Search Results (1,469)

Heart failure (HF) is a complex clinical syndrome that represents an increasingly relevant health issue, associated with substantial morbidity and mortality in pediatric patients. While considerable therapeutic advances have transformed the prognosis of adult patients with heart failure over the past three decades, progress in pediatric heart failure has been considerably slower. In adult patients, large randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have established angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE inhibitors), beta-blockers, mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs), angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitors (ARNIs), and, more recently, sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors as the cornerstone of guideline-directed medical therapy. Evidence supporting pharmacological therapy in pediatric heart failure remains scarce and frequently inconclusive, with most available studies being limited by small sample sizes and heterogeneous patient populations. Therefore, heart failure treatment in children is mostly extrapolated from adult studies and guidelines. However, developmental differences in myocardial structure and function, neurohormonal signaling, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics may substantially influence therapeutic response. In addition, the rarity and the etiological heterogeneity of pediatric HF create major methodological challenges for adequately powered clinical trials. This review compares the pharmacological management of HF in adult and pediatric populations, examines the strength of evidence for contemporary therapies and discusses the biological and methodological limitations of translating adult evidence into pediatric practice. Multicenter collaborative studies and well-designed pediatric randomized controlled trials are essential for establishing truly evidence-based pharmacological strategies for children with HF. Full article

The 2024 European Parliament elections happened about ten years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed the scale of social media interference in democratic processes. Given the persistent concerns about disinformation and its effects on the democratic process, and against a decade of political and public concern about disinformation, this paper examines how disinformation was framed in EU political discourse during the 2024 election campaign. Drawing on a frame analysis of three communicative registers, namely European Parliament plenary debates, party manifestos, and X posts by key political actors during the 2024 European Parliament election campaign, we identify three dominant narratives that articulate the disinformation problem in markedly different ways, revealing a tendency towards ideological asymmetry. Across these narratives, diagnostic framings are generally more developed than prognostic ones, with proposed responses remaining limited and often repetitive. Salient issues linked to contemporary information environments, particularly artificial intelligence, receive comparatively little attention. Overall, the findings suggest that disinformation was an infrequently invoked topic and only rarely treated as a central political issue. Despite a decade of public and policy attention to disinformation, political actors largely reproduced problem-oriented narratives, while discussion of concrete responses remained limited. Full article

In contemporary manned–unmanned teaming (MUM-T) systems, the accurate detection of aircraft in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery is crucial for battlefield surveillance and target identification. However, challenges such as background clutter, significant scale variations, and limitations in existing feature extraction methods hinder detection accuracy. To address these issues, this study proposes CCS-Net, a lightweight Cooperative Context-aware Sensing Network designed specifically for SAR aircraft detection. CCS-Net enhances image contrast through Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) preprocessing and employs a novel C2F_LK module combined with a Multi-scale Context Aggregation (MSCA) module to improve multi-scale feature representation with minimal parameters. An FPN-PAN structure adaptively fuses these features, while the Spatial Coordinate Attention Head (SCA-Head) integrates spatial and coordinate attention mechanisms to emphasize key aircraft regions. Optimized with label smoothing, our model achieves a 96.6% mAP@0.5 and 93.5% precision on the SAR-Aircraft-1.0 dataset with only 0.97M parameters. It generalizes well on the SADD aircraft dataset and cross-domain HRSID and SSDD ship benchmarks, outperforming state-of-the-art methods in both accuracy and lightweight design. Full article

The study of the conceptual framework examined climate change, water civilization, and socio-economic development in ancient Dalmatia (Croatia). The study examined the cultural and social development centered on managing and depending on water from 350 BCE to 900 CE. Significance was highlighted on water resources and water civilization as the basis of human society, influencing culture, governance, and survival. This research utilized a thermodynamic framework to illustrate the dynamic interrelationships that affect the development of civilization, establishing continuous cycles of reciprocal influence and adjustment. The findings indicate that the main external dangers to civilizations in Dalmatia were significant alterations in climate patterns and abrupt variations in water cycles brought on by solar radiation and cooling due to volcanic eruptions. Within the organization, there was an insufficient water management expertise required to manage and regulate water resource systems. With the failure of water networks and dissipative structures, local communities were deprived of water and food resources. Hunger, warfare, and illness frequently ensued, resulting in large-scale movement or the desertion of cities. The results suggest that the connection among climate change, water societies, and socio-economic elements underpins both human history and contemporary global issues. Full article

