Search Results (7,668)

This study analyzes how the integration of native maize cultivation, cultural identity, and technological innovation can promote sustainable and experiential tourism in rural Mexico. The research was conducted in the community of Llano de Guadalupe, Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca. The participatory Action Research process progressed through institutional coordination, participatory diagnosis, biofertilization training, monitoring activities, and community dissemination phases conducted between 3 March 2025 to 25 May 2026. The methodological process included institutional coordination, participatory diagnosis, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, field observations, and the implementation of agroecological practices based on biofertilization. An AI-assisted illustrated field notebook was co-designed to support intercultural education, knowledge exchange, and community participation. The study also incorporated collaborative storytelling, seed preservation practices, and the co-design of sustainable tourism routes grounded in local gastronomy, biodiversity, and agricultural traditions. Preliminary impact indicators showed the expansion of participation from two pilot producers to 54 local producers after community dissemination activities. Findings indicate that the integration of traditional ecological knowledge with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can strengthen community empowerment, intergenerational learning, and sustainable livelihoods while preserving biocultural heritage. The proposed circular framework connects ecological, social, cultural, and economic subsystems by transforming agroecological practices into educational and tourism assets. The results suggest that Indigenous and rural communities can lead sustainable destination development when supported through participatory governance, inclusive education, and context-sensitive technological innovation. The Tlaxiaco case offers a transferable framework for sustainable rural development that contributes to food sovereignty, biodiversity conservation, environmental stewardship, and local economic resilience. Full article

Over the past few decades, South Africa has experienced recurrent drought events of varying intensity. The Musina Local Municipality is particularly vulnerable due to a semi-arid climate, erratic rainfall, and rising temperatures which collectively contribute to heightened environmental stress. This study analyzed drought spatiotemporal patterns, livelihood impacts, and associated coping strategies in Musina from 1991 to 2023. Adopting a mixed-method approach, the research integrated quantitative climate data from the Copernicus Climate Data Store with qualitative insights gathered through semi-structured questionnaires administered to local community members. Drought frequency and distribution were examined using rainfall anomalies, temperature trends, and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). With more than 15 drought events recorded between 1991 and 2023, the findings indicate that Musina experiences recurrent drought episodes including major drought events in 1991–1992 and 2015–2016, characterized by rising temperatures that intensify evapotranspiration and exacerbate water scarcity. SPEI results highlight repeated drought conditions over the study period, with over 14 identified episodes and variable recovery periods, while notably negative values during major events (1991–1992 and 2015–2016) reflect severe moisture deficits associated with elevated temperatures. These climatic shifts have significantly undermined agricultural productivity, livestock health, and household water security, thereby threatening overall livelihood stability. More than 50% of the households experienced water shortages, with 17% reporting crop losses and 17% livestock mortality. While the study identified various coping mechanisms—such as reliance on boreholes, government water aid, conservation agriculture, and livelihood diversification—community vulnerability remains high due to limited water infrastructure and ongoing climate variability. These results contribute to efforts to reduce localized drought risk by providing a detailed understanding of drought dynamics and the effectiveness of community-based adaptation strategies in Musina. Full article

Decarbonisation targets are now widely adopted. However, the speed at which renewables are built depends on many factors, including technology, cost, regulation, and the decisions of investors, developers, and governments. Public acceptance is one of these factors, but it is not the decisive one. This article examines public acceptance specifically: the attitudes, perceptions, and preferences of citizens and consumers, which form only one part of the wider social acceptance of renewable energy that also involves policy-makers, intermediaries, and market actors. We ask how public acceptance of renewable energy varies across countries, what drives that variation, and which policy instruments most reliably turn public approval into built capacity. Using a structured narrative synthesis across 21 countries, we integrate major cross-national opinion surveys (Eurobarometer 555, the UNDP–Oxford Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024, Pew, DESNZ, CSIRO, KfW, Ipsos), peer-reviewed work on local community acceptance, and capacity data from IRENA and the IEA. Three findings stand out. Headline support is high almost everywhere—a median of 76% across 77 countries and 85% in the EU—but increasingly masks polarisation, most sharply in the United States, where the partisan gap on prioritising renewables widened from 26 to 49 points between 2020 and 2024. Technology-specific acceptance follows a broadly consistent order, from rooftop solar down through wind, geothermal, hydropower, and biomass to carbon capture and nuclear. And community acceptance turns less on physical proximity to infrastructure than on procedural fairness, place attachment, and meaningful financial participation. Our contribution is integrative: we propose operational indicators of public acceptance that travel across national contexts, a country typology linking acceptance institutions to renewable outcomes, and a five-element policy architecture—early participation, benefit sharing, procedural transparency, place-sensitive siting, and credible information—each mapped to the acceptance dimension it addresses. Full article

