Unified Theoretical Framework Research Articles

Two-Person Stochastic Duel with Energy Fuel Constraint Ammo

This paper deals with a novel variation of the versatile stochastic duel game that incorporates an energy fuel constraint into a two-player duel game. The energy fuel not only measures the vitality of players but also determines the power of the shooting projectile. The game requires players to carefully balance their energy usage, while trying to outmaneuver their opponent. This unique theoretical framework for the stochastic game model provides a valuable method for understanding strategic behavior in competitive environments, particularly in decision-making scenarios with fluctuating processes. The proposed game provides players with the challenge of optimizing their energy fuel usage, while managing the risk of losing the game. This novel model has potential for implementation across diverse fields, as it allows for a versatile conception of energy fuel. These energy fuels may encompass conventional forms, such as natural gas, petroleum, and electrical power, and even financial budgets, human capital, and temporal resources. The unique rules and constraints of the game in this research are expected to contribute insights into the decision-making strategies and behaviors of players in a wide range of practical applications. This research primarily focuses on deriving compact closed-form solutions, utilizing transformation and flexible analysis techniques adapted to varying the concept of the energy fuel level. By presenting a comprehensive description of our novel analytical approach and its application to the proposed model, this study aims to elucidate the fundamental principles underlying the energy fuel constraint stochastic duel game model.

Support Factors and Green Entrepreneurial Inclinations for Sustainable Competencies: Empirical Evidence from Oman

Purpose: The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the green entrepreneurial inclination of youth and sustainable development in Sultanate of Oman. It has a secondary objective of stimulating more research in areas identified as still being under‐explored. Theoretical framework: Researchers in the field of entrepreneurial intentions identified that certain personality traits as mentioned by META which are crucial for entrepreneurial intentions. Afterwards, Entrepreneurial Potential Model (EPM), which focused over innovative skills was introduced to measure entrepreneurial intentions. Design/methodology/approach The paper is discursive using quantitative research methodology, based on analysis and synthesis of green entrepreneurial literature the framework was developed. The data has been collected from 384 students studying in Dhofar University and University and Technology and Applied Sciences, Salalah. Structural Equation modelling has been conducted to test the model. Findings: Despite a broad spectrum of disciplines that investigate green entrepreneurial inclination and despite this special issue in the area of entrepreneurship, there are still areas open for research into green entrepreneurial intentions. The paper develops a model to explain green entrepreneurial inclination. Research, Practical and Social implications: As empirical research, the study offers the benefit of new research directions for researchers/ universities in understanding and promoting the culture of green entrepreneurship among university students. Originality/Value; The paper links a significant body of literature within a unifying theoretical framework and identifies under‐researched areas of green entrepreneurial inclination of youth in an entrepreneurship context. Originality/vale: The research over sustainability has been conducted rarely in GCC region. however, particularly linking it with green entrepreneurial intentions with the help of universities has failed to get attention by the researchers as well as academicians.

Catalyst Role of University Green Entrepreneurial Support Promoting Green Entrepreneurial Inclinations Among Youth: Empirical Evidence from Oman

Purpose: The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the green entrepreneurial inclination of youth and sustainable development in Sultanate of Oman. It has a secondary objective of stimulating more research in areas identified as still being under‐explored. Theoretical framework: The framework is developed covering the personality factors, support factors and inclination towards green entrepreneurship furthermore the moderating role of institutional support has been inculcated. Design/Methodology/Approach: The paper is discursive using quantitative research methodology, based on analysis and synthesis of green entrepreneurial literature the framework was developed. The data has been collected from 384 students studying in Dhofar University and University and Technology and Applied Sciences, Salalah. Structural Equation modelling has been conducted to test the model. Findings: Despite a broad spectrum of disciplines that investigate green entrepreneurial inclination and despite this special issue in the area of entrepreneurship, there are still areas open for research into green entrepreneurial intentions. The paper develops a model to explain green entrepreneurial inclination. Research limitations/Implications: As a conceptual paper, the study is limited to literature and prior empirical research. It offers the benefit of new research directions for researchers/ universities in understanding and promoting the culture of green entrepreneurship among university students. The paper provides researchers with a proposed and tested integrated model of green entrepreneurial inclination. Originality/Value: The paper links a significant body of literature within a unifying theoretical framework and identifies under‐researched areas of green entrepreneurial inclination of youth in an entrepreneurship context.

