Search Results (4,196)

Hydrological conditions in the Mackenzie River Basin (MRB) are becoming increasingly variable due to climate change, permafrost degradation, and cumulative industrial impacts. While scientific assessments have documented many of these trends, far less is known about how changing water levels and flow patterns affect the daily lives, livelihoods, and cultural responsibilities of Indigenous Peoples across the Basin. This paper synthesizes basin wide Indigenous Knowledge related to water level and flow variability, drawing on 31 Indigenous-led research projects. The analysis highlights shared concerns across regions, including reduced travel safety, restricted access to harvesting areas, shifting river and lake behaviour, and emotional and spiritual impacts associated with hydrological extremes. These observations align with scientific evidence of earlier breakup, prolonged low-water periods, and increased hydrological unpredictability, while also revealing social and cultural dimensions not captured through conventional monitoring. By synthesizing basin wide Indigenous Knowledge of water level and flow variability, this study provides new insight into the cumulative social ecological consequences of freshwater change in the MRB and underscores the importance of Indigenous-led research and governance in responding to accelerating hydrological variability. Full article

Given the growing impact of the climate crisis on mental health, it is necessary to explore the domain of eco-emotions, the affective responses to environmental change. In keeping with this, the present exploratory study aimed to investigate the association between Digital Life Balance (DLB) and eco-emotions, while also examining whether Readiness to Change (RtC) dimensions were involved in possible indirect associations within exploratory cross-sectional statistical mediation models. Data were collected through the use of an anonymous online survey, and the final sample consisted of 257 participants (59.9% cisgender women; 39.3% cisgender men; 0.8% people belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community; mean age = 32.99, SD = 14.640). From a methodological perspective, correlation analysis, MANOVA and exploratory cross-sectional statistical mediation models were performed. The results showed small positive correlations between DLB and eco-emotions in terms of anger, isolation, anxiety, and sorrow. Exploratory statistical mediation models suggested possible uncorrected indirect associations involving perceived importance of the environmental problem (PI; RtC). However, these specific indirect associations did not remain significant after Benjamini–Hochberg correction for multiple testing. Accordingly, the findings should be interpreted as small, preliminary, unadjusted cross-sectional associations between subjective online–offline balance, selected eco-emotions, and sustainability-related psychological readiness. In conclusion, this work provides an initial basis for future longitudinal and covariate-adjusted studies examining how subjective digital–offline balance may be linked to eco-emotional experiences and sustainability-related psychological readiness. Full article

Chosen family caregivers assume caregiving roles by choice rather than by blood or legal relation. Chosen family caregivers play a critical yet often invisible role in supporting older adults living with HIV. Unlike traditional family caregivers, many chosen family members are themselves living with HIV or other chronic health conditions, creating unique dynamics of mutual support, resilience, and vulnerability. Older LGBTQ adults are disproportionately reliant on chosen family, often due to stigma, estrangement from biological family, or social marginalization, highlighting distinct challenges in caregiving relationships. Women in chosen family roles frequently experience compounded burdens, balancing emotional, physical, and logistical care responsibilities alongside broader social and structural pressures. Despite their essential contributions, chosen family caregivers remain largely unrecognized within healthcare systems, limiting their access to formal support, respite, and decision-making authority. This commentary synthesizes the existing literature and conceptual perspectives to examine the social, gendered, and health-related dimensions that distinguish chosen family caregiving. It highlights key gaps in recognition and support and outlines implications for policy, research, and practice aimed at strengthening care for older adults living with HIV. Full article

