Search Results (187)

The tourism industry is a wide and holistic industry, the value of which cannot be overestimated: it plays a key role in promoting inter-cultural understanding and socio-cultural development. Sri Lanka is a renowned tourism destination that offers many diverse tourism products. However, the tourism industry has been continuously and severely disturbed by prolonged civil war. After the war, tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka, particularly to war zones and war memorial sites, rapidly grew. The main objective of this study is to explore dark tourism development in the Northern Province (NP), Sri Lanka. Employing a qualitative methodological approach, this study is underpinned by an interpretive research philosophy. Research data were collected through field-based interviews. For in-depth interviews, sixteen interviewees from different stakeholder groups were selected, using a purposive sampling technique. The research results reveal that twenty-seven dark tourism destinations in the northern territory face various challenges in being developed as sustainable dark tourism destinations. Furthermore, this study indicates that the Sri Lankan Army was aggressively involved in the revitalization of the tourism industry in the northern territory. This research recommends the following moves intended to promote dark tourism development in the NP. First and foremost, when developing dark tourism in the NP, the active participation of locals should be accommodated. Second, rituals must be taken into account as a key mechanism for impressing upon tourists the richness and historical value of dark sites. When developing dark tourism packages, death-related rituals ought to be considered. If so, travelers can experience amazing intangible heritage associated with death. Full article

Fallujah, by Jonathan Holmes (2007), is one of the archetypal examples of verbatim theatre, which addresses the truths of the Iraq War through dramatised eyewitness accounts and documentation reconstructions. Sketched in the Second Battle of Fallujah, the play reveals moral, political, and epistemological aspects of how modern warfare is presented. This article hinges on the postmodern theory of Jean-François Lyotard—especially the concepts of language games, paralogy, and the differend—to discuss the play Fallujah as a subversion of official grand narratives of the Iraq War. Through the use of testimonial intertextuality, irony and fragmentation, Holmes builds a multidimensional tableau of discourse contradictions in which truth is relative, and legitimacy is constantly deferred. The play turns into a meta-discursive critique of Western power dynamics, challenging the manner in which the knowledge is created, distributed, and twisted in the name of liberation and humanitarianism. Further, the article examines both dramaturgical and aesthetic techniques that lend truthfulness to Holmes’ concept of the verbatim approach as it dislocates the truth in relation to war and victimhood. The results help us comprehend the role of modern theatre in the reconstruction of the cultural memory and morality in the post-war era. The article concludes that Fallujah is a vivid example of postmodern theatrical resistance, an ethical and artistic response to commodity violence and the obliteration of lived suffering. Full article

Econophysics is an interdisciplinary field that applies physics concepts to economic and financial systems. By utilizing tools such as statistical physics, including fractal analysis and entropy measures, econophysics helps model the complex and non-linear dynamics of equity markets. This paper examines the intrinsic dynamics and regularity in information content in green finance markets (carbon, clean energy, and sustainability markets) by means of range scale analysis (R/S), detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), fractionally integrated generalized auto-regressive conditionally heteroskedastic (FIGARCH) process, and Shannon entropy (SE). The empirical results can be summarized as follows. First, prices in all markets are persistent; however, returns are likely random as estimated Hurst exponents are close to 0.5. Second, the FIGARCH process shows that volatility series in carbon and sustainability markets are persistent, whilst volatility in clean energy is anti-persistent. Third, in carbon and sustainability markets, entropy is high in prices compared to returns and volatility series. On the contrary, the clean energy market shows lower entropy for prices than for returns and volatility. In sum, it is concluded that price and volatility series are predictable, whilst return series are not. Finally, based on a rolling window framework, it is concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war have altered long memory and randomness in all three green finance markets. Full article

This paper explores the value of imperfections and curated decay in the conservation of architecture and public art as vehicles of cultural memory. While conventional heritage practice treats physical degradation as a threat, newer conservation ethics argue for embracing material impermanence within an aesthetics of care. We examine how acknowledging patina, weathering, and even structural decline can become an act of care, maintaining the “spirit” and authenticity of a place. The theoretical framework integrated the aesthetics of imperfection, including concepts like the Japanese wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in the incomplete and impermanent, critical heritage theory (which questions whose memories and values are preserved or excluded) and cultural memory studies (notably Nora’s notion of lieux de mémoire, where material sites become symbolic elements of communal memory). Methodologically, the article is grounded by two case-study video essays, Imperfections (Genoa) and Scars (Nicosia), as instruments of research, which provide visual analyses of decayed architectural environments. These examples illustrate how curated decay can transform abandoned buildings and war-scarred urban zones into powerful mnemonic devices, provoking reflection on history, identity and the ethics of preservation. Despite extensive theorisation of patina/age-value and curated decay, recent heritage debates offer limited operational criteria for distinguishing intentional curated decay from unmanaged neglect in lived urban conservation contexts. Drawing on ethics and aesthetics of care, this article asks if and how care can be operationalised into a decision framework for urban conservation and tests this framework through two selected buildings: Albergo dei Poveri (Genoa) and Home for Cooperation (Nicosia). The authors argue that caring for heritage does not always mean restoring it to an as-new state; curating ageing and traces of time can support remembrance, resilience, and reconciliation, enriching heritage’s role in future urban imaginaries. Full article

