Search Results (65)

To address limitations such as short forecast periods, data collection challenges, insufficient understanding of physical mechanisms, and single-scale constraints, forecasting factors and their characteristics were analyzed across astronomical, global, and watershed scales. Forecasting factors were selected based on astronomical observations, ocean current predictions, traditional calendars, and agricultural proverbs, and their characteristics were quantitatively processed. A BP neural network optimized by the Gray Wolf Optimizer (GWO) algorithm (GWO-BP) was constructed, and the dataset derived from sample division of the Fengman Reservoir Basin was used to train the model for secondary fitting. The model successfully fit and predicted the annual inflow of the Fengman Reservoir Basin from 2013 to 2017. Through a comparison with the GWO–Support Vector Machine (GWO-SVM) model, results showed that the GWO-BP model exhibited superior predictive performance. This method integrates multi-scale, easily accessible, and quantifiable forecasting factors, facilitating the extension of long-term runoff forecasting applications within the river basin. Full article

In the early years of the Christian Church, it was difficult to reach a consensus on the relationship between God, the Father, and his Son, Jesus Christ. One focus of the discussions was the pre-established relationship between God and his wisdom, as described in Prov 8:22–25 and Sir 24. An original contribution was the Council of Nicaea’s approach to the terms ‘creator’ and ‘creature’, both of which were related to the understanding of the Hebrew verb קנה and the Greek verb κτίζω in those passages. This study employs novel linguistic methods to elucidate the meaning of both verbs, providing fresh insights into how the Alexandrian Jewish and Christian communities interpreted the relationship between God and his wisdom, and how this influenced the terminology of the Nicene Creed. Full article

The effective implementation of preparedness and response strategies toward climate change resilience has evolved into a technical, sociopolitical, and communication issue. We argue that, for climate communication to effectively contribute to community resilience, it demands meaningful dialogue and engagement to facilitate understanding. Using the risk communication theory, we assessed the impact of complex English language on climate change understanding in Nigerian communities where local languages are predominant. Through surveys and semi-structured interviews, we found that current communication strategies are ineffective and misaligned with the local context, traditional knowledge systems, and specific community concerns, therefore marginalizing local actors from meaningful participation. The translation of climate communication into climate change action is challenging for local actors due to prevailing exclusion from discussion and a lack of engagement, which contributes to misunderstanding and poor climate change action. The study indicates that enhancing climate change communication in Nigeria necessitates the development of integrative strategies tailored to the language, cultural, and educational context that will encourage the local actors to participate effectively in this discussion. The paper recommends translating information into local languages and integrating local proverbs and mythological interpretations that can be positively employed to combat climate change within these communities more organically. Full article

This article sheds light on the repercussions of the Proverbs sentence “Wisdom has built her house” on Christian doctrine and on the Marian iconography of the Annunciation. To achieve his objectives, the author uses a double comparative analysis as a methodology. To begin with, he analyzes a vast corpus of texts in which numerous Fathers, theologians, and liturgical hymnographers of Eastern and Western Churches interpret this biblical locution according to Mariological and Christological projections. Secondly, he analyzes eight pictorial Annunciations from the Italian Renaissance in which Mary’s house in Nazareth is depicted as a luxurious palace. As a result of these two sets of analyses, the author concludes that the interpretations of the Fathers, theologians, and hymnographers about the house built by Wisdom and the form of the house/palace in images of the Annunciation allude to the dogma of God the Son’s supernatural human conception/incarnation in Mary’s virginal womb. Full article

In the region of Northeast Asia, Korea has been identified as a nation that has a distinctive affinity for tigers. Koreans’ lives are deeply ingrained with emotions and thoughts related to tigers, even though they have completely disappeared from Korea due to historical changes and urbanization. This study first connects the image of tigers in Korean creation myths and folk tales with cultural identity. The analysis uncovers that the satire and humor present in the literature and paintings depicting tigers were employed to surmount the realistic fears associated with these creatures. Subsequently, the study delves into historical perceptions and spatial concepts by examining folk tales and maps of the Korean Peninsula that are symbolized by tigers. During the Japanese colonial period, tigers were regarded as a symbol of Korean national consciousness, and since then, they have played a significant role in disseminating national spirit and identity discourse. Finally, the analysis of Korean proverbs related to tigers reveals the profound influence of these animals on the development of Korean concepts of seasons and time. This study thus demonstrates the significant role of tigers in shaping the cultural identity and conceptual framework of space and time in Korea. Full article

