Search Results (10,103)

Commercial format diversity serves as a key indicator indicative of the health and resilience of the commercial structure in rail transit station areas. This study focuses on the rail transit station areas in Shanghai, integrates multi-source geospatial data with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), and systematically examines the differential influence paths of six categories of factors—urban form, location, facility configuration, passenger flow, land rent, and commercial spatial form—on commercial format diversity between urban core and suburban areas. Multi-group analysis (MGA) is further used to test whether path coefficients differ across concentric zones around stations. The findings are as follows: (1) Passenger flow characteristics are the primary contributing factors to commercial format diversity and serve as a key mediator through which most other factors influence diversity. Location characteristics, particularly the distance to the rail transit station, primarily play a moderating role to commercial format richness. Urban form characteristics function as the “spatial framework” providing a fundamental regulatory influence, with significant interaction effects with station distance. (2) In urban core areas, the temporal rhythm of passenger flow dominates: weekday passenger flow is positively associated with commercial format richness, whereas weekend passenger flow shows a more complex pattern—associated with an increase in format count but declines in both diversity and dominance concentration, indicating a structural reorganization rather than a simple directional effect. In suburban areas, an initial increase followed by a decrease is observed, with an “optimal synergistic zone” existing approximately 600–1000 m from stations where rail transit and other public service facilities jointly promote commercial format diversity. (3) Land rent is mainly associated with the number of format categories rather than their evenness or dominance. These findings reveal systematic differences in the influence paths of commercial format diversity between urban core and suburban rail transit station areas, as well as the distance-dependent zonal variation patterns of these effects, providing empirical evidence for differentiated spatial design in the context of station-city integration. Full article

Marine pollution in the Philippine archipelago poses increasing threats to biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human health due to rapid urbanization, population growth, and inadequate waste management. As a core region of the Coral Triangle, the Philippines is particularly vulnerable to pollutants transported across interconnected marine ecosystems. This review synthesizes current knowledge on the occurrence, sources, analytical approaches, risk assessment, and knowledge gaps associated with conventional and emerging major marine pollutants, including oil, heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, persistent organic pollutants, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, plastics, and additional stressors such as nutrients, pathogens, and shipping-related contaminants. Available evidence indicates widespread contamination of coastal waters, sediments, and marine biota, with pollution hotspots commonly associated with urbanized coastlines, river systems, industrial zones, shipping routes, aquaculture areas, and tourism centers. Emerging pollutants such as plastics and microplastics are increasingly detected even in remote environments, highlighting limitations in current monitoring and management frameworks. However, significant gaps remain in long-term monitoring, standardized methodologies, human health risk assessment, and interdisciplinary integration. This review emphasizes the need for harmonized monitoring programs, improved waste management infrastructure, strengthened regulatory enforcement, expanded analytical capacity, and integrated science-based policies to support sustainable marine management and ocean governance in the Philippines. Full article

Background: Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) is a growing public health concern, associated with circadian disruption, sleep disturbances, mental health issues, and increased risk for chronic conditions such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Despite a rapidly expanding epidemiological literature on ALAN-related health outcomes, there is limited consensus on standardized and comparable tools for assessing both how individuals perceive ALAN and their objective exposure at the individual and population levels. Methods: A scoping review was conducted using Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science to identify studies published between 2010 and 2025. The aim was to systematically map the methods, tools, and frameworks used to evaluate both the perception of ALAN and objective ALAN exposure, and to examine their implications for public health. Eligibility was restricted to studies explicitly describing approaches to assess ALAN perception or exposure applied to human health research. Results: Most studies adopted cross-sectional designs and focused on urban contexts. Satellite-derived nighttime light data (62%) and GIS-based indicators (46%) were the most frequently used exposure proxies, while surveys and self-reported measures were commonly used to capture individual behaviors, health impacts and perceptions. Only 23% of studies employed wearable sensors or mobile applications, and architectural or building-level data were included in a single study (8%), highlighting a substantial gap in indoor exposure characterization. Conclusions: By critically reviewing current methods, tools, and frameworks, this work highlights the urgent need for harmonized, validated approaches that integrate objective environmental light measurements with human-centered data on how ALAN is perceived and experienced, thereby strengthening the evidence base for public health research and policy. Full article

