Search Results (293)

Marine plastic pollution poses severe ecological and economic threats, while people with disabilities (PwDs) often face limited meaningful employment opportunities. This study evaluated a unique social enterprise in Japan that addresses both challenges through upcycling marine plastic waste into accessories while providing employment for PwDs. Using the Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology, we assessed the project’s social and environmental impacts over one year (2020). Data was collected through stakeholder surveys, interviews, and operational records. The analysis identified 15 outcomes across six stakeholder groups, including income generation, environmental awareness-raising, and sustained volunteer engagement. The project achieved an SROI ratio of 3.50, indicating that every JPY 1 invested generated JPY 3.50 in social value. Media exposure (30.5%), employment income (25.6%), and volunteer motivation (18.5%) comprised 74% of the total value. Despite processing only 50 kg of marine plastic annually, the project demonstrated significant symbolic impact through behavior change and public awareness. Key challenges include limited production capacity, wage constraints, and gender-biased consumer demographics. This case illustrates how small-scale, community-based upcycling initiatives can generate multidimensional social value by integrating environmental conservation with social inclusion objectives. Full article

Conservative media have been shown to exert disproportionate levels of influence over other mainstream media agendas. This study explores the outsized influence of Australia’s conservative media during the 2023 Australian Voice to Parliament referendum on other news agendas and, in turn, the impact on public and political agendas. Combining conservative advocacy, agenda-setting, and frame-building theories, this study uses content analysis of news frames included in Australian news reports about the Marcia Langton “racism” controversy. The influence of conservative media frames on other news media reporting and political and public responses to the controversy is conceptualised as a self-propelling agenda feedback wheel, fuelled by deliberate media advocacy. By having an outsized influence on the rest of the Australian media’s reporting of the racism controversy, News Corp also influenced the public and political referendum debate. These findings add new insights into how conservative media power is used to influence other media and, in turn, democracy. Full article

The decline of the monarch butterfly population in western North America has been documented by 28 years of community scientist counts from overwintering sites in California. However, no long-term studies on the status and dynamics of monarch populations during spring to fall are available. Using multiple datasets from online recording sites, social media, and personal observations, our study over 13 years shows increases and declines in warm-season populations in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) on a 2 to 4-year cycle that corresponds with fluctuations in overwintering populations. Overall, there was little evidence of a systemic decline in the abundance of monarchs in the PNW. Monarchs were reported in all PNW states and territories in all years, with the earliest annual first appearance in Oregon and the latest in British Columbia and a maximum seasonal range of 200 km north of the US/Canada border. Relatively equal numbers of unique sightings originated from each of three community scientist online recording platforms, with a larger number of unique sightings from personal observations/communications and multiple social media sites. The value of community scientist sightings for the rapid detection of substantial changes in populations was highlighted in August 2024 when weekly sighting data showed a substantial decline in PNW populations that may have been caused by poor survival of immature stages during a July heatwave. The conservation of monarchs in western North America will benefit from contemporary and high-value data on phenology and population dynamics, which we show can be provided by community science observations. Full article

Wildlife viewing has long been a central feature of tourism. However, growing concerns over the welfare of animals involved have raised critical questions about human management and the use of wildlife. In response, scholars have developed frameworks to assess and guide the operations of animal-based attractions. This paper applies such a framework to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China, empirically examining visitor perceptions of animal welfare management practices. Drawing on survey data from over 1000 visitors, the study finds that, overall, tourists hold positive evaluations of the Base’s governance, welfare, and conservation practices. However, these perceptions are influenced by factors such as prior exposure to panda-related social media and individual knowledge of animal welfare, highlighting the role of mediated experiences in shaping visitor judgments. The findings underscore the need for further research on ethical wildlife tourism practices and suggest that engaging and empowering tourists—through education, participatory evaluation, and digital platforms—can enhance both public awareness and the effectiveness of conservation and welfare initiatives. Full article

This study analyzes the political speeches of Brazilian federal representatives from the Liberal Party (PL), the primary platform for Bolsonarism, to identify patterns and features of conspiracy theories. Two core concepts are used: conspiracy theories as a worldview that addresses unpredictability and complexity of life in contemporary society, and Bolsonarism as a fundamentally conspiracist worldview grounded in reactionary authoritarianism and populism. Analyzing speeches delivered between 2019 and 2024, our inductive methodology identified both epistemological (logic) and narrative (rhetoric) elements. These individual elements organically integrated to form a pervasive, overarching conspiracy theory that we term “The Grand Collusion”. This theory was strategically deployed to support electoral campaigns and structure political opposition to the Lula government. “The Grand Collusion” alleges a vast alliance between the top echelons of the Judiciary (led by STF Minister Alexandre de Moraes) and the Brazilian Left (led by Lula), with assistance from major media and multilateral organizations. Its alleged objectives include rigging the 2022 elections and orchestrating the systematic persecution and censorship of Right-wing politicians and conservative citizens. Full article

