Global Knowledge Research Articles

A situated analysis of research publication evaluation in Latin countries based on a pluriversal approach

The global knowledge ecosystem is affected by ethnocentrism and witnesses Western monopolies of knowledge that have built hegemonic structures and narratives, especially in scientific and academic publishing. For the design field, the paper proposes a transition from processes of power and control over knowledge to processes of distributed knowledge leadership among the stakeholders of the publishing system (journals, conferences, scientific associations and societies, academic networks). It analyses the publishing ecosystem of Latin American countries as a case study representative of Global South knowledge that is ‘decentring’ scientific design publishing. By problematizing pluriversity, it proposes a practical frameworkon international collaboration, informed evaluation, and distributed processes to promote equity and accessibility. The 8th International Forum of Design as a Process serves as a testbed, showcasing community-led knowledge experimentation targeting the Global South countries. The case study highlights the potential to re-evaluate established structures for more pluriversal design knowledge.

GDMol: Generative Double-Masking Self-Supervised Learning for Molecular Property Prediction.

Effective molecular feature representation is crucial for drug property prediction. Recent years have seen increased attention on graph neural networks (GNNs) that are pre-trained using self-supervised learning techniques, aiming to overcome the scarcity of labeled data in molecular property prediction. Traditional GNNs in self-supervised molecular property prediction typically perform a single masking operation on the nodes and edges of the input molecular graph, masking only local information and insufficient for thorough self-supervised training. Hence, we propose a model for molecular property prediction based on generative double-masking self-supervised learning, termed as GDMol. This integrates generative learning into the self-supervised learning framework for latent representation, and applies a second round of masking to these latent representations, enabling the model to better capture global information and semantic knowledge of the molecules for a richer, more informative representation, thereby achieving more accurate and robust molecular property prediction. Our experiments on 5 datasets demonstrated superior performance of GDMol in predicting molecular properties across different domains. Moreover, we used the masking operation to traverse through the gradient changes of each node, the magnitude and sign of which reflect the positive and negative contribution respectively of the local structure in the molecule to the prediction outcome. This in-depth interpretative analysis not only enhances the model's interpretability, but also provides more targeted insights and direction for optimizing drug molecules. In summary, this research offers novel insights on improving molecular property prediction tasks, and paves the way for further research on the application of generative learning and self-supervised learning in the field of chemistry.

Knowing (in) organizations: calculative cultures and paradigmatic learning in the case of the World Bank

Abstract This paper explores the evidence culture in one of the key global knowledge institutions—the World Bank. Framing itself as a “Knowledge Ban,” the World Bank is a leading organization in data and evidence provision around poverty and inequalities, and as such, it shapes the broader evidentiary standards and knowledge infrastructures around the world. Drawing on a rich qualitative study of 46 semistructured interviews with experts working on poverty knowledge as well as document analysis of the key reports and strategic documents, this paper explores the manner in which the calculative evidence culture of the World Bank mediates the production of evidence and expertise within the institution. This paper explores the collectively formulated interpretative lenses that guide formative questions such as what counts as (good) evidence, how it is used in decision-making, and how to deal with uncertainty with data and evidence. By doing so, this paper makes two contributions to the literature on evidence-based policymaking. First, it provides a cultural lens to the production and use of evidence in policymaking, a lens that is significantly underdeveloped in the existing scholarship. Second, it addresses the question of evolving evidentiary standards and learning within knowledge organizations. By exploring how institutions “change their mind,” this paper provides a dynamic account of the evolving politics of knowledge within organizations.

VITR: Augmenting Vision Transformers with Relation-Focused Learning for Cross-Modal Information Retrieval

The relations expressed in user queries are vital for cross-modal information retrieval. Relation-focused cross-modal retrieval aims to retrieve information that corresponds to these relations, enabling effective retrieval across different modalities. Pre-trained networks, such as Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training networks, have gained significant attention and acclaim for their exceptional performance in various cross-modal learning tasks. However, the Vision Transformer (ViT) used in these networks is limited in its ability to focus on image region relations. Specifically, ViT is trained to match images with relevant descriptions at the global level, without considering the alignment between image regions and descriptions. This article introduces VITR, a novel network that enhances ViT by extracting and reasoning about image region relations based on a local encoder. VITR is comprised of two key components. Firstly, it extends the capabilities of ViT-based cross-modal networks by enabling them to extract and reason with region relations present in images. Secondly, VITR incorporates a fusion module that combines the reasoned results with global knowledge to predict similarity scores between images and descriptions. The proposed VITR network was evaluated through experiments on the tasks of relation-focused cross-modal information retrieval. The results derived from the analysis of the Flickr30K, MS-COCO, RefCOCOg, and CLEVR datasets demonstrated that the proposed VITR network consistently outperforms state-of-the-art networks in image-to-text and text-to-image retrieval.

