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Black liberation theology as an academic discipline in the late 1960s was initially conceived, interpreted, and articulated as Christian theology that characterized material and spiritual liberation from oppression as the primary aim, task, and meaning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This Black theology determined to interpret the gospel message in light of black experience in a system of white racism in the United States. This article raises the question: What is a more holistic, comprehensive, inclusive and nuanced depiction of African American experience as a theological source for doing contemporary Black theology in the North American context? To avoid representing the black experience in the US as one-dimensional, overly racialized, and monolithic, this work resists androcentrism, outdated racial reasoning and logic, reductionism, and stereotypical social constructions that falsely circumscribe, essentialize, and totalize the theological representation of black experience. Rooted in the diversity, difference, and otherness found within the African American community, this contemporary Black theology of liberation reframes black experience in terms of the inclusive justice and subjective freedom of the gospel message. It seeks to graciously affirm, honor, and uplift the inherent dignity, integrity, and worth of Blackness, all Black lives, and each Black life. Full article

Overtourism management increasingly uses public communication to frame how visitors are expected to move, behave, and understand their responsibilities in pressured destination spaces. Yet, in heritage cities, such communication is often examined through isolated signs, etiquette campaigns, visitor advisories, or congestion notices rather than as part of a wider visitor-management communication system. This paper examines Kyoto as a case of overtourism communication in an urban heritage setting. Using document-based content analysis supported by exploratory statistical tests, it maps 64 public-facing communication artifacts published between 2016 and 2025 and codes them by message orientation, artifact type, source environment, and spatial focus. The findings show that exclusionary messaging does not dominate Kyoto’s public-facing overtourism communication within the analyzed corpus. Dispersal and behavioral guidance is the most common orientation, while restriction is targeted and secondary, and invitational place guidance remains comparatively limited. Message orientation is significantly associated with artifact type, with restriction concentrated in signs and posters and invitational place guidance appearing mainly in guides and brochures. Semi-institutional actors account for most artifacts, indicating the central role of destination-management organizations and other visitor-facing tourism bodies in translating management concerns into public guidance. Spatially, guidance-oriented communication appears broadly across the city, while restriction has its clearest place-based concentration in Eastern Kyoto, especially Gion-related areas. A smaller set of messages invites visitors to explore wider Kyoto or less conventional places beyond standard guidebook routes. Drawing on the lens of soft urban governance, the paper argues that public-facing overtourism communication can be understood as one visible layer through which visitor-management expectations are framed, spatially differentiated, and made publicly legible. As a document-based analysis, the study does not measure visitor reception, compliance, or behavioral effects, which remain priorities for future research. Full article

Artificial intelligence is increasingly used to produce and distribute sustainability-related brand communication, yet its effects on consumer brand perceptions remain insufficiently understood. This study examines AI-enabled green brand communication as a sustainability signalling mechanism and investigates its associations with purchase intention through brand identity, brand aspiration, and brand image, while also considering the moderating role of perceived green authenticity. Data were collected in the United Kingdom between March and May 2025 through an online questionnaire completed by 324 adult social media users familiar with sustainability-related brand communication, and the proposed relationships were examined through reliability, validity, structural path, and moderation analyses. The results show that AI-enabled green brand communication is positively associated with both brand identity and brand aspiration. Brand identity and, more strongly, brand aspiration are positively associated with brand image, while brand image is positively associated with purchase intention. Perceived green authenticity further strengthens the positive associations between AI-enabled green brand communication and both brand identity and brand aspiration. The findings suggest that AI-enabled sustainability communication can support favourable brand evaluations and purchase intentions, but its effectiveness depends on whether consumers perceive the message as authentic, credible, and aligned with the brand’s environmental positioning. Full article

