Search Results (1,095)

The article reflects on the care for the work of creation within Benedictine spirituality and within the broader tradition of the Cistercian Order. It seeks to demonstrate that monastic spirituality, though developed in a pre-modern context, contains enduring theological and ethical intuitions that remain relevant for contemporary ecological reflection. The starting point of the analysis is the Rule of Saint Benedict written by Benedict of Nursia, which, although it does not employ the modern vocabulary of ecology or environmental ethics, nevertheless articulates a coherent vision of human life characterized by reverence, moderation, and responsibility toward the created world. Particular attention is given to key spiritual and anthropological dimensions of the Benedictine tradition, such as attentive listening (obsculta), humility, moderation, stability, and responsible work, expressed synthetically in the principle ora et labora. These elements are interpreted not only as monastic disciplines shaping individual and communal life, but also as forming a relational anthropology in which the human person is understood as fundamentally embedded within a network of relationships with God, other people, and creation. In this sense, Benedictine spirituality already implies a non-exploitative attitude toward the natural world. The article then examines how concern for creation has been deepened and concretized in the spirituality, institutional practice, and historical development of the Cistercian Order. Drawing on selected Cistercian documents as well as contemporary monastic reflections, the study shows that care for the natural environment is inseparably linked with spiritual attentiveness to God, interior silence, openness of heart, and readiness to serve. The Cistercian tradition, with its emphasis on simplicity of life, manual labor, and harmonious integration with the surrounding environment, develops these Benedictine intuitions in a particularly concrete and historically embodied form. From this perspective, a pro-ecological attitude is not interpreted merely as a reactive response to contemporary environmental crises, but rather as a structural consequence of a theologically grounded vision of reality. It emerges from a deep relationship with God as Creator and from a sense of entrusted responsibility for creation understood as a gift rather than as an object of domination. Ecological sensitivity is thus presented as an intrinsic dimension of monastic spirituality rather than an external adaptation to modern concerns. The main research question of the article is: to what extent and in what way do Benedictine and Cistercian spiritual traditions provide theological, anthropological, and ethical foundations for an ecological attitude toward creation within the framework of contemporary integral ecology. To address this problem, the study employs qualitative research methods grounded in theological inquiry. The primary method is textual analysis of the Rule of Saint Benedict and selected Cistercian documents, complemented by theological–hermeneutical interpretation aimed at identifying key spiritual principles and their implicit ecological implications. In addition, the study applies a historical–critical perspective in order to situate monastic sources within their original cultural and theological context, as well as a comparative theological approach, which enables a dialogue between classical monastic spirituality and contemporary ecological theology. These methods are used not only to reconstruct historical meanings, but also to interpret monastic texts in light of contemporary debates on integral ecology, sustainability, and the ethics of responsibility for our common home. In this way, the article highlights a significant continuity between monastic wisdom and modern ecological reflection, showing their mutual capacity for enrichment. Full article

The Social License to Operate (SLO) has become a key component of mining sustainability. However, the literature continues to address its main dimensions through fragmented approaches, limiting the understanding of social legitimacy as a dynamic and territorially situated process. In response to this gap, this study develops a territorial–relational analytical framework to integrate the main dimensions involved in the construction, strengthening, and loss of the SLO. Based on qualitative research involving a literature review, document analysis, and comparative case analysis, four interrelated strategic dimensions were identified: social perception and territorial management, territorial governance and citizen participation, territorial distribution of benefits and shared value creation, and institutional trust and relational coherence. The study also proposes a five-stage territorial–relational sequence that represents the dynamic, cumulative, and potentially reversible nature of the SLO throughout the life cycle of mining projects. The interpretive application of the framework to the Dominga Project shows how the interaction among these dimensions helps explain trajectories of strengthening, deterioration, and loss of social legitimacy. Overall, the study reorganizes previously scattered evidence into an integrated conceptual structure that broadens the understanding of the SLO and provides a foundation for future research aimed at its empirical validation and application in the governance of extractive projects. Full article