How to Make Your African Ecology Paper Stand Out to a Global Audience

ABSTRACTThe discovery of the South East Africa Montane Archipelago has unveiled a biologically significant ecoregion with a high level of endemism, showcasing at least 127 endemic plants and 45 endemic vertebrates, including unique genera of both plants and reptiles. This remarkable find highlights Africa's ongoing contributions to global ecological knowledge, despite often being underrepresented in the international research sphere due to biases and marginalisation. To address these issues and enhance the visibility and impact of African ecological research, this Editorial outlines several key strategies. First, it emphasises the importance of making hypothesis‐driven research in ecological studies, following Popper's philosophy of science. Second, it advocates for generalising research findings to broader contexts rather than focusing narrowly on local specifics. Additionally, it underscores the need use clear, generalised terminology and producing detailed, context‐rich maps, so that the authors can enhance the comprehensibility and appeal of their research. Finally, the Editorial highlights the growing influence of African ecology, as evidenced by that the difference in impact factor between AJE and major international general ecology journals has decreased greatly. The Editorial also suggests that by adopting the strategies highlighted herein, African ecologists can further elevate their global presence and contribute more substantially to the field.

The distribution of environmental pressures from global dietary shift

Abstract The production and consumption of food is one of the main drivers of environmental change globally. Meanwhile, many populations remain malnourished due to insufficient or unhealthy diets. Increasingly, dietary shifts are proposed as a means to address both environmental and health concerns. We have a limited understanding of how dietary shifts could alter where food is produced and consumed and how these changes would affect the distribution of environmental pressures both globally and across different groups of people. Here we combine new food flow data linking producing to consuming country with environmental pressures to estimate how a global shift to each of four diets (Indian, EAT-Lancet, Mediterranean, and mean Food Based Dietary Guidelines) could affect environmental pressures at the global, country income group, and country level. Globally, cumulative pressures decrease under the Indian, EAT-Lancet, and Mediterranean scenarios and increase under Food Based Dietary Guidelines. On average, low income countries increase their cumulative consumption and production pressures while high income countries decrease their consumption pressures, and typically decrease their production pressures. Increases in low income countries are likely due to the nutritional inadequacy of current diets and the corresponding increases in consumption quantities with a shift to our diet scenarios. Despite these increases, we believe that three out four of our simulated dietary shifts can be seen as a net benefit by decreasing global pressures while low income countries increase pressures to adequately feed their populations. Additionally, considering principles of fairness applied, some nations are more responsible for causing historical environmental pressures and should shoulder more of the change. To facilitate more equitable shifts in global diets, resources, capacity, and knowledge sharing of sustainable agricultural practices are critical to minimize the increases in pressures that low income countries would incur to adequately feed their populations.

Knowledge source switching under state interventions of latecomer regions: A case study of Shenzhen

This paper aims to unpack the process and analyze the mechanisms of knowledge source switching in latecomer regions that have evolved from peripheral to core positions. Drawing on four decades of matched patent-company data from Shenzhen, we classify patents into various knowledge classifications and calculate their percentage changes to observe the dynamics of knowledge source switching. Furthermore, we employ Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimation to examine the causal effects of state interventions on this dynamic. The findings indicate that Shenzhen's knowledge sources have switched from multinational corporations (MNCs) and foreign subsidiaries to global inventors. Notably, state interventions exhibit a significant positive causal effect on this dynamic, particularly following the implementation of independent innovation policies. These findings contribute to the cross-fertilization of regional innovation studies and the Global Production Networks (GPN) approach, highlight the critical role of the state in ensuring the right and dynamic mode of global knowledge sourcing and offer implications for local innovation policies in latecomer regions.

