Search Results (558)

Conflicts over natural resources reveal the inseparability of issues such as ecological degradation, structural injustice, human dignity, and peace. This article examines the Catholic Church’s pastoral role in such conflicts through the case study of Juan Antonio López, a Honduran lay Catholic leader, environmental defender, and Delegate of the Word who was killed in September 2024 after years of advocacy against extractive projects threatening local communities and water sources. Drawing on political ecology, development theory, biblical reflection, and Catholic Social Teaching, the article argues that conflicts over natural resources cannot be adequately addressed through legal, economic, or institutional frameworks alone. They also require moral, cultural, and pastoral responses capable of sustaining communities in their pursuit of justice and peace. First, the biblical narratives of disputes over wells in Genesis illuminate both the necessity and fragility of legal agreements when fear, domination, and unequal power shape access to life-sustaining resources. Then, in dialogue with the Church’s social magisterium, especially the tradition of integral human development, the article claims that the Church’s distinctive contribution lies in pastoral accompaniment: walking with vulnerable communities, defending the common good, encouraging the development of just societies by raising just individuals, denouncing structures of injustice, and finally witnessing to a just peace rooted in human dignity, fraternity, and care for creation. Full article

County economic growth in multi-tiered fiscal systems depends not only on the volume of transfers but also on whether those transfers pass through intermediary governments. This paper separates administrative delegation from fiscal chain redesign in province-managed county reforms in China. We study 1537 counties from 2000 to 2023 and compare D2, which creates direct province–county fiscal accounts, with D1, which delegates administrative authority but keeps the prefectural intermediary. The empirical design uses panel difference-in-differences estimators, synthetic difference-in-differences, double machine learning robustness checks, and exploratory heterogeneity diagnostics. Based on a placebo-corrected lower bound and a cross-estimator upper bound, D2 is associated with a conservative growth range of 0.35 to 1.0 percentage points per year, while the D1 estimate is imprecise. D2 is also associated with higher contemporaneous per capita fiscal expenditure, but the one-year lagged mediator check does not support a fully identified expenditure mechanism. Heterogeneity patterns are consistent with stronger effects in transfer-dependent counties, but they remain exploratory. The outcome is county economic growth, not a composite sustainability index. The results support a focused governance claim. More reliable transfer delivery is consistent with improved local growth capacity, while fiscal, social, and environmental sustainability remain outside the measured outcome space. Full article

Whether learned cognition can affect evolutionary outcomes remains a long-standing question. This study addresses a narrower mechanism: whether a model-based planner benefits from learned rules that explicitly condition on the action just taken. The testbed is a spatial artificial ecology with plants, shelters, a predator, reproduction, and a day/night cycle. Five rule-use arms are evaluated on matched simulation seeds. At age 200, agents switch to a weaker learned-lite planner that relies more strongly on learned rule predictions. The pre-specified hypothesis is that access to filtered action-conditioned rules improves outcomes relative to an otherwise identical no-rule-policy baseline, in which rules are still induced and stored but are not used for action selection. In thirty paired replicates under the default reproductive gates, the action-conditioned arm outperforms the no-rule baseline on all four pre-specified primary endpoints. The strongest effect is behavioural: the action arm produces 91.4 additional successful post-switch eating events per run ($d_z=1.56$, 93.3% paired win rate, $p<{10}^{-4}$). It also produces 10 additional crystallized clean-causal rules per replicate ($d_z=0.58$, $p_t=0.0034$). All four primary paired-t p-values remain significant after Bonferroni correction across the four-endpoint family. A diagnostic check shows that omitting reproductive cooldown from the planner’s rollout reverses the arm ordering on the same paired seeds; reinstating cooldown recovers the reported result. Two exploratory checks delimit the claim: broad unfiltered rule access can impair foraging, and a means–ends extension shifts behaviour toward reproduction without producing a robust whole-life fitness gain. Within this simulation, access to action-conditioned rules has a measurable effect on post-switch behaviour that is distinct from passive environmental prediction and from clean-crystallized rules alone. Full article