Background: Primary plantar hyperhidrosis is a disabling condition characterized by excessive plantar sweating and impaired quality of life. Lumbar sympathectomy is reserved for patients with symptoms refractory to conservative treatment, but minimally invasive techniques remain technically heterogeneous. This study describes a modified retroperitoneoscopic lumbar sympathectomy and reports its preliminary perioperative outcomes. Methods: A single-center case series included consecutive patients who underwent modified retroperitoneoscopic lumbar sympathectomy for primary plantar hyperhidrosis between June 2019 and May 2024. The technique combined ultrasound-guided retroperitoneal access, indocyanine green (ICG)-assisted creation of the retroperitoneal working space, and temporary selective clamping of the lumbar sympathetic trunk with an intraoperative assessment of plantar temperature and perfusion before definitive clipping. Results: Forty-five patients underwent 81 procedures, including 35 bilateral procedures (70 sides), 10 unilateral procedures, and one unilateral reoperation for recurrent symptoms. All patients resumed oral intake and ambulation on the day of surgery and were discharged within 24 h according to institutional protocol. No intraoperative or postoperative complications were observed and resolution of plantar sweating in subsequent follow-ups was achieved. Conclusions: Modified retroperitoneoscopic lumbar Sympathetic Chain Selective Clamping appears to be a feasible and safe technique for the surgical treatment of primary plantar hyperhidrosis. These technical refinements may facilitate retroperitoneal access and intraoperative confirmation of the target sympathetic level. Larger comparative studies with standardized outcomes and longer follow-up are needed to confirm the durability and clinical value of this approach. Full article

High-altitude regions are known as corridors assisting exchange among communities, and the implementation of economic corridors in these regions provides connections and networks based on two geographical territories. For example, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), established as an infrastructural development project with wide-reaching socioeconomic and environmental implications, is regarded as a significant driver of regional transformation, with the potential to generate several businesses, build institutional resilience, reduce poverty, foster a circular economy, and create job opportunities. The current study explores the perceptions and attitudes of educated adult residents in selected mountain districts regarding CPEC, which is vital to ensure wide-ranging and sustainable infrastructure development in alignment with the SDG goals, explicitly SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), and SDG 15 (Environmental Protection). Grounded in Social Exchange Theory, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to assess local perceptions concerning the costs and benefits linked with infrastructural development projects and concentrating on its socioeconomic and environmental outcomes in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. The questionnaire was self-administered by respondents, who documented their own responses to all items. The researcher remained present throughout data collection to distribute the questionnaires, provide verbal explanations or translations into the local language for specific terms upon request, and collect completed forms; in total, 384 respondents completed the survey. Findings revealed that surveyed educated adult respondents perceived sustainable infrastructural development favorably, particularly regarding anticipated improvements in quality of life, job creation, alleviating poverty, and the current education system, with 59.9%, 53.1%, 53.1% and 41.7% agreement, respectively. Respondents also expressed concerns about environmental protection, such as health and safety, environmental risks, and construction/transportation-related pollution at 39.8%, 37.5% and 36.7%, respectively. Backed up by SEM direct path analysis, which showed significant positive relationships between infrastructural development and educational development (H1: β = 0.439), quality of life (H2: β = 0.638), job opportunities (H3: β = 0.603), poverty alleviation (H4: β = 0.534), and environmental protection (H5: β = 0.267). Thus, all hypotheses H1-H5 were supported. This study recommends that officials and policymakers promote stakeholder investment for regional sustainability transitions, formulate regional environmental policies and governance for sustainable development to enhance the benefits of CPEC. Full article

Child marriage remains a persistent barrier to girls and young women’s education, health, and socioeconomic advancement in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper examines the perceived economic empowerment initiatives contributed to expanding life choices, including the prevention of child marriage and the delay of early marriage, within the Girls Get Equal (GGE) project implemented between 2020 and 2024 across three districts (Nkasi, Kalambo and Sumbawanga DC) in the Rukwa Region of Tanzania between 2020 and 2024. The paper adopted an explanatory mixed-methods case study design to explain aggregated project outcome indicators with participants’ lived experiences captured through focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Endline evaluation interviews and focus group discussions were re-analyzed using a six-stage thematic analysis approach. The paper demonstrates that imparting skills in technical and business fields leads to robust job creation outcomes. A large majority of trained youth transitioned into employment or self-employment and a substantial proportion maintained stable income-generating activities. On top of that, community-based infrastructures, particularly savings and loan groups, emerged as important financial mechanisms as they enabled structures supporting enterprise development and household resilience. The integration of quantitative trends and qualitative narratives suggests that economic empowerment interventions can expand girls’ economic agency and influence their informed decision-making processes related to marriage. Finally, the findings suggest that combining vocational skills development with access to financial capital represents a promising pathway for addressing structural drivers of early and child marriage in economically vulnerable contexts. Full article

