Physical Surroundings Research Articles

El turismo accesible en Chile: articulación y pertinencia de la oferta

Existe un aumento de personas con discapacidad, la repercusión de este segmento ha generado una especial preocupación por parte del sector turístico, las razones fundamentales que justifican la importancia de este nicho de mercado es su rápida tendencia al crecimiento. Existe un mercado significativo en Chile que requiere tener accesibilidad a los espacios de ocio, que sin duda deben ser articulados adecuadamente para dicho fin.El turismo accesible constituye a la fecha parte de la hoja de ruta de organismos públicos y organizaciones privadas, pero dadas las características que tiene la actividad turística, requiere que participen activamente todos los agentes involucrados, lo cual permita desarrollar el turismo nacional bajo un carácter inclusivo, con la pertinencia adecuada en las intervenciones que se deban realizar, por lo que cobra especial relevancia fomentar el turismo accesible desde todos los sectores, ya que la primera exigencia de una persona con discapacidad al salir de viaje es tener la certeza que podrá acceder a un entorno físico adaptado a sus necesidades.La bibliografía revisada y las entrevistas a usuarios de servicios turísticos han permitido obtener información y contrastar, entregando como resultado una primera aproximación con información que da cuenta de los avances y carencias que identifican usuarios de servicios turísticos inclusivos.

Monitoring upstream determinants of dietary health to increase action on nutrition: The INFORMAS initiative

Abstract Background Efforts for tracking malnutrition in all its forms are increasing. The World Health Organization conducts regular surveys among Member States on implementation of policies to prevent non-communicable diseases (NCDs) through online databases and interactive maps. However, there are critical gaps. One of the main factors contributing to unhealthy diets is unhealthy food environments. Food environments are the collective physical, economic, policy and sociocultural surroundings, opportunities and conditions that influence people’s food habits and nutritional status. Methods The International Network for Food and Obesity/NCDs Research, Monitoring and Action Support (INFORMAS) was founded in 2013 and developed a new framework to monitor and benchmark the healthiness of food environments and policies in a standardized way internationally. The framework consists of 7 modules covering different aspects of food environments (e.g. food composition, labelling, marketing, provision) and two tools (focused on policies and business impact) to measure the extent of implementation of priority recommendations to improve food environments by governments and the private sector. Results To date about 30 countries implemented one or several modules or tools of the INFORMAS framework. INFORMAS has conducted several multicountry comparisons and has developed a blueprint country profile for measuring progress on creating healthy food environments. The proposed country profile aims to supplement similar efforts by the Global Burden of Disease in monitoring health risk factors and outcomes. Conclusions This monitoring fills a gap in the available evidence regarding food environments and policies internationally. Monitoring the healthiness of food environments using key indicators is important to strengthen accountability of governments and food companies, and evaluate the impact of their policies.

Effective school food environment interventions for the prevention of childhood obesity: systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundThe food environment is a modifiable enabler of dietary choices that can have a great impact on the prevention of childhood obesity in the UK. It is defined as a combination of physical, economic, political, and sociocultural surroundings as well as opportunities and conditions that influence food choice. Many interventions have been undertaken at the school level but evidence of their effectiveness in the reduction of childhood obesity is scarce. Therefore, we aimed to synthesise and evaluate the evidence of food environmental interventions around and within schools to determine effective parameters that can aid in childhood obesity prevention. MethodsWe searched CINAHL, Embase, Global Health, MEDLINE, Scielo, and Cochrane databases. The considered population were children aged 18 years or younger. Interventions focused on modification of the food environment in schools to prevent obesity and improve dietary intake. Outcomes included anthropometrical measures and dietary intake. The protocol was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42019125039). A second reviewer did a reliability check on 10% of abstracts, bias, and full-text review. FindingsBetween Jan 1, 2000, to Feb 12, 2019, we retrieved 4307 studies, of which 21 were included after screening. Interventions (13; 62%), policies (two; 10%), and laws (three; 14%) from eight countries, including the UK, were included. Four (19%) interventions focused on vending machines. Study designs included natural experiments (one; 5%), quasi-experiments (two; 6%), non-randomised (one; 5%), and randomised (four; 19%). The main outcomes were body-mass index z score (13; 62%) and dietary intake (n=4, 19%). A positive association (p=0·0451) was found in 15 (71%) studies between 0·89% and 1·29% reduction in obesity prevalence. The most frequent interventions were vending machines, school stores, cafeterias, and menu offering regulations. InterpretationIdentified effective interventions in the prevention of childhood obesity were banning of sugary drinks in schools and an increase in availability and accessibility of fruits and vegetables for children from an early age. Multisystem approaches, such as stringent and monitored school meal programmes, alongside the collaboration, training, education, and integration of the school staff, parents, and students, increased acceptability and adaptability according to the local needs and sustainability of the food environment interventions. Changes in the environment lead to individual behaviour modifications. FundingEuropean Commission (H2020 SC2).

