Sebastián Fuentes-Alburquenque, María José Vargas-Straube, Michael Seeger
et al.
Abstract Antarctica, though remote and sparsely inhabited, faces significant ecological risks due to human activities and settlements that generate, among others, fuel leaks. In particular, maritime ice-free soils are becoming increasingly vulnerable to environmental disturbances, particularly hydrocarbon (HC) contamination, which represents a significant ecological threat. Low temperatures and limited nutrients reduce microbial degradation rates, allowing contamination to persist for decades. Despite their ecological importance, the structure and environmental drivers of Antarctic soil microbial communities under chronic HC exposure, such as at research stations, remain poorly understood. In this study, we characterized the bacterial/archaeal and eukaryotic communities across 106 soils sampled near research stations in three regions of the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands over two consecutive years, encompassing a wide range of HC pollution levels. Using 16S and 18S rRNA gene sequencing, we assessed amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) and explored spatial and environmental variables that influence microbial diversity, structure, and functional potential. While bacterial/archaeal beta-diversity was primarily influenced by geographic distance, functional profiles and eukaryotic diversity were shaped mainly by environmental factors, particularly HC concentration, pH, and conductivity. We identified consistent shifts in community composition, with HC and conductivity negatively correlated with alpha-diversity, and pH positively correlated. Hydrocarbon pollution consistently reduced microbial alpha-diversity and enriched specific taxa and functions. Notably, an Actinobacterium (Williamsia) and a Leotiomycetes fungus, largely dominated in heavily polluted sites. These taxa emerged as consistent indicators – or sentinel taxa – of HC pollution at a regional scale. Microbial communities in Antarctic soils are shaped differently by a dynamic interplay between space and environment, but chronic pollution can drive consistent community shifts across geographically distant sites.
Urban Villages (UVs) represent a distinctive form of high-density informal settlement embedded within China's rapidly urbanizing cities. Accurate identification of UVs is critical for urban governance, renewal, and sustainable development. But due to the pronounced heterogeneity and diversity of UVs across China's vast territory, a consistent and reliable nationwide dataset has been lacking. In this work, we present GeoLink-UV, a high-resolution nationwide UV mapping product that clearly delineates the locations and boundaries of UVs in 342 Chinese cities. The dataset is derived from multisource geospatial data, including optical remote sensing images and geo-vector data, and is generated through a foundation model-driven mapping framework designed to address the generalization issues and improve the product quality. A geographically stratified accuracy assessment based on independent samples from 28 cities confirms the reliability and scientific credibility of the nationwide dataset across heterogeneous urban contexts. Based on this nationwide product, we reveal substantial interregional disparities in UV prevalence and spatial configuration. On average, UV areas account for 8 % of built-up land, with marked clustering in central and south China. Building-level analysis further confirms a consistent low-rise, high-density development pattern of UVs nationwide, while highlighting regionally differentiated morphological characteristics. The GeoLink-UV dataset provides an open and systematically validated geospatial foundation for urban studies, informal settlement monitoring, and evidence-based urban renewal planning, and contributes directly to large-scale assessments aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 11. The GeoLink-UV dataset introduced in this article is freely available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18688062.
This paper studies how platform design shapes strategic behavior in decentralized electricity trading. We develop a finite-horizon dynamic game in which photovoltaic- and battery-equipped players ("prosumers") trade on a platform that maps aggregate imports and exports into internal buy and sell prices. We establish existence of a perfect conditional epsilon-equilibrium and characterize a Cournot-like market-power mechanism in an observable-types benchmark of the game: because the producer price is decreasing in aggregate exports, strategic prosumers withhold supply and underutilize storage relative to the price-taking benchmark. To quantify these effects, we use a multi-agent computational framework that exploits the differentiable structure of the platform's clearing rule to compare planner, price-taking, and strategic outcomes under alternative pricing mechanisms. In our baseline calibration, strategic play raises grid settlement cost by about 6 percent relative to price-taking. The magnitude of the distortion depends strongly on platform design: some designs can largely eliminate strategic incentives, while increased competition in storage ownership sharply reduces withholding, with most of the distortion disappearing once storage is split across more than three owners. We also find that information disclosure can improve competitive coordination but also increase the market power effects. Despite these distortions, the platform remains highly valuable overall, reducing a passive consumer's annual electricity bill by roughly 40 percent relative to exclusive grid settlement, with strategic behavior clawing back only about 8 percent of that saving. The results show that pricing rules, information disclosure, and ownership structure determine how much of the gains from decentralized electricity trading are realized.