Artificial intelligence and Afrocentric Biblical Hermeneutics crossroads in Zimbabwe (Col 2:8)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) isset to revolutionise global knowledge domains and biblical hermeneutics is no exception. At face value, in Zimbabwe, AI has been stigmatised as a humanistic and profane technological system with an immense propensity to cause general religious backsliding, degeneracy, vain philosophising and secularisation of the Gospel of Christ. This article isolated Colossians 2:8 as a lens to investigate the congruency of Artificial Intelligence to the pericope’s scope of ‘philosophy, vain deceit, tradition of men and rudiments of the world’. The Zimbabwean setting was used to examine whether the Colossian Christian Church’s philosophical aspersions bear any semblances to how AI is viewed among the clergy, theologians, Christian believers and academics of religious studies. The qualitative methodological paradigms of African Biblical Hermeneutics and Exegetical Method were employed in the study. The study mainly established that AI, like a tool in the hands of a workman, can either build or destroy, enhance or adulterate biblical hermeneutics depending on how it is viewed and used.Contribution: The article reflects on how the world’s most nascent technological development, Artificial Intelligence, impacts on biblical interpretation generally, but, more particularly, in the Zimbabwean context.

Global Knowledge Map and Emerging Research Trends in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Hereditary Diseases: A CiteSpace-based Visualization and Analysis.

The rise of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) technology has ushered in a landmark shift in the study of hereditary diseases. However, there is a scarcity of reports that offer a comprehensive and objective overview of the current state of research at the intersection of iPSCs and hereditary diseases. Therefore, this study endeavors to categorize and synthesize the publications in this field over the past decade through bibliometric methods and visual knowledge mapping, aiming to visually analyze their research focus and clinical trends. The English language literature on iPSCs and hereditary diseases, published from 2014 to 2023 in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), was examined. The CiteSpace (version 6.3.R1) software was utilized to visualize and analyze country/region, institution, scholar, co-cited authors, and co-cited journals. Additionally, the co-occurrence, clustering, and bursting of co-cited references were displayed. Analysis of 347 articles that met the inclusion criteria revealed a steady increase in the number of published articles and citation frequency in the field over the past decade. With regard to the countries/regions, institutions, scholars, and journals where the articles were published, the highest numbers were found in the USA, the University of California System, Suren M. Zakian, and Stem Cell Research, respectively. The current research is focused on the construction of disease models, both before and after correction, as well as drug target testing for single-gene hereditary diseases. Chromosome transplantation genomic therapy for hereditary diseases with abnormal chromosome structures may emerge as a future research hotspot in this field.

Factors Affecting Learners’ Decision to enrol in Commercial Subjects – A Case of the Chris Hani District, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Commercial subjects such as Accounting, Economics and Business Studies are an important stream in schools that help learners broaden their social and global knowledge. The purpose of the study was to identify the factors that influence learners’ decisions to enrol in commercial subjects. A case study served as the foundation for the study’s qualitative methodology. The study was based on Berger and Calabre’s (1983) Uncertainty Reduction Theory. The study purposely sampled ten learners from two secondary schools in the Chris Hani District, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Individual interviews were used to collect the data, which were then analysed using content analysis (CA) and categorised using thematic analysis. The findings proved that several factors, including learners’ ability in the subjects and the influence of teachers and parents, influenced their decision to enrol in commercial courses. The study recommends that learners should first be counselled, mentored, and assisted in making decisions about the choice of subjects. Lastly, schools should conduct aptitude and interest assessments. The contribution of this study is to provide insights on improving curriculum design and career guidance around commercial subjects in this region as well as to inform educational stakeholders on how to address potential barriers to enrolment in commercial subjects and lastly serve as a foundation for broader studies on commercial subject enrollment in South Africa. Keywords: Commercial Subjects; Learner’s decision; Subject Stream

A Black-Archipelago Anticolonial Canon Speaks Psychology

In Euromodernity, the discipline of western psychology holds a unique place in the global knowledge order. It is the primary epistemic source, the authoritative voice of psychological knowledge. This essay explores epistemic problems with western psychological science and its canonical status. Epistemic selectivism—the failure to address phenomena which are detrimental to all human beings, not only those of concern to western subjects and their subjectivities—is identified as a problem to be solved in the discipline of western psychology. In order to address epistemic failures of western psychology I return to the knowledge that emerges from the geography where Europe launched its project of racial and racist modern life. I review the Black-Archipelago anticolonial canon that speaks psychology. I follow this anticolonial canon because it pierces and penetrates epistemic silences about psychological experience in Euromodernity. Of the plenitude of theories and concepts developed by Black, Caribbean anticolonial thinkers which are of relevance to understanding the psychological effects of Euromodernity I focus in this review on two fundamental ideas—Frantz Fanon’s sociogenic principle and the emancipatory thrust of consciousness. An embrace of the principle of open epistemologies is proposed as a solution to the problem of epistemic selectivism.