Understanding how decomposing organic matter attracts calyptrate flies is fundamental to both medical entomology and forensic science, yet the differential effects of substrate type and decomposition stage remain poorly characterized in tropical environments. In this study, we established controlled decomposition gradients for fish viscera (animal tissue) and leafy vegetables (plant tissue) at 37 °C and 65% RH, defining six physicochemical stages per substrate based on color, odor, and ammonia emissions. Over 20 days, in Haikou, Hainan, we deployed 30 spatially replicated traps per stage, collecting 1538 specimens spanning 13 species across four families. Animal substrates attracted 6.8-fold higher fly densities than plant materials (1.48 vs. 0.22 flies/cage/hour; p < 0.01), with Limnophora nudiseta dominating animal-baited traps (68.43%) and Anthomyia illocata prevailing in plant traps (43.94%). Decomposition stage critically modulated attraction: mid–late decay stages (2–5) yielded 3.6-fold more flies on animal tissues than fresh stages, accompanied by a successional shift from A. illocata to L. nudiseta as the primary colonizer. Plant tissues showed incremental but non-significant density increases, and were consistently dominated by A. illocata. These findings demonstrate that substrate identity and decomposition dynamics jointly govern fly abundance, community composition, and niche partitioning. Our mechanistic framework offers practical guidelines for optimizing fly surveillance through species-specific bait selection and decay-stage calibration, with direct applications in vector control, public health monitoring, and forensic post mortem interval estimation. Full article

Belief in ghosts, spirits, and sacrificial culture is important in the Confucian tradition. Across different periods, Confucian interpretations have changed. Pre-Qin Confucianism distanced itself from earlier wu-shi 巫史 (shaman) culture, remaining agnostic about whether ghosts and spirits possess supernatural powers to govern national prosperity or personal fate. In governance and social practice, it prioritized human agency over the authority of ghosts and spirits, marginalizing their influence. While affirming the didactic function of sacrifice, Pre-Qin Confucians venerated ghosts and spirits but insisted on “ji er bu qi” (祭而不祈, “sacrificing without supplication”). Song–Ming Confucianism, responding to challenges from Buddhism and Daoism, reinterpreted these concepts and understood ghosts and spirits in terms of qi (氣, ether), framing them as the contraction and expansion of “qi” (“qi zhi qu shen”, 氣之屈伸). They did not recognize the independent existence, sentience, or supernatural powers of ghosts and spirits. Because the qi of ancestors and the living are identical, communication with ghosts and spirits could be established during ancestral worship. They favored sacrifice to ghosts and spirits but criticized the Buddhist practice of making images of them. In summary, Pre-Qin and Song–Ming Confucianism offered different explanations for why ghosts and spirits should be venerated and the relationship between sacrifice and blessings. These interpretations, shaped by efforts to distinguish themselves from wu-shi traditions and Buddhist–Daoist doctrines, reveal differences and contradictions between the two major phases of Confucian thought. Both, however, shared the aim of negating shamanistic practices and countering heterodoxy. Full article

This study examines how tourism platform ecosystems have evolved into mechanisms supporting sustainable, resilient, and digitally transformed tourism systems amid rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), immersive technologies, and data-driven platform governance. While previous research has extensively explored smart tourism technologies and digital transformation, limited attention has been devoted to understanding how tourism platforms have evolved from digital infrastructures into ecosystem-level coordination mechanisms shaping sustainability, resilience, adaptive governance, and digitally mediated stakeholder interactions in tourism marketing. To address this gap, the study develops a longitudinal evolutionary analysis of tourism platform ecosystems by combining a bibliometric analysis of 447 Web of Science-indexed publications (2015–2026) with an exploratory discourse analysis of Booking.com corporate communications. The findings reveal a progressive transformation of tourism platforms from digital infrastructure ecosystems (2015–2019) to adaptive coordination systems (2020–2022) and, ultimately, to AI-driven intelligent ecosystem orchestrators (2023–2026). Across these stages, tourism research increasingly integrates AI-enabled personalization, conversational interaction, immersive technologies, ecosystem governance, sustainability coordination, destination resilience, predictive analytics, and customer engagement. The study proposes a longitudinal evolutionary framework explaining how tourism platforms transition toward intelligent ecosystem orchestration supporting sustainability-oriented governance, adaptive destination management, personalized visitor experiences, and long-term competitiveness. The framework advances an ecosystem intelligence perspective that extends existing digitalization and technology-adoption narratives within tourism research. Full article

