Vision For Future Research Articles

Digital activism in the future past: How Dutch Extinction Rebellion activists connect past, present and future in their memory work on Instagram

This article investigates the ways in which Dutch Extinction Rebellion activists discursively engage with the past, present and future on Instagram and leverage the platform’s affordances for mnemonic purposes. We argue that Extinction Rebellion activists, in their communication on the platform, connect these temporal planes retrospectively and prospectively. First, Extinction Rebellion activists use the past as a resource for present action aimed at producing lasting change. This relates to cultural reservoirs and repertoires of past injustices. Second, the present is perceived by Extinction Rebellion activists as a concern for future memory. The recording and documenting of climate injustices and the actions of the movement itself are examples of this. Both positive and negative imagined futures are used by Extinction Rebellion activists to legitimise and delegitimise past and present (in)action. In other words, Extinction Rebellion activists’ future imaginaries not just shape present action, but also shape their memory work. Instagram’s affordances of archivability, connectivity and spreadability are used by Extinction Rebellion to support their digital memory work. These socio-technical affordances are thus appropriated as mnemonic affordances for rhetorical and practical purposes. We support these claims through in-depth interviews with Extinction Rebellion activists and a thematic analysis of Instagram content shared by them.

YOUTH OF KAZAKHSTAN: NAVIGATION INTO THE FUTURE (BASED ON THE RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH)

The crises of the last several decades highlight the fragility of many societies, emphasizing a complicated and uncertain future. These concepts focus researchers' attention on identifying and mitigating the risks and potential effects of unforeseen events on society. The article offers the findings of focus group discussions about the future among young Kazakhstani citizens, ages 18 to 29. The authors identify important trends and images of future through discourse analysis. In Kazakhstan-2044, political freedom and freedom of speech are considered to be essential political values. The primary issues facing society in the future might be corruption, emigration—particularly of educated youth—and people's disregard for their professional obligations. The significance of intelligence, knowledge, and advanced technology are recognized as the most societal factors in the development. The ideas of this paper can be used in various fields, including politics, economics, and social aspects.

Development or Ecocide? Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Contested Infrastructure in the “Tren Maya” Controversy

This article examines the controversy surrounding the Tren Maya railway megaproject in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula through the lens of sociotechnical imaginaries. We argue that the Tren Maya, much more than a technological intervention, came to embody differing visions of desired futures. Initially promoted by the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration as a state-led reindustrialization program to mitigate social inequalities, the project was engulfed by the nationalist-developmental imaginary of the so-called “Fourth Transformation.” The local impacts that materialized in the construction process, however, sparked significant socio-environmental conflicts and mobilized a diverse opposition movement comprising indigenous communities, scientific experts, and environmental organizations. As the controversy unfolded, protest actors leveraged various legal mechanisms to challenge the epistemic and normative claims underpinning the government’s plans, eventually giving rise to a subversive imaginary that reframed the Tren Maya as a criminal, “ecocidal” enterprise. Our study reveals the intricate interdependencies between material and discursive processes in the (de)legitimization of competing infrastructural imaginaries and their role in mobilizing social forces. In particular, we underscore the crucial yet often overlooked role of legal channels and institutions in generating, validating, and amplifying imagined futures. By illustrating how social relations and normative ideals are co-produced with technoscientific knowledge and material facts, this research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how different sociotechnical imaginaries interact, compete, and gain traction in the context of infrastructural transformations.

Cardiovascular care with digital twin technology in the era of generative artificial intelligence.

Digital twins, which are in silico replications of an individual and its environment, have advanced clinical decision-making and prognostication in cardiovascular medicine. The technology enables personalized simulations of clinical scenarios, prediction of disease risk, and strategies for clinical trial augmentation. Current applications of cardiovascular digital twins have integrated multi-modal data into mechanistic and statistical models to build physiologically accurate cardiac replicas to enhance disease phenotyping, enrich diagnostic workflows, and optimize procedural planning. Digital twin technology is rapidly evolving in the setting of newly available data modalities and advances in generative artificial intelligence, enabling dynamic and comprehensive simulations unique to an individual. These twins fuse physiologic, environmental, and healthcare data into machine learning and generative models to build real-time patient predictions that can model interactions with the clinical environment to accelerate personalized patient care. This review summarizes digital twins in cardiovascular medicine and their potential future applications by incorporating new personalized data modalities. It examines the technical advances in deep learning and generative artificial intelligence that broaden the scope and predictive power of digital twins. Finally, it highlights the individual and societal challenges as well as ethical considerations that are essential to realizing the future vision of incorporating cardiology digital twins into personalized cardiovascular care.