Family practice with fathers, social care, and capabilities

AbstractThe aim of this article is to offer a novel theoretical perspective on family practitioners' engagement with fathers, through the lens of theories of social care and capabilities. The paper shows how research on low engagement of fathers in family‐ and child‐related social interventions has advanced along three main axes: (a) giving voice to fathers, (b) analyzing workers' perceptions, and (c) what works analysis of father‐oriented programs. I point to several problems in existing research: the absence of a unifying theoretical framework and the lack of sufficient attention to issues of relationality and agency. Theories of care and the capabilities approach are offered as a framework. Applying these theoretical frameworks to existing research on father engagement raises new questions and directions for further studies, mainly in two directions: first, relationality and the configurations of relations and power within families and within welfare systems, and second, the effect of agency on father engagement.

Cross-Modal Retrieval with Partially Mismatched Pairs.

In this paper, we study a challenging but less-touched problem in cross-modal retrieval, i.e., partially mismatched pairs (PMPs). Specifically, in real-world scenarios, a huge number of multimedia data (e.g., the Conceptual Captions dataset) are collected from the Internet, and thus it is inevitable to wrongly treat some irrelevant cross-modal pairs as matched. Undoubtedly, such a PMP problem will remarkably degrade the cross-modal retrieval performance. To tackle this problem, we derive a unified theoretical Robust Cross-modal Learning framework (RCL) with an unbiased estimator of the cross-modal retrieval risk, which aims to endow the cross-modal retrieval methods with robustness against PMPs. In detail, our RCL adopts a novel complementary contrastive learning paradigm to address the following two challenges, i.e., the overfitting and underfitting issues. On the one hand, our method only utilizes the negative information which is much less likely false compared with the positive information, thus avoiding the overfitting issue to PMPs. However, these robust strategies could induce underfitting issues, thus making training models more difficult. On the other hand, to address the underfitting issue brought by weak supervision, we present to leverage of all available negative pairs to enhance the supervision contained in the negative information. Moreover, to further improve the performance, we propose to minimize the upper bounds of the risk to pay more attention to hard samples. To verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method, we carry out comprehensive experiments on five widely-used benchmark datasets compared with nine state-of-the-art approaches w.r.t. the image-text and video-text retrieval tasks. The code is available at https://github.com/penghu-cs/RCL.

Gaming Borderless Internationalism: From International to Interlocalized System Using Ujamaa Epistemology

This article develops a proposed unifying theoretical framework for the concept of ‘interlocalization ’ as an explanatory adjustment to the hegemonic concept of internationalism. This is a response to an exploratory study by Francis Onditi, published by the Futures, ‘Futuring an “Inclusive Knowledge Futures” Framework beyond IR Theories’, aimed at elucidating Afrocentric international studies scholars’ understanding of Africa’s futures that emboldens both local and global value systems. In the current article, ‘interlocalization ’ is defined as a process of (re)creating a seamless linkage between African local epistemologies ( ujamaa) and international knowledge systems. In this system of knowledge production and consumption, institutions and debates shift from the national scale to the global scale and downwards to the local level. In this proliferation and restless knowledge scaling, it remains blurred, whether the local African epistemologies and knowledge networks are capable of becoming simultaneously more globalized and transnational? In this article, we utilize gaming model to theoretically simulate the ‘ positivity’ and ‘ negativity’ of the attributes that build up a mutual global system and international order.

Temperature-Dependent Contact of Weakly Interacting Single-Component Fermi Gases and Loss Rate of Degenerate Polar Molecules.

