Social Sciences

Abstract: Pedestrian injury and fatality rates are frequently reported to be elevated in lower-income neigh- borhoods, but population-based rates confound infrastructure hazards with variations in pedestrian exposure. We integrate modeled pedestrian volumes for New York City with street centerline geometry and five years of geocoded police-reported collision records (2019–2023). Crosswalk segments are identified and clustered into 41,937 discrete crossing sites, predominantly intersections, to which collisions are spatially assigned. Across 38,477 sites located in census tracts with complete covariate data, pedestrian injury and fatality collisions increase by 16% per 10-percentage-point increase in the tract poverty rate (rate ratio [RR] 1.16, 95% CI [1.12, 1.20]), conditioning on pedestrian crossing volume, roadway width, lane counts, posted speed limits, tract-level commuting mode shares, land use, and borough fixed effects. Using a model conditioning only on pedestrian volume yields an RR of 1.30 (95% CI [1.26, 1.35]). The estimate is stable across alternative count estimators, site grouping distances, collision assignment radii, temporal partitions, borough exclusions, clustered covariance structures, and designated truck route controls. The estimate attenuates to 1.10 under ZIP-code fixed effects and increases to 1.19–1.22 after correcting for Census sampling error in poverty estimates. Pedestrian fatalities show a similar and slightly steeper gradient (RR 1.29, 95% CI [1.17, 1.42]), which reflects more collisions and, less precisely, a higher probability that a collision is fatal. Conventional models relying on residential population proxies yield attenuated ratios of 1.06–1.09, indicating that exposure adjustment, rather than the scale of aggregation, accounts for the larger estimate. These estimates reflect observational associations in the absence of comprehensive vehicle volume counts. We provide an open-source pipeline to reproduce all data processing, models, and figures from public records.

Abstract: Smart city technologies are widely promoted as a route to efficiency, sustainability, and a better quality of life. Across global contexts, however, they increasingly expose governance failures that weaken democratic accountability and social equity. This paper examines digital governance failure in smart cities, defined as the intersection of algorithmic opacity, accountability vacuums, and socio-spatial inequities in technology deployment. Drawing on a systematic integrative review of 76 peer-reviewed and foundational works published between 2008 and 2026, the study synthesises evidence from urban studies, public administration, and critical data studies. The analysis shows that opaque algorithmic systems erode legitimacy, public-private partnerships dilute accountability, and digital infrastructures reproduce existing inequalities, with harms concentrated in communities that were already underserved. The article reframes smart city research from techno-optimism towards a governance-critical perspective that treats failure as an analytical category, and proposes an agenda built on anticipatory governance, algorithmic auditing, and equity-by-design. By deliberately including African and other Global South cities, it offers a framework for understanding and reducing the risk of digital governance breakdown in cities worldwide.

Abstract: Background: Mental strength is defined as the behavioral capacity to persist through obstacles and challenges, and to recover from failures, adversities, and setbacks. Building on previous scale developments, Studies 1 and 2 aimed to develop, refine, and validate a brief, psychometrically robust measure of mental strength for combat sports practitioners. Methods: In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted on a sample of Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners (N = 328) to evaluate the factor structure of the 9-item Mental Strength Scale and to propose a brief version of the Mental Strength Scale. In Study 2, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed on a separate sample of combat sports practitioners (N = 300) to test the factor structure of the newly derived Brief Mental Strength Scale (BMSS). Additionally, Study 2 assessed internal consistency and predictive validity against measures of self-efficacy, self-control, self-esteem, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Results: In Study 1, EFA results championed a two-factor structure, leading to the removal of 3 items. In Study 2, CFA confirmed good fit for the two-factor, 6-item model (subscales “Dealing with Failure” and “Facing Obstacles”), showing excellent fit indices: CFI = .985, TLI = .972, SRMR = .037, RMSEA = .090. The scale demonstrated strong internal consistency (α = .89). Moreover, the BMSS exhibited significant (p < .001) and robust predictive validity, positively predicting self-efficacy (β = .66), self-control (β = .51), and self-esteem (β = .45), while negatively predicting symptoms of anxiety (β = -.39) and depression (β = -.38). Conclusion: The Brief Mental Strength Scale is a valid, reliable, and structurally sound bidimensional instrument for assessing mental strength among combat sports practitioners, offering coaches and sport psychology professionals a practical tool for monitoring and enhancing well-being and performance.

