Search Results (61)

Roses held profound cultural and economic significance in ancient Greece and Rome, yet comprehensive documentation of their species diversity, cultivation practices, and horticultural innovations remains fragmented across archaeological, iconographic, and textual sources. This multidisciplinary study synthesizes evidence from classical texts, archaeological remains including recently identified rose stem fragments from Oplontis, and iconographic materials—including frescoes, coins, and mosaics—to reconstruct the horticultural systems and cultural landscape of roses in classical antiquity. Analysis of literary sources, particularly Theophrastus’s fourth-century BCE taxonomic descriptions, reveals systematic cultivation of diverse rose varieties with flowers ranging from white to deep crimson, including yellow variants, characterized by morphologies from simple to double forms and valued for fragrance intensity and re-blooming capacity. Archaeological evidence from sites such as Paestum, Pompeii, and Oplontis, including pollen samples, preserved wood fragments with diagnostic prickle patterns, and fresco representations, documents commercial rose production and specialized cultivation techniques that demonstrate significantly greater morphological diversity than textual sources alone indicate. Field research and collection documentation establish the origins of Mediterranean rose cultivation, while iconographic analysis identifies roses in religious ceremonies, festivals, and daily life contexts. Textual sources provide detailed propagation methods, seasonal management practices, and evidence of Mediterranean hybridization events, alongside extensive documentation of medicinal and cosmetic applications. Economic analysis reveals specialized trade networks, commercial production centers, and diverse applications in perfumery, garland making, and pharmaceutical industries. This research establishes that Greek and Roman civilizations developed sophisticated rose cultivation systems integrating botanical selection, horticultural innovation, and cultural symbolism that directly influenced medieval and Renaissance practices and informed modern trait categorization systems. These findings demonstrate the foundational role of classical antiquity in European rose heritage, revealing how ancient horticultural knowledge, species diversification through hybridization, and cultivation techniques created an unbroken transmission that shaped contemporary rose industries and established conservation priorities for this horticultural heritage. Full article

Mass production in product design typically relies on standardized geometries and dimensions to accommodate a broad user population. However, when products are required to interface directly with the human body, such generalized design approaches often result in inadequate fit and reduced user comfort. This limitation highlights the necessity of fully personalized design methodologies based on individual anthropometric characteristics. This paper presents a novel application that automates the design of custom-fit sunglasses through the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computational Design. The system is implemented using both textual (Python™ version 3.10.11) and visual (Grasshopper 3D™ version 1.0.0007) programming environments. The proposed workflow consists of the following four main stages: (a) acquisition of user facial images, (b) AI-based detection of facial landmarks, (c) three-dimensional reconstruction of facial features via an optimization process, and (d) generation of a personalized sunglass frame, exported as a three-dimensional model. The application demonstrates a robust performance across a diverse set of test images, consistently generating geometries that conformed closely to each user’s facial morphology. The accurate recognition of facial features enables the successful generation of customized sunglass frame designs. The system is further validated through the fabrication of a physical prototype using additive manufacturing, which confirms both the manufacturability and the fit of the final design. Overall, the results indicate that the combined use of AI-driven feature extraction and parametric Computational Design constitutes a powerful framework for the automated development of personalized wearable products. Full article

This paper critically examines Lu Guolong’s interpretation of tianren heyi, arguing that his portrayal of it as an inherent virtue of Chinese culture—and his positioning of Daoism between Confucianism and Buddhism—remains conceptually inadequate. Through a textual analysis of oracle-bone inscriptions, the Shangshu, and the Guoyu, the study reconstructs the notions of shenmin bu za and the four historical “transgressions”, thereby demonstrating that tianren heyi is not a singular, unchanging tradition but a historically generated and internally diverse phenomenon. By distinguishing between the Confucian model of you ren zhi tian, the Daoist model of you tian zhi ren or you ziran zhi ren, and the Daoist practice of yi ren zhi tian, this paper highlights the Daoist distinctive emphasis on the embodied dimension—pursuing tianren heyi through corporeal cultivation and the twin disciplines of waidan and neidan. The modern trend of celebrating tianren heyi as an emblem of Chinese cultural excellence calls for cautious reinterpretation—one that carefully distinguishes its ontological meaning from its practical and historical articulations. Full article

