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In light of the challenges currently facing the inheritance of blue calico, including the reduction in the number of inheritors and the contraction of the market, this paper puts forth a stylistic transfer method based on an enhanced cycle consistency generative adversarial network. This approach is designed to facilitate the creation of novel designs for traditional blue calico patterns. To address the shortcomings of existing style transfer models, including the generation of blurry details, poor texture and color effects, and excessive model parameters, we propose the incorporation of the Ghost convolution module and the SRM attention module into the generator network structure. This approach aims to reduce the model parameter quantity and computational cost while enhancing the feature extraction ability of the network. The experimental results demonstrate that the method proposed in this paper not only effectively enhances the content details, texture, and color effects of the generated images, but also successfully combines traditional blue calico with modern daily necessities, thereby enhancing its appeal to young people. This research provides novel insights into the digital protection and innovative development of traditional culture, and illustrates the extensive potential applications of deep learning technology in the field of cultural heritage.

With the widespread application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies in the field of cultural education, technology-integrated serious games are increasingly emerging as effective tools for the dissemination of intangible cultural heritage. This study targeted university students and developed and deployed an AI- and AR-based serious game titled Dye Verse at the China Blue Calico Museum, serving as a museum-based learning intervention for higher education audiences. The game integrates features such as character creation, semantic guidance, AR recognition, and navigation, aiming to enhance students’ immersion and learning motivation. An experimental study involving 60 participants (N = 60) was conducted using pre- and post-knowledge tests and the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ). Statistical analysis indicates that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in dimensions such as cultural knowledge acquisition, interactive engagement, and emotional identification. These findings validate the educational potential and communicative advantages of integrating AI and AR technologies in serious games. The study offers a cost-effective and highly interactive digital solution for small and medium-sized museums and provides both theoretical and practical implications for the sustainable dissemination of cultural heritage through gamified education.

Background Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) have always been complaints reported by handicraft workers due to the repetitive and static nature of work. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate the ergonomic conditions of craftsmen engaged with the calico industry. Method This cross-sectional study was done in small calico industrial workshops in Isfahan, Iran, in 2022. The sample selection method in this study was census. Using QEC (Quick Exposure Checklist) and Cornell-Musculoskeletal Discomfort Questionnaire (CMDQ), the ergonomic status of workers was evaluated. The data were analyzed using Chi-square (χ2) and Pearson’s product-moment correlation test. Results The risk level of working postures in wrist/hand, shoulder /arm, and neck were high or very high among the craftsmen. The relationships between discomfort complaints reported by the participants and the risk level of working postures were significant for neck χ 2 (1, N  = 100) = 13.603, P value  = 0.034, left knee χ 2 (1, N  = 100) = 12.310, P value  = 0.030 and lower left leg χ 2 (1, N  = 100) = 11.906, P value  = 0.042. The posture risk level scores for %57.7 of the participants who self-reported the right shoulder discomfort were found to be high or very high. Conclusions The high risk found in most calico craftsmen may induce more serious musculoskeletal problems that require applicable interventions. The most important risk factors realized among calico craftsmen were prolonged sitting postures and repetitive tasks.

The image on the cover of this issue of Technology and Culture features an early modern Indian textile, popularly known as \"chintz\" in the Western world. The image depicts stylized flowers surrounded by curving leaves on meandering branches—a colourful artisanal rendition of imaginative flora on a utilitarian object. This essay argues that material objects, such as this chintz, contain embedded knowledge necessary for understanding techniques used in their production and for replicating these objects in new contexts. It further contends that magnified images of historical objects serve as movable microscopic pieces of the objects, enabling detailed visual examinations often not possible with the objects themselves. By foregrounding the use of objects as historical sources, the essay demonstrates the value of incorporating images as essential resources in the historian's research methodology.

This article challenges the prevailing historiography, which asserts that painting with indigo on cotton was technically impossible until the British innovation with arsenic trisulphide in the 1730s. By reconstructing the Indian indigo painting process from the Beaulieu manuscript, the study demonstrates that European dismissal of fermented coconut sap as a viable technique stemmed from a lack of understanding and the incompatibility of the Indian technique with capital-intensive production models. Painting with indigo was not a technical impossibility but an economic and artisanal problem, requiring specialized knowledge of fermented coconut sap's properties. The study argues that successful knowledge transfer depends on adaptability to environmental and structural conditions, advancing a broader definition of \"useful knowledge\" in global economic and technological history—one not limited by immediate economic applicability.