Heat exchangers–adsorbers (HEX-As) are emerging as innovative technologies in many applications (CO₂ capture, gas purification and separation, thermal energy storage, etc). This review addresses the theoretical challenges within computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in modeling and simulating coupled heat and mass transfer within gas separation by using adsorbing porous media in fixed beds. Conservation equations of mass, momentum, and energy from different studies (1D, 2D-CFD, and 3D-CFD models) are presented and discussed with an emphasis on their ability to predict the complex multi-physics multi-scale heat and mass transfer phenomena involved, such as the adsorption kinematics, the thermal front propagation, and the multi-component fluid flow dynamics inside the beds. For the fist time, we show that mathematical theoretical modeling in CFD has been differently developed and applied by many authors in the literature in order to model the same physical phenomena. This sheds light on the present challenges and bottlenecks in theoretical and computational fluid dynamics when it comes to complex coupled heat and mass transfer in multi-component gas dynamics in porous media. This review make it easier for readers to understand the different models that exist in the literature for modeling and simulating HEX-As. It also opens questions on how accurately one can model multi-functional heat exchangers–adsorbers using CFD, e.g., physics multi-scale extrapolation from nano- to meso- and then to macro-scale behavior. Full article

This study investigates how Italian and American media frame climate change through politically oriented and, in some cases, populist narratives that challenge the principles of the open society. The analysis draws on a dataset of 71 items from eight outlets, evenly divided by country and political alignment, collected from Facebook posts that generated at least forty comments. A mixed-methods design was employed, including keyness analysis, topic modeling, keyword-in-context exploration, and qualitative content analysis. The findings show clear cross-national and ideological differences: conservative sources rely more heavily on politicized and populist framings, particularly in the U.S., where climate change is frequently narrated through an antagonistic “elites versus ordinary citizens” lens associated with skepticism toward scientific authority and sustainable technologies. Italian media display a more technocratic approach, emphasizing institutional, economic, and policy dimensions within the European context. Progressive sources in both countries rely more consistently on scientific and policy-oriented arguments, although American progressive outlets show higher political engagement than their Italian counterparts, likely in response to the stronger populist rhetoric and distrust of expertise found in U.S. conservative media. Overall, the results highlight how populist narratives can shape climate communication and influence the openness of public debate in different democratic contexts. Full article

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set the criteria for sustainable economic development. These goals encompass four dimensions, including social, human, economic, and environment, of which the last two goals (i.e., economic and environment) were contemplated in this study. A case study for Corner Brook, a middle-sized city, located in the western region of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, revealed that the current urban water use pricing mechanism is not matched with the SDGs, which reflects impediments to the city’s achievements to become a sustainable economic development community. Residents are billed a fixed rate for water use rather than a tiered or usage-based rate. This is not a resilient policy, as it fails to conserve water resources, ultimately leading to wasting freshwater produce, inhibiting economic growth, creating social exclusion, and degrading natural resources. We recommend changing the current flat-rate based water billing mechanism to either increasing block tariffs or two-part tariffs, adjusted by seasonal rates; issuing governmental policies, such as rebates, subsidies, and lower property taxes to entice residents’ willingness-to-install water meters on their premises; encouraging provisions such as using rain barrels to help cut down water consumption; and raising public knowledge through social media on how high per capita water use is in the region, including how much it costs to install water meters. These recommendations will also help provincial and municipal policymakers pursue the SDGs. Full article

