Search Results (3,581)

In the context of sustainable agricultural development and rural revitalization in China, understanding and addressing psychological poverty traps among rural farm households is crucial. The poverty mindset represents a crucial factor affecting rural poverty. This study focuses on two key questions: first, whether and how material poverty influences the poverty mindset; and second, whether this psychological state affects economic behavior, potentially intensifying material poverty. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) spanning 2014–2018, the data collection employed a multi-stage stratified sampling approach. Multiple methods, including questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews, were utilized to gather information. Through matching and merging processes based on personal questionnaire IDs, a total of 30,143 observations were obtained over a three-year period. We employ Causal Mediation Analysis (CMA) to examine the micro-level mechanisms between material and psychological poverty among rural farm households. Our findings reveal three key insights. First, material poverty significantly reduces aspiration levels and behavioral capabilities of rural farm households, with impoverished groups scoring approximately 10% lower than non-poor groups. Second, this negative impact operates through two primary channels: stigma effects (self-stigmatization 11.29%, social stigma 4.71%) and psychological resource depletion (negative emotions 1.5%, psychological stress 1.27%). Third, psychological poverty reinforces material poverty through aspiration failure (72.3%) and capability deficiency (75.68%), creating a self-perpetuating “psychological poverty trap” that particularly affects agricultural production efficiency. These findings suggest that sustainable agricultural development requires addressing both material and psychological dimensions of rural poverty. Policy recommendations include strengthening psychological support for farm households, enhancing agricultural capacity building, mitigating stigma effects in rural communities, and reconstructing psychological resources for sustainable development. This integrated approach can help break psychological poverty traps, improve agricultural productivity, and support rural revitalization in China. Full article

The readability (RDB) of annual reports (ARs) plays a crucial role in determining the effectiveness of disclosure of information to interested parties, particularly investors. Given that investors rely on the financial information provided in ARs, the chairman’s letter serves as a key communication tool and is the most extensively read section of the report. Consequently, companies are under pressure to provide understandable ARs that can be easily interpreted by investors. Nevertheless, managers sometimes obscure such disclosures in an attempt to bury negative information and hide their own behavior. Drawing from the “managerial obfuscation hypothesis”, this study investigated how the corporate governance (CG) structures affect the RDB of ARs for a sample of 95 banks across seven countries in the MENA region from 2018 to 2022. The findings revealed that board size, frequency of board meetings, and ownership concentration significantly affected the RDB of ARs. Additionally, board independence and gender diversity had a significant negative effect on ARs’ RDB. Conversely, the study found that the presence of role duality within the board had an insignificant effect on ARs’ RDB. As a result, this study recommends enhancing CG structures to enhance the clarity of banks’ reports and boost investor trust. Full article

This study examined the associations between age, adiposity, physical activity, sedentary behavior, and elevated blood pressure (BP) in 2901 Portuguese children and adolescents aged 2–18. BP, body mass index (BMI), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), physical activity, and sedentary behavior were measured. Elevated BP was defined as a BP above the 90th percentile for age, sex, and height. Multivariable analyses assessed the prevalence ratios (PR) of elevated BP across age groups, BMI, WHtR, physical activity, and sedentary behavior. Results showed that older age, especially among middle schoolers, was associated with a 1.8 times higher risk of elevated BP than preschoolers. Participants with a higher BMI (overweight/obese) and a WHtR ≥ 0.50 had a 1.49- and 1.4-times higher risk of elevated BP, respectively. Those who did not meet the recommended 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day showed a 1.63 times higher risk of elevated BP, whereas the association between sedentary behavior and BP was not significant after adjustment. These findings highlight age, higher BMI, central obesity, and insufficient physical activity as key factors associated with elevated BP, underscoring the need for early monitoring and intervention to prevent hypertension in this population. Full article

Against the backdrop of global efforts towards carbon peak and carbon neutrality, enhancing the level of green innovation in enterprises represents a significant challenge faced by governments worldwide. The practice of establishing a certification system for high-tech enterprises and leveraging this certification to influence corporate behavior has been shown to be an effective approach. This paper constructs an analytical framework based on incentive effects, signaling effects, and external pressure, employing the negative binomial regression method to evaluate the impact of high-tech enterprise certification on green innovation using data from listed companies in China from 2006 to 2023. The research findings indicate that, generally speaking, this certification primarily promotes green innovation through increased government subsidies, alleviation of financing constraints, and enhanced market attention. Further analysis reveals that its impact is particularly pronounced on state-owned enterprises, enterprises in central regions, and labor-intensive enterprises. Based on these research outcomes, this paper recommends that the government should further strengthen the construction of the certification system to enhance its credibility and authority; place greater emphasis on green-oriented fiscal subsidy policies; promote the development of green finance to alleviate financing constraints for enterprises; and refine the external supervision mechanisms of the capital market to provide robust support for enterprise green innovation. This study deepens the understanding of the relationship between government institutional construction and green innovation and provides empirical evidence for transforming the economic development model. Full article