The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is a densely populated, highly connected coastal urban region that is exposed to typhoons, extreme rainfall, flooding, storm surges, heat-related risks, and public health emergencies. Existing studies have clarified many aspects of hazard exposure and spatial vulnerability, but evidence on how residents receive warnings, interpret risks, prepare, evacuate, and contribute to community resilience remains dispersed across disciplines and jurisdictions. This study maps the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of research on residents’ responses to urban disaster risks in the GBA. Following a PRISMA 2020-aligned identification and screening process, 144 records from the Web of Science Core Collection were manually screened. Bibliometric analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, a region–hazard matrix, and a BERTopic-inspired topic modelling procedure were then used to identify publication trends, disciplinary sources, spatial hazard patterns, and latent themes. The results show accelerated growth after 2020 and identify six interrelated themes: risk perception and preparedness; evacuation and shelter accessibility; urban flooding vulnerability; typhoon, storm surge, and coastal community risk; community resilience and climate adaptation governance; and health emergency response and psychosocial resilience. The review synthesises these findings into a heuristic framework linking risk information, cognitive appraisal, response action, and community resilience. The GBA is treated as an analytically informative, rather than statistically representative, case of a high-density, coastal, and multi-jurisdictional urban region. The findings suggest that resident-centred resilience planning should connect trusted and actionable warnings with inclusive digital communication, accessible protective resources, and cross-boundary coordination for compound hazards. Full article

Sorghum bicolor is an important cereal crop because of its tolerance to drought, high temperature, and low input requirements. However, the low productivity of sorghum is still due to the inadequate nutrient status and inappropriate use of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). These nutrients are essential for plant growth, metabolism, abiotic stress tolerance, and yield development. Nutrient uptake in sorghum is regulated by the plant, the rhizosphere microbiome, and close interactions between the root system and membrane-localized transporter systems. This review summarizes the molecular interaction between the root and microbes that control the N, P, and K transporter genes in sorghum. It initially describes the architecture of sorghum roots, root exudation, and the key elements that govern rhizosphere microbiome assembly. It goes on to explain the molecular structure of significant nutrient transport systems, such as nitrate, ammonium, phosphate, and potassium transporters. Other important microbial groups related to nutrient uptake identified include diazotrophs, phosphate-solubilizing, potassium-mobilizing, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. The focus is specifically on the interaction of plants and microbes that affect transporter gene expression and symbiotic acquisition of nutrients. In general, the review highlights an integrated framework of the interaction of root characteristics, microbial communities, and transporter networks in the process of controlling nutrient uptake in sorghum, and it determines valuable directions for future studies and crop enhancement. Full article

China is a major producer, consumer, and exporter of automobiles. As an important component of the national industrial system, the automotive industry is associated with strong economic support functions, notable industrial spillover effects, and significant technological externalities, and its core values constitute a powerful driving force in achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals. Accordingly, this paper establishes a complex network evolutionary game model that involves two types of automobile manufacturers (established and latecomer automakers) in a strategic interaction within an exogenous environment jointly shaped by the government and the consumer community. We conduct a numerical simulation analysis to explore the organic relationships between the core elements within the system and the long-term performance of the automotive industry. The main findings are as follows. First, in adopting sustainable business models (SBMs), latecomer automakers exhibit a “high-start, low-end” evolutionary trajectory, whereas established automakers follow a “low-start, high-end” convergence path. Second, regarding the characteristics of game rules, the proportion of automakers that adopt SBMs is positively correlated with a larger proportion of ESG consumer groups, stronger comprehensive production and consumption subsidy standards, a more favorable expected payoff, and stronger market advantages on the part of established automakers. Finally, regarding network-structure characteristics, the proportion of automakers that adopt SBMs is positively correlated with a moderate total number of automakers, a reasonable proportion of established automakers, and a higher edge-addition probability. Moreover, this proportion is nearly independent of the noise interference coefficient, thus indicating that the mathematical model constructed as part of this study exhibits strong anti-interference capability. Full article

