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Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) is an emerging soil testing approach. Although several studies have validated the DRS approach, limited efforts are made to assess the applicability of calibrated DRS models on new samples collected at different locations and/or time. To test such spatio-temporal applicability of calibrated DRS models, we collected surface soil samples from 1,112 smallholder farms during 2018 (T2018) and 607 farms during 2021 (T2021) covering seven districts of the Bundelkhand region of central India. The T2018 samples covered 7 development blocks; the T2021 samples were also collected from these blocks but from different sampling locations. Additionally, a new sampling site (Jhansi-Bamour block) was added during 2021 to create an independent test dataset. Collected samples were analysed for 17 soil parameters (basic soil properties, macronutrients, and micronutrients) and spectral reflectance over the visible to near-infrared region. Corresponding soil test crop response (STCR) ratings were also estimated. The Cubist model was calibrated in the T2018 dataset and tested against the T2021 dataset using the coefficient of determination (R2), root-mean-squared error (RMSE), and percentage relative error deviation (PRED) at 30% error threshold as performance statistics. Model applicability was assessed at each block level (site-specific), by dividing the study site into their two geology-specific regions, and by treating the entire dataset as a regional-scale spectral library. Results showed that DRS models calibrated on a finer scale (site-specific) are less efficient in estimating soil parameters in broader scale (geology-specific and regional-scale) test T2021 samples although their STCR ratings may safely be estimated at local scales. When site-specific data were aggregated to broader scales and T2018 dataset was spiked with 20% samples from the T2021 dataset, model performance improved for critical soil parameters such as soil organic carbon (SOC) contents and several plant nutrients and their ratings; application of such large-scale models also improved the estimation accuracy when applied to site-specific datasets. Exchangeable Ca and Mg, clay and SOC contents were frequently well-estimated with R2 values ranging from 0.54 to 0.93. Fine sand was the next best estimated soil property with R2 values in the range of 0.40–0.75. The STCR ratings estimated in the DRS approach matched the wet chemistry-based STCR ratings to the tune of 43 to 100%. Overall, as many as 60% of all new samples could be estimated with more than 70% accuracy for 8 out of 17 parameters. With the DRS approach tested on both spatially- and temporally-independent test datasets and, specifically, with high estimation accuracy of STCR ratings, our results suggest that the DRS approach may safely be used as a viable alternative to conventional soil testing in smallholder farms.

Nature-based solutions, ecosystem-based approaches that deliver multiple benefits, including biodiversity habitat, have the potential to address a range of challenges that cities are increasingly facing. Nature-based solutions can contribute towards addressing intersecting climate change and biodiversity extinction crises. Mainstreaming nature-based solutions involves policy and planning approaches that shift from a reliance on grey infrastructure to integrating nature-based approaches in urban infrastructures. Mainstreaming requires integration across sectors, scales and stakeholders, as well as across policy domains and levels of governance. While much of the NBS research originates from European and North American contexts, Australian cities are distinctive; the priorities for mainstreaming NBS in Australian cities need to respond to Australia's distinctive context and local research in addition to learning from global research. In this perspective, we propose four priority pathways for mainstreaming nature-based solutions in Australian cities: i) addressing changing climate conditions and climate extremes, including heat and drought; ii) embedding an ecology and biodiversity focus, including threatened species, as well as considering the risks of ‘ecological traps’; iii) localising approaches that bring together local knowledges, research, and practice; and iv) foregrounding Indigenous knowledges and Custodianship as decolonising approaches. Urban planning in Australia cities, as well as cities globally, needs to take an ecological shift and consider planning with and for nature. The proposed four pathways present a way forward for urban planning to facilitate a socio-ecological transition that can build more climate-resilient cities while strengthening ecological knowledge, memory, sense of place and cultural inclusivity.

