Search Results (14)

Amidst rapid societal changes and increasing urbanization, human connectivity with nature has declined, exacerbating public health concerns. This study assesses the efficacy of Shinrin-yoku, or ‘forest bathing’, in Wuyishan National Park as a simple and effective method to counteract the adverse health effects of contemporary lifestyles. Employing repeated-measures analysis of variance, forty-one participants were observed over three days across eight distinct forest settings. Techniques included eye-tracking for visual attention and soundscape perception assessments via questionnaires. Physiological responses were gauged through heart rate variability and skin conductance, while psychological evaluations utilized the Profile of Mood States (POMS) and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). Findings revealed that (1) natural soundscapes—especially birdsong, flowing water, wind, and bamboo raft sounds—and visual elements, such as distant mountains, streams, trees, Danxia landforms, tea gardens, and bamboo views, play pivotal roles in regulating heart rate variability, reducing arousal, and enhancing stress adaptation. Additionally, cultural landscapes, such as classical music and ancient structures, bolster parasympathetic activity. (2) Natural and cultural auditory stimuli, including flowing water and classical music, coupled with visual features, such as Danxia landforms, streams, distant mountains, lawns, and guide signs, effectively induce positive mood states, regulate mood disturbances, and enhance psychological well-being across diverse forest settings. These findings underscore the significant health benefits of immersive natural experiences and advocate for integrating forest-based wellness programs into public health strategies, offering compelling evidence for enriching life quality through nature engagement. Full article

Background: Healthy aging encompasses more than the absence of disease, emphasizing the preservation of functional abilities for enhanced well-being and quality of life. Nature-based interventions are scientifically proven contributors to healthy aging. Objective: To develop an evidence map showcasing nature-based interventions targeting older individuals’ health and well-being. Methods: The evidence map was developed through critical analysis of systematic reviews and clinical trials utilizing the tools AMSTAR2 and CONSORT. A systematic search spanning the past decade was conducted across databases: Cochrane, SCOPUS, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and LILACS. Results: Twelve articles met the eligibility criteria. Nature-based interventions such as forest bathing, hiking, therapeutic gardens, virtual reality, and forest sounds were identified. Outcomes were categorized into physical aspects (cardiovascular and pulmonary; neuro-immuno-endocrinological) and mental/behavioral aspects. The final map integrated interventions, outcomes, and quality assessments. Conclusions: The survey highlights the positive impact of nature-based interventions on the health of the elderly. This study provides insights across various domains, fostering the development of programs and policies in management to promote healthy aging. Regarding healthcare, it encourages discourse among professionals regarding the integration of nature-based practices for equitable care in both individual and group settings. Furthermore, it underscores the need for research in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly in Brazil, where the study was conducted. Full article

The present article traces the symbols of the eye (Greek: κόρη [maiden, concubine, pupil of the eye]; Latin: pūpilla; Hebrew: īshōn bath ʿāyin (‘apple of the eye’ or the ‘pupil of the eye’ [lit. ‘daughter of an eye’], i.e., the feminine divine Presence [Shĕkhīnāh]); Arabic: ʿayn; Persian: chashm) and the black pupil of the eye (Arabic: insān al-ʿayn; Persian: mardum-i chashm) in Sufism, both—in the context of Andalusian Sufism, specifically in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s poem entitled ‘I saw a Girl…’, in whose dark pupil or abyssal blackness (Arabic: ḥawar; Hebrew: īshōn), pleasure of the gaze (naẓar) and repository of the secret (sirr), resides the Beloved—as in the medieval Persian gnosis of the followers of al-Sahykh al-Akbar—Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī and Maḥmūd Shabistarī—, and the mystical poet Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī. Ibn al-ʿArabī and Shabistarī have had an explicit influence on the work of the reputed American video artist Bill Viola (Queens, New York, 1951), specifically in his two video/sound installations—He Weeps for You (1976) and I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986), in which the common image of the mirror pupil of the eye summarizes the entire ancient Neoplatonic conception of the θεωρία (contemplatio, speculatio). Full article

