Radical Change Research Articles

Radical Changes in Infertility Practice: It Is Coming Soon

The Article Abstract is not available.

Multi-step thermal design of microwave vacuum heating to basaltic regolith simulant towards lunar base construction.

Humanned exploration and extended stay on the Moon are the hottest challenges today. We report highly robust materials by microwave heating under high-vacuum conditions (10- 3 Pa) from a basaltic regolith simulant (FJS-1) to ensure the feasibility of lunar infrastructure construction. The violent degassing dynamics were revealed by monitoring vacuum pressure during heating and analyzing the compounds evolved from basaltic silicate compounds: thermal pyrolysis of silicate compounds became more pronounced above 1000 oC, leading to a catastrophic deformation accompanied by forming countless pores of several hundred µm sizes. The preferential formation of the magnetite phase in vacuum heating dominantly caused the radical change in microwave absorption capacity compared with conventional heating routes using an electrical furnace in atmospheric conditions. Besides, the in-situ measurement of dielectric properties during microwave vacuum heating clarified the increase in one order of magnitude from 100 to 1000 oC. Based on the presumed phenomena during microwave-vacuum heating for basaltic regolith, we propose a new thermal design concept to overcome the practical limitations of microwave technology. The multi-step temperature profile successfully fabricated a highly robust product that demonstrated world-class mechanical performance, equivalent to the compressive strength of 65MPa without any vigorous hydrostatic cold press as a pre-treatment.

From being disrupted to being a disruptor: How university presses are helping to drive positive change

Key points Digital disruption is not new and there are plenty of examples of university presses embracing radical change to help achieve our goals. Cambridge University Press has shown the benefits of moving from being disrupted to being a disruptor in early open access (OA) transition. University presses are well positioned to be part of the collaborative, systemic change now required to fulfil OA ambitions. Being focused on the real needs of our communities enables us to see even major disruptions, including artificial intelligence, as just part of our development.

Land-use competition in 1.5°C climate stabilization: is there enough land for all potential needs?

Achieving a low-carbon future requires a comprehensive approach that combines emission mitigation options from economic activities with the sustainable use of land for numerous needs: food production, energy production, carbon sequestration, nature preservation and broad ecosystem services. Using the MIT Integrated Global System (IGSM) framework we analyze land-use competition in a 1.5°C climate stabilization scenario, in which demand for bioenergy and natural sinks increase along with the need for sustainable farming and food production. We find that to address the numerous trade-offs, effective approaches to nature-based solutions (NBS) and agriculture practices are essential. With proper regulatory policies and radical changes in current practices, global land is sufficient to provide increased consumption of food per capita (without large diet changes) over the century while also utilizing 2.5–3.5 billion hectares (Gha) of land for NBS practices that provide a carbon sink of 3–6 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 per year as well as 0.4–0.6 Gha of land for energy production—0.2–0.3 Gha for 50–65 exajoules (EJ) per year of bioenergy and 0.2–0.35 Gha for 300–600 EJ/year of wind and solar power generation. We list the competing uses of land to reflect the trade-offs involved in land use decisions, and note that while there is sufficient land in our scenario, attaining this outcome, capable of delivering a 1.5°C future, requires effective policies and measures at national and global levels that promote efficient land use for food, energy and nature (including carbon sequestration) and ensure long-term commitments by decision makers from governments and industry in order to realize the benefits of climate change mitigation.

Transhumanism and evolutionary psychology: a dialogue about the future of human nature

The article explores the philosophical dialogue between transhumanism and evolutionary psychology regarding the limits and consequences of the technological transformation of human nature. The growing relevance of this debate is analyzed in the context of the rapid development of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics, which open up unprecedented opportunities for changing human nature. The main provisions of transhumanism are considered, which, continuing the ideas of the Enlightenment, offers a radical vision of the future, where humanity can consciously direct its own evolution with the help of technology. The position of evolutionary psychology is highlighted, which, based on an understanding of the natural mechanisms of the development of the human species, warns against hasty intervention in a complex system of adaptive mechanisms that have been formed over millions of years. The paper analyzes in detail the works of leading representatives of both directions, including J. Huxley and Gr. Flow from the side of transhumanism, as well as critical views of F. Fukuyama and L. Kass. Special attention is paid to the research of evolutionary psychologists, who provide scientific justification for the concept of universal human nature and warn against the risks of “planned evolution”. A fundamental contradiction has been revealed between the views of transhumanists, who consider human nature as plastic and ready for technological changes, and evolutionary psychologists, who consider it a fixed reality formed by long evolution. It is emphasized that modern technologies create fundamentally new conditions for human existence that go beyond the traditional enlightened understanding of science. The study shows that although technological development of mankind has already changed our nature, further radical changes require careful consideration and study. The main problem of “planned evolution” is determined by the risk of uncontrolled acceleration of natural evolutionary processes without understanding all possible consequences.