Background/Objectives: The study examined the relationships between specific Theory-of-Mind (ToM) dimensions, cognitive planning, and sleep duration in aging adults. Methods: The sample included 179 participants, comprising 46 cognitively healthy individuals, 75 diagnosed with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI), and 58 with non-amnestic (naMCI). The mean age of the participants was 70.23 years (SD = 4.74), with a mean educational attainment of 12.35 years (SD = 3.22) and gender distribution of 53 men and 126 women. ToM assessment included tasks measuring the understanding and interpretation of non-literal speech, proverbs and metaphors, as well as an emotion-recognition test. For cognitive planning, a Tower Test was utilized. Sleep duration was measured using actigraphy. Results: We identified significant differences in various ToM tasks’ performance between the groups, particularly in non-literal speech tasks and third-order ToM stories. The HC group consistently outperformed both MCI groups in these tasks, with aMCI showing higher performance than naMCI. Mediation analysis applied to examine potential direct and indirect effects of sleep duration on ToM tasks indicated that total sleep time had significant indirect effects through cognitive planning—mainly as rule violation total score—on specific ToM aspects. Hence, besides the effects of MCI pathologies and especially of naMCI, sleep duration seems also to be associated with ToM performance in aging via specific executive functioning decrements. Conclusions: The findings underscore the social implications of ToM deficits due to MCI and/or sleep duration decrease, particularly in naMCI older adults, as they can seriously impair their social interactions. Targeted interventions could improve emotional understanding, communication, and overall quality of life. Full article

Taking its cue from Proverbs 18:21, which places death and life in the hands or authority of the tongue, i.e., language, this paper explores how translators throughout the millennia recomposed, through their translation choices, the story of the first couple in the garden, introducing some deadly consequences with their choices. Full article

For early Christian missionaries, Chinese proverbs were an invaluable resource for learning the language, understanding the culture, and carrying out religious evangelization. While existing research has predominantly focused on collections of Chinese proverbs by Protestant missionaries, Catholic missionaries’ efforts in gathering Chinese proverbs preceded those of their Protestant counterparts and hold significant linguistic, historical, and cross-cultural value. This study begins by tracing the emergence of Catholic missionaries’ interest in Chinese proverbs and then presents a comparative analysis of three representative collections compiled by Joseph de Prémare (1666–1736), Paul Perny (1818–1907), and Joseph Van Oost (1877–1939): Catholic missionaries from different orders and historical periods. It examines the compilation structures, purposes, Chinese proverbs selected, and interpretive approaches in their works, tracing the evolution of Catholic missionaries’ Chinese proverb collections. The study interprets this evolution in relation to the Catholic Church’s missionary strategies and the personal evangelization philosophies of the missionaries themselves. This research demonstrates the diverse cultural engagement practices of Catholic missionaries in China from the 18th to the early 20th century, offering new insights into the interaction between Catholicism and Chinese culture during this period. Full article

The author has provided more than 2100 engineering mathematics teaching materials on YouTube since 2014. The viewer information provided by YouTube revealed that (1) 59.16% of viewers were 18 to 24 years old while 23.18% were over 35 years old, (2) the gender ratio was 4:1 (male–female), (3) 9.19% of viewers subscribed to the educational channel, (4) 88.13% of viewers were from Taiwan and 1.97% from Hong Kong, and (5) the proportion of “External Sources” and “Playlist” was 26.91% and 25.30%, respectively. Such viewer demographics help adjust the principles of tutorial videos. For instance, nearly 60% of the viewers were college students, and their expectations aligned with the grading criteria set by instructors. The majority of college instructors arrange written examinations and present engineering mathematics content in a handwritten manner. Around 25% of the students had richer life experiences and no examination pressure. Therefore, proverbs or idioms related to life philosophy in videos better resonated with these viewers. Tutorial videos were created to assist self-learners in mastering engineering mathematics. The data over the past nine years on YouTube serve as a valuable reference in constructing instructional videos for engineering. This virtual tutorial experience provides a basis to adjust the direction of future tutorial video recordings. Full article

Working chiefly within the tenets of Cultural Linguistics (CL), this study examines the cultural and cognitive motivations that underlie selected death-oriented personal names among the Igbo of South-eastern Nigeria. Based on the cultural linguistic perspective, the analytical tool for the study is shaped by insights from cultural schemas, cultural categories and cultural metaphors as signifiers of ideation and social meaning. The cultural frames enable the language user to have a better understanding of the cultural and cognitive motivations that underlie the conceptualization of names and naming among the Igbo. Much has been done on the structure and sociological forms of Igbo personal names and their meanings, but only a few studies have been undertaken on the names that express the notions of death and dying in Igbo. More importantly, no previous study has used insights from Cultural Linguistics (CL) or the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to explain the motivations for the preponderance of death-oriented names among the Igbo people. Thus, this study specifically aims to address the lacuna. The study reveals that the Igbo, like most African and other human societies, recognize and accept the inevitability of death. Consequently, they use language in diverse forms and contexts to express their perceptions of the horrors and pains associated with the inevitability of death. Songs, proverbs and ritual practices are some of the verbal and social semiotic forms through which the Igbo express their knowledge of and attitude toward death and dying. However, names and naming are the most vivid cultural cognitive patterns by which the Igbo show their understanding of the nature of death and dying and their psychological effects on the living. Constrained by space and scope, this study identified and classified six major death-oriented names among the Igbo, as follows: names that depict the overwhelming power of death; names that make an appeal to death; names that depict death as wicked/evil/terror; names that depict death as no respecter of wealth/social class; names that challenge/mock the assumed power of death; and names that depict death as an insensitive entity. Thus, the above frames constitute the major paradigms by which the Igbo express their knowledge of and attitudes toward death and dying. Full article

