Yigang Liu

Introduction: The movement of generative artificial intelligence from still-image to moving-image creation has reshaped the symbolic mechanism of human-AI co-creation. Methods: This comparative observational study asks how prompt expression changes when the output shifts from static images to moving images, comparing two large-scale public prompt corpora under one neural topic-modeling protocol that combines lexical analysis of style, quality, technical, motion, camera, and format vocabulary with manual family coding and validity checks, and adds an exploratory user-focused topic structure. Results: Video prompts weaken the style, quality, and technical decoration characteristic of image prompts and instead organize meaning around action, scene, and screen format. Because the corpora differ in platform ecology, model generation, period, and corpus construction as well as in modality, these differences are described rather than causally attributed, and the format result is the most interface-sensitive of them. Artist-style imitation loses its earlier prominence, a decline that survives the coding reliability checks, while everyday action and scene description forms the largest family in the adjudicated solution, a position that is sensitive to those checks. Discussion: Prompting practice moved from selecting aesthetic styles toward specifying how a scene moves and how it is framed, and the prompting grammar observed here appears bound to the modality and the period. The terms that organized image prompts did not carry over intact to video prompts. These patterns suggest that the symbolic interface of human-AI co-creation is not a fixed grammar but an adaptive arrangement that responds to the salient capabilities of a generative system. The study contributes a comparative account of how the division of creative labor is reconfigured across media modalities, with implications for co-creation theory, generative interface design, and media literacy education.

Open-source investigations (OSINVs) have radically transformed journalistic evidence practices, yet their institutionalization within economics, business, and finance (EBF) journalism, particularly through the disruptive role of bearish research firms, remains largely undertheorized. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, this study examines a dataset of samples from education, real estate and sportswear industries, comprising bearish reports from institutions from Muddy Waters, equity research from major Chinese securities firms, and state-level EBF news. The analysis reveals that equity reports function within the imaginary order, constructing an ideal ego of market mastery through fantasies of policy dividends and consistent macro development. These reports project a structured reality that conceals systemic risks to maintain the confidence of investors. Conversely, EBF news reports embody the symbolic order, acting as the big other that prestructures market reality through national narratives and corporate crisis responses to sustain social stability. The central finding of this study identifies bearish research as the real order, the traumatic kernel that resists symbolization, including field investigations and multisource data verification. This research argues that the institutionalization of bearish research as OSINVs serves as a diagnostic symptom of systemic failure within the capital market and the environment of Chinese EBF journalism.

The imperative to address climate change has led to innovative approaches, one of which is the application of gamification. This paper explores the potential of gamification to mitigate climate change by enhancing eco-education, simulating scientific scenarios, and providing policy feedback. It argues that gamification, through its ability to engage users in a “magic circle” of play, can foster a participatory culture that encourages behavioral changes aligned with climate mitigation strategies. The objective is to shift the focus from merely improving gamification's effectiveness to leveraging the gaming industry's potential to directly contribute to reducing personal carbon footprints and shaping power consumption habits through gaming. It concludes that gamification and the gaming industry can play a significant role in climate change mitigation by transforming players' behaviors and by establishing a virtual carbon credit market that incentivizes sustainable practices.

Street quality plays a crucial role in promoting urban development. There is still no consensus on how to quantify human street quality perception on a large scale or explore the relationship between street quality and street composition elements. This study investigates a new approach for evaluating and comparing street quality perception and accessibility in Shanghai and Chengdu, two megacities with distinct geographic characteristics, using street-view images, deep learning, and space syntax. The result indicates significant differences in street quality perception between Shanghai and Chengdu. In Chengdu, there is a curvilinear distribution of the highest positive perceptions along the riverfront space and a radioactive spatial distribution of the highest negative perceptions along the ring road and main roads. Shanghai displays a fragmented cross-aggregation and polycentric distribution of the streets with the highest positive and negative perceptions. Thus, it is reasonable to hypothesize that street quality perception closely correlates with the urban planning and construction process of streets. Moreover, we used multiple linear regression to explain the relationship between street quality perception and street elements. The results show that buildings in Shanghai and trees, pavement, and grass in Chengdu were positively associated with positive perceptions. Walls in both Shanghai and Chengdu show a consistent positive correlation with negative perceptions and a consistent negative correlation with other positive perceptions, and are most likely to contribute to the perception of low street quality. Ceilings were positively associated with negative perceptions in Shanghai but are not the major street elements in Chengdu, while the grass is the opposite of the above results. Our research can provide a cost-effective and rapid solution for large-scale, highly detailed urban street quality perception assessments to inform human-scale urban planning.

Global warming, the urban heat island effect (UHI), and the risks of fossil fuel depletion necessitate a re-evaluation of traditional settlements that have been adapted to local climatic conditions, topography, and available resources, including materials and construction methods, through passive strategies to achieve thermal comfort. Although vernacular settlements have received considerable attention, few have examined and evaluated their streetscapes. This study investigates the impact of topographical features and architectural forms on insolation and ventilation conditions in traditional settlements in China’s southern subtropical climate. The aim is to explore traditional planning configurations of streetscapes at different altitudes to identify architectural forms and planning strategies that effectively improve outdoor users’ thermal comfort conditions. For this purpose, case studies are conducted on three traditional settlements in Lingnan; the Lingnan region has a typical subtropical climate in southern China. The chosen cases represent the main features of different topographical conditions, architectural forms, and climate zones in the Lingnan. We systematically simulated the insolation and ventilation in these settlements’ streetscapes on a monthly and quarterly basis and analyzed their sunlight hours, incident solar radiation, shading percentages, sky view factors (SVF), and wind speed. The findings show the following: (1) Specific terrains can affect streetscapes’ shading percentages and wind speed. The mountain settlement (With an average elevation of 600 m) is located on a southeast-facing slope (10° < slope < 20°). It receives an additional 10% of incident solar radiation compared to gentle terrain. (2) Compared to settlements located in coastal hills and mountainous, plain settlements have better shading and ventilation conditions in streetscapes. In terms of insolation, plain settlements have denser building configurations and narrower, elongated street corridors with a height-to-width ratio (H/W) = 1.9~5.5 (the height–width ratio value as street’s H/W (H = height, W = width); note that it is unitless), which can generate greater lower SVF (44.5%), and shading percentages (63.6%). Regarding ventilation, it is easier to create a “cool lane” (i) when the main street, oriented towards the dominant wind direction in summer, forms an angle <30° with it, (ii) when the primary street follows a NE–SW longitudinal orientation, while SE–NW horizontal streets intersect and weave through it, and (iii) with a H/W = 3~4 resulting in wind speeds of 2.9~4.0 m/s. (3) All the streetscapes have overshadowing occurring in winter; similarly, varying sizes of calm wind zones are created in summer. To alleviate these issues, widening the streetscapes along the buildings can permit solar penetration and natural ventilation. (4) In summer, installing shading devices along the horizontal plane of covered street corridors with a H/W = 1~4 and N–S longitudinal orientation can provide an additional shading of 3.6–22%.