Search Results (37)

Historic structures that possess cultural heritage value are important documents that convey the architectural understanding, material technology, and construction techniques of past civilizations to the present day. However, these structures are exposed over time to physical, chemical, and mechanical deterioration due to environmental effects, climatic conditions, the natural aging processes of materials, and human interventions. The conservation and faithful restoration of historic structures necessitate the scientific determination of the properties of original building materials. In this study, we aimed to determine the physical, chemical, mineralogical, thermal, and mechanical properties of the original building materials used in the Old Armenian Church located in the city of Çanakkale. In order to reveal the chemical and mineralogical compositions of the samples, XRD, SEM, Raman, and FTIR analyses were applied. The thermal behaviors of the materials were examined through TGA. To determine the physical properties, tests for unit volume weight, specific gravity, compactness, porosity, and water absorption capacity were carried out. For the determination of mechanical properties, compressive strength tests—as well as non-destructive testing methods such as the Schmidt hammer and UPV measurements—were employed. The analysis results indicate that the materials used in the structure have a carbonate-based mineralogical composition and that calcite-bonded systems are dominant. While the physical and mechanical data reveal that the materials possess a compact internal structure, they also indicate that microcracks and weathering processes may be effective in certain areas. These findings emphasize the importance of using lime-based mortars and stones compatible with the original materials in restoration works. Full article

Robust plant disease detection in real-world agricultural environments remains challenging due to dynamic environmental conditions. Accurate and reliable disease identification is essential for precision agriculture and effective crop management. Although computer vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have shown promising results in controlled settings, their performance often drops under lesion scale variability, inter- and intra-class similarity among diseases, class imbalance, and illumination fluctuations. To overcome these challenges, we propose a Heterogeneous Feature Aggregation Network (HFA-Net) that brings together architectural improvements, illumination-aware preprocessing, and training-level enhancements into a single cohesive framework. To extract richer and more discriminative features from the early layers of the network, HFA-Net introduces a multi-scale, multi-level feature aggregation stem. The Reduction-Expansion (RE) mechanism helps preserve important lesion details while adapting to variations in scale. Considering real agricultural environments, an Illumination-Adaptive Contrast Enhancement (IACE) preprocessing pipeline is designed to address illumination variability in real agricultural environments. Experimental results show that HFA-Net achieves 96.03% accuracy under normal conditions and maintains strong performance under challenging lighting scenarios, achieving 92.95% and 93.07% accuracy in extremely dark and bright environments, respectively. Furthermore, quantitative explainability analysis using perturbation-based metrics demonstrates that the model’s predictions are not only accurate but also faithful to disease-relevant regions. Finally, Grad-CAM-based visual explanations confirm that the model’s predictions are driven by disease-specific regions, enhancing interpretability and practical reliability. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced an additional major stressor for families in the Caribbean, a region already shaped by environmental risk and socioeconomic vulnerability. This study examined changes in family resilience across pandemic phases among English-speaking Caribbean populations, drawing on Walsh’s family resilience framework, which emphasizes belief systems, organizational processes, and communication. Using a convergent parallel mixed methods design, quantitative and qualitative data were integrated from two studies conducted before and during pandemic restrictions and after restrictions were lifted. Survey data were collected from 198 families across English-speaking Caribbean nations, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 31 families from Grenada, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Quantitative analyses indicated a significant decline in family resilience during periods of heightened restrictions, followed by a return to pre-pandemic levels. Qualitative findings identified faith, family connectedness, communication, resourcefulness, and a positive outlook as key processes supporting adaptation during the crisis. Overall, results suggest that while family resilience at the population level was strained during the pandemic, it demonstrated recovery over time. Policies and interventions that strengthen communication supports and community- and faith-based resources may enhance family resilience and preparedness for future public health and environmental disruptions in the Caribbean. Full article

The aim of this research is to present a risk-based AI assurance framework that produces quantifiable metrics for auditors and stakeholders to make deployment decisions with evidence-driven assurance of traceability, explainability, accountability, and reproducibility. Our proposed framework incorporates risk severity core with additional modifiers to accommodate the context, governance obligations, technical and environmental exposure, and residual risk relevant to the AI model. This multi-tiered technique enables stakeholders and governance teams to operationalize the safe deployment assurance. The final Assurance Adequacy Score (AAS) comprises a Governance Readiness Score (GRS) along with two additional indices to quantify the traceability and explainability of the AI model. The Traceability Adequacy Index (TAI) is calculated by evaluating the attributes such as the dataset and model versioning, pipeline logging, model audit completeness, and reproducibility. And an Explainability Adequacy Index (EAI) is calculated by evaluating the attributes such as the fidelity for local and global explanations, stability, faithfulness of the explanation provided, robustness, coverage, and human comprehension. This architecture enables integration of risk assessment and enables continued AI assurance by deploying a bottleneck principle where the readiness of the AI model is confined by the weaker of the indices. Finally, a tiered gate mechanism is applied on the Assurance Adequacy Score to enforce minimum assurance floors for high-risk AI systems. The evaluation conducted on multi-domain AI models demonstrates the Risk-Based AI Assurance Framework’s (RBAAF) ability to yield stable and consistent readiness decisions with sensitivity analysis and re-scoring. The use cases demonstrate that even comparable risk levels can lead to significantly different deployment outcomes depending on assurance maturity, and design-specific improvements in traceable or explainable domains have the ability to shift gate outcomes. Combining governance regulations with a standardized and quantifiable traceability and explainability score enables the stakeholders to evaluate the AI system for an accountable and regulation-compliant deployment. Full article

