Search Results (62)

Extreme heat is a pressing public health threat. This study assesses and describes the interrelationships between beliefs about heat waves, individuals’ precautionary behaviors during heat waves, and demographic factors. In May 2022, we surveyed 1051 residents (aged 25–90 years) in Southern Spain, a region that experiences frequent heat waves. We found that many participants engaged in heat wave avoidance (80.5%, e.g., spending more time indoors), impact reduction (63.7%, e.g., drinking more water), or prosocial behavior (31.6%, e.g., helping others). However, one in four (25.9%) respondents also indicated that they personally do not need to worry about heat waves. Heat wave beliefs and behaviors were modestly correlated with demographic characteristics. Individuals who view themselves as less vulnerable to heat-related health risks (“impervious” beliefs) were less likely to report altering their behavior during heat waves. Public health efforts aiming to change behavior during heat waves may anticipate “impervious” beliefs and demographic differences in risk perception and heat-related behaviors. Full article

Family structure has long been regarded as an important determinant of household saving, yet the empirical evidence for developing economies remains limited. Using the 2018–2022 panels of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), a nationwide survey that follows 16,519 households across three waves, the present study investigates how family size, the elderly share, and the child share jointly shape saving behavior. A household fixed effects framework is employed to control for time-invariant heterogeneity, followed by a sequential endogeneity strategy: external-shock instruments are tested and rejected, lagged two-stage least squares implement internal instruments, and a dynamic System-GMM model is estimated to capture saving persistence. Robustness checks include province-by-year fixed effects, inverse probability weighting for attrition, balanced-panel replication, alternative variable definitions, lag structures, and sample filters. Family size raises the saving rate by 4.6 percentage points in the preferred dynamic specification (p < 0.01). The elderly ratio remains insignificant throughout, whereas the child ratio exerts a negative but model-sensitive association. A three-path mediation analysis indicates that approximately 26 percent of the total family size effect operates through scale economy savings on quasi-fixed expenses, 19 percent is offset by resource dilution pressure, and less than 1 percent flows through a precautionary saving channel linked to income volatility. These findings extend the resource dilution literature by quantifying the relative strength of competing mechanisms in a middle-income context and showing that cost-sharing economies dominate child-related dilution for most households. Policy discussion highlights the importance of public childcare subsidies and targeted credit access for rural parents, whose saving capacity is the most constrained by additional children. The study also demonstrates that fixed effects estimates of family structure can be upward-biased unless dynamic saving behavior and internal instruments are considered. Full article

Using time-varying Granger causality, Neural Networks Nonlinear VAR, and Wavelet Coherence analysis, we evidence the unstable effect of the money market rate on industrial production and consumer price index in Tunisia. The effect is asymmetric and depends on geopolitical risk (low versus high). We show that global geopolitical risk has both detriments and benefits sides—it is a threat and an opportunity for monetary policy transmission mechanisms. Interacted local projections (LPs) reveal short–medium-term volatility or dampening effects, suggesting that geopolitical uncertainty might weaken the immediate impact of monetary policy on output and prices. In uncertain environments (e.g., high geopolitical risk), economic agents—households and businesses—may adopt a wait-and-see approach. They delay consumption and investment decisions, which could initially mute the impact of monetary policy. Agents may delay their responses until they gain more information about geopolitical developments. Once clarity emerges, they may adjust their behavior, aligning with the long-run effects observed in the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). Furthermore, we identify an exacerbating investor sentiment following tightening monetary policy, during global and local geopolitical episodes. The impact is even more pronounced under conditions of high domestic weakness. Evidence is extracted through a novel composite index that we construct using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Our results have implications for the Central Bank’s monetary policy conduct and communication practices. Full article

This paper explores the different perceptions of safety of male and female university students, analyzing the gendered construction of space across three key settings of student life. The study employs a qualitative methodology based on 20 in-depth interviews conducted with both male and female students on the main campus of the Universidad de Concepción (Chile). The results show that female students adopt avoidance and precautionary strategies when navigating university and leisure spaces. These strategies limit their freedom of movement and contrast with the more unconstrained spatial behaviors reported by male students. The findings also reveal a perceived loss of safety as spaces become more communal and less private, particularly for female participants. This research underscores the need to better understand how gendered perceptions of safety shape everyday spatial practices within academic environments. Full article

