Search Results (12,008)

The Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture (GSAs) emphasize that formulating proper regional development plans is essential for achieving sustainable growth in aquaculture. Conventional research has limitations in allocating resources from a regional scale, subject to various constraints relating to the social, economic, environmental, and other domains. To fill this research gap, this study proposes an inexact regional aquaculture system planning model (IRAM) to optimally allocate resources including energy, water, area, media, and labor among various aquaculture species across multiple aquafarms under uncertainty. The model is applied to Fujian Province, China, over a 15-year planning horizon (2026–2040, three 5-year periods). As model-based scenario insights derived under specific assumptions, the main findings are as follows: (i) the system cost would increase by [18.75, 20.00]%, while the product output would greatly rise by [41.57, 47.54]% from period 1 to period 3; (ii) renewable energy (wind and solar) would supply [60.32, 81.05]% of the total electricity by period 3; (iii) shallow-sea culture ([48.6, 50.2]%) and pond culture ([17.6, 18.8]%) would receive the highest media allocation via internet platforms, supporting community communication; and (iv) pollutant and carbon emissions would decline due to the adoption of low-carbon feed and renewable energy penetration. The findings are scenario-dependent, and their practical applicability relies on the sensitivity analysis and model code/data availability discussed in the main text. One limitation lies in its inadequate ability to handle stochastic and fuzzy information commonly encountered in real-world planning problems. Full article

Confronted with severe global challenges, including water scarcity, excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and heavy metal contamination in soils, conventional agricultural technologies exhibit marked limitations in integrated water–fertilizer management and non-point source pollution control. Leveraging their excellent water retention capacity, intelligent sustained-release properties, and environmental responsiveness, hydrogels offer innovative solutions to advance sustainable agricultural development. This review comprehensively outlines the fundamental types, crosslinking mechanisms, and key functional properties of hydrogels, with a focused discussion on their agricultural deployment as high-efficiency soil conditioners, fertilizer vectors, and pesticide carriers; it deciphers the microscopic water-holding mechanisms under the tristate water model, delineates the divergent water-uptake and retention behaviors between ionic and non-ionic hydrogels, and clarifies the cyclic water-holding and release mechanisms of hydrogels during soil amelioration. Thise paper further synthesizes hydrogel-enabled environmental remediation applications, in which heavy metals and pesticide residues in soils and aquatic systems are removed via functional-group coordination adsorption or photocatalytic degradation; concurrently, hydrogels have been shown to activate plant systemic immunity through calcium-signaling pathways, thereby inducing broad-spectrum antiviral defense responses. Moreover, hydrogels can be integrated into precision agriculture frameworks to enable real-time monitoring of crop physiological status and to support targeted irrigation and fertilization management. This work also evaluates the role of hydrogels in promoting seed germination, root system development, crop metabolic regulation, and stress resilience, while introducing tailored application strategies across distinct plant growth stages. Their documented economic advantages include water conservation, enhanced crop yields, reduced dependence on synthetic fertilizers, and lower labor costs. Nevertheless, the large-scale implementation of hydrogels continues to face multifaceted challenges—particularly poor degradability and latent ecological risks, as conventional polyacrylamide (PAM)-based gels resist soil mineralization and retain potentially neurotoxic monomers, leaving a critical gap in multi-annual field data concerning their non-target interference with native soil aggregate evolution, pore distribution, and rhizospheric carbon–nitrogen footprints. Mechanistically, many hydrogels with tensile strengths below 1 MPa are highly susceptible to three-dimensional network collapse under high-salinity osmotic shock and tillage mechanical stress, exhibiting a precipitous drop in water retention after more than three wet–dry cycles due to deficient long-term structural stability. Compounding these technical gaps are elevated production costs and low farmer adoption, driven by the absence of texture-specific performance thresholds—such as an available water increment ≥ 40% for sandy soils—and the lack of established life-cycle cost models and farmer incentive mechanisms for bio-based hydrogels. Moving forward, hydrogel technology should pivot toward materials innovation and cost-reduction engineering to broaden its applicability, employ ≥3-year, multi-habitat regional trials to delineate ecological benefit–risk boundaries, and ultimately position hydrogels as pivotal enablers of sustainable, green agricultural paradigms. Full article

