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The article focuses on the importance of assessing interactional competence in a second language (L2). It mentions that addressed in the papers are the challenges of linking empirical and conceptual progress in L2 assessment and second language acquisition research, particularly in testing interactional competence, which is a complex task. It highlights that interactional competence is conceptualized as the systematic procedures used by speakers to accomplish actions during interactions.

• Four aspects of linguistic indices, lexical complexity, cohesion, syntactic complexity, and readability, were adopted to comprehensively analyze the writing styles of IS-LS researchers. • As the discipline develops, papers' abstracts carry more information and become less accessible to readers, while the way to narrate the research has barely changed. • Considerable linguistic variations emerged between subfields in the IS-LS domain, particularly at the lexical level. • Abstracts published in top quartile journals had higher lexical density, content word sophistication, cohesion, and readability. • Lexical density, sophistication, and readability reveal the evolution of research content; cohesion indicates writing quality; and lexical diversity and syntactic complexity measure writing habits. To some extent, written academic discourse represents the knowledge and practices of the academic community. Studies investigating writing styles in various disciplines have flourished, but fewer studies have leveraged multi-perspective linguistic indices to analyze academic writings, especially in the information science and library science (IS-LS) domain. This study attempts to provide an overview of how writing styles have evolved over the past 30 years across various subfields in IS-LS from multiple perspectives, that is, lexical complexity, cohesion, syntactic complexity, and readability. Based on a large set of abstracts of academic papers published in IS-LS, the empirical findings showed that the readability, cohesion, and lexical sophistication of abstracts in the IS-LS domain have increased over time, indicating that abstracts tend to contain more information but become less accessible. The gradual improvement in cohesion suggests that academic writing logic has increased, and the rigor of knowledge construction of scientific papers has improved. Furthermore, considerable linguistic variations emerged between subfields in the IS-LS domain, particularly at the lexical level. This study suggested that different subfields had various writing styles due to their research topics, methodologies, orientations, etc. The study also found that papers published in top quartile journals and those that gained higher citations typically had larger lexical density, lexical sophistication, cohesion, and readability. This suggests that influential papers tend to carry more information, address more complex scientific issues, and exercise caution in knowledge construction and presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the population dynamics in generalized rock-paper-scissors models with an arbitrary number of species Ν. We show that spiral patterns with Ν arms may develop both for odd and even N, in particular in models where a bidirectional prédation interaction of equal strength between all species is modified to include one -cyclic predator-prey rule. While the former case gives rise to an interface network with Y-type junctions obeying the scaling law L ∝ t1/2, where L is the characteristic length of the network and t is the time, the latter can lead to a population network with N-armed spiral patterns, having a roughly constant characteristic length scale. We explicitly demonstrate the connection between interface junctions and spiral patterns in these models and compute the corresponding scaling laws. This work significantly extends the results of previous studies of population dynamics and could have profound implications for the understanding of biological complexity in systems with a large number of species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Semantic Link Network is a general semantic model for modeling the structure and the evolution of complex systems. Various semantic links play different roles in rendering the semantics of complex system. One of the basic semantic links represents cause-effect relation, which plays an important role in representation and understanding. This paper verifies the role of the Semantic Link Network in representing the core of text by investigating the contribution of cause-effect link to representing the core of scientific papers. Research carries out with the following steps: (1) Two propositions on the contribution of cause-effect link in rendering the core of paper are proposed and verified through a statistical survey, which shows that the sentences on cause-effect links cover about 65% of key words within each paper on average. (2) An algorithm based on syntactic patterns is designed for automatically extracting cause-effect link from scientific papers, which recalls about 70% of manually annotated cause-effect links on average, indicating that the result adapts to the scale of data sets. (3) The effects of cause-effect link on four schemes of incorporating cause-effect link into the existing instances of the Semantic Link Network for enhancing the summarization of scientific papers are investigated. The experiments show that the quality of the summaries is significantly improved, which verifies the role of semantic links. The significance of this research lies in two aspects: (1) it verifies that the Semantic Link Network connects the important concepts to render the core of text; and, (2) it provides an evidence for realizing content services such as summarization, recommendation and question answering based on the Semantic Link Network, and it can inspire relevant research on content computing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world tries to grapple with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are concerns about the revivals of economies across the globe. The world is also trying to make sense of global restructuring trade, which is expected in the post-COVID-19 world. This paper attempts to analyze the emerging trade scenario between India and China. Atlas of Economic Complexity theory (ACE) by Ricardo Hausmann, Cesar A. Hidalgo has been taken as a base for this research. This study propagates that the countries with products that require more know-how have more potential to grow. Taking the Atlas map giving details of Indian exports as a base, the researchers have compared the data from the last two years. The purpose is to identify whether the complexity of Indian exports is increasing or not. A particular case study has been done on Indian exports to China. There has been little progress in this field as India is exporting more complex products slightly to China. There is an urgent need to formulate a strategy to enhance the complexity of Indian exports. The policymakers need to give impetus to the industries which have a cross-cultural demand in China and leverage this opportunity. This will open the path for consolidating India's position in the global trade as well as improving its strategic position vis-a-vis China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper emerged from a workshop presented at the ANZTSR conference in Sydney 2016, and from a series of workshops leading to that conference. The purpose of the paper is to adopt a transdisciplinary perspective, and so encourage a broader discussion of where the third sector fits within current political and economic trends, and within the even broader environmental crisis in which we find ourselves, often identified as the Anthropocene,'the Age of Humans'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior advances in systems engineering (SE) theory were instrumental in defining the discipline and its tools, but are limited in perspective. The SE community needs new theoretical advances to address its existing and emerging sociotechnical challenges. This communication paper is a product of an NSF/SERC/INCOSE funded workshop on theory building in SE with a focus on the use of abstraction and elaboration. The overarching goals of the workshop were twofold. First, to illustrate the nuances and complexities of the theory building process with an emphasis on developing theory about the SE discipline rather than about a particular system of interest. The second goal was to stimulate a new wave of SE theory by providing a set of frames that could be used for formal theory articulation in follow‐up research. The workshop focused on abstraction and elaboration due to their richness and pervasiveness in SE and investigated the concept in two interrelated contexts: (a) the social coordination of design teams and (b) its strategic use during system design. For each research context, we offer a structured guideline for theorizing, and provide an understanding and framing of some of the generalized abstraction and elaboration uses in SE. Research frames articulated in this workshop could serve as the first step for future research on SE theory, which necessitates hypotheses generation, data collection, validation, and refinement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including Academic Papers, Blogs, Dissertations, and Publications.

