Search Results (25,712)

Tourism seasonality affects destination sustainability by concentrating demand into a short period and leaving accommodation capacity underused off-season. This study examines whether Romanian tourism reverted to its pre-pandemic seasonal pattern once volumes recovered, comparing 2019 with 2025 on monthly INS TEMPO-Online series for arrivals, overnight stays and net occupancy, from which operating capacity is derived. Concentration is measured with four complementary indices, nationally, for exhaustive partitions by visitor origin and accommodation category, and for four destination case studies. Arrivals exceeded the 2019 level by 4.89% while overnight stays returned to it, the average length of stay fell by 5.25%, operating capacity rose by 14.03%, and net occupancy fell in every month from 34.15% to 29.76%. The national Gini index of arrivals rose by only 1.20%, less than the change recorded between the pre-pandemic calendar years 2018 and 2019; counterfactual reweighting attributes this near-stability to offsetting component movements. Evidence for a change in national structure therefore rests on the seasonal-group and dispersion measures rather than on month-level inequality. Six of twelve series exceed the pre-pandemic year-on-year change on all three tested measures, among them operating capacity, non-resident arrivals and the seaside cases. The analysis is descriptive; national aggregates understate the redistribution it documents. Full article

Global climate change effects on development and sustainability are currently growing. Many of the planet’s climates present temperature increases, with the Iberian Peninsula in Europe considered as a hotspot. Action in public social housing buildings is highly considered, as a large portion was built before the introduction of thermal regulations, presents poor thermal performance and has users with low resources, representing a health-related concern. This study addresses the climatic sensitivity of a representative case study dwelling regarding the impact of constructive retrofit measures in the building envelope on improving thermal performance for heat conditions, conducted for the Beira Interior region, Portugal. Resorting to a calibrated numerical model, dynamic thermal simulations for current, future and extreme climate scenarios were performed. The resulting indoor temperatures were assessed regarding indoor thermal discomfort and overheating. The results show that the combined effect of regulation-compliant envelope measures, reinforced insulation and higher ventilation achieves considerable thermal comfort improvement, while only investing in high thermal insulation thickness achieves no substantial benefits. Controlled ventilation strategies can be highly relevant for retrofitted buildings, also due to constraints related to occupancy influence or possible thermal insulation limited effects. Heat-related discomfort is an issue, although smoother heat conditions require caution due to cool discomfort. Full article

Edge databases must coordinate replica freshness, consistency requirements, and governance restrictions despite intermittent connectivity. This study specifies an Edge-Aware Database Management System (EA-DBMS) architecture centered on the Policy-Aware Distributed Edge Catalog (PADEC). Its architectural novelty within the reviewed literature is a shared metadata interface connecting these constraints to operator placement, local transaction admission, and reintegration. This design provides a basis for keeping permitted operations local during outages and combining authorized results across sites under explicit contracts. A worked example demonstrates how joint filtering rejects prohibited and stale candidates. The analysis formalizes policy-constrained operator placement and distinguishes NP-hard general cases from three subclasses admitting polynomial-time exact solutions. A reproducible analytical evaluation derives conditional latency trade-offs from published measurements, documented proxies, and explicit assumptions. At a 10 ms proxy catalog cost, local reads benefit in one of four paired network scenarios at the low end of the published execution-time range. Under baseline assumptions, reductive aggregation becomes beneficial above approximately 401 kB per window at a reduction factor of 0.189. In the modeled mixture, global coordination reduces the mean-latency advantage. The design targets industrial telemetry, disconnected local processing, and data-residency-constrained analytics, with catalog lookup cost and matched edge–cloud execution times as priorities for empirical evaluation. Full article