Oral Feeding in Preterm Infants: A Conceptual Model for Health Care Practitioners

Oral feeding competence is a critical milestone needed for proper growth and development in preterm infants. Commonly, the oral feeding process is conceptualized as an infant's ability to coordinate suck–swallow–breathe. However, oral feeding is a highly complex multisystem process. In this article, an oral feeding model is presented that takes into consideration the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence oral feeding performances. The intrinsic neurophysiologic factors include the musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, respiratory, cardiovascular, behavioral, and neurologic systems. The extrinsic environmental factors include the physical surroundings, NICU policies, parental attributes, health care practitioners, and feeding equipment. The objectives of this article are to (1) describe the intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting oral feeding performance of preterm infants in the NICU, (2) introduce a conceptual model of oral feeding that displays the relationship between these factors, and (3) provide a reference guide for health care practitioners to refer to when evaluating an infant's oral feeding performance.

Health and Disease Control in Marwa Village of Jharkhand – A Sociological Study

Health which is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely absence of disease and infirmity' is broad one which implies a perfect harmony of man's internal environment with his external environment consisting of physical, chemical and biological surroundings, is a concept unknown to the rural population. The ignorance of this vast majority of the population proves to be a serious social problem. Though health is recognized as a birth right of all citizens, there has been a wide gap between people's need and the achievement in the area of health. Health has now ceased to be regarded as an end in itself. Moreover, there is not only a glaring lack of awareness of and an even more threatening lack of medical facilities in a majority of rural areas in India. Without awareness of health issues, most tribal populations tend to fall ill more frequently and wait too long before seeking medical help, or are referred too late by untrained village practitioners.

Impact of Culture on Rural Built Environment

The term “built environment” refers to the human made or modified physical surroundings in which people live, work and play. These places and spaces include our homes, communities, schools, workplaces, parks/recreations areas, business areas and transportation systems, and vary in size from large-scale urban areas to smaller rural developments. Based on human activities, the environment was created to obtain the basic needs of people. The regular human activities for many generations to prepare their needs are considered as culture. Hence based on culture, the environment was built and maintained for future generation. Regions are separated into two types based on production occurs in rural area and trading developed in urban. In olden days, most of the places are rural because of the undevelopment in transport system. The activities involved in preparing food, shelter and other needs are the common factors to build rural environment. Natural resources are the basic factor that decides the build environment and culture of human in rural regions. By analyzing the natural resources, the cultural impacts are determined based on building environment in rural areas

Frontispiece: Sulfones as Chemical Chameleons: Versatile Synthetic Equivalents of Small‐Molecule Synthons

Just as a change in physical surroundings can prompt a chameleon to alter its color, a change in reaction conditions can cause a sulfonyl group to alter its chemical reactivity. This remarkable flexibility makes molecules bearing multiple sulfones incredibly versatile building blocks. In this Minireview by B. M. Trost et al. on page 11193 ff., the unique ability of 1,1- and 1,2-bis(sulfones) to masquerade as a vast array of reactive synthons, including methane polyanions, vinyl cations, and all-carbon dipoles, is highlighted.

Alpha-synuclein at the nexus of genes and environment: the impact of environmental enrichment and stress on brain health and disease.