Humanity faces not isolated problems but a PolyCrisis, which is a set of 26 tightly interwoven existential crises spanning ecological collapse, planetary overheating, chronic disease epidemics, institutional fragility and social breakdown. Each crisis amplifies the others through cascading feedback loops, and 16 of these crises possess independently the capacity to cause human extinction or civilizational collapse. We are not entering an emergency, but we are already in a state of emergency. Multiple planetary boundaries have been transgressed, and climate tipping points are being crossed now. Extinction rates match historical great mass extinction events, while our food systems, primarily responsible for over half these crises, simultaneously drive hunger, obesity and chronic diseases. We argue that this PolyCrisis is not the result of isolated failures, but is best understood as the predictable, systemic outcome of Planet A, the prevailing Operating System of our mainstream civilization, characterized by economics of unbounded extraction and hoarding, violence-based and profit-based food systems, short-term thinking, and unlimited growth imperatives on a finite planet. Planet B is our proposed PolySolution framework, a complete alternative Operating System grounded in empirical reality and proven solutions. It integrates animal-free food systems releasing up to 5 billion hectares for rewilding, regenerative economics measuring non-violence and biocapacity, circular economy minimizing waste, technological restraint with democratic governance, seven-generation thinking, and PolyCommunity coordination, collaboration and co-creation of the PolySolution. It calls for the immediate emergency implementation of two planetary-scale MegaSolutions: (a) “Together Around Food”, implementing universal, free access to gourmet whole-food, plant-based vegan meals worldwide, eliminating hunger and accelerating food and health systems transformation, and (b) Cool, halting planetary overheating through agricultural emissions elimination, massive rewilding for carbon sequestration, and comprehensive stabilization of the life-support systems of our planet. Full article

This article undertakes a systematic comparative study of the critiques of modernity advanced by René Guénon (1886–1951) and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭāhā (b. 1944). Both thinkers arrive at convergent diagnoses of modernity’s spiritual and ethical failures from fundamentally distinct intellectual starting points—Guénon from the universal perennialist metaphysics of primordial Tradition, Ṭāhā from Islamic philosophy of language, logic, and ethics. Drawing on Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times alongside Ṭāhā’s Rūḥ al-Ḥadātha (The Spirit of Modernity), Al-ʿAmal al-Dīnī wa-Tajdīd al-ʿAql (Religious Practice and the Renewal of Reason), and Rūḥ al-Dīn (The Spirit of Religion), and supported by secondary scholarship including Wael Hallaq’s Reforming Modernity (2019) and the edited volume Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm (2020), the article argues that the philosophical significance of their encounter lies not merely in their convergences—both condemn the reduction of human life to quantitative and instrumental horizons—but in the productive tension between Guénon’s initiatory-metaphysical model of restoration and Ṭāhā’s trusteeship-based ethic of engagement. Where Guénon describes Western civilization as a civilization of “moralism”—a shifting, interest-driven ethical veneer concealing the absence of genuine transcendent principles—Ṭāhā constructs an affirmative alternative through his concept of i’timāniyya (trusteeship), which grounds reason, speech, and knowledge in an ethics of responsibility toward God, others, and creation. The article further argues that these two thinkers together illuminate a double rupture at the heart of modernity: the loss of metaphysical orientation (the vertical rupture) and the collapse of ethical trusteeship (the horizontal rupture). Full article

Reservoir stimulation is essential in enhanced geothermal systems and unconventional reservoirs where low permeability, inadequate fracture connectivity, or near-wellbore damage restricts commercial injection or production. This review evaluates hydraulic fracturing, thermal stimulation, plasma-pulse stimulation, and selected dynamic stimulation technologies. It compares their physical mechanisms, fracture-network development, reservoir applications, permeability enhancement, operational maturity, deployment challenges, and future perspectives. Hydraulic fracturing remains the most mature method for reservoir-scale fracture creation, fracture conductivity, and reservoir connectivity. In enhanced geothermal systems, however, performance depends on the heat-exchange area, distributed flow, thermal sweep, long-term energy recovery, and induced-seismicity control rather than permeability enhancement alone. Thermal stimulation is integral to geothermal reservoir development. Cold-fluid injection generates thermoelastic stress redistribution, enlarges the fracture aperture, activates natural fractures, promotes thermally assisted fracture propagation, and influences thermal breakthrough. Plasma-pulse stimulation, also termed pulsed-power plasma, electrohydraulic, or shock-wave stimulation, provides a low-water method for near-wellbore permeability enhancement, damage bypass, fracture reactivation, and restimulation. Its broader deployment remains constrained by the limited treatment radius, scale-up uncertainty, energy-transfer efficiency, tool durability, completion integrity, and insufficient field validation. Liquid CO₂ phase-transition, propellant, and explosive stimulation provide additional dynamic-loading options with distinct fracture responses, controllability, safety, and technology readiness. Stimulation technologies should therefore be selected according to the dominant reservoir limitation and evaluated using sustained injectivity or productivity, effective reservoir contact, distributed flow, delayed thermal breakthrough, treatment durability, wellbore integrity, and a controlled geomechanical response. Future progress requires hybrid stimulation, coupled thermal–hydraulic–mechanical–chemical (THMC) modeling, integrated monitoring, adaptive control, physics-informed artificial intelligence, digital twins, standardized field validation, and techno-economic and life-cycle assessments. Full article

