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In this paper, the brain potential changes caused by touching fabrics for handle evaluation were recorded by event related potential (ERP) method, compared with subjective evaluation scores and physical index of KES, explore the cognitive mechanism of the transformation of tactile sensation into neural impulses triggered by subtle mechanical stimuli such as material, texture, density and morphology in fabrics. By combining subjective evaluation of fabric tactile sensation, objective physical properties of fabrics and objective neurobiological signals, explore the neurophysiological mechanism of tactile cognition and the signal characteristics and time process of tactile information processing.

The ERP technology was first proposed by a British psychologist named Grey Walter. It is an imaging technique of noninvasive brain cognition, whose potential changes are related to the human physical and mental activities. ERP is different from electroencephalography (EEG) and evoked potentials (EP) on the fact that it cannot only record stimulated physical information which is transmitted to brain, but also response to the psychological activities which related to attention, identification, comparison, memory, judgment and cognition as well as to human’s neural physiological changes which are caused by cognitive process of the feeling by stimulation.

According to potential changes in the cerebral cortex evoked by touching four types of silk fabrics, human brain received the physical stimulation in the early stage (50 ms) of fabrics handle evaluation, and the P50 component amplitude showed negative correlation with fabric smoothness sensations. Around 200 ms after tactile stimulus onset, the amplitude of P200 component show positive correlation with the softness sensation of silk fabrics. The relationship between the amplitude of P300 and the sense of smoothness and softness need further evidence to proof.

In this paper, the brain potential changes caused by touching fabrics for handle evaluation were recorded by event related potential (ERP) method, compared with subjective evaluation scores and physical index of KES, the results shown that the maximum amplitude of P50 component evoked by fabric touching is related to the fabrics’ smoothness and roughness emotion, which means in the early stage processing of tactile sensation, the rougher fabrics could arouse more attention. In addition, the amplitude of P200 component shows positive correlation with the softness sensation of silk fabrics.

One of the rapidly growing bodies of literature on sustainability in higher education focuses on the competencies students should master to bring about the necessary transformation toward a sustainable future. Given the influential nature of this particular scholarship on curricula and programs, this study aims to assess its trajectory based on bibliometric analyses.

More specifically, authors conducted coauthorship, direct citations of articles and journals and bibliographic coupling analyses to identify the scholars and publications that have shaped the subfield of higher education sustainability competency research.

Findings show that despite the growth in higher education sustainability competency scholarship, this important subfield in higher education for sustainable development (HESD) has been a relatively narrow one. Contributing scholars, coauthor publications mainly with each other, cite each other and draw from a shared pool of research primarily by individuals from the Global North.

Scholars seeking to advance sustainability competency scholarship are encouraged to engage with individuals who can bring more diverse perspective on the knowledge, skills and mindsets higher education students need to master, to ensure that they can transform their communities toward a sustainable future in just ways. Integrating environmental/social justice, traditional knowledge and decolonizing perspectives from academics and sustainability leaders from minoritized groups and the Global South have the potential to result in important, new contributions.

Although prior scholars have examined HESD, including higher education sustainability education through bibliometric analysis, none have focused on assessing the higher education sustainability competency literature specifically. Given the influence this particular body of scholarship has already had, and will increasingly have, on preparing students for leading a just transition toward sustainability, this finding of this subfield’s limited diversity is important to highlight and address moving forward.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

This study aims to consider the role of emotions, especially those related to empathy, in promoting a more humane education that enables students to reach out across kinship chasms to promote the development of communities predicated on a shared value on mutual respect. This attention to empathy includes a review of the rational basis for much schooling, introduces skepticism about the façade of rational thinking, reviews the emotionally flat character of classrooms, attends to the emotional dimensions of literacy education, argues on behalf of taking emotions into account in developmental theories and links empathic connections with social justice efforts. The study’s main thrust is that empathy is a key emotional quality that does not come naturally or easily to many, yet is important to cultivate if social justice is a goal of education.

The author clicked Essay and Conceptual Paper. Yet the author required to write the research design.

The author clicked Essay and Conceptual Paper. Yet the author required to write the research design.

The author clicked Essay and Conceptual Paper. Yet the author required to write the research design.

The paper challenges the rational emphasis of schooling and argues for more attention to the ways in which emotions shape thinking.

Globally, hepatitis C treatment uptake is lower among people who are homeless or unstably housed compared to those who are housed. Understanding and addressing this is essential to ensure no one is left behind in hepatitis C elimination efforts. This study aims to explore peoples’ experiences of unstable housing and health care, and how these experiences influenced engagement in hepatitis C treatment.

Purposive sampling was used to recruit people with lived experience of injection drug use, hepatitis C and unstable housing in Melbourne, Australia. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted and a case study approach with interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify personal experiential themes and group experiential themes.

