Search Results (78)

Inflammatory lung diseases (ILDs) represent a global public health crisis characterized by escalating prevalence, significant morbidity, and substantial mortality. In response to the complex immunopathogenic mechanisms driving these conditions, novel pharmacological strategies targeting resolution pathways have emerged throughout the discovery of specialized pro-resolving lipid mediator (SPM; resolvins, maresins, and protectins) dysregulation across the ILD spectra, positioning these endogenous molecules as promising therapeutic candidates for modulating maladaptive inflammation and promoting tissue repair. Over the past decade, this paradigm has catalyzed extensive translational research into SPM-based interventions as precision therapeutics for respiratory inflammation. In asthma, they reduce mucus hypersecretion, bronchial hyperreactivity, and airway inflammation, with prenatal SPM exposure potentially lowering offspring disease risk. In COPD, SPMs attenuate amyloid A-driven inflammation, normalizing cytokine/chemokine imbalances and oxidative stress and mitigating COVID-19-associated cytokine storm, enhancing survival. This review synthesizes SPMs’ pharmacotherapeutic mechanisms in ILDs and evaluates current preclinical and clinical evidence. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic, driven by SARS-CoV-2, has led to a global health crisis, highlighting the virus’s unique molecular mechanisms that distinguish it from other respiratory pathogens. It is known that the Hypoxia-Inducible Factor 1α (HIF-1α) activates a complex network of intracellular signaling pathways regulating cellular energy metabolism, angiogenesis, and cell survival, contributing to the wide range of clinical manifestations of COVID-19, including Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome (PACS). Emerging evidence suggests that dysregulation of HIF-1α is a key driver of systemic inflammation, silent hypoxia, and pathological tissue remodeling in both the acute and post-acute phases of the disease. This scoping review was conducted following PRISMA-ScR guidelines and registered in INPLASY. It involved a literature search in Scopus and PubMed, supplemented by manual reference screening, with study selection facilitated by Rayyan software. Our analysis clarifies the dual role of HIF-1α, which may either worsen inflammatory responses and viral persistence or support adaptive mechanisms that reduce cellular damage. The potential for targeting HIF-1α therapeutically in COVID-19 is complex, requiring further investigation to clarify its precise role and translational applications. This review deepens the molecular understanding of SARS-CoV-2-induced cellular and tissue dysfunction in hypoxia, offering insights for improving clinical management strategies and addressing long-term sequelae. Full article

With the ongoing changes in global economic and social environments, project organization resilience has emerged as a core competency in addressing environmental uncertainty, thereby becoming a prominent research area within construction management. This resilience is intricately linked to data resources; however, construction enterprises face systemic challenges in governance—fragmented data standards, siloed storage, and underutilized analytics—which limit their ability to translate data into crisis-responsive actions. Consequently, it is of paramount importance to investigate how data governance capabilities influence project organization resilience. This study initially identifies five dimensions of data governance capabilities within construction enterprises, spanning the three stages of planning, flow, and application: top-level design, data standard management, data collection, data storage, and data application. These dimensions are derived through a combination of literature review and expert interviews. Subsequently, this study establishes a theoretical model titled “Data Governance Capability—Project Organization Resilience”, exploring the relationships among these data governance capability dimensions and their correlations with project organization resilience. Data were collected through 142 valid questionnaires from practitioners in the Chinese construction industry and analyzed by the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) method. The results indicate a significant relationship between data governance capabilities and project organization resilience, contributing to the research on the antecedents of the latter. This study offers a scale for construction enterprises to systematically assess data governance capabilities and provides guidance on enhancing organization resilience by progressively nurturing these capabilities. Full article

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and Industry 5.0 (I5.0) represent important changes in industrial paradigms. I4.0 is centered on efficiency and competitiveness, and I5.0 adds sustainability, human-centricity, and resilience to the framework. Despite their growing relevance, much of the existing research remains techno-centric, neglecting the sociocultural and institutional forces shaping them. This study investigates how the transition from I4.0 to I5.0 is occurring using an institutional perspective. A qualitative methodology was employed, combining theoretical synthesis and secondary data analysis to develop an integrative model. The proposed model draws on insights from Institutional Theory, Scandinavian Institutionalism, Management Fashion, and Quintuple Helix, emphasizing the role of translation and diffusion in institutionalizing these paradigms. We maintain that both of them are fundamentally discursive, shaped by institutional pressures, shared meanings, and stakeholder interactions. I4.0 already allows for a heterogeneous vision adjusted to different perspectives and stakeholders. I5.0 goes further by responding to criticism about social and environmental issues and introducing resilience, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis. As a result, I5.0 aligns with a broader range of actors and interests, increasing its potential for widespread acceptance and long-term impact. This research challenges deterministic views of technology, arguing that this new industrial revolution is not eminently technology-driven but instead emphasizes the central role of discourse and institutional processes in shaping its development. Full article

