Search Results (3,302)

Small settlements in Serbia are confronted with long-term processes of depopulation, ageing, and migration, characterised by pronounced spatial and structural heterogeneity. This raises questions about the effectiveness of uniform development policies and underscores the need for a differentiated, place-based approach. The aim of this paper is to identify the demographic heterogeneity of small settlements (with fewer than 100 inhabitants) and to analyse its implications for decentralised territorial development. The research is based on the analysis of 1302 settlements in Serbia, using 26 demographic, socio-economic, and geographical indicators. The methodological framework is based on principal component analysis and cluster analysis, complemented by nonparametric tests and logistic regression. The results indicate pronounced population ageing, low labour potential, and a clear spatial polarisation between accessible and peripheral settlements. Four clearly differentiated types of small settlements are identified. It is concluded that demographic heterogeneity represents a key determinant of development capacity, indicating the need for territorially sensitive and differentiated development policies. In this context, decentralisation and tailored development models may contribute to the revitalisation and long-term sustainability of rural areas. Full article

Rail-trail corridors in the agricultural Midwest exhibit layered ecological conditions influenced by the material legacy of railroad infrastructure and contemporary land use pressures. This study uses a mixed-methods approach integrating GIS analysis, field documentation, and open-response surveys with trail managers to characterize the structural and ecological heterogeneity of two rail-trails within the Corn Belt. Spatial methods quantify variation in right of way width, land cover context, connectivity, and patterns of fragmentation, revealing that corridors shift in response to agricultural edges, successional woodlands, riparian zones, and urban conditions. Field visits and on-site sketching provide fine-grained insight into vegetative structure, topography, and edge dynamics, while the thematic analysis of survey responses highlights how management regimes, resource limitations, invasive species, and adjacent land uses shape ecological patterns along the trail. Together, these methods support the development of a typology of rail-trails based on their vegetative, hydrological, and disturbance patterns. We argue that design and management should work with the nuance of the corridors, noting the potential for landscape experimentation. Novel design approaches can support the performance of rail-trails as ecological infrastructure while enabling meaningful human–environment interactions within the right of way. Full article

Urban railway corridors—including abandoned, redesigned, and in-use lines—can support biodiversity and ecological connectivity in fragmented cities, yet their ecological dynamics and roles in Nature-based Solutions (NbS) remain poorly understood. Addressing this requires a context-sensitive approach that differentiates corridor types and compares their ecological functions. This study compares vegetation dynamics along railway corridors in two cities with contrasting socio-ecological contexts—Perth (Western Australia) and Beijing (China)—using a typology-based comparative approach. The results show that: (1) vegetation dynamics differ fundamentally between the two cities, with Perth characterized by vertically structured vegetation dominated by native tree layers and non-native disturbance-tolerant annual groundcover, while Beijing supports more continuous vegetation with widespread natural regeneration of native species; and (2) these differences correspond to distinct suggested NbS strategies. For Perth, NbS should combine phenology-aware management (wet versus dry seasons) with disturbance-based zoning and staged native planting strategies. In contrast, Beijing corridors are characterized by more uniform disturbance patterns but differentiated corridor typologies, indicating NbS structured around corridor-type management with a stronger emphasis on the support of native groundcover establishment and allowing for self-sustaining regeneration. These findings highlight how different contexts shape vegetation dynamics and provide comparative ecological insights for developing context-specific NbS for urban railway corridors. Full article

This article examines how the discourse of “for your own good” functions as a moral framework through which parental violence is reinterpreted as care in Sinophone family cinema. Focusing on family-centered films as a key site of representation, we analyze how reconciliation is constructed not merely as a narrative resolution but as an ethical expectation. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, we develop the concept of “moralized parental violence” to describe how authority, discipline, and emotional control are legitimized through moral discourse. Through a typological analysis, identify three recurring models of reconciliation: deathbed reconciliation, retrospective understanding, and silent reconciliation. The study further explores works that resist reconciliation, arguing that such narratives suspend ethical closure and challenge normative expectations of forgiveness. By examining narrative structure, visual emphasis, and affective strategies, we demonstrate how cultural texts guide audience responses and shape moral interpretation. Rather than rejecting family values, this study reconsiders how ethics, power, and care are intertwined in cultural narratives and how the refusal of reconciliation opens a critical space for rethinking the limits of moral obligation. Full article

Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia Jacks. ex Andrews) is a tropical orchid of high economic value, with an annual production of 8000 to 10,000 t and a market exceeding 800 million USD in over 40 countries. In vitro propagation has strengthened the innovation, production, and conservation of this species. Bibliometrics, as a quantitative approach, systematically examines the patterns, dynamics, and evolutionary trends of scientific production. A systematic search was conducted in Scopus and Web of Science until December 2025, using the terms “vanilla” and “micropropagation”. A total of 53 documents were identified in Scopus (1997–2025) and 39 in Web of Science (2000–2025). The evaluated indicators included: year of publication, country of origin, language, areas, main categories, document typology, authorship, and keyword distribution. VOSviewer was used for keyword analysis to identify author collaboration networks and emerging trends. The years with the most information were 2024 and 2025, with Mexico and India standing out prominently. The main thematic areas were Agricultural and Biological Sciences, and the role of researcher Ramírez-Mosqueda was highlighted. The keywords with the highest correlation and impact were bioreactors, vanillin, and cryopreservation. This bibliometric study provides a comprehensive perspective on scientific production related to vanilla micropropagation. The results highlight the multidisciplinary nature of biotechnology applied to this crop, integrating contributions from various areas of knowledge for the benefit of the main actors in the value chain. Full article

This study presents a comprehensive and systematic integrative review of Neighborhood-Level Energy Hubs (NLEHs) as pivotal enablers of sustainable and resilient urban energy systems. In response to accelerating climate pressures, rapid urbanization, and the decentralization of energy production, NLEHs are conceptualized as multi-carrier platforms that enable coordinated energy generation, storage, conversion, and exchange at the neighborhood scale. Utilizing a PRISMA-informed methodology to synthesize 125 core studies, the review systematically evaluates recent advances across five interconnected dimensions: conceptual foundations, system typologies, energy flow architectures, urban integration, and optimization paradigms. Unlike conventional reviews, this study explicitly bridges the critical gap between techno-economic optimization and socio-environmental priorities. A key novelty is the proposed mathematical integration of energy justice and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) directly into optimization algorithms (e.g., MILP and MPC) as dynamic constraints and penalty terms. Particular emphasis is placed on participatory governance models, lifecycle sustainability metrics, and digitalization tools such as AI-driven energy management systems and urban digital twins. The analysis further reveals critical research gaps, highlighting a stark geographic dichotomy between high-tech, market-driven NLEHs in the Global North and resilience-oriented hybrid microgrids in the Global South, alongside the lack of adaptive regulatory frameworks. By proposing a unified Cyber–Physical–Social perspective, this study provides actionable insights for planners, policymakers, and researchers to support the development of scalable, inclusive, and context-sensitive NLEH implementations. Ultimately, the paper contributes to redefining neighborhood-scale energy systems as not only efficient and low-carbon infrastructures, but also as socially equitable, globally scalable, and institutionally adaptive components of future smart cities. Full article

Global urban development has fully entered the stage of stock renewal, and the synergy between public health and historic heritage conservation has become a core issue of urban sustainable development in the post-pandemic era. As special spatial units carrying urban cultural memories, historic districts generally face problems such as chaotic traffic functions, a lack of slow traffic spaces, and insufficient public health support. Existing studies lack a public health-oriented special evaluation system and a sustainable renewal path adapted to their characteristics. This paper systematically sorts out eight core impact paths of street built environment elements on public health and constructs a healthy street evaluation system for historic districts, including six dimensions (transportation facilities, green squares, ancillary facilities, street-front commerce, urban furniture, and street network) and 30 core elements combined with the spatial and cultural characteristics of historic districts. Taking five typical streets in the Liuhe Area of Hankou Historic District as an empirical case, a comprehensive evaluation is carried out using a combination of quantitative surveys, questionnaire surveys, and spatial analyses. The results show that the overall health performance of street space in the study area is low, with extremely unbalanced development across dimensions. The core shortcomings are concentrated in incomplete slow traffic systems, lack of public spaces, prominent parking chaos, and fragmented historic styles, and the health problems of streets with different functional types show significant typological differentiation characteristics. Based on this, this paper proposes five systematic renewal strategies, transportation system optimization, public space improvement, landscape system perfection, historic style activation, and long-term mechanism construction, for achieving the synergistic goals of historic culture conservation, public health promotion, and urban sustainable development. This study not only enriches the theoretical system of research on healthy spaces in historic districts but also provides a referable evaluation framework and practical approach for modern historic districts in China and other similar historic districts with comparable spatial textures and functional characteristics. Full article

Multilingual learning is key in natural language processing, but is challenged by the transfer–interference trade-off, where positive transfer benefits certain languages, while negative interference affects others. Prior methods, including linguistic-based and embedding-based language clustering, have attempted to address this; yet, they remain constrained by their static design and lack of task-specific feedback. In this study, we propose a novel computational strategy inspired by molecular design that constructs molecules with targeted properties. Languages are modeled as nodes in an undirected graph, with edges representing the transfer strength. This language molecule is optimized via Reinforcement Learning to adjust edge connections and weights to enhance positive transfer and minimize interference, where graph clustering is applied, and clusters are then evaluated on the Named Entity Recognition and POS tagging tasks using 25 languages from the WikiANN dataset and 12 typologically diverse languages from the UDPOS dataset. Compared to linguistic and embedding-based language clustering baselines, our method yields substantial improvements, especially for low-resource languages, with some showing over 35% increase in F1 score, while high-resource languages benefit moderately, confirming reduced transfer–interference trade-off. Our atom–language model offers a novel path for multilingual learning, inspired by molecular principles from physical sciences. Full article

