Search Results (329)

Isotopic investigations focused on determining the mobility and provenance of ancient human civilizations and sourcing of archeological artifacts continue to gain prominence in archeology. Most studies focus on the premise that the geographic variation in isotope systems of interest (e.g., Sr, Pb, Nd, O) in the natural environment is recorded in both human hard tissues of local individuals and raw materials sourced for artifacts within the same region. The introduction of multi-collection–inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS) and laser ablation systems are techniques that consume smaller sample sizes compared to previous mass spectrometric approaches due to their higher ionization efficiency and increased sensitivity. This development has facilitated the isotopic measurement of trace elements present at low abundances (e.g., Pb, Nd, <1-to-low ppm range) particularly in human tooth enamel. Accurate interpretation of any isotope ratio measurement for the proveniencing of such low-abundance samples requires the adequate evaluation of post-mortem diagenetic alteration. A synopsis of practices currently in use for identifying post-mortem alteration in human archeological samples is discussed here. Post-mortem shifts in radiogenic isotope signatures resulting from secondary alteration are distinct from those potentially related to the impact of climate change on the bioavailable budgets for these elements. This topic is of interest to the archeological community and discussed here in the context of Holocene-aged samples from burial sites within the Nile River Valley System, and preferred dust source areas from the neighboring Sahara Desert. Full article

Creating a comfortable microclimate in the premises of buildings is currently becoming one of the priorities in the field of architecture, construction and engineering systems. The increased attention from the scientific community to this topic is due not only to the desire to ensure healthy and favorable conditions for human life but also to the need for the rational use of energy resources. This area is becoming particularly relevant in the context of global challenges related to climate change, rising energy costs and increased environmental requirements. Practice shows that any technical solutions to ensure comfortable temperature, humidity and air exchange in rooms should be closely linked to the concept of energy efficiency. This allows one not only to reduce operating costs but also to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby contributing to sustainable development and environmental safety. In this connection, this study presents a parametric assessment of the influence of climatic and geometric factors on the aerodynamic characteristics of the air cavity, which affect the heat exchange process in the ventilated layer of curtain wall systems. The assessment was carried out using a combined analytical calculation method that provides averaged thermophysical parameters, such as mean air velocity ($V_s$), average internal surface temperature ($t_{in.s}^{av}$), and convective heat transfer coefficient (${\alpha }_s$) within the air cavity. This study resulted in empirical average values, demonstrating that the air velocity within the cavity significantly depends on atmospheric pressure and façade height difference. For instance, a 10-fold increase in façade height leads to a 4.4-fold increase in air velocity. Furthermore, a three-fold variation in local resistance coefficients results in up to a two-fold change in airflow velocity. The cavity thickness, depending on atmospheric pressure, was also found to affect airflow velocity by up to 25%. Similar patterns were observed under ambient temperatures of +20 °C, +30 °C, and +40 °C. The analysis confirmed that airflow velocity is directly affected by cavity height, while the impact of solar radiation is negligible. However, based on the outcomes of the analytical model, it was concluded that the method does not adequately account for the effects of solar radiation and vertical temperature gradients on airflow within ventilated façades. This highlights the need for further full-scale experimental investigations under hot climate conditions in South Kazakhstan. The findings are expected to be applicable internationally to regions with comparable climatic characteristics. Ultimately, a correct understanding of thermophysical processes in such structures will support the advancement of trends such as Lightweight Design, Functionally Graded Design, and Value Engineering in the development of curtain wall systems, through the optimized selection of façade configurations, accounting for temperature loads under specific climatic and design conditions. Full article

The objective is to present the theoretical contributions offered by the methodology for studying sustainable tourism in protected natural areas, capable of promoting environmental protection and sustainable local development in communities. This research was carried out in Machalilla National Park. The deductive method was applied, which allowed for the analysis of the problem, the consultation of general theories related to the topic studied, and the establishment of premises and objectives that led to conclusions on the topic studied. A mixed research approach was used, integrating contributions from the analyses carried out for the treatment and processing of information. The techniques used included a survey of tourism stakeholders, a semantic differential for tourists, and an expert evaluation method to validate the proposal under study. The theoretical and methodological systematisation of tourism sustainability in protected natural areas was achieved. The results show the need to broaden the scientific debate and transfer knowledge on the relevance of sustainable tourism as an alternative for sustainable development in rural communities. Full article

