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This study aims to explore the level of independence among persons with disabilities (PWDs) towards their use of public buildings’ facilities, as well as assess the anxiety and relevant challenges regarding such use.

In a cross-sectional survey design, 91 consenting PWDs were recruited via purposive sampling at diverse locations and invited to complete self-report questionnaires on their use of public buildings’ facilities.

Only 19 PWDs (20.9%) were able to independently use such facilities. The participants’ level of anxiety, observed to be mostly severe (41.7%), was significantly associated with sex and affected body region (p < 0.05). Most PWDs identified “lack of amenities” (85.7%), “inconvenience” (78%) and “safety issues” (59.4%) as relevant challenges towards the use of public buildings’ facilities.

This research emphasises the urgent need to universally improve PWDs’ level of independence towards the use of public buildings’ facilities alongside eradicating anxiety and challenges experienced towards such use. Accessibility ought to be promoted among PWDs, with specific attention given to women and those affected in multiple body regions; as such populations are prone to experiencing substantial anxiety. This approach should entail the provision of barrier-free facilities as well as ensuring their safe and convenient use by PWDs.

This study sought and provided key feedback from PWDs on the current built environment, which ought to be considered by relevant stakeholders to improve accessibility, promote well-being and contribute towards meeting the global goals of reducing inequality and making cities/communities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

South Asia is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. With its fast economic development, the energy requirement for the region has rapidly grown. As the region relies mainly on nonrenewable energy sources and is suffering from issues like pollution, the high cost of energy imports, depleting foreign reserves, etc. it is searching for those factors that can help enhance the renewable energy generation for the region. Thus, taking these issues into consideration, this paper aims to investigate the impact of macroeconomic factors that can contribute to the enhancement of renewable energy output in South Asia.

An autoregressive distributed lag methodology has been applied to examine the long-term effects of remittance inflows, literacy rate, energy imports, government expenditures and urban population growth on the renewable energy output of South Asia by using time series data from 1990 to 2021.

The findings indicated that remittance inflows have a negative and insignificant long-term effect on renewable electricity output. While it was discovered that energy imports, government spending and urban population growth have negative but significant effects on renewable electricity output, literacy rates have positive and significant effects.

Considering the importance of renewable energy, this is one of the few studies that has included critical macroeconomic variables that can affect renewable energy output for the region. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge that a high literacy level is crucial for promoting renewable energy output, while governments and policymakers should prioritize reducing energy imports and ensuring that government expenditures on renewable energy output are properly used. SAARC, the governing body of the region, also benefits from this study while devising the renewable energy output policies for the region.

Perspiration and heat are produced by the body and must be eliminated to maintain a stable body temperature. Sweat, heat and air must pass through the fabric to be comfortable. The cloth absorbs sweat and then releases it, allowing the body to chill down. By capillary action, moisture is driven away from fabric pores or sucked out of yarns. Convectional air movement improves sweat drainage, which may aid in body temperature reduction. Clothing reduces the skin's ability to transport heat and moisture to the outside. Excessive moisture makes clothing stick to the skin, whereas excessive heat induces heat stress, making the user uncomfortable. Wet heat loss is significantly more difficult to understand than dry heat loss. The purpose of this study is to provided a good compilation of complete information on wet thermal comfort of textile and technological elements to be consider while constructing protective apparel.

This paper aims to critically review studies on the thermal comfort of textiles in wet conditions and assess the results to guide future research.

Several recent studies focused on wet textiles' impact on comfort. Moisture reduces the fabric's thermal insulation value while also altering its moisture characteristics. Moisture and heat conductivity were linked. Sweat and other factors impact fabric comfort. So, while evaluating a fabric's comfort, consider both external and inside moisture.

The systematic literature review in this research focuses on wet thermal comfort and technological elements to consider while constructing protective apparel.

The purpose of this paper is to study haemodynamic flow characteristics and entropy analysis in a bifurcated artery system subjected to stenosis, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow and aneurysm conditions. The findings of this study offer significant insights into the intricate interplay encompassing electro-osmosis, MHD flow, microorganisms, Joule heating and the ternary hybrid nanofluid.

The governing equations are first non-dimensionalised, and subsequently, a coordinate transformation is used to regularise the irregular boundaries. The discretisation of the governing equations is accomplished by using the Crank–Nicolson scheme. Furthermore, the tri-diagonal matrix algorithm is applied to solve the resulting matrix arising from the discretisation.

