Search Results (2,249)

Engineering education is increasingly shaped by two converging developments: accelerating sustainability transitions and rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI). However, in many application-oriented undergraduate programs, sustainability learning remains fragmented, methodologically limited, and weakly connected to authentic engineering decision-making. To address this gap, this study proposes AI-SEE (Artificial Intelligence-Integrated Sustainable Engineering Education), a pedagogical framework that integrates AI across the curriculum as both a cognitive scaffold and a resource for system-level analysis. Emphasizing human–AI collaboration, AI-SEE is designed to be feasible and scalable within application-oriented higher education contexts. The framework comprises four interrelated pillars: intelligence-driven, green-empowered, responsibility-leading, and practice-integrated. Drawing on an empirical case from transportation-related programs at Nantong University, the study employs a qualitative comparative design and conducts semi-structured interviews with 144 undergraduates at the end of their eighth semester (control group n = 70; pilot group n = 74). Interview data were analyzed using thematic analysis informed by constructivist grounded theory and the Gioia coding approach. The findings suggest that participation in AI-SEE is associated with differentiated patterns of sustainability consciousness. At the knowledge level, students reported more systematic and interdisciplinary understandings that extended beyond environmentally reductionist perspectives to include life-cycle thinking, social equity, and long-term considerations. At the attitudinal level, students described enhanced ethical reflexivity and evolving professional self-concepts, shifting from a focus on technical execution toward broader value-oriented roles. At the behavioral level, students reported more extensive knowledge-to-action translation across personal, academic, and career-related domains. Overall, AI-SEE provides a transferable pedagogical pathway for integrating AI into engineering education to support the development of sustainability consciousness in higher education. Full article

The growing emphasis on 21st-century competencies highlights the need to develop students’ systems thinking and problem-solving, particularly in science education, where many concepts involve complex, dynamic relationships. This study examined differences in fifth-grade students’ systems thinking performance and problem-solving perceptions associated with simulation-supported science instruction within the unit Electricity in Our Lives. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design was used with two intact classes, in which the experimental group received PhET-supported instruction and a control group followed the national curriculum. Data were collected through a systems thinking test (multiple-choice and open-ended items) and a problem-solving perception scale. The results showed that, after adjusting for baseline scores, the simulation-supported group demonstrated higher posttest systems thinking scores than the control group, with a large effect size. For problem-solving perceptions, the simulation-supported group also showed higher posttest scores compared to the control group. In addition, a moderate positive correlation was observed between systems thinking performance and problem-solving perceptions. Although causal inferences are limited due to the use of two intact classes and the absence of individual-level random assignment, the findings suggest that interactive simulations may support students’ holistic reasoning and engagement in problem-solving processes. The study highlights the potential value of integrating interactive simulations into science curricula to promote deeper cognitive competencies. Full article

This integrative literature review examines how virtual reality (VR) design can transform environmental understanding by changing users from passive observers to active participants in ecological systems. We aimed to analyze the interaction strategies through which VR enables environmental awareness and to identify the most effective approaches for fostering ecological connection. Through systematic analysis of studies published between 2015 and 2025, we found that effective VR implementations share three core design mechanisms: progressive engagement that builds connection over time, a careful balance between interaction and reflection, and multisensory integration that creates believable immersive experiences. These design mechanisms, in turn, build ecological connection through three fundamental pillars: perspective-taking that generates empathy, the creation of authentic sensory experiences, and the development of network thinking to understand complex interconnections. This review contributes to the field by mapping the development of environmental VR applications, identifying successful implementation strategies, and highlighting research gaps. Our analysis provides a comprehensive interaction framework for designing more effective environmental experiences and advancing this emerging field when innovative approaches are most needed. Full article

The development of digital technologies had a profound impact on religions, bringing about resistance and adaptations of traditional, theistic systems to this new technological and mediated environment, and on the dynamics of invention and creativity, as demonstrated by the wave of new digital religious movements. Scholars’ attention has mainly been put on the modalities of Searching God on the Net. This emphasis on “traditional” religions led to overlooking another dimension, the resurgence and innovative dynamics of beliefs and practices that fall under the category of “paranormal” or “alternative” forms of thinking, believing and acting—magical, witchcraft, occult, esoteric, spirit, and “spiritual” beliefs (understood in a broad sense)—are indeed also spreading and changing by means of new digital technologies. In this regard, digital technologies are not only “religious” or “sacred”, but they are also “haunted”. Departing from a particular topic of primary importance in this field, the ghost, i.e., the different ways by which spectral forms manifests themselves in the new ecosystems of digital technologies, and the way in which technologies reshape the ghost figure, this paper intends to shed light on the logics of this less considered facet of the digital revolution: the ways it participates in a reinvention of the paranormal and a hauntology of technologies. And in parallel to the quest for God online, it is also possible to engage in virtual ghost hunting. Full article