This article stems from the PRIN GOV_REL (Urban Governance of Interreligious Dialogue) research project carried out in four Italian cities in 2023–2025 and reports on some preliminary results of the empirical enquiry held in the city of Brescia. The Brescia area is characterised by high rates of residents with an immigrant background and a consolidated presence of religious minorities (Muslim, Orthodox, Sikh, Hindu and Protestant groups), many recognised centres (mosques, temples and Christian non-Catholic churches) and a significant commitment of ethnic–religious communities to local public life. This paper examines the creation of grassroots-level interreligious dialogue, seen as a communicative process. The empirical evidence is based on material collected by participant observations and semi-structured interviews regarding four initiatives that occurred in 2024. A sociocultural analysis outlines the communicative frame: text; context; aims; acts; interlocutors and their power/freedom of expression; interactions; results. The article examines the communicative pattern of each initiative, considering an intercultural orientation and a pluralistic model of interfaith dialogue. It seeks to answer the following questions: what was the fundamental message that the promoters wanted to convey? How do the single actors communicate their perspective of religious “others”, and what results did they achieve or not achieve? The analysis leads to identifying the patterns that facilitate and/or hamper dialogue, taking into account misunderstandings and “cul-de-sac” aspects. Final recommendations highlight the recurrent breaking points that should be prevented and some premises to guarantee successful communication between members of different religions in multicultural urban spaces. Full article

Drinking water biofilm ecosystems harbor complex and dynamic prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbial communities. However, little is known about the impact of copper corrosion on microbial community functions in metabolisms and resistance. This study was conducted to evaluate the impact of upstream Cu pipe materials on downstream viable community structures, pathogen populations, and metatranscriptomic responses of the microbial communities in drinking water biofilms. Randomly transcribed cDNA was generated and sequenced from downstream biofilm samples of either unplasticized polyvinylchloride (PVC) or Cu coupons. Diverse viable microbial organisms with enriched pathogen-like organisms and opportunistic pathogens were active in those biofilm samples. Cu-influenced tubing biofilms had a greater upregulation of genes associated with potassium (K) metabolic pathways (i.e., K-homeostasis, K-transporting ATPase, and transcriptional attenuator), and a major component of the cell wall of mycobacteria (mycolic acids) compared to tubing biofilms downstream of PVC. Other upregulated genes on Cu influenced biofilms included those associated with stress responses (various oxidative resistance genes), biofilm formation, and resistance to toxic compounds. Downregulated genes included those associated with membrane proteins responsible for ion interactions with potassium; respiration–electron-donating reactions; RNA metabolism in eukaryotes; nitrogen metabolism; virulence, disease, and defense; and antibiotic resistance genes. When combined with our previous identification of biofilm community differences, our studies reveal how microbial biofilms adapt to Cu plumbing conditions by fine-tuning gene expression, altering metabolic pathways, and optimizing their structural organization. This study offers new insights into how copper pipe materials affect the development and composition of biofilms in premise plumbing. Specifically, it highlights copper’s role in inhibiting the growth of many microbes while also contributing to the resistance of some microbes within the drinking water biofilm community. Full article

Shipyards are significant industrial sources of environmental pollution, releasing substantial amounts of heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, and organic solvents into soil and groundwater during shipbuilding and maintenance operations. Such contamination not only affects the shipyard premises but also poses serious environmental threats to nearby communities, raising concerns about the long-term sustainability of the shipbuilding industry. Given the increasing global emphasis on sustainable industrial practices, addressing shipyard-related pollution has become a critical environmental challenge. This review aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the pollution issues associated with shipyards and explore effective remediation strategies. It focuses on contamination in both soil and groundwater, and covers pollution generated throughout the shipbuilding and maintenance lifecycle. First, it examines previous studies to identify the major contaminants and pollution sources typically found at shipyard sites. Next, the paper reviews recent advances in soil and groundwater remediation technologies, including physical, chemical, and biological methods tailored to the unique challenges of shipyard environments. Finally, the review discusses current limitations in remediation practices and outlines potential directions for future research and technological development. Full article

