Search Results (1,454)

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the impact of menstrual symptoms on sport participation and management strategies among adolescent girls playing floorball in Sweden. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among floorball players aged 12–18 years (n = 545). Logistic regression was used to assess factors associated with menstrual-related symptoms and their impact on participation and absence from training sessions or matches. Results: Menstrual pain (89.6%) and mood swings (81.9%) were the most commonly reported symptoms. Symptoms such as menstrual pain, heavy menstrual bleeding, headache, fatigue, dizziness, and concentration difficulties were more prevalent among participants with early menarche (≤11 years) than those with later menarche. Overall, about 62.2% perceived that their menstrual symptoms affected their training and matches. Early menarche (≤11 years) was associated with nearly three times higher odds of refraining from training sessions or matches. Despite substantial impact, healthcare-seeking and communication with coaches were limited. Conclusions: Given the high prevalence of menstrual symptoms and their impact on sport participation and experiences, menstrual health should be recognised as a core component of athlete well-being in youth sport. Efforts are needed to improve menstrual health awareness, early identification of girls with high symptom burden, and supportive sport environments to promote gender equality in youth sport. Full article

The impacts of international tourism on economic performance, sustainable development, natural resources and environmental outcomes have been extensively researched during the last couple of decades in the available body of knowledge. However, the specific role of international tourism on women’s empowerment is rarely researched despite the fact that it creates numerous employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in host economies for women. Accordingly, this research study attempts to examine the impacts of international tourism on women’s empowerment using the framework of Vision 2030 introduced by Saudi Arabia in 2016. Using the ARDL cointegration approach and utilizing annual time series data from 1995 to 2024, this study demonstrates that international tourism has improved women’s empowerment both in the long run as well as in the short run in Saudi Arabia. Besides tourism, this study found that urbanization and female’s labor force participation have accelerated the pace of women’s empowerment both in the long run and short run. In addition, the results underscored that trade openness only matters for women’s empowerment in the long run. Finally, this study demonstrates that internet use is helpful in promoting women’s empowerment in the short run only. The study’s research findings highlight the significance of international tourism as a determinant of women’s empowerment and advocates that the policymakers of Saudi Arabia should introduce gender-inclusive tourism policies. The findings of this research study contribute to the existing body of literature on tourism-led development and gender equality, which is consistent with SDG-5 and Vision 2030 of Saudi Arabia. Full article

Urban parks are essential components of green infrastructure that support residents’ physical health and well-being. However, less attention has been paid to how women can secure such benefits under equitable, safe, and sustainable park-use conditions. Using Xi’an Expo Park as a case study, this study examined the associations among Inclusive Urban Park Design (IUPD), Place Attachment (PA), Environmental Experience (EE), and Women’s Well-Being (WWB), with a focus on whether PA showed an indirect association between IUPD and WWB. This study adopted a quantitative-dominant mixed-methods design, combining 220 valid questionnaires (115 female and 105 male participants) with field observations and semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using correlation analysis, gender-comparison tests, mediation models, and robustness checks. Among female participants, the baseline model showed a statistically significant indirect association between IUPD and WWB through PA; however, this association was not retained after controlling for EE, nor in the fully adjusted model including EE, age, and visit frequency. The gender-comparison and qualitative findings suggested that similar levels of PA and WWB did not necessarily reflect equal conditions of park use. Qualitative evidence further indicated that some women’s park use was shaped by childcare, family activities, and other task-oriented responsibilities, which may involve hidden time, physical, and psychological costs. The subdimension-level findings suggested that perceived safety, accessibility and spatial legibility, and facility support and maintenance should be understood as interrelated use conditions rather than distinct independent effects. This study extends urban park equity research beyond spatial provision by emphasizing actual conditions of use and the equitable realization of well-being benefits. The findings provide implications for gender-responsive park design and social sustainability, while their relevance to everyday resilience should be understood as a conceptual extension rather than as direct evidence of community resilience. Full article

