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The purpose of this paper is to understand how a Canadian intervention based on a professional development (PD) model did or did not influence schools’ capacities to absorb a Healthy School (HS) approach into their operations. This study is the second part of a research project: previously published results regarding this research provided a detailed description of the PD model and highlighted the relevance and effectiveness of PD in improving actors’ HS-related knowledge and practices. The present paper focuses on the organizational impact of such PD intervention.

The design was based on a realist evaluation approach, which helps to elicit a theory explaining how an intervention leads to particular outcomes. A multi-site case study of three schools with pre- (T ₀) and post- (T ₁) intervention comparison was adopted. Multiple qualitative methods were used to capture how the changes were achieved by collecting data from various stakeholders involved in the intervention.

The PD model tested reinforced the schools’ capacities to absorb this type of initiative. For one of the capacities examined, “exploitation”, i.e., the ability to incorporate and maintain the initiative into schools operation, the evidence was less apparent. In congruence with the realist evaluation, the results are rendered in the form of a contextualized intervention theory identifying the links between the PD and the mechanisms that were likely necessary to explain what led to the changes in “absorptive” capacities (which refers to the capabilities of schools to acquire and assimilate HS knowledge, and also to transform and exploit them, in the context).

The refined theory, based on empirical findings, can enable facilitators and practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of the action mechanisms shown to be determining in the success of HS implementation.

A comprehensive “health promoting schools” (HPS) approach is advocated by the World Health Organization to foster the health of students. To date, few studies have evaluated schools' capacity to implement it in an optimal way. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework that identifies core features likely to facilitate the incorporation of innovation, such as HPS, into school functioning.

The framework was built by combining dimensions derived from two major strands of literature, i.e. management and HPS. It has taken root in Zahra and George's model of organisation absorptive capacity (AC) for new knowledge but has been adapted to better explore AC in a school context. The contrasting cases of two secondary schools that adopted a HPS approach in Quebec, Canada, for at least three years were used to illustrate the value of the framework.

The framework proposed is a multidimensional model that considers components such as modulators, antecedents, integration mechanisms and strategic levers as potential determinants of AC, i.e. acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation. The conceptual framework helped to qualify and compare AC regarding HPS in the two cases and holds promise to appreciate mechanisms having the greatest influence on it.

The framework can serve as a conceptual guide to facilitate the absorption of innovation in schools and to design future empirical research to better understand the underlying process by which schools strengthen their capacities to become settings conducive to the health of youth.

The efficient speed controller is found to be an important requirement to run the motor for the brushless direct current (BLDC) motor. This requirement is considered as superior, as it may increase the operating speed and system efficiency. In the existing methods, proportional plus integral (PI) controller has been included because of its simple architecture. But the PI controller produces load disturbance, control complexity and some parametric (Proportional plus integral) variations. The purpose of this proposed controller is to overcome the problems produced by PI controller in BLDC motor.

The proposed BLDC motor is developed with fixed order H-infinity controller. In this architecture, both the weight functions and transfer functions were included to design the controller. This controller has been included in this BLDC to detect the rotor position. The optimal position of rotor is identified by introducing particle swarm optimization algorithm.

The torque that obtained in the motor is highly reduced by this proposed controller and also enhances the speed. The BLDC motor is modelled in a MATLAB environment.

The performance of the torque, speed and back electro-motive force is analysed and compared with the existing controllers such as fuzzy proportional plus integral plus derivative, sensing algorithm and fuzzy proportional plus derivative controller.

Simulation results show that the proposed technique gives better results than the other existing controllers.

Focuses on the basic concepts and principles of alternative economics; a new doctrine of economic thought centred around human communities and their natural environments. The ideas of Karl Polanyi, Ernst F. Schumacher, and Herman E. Daly are presented as the most important antecedents. Considering the economy as multiple interplay among natural ecosystems, economic organizations and human communities, alternative economics tries to find ways in which economies could have been made more ecologically benign and humane. Demonstrates the practical relevance of alternative economics to two fields: first, the responsibility problematics of economizing and, second, the question of how to form economic policies which serve real development.