The article has two objectives: It begins by noting that, in memory studies, indexicality has thus far played a role primarily in the analysis of photographs. Central to this was Roland Barthes’ insight that photography should be read not only as an iconic sign but also as an indexical sign: a photograph touches us not only through what it shows, i.e., not only as a pictorial representation of its referent, but also through the fact that it is an imprint of light, causing it to function like a trace in the snow. While the insight into the indexical quality of photography has been extremely fruitful, it is surprising that other indexical signs (such as shadows or echoes) have received no attention in the discussion of memory studies. The first objective of this essay is to make a start on this, and it does so in dialogue with a Norwegian comic book. In Steffen Kverneland’s Skygger (Shadows), family memories of the German occupation of Norway play a decisive role. Most studies of World War II in contemporary literature focus on how historical events are represented. Kverneland takes a different approach. He is not interested in the representation of memories but in the function of remembering. He relates memories of World War II to current crises and to the aesthetics of his artistic work. The second objective of this essay is to analyse the comic, paying close attention to the various dimensions of indexicality. Full article

During the German Occupation, Picasso reacted to the omnipresent threat of death and violence with defiant stoicism, artistic subversion, and a profound memorialization of its victims. Though his work was banned as “degenerate” by the Nazis, he remained in Paris, and chose to fight with his art rather than flee. Picasso was also personally affected by death during this time as he lost several close friends. Among them were the poet Max Jacob, who died in the Drancy concentration camp in 1944. He knew that his art was impacted by the horror around him, even if he did not paint the war directly. That same year, he declared, “I did not paint the war… but there is no doubt that the war is there in the pictures which I painted then.” The artist stripped away any hint of beauty in his wartime portraits and still lifes in favor of brutal, angular compositions. In all the jarring pictures he painted during this period, death is portrayed as a violent threat rather than a peaceful end to life. Full article

Background: Parents of preterm infants face significant emotional, informational, and caregiving challenges during neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) hospitalisation. Educational interventions are increasingly used to support parental readiness; however, considerable variation exists in their content, structure, and delivery. A clearer understanding of these components is essential to inform the development of effective, contextually responsive programmes. Aim: To identify and synthesise the core educational components, programme structures, and embedded parental support needs within NICU-based educational interventions for parents of preterm infants. Methods: A systematic search of peer-reviewed literature (January 2010–September 2022) identified 33 studies of high methodological quality. Data were extracted and synthesised using thematic analysis. Results: Three overarching domains were identified: (1) educational content, (2) programme structure and delivery, and (3) parental support needs integrated within educational delivery. The educational content encompassed the NICU environment, infant health and behaviour, caregiving practices, parental well-being, and discharge preparation. Programme structures varied widely in terms of intensity, duration, delivery modality, and facilitator roles, with limited justification for structural choices. Parental support–emotional, relational, and confidence-building–was inconsistently embedded despite evidence of its importance. Established interventions such as COPE, FICare, and FCC have clearer theoretical foundations and more holistic support than most locally developed programmes. Conclusions: NICU educational interventions positively influence parental knowledge, confidence, and parent–infant interaction; however, substantial variation and limited conceptual grounding hinder their comparability and scalability. The evidence base remains dominated by high-income settings, which limits its global applicability. Future research must prioritise theory-informed design, transparent reporting, and context-sensitive adaptation, particularly in under-resourced health systems, to support equitable and effective parental education for families of preterm infants worldwide. Full article