Background: The transition to motherhood represents a critical life phase marked by profound biological, psychological and social changes. During this period, women’s nutritional practices are shaped not only by physiological needs but also by shifting identities, caregiving responsibilities and social expectations. Although nutrition during pregnancy and the postpartum period has been widely studied from a biomedical perspective, less attention has been paid to how women experience, negotiate and attribute meaning to food during the transition to motherhood. Objective: This systematic qualitative review aimed to synthesise existing qualitative evidence on women’s experiences of nutritional practices during the transition to motherhood, with particular attention to food as self-care, control, autonomy, identity formation and mental well-being. Methods: A systematic search of electronic databases was conducted to identify qualitative studies exploring women’s experiences of nutrition during pregnancy and early motherhood. Eligible studies employed qualitative methodologies such as interviews, focus groups or ethnographic approaches. Study selection followed PRISMA guidelines. Methodological quality was appraised using established qualitative appraisal tools. A thematic synthesis approach was used to integrate findings across studies. Results: The synthesis identified several interrelated themes: nutrition as a form of self-care and emotional regulation; loss of autonomy and heightened moral surveillance around food choices; food practices as a means of performing and negotiating “good motherhood”; and the emotional burden of dietary expectations in relation to mental health and identity. Women described navigating competing demands between their own nutritional needs and those of their infants, often within contexts of social judgement and limited support. Conclusions: Nutritional practices during the transition to motherhood extend beyond health behaviours and are deeply embedded in issues of identity, autonomy and care. Recognising the social and emotional dimensions of maternal nutrition may inform more holistic, woman-centred approaches to nutritional guidance and maternal health support. Full article

Social media has become a critical channel for public health communication during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet how official health messaging aligns with broader public discourse remains insufficiently understood. This study develops an end-to-end infoveillance framework to examine the dynamic relationship between Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) communications and general public discourse on social media. We analyzed 17,524 CDC tweets and 67,895 public discourse tweets. Biterm Topic Model (BTM) was used to extract topics from each corpus, and a novel topic consistency scoring system integrating cosine similarity with daily public topic prominence was developed to quantify temporal alignment between official health communication and public discourse. Two complementary sentiment measures were incorporated: expected sentiment (average emotional tone) and net sentiment (overall emotional intensity). Temporal relationships were examined using autoregressive integrated moving average with exogenous variables (ARIMAX) models. Results show that topic alignment increased over time across CDC topics, while expected sentiment remained consistently negative. Higher alignment was associated with immediate and delayed changes in expected sentiment and stronger emotional intensity in net sentiment based on ARIMAX results. These findings suggest that topic alignment reflects public attention rather than agreement with official communications and is associated with more negative emotional responses. This framework provides a scalable, generalizable approach to investigating and evaluating public engagement with official health communication. Full article

This study explores how small business owners in the hospitality sector in Jordan cope with the threats from the adjacent Gaza-Israel conflict. While crisis research in tourism has focused mainly on macro-level indicators and managerial responses to events, less is known about the psychological processes used by small hospitality business owners to evaluate such geopolitical tensions and translate them into coping reactions. Using a transactional perspective on stress, appraisal, and coping, this study explores how business owners perceive threats and adopt coping mechanisms under unstable geopolitical conditions. Semi-structured interviews with small hospitality business owners in Jordan reveal that geopolitical conflict is not automatically perceived as a catastrophic threat. Rather, threat emerges through a person–environment transaction when owners interpret the conflict as harmful, uncertain, or beyond control within their business context. The findings further reveal that owners combine problem-focused coping, such as operational and marketing adjustments, with emotion-focused coping, such as pragmatic optimism, positive reappraisal, goal resetting, and the normalization of instability. By foregrounding cognitive appraisal and coping in this way, the study extends tourism and hospitality crisis research beyond macro-level outcomes and offers practical insights into strengthening the resilience of small hospitality businesses in geopolitically unstable tourism regions. Full article

