Search Results (5,438)

Background: This paper addresses the need to clarify and highlight the vital roles non-state actors play in strengthening the disaster management ecosystem, drawing on knowledge and experience across sectors and entities. The objective is to underscore the irreplaceable roles of non-state actors in disaster response and the need for shared capacities through the coordination, adoption, and application of agreed-upon protocols across actors and contexts. The research’s ultimate goal is to provide policymakers, crisis managers, non-state actors, and volunteer coordinators with a comprehensive overview of the functional areas, competencies, and capacities of civic organisations across all phases of disaster management. Integrating these organisations into existing governmental crisis management systems offers an opportunity to enhance community resources and capacities through unified communication and interoperability protocols based on existing technical and ethical standards. Methods: The research reviews academic literature, legal and policy frameworks, and grey literature, including recommendations and experiences documented in a repository of 140 CORDIS EU-funded initiatives that illustrate expert and institutional opinions on disaster management. The manuscript also relies on secondary data analyses presenting the opinions collected from 50 participants in an interactive group exercise on the role of non-state actors and volunteers. It further draws on aggregated knowledge from nine consultative workshops involving 20 civic and governmental organisations, synthesising practices, formal standards, robust coordination frameworks, and command-and-control system rules into an innovative voluntary disaster response protocol for non-state actors and volunteers. The findings demonstrate the value of non-state actors in disaster management and how gaps in their engagement can create opportunities to strengthen the disaster management ecosystem by enhancing the cohesion of capacities and resources. Compared with international standards (INSARAG, etc.), a protocol incorporating technical and integrity norms in an accessible, adaptable format emphasises the importance of integrating non-state actors into the formal disaster crisis management system. Conclusions: Establishing a set of standards for coordinated awareness and response, facilitated by continuous communication of roles and competencies among disaster responders at both local and international levels, is essential for the sustainable mitigation of negative impacts before, during, and after emergencies or catastrophic events. Full article

While AI is widely recognized as an industrial transformation catalyst, how AI translates into green innovation remains insufficiently understood. Drawing on socio-technical systems theory and upper echelons theory, this study investigates how AI adoption influences green innovation and how managerial cognition shapes this relationship. Using data from Chinese A-share listed firms spanning 2012 to 2024, we reveal that AI significantly promotes green innovation by serving as an endogenous technological force. Managerial cognition (green cognition, innovation cognition, long-termism) serves as a critical boundary condition: all three dimensions positively moderate the AI–green innovation nexus, indicating equivalent technological inputs yield divergent outputs depending on executive interpretation frameworks. Mechanism analyses demonstrate AI operates through three channels: information transparency (improving carbon data quality), compliance internalization (embedding requirements into digital systems), and value creation (transforming environmental data into profit sources). Heterogeneity tests show AI’s effect is more pronounced in high-tech industries and under intense market competition. This study reveals the moderating role of managerial cognition—and its multidimensional construct—in the relationship between AI and green innovation. Practically, it provides actionable insights for cultivating managerial cognition to bridge the gap between AI potential and green innovation realization. Full article

The paper presents a comprehensive methodological system for assessing the level of economic security of Russian regions, based on the synthesis of several complementary approaches and accounting for regional specifics. The central idea is a shift from static monitoring to dynamic analysis, which allows not only for capturing the current state but also for identifying the direction and stability of trends over time. The proposed methodology based on four stages: forming a set of indicators, normalizing their values, aggregating them into integral indices, and then visualizing them for operational decision-making. An important feature of sustainable development is the introduction of mechanisms to account for regional specifics through the clustering of regions and adjustment coefficients, which helps to mitigate the influence of geographical and structural differences on the results comparability. Together, they form an integrated system for diagnosing, planning, and monitoring the economic security of regions. The paper provides examples of threshold values for indicators such as the share of households with internet access, the length of the road network, birth rate, the volume of building commissioning, and innovation expenditures. A classification of regions into stability zones and recommendations for policy measures within each zone accompany the threshold analysis. In particular, for digitalization and transport infrastructure, measures are proposed to enhance monitoring, improve service accessibility, and invest in infrastructure; for the demographic component, measures are proposed to support families and improve quality of life. The practical significance of the research lies in creating a universal, yet flexible, toolkit for monitoring, ranking, and planning regional policy in the field of economic security. The proposed system was designed for application both at the federal level and for interregional analysis, including scenario planning and modeling the impact of management decisions. Thus, this study contributes to the literature by bridging the theory of economic security, the imperatives of sustainable regional development, and the practical potential of information technologies. It offers a concrete, scalable methodology for transforming regional economic security management into a data-driven, forward-looking, and context-sensitive process. In the future, the authors intend to further develop the methodology by considering the sectoral specialization of regions, integrating with medium- and long-term forecasting systems, and creating an automated monitoring platform. Full article

