Search Results (40)

Background/Objectives: Falls occurring at home and during leisure time among elderly individuals represent a serious public health issue in Portugal and worldwide. These incidents have a significant impact on healthcare systems and social support structures, as well as the personal and family lives of the victims. There is also a recognized gap in awareness among older adults regarding fall prevention, particularly regarding environmental hazards, the need for home modifications, and the adoption of safety behaviors, including necessary adjustments in their home environments. The present study was developed to enhance our understanding of the circumstances in which falling occurs in elderly people. Methods: A cross-sectional epidemiological study was carried out, analyzing data collected through the national emergency-based injury surveillance system in 2023. Results: The proportion of falls increased across age groups, with 34.9% of total falls occurring in the group aged 85 and over. These differences were statistically significant (p < 0.001). In all age groups, falls were more frequent among women, representing between 63.6% and 69.0% of episodes. Approximately 65.9% of falls occurred at home. The likelihood of falling was higher among the oldest age group (85+) and in the home. Conclusions: The results of this study confirm that falls in elderly people tend to occur more frequently with advancing age, particularly in environments where the most time is spent. This study suggests that fall-prevention campaigns should be specifically targeted towards older females in the home environment, with particular consideration given to morning routines as part of the recommended interventions. Full article

At present, China is facing a serious aging problem. Although community daycare centers have been built, they generally have problems such as inadequate facilities, single-service provision, and insufficient environmental design. These problems make it impossible to meet the multifaceted needs of the elderly in their old age, enhance their sense of wellbeing, and achieve sustainable development. Therefore, relevant policies indicate that the elderly service model of community day care centers should be actively constructed and upgraded. However, most of the existing research focuses on service models or single-design practice studies, and there are relatively few studies that address the integration of restorative environmental design and sustainability. Therefore, this paper systematically explores the current research status of restorative environmental design in daycare centers for the elderly through macro quantitative bibliometric analysis and micro qualitative content analysis based on Web of Science (WOS) data, then proposes design practice strategies, implementation paths, and evaluation methods to enhance wellbeing. Through keyword network visualization analysis, this paper identifies eight main clusters: physical literacy, public preschool services, social support, elderly day care centers, hospice use, designing leisure products, risk factors, and communicative skills. The high-frequency keywords “health”, “elderly”, “cultural diversity”, “children”, and “quality of life” are further categorized into “caregiving”, “Alzheimer’s disease”, “adult day care”, and “daycare centers”, with the latter split into three further categories: design strategy, implementation approach, and evaluation. In addition, this paper combines SDG3 goals such as reducing premature mortality from non-communicable diseases, achieving universal health coverage, etc., in order to explore the potential of resilience-based environmental design to promote the sustainable development of elderly daycare centers. This study not only complements the research related to restorative environmental design in daycare centers for the elderly but also provides specific guidelines and references for future environmental design, policy planning, and elderly service practices. Full article

As an important by-product of pork, pork skin can be processed into meat-based leisure food products to improve its utilization. In this study, microwave vacuum drying (MVD) technology was used to investigate the effects of microwave powers (600, 700, and 800 W) and processing duration on the drying characteristics and quality attributes of pork skin crisps (PSC). Five classical drying models were used to non-linearly fit the experimental data, and the Midilli et al. model was suitable for characterizing the MVD process of PSC. Before reaching a constant rate of drying, increasing microwave power and time can improve the brittleness and expansion ratio of PSC. In the constant rate drying stage, most of the free water in PSC was removed, showing the best brittleness and a stable expansion ratio. High power and long processing time can lead to serious lipid oxidation and change the flavor of PSC. Overall, the desired quality of PSC is recommended as 700 W for 6 min. This study can provide a reference for MVD application of meat-based by-product leisure foods. Full article

In recent years, with the increase in work intensity and the more complex working environment in the construction industry, the problem of job burnout among construction workers has become increasingly prominent. Job burnout not only affects workers’ physical health and work efficiency, leading to more serious safety hazards, but also deeply affects the well-being of construction workers. This study adopts an alternative perspective to explore the impact of professional sports event attendance on construction workers’ job burnout and to analyze the mediating role of leisure spillover in this process. Through a questionnaire survey of construction workers, 641 data points were collected for empirical statistical analysis. The results of the study show that the attention of construction workers’ sports career events can effectively reduce job burnout, and that leisure spillover plays a partial mediating role in this process. This study verifies the positive role of sports career events in promoting construction workers’ mental health through empirical analysis and provides practical references for occupational health management and the mental health development of construction worker groups. Full article