Cultural organizations, like museums, libraries, and archives, are trusted spaces for discovery, innovation, interrogation, and encouraging agency and exploration. They go beyond the physicality of objects, focusing on dissemination of knowledge as the very mission of the organization. By adopting this mission around using collection items, crowdsourcing projects, and programming to expose digital literacy concepts like bias, algorithms, and more, institutions have a new opportunity to become essential to life-long learning geared towards this second quarter of the 21st century. Through hands-on experiences that expose the bias and choice in all description and knowledge creation, these organizations can reinsert human-in-the-loop frameworks into machine learning and artificial intelligence platforms. Full article

4E cognition offers resources supporting an anthropology and an ontology that overcome mind/body and related dualisms that contradict the original understandings of some major world religions, including the Western monotheisms and some Asian religions. 4E cognition embraces a holism with respect to the human organism, enabling a rapprochement with the Hebrew biblical, New Testament, and Qur’anic view of the human being as a psycho-somatic unity, as well as with scriptures and traditions about human nature of some Asian religions. For 4E cognition, the human organism comes embedded or emplaced in an environment with affordances, as it enacts meaning in co-constituting its lifeworld, in terms of both general orientation and particular values. The cruciality of social relationships and nature resonate with Western scriptures and with Mahayana Buddhism, Ruism/Confucianism, and Daoism. 4E cognition extends the joint project of organism and environment to evolution, with a mutual adaptation or specification of organism and environment. The fit of organism and environment finds resonance with these world religions, insofar as they uphold the goodness of creation or of the world. Moreover, the anthropology and ontology of 4E cognition provide a springboard for the analysis and affirmation of ethical values that resonate with the world religions insofar as they affirm the goodness of life. Full article

This paper explores the role of media literacy in enhancing the educational potential of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) video games, particularly in the context of cultural heritage education within technology-enhanced learning environments. Rather than presenting new empirical data, the study draws on existing media literacy, game studies, and cultural heritage scholarship to propose a comprehensive media literacy framework that addresses the needs and competencies of five key stakeholders: (1) players; (2) game developers; (3) educators and researchers; (4) represented communities; and (5) cultural institutions. Video game spaces are mainly designed to create entertaining products, but even COTS games have potential educational and cultural features, such as the promotion of real-life locations and tangible and intangible heritage. This paper argues that fostering media literacy among developers and players can not only support the creation of more culturally aware game worlds but also strengthen the educational use of games within technology-enhanced learning environments. In synthesising and reconfiguring existing theoretical models, the framework offers new insight into the relationship between media literacy and cultural heritage in games, and identifies directions for future empirical research. Full article

Proximity-based urban models, including the widely discussed 15 min city, aim to bring everyday destinations within a short walk, cycle, or shared-mobility trip, with promising benefits for well-being, public health, local economies, and low-carbon mobility. While the appeal of proximity is widely shared, far less is known about how to deliver and govern such neighbourhoods so that these benefits are realised, durable, and embraced by residents across the full range of their mobility needs. Implementation, public acceptance, and governance therefore remain comparatively under-examined. This article contributes an enabling governance approach for proximity-based, accessible neighbourhoods, centred on co-creation and on a rich, attractive menu of mobility options. Through a cross-disciplinary synthesis organised by the CalmMobility paradigm, a governance-posture lens that emphasises co-creation, sequencing, and readiness, it integrates evidence on proximity, accessibility, active travel, shared mobility, well-being, and low-carbon outcomes. The article argues that proximity and shared mobility widen the range of convenient and attractive options for everyday trips, and that this supports health, quality of life, and lower emissions. It also argues that these benefits are more likely to last under calm, co-created governance, which builds good options first and respects the freedom of residents to choose among all modes, including the car. To put the paradigm to work, the study introduces the Governance Compass and applies it to Paris, Barcelona, and Melbourne. The Compass was applied through a qualitative document analysis carried out by one analyst. It is offered as an exploratory tool that aims to make the reasoning open to inspection, not as a validated measuring instrument. Results are reported as ordinal bands, from Absent to Exemplary, and a 0 to 100 index is kept only as an illustration. The three cases show different patterns. In Paris and in the early Barcelona work, the documents set ambitious proximity goals but say much less about how change is paced, how residents shape it, and how choice is preserved, and these dimensions fall in the lower bands. In Melbourne, whose programme is still a pilot, the pattern is the reverse. The process dimensions are stronger there, but proximity itself is less developed. These bands describe the documents examined, not a fixed ranking of the three cities. Positioned as a constructive complement to the proximity-city agenda rather than a critique of it, the article closes with a cross-disciplinary research agenda spanning planning, transport, public health, and policy. Full article