Socio-environmental conflicts in mining regions are often examined through political, economic, or social lenses, while the role of land-system transformation remains less integrated into quantitative analysis. This study examines the co-evolution of socio-environmental conflict and territorial change in Las Bambas (Apurímac, Peru) as a socio-territorial process. Annual conflict records from the Peruvian Ombudsman’s Office (2007–2024) were combined with annual land-cover data from MapBiomas. Yearly conflict influence zones were reconstructed from reported affected communities and geographic features using buffered spatial entities and concave hull polygons. Clustering methods (K-medoids, DBSCAN, and agglomerative hierarchical clustering) and FP-Growth association rule mining were applied to 23 unique conflicts consolidated from the original records and encoded with 10 root causes. The most intense conflict phases were accompanied by measurable landscape transformations, including the emergence of mining-related land cover from 2012 onward, sustained loss of high-Andean natural vegetation, expansion of agricultural mosaics, urban growth along the Apurímac–Cusco corridor, and hydrological alterations in wetlands and headwaters. Three conflict typologies were identified, with unfulfilled company commitments emerging as the most recurrent co-occurring grievance. The dynamic polygon approach offers a replicable framework for linking conflict records with land-system change in extractive regions. Full article

Unused, underutilized, abandoned, and residual urban spaces are increasingly recognized as potential resources for adaptive reuse, ecological improvement, and urban resilience. In this study, such areas are approached through the overarching concept of waste space, a term that captures both their underutilized condition and their transformation potential. While existing research has largely focused on the definition, classification, and emergence of such spaces, their potential for transformation across varying spatial and institutional contexts has received comparatively limited attention. Addressing this gap, this study operationalizes selected social–ecological system (SES) dynamics through spatial analysis in the metropolitan area of İzmir, Türkiye, offering a proxy-based assessment of transformation capacity rather than a direct transformation. Using district-level analysis across ten metropolitan districts, this research combines typological and morphological classification of waste spaces with four spatial indicators: the Density Index, Location Quotient, Shannon Diversity Index, and Typology Dominance Index. The results show that waste spaces are unevenly distributed across İzmir and form distinct district-level configurations shaped by infrastructure expansion, post-industrial transformation, speculative vacancy, and fragmented urban growth. This study concludes that waste spaces cannot be addressed through a uniform regeneration logic. By linking SES dynamics with measurable spatial indicators, the proposed framework offers a context-sensitive, proxy-based basis for indicating transformation capacity of waste spaces and supporting district-specific planning and policy decisions. Full article

The mechanical properties of stone masonry and its behavior under monotonic and cyclic loading depend significantly on the local properties of the masonry and the wall typology. This paper presents preliminary results from in situ inspection of stone masonry typologies at several locations in the Kvarner Littoral of Croatia, which revealed the use of earth mortar in a building over 200 years old instead of the commonly used lime mortar. This finding prompted the selection of this building as a case study, for which a detailed visual survey was conducted and laboratory testing employed to characterize the masonry components. The visual inspection showed that the walls of the case study building are constructed from non-degraded stones, with wedges between the blocks and larger corner blocks. The earth mortar is degraded on the wall surface, so non-destructive testing was unsuccessful. Laboratory tests on stone specimens confirmed high compressive strength (over 135 MPa), while laboratory tests on earth mortar specimens indicated compressive strength between 2.22 and 2.65 MPa. The stone compressive strength is comparable to that of high-quality Croatian limestones, while the compressive strength of the earth mortar is comparable to that of historic lime mortars. Microscopic analysis and FTIR spectroscopy of the earth mortar revealed that it does not contain sand or gravel, what distinguishes it from commonly used historic earth mortars, where clay minerals serve as a binder for sand and silt particles. This study presents the first comprehensive research on the material properties of an earth mortar in Croatia. Full article

