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Changes in urban residential density represent an important issue in terms of land consumption, the conservation of ecosystems, air quality and related human health problems, as well as the consequential challenges for urban and regional planning. It is the decline of residential densities, in particular, that has often been used as the very definition of sprawl, describing a phenomenon that has been extensively studied in the United States and in Western Europe. Whilst these studies provide valuable insights into urbanization processes, only a handful of them have reflected the uneven dynamics of simultaneous urban growth and shrinkage, using residential density changes as a key indicator to uncover the underlying dynamics. This paper introduces a contrasting analysis of recent developments in both de- and re-concentration, defined as decreasing or increasing residential densities, respectively. Using a large sample of European cities, it detects differences in density changes between successional population growth/decline. The paper shows that dedensification, found in some large cities globally, is not a universal phenomenon in growing urban areas; neither the increasing disproportion between a declining demand for and an increasing supply of residential areas nor actual concentration processes in cities were found. Thus, the paper provides a new, very detailed perspective on (de)densification in both shrinking and growing cities and how they specifically contribute to current land take in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries have some kind of energy-system transformation either planned or ongoing for various reasons, such as to curb carbon emissions or to compensate for the phasing out of nuclear energy. One important component of these transformations is the overall reduction in energy demand. It is generally acknowledged that the domestic sector represents a large share of total energy consumption in many countries. Increased energy efficiency is one factor that reduces energy demand, but behavioral approaches (known as “sufficiency”) and their respective interventions also play important roles. In this paper, we address citizens’ heterogeneity regarding both their current behaviors and their willingness to realize their sufficiency potentials—that is, to reduce their energy consumption through behavioral change. We collaborated with three Swiss cities for this study. A survey conducted in the three cities yielded thematic sets of energy-consumption behavior that various groups of participants rated differently. Using this data, we identified four groups of participants with different patterns of both current behaviors and sufficiency potentials. The paper discusses intervention types and addresses citizens’ heterogeneity and behaviors from a city-based perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how former hunter-gatherers living along the southern North Sea coast in NW Europe adapted to long-term and short-term climatic and environmental changes at the beginning of the Holocene. It is argued that contemporaneous hunter-gatherers repeatedly changed their hunting equipment in response to changing climate and environment, not just for functional reasons but mainly driven by socio-territorial considerations. Based on a Bayesian analysis of 122 critically selected radiocarbon dates a broad chronological correlation is demonstrated between rapid changes in the design and technology of stone projectiles and short but abrupt cooling events, occurring at 10.3, 9.3 and 8.2 ka cal BP. Combined with the rapid sea level rises and increased wildfires these climatic events probably impacted the lifeways of hunter-gatherers in such a way that they increasingly faced resource stress and competition, forcing them to invest in the symbolic defense of their social territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe covers the last millennia of Neanderthal life together with the appearance and expansion of Modern Human populations. Culturally, it is defined by the Late Middle Paleolithic succession, and by Early Upper Paleolithic complexes like the Châtelperronian (southwestern Europe), the Protoaurignacian, and the Early Aurignacian. Up to now, the southern boundary for the transition has been established as being situated between France and Iberia, in the Cantabrian façade and Pyrenees. According to this, the central and southern territories of Iberia are claimed to have been the refuge of the last Neanderthals for some additional millennia after they were replaced by anatomically Modern Humans on the rest of the continent. In this paper, we present the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition sequence from Cova Foradada (Tarragona), a cave on the Catalan Mediterranean coastline. Archaeological research has documented a stratigraphic sequence containing a succession of very short-term occupations pertaining to the Châtelperronian, Early Aurignacian, and Gravettian. Cova Foradada therefore represents the southernmost Châtelperronian–Early Aurignacian sequence ever documented in Europe, significantly enlarging the territorial distribution of both cultures and providing an important geographical and chronological reference for understanding Neanderthal disappearance and the complete expansion of anatomically Modern Humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture has become a common form of urban land use in European cities linked to multiple environmental, social and economic benefits, as well as to diversified forms (from self-production allotments to high-tech companies). Social acceptance will determine the development of urban agriculture and specific knowledge on citizens’ perception is required in order to set the basis for policy-making and planning. The ecosystem services provided by urban agriculture can be determinant in this process. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the social acceptance and the perceived ecosystem services of urban agriculture in the city of Bologna (Italy), as an example of a Southern European city. In particular, we evaluated the preferences for urban land uses, for different typologies of urban agriculture and for the resulting products, the perceived provision of ecosystem services and the willingness to engage in new initiatives. A survey that investigated these topics (including open questions, closed questions and Likert-scale evaluation) was performed on the citizens of Bologna (n = 380) between October and November 2016. Results showed that urban agriculture is widely accepted by the inhabitants of Bologna, particularly regarding vegetable production. Although intensive farming systems were the least preferred forms to be implemented in Bologna, citizens highly accepted a large variety of urban agriculture goods, with preference for those obtained from plants as compared to animal products. The willingness-to-pay for urban food products was mostly the same as for conventional ones, although the participants recognised the social values, proximity and quality of the former. Socio-cultural ecosystem services were perceived as more valuable than environmental ones. Policy-making recommendations can be extracted from the results to facilitate the development of urban agriculture plans and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen tremendous advances in the scientific study of networks, as more and larger data sets of relationships among nodes have become available in many different fields. This has led to pathbreaking discoveries of near-universal network behavior over time, including the principle of preferential attachment and the emergence of scaling in complex networks. Missing from the set of network analysis methods to date is a measure that describes for each node how its relationship (or links) with other nodes changes from one period to the next. Conventional measures of network change for the most part show how the degrees of a node change; these are scalar comparisons. Our contribution is to use, for the first time, the cosine similarity to capture not just the change in degrees of a node but its relationship to other nodes. These are vector (or matrix)-based comparisons, rather than scalar, and we refer to them as “rewiring” coefficients. We apply this measure to three different networks over time to show the differences in the two types of measures. In general, bigger increases in our rewiring measure are associated with larger increases in network density, but this is not always the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: In August 2016, new prescription guidelines were introduced in Hungary to reduce the co-payments for antibiotics among children aged 0-4. This study aims at analysing the implementation of this policy and its effect on the use of antibiotics. Methods: The analysis is based on administrative prescription records between January 2010—February 2018, covering the entire population of Hungary aged 0-7. Spatial autocorrelation indices are calculated and settlement level regression models are estimated to analyse the spatial variation in the application of the new guidelines. The effect of reduced co-payments on antibiotic use is estimated with a difference-in-differences type model: the treatment and control groups are children aged 0-4 and 5-7, respectively; the treatment and control periods are August 2016—February 2018 and January 2010—July 2016, respectively. Results: The new prescription guidelines are more widely applied in settlements with higher per capita income and lower unemployment rate. Adherence to the new guidelines is spatially clustered. A 10–15% decrease in the out-of-pocket costs of antibiotics is estimated to increase the consumption of antibiotics by about 5% (95% CI: 2.63%–7.55%). Conclusions: In the absence of clear enforcement mechanisms, the adoption of the new prescription guidelines is selective, contradicting the aims of the policy of making antibiotics affordable for the poor children. The results point to the possible role of physicians’ information networks in the application of prescription guidelines. The use of antibiotics among children aged 0-4 is responsive to the price subsidy of antibiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development goals are used as a guidance for strategies development on local, regional and national levels. The importance of including young people in this complex process is recognized in all relevant documents (i.e. Agenda 21), however it is not an easy task to elicit opinions and preferences from the youth. Furthermore, the assessment of the sustainable development goals itself presents a challenge for the noisy data and nonlinear relationships in data. Popular approach is fuzzy set models where expert knowledge is presented with comprehensible rules; however expert knowledge elicitation takes a long time too. Several studies proposed an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system approach that combines the fuzzy set theory to model expert knowledge with neural networks for inferring rules and membership functions from data to assess the sustainable development performance. We base our assumptions that ANFIS can be used to predict the importance of sustainable development pillars from the demographic data of young people. For this purpose, we have conducted an online survey on sustainable development goals opinions and importance of young people in Serbia. The sample of 386 respondents has been split into a training sample of 300 instances (to generate membership functions and fuzzy rules) and a testing sample of 86 instances to predict the importance of the three pillars. We have conducted a trace-driven simulation test to validate the results of the proposed ANFIS model. Results of the study provided insights into how the young people in Serbia assess the importance of sustainable development goals. Secondly, the results suggest that ANFIS can be