Search Results (40)

Green building materials play a vital role in mitigating the significant carbon emissions produced by the construction industry. However, the widespread presence of greenwashing, where firms falsely portray their products or practices as environmentally friendly, presents a critical obstacle to the adoption of genuinely sustainable materials. The risk of collusion between building material enterprises and certification institutions further exacerbates this challenge by undermining trust in green certification processes. To investigate these issues, this study develops an evolutionary game model that captures the strategic interactions between building material enterprises and certification institutions. The model incorporates the behavioral assumptions of prospect theory, specifically bounded rationality, loss aversion, and diminishing sensitivity, to reflect the real-world decision-making behavior of the involved actors. The findings reveal three evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS) within the system. First, a higher initial willingness by both enterprises and certifiers to engage in ethical practices increases the likelihood of convergence to an optimal and stable outcome. Second, a greater degree of diminishing sensitivity in the value function promotes the adoption of authentic green behavior by enterprises. In contrast, a lower degree of diminishing sensitivity encourages certification institutions to refrain from collusion. Third, although the loss aversion coefficient does not directly affect strategy selection, higher levels of loss aversion lead to stronger preferences for green behavior among enterprises and noncollusive behavior among certifiers. This research makes a novel theoretical contribution by introducing prospect theory into the analysis of greenwashing behavior in the building materials sector. It also provides actionable insights for improving regulatory frameworks and certification standards to mitigate greenwashing and enhance institutional accountability. Full article

Hydrogen is a promising candidate for addressing environmental challenges in aviation, yet its use in structural validation tests for Wing Structure-Integrated high-pressure Hydrogen Tanks (SWITHs) remains underexplored. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first attempt to assess the feasibility of conducting such tests with hydrogen at aircraft scales. It first introduces hydrogen’s general properties, followed by a detailed exploration of the potential hazards associated with its use, substantiated by experimental and simulation results. Key factors triggering risks, such as ignition and detonation, are identified, and methods to mitigate these risks are presented. While the findings affirm that hydrogen can be used safely in aviation if responsibly managed, they caution against immediate large-scale experimental testing of SWITHs due to current knowledge and technology limitations. To address this, a roadmap with two long-term objectives is outlined as follows: first, enabling structural validation tests at scales equivalent to large aircraft for certification; second, advancing simulation techniques to complement and eventually reduce reliance on costly experiments while ensuring sufficient accuracy for SWITH certification. This roadmap begins with smaller-scale experimental and numerical studies as an initial step. Full article

The implementation of universal designated verifier signatures proofs (UDVSPs) enhances data privacy and security in various digital communication systems. However, practical applications of UDVSP face challenges such as high computational overhead, onerous certificate management, and complex public key initialization. These issues hinder UDVSP adoption in daily life. To address these limitations, existing solutions attempt to eliminate bilinear pairing operations, but their proposal still involves cumbersome certificate management and inherent interactive operations that can sometimes significantly degrade system efficiency. In this paper, we first utilize the identity-based (ID-based) SM2 digital signature scheme to construct an ID-based UDVSP system which sidesteps the cumbersome certificate management issue. To further remove the interactive requirement, we also employ the OR proof and Fiat–Shamir technologies to design the other ID-based UDVSP system. Our designs not only possess the same bilinear pairing-free advantage as Lin et al.’s proposal, but also achieve the certificate-free or non-interactive goals. Security proofs and performance analysis confirm the viability and efficiency of our systems. Full article