The availability of environmental indicators at the NUTS-2 level remains limited in European statistical sources, often resulting in regional sustainability analyses that reflect short-term policy dynamics rather than long-term conditions. To address this gap, this paper proposes a parsimonious framework based on a spatial stock indicator measuring the share of artificial land within each region (ENV_ARTIFICIAL_LAND), derived from CORINE Land Cover data and aggregated at the NUTS-2 level. Rather than serving as a short-term metric of policy performance, the indicator describes an inherited territorial stock reflecting historical land-use trajectories, consistent with path-dependent development processes. Using the Italian NUTS-2 regions as a case study, the indicator is analysed alongside key socio-economic variables covering economic capacity, social vulnerability, and human capital formation through a non-aggregative, quadrant-based trade-off framework. The results suggest pronounced regional asymmetries and structural mismatches, demonstrating that territorial rigidities and socio-economic outcomes follow differentiated, non-linear alignments. From a policy perspective, the analysis highlights the limits of uniform benchmarking and underscores the necessity of place-based strategies tailored to inherited spatial constraints. Future developments will include integration into territorialised lifecycle frameworks, to account for the cumulative effects of land occupation and environmental debt. While this framework offers a transparent screening tool for regional spatial rigidity, its convergent validity against high-resolution spatial datasets (such as HRL Imperviousness) and disaggregated land-use subclasses remains to be formally tested in future empirical research. Full article

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is being absorbed into education as a new infrastructural layer, promising individualized tutoring, instant feedback, translation, and accessibility support at marginal cost. Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) calls for inclusive and equitable quality education for all, yet the evidence on whether GenAI advances or undermines that goal points firmly in both directions at once. At the task level, GenAI and intelligent tutoring systems repeatedly compress performance distributions, with the largest gains accruing to lower-skilled and lower-baseline participants. At the system level, a parallel literature on access, AI literacy, language, disability, teacher capacity, and over-reliance finds that benefits are conditioned by resources that track prior advantage. These two literatures are usually read as being in tension, and the tension is usually resolved by privileging one of them. This article argues that both are correct and that the appearance of contradiction is an artifact of conflating distinct stages of a single pathway. We develop the divide cascade: a four-stage filter model—access, effective use, benefit realization, and durable learning—in which each stage has a pass rate that correlates with prior advantage. Because pass rates compound multiplicatively across stages while compression acts additively within a stage, a technology can compress outcomes among those who clear every filter and still stratify outcomes across the population as a whole. We formalize this structure, derive the condition under which the stratifying force dominates the equalizing one, and state three predictions that distinguish the cascade from an access-centred account: that access-only interventions should attenuate rather than close benefit gaps, that a single intervention can narrow one gap while widening another simultaneously, and that measured equity gains should decay as the evaluation horizon lengthens. We also specify what would falsify the model. The framework is then used to identify the conditions that set the sign of GenAI’s distributional effect, to map those conditions onto SDG 4 targets, and to derive a testable research and policy agenda. A recurring corollary is methodological: the strongest evidence for compression comes from workplace-productivity studies that measure produced artifacts rather than durable learning, so its transfer to education is an open question that the cascade locates precisely rather than assumes. GenAI, we conclude, is neither inherently an equalizer nor an amplifier; it is a multiplier whose sign is set by how completely the cascade is engineered for the learners who start behind. Full article