Background/Objectives: Musculoskeletal symptoms (MSS) are among the leading causes of pain and functional limitation worldwide, yet population-level evidence linking excess body weight to MSS in Latin America remains scarce. This study examined the association between body mass index (BMI) and the prevalence of non-traumatic MSS in the Chilean population. Methods: A cross-sectional secondary analysis was conducted using data from the 2009–2010 Chilean National Health Survey (n = 4689). MSS were assessed with the validated COPCORD CCQ-ILAR questionnaire, covering 12 anatomical regions over the previous seven days. BMI was categorized as <25, 25 to <30, and ≥30 kg/m². Survey-weighted negative binomial and logistic regression models were fitted, adjusting for age, sex, educational level, and area of residence. Results: Over half the sample (55.26%) reported at least one MSS. Each one-unit increase in BMI was associated with a 2.8% higher expected symptom count (CR = 1.028; 95% CI: 1.019–1.037). Compared with participants with BMI < 25 kg/m², those with overweight and obesity had 55.7% and 98.4% higher odds of reporting ≥1 MSS, respectively. The knee, shoulder, lower back, and ankle showed the steepest prevalence gradients across BMI strata. After correction for multiple comparisons, overweight remained associated with lower-back, finger, and knee symptoms, whereas obesity remained associated with shoulder, wrist, finger, knee, and ankle symptoms. Age and female sex were also independently associated with greater symptom burden. Conclusions: Higher BMI was positively associated with a greater overall MSS burden. Region-specific analyses identified robust associations in selected weight-bearing and upper-limb regions after correction for multiple comparisons. Because of the cross-sectional design, these findings do not establish that reducing BMI would reduce MSS. In addition, as the data were collected in 2009–2010, the prevalence estimates should not be interpreted as representing the current MSS burden in Chile. Full article

This paper explores the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in shaping consumption, and the contribution AI might make to transitioning to a responsible consumption and production regime, in line with Goal 12 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This paper draws on Practice Theory, an established framework for studying sustainable consumption practices. Based on this framework, the authors suggest that whilst in traditional consumption, the expertise required to consume resides in human subjects, in AI-shaped consumption this expertise resides in AI algorithms. This may have implications for consumers’ agency and can put them at disadvantage. Indeed, the EU has proposed regulations to control the use of AI by providers. The paper draws on two case studies, Ant Forest, a Chinese app which prompts consumers to adopt responsible consumption practices and Mobility as a Service, a platform-based mobility offering. We find that whilst the former contributes to establishing consumers’ expertise in sustainable behavior—for example, through gaming—the latter may remove consumers’ choice by performing some of the consumption practices itself, such as selecting sustainable means of transportation. Our contribution is the formulation of a version of Practice Theory which is adapted to AI. Full article

Sustainability debates in the built environment have concentrated on adaptation and retrofit as the principal mechanisms for extending building life and reconciling financial and social value. The repairs service, arguably the most routine and continuous point of contact between landlords and the fabric and inhabitants of a building has attracted comparatively little scholarly attention, despite its equal claim to be a site of sustainable practice. This study addresses neglect by reframing responsive repairs as a relational function contributing to wider social sustainability goals, rather than a reactive, transactional exercise in asset maintenance. A single exploratory case study of an innovative, bespoke repairs service for older residents introduced by an English social housing organisation is examined through a qualitative analysis from a professional perspective. Quantitative outcomes and resident evaluation are not incorporated in this research, rather semi-structured interviews and a workshop with frontline and strategic professionals embedded within a volatile regulatory and legislative context, capture practitioner-informed reflections on novel practice. Findings suggest that reframing repairs as an interaction, rather than a transaction, generates complex, mutually reinforcing, and often unanticipated outcomes spanning landlord–resident relations, inter-professional working practices, and organisational culture, with perceived implications for resident wellbeing, while exposing the persistent methodological challenge of evaluating such intangible, relational value. By extending the sustainability lens to the everyday practice of repairs, the paper offers original empirical evidence and conceptual insights to inform scholars and policymakers navigating the sector’s evolving social and environmental remit. Full article

