Search Results (1,409)

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and cloud computing is straining terrestrial data center infrastructure, motivating exploration of space-based data centers (SBDCs) as a scalable and energy-efficient alternative. While orbital platforms offer unique advantages, including continuous solar energy, radiative cooling, and global coverage, their practical deployment is constrained by unresolved reliability challenges across the mission lifecycle. This study presents a lifecycle-oriented reliability and risk assessment for SBDCs spanning launch, orbital operation, maintenance, and end-of-life phases, using a structured systems-level analysis of failure modes and operational dependencies. This paper focuses on compute-centric SBDC architectures, treating storage solely as a supporting resource. We identify and classify space-environment-specific risks, including launch-induced mechanical stress, radiation-driven degradation, thermal extremes, and single points of failure in power and communication subsystems. By integrating engineering constraints with economic considerations, we develop a unified risk-chain framework that shows how reliability limitations propagate from component design to system cost and operational viability. The analysis reveals a critical trade-off: achieving terrestrial-grade reliability in orbit requires substantial redundancy and radiation hardening, increasing mass and cost and reducing economic feasibility, whereas lower-reliability designs introduce operational and financial risks that challenge sustainability. These findings establish reliability as the central determinant of SBDC viability, providing an applied foundation for fault-tolerant, modular, and lifecycle-aware design strategies essential for transitioning orbital cloud infrastructure from concept to scalable reality. Full article

This multiple case-study explores the intersection of education justice and digital inclusion through three international students’ experiences of learning English within church communities in Australia. Drawing on an education justice lens foregrounding redistribution, recognition, and representation, as well as spatial perspectives on informal digital language learning, this study examines how faith-based participation and digitally mediated interaction shape language development in everyday life. Narrative and thematic analyses were conducted based on narrative data collected from journal entries and semi-structured interviews. Findings reveal that church involvement created recurring opportunities for English use through volunteering, worship, and small-group interaction. Digital mediation extended community engagement through livestreaming and messaging platforms, supporting vocabulary noticing. Recognition within digital spaces was shaped by how participants’ contributions were taken up by others and by interactional norms such as pace and turn-taking, which structured conditions of visibility and responsiveness. These findings suggest that digital inclusion depends not only on access and participation but on whether participants’ contributions are recognised and sustained within digitally mediated environments. This study offers pedagogical implications for supporting learners’ meaningful participation in the digitally mediated multilingual communities that shape their everyday language development. Full article

Research traditionally examines the spatial distribution of urban parks through the lens of spatial equity, overlooking the intricate interaction between the physical foundation of park construction and historical processes. Grounded in the theory of material geography, we investigate the mechanisms underlying the spatio-temporal evolution of urban parks in Shenzhen. We conduct topographical analysis and examine relevant historical policy texts to explore the ‘production of nature’ in China’s post-Mao urbanisation. We find that the distribution of urban parks in Shenzhen is not merely a result of social choice but a product of the interplay between material natural endowments—centred on topography—and urban spatial policies across historical stages. During rapid urbanisation, government-led spatial policies functionally reorganised and assigned symbolic meanings to diverse topographical features, such as plains, hills, and coastal areas, transforming them into urban parks that support capital accumulation and urban upgrading. The proposed ‘topography–policy’ synergistic framework transcends neutral spatial descriptions, revealing the nexus between the commodification of nature and urban governance. We clarify the rationale for the creation of contemporary urban green spaces in China and offer novel theoretical and empirical insights into sustainable urban transformation worldwide. Full article