Motivated by the experimental realization of single-component degenerate Fermi gases of polar ground state KRb molecules with intrinsic two-body losses [L. De Marco et al., A degenerate Fermi gas of polar molecules, Science 363, 853 (2019).SCIEAS0036-807510.1126/science.aau7230], this work studies the finite-temperature loss rate of single-component Fermi gases with weak interactions. First, we establish a relationship between the two-body loss rate and the p-wave contact. Second, we evaluate the contact of the homogeneous system in the low-temperature regime using p-wave Fermi liquid theory and in the high-temperature regime using the second-order virial expansion. Third, conjecturing that there are no phase transitions between the two temperature regimes, we smoothly interpolate the results to intermediate temperatures. It is found that the contact is constant at temperatures close to zero and increases first quadratically with increasing temperature and finally-in agreement with the Bethe-Wigner threshold law-linearly at high temperatures. Fourth, applying the local-density approximation, we obtain the loss-rate coefficient for the harmonically trapped system, reproducing the experimental KRb loss measurements within a unified theoretical framework over a wide temperature regime without fitting parameters. Our results for the contact are not only applicable to molecular p-wave gases but also to atomic single-component Fermi gases, such as ^{40}K and ^{6}Li.

Evaluation and Comparison of SEA Torque Controllers in a Unified Framework

Series elastic actuators (SEA) with their inherent compliance offer a safe torque source for robots that are interacting with various environments, including humans. These applications have high requirements for the SEA torque controllers, both in the torque response as well as interaction behavior with its environment. To differentiate state of the art torque controllers, this work introduces a unifying theoretical and experimental framework that compares controllers based on their torque transfer behavior, their apparent impedance behavior, and especially the passivity of the apparent impedance (i.e., their interaction stability) as well as their sensitivity to sensor noise. We compare classical SEA control approaches such as cascaded PID controllers and full state feedback controllers with advanced controllers using disturbance observers, acceleration feedback and adaptation rules. Simulations and experiments demonstrate the trade-off between stable interactions, high bandwidths and low noise levels. Based on these trade-offs, an application-specific controller can be designed and tuned, based on desired interaction with the respective environment.

The Misinformation Receptivity Framework

Abstract: Evaluating the truthfulness of new information is a difficult and complex task. Notably, there is currently no unified theoretical framework that addresses the questions of (1) how individuals discern whether political information is true or (deliberately) false, (2) under what conditions individuals are most susceptible to believing misinformation, and (3) how the structure of political and communicative environments skews cognitive processes of truth, discernment, and interpretation generation. To move forward, we propose the Misinformation Receptivity Framework (MRF). Building on Bayesian and probabilistic models of cognition, the MRF suggests that we can conceptualize misinformation receptivity as a cognitive inference problem in which the reliability of incoming misinformation is weighed against the reliability of prior beliefs. This “reliability-weighting” process can model when individuals adopt or reject misinformation, as well as the ways in which they creatively generate interpretations rather than passively discern truth versus falsehood. Moreover, certain communication contexts can lead people to rely excessively on incoming (mis)information or conversely to rely excessively on prior beliefs. The MRF postulates how such environmental properties can heighten the persuasiveness of different kinds of misinformation. For instance, the MRF predicts that noisy communication contexts, in which the reliability of inputs is ambiguous, make people susceptible to highly partisan and ideological misinformation or disinformation that amplifies their existing belief systems. By contrast, the MRF predicts that contextual instability renders people susceptible to misinformation that would be considered extreme or worldview-incongruent in conditions of stability. The MRF formally delineates the interactions between cognitive and communicative mechanisms, offering insights and testable hypotheses on when, how, and why different kinds of misinformation proliferate.