Primary Sources as Linked Data: Exploring Motives Across the Sciences and Social Sciences

ABSTRACTWhile long recognized in the humanities, there is growing recognition in the sciences and social sciences that primary sources—as diverse as manuscripts, photographs, cultural belongings, and specimens—hold vast data about scientific and human knowledge for use in scholarship, community research, and global knowledge. Yet, data embedded in these sources are largely disconnected from the systems of discovery, access, and structured data that support reuse and insights across globally dispersed repositories. In this paper, we share select findings of a systematic review to explore the use of primary sources, and the data embedded in them, via linked data across the sciences and social sciences. Our results confirm the use of a variety of primary source data across diverse disciplines, particularly those requiring longitudinal studies and data integration from diverse repositories and contexts. We highlight how linked data are understood to: connect collections to communities; support highly granular credit, attribution, and assessment of impact; and interrelate diverse sources of knowledge. While these results suggest the value of linked data for the specific research needs of anthropology, the effectiveness of linked data in achieving these objectives and the suitability of this approach for a diversity of institutions and communities need further study.

Resilient Time-Varying Formation Tracking Control for General Linear Multiagent Systems With a Nonautonomous Leader and Adversarial Followers.

This article is concerned with resilient formation tracking problems for general linear multiagent systems, where the leader's control input is unavailable to all the followers and partial followers' behaviors are malicious due to the node attacks. Despite the presence of the nonautonomous leader and the adversarial followers, the remaining benign followers are still expected to track the leader's trajectory with the prescribed time-varying formation. To this end, a resilient scheme comprising an attack detection and isolation strategy and a formation tracking protocol is proposed. The detection strategy enables every benign follower to identify its adversarial neighbors with two-hop communication information, as long as the underlying topology meets given conditions. Then, the detected adversarial agents are directly removed to avoid the spread of their influence, which induces a new problem called node loss. To accommodate possible node loss events, the designed tracking protocol is independent of certain global knowledge, and its convergence is demonstrated by means of the impulsive Lyapunov functions. Finally, the proposed resilient scheme is verified by two simulation examples.

Sinkhorn Distance Minimization for Adaptive Semi-Supervised Social Network Alignment.

Social network alignment, aiming at linking identical identities across different social platforms, is a fundamental task in social graph mining. Most existing approaches are supervised models and require a large number of manually labeled data, which are infeasible in practice considering the yawning gap between social platforms. Recently, isomorphism across social networks is incorporated as complementary to link identities from the distribution level, which contributes to alleviating the dependency on sample-level annotations. Adversarial learning is adopted to learn a shared projection function by minimizing the distance between two social distributions. However, the hypothesis of isomorphism might not always hold true as social user behaviors are generally unpredictable, and thus a shared projection function is insufficient to handle the sophisticated cross-platform correlations. In addition, adversarial learning suffers from training instability and uncertainty, which may hinder model performance. In this article, we propose a novel meta-learning-based social network alignment model Meta-SNA to effectively capture the isomorphism and the unique characteristics of each identity. Our motivation lies in learning a shared meta-model to preserve the global cross-platform knowledge and an adaptor to learn a specific projection function for each identity. Sinkhorn distance is further introduced as the distribution closeness measurement to tackle the limitations of adversarial learning, which owns an explicitly optimal solution and can be efficiently computed by the matrix scaling algorithm. Empirically, we evaluate the proposed model over multiple datasets, and the experimental results demonstrate the superiority of Meta-SNA.

STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF DEFORMATIONS OF MULTI-STOREY BUILDINGS IN ALMATY

The article provides an assessment of the stability of buildings and structures in the city of Almaty under the influence of frequent earthquakes. Studying this process is not only interesting from a scientific point of view but also has great practical significance for ensuring the safety and stability of buildings in the city. The aim of the work is to investigate the condition of buildings in Almaty in terms of seismic safety characteristics. The research tasks include studying the types of buildings common in the city of Almaty and conducting stability calculations for buildings. This article selects the main and most common type of buildings and structures in each district of the city of Almaty as the research object. The calculations of the level of buildings' stability to seismic vibrations in different areas of the city, information on the estimated seismic resistance level of most buildings, and the calculation of their possible stability indicators are provided. The results show that the stability of buildings and structures in the city depends on reducing seismic activity from bottom to top based on their location (on the map). According to the calculation conclusions, it is necessary to increase the number of design organizations responsible for construction quality and use different building structures and construction methods in different parts of the city. Problems related to building deformation are relevant everywhere. Studying this process in Almaty will contribute to the global knowledge base and help create new technical solutions for safe construction.