Abstract: Crime clusters in a few places, but missing coordinates make it hard to tell which components of a place host which crimes, and when. Treating São Paulo as a tissue, we take 1.65 million parcels as cells, census tracts as spots of known composition and 0.69 million police records of 15 crime types as the phenotype. Each class of cell has a distinct crime profile that holds at finer scale (median Spearman ρ = 0.78) and was replicated in 19 held-out districts tested once against criteria fixed beforehand. Daily rhythms of phone crime vary by class and do not follow the crowd: robbery risk per pedestrian is highest at night. Beyond composition, persistent place effects account for at least as much variation in tract crime counts. Month-to-month variation is concentrated in a few high-crime tracts and was poorly forecast. The approach requires only a cadastre, a business registry and police records.

Abstract: Artificial intelligence in cities is usually judged as a tool by asking whether it improves prediction, coordination and service delivery. This conceptual review argues that such judgements miss a more consequential change: the redistribution of authority to define urban problems, organise knowledge and initiate interventions. Drawing on research on smart cities, algorithmic governance, platform urbanism, urban AI and agentic systems, it treats these as overlapping configurations rather than successive technological stages. In each, governing authority becomes embedded in measurement categories, administrative thresholds, proprietary infrastructures, simulation assumptions and permissions to act. The review develops the concept of the urban delegation chain to explain how small, apparently technical transfers of analytical and operational work accumulate into substantial shifts in public control. It distinguishes representational, decisional, infrastructural, epistemic and operational delegation, and argues that legitimacy depends on the relationship between delegated capability and an institution's effective capacity to challenge and revise it. Technical accuracy, nominal human oversight and transaction logs are each insufficient; what matters is whether authorisation, situated validation, contestability, interruptibility and remedy hold together across the chain. Five propositions translate the framework into a research agenda. Urban AI, the review concludes, should be judged by whether it strengthens a city's capacity to govern collective priorities, including its capacity to refuse, suspend or redesign automation.

Abstract: Most urban digital twins assume sensor feeds, traffic counts and calibrated flood models that mid-sized South Asian cities lack. Agartala, capital of Tripura in north-east India, is a case in point: its drains are largely unmapped, about 2% of its road segments carry a name in OpenStreetMap, and the Haora River rose above its danger level in August 2026. We couple a large language model (LLM) interface with a spatiotemporal knowledge graph (STKG), built from open data alone, and a six-rule constraint verifier, so that plain-language disruption reports become network states a simulator can use. Inundation was screened with a flow-routed height-above-nearest-drainage surface and converted to speed loss with a published depth–disruption curve. At a 1.5 m stage, demand within 10 min of a hospital fell from 86.4% to 32.6% at peak and 22.7% of demand lost all hospital access; closing the 31 river bridges as well raised that share to 51.2%. In 600 corrupted action proposals the verifier rejected every hallucinated, invalid, implausible and network-unsafe action and repaired every misspelled road name, but it missed all substitutions of one flood-prone road for another. The LLM is best treated as a translator whose output is always checked against the graph.

Abstract: Introduction: African philosophies, including Ubuntu, Botho, Sankofa and related epistemological traditions, are increasingly invoked in scholarship concerned with decolonisation, relationality, epistemic justice and contextually grounded knowledge. However, their use as explicit research philosophies or methodological paradigms remains conceptually uneven. This review examined how African philosophies are integrated and operationalised within academic writing, the epistemic confidence and methodological engagement reflected in the literature, the associated risks and barriers, and the contextual conditions.Methods: The researcher-selected databases and information sources were Google Scholar and ERIC. The eligibility protocol restricted publication years to 2016–2026. The exact calendar date of search execution was not recorded in the verified identification provenance; this is distinct from the publication-year eligibility range. A systematic review searched Google Scholar and ERIC using a verified Boolean strategy and applied eligibility limits covering English-language publications from 2016 to 2026.Results: The synthesis identified four analytical themes. African philosophies were presented as relational, situated and emancipatory bases for knowing; operationalisation was predominantly applied, plural and incremental rather than fully methodological; epistemic confidence was qualified by concerns about authenticity, adequacy and verification; and institutional structures continued to limit meaningful integration. Context, language, community relationships and intercultural dialogue shaped effective use. Evidence about researchers’ confidence was indirect and methodological accounts were less developed than conceptual claims.Discussion/Conclusion: The literature supports cautious confidence that African philosophies can inform research and scholarly practice, but it does not establish a single, mature or consistently operationalised African research methodology. Meaningful integration requires conceptual depth, linguistic and contextual engagement, institutional transformation and transparent methodological specification.