PurposeThis study aims to examine the thermal performance of vertical greenery systems (VGS) in composite climates with seasonal fluctuations, focusing on their impact on indoor thermal comfort in naturally ventilated buildings during the monsoon season.Design/methodology/approachA case–control experiment was conducted in Delhi, India, to compare the hygrothermal effects of a direct green facade (GF) against a bare wall in a naturally ventilated residential building. Data were collected throughout the monsoon season to evaluate the impact on surface temperatures, indoor air temperatures and humidity levels.FindingsThe GF reduced surface temperatures by up to 16.6°C and indoor air temperatures by up to 5°C, demonstrating significant cooling benefits. However, it also elevated the indoor humidity to 81%, which influenced the perceived comfort. Despite this, the system extended the thermal comfort hours owing to the reduction in air temperatures, highlighting its potential to enhance indoor thermal conditions in monsoon-dominated regions.Originality/valueThis study addresses a critical gap in the understanding of the dual effects of VGS on temperature and humidity in composite climates, specifically during high-humidity monsoon seasons. It provides empirical evidence of the benefits and challenges of implementing GFs in naturally ventilated residences, offering insights into their role in urban sustainability and thermal comfort. These findings advocate region-specific research and strategic integration of VGS into urban design to optimize their effectiveness across diverse climatic conditions.
Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology, Cities. Urban geography
As urbanization progresses in China, the importance of preserving traditional settlements, particularly those located in mountainous areas, is increasingly recognized. To reveal the spatial morphology of mountain settlements influenced by topography, this study employs fractal geometry to analyze twelve mountain settlements within the Jiexiu City region. The correlation between the fractal dimensions of building structures in these settlements and those of suitable construction areas was examined, revealing a significant positive relationship. Moreover, an in-depth spatial distribution analysis of the representative village, Xingdi Village, was conducted to examine its sub-regional spatial morphology. Utilizing the Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) model, this study explored the impact of slope, aspect, and elevation on the spatial form of mountainous settlements. The results indicate that the complexity of sub-spaces within Xingdi Village gradually decreases with village expansion, and there is a significant positive correlation between flat terrain and sub-spatial morphology. Based on this, a conservation framework rooted in the morphological characteristics of settlement typologies is proposed.
Financial institutions deploy Large Language Models (LLMs) for reconciliations, regulatory reporting, and client communications, but nondeterministic outputs (output drift) undermine auditability and trust. We quantify drift across five model architectures (7B-120B parameters) on regulated financial tasks, revealing a stark inverse relationship: smaller models (Granite-3-8B, Qwen2.5-7B) achieve 100% output consistency at T=0.0, while GPT-OSS-120B exhibits only 12.5% consistency (95% CI: 3.5-36.0%) regardless of configuration (p<0.0001, Fisher's exact test). This finding challenges conventional assumptions that larger models are universally superior for production deployment. Our contributions include: (i) a finance-calibrated deterministic test harness combining greedy decoding (T=0.0), fixed seeds, and SEC 10-K structure-aware retrieval ordering; (ii) task-specific invariant checking for RAG, JSON, and SQL outputs using finance-calibrated materiality thresholds (plus or minus 5%) and SEC citation validation; (iii) a three-tier model classification system enabling risk-appropriate deployment decisions; and (iv) an audit-ready attestation system with dual-provider validation. We evaluated five models (Qwen2.5-7B via Ollama, Granite-3-8B via IBM watsonx.ai, Llama-3.3-70B, Mistral-Medium-2505, and GPT-OSS-120B) across three regulated financial tasks. Across 480 runs (n=16 per condition), structured tasks (SQL) remain stable even at T=0.2, while RAG tasks show drift (25-75%), revealing task-dependent sensitivity. Cross-provider validation confirms deterministic behavior transfers between local and cloud deployments. We map our framework to Financial Stability Board (FSB), Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) requirements, demonstrating practical pathways for compliance-ready AI deployments.
