Search Results (249)

Although there is growing agreement between scholars about the crucial role of Maraimalai Adigal in the early stage of the Tamil nationalist movement, the state of current understanding of this “religious phase of Tamil nationalism” is far from satisfactory. Authors of this article focused on three important claims in the currently accepted view on the character and goals of Adigal’s religious reform. The first stance portrays his efforts for purification of the Tamil language from foreign influences as “anti-Aryan” and “anti-Sanskritic.” The second claim describes the reformer’s efforts as a move from polytheism to “Shaiva monotheism”, and builds on ideas of the early Orientalists and Christian missionaries in India who formulated the “Sanskritic hegemony” thesis. As an assumption running through the debates about Adigal’s reforms, there is conviction that the Tamil intellectual basically accepted the crystallizing Aryan Invasion Theory as true description of both Ancient India and roots of the social problems in Tamilnadu of his times. In their thorough analysis of Adigal’s work and scholarly debates, authors of this article disclose the role of unexamined assumption about religious competition being the main form of cultural encounters in India, and argue for very different understanding of Adigal’s efforts to revive Shaivism. Full article

This study synthesizes the rapidly expanding evidence on how digital technologies reshape international trade, with a particular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Guided by two research questions—(RQ1) How do digital tools influence the volume and composition of cross-border trade? and (RQ2) How do these effects vary by countries’ development level and firm size?—we conducted a PRISMA-compliant systematic literature review covering 2010–2024. Searches across eight major databases yielded 1857 records; after duplicate removal, title/abstract screening, full-text assessment, and Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT 2018) quality checks, 86 peer-reviewed English-language studies were retained. Findings reveal three dominant technology clusters: (1) e-commerce platforms and cloud services, (2) IoT-enabled supply chain solutions, and (3) emerging AI analytics. E-commerce and cloud adoption consistently raise export intensity—doubling it for digitally mature SMEs—while AI applications are the fastest-growing research strand, particularly in East Asia and Northern Europe. However, benefits are uneven: firms in low-infrastructure settings face higher fixed digital costs, and cybersecurity and regulatory fragmentation remain pervasive obstacles. By integrating trade economics with development and SME internationalization studies, this review offers the first holistic framework that links national digital infrastructure and policy support to firm-level export performance. It shows that the trade-enhancing effects of digitalization are contingent on robust broadband penetration, affordable cloud access, and harmonized data-governance regimes. Policymakers should, therefore, prioritize inclusive digital-readiness programs, while business leaders should invest in complementary capabilities—data analytics, cyber-risk management, and cross-border e-logistics—to fully capture digital trade gains. This balanced perspective advances theory and practice on building resilient, equitable digital trade ecosystems. Full article

This study investigates the parameters influencing the compatibility between cement and polycarboxylate ether (PCE) admixtures in cements produced with various types and dosages of grinding aids (GAs). A total of 29 cement types (including a control) were prepared using seven different GAs at four dosage levels, and 87 paste mixtures were produced with three PCE dosages. Rheological behavior was evaluated via the Herschel–Bulkley model, focusing on dynamic yield stress (DYS) and viscosity. The data were modeled using CNN, Random Forest (RF), and Neural Classification and Regression Tree (NCART), and each model was enhanced with synthetic data generated by Large Language Models (LLMs), resulting in CNN-LLM, RF-LLM, and NCART-LLM variants. All six variants were evaluated using R-squared, Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and Logcosh. This study is among the first to use LLMs for synthetic data augmentation. It augmented the experimental dataset synthetically and analyzed the effects on the study results. Among the baseline methods, NCART achieved the best performance for both viscosity (MAE = 1.04, RMSE = 1.33, R² = 0.84, Logcosh = 0.57) and DYS (MAE = 8.73, RMSE = 11.50, R² = 0.77, Logcosh = 8.09). Among baseline models, NCART performed best, while LLM augmentation significantly improved all models’ predictive accuracy. It was also observed that cements produced with GA exhibited higher DYS and viscosity than the control, likely due to finer particle size distribution. Overall, the study highlights the potential of LLM-based synthetic augmentation in modeling cement admixture compatibility. Full article