Background/Objectives: Multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) that combine protection against HIV and unintended pregnancy can improve women’s health outcomes by simplifying use and enhancing adherence. We developed a long-acting (LA) implant for the simultaneous and sustained delivery of the antiretroviral islatravir (ISL) and the contraceptive hormone etonogestrel (ENG). Methods: Using extruded poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) tubing, reservoir-style implants were fabricated and evaluated in three configurations: (Group 1) a two-segment implant formed by joining separate ISL- and ENG-containing tubes; (Group 2) a single tube divided into two drug compartments by a heat-sealed PCL spacer; (Group 3) separate single-drug implants. In vitro release was assessed in phosphate-buffered saline at 37 °C, and safety and pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles were evaluated in New Zealand White rabbits (n = 4/group) over approximately 90 days. Results: The average ISL daily in vitro release rates for Groups 1, 2, and 3 were 29 ± 5 µg/day, 18 ± 5 µg/day, and 47 ± 8 µg/day, respectively, and ENG daily in vitro release rates were 39 ± 9 µg/day, 41 ± 8 µg/day, and 33 ± 7 µg/day. From day 28 through the end of the study, median (IQR) plasma concentrations were 0.22 (0.18–0.27) ng/mL, 0.28 (0.24–0.33) ng/mL, and 0.31 (0.28–0.33) ng/mL for ISL in Groups 1, 2, and 3, respectively, and 0.26 (0.21–0.31) ng/mL, 0.25 (0.16–0.47) ng/mL, and 0.30 (0.23–0.38) ng/mL for ENG in Groups 1, 2 and 3, respectively. Implants across all groups were well tolerated and demonstrated favorable local tolerability over the 90-day dosing period. Conclusions: Integration of multiple indications into a single platform capable of sustained release over an extended duration holds potential to address persistent gaps in women’s sexual and reproductive health needs. Full article

Walking tourism is increasingly supported by a wide range of digital technologies that are crucial for mitigating environmental impacts and promoting sustainable territorial development, yet their adoption remains fragmented and rarely interpreted within a unified infrastructure perspective. While systemic infrastructure perspectives are well-established in smart city and transport literature, existing studies on walking trails still tend to focus on individual tools or user-oriented applications. Drawing upon broader smart mobility concepts, this paper proposes a system-level framework, the SmartTrail Framework (STF), for the classification, functional interpretation and integration assessment of digital technologies in walking trail infrastructures. The framework is conceived as a transferable analytical and operational instrument applicable both to academic literature and to real-world trail systems, supporting infrastructure assessment, planning and digital maturity evaluation. Following an initial bibliometric analysis of a broader Scopus dataset comprising 1697 records, a structured literature review of 253 publications was conducted to operationalise and illustrate the framework through the systematic classification of digital technologies, the mapping of functional requirements, and the assessment of Integration Levels (IL). The STF integrates three analytical dimensions: a technology domain taxonomy (six categories), a functional requirement model (five infrastructure functions) and an IL scheme (IL0–IL3) that characterises the degree of systemic coherence among digital components. The results reveal a critical functional imbalance in current digitalisation: while user-oriented navigation and information services are widely adopted, backend infrastructure functions, particularly safety and operational logistics, remain severely underdeveloped, keeping most trail systems trapped in low-integration configurations. Applied to real-world trail systems, the framework enables the identification of architectural gaps, the prioritisation of integration investments and the definition of development pathways towards intelligent trail ecosystems. The paper aims to contribute to field research by providing a structured interpretative framework for understanding digital technologies as infrastructural components of walking trails. This supports a shift from tool-based thinking to system-based infrastructure design and offers practical implications for planners, managers and policymakers involved in the development of smart, resilient and environmentally sustainable trail infrastructures. Full article

