Search Results (134)

Contemporary English speakers often make a distinction between things that are artificial and those that are deemed natural. On the one hand are places, things, and situations that humans have altered, and on the other those that are free (or relatively free) of human influence. This concept of “nature” is an important, if problematic, one: it influences much of the modern environmental movement, where nature often has positive connotations while the artificial is valued negatively. In this paper I will be focusing on an idea found in Tibetan anti-meat literature: that there is a moral difference between eating the meat of animals that “die as a result of their karma” and animals that are slaughtered. This idea, I argue, parallels the distinction between the natural and artificial found in many English language discussions about the environment. As such, my suggestion is that this idea could, with some development, help support dialogue over environmental issues between Western and Buddhist philosophers and communities. Full article

Knowledge of river flood risk in semiarid rural areas is often based on outdated, low-resolution geoinformation. Consequently, identification of exposed settlements, assets and risk-reduction measures remains challenging. This dataset provides up-to-date, fine-grained information for a rural area spanning 931 km² that is exposed to flooding from the Niger River and the Karma Wadi. The dataset includes information on (i) areas exposed to the two flood types that characterise the river’s hydrological regime and flash floods from the wadi, (ii) flood-prone crops, buildings and (iii) measures for risk treatment. Discharge data, a 4 m horizontal-resolution digital elevation model, and two-dimensional hydraulic modelling with BASEMENT were used to identify flood-prone areas. Visual interpretation of high-resolution satellite imagery in Google Earth, together with field inspections, enabled the identification of exposed assets. The Information System on Rural Markets of Niger and house compensation values recognised during resettlement-related works enabled asset valuation. Risk was expressed in monetary terms as the product of flood probability and expected damage. Risk-reduction measures were identified with stakeholders through a SWOT analysis and prioritised using eight criteria. The dataset can support emergency plans, flood early warning systems, rescue and recovery operations and flood risk management. Full article

This paper explores the evolving relationship between energy consumption, economic activity, and carbon emissions in Southeast European countries over the period 2000–2024. Using a dynamic panel framework, the analysis focuses primarily on short-run interactions, given the lack of evidence for a stable long-term equilibrium. The findings reveal that changes in energy consumption remain the main driver of fluctuations in CO₂ emissions, confirming the carbon-intensive nature of energy use across the region. In contrast, economic growth and industrial production do not show a statistically significant direct effect on emissions in the short term. Renewable energy plays a mitigating role, although its impact becomes more visible only when cross-country interdependencies are taken into account. This suggests that regional factors, such as shared policies and energy market shocks, shape environmental outcomes. Overall, the results indicate that emissions are influenced more by immediate changes in energy use than by persistent dynamics, highlighting the ongoing challenge of reducing environmental pressure without fundamentally transforming the energy structure. Full article

Urbanisation and impervious-cover expansion are reshaping riparian landscapes, particularly in mountain cities where steep terrain concentrates development along valley floors. This study examined spatiotemporal land-cover change within the regulated riparian corridors of Thimphu City, Bhutan, over a 25-year period from 1997 to 2022 using Landsat imagery, Random Forest classification and Google Earth Engine. Results show substantial transformation of riparian land cover, with impervious cover increasing from 26.14% to 32.63%, equivalent to an overall increase of 24.83%, while agriculture/barren/low-vegetation declined from 30.59% to 26.01%, equivalent to an overall decrease of 14.98%. A modest increase in detectable vegetation cover was also observed, although this should be interpreted cautiously because the study measured land-cover extent rather than vegetation condition, floristic composition or ecological quality. Classification performance was robust, with overall accuracies ranging from 89.9% to 94.5%, exceeding the commonly accepted 85% benchmark, although uncertainty remains in narrow riparian corridors due to Landsat’s 30 m spatial resolution. Mann–Kendall analysis provided supplementary evidence of monotonic land-cover trends, but the limited number of temporal observations means these results should be interpreted as indicative, rather than definitive. Spatial analysis revealed uneven transformation, with the southern valley recording the greatest increase in impervious cover. These findings demonstrate sustained development pressure within legally regulated riparian buffers and highlight the need for routine spatial monitoring, place-specific buffer management and stronger integration of riparian protection into urban planning. The study provides a quantitative baseline for assessing future riparian land-cover change and supporting more resilient land governance in rapidly urbanising Himalayan mountain cities. Full article

