Search Results (80)

As an advanced non-contact dynamic sealing technology, compliant foil seals offer notable advantages, including a simple structure, light weight, ease of installation, and strong self-adaptability. However, in most designs, the foil stiffness is uniform, resulting in a substantial increase in gas leakage under high inlet pressures. Considering the distinct pressure conditions in compliant foil seals, a variable foil thickness model (VTM) along the axial direction is designed to match the pressure gradient from the inlet to the outlet. By aligning the foil thickness variation with the pressure gradient, the foil deformation is more uniformly distributed axially, thereby maintaining low leakage under high-pressure differentials. In this study, the gas film thickness equation and the Reynolds equation for the compliant foil seal are established and solved using the finite difference method combined with a point-wise iterative approach. First, the static characteristics of a traditional uniform-stiffness compliant foil seal under different rotational speeds and inlet pressures are analyzed. The results indicate that leakage increases substantially under high inlet pressure. The performance of the VTM under different operating conditions—including rotational speed and inlet pressure—is investigated. The results show that an appropriately designed VTM can maintain very low leakage under high-parameter conditions, albeit with some sacrifice in gas film pressure and an increase in viscous friction. Furthermore, surface micro-textures are integrated with the VTM. The study finds that the two approaches exhibit complementary effects: micro-textures enhance the dynamic pressure effect of VTM, while the variable-thickness design maintains extremely low leakage. The combined model demonstrates excellent performance across different speeds and inlet pressures. For instance, at a rotational speed of 30,000 r/min, the gas leakage is reduced by 50.04%, and the maximum gas film pressure is increased by 70%. Full article

Interactions with people who are highly engaged in sustainability (e.g., zookeepers, environmental educators) can have a significant impact on motivating less-engaged individuals to adopt more pro-environmental beliefs and to act on them. The current work examined two groups, graduate students mainly in conservation careers (n = 35) and an undergraduate comparison group (n = 237), to observe how they differed on sustainability beliefs (e.g., reports of willingness to sacrifice for the environment, anthropogenic global warming beliefs), reports of emotional experiences, reflections on nature, and nature–self–humanity cognitive representations. In comparison to undergraduate students, a frequently studied population in sustainability research, the graduate students reported greater willingness to sacrifice for the environment, stronger belief in anthropogenic global warming, and weaker self-interested emotions. When spontaneously reflecting on nature, the graduate students expressed greater connection with nature and stronger negative feelings about how humanity treats the environment. Finally, the graduate students showed more sustainable nature–self representations (e.g., greater inclusion of nature in self, viewing nature as larger than the self). We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding groups that may vary in environmental engagement, for developing measures to assess qualitative and quantitative assessments of nature–self–humanity knowledge, and for providing observations that may spur future work on encouraging people to care more strongly about nature and for supporting people engaged in sustainability fields. Full article

With the widespread deployment of IoT devices, deploying efficient network traffic classification models on resource-constrained edge nodes is critical for real-time boundary security. However, traditional lightweight models primarily rely on macro-level structural pruning, which often sacrifices crucial feature extraction capabilities when handling complex heterogeneous traffic, leading to a severe imbalance between parameter compression and detection accuracy. To overcome this bottleneck, we propose TinyFlowNet, an ultra-lightweight multi-module fusion architecture. To prevent the parameter explosion inherent in combining CNN, LSTM, and Transformer modules, TinyFlowNet innovatively adopts an extreme operator-level reconstruction strategy. By introducing debiased computations, affine-free normalization, and a customized micro-self-attention mechanism, it comprehensively strips away underlying redundant parameters. Simultaneously, an integrated parameter-free regularization mechanism is introduced to compensate for the representational capacity lost under this extreme compression, ensuring robust spatio-temporal feature fusion. Comprehensive evaluations on the custom X-IDS-20 balanced dataset alongside the complex CICDarknet2020 and ToN_IoT public datasets demonstrate that TinyFlowNet achieves exceptional accuracies of 95.31 percent, 99.53 percent, and 97.13 percent, respectively. Furthermore, it exhibits formidable robustness against extreme class imbalances by securing a peak Matthews Correlation Coefficient of 0.9465 and an outstanding PR-AUC of 0.9834, all while strictly confining the parameter count to merely 74,600. Crucially, actual on-device hardware profiling on a commercial edge device corroborates its deployment viability, exhibiting a minimal dynamic memory footprint of 8.26 MB, an average inference latency of 0.79 ms, and a processing throughput exceeding 1200 FPS. Compared to a standard heavy Hybrid CNN-LSTM-Transformer baseline, TinyFlowNet achieves superior detection accuracy while drastically reducing the parameter footprint by over 99.3% and computational FLOPs by 95.8%. Furthermore, against mainstream lightweight benchmarks like DistilBERT and heavy baselines such as LSTM, TinyFlowNet reduces parameters by 61.4% to 94% while simultaneously achieving absolute accuracy leaps and accelerating inference speed by nearly 4× over MobileNetV2, establishing a highly efficient new paradigm for intelligent edge defense. Full article