The future image as a component of political subjective space: testing the conceptual model

The image of the future of youth is described in this paper and its relationship with the subjective space of politics is identified. The article provides a brief analysis of research on the image of the future within the framework of social and political sciences, describes the main theoretical approaches to analyzing the future image of youth. The authors give their own conceptual definition of the future image as a component of the political subjective space, a set of symbolic, ideological and cultural meanings that determine the orientation and behavior of various political actors. The authors as a methodology use focus group interviews, online questionnaires of youth representatives in order to verify the conceptual model of the study. The dynamic nature of the future image as a part of political subjective space is determined by a system of institutions, agents and factors of socialization. Five key components have been identified in the structure of the future image: content, value, emotions, activity and technology. Four projection levels of the future image are defined: personal, group, projection at the level of the macro community and global. The study indicates the predominance of personal projection in the respondents' ideas about the future. Despite the presence of worries and fears for their personal future, young people are generally confident in their own future and believe that the Russian state will continue to play an important role as a world power. An important characteristic of the future image is the subjectivity of its bearer, the degree of activity or proactivity and the willingness to take responsibility for their own future and the future of their families, local community, region, country, and the world. Locus control, that is, a subjective assessment of the factors (personal efforts or external circumstances) on which the future depends, according to the study, is associated with the degree of confidence in the future, the formation of a positive future image. The predominance of civic identity in the hierarchy of identities is also revealed. Young people feel responsible for the future of their country. At the moment, Russian civic identity has a positive impact on the future image of young people. It is significant that among students studying in the Luhansk People's Republic, the level of concern about the future is higher, the level of civil identity is lower, which indicates that the task of forming civil identity should be prioritized in the new regions of the Russian Federation.

The End of the Ottoman Empire: A Century after the Fall

A century ago, the Ottoman Empire finally ceased to be after a long reign that stretched back to the late medieval period, and, ostensibly, nobody really missed it. It was once possible to write about the fall of the Ottoman Empire as the overdue culmination of a process that gave rise to independent nation–states. But, increasingly, the empire casts a long shadow on the historiography of the Middle East, and its last days emerge among its most consequential for the future of the region. The same political actors who reshaped late Ottoman politics were integral to the struggle for the post-Ottoman landscape. These individuals included provincial elites from nondominant ethnic groups who, rather than embracing ethnic nationalism, remained Ottomanist in their vision of the region's future until the final moment. Newer scholarship rejects the teleology of the nations that emerged from postwar fracturing, demonstrating that the map was not redrawn by the victors in an instant. It was forged, instead, through armed struggles against European imperial powers and among rival movements that lasted for years. One hundred years after the Ottoman Empire's collapse, historians are still excavating its long-ignored relevance for understanding the modern Middle East, which was buried under the weight of nationalist and Orientalist metanarratives that never questioned the inevitability of its demise.

Balkanization vs Europeanization: conceptual deconstruction

The article is dedicated to the deconstruction of the binary opposition between the concepts of “Balkanization” and “Europeanization”. The initial phase of deconstruction entails a critical examination of conventional conceptualizations that reflect power relations between Balkans and Europe. A particular emphasis is placed on the dominant perception of balkanization as a process of fragmentation and barbarization, which is a representation commonly depicted within Western strategic discourse. As an alternative, the authentic concept of balkanization, formulated by Yugoslav avant-guardists during the early twentieth century, is analysed. The avant-guard movement Zenitism proclaimed the slogan of the Balkanization of Europe and featured the figure of Barbarogenious-Decivilizer. This approach not only represents an inversion of the Western perspective on the Balkans, but also draws upon ideas of internationalism and class struggle, deriving inspiration from the experience of the Russian revolution. The concept of Europeanization is examined in both broad and narrow senses - as a notion of modernization and as transformations caused by the institutional influence of the European Union. The concept of europeanization, positioned as a positive project and vision of a better future, stands in contrast to the Balkan past ofthe region. With such as interpretation, the successful implementation ofthe europeanization agenda would entail the complete erasure of Balkan subjectivity and identity. Europeanization is conceptualized as a process of debalkanization. In the concluding phase of deconstruction, during the stage of“reassembly”, an alternative perception ofbalkanization is put forward. In accordance with the ideas of Zenitism and the political experience ofthe Balkan peoples' struggle for independence and the establishment of a common stated, balkanization is perceived as, on the one hand, resistance and rebellion; on the other hand, as a desire to overcome borders and internationalization. Accordingly, europeanization is perceived as a process of construction of homogeneous modern nation-states. It can be argued that fragmentation is indeed a consequence and essence of europeanization.