In this paper, we present the view that an ontological shift to complexity thinking will be significant in the future of physical education (PE). Complexity thinking not only moves PE beyond long dominant modernist approaches but also offers the opportunity to integrate many of the postmodern perspectives that currently seek to frame PE. Four interconnected complexity commonalities, becoming, lived time, self-organisation and boundaries, are presented in an overarching frame to guide future PE developments in ways that are coherent, connected and emergent. PE is subsequently viewed as a complex phenomenon that is always in a non-linear, messy and never-ending process of becoming. Students, teachers and other stakeholders are also complex as their past, present and future experiences constantly merge in a lived time unity to create lifelong and life-wide PE journeys that are both personalised and holistic. Central to these personalised journeys is each stakeholder's ability to self-organise and influence the trajectory of their pathways. Self-organisation, however, is not a relativist 'anything goes' phenomenon but a process that takes place within a multiplicity of boundaries. While boundaries may traditionally be viewed as divisive features, complexity thinking recognises that many boundaries are flexible and enable the creation of 'boundary spaces' in which 'rich' discussions can take place to develop more coherent, connected and emergent forms of PE. Transdisciplinary Inquiry (TDI) and Ecologically Informed Practice (EIP) are presented as perspectives that can help teachers, and others, create the 'boundary spaces' in which ways to plan and introduce complexity-informed forms of PE can be explored. The paper concludes by proposing that the challenge for PE in the future will be for practitioners to develop the adaptability, openness, confidence and self-organising skills that will be needed to make the most effective use of the 'rich interactions' that these 'boundary spaces' offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multirepeat in a string is a substring (factor) that appears a predefined number of times. A multirepeat is maximal if it cannot be extended either to the right or to the left and produce a multirepeat. In this paper, we present algorithms for two different versions of the problem of finding maximal multirepeats in a set of strings. In the case of arbitrary gaps, we propose an algorithm with O(σN2n + α) time complexity. When the gap is bounded in a small range c, we propose an algorithm with O((c2 + σ2)mN2n log(Nn) + α) time complexity. Here, N is the number of strings, n the mean length of each string, m the multiplicity of the multirepeat and α the number of reported occurrences. Our results extend previous work by considering sets of strings as well as by generalizing pairs to multirepeats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper presents a position statement of the Dutch Working Group of Transcatheter Heart Valve Interventions that describes which patients with aortic stenosis should be considered for transcatheter aortic valve implantation and how this treatment proposal/decision should be made. Given the complexity of the disease and the assessment of its severity, in particular in combination with the continuous emergence of new clinical insights and evidence from physiological and randomised clinical studies plus the introduction of novel innovative treatment modalities, the gatekeeper of the treatment proposal/decision and, thus, of qualification for cost reimbursement is the heart team, which consists of dedicated professionals working in specialised centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, scholars have applied network science, which examines interconnected systems, to the study of food recipes. By examining the current literature, this review paper analyses the contribution of network science to recipes, and finds evidence of two main contributions. First, the pioneer studies showed the potential of network science for reducing the complexity of recipes and proposing theories to model ingredient pairings and recipe evolution. The second contribution built upon the previous theories and expanded them to cover different regions of the world as the field moved towards understanding the granularity of human culture with rich and detailed studies that examine different cuisines as more recipe datasets became available. Network science studies of recipes allowed researchers to discover insights in recipes to explain sociocultural aspects of cuisines, and include large numbers of recipes in the analysis, which would be nearly impossible using other techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the article about Carl Jung's complex theory and transcendental function titled "An Added Degree of Complexity", by Aime Agnel. Question on what is the first degree of complexity referred to in the paper; Clarification of some points about the complexity theory.