Despite effective antiretroviral therapy (ART), people with HIV (PWH) continue to experience chronic oral mucosal disease characterized by persistent T-cell inflammation, regulatory T cell (Treg) dysfunction, impaired CD8⁺ tissue resident cell (TRM) immunity and microbial dysbiosis. Emerging evidence implicates dysregulated polyamine metabolism and mucosal T-cell dysfunction as key mediators of these pathological processes. However, the effects of polyamines on the oral mucosal epithelium remain largely unexplored. The paradoxical dose-dependent effects of polyamines on oral epithelial barrier integrity are critically discussed, and a unified mechanistic model is proposed. This paper also highlights single-cell transcriptomic data from our laboratory that implicates epithelial cell barrier dysfunction in PWH and offers a perspective on how it may worsen persistent inflammation even after combined anti-retroviral treatment. This hypothesis reports current knowledge on how HIV-induced polyamine overload and Fusobacterium-derived putrescine could drive oral epithelial barrier disruption through interconnected mechanisms involving oxidative stress, α6β4 integrin–laminin-332 signaling, HIF-1α stabilization, tight junction disorganization, and innate immune dysregulation. Finally, we outline key future research directions, including therapeutic targeting of polyamine oxidation to restore oral mucosal homeostasis in PWH. Full article

Mathematical expression evaluation is a critical component in high-performance software systems. Traditional state-dependent algorithms resist Single Instruction, Multiple Data vectorization, while managed runtime environments introduce Garbage Collection overhead. This paper presents a hybrid parsing pipeline that isolates sequential state operations from parallelizable tasks, combining a SIMD-accelerated lexical analyzer with a vector evaluator that allocates no managed memory in its inner loop. Against established .NET evaluators the pipeline leads only below a few hundred evaluations of a given expression (approximately 230 on AMD and 310 on Intel), above which compiling once to a delegate dominates, and vectorized tokenization inverts beyond roughly thirty thousand characters of input. AVX-2 (Vector256) instructions reduce the isolated evaluation of a seven-operand reference expression to 69.30 ns with zero bytes allocated, while the complete pipeline allocates 1216 bytes and remains subject to generational collection. Under a fixed duty cycle holding delivered work constant, active-state residency falls from 69.1% to 51.6% and package energy falls by 15.9%, a measured effect rather than an inferred one. Benchmark-synchronized power instrumentation shows that the energy cost of wider vectors on AMD Zen 4 is expressed in time rather than in power. On both platforms 512-bit packed operations essentially retain the latency of their 256-bit counterparts but consume twice the issue slots. In the evaluation workload they take longer. Where lanes are fully occupied and operations independent, the ordering reverses and the 512-bit path draws less power and consumes 23.8% less energy per element. Power and energy were measured on the AMD platform only. The Intel platform supports the latency and allocation comparison. Full article

This study investigates perceptions of poverty and its underlying determinants among a purposively sampled population of social-benefit recipients in Uzbekistan. For this purpose, a survey was conducted with 1949 respondents who receive social benefits. The collected data were analyzed using an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach. Initially, thematic analysis was conducted to identify perceptions of poverty. The output of the thematic analysis was the emergence of nine themes that illustrate the characteristics of individualistic, structural, fatalistic, and cultural attributions of poverty perceptions. Based on the output of the thematic analysis, multinomial logistic regression was conducted. The selection of the base category was based on both the theoretical framework and survey output. The regression results indicated that age, regional poverty cluster and place of residence were the most statistically significant demographic factors influencing perceptions of poverty. Among the monetary variables, personal income demonstrated the strongest explanatory power. Overall, the findings suggest that, within this sampled population, perceptions of poverty are predominantly shaped by individualistic attributions rather than structural, fatalistic or cultural ones. However, these results should be considered with caution as they may reflect internalized poverty stigma. Full article