The urban drainage system is a significant lifeline for ensuring the safe operation of a city. In recent years, defects and diseases in drainage pipes and their ancillary facilities have occurred frequently. Aiming to provide decision-makers with comprehensive benefit evaluation support, we chose to evaluate the security, environmental, social, and economic benefits of urban drainage culverts and pipes (UDCPs). An index system of 14 first-level indicators in four dimensions was established, and the indicators contain 28 influencing factors. The index weight was obtained by combining the analytical hierarchy process and entropy weight method, and the weights assigned to the security, environmental, social, and economic benefits were 0.448, 0.222, 0.202, and 0.128, respectively. The evaluation system was developed on the basis of a geographic information system (GIS), and the topological analysis of the GIS was applied in the calculation. To process the questionnaire results, this study adopted the automatic questionnaire analysis and scoring method combining natural language processing and optical character recognition technology. The method was applied in the study area in southern China, which contains 9 catchment areas and 1356 pipes. The results show that about 5% of the pipelines need to be included in the renewal plan. For UDCP renewal, the findings provide a decision-making tool of the comprehensive analysis for the selection of engineering technologies and the evaluation of the implementation effects. Full article

Social media has become a platform for the rapid spread of persuasion techniques that can negatively affect individuals and society. Propaganda detection, a crucial task in natural language processing, aims to identify manipulative content in texts, particularly in news media, by assessing propagandistic intent. Although extensively studied in English, Arabic propaganda detection remains challenging because of the language’s morphological complexity and limited resources. Furthermore, most research has treated propaganda detection as an isolated task, neglecting the influence of sentiments and emotions. The current study addresses this gap by introducing the first multi-task learning (MTL) models for Arabic propaganda detection, integrating sentiment analysis and emotion detection as auxiliary tasks. Three MTL models are introduced: (1) MTL combining all tasks, (2) PSMTL (propaganda and sentiment), and (3) PEMTL (propaganda and emotion) based on transformer architectures. Additionally, seven task-weighting schemes are proposed and evaluated. Experiments demonstrated the superiority of our framework over state-of-the-art methods, achieving a Macro-F1 score of 0.778 and 79% accuracy. The results highlight the importance of integrating sentiment and emotion for enhanced propaganda detection; demonstrate that MTL improves model performance; and provide valuable insights into the interaction among sentiment, emotion, and propaganda. Full article

The framing of water infrastructure in the news influences how the public perceives future infrastructure development and associated social-environmental risks. This study examines English-language newspaper coverage of the Ken-Betwa river link, the first component of India’s National River Linking Program (INRLP) to receive approval. Data for this analysis comprised 316 newspaper articles, collected via a keyword search in LexisNexis API, from seven Indian English-language newspapers (Free Press Journal (India), Hindustan Times, Indian Express, The Economic Times, The Hindu, The Times of India (TOI), and Times of India (Electronic Edition)) published between 2004 and 2022. By applying LDA topic modeling, a type of generative probabilistic model, to this dataset, this study examines how evolving media narratives frame water infrastructure in India. Our results identify 23 distinct topics and three dominant frames: (1) a government policy frame, (2) INRLP comparative frame, and (3) environmental conservation frame. We find that these frames evolve, with early coverage emphasizing feasibility and government-led negotiations, and later articles highlighting environmental risks. Our analysis shows how media discourse reflects institutional logic and infrastructure milestones. This study demonstrates the value of computational methods for longitudinal media analysis, has the potential to reveal shifts in public discourse, and highlights power dynamics in environmental reporting. Full article