Digital technologies are increasingly reshaping contemporary visual art, not only through artificial intelligence and generative systems but also through material-based artistic practices. While existing scholarship has extensively explored computational creativity, digital aesthetics, and AI-generated imagery, less attention has been paid to how digital fabrication transforms artistic practice through its interaction with physical materials and spatial perception. This paper addresses this issue through a practice-based investigation of contemporary glass art. Drawing upon the author’s long-term artistic practice, the study examines two interconnected projects: the Glass Calligraphy Series and the Spatial Cutting Series. The first project explores how traditional Chinese calligraphy is translated into glass through digital drawing, vector-based design, and waterjet fabrication, revealing how artistic agency is redistributed among artist, software, fabrication systems, and material processes. The second project investigates how layered glass structures generate spatial depth, optical relationships, and embodied viewing experiences. The paper argues that digital fabrication should not be understood merely as a technical tool. Instead, it functions as a creative framework that reconfigures artistic agency, activates the material and spatial qualities of glass, and transforms viewer experience. By examining the intersection of computation, material practice, and visual perception, this paper proposes a broader understanding of digital fabrication as an integral component of contemporary visual art. It argues that digital technologies are not external instruments applied to artistic production but active agents in the formation of artistic methods, material relationships, and aesthetic experience. Full article

Insulator defect detection remains challenging due to low recognition accuracy for aging, breakage, flashover, and similar faults, limited capability in identifying small targets, and inadequate cross-scale feature fusion under complex backgrounds. To address these issues, this study develops an enhanced detection model, YOLO11-MG, which integrates multi-scale edge information selection and enhancement with global information fusion. In the backbone, the original C3K2 module is replaced by C3K2-MSEIS, which mitigates detail loss during downsampling and strengthens feature representation for small objects and blurred boundaries through a multi-scale edge information selection and enhancement strategy. In the neck, a Gather-and-Distribute (GD) mechanism is introduced; by combining Low-GD and High-GD designs, it enables lossless transmission and effective interaction of cross-scale features. Additionally, the C2PSA module is incorporated to realize adaptive feature weight allocation. Experiments demonstrate that YOLO11-MG achieves precision, recall, mAP@0.5, and mAP@50–95 of 82.3%, 96%, 88.1%, and 70.3%, representing improvements of 5.7%, 4%, 3.1%, and 5.6% over the baseline YOLO11s, respectively. Compared with contemporary YOLO variants such as YOLOv8s, YOLOv10m, and YOLOv12m, the proposed model attains a better accuracy–speed trade-off: it improves mAP@0.5 by 6.3% and accelerates inference by 23.4% relative to YOLOv8s, while keeping 27.67 M parameters—on par with lightweight models but with notably stronger global feature interaction and edge preservation. Overall, the method achieves high detection accuracy, computational efficiency, and real-time inference capability, making it well suited for UAV-based inspection and offering reliable technical support for intelligent insulator fault diagnosis in power systems. Full article

In the early 20th century and before, architectural styles were distinguished by the various cultures of different regions. However, under rapid globalization, these styles have become similar and seem interchangeable, disconnected from the city and human environment. This phenomenon is known as architectural homogenization. In response to this issue, the research aims to reconsider architectural typology as a strategic tool to reinforce architectural identity through a new proposed methodological approach—the Typology–Identity Matrix Model. The model is grounded in matrix and cross-impact analysis; it examines how typological approaches promote different architectural identity dimensions and uses a ternary scoring system to evaluate their relationships. Furthermore, by applying this model to both qualitative and quantitative analysis, the research could derive a range of design attempts significant for forming architectural identity. In literature and design practices, little research applies typology to form architectural identity; the research bridges these two concepts with the original Typology–Identity Matrix Model. In this way, the designed architecture could integrate the site’s characteristics and spirits, while offering new interpretations in the contemporary context. The outcomes provide practical support for contemporary architectural design and help advance disciplinary awareness at the theoretical level. Full article

