7564 research outputs found
Sort by
Digital platform capabilities and circular economy: impact of customer green pressure on frugal innovative strategies
Full text linkManufacturing entities in emerging economies face significant obstacles implementing circular economy principles due to resource‐constrained environments. Arguably, manufacturers need customer green pressure to propel the circular economy, alongside frugal innovative strategies. There is a dearth of research on digital platform (DP) capabilities, customer green pressure, and frugal innovative strategies with circular economy. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, 889 manufacturers were surveyed in the emerging economy of India. Customer green pressure moderation was assessed on the links between frugal innovative strategies and circular economy, DP integration capabilities and frugal innovation, and DP reconfiguration capabilities and frugal innovative strategies. Structural equation modelling revealed that DP integration and reconfiguration capabilities positively influence frugal innovation strategies enabling circular economy performance. Customer green pressure positively moderated DP reconfiguration and frugal innovative strategies. Actionable insights are provided to prioritize DP capability development to satisfy customer green pressure and promote frugal innovative strategies, ultimately facilitating the circular economy
Community action: an architecture and design pedagogy
Full text linkAs architectural educators interested in community engagement and learning about everyday practices in the city, we recognize that teaching community engagement in a practical rather than abstract way is key. This paper presents community-engaged architecture and design pedagogy as potential methods for informing the shift in the role of the architect from top-down to ground-up. This paper presents the author’s pedagogical experimentation based on 25 years of teaching live projects in socially engaged architecture and activism. It describes how a pedagogy combining architecture and activism resulted in the development of an interdisciplinary commons curriculum. The curricula aimed to increase the influence of design practitioners in the development of deliberatively democratic neighborhoods by creating new design practices and outputs. Teaching the political role of the architect from the ground-up rather than from the traditional top-down perspective is challenging, as only a few historical case studies can legitimize and inform its development. This paper describes the content of two pedagogical formats. The ‘Architecture and Activism’ postgraduate architecture and design studio and the following ‘Design for Cultural Commons’ interdisciplinary design postgraduate program. They were both designed to have real-world influence. The ‘Design for Cultural Commons’ postgraduate program enabled the development of a curriculum ranging from modules in social science, art and politics to systems thinking, which is required knowledge for complex neighborhood practices. The city was used as a field of study to discover new knowledge through students’ community engagements. Various theoretical frameworks were employed to develop new forms of emancipatory pedagogy, helping the author unlearn the norms of conventional architectural education. The practice of recalibrating architectural canons and values into a common-based curriculum development is discussed through the framing of learning commons
Cut & paste contraptions: exploring the power of mobile collage and in-situ creativity
Full text link‘The currency of contemporary reportage drawing is in its proximity to its subject’ (Netter, 1994)
Illustration and image-making have a rich heritage of documentation of people and spaces within locations. From the French En plein air ‘outdoors’ in situ painting method to the informative authority of reportage illustration. Through exploration of my practice, collage, I have sought to develop a small self-made portable collage kit. A phone camera, thermal printer (which facilitates the machine-aided illustration providing the live printed materials), chinagraph pencil, glue, scissors, and mini sketchbook. Alongside a self-made contraption to hold all these items which facilitates the ability to work with the kit in an efficient way. Whilst there is in-depth writing into drawing I suggest more research into portable collage would be beneficial for practitioners and through this poster I will contrast my kit with other portable image-making kits and technology exploring historical and contemporary apparatuses. For example, illustrating machines such as portable printmaking kits, underwater drawing kits, and self-made contraptions and gizmos like the drawing boards used by the reportage illustrator Harry Morgan. Examining my own unique use of the kit through autoethnography alongside idiographic practice analysis of how a range of other illustrators and image-makers have used it, this poster explores how the process of using portable making kits results in a special kind of creative capability and outcome
Editorial: Spirituality and religion: implications for mental health
Full text linkSpirituality and religion (S/R) have been central to human experience for centuries, providing frameworks for understanding life's purpose, coping with adversity, and fostering connections with oneself, others and the divine. Yet, it is only in recent years that empirical research has begun to systematically pay attention to these domains and recognize them as integral to understanding the full spectrum of human psychological experience. Furthermore, while in the past the integration of these constructs into psychological research primarily focused on philosophical debates, recent scholarship has recognized the relevance of these dimensions in shaping mental health outcomes worldwide (Mueller et al., 2001; Koenig, 2009; NAMI, 2016; PT, 2010). As such, increased scholarly attention has been given to the intersection between spirituality, religion, and mental health, acknowledging both the potential benefits, and challenges
Interval valued intuitionistic fuzzy digraph matrix approach with PERMAN algorithm for measuring COVID-19 impact on perishable food supply chains
Full text linkThe outbreak of COVID-19 has prompted a substantial shrinkage in various businesses worldwide, the perishable food sector being one of the worst hits. Henceforth, this manuscript intends to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on perishable food supply chains (PFSC) of developed and developing countries. For this, the study presents the analysis in two steps. In the first step, the study illuminates the particular factors that frame unique sorts of supply chain (SC) disturbances in PFSC. Secondly, the study proposes a unique interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) based graph theory and matrix approach (GTMA) to analyse the COVID-19 impact index value. In addition to this, the PERMAN algorithm is used to calculate the permanent function. The study has revealed that developing nations should focus more on their technological and infrastructural factors to improve the condition of PFSC during the pandemic. This study’s results can be deployed by decision-makers to forestall the operative and long-haul consequences of COVID-19, or any other disruptions to the PFSC, and make plans to overcome the impact. The significance of this manuscript is that the prominent factors degrading the performance of PFSC amidst the pandemic have been highlighted, with their respective impact on developed and developing nations compared. Moreover, a neoteric comprehensive integration of IVIFS-GTMA technique along with the PERMAN algorithm has been utilised in this manuscript. This particular study is inimitable as it supplements existing literature by providing analytical support to the relationship among various factors impacting the PFSC amidst the pandemic