Background/Objectives: This study aimed to identify demographic factors associated with perceived food label literacy and use among adults in Seoul and to examine differences in food consumption across perceived food label literacy and use groups. Methods: This study analyzed secondary data from the Seoul Food Survey 2025, which included 3024 adults aged ≥18 years. Perceived food label literacy and use were each dichotomized into high and low levels, yielding four groups based on their combination. Logistic regression and analysis of covariance were used to examine demographic factors and differences in food consumption. Results: The proportions of the high literacy–high use, high literacy–low use, low literacy–high use, and low literacy–low use groups were 37.5%, 21.4%, 12.1%, and 28.9%, respectively. Compared with the high literacy–high use group, men were more likely than women, and individuals with lower educational levels were more likely than those with a college graduation or higher to belong to both the high literacy–low use and low literacy–low use groups. The low literacy–low use group reported more frequent consumption of several processed foods, such as high-fat bread/snacks and sugar-sweetened beverages, and less frequent consumption of several fresh foods, such as fruits and whole grains, than at least one other group (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Men and individuals with lower educational levels emerged as potential priority populations for food label interventions addressing both perceived food label literacy and use. Those with low literacy and low use showed less favorable food consumption patterns. Full article

Makkah faces substantial heat-stress challenges associated with extreme temperatures, dense urban form, and the large numbers of pilgrims present during Hajj and Umrah, creating important public health concerns. Recent heat-related fatalities highlight the need for complementary strategies that address outdoor as well as indoor heat exposure, alongside conventional cooling approaches such as air conditioning. This article examines the potential role of nature-based and complementary engineered interventions in mitigating urban heat stress in Makkah, focusing on afforestation, urban greening, and the possible use of artificial water bodies, contingent on sustainable water management. Drawing on case studies and published evidence from arid and heat-prone regions, including China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the wider Middle East, we summarize reported cooling effects, implementation experience, and feasibility considerations and assess their potential relevance to Makkah. The perspective highlights critical challenges related to water scarcity, spatial constraints, ecological impacts, and governance, while proposing phased implementation pathways that could be evaluated incrementally. If carefully designed and integrated with urban planning and climate-adaptation strategies, nature-based and complementary interventions could potentially reduce human heat stress, reduce cooling demand, and strengthen climate resilience in Makkah. However, their effectiveness, water requirements, environmental impacts, and scalability require evaluation under Makkah-specific environmental and operational conditions. Full article

Accurate and continuous air quality monitoring is essential for sustainable urban management, environmental protection, and public health. However, dense networks of low-cost sensors frequently suffer from missing observations caused by communication failures, sensor malfunctions, or maintenance operations. This paper proposes a hybrid graph convolutional network–temporal convolutional network (GCN-TCN) framework for imputing missing ${\mathrm{PM}}_{2.5}$ measurements in dense sensor networks. The model utilizes spatial relationships between neighboring monitoring stations and temporal dependencies within sensor time series. The proposed approach was evaluated using data from a network of 20 sensors deployed across the academic campus area. Three representative missing-data scenarios were considered, including isolated missing observations, continuous missing sequences, and a hybrid combination of both patterns. The proposed model achieved the lowest reconstruction errors and the highest coefficient of determination among the evaluated methods (${\mathrm{R}}^2\approx$ 0.91–0.93). Standard GCN and TCN networks achieved lower ${\mathrm{R}}^2$ values (∼0.81–0.82 and ∼0.71–0.80, respectively), while recurrent models and classical statistical methods performed substantially worse (${\mathrm{R}}^2\approx 0.6$). These findings indicate that integrating graph-based spatial learning with temporal convolution robustly reconstructs incomplete environmental observations, improving the reliability of low-cost sensor systems for sustainable air quality monitoring and management. Full article