Michelin Green Star restaurants combine sustainability with high-end dining, yet it remains unclear whether motivation to visit and willingness to pay reflect the same psychological process. Across two studies, we examined differentiated consumer responses to this hybrid context and the role of sustainability communication. Study 1 used survey data from 526 participants and structural equation modeling. Visit intention was positively associated with descriptive norms (β = 0.254), perceived behavioral control (β = 0.356), and positive anticipated emotions (β = 0.302). Green consumer orientation, luxury restaurant hedonism, and perceived sustainability were indirectly associated with intention, mainly through positive anticipated emotions. Willingness to pay showed a narrower pattern, being positively associated with perceived behavioral control (β = 0.171) and luxury restaurant hedonism (β = 0.359), whereas sustainability-related distal antecedents showed no significant direct or indirect associations with this outcome. Study 2 experimentally compared practice-based and experience-based messages among 102 participants. The messages did not differ in their average effects, although intention increased overall following exposure. The interaction between message condition and green consumer orientation predicted post-message positive anticipated emotions (b = 0.447), and the index of moderated mediation through positive anticipated emotions was significant (index = 0.200, 95% bootstrap CI [0.069, 0.418]). Overall, motivational readiness and stated monetary allocation appear to reflect partly distinct processes, while the preliminary experimental findings suggest that communication effects depend on the alignment between communication orientation and consumers’ environmental orientation. Full article

Civilian communication systems often fail during armed conflicts, political unrest, and large-scale Internet disruptions—precisely when reliable communication is most needed. This paper presents HERMES, a resilient hybrid communication architecture that integrates HTTP/IP networking, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) mesh communication, and Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) within a unified adaptive routing framework. Unlike conventional approaches that treat alternative transports as backup solutions, HERMES dynamically selects the most efficient transport path based on current network conditions using a transport-aware forwarding policy whose cost function combines round-trip time, transport preference, and observed link risk. The architecture is built on distributed microservices that support topology discovery, shortest-path routing, and fault-tolerant message delivery. Reliability is enhanced through acknowledgments, bounded retransmissions, duplicate suppression, and graceful degradation mechanisms, while end-to-end authenticated encryption (Noise XX with a Double Ratchet) ensures secure communication across transport changes. A prototype implementation developed in C# on .NET 9 was evaluated on a five-node testbed, and a custom Network Simulator 3 (NS-3) module was used to extend the evaluation to networks of up to 500 nodes, under multiple failure scenarios, including node crashes, network partitioning, and complete Internet outages. Experimental results show that HERMES maintains perfect or near-perfect delivery in static topologies, including during a complete Internet blackout that disables IP-only messaging. Compared with the published Delay-Tolerant Networking protocols Epidemic and PRoPHET at one hundred nodes, HERMES exceeds their delivery ratio in static and failure scenarios and remains within 0.06 of them under pedestrian mobility during blackout, while transmitting roughly 35× fewer bytes– and about 21× fewer even relative to the more bandwidth-efficient MaxProp baseline. Under coordinated drop attacks by adversarial relays, HERMES degrades gracefully where flooding-based baselines collapse. This approach demonstrates that resilient civilian communication can be effectively achieved through metric-driven adaptive multi-transport routing, making it suitable for disaster recovery, contested environments, and connectivity-limited regions. Full article

Arc flash faults in industrial substations can release high levels of incident energy, particularly on the line side of incoming circuit breakers, where opening the local breaker alone does not eliminate the source contribution. This paper proposes and experimentally evaluates an IEC 61850-based methodology to mitigate this protection gap by transferring arc flash trip signals between substations using GOOSE messages. The methodology comprises laboratory validation of the complete GOOSE-based protection chain and communication network, followed by validation in an operating industrial substation. Laboratory tests demonstrated satisfactory performance for both homogeneous and multivendor IED configurations, although longer operating times were observed when the test current approached the overcurrent pickup setting. The communication network achieved a mean transfer time of 5.31 ms and a maximum of 6.00 ms. In the industrial case study, the maximum protection operating time was 90 ms. Considering a conservative total fault-clearing time of 107.5 ms, the incident energy was reduced from 7.34 cal/cm² to 2.04 cal/cm², corresponding to a reduction of approximately 72%. These results demonstrate the feasibility of IEC 61850 GOOSE communication for high-speed trip transfer, reducing fault-clearing time and mitigating incident energy under critical line-side fault conditions. Full article