Sport psychology research of ultra-endurance (UE) athletes focused predominantly on their psychological characteristics, traits, and behaviors. However, their happiness and passion, as well as a unified framework for UE hobby phenomenon, were not sufficiently investigated. This study aims to: (1) identify the main contributors to happiness and passion of non-professional UE athletes; and (2) explore the possible relationships between types of sport passion, motivation, and athletic identity. During data collection, 116 non-professional UE athletes (mean age 43.66 years, SD = 8.97, 16.4% female) responded to an online questionnaire. Statistical analyses revealed that obsessive UE passion (p < 0.05) and amotivation (p < 0.05) predicted lower levels of happiness. A higher level of obsessive passion was predicted by extrinsic motivation (p < 0.005), amotivation (p < 0.05), and exclusivity identity (p < 0.001); a lower level was predicted by social identity (p < 0.05) and years in sports (p < 0.05). Weekly training hours and age correlated positively with passion strength, while amotivation was strongly negatively related to training volume. These results indicate that happiness of UE athletes depends on the type of sport passion formed and the quality of the underlying motivation: obsessive passion and amotivation seem to be the main enemies of happiness for UE athletes. This novel finding connecting passion, happiness, and motivation contributes to both a better understanding of the psychology of UE athletes and has practical implications for UE athletes, coaches, athletes’ social circles, and sport psychologists. Due to known maladaptive outcomes of obsessive passion, including its negative impact on overall well-being, health, and now also on happiness, its formation in UE athletes needs to be observed and prevented. While the study shows predictors of obsessive passion and high vs. low obsessive passion, future research should investigate how harmonious passion impacts athletes’ happiness, motivation, and identity. Likewise, research among the UE entourage would help to better understand the social impact of UE as a serious hobby and the formation of UE lifestyles. We also suggest our Temporal Framework for Progressive UE Engagement and Passion, which was further developed based on the results of this study, to be used and validated by sport psychologists. Full article

This study aimed to investigate why video gaming tends to become a serious leisure activity more easily than English learning, using a bioinformatics approach. Methods included interviews with 13 students aged 10–13 and an experimental research design with EEG (electroencephalograph) data from five students during rest, gaming, and English learning prior to and after a 4-week treatment. Interviews revealed that cram schools, school assignments, and future career aspirations influenced English learning habits. EEGs showed greater situational involvement in video games, but no significant improvement in English learning after the treatment. Encouraging English learning was challenging, perhaps due to participants’ busy schedules. Full article

The intrinsic attributes and service functions of community gardens (CGs) are closely related to the stage of national development and social needs. With the gradual implementation of China’s urban micro-renewal policy, many CGs have been gradually developed, but they still face problems such as poor operation and low participation, which urgently require us to carry out site-based research under China’s actual national conditions. Constructing a human’s perception value-oriented evaluation system and summarizing the optimization strategies according to the evaluation results can provide more systematic and targeted practical guidance for the construction of CGs in China. We developed a set of evaluation metrics for CGs based network text analysis, literature analysis, and expert opinions and collected 245 questionnaires from 20 existing CGs in Wuhan as a study sample. Using the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) method, we conducted statistical analysis of data for each type of CG. The results show that “Mosquito impact”, “Facility maintenance”, and “Social experience” are essential parts of residential-type community gardens (Resi-CGs) that are easily overlooked; that the users of commercial-type community gardens (Comm-CGs) consider that “Mosquito impact” is a serious deficiency; that campus-type community gardens (Camp-CGs) need to be optimized with regard to the aspects of “Crop stewardship” and “Leisure facilities”; and finally that there is no significant trend in the key improvement indicators of company-type community gardens (Comp-CGs) and the indicators like “Fitness and recreation experience”, “Crop diversity”, and “Aesthetics” need to be improved. According to the above results, we put forward specific optimization strategies to provide development guidelines and practical guidance for the future construction of CGs. Full article

There is no doubt that a coupling relationship between leisure tourism and the ecological environment exists, but how to realize their coordinated development on that basis is much less clear. In this paper, taking Xinjiang’s Ili region as the research object, we first established a leisure tourism and ecological environment evaluation index system using the mean-variance method to assign its weighting and then built a coupling coordination model. In this way, the coupling and coordination relationship between leisure tourism and the ecological environment of the Ili region over a recent 20-year period (2001–2020) was analyzed in depth. Our results show that the economic benefit of leisure tourism and the efficiency of ecological environment protection contribute most, respectively, to the leisure tourism and ecological environment subsystems. During the study period, the coupling and coordination of leisure tourism and ecological environment system in the Ili area could be divided into five types, namely, “serious disorder-system balanced development”, “moderate disorder-leisure tourism lags”, “near disorder-leisure tourism lags”, “barely coordination-leisure tourism lags’, and “primary coordination-system balanced development”. The comprehensive development level of leisure tourism has exceeded that of the ecological environment, and prominent ecological and environmental problems have gradually arisen. Therefore, when vigorously developing leisure tourism, we should pay more attention to the ecological environment’s problems so as to realize the sustainable, coordinated development of the two. Full article