The inherent semantic symmetry and cross-modal alignment between textual prompts and generated images have fueled the success of text-to-image (T2I) generation. However, this strong correlation also introduces security vulnerabilities, specifically prompt stealing attacks, where valuable prompts are reverse-engineered from images. In this paper, we address the challenge of information asymmetry in black-box attack scenarios and propose PromptTrace, a fine-grained prompt stealing framework via Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training (CLIP)-guidedbeam search. Unlike existing methods that rely on single-stage generation, PromptTrace structurally decomposes prompt reconstruction into subject generation, modifier extraction, and iterative search optimization to effectively restore the visual–textual correspondence. By leveraging a CLIP-guided beam search strategy, our method progressively optimizes candidate prompts based on image–text similarity feedback, ensuring the stolen prompt achieves high fidelity in both semantic intent and stylistic representation. Extensive evaluations across multiple datasets and T2I models demonstrate that PromptTrace outperforms existing methods, highlighting the feasibility of exploiting cross-modal symmetry for attacks and underscoring the urgent need for defense mechanisms in the T2I ecosystem. Full article

An accurate DNA clock can strengthen cross-disciplinary inputs in the study of genealogies and ancient migrations. New Y-chromosome sequence data gathered from a Lotli Pai Kaundinya (LPK) Brahmin cohort whose staged migration from the Pontic Steppe to the West Coast of India was previously reported, are used here to generate a more precise DNA clock. The formula distinguishes Y-mutation rates for transitions and transversions and corrects for dropped mutations in sequence reads. The formula is validated against a baptismal tree covering over four centuries (0–704 YBP interval), a published STR-based chronology for this same cohort (704–5200 YBP) and a comparison to Y-Full formation times for mutations older than 3000 YBP. Using this more precise clock, we support a proposed “founder effect” expansion in Khorasan during 4300–3800 YBP using a novel phylogenetic branching metric; and use archeological, numismatic, toponymic, climate reconstruction and ancient textual data to explore religious and professional dimensions of cultural kinship with other communities believed to have interacted with the LPK during their long migration. The availability of more precise dating facilitates the integration of such secondary data types, resulting in an enriched and more plausible migration narrative. Full article

Targeted multimodal sentiment classification is frequently impeded by the semantic sparsity of social media content, where text is brief and context is implicit. Traditional methods that rely on direct concatenation of textual and visual features often fail to resolve the ambiguity of specific targets due to a lack of alignment between modalities. In this paper, we propose the Complementary Description Network (CDNet) to bridge this informational gap. CDNet incorporates automatically generated image descriptions as an additional semantic bridge, in contrast to methods that handle text and images as distinct streams. The framework enhances the input representation by directly translating visual content into text, allowing for more accurate interactions between the opinion target and the visual narrative. We further introduce a complementary reconstruction module that functions as a regularizer, forcing the model to retain deep semantic cues during fusion. Empirical results on the Twitter-2015 and Twitter-2017 benchmarks confirm that CDNet outperforms existing baselines. The findings suggest that visual-to-text augmentation is an effective strategy for compensating for the limited context inherent in short texts. Full article

This article examines the relationship between jihād and the protection of non-Muslim places of worship in early Islam. Drawing primarily on Qurʾānic verses 22:39–41 and the Covenants of the Prophet, it employs a synchronically comparative framework that analyzes a broad corpus of textual sources, seeking to reconstruct how the early Muslim worldview understood the justification for jihād. It also examines the norms governing conduct after conflict, particularly in relation to treaty-making. The article attempts to make sense of Q22:39–41 within the broader landscape of late antiquity, which was marked by religious persecution and the destruction of sanctuaries under Byzantine and Sasanian rule. The study highlights how clear rules of engagement were articulated in early Islam, including limits on violence and the consequences of treaty violation. It argues that the motivations behind the early conquests cannot be reduced to material interests but rather were guided by a theological and ideological vision linking conquest with the establishment of a just peace, one grounded in the protection of communities, faith, and places of worship through a covenantal paradigm. Full article

The Japanese scholar and art critic Okakura Tenshin traveled to colonial India from January to September 1902 and made three visits to the Buddhist holy site of Bodh Gaya. There, he attempted to purchase a piece of land from the landowner, the Mahant, to build a vihāra (resthouse) for Japanese Buddhist devotees. His purchase request was rejected by the British colonial authority for his foreigner status, despite no legal prohibition against land sales to foreigners under Bodh Gaya’s land management laws at the time. The year after his journey to India, Okakura Tenshin published The Ideals of the East, wherein the renowned declaration that “Asia is one” subsequently evolved to be the intellectual cornerstone of twentieth-century Asianism (or Pan-Asianism). How did Okakura’s Indian journey and his experience of the failed attempt to purchase land in Bodh Gaya catalyze his conception of “Asia is One”? This essay first traces the Buddhist revival movements in late nineteenth-century India and Japan, elucidating how Buddhism helped forge a sense of transnational solidarity between the two nations, which Okakura also embraced. It then examines Okakura’s trip to India and his plan to purchase land at Bodh Gaya, uncovering the underlying geopolitical struggle between the British Empire and the New Asian Power Japan. In this context, the analysis will show that Okakura’s frustrating experience of failed land purchase underscored for him the necessity for the solidarity between Japan and India and the need for a unitary idea of Asia to articulate that solidarity. Finally, a comparative textual analysis between The Ideals of the East (1903) and Okakura’s “History of Japanese Art” lectures given at the Tokyo Fine Arts School before his trip to India explicates how Buddhism, which was being revived by a collective of various groups in and outside its place of origin India, served as a cohesive discursive agent in Okakura’s construction of the narrative of an Asian unity. This Buddhist framework helped Okakura to reconstruct the interlinked cultural histories of India, China, and Japan into a unified notion of Asia within which he crystallized a unique and favored cultural identity for Japan. Full article