Accumulation of alpha‐synuclein protein aggregates is the hallmark neuropathologic feature of synucleinopathies such as Parkinson’s disease. Rare point mutations and multiplications in SNCA, the gene encoding alpha‐synuclein, as well as other genetic alterations are linked to familial Parkinson’s disease cases with high penetrance and hence constitute major genetic risk factors for Parkinson’s disease. However, the preponderance of cases seems sporadic, most likely based on a complex interplay between genetic predispositions, aging processes and environmental influences. Deciphering the impact of these environmental factors and their interactions with the individual genetic background in humans is challenging and often requires large cohorts, complicated study designs, and longitudinal set‐ups. In contrast, rodent models offer an ideal system to study the influence of individual environmental aspects under controlled genetic background and standardized conditions. In this review, we highlight findings from studies examining effects of environmental enrichment mimicking stimulation of the brain by its physical and social surroundings as well as of environmental stressors on brain health in the context of Parkinson’s disease. We discuss possible internal molecular transducers of such environmental cues in Parkinson’s disease rodent models and emphasize their potential in developing novel avenues to much‐needed therapies for this still incurable disease. This article is part of the Special Issue “Synuclein”

Indoor and outdoor physical surroundings and guests’ emotional well-being

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the relationship of internal/external physical environments and emotional well-being and to explore the possible influence of such an association with guest satisfaction and retention considering the moderating role of price perception in the luxury resort hotel context.Design/methodology/approachA total of 603 responses were gathered from a field survey at luxury resort hotels. The data were analyzed using quantitative data analyses to achieve research objectives.FindingsThe results from the structural model assessment revealed that both internal and external physical environments elicited emotional well-being, which in turn leads to the increased guest satisfaction and retention. More specifically, internal atmospherics had a stronger impact on triggering subsequent variables compared to external environment factors. The outcomes also indicated the significant mediating role of emotional well-being and satisfaction. Emotional well-being was found to mediate the effect of internal and external physical environments on guest satisfaction, while guest satisfaction mediated the effect of emotional well-being on guest retention. Moreover, price perception significantly moderated the guest satisfaction–guest retention association. Overall, the proposed conceptual framework satisfactorily accounted for variance in guest retention.Originality/valueThe findings help practitioners in luxury resort hotels to develop ways to boost guests’ post-purchase behaviors by using internal/external atmospherics and emotional well-being.

Factors that Influence Chinese Outbound Tourists’ Intention to Consume Local Food

ABSTRACTFood consumption is an essential activity for tourists. Food can be used for destination marketing to attract travellers, and is one of the main purposes of travel for Chinese tourists. This study investigates the factors that motivate Chinese tourists’ intention to consume local food during their travels. Using a quantitative study of 308 mainland Chinese tourists to Hong Kong, we find that these tourists value local and traditional food experiences. The physical surroundings and prestige of the food experience are Chinese tourists’ major concerns for dining experiences. Local food consumed at the destination is a way to escape from the routine and acquire knowledge of the local culture. The sensory appeal brought by local cuisines also motivate Chinese tourists to consume local foods. These results can assist destination marketers and local restaurateurs to increasing the attractiveness of their destinations and restaurants.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Geographic and Social Predictors of Flood Risk Awareness.

The persistent gap in flood risk awareness in Canada, and elsewhere in North America, is a continual source of worry for researchers and emergency managers; many people living in at-risk places are simply unaware of risks and of their proximity to hazards. This study seeks to understand which residents were aware of flood risk, using unique representative survey data of Calgary residents living in the city's flood-prone neighborhoods collected after the devastating and costly 2013 Southern Alberta Flood. The article uses logistic regression models to analyze which residents were aware of risk to their homes. Findings indicate that, in addition to various demographic predictors, many of the geographic predictors (including the elevation of one's home relative to the river) are significant predictors of awareness. Having a direct sight line to one of Calgary's two rivers is also a significant predictor in some of the models, suggesting that the visibility of hazards matters for flood risk perception, although this effect fades when many of the geographic predictors are added. Finally, the models indicate that several variables related to local, neighborhood-based social networks are significant as well. These findings reveal that both physical surroundings and social context are important for understanding risk awareness. The article concludes by discussing the relevance for social science research on disasters and hazards, as well as for planners and emergency managers.