Establishing protected areas and promoting ecotourism are widely recognized as important pathways toward sustainable development. This study examines the development of ecotourism in oceanic island national parks by applying a systems-thinking perspective to analyze the structural feedback relationships associated with sustainability. Using the driving force–state–response (DSR) indicator framework, we construct a qualitative causal loop model to articulate the interdependencies among ecological, economic, and governance variables within island national park systems. The identified causal relationships can be organized into three principal feedback structures: one reinforcing loop and two balancing loops. These feedback structures provide a theoretically grounded interpretation of how system components may interact within the proposed conceptual framework. Although this study does not include quantitative modeling or simulation, the structural configuration highlights relational patterns among variables that may serve as a basis for subsequent empirical and computational investigation. In addition, this study uses fee-based policy as an illustrative example within the conceptual model to demonstrate how policy interventions may interact with feedback mechanisms and potentially influence park sustainability. The proposed framework provides a foundation for future research that may extend the qualitative structure into more formalized modeling approaches under alternative policy scenarios. Full article

Ensuring strategic resilience in critical infrastructures supported with a machine learning approach requires moving beyond compliance checklists and post-incident analysis toward proactive, intelligence-based approaches. This study introduces the Forensic Resilience Operational Model (FROM), a systems thinking framework designed to embed forensic intelligence into the resilience cycle of complex socio-technical systems. To quantify this integration, the study investigates the determinants of the extent to which four operational pillars (forensic readiness, anomaly detection, governance and privacy safeguards, and structured intelligence integration) affect forensic resilience, using empirical survey data from 212 cybersecurity professionals across critical infrastructure sectors. We deploy Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to investigate these relationships, and the results confirm that anomaly detection is the strongest contributor to forensic resilience, followed by structured intelligence integration and forensic readiness. Governance safeguards, while comparatively weaker, provide the necessary legitimacy and assurance of compliance. Supported with sector-specific case studies in the maritime, financial, and CERT domains, the findings highlight both the adaptability of the proposed FROM and the operational constraints encountered in real-world contexts. The study contributes to the field of systems-oriented strategic management by demonstrating that, when systematically embedded, forensic intelligence enhances adaptive capacity, supports predictive decision-making, and strengthens resilience in environments characterized by uncertainty and high complexity. Full article

Design Thinking (DT) has been widely promoted as a creative, human-centred approach for engaging students with real-world problems. Yet, research consistently shows that DT in mainstream schooling often struggles with ambiguity, superficial engagement with socio-scientific issues, weak integration of disciplinary knowledge, and epistemological tensions with school learning. In this paper, we examine whether DT can become more effective and educationally meaningful when enacted through a socio-constructionist environment using digital media as both design tools and design products. Drawing on a school-based intervention with 70 students using ChoiCo—an open-source digital authoring system for creating socio-scientific games—we analysed critical incidents of student interaction to explore how constructionist digital media mediate reasoning, collaboration, and conceptual development. Our findings show that ChoiCo supports conceptual clarity, iterative refinement, and epistemic grounding by requiring students to encode ideas into rules, thresholds, and consequences. The system’s malleability and embedded feedback align with a special socio-constructionist DT model developed through a multi-organisational European Research and Innovation Project ExtenDT2, enabling rapid prototyping and collaborative meaning-making. We argue that socio-constructionist DT offers a promising way to address long-standing shortcomings of DT in education, shifting the focus from producing polished artefacts to engaging in meaningful, iterative, and epistemically rich design activity. Implications for curriculum design, teacher practice, and the integration of constructionist digital media in DT pedagogy are discussed. Full article

It is widely accepted that preserving biodiversity requires transformative change and, perhaps foremost, demands a paradigm shift in economic scholarship. The prevailing neoclassical growth-based status quo is too often detached from nature and, as a result, ill-equipped to offer insights on how to halt biodiversity loss. This perspective paper builds on the famous cowboy–spaceman economy distinction by presenting an analogy from the natural world. Proposals from post-growth schools of economic thought on how to induce metamorphosis of the growth-based caterpillar economy are described. Thereafter, an exploration is undertaken of a butterfly economy based on three propositions: embed economics in ecosystems, in systems thinking, and in human–nature relationships. Herein, examples are provided of nature-literate economics, policy implications are discussed, and an actionable research agenda is outlined. The perspective closes by drawing on discussions from conservation sciences to inspire the design of an economic framework conducive to healthy human–nature relationships. Full article

