Search Results (266)

The effective resolution of non-deterministic polynomial time hard (NP-hard) combinatorial optimization problems requires a delicate balance between global exploration and local exploitation. While Quantum-Inspired Algorithms (QIAs) leverage principles of superposition to explore vast search spaces, they often lack the fine-grained exploitation capabilities of classical heuristics. To address this limitation, we propose the Quantum-Memetic Hybrid Algorithm (QMHA), a component-based framework that synergistically integrates qubit-based global search with adaptive classical refinement. The QMHA architecture explicitly coordinates five distinct algorithmic components: (1) quantum rotation gates for exploration, (2) a problem-aware memetic operator for immediate solution refinement, (3) an adaptive learning rate schedule, (4) periodic local search, and (5) a stagnation-based population reset for diversity management. We rigorously evaluate the framework against nine established metaheuristics, including Genetic Algorithms (GA), Differential Evolution (DE), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Simulated Annealing (SA), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), MAX-MIN Ant System (MMAS), Memetic Algorithms (MA), Quantum Evolutionary Algorithm (QEA), and Harmony Search (HS), across a comprehensive benchmark suite comprising six NP-hard problem families: constrained combinatorial (Knapsack), graph-based (Max-Cut), permutation-based (TSP), constraint satisfaction (Graph Coloring), bin optimization (Bin Packing), and scheduling (Flow Shop Scheduling), as well as real-world machine learning (Feature Selection) problems and the continuous Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2022 benchmark. Statistical analysis using Friedman tests and Nemenyi post hoc comparisons confirms that QMHA achieves a statistically significant performance advantage ($p<0.004$) and superior average rank (1.5) compared to component baselines and state-of-the-art competitors. Comprehensive analyses include computational complexity profiling, parameter sensitivity mapping, scalability testing up to $D=2000$, noise robustness evaluation, variable correlation degradation analysis, a six-component ablation study, exploration–exploitation dynamics tracking, integration mechanism comparison across five architectures, and a multi-objective extension feasibility study. The proposed framework offers a robust, verified approach to hybrid optimization without relying on biological metaphors. Full article

This study examines how students aged 10–20 conceptualize Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), focusing on their ability to think multiperspectively and justify decisions multidimensionally. In a classroom-based teaching experiment, 131 high school students from Lower Saxony completed a drawing task visualizing sustainable village transformations, followed by interviews with twelve participants. Their negotiation processes, verbal responses, and drawings were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The visualization of village transformations functions as a biology-didactic ESD activity, where students apply decision-making and problem-solving strategies to address biological system levels (e.g., individuals, populations, ecosystems) and their interconnections (trophic levels, food webs, biodiversity). Results indicate age-related differences: students in grades 5–7 primarily emphasized social and ecological aspects, designing idealized living spaces for themselves. Upper-secondary students (grades 11–13) incorporated societal, political, and economic considerations, prioritizing economic development. However, no consistent relationship between multiperspectivity and multidimensional reasoning was identified. Based on these findings and related research, the study advocates integrating systems thinking with a comprehension-oriented approach, combining the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the Model of Educational Reconstruction (MER). This aims to address the complexity of ESD more effectively, avoiding oversimplified, monocausal narratives that undermine the multidimensional nature of sustainable development. Full article

This research endeavoured to capture the lived experiences and perspectives of adult music learners. A qualitative collective case study using creative facilitation approaches was adopted, as part of an established Community of Practice: Adult Learner Meet Up event, to capture the voice of the adult music learner in relation to their experience of learning music within SETU Music School. Following inductive, thematic data analysis, emergent findings provided an insight into the motivations of adult music learners, barriers to their learning and strategies that they felt support their learning. Through the lens of Self-Determination Theory, this paper provides evidence that adult music learners are intrinsically motivated. The research identified that a connection with the wider Music Community through Adult Learner Meet Ups provided peer support and helped to sustain motivation for adult learners. This research identified barriers that are specific to adult music learners, including time pressure, emotional vulnerability and comparisons to younger players. This paper posits that adopting a relational pedagogy including a coaching ethos can foster relationships and help to mitigate such barriers. Drawing on Debussy’s metaphor of the “space between notes”, this paper argues that while the development of musical knowledge and skills is important to adult music learners, their relationships with their peers and lecturers are equally significant. The adult music learner Community of Practice provided a space to foster these relationships and contributed to learners’ motivation, engagement, and commitment to continued music learning. This paper will conclude by discussing how these findings could be applied to adult learners generally and highlight the importance of fostering connection in supporting adult learner retention and lifelong learning. Full article

