Search Results (2,227)

In recent years, experts have associated forecasts of global energy consumption with energy transitions. This paper presents the research results of the paths and trajectories of the global transformations of world energy, including demographic, technological, energy, transport, and communication changes. After demonstrating the long-term trends in global energy consumption, fossil and renewable energy sources, and nuclear energy using neuroforecasting methods, this study explains global demographic development and its relationship with global innovation and technological processes as explained by the flow of global patent applications. The relationship between energy transition and the previously mentioned two factors is also justified based on the trajectories developed by the neural network forecasting. By leveraging the fundamental laws of energy conservation, robust patterns in the evolution and development of global energy could be identified. It is demonstrated that mankind has entered the era of four closely interconnected global transitions: demographic, energy, technological, and political–economic, all at once. According to the results, civilizational changes are currently taking place in global energy advancement, indicating an energy transition to a new quality of energy development. The permanent growth patterns of the energy density of energy sources used and their impact on labor productivity and the speed of movement of people and goods in the economy are also discussed. Finally, the contour of future developments in energy technologies is determined. It is also forecast that future energy technologies are expected to be largely associated with the exploration of outer space, development of robotics, and the expansion of artificial intelligence capabilities. Full article

Despite a global trend toward socially engaged higher education, architectural pedagogy continues to grapple for a coherent approach that systematically and genuinely integrates socio-cultural dimensions into design studio teaching practices. Defined as the interwoven social, cultural, and political factors that shape the built environment, the socius is treated peripherally within architectural pedagogy, limiting students’ capacity to develop civic agency, spatial justice awareness, and critical reflexivity in navigating complex societal conditions. This article argues for a socius-centric reorientation of architectural pedagogy, postulating that socially engaged studio models, which include Community Design, Design–Build, and Live Project, must be conceptually integrated to fully harness their pedagogical merits. The article adopts two lines of inquiry: first, mapping the theoretical underpinnings of the socius across award-winning pedagogical innovations and Google Scholar citation patterns; and second, defining the core attributes of socially engaged pedagogical models through a bibliometric analysis of 87 seminal publications. Synthesising the outcomes of these inquiries, the study offers an advanced articulation of studio learning as a process of social construction, where architectural knowledge is co-produced through role exchange, iterative feedback, interdisciplinary dialogue, and emergent agency. Conclusions are drawn to offer pragmatic and theoretically grounded pathways to reshape studio learning as a site of civic transformation. Full article

Since the turn of the 21st century, urban studies and planning research has examined the strategic role of artists, arts organizations, and cultural activity as local and regional economic development catalysts. This article shifts the spotlight from the “creative class” and “creative industries” as drivers of a “creative city” to study the role of art, culture, and creative practices in community-led, place-based efforts to stabilize neighborhoods and advance more hopeful, healthy, and equitable urban futures. It explores Boston’s Chinatown, where community-based art activism has a long history of addressing critical issues such as reclaiming land taken by interstate highway and urban renewal projects, as well as combating gentrification and displacement through site activation. The case study focuses on Residence Lab, a community-based arts residency program initiated by the Pao Arts Center and the Asian Community Development Corporation that brought together multimedia artists with residents to collectively preserve Boston’s Chinatown through creative and artistic activation of underutilized sites in the neighborhood from 2019 to 2022. We examine a selection of ResLab projects, which give form and meaning to the struggles and aspirations of being at home in Chinatown and embody the art activism of partner organizations and program participants, along with the ResLab’s impacts on participating residents and artists. The concluding discussion considers ResLab’s contributions and implications for the shifting ways in which urban, political, and artistic cultures have intersected and impacted one another in Chinatown along with the relationship between collective action and the preservation and transformation of culture in the urban frame. Full article

