Shira Michel, Benjamin Taylor, Sabrina Parra Díaz
et al.
Recent breakthroughs in Generative AI (GenAI) are reshaping educational landscapes, presenting challenges and opportunities. While all contexts present unique challenges, rural schools are historically under-resourced, facing persistent technology-related barriers. To understand and reduce these barriers, we studied 31 rural high school educators across three U.S. states to examine their use of GenAI and understand how GenAI introduces new challenges, opportunities, and may exacerbate existing educational barriers. Results show while rural educators use GenAI to streamline teaching tasks, existing resource disparities restrict meaningful integration. Through rural educators' voices, we reveal issues like infrastructure barriers, resistance to adoption, and lack of AI literacy training create significant obstacles. Nonetheless, educators envision GenAI can support themselves and their students, but findings emphasize the need for rural-specific design approaches. As a community, embracing inclusive GenAI design and re-examining assumptions about technology adoption in under-served educational contexts is essential to reducing barriers rather than widening them.
Hassan Raza, Muhammad Tauseef Sultan, Asad Abbas
et al.
ABSTRACT Medicinal plants have garnered special attention worldwide in food, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and cosmetic industries, owing to their diverse nutritional and therapeutic profile. Rural inhabitants have traditionally used these plants as therapeutic agents to manage prevalent disorders. Ricinus communis, known as the castor bean, is native to East Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, and Southeast Asia, including India and Pakistan. It is extensively used in various medicinal systems to treat different disorders. This review summarizes the nutritional composition, phytochemistry, health benefits, safety studies, and applications of castor beans and their oil. Various search engines like Google Scholar, PubMed, and ScienceDirect were used to obtain relevant studies (n = 159). The findings showed that diverse bioactive compounds, including saponins, emodins, terpenoids, anthraquinones, flavonoids, steroids, and alkaloids, exhibit therapeutic properties such as antioxidant, anticancer, anti‐inflammatory, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, and hepatoprotective properties. Furthermore, its antioxidant potential helps attenuate oxidative stress and its associated disorders, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other metabolic disorders. Additionally, different studies have documented the toxicity of castor beans, especially ricin.
Food processing and manufacture, Toxicology. Poisons
Ni Made Ary Widiastini, I Ketut Sida Arsa, Made Aristia Prayudi
et al.
Tourism villages contribute significantly to Bali's economic development by promoting rural entrepreneurship. However, the sector faces challenges such as low product quality, ineffective marketing, and competition from low-cost imported products. This study explores collaboration and diversification strategies to ensure the economic sustainability of Bali’s village tourism and rural businesses. Data were collected through observations, questionnaires, and in-depth interviews, then analyzed using the SWOT method to assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The results highlight the importance of community involvement, partnership networks, creative product development, effective marketing, and long-term business management. Findings from four villages indicate that collaboration with local industries and sustainable tourism initiatives enhances community income. To support sustainable tourism and improve community welfare, it is recommended that the government and stakeholders strengthen the promotion of local products and maximize the cultural and economic potential of villages.
IntroductionRural areas have actively invested in distinctive rural development by leveraging distinctive rural resources to enhance the vitality and sustainability of farmers’ income growth. However, the pathway to achieve this objective remains uncertain.MethodsThis study focuses on the distinctive rural development in the northern region of Jiangsu Province via a dynamic configurational perspective across three dimensions—agricultural development, tourism cultivation, and cultural infrastructure—within the distinctive industrial system framework on farmers’ income enhancement.Results and discussionThe findings reveal that a single factor is not a necessary condition for promoting farmers’ sustainable income growth; however, low levels of annual income from specialized industries constitute a necessary condition for the maintenance of low-income levels among farmers. There are four combination pathways that drive farmers’ sustainable income growth: Composite Value-Added Driven Type, Agriculture-Oriented E-Commerce Driven Type, Agriculture-Oriented Chain-Based Collaborative Type, and Innovation-Driven Agriculture-Tourism Co-Driven Type. Distinctive rural development not only mitigates the factor constraints associated with traditional income growth pathways but also expands new avenues for increasing income, thereby enhancing farmers’ capacity for income sustained growth. This study advances configurational theory by applying dynamic fsQCA to rural development, highlighting nonlinear factor interactions over isolated variables through a holistic lens on resource endowments and innovations in rural economic systems.
