Search Results (4,845)

Numerous road accidents involving vulnerable road users result from their insufficient visibility to drivers. To increase the appeal of warning clothing and motivate consumers to use it, particularly in non-professional settings, an innovative high-visibility vest with an active lighting system (ALS) and phosphorescent elements was developed. The effectiveness of the vest’s visibility-enhancing elements was assessed by examining two factors: the intensity of the light emitted by the phosphorescent tapes and the luminance of the optical fibers in the ALS. Studies have shown that thermal-transfer phosphorescent tapes are approximately 42% more effective in terms of luminescence than sewn-on tapes. The ALS demonstrated high durability, withstanding up to 15 washing cycles at 40 °C in a mild process. The luminance of optical fibers decreases significantly with increasing distance from the light source (LED). The difference between the luminance at the light source and at the end of the 1 m optical fiber was about 6 cd/m², representing approximately 68% of the maximum luminance value. This finding can assist in designing luminous clothing. Tests in real-world conditions in a tunnel have shown that the ALS allows the visibility of vest user to be increased to over 430 m, which is a 67% increase compared to retroreflective tapes. Laboratory performance testing confirmed the high acceptability of the vest model, including its aesthetics, by potential users. Full article

This systematic review examines how emotional well-being in journalism has been de-fined, experienced, and supported between 2010 and 2025. It draws on 15 peer-reviewed empirical studies identified in Web of Science and Scopus and evaluated using PRISMA 2020 and the MMAT. The review addresses three main gaps in the field: unclear definitions, limited synthesis of risk and protective factors, and scarce assessment of support interventions. Across studies, emotional distress emerges from structural pressures, such as overwork, trauma exposure, online harassment, job precarity, and the erosion of collegial networks. These pressures, rather than inherent traits of journalistic work, shape vulnerability. Protective factors include social support, editorial autonomy, professional experience, purpose-driven motivation, and practices like mindfulness or digital disconnection. Yet their impact is often limited by weak organizational infrastructures. Vulnerability is higher among women, freelancers, and early career journalists, although intersectional analyses remain rare. Sectoral and organizational responses—peer networks, resilience programs, trauma-informed training, and emerging digital safety policies—show promise but remain fragmented. The review concludes that emotional well-being should be framed as an ethical and structural responsibility within journalism, and that sustainable progress requires systemic measures that foster psychological safety and professional dignity. Full article

Food waste is a persistent global concern, requiring behavioral and systemic responses from consumers. The current study investigated the effect of sociodemographic factors and digital activism on food waste prevention behavior. Data from 390 respondents living in Italy (65% females, from 18 to 75 years old, grouped into four generations) were collected through an online survey covering these sections: sociodemographic variables, digital activism, knowledge, attitudes, and food waste behaviors. A Food Waste Prevention Index (FWPI) was computed to assess self-reported adherence to waste-reducing practices, and differences across three groups identified through tertiles were tested. Women displayed higher levels of digital activism; Gen Z was the most engaged generation in seeking information about food, while interest in food issues declined with age. Gender, geographical area, and dietary orientation significantly influenced food waste prevention, with women, rural residents, and individuals adopting flexitarian or vegetarian diets tending towards more virtuous behavior (higher FWPI). According to digital activism, less virtuous waste behavior (lower FWPI) was associated with a lower social media and apps usage frequency. Furthermore, higher FWPI individuals self-reported stronger sensitivity to sustainability-related topics such as circular economy, short food chains, and ethical or environmental motivations for vegetarianism. Overall, awareness and digital activism may synergistically foster more responsible food consumption, and targeted communication and digital tools can effectively support household food waste reduction strategies. Full article