Digital games, also known as computer-based games, have become increasingly popular and prevalent in cyberspace, particularly among children and adolescents. Therefore, it is important to critically evaluate this area and understand various aspects, including popular styles and games, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of this industry. In this study, we conducted a systematic review of the available literature to gain a comprehensive understanding of the revenue generated by the hardware and software components of the digital gaming industry. Experts in the field of computer and video games can analyze popular games using logical and empirical analysis, with a particular focus on engineering, aesthetic, and psychological aspects. This approach enables the identification of strengths and weaknesses in digital games, and the provision of innovative ideas to improve quality. The use of engaging storylines, aesthetically pleasing graphics, and effective psychological components in video games, including the beginning, continuation, and end of the game, can lead to the creation of high-quality and impactful games. Additionally, the integration of game stages and timely (psychological) rewards can further enhance the player's experience. However, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the game industry must be acknowledged and addressed. Finally, suggestions were offered for those working in the industry and researchers to help guide their efforts in creating successful and engaging games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Digital games, also known as computer-based games, are one of the most popular areas of cyberspace. In a more modern conceptualization, they are viewed as a type of digital entertainment in which players interact with a digital interface and face different types of challenges based on the game design. The global market for computer-based games has experienced significant growth in recent years, with the projected market size for the industry expected to reach $129.93 billion by 2030. In Iran, the gaming population is estimated to be around 34 million people, with 59% of gamers being men and 41% being women. This indicates a significant potential for growth in the Iranian market for computer-based games. According to a survey conducted by our study, the average age of gamers is 23 years old, with 96% of them playing on smartphones, 25% playing on home video game consoles, and 19% playing on computers. Additionally, a study involving students found that 55% of them are computer-based game gamers, and the ratio of male to female gamers is nearly equal. In the literature, the relationship between computer-based games and physical, psychological, social, educational, cognitive, rehabilitation, and therapeutic benefits has been extensively investigated and confirmed. Thus, computer-based games are deemed to be of significant importance. Materials and Methods In this study, a systematic review of research in the field of digital and computer-based video games was conducted to examine the characteristics and potential of the gaming industry in Iran, including popular genres and types of games, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the relationship between computer-based games and physical, psychological, social, educational, cognitive, rehabilitation, and therapeutic components. The findings were presented in a structured and logical sequence to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of computer-based games in Iran and the potential for growth in this industry. In order to search for foreign articles, scientific databases such as Science Direct, Elsevier, Scopus, Google Scholar, and PopMed were used, and SIVILICA, ISC, SID, Noormags, and Magiran were used for Persian articles. Moreover, reliable and important statistical databases related to the video game industry, such as The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), BroadbandSearch Database, Statista, and Digital Games Research Center were used. By analyzing scientific articles and positive aspects of foreign video games, potential improvements to the video game industry in Iran were investigated and discussed. Discussion and Results According to a survey conducted in Iran, the average daily gaming time per gamer has increased from 79 minutes in 2015 to 95 minutes in 2021. Furthermore, a study conducted among households with at least one gamer found that an average of 1.9 individuals play games in each household. The preferred gaming platforms among Iranian gamers under the age of 18, who make up a significant proportion of the gaming population, are smartphones (98%), personal computers (15.3%), and home gaming consoles (18.6%) with the smartphone being the most commonly used platform for gaming activities. Among Iranian gamers, the most popular genres include sports, puzzle, battle royale, strategy, driving, and simulation. Game development programs such as GDevelop, Autodesk, Stencyl, and Construct 2 are some of the top-notch options used by developers to create games. Moreover, C++ and Java are commonly used programming languages in the game development industry. Game development at a professional level is a complex and collaborative process that often involves a team of designers, programmers, artists, and other specialists working together to bring an idea to life. In addition to the engineering aspect (programming, developing, and workflow in the software space), games have three other dimensions: aesthetic or graphics, psychological, and musical. All three dimensions require a specialized approach and skill. A well-designed game requires teamwork and workmanship in all four dimensions. The psychological aspect of game development is particularly important in games that pursue specific goals; a high-quality game is the result of collaboration and expertise in all these areas. Conclusions The study results showed that many individuals, especially children, teenagers, and adolescents, are computer-based gamers. Further analysis of Iranian digital games found that they have low performance and errors in several aspects, including slow quality and graphics, many bugs and errors, lack of availability on common platforms, weakness in online game genres, and similarity to popular foreign games. Addressing these weaknesses requires a multi-disciplinary approach involving game development professionals, psychologists, graphic designers, and musicians familiar with game development. By analyzing the four dimensions of game programming and software, game psychology, graphics, and game music, more comprehensive and specialized studies can be conducted.