This article offers a comparative study of two closely linked constellations of early Ṣūfī thought: the ascetic–mystical program of al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ (d. 187/803) and that of his renowned disciple Bishr al-Ḥāfī (d. 227/841). Moving beyond hagiographic anecdote, the study advances the thesis that the pair articulate two complementary modalities of tawba (repentance) that generate distinct ascetic habitus and pedagogical lineages: al-Fudayl’s “ethic of awe” (fear, juridical redress, and renunciation of patronage) and Bishr’s “aesthetics of reverence” (beauty-induced modesty, evident humility, and fame avoidance). Drawing on primary sources (Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ, al-Sulamī’s Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfiyya, al-Qushayrī’s Risāla, al-Sarrāj’s Lumaʿ), the article reconstructs each thinker’s core concepts, practices (e.g., returning wrongs, ḥafāʾ/barefoot humility), and teaching styles and maps how the teacher–disciple nexus transmits, adapts, and ritualizes these ethics into durable Ṣūfī dispositions. Methodologically, the article combines close textual analysis with practice theory to show how emotions—such as fear and modesty (ḥayāʾ)—are choreographed into public, socially legible acts, thus reframing repentance as embodied discipline rather than interior feeling alone. A prosopographic appendix traces transmission from al-Fudayl to Bishr to Sarī al-Saqaṭī and al-Junayd, clarifying how each modality survives in later Baghdad sobriety and Malāmatī self-effacement. The contribution is twofold: first, it supplies a granular typology of early Ṣūfī repentance that explains divergent stances toward money, publicity, and power; second, it models how to read early Ṣūfī biography as anthropology of practice, recovering the lived grammar by which “conversion stories” become social programs. In doing so, the article nuances standard narratives of early Ṣūfism, showing that Bishr is not merely al-Fuḍayl’s echo but a creative reframer whose “reverential” path complements—rather than imitates—the awe-driven ethic associated with al-Fuḍayl. Full article

Wind power forecasting is critical to renewable energy generation, as accurate predictions are essential for the efficient and reliable operation of power systems. However, wind power output is inherently unstable and is strongly affected by meteorological factors such as wind speed, wind direction, and atmospheric pressure. Weather conditions and wind power data are recorded by sensors installed in wind turbines, which may be damaged or malfunction during extreme or sudden weather events. Such failures can lead to inaccurate, incomplete, or missing data, thereby degrading data quality and, consequently, forecasting performance. To address these challenges, we propose a method that integrates a pre-trained large-scale language model (LLM) with the spatiotemporal characteristics of wind power networks, aiming to capture both meteorological variability and the complexity of wind farm terrain. Specifically, we design a spatiotemporal graph neural network based on multi-view maps as an encoder. The resulting embedded spatiotemporal map sequences are aligned with textual representations, concatenated with prompt embeddings, and then fed into a frozen LLM to predict future wind turbine power generation sequences. In addition, to mitigate anomalies and missing values caused by sensor malfunctions, we introduce a novel frequency-domain learning-based interpolation method that enhances data correlations and effectively reconstructs missing observations. Experiments conducted on real-world wind power datasets demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods, achieving root mean square errors of 17.776 kW and 50.029 kW for 24-h and 48-h forecasts, respectively. These results indicate substantial improvements in both accuracy and robustness, highlighting the strong practical potential of the proposed method for wind power forecasting in the renewable energy industry. Full article

Volatile memory provides the most direct and clear view into a system’s runtime behavior. Yet, traditional forensics methods are prone to errors and remain fragile against modern obfuscation and injection techniques. This paper introduces a textual-attention transformer framework that treats raw memory bytes as linguistic tokens, allowing the model to read memory as text and infer contextual relationships across disjoint regions. The proposed model aligns positional encodings with memory addresses and learns to associate scattered structures—such as injected stubs, PE headers, and decryption routines—within a unified semantic space. Experiments on two publicly verifiable datasets, CIC-MalMem-2022 (multi-class) and NIST CFReDS Basic Memory Images (binary), demonstrate that this approach reconstructs malware behavior with ≈97% accuracy, outperforming CNN and LSTM baselines. Attention heatmaps reveal interpretable forensic cues that identify malicious regions, bridging AI and digital forensics. The proposed concept of textual self-attention for memory opens a new paradigm in automated memory analysis—transforming volatile memory into a readable, interpretable sequence for malware behavior reconstruction. Full article