The international policy framework for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, plus the conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks” (REDD+) is a vital United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) mechanism designed to assist Global South nations in reaching their climate goals under the Paris Agreement. Implementable at the project, subnational, and national levels, REDD+ has placed an increasing emphasis on subnational program implementation in recent years, exemplified by a growing focus on jurisdictional and integrated landscape strategies. These comprehensive approaches balance diverse land uses and address the complex causes of deforestation through economic incentives and multi-level, cross-sector planning at the state, provincial, or district levels. Ultimately, successful implementation depends on collaboration, active stakeholder engagement, resources, mutual trust, and adequate institutional capacity to manage conflicting local interests. However, weak forestland-use governance in many countries of the Global South often results in inefficient collaborative dynamics that hinder stakeholder cooperation. Despite this, the specific collaborative challenges hindering stakeholder collaboration in subnational REDD+ implementation remain insufficiently understood. To address this gap, this study conducts a literature review to systematically synthesize evidence on subnational REDD+ implementation, using the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance (IFCG) to identify key knowledge gaps and challenges. Following established methodological guidance, six databases were searched, Scopus (824), Web of Science (1347), PubMed (84), ResearchGate (557), Google Scholar (571), and Research Rabbit (191), yielding 43 articles on subnational REDD+ implementation for inclusion in the synthesis. The findings identify four main challenges: (i) system context-related challenges, (ii) burdensome global requirements, (iii) resource constraints, and (iv) challenges inherent in the institutional design of collaborative arrangements. While the IFCG proves analytically useful, the complexity and evolving nature of subnational REDD+ programs complicate its application, revealing areas for theoretical refinement. By critically examining the IFCG’s utility, this study advances collaborative governance theory and offers empirical insights into the conditions necessary for effective stakeholder collaboration in subnational REDD+ implementation across the Global South. Full article

The personal care product market has expanded rapidly in recent years, along with growing consumer awareness of chemical exposures and increasing demand for “clean” products. Consumer perceptions of product safety and potential health impacts are commonly based on ingredient labels, intended use, and certifications, rather than the full chemical composition of finished products. In this study, we conducted a targeted review of certification and ingredient-evaluation programs in the United States and European markets. Eighteen programs were identified and characterized based on their evaluation approaches, data sources, and whether they incorporate analytical measurement of finished products. We also evaluated the current U.S. and EU regulatory frameworks. Across both certification and regulatory systems, evaluation was found to rely primarily on ingredient-based approaches and supporting documentation, with limited incorporation of analytical measurement. As a result, contaminants, impurities, and incidentals/non-intentionally added substances (which have previously been identified in many consumer products) may not be consistently identified or evaluated for safety. These findings highlight a fundamental gap between intended formulation and actual product composition. Incorporating analytical measurement, particularly non-targeted approaches, provides a complementary groundwork for identifying previously unrecognized chemical exposures and improving the accuracy of product safety certification programs and hazard assessments. Aligning evaluation with measured chemical composition may enhance transparency and better reflect real-world exposure, support more credible sustainability claims, enhance consumer trust, support growing market demand, support consumer safety, and contribute to more effective regulation in the personal care industry. Full article

Climate change imposes severe constraints on global food security, yet evidence on how crops respond to climate change in irrigation-dominated systems remains limited compared with rainfed agriculture. Building on this gap, we investigated how asymmetric climate shocks influence rice production in a major irrigated setting, using Egypt’s Nile Delta as a case study. Drawing on annual data for 1961–2022, we estimated a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model in which harvested area, fertilizer use, and seasonal temperature and precipitation jointly determine rice output, with structural-break tests used to inform model specification and the historical interpretation of major water and agricultural policy reforms. Temperature and precipitation are decomposed into cumulative positive and negative partial sums to isolate the effects of warming versus cooling and of rainfall surpluses versus deficits. The results showed a stable long-run cointegrating relationship with pronounced asymmetries. Autumn temperature shocks were most strongly associated with production variation, with cooling shocks more damaging than warming shocks were beneficial, while precipitation effects were asymmetric in the opposite direction: production gains associated with above average rainfall years exceeded the losses associated with below average rainfall years, consistent with irrigation buffering rainfall shortfalls. This finding does not rule out drainage-related losses from extreme, short-duration rainfall events, which the annual precipitation total used here cannot separately identify. Land expansion and fertilizer intensification remain positively associated with rice output, yet they only partially offset climate-induced losses, underscoring the limits of input-based adaptation amid increasing climatic volatility. Overall, the findings suggest that irrigation systems face distinct climate risks often obscured in symmetric models, highlighting adaptation priorities in drainage and storage, sustainable use of marginal lands, and season-specific climate services for irrigated rice regions. Full article