Studies of Indigeneity in Southeast Asia have consistently stressed its contested nature. The relevance of the concept has been questioned by governments in this region on the basis that both majority and minority ethnic groups are equally Indigenous. An interesting divergence from this is Cambodia where the term "Indigenous" is recognized in Cambodian law. This has largely been permitted because the term in Khmer is applicable to both ethnic minorities and the Khmer majority. This raises the question of how the concept of Indigenous is interpreted and used in Khmer and other languages. This article explores the root meaning of the Khmer term. Understanding how the concept of Indigeneity has itself been indigenized opens possibilities for building nuances of the term which can provide constructive approaches to addressing majority/minority cultural dynamics. In other words, exploring how terms developed from other contexts have been transposed into local languages can allow for contextualizing concepts to address local realities. A wider understanding of the concept of Indigenous in Khmer allows for building on the concept of Indigeneity in Cambodia, and perhaps other Southeast Asian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly suggested that reducing the psychological distance of climate change will increase public engagement. However, extant studies are limited by their correlational design, or by depicting impacts that vary in distance but also in kind or severity. We conducted two experiments designed to vary distance only, holding impacts constant. U.S. participants completed a visual-spatial task that portrayed the Maldives—a remote island nation facing severe climate impacts—as relatively proximal or distal, before judging the nation's geographic distance (Studies 1 and 2) and summarizing a video depicting its climate vulnerabilities (Study 2). Suggesting an effect on psychological distance, participants in the proximal condition judged the Maldives as geographically closer and described its climate impacts using more concrete (vs. abstract) language. However, this reduced psychological distance did not translate into increased policy support. Complementing other work, results suggest that localizing climate change, by itself, is unlikely to increase engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on observation in the District of Cianjur, West Java, Indonesia shariatization was a form of local re-packaging sharia where the term 'sharia' has been replaced with 'Akhlaq al-Karimah' (noble character). It then had the effect of not only silencing critical groups but also moderating sharia to become more open and inclusive. More importantly, the local-branded sharia became a common ground for the various Islamist groups to coalesce and, indeed, suppress vigilante action to renounce violent threat, at the very least, and served to lessen the divides between them. In this regard, the so-called sharia was like 'killing two birds with one stone' that on one side was a form of moderation to the critical groups but, on the other, was designed to be a common ground for various Islamist groups to coalesce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) approach applied to neuroimaging data, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, has received a great deal of attention because of its sensitivity to distinguishing patterns of neural activities associated with different stimuli or cognitive states. Generally, when using MVPA approach to decode the mental states or stimuli, a set of discriminative variables (e.g., voxels) is first selected. However, in most of existing MVPA methods, the selected variables do not contain all informative variables, since these selected variables are sufficient for decoding. In this paper, we propose a multivariate pattern analysis method based on sparse representation for decoding the brain states and localizing category-specific brain activation areas corresponding to two experimental conditions/tasks at the same time. Unlike traditional MVPA approaches, this method is designed to find informative variables as many as possible. We applied the proposed method to two judgement experiments: a gender discrimination and an emotion discrimination task, data analysis results demonstrate its effectiveness and potential applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to propose a phenomenological topological model of collective perspective. In this framework the paper analyses Husserl's accounts of intersubjectivity emphasizing the difference between early and late conceptions of Einfühlung. The early conception (until 1916) derives the intersubjectivity from the localizing of haptic perceptions on my visually perceived body (i.e. from the Körper to Leib-körper transformation). The late, and more famous, conception conceives Einfühlung rather as a direct perception of the other's expressions. The earlier account inaugurates a specifically transformative aesthesiological-kinetic layer, which is further considered to be a possible basis of intersubjectivity. The emphasis in the layer-based theory of intersubjectivity is not laid on the interactivity among two or more agents (as it is in interactivism in contemporary social cognition research), but rather on the subject's involvement in layers of experience. Consequently, the collective perspective is not derived from the autonomy of interaction, but from a topology of transformative layers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A simple and efficient COMSOL implementation is presented for the LGDM. • COMSOL is used due to its highly intuitive and versatile user interface. • The implementation is found computationally efficient for 1D, 2D and 3D problems. • The obtained results are validated with published references or experimental results. In the present work, a computer implementation of the localizing gradient damage method (LGDM) is presented in a commercial finite element (FE) package, COMSOL. The LGDM is adopted because it can accurately model damage/fracture initiation and propagation. The accuracy of LGDM is due to its thermodynamically consistent formulation using the micromorphic framework. Among available FE implementation software, the COMSOL is preferred for current implementation due to its several advantages. Firstly, the COMSOL user interface (UI) is highly intuitive and informative because, unlike other software, it displays the mathematical basis for every option in the UI. Using this, someone with a knowledge of the mathematical theory of FEM can master COMSOL quickly without any prior experience. Secondly, many customization options available in COMSOL are helpful for advanced users who intend to implement new models. Thirdly, COMSOL's equation-based modelling feature is handy while implementing a new nonlinear coupled field model, like LGDM. It is shown in this work that COMSOL only needs the strong form of PDE to solve and performs weak formulation/linearization of the PDE in the background. This drastically reduces the implementation time for highly nonlinear models because users only need to provide the PDE's strong form to COMSOL. Apart from these