Abstract: National cybersecurity is inherently distributed across institutions with distinct mandates, capabilities, and security regimes, creating a persistent organizational problem of how to integrate specialized actors without excessive fragmentation or concentration. This study reassesses six alternative national cybersecurity architectures against subsequent institutional development. The empirical baseline is an Analytic Hierarchy Process assessment of 88 experts interviewed in 2018–2019, complemented by longitudinal documentary analysis and participant observation of Bulgaria’s cybersecurity governance from 2011 to 2026. Experts ranked a model combining operational cooperation with coordinated capability development highest under all five criteria—effectiveness, efficiency, resilience, agility, and cooperation—while the weakly coordinated status quo ranked lowest. The longitudinal analysis shows that Bulgaria did not converge on any single model. Formal arrangements oscillated between coordination and centralisation, while civilian decision authority and technical capability became progressively concentrated in different institutions and coordination mechanisms remained comparatively weak. This authority–capability decoupling reveals a governance risk when formal authority is not matched by sufficient public specialist capacity, independent assurance, and resilient alternatives. The findings support distinguishing coordination, centralisation of authority, and concentration of capability as separate dimensions of national cybersecurity architecture and suggest that regulatory compliance and institutional concentration cannot substitute for coordinated capability development.

Abstract: This study analyzes the relationship between patterns of artificial intelligence (AI) use and university students’ academic goals, also incorporating a reflection on educational sustainability and the responsible use of digital technologies in higher education. Through cluster analysis, ANCOVA, correlations, and structural equation modeling (SEM), three AI usage profiles (low, balanced, and high) were identified, along with their association with learning, achievement, and social reinforcement goals. The re-sults show significant differences between profiles, as well as positive relationships between AI support dimensions (educational, informational, and emotional) and aca-demic goals.The structural model explains between 29% and 47% of the variance. The R² value was 0.47. The SEM showed an adequate fit to the data (CFI = .96; TLI = .95; RMSEA = .048; SRMR = .041), indicating a satisfactory representation of relationships among variables. The findings suggest that a balanced and ethical use of AI can con-tribute to the development of more sustainable educational practices by fostering learning personalization, resource optimization, and the promotion of responsible dig-ital competencies aligned with sustainability objectives in education.

Abstract: Public relations (PR) scholarship stands at an inflection point. The theoretical architecture that defined the field's maturation—Excellence Theory, the dialogic tradition, and relationship management—was constructed for an information environment that no longer exists. This analytical review synthesizes the most active research gaps in PR as they appear in the international literature through early 2026, organizing them into a coherent framework of four fault lines: technological disruption, sociopolitical role expansion, epistemological narrowing, and the persistent measurement–legitimacy problem. The review is positioned explicitly against the field's growing meta-literature of systematic reviews and bibliometric mappings, which it treats both as evidence and as an object of critique. Seven substantive gaps are examined: the automation of communication labor by generative artificial intelligence (AI); epistemological narrowing and the exclusion of the Global South; corporate social advocacy and PR's political turn; the unresolved evaluation and proof-of-value problem; practitioner precarity, gender, and wellbeing; PR's ambiguous position within the information-disorder ecosystem; and internal communication under hybrid work. For each gap, the review distinguishes descriptive deficits (understudied contexts) from theoretical deficits (inadequate constructs) and methodological deficits (design limitations). A dedicated discussion section interprets the cross-cutting pattern—namely, that the field's fragmented gaps are surface expressions of a single underlying renegotiation of foundational assumptions—and concise recommendations translate this diagnosis into an actionable agenda. The central contribution is a diagnostic map that reframes scattered critiques as a systemic transformation of the field's intellectual foundations.