Dengue fever (DF) is considered one of the most rapidly spreading infectious diseases, which is primarily transmitted to humans by bites from infected Aedes mosquitoes. The current investigation considers the spread patterns of dengue disease with and without host population awareness. It is assumed that some individuals decrease their contact with infected mosquitoes by adopting precautionary behaviors due to their awareness of the disease. Certain susceptible groups actively prevent mosquito bites, and a few infected are isolated to reduce further infections. The basic reproduction number and population dynamics are modeled by a system of fractional-order differential equations. The system of equations is solved using the Adomian Decomposition Method (ADM) since it converges rapidly to the exact solution and can give explicit analytical solutions. Solutions derived are analyzed and plotted for different fractional orders, providing useful insights into population dynamics and contributing to a better understanding of the initiation and control of disease. Full article

Because animals threatened by visually oriented predators may respond in sun-lit daytime but not at night, invertebrate responses to predatory challenges may yield varying results based on the time period within the 24 h daily cycle. We predicted that in laboratory experiments aquatic isopods exposed to kairomones from predatory fish would spend more time immobilized in daylight to avoid detection than those not exposed to kairomones but that this difference would disappear under the cover of nighttime darkness. We further predicted that isopods in the absence of kairomones would move at elevated rates in the daytime compared with night, seeking a precautionary proximity to shelters. However, contrary to our predictions, Caecidotea communis isopods exhibited consistent activity (movement rate and proportion of time spent moving) when exposed to kairomones or in the absence of such cues, at all of the three diurnal cycle periods examined. Thus, Caecidotea communis displayed cathemerality (sometimes called metaturnality), the first documented case of this behavior in crustaceans. Full article

This study assesses the informational usefulness of several uncertainty metrics in predicting the monetary policy and actual economic activity of Tunisia. We use a Bayesian time-varying vector autoregressive (VAR) model to identify uncertainty shocks sequentially. We complement the analysis with the use of local projections (LPs), a recently flexible and simple method that accommodates the effect of an exogenous intervention on policy outcomes. The findings suggest that shocks to global and spillover uncertainty are important in elucidating the dynamics of industrial production and consumer prices. The impulse response functions (IRFs) show that the central bank does not follow a linear-rule-based monetary strategy. The irreversibility theory, or the “precautionary” behavior, is tested in a vector error correction model (VECM). The money market rate impacts industrial production and consumer prices differently during high versus low uncertainty, depending on the uncertainty variable and the horizon (short versus long run). The effects can be insignificant or significantly dampened during high uncertainty, indicating that conventional monetary policy may be ineffective or less influential. The “wait and see” strategy adopted by economic agents implies that they do not take timely actions until additional pieces of information arrive. While this could not be the sole explanation of our findings, it conveys the importance of dealing with uncertainty in decision-making and highlights the necessity of a clear and credible communication strategy. Importantly, the central bank should complement interest rates with the use of unconventional monetary policy instruments for better flexibility. Our work provides a comprehensive and clear picture of the Tunisian economy and a focal guide for the central bank’s future practices to achieve macroeconomic objectives. Full article

The Massarosa wildfire, which occurred in July 2022 in Northwestern Tuscany (Italy), burned over 800 hectares, leading to significant environmental and geomorphological issues, including an increase in soil erosion rates. This study applied the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model to estimate soil erosion rates with a multi-temporal approach, investigating three main scenarios: before, immediately after, and one-year post-fire. All the analyses were carried out using the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform with free-access geospatial data and satellite images in order to exploit the cloud computing potentialities. The results indicate a differentiated impact of the fire across the study area, whereby the central parts suffered the highest damages, both in terms of fire-related RUSLE factors and soil loss rates. A sharp increase in erosion rates immediately after the fire was detected, with an increase in maximum soil loss rate from 0.11 ton × ha⁻¹ × yr⁻¹ to 1.29 ton × ha⁻¹ × yr⁻¹, exceeding the precautionary threshold for sustainable soil erosion. In contrast, in the mid-term analysis, the maximum soil loss rate decreased to 0.74 ton × ha⁻¹ × yr⁻¹, although the behavior of the fire-related factors caused an increase in soil erosion variability. The results suggest the need to plan mitigation strategies towards reducing soil erodibility, directly and indirectly, with a continuous monitoring of erosion rates and the application of machine learning algorithms to thoroughly understand the relationships between variables. Full article