In this post-digital age, writing assessment has been markedly influenced by advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), emphasizing the role of automated formative feedback in supporting second language (L2) writing. This study investigates how Norwegian teachers use an AI-driven automated feedback tool, the Essay Assessment Technology (EAT), in process writing for the first time. Framed by the second and third-order barriers framework, we looked at teachers’ beliefs and the design level changes that they made in their teaching. Data were collected in Autumn 2022, during the testing of EAT’s first prototype. Teachers were first introduced to EAT in a workshop. A total of 3 English as a second language teachers from different schools were informants in this study. Teachers then used EAT in the classroom with their 9th-grade students (13 years old). Through individual teacher interviews, this descriptive qualitative study explores teachers’ perceptions, user experiences, and pedagogical decisions when incorporating EAT into their practices. The findings indicate that teachers’ beliefs about technology and its role in student learning, as well as their views on students’ responsibilities in task completion, significantly influence their instructional choices. Additionally, teachers not only adopt AI-driven tools but are also able to reflect and solve complex teaching and learning activities in the classroom, which demonstrates that these teachers have applied design thinking processes in integrating technology in their teaching. Based on the results in this study, we suggest the need for targeted professional development to support effective technology integration. Full article

Effective language processing relies on pattern detection. Spanish monolinguals predict verb tense through stress–suffix associations: a stressed first syllable signals present tense, while an unstressed first syllable signals past tense. Low-proficiency second language (L2) Spanish learners struggle to detect these associations, and we investigated whether they benefit from game-based training. We examined the effects of four variables on their ability to detect stress–suffix associations: three linguistic variables—verbs’ lexical stress (oxytones/paroxytones), first-syllable structure (consonant–vowel, CV/consonant–vowel–consonant, CVC), and phonotactic probability—and one learner variable—working memory (WM) span. Beginner English learners of Spanish played a digital game focused on stress–suffix associations for 10 days and completed a Spanish proficiency test (Lextale-Esp), a Spanish background and use questionnaire, and a Corsi WM task. The results revealed moderate gains in the acquisition of stress–suffix associations. Accuracy gains were observed for CV verbs and oxytones, and overall reaction times (RTs) decreased with gameplay. Higher-WM learners were more accurate and slower than lower-WM learners in all verb-type conditions. Our findings suggest that prosody influences word activation and that digital gaming can help learners attend to L2 inflectional morphology. Full article

Background: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) remains a global health challenge despite significant advancements in antiretroviral therapy and prevention strategies. Developing a safe and effective vaccine that protects people worldwide has been a major goal, yet the genetic variability and rapid mutation rate of the virus continue to pose substantial challenges. Methods: In this review paper, we aim to provide a comprehensive review of previous vaccine candidates and the progress made in HIV vaccine clinical trials, spanning from the late 1990s to 2025. PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov were searched for English-language Phase 1–3 HIV vaccine trials published from 1990 to March 2025. After de-duplication, titles/abstracts and then full texts were screened; trial phase, regimen, immunogenicity, efficacy, and correlates were extracted into a structured spreadsheet. Owing to platform heterogeneity, findings were synthesized narratively and arranged chronologically to trace the evolution of vaccine strategies. Results: Early vaccine trials demonstrated that a protein subunit vaccine failed to protect against infection, revealing the complexity of HIV evasion strategies and shifting the focus to a comprehensive immune response, including both antibody and T-cell responses. Trials evaluating the role of viral vectors in generating cell-mediated immunity were also insufficient, and suggested that targeting T cell response alone was not enough. In 2009, the RV144 trial made a breakthrough by showing partial protection against HIV infection and providing the first indication of efficacy. This partial success influenced subsequent trials, prompting researchers to further explore the complex immune response required for protection and consider combinations of vaccine technologies to achieve robust, long-lasting immunity. Conclusion: Despite setbacks, decades of rigorous efforts have provided significant contributions to HIV vaccine discovery and development, offering hope for preventing and protecting against HIV infection. The field remains active by continuing to advance our understanding of the virus, refining vaccine strategies, and employing novel technologies. Full article