Nutrition. Foods and food supply, Food processing and manufacture
Osvaldo Blanco, Dasten Julián-Véjar, Dasten Julián-Véjar
et al.
This article examines the geographic variability of labour markets in the Chilean regions of Antofagasta and La Araucanía, emphasizing their structural similarities and differences. An inter- and intraregional perspective is applied to identify common and specific elements in both territories, drawing on multivariate sociodemographic, contractual, and occupational data. Through factorization and cluster analysis, typological systems of labour segmentation are constructed for each region, located at opposite ends of the country. The results reveal the heterogeneity of regional labour matrices, encompassing both regular and protected employment as well as unregulated, temporary, informal, and precarious arrangements. The study also considers the role of urban and rural contexts in shaping productive activities and labour conditions. While extractive industries represent a shared feature of Chile’s productive matrix, the findings show unequal segmentation systems across regions. These differences highlight persistent gender inequalities in access to decent and protected work, along with differentiated patterns of labour insertion for Indigenous peoples and migrants across urban and rural areas. The analysis contributes to understanding regional labour dynamics and underscores the need for territorially differentiated policies that acknowledge the structural diversity of employment conditions in northern and southern Chile.
As the climate emergency intensifies in the Philippines, extreme weather events increasingly threaten key economic sectors. In response, the government has prioritised infrastructure development, driving up demand for sand and gravel from the extractive industry. This article shares the story of a small agricultural village that was devastated by a super typhoon, forcing rice farmers to sell their land and leading to a rapid expansion of sand and gravel extraction. This situation now endangers the village’s irrigation system, its lifeline for farming. The narrative highlights a critical dilemma: while rebuilding after climate disasters necessitates urgent infrastructure development, extractive industries can exacerbate the vulnerabilities of rural communities.
Kazi N S Rafi, M G Aziz, Mohammad Amirul Islam
et al.
Abstract Biofortification of zinc (Zn) is a great means of eradicating Zn deficiency, essentially in developing countries. Current study has evaluated the influence of Zn treatment on bioaccessibility of Zn in food grains along with germination assays. Edible (seed) and inedible (root) portions of BARI Gom 28 (Triticum aestivum), BARI Chola 5 (Cicer arietinum) and BARI Mung 6 (Vigna radiata) sprouts were analyzed for Zn bioaccessibility. The highest Zn (44.50 ppm) was extracted from the seed of BARI Chola 5 at 50 ppm Zn and the lowest (0.45 ppm) was extracted from the root of BARI Mung 6 at control treatment. The highest Zn bioaccessibility percentage (90%) was observed at the seed of BARI Chola 5 and the lowest percentage (62%) at the root of BARI Gom 28 sprouts at 25 ppm Zn treatment. After optimizing fractional factorial design analysis, maximum Zn response is observed in the seed of BARI Chola 5 at 50 ppm Zn treatment with 91.06% composite desirability. Germination percentage, fresh and dried weight of sprouts, sprout length, seed vigor and biological yield showed better results at 50 ppm Zn. Thus, biofortification of food grains through hydroponics approach using control, 25 ppm and 50 ppm Zn treatments produced contrasting effects on Zn bioaccessibility.
The development of digital financial inclusion helps create a healthy rural financial ecological environment and plays an important role in integrating rural tertiary industries. This paper incorporates digital financial inclusion into the rural tertiary industry integration research framework. Furthermore, it adopts the double-difference method to empirically analyze the impact of the development of digital financial inclusion on rural tertiary industry integration from the perspective of policy impact. In addition, it considers regional differences in the financial ecological environment; robustness tests were carried out using methods such as placebo tests and validated the conduction mechanism. The study through the double-difference model found that digital financial inclusion is very conducive to promoting rural tertiary industry integration; using the quantile DID (difference in differences) method to analyze the heterogeneity, it is concluded that there is a heterogeneous impact on rural tertiary industry integration. It exerts a more significant improvement in provinces and cities with higher rural tertiary industry integration levels. Constructing an intermediary effect model to verify the transmission mechanism concludes that the policy has promoted the improvement of rural tertiary industry integration efficiency by promoting technological innovation, improving agricultural modernization, and building a risk-sharing mechanism. Finally, it puts forward policy recommendations from optimizing the financial ecological environment, rationally allocating financial resources, and perfecting the transmission mechanism.