Residential areas in developing arid and semi-arid countries are highly vulnerable to flooding, and water shortages have forced their inhabitants to live close to rivers. While climate change is expected to cause more extreme weather conditions in the future, adopting private loss-reduction measures can diminish flood risk. Although the number of flood models has grown significantly for developing arid and semi-arid lands, these models suffer from being incapable of performing micro-scale flood risk analysis and including household behaviors. This research work presents a novel socio-economic simulation model in the framework of flood risk management (FRM) to couple household adaptive responses with flood risk analysis. Agent-based modeling (ABM) embeds human behaviors in a flood-simulating environment. The focus of this research is the upper Kan catchment in Iran with a long history of severe flash flooding. Our results show the ability of the developed framework to address household participation in FRM activities through private precautionary measures. Moreover, the results indicate the importance of presenting such micro-level behaviors in flood modeling for a more realistic flood risk assessment. It is also demonstrated that household adaptation in a continuous way can lead to less flood risks in the region, even under climate change and the future economy. Finally, the results reveal that the remaining and diminished regional flood risks are influenced by the behavioral framework through which the individuals make decisions in adopting flood-loss-reduction measures. A similar pattern is, however, observed in household contributions over time among the discussed behavioral approaches. Full article

Due to the emerging threat conditions in the work environment, firefighters are at a high risk of exposure to not only toxic substances but also biological agents in the dayroom and during emergency runs. The aim of this study is to evaluate firefighter (career and volunteer) knowledge and practice behaviors on infection control. This study surveyed 444 firefighters (210 career, 234 volunteer) in rural Northwestern Kentucky. The self-reported survey focused on individual characteristics, knowledge on exposure incident control, precautionary actions, and personal protections. We evaluated the descriptive characteristics of knowledge and practice scores stratified by firefighter groups (career and volunteers). The associations between infection control training received (yes/no) and firefighter knowledge and practice scores were also examined. Firefighters who were trained on infection control prevention had significantly higher knowledge scores (M = 63.7, SD = 13.4 vs. M = 59.7, SD = 15.9; p = 0.012). Volunteer firefighters exhibited better infection control practice behaviors than career firefighters (M = 70.6, SD = 13.0 vs. M = 67.4, SD = 11.1; p = 0.05). Firefighters who followed infection control guidelines (M = 69.5, SD = 11.9 vs. M = 58.1, SD = 9.9; p = 0.012) and expressed need for a comprehensive training on personal protective equipment (PPE) selection (β = 3.41, SE = 1.54, aOR = 30.22, 95% CI: 1.47–620.87; p = 0.028) had significantly higher practice scores compared to those who did not. The study results have policy implications for infection prevention and control (IPC) in rural fire departments, both career and volunteer. A review of infection control policies is needed, especially as it relates to training and practice behaviors during emergency calls and in the dayroom. Results also suggest the need to develop strategies to improve the culture of PPE use and training on the selection of PPEs appropriate to the emergency response type. Full article

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a behaviorally defined neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in language, communication, and social function with an estimated prevalence rate of between 1 in 30 and 44 U.S. births. Gene/environment (G × E) interactions are widely regarded as the most probable explanation for idiopathic ASD, especially because some genes are selectively targeted by various environmental xenobiotics. Because deciduous teeth are a likely biomarker of in utero exposure, the present study investigated if the quantity of chemicals found in deciduous teeth differs between children with and without ASD. Twenty-two deciduous teeth from children with ASD and 20 teeth from typically developed children were prepared and analyzed using THE Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (GC × GC-TOF MS) with ChromaTOF version 23H2 software and Agilent 7890 gas chromatograph. The autism sample had significantly more chemicals in their teeth than the typical developing sample (99.4 vs. 80.7, respectively) (p < 0.0001). The majority of chemicals were identified as phthalates, plasticizers, pesticides, preservatives, or intermediary solvents used in the production of fragranced personal care or cleaning products or flavoring agents in foods. The known toxic analytes reported in this study are likely biomarkers of developmental exposure. Why there were greater concentrations of toxic chemicals in the teeth that came from children with ASD is unclear. A further understanding of the cavalcade of multiple biological system interactions (Interactome) could help with future efforts to reduce risks. Notwithstanding, the avoidance of pesticides, plastics, and scented personal care products may be warranted under the precautionary principle rule. Full article

