Greening through schooling:Understanding the link between education and pro-environmental behavior in the Philippines

In recent years, changing lifestyle, consumption and mobility patterns have contributed to a global rise in greenhouse gases responsible for the warming of the planet. Despite its increasing relevance, there is a lack of understanding of factors influencing the environmental behavior of people from emerging economies. In this study, we focus on the role of formal education for pro-environmental behavior in the Philippines and study three potentially underlying mechanisms explaining the education effects: differential knowledge about climate change, risk perceptions, and awareness. Whilst there is some evidence showing that education is associated with pro-environmental behavior, little is known about the actual mechanisms through which it influences decision-making. Using propensity score methods, we find that an additional year of schooling significantly increases the probability of pro-environmental actions, e.g. planting trees, recycling, and proper waste management, by 3.3%. Further decomposing the education effects, it is found that education influences behavior mainly by increasing awareness about the anthropogenic causes of climate change, which may consequently affect the perception of self-efficacy in reducing human impacts on the environment. Knowledge and perceptions about climate risks also explain the education effect on pro-environmental behavior, but to a lesser extent

The health knowledge mechanism: evidence on the link between education and health lifestyle in the Philippines

Studies have found substantial differences in health-related behavior and health care usage between educational groups, which may explain part of the well-documented educational gradient in health. The allocative efficiency hypothesis offers a behavioral explanation for these reported differences. According to this theory, the educated possess more health knowledge and information, allowing them to make better health choices. We perform a mediation analysis to study this mechanism using original survey data from the Philippines, a lower-middle-income country. As an extension of previous empirical research, we construct a comprehensive index that captures different dimensions of health knowledge. Using generalized propensity scores, we find strong support for the allocative efficiency argument. Schooling is significantly associated with health knowledge levels, which explain up to 69% of the education effect on health lifestyle. This corresponds to twice the mediation strength of economic resources, suggesting an important role of this factor in explaining education effects on health decisions

Information exchange in laboratory markets: competition, transfer costs, and the emergence of reputation

Public reputation mechanisms are an effective means to limit opportunistic behavior in markets suffering from moral hazard problems. While previous research was mostly concerned with the influence of exogenous feedback mechanisms, this study considers the endogenous emergence of reputation through deliberate information sharing among actors and the role of barriers in hindering information exchange. Using a repeated investment game, we analyze the effects of competition and transfer costs on players’ willingness to share information with each other. While transfer costs are a direct cost of the information exchange, competition costs represent an indirect cost that arises when the transfer of valuable information to competitors comes at the loss of a competitive advantage. We show that barriers to information exchange not only affect the behavior of the senders of information, but also affect the ones about whom the information is shared. While the possibility of sharing information about others significantly improves trust and market efficiency, both competition and direct transfer costs diminish the positive effect by substantially reducing the level of information exchange. Players about whom the information is shared anticipate and react to the changes in the costs by behaving more or less cooperatively. For reputation building, an environment is needed that fosters the sharing of information. Reciprocity is key to understanding information exchange. Even when it is costly, information sharing is used as a way to sanction others. © 2020, The Author(s)

Binary Maps for Image Separation in Iterative Neuronal Network Applications

Generating a series of images is an important task invarious fields of scientific research, e. g. Computational fluiddynamics (CFD). In the past years, solutions based on deepneural networks gained importance. In these tasks, it’s oftennecessary to declare regions of interest in the image. Further-more, the NN should only perform on these regions and therest should be ignored. With this paper, we propose an inno-vative and easy method for implementing this behavior in thefield of CFD

Editorial for the Special Issue “Spatial and regional aspects of health”

The health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic highlights, more than ever, the necessity of scientific research to inform policy action. During such a crisis it is vital that any measure taken by policy makers mitigates the consequences on health without causing long-lasting social and economic harm. Spatial aspects play an important role here: knowledge about the spread of a disease through space and social networks, the effectiveness of different policy responses, and the economic and social implications for the population are of particular relevance. As any policy action is embedded in its institutional and social environment, not every measure is effective in all contexts. Moreover, infectious diseases can spread at different speed in different places, requiring tailored interventions. Careful evaluation and comparison of different settings, including the organization of the healthcare systems and the geographic and demographic characteristics of a region or country, are therefore essential. The COVID-19 pandemic has made manifest the importance of the spatial and geographical dimension of health, however, the relevance of this interlinkage is not limited to the spread of contagious diseases. Differences in accessibility of services between urban and rural regions, the varying costs of access to healthcare for different (socioeconomic) groups of the population, the impact of these on healthcare utilization, and environmental shocks on population health are just a few examples illustrating the close link between space, socioeconomic factors and health. This special issue of REGION is presented in two parts. In the first part, papers explore the spread and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and economy. In the second part, papers investigate regional and spatial aspects of the healthcare sector with a focus on health disparities