This article analyzes how martyrdom progressively diverged from heroism to become an autonomous category of political discourse in nineteenth-century southern European Catholic societies. It argues that the secularization and politicization of Catholic asceticism played a central role in this process, which culminated in the martyr’s moment of agony and raised the question of the voluntary dimension of martyrdom. The analysis draws on a wide range of political martyrologies, funeral orations, and press reports, and focuses mostly on the Spanish and Italian cases, where martyrdom gained greatest prominence in the political sphere and gave rise to the most explicit theoretical expositions. It highlights the extent to which martyrdom was transformed into a powerful tool of legitimization and mobilization centered on willing self-denial and self-sacrifice for a cause or community. By reassessing secular martyrdom in relation to its religious substrate, this article seeks to reconsider sacrifice, holiness, and memory within Southern European Romanticism, shedding new light on the dynamics of secularization in post-revolutionary Europe. Full article

This study addresses declining social trust and emerging moral challenges among youth in Thailand’s conflict-affected southern border provinces by developing a strategic framework grounded in the Philosophy of Sufficiency Economy (SEP). A quantitative approach was employed, integrating the Modified Priority Needs Index and Priority Matrix analysis to examine discrepancies between current performance and perceived importance. The findings reveal differentiated patterns of moral development. Discipline and Responsibility are identified as a high-priority need, reflecting high importance but comparatively lower performance. Gratitude and Filial Piety, together with Kindness and Generosity, emerge as established strengths, functioning as cultural assets. Unity and Social Harmony and Social Sacrifice are classified as secondary yet contextually significant dimensions, indicating partial internalization. Based on this classification, the study proposes a differentiated strategy comprising targeted self-regulation development, strength-based reinforcement, and experiential activation through service-learning and multicultural engagement. Central to this approach is the creation of “multicultural social action spaces” that enable meaningful interaction across diverse groups. The findings suggest that aligning moral education with matrix-based priorities and contextual realities may support ethical resilience, social cohesion, and sustainable peace in pluralistic and conflict-affected societies. Full article

Unmitigated communion (UC), the prioritisation of others’ needs over one’s own well-being, is a critical lens for understanding the mental health of female migrants. This qualitative study explores how UC intersects with constructions of strength and vulnerability within this population, particularly amid challenges such as adaptation, discrimination, and gendered roles. Using a feminist participatory methodology, the study was co-produced with 10 migrant women and three professionals. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 female migrants from 13 countries, representing diverse languages, cultures, and lengths of stay in the UK. Data were thematically analysed using the Engaging Marginalised Communities by Building Relationships and Knowledge (EMBaRK) framework, which centres lived experience and equitable collaboration. Through this analytic process, three key themes were generated: (1) perceived strength and resilience shaped by societal pressures and internalised self-reliance; (2) gender roles and self-sacrifice, including traditional caregiving expectations and neglect of personal health; and (3) isolation and reluctance to seek support, marked by concealed mental health struggles and stigma. Participants’ narratives revealed shared tensions between resilience and vulnerability. The findings highlight the central role of unmitigated communion in shaping migrant women’s mental health and underscore the need for gender-responsive, culturally informed interventions that support women to balance caregiving with self-care. Full article

This article reinterprets modern realist drama as a site of secular spirituality, where aesthetic form sustains the sacred under conditions of modern secularity. Employing a phenomenological–theological framework, it integrates Charles Taylor’s account of the secular age, Mircea Eliade’s sacred–profane dialectic and hierophany, and René Girard’s anthropology of sacrifice. Through textual and performance-historical analysis of key works—Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) and An Enemy of the People (1882)—together with Chinese modern drama shaped by Ibsenization, including Hu Shi’s translations, Lu Xun’s critiques, and Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm (1934), the article argues that realist theatre fulfils religious functions in secular culture: revelation as truth-telling, confession as critical self-disclosure, and renewal as ethical transformation. In early twentieth-century China, the encounter between Ibsen’s moral realism and indigenous moral traditions generated a distinctive spiritual humanism, in which theatre assumed ritual and didactic functions traditionally associated with religious practices. Full article