The proliferation of African diaspora churches, especially over the last four decades in Europe and the West, has not gone unnoticed. Over this period, there has been a planting and transporting of independent churches as well as branches of Pentecostal and charismatic churches from sub-Saharan Africa to the West. First-generation members of these churches have often been the pioneers, leaders, and custodians of the church culture and practices from their motherland. These first-generation members continue to hold on to liturgy and practices from ‘home’ (Africa) and seek to replicate them as authentic spirituality and spiritual formation practices. A significant part of the rise of these churches are the second-generation members who have a fluid identity and are finding newer ways to assimilate their parents’ socio-cultural and religious practices with that of their present ‘home’ European/Western nations. For these emerging-generation members, their parents’ culture, which is largely based on an African worldview, continues to shape church liturgy and practices. An integral component of the church’s liturgy and practical ministry is prayer. Prayer in its various forms plays a significant part in both personal and collective worship. This paper examines the impact of emerging generations on the dynamics and praxis of prayer in the Church of Pentecost UK. Prayer holds a significant place in the lives of these emerging generation members and forms part of their socio-religious identity. Against this backdrop of prayer from a generational and liturgical viewpoint, we explore the nature, dynamics, and context of the prayers of the emerging generation members of the Church of Pentecost, UK. We examine areas of continuity and discontinuity and explore how Western influences and modernisation have influenced the prayer language and style of the younger generation. Through participant observations and lived experiences, we argue that though prayer is central to the worship of the younger generation, there are significant variations between the generations within the broader framework of style, language, and content. Full article

In applied linguistics, teacher professional development and teacher autonomy have long been hot research topics. However, little attention has been paid to the issue of what attitudes teachers hold toward their professional development. Furthermore, it remains unknown whether teacher autonomy is influenced by the aforementioned attitudes. Under this circumstance, the current study attempts to explore what attitudes English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers hold toward their professional development and whether such attitudes influence teacher autonomy. For this purpose, we investigated 14 EFL teachers, using classroom observation, stimulated recall interview and semi-structured interview, respectively. The collected data were analyzed in light of the grounded theory, which gave rise to three main findings. First, the participants’ autonomy was positively correlated with their attitudes toward professional development. Second, most of the participants held a negative attitude toward their professional development. Third, the participants held conflicting opinions about the influence of in-service training on professional development. These findings indicate that EFL teachers’ professional identity is positively correlated with teacher autonomy. Moreover, the findings call for effective measures to improve EFL teachers’ attitudes toward their professional identity. Full article

Over the past decade, deep neural networks (DNNs) have revolutionized the fields of computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP), achieving unprecedented performance across a variety of tasks. The Vision Transformer (ViT) has emerged as a powerful alternative to convolutional neural networks (CNNs), leveraging self-attention mechanisms to capture long-range dependencies and global context. Owing to their flexible architecture and scalability, ViTs have been widely adopted in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving, where system reliability is paramount. However, ViTs’ reliability issues induced by soft errors in large-scale digital integrated circuits have generally been overlooked. In this paper, we present a fine-grained fault sensitivity analysis of ViT variants under bit-flip fault injections, focusing on different ViT models, transformer encoder layers, weight matrix types, and attention-head dimensions. Experimental results demonstrate that the first transformer encoder layer is susceptible to soft errors due to its essential role in local and global feature extraction. Moreover, in the middle and later layers, the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) sub-blocks dominate the computational workload and significantly influence representation learning, making them critical points of vulnerability. These insights highlight key reliability bottlenecks in ViT architectures when deployed in error-prone environments. Full article