American universities have always reached beyond knowledge development. They are constituted through and often defenders of rights central to free and fair democracy. This article makes a novel case for reinvigorated commitments to democratic civic education, including a normative commitment to the dignity of all persons that is institutionalized through equality before the law. The analysis cuts through contemporary pieties of the left and right. The focus is US higher education, including relationships with governments, law, policy, and civil society, proceeding in six significant sections. After defining key terms and the plan of this paper, I clarify the relatively recent innovation of rights and their absence around the world. Rights are foundational for free and fair democracy. I then review critical moments among state, civil society, the rule of law, and higher education across US history, demonstrating that values commitments are essential to establishing basic freedoms for a functioning democracy. The legal and cultural architecture of the rights tradition also undergirds sacred ideals in higher education, including academic freedom and institutional autonomy. That analysis leads to two highly contested issues—national security and policing—to suggest how contemporary institutional patterns undermine progress on critical university goals: deepened insight and/or principled disagreement. Evidence indicates courses related to policing and its critiques are siloed within curricula, student self-selection and institutional socioeconomic sorting undermine potentially related democratic dialogue, and both connect to position campus discourse out of step with marginalized communities. These issues intersect with a key point of this article: individual rights and the formal, legal embrace of shared dignity require government entities. In the final sections, I focus on institutional-level recommendations for civic education that expands commitments to human dignity and the rule of law within a free and fair democracy. Full article

The question of when human life begins is one of the fundamental issues at the intersection of religious ethics, law, and bioethics. This article examines the legal status of the embryo and abortion in Islamic and Jewish legal traditions through a comparative approach. The study analyzes primary religious sources, including the Qur’an and Hadith in Islam and the Torah and Talmud in Judaism, together with classical legal interpretations and contemporary scholarly debates. Using a comparative legal and textual methodology, it explores key concepts such as the gradual status of the fetus and ensoulment in Islamic law, as well as the position and legal status of the fetus in Jewish law. The findings indicate that both traditions regard the embryo as a developing form of human life worthy of protection, yet they differ regarding the stage at which full legal and moral status is attained. In Islamic law, fetal protection acquires greater significance following ensoulment, while contemporary discussions increasingly emphasize the importance of fertilization. In Jewish law, full legal personhood is generally associated with birth, and the fetus is understood primarily in relation to the mother. These differing approaches lead to distinct legal outcomes in matters such as maternal health and fetal abnormalities. The study concludes that, despite their differences, both traditions seek to balance the protection of fetal life with the preservation of the mother’s life and well-being. Full article

Background/Objectives: Healthcare workforce shortages and the challenges facing healthcare professionals are among the most pressing issues confronting contemporary health systems. This study examines the social representations of public, private, and public–private partnership (PPP) healthcare organisational models and professional practice elicited from public-sector physicians and nurses in Portugal. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted between October 2022 and May 2023 using a non-probability sample of 308 physicians and nurses classified as public-sector professionals. Participants completed a free-association task concerning the public, private, and PPP healthcare models and their professional practice. The evoked terms were examined using prototypical analysis within the structural approach to Social Representations Theory. The representation of the public healthcare sector included elements such as accessibility, universality, equity, slowness, disorganisation, and resource limitations. The private healthcare sector was characterised by elements including cost, profit, speed, organisation, inaccessibility, and service quality. Results: The representation of PPPs included better management, efficiency, profit, interests, and quality, alongside a relatively frequent “No opinion” response. Professional practice was characterised by elements including caring, dedication, empathy, resilience, exhaustion, perceived undervaluation, and remuneration. Conclusions: These findings describe the social representations elicited from the present sample of public-sector physicians and nurses and should not be interpreted as evidence of objective differences between healthcare organisational models or as direct measures of motivation, resilience, burnout, sector preference, or working conditions. The findings are exploratory and hypothesis-generating and may inform future comparative research involving professionals working across different healthcare settings, as well as studies using dedicated measures of professional and occupational outcomes. Full article

