Search Results (1,103)

Background: Gastric cancer (GC) is characterized by aggressive invasion and early peritoneal dissemination, which are strongly driven by chronic inflammation and epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT). c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), a stress-responsive serine/threonine kinase within the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) family, integrates inflammatory cues to promote EMT and metastasis. Huangjin Shuangshen granules (HJSS) is a multi-component traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula derived from Simiao Yong’an Decoction and clinically used as an adjuvant therapy for GC. However, whether HJSS restrains inflammation-driven metastasis through modulation of JNK-associated EMT signaling remains unclear. Methods: The anti-metastatic efficacy of HJSS was evaluated using integrated in vivo and in vitro models, combined with transcriptomics, network pharmacology and molecular validation. Results: HJSS markedly attenuated LPS-induced metastatic behavior and inflammatory activation. Multilevel analyses converged on MAPK8/JNK as a central regulatory node. HJSS reversed EMT progression and inhibited nuclear phosphorylation of JNK without affecting its upstream kinases. Thermal-shift assays and molecular docking supported potential target engagement of HJSS-derived constituents, including possible interactions with JNK-related signaling targets. Pharmacologic reactivation of JNK partially abrogated the inhibitory effects of HJSS, confirming JNK-dependent action. Conclusions: HJSS suppresses inflammation-driven GC metastasis primarily by attenuating JNK-associated EMT, potentially through modulation of JNK activation by its bioactive constituents. These findings provide mechanistic insight into HJSS as a low-toxicity anti-metastatic strategy and support further exploration of its active constituents. Full article

This article juxtaposes the Indigenous communitarian feminist concept cuerpo-territorio and the African proverb musha mukadzi drawing on ethnographic research with Zimbabwean women activists in the context of land reform, thereby expanding the scope of both concepts. Our entry point is Zimbabwean women’s struggles for land in the Third Chimurenga, or post-2000 Fast-Track Land Reform Programme. Despite egalitarian promises, land redistribution efforts have favored political elites and men, reinforcing colonial capitalist practices of extraction and accumulation. Our comparative exercise reveals musha mukadzi as a political discourse that enables Indigenous women to reclaim their body–land relationship through struggles for land reform and beyond. In the process, we identify four key resonances between musha mukadzi and cuerpo-territorio, namely, an ontological similarity expressed through Indigenous women’s commitments to and responsibilities for re/generating the network of life; a common appeal to ancestral (feminist) wisdom to enhance ongoing struggle; the political mobilization of the concepts by Indigenous women to seek liberation from patriarchal, neo/colonial oppression; and, their conceptual utility as feminist analytics. Finally, we lay the foundation for further work on the possibilities of transnational feminist solidarity between Indigenous women in Africa and Abya Yala. Full article

To improve the lubrication stability of centrifugal pump mechanical seals under high-speed and high-pressure conditions, a composite texture combining elliptical dimples and herringbone grooves is proposed. The Hybrid Groove–Ellipse (HGE) configuration aims to enhance hydrodynamic pressure generation and mitigate thermal accumulation within the sealing interface. A thermohydrodynamic (THD) lubrication model with cavitation was established, and the coupled governing equations were solved using the finite volume method over 600–6000 rpm and 0.1–1 MPa. The lubrication performance of circular, rectangular, and two elliptical textures was systematically evaluated to identify their hydrodynamic characteristics. The ellipse with major axis parallel to the flow direction exhibited the most favorable pressure distribution and load-carrying capacity. Based on this geometry, the HGE structure was developed. Compared with conventional herringbone grooves, the HGE texture increases local pressure buildup, improves the load-carrying-to-leakage ratio, and modifies cavitation distribution. The maximum interface temperature is reduced by approximately 10–20% under high-speed conditions, with improved temperature uniformity. These results demonstrate that geometric coupling can enhance both the hydrodynamic and thermal performance of mechanical seals. Full article