Smart-manufacturing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) deployments increasingly depend on low-latency device-to-device (D2D) communication among resource-constrained, physically exposed field devices. This setting makes mutual authentication and session-key establishment difficult: public-key-intensive or cloud-dependent schemes add overhead, availability dependence, and single points of failure, while weak PUF-based designs may expose challenge-response pairs (CRPs) to replay, disclosure, and modeling attacks. This paper proposes PASMAP, a lightweight PUF-ASCON mutual authentication protocol for gateway-assisted D2D communication in smart-manufacturing IIoT. PASMAP combines SRAM-PUF key reconstruction, fuzzy-extractor helper data, hash- and XOR-based obfuscation, and ASCON authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) to protect hardware-rooted identities, hide raw PUF responses, and establish fresh session keys for post-authentication data exchange under an explicitly trusted local-gateway model. The protocol is evaluated against physical, protocol-level, and insider threats, including cloning, tampering, replay, man-in-the-middle, CRP disclosure, PUF modeling, stolen-verifier, and known-key attacks. A real-or-random (ROR) analysis bounds the adversary’s session-key advantage using hash collisions, PUF-response prediction, online guessing, and ASCON AEAD security. A mixed-platform evaluation based on ESP32 primitive timings for the edge devices and desktop timings for the resource-rich gateway yields an estimated total computation cost of 4.762 ms. The initiator and responder require 2.006 ms/264.79 $\mathsf{\mu }$J and 2.679 ms/353.63 $\mathsf{\mu }$J of computational energy, respectively, while the five-message exchange carries 4704 bits. These results indicate low computational overhead under the stated benchmark and power-model assumptions. However, the protocol totals are operation-count-based estimates, the PUF and fuzzy-extractor operations are simulated, and the energy model excludes several platform- and communication-dependent costs. A complete embedded implementation is therefore required to validate end-to-end latency, memory use, energy consumption, communication-stack overhead, SRAM-PUF reliability, and fuzzy-extractor performance. Full article

Brownfield industrial systems often contain programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that expose heterogeneous vendor-specific protocols but cannot directly participate in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) data architectures. Replacing these controllers is frequently impractical, while low-cost gateways often address only one vendor or lack Sparkplug B lifecycle management, Unified Namespace (UNS) structuring, security, or supervisory control and data-acquisition (SCADA) integration. This paper proposes a modular ESP32-based edge gateway framework that connects Festo CI, Mitsubishi SLMP, and Siemens S7comm controllers to a Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT)/Sparkplug B infrastructure and a UNS aligned with the ISA-95 (International Society of Automation Standard 95) enterprise-control hierarchy in Ignition. Each PLC is served by a protocol adapter and represented as a Sparkplug Device, while Transport Layer Security (TLS) protects gateway-to-broker communication. The framework was evaluated using 20,000 measurements per PLC and communication configuration for gateway request-to-publication time, application-level publication-to-Ignition latency, memory usage, and fault behavior. With TLS enabled, mean request-to-publication times were 38.62 ms, 20.28 ms, and 16.80 ms for Festo, Mitsubishi, and Siemens, respectively, while mean publication-to-Ignition latency remained approximately 55–56 ms. The results demonstrate an extensible, low-cost approach for integrating heterogeneous brownfield PLCs without modifying their control logic while establishing a structured data layer for supervisory and future analytics applications. Full article

The security of a signature scheme given in the standard model (SM) will be more stable and reliable than that given in the random oracle model (ROM). Fuzzy identity-based signature (FIBS) enables a user to generate a signature for a set of descriptive attributes, defined as $\omega ={\left\{{\omega }_j\right\}}_{j=1}^n$. Any attributes set ${\omega }^{\prime }={\left\{{\omega }_j^{\prime }\right\}}_{j=1}^n$ can validate the signature provided that the distance between $\omega$ and ${\omega }^{\prime }$ is below a predefined threshold. Most of the existing FIBS schemes are based on the ROM. It is of great significance to design a FIBS scheme based on the SM. In this work, we adopt fingerprint minutiae as the biometric modality and present a feature extraction algorithm $\mathcal{E}$ that transforms raw minutiae into quantized, privacy-preserving attribute sets, and we present a False Rejection Rate (FRR)–False Acceptance Rate (FAR) trade-off framework to calibrate matching threshold t, with adjustable n for qualified error performance. Subsequently, we present a novel and efficient FIBS scheme, which is proven to be unforgeable in SM for any polynomially bounded adversary under selective identity attack model. Compared to the existing FIBS schemes based on the ROM, our new FIBS scheme has a strong security model. Compared to the existing FIBS scheme based on the SM, our new FIBS scheme reduces total computation consumption by approximately $33.55\%$ and achieves a significant reduction in communication consumption, saving approximately $68.07\%$ of the message and signature size, which is suitable for biometric authentication. Full article