This article analyses how three leading female figures of the European far right—Marine Le Pen (France), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), and Alice Weidel (Germany)—construct populist discourse on X (formerly Twitter) during recent high-stakes election campaigns. The analysis is based on a corpus of 1053 posts published in the month preceding the 2022 French presidential elections, the 2022 Italian general elections, and the 2025 German federal elections. Methodologically, it combines content analysis (operationalised through a codebook developed in Atlas.ti v23), Critical Discourse Analysis, and comparative analysis to identify dominant issues, campaign strategies, and underlying discursive structures. Adopting a corpus-pragmatic perspective, the study undertakes a pragmatic examination of implicit meaning—presupposition, implication, and implicature—to show how meaning is conveyed in authentic, digitally mediated political data. The findings reveal a shared populist communicative matrix centred on polarisation, simplification, and emotional mobilisation, alongside important national variations. Le Pen and Meloni primarily construct an “internal traitor” among political elites, linking economic and social grievances to elite failure. In contrast, Weidel recentres migration and security, portraying migrants as a direct threat and mainstream parties as responsible for citizens’ insecurity. The article highlights the need for further research on gender and leadership in the contemporary European far right. Full article

Under globalization, architectural forms, spatial logic, and consumption experiences have become increasingly homogeneous, making placelessness particularly evident in large-scale commercial complexes. Establishing meaningful connections between globalized commercial spaces and local culture, urban memory, and everyday life has consequently become an important issue in research on architectural cultural sustainability. Guided by critical regionalism, this study takes placelessness as its point of departure and cultural sustainability as its evaluative perspective. It develops a two-level analytical framework comprising architectural analysis and user perception evaluation and applies this framework to the Chengdu New Century Global Center. Architectural analysis examines the building’s objective characteristics in terms of spatial image, functional organization, environmental setting, and cultural expression. User perception data were collected through a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, followed by descriptive statistics and comparative analysis across four corresponding dimensions: spatial, functional, environmental, and cultural perception. The results indicate that the building’s megascale form, contemporary architectural appearance, and multifunctional organization contribute to higher levels of spatial and functional perception. Environmental perception is also relatively positive, although deficiencies remain in resting facilities, route organization, and detailed spatial experience. By contrast, cultural perception is substantially lower than the other dimensions. The marine theme, exoticized settings, and entertainment-oriented imagery are more closely associated with a globalized consumer landscape than with the spatial translation of Chengdu’s local culture, urban memory, and everyday life. Consequently, the building’s thematic identity has not been effectively translated into users’ recognition of place-specific characteristics, suggesting that the production of commercial complex space continues to prioritize consumption efficiency over cultural expression. By operationalizing the critical regionalist concept of sense of place as an empirically assessable analytical tool, this study extends its applicability to large-scale commercial complexes and provides a diagnostic framework and practical strategies for enhancing their cultural sustainability. Full article

This review examines the environmental transition of contemporary diets, the effects of plant-based diets on human health, and vegetarianism as a phenomenon extending beyond a dietary choice, offering insights into its relationship with quality of life, physiological mechanisms, psychosocial determinants, and structural implications. In the current landscape, growing interest in vegetarianism is driven by three main factors: its contribution to multiple domains of health, its substantial potential to reduce resource use and environmental impacts, and its association with ethical and animal-related considerations. However, further research is needed to consolidate its role as a key component of future development, requiring integrated educational, cultural, technological, and policy approaches that ensure equitable access to plant-based foods, foster critical reflection on animal welfare and moral responsibility, as well as support coordinated transformations of food systems toward healthier and more environmentally sustainable societies. Ultimately, the global implementation of dietary shifts toward plant-based patterns remains anticipated but constrained, as ingrained economic and cultural interests continue to delay this pivotal systemic change. Therefore, until policy authorities enact substantial structural reforms and individuals actively promote this transition within their immediate social environments, the issue is likely to persist as a subject of ongoing debate and resistance against its operationalization. Full article