Exposure to atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is a major public-health concern, in part because PM can perturb cellular redox homeostasis. This study evaluates an in vitro A549/DCFH-DA approach using repeated fluorescence readouts to assess PM2.5-induced oxidative activity. Untreated and assay-specific controls were combined with zymosan and NIST Standard Reference Material^® 2584 suspended in PBS, and fluorescence was monitored at multiple readout times over a 15 min–6 h window. Method performance was characterized using the coefficient of variation (CV) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). A dedicated three-concentration SRM 2584 series (0.02, 0.05 and 0.10 mg mL⁻¹) further showed readout-dependent concentration behaviour: at 60 min the untreated-control-corrected mean response increased across the tested concentrations and followed an approximate descriptive linear trend (R² = 0.90), whereas earlier readouts were non-monotonic. Substrate-related effects were examined using paired PTFE and quartz filters. Among the eight matched PTFE–quartz pairs included in the regression analysis, zero-intercept fits showed slopes close to unity for both mass- and air-volume-normalized responses (0.90 and 0.99, respectively; R² ≈ 0.99), demonstrating strong proportional agreement within this comparison set; the limited number of pairs does not support universal substrate interchangeability. Application to chemically characterized field PM2.5 samples from an urban-background site and a high-altitude site showed that DCFH-DA fluorescence did not track PM mass alone and is interpreted in terms of exploratory associations with particle composition, rather than causal effects of individual constituents. Taken together, these findings support the use of the method-performance-characterized workflow for assessing oxidative responses to field-collected PM2.5 across multiple readout times and for investigating their associations with particle chemical characteristics. Full article

Background: Public health emergencies disrupt daily life and impose a heavy burden on mental health. Middle-aged and older adults are particularly vulnerable to the shocks caused by such emergencies, which may substantially increase their risk of depressive symptoms. Although social ties are closely related to mental health, little is known about how different types of social ties are associated with mental health in emergency contexts. Moreover, these associations have rarely been examined alongside broader contextual shocks. This study explores how different social ties are associated with lower depressive symptoms and examines the role of indirect disaster exposure. Methods: Data were drawn from the 2020 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and matched with urban cumulative confirmed cases. Using data from 15,897 respondents, we employed linear regression and bootstrap resampling to test whether life satisfaction statistically accounts for some of the associations between social ties, household financial stability, and depressive symptoms. The model also examined whether the association between life satisfaction and depressive symptoms varied with indirect disaster exposure. Results: Broader social participation (b = −0.242, p < 0.01), more positive perceived changes in intergenerational relationships (b = −0.536, p < 0.05), and better household financial stability (b = −1.637, p < 0.01) were associated with fewer depressive symptoms. Life satisfaction statistically contributed to the link between weak ties, financial instability, and depressive symptoms (b = −2.136, p < 0.01). Indirect disaster exposure strengthened the negative association between life satisfaction and depressive symptoms (b = −0.134, p < 0.01). Conclusions: During public health emergencies, depressive symptoms among middle-aged and older adults are associated not only with social ties and household financial stability, but also with the broader context of city-level disaster exposure. Depression prevention strategies need to consider both individual psychological resources and contextual disaster exposure to identify vulnerable populations and reduce mental health risk. Full article