Intermediate band solar cells require in-gap electronic states that remain sufficiently extended to sustain collective electronic coupling and facilitate carrier motion. We investigate how structural disorder affects an intermediate band formed by coupled colloidal quantum dots embedded in a perovskite-like matrix. The system is represented by a single-orbital tight-binding Hamiltonian on a dilated face-centered-cubic lattice containing 4000 quantum dots, with system sizes between 1372 and 5324 in the finite-size analysis. Radius dispersion modifies on-site energies and hopping amplitudes, whereas positional disorder acts mainly through variations in interdot separation. Eigenstate extension is quantified using the normalized participation ratio. To distinguish spectral broadening from the loss of useful extended states, we also evaluate the mean participation of a contiguous threshold-defined spectral core, its relative energy width, and their product as a combined robustness descriptor. For the adopted baseline parameter set, degradation is energy selective: states near the spectral edges lose participation before states near the band center. At equal nominal amplitudes, radius disorder produces a stronger response than positional disorder, although the two amplitudes do not represent equal realized variances. A positional-disorder amplitude of 0.05 retains approximately 86% of the ordered-reference value of the combined descriptor, whereas a radius-disorder amplitude of 0.05 reduces it to about 22%; when both amplitudes are 0.05, about 14% remains. The model displays a comparatively robust regime near ${\sigma }_R=0.02$, a model-dependent crossover around ${\sigma }_R=0.03$–$0.04$, and strong degradation at larger values. Finite-size results are consistent with near-extensive scaling of the effective core participation number over the simulated sizes, but do not establish a thermodynamic mobility edge. These findings identify quantum-dot size uniformity as the more restrictive model control variable for preserving an extended intermediate-band core. Full article

Juniperus species are a rich source of pharmacologically important secondary metabolites, including terpenoids, lignans, flavonoids, and phenolic compounds. However, the commercial utilization of these metabolites is limited by the plant’s slow growth, poor natural regeneration, and environmental variability affecting metabolite accumulation. Integrating plant tissue culture with elicitation strategies is a promising approach for sustainably producing these valuable compounds. This review summarizes the diversity, biological activities, and biotechnological significance of secondary metabolites in Juniperus, focusing on tissue culture systems and enhancement of metabolite biosynthesis through elicitors. It critically evaluates the current knowledge of the effects of signaling compounds such as methyl jasmonate (MeJA), jasmonic acid (JA), and salicylic acid (SA), as well as other abiotic and biotic elicitors including silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), chitosan, and chito-oligosaccharides. Particular attention is given to their effects on podophyllotoxin, phenolic, flavonoid, and other bioactive metabolite accumulation. Elicitation responses appear to depend strongly on species, culture system, elicitor type, and treatment conditions. This review also highlights major knowledge gaps, particularly the limited understanding of the regulatory mechanisms controlling secondary-metabolite biosynthesis in Juniperus species. Overall, the available evidence suggests that integrating optimized elicitation strategies with transcriptomics, metabolomics, and metabolic engineering could improve our understanding of secondary metabolite regulation and facilitate the development of sustainable Juniperus tissue culture platforms for producing high-value natural products. Full article

The integration of Artificial Intelligence is transforming luxury hospitality, forcing hotels to balance advanced technology with human-centered management to sustain service excellence. Yet how Human-Centered Leadership shapes Sustained Service Performance through employees’ AI readiness and engagement remains largely unexamined. This study develops and tests an integrated framework addressing that gap. Survey data were collected from 500 employees of four- and five-star luxury hotels in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Lebanon, and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Human-Centered Leadership was positively associated with both Sustained Service Performance and AI readiness. AI readiness predicted employee engagement, which in turn predicted Sustained Service Performance. AI readiness and employee engagement sequentially mediated the link between Human-Centered Leadership and Sustained Service Performance (β = 0.160, p < 0.001). Digital Organizational Support significantly strengthened the Human-Centered Leadership–AI readiness relationship (β = 0.137, p = 0.004). The study advances hospitality leadership research by establishing Human-Centered Leadership as a driver of Sustained Service Performance in AI-enabled settings, and by revealing the sequential psychological mechanism, AI readiness followed by engagement, through which it operates. The findings help luxury hotel managers combine Human-Centered Leadership with digital support to sustain service excellence during AI-driven transformation. Full article

