Search Results (1,606)

Currently, approximately 6000 mineral species have been identified, and every year, approximately 100 more are discovered. The discovery of a new mineral has a close relationship with geological heritage. It involves the definition of both the type mineral (the specimen from which the sample used for the description of the new mineral species was obtained) and the type locality (the location where the corresponding specimen was found). All type minerals constitute elements of movable geological heritage and must be kept in a museum or a reference research center. However, not all type localities are recognized as geological heritage sites (geosites), despite their connection to a heritage interest. This article discusses these different considerations regarding type minerals and type localities as geological heritage in a general context. In addition, the situation in the case of Spain is analyzed, which, for various reasons, can serve as a model at the international level. It is concluded that type localities should be considered part of the geological heritage, and that the number of type minerals is always greater than that of type localities. Full article

Although numerous studies have examined the spatial patterns of traditional villages and their driving factors, limited attention has been devoted to the transformation of tourism. This study focused on traditional villages in Shaanxi Province, employing geodetector and grounded theory methods to analyze their spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors. First, most traditional villages have not developed tourism. Only 11.98% reached the relatively mature tourism stage. Second, the spatial distribution of mature traditional tourism villages is scattered and primarily clustered in Liuba County, Mizhi County, and Jia County. Third, the factors influencing spatial distribution characteristics include resource endowment, transportation accessibility, and regional economic conditions. Among these factors, the level of traditional villages, village heritage values, and the local tourism environment show the strongest explanatory power. These findings can help enhance cultural resilience, promote economic transformation and upgrading, and support the sustainable development of traditional villages. Full article

This study investigated the nuanced influence of urban morphology on the thermal performance of nine mass housing blocks (21–26, 28–30) in New Belgrade’s Central Zone. These blocks, showcasing diverse structures, provided a robust basis for evaluating the design parameters. ENVI-met simulations were used to assess two scenarios: an “asphalt-only” environment, isolating the urban structure’s impact, and a “real-world” scenario, including green infrastructure (GI). Overall, the findings emphasize that while GI offers mitigation, the inherent urban built structure fundamentally determines thermal outcomes. An urban block’s thermal performance, it turns out, is a complex interplay between morphological factors and local climate. Crucially, simple metrics like Green Area Percentage (GAP) and Building Coverage Ratio (BCR) proved unreliable predictors of thermal performance. This highlights the critical need for urban planning regulations to evolve beyond basic surface indicators and embrace sophisticated, context-sensitive design principles for effective heat mitigation. Optimal performance arises from morphologies that actively manage heat accumulation and facilitate its dissipation, a characteristic exemplified by Block 22’s integrated design. However, even the best-performing Block 22 remains warmer compared to denser central areas, suggesting that urban densification can be a strategy for heat mitigation. Given New Belgrade’s blocks are protected heritage, targeted GI reinforcements remain the only viable approach for improving the outdoor thermal comfort. Full article

The lithological record of past climates and climate changes reveals significant potential in enhancing education and understanding of global climate changes and their impacts on contemporary societies. A relatively young geological record of Pleistocene cooling and glaciations serves as one of the most useful geo-educational tools. The present study encompasses a comprehensive review of ongoing efforts to assess and communicate the glacial geoheritage of the Pleistocene, with a detailed case study of Poland. A literature review is conducted to evaluate the extent of scientific work on inventorying and communicating the geodiversity of Pleistocene glacial and periglacial environments globally. The study demonstrates a steady increase in the number of scientific contributions focused on the evaluation and promotion of Pleistocene geoheritage, with a notable transition from the description of geosites to the establishment of geoconservation practices and educational strategies. The relative complexity of the palaeoclimatic record and the presence of glacial geodiversity features across extensive areas indicate that effective scientific communication of climate changes requires careful selection of a limited number of geodiversity elements and sediment types. In this context, the use of glacial erratic boulders and rock gardens for promotion of Pleistocene glacial geoheritage is advocated, and the significance of educational initiatives for local communities and the preservation of geocultural heritage is outlined in detail. Full article