The study of bubble growth and collapse is of great significance in the context of sustainability due to its influence on numerous energy-related processes and technologies. Understanding the dynamics of bubble behavior is vital for optimising heat transfer efficiency, which has an energetic role in improving the performance of sustainable systems such as nuclear reactors, thermal inkjet printing, and nucleate boiling. Indeed, researchers can progress strategies to enhance the efficiency of these technologies by analysing the parameters influencing bubble growth and collapse, which can lead to reduced energy consumption and environmental impact. Although several theoretical models and experimental investigations have been achieved in the past to inspect bubble growth and collapse, a thorough review and critical assessment of the studies conducted have not yet been achieved. This review aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between bubble dynamics and sustainability, highlighting the potential for further research and development in this area. Specifically, the scope and limitations of past research on bubble growth and collapse is conducted to fill this gap in the open literature. The review covers both numerical and experimental studies of bubble growth and collapse in a wide set of innovative industrial applications including nuclear reactors, thermal inkjet printing, nucleate boiling, hydrodynamic erosion, and ultrasonic and medicinal therapy. The current review also attempts to illustrate and evaluate the numerical methods used and underlines the most relevant results from the studies that were looked at in order to provide researchers with a clear picture of the growth and collapse of bubbles in different applications. The results give a precise understanding of the dynamics of bubble growth and collapse and the related temperature change and cumulative heat transmission from the thermal boundary layer. Additionally, it has been demonstrated that simulation-based models can effectively predict transport coefficients. However, the review observes a number of limitations of the past research on bubble growth and collapse. Due to numerical instability, very little work with respect to dynamic modelling has been carried out on the mechanisms of bubble collapse. Accordingly, a number of recommendations are made for the improvement of heat transmission during bubble growth and collapse. Specifically, future criteria for the highest heat transmission will demand more precise experimental and numerical approaches. Full article

This paper proposes a new model of collaborative filtering that introduces a user difference factor to address the issue of less pronounced similarity performance in traditional algorithms. The algorithm is applied to the recommendation of pilots’ core competency behavior indicators to support pilots’ daily training arrangements, improve their core competencies, and ensure civil aviation flight safety. Firstly, based on traditional collaborative filtering methods, a user difference factor is introduced to improve the Pearson similarity calculation model. Secondly, the advantages and disadvantages of collaborative filtering recommendation models were evaluated using various methods such as average absolute error, accuracy, recall, and diversity. Finally, the new model is applied to the recommendation of PLM core competency behavior indicators, providing a recommendation list of different pilot behavior indicators to support their rehabilitation or enhanced training plans and arrangements. The calculation results show that the new model of collaborative filtering demonstrates better advantages, not only reducing the MAE value, but also improving the accuracy, recall, and diversity of the calculation results, providing effective guidance and theoretical support for pilots’ flight training and safe flight. Full article

Recreational activities are essential in the field of tourism as they improve the overall travel experience and offer chances for relaxation, adventure, cultural immersion, and personal development. However, the activities certainly generate an impact. This review-based study identified and synthesized 21 impact-based research papers in indexed journals from 2004 to 2022. The selected papers underwent four steps of an evidence-based systematic review. Content analysis was used to categorize impacts by theme. Additionally, bibliometric analysis was used to identify research trends. This study found that recreational activities affect the biotic environment of ecology by introducing invasive species, changing behavior and habitat, and reducing population density. The abiotic environment is also affected by soil compaction, degradation, littering, and water pollution. It was also found that management interventions are highly recommended for mitigating negative impacts. The major contribution of this study is that researchers, policymakers, and practitioners can gain valuable insights from the results as it offers a thorough synthesis of the impact of recreational activities, which may be put into immediate action to mitigate negative impacts. Full article

Review-based recommendation can utilize user and item features extracted from review text to alleviate the problems of data sparsity and poor interpretability. However, most existing methods focus on static modeling of user personality and item attributes while ignoring the dynamic changes of user and item features. Therefore, this paper proposes a neural recommendation method with dynamic personalized attention (NRDPA). First, this method captures the changes in user behavior at the word level and review level and models the personalized features of users and items by dynamically highlighting key words and important reviews. Second, the method considers information interaction in the process of user and item modeling and adjusts the feature representations of the interacting parties according to the user’s preferences for different items. Finally, experiments on five public datasets from Amazon demonstrate that the proposed NRDPA model has superior performance, with improvements of up to 10% in MSE and 6.3% in MAE compared to state-of-the-art models. Full article