Developing a Reflective Mind: From Core Metacognition to Explicit Self-Reflection

Metacognition is the ability to monitor and control cognition. Because young children often provide inaccurate metacognitive judgments when prompted to do so verbally, it has long been assumed that this ability does not develop until late childhood. This claim is now challenged by new studies using nonverbal paradigms and revealing that basic forms of metacognition—such as the ability to estimate decision confidence or to monitor errors—are present even in preverbal infants. This new line of evidence suggests that young children adapt to their environment not only by considering their physical and social surroundings but also by reflecting on their own cognitive states.

Ghrita - Elixir: Child Growth and Development

Journal of Ayurveda Medical Sciences,2018,3,3,402-404.DOI:10.5530/jams.2018.3.19Published:April 2019Type:Concept NoteAuthors:Vijay B Negalur, and Krithi Amai Author(s) affiliations:Vijay B Negalur*, Krithi Amai Department of PG Studies in Swasthavritta, Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College of Ayurveda, Kuthpady, Udupi 574118, India Abstract:Today’s children are tomorrow’s citizen. Healthy society of the future relies on the health of the children today. Growth and development, the vital phenomena of childhood have a very important role in determining the health of the children and thereby the society. The term growth is described as the increase in the physical size of the body whereas development refers to increase in skills and functions. Thus, growth and development can be understood as improvement in physical, socio-emotional, cognitive and motor aspects. Factors such as genetic inheritance, nutrition, physical surroundings, psychological factors, economic factors etc influence the growth and development of a child. Nutrition, one among the influencing factors has a very important role before as well as after birth. Adequate nutrition supply to a pregnant is very essential for optimum growth and development of the foetus. Maternal malnutrition is directly responsible for low birth weight of newborns, leading to higher risk of mortality and morbidity. Adequate nourishment of the child during infancy to age of puberty is equally important for their optimum growth and development. Ayurveda, the ancient healing science, describes in detail regarding care of the pregnant as well as child. Use of various dravya (drugs) for promoting the health of both mother and the child are available in the classics. One such dravya, being used since ages in India, in the form of food as well as medicine is ghrita (Ghee). Keywords:NilView:PDF (1.96 MB)

Women’s Somatic Training in Early Modern Spanish Theater

Women’s Somatic Training in Early Modern Spanish Theater

Increase in Mutual Information During Interaction with the Environment Contributes to Perception.

Perception and motor interaction with physical surroundings can be analyzed by the changes in probability laws governing two possible outcomes of neuronal activity, namely the presence or absence of spikes (binary states). Perception and motor interaction with the physical environment are partly accounted for by a reduction in entropy within the probability distributions of binary states of neurons in distributed neural circuits, given the knowledge about the characteristics of stimuli in physical surroundings. This reduction in the total entropy of multiple pairs of circuits in networks, by an amount equal to the increase of mutual information, occurs as sensory information is processed successively from lower to higher cortical areas or between different areas at the same hierarchical level, but belonging to different networks. The increase in mutual information is partly accounted for by temporal coupling as well as synaptic connections as proposed by Bahmer and Gupta (Front. Neurosci. 2018). We propose that robust increases in mutual information, measuring the association between the characteristics of sensory inputs’ and neural circuits’ connectivity patterns, are partly responsible for perception and successful motor interactions with physical surroundings. The increase in mutual information, given the knowledge about environmental sensory stimuli and the type of motor response produced, is responsible for the coupling between action and perception. In addition, the processing of sensory inputs within neural circuits, with no prior knowledge of the occurrence of a sensory stimulus, increases Shannon information. Consequently, the increase in surprise serves to increase the evidence of the sensory model of physical surroundings

Creating an Embodied Phenomenological Typology for Describing the Qualitative Experience of Traumatic Space from Continued Bombings