Oleg Shevchenko / Олег Константинович Шевченко, Anna Dorofeeva / Анна Андреевна Дорофеева
The article, based on a mythopoetic approach, examines several lines of wines from the Alma Valley producer. The authors do a lot of work to identify the mythopoetic elements of the Alma terroir from Antiquity to the nineteenth century, from Scythian settlements to the Battle of Alma. Thus, they consider it possible to give a high mythopoetic assessment of the “Scythian Gold” wine series. But the authors also note a number of inconsistencies between this wine branding and its type. It is proposed to strengthen the historical and mythological component of the brand, more clearly drawing the lines of relationship between the character of the wine and the label design, grape variety and the general idea of the series. Analyzing the series of wines “Seasons” (PIN AP), the authors emphasize the exceptional success of positioning the product in the gender and age segment of the consumer market but conclude that this move cannot be the main one for the philosophy of Alma Valley wines. Particular attention was paid to the “Alma.X” series and the search for the most appropriate mythopoetic line for the original wines, which are the result of bold experiments by Alma Valley specialists.
В статье на основе мифопоэтического подхода рассматривается несколько линеек вин производителя Alma Valley. Авторы проводят большую работу по выявлению мифопоэтических элементов терруара Альмы от Античности до девятнадцатого века, от скифских городищ до Альминского сражения. Таким образом, они считают возможным дать высокою мифопоэтическую оценку серии вина «Золото скифов». Но авторы отмечают и ряд несоответствий между данным брендированием вина и его видом. Предлагается усилить историко-мифологическую составляющую бренда, более четко проводя линии взаимосвязи между характером вина и дизайном этикетки, сортом винограда и общей идеей серии. Анализируя серию вин «Времена года» (ПИН АП), авторы подчеркивают исключительную удачность позиционирования продукта в гендерно-возрастном сегменте рынка потребителей, но делают вывод, что этот ход не может являться магистральным для философии вин Alma Valley. Особое внимание было уделено серии «Альма.Икс» и поиску наиболее соответствующей мифопоэтической линии для оригинальных вин, являющихся результатом смелых экспериментов специалистов Alma Valley.
Despite being a world-class tourist destination, the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI—St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John) face significant challenges related to diversified crop production, food distribution, and food security. High poverty rates among islanders perpetuated by historical iniquities, frequent hurricane damage, drought, poor soil quality, high food production costs, and limited food distribution networks are just a few of the challenges residents face. Consequently, 97% of the food consumed in the USVI is imported. Frequent hurricane damage, such as the recent damage from Irma and Maria (back-to-back Category 5 storms that hit the islands in 2017) complicated these challenges even more and disrupted food import processes. This manuscript focuses on a case study involving a literature review, participant observation, and a series of semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with key informants about issues related to food insecurity, resilience, and farmer needs regarding business sustainability. The results highlight how the political, economic, and cultural complexities of the USVI stymie efforts to lower barriers related to food accessibility and affordability. The results also reveal a new and vibrant entrepreneurial spirit among native islanders and transplants alike, providing novel entryways into food system change and development. Finally, we share policy implications and next steps toward building agriculture and food system resiliency.
Miriam Taegtmeyer, Linet Okoth, Lilian Otiso
et al.