Background/Objectives: Youth are increasingly engaged in mental health research, but many models remain consultative rather than participatory. We examined the Technology and Adolescent Mental Health Internship (TAMI) as an implementation-focused instrumental case study of a structured youth participatory action research internship for high school students recruited through schools serving Chicago’s West and South Sides. Methods: The case study included an embedded multimethod formative evaluation with participatory interpretation by a post-program youth advisory board (n = 8). In Year 3, 18 participants completed baseline surveys, and 16 provided matched pre–post surveys (matched survey completion = 89%). Measures included a study-developed five-item research-task self-efficacy indicator, post-program attitudes and intentions, and four open-ended items. We conducted one exploratory paired-samples t-test and an inductive descriptive content analysis. Results: In exploratory analyses, mean research-task self-efficacy scores increased from 21.8 (SD = 2.1) at baseline to 23.8 (SD = 1.4) post-program, t(15) = 4.09, p = 0.001, d_z = 1.02. Among the 15 respondents who responded to each of these post-program items, all reported being confident or very confident explaining youth mental health research, and all reported being at least somewhat likely to participate in future research, advocacy, or mental health activities. Participants described learning related to literature review, research design, ethics, data interpretation, and science communication. They recommended a longer program, additional applied practice, and more guest speakers. Conclusions: The TAMI was delivered within one program cycle and was viewed favorably by respondents. This case illustrates how youth-generated questions, adult scaffolding, collaborative interpretation, and youth co-authorship can be incorporated into a structured research internship. Larger, independent evaluations are needed to assess outcomes, sustainability, and transferability. Full article

The tourism sector in the Sultanate of Oman is central to “Oman Vision 2040”, with a strategic focus of the government on its dynamic transformation. Coastal regions, vital to tourism, are affected by changes to the coastline due to flash floods, sea-water flooding, and erosion. Despite its implications for tourism and the economy, this topic remains relatively under-explored, especially as to use of Sentinel-1 satellite images. This study assesses water-level changes due to erosion in the urban coastal region of the Al-Batinah governorate via land cover classification. Using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification technique, the overall accuracy is found to be 97.7% and the Kappa coefficient value for the year 2018 is 1.0. Although, when using the Random Forest (RF) classification technique, the accuracy is nearly identical, there is varying precision for the water area. A critical observation is made, showing significant increase of the water area from 2.99% in the year 2017 to 12.36% in the year 2025, suggesting water encroachment. With fixed-effect and combined-effect size meta-analysis models, the confidence levels were identified as 95.0% and 0.37, respectively, indicating a consistent variation in water area that supports the outcomes of image classification. This study offers a valuable insight for policymakers as to managing coastal regions, along with providing assistance to vulnerable coastal communities. The study focuses on a particular governorate, given the satellite images, whereas a broader regional comparison would address the limitation of the generalizability of results. In the future, the research could integrate surveys from coastal communities and businesses for a comprehensive qualitative data perspective on the region’s tourism sector. Full article

Hospitals are complex institutions where clinical, social, and cultural practices intersect. In Ghanaian hospitals, interactions are shaped by multilingual communication, professional hierarchies, cultural norms, and community expectations. Drawing on five months of ethnographic fieldwork, this study examines coordination of care in a Ghanaian hospital to understand how boundaries (i.e., professional hierarchies, communication barriers, community accountabilities), ruling relations, and power dynamics influence care. Institutional ethnography (IE) was implemented. Participants were purposively sampled, and data were collected through participant observation, documentary materials, and interviews with nurses (n = 11), patients (n = 21), and caregivers (n = 11). Thematic and IE analyses trace how boundaries and professional hierarchies, informal economies, and multilayered surveillance (“medical,” “social,” and “community” gazes) organize care work through institutional texts and how nurses, patients, and caregivers access or deliver care. The findings showed that boundaries at the Yendi Hospital were simultaneously rigid and negotiable, with informal economic activities compensating for institutional resource constraints. Communication work was central to navigating linguistic and cultural diversity, while surveillance from within and beyond the hospital-shaped behaviour and accountability. These everyday practices revealed how institutional texts and societal forces co-produce the conditions of care, with implications for teamwork, patient–provider relationships, and hospital governance. Full article

