Search Results (6)

Climate scientists, systems theorists, and policymakers increasingly suggest that global sustainability challenges stem from dysfunctional worldviews and values that drive individual and collective behaviors, undermining both human flourishing and planetary health. Recognizing that paradigmatic shifts in values and worldviews can arise from transformative experiences, this study employed Integral Inquiry in a mixed-methods design to examine the nature of the relationship between such experiences and engagement with sustainability. A sample of 145 adults was recruited based on self-identification of having undergone a life-changing experience and demonstrated evidence of transformative growth and integration. In the qualitative phase, 73 participants completed an open-text survey detailing their perspectives on sustainability and their related practices and behaviors. Ten individuals from this subset were interviewed to explore the depth and dimensions of their engagement with sustainability. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory analysis, three tentative themes emerged: intraconnection, personal equilibrium, and defining social change. Whilst the study was exploratory in nature, the analysis indicated that transformative experiences seemed to foster a profound felt sense of intraconnection—a deep awareness of interconnectedness with all life. This awareness appeared to naturally clarify participants’ values and beliefs, aligning their actions toward sustainability. Moreover, participants emphasized the importance of cultivating personal equilibrium—a state of inner balance and congruence in daily choices—as a foundation for meaningful social and environmental change. This study tentatively highlights the role transformative experiences can play in bringing about more pro-ecological behavior, and it underscores the need for further research into how such experiences can be more readily integrated to support global sustainability efforts. Full article

The insula is often considered the fifth lobe of the brain and is increasingly recognized as one of the most connected regions in the brain, with widespread connections to cortical and subcortical structures. As a follow-up to our previous tractography work, we investigated the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) profiles of insular subregions and assessed their concordance with structural connectivity. We used the CONN toolbox to analyze the rsFC of the same 19 insular regions of interest (ROIs) we used in our prior tractography work and regrouped them into six subregions based on their connectivity pattern similarity. Our analysis of 50 healthy participants confirms the known broad connectivity of the insula and shows novel and specific whole-brain and intra-connectivity patterns of insular subregions. By examining such subregions, our findings provide a more detailed pattern of connectivity than prior studies that may prove useful for comparison between patients. Full article

Various mathematical frameworks play an essential role in understanding the economic systems and the emergence of crises in them. Understanding the relation between the structure of connections between the system’s constituents and the emergence of a crisis is of great importance. In this paper, we propose a novel method for the inference of economic systems’ structures based on complex networks theory utilizing the time series of prices. Our network is obtained from the correlation matrix between the time series of companies’ prices by imposing a threshold on the values of the correlation coefficients. The optimal value of the threshold is determined by comparing the spectral properties of the threshold network and the correlation matrix. We analyze the community structure of the obtained networks and the relation between communities’ inter and intra-connectivity as indicators of systemic risk. Our results show how an economic system’s behavior is related to its structure and how the crisis is reflected in changes in the structure. We show how regulation and deregulation affect the structure of the system. We demonstrate that our method can identify high systemic risks and measure the impact of the actions taken to increase the system’s stability. Full article

Background: Most early children’s experiences will occur in a family context; therefore, the quality of this environment is critical for development outcomes. Not many studies have assessed the correlations between brain functional connectivity (FC) in important areas such as the default mode network (DMN) and the quality of parent-child relationships in school-age children and early adolescence. The quality of family relationships and maternal behavior have been suggested to modulate DMN FC once they act as external regulators of children’s affect and behavior. Objective: We aimed to test the associations between the quality of family environment/maternal behavior and FC within the DMN of school-age children. Method: Resting-state, functional magnetic resonance imaging data, were collected from 615 children (6–12 age range) enrolled in the Brazilian High-Risk Cohort (HRC) study. We assessed DMN intra-connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and inferior parietal lobule (IPL-bilateral) regions. The family functioning was assessed by levels of family cohesiveness and conflict and by maternal behavior styles such as maternal responsiveness, maternal stimulus to the child’s autonomy, and maternal overprotection. The family environment was assessed with the Family Environment Scale (FES), and maternal behavior was assessed by the mother’s self-report. Results: We found that the quality of the family environment was correlated with intra-DMN FC. The more conflicting the family environment was, the greater the FC between the mPFC-left IPL (lIPL), while a more cohesive family functioning was negatively correlated with FC between the PCC-lIPL. On the other hand, when moderated by a positive maternal behavior, cohesive family functioning was associated with increased FC in both regions of the DMN (mPFC-lIPL and PCC-lIPL). Conclusions: Our results highlight that the quality of the family environment might be associated with differences in the intrinsic DMN FC. Full article

Corner-supported modular structures are made of repetitive prefurnished, prefinished modular units, which are fabricated in a factory and transported to the site of a building to form a permanent building block. The modular units are then tied together through the use of so-called inter-modular connections, or inter-connections, which form a different configuration at joints compared to conventional steel structures. The presence of inter-connections in these structures, in addition to beam-to-column connections or intra-connections, may change their dynamic characteristics, including natural frequencies, mode shapes, and damping ratios. This paper aims to investigate the dynamic characteristics of a modular building through the use of operational modal analysis (OMA). A half-scaled three-storey modular structure, designed and instrumented with highly sensitive accelerometers, was experimentally tested under pure and randomly generated vibrations. The time history of the response acceleration of the structure was recorded using a data acquisition system. Different output-only techniques of OMA, based on both frequency and time domains, were employed to analyse the recorded response acceleration of the structure and extract the natural frequencies, mode shapes, and damping ratios. These techniques are peak picking (PP), enhanced frequency-domain decomposition (EFDD), and stochastic subspace identification (SSI). The outcomes in this paper can be used for further research on the development of an experimental formula for the design of multistorey modular buildings against lateral loads. Full article

In this study, simulations are conducted using a network model to examine how the macroscopic network in the brain is related to the complexity of activity for each region. The network model is composed of multiple neuron groups, each of which consists of spiking neurons with different topological properties of a macroscopic network based on the Watts and Strogatz model. The complexity of spontaneous activity is analyzed using multiscale entropy, and the structural properties of the network are analyzed using complex network theory. Experimental results show that a macroscopic structure with high clustering and high degree centrality increases the firing rates of neurons in a neuron group and enhances intraconnections from the excitatory neurons to inhibitory neurons in a neuron group. As a result, the intensity of the specific frequency components of neural activity increases. This decreases the complexity of neural activity. Finally, we discuss the research relevance of the complexity of the brain activity. Full article