Spectroscopic Observations of the GALEX Nearby Young Star Survey Sample. I. Nearby Moving Group Candidates

The GALEX Nearby Young Star Search (GALNYSS) yielded the identification of more than 2000 late-type stars that, based on their ultraviolet and infrared colors and pre-Gaia proper motions, are potentially of age<200 Myr and lie within ~120 pc of Earth. We present the results of a campaign of medium- and high-resolution optical spectroscopy of 471 GALNYSS stars aimed at confirming their youth and their potential membership in nearby young stellar moving groups. We present radial velocity (RV), Li absorption, and H-alpha emission measurements for these spectroscopically observed GALNYSS stars, and assess their Li absorption and optical emission-line properties and infrared excesses. Our RV measurements are combined with literature and Gaia DR3 RV measurements and Gaia DR3 astrometry and photometry to obtain the spatiokinematics and color-magnitude positions of GALNYSS stars. We use these results to assess membership in the TW Hya, Tuc-Hor, Carina, Columba, and Argus Associations and the β Pic and AB Dor moving groups. We have identified 132 stars as candidate members of these seven groups; roughly half of these candidates are newly identified on the basis of data presented here. At least one-third of the 132 candidates are spectroscopic and/or photometric binaries and/or have comoving (visual) binary companions in Gaia DR3. The contingent of young, low-mass stars in the solar vicinity we identify here should provide excellent subjects for future direct imaging exoplanet surveys and studies of the early evolution of low-mass stars and their planetary progeny.

National radiotherapy dosimetry audit in the UK – A vision and roadmap

Radiotherapy dosimetry audit is an important element in the overall quality assurance of radiotherapy delivery and has become established as best practice prior to implementation of new equipment, techniques or clinical trials.The Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) Interdepartmental Dosimetry Audit group (IDA) facilitates regional audits across the UK through a network of 8 regional chairs. This is a well-established and successful network utilising local staff resources and dosimetry equipment from each region to conduct audits for new radiotherapy equipment, techniques and annual reference audits. All dosimeters used are traceable to the National Physical Laboratory's (NPL) primary standard.NPL and the National Radiotherapy Trials Quality Assurance Group (RTTQA) perform audits for new techniques and clinical trials in the UK. The IPEM IDA, NPL and RTTQA have a joint vision of a national audit network so that comprehensive audits can be offered to all UK centres and bring together all UK dosimetry audit data within a centralised database to facilitate coordinated national audits. This will also allow centres to access and review their data for anonymous benchmarking against other UK centres to support quality improvement.Increasing the frequency and complexity of national audits to reflect current clinical practice is often inhibited by the cost of purchasing appropriate equipment. IPEM have now funded two phantoms that will enable national audits of gynae brachytherapy and head and neck external beam treatments through 2024–25.The aim of this Position Paper is to provide an update on the activities of the IPEM IDA and present the future vision and roadmap for the three UK dosimetry audit groups.