Globally, the mutations around forest landscapes continue to draw significant scientific interest, despite fragmented evidence on the socio-ecological outcomes linked to this process. This knowledge gap is evident in the Congo Basin—one of the world’s major ecosystems. To contribute towards addressing the knowledge gap, this study analyzed two decades of forest landscape mutations and the socio-ecological transformation-cum-outcomes linked to the process in Cameroon. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining remote sensing-based land use/land cover (LULC) analysis (using multi-date Landsat imagery at 30 m resolution) with household surveys involving 100 randomly selected forest-dependent households across three forest blocks: Ebo, Ndokbou, and Makombé for ground truthing. Survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and combined spatial analysis to reveal the following. Firstly, forest cover has significantly increased within the 20-year period; this involved a 104.01% increase between 2004 and 2014, and an additional 47.27% between 2014 and 2024. In that vein, agricultural land declined by more than 20%, whereas settlement and water bodies increased by 226.4% and 376.2%, respectively. Secondly, forest landscape mutations in the Yabassi Forest Area were primarily driven by a convergence of social (notably population growth at 57% and livelihood diversification), economic (agricultural expansion and timber exploitation), political (tenure ambiguity and development-driven land conversion), and environmental (climate variability at 36% and ecological restoration efforts) forces. These interwoven drivers shaped the land use change process, revealing how the human-environment feedback defines landscape trajectories in complex and non-linear ways. Thirdly, while the ecological outcomes of forest mutations were largely positive—with significant gains in forest cover, the social outcomes were skewed towards the negative. Communities experienced both improvements in livelihoods and infrastructure (66%), but also faced land conflicts (67%), the loss of traditional access (69%), and resource-based insecurity. By applying the socio-ecological systems (SES) framework, this study provides novel insights on how governance, ecological processes, and human behavior co-evolve in forest landscapes. The findings do not only edify the SES framework but also challenge the mainstream position about forest decline by highlighting areas of recovery. The evidence informs adaptive forest governance processes in the Congo Basin and similar contexts. Further research should investigate the institutional and adaptive mechanisms that influence these dynamics across the Congo Basin. Full article

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic magnified long-standing health disparities in the United States, particularly among rural, disadvantaged populations. These communities experience greater barriers to healthcare access, a higher prevalence of chronic illness, and increased vaccine hesitancy factors that collectively contribute to poorer health outcomes. Methods: This narrative review examines rural–urban disparities in COVID-19 vaccine uptake and their impact on mortality, with a focus on cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes. We synthesized the peer-reviewed literature, CDC data, and U.S. Census reports to assess factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy, vaccination coverage, COVID-19-related mortality, and CVD mortality trends. Results: Rural residents were less likely to initiate COVID-19 vaccination, showed greater vaccine hesitancy, and experienced higher rates of both COVID-19 and CVD mortality. These disparities were further driven by safety concerns surrounding mRNA technology, misinformation, infrastructural barriers, and sociodemographic factors including political affiliation, education, poverty, and religion. Notably, pre-existing CVD increased vulnerability to severe COVID-19 outcomes in rural communities. Conclusions: Expanding vaccination efforts and improving healthcare infrastructure are essential for addressing these widening health inequities. Future public health strategies should prioritize culturally tailored interventions and rural-specific outreach to reduce vaccine hesitancy and improve mortality outcomes in underserved populations. Full article

This paper explores how uncertainty in climate change projections both shapes and is shaped by key epistemic, methodological, ethical, and political concerns. Drawing on a review of key philosophical sources, it examines the relationship between scientific objectivity and the influence of social, ethical, and political values in contexts of deep uncertainty. Authors such as Wendy Parker and Heather Douglas debate the role that social values play in the estimation and communication of scientific uncertainty, particularly when decisions carry significant ethical and political consequences. At the same time, several studies emphasize that, beyond the influence of values, there are structural limitations inherent to complex climate models that prevent uncertainty from being fully reduced. Taken together, these perspectives suggest that both evaluative judgments and technical constraints must be considered when interpreting and managing uncertainty in climate science, especially insofar as it informs collective decision-making processes. The article also examines how certain institutional practices tend to downplay uncertainty, generating biases that affect both scientific communication and public decision-making. It, therefore, explores potential solutions through more integrative approaches, such as robust modeling, risk assessments focused on low-probability but high-impact events (HILL), and collective ethical deliberation. The paper further discusses the concept of normative uncertainty, illustrated through the case of the Tempisque River water conflict, which highlights the difficulty of reconciling competing values. It concludes that, far from being eliminated, uncertainty must be managed through tools that integrate technical rationality, ethical sensitivity, and adaptive governance. Full article