The purpose of the study was to synthesize and investigate the influence of geometrical structure, magnetism, and cytotoxic activity on core–shell platinum and iron–platinum (Fe/Pt) composite nanowires (NWs) for potential application in targeted chemotherapeutic approaches. The Pt-NWs and Fe/Pt composite NWs were synthesized via template electrodeposition, using anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes. The Fe/Pt composite NWs (Method 1) was synthesized using two electrodeposition steps, allowing for greater control of the diameter of the NW core. The Fe/Pt composite NWs (Method 2) was synthesized by pulsed electrodeposition, using a single electrolytic bath. The properties of the synthesized NWs were assessed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), Raman spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), inductively coupled plasma–optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), vibrating-sample magnetometry (VSM), and surface charge (zeta potential). A microscopy image analysis of the NWs revealed the presence of high-aspect-ratio NWs with nominal diameters of 40–50 nm and lengths of approximately <4 µm. The obtained powder XRD patterns confirmed the presence of a polycrystalline structure for both Pt NWs and Fe/Pt composite NWs. The potential utility of the synthesized NW nanoplatforms for anticancer activity was investigated using Tera 1 cells and Mouse 3T3 cells. Pt-NWs displayed modest cytotoxic activity against Tera 1 cells, while the Fe/Pt composite NWs (both Methods 1 and 2) demonstrated enhanced cytotoxic activity compared to the Pt-NWs on Tera 1 cells. The Fe/Pt composite NWs (Method 1) displayed ferromagnetic behavior and enhanced cytotoxic activity compared to Pt-NWs on Tera 1 cells, thus providing a sound basis for future magnetically targeted chemotherapeutic applications. Full article

Interventions such as forest bathing (slow, mindful nature walks) have been shown to increase our connection to nature and be an effective intervention for improving health and well-being. However, there is variation in the activities delivered during forest bathing and the guidance given. Few researchers have evaluated which activities, elements of nature, and senses are responsible for improvements in well-being. The current evaluation addresses this gap and also monitors the emotional state and nature connection following guided forest bathing walks. Participants (N = 1142) across 35 countries completed post-walk evaluation surveys online. Results suggest that well-being and nature connection were rated very highly following forest bathing activities. Experiencing happy feelings and trusting emotions were especially highly rated. The natural elements perceived as contributing the most to well-being were sound-related elements. In terms of sociodemographics, women had higher well-being and nature connection ratings than men; ratings were higher in specialised nature resort areas, with little difference between natural and urban park areas; higher scores were seen in the southern hemisphere and during hot or long-day seasons. This has implications for forest bathing, forest therapy, and nature-based training organisations and their guides who want to improve their method of intervention delivery, maximise well-being, and enhance nature connection. Full article

This paper essentially aims to identify coastal sites of great scenic value not (or barely) affected by human intrusions and propose sound management interventions to improve their landscape quality. Today, management of coastal areas in Italy is a very complex task essentially because of institutional fragmentation and overlapping of laws/regulations at the national, regional and municipal levels. It is estimated that only half of the country’s beaches are freely accessible and usable for bathing, i.e., 43% are occupied by private concessions and in 7.2% bathing is not allowed because of water pollution. Sites’ scenic quality was assessed using the Coastal Scenic Evaluation System (CSES), a robust semi-quantitative methodology based on a set of 26 physical/human parameters, weighting matrices parameters and fuzzy logic mathematics. An evaluation index (D) was afterward obtained for each site and used to classify them into five scenic classes. After a long process of field testing along the coasts of the Tyrrhenian, Ionic and Adriatic seas (25 municipalities, 7 provinces and 4 regions: Campania, Basilicata, Calabria and Apulia), a total of 36 sites were selected for this paper. Twenty-four sites fall within Class I, i.e., were extremely attractive (D ≥ 0.85; CSES) because of their exceptional geomorphological settings that favour a wide variety of coastal sceneries. Most of Class II (8) and Class III (4) sites could be upgraded by implementing clean-up operations or by reducing intrusive beach facilities. Meanwhile “private” beaches are usually cleaned; beach litter at remote/public sites represents a big concern to be challenged. Today, finding a free/aesthetic/clean beach without human intrusions in a fully natural environment is far more complex than it seems. Given this context, emphasis was particularly placed on beach litter and concessions aspects. Full article

Bonding failure between ceramic restoration and cement dramatically influences the success of resin-bonded ceramic restoration. This study evaluates the influence of various fitting surface treatments of 10% zirconia-reinforced lithium glass ceramic (ZLS) on its shear bonding strength to resin cement. Sixty blocks sized 8 × 8 × 2 mm³ were cut from a ZLS. All specimens were fired for 10 min and separated into six groups according to surface treatment: GI (Without treatment), GII (10% HF acid, Ultra Sound water bath US, and silane coupling agent S), GIII (HF, US, S, and bonding without light cure B1), GIV (HF, US, 37% phosphoric acid PA, US, S, B1), GV (HF, US, S, and bonding with light curing B2), VI (HF, US, PA, US, S, and B2). The treated specimens were cemented to a resin cement cylinder of 3.5 mm in diameter and 2 mm in height (Variolink, Esthetic. Neutral). A universal test machine was used to test the shear bond strength (SBS) and SEM for failure mode. The result indicated that applying a bonding agent on the prepared surface of ZLS without curing before cementation significantly increases the shear bond strength and affects the failure mode. In contrast, the application of PA does not influence bond strength. Full article