Strategy for Improving the Quality of Education in Muhammadiyah Schools

This study aims to analyze the SWOT, IFE, and EFE of Muhammadiyah Schools in Bengkulu City. The study was conducted at Muhammadiyah Schools in Bengkulu City from September to November 2023. The research methodology used includes quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitatively, data was obtained by distributing questionnaires via Google Form to 54 respondents and qualitatively conducting interviews with 4 respondents representing elements of Muhammadiyah education figures, Aisyiyah, lecturers, and Muhammadiyah teachers. The results of the study indicate that: 1) There are 10 indicators of strength, 9 indicators of weakness, 6 indicators of opportunity, and 5 indicators of threat in Muhammadiyah schools, and there are 12 SO, WO, ST, and WT strategies that can be applied for the progress and development of Muhammadiyah school education, 2) The value of internal factor analysis (IFE) is 2.85 with a moderate category, and the value of external factor analysis (EFE) is 2.6 with a moderate category, and 3) Muhammadiyah schools in Bengkulu city from kindergarten, elementary school/MMI, junior high school/MMTS, and senior high school/MMA are in quadrant V, namely in a condition of maintaining and maintaining. The recommended strategy for the progress and development of Muhammadiyah schools is a strategy that is aggressively penetrating the community to convince the general public that Muhammadiyah schools can be the main choice, and also a strategy for developing Muhammadiyah schools into superior schools is needed through curriculum changes, radical changes in the school’s vision and mission, and improvements in internal quality, both human resources and related infrastructure.

The Limits of the Law: Work in the Light of Capitalist Reproduction

ABSTRACT The article explores alternatives to capitalist work from the point of view of reproduction of capitalist relations. The latter occurs in a cyclical manner as capitalist structures—the economic, juridico-political and ideological levels—co-constitute and reproduce one another. Given the difficulty inherent in breaking the cycle of reproduction, a reflection on alternatives to capitalist work requires that work is reconceptualised, to the extent possible, beyond current structures: as transformations at any one individual level cannot produce radical change, alternatives to capitalist work require a holistic reimagining of the social totality, transcending, for example, mere legal or mere political reform. The force that can disrupt the cycle of capitalist reproduction and open space for such holistic reimagination is class struggle. The latter becomes embedded in the process of redefining work in so far as it is the force that can precipitate structural and unforeseeable change. It also acts a reminder that the substantive redefinition of work is a collective process, and cannot be the task of any single individual situated externally to that struggle.

Analysis of the Arab singer Shadia’s lyrics

AbstractIn this work, we analyze the lyrics of one of the most famous and influential Arab artists in the twentieth century, namely "Image missing" (Shadia). Lyrics analysis provides a deep insight into the artist’s career evolution and her interactions with the surrounding environment including the social, political, and economic conditions. In order to perform such analysis, we had to collect and compile the lyrics of Shadia accompanied with the necessary meta-data into an organized and structured form. The data are preprocessed by removing stop words and doing some normalization operations over the songs prose. We did not perform any lemmatization or stemming as the original form of the tokens conveys much more information than the source words. We performed a lexical analysis in order to study both the lexical diversity and density over the course of Shadia’s career life. We have as well studied the most significant words, idioms, and terms played in the songs using tools such as word clouds and more quantitative measures such as term frequency–inverse document frequency. We have divided the career life of Shadia into sub-decades of length 5 years, and all analyses are done both in a yearly fashion and more coarsely over such sub-decades. Our quantitative analyses show strong correlations between the artistic lyrical work of Shadia and the state of affairs in Egypt and the Arab World during her time. In particular, Shadia’s lyrics reflect the radical changes in all aspects of the social, political, and economic conditions. This is especially relevant knowing that Shadia is very much truly considered the daughter of the generation of the 1952 revolution in Egypt. The significance of Shadia and her lyrics stem essentially from being contemporaneous to radical changes in Egypt across all sectors including political (support of liberation movements across the world and the conflict with Israel) and socioeconomic (especially changing the social class structure in Egypt). We also investigated the potential effectiveness of PoS (Part-of-Speech) tagging in genre analysis and classification.

