Search Results (220)

Pythium-like organism species are widespread soilborne oomycetes known to cause root diseases in a wide range of plant hosts. However, their involvement in the decline of woody species in historical and urban gardens has received limited attention. This study reports the isolation and identification of a Pythium-like organism from declining Quercus ilex specimens in a historical garden, where affected trees showed symptoms of root rot and sucker dieback. Integration of morphological observations and molecular analyses of ITS, LSU, and Cox II sequences confirmed the identity of the isolates as Globisporangium glomeratum (formerly Pythium glomeratum). Pathogenicity tests confirmed the aggressiveness of these isolates on Q. ilex seedlings, resulting in significant reductions in plant height and shoot and root biomass. The detection of G. glomeratum in the soil of a historical garden underscores the risk of its unintentional dissemination through nursery stock or soil movement, particularly in urban settings where plant replacement is frequent. This is the first report of G. glomeratum as a pathogen of Q. ilex, emphasizing the importance of phytosanitary monitoring in culturally and ecologically valuable green spaces. Full article

Ginseng (Panax ginseng) is highly sensitive to heat stress caused by climate change; thus, the introduction of heat-tolerant cultivars is essential. However, the stable dissemination of heat-tolerant cultivars remains limited due to low propagation efficiency. Plant tissue culture has been introduced as an alternative approach, yet in vitro-grown ginseng often exhibit low survival rates during acclimatization, thereby restricting their practical application. This study was conducted as a fundamental investigation to address this limitation by comparing the morphological, histological, physiological, and metabolic differences between ginseng plants grown in vitro and ex vitro. The results demonstrated that in vitro-grown ginseng had stems and roots that were approximately 30% shorter, less prominent taproot development, and more than 30% lower root fresh weight. These plants also contained about 50% lower chlorophyll content and 52% higher stomatal density compared with ex vitro-grown ginseng. Histologically, in vitro plants exhibited narrow intercellular spaces, underdeveloped root cambium, and lignin deposition in cell walls. Metabolically, in vitro-grown ginseng was clearly distinguishable based on ginsenoside content and volatile compound profiles. The comprehensive findings of this study provide baseline information for future research and can be utilized to enhance the practicality of tissue culture-based micropropagation of ginseng. Full article

This article employs the theoretical framework of religious mediatization and a philosophical–anthropological lens to examine how various religious traditions utilize audiovisual media in the digital age to disseminate their faith and transform the religious experience. By comparing representative film and television cases from Christianity, Islam, and Eastern religions, the study analyzes how digital media reconstruct religious narratives, ritual practices, and identity, and facilitate cross-cultural faith exchange in online spaces. The findings indicate that audiovisual media have become a key arena for contemporary religious practice: they reinforce believers’ identity within their tradition while enabling different faith communities to encounter each other’s narratives, generating new understanding and spiritual experiences. Meanwhile, digital media have fostered virtual religious communities and a fan culture reminiscent of “implicit religion” (secular activities imbued with religious-like devotion), challenging traditional religious authority. Finally, from an interdisciplinary perspective, this article reflects on the opportunities and challenges of religious mediatization in the digital era, highlighting how media shape humanity’s quest for meaning and transcendence in a “liquid modernity” context. It also calls for deeper research into interreligious digital communication. Full article

Mount Etna has a well-documented history of frequent eruptions and seismic activity, periodically causing significant damage to urban areas. On 26 December 2018, a Mw 4.9 shallow earthquake struck the volcano’s eastern flank, severely damaging approximately 3000 buildings. The post-earthquake recovery strategy aimed to enhance community resilience by addressing the hazardous nature of the affected territory. This objective was achieved through measures such as relocation and public use transformation. In areas impacted by active faults, the relocation of damaged buildings was encouraged, while cleared zones were repurposed for public use, transformed into gardens and open-air parking spaces. Despite these efforts, some relocated individuals experienced psychological distress. To address this challenge, government planners played a pivotal role in disseminating scientifically accurate information, raising public awareness, and facilitating adaptation. The approach implemented on Etna was later adopted in other post-earthquake recovery programs in Italy, evolving into a replicable strategy for risk mitigation in disaster-prone areas. Full article