This narrative review examines perimenopause as a critical transitional phase in women’s lives, often accompanied by elevated vulnerability to anxiety and depression. Dysfunction of the gut–brain axis is one of the key factors contributing to perimenopausal mood disorders and is currently receiving extensive attention. GBA dysfunction can trigger neurotransmitter metabolic imbalance, intestinal barrier impairment, and neuroinflammatory responses. Tryptophan (Trp) and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) serve as essential precursors and direct modulators of key neurotransmitters, and the dysregulation of their metabolic pathways has been implicated in perimenopausal anxiety and depression in animal models and limited clinical observations. Trp influences 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) by affecting emotional states. GABA is the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system and is closely associated with anxiety and depression. Fluctuations in estrogen levels during perimenopause significantly alter the composition and metabolic activity of the gut microbiota, which in turn affects Trp metabolism and GABA synthesis through increased intestinal permeability, activation of immune-inflammatory responses, and disruption of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis function. Although traditional hormone replacement therapy and pharmacological treatments are effective, they are associated with some side effects. Preliminary evidence from in vitro and animal studies suggests that nutritional interventions targeting Trp and GABA metabolism within the gut–brain axis may offer a novel research direction, though their efficacy in perimenopausal women remains to be established. Potential nutritional strategies, including supplementation with Trp and its precursors, inhibition of the kynurenine pathway (KP), and supplementation with probiotics and prebiotics, can modulate Trp and GABA metabolism. This review focuses on Trp and GABA metabolic regulation via the gut–brain axis to explore pathogenesis of perimenopausal anxiety and depression and summarize potential nutritional intervention targets, thereby providing a scientific basis for emotional management in perimenopausal women. Full article

Achieving rapid and accurate obstacle avoidance in complex and dynamic environments remains a significant challenge for robots. To enhance the adaptability and flexibility of humanoid arms for obstacle avoidance, a brain-inspired multi-pathway motion decision-making method is proposed to modulate rational planning and habitual actions of humanoid arms. Firstly, a novel framework integrating both a slow and a fast pathway is designed for motion decision-making tasks. Imitating the rational planning function of the prefrontal cortex, the slow pathway employs an improved planning approach based on Real-Time Rapidly exploring Random Tree Star (RT-RRT${}^{*}$) to execute deliberate decisions, along with an improvement in planning via the Smart technique and the high-efficiency neighbor searching method. Meanwhile, mimicking the habitual responses governed by the striatum, the fast pathway utilizes an action model trained by Soft Actor-Critic to make quick and habitual motions. The model in the fast pathway is also used to guide the sampling strategy in the slow pathway. Moreover, to facilitate the integration and smooth transition between the two pathways, an emotional neural network is designed as the modulation module with inspiration from the structure and function of the amygdala. Based on body and obstacle information, the network generates emotional signals to modulate the involvement degree of the two pathways before each decision-making process. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed multi-pathway framework achieves a higher obstacle-avoidance success rate than existing methods while generating motion characteristics that are consistent with certain aspects of human obstacle-avoidance behavior. Full article

This paper explores the development of authentic LGBTQ+ leadership through an identity-conscious leadership development programme for LGBTQ+ staff in UK higher education. Focus group data collected eighteen months after programme completion offered longitudinal perspectives into leadership outcomes and programme design. Reflexive data themes are synthesised into a conceptual framework that illustrates how LGBTQ+ authentic leadership developed. The framework shows that authentic mentoring relationships, supported by trust, hope, and positive emotions, reduced identity and minority stress whilst forming and sustaining leadership identities. Through these processes, participants enhanced their intrapersonal and interpersonal capabilities and constructed collective meaning, thereby enabling authentic LGBTQ+ leadership to flourish within the institution and the wider societal context. The findings underscore that authentic leadership for this minoritised group emerges through the dynamic interplay of individual, relational, organisational, and societal factors. The research emphasises the importance of identity-conscious leadership development programmes in supporting LGBTQ+ leaders, strengthening leadership capacity, and enhancing institutional effectiveness, resilience, and civic responsibility. Full article