Artificial intelligence architecture is no longer adequately described by model size alone. Dense Transformers remain the reference architecture for language and multimodal reasoning, but production systems increasingly combine conditional computation, retrieval, memory, tools, verifiers, edge-cloud routing, observability and governance. This review makes three engineering claims. First, sparse Mixture-of-Experts models are currently the clearest capacity-scaling pattern, because they decouple total parameters from active per-token computation, although routing imbalance and distributed communication remain hard constraints. Second, state-space, recurrent and linear attention hybrids are best interpreted as attention-budgeting architectures: they reduce KV-cache and long-context costs, but do not yet displace dense attention in every reasoning regime. Third, JEPA-style latent world models change the learning objective from surface-token or pixel prediction to representation prediction, which is strategically important for perception and planning but still not a drop-in replacement for general language interfaces. To make the maturity claims auditable, this review uses a PRISMA-inspired search protocol, an explicit technology readiness rubric, quantitative comparison tables, hardware and memory-bandwidth analysis, deployment and reproducibility categories, and failure cases for RAG and agents. The main conclusion is that the optimal architecture is task- and constraint-dependent: small dense or hybrid models are often preferred for real-time edge inference, RAG and graph memory for changing enterprise knowledge, frontier dense or sparse models for difficult reasoning, and agentic workflows only when tool permissions, rollback, provenance and human oversight are engineered as first-class components. Full article

“Rebellion” and “The Grand Inquisitor,” two adjoining chapters in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, are usually read as a contest between two theologies: theodicy and anti-theodicy, freedom and obedience, Christ and institutional power. This article reads them instead as a contest between two forms of power over human life, what Foucault called biopolitics: power directed at the life of populations rather than at territory or law. Using Foucault’s account of pastoral power as a vocabulary for care exercised over each soul and the flock as a whole, and Agamben’s analysis of how modern government inherits its structure from theological models of providence, the article argues that Ivan’s rebellion treats suffering as a scandal no providential plan can absorb, while the Inquisitor’s program turns vulnerable life into the object of administration. Ivan’s tortured children do not literally fit the Roman category of homo sacer, the figure who could be killed but not sacrificed; they occupy a structurally analogous position as lives included in creation as the price of “eternal harmony” yet excluded from any justice adequate to their suffering. The Inquisitor’s three temptations, bread, miracle, and authority, function as pillars of biopolitical rule: managing material needs, capturing consciousness, and deciding who belongs to the community. Christ’s silent kiss neither refutes nor replaces the Inquisitor’s regime; it briefly suspends the apparatus by treating the speaker as a body rather than as a function of power. Building on Solovieva’s reading of the Dostoevsky–Agamben relation, this article shifts attention from the Inquisitor as a corruption of Christianity to the Inquisitor as the limit case of pastoral care when care becomes total administration. The result is a revaluation of the Grand Inquisitor legend: Dostoevsky presents Christianity as internally exposed to the risk that solicitude, compassion, and the promise of happiness may become techniques for governing life. Full article

Indigenous Knowledge (IK) is the traditional wisdom used to manage and sustain ecosystem services (ES). This review paper presents the integration of ES and IK for sustainable natural resource management and policy in Ethiopia, suggesting that despite increased research in recent years, there is a lack of uptake at the policy and program implementation levels. A total of 75 studies published between 2015 and 2025 were systematically reviewed, covering an 11-year sequential scope following PRISMA 2020 guidelines and including articles from the Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, African Journal Online and Indigenous Knowledge Documentation Centre (IKDC) databases. The findings show that provisioning services dominate the literature (67.4%), followed by regulating (18.3%), cultural (9.2%), and supporting services (5.1%). IK documented across 22 ethnic groups demonstrated important contributions to biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture, forest management, and water resource management. However, only 26.8% of the reviewed studies successfully integrated IK into ES frameworks. Policy content analysis tool (PCAT) of 23 national documents showed weak institutional support for IK integration, with an average integration score of only 5.8 out of 20. Major barriers include limited policy implementation, institutional fragmentation, and negative perceptions toward IK. Successful integration cases were strongly associated with community ownership, participatory monitoring, legal recognition, and long-term funding support. This review is important because it systematically shows that IK delivers confirmed environmental and livelihood benefits over this 11-year time frame. It highlights the urgent need for stronger policy frameworks, inclusive governance, and recognition of IK to improve ecosystem conservation and sustainable resource management in Ethiopia. Full article