This paper explores the concept of ephemeral cultural landscapes through the lens of public election advertising during the 2025 Australian Federal election in the regional city of Albury, New South Wales. Framing election signage as a transient cultural landscape, the study assesses the distribution of election signage (corflutes) disseminated by political candidates against demographic and socio-economic criteria of the electorate. The paper examines how corflutes and symbolic signage reflect personal agency, spatial contestation, and community engagement within urban and suburban environments. A detailed windscreen survey was conducted across Albury over three days immediately prior to and on election day, recording 193 instances of campaign signage and mapping their spatial distribution in relation to polling booth catchments, population density, generational cohorts, and socio-economic status. The data reveal stark differences between traditional party (Greens, Labor, Liberal) strategies and that of the independent candidate whose campaign was marked by grassroots support and creative symbolism, notably the use of orange corflutes shaped like emus. The independent’s campaign relied on personal property displays, signaling civic engagement and a bottom-up assertion of political identity. While signage for major parties largely disappeared within days of the election, many of the independent’s symbolic emus persisted, blurring the temporal boundaries of the ephemeral landscape and extending its visual presence well beyond the formal campaign period. The study argues that these ephemeral landscapes, though transitory, are powerful cultural expressions of political identity, visibility, and territoriality shaping public and private spaces both materially and symbolically. Ultimately, the election signage in Albury serves as a case study for understanding how ephemeral landscapes can materially and symbolically shape public space during moments of civic expression. Full article

Promoting energy efficiency in the Italian production sector is significantly hampered by the lack of knowledge, the scarcity and the limited distribution of tools for supporting energy audits in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a wide range of Italian economic sectors (industry, tertiary sector, transport). The Advanced Tool for ENErgy Audit for SMEs, ATENEA4SME, is intended to help SMEs promote energy-efficiency projects, supports energy audits and self-evaluation of energy consumption. The tool uses an original mathematical model that takes into account the results of questionnaires and a multi-criteria analysis to generate recommendations for energy efficiency investments. This article will give a thorough explanation of the tool, emphasizing and outlining the sections as well as the procedures to get the ultimate summary of the energy usage of the enterprises under investigation and the potential for energy saving. From a technological and financial perspective, the tool helps to remove obstacles to the development of energy-efficiency measures. In this article, the IT and methodological structure of the tool will therefore be extensively described, and its operation for the context of SMEs will be illustrated, with application cases. Ample space will be allocated to the dissemination campaign and the replicability of the tool for all economic sectors of the industrial and tertiary sectors. Full article

Ongoing interest in the intersection of spirituality and health has prompted a need for integrated research. This report proposes a distinct approach in a model that allows for successful and harmonious cross-fertilization within these latter two areas of interest. Our work is especially pertinent to inquiries around the role of spirituality in mental health, with special attention to chronic pain conditions. The latter have become an open channel for novel avenues to explore the field of spirituality-based interventions within the arena of psychological inquiry. To address this, the authors developed and implemented the Church and Academia Model, a prototype for an innovative collaborative research project, with the aim of exploring the role of devotional practices, and their potential to be used as therapeutic co-adjuvants or tools to enhance the coping skills of patients with chronic pain. Keeping in mind that the church presents a rich landscape for clinical inquiry with broad relevance for clinicians and society at large, we created a unique hybrid research model. This is a new paradigm that focuses on distinct and well-defined studies where the funding, protocol writing, study design, and implementation are shared by experts from both the pastoral and clinical spaces. A team of theologians, researchers, and healthcare providers, including clinical pain psychologists, built a coalition leveraging their respective skill sets. Each expert is housed in their own environs, creating a functional network that has proven academically productive and pastorally effective. Key outputs include the creation and validation of a new psychometric measure, the Pain-related PRAYER Scale (PPRAYERS), an associated bedside prayer tool and a full-scale dissemination strategy through journal publications and specialty society conferences. This collaborative prototype is also an ideal fit for integrated knowledge translation platforms, and it is a promising paradigm for future collaborative projects focused on spirituality and mental health. Full article