Climate change today is considered one of the most severe global problems. Additionally, it is inherently linked to sustainable development, particularly considering that it is a widespread problem affecting virtually all regions, countries, and continents. Therefore, it is essential to monitor its perception and behaviours towards it. Hence, there is the need for a diagnosis of climate-change attitudes found in various parts of the world. This premise is the foundation for the original study reported in the article. It offers the results of a survey of 300 adult rural residents from southeastern Poland. The article aims to diagnose the respondents’ attitudes towards climate change in the context of sustainable development premises. Respondents’ opinions on the potential activities their local communities could take to be more sustainable are a substantial part of the results. The most common suggestions were low-emission public transport (in the Wadowice District, it was 55% of responses) and road and street redesign to promote safe cycling and walking environments (in the Kraków and Tarnów Districts, over 50% of responses). The respondents found the promotion of sustainable development among youth and older people to be the least important (in three out of five districts, this percentage did not exceed 20%). The other thematic block was specific environmental protection and sustainable development activities that society should prioritise over a five-year horizon. The participants considered the development of new ways to eliminate waste in total production (in the Tarnów District, over 73% of responses), new technologies to curb the carbon footprint and GHG emissions (over 63% in the Wadowice District), and new technologies to scrape and monitor air pollutants (approx. 70% in the Kraków District). Full article

The fashion industry is facing increasing pressure to adopt sustainable practices given its significant impact on the environment. This research aims to analyze the implications of marketing strategies in the fashion industry’s transition towards a sustainable and responsible business model. The study starts from the premise that marketing can influence consumer behavior and turn sustainability into a competitive advantage. To investigate this aspect, SmartPLS software was used and hypotheses were tested on the relationship between marketing strategies to educate and sensitize consumers on sustainability issues in the fashion industry and the creation of a sustainably engaged community. Moreover, it becomes essential to collaborate with non-governmental organizations and other brands that share their sustainability values. The research was based on a sample of 227 respondents, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that marketing strategies that promote transparency in supply chain and production processes, enhance brand reputation and credibility and, promote innovation in sustainable materials and production processes through marketing strategies contributing to creating an engaged community, as well as through brand commitment to sustainability through concrete actions and access to new markets and growth opportunities. Marketing strategies to educate and sensitize consumers on sustainability issues in the fashion industry contribute to increasing consumer interest in sustainable products. The implications of the study highlight the need for coherent marketing approaches to support the sustainable transformation of the fashion industry. Full article

The Lueyang black-bone chicken represents a distinct indigenous avian breed native to China and it is a slow-growing broiler breed. The gut, whose primary function is to digest food and absorb nutrients, is also home to a large and diverse microbial community. The intestinal morphology, intestinal metabolites, and gut microbiota are critical determinants of nutrient utilization efficiency and immune health in poultry. This study investigates the impact of two distinct rearing modalities—cage-raised (CR) and cage-free (CF)—on the intestinal morphology, intestinal metabolites, and gut microbiota of the duodenum and cecum in Lueyang black-bone chickens. Additionally, we have integrated metabolomics and microbiome analyses. Morphological assessments revealed that, in comparison to the CR group, the CF group exhibited a significant increase in duodenal villi height (VH) and crypt depth (CD) (p < 0.01). Furthermore, there was a notable increase in the number of intestinal inflammatory cells within the CF group. Non-targeted metabolomics indicated an upregulation of omega-3 series polyunsaturated fatty acids and bile acid metabolites in the CR group. Conversely, the CF group demonstrated significantly elevated levels of lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) and phosphatidylcholine (PE) in the intestine. Microbiome analysis revealed that in the duodenum, beneficial bacteria (e.g., Lactobacillus) were the dominant genera in the CF group, while the Bacteroides predominate in the CR group. Correlation analyses indicated a positive association between LPC levels and the presence of eight bacterial genera, including Ureaplasma. The omega-3 series polyunsaturated fatty acids were positively correlated with three bacterial genera, such as Flavobacterium. Notably, bile acid metabolites exhibited a significant positive correlation with Rikenellaceae_RC9_gut_group. In conclusion, this study provides novel insights into how rearing methods influence intestinal morphology, intestinal metabolites, and gut microbiota, offering a new perspective for the scientific management of poultry with the premise of ensuring animal health and welfare. Full article