In the Vaibhāṣika system, possession (prāpti), classified as a factor that is neither material nor mental, is posited as a real entity that links the various dharmas associated with a sentient being to its individual continuum. In this context, possession does not refer to legal ownership or supernatural possession; rather, it refers to the attainment or endowment of dharmas, that is, how particular qualities, actions, or mental states come to be present in a given individual. This paper examines the strategies by which Vaibhāṣikas defend the ontological status of possession, thereby shedding light on the motivations underlying this doctrinal commitment. Through close philological and historical analysis of a wide range of Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma sources, including passages from a newly available manuscript folio of the Abhidharmadīpa with Vibhāṣāprabhāvṛtti, this study reconstructs the diachronic development of Vaibhāṣika arguments for the real existence of possession. Vaibhāṣikas consistently employ two principal modes of justification: appeals to scriptural authority (āgama) and logical reasoning (yukti). As the tradition develops, their defenses of possession shift from reliance on scriptural sources toward increasingly sophisticated forms of doctrinal and functional integration. Possession thus evolves from a dharma serving to clarify specific doctrinal difficulties into a structurally embedded component of Vaibhāṣika doctrinal architecture, playing an important role in its accounts of soteriology, causality, and karma. Full article

Mango (Mangifera indica L.), being a climacteric fruit, is highly perishable due to rapid ripening and post-harvest diseases like anthracnose, which significantly shorten its shelf life and limit long-distance sea export. To mitigate these constraints, a chemical-free secondary metabolite-based formulation (SMsF) was developed to delay ripening and control post-harvest anthracnose during storage. The SMsF possesses dual-action properties and is derived from the culture filtrate of Priestia aryabhattai, exhibiting ACC deaminase activity that restricts ethylene formation. It is also rich in antifungal compounds such as vanillic acid, hydroxybenzoic acid, cryptochlorogenic acid, palmitic acid, and BBIT, which inhibit anthracnose development. Additionally, it contains antioxidants including quercetin, coumaryl quinic acid, oleic acid, and acetylglycitin that enhance shelf life and disease resistance. The efficacy of SMsF was evaluated in mango cv. Banganapalli was stored at 12 ± 1 °C and 85–90% relative humidity under simulated reefer conditions (SRC). Integration of gamma irradiation with SMsF provided superior results in disease control and shelf-life extension. The combined treatment maintained higher fruit firmness (0.86 kg cm⁻²), optimal total soluble solids (14.3 °B), desirable acidity (0.22%), and complete suppression of anthracnose (PDI = 0) up to 40 days of storage under SRC compared with the control. The findings conclusively demonstrate that the synergistic application of SMsF and gamma irradiation effectively regulates ripening, enhances fruit quality, and ensures complete disease suppression, thereby significantly extending storage life. This approach holds strong scientific and commercial significance as a sustainable, residue-free, and export-oriented technology capable of improving long-distance transportation, reducing post-harvest losses, and promoting safe mango trade. Full article

Planning an information technology (IT) standard system requires balancing multiple complex factors. These include industrial chain layout, technological iteration, practitioner application scenarios and cross-domain integration. Such planning demands high industrial adaptability, technical foresight and implementation operability, yet mature and systematic methods are currently lacking in this field. To address this issue, this paper proposes a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach for IT standard system planning by integrating complex system decomposition and integration principles. A multi-perspective (industry, practitioner, business, product, standard) and multi-view (industrial chain, practitioner, product, technical process, management process, standardization object, standard) modeling framework is constructed, and an MOF-based meta-model system for each view is designed to realize full-process visual modeling from industrial ecosystem analysis to standard system implementation. As a conceptual and methodological study, this approach makes up for the perspective limitations of traditional planning methods. Multi-view hierarchical and collaborative analysis ensures the standard system to be in line with industrial reality with foresight and operability, providing systematic methodological support for standard-setting organizations, industrial alliances and enterprises in the IT field, and expanding the application boundary of MBSE in standard system planning. Full article

During the mid-to-late Qing Dynasty, the folk-belief text Yuli constructed a systematic “underworld legal code” via its image–text system, distinct from traditional religious karma and religious law. This study focuses on Yuli’s core image system, exploring its unique legal characteristics and social governance functions through an interdisciplinary approach integrating religious studies, art history, and legal history. Yuli transforms real judicial symbols, such as government offices and prison gates, into underworld visual elements, establishing the core legal principles of “correspondence between crime and punishment” and “universal equality” while reflecting contemporary legal thought. The formation of this “underworld legal code” is closely linked to the creative practices of Qing Confucian scholars, who utilized folk beliefs as a vehicle to disseminate secular legal concepts and respond to social demands for behavioral norms. The Yuli thus became the primary behavioral norm for its grassroots audience, who, due to low literacy, could not understand the formal laws of the Qing Dynasty, and guided them to refrain from criminal acts. Yuli’s “underworld legal code” not only supplemented the national legal system but also reflected the pluralistic pattern of social governance in late imperial China, providing crucial empirical support for the theory of legal pluralism. This study deepens the understanding of the interactive relationship between folk beliefs and legal order in traditional China, and further clarifies the unique mode of grassroots social governance in the Qing Dynasty. Full article