Four people were interviewed. The precarious nature of housing for women who inject drugs was a group experiential theme, however, this did not appear to be a direct barrier to hepatitis C treatment. Rather, competing priorities, including caregiving, were personal experiential themes and these created barriers to treatment. Another group experiential theme was “right place, right time, right people” with these three elements required to facilitate hepatitis C treatment.

There is limited research providing in-depth insight into how personal experiences with unstable housing and health care shape engagement with hepatitis C treatment. The analyses indicate there is a need to move beyond a “one size fits-all” approach to hepatitis C care. Instead, care should be tailored to the needs of individuals and their personal circumstances and regularly facilitated. This includes giving greater attention to gender in intervention design and evaluation, and research more broadly.

The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.

Strategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.

Drawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.

This framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.

The digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required of salespeople. This paper aims to explore the personal traits associated with sales performance in a digital selling environment.

Using template analysis, the researchers captured and coded over 21 h of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior sales leaders from various industry sectors, exploring their perceptions of the personal traits now required of B2B salespeople in the digital landscape.

The research identifies three high-level trait types critical to sales success within a digital selling environment: “analytical curiosity” – the natural motivation and ability to gather and synthesize sales-related knowledge, “empathetic citizenship” – the ability to establish initial rapport while building long-term trust and “disciplined drive” – the exertion of selling effort in a highly focused and methodical manner across all stages of the sales process.

The present data came from interviews with sales leaders in Canada. A more global sample may lead to additional insights. Moreover, the sample was drawn from long-cycle B2B sales environments; conclusions may differ for short-cycle or business-to-consumer markets.

This paper presents a framework for hiring and developing salespeople in the digital sales environment, identifying personal trait types that sales leaders should look for when hiring: analytical curiosity, empathetic citizenship and disciplined drive. The paper identifies how these trait types influence sales success, suggesting that sales leaders could coach and educate their teams to make the best use of them.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for hiring in the digital sales environment and introduces the trait of analytical curiosity not previously discussed in the literature.

No matter how dominant a worldview is, there are always other ways of interpreting the world. (Littlebear, 2000, p. 79)

No matter how dominant a worldview is, there are always other ways of interpreting the world. (Littlebear, 2000, p. 79)

These words resonated with me when I first started my career in higher education in Canada 15 years after being a school teacher for much of my young adult life in México. Back then, in Mexico, I took for granted the way in which I lived my values. While there were instances and contexts where those values were challenged, it was not until I moved to Canada that I started redefining and reshaping my worldview, negotiating what was negotiable within me, and fighting to maintain my position in what was not negotiable. I am still learning to navigate the world of postsecondary education where I have learned that, as Siksika Elder Leroy Littlebear (2000) observes, “No one has a pure worldview that is 100 percent Indigenous or Eurocentric; rather, everyone has an integrated mind, a fluxing and ambidextrous consciousness” (p. 85). How then, do I show all of who I am when my position toward Indigenous history, culture, language, and values is informed by my own upbringing and experience and consequently might be perceived as “biased”?

This auto-ethnographic chapter addresses this question by presenting a case study where I reflect on Littlebear's (2000) observations on the fluidity of worldviews and the development of an “ambidextrous consciousness,” and how those principles have allowed me the space to be my authentic self despite the different ontological and axiological orientations I have encountered my work in higher education.

This study investigated the role of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, by concentrating on the obstacles that hinder effective governance of community infrastructure planning.

The qualitative approach via case study design was adopted in this study. The Song District, located in the State of Sarawak, Malaysia, was selected as the case study area. Semi-structured interview sessions were conducted with 21 respondents who belonged to the government agencies involved in rural community infrastructure planning and village community representatives to capture their views on community infrastructure development planning in the selected district. The gathered responses were analysed thematically and the outcomes are discussed.

The findings revealed that although the development of community infrastructure in Song District has progressed and has exerted transformative impacts on rural livelihood, several challenges were identified in the delivery of community infrastructure. The four main themes of challenges that emerged from the data were location factors, financial resources, cooperation and collaboration of stakeholders, as well as community involvement. The outcomes disclosed that, in terms of governance, the institutional roles of the community, stakeholders and government agencies must be integrated throughout the rural community infrastructure planning process to resolve the emerging challenges effectively so that the demands of the rural community are met meritoriously.

An effective and efficient community infrastructure planning approach ascertains that the community infrastructure development gaps in rural areas are bridged and brings fruition to the rural communities for their livelihood transformation.

This paper delineates a view on the governance aspect of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, that is largely untapped. The study outcomes may facilitate practitioners and academics to move forward and recommend improvements in the approach to rural community infrastructure planning.