Search Results (7,770)

Flood and flash flood events can generate severe hydraulic actions on civil structures, requiring modeling strategies able to link flow features to structural damage. This paper proposes a two-scale numerical framework based on advanced finite element modeling to assess the vulnerability of structures subjected to inundation and flood-driven impact. At the macroscale, the flood propagation and the interaction with the built environment are simulated through the depth-averaged Shallow Water Equations, adopting a time-explicit interface treatment to capture the evolution of the free surface. The macroscale model provides time-dependent water depth and flow velocity along the external surfaces of the structure, which are then used to derive hydrostatic and hydrodynamic actions, also in comparison with code-based formulations. At the mesoscale, these actions are transferred to a detailed structural model to investigate the nonlinear mechanical response of the building. Structural components are described through a coupled damage–plasticity constitutive law, enabling the prediction of stiffness degradation, cracking-driven damage patterns, and the identification of the most critical structural zones under flood loading. The proposed workflow is finally applied to a real structure located in the municipality of Cosenza (Italy), demonstrating the capability of the approach to combine hydraulic intensity measures with physics-based structural damage assessment, supporting scenario analyses and risk mitigation evaluations. Full article

Against the backdrop of global sustainable development and ecological civilization construction, tourism ecological security at cultural landscape heritage sites faces both opportunities and challenges. This study constructs a cultural landscape heritage tourism ecological security (CLHTES) evaluation system based on the Driver–Pressure–State–Impact–Response (DPSIR) framework. It dynamically assesses CLHTES in the Yangtze River Delta Integrated Demonstration Zone (YRDIDZ) from 2014 to 2023 using the entropy-weighted Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and linear stretching transformation, identifies obstacle factors with the obstacle degree model, and predicts CLHTES trends for 2024–2030 using a radial basis function (RBF) neural network. Results show that: (1) The CLHTES index in the YRDIDZ presented a three-stage fluctuating upward trend during 2014–2023, with medium-clustered security levels and divergent evolution across the DPSIR criteria layers; (2) CLHTES obstacles feature a multi-level differentiated structure, with rising barriers in D and P layers, the R layer as the future core obstacle, and high-frequency barriers concentrated in cultural and social indicators; (3) Under the assumption of structural continuity in current trajectories, the conditional trend projection suggests that the CLHTES index of the YRDIDZ may sustain a general upward tendency during 2024–2030, with a possibility of approaching Level Ⅶ after 2028; however, these projections should be interpreted as exploratory and scenario-like rather than as robust forecasts, given the short annual series and the absence of exogenous disturbance variables. This study explores tourism-ecology interactions from a social-ecological complex system perspective, supporting synergistic tourism development and ecological protection of cultural landscape heritage. Full article

Historic structures that possess cultural heritage value are important documents that convey the architectural understanding, material technology, and construction techniques of past civilizations to the present day. However, these structures are exposed over time to physical, chemical, and mechanical deterioration due to environmental effects, climatic conditions, the natural aging processes of materials, and human interventions. The conservation and faithful restoration of historic structures necessitate the scientific determination of the properties of original building materials. In this study, we aimed to determine the physical, chemical, mineralogical, thermal, and mechanical properties of the original building materials used in the Old Armenian Church located in the city of Çanakkale. In order to reveal the chemical and mineralogical compositions of the samples, XRD, SEM, Raman, and FTIR analyses were applied. The thermal behaviors of the materials were examined through TGA. To determine the physical properties, tests for unit volume weight, specific gravity, compactness, porosity, and water absorption capacity were carried out. For the determination of mechanical properties, compressive strength tests—as well as non-destructive testing methods such as the Schmidt hammer and UPV measurements—were employed. The analysis results indicate that the materials used in the structure have a carbonate-based mineralogical composition and that calcite-bonded systems are dominant. While the physical and mechanical data reveal that the materials possess a compact internal structure, they also indicate that microcracks and weathering processes may be effective in certain areas. These findings emphasize the importance of using lime-based mortars and stones compatible with the original materials in restoration works. Full article