This study experimentally and numerically validates the commonly employed technique of laser-induced heating of a material in optical temperature sensing studies. Furthermore, the Er3+-doped glass microspheres studied in this work can be employed as remote optical temperature sensors. Laser-induced self-heating is a useful technique commonly employed in optical temperature sensing research when two temperature-dependent parameters can be correlated, such as in fluorescence intensity ratio vs. interferometric calibration, allowing straightforward sensor characterization. A frequent assumption in such experiments is that thermal homogeneity within the sensor volume, that is, a sound hypothesis when dealing with small volume to surface area ratio devices such as microresonators, but has never been validated. In order to address this issue, we performed a series of experiments and simulations on a microsphere supporting whispering gallery mode resonances, laser heating it at ambient pressure and medium vacuum while tracking the resonance wavelength shift and comparing it to the shift rate observed in a thermal bath. The simulations were done starting only from the material properties of the bulk glass to simulate the physical phenomena of laser heating and resonance of the microsphere glass. Despite the simplicity of the model, both measurements and simulations are in good agreement with a highly homogeneous temperature within the resonator, thus validating the laser heating technique. Full article

Emulsion technology is widely used in the preparation of cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, drug delivery, and other daily necessities, and surfactants are frequently used to prepare these emulsions because of the lack of reliable surfactant-free emulsification techniques. This is disadvantageous because some surfactants pose health hazards, cause environmental pollution, have costly components, and place limitations on process development. In this paper, an efficient method for surfactant-free nano-emulsification is presented. In addition, we discuss the effects of different operating parameters on the oil particle size, as well as the effect of the particle size on the emulsion stability. Specifically, we compared three surfactant-free ultrasonic emulsification technologies (horn, bath, and focused ultrasonic systems). The focused ultrasonic system, which concentrates sound energy at the center of the dispersion system, showed the best performance, producing emulsions with a particle size distribution of 60–400 nm at 400 kHz. In addition, phase separation did not occur despite the lack of surfactants and thickeners, and the emulsion remained stable for seven days. It is expected to be widely used in eco-friendly emulsification processes. Full article

Psychosocial stress, tension, and depression are quite common in many parts of the developed world. Integrative medicine techniques which may potentially increase spiritual and emotional well-being may be useful in combating chronic psychosocial stress, as well as challenges with depression and excessive tension. The present observational study examines the effect of singing-bowl sound healing on emotional and spiritual well-being and particularly examines interrelationships between changes in spiritual well-being with changes in tension and depressed mood post-sound healing. Participants experienced a sound healing environment of vibrational musical instruments such as singing bowls (bell-like instruments), gongs, and other vibrational instruments. Sixty-two participants were examined in an observational study using singing-bowl sound healing. Emotional and spiritual well-being were examined by utilizing standardized questionnaires. Results revealed significant correlations between improvements in scores of spiritual well-being and reductions in scores of tension and depression post-sound healing. Moreover, effects varied by age of the study participants. Specifically, the association between spiritual well-being improvement and depression improvement was strongest for ages 31–40, while spiritual well-being improvement and tension improvement associations were strongest for ages 51–60. Implications for applying sound healing meditations as a potential low-cost, low-technology therapeutic technique are discussed for emotional and spiritual well-being. Full article

In the clinical setting, the pathophysiology of sensorineural hearing loss is poorly defined and there are currently no diagnostic tests available to differentiate between subtypes. This often leaves patients with generalized treatment options such as steroids, hearing aids, or cochlear implantation. The gold standard for localizing disease is direct biopsy or imaging of the affected tissue; however, the inaccessibility and fragility of the cochlea make these techniques difficult. Thus, the establishment of an indirect biopsy, a sampling of inner fluids, is needed to advance inner ear diagnostics and allow for the development of novel therapeutics for inner ear disease. A promising source is perilymph, an inner ear liquid that bathes multiple structures critical to sound transduction. Intraoperative perilymph sampling via the round window membrane of the cochlea has been successfully used to profile the proteome, metabolome, and transcriptome of the inner ear and is a potential source of biomarker discovery. Despite its potential to provide insight into inner ear pathologies, human perilymph sampling continues to be controversial and is currently performed only in conjunction with a planned procedure where the inner ear is opened. Here, we review the safety of procedures in which the inner ear is opened, highlight studies where perilymph analysis has advanced our knowledge of inner ear diseases, and finally propose that perilymph sampling could be done as a stand-alone procedure, thereby advancing our ability to accurately classify sensorineural hearing loss. Full article