Media Concentration Law: Gaps and Promises in the Digital Age

Power concentrations are increasing in today’s media landscape. Reasons for this include increasing structural and technological dependences on digital platform companies, as well as shifts in opinion power and control over news production, distribution, and consumption. Digital opinion power and platformised media markets have prompted the need for a re-evaluation of the current approach. This article critically revisits and analyses media concentration rules. To this end, I employ a normative conceptual framework that examines ”opinion power in the platform world” at three distinct levels (individual citizen, institutional newsroom, and media ecosystem). At each level, I identify the existing legal tools and gaps in controlling power and concentration in the digital age. Based on that, I offer a unifying theoretical framework for a “digital media concentration law,” along with core concepts and guiding principles. I highlight policy goals and fields that are outside the traditional scope yet are relevant for addressing issues relating to the digital age. Additionally, the emerging European Union regulatory framework—specifically the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the European Media Freedom Act—reflects an evolving approach regarding platforms and media concentration. On a final note, the analysis draws from the mapping and evaluation results of a Europe-wide study on media pluralism and diversity online, which examined (national) media concentration rules.

Theory of isomeric excitation of 229Th via electronic processes

A unified theoretical framework is presented for the isomeric excitation of the 229Th nucleus via electronic processes. These processes include nuclear excitation by electron transition (NEET), nuclear excitation by electron capture (NEEC), and nuclear excitation by inelastic electron scattering (NEIES). Detailed calculation results on the excitation rate and the excitation cross section are presented.

A unified science of matter, life and evolution.

We are accustomed to looking at matter, life and evolution from different viewpoints. In this article, we present a simple but unified theoretical framework inspired by classical mechanics and thermodynamics. Our framework generalizes Newton's third law of matter to encompass life and evolution. The generalized action-reaction relationship includes scale and temporal parameters. This generalization helps explain why life is a system out of equilibrium. Life can go beyond the action-reaction symmetry law of matter. We define life as an open system that is self-aware of the time trajectory of energy state and environment. The theoretical framework we propose for studying life in terms of power reduces to the science of matter as a limiting case. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thermodynamics 2.0: Bridging the natural and social sciences (Part 1)'.

Experimental and theoretical investigations of rotating algae biofilm reactors (RABRs): Areal productivity, nutrient recovery, and energy efficiency.

Microalgae biofilms have been demonstrated to recover nutrients from wastewater and serve as biomass feedstock for bioproducts. However, there is a need to develop a platform to quantitatively describe microalgae biofilm production, which can provide guidance and insights for improving biomass areal productivity and nutrient uptake efficiency. This paper proposes a unified experimental and theoretical framework to investigate algae biofilm growth on a rotating algae biofilm reactor (RABR). Experimental laboratory setups are used to conduct controlled experiments on testing environmental and operational factors for RABRs. We propose a differential-integral equation-based mathematical model for microalgae biofilm cultivation guided by laboratory experimental findings. The predictive mathematical model development is coordinated with laboratory experiments of biofilm areal productivity associated with ammonia and inorganic phosphorus uptake by RABRs. The unified experimental and theoretical tool is used to investigate the effects of RABR rotating velocity, duty cycle (DC), and light intensity on algae biofilm growth, areal productivity, nutrient uptake efficiency, and energy efficiency in wastewater treatment. Our framework indicates that maintaining a reasonable light intensity range improves biomass areal productivity and nutrient uptake efficiency. Our framework also indicates that faster RABR rotation benefits biomass areal productivity. However, maximizing the nutrient uptake efficiency requires a reasonably low RABR rotating speed. Energy efficiency is strongly correlated with RABR rotating speed and DC.

