Legal identity is a fundamental human right that enables children to access education, healthcare, social protection, and other essential services. However, conflict has significantly disrupted civil registration systems in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest Regions, leaving many children without legal recognition. This article examines the role of community-based technology intermediaries in supporting digital civil registration reforms and advancing child protection in these conflict-affected areas. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining doctrinal legal analysis with qualitative interviews and documentary review. It evaluates Cameroon’s legal framework, including Law No. 2024/016 of 23 December 2024, Organising the Civil Registration System in Cameroon, alongside international and regional human rights instruments governing the right to legal identity. The findings reveal that community-based technology intermediaries play a critical role in facilitating digital birth registration, improving access to legal identity, and strengthening institutional resilience where conventional administrative systems have been disrupted. However, challenges such as digital exclusion, weak infrastructure, data privacy concerns, cybersecurity risks, and limited regulatory oversight continue to hinder effective implementation. The article contributes to existing scholarship by conceptualising community-based technology intermediaries as rights-enabling governance actors and proposing a Human-Centred Community Digital Identity Governance Model (HCDIGM) to strengthen digital civil registration. It concludes that achieving universal legal identity requires not only legislative reform and technological innovation but also inclusive, rights-based governance that prioritises children’s best interests and institutional accountability.
As global demand for sustainable agriculture rises, biopesticides represented by Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have become a core alternative to chemical pesticides. However, UV-induced photodegradation severely limits the field efficacy of conventional Bt products. Melanin-enhanced Bt, a genetically modified microbial (GMM) formulation with improved photostability, offers a technical solution, yet it faces divergent regulatory barriers across major economies that hinder its global adoption. Taking the United States, the European Union, China, and Brazil as research subjects, this paper systematically compares their regulatory frameworks for melanin-enhanced Bt, analyzes the structural drivers of regulatory divergence from four dimensions—political philosophy, economic interests, historical memory, and international trade regimes—and proposes targeted policy recommendations at global, national, and industrial levels.
This paper examines how contested pasts are mobilized to negotiate power and identity in contemporary digital publics, using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case of “imagefare” (image warfare) preceding the 7 October 2023 Gaza war. Focusing on Vice News’ YouTube coverage (2014-2023), the study asks: What themes regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict highlight polarizing responses in public video-commentary on the Vice News channel? Methodologically, the research applies an inductive qualitative content analysis, with themes used as the reporting categories, to a manually curated corpus of 10,000 highly visible comments (top 33 comment threads per video) drawn from a random sample of 20 videos within a 37-video Vice-curated playlist. This design leverages platform-ranked “top” threads to capture discourse most likely to shape audience interpretation and community norms. The findings are reported thematically through seven identified recurrent themes, four of which concentrate on polarization: (1) empathy and affective positioning; (2) rights to existence and the ethics of violence; (3) historical, religious, and politico-cultural interpretations; and (4) settlements as a locus of legality, dispossession, and moral argumentation. Across these themes, commenters repeatedly re-litigate historical narratives (e.g., origins, legitimacy, inheritance, displacement) to authorize present-day claims, reproduce in-/out-group boundaries, and frame asymmetries of power through “victim/defensive” logics. Notably, the comment space includes both international spectators and self-identified stakeholders, suggesting that digital arenas function as an extension of conflict—where memory claims, identity resilience, and legitimacy contests are performed, amplified, and contested in real time.
The objective of this study is to examine the role of substance use, disease and illness, inadequate sleep, and 24-hour dietary patterns in food insecurity in Fresno’s unsheltered homeless population. We conducted 201 semi-structured interviews and 32 in-depth interviews, and made direct observations of people’s behavior and circumstances. Triangulation of the information from these three methods ensured its reliability and credibility. We employed an inductive thematic analysis, which enabled us to identify, analyze, and report complex data. The data were coded and sub-coded around emerging themes and analyzed. The five themes that emerged from the analysis were the cumulative impact of disease/illness, substance use, 24-hour sleeping patterns, multiple substance use, coping behavior, and food security. Whereas the former three themes describe the downward trajectory of food insecurity that is strongly influenced by mental disease, substance use, and personal safety measures, the coping behavior theme identifies both positive and negative behavioral traits and safety-linked factors, and the food security theme describes the beneficial impacts of good health, non-use of substances, self-efficacy, eating at least two meals a day, and sleeping six or more hours. We conclude that the triad of semi-structured interviews, in-depth interviews, and direct observation is a comprehensive information source and inductive thematic analysis is a powerful tool for examining complex food insecurity data, and that the actionable results can inform the development of policies and integrative social and health services aimed at improving the food security of unsheltered homeless people in Fresno.
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), blended teaching has become a pivotal paradigm for enhancing instructional quality in higher education. However, existing literature predominantly focuses on isolated AI tools or short-term learning performance, leaving a critical gap in systematic pedagogical frameworks and empirical evidence on how AI-driven blended teaching supports student-centered learning, particularly in large undergraduate classes. To address this gap, this study proposes an AI-driven blended teaching framework, termed the ‘1235’ model, which integrates student-centered development as its core, problem- and goal-oriented teaching as dual directions, three-dimensional learning objectives (knowledge, skills, and literacy), and five instructional integration paths (ideological education, online-offline modalities, knowledge-ability development, research-active learning, and practical application). Grounded in Kirkpatrick’s four-level training evaluation model, a quasi-experimental mixed-methods study was conducted in an undergraduate Human Resource Management course (N = 143) to compare the AI-driven model with traditional teacher-centered instruction. Quantitative results demonstrate that the experimental group achieved significantly higher levels of engagement, proactive learning behaviors, and academic performance (p < 0.01) with a substantial effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.69). Qualitative thematic analysis further reveals that the strategic integration of AI across pre-class, in-class, and post-class stages effectively supports personalized learning, self-regulation, and higher-order cognitive development. This study contributes to the educational technology literature by providing a model-based, mechanism-oriented explanation of AI-enabled instructional innovation and offers actionable guidelines for practitioners.