The accelerating convergence of geopolitical volatility, technological disruption, environmental stress, and societal transformation has rendered traditional strategic management frameworks insufficient. Organizations now operate in environments defined not only by disruptions with existential implications but by wickedness—conditions in which problems are ambiguous, stakeholders disagree, and solutions reshape the challenge itself. Building on the premise that strategy itself is a wicked problem, this article advances a central claim: organizational resilience is best understood as an architectural capability largely grounded in humanity-based identity. Unlike organizational structure, mission, or even current strategy, each of which may be transient in turbulent environments, organizational identity, which is a construct that derives from individuals and humanity, provides an enduring basis for harmonizing the organization and its environment. Utilizing the lens of “humanity”—in its two dimensions of humankind and humaneness—we synthesize research on wicked problems, organizational identity, dynamic capabilities, modular design, alliances and smart power, and hybrid intelligence. We then propose an integrative model linking humanity-driven identity to resilience through three vectors—Inspirational Transformative Ambition, Innovative Value Networks, and Hybrid Intelligence Ecosystems—operationalized via a recently developed diagnostic tool. Finally, we offer corroborative evidence for the “Business of Humanity” logic, arguing that aligning humankind (opportunity across the full market spectrum) with humaneness (values-based evaluation) strengthens resilience by expanding opportunity sets while enhancing legitimacy, trust, and stakeholder alignment. Full article

Population growth, industrialization and climate change have placed increasing stress on natural freshwater reserves, making conventional water sources inadequate. Coupled with rising energy constraints and environmental concerns, interest in desalination technologies that can operate more sustainably and efficiently has intensified. Among the available approaches, membrane desalination has gained particular importance because of its modularity, relatively low energy demand, and compatibility with decentralized water treatment. In parallel, thermoelectric devices have emerged as promising components for hybrid desalination systems due to their ability to convert temperature gradients into electricity or provide localized heating and cooling for process enhancement. This article presents a narrative review of thermoelectric integration in desalination systems, with particular emphasis on membrane desalination and membrane-hybrid water treatment configurations powered by renewable-energy or low-grade heat sources. The review examines the role of thermoelectric devices in relation to key membrane-based and hybrid desalination processes, including reverse osmosis, membrane distillation, electrodialysis, nanofiltration, forward osmosis, and selected hybrid systems. Particular attention is given to system configurations, renewable energy coupling pathways, functional roles of thermoelectric devices, water productivity, module output, desalination efficiency, water quality, and economic performance. The reviewed literature indicates that thermoelectric integration can provide meaningful benefits in hybrid desalination, particularly through improved thermal management, enhanced utilization of low-grade heat, and supplementary energy recovery. These opportunities appear especially relevant for thermally driven membrane systems such as membrane distillation and for membrane-hybrid configurations intended for decentralized or renewable-powered applications. However, the available evidence remains highly heterogeneous, with substantial variation in system scale, operating conditions, reporting metrics, and cost assumptions, which limits direct cross-study comparison and broad generalization of performance claims. This review highlights the technical challenges, reporting inconsistencies, and research gaps that currently constrain the practical development of thermoelectric-assisted membrane desalination and outlines future directions for membrane-aligned hybrid desalination research. Full article

The increasing number of sustainability claims may reduce the perceived reliability of formal eco-labels, creating an environment in which greenwashing can erode institutional trust. This study explores how consumers navigate significant information asymmetry when standardized environmental signals are absent. Using a qualitative research design, we conducted focus group discussions with Hungarian- and Romanian-speaking consumers in Transylvania, Romania, a multiethnic transitioning market. Computational text analysis, including topic modeling, was used to support this interpretive approach and effectively decode the complex typologies of green claim evaluation. The findings suggest that signal degradation among the participants was associated with culturally embedded heuristic substitution rather than a uniform rejection of green claims. Romanian-speaking participants described more analytical, information-seeking heuristics that are tightly integrated into routine purchasing decisions. Conversely, Hungarian-speaking participants articulated a looser connection between generalized skepticism and their purchasing routines. This study contributes to signaling theory and administrative science by suggesting that standardized governance tools may be less effective when they are not aligned with localized trust structures. Reconceiving greenwashing as a failure of signal fit rather than as deceptive marketing communication, the study contributes to a process-oriented understanding of how consumers evaluate sustainability claims under uncertainty. Future research should quantitatively test these heuristic pathways across diverse regulatory and cultural environments. Full article

