Love is a mysterious concept. From the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory, the concrete experience of our bodies may contribute to the formation of the concept of love. The present research investigated the relation between perceptions of softness and weight and the concept of love. Study 1 was conducted at night and found that love was perceived as soft and heavy. Study 2 and Study 3 were conducted to contrast different wordings of love. Results showed that, in the morning, different wor...

Psychology  Linguistics 

The feasibility of physical-distancing interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic implicitly relied on structural properties of physical space. We show that minimum-distance policies (usually formulated as “individuals must remain at least δ metres apart”) require not only the Hausdorff property but a compatible metric structure that supports uniform separation with a positive lower bound. Using results from metric topology, we prove that the existence of disjoint open neighbourhoods is necessar...

Topology  Mathematics  Algebra 

Effective waste management remains a significant challenge in developing countries, where inadequate waste disposal practices pose substantial environmental and health risks. In response, waste segregation and recycling have emerged as promising strategies for mitigating these issues. This study investigated the effectiveness of waste segregation and recycling initiatives, focusing on the University of Environment and Sustainable Development and neighbouring educational institutions within the K...

Environmental Sciences 

The international dissemination of rural culture is a vital pathway to enhance cultural soft power and foster mutual understanding among civilizations. Focusing on the rural cultural heritage of Qilu within the Yellow River Basin, this paper investigates its current status, inherent challenges, and potential strategies for global outreach. Drawing upon existing research, we identify three core dilemmas: the fragmentation of rural cultural memory carriers, the insufficiency of participatory and i...

Culture  Sociology 

This study addresses the practical challenges in the professional development of English language instructors within the disparate urban and rural educational landscapes of Xinjiang, China. It proposes and evaluates the efficacy of a novel “AI-Enhanced Professional Learning Community” (AI-PLC) model. Grounded in sociocultural theory, the research investigates how artificial intelligence tools mediate collaborative interactions among teachers to promote greater educational equity. A convergent pa...

Educational Technology 

This study examines the influence mechanism of cover design in English translations of Chinese children’s picture books on cultural transmission from a multimodal metaphor perspective. By analyzing representative picture books, such as The Water Dragon, and Reunion, it becomes clear that a complex interplay exists among visual symbols, color metaphors, and typography, collectively constructing a metaphorical system for cross-cultural communication. Research indicates that successful cover design...

Linguistics 

We consider a constrained variational problem where the energy functional includes a logarithmic convolution term and an external potential  . There is a threshold   that we establish existence and nonexist-ence results for constraint minimizers: for  , minimizers exist for any  ; for   with   and   with  , no minimizer exists. Furthermore, for   and  , we analyze the limiting behavior of positive minimizers, showing that...

Mathematical Analysis  Mathematics  Functional Analysis 

Morphological segmentation is foundational for Natural Language Processing in morphologically rich languages, such as Amharic, yet progress is constrained by limited gold annotations and fragmented toolchains. We present an end-to-end framework that jointly addresses data creation and modeling for Amharic segmentation, part-of-speech tagging, and dependency parsing. Our approach begins with a silver-data generation pipeline that bootstraps segmentation labels from a rule-based analyzer and refin...

Computer Engineering 

Biogas generation through the anaerobic digestion of organic matter is one of the crucial technology interventions that brings about the transformation of the fossil fuel dependent energy system to a renewable energy based one. Biogas production needs further development and optimisation for the technical, economic, and environmental aspects to be fully marketable and economical. Thus, a broad knowledge of the reaction kinetics involved in the breaking down of organic matter by microbes into bio...

Mechanical Engineering 

Globalization highlights the role of film and television in cultural exchange, and movie subtitles are critical to overcoming language barriers for intercultural communication. This paper examines Kung Fu Panda 4 through the lens of contextual theory to explore effective subtitling strategies. Translation practice usually draws on linguistic, situational and cultural contexts, and the logical coherence of contextual language directly dictates the stylistic orientation of subtitles. Contextual th...

Literature