Inclusive education is a fundamental right of all students. Despite international policy initiatives, educational exclusion is pervasive, especially in the Global South, and disproportionately affects disabled students. Barriers to inclusive education have been itemised in the literature, but in this conceptual paper that offers a novel perspective on the topic, we argue for a complexity approach to understand its evolution. Using a qualitative deductive content analysis of South African laws, policies, reports and scholarly literature, we explore three path dependencies from colonial/apartheid times that lock the country into historical patterns of categorisation and segregated schooling. These operate alongside the emergence of new and inclusive practices by actors at a system-wide and local level, made possible by inputs into the policy ecology. South Africa represents a complex, contradictory educational environment that confounds the expectation of linear progression towards greater inclusivity. Instead of identifying barriers to inclusive education, we argue for a nuanced understanding of the imbrications of historical investments and drivers of inequality, with policy possibilities and the impetus for transformation among system actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of research on the integration of emergence theory and complex systems, value emergence has become a new model of value creation in green innovation ecosystems. Exploring the research status of green innovation ecosystems from the perspective of value emergence has become a research hotspot in the field of management science. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to use bibliometric methods, explore the current research status of green innovation ecosystems from the perspective of value emergence, and, more importantly, provide a future direction for the integration of emergence theory into complex systems. In this paper, a search was conducted in the Web of Science and CNKI databases, with a time limit from 2009 to May 2023, and through further screening, 159 articles were collected, and CiteSpace software (CiteSpace.6.3.R1) was used for visualizing and exploring bibliometric networks. This study innovatively introduce the value emergence perspective in the context of green innovation ecosystems. The basic interaction, dynamic promotion, and feedback loop of value emergence are taken as the research framework, and the generation mechanism and dynamic evolution of the green innovation ecosystem are analyzed. Finally, three prospects for future research are presented: How do green innovation entities generate basic resources? How do digital transformation and dynamic capabilities promote emerging value? How do internal models and external identifiers promote feedback loops? This paper is highly important for promoting theoretical exploration in the field of green innovation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s when the possibility of a network approach in translation studies (TS) was noted, social network analysis (SNA) has been applied to explore the relational complexity of various translational agents in practical, industrial, academic, and educational settings. Through a systematic review, this paper shows that SNA's major contributions to TS have been mainly in areas of translation history, translation economy, translation scientometrics, translation education, and online collaborative translation. It also identifies how SNA has adapted to and complemented other methodological and theoretical approaches in TS under two paradigms, i.e., explanatory structuralist and exploratory complex paradigms. In light of the review, strengths and weakness of these paradigms are discussed, and suggestions are provided for further research on their confluence, which is characterized by a less reductionist analytic model with appropriate explanatory power in a closer symbiosis between complexity theory and SNA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the research on successful school principalship carried out in England over the last 20 years. Drawing on evidence synthesized from the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) and related English school leadership research conducted by ISSPP scholars, this review aims to answer a conceptual research question: How do the principalship's moral purposes and contextual understanding shape the time-sensitive, informed adoption of combinations and accumulations of strategies that lead to sustained school success? This paper identifies five research insights derived from case studies in England and elaborates on the complex, values-led layered web of interactions between the school principal and key stakeholders within and outside the school in the context of frequent social changes and policy interventions in England. Whilst the pace has been greater and more intense than in many other countries, the direction has been, and remains, similar. The body of scholarship here reviewed engages with national policies as filtered and then enacted by successful principals. While 'effective' principals lead to students' success as measured by performance on national tests and examinations, our focus is upon an empirically founded definition of 'successful' school leadership that is located in complexity theory and encompasses the enactment of the core purposes of education that include but go beyond the functional. In doing so, it avoids 'what to do' formulae and the limitations of certain theoretical 'leadership' models, finding that successful school leaders' work embodies a broader humanistic view of student learning and achievement, which implies the preordinance of the personal over the functional. Taken together, these research insights contribute to the ISSPP's continued effort to refine and advance the knowledge base of successful school leadership within and across different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper introduces a conceptual lens for leading social change in slums and informal settlements. In line with this aim, the purpose of this case study is to describe the public problem-solving approach of a social change organization situated in an informal settlement through the lens of adaptive leadership, complexity theory and social change leadership (SCL). Design/methodology/approach: This paper follows an engaged reflection tradition. First, the author-practitioners describe an informal settlement case hereafter called ISC in southeast Iran where many people have historically remained undocumented and uneducated. Using complex adaptive systems theory, adaptive leadership and SCL as the conceptual lens, the paper analyzes ISC as a complex adaptive context in which the community and the government are in tension in solving problems, particularly illiteracy. The instrumental case study draws from participant observation and document analysis to describe and examine the endeavors of a community office operating within ISC. Through this reflective analysis, the authors illustrate how a social change organization can effectively tackle public issues like illiteracy within informal settlements. Findings: This paper applies complexity leadership theory to a social context. The study illustrates how social change organizations can support the transformation of informal spaces into adaptive spaces to enact social change. Originality/value: This paper reflects on engagement activity near the insecure borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By extending an organizational-level theory to the public sphere, this paper contributes theoretically to the complexity theory literature. Moreover, it provides a practical insight for community development and slum upgrading projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suicide has become a pressing public health issue facing university students in South Africa. It is within this context that we invite submissions for a Special Section of an Issue in the I South African Journal of Psychology i on depression and suicide in university students. This Special Section welcomes manuscripts related to depression and suicide assessment, prevention, and intervention. [Extracted from the article]