Abstract: The requirement of Orientation and Refresher Courses under the University Grants Commission (UGC) Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) has undergone repeated regulatory changes, exemptions, and transitional arrangements since the promulgation of the UGC Regulations, 2018. Clause 6.3(VIII) has, at different points, declared the Orientation Course (OC) and Refresher Course (RC) requirement non-mandatory for specified periods. The 3rd Amendment Regulations, 2023 extended transitional treatment up to 31 December 2023 or as notified by the Commission, while the 4th Amendment Regulations, 2024 subsequently introduced a further hardship-oriented transition for faculty who had already qualified or were likely to qualify by 31 December 2024 under the 2010 or 2018 Regulations. Yet the framework as implemented produces five interconnected problems — here termed the Punitive Paradox — that together undermine its stated objectives of faculty quality and equitable career progression. This article argues: first, that the continuing reliance upon rigid cut-off dates, without adequately addressing faculty who completed recognized induction, orientation, refresher, or faculty-development programmes during transition, creates significant concerns of substantive equality, legitimate expectation, proportionality, consistency, and administrative fairness; second, that the requirement of repeated extensions operates as a de facto punishment against first-generation teachers who lack insider knowledge to navigate the system; third, that the Direct Recruitment-CAS Asymmetry — whereby the same courses are not required for direct appointment to Associate Professor or Professor — constitutes a logically incoherent entry-level barrier that actively discourages talented individuals from the teaching profession; fourth, that the Duty-Development Conflict — the simultaneous expectation of institutional contribution and professional development without institutional facilitation — creates disproportionate burdens; and fifth, that temporal and career-stage anomalies, programme availability constraints, information asymmetry, and compounding career hardship reinforce each systemic failure. The article examines the historical UGC approach, including the 2001 PhD-holder exemption, the judicial reasoning in Punam Chauhan & Anr. v. State of H.P. (2023), the 2023 and 2024 amendments, the Pondicherry University institutional precedent, the emergence of MMTTC and FIP frameworks, comparative international practices, and the consequences of denying CAS progression despite otherwise satisfying substantive academic and service requirements. It proposes a uniform remedial mechanism and a No-Loss Transitional Principle, and concludes with fourteen specific policy recommendations for comprehensive regulatory reform.

Abstract: Background. Open access (OA) can widen access to research, but its uptake in Africa has rarely been measured across the whole continent and over a long period. Methods. We identified 854,785 articles with at least one African institutional address, indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and published between 2002 and 2021. We matched each article by DOI to Unpaywall (August 2022) and described OA by year, OA type, region, country, research area, collaboration type and funding. Results. Overall, 44.3% of articles were openly available. The yearly share rose from 16.7% in 2002 to 56.0% in 2020 and 55.0% in 2021, and OA articles have outnumbered closed ones since 2018. Gold OA made up 67.6% of OA articles in 2021. Shares ranged from 61.5% in Eastern Africa to 33.9% in Northern Africa, and from 28.5% (Tunisia) to 78.4% (Gambia) across 54 countries (mean 57.7%, SD 11.2). More than 70% of articles in public health, infectious diseases and tropical medicine were OA, against 25–32% in materials science, engineering, chemistry, computer science and physics. Over the whole period, 50.4% of articles with a co-author outside Africa were OA, against 36.5% of articles from a single African country. Funded articles were more often OA than unfunded ones (56.9% vs 35.5%). Mean citations were higher for OA articles, but this comparison is not adjusted for field or journal. Conclusions. OA is now the majority mode for internationally indexed African research, but the gains are uneven and lean on Gold OA, external funding and international partners. Because Web of Science covers journals published in Africa poorly, these results describe the internationally visible part of African research.

