Search Results (3)

School is one of the main settings where it is useful to guarantee health promotion actions, as it is well known that diet and eating habits that are shaped in the early stages of life are maintained through adulthood. The objective of this study was to carry out the “Healthy Snack” project to promote nutritional education in primary schools in the Province of Belluno in the 2022–2023 school year, in which 925 students were enrolled, and to evaluate the intervention in terms of changes in eating habits during their school breaks. Following the workshops performed by the healthcare workers (HCWs), medals were awarded, taking into account the quality of the participating students’ mid-morning snacks, considering the food pyramid. The results collected in the annual survey period were related to the type and quantity of snacks consumed at school, and allowed students to gain a final score, comparing the period before and after the educational intervention to demonstrate the effectiveness of the actions promoted by HCWs and the increased nutritional quality of meals. In light of this evidence, public health strategies must continue to emphasize the importance of implementing health promotion interventions and actions aimed at children in order to prevent weight gain in this age group, and the potential development of cardiometabolic pathologies over their lifetime. Full article

Urban spatial morphology reflects the processes of external urban expansion and the internal spatial structure of the human economy, and exploring urban spatial morphology is important for regional management of PM_2.5 pollutants in the air environment. Whether urban spatial morphology can influence air pollution is a question that has been explored and evaluated. Therefore, we constructed a spatial-temporal driving mechanism framework and explored the interactions among urban expansion and PM_2.5 pollutants in the “2 + 26” cities of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH). Based on 2010, 2015, and 2020 urban expansion factors and PM_2.5 pollutants data from the “2 + 26” cities of BTH, the results of the Geo-Detector medal imply that: (1) The spatial distribution characteristics of areas with high PM_2.5 pollutants in the “2 + 26” cities of BTH were affected by the PM_2.5 concentration value, and the high-value phenomenon appeared to decrease with the improvement of PM_2.5 pollutants. (2) The level of urbanization in the “2 + 26” cities of BTH had been increasing annually, with the most significant growth in construction land area located in the northeastern coastal cities. (3) The compactness index, was the most critical influencing urban expansion factor, explaining 0.63, 0.64, and 0.66 of PM_2.5 pollutants in 2010, 2015, and 2020. (4) In factorial interactions, the compactness index and the centrality ratio explained spatial and temporal analysis characteristics of PM_2.5 pollutants, and the interaction factor enhanced the explanation for the spatial-temporal characteristics. This study reveals the coupled spatial-temporal driving mechanism of air pollution in the “2 + 26” cities of BTH and also shows that reasonable urban planning has a positive impact on the regional ecological environment in the future. Full article

This article surveys images depicted on the reverses of papal annual medals in the seventeenth century, beginning in 1605 under Paul V (r. 1605–21) with the first confirmed annual medal, and ending in 1700 at the conclusion of the papacy of Innocent XII (r. 1691–1700), a reign that marked a distinct change in papal politics in advance of the eighteenth century. The article mines a wealth of numismatics images and places it within a narrative of seventeenth-century papal politics. In the ninety-six years under consideration, ten popes issued ninety-four annual medals (sede vacante produced generic annual medals in 1667 and 1691). Annual medals are a unique iteration of papal commemorative medals and they celebrate an important papal achievement from the preceding year. The production of annual medals was an exercise in identity creation, undertaken to advance the image of the pope as an aristocratic prince in three specific roles: as builder, warrior, and impresario. The timeliness of the medals makes them valuable sources to gauge the perceived success of the papacy on an annual basis and to chart the political course plotted by popes through the seventeenth century. Full article