This study investigates the effects of community environment, leisure, and social activities on the health status of older adults with diabetes, a serious disease in modern society. Data from the 2020 National Survey of Older Koreans were analyzed. Descriptive statistics were used to assess participants’ characteristics, and regression analyses were conducted to assess the effects of community environment, leisure, and social activities. Mediating effects were tested using hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping. The key results are as follows. (a) Community environmental satisfaction affected participation in leisure and social activities. (b) Community accessibility had a negative effect on subjective health, while community environmental satisfaction had a positive effect on subjective health, cognitive function, and chronic diseases. (c) Leisure activities had a positive effect on cognitive health, while social activities influenced subjective health, cognitive function, and chronic diseases. (d) Analysis of the mediating effect of leisure and social activities on the relationship between the community environment and health status of older adults with diabetes confirmed a partial mediating effect. To improve older adults’ mental and physical health, mere quantitative increases in the community environment will not be sufficient. It is necessary to cultivate and manage professionals to increase opportunities for participation by increasing social exchanges and systematically managing older adults’ health. Full article

Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a tendency for people to participate more frequently in outdoor leisure activities as opposed to indoor leisure activities. Leisure activities bestow various benefits. The purpose of this research is to study the effect of leisure attitude, serious leisure, recreational specialization, and leisure satisfaction among outdoor leisure activity participants in South Korea. Therefore, this research is used to analyze the relationships amongst leisure attitudes, serious leisure, recreational specialization, and leisure satisfaction among various theories about leisure. The participants in this study were collected from amongst 356 people who were frequent participants in outdoor leisure activities. For the data analysis, we used frequency, confirmatory analysis, reliability, correlation, and structural equaling modeling. The findings are as follows. First, leisure attitude had an influence on serious leisure and leisure satisfaction. Second, serious leisure had an effect on recreational specialization and leisure satisfaction. Third, recreational specialization had an influence on leisure satisfaction. According to the results of this study, leisure attitude and recreational specialization had insignificant effects, but all other hypotheses were accepted. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, it was various reasons such as, leisure attitude, serious leisure, recreational specialization, leisure satisfaction and which was continuous participation in outdoor leisure activities were confirmed in South Korea. Full article

Background: Rhinosinusitis is commonly treated with decongestants, analgesics, and local corticosteroids. Phytotherapeutics are also utilised for symptomatic relief, including cineole, the main component of eucalyptus oil. Methods: The current non-interventional, anonymised survey investigated quality of life in participants with rhinosinusitis (with or without additional symptoms of bronchitis) via the German version of a validated quality of life questionnaire (RhinoQol). Overall, 310 subjects administered a cineole preparation (Sinolpan) and 40 subjects applying nasal decongestant were recruited in German pharmacies. Results: Significant improvements in frequency (64.0%), bothersomeness (52.1%), and impact (53.9%) of rhinosinusitis symptoms were reported upon treatment with cineole over a mean treatment period of seven days (p < 0.001 each). The overall treatment efficacy of cineole was evaluated as good or very good by 90.0% of the participants, and the quality of life during work or leisure time improved upon treatment. Six (non-serious) possibly related side effects were reported in four participants who were administered cineole. The tolerability of the treatment was assessed as good or very good by 93.9% of the participants. Conclusions: Cineole can be considered as a safe and well-tolerated rhinosinusitis treatment conferring a clear improvement in quality of life outcomes. Full article