Pandemic Dining Dilemmas: Exploring the Determinants of Korean Consumer Dining-Out Behavior during COVID-19

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic’s significant impact on the dining-out industry, this study examined factors influencing consumers’ dining-out behavior changes using a unified theoretical framework based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and select components of the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model. A quantitative research method was employed, analyzing 536 valid survey responses collected in South Korea in early 2021 using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings showed that consumer attitude, perceived control, and subjective norm positively influenced dining-out intention, supporting the TPB. However, risk information-seeking behavior discourages dining-out behavior without significantly affecting intention. Fear emerged as a determinant of dining-out intention, risk information-seeking behavior, and dining-out behavior, highlighting the importance of emotions over rational thinking. This study contributes to existing literature by incorporating dining-out intention, COVID-19-related information-seeking behavior, and fear as key antecedents of dining-out behavior during the pandemic, while validating formative indicators that constitute risk information-seeking behavior and dining-out behavior in the research model.

Dynamic prospect theory: Two core decision theories coexist in the gambling behavior of monkeys and humans.

Research in the multidisciplinary field of neuroeconomics has mainly been driven by two influential theories regarding human economic choice: prospect theory, which describes decision-making under risk, and reinforcement learning theory, which describes learning for decision-making. We hypothesized that these two distinct theories guide decision-making in a comprehensive manner. Here, we propose and test a decision-making theory under uncertainty that combines these highly influential theories. Collecting many gambling decisions from laboratory monkeys allowed for reliable testing of our model and revealed a systematic violation of prospect theory's assumption that probability weighting is static. Using the same experimental paradigm in humans, substantial similarities between these species were uncovered by various econometric analyses of our dynamic prospect theory model, which incorporates decision-by-decision learning dynamics of prediction errors into static prospect theory. Our model provides a unified theoretical framework for exploring a neurobiological model of economic choice in human and nonhuman primates.

Unified theoretical framework for black carbon mixing state allows greater accuracy of climate effect estimation

Black carbon (BC) plays an important role in the climate system because of its strong warming effect, yet the magnitude of this effect is highly uncertain owing to the complex mixing state of aerosols. Here we build a unified theoretical framework to describe BC’s mixing states, linking dynamic processes to BC coating thickness distribution, and show its self-similarity for sites in diverse environments. The size distribution of BC-containing particles is found to follow a universal law and is independent of BC core size. A new mixing state module is established based on this finding and successfully applied in global and regional models, which increases the accuracy of aerosol climate effect estimations. Our theoretical framework links observations with model simulations in both mixing state description and light absorption quantification.

Transforming education for the just transition

Society faces many challenges in promoting a just transition to a low-carbon economy, a transition that does not create or exacerbate injustices. Notably, the just transition can only be attained with new educational approaches which revolve around social, climate and environmental justice. This paper advances that for a just transition, the shift to a greener economy cannot be driven by the traditional neoliberal engine, which has captured educational practices. Rather, the necessary educational transformation needs the principles of critical pedagogy and the dimensions of justice provided by the JUST Framework. We bring these two important schools together and draw on the experience of the global periphery and Latin America in particular, to develop a unique theoretical framework that contributes to the literature on education for sustainable development. Therefore, this conceptual research provides a theoretical framework that should guide education for a just transition. This paper establishes what is referred to as CCR Education Framework which involves: Critical thinking about climate, environmental and social costs of fossil fuels; Coexistence with nature and the other; and Resistance against neoliberalism and other forces that jeopardise the just transition. The CCR Education Framework is a response to the question of what education needs to include to achieve a just transition. The paper also opens the discussion about the implications of the Framework in terms of teacher training and education and appropriate pedagogical approaches. The key theoretical advancements here is that education for the just transition must affirm the importance of teachers and students as agents of transformation, and promote critical educational practices and approaches which support the transition to a low-carbon economy, and which value the characteristics of justice (which include equity, equality, fairness, and inclusiveness) to build a curriculum that advocates sustainable growth and a societal just transition.