the prosperity of rural industries, that is, by enhancing the allocation of professional talents, increasing policy support, and forming a smart logistics system, with the help of rural e-commerce, this important force will comprehensively promote the revitalization of rural industries and promote the development of rural agricultural economy on the new journey.
This study aims to investigate the influence of agricultural insurance on the development of the agricultural industry. Employing the functional decomposition approach in systems engineering, we analyze the mechanisms by which agricultural insurance affects the development of rural industries. Additionally, we conduct an empirical analysis using panel data from Chinese provinces between 2011 and 2019, employing a two-way fixed effects model. The findings reveal a substantial and positive impact of agricultural insurance on the development of rural industries. Furthermore, we identify regional heterogeneity in the influence of agricultural insurance on rural industry development. Specifically, in major grain-producing provinces, the effect of agricultural insurance on rural industry development is not statistically significant. In contrast, non-grain-producing provinces experience a significantly positive impact on rural industry development from agricultural insurance. The outcomes of this study offer valuable insights for policymakers to promote rural industry development through the effective utilization of agricultural insurance.
The development and integration of industries have promoted economic growth and gradually become an important perspective to understand the country’s modernized construction. The cultural industry and the tourism industry are naturally coupled, which is an important part of the process of industrial integration. In addition, the country’s drive towards modernization needs to improve the overall level of industrial integration, and rural revitalization is one of the key links to this. Therefore, to explore the relationship between the integration of cultural tourism industry and rural revitalization, this study collected the panel data of 31 provincial-level regions in China from 2005 to 2021. Based on the entropy method and the coupling coordination degree model, this study constructs an evaluation index system, including cultural industry, tourism industry, the integration of cultural tourism industry, new urbanization, and rural revitalization, and obtains the comprehensive scores of each. Furthermore, the study discusses the path selection and future development direction of rural revitalization through the integration of a cultural tourism industry. The conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) The development of the cultural and tourism industries can significantly promote the development of new urbanization and rural revitalization; (2) the integration of cultural tourism industry has a positive effect on rural revitalization; (3) new urbanization plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between the integration of cultural tourism industry and rural revitalization; (4) new urbanization has a masking effect on the influence of the integration of cultural tourism industry on rural revitalization; and (5) the extent of these effects varies by region. Finally, this study not only deepens the understanding of rural revitalization from the perspective of industrial development and integration, but also provides an empirical basis for the country, local governments, and enterprises to promote rural revitalization.
Integration of digital economic (technological) development is an inevitable choice for the growth of industries in China's urban and rural areas. Industrial prosperity in the countryside requires the development of speciality industries according to the reality of the countryside. The integration of characteristic industries and digital economy helps rural industries to flourish and accelerates the realisation of the goal of rural revitalisation. Due to different natural endowments, villages in the categories of agglomeration and upgrading, suburban integration, characteristic protection and relocation and annexation focus on the development of different characteristic industries. According to the actual situation of each type of villages, the development of characteristic industries and the digital transformation and upgrading of characteristic industries are the basic paths for the optimisation and development of rural industries in China. The development of special industries in different types of villages requires a sound digital foundation, the pooling of financial resources in various aspects, and the support and promotion of the construction of digital talents.
This paper explores the causal impact of education opportunities on rural areas by exploiting the higher education expansion (HEE) in China in 1999. By utilizing the detailed census data, the cohort-based difference-in-differences design indicates that the HEE increased college attendance and encouraged more people to attend senior high schools and that the effect is more significant in rural areas. Then we apply a similar approach to a novel panel data set of rural villages and households to examine the effect of education opportunities on rural areas. We find contrasting impacts on income and life quality between villages and households. Villages in provinces with higher HEE magnitudes underwent a drop in the average income and worse living facilities. On the contrary, households sending out migrants after the HEE experienced an increase in their per capita income. The phenomenon where villages experienced a ``brain drain'' and households with migrants gained after the HEE is explained by the fact that education could serve as a way to overcome the barrier of rural-urban migration. Our findings highlight the opposed impacts of education opportunities on rural development and household welfare in rural areas.