This paper aims to construct a spatio-temporal emotional framework (STEF) for digital humanities from a quantitative perspective, applying knowledge extraction and mining technology to promote innovation of humanities research paradigm and method.

The proposed STEF uses methods of information extraction, sentiment analysis and geographic information system to achieve knowledge extraction and mining. STEF integrates time, space and emotional elements to visualize the spatial and temporal evolution of emotions, which thus enriches the analytical paradigm in digital humanities.

The case study shows that STEF can effectively extract knowledge from unstructured texts in the field of Chinese Qing Dynasty novels. First, STEF introduces the knowledge extraction tools – MARKUS and DocuSky – to profile character entities and perform plots extraction. Second, STEF extracts the characters' emotional evolutionary trajectory from the temporal and spatial perspective. Finally, the study draws a spatio-temporal emotional path figure of the leading characters and integrates the corresponding plots to analyze the causes of emotion fluctuations.

The STEF is constructed based on the “spatio-temporal narrative theory” and “emotional narrative theory”. It is the first framework to integrate elements of time, space and emotion to analyze the emotional evolution trajectories of characters in novels. The execuability and operability of the framework is also verified with a case novel to suggest a new path for quantitative analysis of other novels.

Changing the present behavior of individuals toward a more sustainable lifestyle is a complex task requiring a well-established strategy and institutional commitment. The purpose of this paper is to understand the strategic steps, as proposed by Steg and Vlek (2009), that has been mostly focused on by higher education institutions (HEIs) in the past decade (2010–2020) to foster pro-environmental behavior (PEB) of students.

A literature review was conducted following the approach given by Denyer and Tranfield (2009). Subsequently, the results of 147 articles from 22 journals were discussed using the seven-element system proposed by Lozano et al. (2013).

In the past decade, HEIs have increased their efforts to improve their understanding of the determinants of PEB of students and methods to foster PEB. However, the results indicated that the classification was similar to previous studies, with HEIs focused mainly on assessing students in terms of personal factors (assessment and reporting category), understanding the relationships among psychological determinants and their influence on student behavior (research category) and planning educational interventions (education category).

This is the first study that reviewed the role of HEIs in fostering PEBs of students using the approach proposed by Lozano et al. (2013) as a theoretical framework and the strategy proposed by Steg and Vlek (2009) as a guideline.

Tourism systems have been considered more and more in the light of complexity and chaos theories. Most of the work done in this area has highlighted the reasons for and the issues regarding this approach. A steadily growing strand of the recent literature uses the theories to overcome the problems of a reductionist and mechanistic view that is considered unable to provide a full understanding of the structural and dynamic characteristics of tourism systems, and specifically of tourism destinations. This paper seeks to continue this approach and to provide a series of quantitative methods to assess the dynamics of non‐linear complex tourism systems.

The time series used in the paper contains data collected from a sample of 23 large (four‐star) hotels located in Milan, Italy. For each structure daily data of occupancy, average room rate and RevPAR (revenue per available room) were recorded for the period 2006‐2009. The daily distributions of these observations are highly skewed, and therefore the median of the daily values were considered. This results in three series of 1,461 points per type (occupancy, room rate and RevPAR).

The data confirm the complex nature of the destination system and its tendency towards a chaotic state. Additionally, high stability and long memory effects are detected. The outcomes and the implications of this analysis are examined.

A comparison of the values obtained leads to the conclusion that the series under study has a detectable level of non‐linearity, even if it does not reach the pure chaoticity of the Lorenz attractor. A first conclusion is that, as qualitatively assessed in many similar studies, the tourism destination is a complex system with a tendency to become chaotic.

The picture obtained with the analyses conducted can be summarised by saying that the system under study exhibits an unequivocally complex nature. It tends towards a chaotic stage but does so at a slow pace. The stability of the system is quite high: it might be able to resist transient shocks well but, once led in one direction, its long memory characteristics tend to keep it on the resulting path.