The world is experiencing incredible biodiversity loss, including the decline of iconic species, such as elephants. The species faces an uncertain future due to habitat loss, human-elephant conflict, poaching and climate change, reminding us of the urgency of acting on a local and global scale. Art has historically been a powerful medium for expressing ideas and emotions, fostering deep connections for people. Therefore, this paper explores the impact of the sharing of scientific content through dance on conservation values in young people. Understanding conservation needs and analyzing what drives people to gain an emotional affinity towards the environment has shown the potential to support and innovate traditional education. The work presented here uses a dance piece, performed through a choreographic process with dance students, to educate an audience about the importance and behavior of the African savannah elephant and the threats to its survival. Our findings indicated differences between the level of knowledge and opinion of the audience throughout the different phases of the methodology explored here, revealing that dance (and artistic) education can provide knowledge and stimulate more empathy for species conservation. Full article

The image of the journalist in popular culture has increasingly added value to metajournalistic discourse. These portrayals have the power to influence the audience’s perception of real-world journalists and the industry. However, most research analyzes portrayals in film and television. Using Terry Pratchett’s fantasy novel “The Truth,” this study explored how journalism, the media industry, and the journalist are portrayed in fantasy literature. Through a textual analysis of the novel, it was found that the work was a celebratory portrayal of journalism that shared a variety of themes found in film and television portrayals. Though its ethics were challenged throughout the novel, the Ankh-Morpork Times was devoted to the truth, served the watchdog role, and practiced social responsibility. Additionally, the novel’s historical rendition of the penny press highlighted the competitiveness of the media industry, how the public interest was challenged by political and corporate influence, and offered a portrayal of naïve news consumers. Lastly, it was found that William de Worde portrayed an ethical journalist and followed the common investigative journalist trope, but his character strayed from the usual editor, publisher, and male reporter tropes found in film and television. This study also suggests the possibility of looking at negative portrayals of journalism in fiction as a series of critical incidents in which journalism has difficulty fully repairing its paradigm. Full article

More efficient use of nutrients by crops and their reduced dispersion in the environment are essential elements of sustainable agriculture. The purpose of the present experiment was to determine the effects of mineral (N_min) and spent mushroom substrate (SMS) nitrogen on Festulolium braunii yield, but also on the uptake of that chemical element, use efficiency, and its accumulation in the soil. Results indicated that organic waste applied together with mineral fertilizers increased plant utilization of nutrients, their soil content and, consequently, the yield. SMS was applied once at the beginning of the experiment at three levels: SMS₁—10; SMS₂—15; SMS₃—20 Mg·ha⁻¹, supplying plants with 75, 112, and 150 kg N·ha⁻¹. Supplementary mineral nitrogen was applied at three levels as well: N₁—30; N₂—68; N₃—105. Additionally, 180 kg N·ha⁻¹ was applied without SMS (N₄). Treatment significantly affected grass yield, daily growth, and productivity of 1 kg of nitrogen. Their values were the highest on the N₂ + SMS₂ plot (68 + 112 kg N·ha⁻¹). Nitrogen content was the highest in grass treated with mineral nitrogen without SMS (N₄). When the share of SMS nitrogen was higher, its content in the biomass was lower. The absorption of nitrogen (Nup) and its use efficiency (NUE) by plants on the plots with SMS and mineral fertilizers (105 + 75 kg N·ha⁻¹, as well as 68 + 112 kg N·ha⁻¹) were similar to the values recorded on the plot with mineral nitrogen only (N4). After two years, there was no increase in total nitrogen soil accumulation as a result of applied treatment. Mushroom substrate nitrogen allowed for a reduction of nitrogen fertilizer doses by 40 to even 60%. Such fertilizer treatment fits into the closed economy model based on minimizing the consumption of raw materials and on increasing environmentally friendly waste disposal. Full article

