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The term ziran first appears in the Daodejing, yet its precise meaning and attribution remain ambiguous in this book, sparking ongoing scholarly debate. This paper argues that Laozi’s idea of ziran fundamentally pertains to all things and the common people, rather than the Dao or the ruler, and its realization depends on the noncoercive action (wuwei, 無為) of the Dao and the ruler. While ziran is commonly understood as “natural” or “free from external force”, Laozi reinterprets it beyond its literal meaning, integrating the notion of order through its relationship with wuwei and thus imbuing it with theoretical significance. In this framework, ziran encompasses orders of internal senses and orders of external activities inherent in all things while simultaneously excluding excessive and disorderly desires. It thereby serves as a criterion for assessing the orderliness of desires. Furthermore, by elucidating ziran as the continuous transformation of things, the standard to which the ideal ruler or the sage resorts to curb the disorderly desires of the common people is established.

In the age when AI is prevalent in the world, teachers will use AI tools more frequently to teach students in educational contexts. With the assistance of AI, students tend to show more interest in learning English. This paper is to review the influences of AI-related technologies on the intrinsic motivation of students to learn English as a second language, drawing upon two perspectives, including the positive influences and negative ones. In terms of the benefits of AI technologies on student intrinsic motivation in learning English, it can be concluded from the reviewed research papers that AI can foster student engagement and teacher-student interactions, enhance personalized learning and student autonomy, as well as reduce learner anxiety. From the negative side, this paper also finds from the articles that AI could also cause over-reliance on technology as well as a lack of human connection, which may hinder student motivation in learning English. Lastly, this paper points out the future research directions, including the situations where students lack intrinsic motivations to learn English when using AI tools, as well as how to solve the adverse effects caused by AI tools.

A nation’s progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) depends in part on the long-term health of its educational research system, yet systematic, longitudinal assessments of such research ecosystems remain scarce. This study applies a generative artificial intelligence–based framework to evaluate the sustainable development of China’s empirical educational research ecosystem from 2004 to 2023. We compiled a dataset of 2,145 empirical studies published in leading Chinese education journals and used GPT-4o to score each paper on 31 quality indicators covering research problem, theoretical framing, design, data collection, analysis, and reporting, using a 1–10 analytic rating scale. Based on the resulting score distributions, we constructed a fuzzy relation matrix and applied a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method to derive annual and overall sustainability indices, while the Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) method was used to determine objective indicator weights. The overall sustainability index of China’s empirical educational research ecosystem over the 20-year period is 75.77 on a 100-point scale, with membership degrees concentrated at quality levels 7 (0.328) and 8 (0.435), indicating a generally robust and maturing system. Longitudinal trends reveal three stages of evolution—fluctuating development, rapid growth, and continuous improvement—corresponding to a shift toward more stable high-quality output. At the micro level, the ecosystem shows strong responsiveness to real-world educational problems, with high average scores for the relevance (8.45) and social significance (8.23) of research questions, as well as generally solid research design and data analysis practices. However, relatively lower scores for transparency of data analysis (7.08) and accessibility of raw data (6.46) highlight persistent challenges for reproducibility, open science, and methodological innovation. We conclude that China’s empirical educational research ecosystem has reached a relatively high and stable level of performance but faces critical tasks in strengthening data openness, methodological renewal, and AI-augmented governance. The proposed generative AI–based evaluation framework may offer a scalable tool for continuous monitoring and governance of national research ecosystems, while its results should be interpreted as an auxiliary input rather than a substitute for expert peer assessment.

Humans evolved in a patchwork of semi-connected populations across Africa 1 , 2 ; understanding when and how these groups connected is critical to interpreting our present-day biological and cultural diversity. Genetic analyses reveal that eastern and southern African lineages diverged sometime in the Pleistocene epoch, approximately 350–70 thousand years ago (ka) 3 , 4 ; however, little is known about the exact timing of these interactions, the cultural context of these exchanges or the mechanisms that drove their separation. Here we compare ostrich eggshell bead variations between eastern and southern Africa to explore population dynamics over the past 50,000 years. We found that ostrich eggshell bead technology probably originated in eastern Africa and spread southward approximately 50–33 ka via a regional network. This connection breaks down approximately 33 ka, with populations remaining isolated until herders entered southern Africa after 2 ka. The timing of this disconnection broadly corresponds with the southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which caused periodic flooding of the Zambezi River catchment (an area that connects eastern and southern Africa). This suggests that climate exerted some influence in shaping human social contact. Our study implies a later regional divergence than predicted by genetic analyses, identifies an approximately 3,000-kilometre stylistic connection and offers important new insights into the social dimension of ancient interactions. By tracing the changing size of ostrich eggshell beads, climate is shown to have an important role in influencing when and where regional African populations interacted.

Addressing and anticipating future South Asian monsoon changes under continuing global warming is of critical importance for the food security and socioeconomic well-being of one-quarter of the world’s population. However, climate model projections show discrepancies in future monsoon variability in South Asian monsoon domains, largely due to our still limited understanding of the monsoon response to warm climate change scenarios. Particularly, climate models are largely based on the assumption that higher solar insolation causes higher rainfall during similar warm climatic regimes, but this has not been verified by proxy data for different interglacial periods. Here, we compare Indian summer monsoon (ISM) variability during the Last Interglacial and Holocene using a sedimentary leaf wax δD and δ13C record from the northern Bay of Bengal, representing the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna (G-B-M) river catchment. In combination with a seawater salinity record, our results show that ISM intensity broadly follows summer insolation on orbital scales, but ISM intensity during the Last Interglacial was lower than during the Holocene despite higher summer insolation and greenhouse gas concentrations. We argue that sustained warmer sea surface temperature in the equatorial and tropical Indian Ocean during the Last Interglacial increased convective rainfall above the ocean but dampened ISM intensity on land. Our study demonstrates that besides solar insolation, internal climatic feedbacks also play an important role for South Asian monsoon variability during warm climate states. This work can help to improve future climate model projections and highlights the importance of understanding controls of monsoonal rainfall under interglacial boundary conditions.