applied to predict values of importance of the three sustainable development pillars with the relative error of Rel Err < 5%. It must be noted that the considered model could be further improved by using training samples with more data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human populations in Western Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum were geographically constrained to glacial refugia by the severity of the climate and ecological risk factors. In this research we use an agent-based model of human mobility and interaction, based on ethnographic and archaeological data, to explore the impact of ecological risk on human population structure via a reconstructed landscape of habitat suitability. The agent-based model allows us to evaluate the size and location of glacial refugia, the size of the populations occupying them and the degree of genetic relatedness between people occupying these areas. To do this, we model the probability of an agent foraging groups’ survival as a function of habitat suitability. The model’s simulated “genomes” (composed of regionally specific genetic markers) allow us to track long-term trends of inter-regional interaction and mobility. The results agree with previous archaeological studies situating a large glacial refugium spanning southern France and northeastern Spain, but we expand on those studies by demonstrating that higher rates of population growth in this central refugium led to continuous out-migration and therefore genetic homogeneity across Western Europe, with the possible exception of the Italian peninsula. These results concur with material culture data from known archaeological sites dating to the Last Glacial Maximum and make predictions for future ancient DNA studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The causes of disappearance of the Neanderthals, the only human population living in Europe before the arrival of Homo sapiens, have been debated for decades by the scientific community. Different hypotheses have been advanced to explain this demise, such as cognitive, adaptive and cultural inferiority of Neanderthals. Here, we investigate the disappearance of Neanderthals by examining the extent of demographic changes needed over a period of 10,000 years (yrs) to lead to their extinction. In regard to such fossil populations, we inferred demographic parameters from present day and past hunter-gatherer populations, and from bio-anthropological rules. We used demographic modeling and simulations to identify the set of plausible demographic parameters of the Neanderthal population compatible with the observed dynamics, and to explore the circumstances under which they might have led to the disappearance of Neanderthals. A slight (<4%) but continuous decrease in the fertility rate of younger Neanderthal women could have had a significant impact on these dynamics, and could have precipitated their demise. Our results open the way to non-catastrophic events as plausible explanations for Neanderthal extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The loss of Neanderthal groups across Western and Central Europe during Oxygen Isotope Stage (OIS) 3 has held the attention of archaeologists for decades. The role that climatic change, genetic interbreeding, and interspecies competition played in the extinction of Neanderthal groups is still debated. Hohle Fels is one of several important Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites from the Ach Valley in southwestern Germany which documents the presence of Neanderthals and modern humans in the region. Chronological and stratigraphic records indicate that these two groups occupied the site with little to no overlap or interaction. This provides the opportunity to examine the behavioural variability of Swabian Neanderthal populations without the complication of cross-cultural influence. In this study we contribute a terrestrial paleoenvironmental record derived from the small mammal material from Hohle Fels Cave to the ever-growing archaeological record of this period. By reconstructing the climate and landscape of the Ach Valley during this time we can identify the effect that the OIS 3 environment had on the presence of Neanderthals in the region. Based on indicator taxa and the habitat weighing method, the small mammal record, which includes rodents, insectivores, and bats, from Hohle Fels shows that the earliest Neanderthal occupation took place on a landscape characterized by substantial woodland and forest, rivers and ponds, as well as moist meadows and grasslands. A gradual increase in cold tundra and arctic environments is clear towards the end of the Middle Paleolithic, extending to the end of the early Aurignacian which may correlate with the onset of the Heinrich 4 event (~42,000 kya). Our taphonomic analysis indicates the material was accumulated primarily by opportunistic predators such as the great grey owl, snowy owl, and European eagle owl, and therefore reflects the diversity of landscapes present around the site in the past. Importantly, at the time Neanderthals abandoned the Ach Valley we find no indication for dramatic climatic deterioration. Rather, we find evidence of a gradual cooling of the Swabian landscape which may have pushed Neanderthal groups out of the Ach Valley prior to the arrival of modern human Aurignacian groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the Paleolithic art and ornaments discovered in Romania come from the site of Poiana Cireșului. Four Paleolithic layers have been studied at this site—the oldest one belongs to the Early Gravettian period between 30 ka and 31 ka BP. The ornaments discovered in this layer include perforated shells from three species of mollusks: freshwater Lithoglyphus naticoide and Lithoglyphus apertus as well as Homalopoma sanguineum (an exclusively Mediterranean species). Poiana Cireșului is one of the very few Gravettian sites where perforated Homalopoma sanguineum shells were found, and the importance of