Prosociality may in part determine sustainability behavior. Prior research indicates that pro-environmental behavior correlates with prosocial attitudes, and separately, that prosociality correlates with social support in homes and communities. Therefore, prosociality may constitute a keystone variable linking human well-being with pro-environmental behavior. The purpose of the paper is to test this conjecture.

Data from a multi-year student survey at the University of Maine on environmental behavior, prosociality and experienced social support are used. A two-stage least-squares regression is applied to explore the relationships between these variables, and sub-scale analysis of the pro-environmental responses is performed. Additionally, spatial statistics for the student population across the state are computed.

The data corroborate previous findings and indicates that social support within a community may bolster the prosociality of its members, which in turn may increase pro-environmental behaviors and intentions.

Cross-sectional data do not permit the imputation of causality. Self-reported measures of behavior may also be biased. However, student prosociality surveys may provide an effective and low-cost sustainability metric for large populations.

The results of this study corroborate prior research to suggest that pro-environmental and prosocial behaviors may both be enhanced by bolstering social support efforts at the community level.

It is suggested that prosociality could become a keystone sustainability indicator. The study’s results extend the understanding of the connections between prosociality, social support and pro-environmental behavior. The results of this study suggest that efforts to simultaneously improve the well-being and environmental status might focus on building prosociality and social support systems at the community level.

Women’s empowerment remains a key development challenge in Kenya. The purpose of this study is to attempt to understand the status of women’s empowerment and the key contributors to their disempowerment in Kenya’s aquaculture sector.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 534 male and female fish farmers from 300 households drawn from six counties in Kenya (Kakamega, Kisumu, Kisii, Kiambu, Meru and Nyeri). The Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) was adapted to Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Fisheries and Aquaculture Index (A-WEFI) to suit the aquaculture and fisheries sub-sector. The adapted A-WEFI was then used to estimate and the status of women’s and men’s using five domains of empowerment (5DE) and a gender parity index (GPI). Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Cramer’s V and sensitivity analysis as test statistics.

About 86% of the men and 80% of the women were classified as empowered. The mean score of the 5DE was 0.93 and 0.95 for women and men, respectively. In addition, 82% of the households achieved gender parity, suggesting that for such households, empowerment of men was no greater than that of women. Overall, the results suggest no major differences between the empowerment of women and men. Findings suggest areas of improvement in empowerment: when observed separately, women report lack of agency in production, resource, time-use and allocation and leadership.

This paper adapts the A-WEAI to the fisheries and aquaculture context, in bid to bridge the gap in standard women’s empowerment measurement methods in this area. Also, there are limited empirical studies on the multifaceted empowerment of women in aquaculture in Kenya. The findings are meant to serve as a point of reference for policymakers, as they develop gender-responsive intervention programmes, and in implementing gender mainstreaming in Kenya.

Bottled water consumption continues to break records worldwide and its environmental impact is often underestimated by the consumer. Many factors affect individuals’ choices to consume tap water and bottled water including perceived health risks and water quality. The University of South Florida (USF) has joined a nationwide initiative to become carbon-neutral, and reducing bottled water consumption was a chosen strategy. The purpose of this study was to assess the risk perceptions and drinking water choices of the USF-Tampa campus community.

A sample of 561 students, faculty and staff members responded to an online survey. The survey contained questions about the use of bottled water and tap water, reusable water bottles, risk perceptions and demographics.

The results revealed that certain groups – undergraduate students and ethnic/racial minorities (e.g. black/African American, Hispanic/Latino) – drank significantly more bottled water. Among political ideologies, Liberals drank the least bottled water. Females and minorities had significantly greater risk perceptions of the tap water on campus. Important perceived benefits were tap water being less expensive and better for the environment than bottled water. Important perceived barriers were poor tasting tap water and the desire for filtered water.

The findings suggest the need for public health campaigns to increase awareness of health, environmental and financial consequences of bottled water consumption. Such campaigns should aim to discourage bottled water and any potential increased sugar-sweetened beverage consumption while promoting tap water consumption.