Abstract: Nigeria's difficulty in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is often described as a funding or policy-design problem, yet a large share of the gap lies in whether administrative systems are ready to convert commitments into services. This paper develops the Delivery Readiness Model (DRM), a conceptual and measurementoriented extension of the view that public administration is an enabling architecture for the SDGs. The DRM identifies five readiness dimensions (capacity, accountability, digital, inclusion and coordination), assesses them separately at federal, state and local tiers, and links them to five SDG clusters (health, education, gender equality, infrastructure and cities, and peace, justice and institutions). Drawing on an integrative reading of recent Nigerian studies and on wider scholarship in state capacity, accountability, digital-era governance and SDG integration, the paper proposes an Administrative Delivery Readiness Index (ADRI), six testable hypotheses, a mixed-methods research design and a sequenced reform pathway. The paper is conceptual and reports no new primary data. Its contribution is to move from describing governance as important to specifying how readiness can be diagnosed, compared across tiers and tested empirically.

Abstract: The Downtown Eastside (DTES) in Vancouver is a neighbourhood facing persistent poverty, food insecurity, and housing insecurity and includes nonprofit organizations with varied service models, populations served, and funding arrangements. This descriptive document analysis maps a purposive working sample of 20 DTES-serving organizations using an organization directory and publicly available organizational and financial materials. Each organization was assigned one primary operating model while its other documented activities and revenue arrangements were retained in the qualitative record. The sample spans six models: housing, shelter, and health (four organizations); food and neighbourhood services (four); and four categories with three organizations each—women and sex worker support, Indigenous and peer harm reduction, employment and the informal economy, and arts, seniors, and tenant organizing. The financial records suggest considerable variation in organizational scale, but differences in source type and reporting scope limit direct comparison. The resulting typology describes organizational diversity within the working sample and provides a framework for further source verification and community-informed research.

Abstract: This paper introduces the “literacy triangle” as a heuristic for mapping and understanding internal tensions among three interconnected polarities in adult education: the policy system, adult learners and teachers of adults. It argues that the system, strongly influenced by neoliberalism, restricts adult education to measurable outcomes, employability and a focus on developing human capital. Learners bring a wide range of experience, aspirations, needs and exclusions, while teachers occupy an “in-between” position, mediating institutional imperatives and learner needs through delivering recognition and critical pedagogy. Drawing on Freire, Mezirow, Honneth and Irish literature, the paper proposes a rationale for using literature as an empirical resource for illuminating how social structures impact every-day lives of individuals. It introduces the idea that some stories recount incidents that act as “shut-up stories,” silencing learners, shutting down the capacity to question and undermining self-confidence. The paper recommends that adult education, provides not only routes to employment but pre-conditions for recognition, identity development, democratic participation and freedom. The paper calls for adult education to reclaim its critical and democratic purpose, with teachers actings as agents for revealing structural inequalities and imagining more just futures and social freedom.

Abstract: Geographical Indications (GIs) represent a unique intersection of intellectual property, cultural heritage, and socioeconomic development. In India, the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, provides the legal foundation for protecting products tied to specific territories. This research article presents a comprehensive state-wise inventory of Indian GIs, covering all 28 states and key Union Territories, across categories such as agriculture, handicrafts, textiles, and food stuffs. The study employs an analytical legal methodology to examine the statutory provisions of the 1999 Act, the distinction between registered infringement and the common law remedy of passing off, and the role of authorized users and producer communities. Through a critical evaluation of landmark judicial decisions—including the Tea Board of India v. ITC Ltd. and the Scotch Whisky Association cases—the paper identifies systemic gaps in post-registration quality control and enforcement. The findings highlight a regional imbalance in GI registration and the need for robust inspection bodies. Strategic recommendations are offered to strengthen the GI ecosystem, ensuring that the benefits of collective reputation translate into sustainable rural prosperity and global brand recognition.

Abstract: Sri Lanka admits people to the teaching profession through two very different doors. Advanced Level (A/L) school leavers enter National Colleges of Education (NCOEs) on the basis of district Z-scores, receive three years of residential pre-service training, and are then appointed to schools as a cohort. University graduates, by contrast, must compete in an open competitive examination built around an aptitude paper and a general knowledge paper, followed by an interview and a practical teaching test, and many of those who succeed enter classrooms with no pedagogical preparation at all. This article uses a critical policy analysis of recruitment gazettes, Ministry of Education notices, National Education Commission policy documents and World Bank and Institute of Policy Studies reviews to examine the fairness, validity and educational logic of this dual system. Drawing on research on teacher selection, organizational justice and teacher preparation, the article argues that the graduate examination is weakly aligned with the knowledge and dispositions that predict effective teaching, that it treats two groups of future teachers unequally at the point of entry, and that it moves the problem of preparation from before appointment to after it. The article proposes an alternative model in which graduates who intend to teach are identified early, selected on teaching-relevant criteria, and given structured pre-service training before appointment. The analysis contributes to debates on teacher recruitment in South Asia and offers concrete policy directions for Sri Lanka's ongoing education reform.