The literature on the Commercial Determinants of Health has primarily focused on the political power and interventions of corporations versus countermeasures by civil society. However, there is a gap in the discourse concerning industry use of legal threats and actions to silence public health organizations and their public health communication campaigns (PHCCs). This legal review aims to understand legal challenges brought against PHCCs and provide best practices for effective campaigns while minimizing legal risk. We used jurisprudence in Mexico and the United States as proxies for civil and common law countries, supplemented by international law and principles to identify the best defenses and mitigation strategies against defamation and trademark infringement actions. Legal frameworks in these countries demonstrate the ability of aggressive evidence-based public health campaigns to withstand these legal challenges. Based on these legal protections, we recommend that advocates implement PHCCs that (1) contain facts that are true and substantiated with evidence, (2) frame messaging as opinion or satire, (3) highlight the non-commercial purpose of informing people about the impact of their consumption choices on health and well-being and (4) explain how the messaging advances the rights to health and access to information. A PHCC’s success in court can also set important precedents regarding the right of advocates to disseminate and the right of populations to receive important health messages. Following these recommendations and best practices, health advocates can minimize legal risk and continue to provide effective evidence-based PHCCs that promote and protect public health. Full article

This paper explores the ‘criminalisation’ of asylum in recent UK law and policy, most notably the 2022 Nationality and Borders Act (NABA) and 2023 Illegal Migration Act (IMA), and the ways in which this framework has fed through into recent legislative and policy measures. Whilst the development and expansion of criminal offences relating to irregular entry and arrival may be considered the most overt form of ‘criminalising’ people on the move, in this paper it is argued that the criminalisation of asylum in the UK today should not only be understood through the prism of crimmigration measures which are expressly penal in nature, but also through an array of measures which, although framed as administrative and civil, are similarly punitive in character and serve the criminal punishment rationale of retribution and deterrence. The legislative framework of the NABA 2022 and IMA 2023 has paved the way for this progressive ‘criminalisation’ by sanctioning those arriving irregularly to the UK to claim asylum. This trend has been continued in recent law and policy, and progressively expanded in a manner that increasingly sanctions refugees for the very fact of having claimed asylum in the UK. Full article

Large language model (LLM) chatbots, as a widely used form of generative artificial intelligence, have reduced the marginal cost of producing publication-style manuscripts and have expanded feasible routes for manipulating citation metrics within the publishing ecosystem. Citation-based indicators (e.g., the h-index, the i10-index, and total citation counts) remain embedded in research evaluation and are sensitive to indexing practices of bibliographic databases, with Google Scholar providing broad coverage combined with comparatively limited curation. In this study, a systematic literature review is conducted to synthesize reported mechanisms of citation-metric manipulation and to examine limitations of citation-metric use, including evidence reported in civil engineering. A Google Scholar proof-of-concept case study examines whether the indexing of LLM-assisted, non-peer-reviewed documents with concentrated references to a target author is associated with changes in author-level citation metrics under platform-specific conditions. After indexing, a stepwise increase in author-level metrics is observed, demonstrating the feasibility of citation-metric manipulation under the platform-specific conditions. Finally, this paper discusses the implications for research integrity and citation manipulation in the era of generative artificial intelligence. It also presents recommendations for researchers, academic institutions and evaluation committees, publishers and editors, bibliographic database providers, and funding institutions and policymakers. Full article

The prehistoric and historic Greek populations have a long and glorious history and could teach us significant lessons relevant to water resources and their management. Most Greek civilizations lived in harmony with the environment, with a profound understanding of environmental sustainability. The Minoan era, considered as Pax Minoica (or Minoan peace), was a time when palaces and other living places did not have defensive walls; in that time, human rights and power without a military aristocracy developed. During that time, hydro-structures with a high degree of security, which remained in operation for millennia, were developed, most of them established in predominantly arid areas for reasons of security, protection, and public health. The study presents important elements of the development and progress of these technological achievements provided by ancient civilizations throughout the prehistoric to modern period, in the context of revealing and highlighting potential lessons to understand and address current critical issues in the management of water resources. Furthermore, the methodology used and the technological structural advancement of water works, their infrastructure durability, and early water law principles are considered. Many modern systems are designed for operational lifespans of 50–100 years, whereas several ancient Greek hydraulic structures remained functional for centuries by relying on renewable natural resources—reflecting a fundamentally different design philosophy centered on longevity and robustness. Thus, terms such as “sustainability” and “water security/safety”, first taught by ancient civilizations, need to be reconsidered and adopted again nowadays to inspire policies, strategies, and actions against the increasing challenges. Full article