The global energy transition (ET) is widely portrayed as a technological shift toward low-carbon systems; however, it also entails profound geopolitical and socio-environmental transformations. While energy justice (EJ) has become a key framework for assessing fairness in energy systems, it seldom incorporates the geopolitical restructuring of material, energy, and economic flows that underpin contemporary transitions. This article develops a geopolitically informed approach to EJ, trying to capture how the new flows of energy, matter, and power shape—and are shaped by—enduring centre–periphery inequalities. Using a guided literature synthesis that combines EJ, political ecology, decolonial critiques, and green extractivism, the study enhances classical EJ tenets by incorporating transboundary flows, ecological unequal exchange, ontological plurality, and local self-determination. An illustrative application to copper extraction in Chile and Peru demonstrates how critical-mineral supply chains reproduce new sacrifice zones within emerging geopolitical configurations. By connecting local socio-environmental conflicts to global energy dynamics, the framework advances a more comprehensive, multidimensional approach to justice in the ET. The findings offer conceptual and practical insights for designing more equitable and geopolitically aware sustainability policies. Full article

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the experiences and challenges faced by informal caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s, including the social and emotional aspects of their caregiving role. Methods: A descriptive qualitative study was conducted using one focus group discussion and eleven semi-structured interviews with informal caregivers of individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The data collected were analyzed through thematic analysis using ATLAS.ti qualitative software version 23. Results: The results reveal two themes: (1) “Life centred on compassionate care for the other person”, which reflects the role performed from a perspective of emotional and compassionate commitment to those in need of care, and (2) “Abandonment by caregivers”, which expresses the emotional cost associated with caregiving. Conclusions: Informal caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease undertake their roles guided by compassion, which involves substantial personal sacrifice. This commitment often leads to self-abandonment, impacting their emotional and physical health, social relationships, and personal aspirations. It is therefore crucial to implement psychosocial interventions grounded in compassion and to strengthen both formal and informal social support systems for caregivers. Full article

This article proposes to analyze how different concepts of the sociology of religion operate in today’s youth. Specifically, it starts from the concepts of “enterprise of the self” and “performance/enjoyment device”, proposed by Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot in The New Way of the World, to try to identify the reconfiguration of sacredness and sacrifice in the younger generation, in a context that is identified as precarious. The analysis delves into a precariousness that goes beyond the system of modeling subjectivities and the device for controlling action proposed by Laval and Dardot. This does not imply the ineffectiveness of these concepts, but rather their intensification and rearticulation in accordance with the different realities of youth. Full article

This article examines how Kant’s conception of sacrifice in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason connects with his account of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment. We argue that the analogy between sacrifice and sublimity illuminates the transformation involved in moral rebirth, whereby the old self is relinquished for the sake of the new. This transformation comprises two interrelated aspects: suppressive sacrifice, which subordinates self-centered inclinations to the moral law, and kenotic sacrifice, in which self-centeredness is relinquished as part of a radical reorientation of one’s disposition. By situating these aspects within Kant’s discussions of grace, the archetype–prototype distinction, and the imagination’s “sacrifice” during experiences of the sublime, we show how sacrifice functions as a symbol both of the moral exemplar (Vorbild) and of the conversion process. The resulting threefold analogy—between the old/new self, Christ’s kenotic self-emptying, and the imagination’s renunciation within the experience of the sublime—reveals how aesthetic experience, especially the sublime, helps exemplify and empower moral transformation in Kant’s thought, supplementing what his ethics alone can explain. Full article

Motherhood regret still constitutes a major taboo that limits the possibility of processing the negative exposure to being a mother. This qualitative study involved Italian women living both in Italy and abroad, where traditional patriarchal thinking remains influential. Sixteen women defining themselves as ‘regretful were interviewed to explore their experiences of regret, the changes following the birth of children, family and social support, and employment. The thematic analysis highlighted several recurring themes: the idealisation of motherhood and the hidden struggles it conceals; the guilt associated with feeling inadequate and the indifference of some fathers; the social pressure that compels women to conform to maternal expectations; the perception of being trapped in a predefined role; and the conflict between personal identity and the ideal of the “perfect mother.”. The findings reveal that maternal regret is deeply intertwined with internalised patriarchal norms, the myth of the “good mother,” and the social expectation of women’s self-sacrifice. Despite recognising these as cultural constructs, participants expressed feelings of guilt, anger, and inadequacy, intensified by the unequal division of domestic and parental responsibilities. This issue and the need for a revival of women’s consciousness-raising groups to open a space for dialogue on the topic in countries where patriarchy is still strong, such as Italy, are discussed. Full article