Through analysis and discussion of basic systemic properties of a rural municipality, this paper explores how aggregating data in planning and land use modeling can potentially obscure intricate real-world behavior. Complexity theory is applied as a theoretical framework for explaining this hypothesis. Thus, the aim of this study is to address the author's desire to understand systemic complexity when designing a data-driven decision-making model for rural planning. The novelty of this approach is two-fold: one, most studies on scalability issues in planning addresses spatial complexity, more so than systemic complexity within the complex system that the very act of planning strives to dictate. Two, although delimited to the scope of the study, the accessibility to and use of complete and valid socio-demographic data enables a rarely demonstrated accurate representation of an entire population. It is ultimately observed that on the disaggregated municipal level, systemic dispersion increases parallelly with population size, a correlation that is significantly influenced by gender ratio in any given parish – a characteristic that was not visible at the aggregated municipal level. In addition to advancing the understanding and placement of complexity science within spatial data science, these insights will make it easier to assess the generalizability of any given administrative unit by quantifying basic complexity attributes; in this case based on the correlation dispersion caused by the fragmentation of a municipality into its comprising parishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the curators of science and technology collections represent the daily realities of doing science? Through the acquisition of Professor Stephen Hawking's office by the Science Museum, this paper will explore what is involved in making major acquisitions for national collections. How do curators consider what to preserve from the eclectic range of items found in the working spaces of scientists? What do the personal artefacts of a scientist's life represent, and what do acts of curatorial choices say about the narratives that are foregrounded -- and those that are not -- in positioning that life historically? And how do those choices illuminate the considerations involved in the way science and technology is represented in our national collections? By going beyond the glass case, we consider what it takes to bring an object into a collection: the intellectual considerations of how its stories are preserved for a nation and the practical considerations required so that items can even be considered for future display. The paper illuminates the formal and informal networks around scientists' collections, and the processes and judgements that science and technology curators make every day when choosing what could be important for defining our history. Using the Stephen Hawking office as a case study the article explores the representation of scientific practice in museum collections, the relationship of some collections with celebrity and disability, and some of the challenges posed by science and technology acquisitions compared to other types of museum object. The paper explores how knowledge is generated in museum collections, through the act of acquiring a new collection. It asks fundamental questions, which are essential to the fields of museology and science and technology studies, about the contribution to knowledge made by personal scientific objects. It goes beyond the study of collections as artefacts of display in exhibitions and galleries, providing a detailed analysis of a routine but oftenneglected aspect of behind-the-scenes museum work: the acquisition of a collection. Arguing that a large and complex collection is a vital tool for understanding the complexity of science, the paper uses the 'museum as method' (Thomas, 2016) which prioritises simple curatorial questions and the use of the objects in exploration; this enables scholars and curators to respond to material evidence of scientific knowledge, and identify narratives that are prioritised, and others that are obscured, in the historic record. In doing so, it suggests that curators are uniquely placed to provide insights into the roles of human and non-human actors in the construction of scientific knowledge, demonstrating how the Hawking collection allows us to explore the nature of scientific practice, the creation of scientific celebrity, and the potential to give visibility to disability within the history of science whilst de-centring the myth of the scientific genius in museum narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the influence of past citations ki on papers' attachment rate Π(k, t) and propose a method to consider these influences by assigning different weights to ki. The correlation r between Π(k, t) and ki decrease rapidly with time, which suggests the different influences of past citations on the preferential attachment in citation networks. According to the different influences of ki on Π(k, t), we put different weights to ki and find a good linear dependence between Π(k, t) and the weighted past citations in three actual citation networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental results show that the edge detection method of the crater proposed in this paper is better than other edge detection methods; compared with other crater detection methods, the proposed method has higher detection accuracy and more correct detection rate. In the paper entitled 'A novel color image encryption based on fractional order Lorenz system' by S. Li et al., we have a novel colour image encryption algorithm is proposed based on the fractional order Lorenz system. Since the node information of a complex network is always not fully available, state estimation technique becomes an important tool to estimate the desired node information through the received measurement outputs. The high precision mechanical sensors are used to install on the rotating shaft in the traditional methods, occupied the space and increased system cost and the mechanical sensors are easily affected by the environment, reduced the measurement accuracy and system stability. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Theory & Practice of Second Language Acquisition is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyses the disruptions occurring in a production system determining the operating states of a single machine. A system with a convergent production character, in which both single flows (streams) and multi-stream flows occur, was considered. In this paper, a two-level formalisation of the production system (PS) was made according to complex systems theory. The continuity analysis was performed at the operational level (manufacturing machine level). The definition of the kth survival value and the quasi-coherence property defined on chains of synchronous relations were used to determine the impact of interruption of the processed material flow on uninterrupted machine operation. The developed methodology is presented in terms of shaping the energy efficiency of technical objects with the highest power demand (the furnace of an automatic paint shop and the furnace of a glass tempering line were taken into consideration). The proposed methodology is used to optimise energy consumption in complex production structures. The model presented is utilitarian in nature—it can be applied to any technical system where there is randomness of task execution times and randomness of unplanned events. This paper considers the case in which two mutually independent random variables determining the duration of correct operation T P and the duration of breakdown T B are determined by a given distribution: Gaussian and Gamma family distributions (including combinations of exponential and Erlang distributions). A formalised methodology is also developed to determine the stability of system operation, as well as to assess the potential risk for arbitrary system evaluation parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a book titled "De mundi recentioribus phænomenis: Cosmologie et science dans l'Europe des Temps modernes, XV e – XVII e siècles" edited by Mehl, Pantin, and Granada. The book is a collection of papers presented at a conference held to honor Miguel Ángel Granada on his 70th birthday. The papers cover a wide range of topics related to the history of early modern philosophy and science, including celestial novelties, the Scientific Revolution, and the works of Kepler. The volume highlights Granada's contributions to the field and offers new insights into the interconnectedness of European and Islamicate science during this period. The article discusses a collection of essays that explore various aspects of Johannes Kepler's work and philosophy. The essays cover topics such as Kepler's interpretation of Platonic polyhedrons, his hypotheses about solar inhabitants and the solar mind, and the understanding of Kepler's astronomy and philosophy by philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The collection also includes unpublished letters from Kepler and his circle, shedding light on his personal and professional life. The volume reflects the complexity of the Scientific Revolution and the broader history of science, highlighting the circulation of ideas across Europe. [Extracted from the article]

This paper reviews the use of game theory tools to study the operation and design of modern power grids. The contribution of this work is to summarize the literature to highlight the versatile solution capability of game theory by focusing on the interconnected objectives of energy trading and energy management. This review was conducted with a focus on various applications in energy systems, including general energy markets, micro grids (MGs), virtual power plants (VPP), electric vehicles (EVs), and smart homes, and explores how game theory can summarize the solutions for pricing, bidding, demand side management, and resource optimization. A key finding is the suitability of game theory for modeling decentralized energy systems where strategic incentives can lead to outcomes that benefit both individuals and society. It also discusses the limitations, challenges, and potential benefits of game theory in complex power systems. This study provides researchers and policy makers with a comprehensive overview of current research and insights into the potential of game theory to shape the future of energy systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Content and Focus: Counselling psychologists offer their services to clients in organisational, political and economic contexts that are characterised by increasing levels of complexity, uncertainty and turbulence. Investigating the effectiveness of what we do remains critical to the future of the psychology professions, but our traditional approaches to scientific enquiry may not be adequate for the types of dilemma generated by complexity. Conclusions: This paper describes a framework, adapted from contemporary complexity theory, that can support us in thinking systematically and creatively about the range of investigative skills we might need if professional practice is to prove fit for purpose in the decades to come. It is proposed that complexity theory can assist us in responding creatively to the dilemmas of living and working in unprecedented times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the reader-oriented approaches to literary theory through the perspectives of Norman Holland and Wolfgang Iser, focusing on their theories of reader-text interaction. Holland, drawing from psychoanalytic theory, emphasizes the role of the reader's unconscious mind and psychological experiences in shaping the reading process. Through his transactive theory, he argues that readers project their identity issues onto the text, influencing their interpretations. Iser, on the other hand, adopts a phenomenological approach, highlighting the reader's active engagement with the text and the interplay between their expectations and the text's structures. His concepts, such as the implied reader and the wandering viewpoint, underscore the dynamic nature of meaning-making during reading. Despite their differences, both theorists challenge text-oriented approaches, emphasizing the vital role of the reader in creating meaning. This comparative analysis aims at enriching the understanding of reader-oriented literary theory and underscores the complexity of reader-text interaction in the process of interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic Pattern Synthesis (DPS) provides a new longitudinal method for evaluating the impacts of macroeconomic and public policy interventions. Situated within complexity theory and critical realism, it has evolved from the established methods of Cluster Analysis and Configurational Modelling approaches. Dynamic Pattern Synthesis identifies case convergence and divergence (using quantitative techniques), while remaining close to the qualitative uniqueness of each case. In this paper, the DPS approach is used to consider macroeconomic convergence across Sub-Saharan Africa during the Millennium Development Goals, and the possible impacts of IMF interventions in stimulating long-term macroeconomic outcomes. The findings reveal a high degree of economic instability experienced across the region and varying responses to an external shock. The importance of 'outliers' and inconsistency in country convergence are also observed. The DPS method highlights the importance of individual country experiences in relation to external shocks. When factoring in IMF interventions, the findings highlight multiple paths to a given policy outcome, rather than a single optimal economic strategy. This opens up the debate on policy issues associated with economic complexity, including how best to create an overall environment of stability that might promote convergence and reduce the instability that undermines planning and investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of data and automation in the field of teaching materials management in colleges and universities is an important part of teaching management in colleges and universities, and it is also a specific and heavy task. Therefore, improving the function of the college textbook management system and giving full play to the informatization service role of the college information management system are of great significance to improve the management efficiency of college textbooks and the quality of college teaching management. The research done still needs to be further deepened and still needs to be gradually improved in many aspects. For example, in order to