Alphonse Mucha’s oeuvre is frequently categorized as a formalist paradigm of ornamentation within the Art Nouveau movement. This study, however, contends that Mucha’s signature Q Formula is far from a mere aesthetic redundancy or a utilitarian embellishment; rather, it manifests as Autonomous Ornament—an autonomous generative process and an inherent rhythm. Adopting a synchronic structural perspective that transcends linear historical causality, this research frames ornament as a dynamic relational medium connecting individual perception with collective evolution across geocultural boundaries. With Theosophy serving as a historical mediation and synthesizing Rudolf Arnheim’s psychology of visual perception with Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of the ornamental refrain (ritornello), this paper traces the cross-cultural construction of the Q Formula—from Mucha’s Moravian Catholic roots to the avant-garde Theosophical milieu of Paris. Through a horizontal comparative analysis with contemporary fin-de-siècle artists—specifically contrasting Gustav Klimt’s ornamental dissolution and Aubrey Beardsley’s ironic fragmentation—the study underscores Mucha’s distinct integrative strategy. Furthermore, it demonstrates a profound structural homology in topological energy between the Q Formula and the Eastern Kālacakra Mandala. Within this pure and vital ornamental logic, the circular main body acts as a centripetal anchor referencing Emptiness (Śūnyatā), while the boundary-crossing media serve as a metaphor for centrifugal Dependent Origination (Pratītyasamutpāda) and worldly manifestation through clothed repetition. Such ornamental rhythms collapse the classical hierarchy between structure and surface. Amidst the pervasive anxiety of fin-de-siècle industrialization, these forms exerted a visual soothing function, providing deep emotional and psychological efficacy. Mucha’s ornamental schemata reveal how repetitive and structural rhythms successfully transmuted traditional religious paradigms into channels for the internal integration of the modern subject. The paper thus reaffirms ornament as a form of critical imagination and an independent artistic force, which not only reshapes the psychological homeostasis of the modern subject but also constructs a profound resonance between form and life within a cross-cultural context. Full article

Multi-Level Governance (MLG) frameworks effectively diagnose the complexity of regional renewable energy transitions but lack operational mechanisms for institutional implementation. This study develops a hybrid evidence-based architecture that integrates the Viable System Model (VSM) with computational intelligence and objective multi-criteria decision analysis. Methodologically, a systematic review following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) protocol of 339 peer-reviewed articles (2015–2025) feeds a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model that extracts K = 30 strategic topics (semantic coherence $C_v$ optimized over K = 5–40), operationalizing System 4 environmental sensing. In parallel, a 1 km² pixel-based spatial model integrates a National Conflict Index (INC, 2019–2024) with technical feasibility layers (Global Wind Atlas v4.0, Solargis, Servicio Geológico Colombiano) and applies CRITIC (CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation) objective weighting and TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) prioritization (System 3 control). Robustness is confirmed through $\pm 10$–$20\%$ weight perturbation (Spearman > 0.92). Empirically, the framework reveals a localization paradox: approximately 68% of optimal wind zones (>9 m/s at 100 m hub height) in the Colombian Caribbean overlap with the highest national conflict quartile, narrowing a theoretical capacity exceeding 100 GW (50 GW offshore wind, 30 GW onshore wind, 42 GW solar PV, 1.17 GW geothermal) to roughly 24 GW of governance-viable capacity. Scenario calibration (Accelerated 80/20, Balanced 50/50, Justice-Oriented 30/70 technical/conflict weighting) demonstrates that System 5 normative orientation materially reshapes territorial prioritization. The framework advances VSM from a qualitative diagnostic metaphor to a reproducible governance architecture for high-variety regional contexts. Full article