The rapid expansion of digital assets has transformed contemporary financial systems, yet their role in inheritance planning remains underexplored, particularly in developing economies. Employing a mixed-methods design, this study examines the factors influencing individuals’ acceptance of digital assets as inheritance and explores their perceptions and readiness to adopt such assets within estate planning in Thailand. The quantitative phase analyzes survey data using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression, focusing on investment experience, risk orientation, emotional responses to financial risk, financial capacity, and perceived suitability. The results indicate that investment orientation, discretionary financial capacity, familiarity with diverse digital asset types, and psychological resilience toward financial volatility significantly increase acceptance, with Preferred Investment Group emerging as the strongest predictor. In contrast, anxiety toward high-risk investments reduces acceptance. Qualitative findings, derived from content analysis of in-depth interviews, reveal persistent skepticism regarding asset stability, legal and institutional uncertainty, technological barriers, and subjective valuation. Despite these concerns, participants expressed conditional readiness to adopt digital assets in inheritance planning given clearer legal frameworks, professional guidance, and user-friendly technologies. This study contributes to the emerging literature on digital wealth transfer and offers practical implications for policymakers, financial advisors, and legal professionals seeking to develop regulatory frameworks, financial literacy initiatives, and technological infrastructures that support the secure intergenerational transfer of digital assets. Full article

Masonry buildings have shaped construction history since about 6500 BCE. They offer durability, strength, and cost effectiveness, especially in developing countries. Yet assessing compressive strength during construction remains challenging due to the constituent materials soil, cement, and stone, complicating standardization worldwide. In the present study, an innovative model based on a machine learning algorithm is put forth to predict the compressive strengths of prisms. Some important factors considered as input to the algorithm based on traditional methods are the brick and mortar strengths, prism geometry, mortar bed thickness, and empirically derived height-to-thickness (t) (h/t) ratios. Three different ANN algorithms are coded and trained on the input data, and they are based on the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm, the resilient backpropagation algorithm, and the conjugate gradient algorithm. The optimal ANN model trained using the conjugate gradient Polak–Ribière algorithm (traincgp) achieves superior performance, with R² = 0.9881, R² = 0.9927, RMSE = 0.9914 MPa, MAE = 0.6039 MPa, MAPE = 20.9141%, VAF = 0.9881, and WI = 0.9970. Sensitivity analysis shows the height-to-thickness (h/t) ratio is the dominant influence on compressive strength, consistent with structural mechanics. The primary contributions are the systematically curated, richly parameterized dataset and its use to produce robust, physically interpretable predictions with established ANN methods. Full article

The contemporary crisis of trust in institutions and organizations has intensified what recent literature describes as a “leadership recession”, characterized by declining ethical legitimacy and limited capacity to manage systemic change. This article introduces the concept of leadership recession as a systemic and ethical phenomenon and proposes an ethical–systemic leadership model as potential pathway toward leadership recovery. Drawing on Aristotelian ethics—particularly the concepts of phronesis (practical wisdom), justice, and virtue—combined with systems theory and change management, the study develops an integrated theoretical framework that reconceptualizes leadership legitimacy as both a moral and organizational condition. Empirically, the study is based on a quantitative survey of 402 employees from the public and private sectors in Greece. The findings indicate that employees’ perceptions of effective leadership are positively associated with ethical virtues and leaders’ capacity to understand and manage organizational interdependencies. Ethical legitimacy emerges as an important relational mechanism that enhances trust, participation, and acceptance of organizational change. The article contributes to leadership and administrative sciences literature by introducing the notion of leadership recession and by proposing an ethical–systemic leadership paradigm that integrates values-based leadership, systemic thinking, and change management. The findings offer both theoretical insights and practical implications for leaders and organizations seeking sustainable and ethically legitimate transformation. Full article