The environmental burden from cosmetic production has intensified interest in sustainable and scientifically robust raw materials. Among the emerging alternatives, agro-industrial residues are gaining attention as chemically rich sources of bioactive compounds with potential for dermocosmetic applications. However, research on their molecular activity, formulation performance, and industrial feasibility remains fragmented across the fields of sustainability, dermatology, and engineering. This narrative review synthesizes current knowledge on the phytochemical composition of extracts from agro-residues. It also critically examines their effects on key skin-related pathways, including oxidative stress modulation, extracellular matrix regulation, inflammation, senescence, and barrier function. Compounds such as polyphenols, carotenoids, peptides, and polysaccharides have been reported to influence signaling networks, including Nrf2/ARE, NF-κB, TGF-β/Smad, and PI3K/AKT/mTOR. Importantly, most of this evidence originates from in vitro and ex vivo studies on animal models, while controlled human and clinical studies remain limited; thus, mechanistic findings should not be equated with proven dermocosmetic efficacy. Nevertheless, challenges remain, such as compositional variability, safety-validation requirements, limited skin bioavailability and stability of bioactives in finished formulations, and limitations in scalable green extraction. Economic modeling and life-cycle assessment also highlight the need to verify both financial and environmental viability. Advancing agro-residue-derived bioactives toward mainstream cosmetic use will require strategies that integrate molecular characterization, regulatory alignment, rigorous claims substantiation and sustainable process optimization. Full article

The rapid proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in civilian sectors has generated diverse research spanning platform engineering, application deployment, and regulatory governance. This scoping review systematically maps the current knowledge landscape of civilian UAVs, their applications, and their regulatory frameworks, and aims to serve as initial practical guidance for researchers and practitioners initiating drone-based projects. Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, a structured three-stream literature search was conducted using Google Scholar, yielding 109 sources published between 2015 and 2025. This review synthesises findings across three domains: (1) technical specifications, including UAV platform configurations, their common applications, their advantages and limitations, electromechanical systems, flight control architectures, and communication technologies, while also providing key guidance on how to choose the appropriate components for a given application; (2) civil applications across eight sectors—delivery logistics, infrastructure inspection, precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, emergency response, waste management, and commercial uses—to provide inspiration as well as to capture important details on drone projects; and (3) regulatory frameworks and ethical considerations governing UAV operations. Analysis reveals concentrated research attention on autonomy and AI-driven control systems and emerging focus on communication infrastructure. Geographic representation is dominated by US, European, and Chinese contexts, with limited coverage of developing regions. Key knowledge gaps include economic feasibility analyses, standardisation frameworks, developing-world deployment contexts, and environmental lifecycle assessments. Contradictions emerge between optimistic application scalability claims and fundamental constraints in energy storage, swarm communication reliability, and privacy–efficiency trade-offs. This review provides researchers and practitioners with a comprehensive map of current UAV knowledge, identifies critical research gaps, and establishes a foundation for future research in civilian drone technologies. This study aims to systematically consolidate and synthesise fragmented research on civilian UAV technologies, applications, and regulatory frameworks into a unified reference for research and practice. Full article