Utopian Science Fiction and Ethnic Future Imagination in Chinese Contemporary Science Fiction

Utopian science fiction, as a fusion of science fiction literature and utopian literature, integrates the construction of imagined interactions between people, technology, society, and the environment in future narratives. In doing so, it deepens the aesthetic value and social significance of science fiction literature. Chinese science fiction utopian future narratives use technological imagination to construct three models of expression. First, they re-examine the symbiotic patterns of technology, humanity, and time within the multiple dimensions of human subjectivity. Second, within the transformation of social structures, they reassess the subject and emotions, recognizing that the acceleration of social change has transformed human nostalgia into a series of rehearsals seeking future possibilities in the past. Third, within the dissolution of cultural politics, they reconsider space and the environment, reconstructing planetary existence through a model of deterritorialization. The imagined technological developments constitute the internal logic of Chinese science fiction utopian future narratives, suggesting that the future is an uncertain movement entangled with technology, time, space, and human nature. The confluence of technology, time, and humanity gives rise to people’s expectations and yearnings for eternal life. However, these three modes of narrating the future also lead us to return to Earth as the central theme, highlighting the planetary nature and reflecting on the meaning of existence.

About the All-Russian academic conference with international participation “The Image of a Common Future in the Discourses of Gender Studies in the CIS Countries and Russia”

About the All-Russian academic conference with international participation “The Image of a Common Future in the Discourses of Gender Studies in the CIS Countries and Russia”

Optical photothermal infrared imaging using metabolic probes in biological systems.

Infrared spectroscopy is a powerful tool for identifying biomolecules. In biological systems, infrared spectra provide information on structure, reaction mechanisms, and conformational change of biomolecules. However, the promise of applying infrared imaging to biological systems has been hampered by low spatial resolution and the overwhelming water background arising from the aqueous nature of in cell and in vivo work. Recently, optical photothermal infrared microscopy (OPTIR) has overcome these barriers and achieved both spatially and spectrally resolved images of live cells and organisms. Here, we determine the most effective modes of collection for work in biological samples. We examine three cell lines (Huh-7, differentiated 3T3-L1, and U2OS) and three organisms ( E. coli , tardigrades, and zebrafish). Our results suggest that the information provided by multifrequency imaging is comparable to hyperspectral imaging while reducing imaging times twenty-fold. We also explore the utility of IR active probes, including global and site-specific probes, for tracking metabolic pathways and protein localization, structure, and local environment. Our findings illustrate the versatility of OPTIR, and together, provide a direction for future dynamic imaging of living cells and organisms.

Head-area sensing in virtual reality: future visions for visual perception and cognitive state estimation

Biosensing techniques are progressing rapidly, promising the emergence of sophisticated virtual reality (VR) headsets with versatile biosensing enabling an objective, yet unobtrusive way to monitor the user’s physiology. Additionally, modern artificial intelligence (AI) methods provide interpretations of multimodal data to obtain personalised estimations of the users’ oculomotor behaviour, visual perception, and cognitive state, and their possibilities extend to controlling, adapting, and even creating the virtual audiovisual content in real-time. This article proposes a visionary approach for personalised virtual content adaptation via novel and precise oculomotor feature extraction from a freely moving user and sophisticated AI algorithms for cognitive state estimation. The approach is presented with an example use-case of a VR flight simulation session explaining in detail how cognitive workload, decrease in alertness level, and cybersickness symptoms could be modified in real-time by using the methods and embedded stimuli. We believe the envisioned approach will lead to significant cost savings and societal impact and will thus be a necessity in future VR setups. For instance, it will increase the efficiency of a VR training session by optimizing the task difficulty based on the user’s cognitive load and decrease the probability of human errors by guiding visual perception via content adaptation.

Decision dynamics and landscape approach by individuals and collective groups: the case of Japanese rural land use in agricultural, forest, and boundary areas in an era of population decline

Establishing a decision-making scheme for multiple land use types in a shrinking society is an urgent and persistent task. In particular, residents and governments face the complexity of cross-sectoral visions over concerned landscapes. This study examined the preference of residents for future visions and the effects of group deliberation in a Japanese rural community to enhance the current understanding of decision and learning processes on cross-sectoral land use types (i.e., agricultural land, forest land, and boundary areas) across ages and groups. This study posed the following questions: (i) what types of interactions do residents find among options on cross-sectoral land uses? and (ii) how do group deliberation influence the individual preferences of residents for land use? In the survey, the residents disclosed their preferences for the prepared visions over three land use types. The survey also enabled the comparison of choices before and after group deliberation. Regarding question (i), the residents’ choice prior to the deliberation demonstrated thematic coherence through land use categories. Smart technology and potential productivity improvement were selected across agriculture and forests. However, regarding question (ii), thematic coherence decreased after the group deliberation. The residents could communicate disagreements during group deliberation and consider the issues relatively independently over land use types, which separately views agriculture lands and forests. The choice after group discussions became increasingly embedded and influenced by residential areas and land ownership of residents. These findings provide unique insights into the group discussion on how individual decisions are affected. In summary, the preferences of cross-sectoral land use types did not converge but tended to diverge.