Biosphere Reserves (BRs), designated by UNESCO, are uniquely positioned to serve as model territories for sustainable development, as they aim to harmonize biodiversity conservation with the socio-economic vitality and cultural identity of local communities. This work examines the commitment of the Spanish Network of Biosphere Reserves to the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Using a survey-based research design, this study assesses the extent to which the reserves have integrated the SDGs into their strategic frameworks and operational practices. It also identifies and analyses successful initiatives and best practices implemented across Spain that exemplify this integration. The findings highlight the need for enhanced awareness and understanding of the 2030 Agenda among stakeholders, alongside stronger mechanisms for participation, cooperation, and governance. The conclusion emphasises the importance of equipping all reserves with strategic planning tools and robust systems for monitoring, evaluation, and accountability. Moreover, the analysis of exemplary cases reveals the transformative potential of sustainability-oriented projects—not only in advancing environmental goals but also in revitalizing local economies and reinforcing cultural heritage. These insights contribute to a broader understanding of how BRs can act as dynamic laboratories for sustainable development and heritage preservation. Full article

Museums may acquire archaeological artefacts discovered by non-specialists or amateur archaeologists, holding the potential to promote the safeguarding of cultural heritage by integrating the local community in their activities. However, this also creates an opportunity for the fraudulent sale of modern forgeries presented as archaeological artefacts, resulting in the need for a critical assessment of the artefact’s authenticity prior to acquisition by the museum. In 2019, the regional museum in Cáceres (Spain) was offered the opportunity to acquire a Phoenician-Punic head pendant, allegedly discovered in the vicinity of the city. The artefact’s authenticity was assessed by traditional approaches, including typological analysis and analysis of manufacture technique, which raised doubts about its purported age. VP-SEM-EDS analysis of the chemical composition of the different glass portions comprising the pendant was used for non-invasive determination of glassmaking recipes, enabling the identification of glass components incompatible with known Iron Age glassmaking recipes from the Mediterranean. Further comparison with historical and modern glassmaking recipes allowed for the identification of the artefact as a recent forgery made from glasses employing modern colouring and opacifying techniques. Full article

The implementation of the trans-European tourist cycle route network “EuroVelo” is fostering new strategic importance for non-motorized mobility and the associated practice of cycling tourism. Indeed, slow tourism offers a pathway for the development of inland areas. The infrastructure supporting it, such as long-distance cycling and walking paths, can act as a vital connection, stimulating regeneration in peripheral territories by enhancing environmental and landscape assets, as well as preserving heritage, local identity, and culture. The regeneration of peri-urban landscapes through soft mobility is recognized as the cornerstone for accessibility to material and immaterial resources (including ecosystem services) for multiple categories of users, including the most vulnerable, especially following the restoration of green-area systems and non-urbanized areas with degraded ecosystems. Considering the forthcoming implementation of the Magna Grecia cycling route, the southernmost segment of the “EuroVelo” network traversing three regions in southern Italy, this contribution briefly examines the necessity of defining new development policies to effectively integrate sustainable slow tourism with the enhancement of environmental and landscape values in the coastal areas along the route. Specifically, this case study focuses on a coastal stretch characterized by significant morphological and environmental features and notable landscapes interwoven with densely built environments. In this area, environmental and landscape values face considerable threats from scattered, irregular, low-density settlements, abandoned sites, and other inappropriate constructions along the coastline. Full article

Rural regions face significant barriers to adopting IoT technologies, due to limited connectivity, energy constraints, and poor technical infrastructure. While urban environments benefit from advanced digital systems and cloud services, rural areas often lack the necessary conditions to deploy and evaluate secure and autonomous IoT solutions. To help overcome this gap, this paper presents the Smart Rural IoT Lab, a modular and reproducible testbed designed to replicate the deployment conditions in rural areas using open-source tools and affordable hardware. The laboratory integrates long-range and short-range communication technologies in six experimental scenarios, implementing protocols such as MQTT, HTTP, UDP, and CoAP. These scenarios simulate realistic rural use cases, including environmental monitoring, livestock tracking, infrastructure access control, and heritage site protection. Local data processing is achieved through containerized services like Node-RED, InfluxDB, MongoDB, and Grafana, ensuring complete autonomy, without dependence on cloud services. A key contribution of the laboratory is the generation of structured datasets from real network traffic captured with Tcpdump and preprocessed using Zeek. Unlike simulated datasets, the collected data reflect communication patterns generated from real devices. Although the current dataset only includes benign traffic, the platform is prepared for future incorporation of adversarial scenarios (spoofing, DoS) to support AI-based cybersecurity research. While experiments were conducted in an indoor controlled environment, the testbed architecture is portable and suitable for future outdoor deployment. The Smart Rural IoT Lab addresses a critical gap in current research infrastructure, providing a realistic and flexible foundation for developing secure, cloud-independent IoT solutions, contributing to the digital transformation of rural regions. Full article