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a widely adopted metaheuristic for solving complex combinatorial problems; however, performance is often deteriorated by premature convergence and limited exploration in later iterations. Eclipse Randomness–Ant Colony Optimization (ER-ACO) is introduced as a lightweight ACO variant in which an exponentially fading randomness factor is integrated into the state-transition mechanism. Strong early-stage exploration is enabled, and a smooth transition to exploitation is induced, improving convergence behavior and solution quality. Low computational overhead is maintained while exploration and exploitation are dynamically balanced. ER-ACO is positioned within real-time healthcare logistics, with a focus on Emergency Medical Services (EMS) routing and hospital resource scheduling, where rapid and adaptive decision-making is critical for patient outcomes. These systems face dynamic constraints such as fluctuating traffic conditions, urgent patient arrivals, and limited medical resources. Experimental evaluation on benchmark instances indicates that solution cost is reduced by up to 14.3% relative to the slow-fade configuration ($\gamma =1$) in the 20-city TSP sweep, and faster stabilization is indicated under the same iteration budget. Additional comparisons against Standard ACO on TSP/QAP benchmarks indicate consistent improvements, with unchanged asymptotic complexity and negligible measured overhead at the tested scales. TSP/QAP benchmarks are used as controlled proxies to isolate algorithmic behavior; EMS deployment is treated as a motivating application pending validation on EMS-specific datasets and formulations. These results highlight ER-ACO’s potential as a lightweight optimization engine for smart healthcare systems, enabling real-time deployment on edge devices for ambulance dispatch, patient transfer, and operating room scheduling. Full article

Background/Objectives: Social media’s impact on adult well-being varies by engagement patterns, highlighting the need for evidence to inform digital well-being strategies. This study examines the association between social media use and self-esteem, a key psychological indicator linked to adult well-being, with the aim of identifying modifiable behavioral targets relevant to clinical, workplace, and public health contexts. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 81 Greek adults assessed daily social media use, engagement patterns, and self-esteem using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Analyses included linear and exploratory quadratic regression models, multiple regression with demographic covariates (age, gender), and descriptive group comparisons. Results: A small but statistically significant negative association was observed between daily social media use and self-esteem (R² = 0.078), indicating limited explanatory power. Exploratory analyses did not provide strong evidence of non-linear effects. Demographic factors and usage categories were not significant predictors, likely reflecting limited statistical power. Participant self-reports highlighted potentially disruptive patterns such as intensive use at specific times/conditions, perceived sleep impact, and cognitive preoccupation with social media, as well as motivation to reduce or stop use. Conclusions: Time spent online is a weak predictor of self-esteem, underscoring the importance of engagement quality over frequency. From a management perspective, the findings support shifting attention from generic screen-time reduction to targeting specific potentially high-risk patterns of engagement in future policy and practice. This exploratory pilot study provides initial, hypothesis-generating evidence within a Greek adult sample and highlights the need for larger, population-based studies to confirm and extend these findings. Full article

Sport persistence is a key factor in maintaining a sporting career and preventing dropout from sport. Among psychological and social factors, social support plays a prominent role as a protective factor that strengthens self-esteem and reduces the risk of burnout, as does the perfectionist climate, which is motivating in a supportive environment but places psychological burdens on athletes in its maladaptive forms. The research aimed to explore the extent to which the sport persistence of young athletes can be explained by different sources of social support (parental, teacher, peer) and the dimensions of the perfectionist climate (expectations, criticism, control, conditional respect, anxiety), as well as the role played by gender. We conducted a cross-sectional, quantitative study involving 1105 young people aged 14–25 who regularly participate in sports. We used validated questionnaires to measure sports persistence, social support and perfectionist climate. We used regression and mediation models to analyse the data. According to the analyses, parental and teacher support contributed to increased sport persistence, while peer support had no significant effect. Among the dimensions of the perfectionist climate, expectations were positively related to persistence, while criticism was negatively related. Gender also indirectly influenced sports persistence, with its effect partly mediated by social support and the perfectionist climate. The results indicate that parental and teacher support, along with an emphasis on healthy expectations, are vital for strengthening sports persistence. In contrast, a critical, controlling climate was associated with lower persistence among female athletes in the present sample. Full article