Integration of the community into health research through community-engaged research has proven to be an essential strategy for reducing health inequities. It brings significant benefits by addressing community health concerns and promoting active community participation in research. The Community Training Institute for Health Disparities (CTIHD) was established to support this integration based on Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) principles. The main objective of this paper is to report the CTIHD program’s implementation, evaluation, and outcomes from the first two cohorts. The CTIHD recruited Hispanic community members (N = 54) to be trained in health disparities research and health promotion to foster Community–Academic Partnerships (CAPs) and develop community-led health promotion interventions. Evaluation measures included satisfaction, knowledge change, retention rate, completion rate, and project proposals (research and community health promotion plans). The retention and completion rates were 83% and 78%, respectively, with forty-two (n = 42) community trainees receiving the completion certification. Both cohorts demonstrated a significant increase in knowledge (p < 0.05), and overall satisfaction exceeded 90%. Outcomes include seven (7) community–academic partnerships, leading to the co-development of research proposals, three (3) of which received funding. Additionally, twenty-two (22) community health promotion plans were developed, with seven (7) implemented, impacting 224 individuals. Findings from this study suggest that the CTIHD effectively provided capacity building, promoted the formation of CAPs, and increased community-led health promotion interventions, thereby advancing health disparity research and community initiatives. Full article

The regulatory framework of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPASs) has recently experienced an extraordinary evolution. This article seeks to improve the integration of certification considerations in RPAS conceptual design approaches so as to enhance the safety, certifiability and competitiveness of their resulting designs. The first part of the research conducts a two-stage analysis of contemporary regulations related to an RPAS’s initial airworthiness. In the first stage, the broad international regulation paradigm is evaluated attending to a set of criteria that are tightly related to both airworthiness and design considerations. The second stage keeps the most promising documents from a design–integration standpoint, which are assessed according to their applicability considering both design and operational aspects. The results of this analysis provide insights regarding the main issues in airworthiness design criteria extraction and integration in design methodologies. To aid the designer in surmounting these challenges, a flexible procedure named DECEX is developed. Considering the documents and findings from the survey, and attending to the scope of the design methodology being developed, it aids in establishing a complete regulatory document corpus and in comparing and extracting the applicable airworthiness design criteria. Two case studies for different RPAS types are conducted to demonstrate its application. Full article

Pyrochar (Biochar) produced from the thermochemical conversion of biomass has been widely used as a soil amendment to improve agricultural soil quality. Since polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can be produced in such processes, the occurrence of PAHs in pyrochars has been extensively studied, and standards such as the European Biochar Certificate (EBC) and International Biochar Initiative (IBI) contain limit values for biochars applied to soils. However, studies on PAH levels in hydrochars from hydrothermal processes, which can be an alternative to wet biomass are scarce. This study focuses on comparing the occurrence of 16 PAHs regulated by the US EPA in 22 char samples (including pyrochars from pyrolysis, hydrochars from hydrothermal carbonization, and, for the first time, hydrothermal humification) using an ultrasonic extraction method. Results showed that the sum of the 16 EPA PAHs in all samples was well below the requirements of the two standards, except for pyrochar produced at the farm scale. They ranged from 131 to 9358 µg·kg⁻¹ in the seven pyrochars and from not detected to 333 µg·kg⁻¹ for the fourteen hydrochars. Our findings indicate that hydrochar produced via hydrothermal methods exhibits much lower concentrations and is a safe option for soil amendment and environmental applications. Full article

(1) Background: Sepsis management in children is crucial, especially in emergency services. This study aims to evaluate Thai physicians’ knowledge gaps in the emergency management of sepsis in children and to evaluate their adherence to the current sepsis clinical practice guidelines. (2) Methods: This is a cross-sectional survey of Thai physicians’ management of septic shock in children. The survey was conducted through online questionnaires from March 2019–April 2019. (3) Results: Of the 366 responders, 362 (98.9%) were completed. Most of the responders were general practitioners (89.2%) and pediatricians (10.8%). The time from positive sepsis screening to being evaluated by physicians within 15 min was reported by 83.9%. The most common choice of fluid resuscitation was normal saline solution (77.3%). The practice of a fluid loading dose (20 mL/kg) consistent with the guidelines was 56.3%. The selection of the first vasoactive agent in warm shock (norepinephrine) and cold shock (epinephrine) according to recommendations in the guidelines was 74.3% and 36.2%, respectively. There was a significant difference between general practitioners and pediatricians in terms of knowledge about initial fluid resuscitation and the optimal vasoactive agent in cold shock (p-value < 0.001). In the multivariate model, factors associated with the guideline-based decision-making of vasoactive agent choice for cold shock were specialist training (pediatrician) and the completion of sepsis management training certification, with adjusted odds ratios (AORs) of 7.81 and 2.96, but working experience greater than ten years was inconsistent with the guideline-based decision-making (AOR 0.14). (4) Conclusions: Thai clinicians were unfamiliar with pediatric sepsis therapy standards, specifically the quantity of early fluid resuscitation and the appropriate vasoactive medications for cold shock. To encourage adherence to the guidelines, we propose a regularly required training course on pediatric sepsis management. Full article