In this paper, we analyzed the role of credit consortia in supporting SMEs of the Italian region of Sardinia around and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic crisis. Credit consortia (or credit guarantee schemes) are financial companies whose institutional role is to support small firms needing bank lending who are individually weak in the bank–firm relationship. Credit consortia are particularly relevant in Italy, where they mitigate credit restrictions for SMEs by supplying guarantees to the bank, allowing for partial coverage of potential losses, providing peer-monitoring activity, and collectively negotiating more favorable interest rates and other conditions with banks. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, credit consortia had a crucial role in supporting Sardinian SMEs with guarantees and obtaining government financial support. The evolution of Sardinian companies’ financial structures during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic shows that the confidi-supported firms have low capitalization and are financially fragile yet capable of good returns. The liquidity provided by the government during the pandemic loosened these constraints, boosting the available liquidity, which translated, in short, into higher investment and higher sales. The demographics of Sardinian companies in 2019–2022 and the volumes of loans and savings showed a strengthening of debt capital payments, increased collections, and a progressive improvement of the Sardinian companies’ net financial positions. Full article

From the late 17th to the early 18th century, Europe witnessed various intellectual debates, and it undeniably received help from places outside Europe such as China. When Chinese history, culture and thought, especially the Confucian classics translated into Latin, were introduced to Europe, they provided resources for comparison and reference for Europe’s ideological crisis. Confucius ou la Science des Princes, the Confucian classic translated by François Bernier, is a typical example. From the perspective of the cross-cultural history of ideas, after carefully analyzing the terminology used in Bernier’s translation and his understanding of Confucius’s thought, this paper will show that Bernier accepted, through the Jesuit translation, the non-religious dimension of politics and ethics in Confucianism, but unlike the Jesuits, he did not see Confucianism as needing Christianity; on the contrary, he believed that politics and ethics could be based on a purely secular philosophy. Based on his secular understanding of Confucius’s thought, Bernier reconstructed Confucius’s texts as a manual to teach European princes, regarding the prince’s virtue, reason and benevolence as the foundation of a country’s good government. Full article

In view of the gradual decline and near-stagnant crisis of traditional furniture art from the late Qing Dynasty, the article studied the cultural sustainable strategies of Chinese traditional furniture represented by Ming-style furniture, hoping to promote the revitalization of traditional furniture and good inheritance of traditional culture in modern society. Based on the theory of “Methodology of Affairs”, the article proposes that the sustainable strategies of traditional furniture can be understood as a correlation system under the joint action of “internal factors” (shape, function, technology, etc., of furniture) and “external factors” (social environment, economic environment, humanistic environment, etc., in which furniture develops). Starting from the two aspects, the article finally analyzed the improved translation of internal factors in five parts: shape and function, structure and connection, material and process, color and furnishing, decoration and aesthetics, and studied the adaptive changes in external factors from five dimensions: politics, economy, culture, society, and users. The article hopes to help this endangered Chinese traditional furniture art develop in a sustainable direction, and also provide a reference for scholars working in the field of the inheritance and development of traditional culture. Full article