The emergence of novel pathogens is a well-known epidemiological risk; however, the unexpected emergence of a truly novel coronavirus-mediated pandemic due to SARS-CoV-2 underscored the significance of understanding this contagion. The pandemic, due to novel coronavirus, termed COVID-19, caused unprecedented social, economic, and educational disruptions on a scale never seen before. In addition to social protocols, safe, effective, and affordable vaccines were developed within months, the cornerstone of the mitigation of this pandemic. We present an overview of the evolution of the pandemic from a historical perspective and describe its biology and behavior, especially the immunological aspects of the disease. We further provide an overview of therapeutics, treatment, and vaccine development to mitigate SARS-CoV-2. It is critical to understand the transmission mechanism of the disease to control and mitigate its progression. We describe cohort studies to identify secondary and tertiary syndromes. The transmission characteristics help its diagnosis and detection. During the pandemic, a lot of emphasis was placed on personal protection equipment. It is now concluded that the virus particles are spread by aerosol dispersion. While the recommended distance may not have been sufficient, the use of personal protective equipment and social distancing was helpful in close-quarters environments. Such protocols, in conjunction with safe and effective vaccines and personal hygiene, are among the safe practices. While we learn from our experience, this review provides a holistic overview of the pandemic and encapsulates the event in a historical context. In doing so, we hope to understand the SARS-CoV-2 virus and take sufficient precautionary measures to mitigate consequences during any subsequent similar pandemics. In addition to a wide-spectrum automated analytics system introduced by the authors earlier, we propose the use of artificial intelligence in conjunction with data analytics to minimize the risk of speculatively diagnosing agents incorrectly by employing a novel concept of cloud-based presumptive diagnosis. Full article

Cybersecurity is a significant concern for businesses worldwide, as cybercriminals target business data and system resources. Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) enhances organizational cybersecurity resilience by obtaining, processing, evaluating, and disseminating information about potential risks and opportunities inside the cyber domain. This research investigates how companies can employ CTI to improve their precautionary measures against security breaches. The study follows a systematic review methodology, including selecting primary studies based on specific criteria and quality valuation of the selected papers. As a result, a comprehensive framework is proposed for implementing CTI in organizations. The proposed framework is comprised of a knowledge base, detection models, and visualization dashboards. The detection model layer consists of behavior-based, signature-based, and anomaly-based detection. In contrast, the knowledge base layer contains information resources on possible threats, vulnerabilities, and dangers to key assets. The visualization dashboard layer provides an overview of key metrics related to cyber threats, such as an organizational risk meter, the number of attacks detected, types of attacks, and their severity level. This relevant systematic study also provides insight for future studies, such as how organizations can tailor their approach to their needs and resources to facilitate more effective collaboration between stakeholders while navigating legal/regulatory constraints related to information sharing. Full article

Media exposure to health communication contents related to the COVID-19 pandemic alone is inadequate to measure the influence of media on individuals in adopting precautionary behaviors against COVID-19, such as vaccine uptake. Certain individuals may pay attention to and be influenced by communication content. However, literature has suggested other instrumental determinants in developing and adopting health precautionary measures, such as culture or religion, especially regarding vaccination. In times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it is valuable to examine the interrelationships among psychological, sociocultural, and informational factors. This can provide valuable insights for policymakers in developing effective communication strategies. Drawing an analogy between the Media dependency theory (MDT) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model, this study unravels the factors underpinning the COVID-19 vaccine uptake intention among Pakistanis. The study utilized a cross-sectional research design and employed a survey method to gather data from a sample of 993 participants. The findings obtained from the PLS-SEM analysis confirmed that individuals relied on both traditional and social media to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings show that individuals rely more on the informational content disseminated through conventional media channels. The findings also suggest that individuals from Asian countries, such as Pakistan, tend to be more inclined toward collectivism. The findings about the moderating role of religiosity suggest that religious beliefs significantly shape individuals’ reliance on traditional media. Hence, this study has uniquely contributed to public health and media management by providing a strategy for managers to address disseminating misinformation related to religion and its impact on vaccination-related health issues. The study has theoretically confirmed the principles of media dependency theory. As a result, it is recommended that various information sources be utilized to cultivate resilience among individuals to manage health crises effectively. Full article

Forestry workers play a crucial role in implementing forest management programs, but their outdoor work exposes them to rising temperatures caused by global climate change, which poses potential health risks related to heat. This study specifically investigates the relationship between knowledge of heat-related issues, risk perception, and precautionary behavior among Indonesian forestry workers and paddy farmers in response to the escalating workplace heat exposure. Developing effective precautionary behavior is essential for preventing heat-related health disorders and promoting health protection programs. To investigate the association of the latent variables comprehensively, structured interviews were conducted with two occupational groups of outdoor workers, comprising 210 forestry workers and 215 paddy farmers. The findings indicate that increasing knowledge about heat-related issues promotes precautionary behavior, and risk perception acts as a mediator between knowledge and behavior. Additionally, the study highlights that the emotion of “dread” intensifies the perceived risk and predicts positive behavior changes. To enhance heat-related knowledge, exploring the potential use of a “fear” tone is important. In conclusion, comprehensive strategies should be implemented to promote precautionary behavior among forestry workers, particularly manual laborers, who are more vulnerable compared to farmers. Full article