Human beings have created numerous laws, sayings and proverbs that still influence behaviors and decision-making processes of people. Some of the laws, sayings or proverbs are used by people to understand the phenomena that may take place in daily life. For example, Murphy’s law states that “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Murphy’s law is helpful for project planning with analysis and the consideration of risk. Similar to Murphy’s law, the old saying “Two heads are better than one” also influences the determination of the ways for people to get jobs done effectively. Although the old saying “Two heads are better than one” has been extensively discussed in different contexts, there is a lack of studies about whether this saying is valid and can be applied in evolutionary computation. Evolutionary computation is an important optimization approach in artificial intelligence. In this paper, we attempt to study the validity of this saying in the context of evolutionary computation approach to the decision making of ridesharing systems with trust constraints. We study the validity of the saying “Two heads are better than one” by developing a series of self-adaptive evolutionary algorithms for solving the optimization problem of ridesharing systems with trust constraints based on the saying, conducting several series of experiments and comparing the effectiveness of these self-adaptive evolutionary algorithms. The new finding is that the old saying “Two heads are better than one” is valid in most cases and hence can be applied to facilitate the development of effective self-adaptive evolutionary algorithms. Our new finding paves the way for developing a better evolutionary computation approach for ridesharing recommendation systems based on sayings created by human beings or human intelligence. Full article

Urban flooding is one of the main challenges affecting sustainable urban development worldwide, threatening the safety and well-being of communities and citizens. The aim of this study is to assess the development and trends in urban flood resilience at the city scale, as well as to improve the resilience of cities to these risks over time. The study constructs a model for assessing urban flood resilience that incorporates economic, social, ecological, and managerial aspects and assesses them through a range of indicators identified in the literature. The comprehensive evaluation model of Network Analysis Method–Entropy Weight Method–The Distance between Excellent and Inferior Solutions (ANP-EWM-TOPSIS) was used to empirically investigate the flood resilience characteristics of Nanjing from 2010 to 2021. There are two main findings of the study: firstly, the flood resilience of Nanjing gradually improves over time, as the economic flood resilience steadily increases, while the social, ecological, and management flood resilience decreases; and secondly, during the study period, barriers caused by economic and regulatory factors in Nanjing decreased by 33.75% and 23.72%, respectively, while barriers caused by social and ecological factors increased by 32.69% and 24.68%, respectively. The novelty of this study is the introduction of a “barrier degree” model, which identifies and highlights barriers and obstacles to improving urban flood resilience and provides new insights into improving urban flood resilience at the city scale. Full article

Cultural philosophies, belief systems and experiences serve as superordinate cultural concepts that are reconceptualised and expressed using metaphorical personal names in Mabia languages. Metaphorical personal names are ‘vehicles’ that transport the worldviews of speakers of Mabia languages to the target audiences. Every metaphorical personal name shares properties of a superordinate umbrella concept such that even newly created metaphorical names fall within an already existing cultural philosophy. This study argues that there is a corresponding relationship between a metaphorical personal name, the source domain, and its superordinate umbrella philosophical concept, the target domain. The study uses data from four Mabia ‘sister’ languages of West Africa: Dagbani, Kusaal, Likpakpaln, and Sisaali. The findings show that the source domains of these names include the name-bearer and the personal name itself, and the name-giver, whilst the target domains include flora and fauna terms, belief systems, innuendos and proverbs, experiences of name-givers, ‘death prevention’ labels, among others. The article also establishes that both sociocultural and ethnolinguistic factors influence the use of metaphorical personal names in the cultures under study. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) is employed for the analysis of data in this research. The work uses the qualitative method and data are sourced from semi-structured interviews, from school registers and other previous studies on personal names in the selected languages. Full article

In recent years, large-scale flood events have occurred more frequently, and the concept of resilience has become a prevalent approach to managing flood risk in many regions. This has led to an increased interest in how to effectively measure a city’s flood resilience levels. This study proposes a novel modeling approach to quantify urban flood resilience by developing D-number theory and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) models, which are applied to three cities in China using the VIse Kriterijumski Optimizacioni Racun (VIKOR) method. The findings reveal that Hefei City has the most effective level of flood resilience, Hangzhou City was ranked second, while Zhengzhou City has the least effective level of flood resilience. This study provides a new scientific basis on how to quantify flood resilience at the city scale and provides a useful reference for these three specific cities. The methods and approaches developed in this study have the potential to be applied to other cities and in the related aspects of disaster prevention, recovery, and reconstruction. Full article