This study examines how the ideal woman is discursively constructed and negotiated in contemporary Vietnamese online media amid globalisation and rapid social transformation. Using framing analysis, it examines recurring metaphors, catchphrases, depictions, exemplars, slogans and visual representations across a corpus of Vietnamese online texts concerning accomplished women, femininity, marriage and identity. The findings delineate three competing interpretive frames: (1) modernized traditional femininity, which reinterprets Confucian gender ideals through contemporary narratives of female empowerment; (2) relational negotiation, which situates women’s achievements by their impacts on heterosexual relations, emotional balance, and familial responsibilities; and (3) critical challenges to gender inequality, which questions restrictive gender norms, idealized femininity, and unequal relational expectations. Collectively, these frames demonstrate that contemporary media frequently portray women’s empowerment alongside persistent expectations of caregiving, emotional labor, and relational responsibilities. Building on these findings, functional persistence and relational negotiation are proposed as complementary analytical concepts for explaining how contemporary empowerment narratives accommodate and transform, rather than simply displace, traditional gender norms. The study contributes to sociological scholarship on gender discourse, media framing, and globalisation by demonstrating how competing representations of the ideal woman collectively shape a hybrid configuration of femininities in contemporary Vietnam. Full article

This study introduces and provides an initial validation of the Metaphorical Anchor Model, a framework in which metaphors function as cognitive tools that transform affective overload into structured professional meaning in the context of death and end-of-life care. A mixed-methods design was used to test whether professional background moderates the anchoring process. Study 1 involved a qualitative analysis of 61 metaphorical expressions produced by 14 multidisciplinary professionals, using thematic analysis within a discourse-based interpretative framework grounded in cognitive linguistics. Study 2 provided quantitative validation through Fisher’s Exact Test to examine whether professional training influences the selection of metaphor types. Qualitative findings identified six cognitive domains grouped into two macro-clusters: Symbolic & Relational Anchors (symbolic, affective, relational) and Functional & Cognitive Analogies (embodied, spatial, cognitive). Quantitative results supported the model, showing professional role as a significant moderator (p = 0.008): science-based professionals predominantly used Functional & Cognitive Analogies (54.3%), whereas humanistic-psychosocial professionals relied mainly on Symbolic & Relational Metaphor Anchors (80.8%). These findings suggest that metaphor use offers insight into how professional roles shape representations of death and care and may represent a relevant resource for emotional processing. Beyond its theoretical contribution, the model has potential implications for clinical communication training, supporting healthcare professionals in managing emotionally demanding interactions and improving reflective practice in end-of-life care. Full article

This study critically explores theoretical concepts of fluidity in architectural design, addressing its positioning, challenges, and evolving role within digital-era developments in scientific research over the past three decades. The aim of this article is to critically review the fluidity research gap in architectural design, shifting the concept away from ambiguous and inconsistent formal metaphors toward recognizing its importance within the interdisciplinary context of digitization and networking. The research method employs a four-level content analysis based on a deductive approach. The development of an interdisciplinary conceptual framework of fluidity is examined, alongside its changing scope, meanings, and positioning within the field of architectural design research. The study employs the definition and systematization of key terms and spatial aspects to trace the transformation of fluidity. This is achieved through the analysis of a selected corpus of peer-reviewed scientific articles, structured along cultural and technological lines of thought. The results reveal (1) the manner in which fluidity is situated within the domain of architecture in relation to adjacent scientific fields, along technological and cultural lines, and (2) the manner in which corresponding spatial aspects and demands for new forms of knowledge in architectural design have emerged and transformed from predominantly formal and expressive interpretations and metaphors towards a more operational and methodological role. This paper contributes to architectural design research through the development of a structured conceptual and analytical framework that positions fluidity within architectural inquiry. The study addresses the opportunities and challenges of conceptualizing the continuous variability of the notion of fluidity and the spatial aspects it is based on in architectural design processes in response to cultural and technological transformations. Furthermore, the study extends fluidity beyond its role as a design language for articulating complex spatial formations and their experiential implications by establishing a conceptual bridge between digital notions of fluidity and constructural design thinking, thereby reframing fluidity as a performative condition that structures access, movement, and exchange within evolving socio-technical flow systems. Full article