Background/Objectives: Autologous conditioned serum (ACS) is an intra-articular orthobiologic for osteoarthritis (OA) intended to shift the joint cytokine milieu toward an anti-inflammatory, pro-regenerative profile. In the present study, we compared the molecular composition of ACS (specifically IMPACT^® ACS) from OA patients with that of healthy controls and assessed demographic and lifestyle influences on mediator levels. Methods: ACS was prepared from the whole blood of 50 OA patients and 20 healthy controls using the IMPACT^® centrifugation system (Plasmaconcept, Cologne, Germany) with glass-bead incubation and standardized handling. Cytokines, growth factors, and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) were quantified using multiplex immunoassays and ELISA. To account for demographic imbalances across cohorts, the primary findings were verified using age- and sex-adjusted multiple linear regression models. Results: Pro-inflammatory mediators were minimal in both cohorts, with IL-1β undetectable and IL-6 and TNF-α at very low levels. IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RA) was consistently present. Notably, OA-derived ACS exhibited a catabolic shift compared to controls, characterized by significantly higher MMP-2 and MMP-3 levels. Growth factor profiling showed lower TGF-β1 and TGF-β3 in OA-derived ACS, with TGF-β2 showing no significant difference after adjustment. Exploratory stratified analyses indicated potential differences across sex, BMI, smoking status, and diet for select mediators, though subgroup sizes were limited. Conclusions: ACS prepared with a standardized IMPACT^® protocol displays a broad anti-inflammatory profile. However, increased MMPs and isoform-specific differences in TGF-β reflect a disease-associated molecular imprint. Consequently, patient-related heterogeneity supports the need for standardized reporting and motivates further research into stratified ACS therapy. Full article

Background/Objectives: Early turnover among new graduate nurses remains challenging in South Korea. This study examined how socialisation factors—based on Scott et al.’s transition model and Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory—are associated with early retention at the first hospital of employment among new graduate nurses. Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study analysed secondary data from the Graduate Occupational Mobility Survey (GOMS), a nationally representative dataset of college and university graduates in Korea, collected using a stratified multi-stage sampling method. The study included 602 new graduate nurses from the 2017–2019 datasets who had worked as nurses at their first hospital of employment. Anticipatory socialisation factors included personal and educational characteristics. Organisational socialisation factors referred to workplace-related characteristics of the first hospital, including motivational factors and hygiene factors. The outcome variable was early retention. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to identify factors associated with early retention. Results: A total of 68.6% of nurses remained in their first hospital employment. Retention was more likely among nurses whose high school, nursing school, and first hospital were in the same region (p = 0.019), those employed in Seoul (p < 0.001), and those working in larger hospitals (p < 0.001). Retention was also associated with satisfaction with autonomy and authority (p = 0.013). Conversely, lower retention was observed among nurses who were dissatisfied with interpersonal relationships (p < 0.001) and those who reported satisfaction with growth opportunities (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Targeted strategies that support new graduate nurses during their transition are essential. Aligning education-to-employment regions and strengthening workplace conditions may enhance early retention. Full article

Fully integrated airport access requires managing many aspects from both the passengers’ and the operational point of view. It is noted that air passenger preferences, influenced by distance, time, and other travel-related factors, are one of the fundamentals for understanding airport choice within multi-region airport systems. Therefore, an online survey was conducted in Europe, collecting more than two thousand responses, from which passengers’ attitudes and motives for selecting airport access travel modes were obtained. On the basis of the mobility profile of respondents, Fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering analysis was performed to identify segments with similar travel attributes. The outcomes of clustering were validated through the comparison between the FCM and K-means clustering algorithms. The results of the study showed that (i) the car was the most preferred mode of transport across different age groups, and (ii) waiting time, travel costs, and travel time were rated as important, with reliability identified as the most important factor when making travel mode choices. These findings may serve as a reference for improving multimodal airport access services and encouraging a shift from private to public transportation modes. Full article