This paper examines how early Confucianism reinterpreted sacrificial rites and reconstructed the relationship between humans and spirits through the lens of qing (情, sentiment). Traditional scholarship often views the Confucian reinterpretation of sacrifice as a shift from religious belief to a human-centered framework of rationality, morality, and humanism—emphasizing its role in moral education and social governance and thereby marginalizing or even denying the existence of guishen (鬼神, spirits and deities) and the transcendent realm they represent. Although some scholars have emphasized the religious dimensions of Confucianism, few have addressed how Confucians managed to affirm the existence of spirits while simultaneously endowing sacrificial rites with moral and humanistic meaning—that is, how they navigated the inherent tension between the human and the divine realms. Against this background, this study argues that early Confucians neither denied the existence of spirits nor reduced sacrifice to a purely ethical or political instrument. By contrast, they regarded human sentiment as the universal foundation of sacrificial practice and, through a profound and creative transformation, redirected the meaning of sacrifice toward the human world (rendao 人道), thereby establishing a new model of human–divine relations—one that affirms human agency and dignity while preserving the sanctity of the spiritual. Drawing on close readings of classical Confucian texts such as The Analects, The Book of Rites, and Xunzi, this paper identifies three core dimensions of sacrificial sentiment: remembrance, gratitude, and reverence and awe. Together, these sentiments form a relational structure between humans and guishen that enables communication and interaction while maintaining clear boundaries. In this way, Confucian sacrificial rites become a space for emotional expression without degenerating into a “carnival of emotions” or transgressing the proper separation between the human and the divine. Confucian sacrificial thought thus affirms human dignity and moral agency while upholding the transcendence of the sacred. Full article

The global expansion of shale oil and gas extraction has generated widespread attention for its environmental, economic, and political implications. However, its social consequences remain less systematically assessed. This review synthesizes interdisciplinary research on how shale energy development affects communities, particularly in rural and resource-dependent regions. While extraction activities may generate economic opportunities and strengthen national energy security, they are also associated with population influx, pressure on infrastructure, housing shortages, public health risks, and increased political polarization. These impacts can alter social relationships, institutional trust, and access to essential services. By organizing and analyzing key themes in the social science literature, this review offers a structured overview of how shale energy development shapes local experiences and social systems. The goal of the present paper is to support researchers, policymakers, and community stakeholders in understanding the civic, communal, and public dimensions of energy transitions and in developing more equitable and sustainable policy responses. Full article

In most periods of the Tang Dynasty, central monastic officials were typically appointed from among government officials, while Buddhist monks could only serve as the Three Monastic Superintendents (sangang 三綱) in the Buddhist state monasteries at the local level. However, during the reigns of Gaozu, Empress Wu, and Zhongzong, a distinct group of monastic officials known as the “Ten Bhadantas” (shidade 十大德)—entirely composed of Buddhist monks—emerged as central monastic officials in exceptional political contexts, overseeing Buddhist affairs throughout the empire. Gaozu’s ten bhadantas were a temporary appointment, yet they constituted a centralized monastic administrative structure and institutional power center at the national level in Chang’an, tasked with supervising Buddhist affairs and monasteries across the empire. This arrangement provided substantial religious support and political guarantee at a time when religious policy remained unsettled and national governance was unstable during the early years of the Tang Dynasty. It helped the newly established regime overcome the difficulties of managing religious affairs in its formative period. Under Empress Wu, the ten bhadantas of the Dabiankongsi chapel offered powerful Buddhist theoretical support for her seizure of the Tang throne and the consolidation of the Wu-Zhou regime. They contributed to the sacralization, authorization, and legitimization of secular imperial power through appeals to heavenly mandate or Buddhist prophecy, thereby securing the reverence and acknowledgment of both monastic and lay communities. During Zhongzong’s reign, the ten bhadantas of the Linguang chapel aided him in leveraging Buddhism to expand his political influence and vigorously cultivating support from both monastic and lay Buddhist adherents within the government and across society, thereby consolidating his rule. Based on the above, this indicates that the ten bhadantas, a special institutional formation in the Tang Dynasty characterized by the functions and status of central monastic officials, exemplified a complex and tension-filled model of state–saṃgha relations. This model vividly reflected the ongoing historical process in which Buddhism was increasingly Sinicized and secularized. Full article