From Individuality to Universality: A Critical Exposition of ‘Self’ of Women in Dalit Movement and Literature in India

This scholarly research article delves into the conceptualization of ‘Self’ of women in the Dalit movement and literature in India, providing a critical analysis that bridges the gap between individuality and universality. It initiates a discourse on the often-overlooked narrative of Dalit women in a predominantly patriarchal and caste-dominated society, underscoring the experiences they encapsulate, extending from personal narratives to shared universality. Through the examination of an assortment of primary sources, including autobiographies, literary texts, speeches, and interviews of Dalit women, this study unveils the complexities in their identities, informed by the intersection of caste, gender, and class. It further explores how these experiences, entrenched in oppression and resistance, shape the ‘Self’ and communal identity of Dalit women. The article advances a unique theoretical framework that combines intersectional feminism and subaltern studies to decipher the nuances of Dalit women’s selfhood. The framework enables a systematic exploration of the convergences and divergences in the perception of ‘Self’ amongst Dalit women, aiding in the understanding of their position within the wider socio-political discourse. In unearthing the shared collective consciousness arising from individual struggles, the research sheds light on the universality of Dalit women’s experiences. Simultaneously, it exposes the evolution of the Dalit women’s movement from a regional force to a global voice, forging an essential link between local experiences and universal human rights discourses. This study conclusively asserts the need for broader recognition and comprehension of Dalit women’s narratives, not as a marginal story but as a central one that intersects with various global feminist and human rights movements. It proposes that the understanding of Dalit women’s ‘Self’ is pivotal in moving towards an inclusive and equitable society, thereby contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of social justice in India and beyond.

Service-dominant logic as a unifying theoretical framework for the re-institutionalization of the marketing discipline

This manuscript addresses growing concerns about the impact and relevance of the marketing discipline and its ability to replicate itself through common theoretical, empirical, and historical-knowledge foundations available to current and future scholars and practitioners (Hunt, 2020a). Specifically, we echo the calls by Hunt (and others) for the need of more indigenous theories, the bridging of subdisciplines, and the building of stronger links between positive and normative theories. We do so by positing that service-dominant (S-D) logic can serve as a metatheoretical framework that can facilitate the development of a general theory of markets. We view such a positive, general theory of markets as a necessity for developing a mainstream, central focus of the discipline and providing a foundation for re-institutionalizing marketing as a discipline. Such a central focus is needed to develop more impactful normative theories and to overcome the increasingly extreme fragmentation among consumer behavior, marketing strategy, and macromarketing subdisciplines that threaten the cohesion and intellectual health of our domain.

Non‐reproductive dispersal: an important driver of migratory range dynamics and connectivity

Dispersal is the primary ecological process underpinning spatial dynamics in motile species by generating flux in reproductive locations over time. In migratory species, dispersal can also occur around non‐breeding ranges, but this form currently lacks a unifying theoretical framework. We present a novel conceptual model for dispersal in migrants that builds upon existing literature, differentiating ‘reproductive' dispersal (i.e. changes in breeding locations) from ‘non‐reproductive' dispersal, which we define as movements resulting in inter‐annual or inter‐generational changes in non‐breeding locations. Crucially, unlike reproductive dispersal where movement outcomes are naturally propagated between generations, the outcomes of non‐reproductive dispersal can be non‐heritable. We use simulations of a solo‐migrant population with a genetically encoded migratory programme to illustrate how variation in this heritability exerts a strong influence on both migratory connectivity and range shift propensity. When exposed to spatially uncoupled shifts in habitable ranges (i.e. seasonal climate niches shifting at different rates), long‐term persistence of simulated populations required changes in migratory programmes to arise through heritable forms of non‐reproductive dispersal (e.g. mutations in migratory gene complexes). By contrast, non‐heritable dispersal mechanisms (e.g. navigation errors) cannot drive long‐term shifts in non‐breeding ranges, despite being a major component of realised dispersal and migratory connectivity patterns. Migratory connectivity metrics conflate these heritable and non‐heritable drivers of non‐reproductive dispersal, and therefore have limited power in predicting population responses to environmental change. Our models provide a framework for improving our understanding of spatial dynamics in migratory populations, and highlight the importance of teasing apart the mechanisms that drive migratory variability in order to evaluate and predict range plasticity in migrants.