We investigate interaction effects of system attributes—age and volatility—and team attributes—instability and skill-diversity—on software maintenance productivity in the context of lifecycle maintenance involving multiple serial tasks (projects), unlike extant work’s focus on single maintenance tasks. Given the knowledge intensity of software maintenance, we apply knowledge creation theory to identify knowledge needs and challenges that system and team attributes create, then develop two theoretical predictions. First, team attributes adversely affect maintenance productivity while system attributes do not exhibit direct negative effects. Second, interactions of system and team attributes have offsetting (substitutive) effects on productivity since their knowledge needs and challenges overlap. We test our predictions using archival data on three years of maintenance work across 426 mission-critical systems at a Fortune 100 company, encompassing over 7500 maintenance tasks executed by thousands of maintainers. Our analysis yields two key insights. First, interactions diminish substantially the strong negative direct effects of team instability and skill-diversity on maintenance productivity—by as much as 20%. System volatility exhibits a small direct effect (0.38% productivity decline), while system age shows no significant direct effect. Second, interaction effects indicate that productivity declines as instable and skill-diverse teams are sharper when working on younger and less volatile systems—the opposite of conventional wisdom. For example, assigning a team with above-average instability to an above-average age system improves productivity by 3.06% through substitutive effects. Our findings demonstrate that congruence between system and team attributes can improve maintenance productivity, with substantial economic implications: organizations should strategically match team configurations to system characteristics rather than attempting to eliminate team instability or diversity universally. Full article

This study examines the compressive behavior and analytical modelling of natural and rubberized concretes (RuC) confined with low-cost glass chopped-strand mat (GCSM) jackets. A total of forty-two cylindrical specimens were tested under axial compression to assess the influence of rubber particle size, confinement configuration, and the number of GCSM layers. The RuC mixes were prepared by replacing 20% of fine aggregate by volume with crumb rubber of two size fractions: coarse (2.0 mm, retained on #10 sieve) and fine (0.425 mm, retained on #40 sieve). Both full- and strip-wrapping schemes were applied using two, four, and six layers of GCSM. The results demonstrated that GCSM jackets significantly enhanced the mechanical performance of both NAC and RuC specimens. Full wrapping provided the highest confinement efficiency, increasing compressive strength by up to 115% for NAC and 90% for RuC, while the ultimate axial strain increased by more than 1300% compared with unconfined specimens. Strip wrapping also improved performance, producing strength gains of 25–45% and strain increases of 250–500%. Analytical stress–strain models were developed through regression analysis, showing strong correlation with the experimental results (R² = 0.80–0.99). The proposed GCSM jacket system demonstrates high potential as a sustainable and economical alternative for strengthening and retrofitting rubberized concretes, offering improved ductility and energy absorption while supporting circular material utilization. It is noted that the confinement ratio, size of rubberized aggregates, and their percentage replacement of rubberized aggregates should be consistent with the values used in this work in order to use the proposed analytical expressions. Full article

This study introduces an innovative hybrid framework for the sustainable design of meditation centers by integrating entropy-weighted fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) with principles of cultural sustainability. While conventional sustainable design assessment methods predominantly emphasize technical environmental performance, they remain insufficient for meditation center design, where contemplative experience, cultural continuity, and spatial meaning are equally essential. In response to this gap, this research reinterprets the Mogao Caves as an exemplar of “deep sustainability,” where environmental, social, and cultural dimensions are integrated in a mutually reinforcing manner. Through a systematic analysis of the spatial and artifactual heritage of the Mogao Caves, a robust and quantifiable evaluation system consisting of 27 indicators was developed, spanning architectural design, spatial organization, seating iconography depicted in the murals, and decorative elements. The novelty of this study lies in establishing a heritage-informed and data-driven framework that translates historical spatial wisdom into a contemporary sustainable design assessment model. By applying the entropy-weighting method, the study identifies Functional Diversity (0.087) and Symbolic Representation (0.071) as indicators with comparatively greater discriminative contribution within the present sample, highlighting the importance of programmatic adaptability and cultural expression in meditation center design. The FCE model was applied to 156 valid questionnaire responses, enabling a multi-criteria evaluation of 11 meditation centers worldwide, among which the Fujian Longyan Dahe Meditation Center achieved the highest score (73.032). The findings indicate that the proposed framework offers a more balanced basis for evaluating meditation center design by integrating functional performance with cultural continuity and spatial meaning. Full article