Background: Healthcare systems globally continue to experience persistent workforce and system-level challenges as increased workloads, lasting wellbeing impacts, and retention issues remain following the pandemic. To inform strategies and interventions to address these issues, this paper explored the workplace experiences of Victorian (Australia) frontline healthcare workers with parenting responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A total of 39 frontline healthcare workers from a large metropolitan hospital were interviewed between October 2020 and February 2021. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse transcripts. Results: Three superordinate themes and five subordinate themes were identified. Themes highlighted the significant pressure that rapid workplace changes placed on healthcare staff and leaders, affecting their physical, mental, and relational health. Support from peers and supervisors was protective, though this increased demands on supervisors themselves. While many staff reported pride in their work, some experienced reduced career satisfaction and concerns about lasting psychological impacts. Conclusions: This study identifies how workplace supports operate through communication transparency, leadership capacity, and protected peer-support space, translating to organisational priorities for the post-pandemic workforce. In the context of ongoing workforce shortages and heightened demands post-pandemic, these findings underscore the importance of strengthening leadership capacity, embedding sustainable workplace supports, and addressing the psychological needs of healthcare staff. Such system-level responses are essential for pandemic recovery, improving workforce retention and staff wellbeing in the modern healthcare environment. Full article

Urban canals in rapidly growing cities often experience water quality deterioration from wastewater inputs and stormwater runoff, with impacts that vary across space and time. This study aimed to quantify five-year spatiotemporal patterns of key water quality indicators in the Mae Kha Canal, Chiang Mai, Thailand, and to identify persistent degradation hotspots to support management. Monthly longitudinal data (2020–2024) for dissolved oxygen (DO), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), pH, and water temperature (WT) were collected at 18 monitoring stations and analyzed using locally estimated scatterplot smoothing (LOESS) for trend exploration, repeated-measures correlation for association between parameters, and Geographic Information Systems-based spatiotemporal mapping using inverse-distance-weighted interpolation. Results showed that DO remains very low across much of the canal, while BOD was persistently high; pH was relatively stable near neutral and WT exhibited clear seasonal variability. Spatial mapping indicated that upstream sections generally had better quality, whereas the urban middle reaches repeatedly exhibited hotspots of low DO and high BOD. BOD and DO levels positively correlate with pH level (p < 0.001). In conclusion, the Mae Kha Canal has sustained impairment over 2020–2024, highlighting the need for strengthened wastewater control, stormwater management, and targeted remediation guided by hotspot-based monitoring. Full article

The growing integration of sustainability into university curricula requires teaching models capable of addressing social and environmental complexity through interdisciplinary and human-centered approaches. In this context, this research investigates the role of Virtual Reality as a pedagogical infrastructure to support sustainability-oriented learning, with a particular focus on conditions of frailty and the role of green spaces—areas that remain under-explored in the literature. The study adopts a research-through-design and design-based research approach, developed within a university course in which students design immersive environments using Extended Reality technologies and a shared metaverse hub. The methodological framework is structured in six iterative phases and is supported by a multi-level evaluation strategy based on project criteria and maturity indicators, applied to three learning domains. The results suggest the potential of Virtual Reality as a learning environment when technological, spatial, and design dimensions are coherently integrated. They also show different degrees of integration between frailty-oriented design approaches and spatial configurations, indicating how human-centered principles can be operationalized through design choices. In addition, the findings point to the role of green elements in contributing to the perceived quality of the experience when configured as active spatial components. Overall, the study proposes a replicable framework for integrating Virtual Reality into SDG-oriented curricula, providing evidence of design integration rather than a direct measurement of learning outcomes, and contributing to the connection between pedagogical, design, and environmental dimensions in higher education. Full article

Urban community parks are important public open spaces (POSs) that support residents’ quality of life (QoL) by aiding recreation, social interaction, and physical activity. However, evidence on how to design and assess sustainable POS in Saudi Arabia remains limited, particularly in relation to the country’s hot–arid climate, socio-cultural context, and emerging urban development priorities. This study aims to develop a context-sensitive framework for the design and assessment of sustainable POSs (a scope of urban community parks) in Saudi Arabia using a mixed-methods approach. The study combined: (i) a structured review of the literature on POSs’ sustainability and QoL/subjective well-being (SWB); (ii) naturalistic field observations in two community parks in Al-Khobar (Shells Park and Prince Ibn-Jalawy Park); (iii) an on-site questionnaire survey of park users assessing satisfaction and self-reported well-being (n = 89); and (iv) structured expert interviews to refine and prioritize the framework elements (n = 15). The quantitative analysis included descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, and reliability testing using Cronbach’s alpha, the Mann–Whitney U test, and the Kruskal–Wallis test to explore the associations between perceived park attributes, user satisfaction, and self-reported well-being. The framework was iteratively refined through triangulation via the literature, field evidence, user feedback, and expert judgement, while expert responses were synthesized using weighted mean scores, simple ranking system, and the Relative Importance Index (RII). The findings indicate that shading and thermal comfort, safety, accessibility, maintenance, and cultural alignment are the most important design priorities in the Saudi Arabian context. The empirical assessment also highlights recurrent shortcomings in the selected parks, particularly inadequate heat mitigation measures, inconsistent maintenance, limited recreational infrastructure, and the weak integration of smart support features. Based on this triangulated evidence, the study proposes a framework comprising nine categories, 43 sub-categories, with 137 indicators organized across environmental, socio-cultural, economic, and smart-enabler considerations. The framework provides a practical and context-sensitive tool for evaluating existing parks, prioritizing interventions, and guiding future community park development in support the Quality-of-Life Programme of Saudi Vision 2030. Full article

