Environmental Regeneration Integrating Soft Mobility and Green Street Networks: A Case Study in the Metropolitan Periphery of Naples

Public space and street networks form a significant and central determinant of urban quality. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has focused their crucial importance in the reorganisation of places that are “safe” because they allow movement through cities with minimal risk of contagion. While addressing the need for social distancing, open-air exercise, and mobility without the use of public transport, these measures resulted in other environmental and social benefits. Living with the coronavirus pandemic has produced a series of adaptative actions, such as barring or limiting automobile traffic, thereby expanding street space for pedestrians and bicyclists, whose impact is, as yet, difficult to fathom because of their contingent, temporary nature. In this context, this case study proposes a sustainable bicycle network to inform the future, permanent street redesign. Based on topographic, morphologic, and climatic data, it evaluates a series of contiguous road sections, defining redesign capacities and critical conditions to implement sustainable interventions to manage urban runoff, mitigate of extreme heat events, expand pedestrian paths and provide a bicycle network. This holistic approach to sustainable urban design evaluation, supported by reproducible data and parameters, serves as a replicable model for the sustainable redesign of roads in other urban settings. The extent, integration, and complexity of the study engaged an interdisciplinary framework, facilitating detailed planning and design and quantified assessments of the environmental outcomes

Application of Statistical Shape Modeling to Predict Clinical Metric of Femoral Head Coverage in Patients with Developmental Dysplasia

Developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) is described as under-coverage of the femoral head by the acetabulum, resulting in mechanical instability. Though DDH is often diagnosed using plain film radiographs, these images cannot adequately capture 3D joint coverage. Herein, we applied a 3D statistical shape model (SSM) to the femur and hemi-pelvis of patients with DDH to objectively measure shape variation and evaluated whether SSM outputs could predict measurements of joint coverage. The femur and hemi-pelvis were semi-automatically segmented from CT images (83 hips from 47 females with DDH). Surfaces of each hip were reconstructed from segmentations, aligned, and input into a multi-domain SSM (shapeworks.sci.utah.edu). Correspondence particles were automatically placed over the bone surfaces and a subset on the femoral head and acetabulum were isolated for a joint-specific model. Modes of shape variation were determined with principal component analysis (PCA). A sparse model of PCA modes predicting coverage was determined using linear regression with Lasso regularization. Coverage measurements ranged from 27.3% to 39.4%. Eight and 13 modes were selected for the full bone and joint-specific models, respectively. These modes represented 6.1% and 39.6% of the overall shape variation for full bone and joint-specific models with mean prediction errors of 0.9% and 0.6% coverage, respectively (Figure 1). Selected modes represented the depth of the acetabulum and oblateness of the femoral head, aligning well with the clinical description of DDH. In addition, the full bone model captured morphological and pose-related differences potentially related to altered muscle paths or differences in femoral torsion

No Humanitarian Intervention in Asian Genocides: How Possible and Legitimate?

This paper addresses an important empirical puzzle: why has the United States, without exception, chosen not to intervene in the six humanitarian catastrophes in post-war Asia, namely in Indonesia, East Pakistan/Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Timor, Sri Lanka and Myanmar? We use an eclectic approach that blends arguments about the international normative structure and geostrategic interests to examine what has made the absence of humanitarian intervention in Asia by the US possible and legitimate. Specifically, we focus on the paradox between calls for humanitarian intervention and the historically and geographically contingent social construction of the norms of humanity, national sovereignty and UN-backed multilateralism in conjunction with US and Chinese concerns over their regional geostrategic interests. The normative narratives about race, ‘communists’, ‘terrorists’, international order and inclusive multilateral process, and geostrategic interests of the US and China combine to make non-intervention possible and legitimate

Severe breastfeeding difficulties: Existential lostness as a mother—Women's lived experiences of initiating breastfeeding under severe difficulties

A majority of women in Sweden initiate breastfeeding but almost a quarter stop or wean the infant in the first few weeks after birth because of difficulties. In order to develop care that facilitates initiation of breastfeeding and enables mothers to realize their expectations concerning breastfeeding, it is necessary to understand what having severe breastfeeding difficulties means for women who experience them. The aim of this study is to describe the lived experiences of initiating breastfeeding under severe difficulties. A reflective lifeworld research design was used. Eight women, seven primiparous and one multipara, were interviewed within 2 months of giving birth. The essential meaning of the phenomenon is described as “Existential lostness as a mother forcing oneself into a constant fight”. This pattern is further explicated through its constituents; shattered expectations, a lost time for closeness, being of no use to the infant, being forced to expose oneself, and gaining strength through sharing. The results show that mothers with severe breastfeeding difficulties feel alone and exposed because of their suffering and are lost in motherhood. Thus, adequate care for mothers should enhance the forming of a caring relationship through sharing rather than exposing