Background: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly proposed as clinical decision support tools. However, their reliability in the emergency department (ED) triage remains insufficiently validated. This study aimed to evaluate the performance and limitations of multiple LLMs in triage using a large retrospective dataset. Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of 39,375 anonymized patient cases from the ED of AHEPA University General Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece (June 2024–July 2025), extracted from the hospital’s electronic medical record system. All cases were triaged in real time according to the Emergency Severity Index (ESI) by 25 emergency physicians. In cases of uncertainty, a senior emergency physician was consulted. Seven LLMs (ChatGPT-5 Thinking, ChatGPT-5 Instant, Gemini 2.5, Qwen 3, Grok 4.0, Deep Seek v3.1, and Claude Sonnet 4) were evaluated against the physician-assigned ESI level (reference standard). Outcomes included triage score agreement (quadratic weighted kappa, κw), clinic referral accuracy and admission prediction. Subgroup analyses were performed by referral clinic and admission outcome. The study was conducted in accordance with TRIPOD-AI reporting guidelines. Results: Model performance varied substantially. DeepSeek and Claude Sonnet 4 achieved the highest agreement with physician-assigned ESI (κw ≈ 0.467; raw accuracy: 61.7%). In contrast, GPT-5 Instant performed poorly across all evaluation metrics (κw = 0.176; 95% CI: 0.167–0.186). Claude Sonnet 4 demonstrated the best performance in clinic referral (67.1%; κ = 0.619) and admission prediction (κw ≈ 0.46). Subgroup analyses indicated higher performance in pediatric cases and organ-specific complaints, such as ophthalmology (up to 81% accuracy). LLMs also showed tendencies toward over- or under-triage. Conclusions: Current LLMs demonstrate promising but inconsistent capability in triage. While selected models achieved moderate alignment with physician ESI decisions, none achieved strong agreement (κ > 0.80). LLMs are most suitable as supervised decision support tools, particularly in anatomically well-defined clinical scenarios, rather than as autonomous systems. Full article

The current research discusses the thematic alignment of narratives and its impact on user engagement in gamified apps, using NLP Game-with-a-Purpose (GWAP) as the experimental environment. The experimental game is made up of a three-dimensional environment wherein a scene-based narrative is contextually integrated with the game world, and there is no such integration in the case of a non-scene-based narrative. Quantitative data gathered from 80 participants shows that a scene-based narrative contributes much better to user engagement, scoring higher in Focused Attention (FA) and Reward (RW) compared to the non-scene-based narrative. These findings are supported by qualitative feedback and think-aloud protocols, which showed that the participants found the scene-based narrative to be more engaging and involved than the non-scene-based material. Even though there were no statistically significant differences in cognitive load, trends of mental demand and frustration were observed indicating that thematic alignment has the potential to streamline the user experience. These findings have design implications in developing narrative-based gamified systems that can be used to improve interaction in language-related tasks. Full article

Engineering education is increasingly expected to prepare graduates capable of addressing sustainability challenges, public safety concerns, and ethical responsibilities. However, in many civil and environmental engineering curricula, sustainability and ethics are still treated as supplementary topics rather than being systematically embedded in core technical courses. This study reports a sustainability-oriented curriculum reform implemented in a Building Water Supply and Drainage Engineering course, integrating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) principles into CDIO-aligned project-based learning activities. A single-group pre–post quasi-experimental design was adopted with 100 undergraduate students. Quantitative data were collected using a competency-based questionnaire, and paired-sample t-tests, effect sizes, and 95% confidence intervals were applied to examine changes in students’ self-reported competencies. Qualitative data were obtained from reflective learning reports and analyzed through thematic analysis. The results indicate statistically significant improvements in sustainability awareness, ethical and professional responsibility, human-centered design, and systems thinking, with large effect sizes. These findings provide context-specific descriptive evidence supporting the feasibility of embedding sustainability and ethical responsibility within discipline-specific technical engineering courses. Nevertheless, the absence of a control group and the reliance on self-reported measures limit causal interpretation. Future research is recommended to adopt comparative or longitudinal designs and incorporate more objective performance-based assessments. Full article