Green finance and environmental governance are integral to ecological civilization construction. This study explores whether green finance advances regional environmental governance by promoting industrial structure upgrading, using balanced panel data from 31 Chinese provinces (2008–2023) and a fixed-effects model. Key empirical findings show that green finance significantly reduces regional environmental pollution, with a core coefficient of −0.8703 (p < 0.01) in the benchmark regression including individual and time effects. Industrial structure upgrading plays a mediating role, with an indirect effect of −0.0333 (accounting for 3.98% of the total effect). Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the governance effect is more pronounced in central and western regions (coefficients: −25.3420, −40.0136 *), and in regions with higher marketization and fiercer bank competition. Additionally, fiscal subsidies and government environmental concerns synergize with green finance, with interaction term coefficients of −0.134 (p < 0.05) and −0.112 (p < 0.05), respectively. The research enriches the theoretical framework of green finance and environmental governance and provides targeted policy implications for regional sustainable development. Full article

Noise disturbances can cause conflicts in several areas, such as residences, civil constructions, highways, subways, and airports, measured by different scales of acoustic comfort for community well-being evaluation. These disturbances also have signatures such as frequency, amplitude, and temporal patterns to compare acoustic comfort with real-time parameters. In addition, acoustic sensors should be chosen based on accuracy, price, and calibration method, and acoustic insulation should be applied with the aim of achieving reliable measurements in indoor and outdoor environments for sustainable urban living. In some situations, the lack of noise control can lead to several human disorders, from hearing loss to cardiovascular complications. Therefore, legislation and regulation should be carefully studied and applied to achieve an equilibrium between energy-efficient and healthy building designs in entertainment, work, and rest activities with measured parameters visualized through the design of interface tools that should enable the collection and organization of sound data, with proper presentation for the final user. Finally, intellectual property registrations bring recent industrial applications with aspects of noise mitigation. All these features constitute noise disturbance mitigation in a multi-dimensional integration framework of technology, health, and law to improve the quality of life in human-centric environments. Full article

Promoting the construction of National Forest Cities to enhance urban ecological environmental quality and foster green and sustainable development has become an important policy pathway in China’s ecological civilization agenda. This study employs panel data for 214 Chinese cities over the period 2003–2023 and adopts a difference-in-differences (DID) approach to empirically examine the impact of National Forest City construction—a policy implemented in China since 2004—on urban ecological environments and its underlying mechanisms. The results indicate that National Forest City construction significantly improves urban ecological environmental quality. The findings remain robust after a series of robustness checks. Mechanism analysis shows that National Forest City construction primarily promotes urban environmental improvement by enhancing urban green innovation and optimizing adjustments to the urban industrial structure. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that the environmental effects of the policy are more pronounced in non-resource-based cities, non-central cities, large cities, and cities with stronger governance capacity and higher levels of environmental concern. The conclusions provide policy implications and mechanistic insights from China’s experience for other cities around the world seeking to jointly address environmental pollution and climate change through comprehensive ecological interventions and to advance green and sustainable development. Full article

To improve the aerodynamic design efficiency of nacelle intake systems for wing-mounted civil aero-engines under multiple operating conditions, an integrated multi-objective optimization method was developed to address the limited optimization efficiency and robustness encountered in conventional approaches. The proposed method employed parametric techniques to construct three-dimensional non-axisymmetric nacelle geometries and integrated flow-field simulations with performance evaluation modules, forming a hybrid optimization framework based on a Kriging surrogate model coupled with the NSGA-II genetic algorithm. Two-dimensional numerical analyses were employed to rapidly evaluate inlet profiles and constrain the three-dimensional design space. Following the reduction in the design space, the three-dimensional optimization simultaneously accounted for multiple performance objectives, including nacelle drag and block fuel consumption during cruise conditions, as well as inlet distortion and flow separation under off-design conditions. A set of Pareto-optimal solutions was obtained through surrogate-based prediction and validated using high-fidelity CFD simulations. The results indicate that the optimized nacelle configuration achieves a 0.933% reduction in drag coefficient and a 0.628% decrease in block fuel consumption under cruise conditions. Under crosswind conditions, the inlet total pressure recovery coefficient is increased by 2.76%, accompanied by a pronounced reduction in flow separation, while under maximum-lift coefficient conditions, the total pressure recovery remains above 99%. These results demonstrate that the proposed optimization approach enables coordinated aerodynamic performance improvements across multiple operating conditions while simultaneously enhancing overall aircraft fuel efficiency, providing an effective strategy for advanced nacelle aerodynamic shape design. Full article