It is generally recognized that the use of physical and digital information-based solutions for tracking plastic materials along a value chain can favour the transition to a circular economy and help to overcome obstacles. In the near future, traceability and information exchange between all actors in the value chain of the plastics industry will be crucial to establishing more effective recycling systems. Recycling plastics is a complex process that is particularly complicated in the case of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic because of its versatility and use in many applications. This literature study is part of a larger EU-funded project with the acronym ABSolEU (Paving the way for an ABS recycling revolution in the EU). One of its goals is to propose a suitable traceability system for ABS products through physical marking with a digital connection to a suitable data-management system to facilitate the circular use of ABS. The aim of this paper is therefore to review and assess the current and future techniques for traceability with a particular focus on their use for ABS plastics as a basis for this proposal. The scientific literature and initiatives are discussed within three technological areas, viz., labelling and traceability systems currently in use, digital data sharing systems and physical marking. The first section includes some examples of systems used commonly today. For data sharing, three digital technologies are discussed, viz., Digital Product Passports, blockchain solutions and certification systems, which identify a product through information that is attached to it and store, share and analyse data throughout the product’s life cycle. Finally, several different methods for physical marking are described and evaluated, including different labels on a product’s surface and the addition of a specific material to a polymer matrix that can be identified at any point in time with the use of a special light source or device. The conclusion from this study is that the most promising data management technology for the near future is blockchain technology, which could be shared by all ABS products. Regarding physical marking, producers must evaluate different options for individual products, using the most appropriate and economical technology for each specific product. It is also important to evaluate what information should be attached to a specific product to meet the needs of all actors in the value chain. Full article

Non-profit organizations (NPOs) support economically disadvantaged communities by improving housing conditions and building homes, despite limited resources. With rising housing costs and poverty causing homelessness and poor housing quality, NPOs’ efforts are crucial. However, operating constraints (such as financial, policy, and others), often lead NPOs to prioritize initial costs over sustainability and environmental impacts. Therefore, this research investigated the adoption, implementation, and routinization patterns for sustainability and green efforts in Mississippi (US) by a leading NPO. The research used a two-phased combined design methodology, with the first phase involving explorative design that involved the identification of criteria that led to selecting the affiliates of Habitat for Humanity (HFH) as the unit of analysis. The selected NPO (HFH) had 38 affiliates across Mississippi, US, at the time of the study. The second phase involved a cross-sectional design, with data collected by utilizing a structured telephone survey. All collected data were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics, and thematic analysis. Twenty-five affiliates (66% response rate) participated in the study, and the results indicate that a small proportion of affiliates were actively adopting sustainability practices for projects constructed, and most were located in the southern part of the state. The research identified factors that lead to the routinization of sustainability practices, the most commonly used third-party benchmarking tools, and perceptions of NPOs towards such tools to evaluate the greenness of residential projects. Some crucial implications were identifying uneven project completion within HFH, limited adoption of green strategies, and perception of green certification as non-vital. Full article