This article examines how gender shapes the framing, governance and lived experience of women’s health within a national health system, and what this reveals about translating gender equality commitments into social policy practice. Using a convergent mixed-methods design, the study combines analysis of national policy documents and parliamentary debates in Portugal (2014–2024) with interviews with key actors (n = 13) and an exploratory national survey of women (n = 268). Across policy and political arenas, women’s health is widely recognised within gender equality and rights-based discourse, yet remains weakly consolidated within mainstream health governance. Reproductive framings dominate, while life-course dimensions such as menopause, women’s mental health and health literacy are under-articulated and weakly operationalised. Actor perspectives emphasise prevention, health literacy, communication and continuity of care, pointing to diffuse ownership and limited accountability. Survey respondents’ accounts both reproduce and extend dominant framings, highlighting mental health, information needs, access barriers and the importance of accessible and trustworthy health information. Reported care experiences reveal a pattern of “respect without responsiveness”, where positive interpersonal treatment coexists with organisational and communicative shortcomings. The article conceptualises this as a governance paradox of recognition without consolidation and shows how policy silences shape not only what becomes actionable within gendered health systems but also the informational conditions that support informed engagement with health and care. The findings have implications for designing life-course-oriented, communication-sensitive and accountability-anchored approaches to women’s health governance. Full article

Social movements increasingly rely on digital platforms to mobilize support, raise awareness, and coordinate collective action. At the same time, however, the rise of online activism has intensified concerns regarding “slacktivism”, namely forms of symbolic and low-effort engagement that fail to translate into consequential social action. Existing theoretical accounts have explained this phenomenon in terms of impression management, in-group enhancing, or moral licensing, but have paid little attention to how publicly expressing support for a social cause through online behaviors should undermine actual action, while overlooking the role of audiences in such a process. Drawing on symbolic self-completion theory (SCT), the present paper proposes a complementary motivational perspective. Specifically, we argue that publicly displaying identity-relevant symbols (e.g., posts supporting social causes) within like-minded online networks may generate a premature sense of completeness regarding an aspired-to identity (e.g., being a gender equality advocate), thereby reducing motivation to pursue difficult, high-effort behaviors required for genuine social change. Furthermore, we conceptualize social media echo chambers not merely as informationally homogeneous environments, but as non-dissenting validators of one’s identity goal symbols. By prioritizing symbolic recognition over cross-group dialogue and intervention, social media echo chambers may inadvertently undermine the social progress they purport to promote. Full article

Background/Objectives: Endo-periodontal lesions (EPLs) represent complex pathological entities involving both periodontal and pulpal tissues, often implying diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. Limited evidence exists regarding the relationship between periodontal disease staging and grading and EPL subtype. The aim is to evaluate the clinical and statistical distribution of endo-periodontal lesions and investigate their association with periodontal stage and grade according to the European Federation of Periodontology (EFP) classification. Methods: An observational retrospective study was conducted in the Department of Periodontology, Faculty of Dental Medicine, Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania. Among 884 examined patients, 31 of them were diagnosed with EPLs and included in the analysis. Demographic variables, systemic conditions, affected tooth type, EFP stage and grade, and EPL type according to the Foce classification were recorded. Statistical analysis included Fisher’s exact test and univariable and multivariable binomial logistic regression models. Results: The mean age of the patients was 53.55 ± 9.42 years, with a nearly equal gender distribution. Most patients presented Stage III periodontitis (54.8%), Grade B periodontitis (71%), and EPL 3 (58.1%). Pluriradicular teeth were the most frequently affected (64.5%). The only statistically significant association identified was between EFP grading and EPL classification (p = 0.001). Grade B patients were significantly more likely to present EPL 3 than Grade C patients. Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that Grade B was a strong predictor of EPL 3 both in the univariable model (OR = 27.2; 95% CI: 2.712–272.828) and after adjustment for age and gender (OR = 32.676; 95% CI: 2.832–376.984). Neither age nor gender showed a significant association with EPL 3 occurrence. Conclusions: EPL 3 was the predominant lesion subtype in the study. EFP grading was significantly associated with EPL distribution, with Grade B emerging as an independent predictor of EPL 3. These findings suggest that periodontal disease progression may play a key role in the development and characterization of combined endo-periodontal lesions and highlight the importance of integrated periodontal–endodontic assessment in clinical practice. Full article