This article examines the adaptive Sufi praxis of Ken‘ān Rifā‘ī (1867–1950) in early 20th-century Istanbul through the lens of practical theology. Navigating the political, social, and legal transformations of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods, Rifā‘ī sustained Sufi practices not by rigid institutional preservation but through a dynamic integration of spiritual tradition into the rhythms of urban modernity. His lodge, the Ümmü Ken‘ān Dergāh, functioned as a “moral commons”—simultaneously a site of devotional practice, social refuge, and ethical formation. Utilizing the frameworks of Don S. Browning’s fundamental practical theology, Elaine L. Graham’s emphasis on lived praxis, and John Swinton’s theology of qualitative reflection, this study explores how Rifā‘ī recontextualized classical Sufi rituals, ethical teachings, and communal hospitality to meet the needs of a rapidly secularizing and urbanizing society. Particular attention is given to his inclusive pedagogies, non-monetary ethos, integration of women as active participants, and the lodge’s role as a “shelter” amid widespread displacement, war, and social dislocation. By reading Rifā‘ī s practices as forms of contextual theology and lived religious adaptation, this article contributes to broader conversations on the resilience of spiritual communities under conditions of modern transformation, offering insights into how religious traditions may remain both rooted and responsive in times of profound societal change. Full article

This paper explores the concept of ephemeral cultural landscapes through the lens of public election advertising during the 2025 Australian Federal election in the regional city of Albury, New South Wales. Framing election signage as a transient cultural landscape, the study assesses the distribution of election signage (corflutes) disseminated by political candidates against demographic and socio-economic criteria of the electorate. The paper examines how corflutes and symbolic signage reflect personal agency, spatial contestation, and community engagement within urban and suburban environments. A detailed windscreen survey was conducted across Albury over three days immediately prior to and on election day, recording 193 instances of campaign signage and mapping their spatial distribution in relation to polling booth catchments, population density, generational cohorts, and socio-economic status. The data reveal stark differences between traditional party (Greens, Labor, Liberal) strategies and that of the independent candidate whose campaign was marked by grassroots support and creative symbolism, notably the use of orange corflutes shaped like emus. The independent’s campaign relied on personal property displays, signaling civic engagement and a bottom-up assertion of political identity. While signage for major parties largely disappeared within days of the election, many of the independent’s symbolic emus persisted, blurring the temporal boundaries of the ephemeral landscape and extending its visual presence well beyond the formal campaign period. The study argues that these ephemeral landscapes, though transitory, are powerful cultural expressions of political identity, visibility, and territoriality shaping public and private spaces both materially and symbolically. Ultimately, the election signage in Albury serves as a case study for understanding how ephemeral landscapes can materially and symbolically shape public space during moments of civic expression. Full article