Medieval liturgical exegesis presents a striking interpretative paradox: Advent, the opening season of the liturgical year, falls within the autumn–winter period and yet is frequently understood as a tempus renovationis, a time of renewal analogous to spring. This study argues that such an association is not merely a poetic metaphor, but the result of a liturgical and theological reconfiguration of time grounded in the adventus Domini. Focusing especially on the liturgical commentaries of Prepositinus of Cremona and related exegetical traditions, the article examines how the symbolic code of spring, widely attested in medieval cultural and poetic sources, is assumed and transformed within the liturgical sphere. It then considers chant as one of the principal media through which this renewed temporal condition becomes perceptible in ecclesial practice. Particular attention is given to the introit Ad te levavi, read as the sung threshold of the liturgical year, in which prophetic promise, ecclesial response, renewed breath, and ascensional movement converge. The analysis is finally extended to manuscript culture, where enlarged initials, figural programs, and the notated shaping of the incipit contribute to the visual and aural articulation of the same theological logic. The study concludes that the “spring” of Advent is best understood not as a merely seasonal analogy, but as a coordinated symbolic and liturgical phenomenon articulated across exegesis, chant, and manuscript mediation. Full article

The article examines conservative rhetoric and discourse in Israel toward the LGBTQ+ community from a sociolinguistic perspective that conceptualizes language as an arena of socio-cultural struggle over identity, power, and normativity. Drawing on queer linguistics theory and identity politics, the study explores how language constructs reality through metaphors of illness, sin, and existential threat, as well as through theological framing and appeals to family and national values. These rhetorical strategies produce a social hierarchy in which heteronormativity is positioned as a “natural truth” while queer identities are labelled as deviant or threatening. From sociological perspective, the study reveals how conservative discourse establishes social boundaries and reinforces collective identity through the exclusion of the Other, thereby reproducing power relations and hierarchies. The article calls for the development of an alternative public discourse grounded in pluralism, inclusion, and the recognition of diverse identities as a means of strengthening democracy and social justice. While existing studies have examined conservative discourse toward LGBTQ+ communities primarily in Western contexts, this study contributes to the field by centering the Israeli case as a distinctive site of analysis, where conservative voices emerge from multiple and ideologically heterogeneous traditions: national-religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Muslim-Arab. By examining how rhetorically divergent speakers converge around shared mechanisms of exclusion, the study reveals that heteronormative discourse is not the product of a single ideological source, but a cross-sectoral phenomenon embedded in the specific political and cultural tensions of Israeli society. Full article

This article examines how sacred vocabularies from Orthodox Christianity and Judaism function in racialised public discourse in Poland and Ukraine between 2020 and 2025. It asks how terms such as imago Dei/tselem Elohim, neighbour-love and chesed, holiness/purity, suffering/martyrdom, and exile/return are mobilised across pulpit, policy, and platform communication. Drawing on a corpus of 23 publicly available texts, the study applies comparative rhetorical discourse analysis informed by Burke’s concepts of identification and logology and Pernot’s account of the religious dimension of rhetoric, alongside a coding scheme focused on topoi, metaphors, frames, appeals, and boundary work. The findings show convergences in dignity claims, memorial warning, and care rhetoric under conditions of war and displacement but also clear divergences: Jewish discourse more often mobilises peoplehood as a rhetoric of continuity and communal protection, whereas Orthodox discourse more often ties sacred language to national-historical self-location, ecclesial autonomy, and opposition to russkii mir (“Russian world”). Across the retained corpus, dog-whistle-like discourse appears mainly as an object of quotation or denunciation, while explicit counter-speech is widespread. The article concludes that sacred language remains an active rhetorical resource for defining dignity, injury, solidarity, and belonging, although its function varies across arenas, traditions, and the corpus’s asymmetries. Full article