Cross-border e-commerce, as an emerging trade format, offers new chances for optimizing industrial chains’ layout, enhancing economic resilience, and attaining high-quality development at the city level. In this context, treating the execution of the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone (CBEC) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study subtly attests to how the CBEC affects urban entrepreneurship by using a difference-in-differences (DID) technique. The results exhibit that the CBEC greatly promotes urban entrepreneurship, which is supported by some robustness tests, including instrumental variable testing and placebo testing. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that in cities with more developed economies, stronger digitalization, richer cultures, sounder law rules, and better business environments, the benefit for the CBEC on entrepreneurship is more significant. Mechanism testing argues that the CBEC promotes urban entrepreneurship through talent aggregation and industrial upgrading. Precisely, the more concentrated high-quality talents are and the more advanced the industrial structure is, the higher the urban entrepreneurship. More importantly, the CBEC exhibits a spatial spillover effect on entrepreneurship, promoting local entrepreneurship while stimulating the motivation to imitate and learn in neighboring areas, thereby driving their entrepreneurship. The findings offer a viable decision-making guide for building a unified factor market and achieving regional coordinated development. Full article

Background/Objectives: Emerging evidence suggests that multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS) provide additional benefits for maternal and neonatal health compared with iron and folic acid (IFA) supplements. To achieve effective coverage, acceptability, and adherence—and to inform a nationwide rollout of MMS—it is essential to understand the context-specific factors that shape implementation. This study evaluated the pilot implementation of MMS in Rwanda to identify key enablers, areas for improvement, and challenges related to antenatal care (ANC) attendance and MMS use. Methods: Data were collected through a survey of 3257 women who attended ANC services, seven focus group discussions with 35 ANC attendees, and key informant interviews with 20 ANC nurses and 21 community health workers. Results: Pregnant women reported high ANC attendance (74%) and MMS consumption (79%), largely driven by strong motivation and awareness of MMS benefits. Strategies to remember daily intake and to manage side effects supported adherence, as did reminders, motivation, and information from family members and healthcare providers. Limited patient-centered counselling, financial constraints, barriers to accessing ANC services, and product stock-outs were key areas for strengthening service delivery in Rwanda. Conclusions: Sustaining high ANC attendance and MMS adherence as the program transitions from the pilot phase to national scale-up is essential. Improving counseling quality and strengthening supply chains may reinforce ANC services and support sustained MMS adherence, with benefits for maternal and child health. Full article

Campus community gardens are expected to leverage disciplinary resources and spatial conditions to deliver ecological, educational, and social benefits beyond those of general community gardens. In China, these gardens are primarily established under the guidance of educational authorities, leading to issues such as significant homogenization and a lack of diversity, which hinders the full realization of their potential. This study investigates the potential factors influencing the development of campus gardens. Focusing on university campuses in Beijing, it employs stratified sampling and a questionnaire survey (n = 1008), utilizing methods including exploratory factor analysis (EFA), multiple linear regression, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to systematically identify the factors affecting their differentiated development. The results indicate that: (1) the willingness to participate is collectively driven by four dimensions: “planting expectation,” “funding and site selection,” “personal motivation,” and “organizational support,” with “planting expectation” being the most significant factor. (2) Students’ academic disciplines influence their perceptions of the need for organizational support and spatial resources for gardens. (3) Campus location and size moderate the demand for gardens, with students in the urban expansion belt (between the 4th and 5th Ring Roads) and those from smaller campuses showing a stronger “pro-nature compensation” tendency. Based on campus spatial scale, urban location, and the academic backgrounds of participants, the study proposes integrated “space-organization” development strategies. This research provides targeted planning strategies for campus community gardens in China, aiming to leverage institutional disciplinary strengths, respond to participant needs, and maximize the gardens’ benefits. Full article