This study evaluates the non-catalytic thermal pyrolysis of post-consumer polystyrene (PS) in a laboratory-scale batch fixed-bed reactor to recover aromatic-rich liquid products. The PS feedstock was characterized by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and micro-Raman spectroscopy to assess its thermal behavior and chemical homogeneity. In addition, the main TGA degradation region was analyzed using Coats–Redfern, Horowitz–Metzger, and Broido kinetic models, yielding apparent activation energies of 269.18, 288.83, and 280.69 kJ mol⁻¹, respectively. Pyrolysis experiments were performed at final temperatures of 400, 450, and 500 °C and heating rates of 10 and 20 °C min⁻¹ under continuous N₂ flow. The maximum liquid yield reached 95.2 wt% at 500 °C and 20 °C min⁻¹, while the estimated gaseous fraction decreased to approximately 2.0 wt%. ANOVA confirmed that final temperature was the dominant factor controlling liquid recovery, contributing approximately 83% of the model variability, whereas heating rate had a secondary but significant effect. GC–MS analysis showed that the pyrolysis oil was mainly composed of aromatic hydrocarbons, including styrene, toluene, and ethylbenzene, with increasing temperature promoting the redistribution of the liquid fraction toward lighter monoaromatic compounds. These results indicate that non-catalytic fixed-bed pyrolysis is a promising route for converting post-consumer PS into aromatic-rich liquid products. However, the recovered oil should be considered a complex mixture rather than a purified monomer stream, and further gas-phase characterization, downstream purification, energy-balance evaluation, life-cycle assessment, and techno-economic analysis are required before definitive claims regarding industrial circularity or environmental performance can be established. Full article

There is growing interest in vegan and vegetarian (veg*n) diets for dogs and cats, due to factors including pet health, environmental sustainability and farmed animal welfare. Such diets should be carefully designed and manufactured in order to be nutritionally sound. Digestibility is a key, although not the only, determinant of this, and it has sometimes been claimed that dogs and cats cannot effectively digest and utilize plant-based proteins. To evaluate this claim, studies assessing canine and/or feline digestibility of veg*n diets and ingredients were analyzed. Thirty-one studies were included: 22 specific to dogs, two specific to cats, and seven applicable to both species. Across various study designs, populations, digestibility metrics, dietary ingredients and processing methods, digestibility values of veg*n diets were consistently high and broadly comparable to those of conventional meat-based diets. In all five studies that assessed apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of veg*n pet diets, ATTD values exceeded 80% (dry matter), 85% (organic matter), 80% (crude protein), 89% (fat), 88% (nitrogen-free extract), and 86% (energy). These studies also indicate that individual vegan protein sources can be well digested by dogs and/or cats, including those derived from legumes (such as soy-derived ingredients), pulses, grains and microbial fermentation. Discrepancies exist regarding whether these ingredients are more, less or equally digestible compared to animal-based alternatives. Nevertheless, even in studies where vegan protein sources showed lower digestibility for specific nutrients, overall digestibility remained high. These findings support the use of nutritionally sound veg*n pet diets. Such diets are not normally significantly less digestible than conventional meat-based diets. Full article

The escalating crisis of antimicrobial resistance claims nearly 5 million lives annually. Resistant infections now account for 4.95 million deaths worldwide and economic losses projected to reach $300 billion by 2030. Despite this urgent threat, traditional antibiotic discovery has declined precipitously. New chemical entity approvals have fallen by over 50%, while existing therapeutics are rapidly rendered obsolete by sophisticated bacterial resistance mechanisms including extended-spectrum β-lactamases, carbapenemases, and multidrug efflux pumps. Bio-based products have historically provided humanity’s most transformative antibiotics, yet conventional discovery pipelines face insurmountable bottlenecks. A total of 99.9% of environmental microbes remain unculturable. Biosynthetic gene clusters are predominantly silent under laboratory conditions, and dereplication efforts achieve only 2 to 5% annotation rates. This review presents a comprehensive examination of how artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing bio-based product-based antibacterial discovery. We analyze AI-driven genome mining tools that have identified over 170,000 biosynthetic gene clusters across bacterial genomes, deep learning architectures achieving 88.5% bioactivity prediction accuracy, and generative models delivering experimental hit rates exceeding 50%—representing 50- to 90-fold improvements over traditional screening. Through validated case studies spanning in silico prediction to in vivo efficacy, we demonstrate that AI integration is not merely accelerating discovery but fundamentally transforming our capacity to access nature’s previously inaccessible chemical diversity in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. Full article