Throughout the long history of human development, a large number of activity relics have been left on the earth, among which settlements are important carriers for studying human construction activities. In the era without modern active environmental control technology, humans used their experience to create the miracle of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. Especially in the construction of settlements under complex environmental stress, it is the crystallization of human wisdom. For China, the settlements of ethnic minorities, due to their unique culture and harsh living environment, are undoubtedly key objects for studying the wisdom of human settlement construction. Therefore, this study takes the Tujia rural settlements in the mountainous environment of northeastern Sichuan as the research object and uses the spatial analysis function of ArcGIS to construct a complete “culture-space” environmental adaptation wisdom research system. The research results show that there is a close relationship between the cultural wisdom and spatial construction wisdom of the Tujia people in northeastern Sichuan. Cultural wisdom plays a key role in guiding settlements to adapt to terrain, water resources, and climate, etc., thus presenting a highly coordinated mechanism between the overall distribution of Tujia rural settlements in northeastern Sichuan and the construction of settlement space and the environment. The “culture-space” environmental adaptation research framework proposed in this study can provide a reference for the study of rural settlement space worldwide, and the clear settlement environmental adaptation strategies in the research can provide guidance for the construction of modern mountainous town spaces. Full article

The escalating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis necessitates the development of innovative anti-infectives with novel mechanisms of action. Nevertheless, research on natural products remains constrained by low-throughput screening and limited mechanistic insights. Artificial intelligence (AI) is catalyzing a pivotal paradigm shift—from the mere isolation of active compounds to precisely deciphering their modes of action. This review highlights AI’s transformative role in bridging ethnopharmacological knowledge and modern pharmacology to decode the mechanisms of plant-derived anti-infectives. Case studies on berberine, baicalein, danshensu derivatives, and rosmarinic acid derivatives from Coleus amboinicus illustrate AI’s capacity to map traditional therapeutic concepts to specific pathways (e.g., biofilm inhibition, inflammasome modulation) and to predict precise binding interactions and pharmacophores with high precision. Leveraging statistical correlations between ethnobotanical usage patterns and chemical similarity, we propose a “Knowledge–Data–Mechanism” three-layer framework centered on deep mechanistic insight. Integrating Chinese initiatives, such as the CNDR (China’s National Drug Repository) database and the TCM-AI platform, with global traditional medicine wisdom, this strategy provides an actionable roadmap for modernizing anti-infective discovery. Validated applications of this paradigm have demonstrated order-of-magnitude acceleration in mechanistic characterization, rapidly yielding structurally novel agents with well-defined, target-specific actions—a critical advancement in addressing the urgent global threat of antimicrobial resistance. Full article

The development of sustainable and environmentally benign N-methylation methodologies is essential for enhancing sustainable synthetic practice in pharmaceutical manufacturing. In this study, we demonstrate that microwave heating (MWH) markedly enhanced the efficiency of cobalt-catalyzed N-methylation using methanol or methanol-d₄ as green C1 sources. Compared with conventional heating (CH), MWH enabled highly efficient syntheses of key pharmaceutical intermediates—including 6-dimethylamino-1-hexanol, imipramine hydrochloride, and butenafine hydrochloride—under milder conditions and shorter reaction times and without generating hazardous halogen-containing waste. UV–vis spectroscopic analysis revealed that MWH accelerated the transformation of Co(acac)₂ into catalytically active Co species by approximately four-fold, providing a mechanistic basis for the enhanced reactivity. We hypothesized that this effect was caused by the selective microwave heating of the catalyst, which in turn promoted the rapid generation of catalytically active species. Notably, MWH also significantly improved the N-trideuteromethylation of amines using methanol-d₄, achieving a 95% yield for imipramine-d₃ hydrochloride versus 32% under CH. Molecular dynamics simulations indicated that methanol-d₄ exhibited slower dipole relaxation and enhanced cluster fragmentation under microwave fields, improving catalyst–substrate contact, while kinetic isotope effects stabilized reactive intermediates. These synergistic effects account for the pronounced microwave promotion observed in deuterated systems. Overall, the combination of MWH and cobalt catalysis offers an energy-efficient, waste-minimizing, and environmentally benign strategy for the scalable synthesis of both methylated and deuterated amines. Full article