make the application of the decision-making method proposed in this paper more convenient, it is necessary to further develop the supporting decision-making analysis software, which are practical problems that need to be improved and solved in the future. Aiming at the problems of traditional college textbook management mode, such as large manual workload, low work efficiency, unsound query and statistical functions, and postreview perimeter, this paper studies and designs a set of college information management system based on nonlinear matrix organizational structure. Based on the comprehensive integration methodology of nonlinear complex system theory, reductionism, and holism, this paper innovatively proposes a new analysis structure for complex problem evaluation and a value system for solution evaluation. The non-linear ANP decision-making method (collectively referred to as the new method) is proposed in this study. The new method judges the system state layer by layer from bottom to top based on the hierarchical overall judgment thinking, effectively revealing the behavior characteristics such as the emergence and mutation of complex systems. Compared with the traditional ANP decision-making method, the new method is more scientific and reliable than the traditional ANP decision-making method. This paper designs and develops a college information management system based on nonlinear matrix. Through the implementation test, it can be found that the system is helpful to improve the management level of college textbooks, reduce the irrelevant workload in the management of textbooks, and use data management for the decision-making of college textbooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study conducts a comparative analysis between complex nonlinear systems and business models. Findings: Drawing from early research and current debates on complex systems, the paper links business models' qualities such as emergent properties, feedback loops, interdependency of its components and sensitivity to initial conditions under the umbrella of complexity theory. The paper also introduces the concept of attractors and non-equilibrium in business models. Originality/Value: The value of directly addressing the construct's nonlinear dynamic is twofold. First, it will try to resolve the conceptual ambiguity that has traditionally surrounded the discipline of business model and business model innovation by providing a new method to study the construct. Also, by linking the business models' qualities under the umbrella of complexity theory, this paper hopes to resolve the disconnect in the current research effort and to encourage further dialogue and studies on the subject of business model and complexity. Practical Implications: By attempting to represent the business model construct as complex system, the paper opens up the study of business model to novel possibilities to understand its dynamic and evolution. Also, by introducing the concept of business model's attractors the paper seeks to find a framework to support and understand business model's innovation and evolution. Research Limitations/Implications: Limitations are inherent to the non-empirical nature of this study. Furthermore, the paper sole objective is to introduce an overview of how different aspects of complexity relate to business models, therefore this study lacks of depth in the analysis of each of aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reliability of computing the Complex Network using probability theory as a complex system is the main topic of this paper. The reliability assignment and optimization issue was dealt with using the Genetic Algorithm (GA), which has the ability to deal with complex issues that are typical in engineering systems. A higher number of duplicates are frequently necessary when the cost of execution is significant. In addition to GA, we use the particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique. This method is based on how accumulating organisms behave. In order to compare the resilience and durability of the algorithms that aid in determining the fitness of a particular system, two algorithms will be used in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an introductory paper of the Focus Issue Recent advances in modeling complex systems: Theory and applications, where papers presenting new advances and insights into chaotic dynamics, fractional dynamics, complex oscillations, complex traffic dynamics, and complex networks, as well as their applications, are collected. All these different problems share common ideas and methods and provide new perspectives for further progress in the modeling of complex systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with a fuzzy analysis of power-flow (PF) involving uncertainties of load demands and network parameters. The crux of this paper is to propose an advanced fuzzy arithmetic. Fuzzy transformation method merges with backward–forward sweep in order to evaluate the contribution and propagation of uncertainty in IEEE 33-bus and 69-bus distribution systems. Results are validated by true intervals and random ranges. To determine true intervals, Global Optimization Problems (GOPs) are defined and solved through derivative-based and free techniques. To estimate random ranges, Monte-Carlo Simulations (MCSs) are employed. Our findings confirm that the sharpness of fuzzy intervals, tractability of computations, and applicability of possibility distributions. Following scenario-based evaluations, this paper discusses new implications of power losses, voltage profiles, optimal re-configuration, feeder extension, and reactive power compensation so that results would be beneficial to system planners and operators. Altogether, this paper provides a blueprint for a new way to handle uncertainties in a wide variety of power system problems without global optimization, linearization, and randomized simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of project complexity has evolved tremendously since topic discussions were initiated. A diversification was sparked a decade ago. The multiplicity of concepts makes it increasingly challenging to utilize the overall research stream of project complexity. This paper takes stock and presents a typology with five ideal types of research in project complexity. This demonstrates an overarching relationship between the type of research of project complexity and the inherent perspective on project success. The typology contributes a much-needed overview for researchers who are new to the overall topic of project complexity. The complexity of projects is an important aspect of research of rethinking of project management, and the typology has the potential of forming a theory of project complexity supporting this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: Given the complex determinants of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and the dynamic policy landscape, researchers and policy-makers are exploring the use of systems thinking and complexity science (STCS) in developing effective policies. The aim of this review is to systematically identify and analyse existing applications of STCS-informed methods in NCD prevention policy. Methods: We searched academic databases (Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, EMBASE) for all publications indexed by October 13, 2020, screening titles, abstracts and full texts and extracting data according to published guidelines. We summarised key data from each study, mapping applications of methods informed by STCS to policy process domains. We conducted a thematic analysis to identify