advantages, the COMSOL implementation is computationally efficient and is capable of solving complex/large scale problems with minimal computational resources. A detailed discussion on the COMSOL implementation for a nonlinear model is presented and sample simulation files are provided as supplementary material that would be helpful to users/researchers working on similar coupled field models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent surveys show that the communication about climate change between science and the public is severely disturbed. In this article we discuss this problem in focusing on both regional climate services and other, local forms of knowledge. The authors suggest that climate science and its public services have to critically revise their own practices and to acknowledge other forms of knowledge about climate as constitutive. Based on approaches from geography and anthropology, the article first discusses the short history and "normal practices" of regional climate services and how they approach the public. Outlining the potentials and constraints of this concept, the article focuses on the friction, on "its openness to change as it rubs up against society" (Hulme 2007). The focus then shifts to local knowledge systems and how they deal with the challenges of a changing climate. In addition to the "extended peer review" as a new option for climate research in a post-normal setup, the authors discuss the possibility of an "extended knowledge basis," that is, the integration of different forms of climate knowledge with a special focus on regional populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the roles of transnational media in the lives of Shan communities in Burma with a focus on their consumption of Thai satellite television, the main window to the outside world available to them. It will analyse how the Shan appropriation of transnational television creates a new site of identity transcending national boundaries and expressing an ambivalent sense of interaction with mediated modernity. The paper will demonstrate the role of transnational television as a catalyst for the emergence of Shan migration to Thailand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local-global solution (LOGOS) modes provide a computationally efficient framework for developing fast, direct solution methods for electromagnetic simulations. In this article, we demonstrate that the LOGOS framework yields fast direct solutions for finite element discretizations of the wave equation in two dimensions. For fixed-frequency applications, numerical examples demonstrate that the memory and CPU complexities of the proposed solver are nearly linear. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 1050–1054, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23298 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Accurate and affordable measurements of upper-stem diameters are now possible thanks to recent advances in laser technology. Measurement of the midpoint upper-stem diameter can be employed to improve the accuracy of diameter predictions along the tree bole. Felled-tree data from a loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantation was used to evaluate two approaches: (1) calibrating a segmented taper equation by constraining a parameter, and (2) localizing the taper model by predicting the random effects for each tree. The calibration technique is much simpler and produced less-biased prediction of diameters and is therefore recommended. Calibration results were similar for both fixed- and mixed-effects taper models, even though a slight gain in accuracy and precision was attained with the mixed-effects model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In order for the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda to be achieved, it is essential to "localize" the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), since it is only at the local level that it is possible to move towards their effective implementation. This article seeks to contribute to the development of evaluation and monitoring strategies for target 6.2 at the local level, adapting the official SDG indicator 6.2.1a and the international criteria established by the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)) at the municipal scale. Using the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region (RMBH) as a case study, a series of methodological procedures is proposed to assess and monitor equitable access to sanitation services. Inequalities in access to services between different population subgroups and between the municipalities that make up the RMBH are explored in different ways, including the evaluation of intersecting forms of inequality, the mapping of a synthetic index of inequality based on multiple criteria and the projection of the time needed to achieve universal access to services according to international criteria. The procedures applied demonstrated the existence of significant inequalities among the municipalities and population subgroups of the RMBH, which are not evident in the analysis of the aggregated data by municipality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key message: Local site-level calibration of allometric models was scrutinized. Two Bayesian calibration methods were compared to local random effects estimations. The Bayesian calibration methods proved more effective than local estimation of random effects in reducing prediction bias. The simplest literature-based calibration can be recommended. The local calibration had minor effects on stem volume estimations. Context: The spatial variability of trees allometry has long prompted the necessity for local, site- or stand-level calibrations. Mixed-effect models have enabled a quantitative progress through a local calibration where data are available. More recently, Bayesian statistics brought new alternatives owing to their formal definition of the random effects from prior information. Aims: To compare three local calibration methods: (i) a calibration based on the estimation of the local random effects, (ii) a Bayesian calibration where prevailing measurements are used to produce prior estimations, and (iii) a Bayesian calibration reproducing a calibration based on literature data only. Methods: The three calibrations were compared using a stem taper model developed for Norway spruce in Romania. The taper model was fitted to a large dataset, then applied locally to two high-elevation sites with contrasting growing conditions. Results: The local calibration of mixed-effect models resulted in small gains and high biases. The Bayesian calibrations yielded better results, mostly because the Monte Carlo Markov Chain implementation permitted to tune of all the model's parameters simultaneously. The differences in stem volume estimations were however always very small ranging from − 5.2 to 3.3% of the non-calibrated volume. Conclusion: The Bayesian literature-like calibration performed as well as the calibration using the large dataset (4–97% bias reduction according to the tree) and can be preferred for its ease of use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]