Early printed books, particularly incunabula, are invaluable archives of the beginnings of modern educational systems. However, their complex layouts, antique typefaces, and page degradation caused by bleed-through and ink fading pose significant challenges for automatic transcription. In this work, we present a modular pipeline that addresses these problems by combining modern layout analysis and language modeling techniques. The pipeline begins with historical layout-aware text segmentation using Kraken, a neural network-based tool tailored for early typographic structures. Initial optical character recognition (OCR) is then performed with Kraken’s recognition engine, followed by post-correction using a fine-tuned ByT5 transformer model trained on manually aligned line-level data. By learning to map noisy OCR outputs to verified transcriptions, the model substantially improves recognition quality. The pipeline also integrates a preprocessing stage based on our previous work on bleed-through removal using robust statistical filters, including non-local means, Gaussian mixtures, biweight estimation, and Gaussian blur. This step enhances the legibility of degraded pages prior to OCR. The entire solution is open, modular, and scalable, supporting long-term preservation and improved accessibility of cultural heritage materials. Experimental results on 15th-century incunabula show a reduction in the Character Error Rate (CER) from around 38% to around 15% and an increase in the Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU) score from 22 to 44, confirming the effectiveness of our approach. This work demonstrates the potential of integrating transformer-based correction with layout-aware segmentation to enhance OCR accuracy in digital humanities applications. Full article

Preserving historical porous materials requires careful monitoring of surface humidity to mitigate deterioration processes like salt crystallization, mold growth, and material decay. While microclimate monitoring is a recognized preventive conservation tool, its role in detecting surface-specific moisture risks remains underexplored. This study evaluates the relationship between indoor microclimate fluctuations and surface moisture dynamics across 13 historical sites in Northern Italy (Lake Como, Valtellina, Valposchiavo), encompassing diverse masonry typologies and environmental conditions. High-resolution sensors recorded temperature and relative humidity for a minimum of 13 months, and eight indicators—including dew point depression, critical temperature–humidity zones, and damp effect indices—were analyzed to assess the moisture risks. The results demonstrate that multivariate microclimate data could effectively predict humidity accumulation. The key findings reveal the impact of seasonal ventilation, thermal inertia, and localized air stagnation on moisture distribution, with unheated alpine sites showing the highest condensation risk. The study highlights the need for integrated monitoring approaches, combining dew point analysis, mixing ratio stability, and buffering performance, to enable early risk detection and targeted conservation strategies. These insights bridge the gap between environmental monitoring and surface moisture diagnostics in porous heritage materials. Full article

As sustainable cultural heritage tourism increasingly demonstrates its unique value and appeal, effectively stimulating tourists’ emotional experiences and value co-creation behaviors has become a focal issue. This study investigates how multiple tourist motivations (self-enhancement, escapism, and social interaction) shape value co-creation through emotional mediators—namely aesthetic, nostalgic, and flow experiences. Data were collected from 470 valid responses from visitors to the UNESCO-listed Suzhou Classical Gardens in China and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results show that these emotional experiences significantly drive value co-creation behavior: self-enhancement motivation enhances all three experiences, escapism mainly promotes nostalgic and flow experiences, and social interaction primarily affects aesthetic experience. These findings clarify the psychological mechanisms through which tourists’ motivations and emotional experiences influence value co-creation behavior in cultural heritage tourism. This research advances our understanding of the motivation–experience–behavior framework and emphasizes that enhancing emotional engagement is key to fostering sustainable cultural heritage tourism practices. The study provides practical implications for designing experiences and strategies that balance visitor satisfaction with the long-term vitality of cultural heritage sites and local communities, thereby contributing to broader sustainable development goals. Full article

The NW–SE-trending Firenze-Pistoia Basin (FPB) is an intermontane tectonic depression in the Northern Apennines (Italy) bounded to the northeast by a SW-dipping normal fault system. Although it has moderate historical seismicity (maximum estimated Mw 5.5 in 1895), the FPB lacks detailed characterization of its recent tectonic structures, unlike those of nearby basins that have produced Mw > 6 events. This study focuses on the southeastern sector of the basin, including the urban area of Florence, using tectonic geomorphology derived from remote sensing, in particular LiDAR data, field verification, and high-resolution geophysical surveys such as electrical resistivity tomography and seismic reflection profiles. The integration of these techniques enabled interpretation of the subdued and anthropogenically masked tectonic structures, allowing the identification of Holocene activity and significant, although limited, surface vertical offset for three NE–SW-striking normal faults, the Peretola, Scandicci, and Maiano faults. The Scandicci and Maiano faults appear to segment the southeasternmost strand of the master fault of the FPB, the Fiesole Fault, which now shows activity only along isolated segments and cannot be considered a continuous active fault. From empirical relationships, the Scandicci Fault, the most relevant among the three active faults, ~9 km long within the basin and with an approximate Late Quaternary slip rate of ~0.2 mm/year, might source Mw > 5.5 earthquakes. These findings highlight the need to reassess the local seismic hazard for more informed urban planning and for better preservation of the cultural and architectural heritage of Florence and the other artistic towns located in the FPB. Full article