advantages, limitations, barriers and facilitators to using STCS. Results: 4681 papers were screened and 112 papers were included in this review. The most common policy areas were tobacco control, obesity prevention and physical activity promotion. Methods applied included system dynamics modelling, agent-based modelling and concept mapping. Advantages included supporting evidence-informed decisionmaking; modelling complex systems and addressing multi-sectoral problems. Limitations included the abstraction of reality by STCS methods, despite aims of encompassing greater complexity. Challenges included resource-intensiveness; lack of stakeholder trust in models; and results that were too complex to be comprehensible to stakeholders. Ensuring stakeholder ownership and presenting findings in a user-friendly way facilitated STCS use. Conclusion: This review maps the proliferating applications of STCS methods in NCD prevention policy. STCS methods have the potential to generate tailored and dynamic evidence, adding robustness to evidence-informed policy-making, but must be accessible to policy stakeholders and have strong stakeholder ownership to build consensus and change stakeholder perspectives. Evaluations of whether, and under what circumstances, STCS methods lead to more effective policies compared to conventional methods are lacking, and would enable more targeted and constructive use of these methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Remote work (RW) literature is a megatrend in HRM literature, and the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of RW as a concept and an organisational practice. Given the large number of papers being published on remote work, there is a need for a critical review of the extant literature using bibliometric analysis. This paper examines the literature on remote working to identify the factors crucial for managing a remote workforce. This study uses the complex adaptive systems theory as a foundation to build a framework that organisations can use to manage their remote workforce, focusing on three outcomes: employee engagement, collaboration and organisational agility. Design/methodology/approach: Bibliometric analysis was conducted on the research published in Scopus journal in the area of remote work, followed by critical literature analysis. Findings: The bibliometric analysis identified five clusters that reflect five organisational factors which the management can align to achieve the desired outcomes of engagement, collaboration and agility: technology orientation, leadership, HRM practices, external processes and organisational culture. The present findings have important implications for managing the remote workforce. Originality/value: The five factors were mapped to propose a conceptual model on engaging individual employees, fostering team collaboration and building organisational agility while working remotely. We also propose an application model for using technology to achieve the outcomes of engagement, collaboration and agility in the organisation. Practitioners could use this framework to focus on the factors that can create a conducive environment to improve work efficiency in a remote workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "pre-disease" theory of traditional Chinese medicine focuses on the dynamic and continuous evolution from health to disease, and emphasizes early identification and intervention in the complex and gradual process of evolution from health to disease. The "pre-disease" theory and complexity science share the same perspective on health and disease from the standpoint of features of the dynamic evolution and holism, i. e., life is considered as a complex system with ongoing dynamic changes, which exhibit the nonlinear features of "homeostasis-destabilization-phase transition-another homeostasis". In this paper, from the perspective of nonlinear dynamics in complexity science, we explain the scientific connotation of the evolution law of "pre-disease" -disease based on the theory of critical slowing down in traditional Chinese medicine. Based on the theory of critical slowing down and the dynamic network biomarker method generated by its development, combined with the macro signs of comprehensive analysis of data gained by four diagnostic method and the micro features including transcriptomics and the microbiomics, this paper proposes to integrate macro and micro multi-hierarchy information to construct a "pre-disease" critical slowing down identification model with the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis and treatment, which provides a new perspective and method for the early warning of complex diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new era of lunar exploration has begun with participation of all major space agencies. This activity brings opportunities for revolutionary science experiments and observatories on the Moon. The idea of a lunar gravitational-wave detector was already proposed during the Apollo programme. The key characteristic of the Moon is that it is seismically extremely quiet. It was also pointed out that the permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles provide ideal conditions for gravitational-wave detection. In recent years, three different detector concepts were proposed with varying levels of technological complexity and science potential. In this paper, we confront the three concepts in terms of their observational capabilities based on a first more detailed modelling of instrumental noise. We identify important technological challenges and potential show-stoppers. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Astronomy from the Moon: the next decades (part 2)'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we experimentally evaluate the zero-shot performance of GPT-4 against prior generations of GPT on the entire uniform bar examination (UBE), including not only the multiple-choice multistate bar examination (MBE), but also the open-ended multistate essay exam (MEE) and multistate performance test (MPT) components. On the MBE, GPT-4 significantly outperforms both human test-takers and prior models, demonstrating a 26% increase over ChatGPT and beating humans in five of seven subject areas. On the MEE and MPT, which have not previously been evaluated by scholars, GPT-4 scores an average of 4.2/6.0 when compared with much lower scores for ChatGPT. Graded across the UBE components, in the manner in which a human test-taker would be, GPT-4 scores approximately 297 points, significantly in excess of the passing threshold for all UBE jurisdictions. These findings document not just the rapid and remarkable advance of large language model performance generally, but also the potential for such models to support the delivery of legal services in society. This article is part of the theme issue 'A complexity science approach to law and governance'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As more groups consider how AI may be used in the legal sector, this paper envisions how companies and policymakers can prioritize the perspective of community members as they design AI and policies around it. It presents findings of structured interviews and design sessions with community members, in which they were asked about whether, how, and why they would use AI tools powered by large language models to respond to legal problems like receiving an eviction notice. The respondents reviewed options for simple versus complex interfaces for AI tools, and expressed how they would want to engage with an AI tool to resolve a legal problem. These empirical findings provide directions that can