Air pollution risk factor on human health was surpassed only by high blood pressure, tobacco use and poor diet. Total number of deaths due to air pollution worldwide was estimated to 6.67 million people in 2019. In the European Union, 97% of the urban population is exposed to levels of fine particulate matter above the latest guideline levels set by the World Health Organization. Air pollution accounts for 20% of newborn deaths worldwide, most related to complications of low birth weight and preterm birth. Low birth weight and preterm birth are responsible for 1.8 million deaths worldwide. Bucharest is the capital city of Romania and one of the most polluted cities in Europe, ranking in the 9th position out of 96 of the top cities from Europe and in the 4th position out of 32 of the top cities in Eastern Europe, data from June 2022. The aim of this study was to measure the real time level of indoor particulate pollution levels in different indoor environments from Bucharest, during the pandemic period. The PM_2.5/PM₁₀ ratio and its rate of change were also determined for the measured data. The PM_2.5/PM₁₀ ratio and its rate of change were also calculated based on the measurement data. The PM_2.5/PM₁₀ ratio showed an upward trend on weekends compared to weekdays, suggesting a relationship with outdoor PM where leisure activities and traffic infiltrated the indoors. The fluctuation range of the PM_2.5/PM₁₀ ratio was 0.44~0.95, and low measured values were detected on weekdays. Of the seasons, the proportion of particulate in autumn and its rate of change tended to be higher than in summer. It was suggested that outdoor air may have permeated the room. In addition, the relationship was considered, such as it is a holiday period, there are few rainy days, the concentration of coarse particles is high, and the number of residents in the city decreases. When it comes to indoor air quality, the higher this ratio, the more serious the air pollution. PM₁₀ concentrations decreased by 29.1% in the absence of human activity and increased by 35.1% in the presence of humans. PM_2.5 concentration decreased by 30.3% without human activity and increased by 3.1% with the presence of humans. Certain trends were suggested for the resumption of human activity and an increase in PM_2.5 concentrations. The average relative difference between October 2021, a pandemic period, and October 2022, a post pandemic period, was 64% for PM₁₀ and 47% for PM_2.5. The pandemic period brought a significantly better indoor air quality from the particulate pollution point of view. Full article

Meaning-making has been one of the primary domains of religion throughout history, and some have claimed that this is religion’s central function. Yet, the modern era has seen a proliferation of other social institutions that generate meaning for people. Here we reflect on what religious meaning-making can tell us about meaning-making in secular institutions, with a particular focus on sport. Sport as a meaning-making institution is puzzling since sports are generally considered leisure activities, not serious enough to provide meaningful structure and purpose to human lives. Nonetheless, people do derive meaning from sport and we argue that because sport shares many features with religion, it offers a unique opportunity to examine a secular meaning-making institution. We offer a theoretical framework for the study of meaning-making that derives from our conceptual approach to religion as an adaptive system. We use this approach, and other anthropological research, to delineate seven general characteristics of human meaning-making systems: collective, constructed, subjective, narrative, relational, transcendent, and growth-oriented. These features of meaning-making systems highlight why sport has been so successful at offering meaning to sport enthusiasts, both fans and athletes alike. We conclude with a brief speculative evolutionary scenario that may explain our proclivity for seeking meaning, and why secular institutions will continue to fill that role when religious worldviews are not compelling. Full article

Higher injury rates among children is a significant post-COVID-19 phenomenon. This paper focuses on injury frequency in pre-school, as well as in younger school-age children, and maps the approaches used by families to prevent injuries and ensure child safety in the Czech Republic. The aim of the survey was to determine what types of serious injuries prevail among children, how parents or grandparents evaluate the awareness of children toward dangerous situations, and what opinions and preferences they have regarding educating their children about health and safety. The questionnaire survey among parents and grandparents (N = 278) of children from birth to the age of 12 was conducted at educational events for the wider public in 2017–2019. The survey showed that head injuries (27%) are prevalent among pre-school children; however, in children older than 5 years, injuries are due to increased outdoor activity and tend to be more associated with sports and leisure activities (fractures 31%, burns 23%). Most respondents considered their children to be more likely to recognize life-threatening risks, which is worrying in the context of the rising number of injuries in the Czech Republic in recent years. Full article

Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) represent an important group of environmentally saprophytic and potentially pathogenic bacteria that can cause serious mycobacterioses in humans and animals. The sources of infections often remain undetected except for soil- or water-borne, water-washed, water-based, or water-related infections caused by groups of the Mycobacterium (M.) avium complex; M. fortuitum; and other NTM species, including M. marinum infection, known as fish tank granuloma, and M. ulcerans infection, which is described as a Buruli ulcer. NTM could be considered as water-borne, air-borne, and soil-borne pathogens (sapronoses). A lot of clinically relevant NTM species could be considered due to the enormity of published data on permanent, periodic, transient, and incidental sapronoses. Interest is currently increasing in mycobacterioses diagnosed in humans and husbandry animals (esp. pigs) caused by NTM species present in peat bogs, potting soil, garden peat, bat and bird guano, and other matrices used as garden fertilizers. NTM are present in dust particles and in water aerosols, which represent certain factors during aerogenous infection in immunosuppressed host organisms during hospitalization, speleotherapy, and leisure activities. For this Special Issue, a collection of articles providing a current view of the research on NTM—including the clinical relevance, therapy, prevention of mycobacterioses, epidemiology, and ecology—are addressed. Full article