Federated learning (FL), as a distributed machine learning framework, enables multiple participants to jointly train models without sharing data, thereby ensuring data privacy and security. However, FL systems still struggle to escape the typical poisoning threat launched by Byzantine nodes. The current defence measures almost all rely on the anomaly detection of local gradients in a plaintext state, which not only weakens privacy protection but also allows malicious clients to upload malicious ciphertext gradients once they are encrypted, which thus easily evade existing screenings. At the same time, mainstream aggregation algorithms are generally based on the premise that “each client’s data satisfy an independent and identically distributed (IID)”, which is obviously difficult to achieve in real scenarios where large-scale terminal devices hold their own data. Symmetry in data distribution and model updates across clients is crucial for achieving robust and fair aggregation, yet non-IID data and adversarial attacks disrupt this balance. To address these challenges, we propose FedOPCS, an optimized poisoning countermeasure for non-IID FL algorithms with privacy-preserving stability by introducing three key innovations: Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (CGAN)-based data augmentation with conditional variables to simulate global distribution, a dynamic weight adjustment mechanism with homomorphic encryption, and two-stage anomaly detection combining gradient analysis and model performance evaluation. Extensive experiments on MNIST and CIFAR-10 show that, in the model poisoning and mixed poisoning environments, FedOPCS outperforms the baseline methods by 11.4% and 4.7%, respectively, while maintaining the same efficiency as FedAvg. FedOPCS therefore offers a privacy-preserving, Byzantine-robust, and communication-efficient solution for future heterogeneous FL deployments. Full article

With the deep integration of distributed network technology and intelligent medical care, how to achieve efficient collaboration under the premise of safeguarding data security and system efficiency has become an important challenge for intelligent medical diagnosis systems. The traditional practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) algorithm has difficulty meeting the demands of large-scale distributed medical scenarios due to high communication overhead and poor scalability. In addition, the existing improvement schemes are still deficient in dynamic node management and complex attack defence. To this end, this paper proposes the VS-PBFT consensus algorithm, which fuses a verifiable random function (VRF) and reputation mechanism, and designs a distributed intelligent medical diagnosis collaboration system based on this algorithm. Firstly, we introduce the VRF technique to achieve random and unpredictable selection of master nodes, which reduces the risk of fixed verification nodes being attacked. Secondly, we construct a dynamic reputation evaluation model to quantitatively score the nodes’ historical behaviors and then adjust their participation priority in the consensus process, thus reducing malicious node interference and redundant communication overhead. In the application of an intelligent medical diagnosis collaboration system, the VS-PBFT algorithm effectively improves the security and efficiency of diagnostic data sharing while safeguarding patient privacy. The experimental results show that in a 40-node network environment, the transaction throughput of VS-PBFT is 21.05% higher than that of PBFT, the delay is reduced by 33.62%, the communication overhead is reduced by 8.63%, and the average number of message copies is reduced by about 7.90%, which demonstrates stronger consensus efficiency and anti-attack capability, providing the smart medical diagnosis collaboration system with the first VS-PBFT algorithm-based technical support. Full article