Corrosion in reinforced concrete (RC) structures has led to the increased adoption of non-corrosive materials, such as carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRPs), as replacements for traditional steel rebar. However, ensuring the long-term reliability of CFRP grids under sustained stress is critical for achieving safe and effective designs. This study investigates the long-term tensile creep rupture behavior of CFRP grids to establish a design threshold for their tensile strength under sustained loading conditions in demanding structural applications. A comprehensive laboratory experiment was conducted over 10,000 h, during which CFRP grid specimens were subjected to constant stress levels ranging from 92% to 98% of their ultimate tensile strength. The results confirm the excellent creep rupture resistance of CFRP grids. Specimens subjected to a sustained stress ratio of 92% of their ultimate tensile strength remained intact throughout the testing period, with minimal creep strain ranging from approximately 1% to 4% of the initial strain. The mean extrapolated creep rupture factors were found to be 92.1% and 91.7% of their ultimate tensile strength for service lives of 50 and 114 years, respectively. Based on the results of this study, a tensile stress limit of 48% of the ultimate tensile strength is recommended for CFRP grids to ensure long-term creep rupture resistance over a 100-year service life. Full article

Climate-smart agricultural technology (CSAT) has been recognized as an effective agricultural technology for mitigating or eliminating climate change damages to agricultural production. The adoption of CSAT by Chinese farmers has also increased significantly, driven by the government. However, the range of technologies adopted is very limited to several types, such as piped irrigation, high-yielding seeds, and organic fertilizers. In this study, four reasons for the adoption of CSAT were summarized through a literature review and semi-structured interviews, and antecedents and outcomes were conceptualized through the Behavioral Reasoning Theory (BRT) model and the concept of willingness to pay (WTP). The data from 308 farmers’ cooperatives were analyzed and it was found that three reasons—policy/government support, recommendations from opinion leaders, and extension services—have positive significant impacts on the willingness of farmers’ cooperatives to adopt CSAT. However, perceived usefulness was also observed to have no significant impact on the willingness of farmers’ cooperatives to adopt CSAT because the significant level of the t-value was only 1.767. In addition, the value of openness to change was proved to have significant positive effects on policy/government support, recommendations from opinion leaders, extension services, and perceived usefulness, whereas it had no impact on willingness to adopt CSAT. However, reasons for the adoption (policy/government support, recommendations from opinion leaders, and extension services) were confirmed to have a mediating effect between the value of openness to change and willingness to adopt CSAT, which means that the value of openness to change can indirectly affect the willingness to adopt CSAT by influencing the views of farmers’ cooperatives on the variables of reasons for the adoption of CSAT. More widespread, diverse, and multi-level CSAT adoption requires in-depth publicity and promotion and multi-channel recommendations, both at the government level and at the technology company level. Full article

Eye-tracking technologies are emerging in research aiming to understand the visual behavior of cyclists to improve their safety. These technologies gather real-time information to reveal what the cyclists look at and how they respond at a specific location and time. This systematic review investigates the use of eye-tracking systems to improve cyclist safety. An extensive search of the SCOPUS and WoS databases, following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, found 610 studies published between 2010 and 2024. After filtering these studies according to predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, 25 were selected for final review. The included studies were conducted in real traffic or virtual environments aiming to assess visual attention, workload, or hazard perception. Studies focusing on other types of road users or participants not involved in active cycling were excluded. Results reveal the important impact of road elements’ design, traffic density, and weather conditions on cyclists’ gaze patterns. Significant visual workload is imposed mainly by intersections. Along with the valuable insights into cyclist safety, potential biases related to small sample sizes and technological limitations were identified. Recommendations for future research are discussed to address these challenges through more diverse samples, advanced technologies, and a greater focus on peripheral vision. Full article

This paper constructs an evolutionary game model involving the “central government–local government–coal enterprises” to explore the impact mechanism of central environmental protection inspection on green coal mining. By analyzing the strategic behaviors of the key actors, this study identifies critical factors that influence their decisions. System simulations are conducted to assess the effects of key parameters on system stability and convergence. The findings indicate the following: (1) Increasing inspection costs weaken the central government’s support for green mining, with excessive costs potentially causing regulatory fatigue. Moderating inspection investments is key to sustaining long-term effectiveness. (2) Higher penalties for local governments improve the enforcement of green mining policies, particularly in the mid-term, showing that stringent penalties are an effective regulatory tool. (3) Lower technical costs and greater economic incentives encourage coal enterprises to adopt green mining practices, highlighting the role of innovation and profitability in driving green transitions. (4) Central government subsidies enhance local governments’ short-term enforcement but may lead to dependence if overused. Balanced subsidy policies are essential for sustained policy implementation at the local level. Based on these findings, the paper proposes policy recommendations to improve inspection mechanisms, optimize policy tools, and establish a collaborative regulatory system to ensure the long-term effectiveness of green coal mining. Full article