The investigation reveals that the velocity profile experiences enhancement with an increase in the Debye–Hückel parameter, whereas the magnetic field parameter exhibits the opposite effect, reducing the velocity profile. A comparative study demonstrates the velocity distribution in Au-CuO hybrid nanofluid and Au-CuO-GO ternary hybrid nanofluid. The results indicate a notable enhancement in velocity for the ternary hybrid nanofluid compared to the hybrid nanofluids. Moreover, an increase in the Brinkmann number results in an augmentation in entropy generation.

This study investigates the flow characteristics and entropy analysis in a bifurcated artery system subjected to stenosis, MHD flow and aneurysm conditions. The governing equations are non-dimensionalised, and a coordinate transformation is applied to regularise the irregular boundaries. The Crank–Nicolson scheme is used to model blood flow in the presence of a ternary hybrid nanofluid (Au-CuO-GO/blood) within the arterial domain. The findings shed light on the complex interactions involving stenosis, MHD flow, aneurysms, Joule heating and the ternary hybrid nanofluid. The results indicate a decrease in the wall shear stress (WSS) profile with increasing stenosis size. The MHD effects are observed to influence the velocity distribution, as the velocity profile exhibits a declining nature with an increase in the Hartmann number. In addition, entropy generation increases with an enhancement in the Brinkmann number. This research contributes to understanding fluid dynamics and heat transfer mechanisms in bifurcated arteries, providing valuable insights for diagnosing and treating cardiovascular diseases.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distribution characteristics of airflow in mine ventilation suits with different pipeline structures when the human body is bent at various angles. On this basis, the stress points are extracted to investigate the pressure variation of a ventilation suit under different ventilation rates and pipeline structures.

Based on the three-dimensional human body scanner, portable pressure test and other instruments, a human experiment was conducted in an artificial cabin. The study analyzed and compared the distribution characteristics of clearance under three different pipeline structures, as well as the pressure variation of the ventilation suit.

The study found that the clearance in front of two pipeline structures gradually increased in size as the degree of bending increased, and there was minimal clearance in the chest and back. The longitudinal structure exhibits a significant decrease in clearance compared to the spiral structure. The pressure value of the spiral pipeline structure with the same ventilation volume is low, followed by the transverse structure, while the longitudinal structure has the highest pressure value. The increase in clothing pressure value of a spiral pipeline structured ventilation suit with varying ventilation volumes is minimal.

The ventilation suit has a promising future as a type of personal protective equipment for mitigating heat damage in mines. It is of great value to study the pipeline structure of the ventilation suit for human comfort.

This systematic literature review aims to identify the main areas of study related to co-creation and innovation in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), as well as the main external and internal stakeholders with whom co-creation is made.

The empirical approach is based on 258 articles selected from the Web of Science (WoS), Clarivate Analytics and Scopus, Elsevier databases, with analysis of titles, abstracts and keywords following a research protocol. VOS viewer and CitNetExplorer software were used, with the twin aim of identifying publications with a higher number of citations and designing maps of reference word co-occurrence.

The analysis led to three clusters being identified: Cluster 1. Management and transfer of knowledge from HEIs to companies; Cluster 2. Co-creation and innovation in HEIs through cooperation between universities and companies; and Cluster 3. Universities’ third mission and their role in developing entrepreneurship education. The results of the literature clusters analysis led to proposing a conceptual model of analysis.

Despite only employing two databases and the content analysis criteria, the three found clusters are linked, recognising the interplay between co-creation and innovation in HEIs, knowledge transfer to enterprises and the influence on HEIs' third goal.

This systematic literature review highlights and gives a picture of the state-of-the-art in co-creation and innovation in HEIs, as well as presenting a model of co-creation and innovation in HEIs that can contribute to reinforcing the University-Industry-Community ties.

This study can lead to a better knowledge of the issue of co-creation and innovation at HEIs, as well as a deeper analysis of the sorts of relationships between HEIs and their stakeholders, as well as its impact on surrounding areas and influence.

The research highlights the interaction between HEIs and their stakeholders on a basis of value co-creation and innovation, providing mutual benefits for all involved, as well as greater development and recognition of HEIs and their surrounding regions’ image andreputation. A future research agenda is also presented on the topic of co-creation and innovation in HEIs.

This study aims to investigate student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships in a health professions education program.

The design uses embodied hermeneutic phenomenology. The data comprise 10 participant interviews and visual “body maps” produced in response to guided questions.

The findings about student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships include a core theme of nurturing a trusting learning community and five related themes of attunement to mentees, commonality of experiences, friends with boundaries, reciprocity in learning and varied learning spaces.