Background/Objectives: Spiritual care is a core component of holistic paediatric palliative care, yet nurses often feel insufficiently prepared to address the spiritual and existential needs of seriously ill children and their families. This systematic review aimed to explore nurses’ experiences of providing spiritual care to seriously ill and dying children in paediatric palliative care settings and to identify the factors that facilitate or hinder its provision. Methods: A systematic review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020. CINAHL, PubMed, Web of Science and SAGE were searched for English-language qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods studies published up to November 2025. Study quality was assessed using JBI critical appraisal checklists, and the findings were synthesised thematically following Thomas and Harden. Results: A total of 228 records were identified, of which ten studies met the predefined inclusion criteria. The thematic synthesis identified one overarching theme—nurses’ engagement with spirituality while caring for seriously ill and dying children—supported by two sub-themes: managing emotional responses and maintaining professional, family-centred support. Conclusions: Nurses recognise spiritual care as essential in paediatric palliative care but often lack the competence and institutional support to provide it consistently. Education should prioritise spiritual assessment, developmentally appropriate communication, ethical boundaries, reflective practice and structured debriefing. Full article

Background/Objectives: Attitudes toward end-of-life care (EOLC) are a key component of nursing practice. This study aimed to assess nursing students’ attitudes toward EOLC and their perceived preparedness to manage end-of-life situations. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with 593 undergraduate nursing students from a public Spanish university. Data were collected using an online questionnaire, including the validated Spanish version of the Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale (FATCOD-S). Descriptive and inferential analyses were performed. Results: The median reverse-coded FATCOD-S total score was 125.0 (IQR 119.0–131.0), and 99.7% of students were classified as having positive or very positive attitudes when the descriptive cut-offs were applied. In the exploratory adjusted model, fourth-year status and previous EOLC training were associated with higher FATCOD-S total scores. However, 59.5% of respondents reported feeling unprepared to provide EOLC, and 59.0% perceived EOLC as a significant source of stress for nurses. Additionally, 62.0% of students with positive attitudes reported not feeling prepared to provide such care. Responses related to emotional involvement, communication about death, and ethical aspects showed greater variability. Conclusions: Although most nursing students display favorable attitudes toward EOLC, these coexist with a low perceived level of preparedness, with more than half of students reporting that they do not feel prepared to provide EOLC. Positive attitudes alone may not ensure confidence in clinical practice. Strengthening undergraduate education—particularly in emotional preparation, communication skills, and coping strategies—is essential to better prepare future nurses for the complexities of EOLC. These findings should be interpreted in light of the study’s cross-sectional design and single-university setting. Full article

Running is a widely practiced exercise modality in which central and peripheral fatigue can influence performance and pacing strategy. This study investigated the influence of cognitive–emotional factors, based on the psychobiological model of fatigue, on 5 km time trial performance using a randomized crossover design. Twenty-two recreational male runners (23.0 ± 3.05 years) completed four laboratory visits. During the first visit, participants underwent body composition assessment and an incremental test to determine maximal oxygen uptake (VO₂max) and the velocity associated with VO₂max. In the subsequent three visits, participants performed a 5 km treadmill time trial as fast as possible under three conditions: no feedback (5k-NF), distance-only feedback (5k-Dist), and full feedback (5k-FF). No significant differences in performance were observed between conditions (5k-FF: 24.3 ± 1.8 min; 5k-NF: 24.8 ± 2.1 min; 5k-Dist: 24.7 ± 2.7 min). Regardless of the condition, ratings of perceived exertion and heart rate increased progressively throughout the trials. Other physiological variables showed similar responses across conditions. These findings indicate that manipulating feedback availability during a 5 km time trial did not significantly alter performance or physiological responses under the specific laboratory conditions examined, despite that the true absolute absence of effect should be interpreted with appropriate caution. Full article