Biomimetic perception systems integrate heterogeneous cues selectively rather than treating all available information as equally reliable. Inspired by this principle, this study proposes QGFace-LLaVA, a multimodal large language model (MLLM)-centered framework for robust face analysis under imperfect metadata. A pretrained MLLM serves as the shared prompt-conditioned visual–language reasoning backbone, while structured side information, including age, gender, confidence cues, and availability indicators, is regulated through task-aware quality estimation, reliability-guided metadata calibration, gated residual correction, and counterfactual metadata reliability regularization (CMRR). Experiments on FER2013, CelebA-40, and UTKFace cover facial expression recognition, facial attribute recognition, and age estimation under clean, noisy, missing, shuffled, naturally erroneous, and counterfactual metadata conditions. The results show that metadata utility depends jointly on task relevance, metadata reliability, and fusion strategy, and that clean-setting gains do not necessarily imply robustness. QGFace-LLaVA reduces harmful dependence on unreliable metadata, while CMRR provides additional stability under corruption and mismatch. Overall, the framework transfers biomimetic selective cue integration into MLLM-based face analysis by treating metadata as reliability-controlled auxiliary evidence rather than a uniformly beneficial input. Full article

This article analyzes the explicit and implicit presence of social justice in the graduation profiles of Social Work programs at Chilean state universities, as well as the way in which its distributive, recognition, and participatory dimensions are articulated within the declarative curriculum. An exploratory qualitative design was developed based on a comparative documentary analysis of twelve official graduation profiles, retrieved from institutional sources and analyzed through a matrix grounded in a plural conception of social justice. The results show that explicit references to social justice are exceptional and that, more frequently, it is expressed indirectly through references to human rights, public policies, diversity, human development, citizenship, or territory. The distributive dimension shows the greatest operational development, especially through public policies, program management, state action, social equality, and intervention in vulnerable contexts. The recognition dimension appears mainly at a declarative level, linked to diversity, pluralism, interculturality, and gender. The participatory dimension is the least operationalized, with limited references to deliberation, democratic governance, or shared decision-making. The study identifies three profile typologies: distributive-institutional; rights-, diversity-, and recognition-oriented; and relatively integrated profiles of plural social justice. The findings suggest that strengthening curricular coherence may require moving from general normative statements toward competencies, learning outcomes, and assessment criteria capable of integrating redistribution, recognition, and participation in professional education. Full article

Women’s health in middle age is influenced by the physical and hormonal changes associated with perimenopause and menopause, phenomena that have been extensively studied from a biological perspective. However, there remains a gap in our understanding of the sociocultural factors that affect this stage of life, especially regarding social perception, self-perception, and their consequences for social behaviour. This article presents a scoping review of the literature in the Web of Sciences and Scopus databases using PRISMA Guidelines for the period 2015–2025. Limitations include the exploration of only two databases and the inclusion of only articles, not books, theses, or other materials. The search focused on social prejudices and assessments of middle-aged women, linked to sexism and ageism, as well as the psychological, social, and cultural processes that have contributed to overcoming these issues in recent decades. Special relevance is given to the concept of attractiveness, analysing how external perception and self-perception of female attractiveness are shaped during this transition. Articles mainly centred on medical issues, or that did not include a social perspective, were excluded. The findings from 57 studies provide an understanding of the evolution of these representations and their implications for gender equality and the reduction in sexism and ageism. Full article

Across Latin America, digital technologies helped cushion some of the pandemic’s worst effects, creating new opportunities that were not equally distributed between men and women. This study analyzed three waves of Latinobarometer data across 17 countries before, during, and after the pandemic to examine gender differences in labor perceptions and digital skills. The findings indicate that women consistently reported higher levels of perceived poverty and greater concern about unemployment than men. To assess the digital labor divide, the study developed a Digital Dexterity Index (DDI) based on social media use and educational attainment. Results indicate that the pandemic accelerated digital skill development for both genders, with statistically significant changes over time. Although women generally scored slightly higher than men on the DDI, patterns varied across countries. The study highlights a paradox: higher digital dexterity among women did not translate into greater confidence or security in the future of work. Despite their stronger digital skills, women expressed greater anxiety about their future labor-market prospects than men. Full article