This is a preliminary report on a study of Indic precedents for Pure Land traditions. It contests anglophone scholarship that find those traditions to be predominantly East Asian constructions in discontinuity with Indian Buddhism. The first part, related to previously unpublished research, disputes a common leading point of such arguments that the expression pure land, jingtu, has no Sanskrit antecedents. The article will show that Sanskrit antecedents for jingtu are in fact abundant. The second part summarizes previously published work showing that the cosmology, soteriology, and buddhology of buddhakṣetras have explicit foundations among the heavens and devas. The third part forecasts research for Kenneth Tanaka’s “Other Power” project. ‘Other-power’ has been seen as discordant with Indian traditions, when even abhidharma sources state that, through ‘a single mind of faith in Buddha to the marrow of one’s bones, one can overcome infinite bad karma.’ The salvific power of the names of buddhas is a common concept in Indian Buddhism, declared even by Nāgārjuna. Not discounting Chinese and Japanese creative contributions and acculturation, Pure Land traditions are in strong natural continuity with Indian Buddhist thought. Full article

The article examines the religio-ecological framework articulated in Ming–Qing morality books 勸善書, focusing on how animals, Ledgers of merit 功過格, and karmic 業報 are integrated into a system of moral causality. Within this framework, actions such as killing or saving animals are directly linked to karmic reward and punishment, generating a dual mechanism that combines moral technology with an ultimate logic of justice to cultivate ecological consciousness and enforce social discipline. A central contribution of the study is the articulation of a triadic analytical framework—merit–demerit ledgers, karmic narrative, and animal ethics—showing how these elements form a coherent system of measurable and actionable ethical practice. In doing so, the framework challenges a strictly human-centered worldview by foregrounding an interconnected ecological order in which humans and animals are bound together through shared moral obligations and karmic entanglements. The article further situates this religio-ecological mechanism within contemporary debates in environmental ethics and animal rights. Through comparison with modern approaches—such as anti-speciesism, animal welfare and rights discourse, and proposals for cross-species political communities—it identifies both points of convergence and structural divergence. It concludes by exploring how this historical model might be critically translated and revised for present-day conditions, proposing a “revised morality book” framework that is more publicly defensible and more amenable to institutional implementation. Full article

Social networks are now integral to corporate strategy and daily social life. They enable the rapid and extensive dissemination of information, proving highly effective for promoting hotel marketing content. Consequently, they facilitate interaction and engagement between hotels and their customers, serving both advertising and evaluation purposes. This study aims to analyse the use of the Facebook social network by luxury wine hotels located in countries associated with the Mediterranean Diet. An analytical model examining the variables of content, interactivity, and visibility was employed. A total of 17 luxury hotel pages were analysed, with data collected using the Karma Fanpage platform, an online tool for social media analysis and monitoring. The findings indicate that the majority of profile posts were photographs, and that this format generated the highest number of user reactions. It is recommended that hotels publish more photographic content to foster greater engagement and conduct further analysis of the specific types of posts that elicit the most reactions. Full article

In Indian religious traditions, the attainment of death with full conscious awareness has long been idealized, reflecting the deep ontological connection posited between death and liberation (mokṣa). Within this framework, Jainism—grounded in a rigorous soul–matter dualism—developed highly systematized practices that aim to separate consciousness from both the body and karma not only at the moment of death but throughout daily practice, as exemplified by kāyotsarga. Although sallekhaṇā (fasting unto death) has received considerable attention beyond Jain communities in the context of “death with dignity,” its deeper meditative dimensions have remained largely understudied. This article elucidates the meditative techniques of samādhimaraṇa underlying sallekhaṇā by examining classical Jain sources on deathbed meditation, particularly the kevalin’s procedures at the third and fourth stages of pure meditation (śukladhyāna). The analysis also addresses kevali-samudghāta—the uniquely Jain technique of “omniscient soul projection” incorporated into the third stage of śukladhyāna in Hemacandra’s twelfth-century Yogaśāstra—thereby clarifying the broader meditative context of sallekhaṇā. By situating samādhimaraṇa within its doctrinal, meditative, and soteriological contexts—rather than reducing it to suicide or to a religious variant of “death with dignity”—this article contributes to a more precise and contextualized understanding of Jain deathbed meditation. In doing so, it also contributes to the expanding field of death-yoga studies that has so far focused primarily on Hindu and Buddhist traditions, highlighting the distinctive role of Jainism in the landscape of Indian contemplative practice. Full article