Cryptococcosis is a severe systemic mycosis affecting humans and animals, caused primarily by members of the Cryptococcus neoformans/Cryptococcus gattii species complex. In cats, it is the most common systemic fungal infection and may present with non-specific signs involving the upper respiratory tract, skin, lymph nodes, eyes, or the central nervous system. This study presents two feline cases of cryptococcosis diagnosed by cytological examination and provides an updated literature review. Fine-needle aspiration biopsies were performed in two cats with chronic nasal swelling and submandibular enlargement. Cytological smears stained with hematoxylin and eosin revealed spherical to oval yeast-like organisms with a characteristic thick, non-staining capsule, narrow-based budding, and absence of pseudohyphae, consistent with Cryptococcus spp. Based on cytological findings, both patients were treated with oral itraconazole, resulting in favorable clinical outcomes. A limitation of this study is the lack of mycological culture or molecular confirmation, owing to the owners’ refusal of further diagnostic testing. These cases highlight the diagnostic value of cytology as a rapid tool for differentiating fungal infections from neoplastic processes. Early diagnosis and antifungal therapy are crucial for successful management. From a One Health perspective, feline cryptococcosis may indicate shared environmental exposure risks relevant to both animal and human health. Full article

The shift toward sustainable cosmetic systems has become a strategic priority in response to rising environmental pressures, biodiversity loss, and regulatory demands for traceability and responsible sourcing. This review critically examines the Brazilian sustainability model in the cosmetics industry, focusing on three key pillars: (i) traceability and certification of origin aligned with international standards; (ii) community partnerships and equitable value sharing; and (iii) technological innovation tailored to local biodiversity contexts. It synthesizes scientific articles, regulatory documents, and industry reports published mainly between 2005 and 2025, including international certification schemes (COSMOS, ECOCERT, NATRUE, IBD) and Brazilian biodiversity laws. Quantitative export data show that Brazil’s cosmetic industry surpassed US$ 300 million in exports to major markets, emphasizing the global importance of sustainability-driven competitiveness. This study presents a conceptual framework combining biodiversity-based innovation, socio-environmental governance, and certification systems as a unique sustainability pathway distinct from traditional green cosmetic strategies. The review highlights technical challenges such as supply chain traceability, harmonization of international standards, regulatory asymmetries, and the scalability of community-based value chains. The findings indicate that Brazil’s model offers a hybrid sustainability architecture that combines biotechnological innovation, fair-benefit sharing mechanisms, and compliance with international standards. Future research should focus on quantitative impact assessment metrics, life-cycle evaluations of biodiversity-derived ingredients, and mechanisms for regulatory convergence to improve industrial scalability and global market integration. Full article

The sustainability of experience-intensive wellness tourism services increasingly depends on managers’ ability to understand heterogeneous and implicit tourist preferences that are rarely captured through traditional survey-based approaches. In the context of Korean Templestay tourism, this study develops a data-driven decision-support framework that leverages large-scale unstructured review data to address managerial challenges such as choice overload, inefficient resource allocation, and cold-start conditions. Using 74,015 user-generated reviews collected between 2020 and 2024, the framework integrates Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract image-embedded text, achieving a validated character-level accuracy of 96.8%. In addition, a weak supervision strategy is applied to identify latent tourist preferences in a cost-efficient and scalable manner. Preference classification is conducted using Random Forest models combined with SMOTE, followed by clustering and user-based collaborative filtering to support personalized recommendations. The findings indicate that the Templestay market is better understood as an interconnected preference network rather than a set of mutually exclusive segments. Across user groups, “rest” emerges as a shared foundational value, while differentiated sub-preferences coexist within the network. The proposed framework successfully generates recommendations for all users in the dataset, demonstrating strong applicability for mitigating cold-start risks and supporting adaptive and sustainable program design. Full article