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more integrated into education, its role in supporting English language learning has drawn increasing attention. This paper explores how AI technologies impact the development of English speaking and writing skills, using a SWOT analysis framework to examine their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The findings show that AI tools provide real-time feedback, personalized guidance, and low-pressure practice environments, which significantly enhance learners’ pronunciation accuracy, writing fluency, and self-regulation. However, challenges remain, such as students’ over-reliance on AI, reduced critical thinking, lack of creativity, and concerns about data privacy and academic integrity. Despite these issues, AI still holds strong potential for improving immersive learning, cross-cultural communication, and personalized instruction, especially when combined with technologies like VR or data analytics. The study concludes that AI can be a powerful support in English output learning, but its success depends on thoughtful integration, ethical use, and continued teacher involvement to ensure it complements rather than replaces human interaction.

In contrast to the aphoristic style of the Daodejing, Zhuangzi is known for its abundant use of dialogues. These dialogues, especially those found in chapters 21 and 22, are consciously organized around the theme of “asking about Dao”. They bring together the diverse propositions about the Dao that are found independently throughout the Daodejing. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the fact that Zhuangzi consciously orders these propositions in terms of the different levels of knowledge of Dao. Within this theoretical framework, Zhuangzi further ranks the questions and answers regarding these propositions. Certain dialogues are partly dismissed because both participants demonstrate a flawed and shallow understanding of the Dao, while other questions and answers are acknowledged and appreciated for their correct and profound understanding of it. There is a strict corresponding relationship between levels of knowledge of Dao and different attitudes toward dialogues in it. Therefore, the examination of the dialogues about the Dao reveals that Zhuangzi places explicit emphasis on the knowledge of the Dao compared to the Daodejing, which also sheds light on Zhuangzi’s distinctive awareness of the problems surrounding this key concept.

The theoretical proposition that sages or ideal rulers wuwei 無為 (act noncoercively) to achieve ziran 自然 of people has been clearly identified as the key claim in the political field, as posed by Laozi. However, this proposition leaves two questions worth further consideration. Firstly, how does this political claim relate to other, somewhat negative, political claims in Laozi, such as bushangxian 不尚賢 (not promoting those of superior character)? Secondly, why and in what sense should ziran of people and things be affirmed? Correspondingly, the purpose of this paper was to elucidate that those seemingly negative political claims are critiques of the ruler’s youwei 有為 (coercive action) in governance, in accordance with the viewpoint of noncoercive action, and to argue that the affirmation of the value of ziran must be established in the metaphysical realm of shapeless Dao instead of in the political realm. On the grounds of Dao, although the content of ziran involves the diversity of states of things, a permanent change of those states really establishes the measures and criteria of the ziran of things.

Negative terms are widespread in the text of Laozi; however, our understanding of their field, form and philosophical meaning is still unclear. In this paper, I intend to argue that the theoretical meaning of these terms first needs to be understood in terms of the proposition “Truthful words seem contrary”. In this proposition, “contrary” is the accurate meaning of negative terms. I demonstrate that the essence of the “contrary” lies in the critical reaction of xuande (dark virtue) to mingde (brilliant virtue), which is the traditional highest value. Thus, dark virtue is the theoretical foundation of the “contrary” because it is the new highest value. The “contrary” manifests itself in two forms: intuitive words (including adjectives and nouns), which are reflective, and negative words (including negative adverbs and verbs). Intuitive words represent the highest value or Being by means of the states and beings in the empirical world (I make use of the ontological difference between Being and being made by Heidegger, and so I maintain the capitalization of Being). In contrast, negative words more clearly distinguish the highest value or Being from secular values and beings in negative sentences. According to a further analysis of the relationship between affirmative and negative sentences, the latter is the universal expression of the former. All of these propositions reveal a philosophical possibility in which the diverse ways and values of the existence of all beings are affirmed and fulfilled.

A major challenge in cancer vaccine therapy is the efficient delivery of antigens and adjuvants to stimulate a controlled yet robust tumour-specific T-cell response. Here, we describe a structurally well defined DNA nanodevice vaccine generated by precisely assembling two types of molecular adjuvants and an antigen peptide within the inner cavity of a tubular DNA nanostructure that can be activated in the subcellular environment to trigger T-cell activation and cancer cytotoxicity. The integration of low pH-responsive DNA ‘locking strands’ outside the nanostructures enables the opening of the vaccine in lysosomes in antigen-presenting cells, exposing adjuvants and antigens to activate a strong immune response. The DNA nanodevice vaccine elicited a potent antigen-specific T-cell response, with subsequent tumour regression in mouse cancer models. Nanodevice vaccination generated long-term T-cell responses that potently protected the mice against tumour rechallenge. A DNA nanodevice vaccine has been developed and utilized to stimulate a tumour-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte response in vivo, leading to the inhibition of tumour growth as well as prevention of metastasis.