Social media platforms facilitate the dissemination of science and access to it. However, gender inequalities in the participation and visibility of communicators persist. This study examined the differences in reach and audience response between YouTube and TikTok from a gender perspective. To do so, the ten most influential science accounts on YouTube and TikTok were selected, with the sample divided equally between men and women, to conduct a comparative study. A total of 4293 videos on TikTok and 4825 on YouTube were analyzed, along with 277,528 comments, considering metrics of views and interaction. The results show that on YouTube, men received more likes and views, while on TikTok, audience response was more balanced. The participation of women on both platforms also had a differential impact, as the number of women engaging with content on YouTube negatively correlated with interaction levels, whereas on TikTok, their impact was slightly positive. In conclusion, TikTok emerges as a more inclusive space for scientific communication, though structural challenges remain on both platforms, encouraging further research into strategies that promote gender equity in online science communication. Full article

The subject of this article is the centuries-old religious heritage of Vilnius. The aim of the article is to analyse this heritage and its reflection in the gaze of tourists. In particular, it focuses on selected Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, and Karaite sites. The methods used in the empirical study include the analysis of reviews posted on the Tripadvisor website by tourists from different countries who visited five selected sites: (1) St. Anne’s Church, (2) Holy Spirit Orthodox Church, (3) Evangelical Lutheran Church, (4) Vilnius Choral Synagogue, and (5) Kenesa. The authors employed the method of desk research, which involves the analysis of existing data. The selection of objects was made by indicating the most commented sites of a given religious tradition for which the most comments were received. In the light of the pervasive influence of social media, it is noteworthy to observe the contemporary representation of multi-religious Vilnius that is disseminated through this medium. Urban sacred spaces are not only places of worship of interest to religious people, including local and foreign pilgrims. Furthermore, they constitute an attractive urban heritage for a significant number of cultural tourists. Committed tourists, including cultural tourists, meticulously document their impressions in various forms of narrative, offering either endorsement or criticism of a particular object. In this manner, they also interpret elements of the heritage in the local urban space. Full article

Traditional coal quality assessment methods rely exclusively on the laboratory testing of physical samples, which impedes detailed stratigraphic evaluation and limits the integration of intelligent precision mining technologies. To resolve this challenge, this study investigates geophysical logging as an innovative method for coal quality prediction. By integrating scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray analysis, and optical microscopy with interdisciplinary methodologies spanning mathematics, mineralogy, and applied geophysics, this research analyzes the coal quality and mineral composition of the Shanxi Formation coal seams in northern Jiangsu, China. A predictive model linking geophysical logging responses to coal quality parameters was established to delineate relationships between subsurface geophysical data and material properties. The results demonstrate that the Shanxi Formation coals are gas coal (a medium-metamorphic bituminous subclass) characterized by low sulfur content, low ash yield, low fixed carbon, high volatile matter, and high calorific value. Mineralogical analysis identifies calcite, pyrite, and clay minerals as the dominant constituents. Pyrite occurs in diverse microscopic forms, including euhedral and semi-euhedral fine grains, fissure-filling aggregates, irregular blocky structures, framboidal clusters, and disseminated particles. Systematic relationships were observed between logging parameters and coal quality: moisture, ash content, and volatile matter exhibit an initial decrease, followed by an increase with rising apparent resistivity (LLD) and bulk density (DEN). Conversely, fixed carbon and calorific value display an inverse trend, peaking at intermediate LLD/DEN values before declining. Total sulfur increases with density up to a threshold before decreasing, while showing a concave upward relationship with resistivity. Negative correlations exist between moisture, fixed carbon, calorific value lateral resistivity (LLS), natural gamma (GR), short-spaced gamma-gamma (SSGG), and acoustic transit time (AC). In contrast, ash yield, volatile matter, and total sulfur correlate positively with these logging parameters. These trends are governed by coalification processes, lithotype composition, reservoir physical properties, and the types and mass fractions of minerals. Validation through independent two-sample t-tests confirms the feasibility of the neural network model for predicting coal quality parameters from geophysical logging data. The predictive model provides technical and theoretical support for advancing intelligent coal mining practices and optimizing efficiency in coal chemical industries, enabling real-time subsurface characterization to facilitate precision resource extraction. Full article