Background: Post-harvest losses in bananas, particularly due to diseases such as anthracnose and stem-end rot, significantly limit their storage life and marketability. Developing effective and non-toxic treatments to prolong the shelf life of fruits while maintaining quality is crucial inenabling long-distance transport and facilitating exports. Methods: The most popular and commercial banana variety, ‘Grand Naine’, was treated with a proprietary secondary metabolite-based formulation (this refers to a solution containing natural compounds produced by living organisms, which are not directly involved in growth but can influence various biological processes, such as antimicrobial activity) and stored under cold conditions at 13 °C, using vacuum packaging (a method where air is removed from the packaging to reduce spoilage and prolong freshness). Untreated fruits were considered as controls, meaning that they were not subjected to the treatment and served as a baseline for comparison. Shelf life-related parameters such as ethylene production (a plant hormone responsible for triggering fruit ripening), ACC oxidase activity (an enzyme central to ethylene synthesis), respiration rate (the rate at which fruit consumes oxygen and produces carbon dioxide), firmness, total soluble solids (TSS; measures the sugar content in fruit), acidity, and metabolic composition were assessed, including indices of susceptibility to disease. These measurements were taken at regular intervals for both treated and control fruits. Results: Secondary metabolite-treated bananas maintained quality for 45 days, staying free from anthracnose and stem-end rot. Control fruits showed over-ripening and an 11.6% percent disease index (PDI). Treated fruits had lower ethylene production (7.80 μg/kg/s vs. 10.03 μg/kg/s in controls), reduced ACC oxidase activity, and a slower respiration rate, delaying ripening. They also had greater firmness (1.45 kg/cm²), optimal TSS (13.5 °Brix), balanced acidity (0.58%), and increased flavonoid and antioxidant levels compared to controls. Conclusions: Secondary metabolite-based treatment, combined with cold storage and vacuum packaging, extended banana shelf life to 45 days, minimized disease, and preserved fruit quality. This approach substantially reduced post-harvest losses, demonstrating export potential through extended storage. Full article

Background: This study reports on a community engagement knowledge-translation world café hosted in British Columbia, built on the research project “Enhancing cancer navigation for newly diagnosed, treated and post-treatment of people living with breast cancer in interior region”. The aim was to co-create a knowledge translation initiative with community stakeholders to enhance interdisciplinary approaches to psychosocial oncology. Methods: This study drew on implementation science and the consolidated framework for implementation research, which emphasize the importance of creating partnerships between researchers and engaging people for whom the research is meant to be of use—knowledge users and service users. Guided world café and purposeful sampling were used to engage a diverse range of stakeholders. Eighty stakeholders participated in this study from April 2023 to April 2024. Thematic analysis was conducted through familiarization, coding, theme development, review, definition, and reporting. Results: Eleven key themes emerged, including compassionate connection, time as a healing gift, empowering health literacy, informed compassion, holistic support ecosystem, empowering patient navigators, shared decision-making, empowering partnerships, digital–physical synergy, person-centered transformation, and accountability and collaboration. Conclusions: The key findings highlighted the need for continuous professional development for primary care providers, integrating patient-reported outcomes in electronic health records, leveraging digital health tools, and establishing community-engaged psychosocial oncology hubs to enhance care in rural communities. Recommendation: Recommendations include ongoing professional learning, embedding patient voices and lived experiences into care planning through digital tools, and empowering rural and diverse communities through inclusive and accessible cancer models of care. Full article

The current study examines the influence of tool rotational speed (TRS) and reinforcement volume fraction (%vol.) of SiC on particle distribution in the stir zone (SZ) of AZ91 Mg alloy. Two parameter sets were analyzed: S1 (500 rpm TRS, 13% vol.) and S2 (1500 rpm TRS, 10% vol.), with a constant tool traverse speed (TTS) of 60 mm/min. SPH simulations revealed that in S1, lower TRS resulted in limited SiC displacement, leading to significant agglomeration zones, particularly along the advancing side (AS) and beneath the tool pin. Cross-sectional observations at 15 mm and 20 mm from the plunging phase indicated the formation of reinforcement clusters along the tool path, with inadequate SiC transference to the retreating side (RS). The reduced stirring force in S1 caused poor reinforcement dispersion, with most SiC nodes settling at the SZ bottom due to insufficient upward movement. In contrast, S2 demonstrated enhanced particle mobility due to higher TRS, improving reinforcement homogeneity. Intense stirring facilitated lateral and upward SiC movement, forming an interconnected reinforcement network. SPH nodes exhibited improved dispersion, with particles across the SZ and more evenly deposited on the RS. A comparative assessment of experimental and simulated reinforcement distributions confirmed a strong correlation. Results highlight the pivotal role of TRS in reinforcement movement and agglomeration control. Higher TRS enhances stirring and promotes uniform SiC dispersion, whereas an excessive reinforcement fraction increases matrix viscosity and restricts particle mobility. Thus, optimizing TRS and reinforcement content through numerical analysis using SPH is essential for producing a homogeneous, well-reinforced composite layer with improved surface properties. The findings of this study have significant practical applications, particularly in industrial material selection, improving manufacturing processes, and developing more efficient surface composites, thereby enhancing the overall performance and reliability of Mg alloys in engineering applications. Full article