The effect of ongoing bombs and sirens in civilian areas and in day-to-day life, as is typical in current war situations, transforms the spaces of everyday living into traumatic spaces. Not only do the spaces hold memories of past traumas, but they are also stages for trauma that will occur in the near future. Thus, the most familiar “safe spaces” of life—my room, my house, my street, my suburb—become infused with traumatic memories. While there is literature on defining and measuring traumatic experience, there is less descriptive literature concerning how people experience their embodied and immediate space in such contexts. How do people experience the shift of familiar spaces around them to violent and chaotic spaces from a phenomenological and embodied standpoint? This view takes trauma out of the body as disconnected from context and situates body in environment, figure within background. This research focused on the spatial experiences in vignettes of bombing experiences of 24 mothers diagnosed with PTSD in an ongoing war context. It created a typology of four axes of spatial experiences of this traumatic space including horizontal organization of space, vertical organization of space, close and distant elements, and inside–outside elements. The findings show how spatial narratives of civilian bombing may aid in unraveling fragmented traumatic memories of local spaces where the bombing occurred, and in this way, help to reconstruct its safety. We thus enable a narrative of the spatial elements of the event that utilizes spatial concepts rather than abstract or feeling concepts within the body, decontextualized from the physical surroundings. This research aims to contextualize traumatic experience within familiar and local spaces to investigate how this perspective may support trauma narration as part of the healing process.

Solutions from everyday life: good care(s) in the context of caring for severe mental illness in Portugal

Introduction: In Portugal and many European countries, caring for mental illness is frequently encapsulated in what some call the psy complex [1] , centered in the hospital. Even if there have been efforts for deinstitutionalization, successive delays in restructuring services and little interest from the political, public, and scientific fields [2] have contributed, for decades, for the lesser visibility of what it means to experience mental illness, and other ways of dealing with it beyond the hospital and psychiatry. Indeed, closing psychiatric institutions and changing to a community paradigm, includes creating other structures and components for rehabilitation and inclusion that would allow keeping people with psychosocial difficulties in the community. These also mean rehabilitating the patient, his/her relatives and the professional, as they shall operate in a new rehabilitative-communitarian model – putting them, even temporarily, somewhere in between this and the old bio-medical model, raising tensions and unexpected consequences. Materials and methods: This presentation is empirically based on an ethnographic study, which included 6-month daily participant observation, from April to October 2016, in two ambulatory units of a Psychiatry Department in a Portuguese general hospital, and interviews with users of these units. During this time, I participated in all the activities that these units provided in terms of care, social rehabilitation, or social events, as well as team/department meetings. All the people with whom I worked there were aware of my role as researcher and the project I was developing there. During these months, I have documented the daily routines of ambulatory psychiatric treatment, materialized by patients, relatives, professionals and in physical surroundings. Fieldnotes were analyzed from the starting point of finding points of tension/uncertainty in the provision of care and highlighting the solutions found by participants in order to solve them. Results: Data shows how different ideas of good care [3] are practiced, intersecting different cultural, professional or contextual values, and articulate new opportunities for caring. To illustrate this, I will focus on apparently evident practices like eating activities, which originate different hospital repertoires: asylum; rehabilitation unit; home; leisure setting. If the therapeutic importance given to eating activities may overcome initial expectations, they may also be reconducted into a ludic dimension, for many opposite to the idea of caring. Discussion and conclusions: Grand societal explanations on mental illness collide and co-habit, in everyday life, with how actors appropriate of practices, different circumstances for action are created, or diverse positions and motivations towards food, wellbeing and illness coexist. These sometimes hinder training skills for everyday activities, but facilitate sociability/solidarity among participants. Hence, these versions of good create not only different ways of caring, but different settings, within the hospital, that are seldom depicted in official discourses, and which are urgent to know and debate for the success and quality of mental illness policies.

