Search Results (3,595)

Although Industry 4.0 has successfully advanced lean manufacturing through digitalization and automation, its primary focus on operational efficiency leaves emerging strategic priorities—human-centricity, sustainability, and resilience—outside its original scope. The Industry 5.0 agenda explicitly elevates these three pillars, creating new potential to drive lean transformation. However, how Industry 5.0 can systematically drive lean manufacturing transformation remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, this study develops a strategic roadmap. First, a content-centric literature review identifies 12 key enablers for Industry 5.0-driven lean manufacturing. Second, Fuzzy Interpretive Structural Modeling (FISM) and expert opinions determine hierarchical relationships among the enablers and construct a multi-level structural model. Third, Matrices d’Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement (MICMAC) analysis evaluates the driving power and dependence of each enabler. Finally, a strategic roadmap is developed based on expert synthesis. The findings reveal that “government regulation and incentives” and “employee skill training” are the most critical enablers, while “value chain design and improvement” and “resource input and return” are the most complex and difficult to develop. The roadmap highlights the mediating role of “stakeholder participation and collaboration.” Importantly, the roadmap addresses potential tensions in lean implementation—such as the carbon footprint trade-off of frequent small-batch transport—by embedding sustainability assessment into value chain design and technology governance. This study offers a practical guide for manufacturers to prioritize investments and sequence actions toward lean transformation in the Industry 5.0 era. The main contribution of this study is a strategic roadmap that explains how Industry 5.0 can enable lean manufacturing transformation through prioritized actions and hierarchical enablers, while reconciling efficiency with sustainability and resilience goals. This roadmap offers a practical guide for manufacturers and policymakers to sequence investments and actions toward lean transformation in the Industry 5.0 era. Full article

Diagnostic imaging is central to clinical decision-making across many care pathways, yet the expertise needed to use these images well is unevenly distributed across health systems, with workforce limitations identified as a major barrier to equitable access, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Digital education has emerged as one response to this gap, offering scalability, asynchronous and just-in-time access, and the cost-efficiency required for global deployment. This paper examines the digital education portfolio of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Nuclear Medicine and Diagnostic Imaging Section, hosted mainly on the open-access Human Health Campus, which in 2025 recorded approximately 45,800 active users and 150,000 views across 159 countries. The portfolio combines structured e-learning courses, interactive webinars, virtual conference access through the Livestream programme, and a broader repository of publications, teaching cases, and reference resources, supported by an internal e-learning framework and learning management system infrastructure. Partnerships with international scientific societies further extend the reach of expert knowledge and professional exchange. The paper argues that these initiatives are best understood not as content delivery alone but as a coordinated strategy to support diagnostic quality at the level of the practising physician, extending access to expertise and strengthening the conditions for better practice, while remaining a complement to, rather than a substitute for, supervised clinical training. Full article

Digital twin technology is becoming a core enabler for the intelligent transformation of civil engineering. This review adopts an integrated mixed-method design that combines a reproducible bibliometric protocol with structured content analysis to connect macro-level knowledge evolution with domain-specific engineering implementation. Based on the Web of Science Core Collection, the study analyzes publication trends, collaboration patterns, highly cited studies, keyword co-occurrence, network centrality, and citation bursts, and then reviews application status and technical pathways across five thematic areas: intelligent construction, bridge engineering, tunnel engineering, smart water conservancy, and other infrastructure. Key findings include: rapid growth in publication volume after 2021, three dominant keyword clusters (model/system construction, structural health monitoring and sensing, and AI-enabled optimization/decision-making), and an evolution of research frontiers from concept introduction to engineering scenario deepening and further to three-dimensional reconstruction, knowledge fusion, and intelligent decision-making. The content analysis shows differentiated technical pathways across sub-domains and identifies data heterogeneity/interoperability as the most urgent bottleneck because it constrains model updating, cross-platform integration, and engineering-scale deployment. Future directions should focus on data standardization, hybrid modeling, platform interoperability, artificial intelligence empowerment, and full-lifecycle cross-system coordination. This review provides a quantitatively supported panoramic reference for digital twin research in civil engineering. Full article