This study investigates the mechanisms underlying the diffusion of risk information about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. Drawing upon social contagion theory, we examine how endogenous and exogenous mechanisms shape users’ information-sharing behaviors. An analysis of 388,722 reposts from 2444 original GMO risk-related texts enabled the construction of a comprehensive sharing network, with computational text-mining techniques employed to detect users’ attitudes toward GMOs. To bridge the gap between descriptive and inferential network analysis, we employ a Shannon entropy-based approach to quantify the uncertainty and concentration of attitudinal differences and similarities among sharing and non-sharing dyads, providing an information-theoretic foundation for understanding positional and differential homophily. The entropy-based analysis reveals that information-sharing ties are characterized by lower entropy in attitude differences, indicating greater attitudinal alignment among sharing users, especially among GMO opponents. Building on these findings, the Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) further demonstrates that both endogenous network mechanisms (reciprocity, preferential attachment, and triadic closure) and positional homophily influence GMO risk information sharing and dissemination. A key finding is the presence of a differential homophily effect, where GMO opponents exhibit stronger homophilic tendencies than non-opponents. Despite the prevalence of homophily, this paper uncovers substantial cross-attitude interactions, challenging simplistic notions of echo chambers in GMO risk communication. By integrating entropy and ERGM analyses, this study advances a more nuanced, information-theoretic understanding of how digital platforms mediate public perceptions and debates surrounding controversial socio-scientific issues, offering valuable implications for developing effective risk communication strategies in increasingly polarized online spaces. Full article

The heritage of public works is composed of networks that are strongly linked to the territory where they are built. With the aim of deepening our knowledge of the appearance and subsequent development of the transport and supply systems in Madrid, we present a study of the main hydraulic works, bridges and railway stations. Based on historical and technological documentation, works and networks are analysed and georeferenced in order to relate their traces and evolution to the city. These built elements define recognisable physical and cultural traces in the form and identity of the city. The documentation and technological and social analysis work was completed with a dissemination and heritage education process. The results show that the physiographic and lithological reality of Madrid, characterised by its intense link with water, has determined the configuration of the urban network and the expansion of the city. Bridges span obstacles and set milestones. Stations are spaces for exchange and connection. The water supply network feeds the urban grid. The city changes, but the traces remain. Urban growth has smoothed, absorbed or hidden the original relief and watercourses, but they are still present in public works and even in the collective memory of the citizens through the force of their cultural and social values. Full article

This paper seeks to address the limitations of conventional remote sensing data dissemination algorithms, particularly their inability to model fine-grained multi-modal heterogeneous feature correlations and adapt to dynamic network topologies under resource constraints. This paper proposes multi-modal-MAPPO, a novel multi-modal deep reinforcement learning (MDRL) framework designed for a proactive data push in large-scale integrated satellite–terrestrial networks (ISTNs). By integrating satellite cache states, user cache states, and multi-modal data attributes (including imagery, metadata, and temporal request patterns) into a unified Markov decision process (MDP), our approach pioneers the application of the multi-actor-attention-critic with parameter sharing (MAPPO) algorithm to ISTNs push tasks. Central to this framework is a dual-branch actor network architecture that dynamically fuses heterogeneous modalities: a lightweight MobileNet-v3-small backbone extracts semantic features from remote sensing imagery, while parallel branches—a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for static attributes (e.g., payload specifications, geolocation tags) and a long short-term memory (LSTM) network for temporal user cache patterns—jointly model contextual and historical dependencies. A dynamically weighted attention mechanism further adapts modality-specific contributions to enhance cross-modal correlation modeling in complex, time-varying scenarios. To mitigate the curse of dimensionality in high-dimensional action spaces, we introduce a multi-dimensional discretization strategy that decomposes decisions into hierarchical sub-policies, balancing computational efficiency and decision granularity. Comprehensive experiments against state-of-the-art baselines (MAPPO, MAAC) demonstrate that multi-modal-MAPPO reduces the average content delivery latency by 53.55% and 29.55%, respectively, while improving push hit rates by 0.1718 and 0.4248. These results establish the framework as a scalable and adaptive solution for real-time intelligent data services in next-generation ISTNs, addressing critical challenges in resource-constrained, dynamic satellite–terrestrial environments. Full article