Cervical cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related mortality among women in Nepal, where national screening coverage is approximately 16%. This study evaluated the feasibility of a community-based, door-to-door self-sampling strategy for high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) detection in an urban municipality of central Nepal and assessed hrHPV prevalence, genotype distribution, screening outcomes, and associated demographic factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted between September 2023 and May 2024 in Ward No. 3 of Lalitpur Metropolitan City. Women aged 30–60 years were recruited through trained community health workers, provided education and home-based self-sampling kits, and completed a demographic questionnaire. Dry cervical swabs from 418 participants were tested for hrHPV. Women with positive results underwent visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA), followed by colposcopy, biopsy when indicated, and thermal ablation for confirmed precancerous lesions. Overall participation was 64.1%, and hrHPV prevalence was 10.3%. Non-16/18 hrHPV genotypes predominated (55.8%), followed by HPV16 (20.9%). Women aged > 50 years were more likely to be hrHPV- and VIA-positive (OR = 7.39, p = 0.02). Six pre-cancer cases were identified: five cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN1) and one CIN3 case. Community-based hrHPV self-sampling was found to be feasible and achieved effective linkage to triage and treatment, supporting its consideration for strengthening cervical cancer screening in Nepal. Full article

The increasing exposure of informal urban settlements to climate-related hazards highlights the need for reliable tools to assess community resilience and support adaptation planning. This study developed and validated the Climate Resilience Index for Housing and Settlements (IRECLIVA), a multidimensional framework designed to evaluate climate resilience in vulnerable urban communities. The methodology combines objective expert-based assessments with community perception data organized into five dimensions: housing and infrastructure, natural environment, community and governance, economy and insurance, and health and well-being. The index was applied in nine informal settlements in Greater Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, using field checklists, household surveys (n = 198), and statistical validation procedures, including Cronbach’s alpha and Cohen’s kappa coefficients. The results demonstrated acceptable to excellent internal consistency across dimensions and substantial to almost perfect inter-rater agreement among evaluators. Resilience assessment showed that four settlements exhibited low resilience and five medium resilience, with the most critical deficiencies related to housing quality, infrastructure conditions, environmental exposure, and limited adaptive capacities. These findings indicate that IRECLIVA provides a reliable and practical framework for identifying resilience gaps, prioritizing adaptation measures, and supporting evidence-based urban planning. Further applications in different geographic and socio-economic contexts are recommended to assess the broader transferability and scalability of the index. Full article

Background/Objectives: Rural populations in the United States experienced consistently lower COVID-19 vaccination rates than urban populations during the pandemic. While barriers to vaccination have been well documented, less is known about facilitators of uptake in rural settings. This study aimed to identify facilitators of COVID-19 vaccination in rural communities from the perspectives of Washington State University (WSU) Extension personnel and to examine these factors using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) Outer Setting domain. Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted using semi-structured key informant interviews with WSU Extension personnel. Twenty-one participants representing 34 of 40 Extension offices across Washington State were interviewed in Fall 2023. Interviews were transcribed, de-identified, and analyzed using deductive thematic analysis. Findings were organized into the seven CFIR Outer Setting constructs: critical incidents, local attitudes, local conditions, partnerships and connections, policies and laws, financing, and external pressures. Results: Perceived facilitators of COVID-19 vaccination were identified across all CFIR Outer Setting constructs. Trust emerged as a central theme, with participants reporting that vaccine acceptance was higher when information was delivered by trusted local sources, including Extension personnel, healthcare providers, community leaders, and informal networks. Participants described leveraging partnerships with public health agencies, schools, faith-based organizations, and community groups as enhancing outreach and information dissemination. Additional facilitators identified by participants included no-cost vaccine and personal protective equipment availability, accessible community-based vaccination sites, culturally appropriate educational materials, and coordinated communication systems. Conclusions: Rural vaccination efforts were supported by trust, strong community partnerships, and locally tailored strategies. These findings may inform future public health emergency responses in rural communities. Full article