Machine learning techniques for network-based intrusion detection systems (NIDS) have advanced considerably over the past decade. Still, improvements are inhibited by handcrafted feature pipelines, isolated public benchmark data, and evaluation procedures that do not reflect real-life deployment. AutoML, a branch of ML automating model selection, automated architecture search, and the creation of model pipelines, may help overcome these shortcomings. While numerous NIDS applications employing automated ML techniques have been proposed, and recent surveys have mapped the AutoML framework landscape for network intrusion detection, no existing review critically audits the evaluation practice of this literature: the quality of its benchmark datasets, the reproducibility of its reported results, and the realism of its deployment assumptions. This paper critically reviews 26 research works published between January 2023 and June 2026, collected via a two-phase structured search: a documented keyword search across five databases (Scopus, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, ACM Digital Library, and Google Scholar), followed by full-text eligibility screening, citation chaining, and expert evaluation. Findings drawn from this collection capture trends observed among the selected studies, rather than reflecting the broader state of the field. Analysis of the corpus reveals that 88% of dataset-verified studies evaluate exclusively or partly on the legacy benchmark family (KDD-derived, CICIDS, UNSW-NB15, CIDDS), 21% evaluate on a single dataset only, and among attribute-verified studies only 32% release source code, 40% report statistical significance testing, and 36% include variance analysis, findings that collectively motivate the four contributions of this study. First, a recommended evaluation framework is proposed, addressing baseline parity, transparent search-space and budget reporting, nested cross-validation for selection-bias control, and stability reporting across multiple random seeds. Second, a dataset quality scoring framework is introduced, assessing five dimensions: overlap rate, duplication rate, label correctness, attack-type representativeness, and coverage of benign, IoT, and IIoT traffic. Third, a cross-domain justification is provided for neural architecture search (NAS) and meta-learning in NIDS, grounded in advances in federated NAS, out-of-distribution robustness, edge-constrained search cost reduction, and few-shot adaptation. Fourth, a structured research roadmap is outlined, targeting real-world validation, standardized benchmarks, curated datasets, resource-aware AutoML, and privacy-preserving federated NAS. In contrast to prior surveys of AutoML for network intrusion detection, which map frameworks and computational paradigms, this review contributes a formalized evaluation checklist, an explicit and partially empirically validated dataset quality scoring scheme, and evidence-based methodological guidance grounded in a transparent, fully enumerated study corpus. 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

The traditional Chinese ecological aesthetics takes ‘the Unity of Heaven and Humanity’ [天人合一] as its philosophical core and constructs a cosmological landscape of coexistence and prosperity between humans and nature. Given the challenges of the global ecological crisis, this research draws on the ecological aesthetic wisdom of ‘the Unity of Heaven and Humanity’ to systematically explore its theoretical support and practical value for building a Beautiful China. By employing a mixed-method approach that integrates textual analysis, policy review, and multi-case comparative study, this research finds that in the process of building a Beautiful China, the traditional ecological aesthetic wisdom of ‘the Unity of Heaven and Humanity’ has achieved creative transformation and innovative development through the spatial creation of ‘Poetic Dwelling’, the green economy characterized by ‘Suitable for Employment’ and the ecological empowerment for the principle of ‘Suitable for Nurturing Life and Tourism’. This has paved a distinctive path for green development that integrates cultural subjectivity, ecological principles, and modern governance technologies. The discussion further emphasizes that intelligent ecological governance, leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, provides a key technological pathway for the contemporary transformation of ‘the Unity of Heaven and Humanity’ philosophy. This study provides a unique ecological and cultural foundation for building a Beautiful China and for global ecological protection. Full article