Interleukin-33 (IL-33) belongs to the IL-1 superfamily and is defined by functional duality; it resides constitutively within barrier epithelial cell nuclei under homeostatic conditions but is released into the extracellular compartment, where it operates as an alarmin that initiates ST2-dependent type 2 inflammation, upon cellular damage. In atopic dermatitis (AD), IL-33 is markedly overexpressed in lesional keratinocytes, and its extracellular cytokine activity has long been regarded as the principal disease-relevant function. However, accumulating evidence indicates that nuclear IL-33 itself may play an active, receptor-independent role in keratinocyte biology. This review reconciled two apparently opposing paradigms of nuclear IL-33 whereby it acts as (1) a passive sequestration checkpoint that restrains alarmin activity in several cell types and (2) an active transcriptional regulator of the epidermal barrier in keratinocytes. We analyzed the proposed role of nuclear IL-33 as a putative intracellular hub of barrier dysfunction by summarizing how the major type 2 cytokines in AD (i.e., IL-4/IL-13, IL-31, and TSLP) converge on it to suppress barrier and differentiation genes, as well as filaggrin, loricrin, keratins, claudin-1, and antimicrobial peptide. We further explored the limited clinical efficacy of extracellular IL-33/ST2-targeting biologics in AD, compared with that of nuclear-IL-33-directed strategies, including topical trehalose, which are barrier-restorative, mechanistically targeted therapeutics. As this model derives largely from in vitro keratinocyte and three-dimensional skin studies, nuclear IL-33 should therefore be regarded as a putative, context-dependent cofactor whose direct chromatin action and in vivo relevance remain to be established. Full article

Background objective: This study explored the level of support needs of mothers of children with Down syndrome (DS) in Kuwait following postnatal diagnosis, across four domains: educational needs, professional needs, social needs, and primary caregiver support needs. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 82 mothers of children with DS residing in Kuwait. Descriptive statistics were calculated, while group comparisons (in terms of needs) were conducted using nonparametric tests, and internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. Reliability estimates ranged from α = 0.79 to α = 0.89 across the four subscales, with an overall alpha of 0.93. Results: Participants reported high levels of need across all domains, including educational, professional, social, and primary caregiver support needs, with a median score of 5 on a 1–5 scale (Likert). The most prominent finding in group comparison was the significant association between family size and the social needs score (p = 0.012), where the median was 5 (IQR: 4.89–5.00) for family size < 3, and it decreased as we moved towards larger families, until it reached 3.78 for family size > 8. Conclusions: Caregiver demands following a postnatal DS diagnosis were multidimensional and strongly interconnected. Findings underscore the importance of coordinated post-diagnosis services that addressed informational, professional, social, and practical support needs for mothers and primary caregivers. Full article

Background: Hospital transfers of residents with dementia may provide them with access to acute diagnosis and treatment but also disrupt their continuity of care, which is essential for residents’ stability, safety, and quality of care. The aim of this study was to examine how transfer decisions are produced within the organizational context of long-term dementia care and how they may affect continuity of care. Methods: A qualitative descriptive design was used, supplemented by retrospective referral data. The study was conducted in a 200-bed dementia-specialist long-term care facility. Referral records over three years were reviewed to describe transfer patterns, reasons, and outcomes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 nurses and 2 physicians. Referral data were analyzed descriptively, and interviews were analyzed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA). Results: A total of 578 referrals to hospital emergency departments were identified; 34.9% resulted in hospitalization. Three themes were identified: (1) From recognition to authorization, describing interprofessional hierarchy in referral decision-making; (2) When uncertainty becomes risk, describing how limited diagnostic and treatment capacity shifted decisions toward transfer; and (3) Protecting continuity, describing staff concerns about the disruptive effects of transfer. Overall, decisions were shaped by clinical uncertainty, organizational conditions, and continuity-of-care concerns. Conclusions: Transfer decisions for residents with dementia are context-dependent organizational judgments, not solely responses to acute clinical deterioration. Strengthening institutional capacity, decision-support tools, staff training, and advance care planning may help preserve continuity of care, reduce avoidable disruption, and improve resident safety and quality of care. Full article