Urban nature-based solutions (NbSs) are increasingly deployed to address climate risks, yet their health co-benefits remain poorly understood. This paper presents a secondary analysis of 90 peer-reviewed, English-language China-specific studies drawn from a registered systematic review covering January 2015 to April 2025. Evidence was analyzed by geographical distribution, NbS category, climate-adaptation pathway, health outcome, and greenness measurement, with complementary comparison against 88 non-China-specific studies. Air-quality pathways and physical-health outcomes predominated, whereas heat received less attention, and only one study examined flood-related health. Thirty studies (33.3%) were located wholly in eastern China, while 9 of the 31 mainland provincial-level jurisdictions lacked dedicated or separately reported evidence. Setting-based greenery dominated the five-category NbS classification. Of 126 association units, 100 (79.4%) were favorable; null or adverse findings were confined to specific exposures or contexts, including allergenic or low-diversity vegetation and reduced visibility. Although the two subsets covered broadly similar topics, China-specific studies relied more heavily on aggregate greenness indices (e.g., NDVI: 73.3% versus 45.5%), less often distinguished vegetation types or strata (14.4% versus 36.4%), and included no studies treating urban trees or community gardens as distinct exposures. These findings support five China-specific policy priorities and adapt four international policy themes to Chinese governance contexts. Full article

Parenting practices involving violent discipline are a global health concern, particularly among low-income families. While the current literature offers general prevalence data, it lacks a comprehensive global perspective evaluating how diverse sociodemographic, cultural, and historical contexts intersect within disadvantaged households. This scoping review protocol aims to map the global evidence on parenting practices related to physical and psychological violence used as disciplinary practices against children within low-income contexts. Following the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis and PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we will conduct a comprehensive search across databases, including MEDLINE/PubMed (via the National Library of Medicine), CINAHL (EBSCO), APA PsycINFO (APA), Embase (Elsevier), ERIC, IBECS (via the VHL) and the WHO Global Index Medicus to capture global evidence published in recent years. Studies published in English, Portuguese, and Spanish between January 2015 and June 2026 that report violent disciplinary practices by parents or caregivers of children aged 1–8 years will be included. Rayyan software will assist with study selection. Mapping these practices across diverse socioeconomic settings may clarify current research gaps and synthesize the characteristics of families globally, shifting the interpretation of violent discipline from isolated parental choices to broader understanding of its social determinants and providing a clearer baseline to support future child protection research. Full article

The rapid digitalization of health resources highlights the need to understand health information adoption in Indonesia. This study examines trust-related HBM belief pathways and Health Information Access Behavior (HIAB) as both a direct predictor and a moderator. Survey data from 260 respondents across urban, suburban, and rural settings were analyzed using PLS-SEM, with 20 semi-structured interviews used for interpretive context. Perceived benefits, cues to action, and self-efficacy significantly increased adoption, and HIAB had a significant positive direct effect. Moderation was limited: only the perceived barriers and HIAB interaction was significant and negative (β = −0.123, p = 0.023), while the other five interactions were not significant. Thus, access behavior does not uniformly strengthen trust-related HBM pathways; its moderating role is specific to perceived barriers. Full article

Urban services increasingly depend on interconnected sensing, communication, computing, decision-support, and response functions, yet technical performance alone does not establish service effectiveness. This structured integrative review examines WSNs, WBANs, V2X systems, 5G-enabled edge–cloud infrastructures, and prospective 6G capabilities across health, mobility, environmental monitoring, energy, water, infrastructure safety, and climate resilience. A five-database search covering January 2018–March 2025 was supplemented by citation tracing and a documented gap-directed update with a final cutoff of 1 July 2026. The analytical corpus comprised 40 peer-reviewed studies, five deployment cases, and one scope-boundary case. An outcome-mediated perception–network–edge/cloud–decision–response framework enabled categorical comparison of heterogeneous evidence without pooling non-comparable measures. Attribution was classified as T1 (comparatively evaluated downstream outcome), T2 (technical or bounded operational outcome), or T3 (conceptual linkage): three studies were T1, 34 T2, and three T3. Ten studies supported target-level SDG alignment, whereas none reached indicator-level correspondence. Evidence remained concentrated at communication, processing, decision-support, and bounded operational endpoints, with limited assessment of response availability and disruption–recovery conditions. Among the deployment cases, only SFpark supported T1 interpretation. These findings characterize the selected corpus and identify a persistent gap between technical performance and comparative, longitudinal, and distributionally assessed urban-service outcomes. Full article