Encounter, Critique, and Postcritique: A Play in Two Acts

What’s at stake in debates over critique and postcritique in International Relations (IR)? To subvert that question, this article is written in the format of a theatre play that stages a repeated encounter between scholars who are invested, or not, in that debate. At the centre of the conversations that take place are questions linked to academic responsibility, the nature of reflexivity, and the possibility of different political futures. The play and its characters are fictions, though they are hoped to reflect the ‘narcissism of small differences’ that often pervades academia. In doing so, we seek to (1) foreground how small changes in context (here, from an academic to a practitioner conference) force radical changes on how intellectual controversies are debated, (2) emphasize that the true stakes of debates such as those between critique and postcritique are often obscured by the combative nature of academic discourse, and (3) advocate for a refusal of, or active withdrawal from, the arbitrary classification of scholars into particular intellectual camps or positions. This process of fixing identities, the false idea that we are simply our academic personas, very rarely reflects either our personal-political realities nor the complex, polyphonic, and sometimes happily contradictory qualities of our evolving intellectual lives.

Grand challenges of wind energy science – meeting the needs and services of the power system

Abstract. The share of wind power in power systems is increasing dramatically, and this is happening in parallel with increased penetration of solar photovoltaics, storage, other inverter-based technologies, and electrification of other sectors. Recognising the fundamental objective of power systems, maintaining supply–demand balance reliably at the lowest cost, and integrating all these technologies are significant research challenges that are driving radical changes to planning and operations of power systems globally. In this changing environment, wind power can maximise its long-term value to the power system by balancing the needs it imposes on the power system with its contribution to addressing these needs with services. A needs and services paradigm is adopted here to highlight these research challenges, which should also be guided by a balanced approach, concentrating on its advantages over competitors. The research challenges within the wind technology itself are many and varied, with control and coordination internally being a focal point in parallel with a strong recommendation for a holistic approach targeted at where wind has an advantage over its competitors and in coordination with research into other technologies such as storage, power electronics, and power systems.

Determining Elementary Teachers’ Competencies Using Practical Content Development Technologies

In education, as in all areas of our lives, the rapid development of computers and the Internet has brought about radical changes. The variety and use of technology in the educational environment is becoming increasingly widespread. A qualified teacher should have a personality that is in a state of constant renewal and development, which is directly proportional to the development of science and technology. Therefore, it is valuable for elementary teachers to become digitally literate and to know how to use this technology in teaching. The aim of this study was to investigate the competence of elementary teachers in the use of practical technologies for content development. This study is descriptive in the general survey type. The "Personal Information Form" and the "Competence Scale for Using Practical Content Development Technologies" were used to collect the research data. According to the results of the research, elementary teachers’ competence in the use of practical content development technologies was very low. It was found that the competences of the teachers with a good level of Internet use were higher than those of the teachers with a poor level of Internet use.

Regenerating the pitch: environmental discourses in football

ABSTRACT Climate crisis, environmental problems, and their appropriate responses are contested topics in international football. In this study, I analyse the construction of these issues and the privileging of certain responses through a critical discourse analysis of media content on environmental problems from FIFA, UEFA and We Play Green's (WPG) websites posted in 2022 (N = 66). I then examine how power is expressed within these discourses, and how this influence the renegotiation of the dominant discourse. In addition to a dominant discourse offered by FIFA and UEFA emphasizing how economic development is compatible with, and needed to achieve environmental sustainability, I identified a counter-discourse offered by WPG, promoting radical changes in politics and consumer practices. The various constructions of environmental problems and appropriate responses found in the two discourses demonstrate the need for democratic discussions when conceptualizing these issues, to make responses less dependent on strategic and economic interests.

Are radical changes to lifestyles necessary for mitigating climate change?

Many policy-makers and commentators propose that technological change alone will solve climate change. In this commentary, we argue that this techno-optimism is unrealistic, risky, and misses opportunities to improve well-being: radical behavioural change is essential for tackling climate change. While some behaviour change involves adopting green technologies, some are about changing how (much) we consume. Change is needed in our travel and dietary habits, material, energy and water use, in how we work and play. But not everyone needs to make radical lifestyle changes – the wealthiest need to change most. Achieving this will require policies that make low-carbon behaviours easier, cheaper, and more attractive. Tackling climate change requires a shift to a more equitable society and one in which happiness is prioritised over consumption.