Hospital environments host diverse microbial communities that may contribute to nosocomial infections. Moisture-retaining surfaces such as cleaning sponges and faucet edges represent high-contact, under-investigated hygiene hotspots, particularly in wards caring for immunocompromised patients. Environmental samples were collected from cleaning sponges (n = 14) and faucet edges (n = 4) across multiple hospital rooms of a paediatric haematology–oncology unit, with domestic physician sponges as controls (n = 3). DNA was extracted and sequenced targeting the V3–V4 and V7–V9 hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA gene on the Illumina MiSeq platform. Taxonomic composition and alpha/beta diversity were assessed using QIIME 2 and R. Sponge samples were dominated by Moraxellaceae, particularly Acinetobacter and Enhydrobacter, and showed significantly lower alpha diversity than faucet samples (Shannon index: Kruskal–Wallis H = 8.4, p = 0.01; Faith’s phylogenetic diversity: H = 9.17, p = 0.01). Faucet samples were enriched in human-associated genera including Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, and Chryseobacterium. Statistically significant beta-diversity differences were detected between sponge and faucet communities by PERMANOVA based on Bray–Curtis dissimilarity (p = 0.01), whereas no significant clustering by room or floor location was observed (p = 0.29). Potentially pathogenic taxa including Aeromonas, Pseudomonas, and Enterobacteriaceae were identified across both surface types. Domestic control sponges showed distinct microbiome profiles from hospital samples. Microbial communities differ significantly between hospital sponges and faucets, with surface type rather than location as the primary determinant of community structure. The presence of opportunistic pathogens on both surface types highlights the importance of enhanced hygiene protocols, inclusion of faucet edges and sink drains in routine decontamination schedules, and regular microbiological surveillance in clinical settings caring for immunocompromised patients. Full article

The increasing availability of satellite data at different spatial resolutions offers new opportunities for environmental monitoring, highlighting the limitations of medium-resolution products for fine-scale territorial analysis. However, it also raises the need to enhance the resolution of low-quality imagery to enable more detailed spatial assessments. This study investigates the effectiveness of different super-resolution techniques applied to low-resolution (LR) multispectral Sentinel-2 satellite imagery to generate high-resolution (HR) data capable of supporting advanced knowledge extraction. Three main methodologies are compared: traditional bicubic interpolation, a generic Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach, and a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model specifically designed for super-resolution tasks. Model performances are evaluated in terms of their ability to reconstruct fine spatial details, while the implications of these methods for subsequent visualization and environmental analysis are critically discussed. The evaluation protocol relies on RMSE, PSNR, SSIM, and spectral-faithfulness metrics (SAM, ERGAS), showing that the CNN consistently outperforms ANN and bicubic interpolation in reconstructing geometrically coherent structures. The results confirm that super-resolution improves the apparent spatial detail of existing spectral information, thus clarifying both the practical advantages and inherent limitations of learning-based super-resolution in Earth observation workflows. Full article

This study explores the role of sustainability-oriented education in supporting post-disaster recovery and resilience in Derna, Libya, following the catastrophic floods of September 2023. Using a qualitative descriptive design, twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with academic experts, public health professionals, policymakers, and community leaders. The findings reveal that Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is perceived as both a critical resilience tool and a moral imperative in fragile, disaster-affected contexts. However, institutional fragility, limited resources, and weak policy integration hinder its implementation. The study highlights the need to embed ESD within both formal education systems and informal community networks, aligning recovery strategies with local environmental realities. It offers practical recommendations for leveraging schools, faith-based institutions, and grassroots initiatives to foster adaptive capacity. These insights contribute to global debates on localising sustainable development in post-conflict settings and underscore the potential of ESD to bridge immediate recovery and long-term sustainability. The study explicitly aligns with the objectives of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) and Sustainable Development Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). It demonstrates how sustainability-oriented learning can strengthen community resilience by connecting education with local recovery systems, environmental adaptation, and social rebuilding. Through this alignment, the research underscores the role of education as a mechanism for both immediate recovery and long-term sustainability within fragile and disaster-affected societies. Full article