We perform three-dimensional general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of a near-maximally spinning black hole (spin parameter $a=0.998$) with varying initial magnetic field geometries, systematically exploring the parameter space connecting magnetically arrested disk (MAD), intermediate (INT), and standard and normal evolution (SANE) accretion states. The magnetic flux threading the black hole horizon emerges as the fundamental state variable controlling jet efficiency, flow magnetization, and radiative output across all three states. We introduce complementary diagnostics—broadband spectral energy distributions spanning radio through hard X-ray frequencies and time-resolved X-ray light curves—that together connect simulation dynamics directly to multiwavelength observables. The radiative output follows a clear MAD > INT > SANE hierarchy in time-averaged luminosity, mean X-ray emission, as well as variability. Furthermore, MAD exhibits the highest fractional variability through quasi-periodic magnetic flux eruption events, and INT and SANE show moderate variability driven by episodic reconnection and stochastic MRI turbulence, respectively. Scaling to GRS 1915+105, Cyg X-1, and HLX-1, we demonstrate that all twelve temporal classes of GRS 1915+105 map naturally onto our three magnetic states, Cyg X-1’s persistent hard state is reproduced by a sustained INT configuration, and HLX-1’s extreme luminosities arise through efficient Blandford–Znajek extraction in MAD states scaled to higher black hole mass. Full article

In today’s tourism industry, service quality is essential for differentiation and achieving sustainable competitive advantage. While much research on service quality exists for the private sector, a notable gap remains regarding service dynamics in non-profit public recreational spaces in emerging economies. This study fills that gap by examining service quality (SQ) at National Botanical Gardens (NBGs) in South Africa, focusing on visitor perceptions of SQ importance and performance. Using an adapted Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA) framework, the research explores how visitor expectations compare with actual experiences. A quantitative approach was adopted, with structured questionnaires given to a convenience sample of visitors at key gardens like Pretoria and Walter Sisulu NBGs. Data analysis centred on correlation coefficients to assess the relationship between perceived importance and actual performance. The findings reveal a generally strong, statistically significant positive correlation; however, some attributes show a ‘weak correlation,’ indicating critical service gaps often overlooked by traditional management models. These insights demonstrate that, in natural attraction settings, visitor-perceived importance primarily drives satisfaction with performance. In addition to offering the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) a strategic plan to boost visitor retention, this study advances the academic discussion by challenging existing SQ models within non-profit recreational sectors. It lays a vital empirical groundwork for future research on public-sector service excellence in the Global South. Full article