Abstract: Peer-to-peer accommodation (P2PA) has expanded rapidly in Morocco, but evidence on how tourists evaluate it in emerging destinations remains scarce. This study examines how tourists' motivations and multidimensional perceived risks relate to their attitude towards P2PA, and how attitude, social norms and perceived behavioural control relate to intention and self-reported travel behaviour. Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour and perceived-risk theory, six motivational and six risk dimensions were modelled as components of two higher-order constructs. Data from a mixed-mode survey of 502 tourists, collected face-to-face in four Moroccan destinations and online, were analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling. Motivations were strongly associated with attitude (β = 0.564), whereas risks showed a weaker negative association (β = −0.137). Authenticity and enjoyment contributed most among the motivations, and physical and cultural risk among the risks. Attitude and social norms were associated with intention (R² = 0.431), and intention and perceived behavioural control with travel behaviour (R² = 0.669). The findings indicate that tourists value P2PA in an emerging destination mainly as an experiential product, and that safety and cultural reassurance are key conditions for trust.

Abstract: Introduction: Concurrent parliamentary and judicial inquiries are intended to strengthen accountability, yet overlapping investigative arrangements may also fragment responsibility, divert resources and weaken implementation. The supplied literature provides relevant evidence on South African commissions of inquiry, public-sector governance and municipal accountability, but offers limited direct evidence on simultaneous parliamentary and judicial investigations. Methods: The researcher-selected databases and information sources were Google Scholar, ERIC, OpenAlex and Crossref. The eligibility protocol restricted publication years to 2015–2026. COSTAQDA recorded source-level retrieval through OpenAlex (150 retrieved; 319 available), Crossref (150 retrieved; 691 available). Where researcher-selected sources did not expose a suitable direct bulk-search connector, COSTAQDA used its OpenAlex/Crossref discovery bridge while preserving the researcher-selected source names in the PRISMA record. The identification run recorded 300 records before cross-source deduplication and 298 unique records after deduplication. Results: Six codes, three categories and three analytical themes were developed. Institutional overlap expanded investigative capacity and public documentation but could reproduce fragmentation when existing enforcement systems remained unreformed. Repeated inquiries could displace prosecution and divert resources. Effective democratic oversight depended on institutional independence, professional capacity and implementation pathways. Direct South African evidence was sparse, and systematic comparative evidence on resource efficiency was absent. Discussion/Conclusion: Institutional overlap is neither intrinsically beneficial nor harmful. Its effects depend on whether overlapping mandates are coordinated with independent enforcement, clear responsibility and mechanisms that convert findings into sanctions or administrative change.

Abstract: Family cultural capital includes household educational resources, parental qualifications, and everyday family practices that may be relevant to students’ science learning. Using PISA 2025 data, we examined how these dimensions predicted science achievement among 12,258 students in China (B-S-J-Z: Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang) and 2,291 U.S. questionnaire respondents. We used the same twelve family cultural-capital and science-participation indicators in both samples and evaluated two predictive models—ridge regression and XGBoost—through school-grouped cross-validation and ten science plausible values. The full XGBoost models achieved held-out R2 values of .361 in China (B-S-J-Z) and .327 in the U.S. sample. Perceived parental educational expectations and books at home ranked first and second among the focal indicators in both settings. The additional predictive information associated with perceived expectations was greater in the China (B-S-J-Z) model, whereas family conversations and science-related participation added relatively more information to the U.S. model. Parental qualifications were also more prominent in the China (B-S-J-Z) results. Together, the findings identify both shared cultural-capital patterns and different profiles of family educational resources and practices across the two educational settings.