AI-enabled chatbots are increasingly positioned as a remedy for breastfeeding support gaps in rural maternal health, offering private, immediate assistance amid persistent shortages of lactation specialists and limited access to care. However, their clinical promise remains constrained by the probabilistic nature of large language models, which can generate hallucinations that undermine maternal–infant safety. This article argues that safely integrating AI into breastfeeding support requires treating hallucination not as a singular technical flaw but as a systems-level risk shaped by design, governance, and use context. We identified key risks of AI systems that could result in hallucination such as, false citations, transcription errors, prompt injection and jailbreaking, and incorrect generalization or personalization, and analyze how each error introduces distinct safety vulnerabilities. Drawing from systems thinking, we outline mitigation strategies including retrieval-augmented generation grounded in authoritative breastfeeding sources, layered guardrails, adversarial testing, uncertainty-aware messaging, and domain-specific fine-tuning. By linking AI system design choices to downstream health consequences in resource-constrained settings, this paper reframes AI-assisted breastfeeding support as a governance challenge central to equitable, safe maternal health innovation. Full article

European citizens made it clear in 2024 that healthcare should be the EU’s top priority for shaping the future of Europe. This sentiment reflects the escalating health challenges facing the region, driven by ageing populations, rising chronic disease burdens, and persistent disparities in access to healthcare. Despite these growing needs, the most recent data on health spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) is just slightly above the pre-COVID-19 pandemic level, and spending on pharmaceuticals specifically has remained a stable proportion of healthcare spending over the last 20 years. Austerity measures have profoundly impacted the health sector and pharmaceutical industry, more so than any other sectors, despite the wide range of health and socioeconomic benefits medicines bring to patients, the health system, and society. Such trends are not keeping pace with evolving population demographics and disease prevalence. To secure a healthier, more equitable future, Europe must urgently increase health investments, optimise health systems, and address unmet needs by supporting fast uptake of pharmaceutical innovations. Policymakers must work with all stakeholders to ensure stronger and sustained investments in health innovations by (i) adopting a long-term vision, moving away from short-term thinking and valuing health appropriately to drive economic growth; (ii) implementing transformative policies that eliminate ineffective and wasteful spending; (iii) promoting value-based approaches to improve patient access and system sustainability, and (iv) creating incentives that attract greater investments to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness and safeguard against health threats. Full article

Unsafe behavior remains a dominant contributor to accidents in complex socio-technical systems (STSs), yet it is still frequently interpreted as an individual-level information failure. This study argues that unsafe behavior is more accurately understood as a systemic outcome shaped by multi-level technological, organizational, and environmental conditions. To address this gap, an integrated human factor risk analysis framework is proposed by combining the STS perspective with safety information cognition (SIC) theory. The framework conceptualizes unsafe behavior as the result of risk transmission through safety information flows, linking system-level risk sources to individual perception, cognition, decision-making, and action. Within this perspective, human factor risk does not arise directly from individual error, but from deficiencies and asymmetries in the generation, transmission, and utilization of safety-related information embedded in the STS. Based on this conceptualization, a system-oriented human factor risk analysis (HRFA) approach is developed to support the identification, assessment, and control of unsafe behaviors across both accident scenarios and operational contexts. The framework is applied to road transportation of dangerous goods in China, a typical high-risk STS. The application results demonstrate that the proposed approach can effectively distinguish the comprehensive risk characteristics of different unsafe behaviors and reveal their underlying systemic causes. This study contributes to systems thinking in safety governance by shifting the analytical focus from individual behavior correction to upstream system conditions and information processes. The proposed framework provides a transferable approach for understanding and managing human factor risk in complex STSs and offers practical implications for proactive, system-oriented safety governance. Full article

This article advances EcoTechnoPolitics as a transformational conceptual and policy recommendation framework for hybridizing digital–green twin transitions under conditions of planetary polycrises. It responds to growing concerns that dominant policy approaches by supranational institutions—including the EU, UN, OECD, World Bank Group, WEF, and G20—remain institutionally siloed, technologically reductionist, and insufficiently attentive to ecological constraints. Moving beyond the prevailing digital–green twin transitions paradigm, the article coins EcoTechnoPolitics around three hypotheses: the need for planetary thinking grounded in (i) anticipatory governance, (ii) hybridization, and (iii) a transformational agenda beyond cosmetic digital–green alignment. The research question asks how EcoTechnoPolitics can enable planetary thinking beyond digital–green twin transitions under ecological and technological constraints. Methodologically, the study triangulates (i) an interdisciplinary literature review with (ii) a place-based analysis of two socially cohesive city-regions—the Basque Country and Portland (Oregon)—and (iii) a macro-level policy analysis of supranational digital and green governance frameworks. The results show that, despite planetary rhetoric around sustainability and digitalization, prevailing policy architectures largely externalize ecological costs and consolidate technological power. Building on this analysis, the discussion formulates transformational policy recommendations. The conclusion argues that governing planetary-scale ecotechnopolitical systems requires embedding ecological responsibility within technological governance. Full article