This paper explores and showcases the return of two middle-aged women to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, education, training and professions. We use the lenses of transformative learning theory and intersectionality to explore STEM identity development among our participant women in midlife, despite being ‘leaked out’ of the so-called STEM pipeline. We employ a qualitative phenomenological research design, conducting narrative interviews and employing thematic analysis to identify key themes for discussion. The implications derived from this small-scale study (n = 2) suggest the need for further research that may potentially be of particular interest to scholars, STEM industries and policy-makers (i) to recognise and act upon stereotypical, inequitable and one-sided views of the ‘STEM pipeline’, primarily those associated with gender and age, (ii) to acknowledge, appreciate and showcase midlife women’s entrance into STEM, thereby benefiting their own personal and professional STEM identity development, and their contributions to the STEM community, indeed to society more widely, (iii) to fund and create informal and community-driven STEM opportunities for middle-aged women to re-engage them with STEM and (iv) to re-think on the limitations proposed by the STEM pipeline metaphor and to focus their attention to a motorway junction metaphor, in which women enter and leave the STEM carriageway at many different points along the way. Full article

This article examines collaboratively produced poems by displaced Lebanese and Syrian women created within a Participatory Arts-Based Research (PABR) project in Akkar, North Lebanon. The study asks how creative writing pedagogy and participatory research methods can reduce forms of ‘othering’ that may arise in top-down research on conflict and displacement. The project combined creative writing workshop practice with participatory research methods, including joint analysis workshops with NGO partners and participants. Writing prompts, group workshops, and subsequent collaborative translation resulted in reflective and creative texts drawn from lived experience. The work documents war, migration, economic hardship, and fractured social relations. Close readings show how metaphor, dialogue, and narrative fragments function as acts of self-narration rather than passive testimony. Participants describe writing as a way of thinking and coping, and several texts foreground storytelling as a relational process. The study argues that Creative Writing practice, based on the participatory tenets of the ‘workshop’ can support shared knowledge production and ethical engagement. The writings suggest that a counter-archive can emerge in which storytelling can resist victimising narratives and can instead, within a social literary practice participatory paradigm, model new forms of collaborative reflection. Full article

In the epistemological constellation of contemporary visual education, web comics establish themselves as semiotic devices with a dual pedagogical value. On the one hand, they represent the advanced synthesis of multimodal codes (visual, textual, sound); on the other, they structure participatory learning environments typical of digital culture. This contribution starts from the theoretical premise that digital comic narratives, in their hypertextual and algorithmic essence, constitute true liminal spaces where ontological meanings are negotiated and transformative visual literacy skills are developed. The research, conducted according to the methodological paradigm of design-based research and rooted in the framework of multimodal social semiotics, demonstrates how sequential narrative structure and visual metaphors reduce cognitive load, through scaffolding. The interactive mechanisms typical of the medium (comments, sharing, remixes) promote an aesthetic of participation, transforming students from passive users to producers of knowledge, according to the principles of connected learning. The analysis focuses on: Panda Likes Bevilacqua, Totally Unnecessary Comics by Leone; Rossoni’s Rouge Worms, Lele Corvi’s strips, Natangelo’s cartoons. The limitations of the study lie in the limited sample and its preliminary nature, as it analyses the device itself without evaluating its implications in the classroom or the professional skills (TPACK) necessary for teachers. Large-scale teaching feasibility remains to be investigated in future applied experiments, which involve the direct involvement of classes and teachers. From a pedagogical perspective, web comics are effective teaching tools for students with ASD. Their community-based nature requires a recalibration of traditional pedagogical frameworks towards more ecological approaches. Full article

This article analyzes how twentieth- and twenty-first-century Afro-Colombian women poets from the Pacific region challenge and reframe the feminization of the land and the naturalization of the Black female body within colonial and Eurocentric epistemologies. Drawing on a framework that conceptualizes body, territory, spirituality, and community as an interdependent continuum, the article conducts close textual analysis to demonstrate how these poets construct territory and the Black female body as sentient sites. These sites are simultaneously shaped by historical violence, forced displacement, extractive economies, and racialized gender constructs, while preserving ancestral knowledge and collective memory. The findings show that Valencia Córdoba develops the body–territory through metaphor and anaphora as a generative space; Grueso Romero deploys orality and the sea as transatlantic archives of ancestry and identity; and Truque articulates urban displacement as an ontological rupture that affects memory and Black subjectivity. Ultimately, the article advances the concept of body–territory as a decolonial aesthetic and analytical tool through which Afro-Colombian women’s poetry articulates environmental justice, gendered racialization, and forms of resistance within the Afrodiasporic diaspora. Full article