This article examines the reshaping of the period of the Second World War in Cecilie Løveid’s play Maria Q, a drama centered on the enigmatic historical figure of Mara Vasilyevna Pasetchnikova, better known as Maria Quisling, the second wife of Vidkun Quisling, who was Norway’s fascist prime minister during that war. Drawing on studies of historical fiction and intertextuality, this article aims to show how Cecilie Løveid employed the genre of historical drama but transformed it so that she could offer her reimagining of the war period in Norway to a present-day audience. I read Maria Q as an experimental historical drama in which Løveid not only used her freedom as a writer of dramatic fiction to combine fact with imagination but simultaneously incorporated various texts and genres as sources to further her own multifaceted reimagining of Maria Quisling as a complex character. As I will demonstrate, by foregrounding dialogism as her central dimension, Løveid rejected a unitary, monologic and authoritarian conception both of recent Norwegian history and of Maria Quisling’s role in it. Full article

This study investigates volatility spillovers from the stock markets of the United States, Germany, China, and Japan to the UK stock market using daily data from major benchmark indices (FTSE 100, S&P 500, DAX, Shanghai Composite, and Nikkei 225) and Brent crude oil prices. Using a novel two-stage bootstrap framework, we first model time-varying conditional volatilities with GARCH-family models and compare them with long-memory FIGARCH specifications to account for persistent volatility dynamics. These volatilities are then incorporated into a VAR-X model, treating Brent crude oil price volatility as an endogenous or exogenous variable in robustness checks. To overcome limitations of traditional VARs, bootstrap-corrected GIRFs are employed to trace dynamic, order-invariant impacts across key sub-periods: the global financial crisis, Brexit, COVID-19, and the Ukraine war. We also benchmark our results against the Diebold–Yilmaz connectedness index and conduct rigorous out-of-sample forecasting and Value-at-Risk backtesting. Results reveal heterogeneous spillovers: US and German shocks trigger strong, immediate, and persistent UK market volatility, reflecting deep integration; Chinese shocks are delayed and gradual, while Japanese shocks are muted or short-lived. Spillover intensity is time-varying, peaking during global crises. Our model outperforms standard benchmarks in out-of-sample volatility forecasting and risk management applications. The study offers critical insights for investors seeking international diversification and for policymakers aiming to manage systemic risk in an interconnected global financial system. Full article

In an e-learning platform, information retrieval plays an enormous role through efficient processing. Recently, the education sector has increased its trend in online learning systems by generating a large amount of educational content based on student’s criteria. For this sophisticated data analysis scheme, several methods have been employed in recent studies; however, they have suffered from various limitations, including reliability issues, security problems, unauthorized disclosure of data, cost consumption, and interpretability challenges. To tackle these issues, a proposed framework, named the war strategy optimization-based bidirectional long short-term memory (WSO-BiLSTM) model, is designed in this research to reduce sensitivity to local optima and improve convergence stability, thereby achieving robust retrieval performance. With this perspective, the BiLSTM model captures the semantic information of documents in a dual direction for effective retrieval outcomes. Moreover, the model’s key features are extracted effectively by various feature extraction methods. The dynamic movement towards the optimal solution of the WSO algorithm enables the proposed model to retrieve the information more accurately in the information retrieval system. Experiments on an e-learning dataset show that, with a 90% training split, the proposed method achieves 97.90% accuracy, 98.45% precision, 97.90% F1-score, and 97.35% recall. Full article

Andrea Riccardi is an Italian Catholic historian, university professor, activist, and the founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio. His writings mainly deal with contemporary historical topics, with a particular focus on the history of the papacy today. However, his books do not neglect moral positions. He shapes his views in practice just as he does in his theoretical work. His community, the Community of Sant’Egidio carries out a significant peace mission, the moral foundations of which were laid by Riccardi. In this study, I wanted to collect primarily those moral principles and theoretical statements from Riccardi’s writings that came from his heart and define the Community’s peace mission. Pope Francis described this Catholic lay association as the community of the “three P’s’: preghiera (prayer), poveri (the poor), and pace (peace). The mission of peace and standing up for peace are therefore essential in the life of this Community. In Catholic social teaching, the importance of the message of peace has become increasingly valued in recent decades. Riccardi explains his own moral principles in this context. Full article

This paper examines Christian icons in Panjab, in northern India, and their relationship to the larger discourse on race, iconoclasm, and decentering Whiteness in the United States. I analyze the appropriation of Panjabi idioms woven into Christian icons to interrogate the alleged case of forced conversions of lower caste, Mazhabi Sikhs, and the atmospheres of violence. Focusing on the beheading of Christ and Mary’s pieta statue in a church in Tarn Taran, Panjab in 2022, I investigate the iconic materiality and vexed histories of the religious symbol through a visual studies lens. How do Christian images signal liminal material presences that oscillate between their identity of sacred icons and of hegemonic monuments of white supremacy? Using a Lacanian psychoanalytic and decolonial framework, I argue that entangled in the politics of memory, Christian icons are an impregnated space of intersecting colonial histories of oppression and conversion entrenched in hierarchies of race, class, and caste. This study contributes to understanding the growing impact of Christianity in northern India, the war of narratives being enacted upon its icons, and its relationship to anti-colonial and anti-racial expressions of transnational iconoclasm to posit a bigger question: Is there a way to navigate through the dense matrix of colonialism, race, religion, caste, and violence to reclaim agency through Mignolo’s call for a “praxis of decolonial healing”? Full article