The southern Anhui region is home to numerous atypical traditional villages. These settlements serve not only as vital spaces for residents’ daily lives but also as core venues for the transmission and dissemination of traditional culture. Consequently, effectively identifying and classifying these deteriorating traditional villages to formulate corresponding conservation and revitalization strategies has become a critical issue in cultural heritage preservation and utilization. This study focuses on 40 traditional villages in Yixian County, Huangshan City, Anhui Province, as its research subjects. Based on Points of Interest (POI), media sources, village archives, and field surveys, a systematic analysis of these traditional villages was conducted. By integrating a literature review with expert consultation within a multidisciplinary framework, we constructed a three-tiered evaluation system comprising 15 indicators across three major domains: resident experience, tourist engagement, and village environmental quality. The clustering results indicate that 33 out of the 40 villages are atypical. Based on indicator aggregation, these atypical villages are further categorized into two types: B1 (endangered-type) and B2 (resident-dominant/tourist supplementary type). Using this classification system, we propose tailored development strategies for each village type. The findings offer both theoretical and practical guidance for broader traditional village conservation efforts. Full article

This paper investigates a physics-informed surrogate modeling framework for multi-phase flow in porous media based on the Fourier Neural Operator. Traditional numerical simulators, though accurate, suffer from severe computational bottlenecks due to fine-grid discretizations and the iterative solution of highly nonlinear partial differential equations. By parameterizing the kernel integral directly in Fourier space, the operator provides a discretization-invariant mapping between function spaces, enabling efficient spectral convolutions. We introduce a Dual-Branch Adaptive Fourier Neural Operator with a shared Fourier encoder and two decoders: a saturation branch that uses an inverse Fourier transform followed by a multilayer perceptron and a pressure branch that uses a convolutional decoder. Temporal information is injected via Time2Vec embeddings and a causal temporal transformer, conditioning each forward pass on step index and time step to maintain consistent dynamics across horizons. Physics-informed losses couple data fidelity with residuals from mass conservation and Darcy pressure, enforcing the governing constraints in Fourier space; truncated spectral kernels promote generalization across meshes without retraining. On SPE10-style heterogeneities, the model shifts the infinity-norm error mass into the ${10}^{-2}$ to ${10}^{-1}$ band during early transients and sustains lower errors during pseudo-steady state. In zero-shot three-dimensional coarse-to-fine upscaling from $30\times 110\times 5$ to $60\times 220\times 5$, it attains $R^2=0.90$, RMSE = $4.4\times {10}^{-2}$, and MAE = $3.2\times {10}^{-2}$, with more than 90% of voxels below five percent absolute error across five unseen layers, while the end-to-end pipeline runs about three times faster than a full-order fine-grid solve and preserves water-flood fronts and channel connectivity. Benchmarking against established baselines indicates a scalable, high-fidelity alternative for high-resolution multi-phase flow simulation in porous media. Full article

Daknamu (Broussonetia × kazinoki), the primary fiber source for hanji (traditional Korean handmade paper), provides fibers that are highly durable and used in fine-edition publishing as well as in the conservation and restoration of cultural heritage materials and historic books. However, hanji production has declined due to decreased farm cultivation of B. × kazinoki, emphasizing the need for efficient vegetative propagation. This study evaluated the effects of three rooting media (commercial substrate, a mixture of commercial substrate and decomposed granite soil, and decomposed granite soil) and two plant growth regulators (auxins), 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) and indole-3-butyric acid (IBA), including a rooting powder containing 0.8% IBA, on rooting performance and physiological responses. Decomposed granite soil produced the highest rooting rate, and the rooting effect index peaked with the rooting powder treatment. Exogenous auxins consistently increased the rooting rate and improved root traits. Photosynthetic activity was enhanced in decomposed granite soil, indicating improved water uptake following root development. Chlorophyll fluorescence showed a low F_v/F_m ratio and a JIP pattern indicative of stress. Soil analyses confirmed greater aeration and drainage in decomposed granite soil but revealed limitations in post-rooting water and nutrient availability. Root traits were positively correlated with photosynthetic parameters and available phosphorus, whereas electrical conductivity, cation-exchange capacity, moisture, organic matter, total nitrogen, and exchangeable cations were negatively correlated. Decomposed granite soil combined with 1500 mg·L⁻¹ IBA or rooting powder provided practical conditions for nursery-scale propagation. These findings provide a scientific basis for developing efficient cutting propagation systems for B. × kazinoki in farms and nurseries. Full article

The spontaneous combustion of coal represents a common and serious safety challenge in underground mining. A frequent cause of mine fires is the ignition of residual coal accumulated in goafs. Based on the governing equations of continuity, momentum, and energy conservation, combined with the theory of flow through porous media, a three-dimensional numerical model was developed to simulate CO₂ injection for fire prevention in coal goafs. Using COMSOL Multiphysics software, the effects of different CO₂ injection parameters (location and flow rate) on oxygen distribution and the range of the oxidation zone within the goaf were investigated. The results indicate that with an injection point 15 m from the working face and a flow rate of 4.41 m³/min, the width of the oxidation zone was most significantly reduced, effectively suppressing the occurrence of coal spontaneous combustion. The location of the injection point was found to have a greater impact on the inerting effect than the injection flow rate. This study provides a theoretical basis and parameter optimization guidelines for CO₂ injection in goaf areas for fire prevention and control. Full article