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), as a key communication component of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), enable vehicles and roadside infrastructure to exchange information efficiently, thereby supporting road safety and traffic management. However, because these communications take place over open wireless channels, VANETs are exposed to message forgery, replay, identity disclosure, and unauthorised access by revoked vehicles. To address these issues, this paper proposes EPAF, an efficient privacy-preserving batch authentication scheme with revocation support for fog-enabled VANETs. EPAF uses roadside fog nodes to distribute update keys and report information related to misbehaving vehicles, thereby reducing reliance on remote centralised processing. Rather than assuming ideal tamper-proof devices that store system-wide secrets, EPAF requires protected storage only for vehicle-local certificates, limiting the impact of compromising an individual vehicle device. The scheme employs batch verification to authenticate multiple messages from different vehicles in a single procedure, reducing verification overhead in message-intensive traffic conditions. It further introduces an update-key mechanism through which legitimate vehicles obtain current authentication keys, whereas revoked vehicles are prevented from generating valid authentication messages in subsequent revocation periods. Under the honest-authority model, the security analysis establishes the EUF-CMA security of an authentication packet in the random-oracle model and separately addresses conditional identity privacy, traceability, and unlinkability across different pseudonym periods. Performance evaluation examines the trade-off among authentication efficiency, communication overhead, and revocation performance, showing that EPAF is a practical solution for fog-enabled vehicular communication. Full article

National recycling rates have stagnated at approximately 32 percent in the United States, suggesting that existing programs are not achieving desired levels of diversion. A growing body of field experiments has examined whether informational and norm-based messaging interventions can shift recycling behavior, though most studies rely on self-reported outcomes or stated preferences rather than objective behavioral measures. Using bin-level audit data from a randomized field trial among 200 voluntarily enrolled households in Columbus, Ohio, we find that norm-based and educational message framing produce statistically indistinguishable average effects on recycling fill level, participation, and contamination over a 29-week program. However, the analysis identifies that norm-based messaging outperforms educational messaging when adverse weather raises participation costs, while educational messaging holds up better during high-distraction community events. These patterns point toward adaptive messaging designs that condition content on observable contextual triggers as a promising direction for extracting greater behavioral returns from recycling outreach investment. Full article

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent “forever chemicals” associated with environmental and public health risks. Despite increasing concern, policies and mitigation strategies often lag behind PFAS contamination, and many communities lack accessible solutions for reducing exposure. Effective risk communication is needed to develop public awareness of, engagement with, and adoption of PFAS mitigation practices. This study examined how risk message framing may influence behavioral intentions to reduce PFAS contamination in everyday living environments. A between-subjects experiment (N = 296) exposed participants to one of four PFAS messages varying in threat (high vs. low) and efficacy (high vs. low) levels. Participants reported very limited prior exposure to PFAS risk messaging. High-threat messages generated greater fear than low-threat messages, but high-efficacy messages did not produce significantly greater perceived efficacy than low-efficacy messages. The interaction between threat and efficacy significantly predicted emotional flow, with the high-threat/high-efficacy condition generating greater emotional flow than the low-threat/low-efficacy condition. Fear, perceived efficacy, and emotional flow were significant positive predictors of PFAS mitigation behavioral intentions. Findings suggest that PFAS risk communication should pair credible threat information with actionable efficacy cues that help audiences move from fear toward agency, hope, and protective intentions. Full article

The plant-based meat alternatives sector increasingly promotes its products as sustainable, yet the extent to which these claims are supported by transparent corporate disclosure remains insufficiently understood. This study investigates the alignment between product-level sustainability claims and corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) transparency in the Italian online plant-based meat alternatives (PBMA) market, considered as a case study within the broader European regulatory context. A dataset of 200 PBMA products from 11 companies was analyzed. Sustainability claims were collected from packaging and online materials, classified into textual, symbolic, and certification-based categories, and evaluated for specificity, substantiation, and transparency. Corporate ESG transparency was measured using an ESG Transparency Index based on 45 indicators from the “Sustainability Dialogue between SMEs and Banks” framework. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, cluster analysis, and multivariate regression were used to examine the relationship between claim intensity, ESG disclosure quality, and firm characteristics. The results reveal substantial variation in the alignment between product communication and corporate transparency. While specialized plant-based companies and some large retailers show higher ESG disclosure, several firms combine intensive sustainability messaging with limited reporting, indicating product–corporate communication gaps that may warrant further investigation. Regression results show that ESG transparency significantly predicts claim intensity, certifications are positively associated with claim intensity, and company size is not a significant predictor. By providing a multi-level assessment of sustainability communication, this study contributes to research on ESG disclosure, transparency alignment, and the screening of communication–disclosure gaps in environmental marketing. The findings offer insights for policymakers, regulators, and firms, particularly in the context of the European Union’s Directive 2024/825 on consumer protection against misleading environmental claims. Full article