Fish species’ biological vocalizations serve as essential acoustic signatures for passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) and ecological assessments. However, limited availability of high-quality acoustic recordings, particularly for region-specific species like the brown croaker (Miichthys miiuy), hampers data-driven bioacoustic methodology development. In this study, we present a framework for reconstructing brown croaker vocalizations by integrating fk14 wavelet synthesis, PSO-based parameter optimization (with an objective combining correlation and normalized MSE), and deep learning-based validation. Sensitivity analysis using a normalized Bartlett processor identified delay and scale (length) as the most critical parameters, defining valid ranges that maintained waveform similarity above 98%. The reconstructed signals matched measured calls in both time and frequency domains, replicating single-pulse morphology, inter-pulse interval (IPI) distributions, and energy spectral density. Validation with a ResNet-18-based Siamese network produced near-unity cosine similarity (~0.9996) between measured and reconstructed signals. Statistical analyses (95% confidence intervals; residual errors) confirmed faithful preservation of SPL values and minor, biologically plausible IPI variations. Under noisy conditions, similarity decreased as SNR dropped, indicating that environmental noise affects reconstruction fidelity. These results demonstrate that the proposed framework can reliably generate acoustically realistic and morphologically consistent fish vocalizations, even under data-limited scenarios. The methodology holds promise for dataset augmentation, PAM applications, and species-specific call simulation. Future work will extend this framework by using reconstructed signals to train generative models (e.g., GANs, WaveNet), enabling scalable synthesis and supporting real-time adaptive modeling in field monitoring. Full article

Muslims are religiously obligated to care for the Earth, yet little empirical research exists on how Muslim communities in the U.S. engage with climate change. This study used a mixed-methods approach to explore climate change knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) among 82 Muslims in Knoxville, Tennessee, building on prior theoretical or internationally focused work. Results found that participants largely accepted anthropogenic climate change and were strongly willing to act, citing Islamic principles such as stewardship and divine accountability as key motivators. However, many felt underinformed and lacked clarity on how to take action. Religious texts, more than religious leaders, shaped environmental views, offering interpretations that both aligned with and diverged from scientific narratives. Education and personal experience were the most frequently cited sources of climate understanding. Religion emerged as an important source of climate knowledge and a filter through which scientific information was interpreted. The knowledge and environmental attitudes inspired by their religion guided many participants to mitigate climate impacts, although some expressed a more fatalistic view of climate change. These findings suggest that effective climate communication in Muslim communities should integrate faith-based teachings with scientific messaging and engage religious leaders as amplifiers. Expanding this research to include more diverse Muslim populations across the U.S. can provide deeper insight into how Islamic worldviews shape climate engagement and behavior. Full article

This paper examines local knowledge, perceptions, and responses to changing climes in the Trans-Himalayan region of Dolpa in Nepal. Rooted within the environmental humanities and shaped by emerging understandings of faith-based ecospirituality, our research partnership focuses on the experiences of the indigenous Tarali Magar people of Gumbatara and neighbouring Shaharatara in the Tichurong valley. Through place-based engagements and drawing on various disciplinary threads and intellectual traditions, we review the effects of changing cultural, climatic, and ritual patterns on the lives and livelihoods of the Tarali Magar community. We explore how (i) agricultural practices are changing and adapting in response to wider systemic transformations; (ii) in what ways physical changes in the weather, clime and climate are experienced and imagined by Taralis through the lens of the Tarali concepts of nham (weather) and sameu (time); and (iii) local knowledge and embodied understandings about the natural and cultural worlds are embedded within Tarali spiritual traditions and religious worldviews. In reckoning with shifts in ecological patterns that disrupt long-standing agricultural practices and the cultural and religious knowledge systems that guide them, we demonstrate that Taralis are indigenous environmental humanists and empirical scientists. Through our study, we uplift culturally grounded, location-specific religious practices in the Tichurong valley and show how members of the Tarali community are contributing to global imaginaries for sustainable futures in our more-than-human world. Full article