A major development direction for next-generation civil aircraft is to significantly reduce fuel consumption through the integration of high-bypass-ratio engines. However, the large diameter of high BPR engines will cause traditional aircraft to face the dilemma of ground clearance. The over-the-wing engine mount configuration avoids ground clearance constraints by installing the engines over the wings, which is conducive to the integration of high BPR engines. However, the sensitivity of the flow on the upper surface of the wing makes this configuration more likely to cause strong interference between the engine and the wing than the traditional configuration. During the design, the important interaction of the wing shapes, the wing static elastic deformation, the engine installation position and the engine inlet and exhaust effect should be fully considered, which brings great challenges to the traditional design method. An automatic multidisciplinary coupled optimization method based on the discrete adjoint approach and gradient-based optimization is proposed for this configuration. A corresponding framework is established based on the open-source multidisciplinary optimization platform OpenMDAO; the CFD solution and the adjoint solution are carried out using the open-source CFD solver DAFoam; the structural finite element solution and the structural adjoint solution are carried out using the open-source FEM solver TACS; and the engine power effect is solved by coupling the intake and exhaust boundary conditions into the CFD solver. This method can comprehensively consider the changes in the wing shapes, the static aeroelastic deformation of the wing, the intake and exhaust effects of the engine, and the positional movement of the engine along the spanwise, chordwise and vertical directions of the wing. The optimization results show that the optimized configuration eliminates the strong shock interaction between the nacelle and the wing, enhances the favorable pressure gradient on the upper surface of the wing, and reduces the drag by 9.51%, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed multidisciplinary coupled adjoint optimization method for this configuration. Full article

Corporate “greenwash” constrains high-quality economic development in China, and its identification and governance constitute a critical step in building a green market and advancing ecological civilization. However, existing studies have primarily focused on the green governance effects of green finance policies, while paying limited attention to whether such policies may induce corporate “greenwash”. Using panel data on A-share listed firms in China from 2011 to 2023, this study exploits the Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zones as a quasi-natural experiment and employs a Double Machine Learning model to identify the impact of green finance reform policies on corporate “greenwash” and its underlying mechanisms. The results show that the pilot policy induces corporate “greenwash”, but this effect exhibits significant temporal characteristics and does not persist in the long run. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that the aggravating effect is more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises, non-heavily polluting firms, and large-scale firms. Mechanism analysis reveals that the pilot policy promotes corporate “greenwash” by intensifying external competitive pressure and internal performance pressure, while such behavior can be mitigated through optimizing firms’ internal strategic decision-making and external capital structure. Based on these findings, this study proposes policy recommendations in three aspects, namely establishing a dynamic policy adjustment mechanism, improving the competitive environment, and strengthening corporate governance, thereby providing a policy basis for mitigating corporate “greenwash”. Full article

Over the past five years, the number of new United States laws banning gender-affirming care, restricting public access to services and spaces for transgender and gender-diverse persons, and forcibly outing transgender youth in schools has increased dramatically. Much of the focus in the media and research has been on the domestic political and social causes of these anti-transgender and anti-gender-affirming care laws and their devastating effects on vulnerable transgender and gender-diverse communities. This article argues that the current wave of anti-transgender and anti-gender-affirming care laws violates civil and human rights in the context of international human rights resolutions and principles on healthcare and displacement. I explore the implications of using international human rights to challenge anti-transgender and anti-gender-affirming care legislation and what coalitional possibilities exist when expanding the fight against these laws transnationally. Full article