This study explores the learning experiences of pre-service early childhood teachers as they develop climate change education materials for family engagement within a teacher education context. Grounded in the need for practice-oriented climate change education that connects young children’s everyday lives with meaningful action, it examines how pre-service teachers construct their understanding through designing educational materials. A qualitative approach was employed with 24 pre-service teachers enrolled in a science education course in South Korea. Over a five-week project, participants developed family-connected materials, including videos and brochures. Data were collected through reflective journals, researcher notes, and project artifacts, and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. The findings reveal that participants translated abstract climate change concepts into developmentally appropriate learning experiences, employed creative and sensory-based strategies to encourage voluntary engagement, and designed shared digital spaces that connect home and educational settings. They also recognized the importance of fostering climate sensitivity grounded in positive emotions and developed a sense of responsibility as future educators. These findings suggest that developing family-connected climate change education materials provides an effective and scalable practice-based approach that integrates climate literacy, sensitivity, and action in early childhood teacher education. Full article

Social media has emerged as a crucial environment for examining public sentiment during disasters, providing immediate insights into collective emotions and urgent expectations. This research examines the emotional reactions expressed on Turkish posts shared on the X platform (formerly Twitter) following the 6 February 2023 earthquake by employing an integrated method that combines topic modeling and topic-based sentiment analysis. Data were collected between 10 February 2023 and 28 February 2023. A large dataset consisting of 305,000 tweets was compiled, and 296,836 tweets remained for analysis after preprocessing and filtering procedures. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), enhanced with term frequency-inverse document frequency weighting and bigram extraction techniques, was applied to identify prominent themes, including rescue operations, appeals for assistance, communication about missing persons, and disaster management. The sentiment polarity within each topic was determined using a hybrid deep learning model incorporating Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) embeddings Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) layers, and FastText representations. This model reached a classification accuracy of 94%, with F1-scores of 0.91 and 0.95, recall values of 0.90 and 0.96, and precision values of 0.92 and 0.95, achieving higher performance than the evaluated baseline models. The findings indicate that supportive, solidarity-oriented, and resilience-related communication patterns were among the most frequently observed positive sentiment expressions, whereas negative sentiments appeared more frequently in discussions regarding delays in aid delivery and perceived shortcomings in institutional response. This study presents a scalable and flexible framework for analyzing sentiment in Turkish-language crisis communication, providing insights that may support disaster response monitoring and decision-making processes as well as the development of systems for tracking public reactions in real time. Full article

Next-generation communication technologies are increasingly shaping not only network infrastructure and digital services, but also public expectations, risk perceptions, and policy debates. As 5G deployment continues and 6G research accelerates, social responses to communication technologies have arguably become an important dimension of technology adoption, governance, and regulatory decision-making. Social media platforms provide timely and large-scale data sources for public opinion analysis. However, 5G/6G-related discourse often contains domain-specific terminology, technical complaints, and complex emotional expressions, which pose challenges for sentiment analysis. To address this challenge, this study constructs a manually annotated dataset of 1746 5G/6G-related Twitter posts collected across multiple communication-related events. This study aims to provide a domain-specific empirical evaluation of sentiment analysis models by examining classification performance, deployment-oriented inference efficiency, and lightweight domain adaptation. Three sentiment analysis methods are evaluated: twitter–roberta–base–sentiment, bertweet–base–sentiment–analysis, and VADER. In addition, a filtered Amazon Reviews’23 subset is used as an external review-style dataset, and a LoRA-based fine-tuning experiment is performed on Twitter-RoBERTa to examine domain adaptability. The results show that pre-trained language models achieve stronger classification performance than the rule-based method, particularly for domain-specific and semantically complex texts. VADER, by contrast, shows high observed efficiency under its CPU-based deployment setting, especially for short-text inference. The LoRA fine-tuned RoBERTa model further improves classification performance on both Twitter and Amazon test sets, indicating that lightweight parameter-efficient adaptation can enhance model robustness in specialized 5G/6G discourse. These findings contribute a domain-specific dataset, a deployment-oriented comparison of sentiment analysis paradigms, and empirical evidence on lightweight domain adaptation for 5G/6G-related public opinion monitoring. Full article