Safety climate has been extensively studied using survey-based approaches, providing significant insights into safety perceptions and behaviors. However, understanding its dynamics in construction projects requires methods that address temporal and trade-specific variability. This study employs a longitudinal, mixed-methods design to explore safety climate dynamics. Quantitative data analyzed with ANOVA revealed stable overall safety climate scores across project phases, while Item Response Theory (IRT) identified survey items sensitive to safety climate changes. Positive perceptions were associated with management commitment and regular safety meetings, while negative perceptions highlighted challenges such as workplace congestion and impractical safety rules. Qualitative data from semi-structured interviews uncovered trade-specific and phase-specific safety challenges, including issues tied to site logistics and workforce dynamics. For instance, transitioning from structural to interior work introduced congestion-related risks and logistical complexities, underscoring the need for phase-adapted strategies. This combination of quantitative stability and qualitative variability provides empirical evidence of safety climate dynamics in construction. The findings emphasize the importance of tailoring safety interventions to address trade-specific and phase-specific risks. This study advances the understanding of the safety climate in dynamic work environments and offers actionable recommendations for improving construction safety management through targeted, proactive strategies. Full article

This study examined how eating out behavior and variety-seeking tendency in food choice (VARSEEK) differ depending on social network service (SNS) use and recommended information utilization (SURU), focusing on Korean generation Z youth. To this end, participants were categorized as high, middle, or low based on their SURU score; eating out behavior, as well as VARSEEK, were then compared across the three groups. The results indicated that higher SURU scores were associated with a higher frequency of cooking, a higher frequency of eating out, a higher average cost of eating out per person, and a greater tendency to perceive oneself as gourmet. In relation to VARSEEK, the high and middle SURU score groups demonstrated significantly higher mean scores than the low group. This finding suggests that the greater the SURU level, the greater the food neophilic inclination, expressing an affinity for unique, unfamiliar, or exotic cuisine and a willingness to experiment with novel recipes. Consequently, SURU leads to more frequent eating out, resulting in consumers expanding into a food neophilic tendency to try more diverse and new foods. Based on these results, SURU can be a useful indicator for segmenting food- and restaurant-related markets; consumers with a high level of SURU are a group to pay attention to in marketing as they can be tested when introducing new foods into the market. Full article

Using construction and demolition (C&D) waste in concrete production is a promising step toward environmental resilience amid the construction industry’s ecological footprint. The extensive history of using bricks in the construction of buildings has resulted in a considerable amount of waste associated with this commonly used material. This study aimed to assess the quality of concrete by examining the effect of replacing cement with varying percentages of recycled brick powder (RBP—0% to 50%). The primary objectives include evaluating the mechanical properties of concrete and establishing the feasibility of using RBP as a partial cement substitute. The investigation of target concrete can be divided into two phases: (i) laboratory investigation, and (ii) numerical investigation. In the laboratory phase, the performance of concrete with RBP was assessed under short-term dynamic and various static loads. The drop-weight test recommended by the ACI 544 committee was used to assess the short-term dynamic behavior (352 concrete discs). Furthermore, the behavior under static load was analyzed through compressive, flexural, and tensile strength tests. During the numerical phase, artificial neural network models (ANN) and fuzzy logic models (FL) were used to predict the results of 28-day compressive strength. The impact life with different failure probabilities was predicted based on the impact resistance results, by combining the Weibull distribution model. Additionally, an impact damage evolution equation was presented for mixtures containing RBP. The results show that the use of RBP up to 15% caused a slight decrease in compressive, flexural, and tensile strength (about 3–5%). Also, by replacing RBP up to 15%, the first crack strength decreased by 7.15% and the failure strength decreased by 6.46%. The average error for predicting 28-day compressive strength by FL and ANN models was recorded as 4.66% and 0.87%, respectively. In addition, the results indicate that the impact data follow the two-parameter Weibull distribution, and the R² value for different mixtures was higher than 0.9275. The findings suggest that incorporating RBP in concrete can contribute to sustainable construction practices by reducing the reliance on cement and utilizing waste materials. This approach not only addresses environmental concerns but also enhances the quality assessment of concrete, offering potential cost savings and resource efficiency for the construction industry. Real-world applications include using RBP-enhanced concrete in non-structural elements, such as pavements, walkways, and landscaping features, where high strength is not the primary requirement. Full article