter-2017 datasets yield F1 scores of 77.42% and 88.79%, outperforming baseline models. These results demonstrate that the global–local complementary mechanism effectively balances alignment precision and noise robustness, thereby enhancing entity recognition accuracy in social media and advancing multimodal semantic understanding. Full article

Amid accelerating globalization and urbanization, regional revitalization has become a key policy direction for countries to address regional decline. Among these, social capital and community empowerment can significantly promote regional development. Social capital emphasizes how trust, norms, and reciprocity facilitate collective action, while community empowerment focuses on improving residents’ participation and autonomous decision-making capacity. Existing research primarily focuses on cases from Europe and America; there is no in-depth exploration of the interaction between regional revitalization and social capital in Taiwan. Notably, systematic studies are lacking regarding the mechanisms through which University Social Responsibility (USR) programs engage and promote community development. This study takes the Wanli and Jinshan districts in northern Taiwan as case study examples. We employ action research and qualitative research methods to analyze the role of social capital and community empowerment in regional revitalization. This paper reviews how internal trust and cooperation within a community build bonding social capital. It explores how USR programs promote collaboration between communities and external resources through bridging social capital. The findings indicate that bonding social capital can enhance community cohesion and support regional revitalization efforts; bridging social capital can introduce academic, corporate, and governmental resources, providing technical and financial support for community innovation. The participatory mechanism of USR programs not only fosters civic awareness development but also offers a cross-organizational cooperation platform for regional revitalization, enabling communities to integrate internal and external resources more effectively. The results of this study indicate that bonding and bridging social capital can achieve complementary effects through USR programs, further promoting community empowerment and regional development. This study deepens the application of social capital theory in regional revitalization. It provides an empirical basis for policymakers and academic institutions to optimize the planning and implementation of future USR programs. While the study focuses on a geographically bounded set of cases and employs an exploratory qualitative design, these choices enabled a rich, context-sensitive understanding of how regional self-governance and community capital may be strengthened in practice. Future research could extend this line of inquiry by examining additional locales, adopting longitudinal perspectives, and integrating mixed-method approaches, thereby further amplifying the robustness and applicability of the propositions advanced here. Full article