The brain and its health are essential for our (physical mental, social, and spiritual) wellbeing, for being able to realize our potential as individuals, and also for a fair, well-functioning, and productive society. However, today the world is facing a healthcare crisis related to the very high (and increasing) burden of brain disorders. As a response to this crisis, the “Swiss Brain Health Plan” (SBHP) was conceptualized in the context of other initiatives launched to value, promote, and protect brain health over the entire life course. In the first section of this position paper, the following fundamental considerations of the SBHP are discussed: (1) the high (and increasing) burden of brain disorders in terms of prevalence (>50% of the population suffers from a brain disorder), disability, mortality, and costs; (2) the prevention of brain disorders; (3) the operational definition of brain health; (4) determinants of brain health; (5) international initiatives to promote brain (including mental) health including the World Health Organization (WHO) intersectorial global action plan on epilepsy and other neurological disorders (NDs) (IGAP) and the WHO comprehensive mental health action plan. In the second section of the paper, the five strategic objectives of the SBHP, which has the vision of promoting brain health for all across the entire life course, are presented: (1) to raise awareness; (2) strengthen cross-disciplinary and interprofessional training/educational programs for healthcare professionals; (3) foster research on brain health determinants and individualized prevention of brain disorders; (4) prioritize a holistic (non-disease-specific), integrated, person-centered public health approach to promote brain health and prevent brain disorders through collaborations across scientific, health care, commercial, societal and governmental stakeholders and insurance providers; (5) support, empower, and engage patients, caregivers, and patient organizations, and reduce the stigma and discrimination related to brain disorders. In the third section of the paper, the first (2024) steps in the implementation of the SHBP, which will be officially launched in Zurich on 22 November 2023, are presented: (1) a definition of the overall organization, governance, specific targets, and action areas of the SBHP; (2) the patronage and/or co-organization of events on such specific topics as brain research (Lausanne), dementia (Geneva), stroke (Basel), neurohumanities (Bellinzona), sleep (Lugano), and psychiatry (Zurich); (3) the conduction of a new study on the global burden of brain disorders in Switzerland; (4) the launching of an international Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) on Brain Health at the University of Bern. In the fourth section of the paper, there is a concise executive summary of the SBHP. Full article

Background: This study examined the perceptions regarding the competency of “sports for all” instructors using big data analysis. Given the increasing number of everyday participants in sports in the Republic of Korea, this study aimed to identify sports for all instructor competency requirements and gaps and thus help to develop and foster such instructors’ competence. Methods: This study employed big data analysis, specifically, text mining, opinion mining, term frequency–inverse document frequency analysis, and degree centrality analysis. Semantic network analysis was also performed using Textom and UCINET 6’s NetDraw program. The data collection period was from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2020. This five-year study was initiated following the reorganization of the sports for all instructor qualification system in the Republic of Korea in 2015. Results: First, eight groups were formed by extracting 80 words with the highest frequency and conducting a convergence of iteration correlation analysis. Second, categorization based on the results yielded four factors: certification of sports for all instructors, coaching competency, competency education, and emotions. Conclusions: The analysis of perceptions of the competencies of sports for all instructors revealed a great deal of interest in a qualification system that can develop competencies and in education that strengthens them. To become an effective sports for all instructor, corresponding competencies are required and a qualification system to acquire and strengthen these competencies is necessary. The state should focus continuous attention and effort on the qualification system to nurture such competencies. Full article

The German labor market relies heavily on vocational training, retraining, and continuing education. In order to match training seekers with training offers and to make the available data interoperable, we present a novel approach to automatically detect access to education and training in German training offers and advertisements and identify open research questions and areas for further research. In particular, we focus on (a) general education and school leaving certificates, (b) work experience, (c) previous apprenticeship, and (d) a list of skills provided by the German Federal Employment Agency. This novel approach combines several methods: First, we provide technical terms and classes of the education system that are used synonymously, combining different qualifications and adding obsolete terms. Second, we provide rule-based matching to identify the need for work experience or education. However, not all qualification requirements can be matched due to incompatible data schemas or non-standardized requirements such as initial tests or interviews. Although there are several shortcomings, the presented approach shows promising results for two data sets: training and retraining advertisements. Full article