Safeguarding challenges in global health research include sexual abuse and exploitation, physical and psychological abuse, financial exploitation and neglect. Intersecting individual identities (such as gender and age) shape vulnerability to risk. Adolescents, who are widely included in sexual and reproductive health research, may be particularly vulnerable. Sensitive topics like teenage pregnancy may lead to multiple risks. We explored potential safeguarding risks and mitigation strategies when studying teenage pregnancies in informal urban settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. Risk mapping was initiated by the research team that had prolonged engagement with adolescent girls and teen mothers. The team mapped potential safeguarding risks for both research participants and research staff due to, and unrelated to, the research activity. Mitigation measures were agreed for each risk. The draft risk map was validated by community members and coresearchers in a workshop. During implementation, safeguarding risks emerged across the risk map areas and are presented as case studies. Risks to the girls included intimate partner violence because of a phone provided by the study; male participants faced potential disclosure of their perceived criminal activity (impregnating teenage girls); and researchers faced psychological and physical risks due to the nature of the research. These cases shed further light on safeguarding as a key priority area for research ethics and implementation. Our experience illustrates the importance of mapping safeguarding risks and strengthening safeguarding measures throughout the research lifecycle. We recommend co-developing and continuously updating a safeguarding map to enhance safety, equity and trust between the participants, community and researchers.
Medicine (General), Infectious and parasitic diseases
Das Sterben ist eine alltägliche Praxis, nicht nur in den urbanen Zentren. Doch zeigen sich aus geschichtswissenschaftlicher Perspektive erhebliche Desiderate. Obgleich seit einigen Jahren eine „neue Sichtbarkeit des Todes“ postuliert wird, verweist diese neue Beschäftigung vielfach auf Vorstellungen über den Tod und das Sterben und weniger auf Realitäten des Todes. Der folgende Beitrag fokussiert auf die architektonischen und institutionellen städtischen Strukturen, die als Topoi des Todes mit Tod und Sterben verbunden sind. Unter dem Schlagwort „Recht auf Stadt“ wird an dieser Stelle auf Ansprüche, aktuelle Transformationen und historische Prozesse verwiesen und damit die Frage aufgeworfen, welchen Stellenwert die Thematik in unserer heutigen Gesellschaft einnimmt.
Cities. Urban geography, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
Planktonic organisms, despite their passive drift in the ocean, exhibit complex responses to fluid flow, including escape behaviors and larval settlement detection. But what flow signals can they perceive? This paper addresses this question by considering an organism covered with sensitive cilia and immersed in a background flow. The organism is modeled as a spherical particle in Stokes flow, with cilia assumed to measure the local shear at the particle surface. This study reveals that, while these organisms can always measure certain components of the flow strain, bottom-heaviness is necessary to measure the horizontal component of vorticity. These findings shed light on flow sensing by plankton, contributing to a better understanding of their behavior.
Gabriel Bizama, Alexander Wu, Bernardo Paniagua
et al.
This research aims to provide a framework to assess the contribution of digital currencies to promote financial inclusion, based on a diagnosis of the landscape of financial inclusion and domestic and cross-border payments in Latin America and the Caribbean. It also provides insights from central banks in the region on key aspects regarding a possible implementation of central bank digital currencies. Findings show that although digital currencies development is at an early stage, a well-designed system could reduce the cost of domestic and cross-border payments, improve the settlement of transactions to achieve real-time payments, expand the accessibility of central bank money, incorporate programmable payments and achieve system performance demands.
The accuracy assessment of remote-sensing derived built-up land data represents a specific case of binary map comparison, where class imbalance varies considerably across rural-urban trajectories. Thus, local accuracy characterization of such datasets requires specific strategies that are robust to low sample sizes and different levels of class imbalance. Herein, we examine the suitability of commonly used spatial agreement measures for their localized accuracy characterization of built-up land layers across the rural-urban continuum, using the Global Human Settlement Layer and a reference database of built-up land derived from cadastral and building footprint data.