MEASURING GLOBALIZATION: ANALYZING INTERNATIONALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION (IOHE) THROUGH STEM EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN

The concepts of 'internationalization' and 'globalization' are closely intertwined, impacting both tangible and intangible aspects of higher education. Internationalization refers to the internal transformations that occur within an educational setting as a result of frequent cross-border interactions within a local governmental system. Currently, developing countries like Pakistan are adapting and shaping their higher education systems in response to the global knowledge economy but neglecting the introduction of STEM education in the areas of social sciences like mathematics, statistics, entrepreneurship, IT, and other courses that are considered the need of time may leads to lack social scientist’s ability to estimate & forecasting and critically evaluate the situations as these deficiencies lead to reduce the cognitive skill of the workforce. This qualitative study employed Wallenstein’s World System analysis framework to examine student mobility and educational policy aspects in Pakistan critically. The findings suggest that the internationalization of higher education may lead to unequal exchange of educational services between core and peripheral countries in the global system.

Wayang-based digital storytelling: a project to promote students" collaborative and digital literacy skills

Indonesian Wayang is a cultural heritage recognized by UNESCO that must be preserved and passed toward future generations. One of the efforts to maintain wayang existence is through the insertion within educational field by the help of technology and animation in the form of digital storytelling. This research is aimed at exploring the implementation of wayang-based digital storytelling project at an Indonesian school which combined art, culture, skills, character education, cultural heritage values and global knowledge. The researchers applied narrative inquiry design in order to investigate and have in depth exploration toward the implementation of wayang-based digital storytelling within the researcher’s classroom. After having the analysis and reflection toward teaching and learning process as well as teaching documentation, it is concluded that the wayang-based project is potential to help students in addressing cultural challenges. Through the wayang media applied, the young generation know and increase their awareness to preserve the local cultural heritage. Further, the implementation of project in group using technology integration is concluded to be effective to enhace students’ collaborative, communicative, and ICT literacy which is very important in the 21 century era. Moreover, the topic which was close to socio environmental issues is expected to raise students’ awareness to be active individual to protect the surroundings. In conclusion, the application of wayang-based project within the classroom is effective and potential to strengthen Profil Pelajar Pancasila character stated in national curriculum (Kurikulum Merdeka).

Research Trends in Sports Volunteering: A Focus on Polish Contributions to Global Knowledge

Research Trends in Sports Volunteering: A Focus on Polish Contributions to Global Knowledge

Integrating traditional knowledge of non-Western humanities and social sciences: a research agenda through the Chinese lens

ABSTRACT The global knowledge asymmetries, dominated by academic centers in Western societies, have marginalized traditional non-Western knowledge. In line with the call for intellectual pluriversality, non-Western scholars in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) have witnessed a revitalization of traditional knowledge in research. Nonetheless, how they integrate their traditional knowledge into research lacks theoretical grounding and empirical substantiation. This study specifically examines the research agenda of contemporary Chinese HSS academics who are attempting to integrate traditional Chinese and modern Western knowledge. Through interviews, it seeks to understand their reasons, goals, principles, and strategies related to such knowledge integration. It first underscores the rationales stemming from global knowledge disparities and Chinese individuals’ limited exposure to their traditional knowledge. It then reveals guiding principles for understanding traditional Chinese knowledge. Last, it provides strategies for knowledge integration, including comparative analysis and the transformation of traditional Chinese knowledge into modern theories and methodologies. Such a research agenda transcends critical reflection on the hegemonic and inequitable global knowledge system, promoting tangible actions to facilitate HSS research in China and beyond.

"Data Free Flow with Trust": Japan's struggle to integrate democracy and human rights into digital trade policy.

A powerful regime for regulating trade, the Group of Seven (G-7) has increasingly negotiated its digital trade through bilateral and preferential trade agreements, including with non-member states in the Global South. Focusing on the dominant concept shaping these agreements, Japan's "Data Free Flow with Trust" (D.F.F.T.), we trace its discursively contested emergence and meaning within a national ("Society 5.0") vision for Japan's digital transformation, and its subsequent transnationalization in international fora and institutionalization in global digital trade policy. Drawing on our interviews with Japanese government ministers, business elites, and legal experts who contributed to the processual development of D.F.F.T., as well as diverse additional primary sources, we find that the D.F.F.T. has become more than a trade policy, covering a wider range of social and geopolitical issues. In particular, we show that contention over "data localization measures" has restructured international relations of trust, especially across the Global North/South divide. Ultimately, this research report contributes to our understanding of how D.F.F.T. poses threats to human rights, democracy, and the global knowledge economy that may undermine its goals of enhancing innovation capacity and economic growth.