We have developed a visualized 3-D model of a City Sustainability Index (CSI) based on our original concept of city sustainability in which a sustainable city is defined as one that maximizes socio-economic benefits while meeting constraint conditions of the environment and socio-economic equity on a permanent basis. The CSI is based on constraint and maximization indicators. Constraint indicat...

BACKGROUND Substantial attention and resources are aimed at the reintegration of child soldiers, yet rigorous evaluations are rare. METHODS This tracer study was conducted among former child soldiers (N=452) and never-recruited peers (N=191) who participated in an economic support program in Burundi. Socio-economic outcome indicators were measured retrospectively for the period before receivi...

Social smiling is universally regarded as being an infant's first facial expression of pleasure. Underlying co-constructivist emotion theories are the assumptions that the emergence of social smiling is bound to experiences of face-to-face interactions with caregivers and the impact of two developmental mechanisms--maternal and infant imitation. We analyzed mother-infant interactions from two d...

Users in different countries may have different music preferences, possibly due to geographical, economic, linguistic, and cultural factors. Revealing the relationship between music preference and cultural socio-economic differences across countries is of great importance for music information retrieval in a cross-country or cross-cultural context. Existing works are usually based on small samp...

Discusses the interaction between socio-economic systems and their natural environment, by examining the indicators of sustainable development. Areas covered by the operationalization of sustainable development indicators; Details on the global nature of environmental problems; Important strategy of the operationalization of sustainable development; Link between economic data and ecological ind...

BACKGROUND Despite clear reasons for necessity of sexual health education for adolescents, it is a contested issue and has faced challenges in most cultures. Providing sexual education for non-married adolescents is culturally unacceptable in most Muslim societies. OBJECTIVE This qualitative study addressed socio-cultural challenges to sexual health education for female adolescents in Iran. ...