Background/Objective: Little is known about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality from COPD at the population level. The objective was to investigate COPD-related mortality throughout different epidemic waves in Italy before and after the vaccination campaign, which started in late December 2020 and initially targeted the population aged ≥80 years. Methods: Death certificates of residents in Veneto (Northeastern Italy) aged ≥40 years between 2008 and 2021 were analyzed. Age-standardized morality rates were computed for death certificates with any mention of COPD. Generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were fitted to estimate the expected mortality during the pandemic. The results were stratified by age groups of 40–79 and ≥80 years, main comorbidities, and place of death. Results: COPD was mentioned in 3478 death certificates in 2020 (+14% compared to the 2018–2019 average) and in 3133 in 2021 (+3%). Age-standardized mortality rates increased in all age and sex groups in 2020; in 2021, mortality returned to pre-pandemic levels among the elderly but not in the population aged 40–79 years (+6%). GEE models confirmed this differential trend by age. COPD-related mortality peaks were observed, especially in the first pandemic waves, with COVID-19 identified as the underlying cause of death in a relevant proportion (up to 35% in November 2020–January 2021). Mortality with comorbid diabetes and hypertensive diseases slightly increased during the pandemic. Conclusion: COPD-related mortality increased at the beginning of the pandemic, due to deaths from COVID-19. The start of the vaccination campaign was associated with an important decline in COPD-related mortality, especially among the elderly, who first benefited from COVID-19 vaccines. The study findings show the role of mass vaccination in reducing COPD-related deaths during the later phases of the pandemic. Full article

This article emerged from my study of three alternative-certification teachers, or teacher learners as they tried to enact culturally responsive practices while navigating their first year of teaching and taking graduate courses for initial certification. These teacher learners worked to develop their understanding and capacities to enact a culturally responsive pedagogy but found that standardization of content and conceptions of what constitutes “good students”, appropriate classroom conduct, and micro-managed professional learning communities all created environments hostile to their attempts to develop as equity-minded educators and culturally responsive practitioners. However, their experiences changed once the COVID-19 pandemic closed these teacher learners’ schools to in-person instruction and sent them home to instruct online for the remainder of the spring 2020 semester. Free from the constrictive macro-structures and socio-political contexts in their physical workplaces, their planning showed them employing more culturally responsive practices and considering those practices more deeply. Once outside the cultures of practice, formed around neoliberal conceptions of success and measuring learning, these teacher learners became the sole mediators of the conflicting knowledge sources of their jobs and their university methods courses. On their own they began to confront the ways educational institutions stubbornly cling to hegemonic concepts of their communities and valorize work centered on concepts of knowledge and ways of knowing that bear little resemblance to society’s current reality. Away from the wider cultures of their schools during the COVID-19 lockdown and aided in mediating their own development using a dialogically structured lesson planning template inspired by—the Heuristic for Thinking About Culturally Responsive Teaching (HiTCRiT)—the teacher learners focused their instruction on their students making both their students’ learning and their own conceptions of CRP more real and their students’ learning more equitable. Full article

Systemic infections with phytoplasmas and viruses threaten the production of healthy plant material under the fruit species certification system. We tested the possibility of sanitation using in vitro culture and cryotherapy. The starting material of the cultivars Golden Delicious (clones A and B), Virginia Crab, and Panenské zlepšené was taken from in vivo plants that tested positive for apple proliferation phytoplasma. The Táborita cultivar was obtained from already established in vitro cultures that had tested positive for apple proliferation phytoplasma, apple mosaic virus, and apple chlorotic leaf spot virus. Cultivars Golden Delicious A, Virginia Crab, and Panenské zlepšené were sanitated from the phytoplasma in the first step, i.e., by sterilization and a subsequent transfer to in vitro conditions. Golden Delicious B remained infected with the phytoplasma, and both viruses, after the in vitro culture phase and together with Táborita, were subjected to cryotherapy by vitrification. In Golden Delicious B, three out of thirteen initial shoot tips regenerated after a liquid nitrogen treatment. Four mericlones were regenerated from 10 initial cryopreserved shoot tips of Táborita. None of the three pathogens were detected by PCR in the regenerated Golden Delicious B mericlones. On the contrary, in the case of Táborita, infection with all the pathogens was detected after regeneration. The results obtained indicate the potential applicability of in vitro cultivation techniques or, if necessary, subsequent cryopreservation as a method for sanitizing against systemic microbial contamination. However, further research on the relationship between pathogens and specific genotypes is needed. Full article