The increasing food crisis in times of ecological threats has challenged conventional agriculture to transform into a more efficient and sustainable agri-food system. The global priority of these activities has become, among others, the responsible and effective use of already produced food. This study aimed to assess the impact of the natural resistance of cereal grains to consumption by storage pests. The study presented here analyzed the impact of selected chemical factors from the grain of six species of cereals (wheat, triticale, rye, barley, oat, corn) on the development of one of the most dangerous storage pests—the lesser grain borer Rhyzopertha dominica F. The increased development of this beetle on the tested grain was determined based on the number of progeny, the mass of dust produced, and the loss of grain mass. Moreover, the correlations between the above-mentioned development parameters of the pest and the content in the grain of dry matter, crude ash, total protein, crude fat, starch, and water-soluble carbohydrates (WSCs) were examined. The results showed that the tested pest developed most intensively on barley and triticale grains and was least abundant on oat and corn grains. Chemical analysis of the selected grain showed that the low number of the R. dominica progeny population was correlated with a higher crude fat content and a lower total protein content in the cereal grain, and therefore, these chemical properties could affect the development of the pest. Knowledge of these relationships can be used in cereal breeding programs and when recommending cereals for more extended storage. This directly translates into improved local and global nutritional and food security. Moreover, it may also contribute to the reduction of pesticide use at the storage stage, which is one of the basic requirements for agricultural production in a sustainable agriculture system. Full article

This study assesses and quantifies the economic and financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic during the period of business operation restrictions countrywide (lockdown measures). We examine the strategies adopted by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to reopen their business operations after lockdown measures had been relaxed or lifted. Data were collected in Rwanda from nearly 244 SMEs across the country, providing firsthand and reliable information on the effects of the pandemic on business performance, with a particular emphasis on wood-based enterprises. We used Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) and multivariate linear regression methods to measure the pandemic’s effects on employment, sales, and tax payments among SMEs. The findings reveal that firms downsized employment by 36%, with significant deviations within different SME sizes. Small businesses were particularly affected by reduced sales levels due to the pandemic. Although there was an overall reduction in tax payments during the crisis, medium-sized enterprises experienced a more significant decrease in taxes paid to the government by 74.6%. Additionally, regression findings affirm that the COVID-19 effects on SMEs were manifested in reduced sales across all categories of SMEs, reduced employment, and a reduced amount of taxes paid to the government, which further translate to reduced economic performance during COVID-19 period. Furthermore, SME owners utilised various coping mechanisms during the reopening phase, including a reliance on savings and selling assets. The analysis recommends establishing medium-term financing mechanisms and providing technical support for SMEs to ensure a steady and sustainable recovery from the pandemic’s effects, as well as enhancing their resilience to future socio-economic shocks. Full article

The global energy crisis has spurred increased investments in energy efficiency and clean energy initiatives; however, the results have fallen short of expected effectiveness. Concurrently, population growth and urbanisation drive a persistent surge in energy demands, especially within the residential sector, significant to overall building energy consumption. Current research focuses on residents’ responses to one-shot investments for energy efficiency or clean sources. The renovation wave, involving a massive number of existing buildings, calls for the mobilisation of huge investments that can be hard to afford in the short run. Sustainable behavioural change is complementarily rising as a key asset for maximising the overall estimated energy saving potential. Despite significant efforts to analyse household energy use and promote behavioural transformations, the literature remains gaping about future users, particularly the younger generation, as future leaders of sustainable development who exhibit a more responsible approach towards climate-related issues but also a strong dependency on digital-based solutions, which may influence energy use patterns and living habits, also impacting relations among peers and overall societal sustainability and energy efficiency. This article proposes a systematic literature review to analyse the variables affecting young people’s energy behaviour at home. The aim is to investigate the engines and gaps between strategies or tools for behaviour change and the expected effects, then find potential methods to address that barrier to identify a more promising approach, encouraging the younger generation to translate towards more sustainable energy behaviours. Full article

In light of the energy crisis, extensive research is being conducted to enhance load forecasting, optimize the targeting of demand response programs, and advise building occupants on actions to enhance energy performance. Cluster analysis is increasingly applied to usage data across all consumer types. More accurate consumer identification translates to improved resource planning. In the context of Industry 4.0, where comprehensive data are collected across various domains, we propose using existing sensor data from household appliances to extract the usage patterns and characterize the resource demands of consumers from residential households. We propose a general pipeline for extracting features from raw sensor data alongside global features for clustering device usages and classifying them based on extracted time series. We applied the proposed method to real data from three different types of household devices. We propose a strategy to identify the number of existent clusters in real data. We employed the label data obtained from clustering for the classification of consumers based on data recorded on different time ranges and achieved an increase in accuracy of up to 15% when we expanded the time range for the recorded data on the entire dataset, obtaining an accuracy of over 99.89%. We further explore the data meta-features for a minimal dataset by examining the necessary time interval for the recorded data, dataset dimensions, and the feature set. This analysis aims to achieve an effective trade-off between time and performance. Full article