This study employs walking interviews to examine the low-carbon practices, cultural adaptation, and policy awareness of older Chinese migrants in the UK within their everyday environments. A total of 20 participants were interviewed in public spaces such as parks, supermarkets, and their homes. Using contextual thematic analysis, the study identifies key factors influencing their environmental behaviors. The findings reveal the following: (1) Language barriers, economic pressures, and social isolation limit migrants’ understanding of environmental policies. Many participants rely on self-sufficient ethnic community networks rather than engaging with mainstream sources; (2) Generational differences are evident—younger migrants demonstrate greater theoretical awareness of environmental policies, whereas older migrants exhibit stronger low-carbon behaviors through energy conservation and waste reduction; (3) A balance between cultural identity and consumption habits—while some migrants adjust their dietary, spending, and linguistic habits, core cultural values such as frugality and family responsibility remain unchanged. This study highlights the value of walking interviews in capturing situational insights into low-carbon behaviors and cultural adaptation. It provides empirical evidence for government agencies and community organizations, advocating for cross-cultural environmental education and improved policy communication. Recommendations include targeted environmental training, community-based volunteer initiatives, intergenerational environmental education, and policy dissemination through WeChat, Chinese communities, and ethnic networks. These measures can help bridge the generational gap in policy awareness and promote social integration among older Chinese migrants. Full article

Background: The diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) relies on identifying neurological signs and symptoms, supported by evidence of central nervous system (CNS) dissemination of lesions across time and space. The visual pathway is commonly involved in MS, with a frequent involvement of optic neuritis (ON) episodes. Our study aims to assess the relationship between neuronal damage and optic nerve demyelination by analyzing the latency and amplitude of the p100 wave complex using visual evoked potentials (VEPs). Methods: We conducted a retrospective longitudinal study, analyzing VEP records of 15 patients with recurrent remissive MS at baseline, 5, 10, 15, and 19 years. Results: In 30 eyes we observed an increase in p100 wave latency at 5-years by 14.35 ± 4.47 ms (p = 0.003), at 10-years by 19.26 ± 4.87 ms (p < 0.0005) and a decrease in amplitude by 2.29 ± 0.52 mV (p < 0.0005) when comparing to baseline values. At 15-years, 24 eyes presented an increase in latency of 31.39 ± 7.8 ms (p = 0.001) and a decrease in amplitude of 2.51 ± 0.6 mV (p < 0.0005) compared to baseline, while at 19-years, 10 eyes presented an increase in p100 wave latency of 53.45 ± 18.42 ms (p = 0.018) and a further decrease in amplitude of 4.06 ± 1.32 mV (p = 0.014). We found correlations between the p100 wave latency and amplitude at baseline, 15-year, and 19-year follow-ups, increasing from a low negative (r = −0.43) to medium negative (r = −0.502) and finally high negative (r = −0.906) correlation. Conclusions: VEPs have long been acknowledged for their ability to detect both clinical and subclinical lesions in MS cases. Our study offers new insight into the relationship between demyelination and axonal degeneration observed when analyzing the latency and amplitude of the p100 wave complex during VEP in a longitudinal analysis. Full article