In the context of global climate change and the green transformation of the tourism industry, low-carbon tourism has emerged as an important topic within the field of sustainable development research. Consequently, there is a pressing need to systematically review and synthesize its knowledge domain. This study utilizes bibliometric analysis, employing CiteSpace, to review 468 articles published in the Web of Science Core Collection from 2010 to 2026, thereby elucidating publication trends, keyword clustering, and research hotspots within the field of low-carbon tourism. Additionally, it employs content analysis to provide an in-depth discussion of the knowledge system in this research area. Key findings are as follows: (1) The number of published papers on low-carbon tourism exhibits a phased growth pattern, with contributions predominantly centered around scholars such as Gössling and institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Moreover, keyword co-occurrence and clustering analyses uncover a development from essential concepts such as low-carbon tourism and climate change to a more extensive range of themes, including carbon emission accounting, tourist behavior, and systemic governance, and research topics have undergone a phased evolution, moving from macro-level cognition to quantitative analysis, and then to systemic governance. (2) The research hotspots encompass five key areas: basic cognition and related concepts, carbon emission accounting methods and applications, factors influencing emissions and assessment frameworks, tourists’ low-carbon behaviors and decision-making mechanisms, and pathways for multi-party collaborative governance. (3) Current research is still facing four challenges, i.e., the absence of a standardized framework for assessing carbon emissions, outdated assessment methods, a disconnect between behaviors and governance, and fragmented governance entities. This indicates that research on low-carbon tourism has progressed beyond the initial macro-level discussions and has entered a critical phase closely linked to substantive governance. Future research needs to focus on deeply exploring the standardization of accounting methods, the development of dynamic assessment models, the design of behavioral intervention mechanisms, and the establishment of multi-level collaborative governance mechanisms. These efforts are essential to provide scientific evidence and practical guidelines for the global tourism industry to achieve neutrality goals. Full article

Marginal land refers to areas where environmental constraints prevent cost-effective production; driven by global energy and food security strategies and greenhouse gas reduction targets, its potential productivity has garnered significant attention. However, macro-level and data-driven knowledge graph analyses remain scarce. Therefore, this study employed VOSviewer, Bibliometrix R, and CiteSpace to conduct a bibliometric analysis of 2535 Web of Science Core Collection documents (1995 to 2025). Findings reveal that: (1) The research is split into four stages—early exploration, fluctuating development, rapid growth, and stable output, peaking at 191 papers in 2021. (2) The collaboration of authors and institutions has reached an initial scale but remains relatively weak, with Lewandowski and the Chinese Academy of Sciences occupying the core of the co-authorship network. The United States (N = 501) ranks as the top-producing country. France (MCP% = 56.8%) leads in international collaboration intensity, and US—China cooperation is the most frequent. (3) Journals primarily focus on environmental science and agronomy, with Global Change Biology Bioenergy leading with 109 publications. (4) Through consolidating core keywords like “marginal lands,” “biomass,” and “productivity” into four perspectives: technological/model interventions, farmer behavioral choices, natural baseline conditions, and theoretical understanding, this study constructs a comprehensive framework to help research become sustainable. Full article

Metaheuristic algorithms can fail to balance global exploration and local exploitation, occasionally becoming trapped in suboptimal regions on highly multimodal problems. The Groupers and Moray Eels (GME) algorithm, inspired by the associative hunting strategies of marine predators, provides a cooperative optimization framework. However, the sequential interaction phases of GME can fail to maintain diverse topological coverage across heavily constrained landscapes. To address these limitations, we propose an enhanced variant, GPS-CC-GME. The approach improves the initial agent distribution by deploying a number-theoretic Good Point Set (GPS) generation protocol to establish a uniformly dispersed starting space. In addition, algorithmic stagnation is addressed through a dual-crossover search architecture. A horizontal crossover stage enforces information sharing among randomized agents to sustain global diversity, and a vertical crossover phase isolates specific dimensional vectors within individual agents for localized fine-tuning. We evaluated the proposed model on the CEC2017 benchmark suite, where it secured the highest overall ranking compared to the baseline GME and several standard metaheuristics. GPS-CC-GME was then applied to a high-dimensional optimization scenario for petroleum reservoir production. The algorithm yielded higher Net Present Value (NPV) metrics than the canonical framework. The results indicate that embedding deterministic initialization and bidirectional mutation operators into multipredator models can improve search outcomes in non-linear engineering tasks. Full article