Financial Performance Evaluation of Small Finance Banks: A CAMEL Analysis

Small finance banks (SFBs) are a special category of banks incepted by the Reserve Bank of India in 2015 to cater to the financial needs of the underserved population of the country with the aim of financial inclusion. They serve the priority sector and the unorganised sector of the country. This article analyses and evaluates the performance of these banks on the basis of various financial parameters such as capital adequacy, asset management, management quality, earning quality and liquidity derived from the CAMEL framework. Following a robust evaluation methodology, namely data envelopment analysis (DEA), a sample of all the SFBs operating in India to date is taken. As per the composite rating of CAMEL, results show that the majority of SFBs exhibit satisfactory performance. Utkarsh SFB Limited is ranked at the first position and is followed by Fincare SFB Limited on the second position. Jana SFB Limited stands at the last position amongst all the banks, preceded by ESAF SFB Limited. The results of DEA show average inefficiency among SFBs. The calculated efficiency scores of SFBs highlight that Capital SFB, Fincare SFB, Jana SFB, Shivalik SFB and Utkarsh SFB are the most efficient banks, with a technical efficiency score of 1. ESAF SFB has the lowest efficiency score. Scale inefficiency is the major reason for inefficiency. The study provides valuable insights to the authorities, managers and investors about the performance of these banks and gives them a future vision of the sustenance of these banks.

A knowledge creation framework for academia toward agroecological transformations of food systems

Industrialized agriculture, characterized by high inputs, large-scale monocultures, and confined livestock production, with a narrow focus on profit, is a major transgressor of societal and planetary boundaries. It fuels climate change, biodiversity loss, water and soil degradation, nutritional deficiencies, public health issues, cultural erosion, and socioeconomic inequalities. As early-career researchers in agricultural sciences, we are concerned about these systemic crises and recognize that participating in normative academic practices without reflection may reinforce the prevailing industrialized food system. Motivated by the dissonance between the potential impact of our work and our vision of a better future, in this paper we describe and challenge academic praxis in agricultural sciences to tackle the interconnected crises. We do this by developing a framework of two drivers of academic knowledge production, power and values, and two mechanisms, motives and relationality. We argue that in the current dominant food system, power is consolidated and hierarchical, driven by the values of growthism and reductionism, motivated by efficiency and productivism, and characterized by extractive and anthropocentric relationality. Furthermore, we highlight evidence of the negative outcomes associated with this system, including the challenges we face and may potentially contribute to as participants. We then envision transformed food systems through examples of counter-hegemonic knowledge production systems, grounded in agroecological principles, in which power is distributed and horizontal, the primary values are solidarity and holism, motives enhance sufficiency and sovereignty, and relationality is reciprocal and based on care. By examining the current system and offering examples of alternatives, we aim to help distinguish between research that upholds the statu-quo and research that fosters change. We aim to inspire ourselves and others to reconnect with our agency and contribute towards transformed knowledge systems where food systems, underpinned by the values of agroecology, are more capable of sustaining life on this planet in an equitable and just manner.

High gain MIMO antenna with multiband characterization for terahertz applications