An analysis of Albanian Muslims in Italy provides a compelling case study of communities perceived as marginal. Studies of Muslims in Italy tend to focus on the majority and chronologically older groups within the country’s Islamic landscape, particularly those from Asia and Africa. In addition to providing a better understanding of Islam in Italy, a study of the identity and community-building issues of the Albanian community of origin offers many insights into that community’s complexity. Albanians in Italy have a very specific historical and religious heritage; so, analyzing their roots and community-building processes helps us to better understand the development of Islam on the margins of large national organizations and majority groups. This article presents the results of the first national study of Albanian Muslims in Italy. Online interviews and field observations were conducted in 2024 within the Union of Muslim Albanians in Italy (Unione degli Albanesi Musulmani in Italia—UAMI), using the ethnographic method. The Association has fewer members compared with national level organizations. It was founded in 2009 to address specific issues related to the management of Muslim Albanian religious identity. The Association has sought to address the fragmentation of religion and Albanian nationalism, a consequence of a long period of state atheism, and to counter the literalist and radical tendencies in the interpretation of religion that have emerged in Albania since the collapse of the communist regime. In addition to these challenges, the Association has also tackled issues related to the Islamic religion in its local and global dimensions. The analysis of these challenges and the ways to deal with them offers a new framework in the Italian Islamic panorama, despite its marginality. The results of this research point to the emergence of new forms of rooting and belonging characterized by spirituality over orthopraxis. These forms adopt a religious approach open to diversity and pluralism. Full article

This paper presents a qualitative case study on the design, implementation, and validation of the Art Nouveau Path, a mobile augmented reality game developed to foster sustainability competences through engagement with Aveiro’s Art Nouveau built heritage. Grounded in the GreenComp framework and developed through a Design-Based Research approach, the game integrates location-based interaction, narrative storytelling, and multimodal augmented reality and multimedia content to activate key competences such as systems thinking, futures literacy, and sustainability-oriented action. The game was validated with 33 in-service schoolteachers, both through a simulation-based training workshop and a curricular review of the game. A mixed-methods strategy was used, combining structured questionnaires, open-ended reflections, and curricular review. The findings revealed strong emotional and motivational engagement, interdisciplinary relevance, and alignment with formal education goals. Teachers emphasized the game’s capacity to connect local identity with global sustainability challenges through immersive and reflective experiences. Limitations pointed to the need for enhanced pedagogical scaffolding, clearer integration into STEAM subjects, and broader accessibility across technological contexts. This study demonstrates that these games, when grounded in competence-based frameworks and inclusive design, can meaningfully support multimodal, situated learning for sustainability and offer valuable contributions to pedagogical innovation in Education for Sustainable Development. Full article

Structural cracks significantly threaten the safety and longevity of historical buildings, which are essential parts of cultural heritage. Conventional inspection techniques, which depend heavily on manual visual evaluations, tend to be inefficient and subjective. This research introduces an automated framework for crack and damage detection using advanced YOLO (You Only Look Once) models, aiming to improve both the accuracy and efficiency of monitoring heritage structures. A dataset comprising 2500 high-resolution images was gathered from historical buildings and categorized into four levels of damage: no damage, minor, moderate, and severe. Following preprocessing and data augmentation, a total of 5000 labeled images were utilized to train and evaluate four YOLO variants: YOLOv5, YOLOv8, YOLOv10, and YOLOv11. The models’ performances were measured using metrics such as precision, recall, mAP@50, mAP@50–95, as well as losses related to bounding box regression, classification, and distribution. Experimental findings reveal that YOLOv10 surpasses other models in multi-target detection and identifying minor damage, achieving higher localization accuracy and faster inference speeds. YOLOv8 and YOLOv11 demonstrate consistent performance and strong adaptability, whereas YOLOv5 converges rapidly but shows weaker validation results. Further testing confirms YOLOv10’s effectiveness across different structural components, including walls, beams, and ceilings. This study highlights the practicality of deep learning-based crack detection methods for preserving building heritage. Future advancements could include combining semantic segmentation networks (e.g., U-Net) with attention mechanisms to further refine detection accuracy in complex scenarios. Full article