Prolonged exposure to airborne ultrasound in a workplace can have a detrimental influence on a worker’s well-being. Given the ever-increasing use of ultrasonic industrial equipment, it is of vital importance—and may also be regulated by law—to monitor ultrasound exposure during a normal workday as part of workplace risk assessment. However, the devices currently utilized exhibit limitations with regard to both their operational frequency and their portability (wearability). In this paper, the first prototype of a high-frequency and ultrasound personal exposimeter is presented in the light of the latest national and international standards governing high-frequency and ultrasonic noise measurement in the field of occupational health monitoring. The prototype was tested in the laboratory environment in order to assess its sound level detection capabilities in both the audible and ultrasonic frequency ranges. Several common industrial scenarios—including an ultrasonic welding machine, an ultrasonic cleaning bath, and a compressed air gun—were simulated in a laboratory environment. For each simulated set-up, a corresponding high-frequency or ultrasonic signal was fed through a specially prepared generation chain. Each experimental scenario was initially surveyed with an ultrasound level meter previously tested up to 100 kHz. This was followed by a measurement with the prototype. For this study, the simulated sound signals varied between 10 kHz and 40 kHz on the frequency scale and between 60 dB and 90 dB in amplitude. The portability of the prototype, which may be required to be worn throughout an entire workday (e.g., 8 h), was also considered. All the experiments were performed on a customized ultrasound measurement set-up within a free-field environment located at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig, Germany. Results obtained suggest a good agreement between the measurements performed with both devices in the louder areas of the sound fields produced. Because the overall measurement uncertainty is highly dependent on the specificity of the individual measurement set-up and measurement procedure, an uncertainty budget estimated for the prototype considers electro-acoustical contributions only. Full article

A soundwave is transmitted by adjacent molecules in the medium, and depending on the type of sound, it exhibits various characteristics such as frequency, sound pressure, etc. If the acoustic wavelength of the soundwave is sufficiently long compared with the size of an acoustic element, physical analysis within the sound element could be simplified regardless of the shape of the acoustic element: this is called “long wavelength approximation”. A Helmholtz resonator, a representative acoustic element which satisfies the “long wavelength theory”, consists of a neck part and a cavity part. The Helmholtz resonators can absorb certain frequencies of sound through resonance. To exhibit attenuation properties at ultrasound range, the Helmholtz resonator should be made into a microscale since Helmholtz resonators should satisfy the “long wavelength approximation”. In this study, Helmholtz resonator inspired acoustic elements were fabricated using MEMS technology, and acoustic attenuation experiments in a water bath were conducted using various shapes and materials. As a result, the fabricated samples showed admirable attenuation properties up to ~13 dB mm⁻¹ at 1 MHz. The results were analyzed to derive the necessary conditions for the fabrication of acoustic elements with acoustic attenuation properties in ultrasound range. Full article

Medical ultrasonic arrays are typically characterized in controlled water baths using measurements by a hydrophone, which can be translated with a positioning stage. Characterization of 3D acoustic fields conventionally requires measurements at each spatial location, which is tedious and time-consuming, and may be prohibitive given limitations of experimental setup (e.g., the bath and stage) and measurement equipment (i.e., the hydrophone). Moreover, with the development of new ultrasound sequences and modalities, multiple measurements are often required to characterize each imaging mode to ensure performance and clinical safety. Acoustic holography allows efficient characterization of source transducer fields based on single plane measurements. In this work, we explore the applicability of a re-radiation method based on the Rayleigh–Sommerfeld integral to medical imaging array characterization. We show that source fields can be reconstructed at single crystal level at wavelength resolution, based on far-field measurements. This is herein presented for three practical application scenarios: for identifying faulty transducer elements; for characterizing acoustic safety parameters in focused ultrasound sequences from 2D planar measurements; and for estimating arbitrary focused fields based on calibration from an unfocused sound field and software beamforming. The results experimentally show that the acquired pressure fields closely match those estimated using our technique. Full article