The study contributes original insights by highlighting complexity, shifting boundaries, liminality, embodied social understanding and trusting intersubjective relations as key considerations in student peer mentor relationships.

Sharing patient health information (PHI) among hospitals has been much slower than the adoption of health record systems. This paper aims to investigate if privacy regulation (PR) or security measures (SMs) influence hospitals’ use of health information exchange (HIE) to share PHI with other providers (e.g. physicians, labs, hospitals). The study specifically focuses on how multiple PRs can impede and a strong national security infrastructure (NSI) can support HIE.

The study uses secondary data from a multi-national and multi-hospital survey administered by the European Union. The multi-level structure of the cross-sectional panel data is used to test the influence of both hospital-level (e.g. PR) and national-level variables (e.g. NSI) on HIE. A total of nine types of HIE, three types of PRs, nine SMs and other relevant control variables are considered. This study uses a two-level random intercept generalized linear model to test the hypothesis proposed in the study.

The study finds that national-level PRs (NLPR) have the strongest positive influence on HIE in comparison to regional (RLPR) and hospital-level (HLPR) PRs. Moreover, the study finds evidence that the presence of RLPR and HLPR, on average, decreases the positive impact of NLPR by 264%. The SMs also have a significant and positive impact on HIE. Adoption of an additional SM can increase the odds of engaging in a certain type of HIE between 21% and 61%. On the other hand, a strong NSI can also amplify the positive impact of SM on certain types of HIE.

This study extends prior research on the role of PRs in enabling HIE by considering the complexities brought up by adopting multiple PRs. NLPRs have the strongest impact on HIE in comparison to RLPRs or HLPRs. Moreover, public infrastructure initiatives such as those related to secure communications can also complement SMs adopted by the providers by encouraging HIE.

This paper aims to investigate the evolution, roots and influence of the rural entrepreneurship literature.

Using a bibliometric exercise, the analysis starts with investigation of studies on entrepreneurship and gathering all (772) articles on rural entrepreneurship (from 1981 to 2020) found in both Scopus and Web of Science up to 15 August 2020. Citation analysis of the references/citations of 755 articles are listed in the abstract database, generating a citation database involving 46,432 references/citations. This paper considers 635 (out of the 772) articles on rural entrepreneurship (i.e. articles cited in one or more studies), generating a database of 10,767 studies influenced by the rural entrepreneurship literature.

This study discovers that the relative importance of rural entrepreneurship within the entrepreneurship literature has increased in the last few years, but rural entrepreneurship remains a European concern; the most frequently addressed topics include growth and development, institutional frameworks and governance and rurality, with theory building being rather understudied. Most of the studies on rural entrepreneurship are empirical, involving mainly qualitative analyses and targeting high income countries; rural entrepreneurship is rooted in the fields of economics and entrepreneurship and is relatively self-referential.

This study provides a comprehensive and updated investigation of evolution of the rural entrepreneurship literature. The assessment of the literature’s scientific roots of rural entrepreneurship had not yet been tackled before. To the best of the author’s knowledge this study can be considered as the first effort for identifying the scientific influence of the rural entrepreneurship literature.

This paper addresses a significant research gap in the study of Rayleigh surface wave propagation within a piezoelectric medium characterized by piezoelectric properties, thermal effects and voids. Previous research has often overlooked the crucial aspects related to voids. This study aims to provide analytical solutions for Rayleigh waves propagating through a medium consisting of a nonlocal piezo-thermo-elastic material with voids under the Moore–Gibson–Thompson thermo-elasticity theory with memory dependencies.

The analytical solutions are derived using a wave-mode method, and roots are computed from the characteristic equation using the Durand–Kerner method. These roots are then filtered based on the decay condition of surface waves. The analysis pertains to a medium subjected to stress-free and isothermal boundary conditions.

Computational simulations are performed to determine the attenuation coefficient and phase velocity of Rayleigh waves. This investigation goes beyond mere calculations and examines particle motion to gain deeper insights into Rayleigh wave propagation. Furthermore, this investigates how kernel function and nonlocal parameters influence these wave phenomena.

The results of this study reveal several unique cases that significantly contribute to the understanding of Rayleigh wave propagation within this intricate material system, particularly in the presence of voids.

This investigation provides valuable insights into the synergistic dynamics among piezoelectric constituents, void structures and Rayleigh wave propagation, enabling advancements in sensor technology, augmented energy harvesting methodologies and pioneering seismic monitoring approaches.

This study formulates a novel governing equation for a nonlocal piezo-thermo-elastic medium with voids, highlighting the significance of Rayleigh waves and investigating the impact of memory.