Many pastors, faith leaders, and community organizers are isolated and under-connected to communities of praxis that can accompany them as they go about their social change work, helping them to ground their organizing in their faith lives. There is a crisis of leadership development and training. This paper argues for a rethinking of leadership development as grounded in conceptions of relational power, value-based organizing, and deep solidarity. Leaders, it is often said, are those who have followers. This definition takes for granted models of leadership that were first developed in the 1940s in Alinsky-style networks and adapted in the 1980s and 1990s in the neo-Alinskyite movement. This article extends this approach to home in on what leadership development amounts to in broad-based community organizing so as to help congregations and faith leaders see how community organizing can be an enactment and expression of their faith lives. Organizing strategies of leadership development can sit at the heart of congregational development. Developing leaders is about transformative critical reflection on premises of meaning schema. Leadership development is connected to leaders developing in the sense of exploring new ways of seeing the world and acting on them. By refocusing the organizing strategy of leadership development around relational power and deep solidarity, pastors, faith leaders, and community organizers can build stronger institutions. Full article

Scientific route selection is the premise of constructing the Grand Canal National Trails (GCNTs). How to highlight the historical and cultural characteristics of the cities along the Grand Canal and meet the diverse needs of urban residents and tourists through GCNTs while considering the reality is an important goal of the route selection research. Taking the old town of Jining City as an example, this study proposes a theoretical framework for route selection of the GCNTs based on resource connectivity, spatial continuity, and residents’ promotion, with a realization path of “three sections and six steps”. The results show that the optimal connection path between “canal–resource–community” can be found through systematic methods such as the optimized minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) model and space syntax, and the “main route–branch route–connection route” system of the GCNTs can be constructed. The GCNTs closely connect the canals, 59 resources, and 352 communities into an integral spatial network, forming a complete canal cultural narrative system and path. The results offer theoretical and methodological support for the route selection of GCNTs in 35 prefecture-level cities and 150 districts and counties along the Grand Canal, providing reference for route selections of similar related concepts in central urban areas. Full article

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communication is gradually becoming the main carrier for satellite communication by virtue of its advantages, such as high landing power, narrow beam, large transmission bandwidth, and small time delay. In the military field, interference with LEO satellites has become a core element in combat, but the existing interference and confrontation methods cannot meet the needs of LEO satellite interference. Aiming at the above problems, this paper proposes an LEO satellite navigation signal multi-dimensional interference optimisation method based on hybrid game theory. Firstly, the method achieves a dynamic classification of jammers within the airspace. Then, an interference effectiveness evaluation function is established, which reflects the time, frequency, and power domain losses, as well as the strategy gains. With the help of hybrid game theory, the optimal resource allocation under Nash equilibrium is achieved, and the distributed interference optimisation problem is effectively solved. The experiment uses a large microwave darkroom as an interference verification scenario. The results indicate that the interference bit error rate (BER) of the algorithm proposed in this paper is on the order of ${10}^{-2}$, under the premise of guaranteeing the full coverage of the area to be interfered. The value of the multidimensional interference utility function, including the power, time, and frequency domains, is improved by at least 0.4993 times compared to other algorithms. Full article

Despite the plethora of digital and technological advances made in the construction industry over the past three decades, at its core, the sector remains human-centric. Consequently, this research investigates the core soft skills employed on public linear infrastructure (PLI) projects (during the construction phase) that are digitally enabled and concludes with the development of a decision support tool for PLI project team management. A mixed philosophical stance is implemented using interpretivism, postpositivism and grounded theory together with abductive reasoning to examine subject matter experts’ perceptions of the phenomena under investigation. Textual analysis is then utilised to formulate a decision support tool as a theoretical construct. The research findings demonstrate that communication, leadership and creativity/curiosity are the three main soft skills required of PLI projects. Furthermore, the key elements of a decision support tool—namely, trackable and measurable data, clear objectives and success criteria, and an easy-to-understand visual format—were identified. Such knowledge provides a strong base for building an emotionally intelligent project team. This research constitutes the first attempt to understand the essential soft skills required on PLI projects and, premised upon this, generate a decision support tool for project management in teams that helps to augment project performance through workforce investment via a learning organisation. Full article