This article is written as part of the ongoing multidisciplinary inquiry into how ecologically focused Buddhism is and whether or not the faith-based “Buddhist ecology” and the natural scientifically conceived discipline of ecology—which studies the relation of organisms to their physical environments—communicate well and are mutually complementary with each other. It addresses these questions by linking regionally specific Buddhist traditions with modern Buddhism and Buddhist studies in the West, which are, respectively, known for initiating Buddhist environmentalism in the public sphere and shaping Buddhist ecology as an academic field. Situated in the eastern Himalayan-Tibetan highlands, this article offers a twofold argument. First, many ecological practices in Buddhist societies of Asia originate in pre-Buddhist indigenous ecological knowledges, not in the Buddhist canon. Second, understood either from the Buddhist environmentalist perspective or as an academic field, Buddhist ecology originates in the modern West, not in Asia, as a combined outcome of Western Buddhists’ participation in the greater environmental movement and their creative interpretation of Buddhist canonical texts for the purpose of establishing a relational understanding of ecobiologically conceived lifeworlds. This argument is based on the case studies of long se, or spirit hills, in Dai villages in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, and of lha-ri, or deity mountains, in the Tibetan Plateau. Both long se and lha-ri are often discerned as a spiritual-environmental basis of Buddhist ecology. While Dai and Tibetan societies are predominantly Buddhist, the cultural customs of long se and lha-ri are pre-Buddhist. Through the comparable cases of human-spirit-land relations among the Dai and the Tibetans, this article concludes that, conceived in the West, Buddhist ecology entails a body of syncretized approaches to the relational entanglements of all life communities. These approaches find their origins mostly in the ecologically repositioned Buddhist soteriology and ethics as well as in the modern scientific environmentalist worldview. Full article

Religion in international relations should not be viewed solely as a source of conflict or cultural differences; it also has a constructive dimension, as demonstrated by the international activities of faith-based organizations (FBOs). FBOs have benefited from the post-Cold War expansion of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in global affairs. Their growth is often linked to raising awareness among various social groups about security challenges or issues traditionally addressed by state and inter-governmental actors, as well as increasing international interconnectedness. While FBOs differ from classical NGOs in their strong religious motivation, they too often organize around specific missions or messages. The Community of Sant’Egidio (CSE) is a distinctive example of a faith-based organization that operates both as a religious community within the Roman Catholic Church and as an internationally active NGO. Unlike many NGOs, which are founded in response to a singular issue, CSE has broadened its scope over time, addressing a wide range of concerns, from poverty alleviation and peacebuilding to humanitarian aid and, more recently, environmental issues. This paper explores the process by which the CSE has discursively constructed its identity and examines how this process has contributed to its growing influence on the international stage. Full article

In the modern era, we increasingly encounter threats and challenges caused by climate change, and as a result, “green” thinking has become a necessity in every person’s life. It is believed that environmentally focused thinking can be invigorated with the help of Homo Climaticus, who is defined as a rational person in a climate crisis. However, it must be recognized that to understand the essence of Homo Climaticus, it must be compared with other archetypes. Within the framework of this article, the authors have evaluated the interaction between Homo Climaticus and Homo Religiosus in the context of environmental management. The analysis of these archetypes outlines the synergies and conflicts that arise from the fundamental differences in the worldviews of these archetypes, although both are committed to preserving the environment. Homo Climaticus is fundamentally based on science and data related to environmental management, whereas Homo Religiosus is motivated by faith-based ethics and the moral necessity to protect the world created by God. Recognizing and utilizing the strengths of both these archetypes can create more effective environmental management. Such an interdisciplinary approach indicates that collaboration between scientific and religious communities can provide a comprehensive strategy for addressing global environmental issues. Full article

Religions play a key role in shaping our worldviews, values, and behaviours and this includes our interactions with the environment. Fuelled by the development of the technocratic paradigm, Christianity has historically received a bad reputation for perpetuating anti-environmental views. Nonetheless, the development of ecotheological strands and the emergence of faith-based organisations focusing on climate justice have aided in producing the much-needed environmental reformulations. As such, this paper seeks to provide a broad overview of the role of Christianity in shaping worldviews, from those hindering environmental action to more contemporary ecotheological approaches discussing climate change, particularly Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’. Christianity’s preparedness to navigate climate change will be theorised in relation to empirical evidence and the work of European faith-based organisations, as well as the methodological opportunities that the field of ecolinguistics can offer to inform effective communication. Full article

Mountain ecosystems harbor evolutionarily unique and exceptionally rich biodiversity, particularly in insects. In this study, we characterized the diversity, community stability, and assembly mechanisms of butterflies on a subtropical mountain in the Chebaling National Nature Reserve, Guangdong Province, China, using grid-based monitoring across the entire region for two years. The results showed that species richness, abundance, and Faith’s phylogenetic diversity decreased with increasing elevation; taxonomic diversity played a considerable role in mediating the effects of environmental changes on stability. Moreover, our results showed that stochastic processes are dominant in governing the assembly of butterfly communities across all elevational gradients, with habitats at an elevation of 416–580 m subjected to the strongest stochastic processes, whereas heterogeneous selection processes displayed stronger effects on the assembly of butterfly communities at 744–908 m, 580–744 m, and 908–1072 m, with abiotic factors inferred as the main driving forces. In addition, significant differences were detected between the barcode tree and the placement tree for the calculated β-NTI values at 416–580 m. Overall, this study provides new insights into the effects of environmental change on the stability and assembly of butterflies in Chebaling, which will be beneficial for biodiversity conservation and policy development. Full article