Floodplains sustain fisheries, water supply, and climate regulation, and their services depend on the water regime—the extent, depth, frequency, duration, and connectivity of inundation—which dams, drought, and land-use change are altering. Remote sensing and GIS can supply evidence for managing these systems sustainably, yet the methods remain dispersed, and their fit to management needs has not been assessed. Following the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) and a publicly posted protocol, we retrieved peer-reviewed studies from Dimensions and OpenAlex (2004–2026), searched on 13 July 2026 and updated on 14 August 2026, and screened them in two stages with two reviewers. We charted data by study area, sensors, methods, variables, and drivers, then mapped them onto the decisions and Sustainable Development Goal targets they inform. Of 137 studies, 53% appeared since 2021; 2026 is only partially covered. Inundation extent dominates (83%), mapped mainly with Landsat (36%) and radar, whereas water level (28%), connectivity (21%), inundation frequency (14%), storage (13%), hydroperiod (12%), and depth (8%) remain scarce, as does evidence from data-scarce transboundary basins, including Central Asia. The attributes most needed for environmental-flow, allocation, and restoration decisions thus appear to be the least observed—a decision–observation mismatch that shapes monitoring priorities. Full article

Sustainable Development Goal 7 requires energy access to be affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern. However, SDG 7 progress is often monitored at national levels through binary access indicators that do not adequately capture household-level energy realities. This study addresses this measurement gap and develops a 0–100 Household SDG 7 Attainment Index from three equally weighted pillars, the Household Energy Affordability Index, Household Energy Reliability Index, and Household Energy Sustainability Index and applies it to data from 659 rooftop solar households. The corrected index produced a mean attainment score of 88.81 (95% bootstrap confidence interval: 88.00–89.52). Threshold sensitivity analysis showed that the mean ranged from 86.37 to 90.29 under ±20% alternative specifications, while Spearman rank correlations with the baseline ranged from 0.941 to 1.000. A scenario-based Monte Carlo analysis further quantified household-level uncertainty arising from plausible reporting error. Random Forest, permutation importance, node-purity diagnostics, DALEX, and iBreakDown-based local interpretability methods were also used. Random Forest regression achieved an independent-test RMSE of 7.03, MAE of 4.57, MAPE of 5.92%, and predictive R² of 0.592. Income was the dominant predictor, followed by solar-rooftop usage, first device, job type, and electric vehicle profile. Partial dependence showed a rapid increase in predicted attainment at lower income levels followed by a plateau. The study contributes a household-level SDG 7 diagnostic framework that can support government targeting, subsidy design, rooftop solar policy evaluation, and the identification of households that remain behind despite solar adoption. Full article

This paper is presented by a collective of Black women who have devoted years to sexual health as educators, programmers and facilitators. It offers an insider perspective on their experiences facilitating the pilot of the Sista2Sista project, a sexual health intervention adapted to the Canadian context for young Black women ages 15–29. The post-pilot focus groups were conducted with stakeholders and facilitators to gather feedback on the intervention. This approach centers the perspectives of facilitators and stakeholders in implementing sexual health programs for Black youth. Findings show that the Sista2Sista pilot benefited from Black women facilitators, whose positionality fostered a culturally affirming space for young Black women. Additionally, the findings highlight gaps in race-based data and sexual health programming for Black youth in Ontario specifically, and Canada more broadly. Participants highlighted the need for holistic, relevant and sustainably funded interventions that address sexual health alongside pleasure, body image and systemic barriers, such as anti-Black racism. Overall, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of sexual health for young Black women by centring the lived experiences of Black women facilitators who informed the pilot intervention while advocating for contextually relevant approaches that reflect the realities of Black communities. Full article