Recent reports have revealed that the number of lower limb amputees worldwide has increased as a result of war, accidents, and vascular diseases and that transfemoral amputation accounts for 39% of cases, highlighting the need to develop an improved functional prosthetic knee joint that improves the amputee’s ability to resume activities of daily living. To enable transfemoral prosthesis users to walk on level ground, accurate prediction of the intended knee joint angle is critical for transfemoral prosthesis control. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to develop a technique for estimating knee joint angle utilizing a long short-term memory (LSTM) network and kinematic data collected from inertial measurement units (IMUs). The proposed LSTM network was trained and tested to estimate the contralateral knee angle using data collected from twenty able-bodied subjects using a lab-developed sensory gadget, which included four IMUs. Accordingly, the present work represents a feasibility investigation conducted on able-bodied individuals rather than a clinical validation for amputee gait. This study contributes to the field of bionics by mimicking the natural biomechanical behavior of the human knee joint during gait cycle to improve the control of artificial prosthetic knees. The proposed LSTM model learns the contralateral knee’s motion patterns in able-bodied gait and demonstrates the potential for future application in prosthesis control, although direct generalization to amputee users is outside the scope of this preliminary study. The contralateral LSTM models exhibited a real-time RMSE range of 2.48–2.78° and a correlation coefficient range of 0.9937–0.9991. This study proves the effectiveness of LSTM networks in estimating contralateral knee joint angles and shows their real-time performance and robustness, supporting its feasibility while acknowledging that further testing with amputee participants is required. Full article

Background: Parents caring for preterm infants during hospital admission have unique needs. How these are addressed plays an important role in parents’ ability to cope with caregiving responsibilities. Educational programmes have proven beneficial to parents during their infant’s stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), for both parental and neonatal outcomes. Key components of parenting education during the NICU stay have been described; however, less is known about our understanding of parents’ educational needs, specifically in the South African context. Objectives: To explore parental needs and perceptions regarding a parenting education intervention provided to them while in the NICU, with a focus on programme content, structure, and mode of delivery. Methods: Three focus group discussions were conducted with mothers of preterm infants admitted to the NICU of a referral hospital in the North West province, South Africa. Inclusion criteria comprised parents of infants born in the hospital, singletons or multiples, with a gestational age below 37 weeks, and expected to stay in the NICU for at least 7 days. Discussions centred on mothers’ perceived needs regarding parenting education based on their experiences during their baby’s NICU admission. Results: Twenty-five mothers of singletons or multiples born before 37 weeks of gestation participated in the study. Three main themes were identified: (1) preference for content topics to include basic infant care, infant health and behaviours, and post-discharge related information; (2) education programme structure, which included instructional approaches and training logistics; and (3) support needs, including intrapersonal motivators, communication, and psychosocial and physical support. Conclusions: Participants recognised educational content needs that align with existing literature. However, they also emphasised the importance of addressing basic physical and emotional needs while receiving educational content, ensuring that parents feel empowered and capable of engaging with the information. Full article

This article examines memory and monuments in the science fiction Star Trek franchise as a lens for understanding commemoration technologies and how futuristic visions of memorials anticipated real ones, especially during times of conflict. To understand the cultural reciprocity of sci-fi television and contemporary commemoration of war and trauma, we investigate the interactive website produced by the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, Kan, titled Kan 7.10.360, which commemorates the victims of the 7 October 2023 Hamas massacre of civilians, soldiers, and policemen in Israel’s Gaza Envelope region. The 7.10.360 website employs advanced technologies to create what we identify as a digital “counter-monument.” By applying the concept of metamemorial science fiction relating to the Shoah, investigating its victims’ commemoration and examining the globital turn in memory work, we demonstrate that the Kan project realizes digital mnemonic practices engaged in Star Trek. We argue that the renowned series performs and anticipates three aspects of globital memory work and novel digital commemoration, also prevalent in the Kan 7.10.360 website: the personalization of memory using images; televisual testimony or documentation that mediates personal experience; and the display of objects that symbolize quotidian aspects of the victims’ lives. Full article