The automotive industry is evolving toward Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs) enabled by centralized computing, cloud integration, and Over-the-Air (OTA) updates. Yet, prevailing SDV and Internet of Vehicles (IoV) simulators often treat each vehicle as a single monolithic node, obscuring the interplay between internal vehicle modules and the surrounding infrastructure in dense urban scenarios. This work proposes a modular SDV reference architecture embedded in a Software-Defined Internet of Vehicles (SD-IoV) framework together with a Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) co-simulation testbed built on Objective Modular Network Testbed in C++ (OMNeT++), Simulation of Urban MObility (SUMO), and Vehicles in Network Simulation (Veins). The architecture decouples perception, communication, decision, and actuation into typed replaceable modules and instantiates them across six co-existing agent types: an SDV; two human-driver vehicle classes with cognition modelled as a multi-stage Eye–Ear–Brain–Hand–Foot pipeline with reaction-delay sampling; a public transport bus; a Roadside Unit (RSU); and a Traffic Light (TL). Three platform-level mechanisms connect the agents to the infrastructure: a single shared world model with a three-layer line-of-sight funnel that serves visual-sensor queries and reuses the building polygons of the wireless shadowing model; a dual-CPU mobile-fog node implementing a cycles-per-frequency workload model with explicit end-to-end latency decomposition; and a three-plane intersection coordination fabric that combines 802.11p wireless with a wired RSU-to-TL star and a wired peer mesh between adjacent TLs. The initial results confirm that the implemented message paths and module interactions behave as specified, including directional Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) reception, cross-junction handover, bus-side fog-offload latency accounting, and passive identification of Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X)-silent vehicles. Several architecture elements are specified but deliberately not exercised in the present evaluation and remain design targets for future work: the Roadside Unit (RSU) route planning and fog computing companion (and any multi-tier offloading comparison), non-line-of-sight SPaT reception, and a safety violation detection layer. Within the above scope, the testbed is positioned as a reusable foundation for module-level SDV research and as a basis for future extensions such as Joint Communication and Sensing (JCAS), energy-aware driving, and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) integration. Full article

Signalling traffic in 5G Interconnect and Roaming Networks (IRNs) over the IP eXchange (IPX) faces man-in-the-middle (MITM) interception on N32 and GTP-U, billing fraud, and “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” (HNDL) adversaries. This paper develops and validates qSiP, a hybrid quantum–classical framework integrating Quantum Key Distribution (QKD, BB84 decoy-state protocol) and Quantum Secure Direct Communication (QSDC, DL04) at OSI Layers 1–2 with a classical-plus-quantum ML classifier for signalling anomaly and billing-fraud detection. Evaluation spans NS-3, Mininet, and MicroK8s on a dual-PLMN Open5GS testbed with PacketRusher NB-IoT traffic and STRIDE-L threat modelling. Cryptographically, qSiP holds BB84 QBER within decoy-state thresholds, sustains key rates matched to N32 timing, and under HNDL conditions bounds adversary exposure to one key-rotation interval; N32 captures confirm 3GPP message format and handshake semantics end-to-end. For detection, the Hybrid configuration reaches 98.5–99.5% accuracy across environments (vs. 89.4–96.0% classical), reduces undetected billing fraud over four roaming paths, and adds under 5 ms latency per signalling exchange. Statistical tests confirm hybrid > classical at p < 0.05 across eMBB, uRLLC, mMTC, and BCE. The work contributes an integrated framework with simulation-based empirical validation in a standards-aligned 5G SA testbed and a methodological commitment for future quantum-roaming research: quantum ML detects but does not encrypt, while QKD/QSDC encrypt does not classify; these are two complementary, non-interchangeable roles. Full article