This article examines how green marketing and the phenomenon of greenwashing on social media relate to consumers’ trust-related reactions and their perception of food companies’ sustainability orientation. The study is situated within the context of sustainability communication related to food products and food-related consumer decision-making. Particular attention is given to the role of environmental awareness in recognising misleading practices, investigating whether more informed and sustainability-oriented consumers are more likely to identify deceptive sustainability claims. The research employs a quantitative survey method to analyse consumer attitudes and perceptions. The study is based on a convenience sample of 145 adult social media users in Slovenia. The findings suggest that environmentally aware consumers are more capable of detecting greenwashing, that such practices are associated with negative trust-related reactions, and that greater exposure to social media is associated with increased attentiveness to misleading sustainability claims on social media. The results further indicate that verifiable evidence was not significantly associated with lower perceived greenwashing and should be interpreted with caution given the study’s measurement limitations. Based on these findings, we suggest that companies build their sustainability communication on consistent and measurable environmental practices, use verifiable and transparent claims, and strategically leverage social media to enhance credibility. Full article

Advancing athlete health requires a shift from reactive sports medicine toward proactive, personalized, and longitudinal care. This article presents a conceptual framework for an Interdisciplinary AI Center for Longevity and Well-Being designed to integrate Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), wearable sensing, and multimodal analytics into a unified athlete health ecosystem. The manuscript contextualizes the proposed framework with relevant literature across key technical domains and presents a reference edge–fog–cloud architecture together with a proof-of-concept dashboard pipeline to illustrate technical feasibility. Within this framework, heterogeneous data streams from wearable physiological sensors, biomechanical devices, non-invasive biomarker monitors, and environmental trackers are organized to support multimodal analysis and individualized performance intelligence. The paper outlines five target application domains: real-time health monitoring, injury risk assessment, performance optimization, holistic well-being evaluation, and longevity-oriented health management. Privacy-preserving and interpretable AI components, including federated learning, differential privacy, and explainability-oriented design considerations, are presented as key architectural priorities, while several elements are explicitly identified as future development directions. Rather than claiming full real-world validation, this work provides an interdisciplinary blueprint and prototype-informed foundation for future research and implementation at the intersection of computer science, biomedical engineering, and sports science. Full article

Dietary supplements, especially lycopene-containing ones, are of interest because of their antioxidant and potential health-promoting effects; however, their actual composition and safety have not been sufficiently verified. This study evaluated the accuracy of labelled lycopene content and assessed selected chemical and microbiological safety parameters in commercially available products. Lycopene levels were determined spectrophotometrically and by HPLC, whereas pesticide residues, heavy metals, and microbiological purity were analysed using validated regulatory-compliant methods. Marked inconsistencies were found between the declared and measured lycopene content, with HPLC revealing concentrations up to 70% above label claims. Methomyl (0.059 mg/kg), a pesticide not approved in the EU, was detected in one supplement, heavy metal concentrations met current regulatory limits, and other elements remained below quantification thresholds. Microbiological quality was satisfactory, with low total viable counts and absence of pathogens, yeasts, and moulds; only low levels of environmental spore-forming bacteria were detected. The findings highlight acceptable microbiological and elemental safety but reveal substantial deviations in lycopene content labelled/determined and the presence of a non-approved pesticide (however, below the MRL). A comprehensive multi-parameter quality assessment is essential to ensure the safety, reliability, and regulatory compliance of lycopene supplements. Full article

This study examines the human–nature relationship in the thoughts of Yunus Emre (d. ca. 1320) and addresses the Qur’anic positioning of humanity as laden with responsibility through the idea of amanah (entrustment), while focusing on Yunus Emre’s reflections on this concept as both a mystical stance and a moral state. His poems place humanity not as an absolute claim of ownership over the world and other beings, but rather within a relationship based on testimony, decency, and equality. He presents nature not as an object requiring protection or an area needing transformation but as a framework for contemplation and reflection in which the divine order is visible. In this context, humans’ established relationship with the world reflects a stance determined not by domination or interference but by a consciousness of limitation and a sense of moderation. By revealing the aspects of his understanding of humanity and nature that overlap with the concept of amanah in Islamic thought, this study argues that this overlap should be evaluated not as conceptual equivalence but rather in terms of mystical and moral affinity. This approach aims to demonstrate how Yunus Emre’s ideas, while not offering direct solutions to modern environmental debates, provide a historical mystical perspective that allows for a rethinking of the human–nature relationship. Full article