Recent shifts in teacher perspectives indicate that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has begun to transform long-standing patterns of routine and repetition in educational practice. This study investigates how educators across different educational levels within an Arab educational context perceive the role of GenAI in fostering sustainable teaching and learning. It examines its influence on learning processes, instructional practices, and educational continuity. Adopting a qualitative research design, the study draws on focus group discussions to capture teachers’ perspectives and applies thematic analysis to explore shared experiences of AI integration in classroom settings. The analysis identified six interconnected themes reflecting a move toward more open and generative learning, the sustainability of learning activities through diversity and personalization, support for teachers in planning, implementation, and assessment, the empowerment of students’ understanding, thinking, achievement, and learning continuity, the central role of ethical considerations, and the challenges and requirements associated with sustainable implementation. The findings demonstrate that the educational value of GenAI is shaped by how it is meaningfully integrated to sustain teaching and learning practices over time. GenAI can contribute to quality and inclusive education in ways that support the long-term aims of Sustainable Development Goal 4. Full article

Most existing studies on the cost competitiveness of self-consumption PV systems fail to jointly consider key technical, economic, and user-specific factors—such as the share of PV electricity self-consumed, energy exported or imported from the grid, and time-of-use electricity pricing—all of which significantly influence investment viability. To address these gaps, this study introduces a novel method based on a new model to calculate the unit cost of electricity consumption from the user’s perspective (C_EC, in €·kWh⁻¹). The array DC power rating is then optimally sized—assuming ideal orientation and tilt—to minimize C_EC. A self-consumption PV system is considered cost-competitive when the annualized minimized C_EC is lower than the applicable regulated electricity tariff. Colombia is selected as a case study to demonstrate the novel method due to the limited deployment and analysis of self-consumption PV systems in the country. The method is applied across residential, commercial, and industrial sectors in various locations. The resulting annualized minimized C_EC values (0.35–8.85 c€/kWh) are consistently below the corresponding regulated tariffs, demonstrating the economic viability of properly sized PV systems. The method’s adaptability to international tariff frameworks makes it a valuable tool for global application and a useful resource for policymakers and stakeholders. Full article

Against the backdrop of the digital economy reshaping the global competitive landscape and the urgent demand for sustainable development, how data factors drive startups to break through resource constraints, achieve a niche leap, and realize long-term sustainable growth has become a critical issue of common concern in academia and policy circles. Drawing on resource orchestration theory and the dynamic capability view, this study constructs a theoretical framework of “Data Factor Allocation → Digital Capability Integration → Niche Leap → Sustainable Growth” and conducts an empirical test, using 412 technology-based startups as samples. The findings are as follows: (1) Data factor allocation (encompassing scenario-based access, lightweight tool penetration, and ecological sharing) exerts a significant inverted U-shaped relationship impact on both digital capability integration and the startup niche leap (range of quadratic term coefficients for core dimensions: −0.165~−0.203, p < 0.01), with turning points between 3.41 and 3.72 on a 5-point scale. Excessive data investment may trigger risks of capability hollowing and niche lock-in, hindering sustainable growth. (2) Digital capability integration (including technology application, resource coordination, and dynamic adaptation capabilities) plays a non-linear mediating role, with mediation proportions ranging from 18.7% to 32.4%. Among them, the technology application capability exhibits the highest transmission efficiency between lightweight tool penetration and the niche leap (32.4%), thereby promoting sustainable value creation. (3) The moderating effect of data governance maturity is heterogeneous: governance adaptability significantly strengthens the mediating path of the technology application capability (β = 0.187, p < 0.01) and security compliance enhances the transmission efficiency of the resource coordination capability (β = 0.165, p < 0.01), while the moderating effect of open sharing is insignificant. These findings provide a dynamic framework for the non-linear and sustainable leap of startups by integrating two core theories. They offer a decision-making basis for enterprises to optimize data allocation strategies (e.g., controlling allocation thresholds to avoid resource waste) and for governments to improve governance policies (e.g., data vouchers, trusted data spaces), thereby facilitating the implementation of the “Data Factor × Innovation and Entrepreneurship × Sustainable Development” initiative and promoting the sustainable growth of the digital economy ecosystem. Full article

