This paper assesses South Africa’s massive infrastructure drive to revive growth and increase employment. After years of stagnant growth, this is now facing a deep economic crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This drive also comes after years of weak infrastructure investment, widening the infrastructure deficit. The plan outlines a R1 trillion investment drive, primarily from the private sector through the Infrastructure Fund over the next 10 years (Government of South Africa, 2020). This paper argues that while infrastructure development in South Africa is much-needed, the emphasis on de-risking for private sector buy-in overshadows the key role the state must play in leading on structurally transforming the economy.

The world has complex mega-cities and interdependent infrastructures. This complication in infrastructure relations makes it sensitive to disasters and failures. Cascading failure causes blackouts for the whole system of infrastructures during disasters and the lack of performance of the emergency management stakeholders is clear during a disaster due to the complexity of the system. This research aimed to develop a new concurrent engineering model following the total recovery effort. The objectives of this research were to identify the clustered intervention utilized in the field of resilience and developing a cross-functional intervention network to enhance the resilience of societies during a disaster. Content analysis was employed to classify and categorize the intervention in the main divisions and sub-divisions and the grouping of stakeholders. The transposing system was employed to develop an integrated model. The result of this research showed that the operations division achieved the highest weight of information interchange during the response to improve the resilience of the system. The committee of logistics and the committee of rescue and relief needed the widest bandwidth of information flow in the concurrent engineering (CE) model. The contributed CE model helped the stakeholders provide a resilient response system. The final model and the relative share value of exchanging information for each workgroup can speed up recovery actions. This research found that concurrent engineering (CE) is a viable concept to be implemented as a strategy for emergency management. The result of this research can help policymakers achieve a collaborative teamwork environment and to improve resilience factors during emergency circumstances for critical infrastructures.

Given the heavy workload faced by teachers, automatic speaking scoring systems provide essential support. This study aims to consolidate technological configurations of automatic scoring systems for spontaneous L2 English, drawing from literature published between 2014 and 2024. The focus will be on the architecture of the automatic speech recognition model and the scoring model, as well as on features used to evaluate phonological competence, linguistic proficiency, and task completion. By synthesizing these elements, the study seeks to identify potential research areas, as well as provide a foundation for future research and practical applications in software engineering.

On the basis of the enlightenment of international engineering education accreditation for the reform and development of higher education in China, combined with the important measures of the national “double first-class” construction, new challenges have been proposed for innovative talent cultivation among engineering majors in the context of promoting national development. These challenges also promote the reform of science-oriented courses among engineering majors. As a core mandatory course for engineering majors, biochemistry plays a crucial role in the entire educational process at universities, serving as a bridge between basic and specialized courses. To address challenges such as limited course resources, insufficient development of students’ advanced thinking and innovation skills, and overly standardized assessment methods, the bioengineering major from Guilin University of Technology restructured the biochemistry course content. A blended teaching model termed “three integrations, three stages, one sharing”, was implemented. This effort has yielded significant results, providing a research foundation for constructing an innovative talent cultivation system that is oriented toward industry needs within modern industrial colleges. It also offers valuable insights into and reference points for the cultivation of engineering talents and curriculum reform in local universities.

In order to explore the influence of the ferroelectric surface on the structure and properties of semiconductor oxides, the growth of CdS nanocrystals was regulated and controlled by taking single-crystal perovskite PbTiO₃ nanosheets as the substrate through a simple hydrothermal method. Through composition design, a series of PbTiO₃-CdS nanocomposite materials with different loading concentrations were prepared, and their microstructure and photocatalytic properties were systematically analyzed. Studies show that in the prepared product, CdS nanoparticles selectively grow on the surfaces of PbTiO₃ nanosheets, and their morphology is affected by the exposed surfaces of PbTiO₃ nanosheets. There is a clear interface between the PbTiO₃ substrate and CdS nanoparticles. The concentration of the initial reactant and the time of hydrothermal reaction also significantly affect the crystal morphology of CdS. Photocatalysis studies have shown that the prepared PbTiO₃-CdS nanocomposite material has a significant degradation effect on 10 mg/L of Rhodamine B aqueous solution. The degradation efficiency rises with the increase of CdS loading concentration. When degrading 10 mg/L Rhodamine B aqueous solution, the PbTiO₃-CdS sample with a mass fraction of 3% can reach a degradation rate of 72% within 120 min.