Seniors residing in rural areas often encounter limited accessibility to opportunities, resources, and services. This paper introduces a model proposing that both aging and rural residency are factors contributing to the restricted accessibility faced by rural seniors. Leveraging data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey, the study examines three hypotheses pertaining to this causal model. Multiple causal pathways emerge in the data analysis, with mobility identified as a mediator in one of them. The study further identifies specific challenges faced by rural seniors, such as the reduced accessibility in reaching medical services and assisting others. These challenges stem primarily from aging and geographic obstacles that not only diminish their willingness to travel but also restrict more in the group from choosing transportation modes with higher mobility. The insights gained from this study serve as a foundation for devising effective methods to enhance transportation accessibility for seniors in rural areas.
Strengthening urban–rural linkages (URLs) has been proposed by UN-Habitat within the framework of ‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ to narrow down urban–rural differences via shaping new urban–rural relationships. Like URL, the aim of urban–rural integration (URI) has been promoted by the Chinese government since 2019 to address existing urban–rural divides. This concept underlines the ‘rural revitalisation’ strategy and emphasises a two-way flow of urban–rural development factors. Introducing and upgrading ‘appropriate’ rural industries is crucial to stimulate and facilitate the circulation of urban–rural development factors. This research studied three neighbouring villages, situated in urban–rural interface areas in Huangyan-Taizhou, China, each driven by different types of small industries supported by URI. It analyses the impact of small rural industries on the flow of development factors between urban and rural areas. The results showed that small-scale rural industries have been enhanced URL by decreasing urban–rural differences by creating new job opportunities to attract an in-flow population, increasing investments, and upgrading public services and infrastructure. Indigenous industries demonstrated lower profitability but exhibited greater resilience compared to industries linked to global production chains and rural tourism. Thus, this study demonstrates the imperative to carefully consider the opportunities and potential risks associated with pursuing strategies of URI through rural industry development. By providing empirical insights from URI projects in China, this study contributes to theoretical and policy dialogues concerning the concepts of both URL and URI by exploring the localization of SDGs. Furthermore, it offers valuable practical knowledge and experience for other global regions confronting similar challenges to urban and rural development.
S. I. Jeyanth Allwin, S. Lititia, Serena Ann Cherian
et al.
The Asian Palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer L.) is an economically important tree widely distributed in the Indian
subcontinent and Southeast Asia. The multifaceted uses of the Palmyra palm fruit as food, wood, and medicine, make it a viable
industrial crop. It is among the most beneficial species that have economic and medicinal value. It is found to posses antiinflammatory, anti-arthritic, cytotoxic, antibacterial, analgesic, antipyretic, hypoglycemic, and anti-oxidant properties. The plant
has a very close connection with the rural livelihood, and cottage and agro-based industries of Indian economy. Unfortunately,
over 60% of the annual fruit yield is often lost within ten days after harvesting due to rot in storage. The value of Palmyra fruit is
not yet materialized, as no Palmyra products are commercialized so far. Even though Palmyra is an economically important palm
for its nutritional aspects, it is underutilized and has not received proper attention in agricultural research, since it is a very slowly
growing palm and is mostly found in the wild state. Hence, this paper attempts to give a view on Palmyra fruit’s historical
importance, chemistry, nutritional properties, medicinal properties, and commercialization.
B.M. Khaled, Mrityunjoy Biswas, Adda Ann Sina
et al.