Applying artificial intelligence in healthcare: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in global healthcare systems and highlighted the need for innovative, technology-driven solutions like Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, previous research on the topic has been limited and fragmented, leading to an incomplete understanding of the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ of its application, as well as its associated benefits and challenges. This study proposes a comprehensive AI framework for healthcare and assesses its effectiveness within the UAE’s healthcare sector. It provides valuable insights into AI applications for healthcare stakeholders that range from the molecular to the population level. The study covers the different computational techniques employed, from machine learning to computer vision, and the various types of data inputs fed into these techniques, including clinical, epidemiological, locational, behavioural and genomic data. Additionally, the research highlights AI’s capacity to enhance healthcare’s operational, quality-related and social outcomes, and recognises regulatory policies, technological infrastructure, stakeholder cooperation and innovation readiness as key facilitators of AI adoption. Lastly, we stress the importance of addressing challenges such as data privacy, security, generalisability and algorithmic bias. Our findings are relevant beyond the pandemic in facilitating the development of AI-related policy interventions and support mechanisms for building resilient healthcare sector that can withstand future challenges
Reinforcement learning for an efficient and effective malware investigation during cyber Incident response
Full text linkThe ever-escalating prevalence of malware is a serious cybersecurity threat, often requiring advanced post-incident forensic investigation techniques. This paper proposes a framework to enhance malware forensics by leveraging reinforcement learning (RL). The approach combines heuristic and signaturebased methods, supported by RL through a unified MDP model,
which breaks down malware analysis into distinct states and actions. This optimisation enhances the identification and classification of malware variants. The framework employs Q-learning and other techniques to boost the speed and accuracy of detecting new and unknown malware, outperforming traditional methods. We tested the experimental framework across multiple virtual environments infected with various malware types. The RL agent collected forensic evidence and improved its performance through
Q-tables and temporal difference learning. The epsilon-greedy exploration strategy, in conjunction with Q-learning updates, effectively facilitated transitions. The learning rate depended on the complexity of the MDP environment: higher in simpler ones for quicker convergence and lower in more complex ones for stability. This RL-enhanced model significantly reduced the time required for post-incident malware investigations, achieving a high accuracy rate of 94% in identifying malware. These results indicate RL’s potential to revolutionise post-incident forensics investigations in cybersecurity. Future work will incorporate more advanced RL algorithms and large language models (LLMs) to further enhance the effectiveness of malware forensic analysis
Adjustment to atopic dermatitis: a cross-sectional study investigating the role of maladaptive self-schemas in a community sample of people with atopic dermatitis
No full textBackground:
Studies have demonstrated variability in adjustment to atopic dermatitis (AD).
Objectives:
The present study investigated whether adjustment to AD is mediated by psychological (maladaptive schemas/personality) or condition-only factors (age at onset) in a community sample.
Methods:
A cross-sectional design was employed with two groups: a) early onset of AD (n = 74) and b) late onset (n = 76). All groups completed the Young Schema Questionnaire (Short Form 3) and the Adjustment to Chronic Skin Disease Questionnaire.
Results:
There were no significant differences in adjustment levels between the two groups. Both groups presented with poor adjustment levels specifically on the itch-scratch, helplessness and anxious-depressive mood factors. Poor adjustment levels were predicted by maladaptive schemas and not by age of onset of AD.
Conclusions:
Findings highlight and support that adjustment and coping with AD is strongly linked and predicted by core psychological factors such as maladaptive schemas. Understanding schema-level cognitions and offering interventions that can address them might prevent further life impairment and improve overall adjustment to AD
3rd order coupled-resonator bandpass filter assisted by Groove Gap-Waveguide technology for 26-GHz radio link diplexer
Full text linkThis paper investigates the design of a bandpass filter (BPF) intended for 26-GHz radio-link diplexer using Groove-Gap-Waveguide (GGW) technology. Its unit-cells consist of a rectangular metal-pin which is connected to a bottom metal plate and its other side is electromagnetically coupled to a top plate with an air-gap of approximately λ/4 that creates a bandgap, preventing unwanted electromagnetic-wave propagation. An array of these unit-cells forms a cavity resonator, allowing wave propagation over a specific conductive region. To achieve the desired passband response, a rectangular slot-channel is milled on the bottom metal plate, perturbing the cavity modes and creating the desired filter characteristics
‘Welcome to favelas, but in Italy’: urban precariousness, right-wing ideology and phatic nihilism on social media
Full text linkNumerous social media projects have depicted grim scenes of urban life in big cities. By exploiting crime or garbage collection problems, for example, these pages have created pessimistic ways of perceiving the city and engaging citizens in search of memes or viral videos. This research invested in two multiplatform projects based in Italy, Welcome to Favelas and Simone Cicalone, to verify their inclination to specific ideologies or political intent behind interventions on social media. Using visual metadata and LDA-generated topics, this paper anchors a visual and critical discourse analysis interested in mapping creators’ phatic strategies. Exploratory results suggest a few formulaic, though elliptic, ways of manipulating audiences for crypto-ideological purposes mainly leaning to the right, theorised here as phatic nihilism