Despite the growing number of bilinguals worldwide, research on how bilingualism influences grammatical development in children with learning disabilities remains limited. This may be due to challenges in assessing language in these children, given the heterogeneity of their disabilities, lack of appropriate tools, and variability in language background and exposure common in bilingual populations. This pilot study investigates grammatical abilities in bilingual versus monolingual children with Down syndrome using the LITMUS Sentence Repetition Task, specifically designed for bilingual populations. Sentence repetition tasks are widely used for assessing grammar in neurotypical children and children with language impairments and are part of many omnibus language assessments. Ten children with Down syndrome aged 5–8 were recruited: five bilingual, speakers of British English and various home languages, and five monolingual, age- and language-matched. Both groups produced a high proportion of ungrammatical repetitions, with more omissions of verbs than nouns, function words than content words, and significant difficulties producing complex structures such as relative clauses, wh-questions, and passives. However, qualitative analyses showed that bilingual children speaking morphologically rich home languages (e.g., Polish, Greek) appeared to have fewer difficulties with some function words (e.g., prepositions) and were able to produce complex structures like passives and wh-questions, unlike their monolingual peers. Although the small sample limits generalisability, two insights emerge: First, sentence repetition may be of limited use in assessing expressive grammar in children with Down syndrome due to frequent ungrammatical responses. Second, while both groups showed similar challenges, bilingualism—especially with richly inflected home languages—may support specific grammatical skills. These findings support existing evidence that bilingualism does not hinder grammatical development in children with Down syndrome and suggest that parents should not avoid dual-language input. Further research is needed to determine whether bilingualism confers specific benefits in grammatical morpheme use and complex syntactic constructions. Full article

Rural agricultural markets face unique challenges, yet neuromarketing applications in this sector are understudied. This systematic review investigates how neuroscience has been applied to shape marketing narratives for rural agricultural producers. The objectives were to catalog relevant studies, identify key themes using inductive thematic synthesis, and derive practical implications for rural marketing strategy and future research. We systematically searched English-language, peer-reviewed studies published between 2016 and 2024 across multiple academic databases, following PRISMA guidelines. Two independent reviewers screened the records, resulting in the inclusion of 20 studies. Key data from each study were extracted and synthesized using an inductive thematic analysis approach. The synthesis revealed several recurrent findings. First, in terms of social and community context, farmers showed greater trust and engagement with familiar local buyers than with distant corporations, indicating that local relationships strongly influence producer behavior. Second, regarding product and narrative attributes, marketing narratives that emphasized local provenance, organic or sustainable production, and ethical values such as animal welfare and environmental sustainability resonated strongly with rural consumers. Third, sensory and emotional cues particularly visual elements and storytelling techniques including color, imagery, and packaging design consistently enhanced consumer attention and engagement. Overall, these neuroscience-informed themes suggest that marketing narratives emphasizing authenticity, trust-building, and community values can effectively strengthen rural agricultural marketing. This review provides neuroscience-informed interpretations of key rural marketing challenges, drawing on dual-process theory and consumer decision models for applying neuromarketing insights in this context. Practically, rural producers can leverage these findings by designing marketing messages and packaging that highlight local identity and ethical values, thereby building consumer trust and loyalty. The review also highlights gaps such as the need for more field-based neuromarketing studies and suggests directions for future research, offering guidance for both scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of neuroscience and rural consumer behavior. Full article

Despite the growing acceptance of the varieties of English, standard language ideology continues to cause some to be valorized and denigrated. This paper examines the attitudes of Filipino-Americans within an inner-circle English variety zone towards Philippine English (PhE), focusing on its status, development, lexicon, intelligibility, and acceptability. The study surveyed 113 Filipino-American speakers of American English (AmE) who were familiar with Philippine culture and PhE. Studies show that some first-language English speakers exhibit negative attitudes towards new English varieties. Contrary to this trend, our findings reveal positive attitudes among AmE speakers towards PhE. However, although it is commonly understood, these positive attitudes do not guarantee the full acceptability of PhE. Notably, there is a growing trend towards the acceptability of PhE neologisms, especially in formal and scientific contexts, indicating a shift in previous perceptions. Additionally, the findings of the study highlight that word-formation processes significantly influence the acceptability of new terms across different speech domains, a novel finding that merits further investigation. Acceptability plays a vital role in the dissemination of local expressions and in shaping the status of a language variety. This research may contribute to understanding the evolving dynamics of the acceptability of PhE and its status in local and international contexts. The positive attitudes towards PhE among American English speakers indicate a shift in perceptions. Language teaching can build on this trend by fostering an environment where students are encouraged to appreciate and respect different English varieties. This can be achieved through exposure to diverse linguistic inputs and discussions on language attitudes. Full article