The recovery of waste heat from post-combustion gases is often limited by sulfuric acid condensation, which promotes severe low-temperature corrosion. Hydrophobic and superhydrophobic coatings promote dropwise condensation rather than filmwise mode, potentially reducing the residence time of the condensed liquid on the surface. However, the dynamics of sulfuric acid dropwise condensation on such surfaces remain poorly understood. To address this gap, an individual-based model is developed to simulate the evolution of the condensing droplet population. Each droplet is tracked from nucleation to shear-driven sliding, accounting for growth by direct condensation and coalescence with other droplets. The heat and mass transfer model, used to evaluate the condensation rate of sulfuric acid for each droplet, includes latent heat transfer at the liquid–vapor interface and convection in the surrounding gas phase. Given its low mole fraction, all the sulfur trioxide is assumed to react with water to form sulfuric acid. Assuming that the wall temperature is below the acid dew point but above the water dew point, the composition of the condensed H₂SO₄-H₂O solution is determined from vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE). The numerical model is validated against experimental data from the literature. The results show that, compared with hydrophilic surfaces, superhydrophobic surfaces substantially reduce the wet fraction of solid substrate and the residence time of condensed droplets, suggesting a lower risk of low-temperature corrosion. Full article

Public-space experiences in mountain tourism villages involve environmental appraisal, bodily comfort, and place-related affect, but their associations with restorative perception require examination based on user feedback. Using Sanpo Town, China, as a case study, this study asks whether Local Environmental Perception (LEP), Perceived Microclimate Comfort (PMC), and Place Attachment (PA), operationalized as shared place-related affect, are distinguishable constructs; how they are associated with Restorative Perception (RP); and whether the findings are consistent across analytical methods and resident–tourist groups. An on-site non-probability survey conducted in May–June 2025 yielded 591 questionnaires from 300 residents and 291 tourists. Robust maximum-likelihood structural equation modeling was supplemented by ordinal-item analyses, coefficient-product decomposition, composite-score robustness checks, and exploratory group comparisons. LEP, PMC, and PA each retained a positive conditional association with RP, with standardized coefficients of 0.329, 0.259, and 0.202, respectively; the model explained 50.7% of the variance in RP. HTMT and alternative-model comparisons provided qualified support for distinguishing LEP from PMC, although their correlation slightly exceeded the square root of PMC’s average variance extracted. The latent-path comparisons did not detect clear resident–tourist differences under the present data and model specifications; this should not be interpreted as evidence of group equivalence. Familiarity-adjusted composite-score analyses retained positive associations, while a nominal group difference in the LEP–PMC path did not survive correction across six comparisons. The findings support a multidimensional evaluation of the experiences of users encountered in the surveyed public spaces. They do not establish causal design priorities, objective microclimatic performance, population representativeness, or measured recovery relative to a pre-exposure baseline. Full article

Consequence-based dam classification is central to dam safety management, yet screening and regulatory approaches often rely on proxy measures of downstream exposure without explicitly considering hydraulic severity or wave arrival time. This limits discriminatory capacity, particularly where detailed exposure, demographic, evacuation, and asset-level consequence data are unavailable. This study introduces the Assessment of Technical Simplified Consequences (AT-SAC), a screening-oriented framework using widely available geospatial data. AT-SAC integrates five dimensions—Population at Risk (PAR), Wave Arrival Time at Residences (WTR), critical infrastructure (INF), environmentally sensitive areas (ESA), and socioeconomic disruption (SD)—within hydraulically conditioned consequence zones. The internal behavior of the classification structure was evaluated across 592 logically admissible consequence combinations under the baseline and two alternative weighting schemes, showing limited sensitivity to the relative weighting of the two life-safety criteria. Applied to four dams in northeastern Brazil with contrasting structural and downstream exposure conditions, AT-SAC differentiated the cases across four consequence tiers, from Significant to Extreme. Compared with two Brazilian regulatory classification systems, AT-SAC provided greater differentiation by separating exposure magnitude from response-related constraints, supporting transparent consequence-based prioritization under limited-data conditions. Full article