The challenges posed by epidemics and pandemics are immense, especially if the causes are novel. This article introduces a versatile open-source simulation framework designed to model intricate dynamics of infectious diseases across diverse population centres. Taking inspiration from historical precedents such as the Spanish flu and COVID-19, and geographical economic theories such as Central place theory, the simulation integrates agent-based modelling to depict the movement and interactions of individuals within different settlement hierarchies. Additionally, the framework provides a tool for decision-makers to assess and strategize optimal distribution plans for limited resources like vaccines or cures as well as to impose mobility restrictions.
The rapid urbanization trend in most developing countries including India is creating a plethora of civic concerns such as loss of green space, degradation of environmental health, clean water availability, air pollution, traffic congestion leading to delays in vehicular transportation, etc. Transportation and network modeling through transportation indices have been widely used to understand transportation problems in the recent past. This necessitates predicting transportation indices to facilitate sustainable urban planning and traffic management. Recent advancements in deep learning research, in particular, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), and their modifications in spatial data analysis such as CityGAN, Conditional GAN, and MetroGAN have enabled urban planners to simulate hyper-realistic urban patterns. These synthetic urban universes mimic global urban patterns and evaluating their landscape structures through spatial pattern analysis can aid in comprehending landscape dynamics, thereby enhancing sustainable urban planning. This research addresses several challenges in predicting the urban transportation index for small and medium-sized Indian cities. A hybrid framework based on Kernel Ridge Regression (KRR) and CityGAN is introduced to predict transportation index using spatial indicators of human settlement patterns. This paper establishes a relationship between the transportation index and human settlement indicators and models it using KRR for the selected 503 Indian cities. The proposed hybrid pipeline, we call it RidgeGAN model, can evaluate the sustainability of urban sprawl associated with infrastructure development and transportation systems in sprawling cities. Experimental results show that the two-step pipeline approach outperforms existing benchmarks based on spatial and statistical measures.
Establishing a human settlement on Mars is an incredibly complex engineering problem. The inhospitable nature of the Martian environment requires any habitat to be largely self-sustaining. Beyond mining a few basic minerals and water, the colonizers will be dependent on Earth resupply and replenishment of necessities via technological means, i.e., splitting Martian water into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel. Beyond the technical and engineering challenges, future colonists will also face psychological and human behavior challenges. Our goal is to better understand the behavioral and psychological interactions of future Martian colonists through an Agent-Based Modeling (ABM simulation) approach. We seek to identify areas of consideration for planning a colony as well as propose a minimum initial population size required to create a stable colony. Accounting for engineering and technological limitations, we draw on research regarding high performing teams in isolated and high stress environments (ex: submarines, Arctic exploration, ISS, war) to include the 4 basic personality types within the ABM. Interactions between agents with different psychological profiles are modeled at the individual level, while global events such as accidents or delays in Earth resupply affect the colony as a whole. From our multiple simulations and scenarios (up to 28 Earth years), we found that an initial population of 22 was the minimum required to maintain a viable colony size over the long run. We also found that the agreeable personality type was the one more likely to survive. We find, contrary to other literature, that the minimum number of people with all personality types that can lead to a sustainable settlement is in the tens and not hundreds.
The rapid urban growth of the city of Batna since the post-independence period has led to an increase in the distances between the city center, where activities and jobs are concentrated, and the outskirts, where informal settlements have proliferated and developed. However, the public transport offer has not evolved in line with the mobility needs of the populations of these neighborhoods, which are often the densest in the city. This article analyzes the disparities in access to bus transport - the most accessible means of transport for the entire population in the city of Batna - and tends to question their impact on the daily lives of the inhabitants of informal settlements. In the absence of official data on the supply of transport in Batna, we opted for a detailed survey of the public transport network and a survey of the inhabitants of informal settlements. The results of this research highlighted the acute inequalities in access to public transport by bus in Batna, to the detriment of the occupants of the informal settlements, which has a heavy impact on their daily lives, whether in terms of access to work or school, or to social life or to shopping. The exhausting constraints and discomforts faced by these inhabitants accentuate their segregation, inherent to the disparities in access to transport.