Recently, the relevance of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technology has increased due to the growing user base and the surge in demand for high data rates. It provides an essential answer to the pressing requirement for high-capacity communication systems compliant with new standards. In this study, a four-element MIMO antenna with specific properties—a thickness of 0.0224 mm and a relative permittivity of 4.3 —is presented on a polyamide substrate. It is intended to operate in terahertz (THz) applications at 0.395 and 0.629 THz. The configuration of the antenna is based on a traditional fork antenna. At the resonant frequencies, this MIMO antenna can achieve bandwidths of 9.53 GHz and 24.19 GHz, with reflection coefficients of -16.19 dB and -24.27 dB, respectively. Moreover, a gain of 5.17 dB and 3.19 dB are obtained at the second and first resonant frequencies, respectively. In the effort to maintain the operational band and enhance gain, a significant challenge arises from the insufficient isolation between the four antenna elements within the limited space. A Defected Ground Structure (DGS) is constructed and the inter-element distance is carefully investigated in order to effectively address this issue. Mutual coupling effects are effectively reduced with this antenna, and an amazing MIMO diversity response is shown. Additionally, it achieves a mean effective gain of less than -3, envelope correlation coefficients below 0.0125, diversity gain of around 10 dB, and total active reflection coefficients below -4 dB. The suggested design was simulated using the ansys High-Frequency Structure Simulator program. These enhancements show that the recommended MIMO antenna is a suitable choice for terahertz applications like 5 G networks of the future and terahertz imaging systems used in medical settings for tissue imaging and cancer diagnosis.

Participatory backcasting towards desirable co-produced mobility futures: A case study of MaaS in Greater Manchester

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) has emerged as a model supported by popular discourse on achieving greener, more efficient and equitable future mobility. While technological change is a primary driver for models of development, the policy pathways, implementation and implications of MaaS are complex and unclear. In this paper, we explore the implications and limitations of a participatory approach to co-produced MaaS futures in Greater Manchester (GM). We adapt a backcasting methodology involving two stakeholder workshops to develop shared future visions and action pathways. Our methodology includes a participatory approach to pluralistic vision development and the use of a Three Horizons method for backcasting. This approach provides the opportunity to explore multiple desirable futures and the formulation of action pathways without negating plausible future possibilities. The research identifies multiple policy and collaborative action areas while also revealing limitations in MaaS user agency and unaddressed sustainability concerns related to wider Smart City criticisms. Findings also suggest a lack of adequate theory within current MaaS frameworks to engage with uncertainty, change and adaptive capacity. Future areas of research include the expansion of current frameworks to incorporate alternative framings from planning and complexity theories already attempting to address these dimensions of futures.

A Reparative Lens for Exploring Youth Aspirations in South African Universities

ABSTRACT In South Africa, low-income rural black youth are assumed to exhibit endurance in their higher education agency while yet not really being agentic, because they accommodate an oppressive university and settle for less ambitious aspirational horizons. Drawing on illustrative empirical data from a longitudinal study of black youth without hot knowledge of higher education to deploy from their families’ biographies, the project explored students’ accessing, participating in and moving on from their studies at five South African universities. In exploring youth aspirations and agency, the concept of repair is employed to position aspirations as reparative and temporal where past injustices, present and future intersect in shaping agency and in projecting imagined futures for youth. The cultural lens of aspiration offers a space to interrogate and dismantle past exclusions and unsettle norms of the “disadvantaged student” to avoid reinscribing past injustice in ways which are globally relevant to marginalised university students from poor backgrounds compared to better off students. It shows how day to day negotiated conditions of living in universities by these students are agentic; enduring poverty and exclusion is an active aspirational struggle for dignity and recognition, even if these students are not able to undo relations of power. Ubuntu is mobilised as an ontological means to further deepen how we understand aspirations and agency as interdependent and interacted between person and community and as refusal of the neoliberal university. Finally, features of universities as potential spaces of aspirations and repair for transformative change and transformative futures are sketched.

The future of higher education and the claim of globalisation: revisioning the past, re-imagining the future

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a rise in policy papers and academic literature about the future of higher education, often formulated within a particular globalist imaginary. The thesis of this article is that this imaginary configures discourses on higher education futures and simultaneously reconstructs the history of higher education in terms of a process of global isomorphism. The prevailing discourse assumes a transition from nation-state-centred to globally oriented universities, emphasising convergence and integration on a global scale. Critically examining this globalist imaginary, the article uncovers several misconceptions in the historiography of higher education under the guise of globalisation. The globalist perspective tends to cast higher education history within a diffusionist framework, ignoring the complexities and nuances of historical development, especially in contexts marked by histories of colonialism. The article advocates for a cultural historiography that acknowledges contextual differences and confronts historical power relations. Challenging the assumptions of global isomorphism, the authors propose a shift in focus to foster a more nuanced understanding of the past of higher education, enabling more interesting and relevant imaginations of higher education futures.