Pharmacotherapy in SAH: Clinical Trial Lessons.

Subarachnoid Haemorrhage (SAH) is a medical emergency with potentially devastating outcomes. It is without doubt that over the past decades, there has been a radical change in the approach towards patients with SAH, both in terms of the surgical as well as of the pharmacological treatments offered. The present review aims to outline the principal data regarding the best practice in the pharmacotherapy of SAH, as well as to sum up the emerging evidence from the latest clinical trials. To date, nimodipine is the only evidence-based treatment of vasospasm. However, extensive research is currently underway to identify novel substances with magnesium sulphate, cilostazol, clazosentan and fasudil, demonstrating promising results. Antifibrinolytic therapy could help reduce mortality, and anticoagulants, in spite of their associated hazards, could actually reduce the incidence of delayed cerebral ischemia. The effectiveness of triple-H therapy has been challenged, yet evidence on the optimal regimen is still pending. Statins may benefit some patients by reducing the incidence of vasospasm and delayed ischemic events. As several clinical trials are underway, it is expected that in the years to come, more therapeutic options will be added to the attending physician's armamentarium.

Ethical mediarhetoric in videogame cybertexts: procedural explication of moral topics in an educational context

Introduction. Education in the field of ethics and practical philosophy is important both within the framework of educational and disciplinary discourse and in terms of personal and social formation of a person, his/her value-behavioral system of coordinates. Video game cybertexts containing moral themes in their narrative and procedural structure can increase interest in the study of theoretical issues of ethics and create a special virtual-simulative space of moral experimentation. Materials and Methods. The theoretical part of the paper is based on the conceptual framework of understanding video games as a procedural cybertext formulated by E. Aarseth and I. Bogost. The operation of the multimodal-semiotic structure of video games is based on the ideas of J. Havreljak and W. Toch. The experimental cluster of work is realized on the principles of Digital Game-Based Learning developed by M. Prensky and a set of pedagogical practices on the use of ICT-based learning. Results. Based on the interpretation of the features of multimodal semiotics of ethically engaged video games, two modes of their distinction are revealed – narrative and gameplay. Narrative represents moral themes through narrative storytelling, and gameplay through gameplay. It has two forms of manifestation and certainty - external-iconic (based on visual reading and ethically binary interpretation of videogame cybertext) and procedural, where at the level of program architectonics the possibilities of choice and realization of simulations of ethical activities are created. The experiment allowed a radical change for the better (from 20% to 73%) in most students' expectations about the educational possibilities of video games in this disciplinary area. The DGBL methodology helped the learners (80%) to experience (80%) the practical dimension of important ethical issues and to conduct a series of moral experiments within the virtual simulations. Most of the students (75%) were able to correctly relate theoretical knowledge from philosophy and ethics to specific video game situations and successfully interpreted them. Conclusion. Given the time-consuming nature of these cybertexts, it is recommended that they be used only as supplementary media to the main course texts. It seems most appropriate to study them as part of an elective to a basic course in ethics or philosophy. This material could also be the basis for the creation of an educational laboratory on practical ethics in a social and humanitarian quantorium.

The Changing Role of the Architect from Craftsmanship to Artificial Intelligence Environment in Historical Context

Architects differentiated themselves from master builders, craftsmen, and engineers, acquiring a distinct identity, social status, and position with modernity. The observation of this study indicates the presence of signs that a similar radical change is beginning to emerge. The knowledge and skills that contemporary architects need to possess are diverging with the incorporation of systems such as artificial intelligence, metaverse, blockchain, machine learning, and digital twins into the process, thereby transforming the ways architects design and represent. In this context, the study attempts to identify changes in the architect's identity through the evolving role of the architect in the historical process. It concludes that the role of the architect throughout the historical process is not stable but subject to continuous and dynamic change.

“Não esqueça eu” - O uso do pronome sujeito EU em função de objeto no português popular do Brasil

Portuguese, like many other Romance languages, is traditionally classified as a pro-drop language with a nominative-accusative alignment in its pronominal system. This means that it basically encodes the subject function on the verb, whereas the object function is marked on the object pronoun itself. However, spoken Portuguese in Brazil has been known to have drastically readjusted its pronominal system due to the introduction of novel pronouns such as você and a gente that do not inflect for case and which both trigger the verb to be inflected for 3rd person singular. Obviously, such radical changes can affect the entire pronominal system. New evidence taken from various sources such as pop music and X (Twitter) show precisely this: loss of case distinction seems to affect also other pronouns in Spoken Brazilian Portuguese. This paper tries to follow this development with the example of the 1st person singular pronoun eu by analyzing data found on social media and comparing it to written sources as far back as the 15th century.