The expanding capabilities of deep learning-based media synthesis have intensified concerns regarding the authenticity of digital content and the reliability of forensic analysis tools. In response to these challenges, this work introduces DeepFakeX, a collection of 800 synthetically generated videos available under controlled access for research purposes. The dataset encompasses four distinct categories of AI-driven synthesis: facial identity replacement, audio track substitution, neural voice cloning, and combined audiovisual alteration. Unlike existing deepfake datasets that predominantly focus on facial synthesis, DeepFakeX covers a broader range of manipulation modalities, reflecting the diversity of synthetic media encountered in real-world settings. All deepfakes were generated using state-of-the-art, publicly available tools. Standardized post-processing procedures were applied to each video to ensure uniformity in terms of quality, duration and encoding format. DeepFakeX also emphasizes diversity in gender, age, ethnicity, and language. Video contexts span speeches, informational videos, movie clips, news broadcasts, and interviews that reflect content scenarios commonly encountered in real-world online environments. The dataset includes videos in both English and Urdu. The dataset’s quality and structural variability were assessed through visual and audio analyses using the Structural Similarity Index Measure (SSIM), Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs), and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The evaluation results revealed substantial variability within each manipulation category, along with clearly distinguishable patterns specific to each modality. DeepFakeX has been developed to facilitate rigorous and transparent research in deepfake detection, cross-modal forensic analysis, and AI-driven media forensics. It is hosted on Zenodo under controlled access for research use. Full article

This study addresses the early-age brittleness and performance limitations of sustainable cement soil. While prior works optimized the baseline compressive strength using recycled sand and nanoclay, the multi-scale synergistic effects of fibers and nanomaterials on the post-peak deformation remain underexplored. To address this gap, a composite modification system incorporating recycled sand, nanoclay, polypropylene fibers, and graphene derivatives was developed. The experimental program comprised standard specimen fabrication, early-age curing, and unconfined compressive strength (UCS) testing, supplemented by RBF neural network curve fitting and quantitative ArcGIS digital image processing of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) micrographs. The results demonstrate that optimizing the fiber parameters (0.6% content with 6 mm length) successfully increases the early UCS to 2263.2 kPa, which is further elevated to a peak of 2755.0 kPa upon co-incorporation with 0.05% small-sized graphene oxide. Correspondingly, a newly introduced ductility index quantitatively confirms that the single-fiber reinforcement yields an index of 1.93, which is further enhanced to 2.02 by the graphene composite system. Microstructure tracking and digital image extraction revealed that the SEM-derived surface porosity decreased significantly, exhibiting a clear inverse relationship with the macroscopic mechanical strength. These quantitative microstructural shifts confirm that graphene effectively filled micropores and reinforced the fiber–matrix interface, establishing a dense matrix network with enhanced interfacial bonding. This multi-scale approach offers a sustainable strategy for green geotechnical applications. Full article

This paper explores the integration of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Content-Based Instruction (CBI) within undergraduate accounting education in a non-Anglophone higher education setting. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, the research examines a series of task-based learning (TBL) activities designed to merge language instruction with specialised disciplinary content through authentic accounting tasks. The evidential basis of this study derives from a single-cohort case study of 36 third-year undergraduate students, organised into 10 distinct groups at a single public higher education institution. Data collection focused on content analysis of qualitative student-produced outputs and metacognitive reflections compiled from 10 group e-portfolios that documented the completion of five specific pedagogical tasks over one semester. Qualitative analysis of these e-portfolios and digital platform interactions suggests that this task-based framework appears to support students in interpreting accounting-related texts and applying technical accounting concepts in English. Furthermore, student reflections indicate an increased awareness of the language’s relevance to future professional practice. Given the localised, naturalistic design of this action-research intervention, the findings are framed as context-bound to this specific institutional cohort, offering a transparent, transferable framework for embedding communicative language practice within specialised accounting curricula. Full article