In the face of escalating environmental crises, sustainable development is becoming one of the key global challenges. A growing body of research indicates that transitioning to plant-based diets, including a vegan diet, can significantly improve environmental sustainability. Young people from Generation Z play a crucial role in shaping future consumption patterns, and their beliefs and attitudes toward sustainable food may serve as an important indicator of social changes in the area of nutrition and the potential for implementing pro-ecological practices. The aim of the study is to assess students’ perceptual attitudes toward plant-based products, which constitute an integral part of vegan diets, addressing a significant gap in the literature on sustainable consumption among Generation Z in emerging economies. The study allows for the identification of the main sources of information, psychosocial barriers, and motivational factors underlying the adoption of a vegan diet, situating them within sustainable development paradigms. The research group consisted of 263 university students in Warsaw (Poland). A CAWI survey method was used, with a proprietary questionnaire. The study shows that more than 60% of respondents were not interested in this dietary option, and a similar proportion did not expect to adopt veganism in the future. Students’ attitudes toward the vegan diet are shaped primarily by their self-assessment of nutritional knowledge, previous experiences with plant-based diets, and socio-cultural factors. Although many respondents recognize the health and environmental benefits of a plant-based diet, the lack of reliable knowledge, concerns about deficiencies, higher product costs, and social pressure remain key barriers limiting their willingness to change eating habits. From a practical perspective, the findings highlight the need to develop nutrition education focused on the competencies required to properly balance plant-based diets, to increase the economic and sensory accessibility of vegan food, and to counteract persistent stereotypes and misconceptions about veganism, especially on social media, which is the main source of information for this age group. Full article

This study examines how Generation Z’s digital practices on TikTok and Instagram shape their music festival experiences, focusing on event perception, engagement, and the development of collective identity. The aim is to identify key factors connecting online and offline aspects of festival participation. The research adopts a quantitative approach based on an online survey of 248 respondents born between 1995 and 2010 from various regions of Serbia. Data were analyzed in SPSS 26.0 using Spearman correlation, quantile regression, and the Mann–Whitney test. Given the exploratory nature of the study, the findings should be interpreted accordingly. Findings show that frequent social media use has a positive but limited effect on how important these platforms are perceived for the festival experience. However, user-generated content created by attendees plays a more significant role in shaping engagement and attitudes than influencer content. Influencer credibility also influences how festivals are interpreted digitally. The interplay between online interaction and offline participation motivates content sharing and reinforces a sense of community. Overall, the study concludes that social media and digital narratives are central to Generation Z’s festival experience. Authentic, attendee-created content strongly contributes to collective identity, helping bridge digital and physical dimensions—insights valuable for festival organizers, influencers, and cultural tourism. Full article

Objectives: This study aims to explore the facilitators and barriers in the process of using AI agents for disease management in older COPD patients. Methods: Based on the normalization process theory, a descriptive qualitative study was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with 28 older patients with COPD recruited from June to August 2025 in a Class A tertiary hospital in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. Results: A total of 28 interviews were conducted. Four themes (Coherence, Cognitive Participation, Collective Action, Reflexive Monitoring), nine subthemes (recognition of intelligent technology;supported by policy discourse and the background of national-level projects; the creation of a family atmosphere; recommendations from HCPs; relief and social connection; new “doctor”–patient relationship and communication; eliminate the burden and return to life; benefit and value perception; right self-decision by AI) in facilitators and nine subthemes (privacy conflicts and trust deficiency; blurred boundaries of human–machine responsibility and authority; non-high-quality services are chosen reluctantly; technical anxiety; lack of motivation for continued engagement; extra burden; limitations of the physical environment; human–machine dialogue frustration; a sense of uncertainty about the future of AI) in barriers were extracted. Conclusions: This study identified key factors influencing the use of AI agents in chronic disease management in older patients with COPD. The results provide directions for improving the implementation and sustainable use of AI health technologies. Full article