Whereas agroforestry has emerged as a vital Nature-Based Solution (NBS) in the face of climate change, it is yet to be fully embraced in many parts of the world including Uganda. Therefore, understanding the various dynamics surrounding agroforestry adaptation such as the associated benefits and drivers is equally important. The study aimed to explore perceptions and preferences for agroforestry benefits from both ecological and socioeconomic aspects in Uganda. The study employed a non-probability convenience online survey and a total of n = 1138 responses were collected and subjected to descriptive and binary regression analysis. Assessment of agroforestry benefits demonstrated very high ecological preferences. The socioeconomic factors of wood fuel, forest incomes, and forest food and fruits ranked moderately. The models showed a consistent cluster of positive relations among provisioning/protection outlooks of forest food and fruits, water protection and soil conservation services. Moreover, the trade-offs between livelihood dependency for wood fuel/firewood energy, forest income and conservation attitudes (saving nature) were observed. The demographics characteristics (age and gender) were mainly not significant across most models. The efforts of the government of Uganda had a positive and very significant correlation with a preference for wood fuel, indicating policy problems. The study outcomes not only provide a strong case for future studies regarding agroforestry benefits but also offer insights for policy advice such as integrated approaches in agroforestry systems in Uganda. Full article

Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) have been an eligibility requirement for Horizon Europe funding since 2022, yet formal adoption does not necessarily alter organizational routines, culture, or resource allocation. This article examines the process of moving from compliance toward institutionalized practice through a longitudinal single-case study of the University of Primorska (UP), a smaller university in a resource-constrained Widening-country context. We compare the first analytical observation period (2021–2025), based on its 2021–2027 GEP, with GEP 2.0 (2026–2030). Evidence combines documentary analysis, selected gender-disaggregated indicators, three focus groups (n = 24), and aggregated staff-survey results for 2024–2025. We develop the Gender Equality Plan Maturity Index (GEP-MI), an unweighted six-dimensional heuristic scored from 0 to 18. The document-based, triangulated score rises from 7 to 15, indicating more explicit governance, data routines, and resourcing, but not durable implementation outcomes. Qualitative evidence illustrates three overlapping categories associated with the paper–practice gap: passive resistance (skepticism and box-ticking), active ideological resistance (naturalization and denial), and structural implementation constraints (including administrative infeasibility and unequal care burdens). A documentary comparison with the Universities of Ljubljana and Maribor contextualizes differences in formal design; it does not establish the prevalence of these categories beyond UP. We define audit-induced decoupling under constrained resources as the risk that audited requirements redirect scarce capacity toward demonstrable compliance rather than substantive change. The case offers a transparent monitoring heuristic and suggests that proportionate capacity support warrants consideration alongside European conditionality. Full article

Background/Objectives: Depression is a leading cause of disability among middle-aged and older adults, with its burden markedly amplified by multimorbidity. In rapidly aging China, distinct multimorbidity phenotypes interact with depressive symptoms through complex, non-linear pathways that traditional models struggle to capture. Interpretable machine learning offers high predictive accuracy alongside clinically transparent explanations, yet few studies have applied this approach to large national Chinese cohorts while stratifying by empirically derived multimorbidity patterns. The aim of this study was to identify the pattern-specific determinants of depression among middle-aged and older adults with multimorbidity using explainable machine learning techniques based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Methods: In this cross-sectional analysis of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) 2020 data, 14,981 participants were divided into a multimorbidity group (≥2 of 12 physician-diagnosed chronic conditions; n = 8265) and a matched control group (0 or 1 condition; n = 6716). Depressive symptoms were defined as a CES-D-10 score ≥ 10 (binary outcome). Forty-four candidate predictors were screened via LASSO regression, the Boruta algorithm, and univariate logistic regression. Fifteen supervised machine learning models were trained separately for each group using SMOTE for class imbalance, nested 5-fold cross-validation for hyperparameter tuning, and an independent 20% test set for external validation. Model performance was ranked by the composite AB Score (equal weighting of AUROC and Brier score). The champion models were interpreted globally via SHAP summary plots, directional waterfall diagrams, and novel impact-intensity network diagrams. The same pipeline was repeated across four literature-derived multimorbidity patterns within the multimorbidity group. Results: Depressive-symptom prevalence was 42.96% (3551/8265) in the multimorbidity group versus 27.01% (1814/6716) in the control group. The Gaussian process classifier achieved the highest AB Score (0.7782) in the multimorbidity group (external AUROC of 0.7545, Brier score of 0.1981); the generalized additive model was optimal in the control group (AB Score 0.7856, external AUROC 0.7387, Brier score 0.1676). Across both groups, the top contributors by mean absolute SHAP were IADL disability, abnormal sleep duration, ADL disability, rural residence, and lower education level. Pattern-specific SHAP networks revealed clinically meaningful heterogeneity: cardio-metabolic clusters were driven by marital status and headache; digestive–joint clusters by IADL disability and shoulder–knee pain synergy; respiratory clusters by gender and multisite pain; and cardiovascular–digestive clusters by sleep duration and vigorous activity. Conclusions: Interpretable machine learning models demonstrated clinically useful discrimination and excellent calibration while revealing universal drivers (functional disability and sleep disturbance) and cluster-specific synergistic interactions underlying depressive symptoms in multimorbid Chinese adults. These phenotype-tailored insights provide a practical roadmap for precision screening and targeted interventions in aging populations. Full article