this discovery is stressed even more by the very long distance between the site and the nearest source located over 900 km away. This find suggests the connection of communities here with the Mediterranean area as well as a possible movement of populations from the south of the continent to the east of the Carpathians with significant implications in understanding human group mobility and the origin of the Early Gravettian in this area. Furthermore, Poiana Cireșului is the only Gravettian settlement where Lithoglyphus naticoides shells were used. The unique association of perforated shells—not found in any other Gravettian settlement—contributes to the identity of the Paleolithic community of Poiana Cireșului through their ornaments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the types of social organization characterizing the pre-Roman Celtic populations of Italy. Here, we explore the funerary variability characterizing the late Iron Age site of Seminario Vescovile (SV: Verona, Italy, 3rd-1st c. BC), and test its possible correlation to diet and relative exposure to developmental stressors. Patterns on funerary treatment (N = 125), δ13C and δ15N (N = 90), and linear enamel hypoplasia (N = 47) from SV are compared, and their possible association with sex and age-at-death further discussed. Results point to the presence at SV of variable funerary customs while at the same time demonstrating a rather homogenous diet and exposure to developmental stressors: funerary treatment is mainly correlated to age-at-death but do not appear to be associated to either isotopic patterns or hypoplasia frequencies. Accordingly, even if some weak social differentiation may have characterized the individuals buried at SV, this was not reflected in markedly differing living conditions. Our study is the first to attempt an exploration of the links between age, sex, funerary variability, and diet in a pre-Roman Celtic community from Italy. While highlighting the potential of a multifaceted approach in bioarcheology, it also points to a series of analytical and theoretical issues relevant when trying to disentangle the cultural and biological dimensions of social differentiation in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proving voyaging at sea by Palaeolithic humans is a difficult archaeological task, even for short distances. In the Mediterranean, a commonly accepted sea crossing is that from the Italian Peninsula to Sicily by anatomically modern humans, purportedly of the Aurignacian culture. This claim, however, was only supported by the typological attribution to the Aurignacian of the lithic industries from the insular site of Fontana Nuova. AMS radiocarbon dating undertaken as part of our research shows that the faunal remains, previously considered Aurignacian, actually date to the Holocene. Absolute dating on dentinal collagen also attributes the human teeth from the site to the early Holocene, although we were unable to obtain ancient DNA to evaluate their ancestry. Ten radiocarbon dates on human and other taxa are comprised between 9910–9700 cal. BP and 8600–8480 cal. BP, indicating that Fontana Nuova was occupied by Mesolithic and not Aurignacian hunter-gatherers. Only a new study of the lithic assemblage could establish if the material from Fontana Nuova is a mixed collection that includes both late Upper Palaeolithic (Epigravettian) and Mesolithic artefacts, as can be suggested by taking into account both the results of our study and of the most recent reinterpretation of the lithics. Nevertheless, this research suggests that the notion that Aurignacian groups were present in Sicily should now be revised. Another outcome of our study is that we found that three specimens, attributed on grounds both of morphological and ZooMS identifications to Cervus elaphus, had δ13C values significantly higher than any available for such species in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Cultural behaviors are theoretically linked to future life chances but empirical literature is scant. We use heavy metal as an example of cultural identities due to its high salience. We first assess the social morphology of metal preferences in terms of socio-economic and socio-structural positions, and then asses the short term outcomes of being a heavy metal fan on education and health behaviors. Methods: The analysis was based on a representative random stratified sample of 23-year-olds of native Swedish, Iranian, and Yugoslavian background in contemporary Sweden (n = 2,232). Linear probability models with multiple imputation were used to calculate preferences for metal music and the association of metal preferences with subsequent outcomes. Results: In contrast to many prior studies, we find that the preference for heavy metal is not structured by social background or neighborhood context in Swedish adolescents. Poor school grades tend to make them more prone to like metal, but net of previous grades, social background, personality, personal network, and neighborhood characteristics, metal fans have substantially lower transition rates into higher education. Discussion: The study suggest that metal preferences appears rather unsystematically with few important predictors, and is linked to lower education attainments in the short run. While these findings are specific to heavy metal as a certain type of culture and to Swedish adolescents, we suggest that they are indicative of how cultural consumption may play a role for life-chances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Large proportions of the populations in many European countries, including Germany, are migrants. Migrant children and adolescents tend to be less physically active than their non-migrant peers. However, current research is limited as it does not sufficiently consider different domains of physical activity. Using a representative dataset, the present study examines the patterns of sports participation and other domains of physical activity among migrant