Modern Naturalistic Enclosures: Comparatively an Enhanced Management Practice of Captive Felids in the Zoological Park

Due to the expansion of human population, threat for existence of all wild animals is gradually increasing. They are driven to exist in smaller areas and in the worst case scenario extinction. Zoos are being encouraged to improve the animal's physical and social surroundings. In this study, the modern naturalistic enrichment introduced to large felids tiger, lion and leopard at Gandhi Zoological Park, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, was studied. The study has envisaged evaluating if the modern naturalistic enclosures could increase activity levels and how the felids opted to these enclosure. The enclosures were divided into menageries and natural enrichment, which had a varying degree of opportunities for the animals to climb, hide and rest above ground level. The environmental enrichment effects on the proportion of time spent engaging in active behaviors and stereotypic pacing in the large felids were compared and recorded using instantaneous scan sampling. The results of this study revealed clearly that large felids kept in more natural and complex enclosures performed less stereotypic pacing (unnatural behavior), and more exploratory (natural) behaviour than those housed in less natural enclosures reducing the stress level in captive tigers will enhance the animals’ overall physical and psychological well being, which will in turn increase the success of captive breeding programs. Furthermore, these results suggest that captive tigers should be housed in large enclosures containing natural substrate and vegetation, water pools, ample shade, a variety of resting locations and enrichment items.

You don’t miss it ‘til it’s gone: insecurity, place, and the social construction of the environment

ABSTRACTIn this article, I examine the social construction of the environment, ideas about the risk society, place attachment and place detachment in the aftermath of two tornadoes that occurred in 2011 in Joplin, Missouri, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The specific research questions are: How does the physical world influence the social world in the face of radically changed surroundings due to disaster? How do disaster aftermaths shape the ways in which participants make sense of themselves? How does disaster undo or remake relationships people form with landmarks, locations and places, such as homes, when they are destroyed? I conducted 162 interviews in Joplin and Tuscaloosa, engaged in participant observation with nonprofit organizations, and collected archival work on the history of both cities. I have three related and overlapping findings. (1) Participants experienced a loss of reality that made it difficult for them to make sense of themselves and their places in the social and physical world. (2) Participants experienced a ‘negative sense of place’ after significant places were destroyed. (3) The participants were often unaware of their physical surroundings until a rupture like disaster caused them to understand how the environment is an important part of their everyday life.

Unique Patterns and Biogeochemical Relevance of Two-Component Sensing in Marine Bacteria.

Two-component sensory (TCS) systems link microbial physiology to the environment and thus may play key roles in biogeochemical cycles. In this study, we surveyed the TCS systems of 328 diverse marine bacterial species. We identified lifestyle traits such as copiotrophy and diazotrophy that are associated with larger numbers of TCS system genes within the genome. We compared marine bacterial species with 1,152 reference bacterial species from a variety of habitats and found evidence of extra response regulators in marine genomes. Examining the location of TCS genes along the circular bacterial genome, we also found that marine bacteria have a large number of "orphan" genes, as well as many hybrid histidine kinases. The prevalence of "extra" response regulators, orphan genes, and hybrid TCS systems suggests that marine bacteria break with traditional understanding of how TCS systems operate. These trends suggest prevalent regulatory networking, which may allow coordinated physiological responses to multiple environmental signals and may represent a specific adaptation to the marine environment. We examine phylogenetic and lifestyle traits that influence the number and structure of two-component systems in the genome, finding, for example, that a lack of two-component systems is a hallmark of oligotrophy. Finally, in an effort to demonstrate the importance of TCS systems to marine biogeochemistry, we examined the distribution of Prochlorococcus/Synechococcus response regulator PMT9312_0717 in metaproteomes of the tropical South Pacific. We found that this protein's abundance is related to phosphate concentrations, consistent with a putative role in phosphate regulation. IMPORTANCE Marine microbes must manage variation in their chemical, physical, and biological surroundings. Because they directly link bacterial physiology to environmental changes, TCS systems are crucial to the bacterial cell. This study surveyed TCS systems in a large number of marine bacteria and identified key phylogenetic and lifestyle patterns in environmental sensing. We found evidence that, in comparison with bacteria as a whole, marine organisms have irregular TCS system constructs which might represent an adaptation specific to the marine environment. Additionally, we demonstrate the biogeochemical relevance of TCS systems by correlating the presence of the PMT9312_0717 response regulator protein to phosphate concentrations in the South Pacific. We highlight that despite their potential ecological and biogeochemical relevance, TCS systems have been understudied in the marine ecosystem. This report expands our understanding of the breadth of bacterial TCS systems and how marine bacteria have adapted to survive in their unique environment.