Improving the energy performance of existing multi-apartment residential buildings is critical for reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in Central and Eastern Europe, where large stocks of post-war buildings with limited insulation are connected to district heating systems. This study evaluates façade insulation retrofit strategies for two representative typologies in Novi Beograd, Serbia—a high-rise tower and an elongated slab-type (‘lamella’) building—using calibrated dynamic energy models and cradle-to-use lifecycle assessment (LCA) over a 50-year service life. Models were calibrated against measured 2023–2024 heating consumption data (NMBE < 1%, CVRMSE < 15%) and normalized with Typical Meteorological Year weather for consistent scenario comparison. Retrofit scenarios applied expanded polystyrene (EPS) and cellulose insulation at 10, 12, and 15 cm thicknesses. Results show that external insulation reduces annual heating demand by approximately 19–20% compared to the uninsulated baseline (192 kWh/m²·a), with the majority of savings achieved at 10 cm and only marginal gains from additional thickness. Insulation thickness has a stronger influence on operational energy reduction than material choice, as differences between EPS and cellulose remain below 0.5%. LCA indicates 23.6–26.0% lower climate change impacts and 23.6–25.8% reduced cumulative energy demand in retrofit scenarios, with cellulose offering modest advantages due to lower embodied emissions and biogenic carbon storage. These findings support targeted envelope retrofits as an effective strategy for decarbonizing district-heated residential buildings in the region. Full article

Systematic frameworks for describing podcast design remain scarce. Previous research on listening motives often treats podcasts as a monolithic category or focuses on specific genres, leaving open how motives vary across different design types. This dual-perspective investigation examines two questions: Which primary design types characterize German-language podcasts, and how are listening motives related to these design types? Using a multi-method qualitative approach, 30 podcasts were analyzed through iterative listening and 16 expert interviews to develop a typology of design. Additionally, 29 semi-structured listener interviews were examined via qualitative content analysis to identify usage motives and their associations with design types. The analysis identified three podcast design types—story, talk, and factual (STF)—each characterized by distinct structural and aesthetic features. The analysis further suggested that factual design types were primarily associated with cognitive motives, talk design types with social motives, and story design types with affective motives. The resulting STF model is a relevant framework for both academic research and practical applications in podcast production. The results further suggest that usage motives may be linked to these design types and thus indicates how podcast form and audience needs and gratifications may be interdependent. Full article

This paper examines how scam compounds, money mules and crypto-assets operate as interdependent elements of contemporary money-laundering chains. It assesses whether existing anti-money laundering (AML) and crypto-asset regulatory frameworks are capable of disrupting these chains holistically, rather than addressing individual components in isolation, with particular reference to scam-compound activity in Southeast Asia. The study adopts a qualitative comparative case-study methodology grounded in legal and regulatory analysis. Four empirically grounded cases are examined: two Southeast Asian scam-compound enforcement cases (Cambodia and Myanmar) and two European crypto-asset seizure cases (Ireland and Italy). Judicial decisions, enforcement actions and regulatory instruments are analysed through a chain-based analytical framework aligned with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards, the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) framework. The analysis reveals a structural divergence in enforcement strategies: Southeast Asian responses increasingly prioritise network- and infrastructure-level disruption of scam compounds, whereas European approaches remain largely centred on post-offence crypto-asset seizure through traditional proceeds-of-crime mechanisms. Across all jurisdictions, money mules emerge as a critical yet systematically under-regulated intermediary layer enabling the resilience of crypto-laundering operations. The paper advances existing AML typologies by conceptualising scam compounds, money mules and crypto-assets as interconnected components of a single crypto-laundering chain. This chain-based perspective offers a novel analytical and regulatory lens for understanding organised crypto-enabled fraud. The study is based on a qualitative, case-based design and does not aim for statistical generalisation. However, the analytical framework developed is transferable to other jurisdictions experiencing similar scam-compound and crypto-laundering dynamics. The findings suggest that effective AML enforcement requires coordinated intervention across multiple nodes of the laundering chain, including scam compound infrastructure and money mule networks, alongside traditional asset-seizure mechanisms and CASP supervision. By highlighting the structural links between scam compounds, coercive labour and crypto-laundering mechanisms, the paper underscores the broader social harms of crypto-enabled fraud and the need for integrated regulatory responses that address both financial crime and human exploitation. Full article

Developing countries participating in the Warsaw Framework for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+) (WFR) are eligible to receive financial incentives linked to verified reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from forest-related activities. It is necessary to strategically select priority countries among the WFR participants to achieve REDD+ cooperation and mutual benefits between recipient and donor countries. This study evaluates the mitigation potential of 71 developing countries registered under the WFR (December 2025) using two dimensions: national measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) capacity and the need-effectiveness of official development assistance (ODA) in strengthening MRV capacity. Countries were ranked and classified into six typological groups based on MRV capacity and ODA need-effectiveness. The results show that countries with an intermediate MRV implementation capacity and high ODA need-effectiveness can transition to the MRV implementation phase through policy and financial interventions, suggesting high potential to achieve emission reductions and become priority countries for cooperation. Meanwhile, those with an intermediate MRV implementation capacity but low ODA need-effectiveness were interpreted as types where medium- to long-term cooperation possibilities can be reviewed based on improvements to MRV components. Our findings suggest a two-stage cooperation strategy that integrates short-term MRV-based engagement with long-term ODA-driven capacity-building to expand REDD+ mitigation outcomes under the WFR. Full article