counterbalance legal domain experts' proposals about the public interest around AI, as expressed by attorneys, court officials, advocates and regulators. By hearing directly from community members about how they want to use AI for civil justice tasks, what risks concern them, and the value they would find in different kinds of AI tools, this research can ensure that people's points of view are understood and prioritized, rather than only domain experts' assertions about people's needs and preferences around legal help AI. This article is part of the theme issue 'A complexity science approach to law and governance'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the potential for reducing the complexity of AI and Law and empirical legal studies projects through a novel annotation methodology that relies on GPT Family Models to assist human annotators. Improving the speed, cost and quality of annotation could greatly benefit such projects. In modelling types of legal claims, researchers in the fields of empirical legal studies and AI and Law have long relied on manually annotating factors in case texts. To demonstrate our methodology, we employ cases and factors regarding whether a police officer has constitutional authority to detain a motorist on the basis of the officer's suspicion that the motorist is trafficking drugs. Our results demonstrate how recent advances in text analytics can reduce the burden of identifying factors in large numbers of cases and improve machine learning models' predictions of case outcomes. This article is part of the theme issue 'A complexity science approach to law and governance'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law sets out the rules for society and the economy, particularly important for interactions between strangers. Legal code is a form of non-rival infrastructure, a public good important for investment and innovation. This paper investigates whether legal code complexity scales with population size in US localities. We analyse a corpus of municipal codes from 3259 cities and measure legal complexity using various metrics, including number of words, bytes, and compressed bytes. We find that legal complexity scales geometrically with jurisdiction population, with a scaling parameter of approximately 0.2 and an R2 of approximately 0.2. The estimated scaling parameter is similar to gross domestic product percapita, consistent with an interpretation of legal codes as regulating social interactions per capita in cities. This article is part of the theme issue 'A complexity science approach to law and governance'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Smart manufacturing is the prime gripper for the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. Smart manufacturing systems (SMSs) largely determine how smart manufacturing evolves in technical and organizational dimensions and how it realizes values in products, production or services. SMSs are growing rapidly and receiving tons of attention from academic research and industrial practice. However, the development of SMSs is still in its fancy, and many issues wait to be identified and solved, such as single point failures, low transparency and ineffective resource sharing. Blockchain, an emerging technology deriving from Bitcoin, is competent to aid SMSs to conquer troubles due to its decentralization, traceability, trackability, disintermediation, auditability and etc. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the blockchain applications in SMSs, seek out the challenges faced by blockchain-enabled SMSs (BSMSs) and provide referable research directions and ideas. Design/methodology/approach: A comprehensive literature review as a survey is conducted in this paper. The survey starts by introducing blockchain concepts, followed by the descriptions of a literature review method and the blockchain applications throughout the product life cycle in SMSs. Then, the key issues and challenges confronting BSMSs are discussed and some possible research directions are also proposed. It finally presents qualitative and quantitative descriptions of BSMSs, along with some conclusions and implications. Findings: The findings of this paper present a deep understanding about the current status and challenges of blockchain adoption in SMSs. Furthermore, this paper provides a brand new thinking for future research. Originality/value: This paper minutely analyzes the impacts that blockchain exerts on SMSs in view of the product life cycle, and proposes using the complexity science thinking to deal with BSMSs qualitatively and quantitatively, including tackling the current major problems BSMSs face. This research can serve as a foundation for future theoretical studies and enterprise practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This conceptual paper explores the relationship between school structure, organisation, and home–school collaboration. It argues that the traditional and dominant secondary school model based on same-age organisation acts in ways that constrain home–school collaboration while claiming to value it. The paper proposes an alternative model (vertical tutoring), one that relies on home–school collaboration and developing the capacity to absorb the complexity that collaboration creates Design/methodology/approach: Models of home–school collaboration abstracted from the research literature are set within a framework of organisational studies, complexity science, and systemic thinking, revealing incongruities between claimed values and operational practices. The paper contrasts the frailties endemic to same-age organisation with the advantages claimed by schools that have adopted a vertical tutoring (VT) system Findings: The choice of organisational structure is a major influence on a school's capacity to develop the home–school collaboration needed to liberate individual and organisational learning. Same-age organisational structure has a reduced capacity for building the collaborative partnerships needed to engage parents in their child's learning process. Multi-age organisation matches capacity with learning demand, enabling agency and liberating management. Research limitations/implications: Current approaches to modelling rarely consider same-age operative structure and so are destined to restrict rather than enable home–school collaboration. The adoption of VT by schools broadens the scope of organisational analysis, positing a need for multi-disciplinary research able to link the form of school organisation to individual and organisational learning. Originality/value: VT is rarely mentioned in the research literature as an alternative to same-age structuration. This paper addresses this issue and draws upon complexity science, autopoietic theory, and systemic thinking to explain why current models of home–school collaboration are insufficiently situated in organisational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My analysis focuses on two main observations. First, many competing schools of thoughts are currently present in economics with no predominant paradigm. We are experiencing an era of pluralism (Davis J Econ Methodol 14(3):275-290, , Camb J Econ 32:249-366, ; Colander ; Colander et al. J Polit Econ 16(4):485-499, ). The term 'pluralism' is extremely interesting since, as I will show, it has different dimensions to it. These offer insights into interpreting the tangled universe of the economics. Second, there is a progressive intertwining of innovation economics with complexity economics, which I argue provides an instance of the above-described shift toward pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]