Digital media is increasingly shaping the ways in which children learn, communicate, and participate in everyday activities from an early age. The aim of this study was to examine how educators in early childhood education and care perceive the role of digital media in children’s learning, behaviour, and development, with particular emphasis on patterns of use, educational potential, and the role of educators and parents in mediating children’s digital experiences. The study specifically contributes to understanding these issues within the Croatian preschool context, where qualitative research on educators’ everyday experiences with digital media remains limited. The study employed a qualitative approach using focus groups conducted with a sample of 20 female educators from Croatia, organised into four focus groups. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings suggest that educators perceive digital media as a useful yet complex pedagogical tool whose value depends on the way it is used. A distinction was particularly evident between passive and active use of digital content, with active, guided, and purposeful use perceived as having greater educational potential. At the same time, educators also recognised the potential of digital media to support children’s learning, motivation, creativity, and engagement when integrated meaningfully into educational activities. Educators emphasized the importance of their own role in guiding children’s digital experiences, as well as the significant influence of the family environment on patterns of media use. They also highlighted challenges related to excessive screen exposure, the lack of clear pedagogical guidelines, and the need for additional professional support. The findings suggest the importance of strengthening educators’ digital competences, supporting collaboration with parents, and developing clearer pedagogical guidance for the use of digital media in early childhood education and care. Full article

Population ageing presents growing challenges for health and social care systems, particularly in supporting older adults to remain independent and involved in decisions concerning their own health and wellbeing. The EMPOWERing individuals and communities to manage their own CARE (EMPOWERCARE) project evaluated asset-based initiatives designed to support older adults in managing their health and wellbeing across seven pilot sites in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Initiatives were categorised as caring technologies, which focused on digital tools and assistive technologies to improve autonomy, promote self-management, and support independent living, and social mobilisation initiatives aimed at building stronger community networks, reducing loneliness, and fostering engagement. A multi-site, embedded case study design combined quantitative and qualitative methods. Survey data were collected at baseline (T0; n = 187) and endpoint (T2; n = 105) between July 2021 and January 2023. Outcomes included self-efficacy, mental wellbeing, loneliness and digital literacy. Descriptive statistics and repeated-measures t-tests were conducted, while Photovoice and focus group data were analysed using summative content analysis. Findings indicated improvements in self-efficacy and mental health among some participants, alongside positive trends in digital literacy and internet-based health-seeking behaviour. Qualitative findings further highlighted increased confidence, social connectedness and empowerment among participants. Full article

Research on migration and digital media has expanded, yet empirical knowledge about how digital network communication structures public interaction in post-migration contexts remains limited. In particular, little is known about the communicative arenas in which interaction becomes visible, the actors who gain interpretive authority, and the recurring issues and narratives that stabilize meaning. This article addresses these gaps by examining Afghanistan-linked digital publics in Germany. Eight semi-structured interviews with key informants and a qualitative content analysis of selected TikTok accounts revealed that short-video platforms can function as central arenas of attention, where repeatedly recognized communicators become orientation points for audiences through sustained interaction. Communication stabilizes around recurring issues and narratives such as migration procedures, institutional encounters, Afghanistan-related political developments, and community conflicts, which connect everyday experiences in the country of residence to political, social, and cultural debates about Afghanistan—thereby bridging local and transnational references within shared communication networks. These environments function simultaneously as spaces of practical guidance, social orientation, and public dispute. Building on these insights, the article proposes a multidimensional model of digital diaspora communication that links communicative arenas, actors, and issues and narratives. Full article