Although nanotechnology is increasingly applied in plant tissue culture in many parts of Europe, its use in the Balkans remains limited, revealing a regional gap with untapped potential for advancing in vitro propagation and preservation of woody plant species. Building upon a recently published regional review covering 2001–2024, which analyzed in vitro biotechnology progress in nine Balkan countries, this paper introduces the concept of a “nano gap”, referring to the limited connection between existing nanotechnology research potential and its use in in vitro woody plant biotechnology. In Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Albania, significant progress has been made in optimizing micropropagation and in vitro conservation strategies by introducing temporary immersion systems, synthetic seed technology, adapting genotype-specific sterilization and multiplication protocols, and modifying established cryopreservation methods for regional woody species. However, the integration of nanotechnology into these systems remains largely unexplored. To date, there are no published results or validated applications for nano-enhanced media or nanoscale delivery systems for micropropagation and in vitro conservation of woody species. The limited integration of nanotechnology may be due to insufficient funding, lack of specialized infrastructure, and limited interdisciplinary expertise. Nevertheless, many Balkan countries possess growing capacities in nano-applications within agriculture and environmental sciences and are ready to advance toward interdisciplinary research and innovation. By mapping both scientific readiness and structural barriers, this review provides a strategic framework for bridging the “nano gap” and offers a novel regional perspective with broader implications for European research policy, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity preservation, and green innovation. Full article

In the context of digital transformation for industrial heritage conservation propelled by China’s National Industrial Heritage Management Measures, evidence regarding the trade-offs among accuracy, completeness, and efficiency within the acquisition–registration–integration pipeline, as well as transferable methodologies, remains inadequate. Addressing key challenges in information integration for industrial architectural heritage in Inner Mongolia—such as fragile media, weak sustainability, and severe information silos—demands a systematic solution. This paper proposes a BIM-based three-dimensional digital preservation framework centered on “Space-Time-Value” and empirically validates its workflow effectiveness and database interoperability. Focusing on the Inner Mongolia University of Technology Architecture Building, a prime exemplar of adaptive reuse in the region, we employed terrestrial 3D laser scanning and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) oblique photogrammetry to acquire a 13.8-billion-point cloud. Using Autodesk Revit, we developed an LOD400 model (comprising 12 component types and 349 parametric families), achieving systematic integration of structural data, spatial evolution information, and non-geometric attributes. Comparative evaluation shows that this workflow outperforms baselines in geometric accuracy, facade completeness, and processing efficiency, while significantly enhancing the integration and retrieval capabilities for heterogeneous data. The research establishes a “Multi-source Data Integration + Sustainable Utilization” digital paradigm for industrial architectural heritage, providing a replicable methodology for whole-life-cycle management and adaptive reuse. Full article

Heritage cities confront persistent tensions between safeguarding cultural authenticity and facilitating sustainable heritage tourism within rapidly modernizing urban contexts. This study examines these dynamics through Pingyao Ancient City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site exemplifying both conservation achievements and tourism challenges. Employing a mixed-methods framework, the research synthesizes GIS-based spatial analysis, multi-scalar policy assessment, media discourse analysis, and stakeholder interviews with residents, tourists, and heritage managers. Findings reveal substantial land use transformations characterized by internal functional restructuring with 212% and 300% expansion of service and commercial land use, respectively. While regulatory frameworks demonstrate efficacy in preserving architectural integrity, they simultaneously constrain adaptive reuse and experiential engagement. Media narratives and interviews illuminate pervasive authenticity concerns (86% among stakeholders) despite acknowledged infrastructural improvements. The analysis validates that static preservation paradigms, while achieving technical objectives, potentially undermine destination competitiveness by privileging physical conservation over cultural vitality and holistic visitor experiences. This study posits that sustainable heritage tourism necessitates integrated policy frameworks reconciling conservation imperatives with adaptive spatial strategies, dynamic community engagement, and authentic cultural interpretation. These findings contribute to heritage management theory while offering practical implications for policy formulation in comparable contexts. Full article