This paper addresses the generation of time-efficient, collision-free cooperative motions for a dual-arm robotic system transporting a shared payload in constrained industrial workspaces. Trajectory generation is formulated as a constrained optimization problem and solved through bio-inspired metaheuristic search, where candidate solutions are evaluated with a safety-first cost function that first enforces feasibility by heavily penalizing collisions and then minimizes total execution time among collision-free trajectories. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA), and Gazelle Optimization Algorithm (GOA) are evaluated under identical bounds and stopping conditions, showing that all three reliably discover feasible cooperative trajectories; however, clear differences emerge in feasibility discovery and final trajectory quality: PSO reaches feasibility earlier and achieves the lowest final objective value and the shortest trajectory execution time (6.825 s), followed by WOA (7.330 s) and GOA (8.525 s). Overall, this work contributes an object-centric optimization methodology for constrained dual-arm bimanipulation using bio-inspired metaheuristics, a feasibility-first cost structuring that explicitly separates safe motion discovery from time-optimal refinement, and a controlled benchmarking of PSO/WOA/GOA that quantifies their distinct convergence and late-stage refinement behaviors. Full article

Climate change has heightened concerns regarding the economic impacts of natural disasters, particularly in countries highly exposed to weather-related hazards, such as South Korea. Although official disaster statistics are published regularly, national-level analyses that jointly examine economic damage, recovery expenditures, and hazard composition remain limited. This study analyzes data from the Korean Disaster Yearbook to investigate temporal patterns in natural disaster impacts over the period 2015–2024. Descriptive statistics, cause-based decomposition, and non-parametric trend tests are employed to assess interannual variability, monotonic trends, and changes in the contributions of different disaster causes. The results reveal substantial year-to-year variability in both economic damage and recovery costs, with a small number of extreme years accounting for a large share of cumulative losses. Mann–Kendall tests do not detect statistically significant monotonic trends; however, positive Kendall’s tau values and Sen’s slope estimates indicate an overall increasing tendency. In addition, the composition of economic damage by disaster cause varies markedly across years, reflecting shifts in dominant hazards. These findings suggest that recent disaster risks in South Korea are driven more by episodic extreme events and evolving hazard compositions than by smooth linear trends, underscoring the importance of preventive and adaptation-oriented disaster management strategies for long-term sustainability. Full article

Community-based tourism (CBT) is widely promoted as a route to inclusive growth and conservation in emerging economies, yet outcomes vary because the communities’ ability to create, scale, and sustain CBT enterprises depends on the surrounding entrepreneurial ecosystem. Building on entrepreneurial ecosystem theory and grand challenges scholarship, this article reframes CBT as a place-based entrepreneurial ecosystem that mobilizes local and external actors, resources, and institutions to advance the United Nations 2030 Agenda. The purpose of the study is to develop and illustrate an SDG-oriented CBT entrepreneurial ecosystem framework and identify the ecosystem mechanisms and boundary conditions associated with SDG contributions. Using a qualitative multiple-case design and structured document analysis of 42 public artifacts (peer-reviewed studies, program evaluations, organizational reports, and organizational webpages), three initiatives were examined: Namibia’s communal conservancies, Chi Phat community-based ecotourism in Cambodia, and Bolivia’s Chalalán Ecolodge. Cross-case synthesis showed that progress on SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth)—with complementary contributions to SDGs 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, and 17—emerges when ecosystems combine: (i) enforceable community rights and benefit-sharing rules; (ii) bridging organizations that provide training, finance, market access, and quality assurance; (iii) accountable local governance for transparency and conflict resolution; and (iv) reinvestment mechanisms that fund conservation and community services. The analysis also identified boundary conditions (e.g., elite capture, value leakage, donor dependence, uneven tourism potential, and demand shocks) and specific policy levers (tenure security, adaptive concession policies, blended finance, and impact monitoring) to strengthen CBT ecosystems for SDG delivery. Full article