The stability and health of the ecological environment are the premise of urbanization development, and promoting their coordinated advancement constitutes the goal of sustainable social development. This research employs panel data from 30 Chinese provinces and provincial-level municipalities over the period 2011–2023 to construct a comprehensive evaluation index system for urbanization and ecological environment (U-EE). The coupling coordination degree (CCD) model is used to evaluate the coordinated development level of U-EE. Combining the Dagum–Gini index and decomposition (DGID), the spatial autocorrelation model (SAM) and trend surface analysis (TSA), the evolution characteristics and changing trends of the U-EE coordination degree (D-UEE) in both time and space are explored. It is found that, first of all, the CCD model results show that D-UEE is not high overall, yet exhibits a consistent year-on-year upward trend. Secondly, the DGID results show that the intra-group differences among the four regions—namely, the eastern, central, western and northeastern regions—are decreasing year by year, among which the eastern region has the largest difference and the northeastern region has the smallest difference. In terms of inter-group differences, the east–west disparity is the largest, whereas the central–northeast difference is the smallest. Thirdly, the global Moran’s index (GMI) results show that D-UEE presents significant spatial aggregation distribution characteristics and there is a positive correlation phenomenon. Fourthly, from the perspective of the local Moran’s index (LMI), most of the regions are concentrated in the first and third quadrants, corresponding to HH and LL types, exhibiting significant positive spatial autocorrelation and clustering patterns characterized by spatial homogeneity. Fifthly, the results of TSA show that the spatial distribution of D-UEE is high in the eastern and low in the western regions, and high in the southern and low in the northern regions. Through analysis of the results, it is evident that the intra-regional gap in the country is narrowing, but the east–west gap is still the most important reason for spatial differentiation. There are still some incoordination issues between the U-EE systems, but they are continuously improving and moving in a positive direction. Full article

Industrial parks serve as critical nodes in urban energy consumption and carbon emissions, posing substantial challenges to sustainable urban development. Yet existing research lacks systematic investigation into the synergistic effects of industrial restructuring, spatial configuration, and policy instruments on sustainability outcomes. This study addresses this gap by proposing and empirically exploring a “three-dimensional collaborative paradigm” encompassing the industry, space, and policy dimensions. Through comparative analysis of six low-carbon pilot parks and three traditional high-carbon parks, the researchers employed a carbon flow topology network accounting framework integrated with exploratory association analysis to examine emissions reduction mechanisms. The results indicate that parks implementing coordinated strategies across all three dimensions demonstrate substantially lower emission intensities compared to those pursuing single-dimensional approaches. Industrial symbiosis networks, spatial compactness through transit-oriented development, and integrated policy packages emerge as critical success factors for enhancing park-level sustainability. The study identifies industrial restructuring as a potential prerequisite for effective spatial transformation, with temporal sequencing playing a possible role in optimization outcomes. Given the limited sample size (n = 9) and the exploratory design, all findings should be interpreted as hypothesis-generating rather than confirmatory. The synergistic mechanisms exhibit contextual variations across different park types and climatic conditions. This study’s primary contribution is the development of an integrated conceptual framework and a practical carbon accounting methodology; the empirical findings are illustrative and intended to guide future confirmatory research. Full article

Against the backdrop of rapid urbanization, high-density living environments and fast-paced lifestyles have seriously undermined people’s physical and mental health. Urban recreation has become a prevalent way for people to relieve daily stress and achieve psychological restoration. However, few studies have explored the influencing mechanisms of urban recreational experience scenes on psychological restoration from the scenes’ perspective. This study establishes a dimensional indicator system for urban recreational experience scenes. Based on 571 valid questionnaires, structural equation modeling (SEM) is adopted to empirically examine the influencing mechanism of the five dimensions of urban recreational experience scenes on recreationists’ psychological restoration. The results indicate that all five dimensions of urban recreational experience scenes exert a significant positive effect on place attachment. The social symbolism dimension and experiential activity dimension have salient positive impacts on psychological restoration. Place attachment greatly facilitates psychological restoration and plays a mediating role between the five dimensions of recreation experience scenes and psychological restoration. Additionally, individual attributes present a significant moderating effect in the relationships between the social dimension, experiential activity dimension and psychological restoration. This research breaks through the limitations of traditional natural recreation studies and clarifies the transmission path from urban recreational experience scenes to psychological restoration. It not only enriches and expands the existing theories of tourism experience scenes, but also provides theoretical references for optimizing urban recreational spaces and promoting the healthy and sustainable development of cities. Full article