Research on historical climate plays a crucial referential role in understanding the climate and its variation patterns in specific regions and periods, as well as in predicting future climate change. This study focuses on woody plants recorded in Xijin Zhi Jiyi (Collected Fragments of the Xijin Zhi), a historical document depicting Beijing’s general condition over 650 years ago. Using textual research methods, 11 out of 19 recorded woody plant names were identified to species level, 3 to genus level, 1 to family level, 1 was identified as a non-native species, and 3 remained uncertain. Based on this identification, climate-related studies were carried out on the 11 species-confirmed woody plants using data from the Atlas of Woody Plants in China: Distribution and Climate and the Coexistence Approach. Six key climate parameters were determined. Statistical analysis indicates that over 650 years ago, mean annual temperature in Beijing was 0.04 °C higher than today. However, during the hottest month, temperatures were 6.82% cooler than modern values, while in the coldest month, they were 138.14% warmer. Precipitation in Beijing was 88.49% higher overall than present levels. In the warmest season, rainfall was 313.55% greater, and in the coldest season, it was 1313.67% higher. These results suggest that Beijing’s climate over 650 years ago was slightly warmer overall with less variability in temperature compared to the modern era. Precipitation was significantly higher than today. In general, the Beijing region had a warm and humid climate during that period. Full article

Current research on Daoist neidan (內丹, Internal Alchemy) has primarily focused on its philosophical frameworks, practical methods, and therapeutic benefits; however, systematic inquiry into the mechanisms of failure during practice remains limited. This study investigates the long-neglected yet pivotal phenomenon of zouhuo rumo (走火入魔, fire deviation and entry into demonic states) within Daoist cultivation, especially as it emerges in the context of dual cultivation of xing and ming (性命雙修). Through textual and hermeneutical analysis, this study traces the historical evolution, semantic transformation, and causal structure of the term, revealing its dual function as both a technical deviation and a religious warning. Findings indicate that zouhuo rumo arises from the interplay of impure self-refinement, loss of mental focus, improper fire phases (火候), and illusory disturbances, reflecting a profound psychosomatic imbalance rooted in the practitioner’s mind-nature (心性). Daoism interprets this state as mokao (魔考, demonic trials in Daoist cultivation), a transformative mechanism designed to refine inner alignment. On this basis, this study proposes a three-stage healing pathway—Spirit Preservation and Breath Stabilization (存神定息), Inner Vision and Self-Reflection (內觀返照), and Transformation of Form and Refinement of Essence (化形改質)—and constructs a Daoist cultural healing model that integrates moral cultivation, breath regulation, and introspection. This model provides a non-pathologizing cultural framework for enhancing psychological resilience, reconstructing meaning, and addressing contemporary spiritual and psychological crises. Full article

Accurate classification of cognitive levels in instructional dialogues is essential for personalized education and intelligent teaching systems. However, most existing methods predominantly rely on static textual features and a shallow semantic analysis. They often overlook dynamic temporal interactions and struggle with class imbalance. To address these limitations, this study proposes a novel framework for cognitive-level classification. This framework integrates time entropy-enhanced dynamics with a dynamically weighted, heterogeneous ensemble strategy. Specifically, we reconstruct the original Multi-turn Classroom Dialogue (MCD) dataset by introducing time entropy to quantify teacher–student speaking balance and semantic richness features based on Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF), resulting in an enhanced MCD-temporal dataset. We then design a Dynamic Weighted Heterogeneous Ensemble (DWHE), which adjusts weights based on the class distribution. Our framework achieves a state-of-the-art macro-F1 score of 0.6236. This study validates the effectiveness of incorporating temporal dynamics and adaptive ensemble learning for robust cognitive level assessment, offering a more powerful tool for educational AI applications. Full article

Robert Henricks’ Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching: A Translation of the Startling New Documents Found at Guodian marks a milestone in Daoist studies and translation history as the first complete English translation of the Guodian Laozi. However, systematic research on Henricks’ version remains limited, particularly regarding its philological foundation and translation strategies. Drawing on the concept of representation, this paper addresses the gap through a descriptive case study of Henricks’ work. By examining Henricks’ philological readings of dating, authorship, chapter divisions, textual variants, and philosophical thoughts, the study shows how he reconstructs and represents Daoist knowledge embedded in the Guodian Laozi. The findings suggest that Henricks, as both a translator and researcher, integrates rigorous philological studies with extensive paratexts, producing a version that both faithfully represents the text and offers new insights into its formation and philosophy. His translation has demonstrated the necessity of philological approaches for rendering Daoist and other ancient Chinese classics. Full article