This article examines how British philosophers of the 1930s grappled with the relationship between reason, emotion, and democratic citizenship in the context of a perceived “crisis of democracy” in Europe. Focusing especially on Bertrand Russell, Susan Stebbing, and John Macmurray, it argues that philosophers working from diverse philosophical perspectives shared a sense that the crisis of democracy was simultaneously a crisis of reason and one of emotion. They tended to frame this crisis in terms of three interrelated concerns: first, as a problem of balancing or integrating reason and emotion; second, as a problem of the relationship between emotions and democratic citizenship; and third, as a problem of how to properly train or educate the emotions. Significantly, British philosophers addressed these issues most directly in writings for a non-professional audience, as they sought to translate their professional expertise into popular works that might rejuvenate democratic citizenship. This historical episode is a reminder of how philosophers were deeply engaged in the cultural politics of the interwar period and is a telling example of how personalist concerns were central to philosophy even as the “analytic revolution” was gathering steam. Full article

In light of the escalating climate crisis, there is a pressing need for a significant shift in how we design the built environment to effectively confront global challenges. Natural systems have inspired scientists, architects, and engineers for centuries; however, conventional biomimetic approaches often focus on superficial aspects, disregarding the underlying complexities. While this approach may lead to a more efficient outcome, it operates under the assumption that the organism functions exclusively within the confines of human knowledge, which are inherently limited by established epistemological and technological systems. This study advocates for a departure from conventional biomimetic approaches and asks the mechanisms of the biological system to inform the process of translation, as opposed to simply defining the outcome. By relinquishing control to material properties and dynamic processes of the biological analog, this study explores the generation of novel, bio-inspired dynamic formworks through non-linear fabrication processes. Specifically, it investigates the thermal properties of accessible building materials, enabling them to respond to environmental conditions without sophisticated technology or human intervention. By embracing chance and unpredictability, translated behaviors are granted the same influence as human intervention. Drawing inspiration from adaptive plant physiology, this research seeks to inspire innovative, climate-responsive methodological practices within broader architectural systems. Full article

In this article, I analyse how the COVID-19 crisis crystalised and fuelled the vigorous role of Amazonian indigenous artists as, what I call, “agents of interface”, enabling connectivity, translation, networking and bridging information, ontologies, claims, and aesthetics. With the pandemic’s spatial restrictions and the reduction of global activity in the arts with a return to focusing on the local, I argue that it is important to look at interfaces as arenas from which to understand further reconfigurations, actions, and values in the arts. Based on the project and exhibition Ite!/Neno!/Here!: Responses to COVID-19 co-curated by the indigenous artist Rember Yahuarcani and me, and on other various initiatives, this paper explores how Amazonian indigenous artists became crucial agents of the interface in four main arenas providing first-hand, real-time information of the impact of COVID-19 at Amazonian urban and rural settings, channelling networks of aid and curation, connecting different agents and worlds, and engaging in curatorial collaborations. I argue that by acting at the interface, artists have reinforced their voices, while pushing for redefinitions of and positions in the art system and suggest that the COVID-19 crisis has introduced a new moment in the configuration of Peru’s art scene. Full article

The claim that environmental virtue ethics (EVE) is anthropocentric appears inherently aporetic since it implies that either anthropocentrism is virtuous or the whole environmental issue is anthropocentric, thus translating vices into virtues or vice versa. Another interpretation is that both the environment and humanity are thought with a vicious conception of centeredness. Conversely, if centeredness is rightly addressed and humanity and its environment are considered as one and the same issue, the focus on anthropocentrism should also be different. By drawing on Felix Guatttari’s ecosophy, this paper proposes that EVE needs to be based on a philosophical understanding of agriculture. Thus, agriculture is the organic and epistemic matrix of our relation to the environment and not merely a section of an abstract environment nor one economic area among others. The environmental crisis is primarily a crisis of humanity within its agricultural matrix. To be an environmentally virtuous human being, a requirement is to face again the burden of our absolute need for food and for fruitful cooperation between farmers and plants, not only animals. This paper discusses the importance of plant ethics and plant topology to understand the specificities of the agricultural matrix. The emphasis will be placed on plant-centered virtue ethics and reframing anthropocentrism by drawing on transdisciplinary conversation with plant practitioners in the context of a research action project. Full article