A just and sustainable energy transition in historically coal-dependent regions like Kentucky requires more than the adoption of new technologies and market-based solutions. This study uses a stated preferences approach to evaluate public support for various attributes of energy transition programs, revealing broad backing for moving away from coal, as indicated by a negative willingness to pay (WTP) for the status quo (–USD 4.63). Key findings show strong bipartisan support for solar energy, with Democrats showing the highest WTP at USD 8.29, followed closely by Independents/Others at USD 8.22, and Republicans at USD 8.08. Wind energy also garnered support, particularly among Republicans (USD 4.04), who may view it as more industry-compatible and less ideologically polarizing. Job creation was a dominant priority across political affiliations, especially for Independents (USD 9.07), indicating a preference for tangible, near-term economic benefits. Similarly, preserving cultural values tied to coal received support among Independents/Others (USD 4.98), emphasizing the importance of place-based identity in shaping preferences. In contrast, social support programs (e.g., job retraining) and certain post-mining land uses (e.g., recreation and conservation) were less favored, possibly due to their abstract nature, delayed benefits, and political framing. Findings from Kentucky offer insights for other coal-reliant states like Wyoming, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois. Ultimately, equitable transitions must integrate local voices, address cultural and economic realities, and ensure community-driven planning and investment. Full article

This conceptual position is based on the diagnosis that artificial intelligence (AI) accentuates existing economic and geopolitical divides in communities in the Global South, which provide data without receiving rewards. Based on bioethical precedents of fair distribution of genetic resources, it is proposed to transfer the principle of benefit-sharing to the emerging algorithmic governance in the context of AI. From this discussion, the study reveals an algorithmic concentration in the Global North. This dynamic generates political, cultural, and labor asymmetries. Regarding the methodological design, the research was qualitative, with an interpretive paradigm and an inductive method, applying documentary review and content analysis techniques. In addition, two theoretical and two analytical categories were used. As a result, six emerging categories were identified that serve as pillars of the studied principle and are capable of reversing the gaps: equity, accessibility, transparency, sustainability, participation, and cooperation. At the end of the research, it was confirmed that AI, without a solid ethical framework, concentrates benefits in dominant economies. Therefore, if this trend does not change, the Global South will become dependent, and its data will lack equitable returns. Therefore, benefit-sharing is proposed as a normative basis for fair, transparent, and participatory international governance. Full article

The Alevis of Anatolia and the Balkans and the Alawites of Syria and southeastern Turkey are two distinct ethnoreligious communities frequently conflated in both media and scholarly literature, despite their divergent historical origins, theological differences, and varying sociocultural formations. While their shared histories of marginalization and persecution, certain theological parallels, and cognate ethnonyms contribute to this conflation, it largely stems from a broader tendency within mainstream Islamic frameworks to homogenize so-called heterodox communities without sufficient attention to their doctrinal and cultural specificities. This paper, grounded in a synthetic analysis of current scholarship, maps the key historical, theological, and sociocultural intersections and divergences between Alawite and Alevi communities. Situated within the broader framework of intra-Islamic diversity, it seeks to move beyond essentialist and homogenizing paradigms by foregrounding the distinct genealogies of each tradition, rooted, respectively, in the early pro-Alid movements of Iraq and Syria and in Anatolian Sufism. In addition, the study examines the communities’ overlapping political trajectories in the modern era, particularly their alignments with leftist and secular–nationalist currents, as well as their evolving relationship—from mutual unawareness to a recent political rapprochement—prompted by the growing existential threats posed by the rise of Sunni-Salafi Islamist movements. Full article

The study of historical monuments within both architectural and literary frameworks reveals a dynamic interplay between scientific observation and artistic interpretation—a vital characteristic of travel writing/the travelogue. This approach, exemplified by British traveler and writer Henry Finnis Blosse Lynch (1862–1913), reflects how factual detail and creative representation are seamlessly integrated in depictions of sites, landscapes, and cultural scenes. This case study highlights Lynch as a pioneering explorer who authored the first comprehensive volume on Armenian architecture and as a writer who vividly portrayed Armenian monuments through both verbal description and photographic imagery, becoming the first traveler to document such sites using photography. Additionally, this paper emphasizes the significance of Lynch’s detailed accounts of architectural monuments, churches, monasteries, cities, villages, populations, religious communities, and educational institutions in vivid language. The careful study of his work can contribute meaningfully to the investigation of the travelogue as a literary genre and to the preservation and protection of the architectural heritage of historical and contemporary Armenia, particularly in regions facing cultural or political threats. Full article