Using solid wastes to fabricate sustainable backfill materials for mining engineering is crucial for environmental sustainability worldwide. In this study, the use of coal gangue aggregates as a sustainable alternative to natural aggregates in geopolymer gel backfill materials was explored, which contributes to green mining development. Through uniaxial compression tests, the effects of fine gangue content, mass concentration, and the binder content of geopolymer backfill materials on the compressive behavior of coal gangue geopolymer gel backfill–rock combinations (CGBRC) were systematically evaluated. Digital Image Correlation (DIC) and acoustic emission (AE) techniques were employed to reveal the strain field evolution and damage progression of CGBRC. Results show that as the content of fine coal gangue increases, the compressive strength first increases and then decreases. Compared with the compressive strength at a 20% content, the compressive strength at a 40% content increased by 33.2%, while the elastic modulus increased by 11.2%. Meanwhile, with the increase in mass concentration and binder content, the compressive strength and elastic modulus of coal gangue geopolymer filling materials show an increasing trend, reaching peak values at 86% mass concentration and 32% binder content, respectively. The strain concentration zones mainly form near the backfill interface, with propagation paths governed by backfill strength. Damage evolution undergoes three stages including rapid accumulation during compaction, gradual development in the elastic-plastic stage, and abrupt acceleration at failure. The interfacial debonding behavior is primarily influenced by the strength difference between the backfill and surrounding rock. Specimen failure is dominated by brittle shear fracture, categorized into three modes based on crack paths relative to the backfill, which include penetrating backfill failure, axisymmetric interface failure, and centrally symmetric interface failure. These findings offer theoretical and technical support for coal gangue resource utilization and green mining practices, advancing sustainable solid waste management. Full article

The rapid development of AI Technology has significantly influenced digital art and triggered widespread discussion on social media platforms, particularly X. The use of AI in generating visual artworks and digital content has elicited diverse public responses, ranging from support for technological innovation to concerns regarding originality and the role of human artists. In this study, a total of 1737 tweets were collected through a data crawling process using relevant keywords and processed using RapidMiner through preprocessing stages to analyze user sentiment on the X platform toward the application of AI in digital art. The data include data cleaning, text normalization, and tokenization, before being classified into positive and negative sentiments. Three classification algorithms, Naïve Bayes, support vector machine (SVM), and decision tree, were applied to compare sentiment distributions. The results show that the Naïve Bayes model classified 30.5% of tweets as positive and 69.5% as negative, while the SVM and Decision Tree models showed a stronger bias toward negative sentiment, with 93.3% and 88.8% negative classifications, respectively. These findings indicate that negative sentiment toward AI in digital art is more dominant among users. Full article

While social media platforms are primary vectors for misinformation, automated detection systems remain largely confined to English. This paper presents a transferable, three-stage framework for fine-tuning transformer models to detect domain-specific deceptive content in Spanish. The pipeline comprises: (1) corpus unification, merging fragmented datasets into a 61,674-article resource mapped into three classes (Real, Fake, Satire) to prevent stylistic confounding; (2) systematic model optimization, extensively benchmarking classical metaheuristics against eight transformer architectures (including mBERT, XLM-RoBERTa, and BETO) using strong regularization to mitigate overfitting; and (3) production deployment, encapsulating the optimized model as a containerized web application for real-time inference. Through rigorous experimentation, the Spanish-specific BETO encoder emerged as the strongest model for this task, achieving 89.18% overall accuracy. The model attains a near-perfect in-source F1-score on the satire class; however, a strict source-held-out test reveals that this performance is highly source-dependent—recall on satire from an unseen outlet drops to 0.08—indicating that single-source class construction leads the model to recognize the source rather than a generalizable category. We report this finding as a central methodological result: corpus design, and in particular the source diversity of each class, is the primary determinant of whether the framework generalizes. Adversarial robustness tests using named-entity masking and typo injection provide complementary evidence on the model’s reliance on semantic versus surface cues. The methodology is designed to be adaptable across domains: by substituting the training corpus, the same framework may in principle be retargeted to other digital threats, such as investment scams and phishing, provided that suitable labeled corpora are constructed and validated for each new domain. The complete framework, dataset, and application are released as open-source resources to support reproducible research and practical countermeasures against online misinformation. Full article