The study investigated the changes in chemical and fatty acid composition in selected edible oils due to continuous heating. Peroxide value of all the oil except rice bran oil went beyond the permissible limit of 10 mEqO2/kg after 90 min of heating. At first degree of heating, the saponification number of all the oils increased. But the values declined after second and third time of heating, indicating a high degree of saturation. Rice bran oil showed the most slower decreasing trend in case of iodine value. Acid value of all the oils increased with time of heating indicating the presence of free fatty acid. Fatty acid composition of all the oils seemed to be affected due to continuous heating when analyzed with GC–MS. Presence of essential fatty acids was affected and fully absent in some oil. Some foreign chemicals like glycidyl fatty acid esters, fumaric acid, succinic acid, cyclohexane, etc. were detected due to the heating of oils. Glycidyl fatty acid esters were discovered in the degradation of each oil. Cyclohexane is produced during the breakdown of palm and soybean oil. Conferring to the results, it is recommended that oils should not be used after the third degree of heating.
The Chinese government is implementing a rural revitalization strategy and speeding up rural modernization. The rapid development of the rural digital economy has become a new driving force for the revitalization of rural industries. By analyzing how rural industrial revitalization is driven by the rural digital economy, this study constructs a rural digital economy from the three dimensions of optimal allocation of rural resource elements, the effective connection of urban–rural markets, and the integrated development of rural industries. The entropy value method was used to assess the comprehensive level of development of the rural digital economy and industrial revitalization. Based on the agricultural and rural development data of 30 provinces in China from 2014 to 2019, we construct a dual fixed effect model to empirically analyze how the rural digital economy drives rural industrial revitalization. The results show that, first, the rural digital economy promotes the revitalization of rural industries through the following main approaches: optimal allocation and utilization of rural resources, effective connection of urban–rural markets, and industrial integration development. Second, using the benchmark regression test, it can be concluded that if the development level of the rural digital economy is increased by 1 percent, the development of rural industrial revitalization will increase by 0.066 percent, indicating that the development of the rural digital economy can significantly drive the revitalization of rural industries. Third, the driving effect of the rural digital economy on the revitalization of rural industries is heterogeneous in different regions and industrial structures. The effect of the rural digital economy on the revitalization of rural industries in the western region, the region with a high proportion of the output value of the primary industry, is higher than in the east and central regions, which have a low proportion of the output value of the primary industry.
As the tourism industry is embedded in the countryside, space, which is an important means of production of modern industries, has undergone significant changes in the models and trends of spatial transform. This paper aims to analyze the development pattern of rural economic and social structure driven by the tourism industry. Based on the spatial syntax model, it takes Matao Village of China as the research sample and decomposes the evolutionary process of rural space transform. Firstly (1) in the self-driven development stage, the rural space presented a polar core development trend with high intelligibility and obvious agglomeration. Secondly (2) in the tourism-driven development stage, firstly, the driving force of the tourism industry was relatively weak, whereas the traditional spatial core still occupied an absolute advantage in the whole village space. However, with further development, the spatial scope of high Integration and Choice Values has expanded, resulting in multiple spatial development agglomeration centers. Based on this, it is proposed that a village with a tourism industry should integrate village spatial development planning with landscape style, focus on the regeneration and development of the old space core, and strengthen the integration and correlation of the old and new space clusters.
This paper aims to realize the planning of resource utilization and development of rural industries endowed by digitalization under entrepreneurship. First, the global classic practical experience of digitizing rural industries is studied, and the development model of existing rural industries is captured from the perspective of entrepreneurship. Second, the influencing factors of rural industrial development are extracted, the structure of resource development is analyzed, and a Neural Network (NN) model of industrial development aiming at expected per capita annual income is established. In addition, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) is introduced to learn the weights of influencing factors in the model. The structure of the NN is determined through extensive experiments. Finally, conclusions are drawn through the simulation and experiment of NN and GA. Tourism, infrastructure, and transportation planning have weights of 7.79, 5.6, and 6.4, respectively, and these three sectors should be vigorously developed. In the future, the weight values of these factors can be used for reference, and the development of various aspects can be refined. This paper clarifies the core of industrial development in rural revitalization based on the perspective of entrepreneurship. The problem of how to realize the optimal utilization of resources is solved scientifically and rationally through the mathematical model. The introduction of deep learning algorithm models provides data support for resource allocation and industrial planning in the process of digital empowerment of traditional rural industries, which is of great value and significance for exploring digital models for rural industry development.