The analysis of brain data through electroencephalography (EEG) has become essential in neuroscience, affective computing, and brain–computer interfaces. Recent work associates EEG features with artificial neurotransmitter models, simulating emotions and rational–emotional decision-making using complexity theory. However, current methods face limitations: (1) linear temporal representations lacking memory and anticipation, (2) limited contextual adaptation, (3) difficulty with paradoxical affective states, and (4) absence of ethical reasoning in decision-making. We present a framework based on Sophimatics, using complex time ($t=t_{real}+i\cdot t_{imag}\in \mathbb{C}$) where $t_{real}$ represents chronology and $t_{imag}$ encodes experiential dimensions including memory depth and anticipatory imagination. The Super Time Cognitive Neural Network (STCNN) architecture enables the parallel processing of objective time sequences and subjective cognitive experiences. Our Sophimatics-assisted EEG analysis achieves: (1) two-dimensional temporal coherence integrating past experiences and future projections, (2) context-sensitive adaptation via ontological knowledge graphs, (3) interpretable symbolic reasoning compatible with clinical psychology, (4) mechanisms for resolving affective paradoxes, and (5) ethical constraints ensuring value-based decision-making. Across three case studies (emotion recognition, meditation-induced transitions, and brain–computer interface decision support), integrated Sophimatics models outperform traditional machine learning (15–22% accuracy improvement) and complexity theory models (8–14% improvement), while offering greater cognitive richness and immunity to incomplete data. Results establish a post-generative AI framework with computational wisdom: relationally interactive, ethically informed, and temporally consistent with human cognitive and affective life. The framework outlines paths toward next-generation neuromorphic systems achieving genuine understanding beyond pattern recognition. Full article

This article documents and analyzes a three-month intercultural performance collaboration with Metamorphosis Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, during the summer of 1992—a pivotal moment following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Drawing on the author’s fieldwork methodology developed through decades of collaboration with Indigenous communities in Alaska, Southern Africa, and Siberia, the project employed trance techniques, rhythm-based training, and ritual archaeology to reconstruct pre-Christian Slavic performance practices. The resulting production, Shadows from the Planet Fire, emerged through a process that positioned ritual not as nostalgic revival but as a living technology for addressing cultural trauma and existential displacement. This account contributes to performance studies, applied theatre, and cultural heritage discourse by demonstrating how cosmocentric Indigenous methodologies can be adapted to address the spiritual and psychological wounds of post-industrial, post-colonial societies. The work establishes foundational principles for what the author terms “Techdigenous” practice—the synthesis of Indigenous wisdom traditions with contemporary performance contexts—and argues for ritual as a necessary consciousness technology in an era of ecological crisis and cultural fragmentation. Full article

Large insurance claims handling is a complex, knowledge-intensive process that requires the analysis of heterogeneous information sources and the reuse of past experience distributed across multiple organizational data sources. Consequently, a significant portion of decision-making knowledge is embedded in historical claims records and internal documents, making systematic access and reuse challenging. This paper presents Enterprise Knowledge Assistant (EKA), a collaborative multi-agent AI system designed to act as a sparring partner for large claims handlers. EKA integrates claims structured and unstructured data with an archive of more than five thousand historical cases related to claims management, enabling retrieval, interpretation, and synthesis of relevant past cases and decision patterns. The system is organized as a set of specialized AI agents, each responsible for distinct tasks including claim context analysis, knowledge extraction, document synthesis, and interaction with human users. Through agent collaboration, EKA provides decision support by analyzing comparable historical cases, uncovering hidden correlations, and extracting insurance wisdom, while keeping the human expert firmly in control. The paper describes the system architecture and reports an industrial case study evaluating EKA in a real insurance environment. Results indicate improved knowledge reuse and reduced analysis effort in large claims handling. Full article