An integrated dataset of ground hydrothermal regimes and soil nutrients monitored in some previously burned areas in hemiboreal forests in Northeast China during 2016–2022

Abstract. Under a warming climate, the occurrence of wildfires has been becoming increasingly more frequent in boreal forests and Arctic tundra over the last few decades. Wildfires can cause radical changes in forest ecosystems and the permafrost environment, such as the irreversible degradation of permafrost, succession of boreal forests, rapid and massive losses of soil carbon stock, and increased periglacial geohazards. Since 2016, we have gradually and more systematically established a network for studying soil nutrients and monitoring the hydrothermal state of the active layer and near-surface permafrost in the northern Da Xing'anling Mountains in Northeast China. Soil moisture content (depth of 0–9.4 m), soil organic carbon content (0–3.6 m), total nitrogen content (0–3.6 m), and total phosphorus and potassium content (0–3.6 m) datasets were obtained in 2016 via field sampling and subsequent laboratory tests. Ground temperature (0–20 m) and active layer thickness (2017–2022) datasets were obtained using thermistor cables that were permanently installed in boreholes or interpolated with these temperatures. The present data can be used to simulate changes in permafrost features under a changing climate and wildfire disturbances and to explore the changing interactive mechanisms of the fire–permafrost–carbon system in hemiboreal forests. Furthermore, they can provide baseline data for studies and action plans to support the carbon neutralization initiative and assessment of the ecological safety and management of the permafrost environment. These datasets can be easily accessed via the National Tibetan Plateau/Third Pole Environment Data Center (https://doi.org/10.11888/Cryos.tpdc.300933, Li and Jin, 2024).

‘Must Fall’ movements globally: transnational flows of South African student activism

This article demonstrates an important case of transnational activist influence from the Global South to both Global North and other Global South contexts. While protests, slogans, strategies and demands are expressions of a specific context-bound protest culture, they have the potential to resonate globally. In this way, specific protests become a model for other social movements, although not without tension or reconfigurations of activism. In this article, we explore the transnational flow of the ideas around ‘Must Fall’, developed initially by the South African student movement. From 2015, several university-based protests in South Africa coalesced under the slogan ‘Must Fall’, most prominently #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall. This ‘Must Fall’ idea resonated transnationally in multiple contexts. However, protests using ‘Must Fall’ also drew from other resources and held different meanings across the different contexts, creating a complex transnational flow of partially connected protests across Africa, Europe, and the US. Nevertheless, the ‘Must Fall’ protests were similar in expressing a need for a radical change to rupture and overcome structures of oppression, especially those shaped by colonialism. This article analyses the Global South genesis and meaning of the ‘Must Fall’ protests and how they travelled, resonating differently in both Southern and Northern contexts.

DECONSTRUCTING STABILITY: THE IMPACT OF THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR ON THE FORMATION OF A NEW SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

On February 24, 2022, a full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine began. It became a continuation of the Russian hybrid offensive and finally testified to the transition to a new geopolitical reality. In this sense, the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2014–2024 should be considered a postponed major European war. It initiated the transition from post-bipolarity to a neo-post-bipolar international system. The Russian-Ukrainian war became the most powerful armed conflict in Europe after the end of the Second World War. Russian hybrid and full-scale aggression caused a wave of political-diplomatic, military, socio-economic tsunami. It significantly influenced the transformation of the post-bipolar international order that functioned after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc. Today, it is impossible to accurately determine all the consequences and changes in the international arena that the modern Russian-Ukrainian war will lead to. However, it should be considered a turning point for the activation of radical changes. First, the modern neo-post-bipolar system of unstable equilibrium relations is characterized by an orientation towards the transformation of the global international order into a “post-American world”. Secondly, other centers of globalization have emerged and are gaining strength, especially the People's Republic of China and the EU, as well as the G 20 and BRICS states. Thirdly, the Russian Federation seeks to create an anti-American/anti-Western coalition in the face of an acute armed conflict and increased sanctions. Fourthly, the transformation of the modern system of international relations takes place in the direction of the formation of polycentrism while preserving the “deconstruction of stability”, that is, the strengthening of the conflict-causing potential at the global, regional, and peripheral levels.