Susilawati Susilawati, Nur Asyiah, M. Nur Iskandar
Pandemi merubah pola proses pendidikan yang semula tatap muka menjadi dalam jaringan (daring). Pembelajaran daring yang dilaksanakan selama ini berupa pemberian tugas untuk mencatat dan mengerjakan soal-soal yang ada pada buku paket melalui Whatsapp Group, dampaknya peserta didik mengalami kejenuhan dan motivasi belajar pun menjadi menurun. Guru perlu berinovasi dan berkreasi untuk menampilkan pembelajaran daring dengan cara menyenangkan melalui berbagai aplikasi pembelajaran yang menarik. Salah satu media yang mendukung kreativitas guru dalam mengajar daring diantaranya menyajikan Lembar Kerja Peserta Didik (LKPD) melalui aplikasi liveworksheet. Tujuan kegiatan PKM ini memberikan pelatihan dan pendampingan penyusunan LKPD untuk guru-guru SD sehingga, mampu menciptakan pembelajaran daring yang inspiratif, interaktif, menyenangkan, menantang, dan memotivasi peserta didik. Metode yang digunakan dalam kegiatan PkM ini meliputi 3 tahapan (1) observasi pembelajaran daring yang dilaksanakan di sekolah, (2) pelatihan penyusunan LKPD menggunakan aplikasi liveworksheet, (3) pendampingan dan evaluasi implementasi LKPD menggunakan aplikasi liveworksheet. Rangkaian kegiatan ini telah mampu meningkatkan motivasi peserta kegiatan yaitu guru-guru SD dalam menyusun LKPD online menggunakan aplikasi liveworksheet. Selain itu, peserta didik merasakan adanya perbedaan belajar yang signifikan dari pembelajaran yang biasa dilakukan, 100% guru mampu membuat LKPD interactive. Ide pembuatan LKPD 10%, memasukkan gambar dalam LKPD 70%, memasukkan video dalam LKPD 80%, memasukkan video dalam LKPD 50%, Komponen LKPD bervariatif 30%. LKPD Interaktif dengan menggunakan liveworksheet dapat digunakan di seluruh wilayah Indonesia sehingga proses belajar menjadi lebih mudah dan menyenangkan.
Helen Elsey, Alastair H Leyland, Linsay Gray
et al.
Introduction Several studies have shown that residents of urban informal settlements/slums are usually excluded and marginalised from formal social systems and structures of power leading to disproportionally worse health outcomes compared to other urban dwellers. To promote health equity for slum dwellers, requires an understanding of how their lived realities shape inequities especially for young children 0–4 years old (ie, under-fives) who tend to have a higher mortality compared with non-slum children. In these proposed studies, we aim to examine how key Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) factors at child and household levels combine to affect under-five health conditions, who live in slums in Bangladesh and Kenya through an intersectionality lens.Methods and analysis The protocol describes how we will analyse data from the Nairobi Cross-sectional Slum Survey (NCSS 2012) for Kenya and the Urban Health Survey (UHS 2013) for Bangladesh to explore how SDoH influence under-five health outcomes in slums within an intersectionality framework. The NCSS 2012 and UHS 2013 samples will consist of 2199 and 3173 under-fives, respectively. We will apply Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy approach. Some of SDoH characteristics to be considered will include those of children, head of household, mothers and social structure characteristics of household. The primary outcomes will be whether a child had diarrhoea, cough, fever and acute respiratory infection (ARI) 2 weeks preceding surveys.Ethics and dissemination The results will be disseminated in international peer-reviewed journals and presented in events organised by the Accountability and Responsiveness in Informal Settlements for Equity consortium and international conferences. Ethical approval was not required for these studies. Access to the NCSS 2012 has been given by Africa Population and Health Center and UHS 2013 is freely available.