In the era of DevOps, developing new toolsets and frameworks that leverage DevOps principles is crucial. This paper demonstrates how Ansible’s powerful automation capabilities can be harnessed to manage the complexity of Kubernetes environments. This paper evaluates efficiency across various CNI (Container Network Interface) plugins by orchestrating performance analysis tools across multiple power profiles. Our performance evaluations across network interfaces with different theoretical bandwidths gave us a comprehensive understanding of CNI performance and overall efficiency, with performance efficiency coming well below expectations. Our research confirms that certain CNIs are better suited for specific use cases, mainly when tuning our environment for smaller or larger network packets and workload types, but also that there are configuration changes we can make to mitigate that. This paper also provides research into how to use performance tuning to optimize the performance and efficiency of our CNI infrastructure, with practical implications for improving the performance of Kubernetes environments in real-world scenarios, particularly in more demanding scenarios such as High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Nantong blue calico pattern is a significant and indispensable part of China’s intangible cultural heritage, representing an artistic form of weaving and dyeing. However, existing research on blue calico patterns is not extensive, and few studies have focused on the construction of a database categorizing them or on recognizing the Nantong blue calico pattern. Obtaining good efficiency and accuracy through manual recognition has been the primary challenge in recognizing the Nantong blue calico pattern. In light of these challenges, this study proposes the use of deep learning network model to intelligently classify and recognize blue calico patterns.First, the patterns are classified to establish a Nantong blue calico pattern database, and the corresponding category labels are then manually assigned to each image. Second, based on the database and a backbone feature extraction network, the abilities of SSD (Single Shot Multibox Detector), Faster RCNN (Region-CNN), and You Only Look Once (to recognize the Nantong blue calico pattern were compared. The results show that the SSD model based on a VGG (Visual Geometry Group) backbone network has the best recognition accuracy of these three algorithms, with an average accuracy of 79.42%. On this basis, we selected the SSD model for parameter optimization and adjustment, and we replaced the backbone with mobilenetv2, a lighter backbone extraction network, to recognize the Nantong blue calico pattern. The results show that compared with the original SSD model, the optimized SSD model can improve the pattern recognition rate of Nantong blue calico pattern. Furthermore, this paper makes use of the characteristics of the VGG deep network, the backbone network of the SSD model, to efficiently extract the features of blue calico patterns, which provides a basis for designers to design innovative blue calico patterns.

This article describes the technologies in use for second language learning, in relation to the major language areas and skills. In order, these are grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, pronunciation, listening, speaking, and culture. With each language area or skill, the relevant technologies are discussed with examples that illustrate how practitioners have employed the technological tool to help assist the language learner. In each case, the examples are chosen to highlight current points of focus and priorities, to give an indication of successful applications, and, in some cases, to draw attention to areas in which further work is required before a viable application is achieved.

Biological invasions contrast with reintroduction projects, where native species are deliberately returned to their natural habitat to restore local biodiversity. Such a reintroduction project is being carried out in the Upper Rhine Valley with the European pond turtle ( Emys orbicularis ) in the transbordering region between Lauterbourg (France) and Neuburg am Rhein (Germany), hereafter referred as Neu-Woerr. Several ponds have been created to benefit the dispersal of reintroduced turtles. However, this pondscape has been recently widely invaded by the calico crayfish ( Faxonius immunis ) and partly by the zebra mussel ( Dreissena polymorpha ). These two invasive non-native species decrease the overall habitat quality due to the massive exploitation of phytoplankton by the zebra mussel as well as macrophytes and macroinvertebrates by the calico crayfish. However, these invasive non-native species are also potential novel prey for the reintroduced turtles. Here, we investigated the trophic interactions under captive conditions between the turtle and the two invasive non-native species. We conducted prey choice tests of turtles with calico crayfish of different sex, size, and shell hardness, as well as with zebra mussels of different size. Additionally, faecal samples of wild caught turtles on Neu-Woerr were sampled and analysed for calico crayfish DNA. Our results demonstrated that the turtles were capable of preying on the calico crayfish in the wild and in captivity, preferring small crayfish individuals, with no sexual preference for the less aggressive female crayfish. For the zebra mussels, turtles preyed preferably on small alive individuals, while they also preyed on larger, yet dead mussels. This study provides new insights into the feeding ecology of the European pond turtle and highlights added benefits and values of reintroduction projects when the reintroduced species additionally acts as a novel predator of invasive species.

By the 1780s in the city of Barcelona alone, more than 150 factories shipped calicoes to every major city in Spain and across the Atlantic. This book narrates the lives of families on both sides of the Atlantic who profited from the craze for calicoes, and in doing so helped the Spanish empire to flourish in the eighteenth century.