Japanese narcissism refers to a culturally embedded form of narcissistic personality that emerges within collectivist societies, particularly in Japan, where self-worth is maintained through emotional over-adaptation, perfectionism, self-sacrifice, and conformity to internalized moral obligations. Within the framework of Schema Therapy, this construct is characterized by dominant coping modes, such as Armor mode and Demanding Community mode, that suppress vulnerable emotional states and promote socially sanctioned compliance. Although narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) has been extensively studied in individualistic Western cultures, its manifestation in collectivist cultures remains underexplored. Japanese narcissism offers a culturally contextualized model that integrates psychoanalytic and Schema Therapy perspectives to explain thin-skinned narcissistic vulnerability, disguised as adaptive functioning. Clinical observations and case analyses indicate that patients often develop Armor mode (fusing Detached Protector and Perfectionistic Over-controller functions) and Demanding Community mode (internalizing collective moral expectations). These adaptive-appearing modes mask core maladaptive schemas—Emotional Deprivation, Defectiveness/Shame, Enmeshment, and Self-Sacrifice—while being mistaken for mature or healthy functioning. Historically, such patterns have been reinforced by moral-collectivist ideals, exemplified by the Imperial Rescript on Education, which valorized loyalty, endurance, and self-denial. Japanese narcissism may therefore represent a culturally specific clinical configuration, suggesting the need for contextually adapted Schema Therapy interventions that recognize both the harmony-preserving and narcissism-reinforcing functions of adaptive behavior. This framework contributes to the cross-cultural extension of Schema Therapy by theorizing how narcissistic structures manifest in collectivist societies, and highlights the need for empirical validation of culturally sensitive treatment protocols. Full article

Roger Scruton identified three basic forms of communal loyalties that produce the first-person plural “we”: the national, the tribal, and the credal. Scruton argues that it is the national that maximally permits plurality and difference without jeopardising peaceful coexistence; it even makes possible self-sacrifice for the stranger. The generation of such a first-person plural requires a commitment both to non-contractual forms of obligation for its members and non-purposive activities that transcend questions of utility. These can be seen as keeping alive the question of the bonum honestum, which founds the common good. Pope John Paul II discusses the first-person plural in phenomenological-personalistic terms, as an accidental formation patterned according to the substantial I–Thou relationship between persons. The I–Thou points towards the true good, and this is what allows nations to arise. But various forms of masquerading are here possible, whether it be credal loyalty pretending to be national, or dutiful and moral customs devoid of the bonum honestum as a stabilisation. Both threaten true freedom. John Paul II shows that it is the task of the “we” community to inherit the national patrimony. It is Massimo Recalcati that shows us that, for all its beneficial wealth, this inheriting involves an inevitable mourning and incurring of “symbolic debt”. Only a correct relation to this debt will allow the first-person plural properly to arise and inherit the national patrimony. Full article

The Special Issue on Health, Well-Being and Sustainability invites research that integrates behavioral, cultural, and systemic approaches to fostering sustainable lifestyles within work environments. This study focuses on the role of leadership in promoting employee health and healthy lifestyles, which are central dimensions of the validated Health-oriented Leadership framework. Although previous research has assumed that high levels of leader StaffCare lead to high levels of employee SelfCare and consequently to better health outcomes, inconsistent dyadic patterns have rarely been examined. In this study, we investigate dyadic relationship patterns between leaders’ StaffCare and employees’ SelfCare jointly creating a sustainable workplace health system in hybrid contexts. Using Latent Profile Analysis on a sample of N = 1104, we identify consistent and inconsistent patterns, their health and motivational outcomes after three months, as well as potential antecedents in terms of working conditions for profile membership. The consistent dyads showed expected results: high StaffCare and high SelfCare led to high health and motivation outcomes, while low StaffCare and low SelfCare resulted in the lowest outcomes. New findings emerged in inconsistent dyads. In the low leaders’ StaffCare and high employees’ SelfCare dyad (Bystanders & Health Proactives), leaders recognized risks but did not actively promote health measures. However, proactive employees who engage in SelfCare behaviorally compensate for insufficient leader support but at a motivational cost. In contrast, the high leaders’ StaffCare and low employees’ SelfCare dyad (Health Sacrificers) included leaders who supported employees’ health but neglected their own, resulting in lower health but higher motivation among employees. Job demands and resources partly predicted group membership and can offer practical implications for building work environments that foster employees’ well-being and health. The findings offer insights into inconsistent leadership behaviors and provide guidance for enhancing employee well-being, particularly in hybrid work environments. Full article