Background/Objectives: Postoperative pain is one of the most frequently reported complications following endodontic treatment. Bioceramic sealers have gained widespread clinical acceptance. However, comparative clinical data on postoperative pain between specific bioceramic sealers remains limited. This double-blind randomized clinical pilot trial aimed to evaluate and compare the incidence and intensity of postoperative pain following root canal obturation using two bioceramic sealers—Bio-C Sealer (Angelus, Brazil) and TotalFill BC Sealer (FKG Dentaire, Switzerland)—over a seven-day follow-up period. Methods: A total of 30 patients requiring non-surgical root canal treatment were recruited from the dental clinics at Al-Baha University, Saudi Arabia, and randomly allocated into two equal groups (n = 15 per group). All root canals were prepared and then obturated using the tested sealers with the single-cone technique. Postoperative pain was assessed using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) at 24 h, 48 h, 72 h, and 7 days post-treatment. Statistical analysis was performed using Fisher’s exact test, Chi-square tests, and the independent t-test, with a significance threshold set at p < 0.05. Results: At 24 h, postoperative pain was reported by 33.3% of patients in the Bio-C Sealer group and 26.7% in the TotalFill BC Sealer group, with no statistically significant difference (p = 1.000). By 48 h, all patients in the TotalFill BC Sealer group were completely asymptomatic, whereas 13.3% of patients in the Bio-C Sealer group continued to report pain (p = 0.483). No significant associations were identified between postoperative pain and gender, tooth type, sealer extrusion, or preoperative pain status in either group (p > 0.05). Conclusions: Within the limitations of this randomized clinical pilot trial, the preliminary data suggest similar short-term clinical performance between Bio-C Sealer and TotalFill BC Sealer in terms of both the incidence and intensity of postoperative pain following non-surgical root canal treatment. Full article

Marriage remains a central social institution among the Vatsonga, functioning not merely as a union between individuals but as a cultural institution through which gender identities, kinship relations, ritual obligations, and communal belonging are constructed and transmitted across generations. While scholarship has extensively explored marriage and gender in African societies, limited attention has been paid to the genealogical processes through which Vatsonga marriage rituals have historically shaped gender identities within changing social, political, and religious contexts. This article examines marriage as a site of gender construction by analysing the relationship between ritual practices, identity formation, and social belonging among the Vatsonga of Southern Africa. Using the genealogical approach of Michel Foucault and the theories of African feminists and decolonials, this study employs interpretive qualitative methodology, which entails the analysis of interdisciplinary literature in African philosophy, anthropology, gender studies, theology, and ritual studies. As a result of this analysis, it becomes evident that marriage rituals continue to play a great role in constructing masculinity and femininity, as well as kinship and community. At the same time, however, these rituals are dynamic and have undergone changes in light of colonialism, Christianity, urbanization, migrations, constitutional democracy, and modern concerns regarding gender equality. This article does not present marriage rituals of Vatsonga as static and monolithic practices, but rather shows their historical contingency, cultural dynamism, and continuous negotiation amid social change. Therefore, this study calls for critical engagement with marriage rituals in order to protect culture as well as to ensure gender equality and the dignity of all parties involved. With regard to the application of genealogy to marriage practices of Vatsonga, this article brings new perspectives to current debates on ritual, gender construction, African epistemologies and the decolonisation of marriage studies. Full article