LivWell: a sub-national Dataset on the Living Conditions of Women and their Well-being for 52 Countries

Data on women’s living conditions and socio-economic development are important for understanding and addressing the pronounced challenges and inequalities faced by women worldwide. While such information is increasingly available at the national level, comparable data at the sub-national level are missing. We here present the LivWell global longitudinal dataset, which includes a set of key indicators on women’s socio-economic status, health and well-being, access to basic services and demographic outcomes. It covers 447 regions in 52 countries and includes a total of 265 different indicators. The majority of these are based on 199 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for the period 1990–2019 and are complemented by extensive information on socio-economic and climatic conditions in the respective regions. The resulting dataset offers various opportunities for policy-relevant research on gender inequality, inclusive development and demographic trends at the sub-national level

Editorial for the Special Issue "Spatial and regional aspects of health"

The health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic highlights, more than ever, the necessity of scientific research to inform policy action. During such a crisis it is vital that any measures taken by policy makers mitigate the consequences of risks without causing long-lasting social and economic harm. Spatial aspects play an important role here: knowledge about the spread of a disease through space and social networks, the effectiveness of different policy responses, and the economic and social implications for the population are of particular relevance. As any policy action is embedded in its institutional and social environment, not every measure is effective in all contexts. Moreover, infectious diseases can spread at different speed in different places, requiring tailored interventions. Careful evaluation and comparison of different settings, including the organization of the healthcare systems and the geographic and demographic characteristics of a region or country, is therefore essential. The COVID-19 pandemic has made manifest the importance of the spatial and geographical dimension of health, however, the relevance of this interlinkage is not limited to the spread of contagious diseases. Differences in accessibility of services between urban and rural regions, the varying costs of access to healthcare for different (socioeconomic) groups of the population, the impact of these on healthcare utilization, and environmental shocks on population health are just a few examples illustrating the close link between space, socioeconomic factors and health. This special issue of REGION is presented in two parts. In the first part, papers explore the spread and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and economy. In the second part, papers investigate regional and spatial aspects of the healthcare sector with a focus on health disparities

A High-Sensitivity Hydraulic Load Cell for Small Kitchen Appliances

In this paper we present a hydraulic load cell made from hydroformed metallic bellows. The load cell was designed for a small kitchen appliance with the weighing function integrated into the composite control and protection of the appliance. It is a simple, low-cost solution with small dimensions and represents an alternative to the existing hydraulic load cells in industrial use. A good non-linearity and a small hysteresis were achieved. The influence of temperature leads to an error of 7.5%, which can be compensated for by software to meet the requirements of the target application

Automated determination of peripheral nerve stimulation parameters to achieve desired effector response – a procedural routine, preliminary studies and proposal of improvements

BACKGROUND: The feasibility of selectively stimulating fascicles and fibers within peripheral nerves has been demonstrated by a number of groups. Although various multi-contact electrodes have been developed for this purpose, the lack of procedures for fast determination of stimulation parameters to produce the desired effector activity hampers the clinical application of these techniques. In this paper, we propose an automated search routine that may facilitate the determination of stimulation parameters. To verify the routine's performance, we also developed an another routine that performs systematic stimulus–response mapping (the mapping routine). METHOD: The mapping routine performs systematic mapping of all possible combinations of the allowed stimulation parameters (i.e. combinations of electrode contacts used to provide the stimulus and sets of stimulus parameters values) and the observed displacements. The proposed automated search routine, similarly to the mapping routine, maps stimulation parameters to muscle responses, but it first investigates stimuli of the low charge and during the mapping process it compares the recorded responses with the desired one. Depending on the result of that comparison, it decides whether the use of a particular combination of electrode contacts should be further investigated or skipped. Both approaches were implemented on a custom-made closed-loop FES platform and preliminary experiments were performed on a rat model. The rat's sciatic nerve was stimulated with a 12-contact cuff electrode and the resulting displacement of the rat's paw was determined using a MEMS accelerometer. RESULTS: The automated search routine was faster than the mapping routine; however, it failed to find correct stimulation parameters in one out of three searches. This could be due to unexpectedly high variability in the responses to a constant stimulus. CONCLUSION: Our initial tests have proven that the proposed method determines the desired stimulation parameters much more quickly than systematic stimulus–response mapping. However, the factors influencing the variability of responses to constant stimuli should be identified, and their influence diminished; the remaining essential variability can then be identified. Thereafter, the criteria influencing the search process should be investigated and refined. Further improvements to the search routine are also proposed