This research examines the relationship between the current profile of agricultural practitioners and the emerging characteristics of future practitioners, as well as identifying the implications of this relationship for adapting marketing strategies in agricultural innovation. Methodologically, a sequential mixed-methods design was used, combining a literature review, semi-structured interviews with students in the agricultural field, a questionnaire administered to 172 respondents, and a focus group. The results show that the emerging profile of practitioners reflects a reconfiguration of the decision making associated with current practice, within a more digitalized context. The qualitative analysis and quantitative results indicate that the approach to innovation remains anchored in practical utility. The subjects are interested in validation through testing, clarity of results, credibility of sources, and risk control. They demonstrate openness toward innovative technologies and digitalization for decision making. The focus group confirmed an acceptance of new technologies depends on their utility and their smooth integration into current operations, as well as their validation within credible professional networks. The research highlights that marketing strategies for agricultural innovation must be built around practical demonstrations, profitability, accessible content, and professional validation. For Romanian agriculture, these conclusions support the need for communication strategies that are adapted to the current profile of practitioners and the emerging characteristics of the new generation that is entering the agricultural sector. Full article

Baseline web security configuration is a critical but often overlooked component of national cybersecurity posture, particularly in small and developing digital economies. This study presents a systematic empirical assessment of Tier-1 HTTP security header adoption across 51 Maldivian government and public limited company (PLC) websites, benchmarked against 20 internationally recognised secure domains. To enable reproducible, policy-relevant evaluation, this paper introduces the Website Security Header Score–Benchmark (WSHS-B), a normalised metric quantifying deployment of three foundational browser-enforced controls: Strict-Transport-Security, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options. Only 11.8% of evaluated Maldivian websites implement all three Tier-1 headers; 39.2% implement none and 49.0% partially comply. Benchmark domains achieve near-complete adoption (mean WSHS-B = 0.92) versus 0.35 for Maldivian websites, a gap of 57 percentage points. Mann–Whitney U tests confirm statistically significant differences between groups (p < 0.001), with large rank-based effect sizes (Cliff’s δ ≈ 0.80). Unlike practitioner-facing tools such as Mozilla Observatory and SecurityHeaders.com, which produce composite site-level grades, WSHS-B is purpose-built for population-level governance monitoring through binary, policy-enforceable indicators. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first nationally scoped empirical baseline of Tier-1 header adoption in the Maldives and the first governance-aligned metric of its kind for small digital economies. The findings provide an evidence base for NCSS 2024–2029 implementation, including mandatory baseline standards, automated compliance monitoring, and targeted capacity development. The methodology is replicable across comparable Small Island Developing States using passive, open-source scanning. Full article

Financial literacy among university students is increasingly important in contexts marked by digital payments, accessible credit and growing financial-product complexity. This study analyzes the explanatory relationships between technical-financial knowledge (TFK), perception/attitude toward financial education (PS), practical application of financial knowledge (PAK), and financial self-management (PFS) among Peruvian university students. A total of 422 surveys were collected, and the final PLS-SEM analysis was conducted with 358 complete cases. The model was estimated in ADANCO using consistent PLS for reflective constructs and Mode B for PFS as a formative construct, with 5000 bootstrap replicates. The results show that TFK positively predicts PS (β = 0.711; p < 0.001) and PAK (β = 0.709; p < 0.001). PFS is explained by both PS (β = 0.282; p < 0.001) and, more strongly, PAK (β = 0.558; p < 0.001), with moderate-to-high explanatory power (R² = 0.568). The total indirect effect of TFK on PFS was significant (β = 0.596; p < 0.001), and the TFK → PAK → PFS pathway was the dominant mechanism. These findings suggest that university financial education should move beyond conceptual content and prioritize practice-oriented learning strategies, including budgeting, savings planning, product comparison and digitally mediated decision-making. Full article