and non-migrant children and adolescents residing in Germany. Methods: Nationwide data from the Motorik-Modul (MoMo) Study is used. Five different domains of physical activity participation (sports clubs, outside of sports clubs, extra-curricular physical activity, physical activity, outdoor play and active commuting to school) were compared between children and adolescents with no, one-sided and two-sided migration background using logistic regression adjusted for demographic factors. Interaction terms were included in order to examine whether difference between the three groups differ by age and gender. Results: Information on n = 3,323 children and adolescents was available. As compared to non-migrants, children and adolescents with a two-sided migration background had a 40% (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.60, 95%-CI: 0.44–0.81), those with a one-sided migration background a 26% (aOR = 0.74, 95%-CI: 0.55-<1.00) lower chance of participating in sport club activities. In contrast, children and adolescents with a two-sided migration background were at 65% higher chance of participating in extra-curricular physical activity than non-migrants (OR = 1.65, 95%-CI: 1.15–2.36). Conclusion: The study shows that differences in levels of physical activity between migrant and non-migrant children and adolescents are less pronounced than previous research has suggested. In particular, it reveals that migrants are only disadvantaged regarding participation in sports clubs whereas they fare better with respect to extra-curricular physical activity. Interventions should therefore address barriers migrant children and adolescents encounter in the access to sport clubs while maintaining their high level of extra-curricular physical activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the study is to analyze the standard expected years of life lost (SEYLL) due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in Poland from 1999 to 2014 by sex and place of residence. Methods: The number of deaths due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (J40 –J44 and J47 according to ICD-10) over the period 1999 to 2014 was analyzed based on data obtained from the Central Statistical Office in Poland. Standard expected years of life lost due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were calculated by sex and place of residence according to the living population (SEYLLp) and the number of deaths caused by the disease (SEYLLd). Changes in the calculated measures were evaluated using joinpoint models. The annual percentage change (APC) and the average annual percentage change (AAPC) were also calculated. Results: The study revealed that COPD contributed to 1.8% of the total number of deaths which occurred between 1999 and 2014. The greatest decrease in the analyzed measures was observed among males from rural areas (p<0.05) (SEYLL: AAPC = -1.6; 95%CI: -3.0;-0.2; SEYLLp: AAPC = -2.0; 95%CI: -3.4;-0.6; SEYLLd: AAPC = -1.1; 95%CI: -1.2;-0.9). A statistically significant increase in the SEYLL and SEYLLp indices was observed among female city dwellers (SEYLL: AAPC = 2.4; 95%CI:0.7;4.0 and SEYLLp: AAPC = 2.4; 95%CI: 0.8;4.1). Conclusions: All studied measures were higher in the male group than in the female group, regardless of the place of residence. A male who died of COPD in Poland in 2014 potentially lost 14.9 years of life, whereas a female lost 14.2 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the dynamic of Neolithic settlement on a local scale and its connection to climate variability is often difficult due to missing on-site climate reconstructions from natural archives. Here we bring together archaeological settlement data and a regional climate reconstruction from precipitation-sensitive trees. Both archives hold information about regional settlement dynamics and hydroclimate variability spanning the time of the first farming communities, the so called Linearbandkeramik (LBK) in Bavaria, Germany. Precipitation-sensitive tree-ring series from subfossil oak are used to develop a spring-summer precipitation reconstruction (5700–4800 B.C.E.) representative for southern Germany. Early Neolithic settlement data from Bavaria, mainly for the duration of the LBK settlement activities, are critically evaluated and compared to this unique regional hydroclimate reconstruction as well as to reconstructions of Greenland temperature, summer sea surface temperature, delta 18O and global solar irradiance to investigate the potential impact of climate on Neolithic settlers and their settlement dynamic during the LBK. Our hydroclimate reconstruction demonstrates an extraordinarily high frequency of severe dry and wet spring-summer seasons during the entire LBK, with particularly high year-to-year variability from 5400 to 5101 B.C.E. and with lower fluctuations until 4801 B.C.E. A significant influence of regional climate on the dynamic of the LBK is possible (e.g. around 4960 B.C.E.), but should be interpreted very carefully due to asynchronous trends in settlement dynamics. Thus, we conclude that even when a climate proxy such as tree rings that has excellent spatio-temporal resolution is available, it remains difficult to establish potential connections between the settlement dynamic of the LBK and climate variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the scenario of the spread of the anatomically modern humans (AMHs) into Europe, the techno-complex known as Protoaurignacian is defined by the production of blades and bladelets within a single and continuous stone knapping sequence from the same core as the result of its progressive reduction. However, the growing re-evaluation of some assemblages is revealing that bladelets are frequently obtained from independent reduction sequences, hence discouraging the direct application of the model developed in southwestern France. High-resolution regional signatures are thus needed to reconstruct a more accurate portrait of the AMH colonization dynamic. Northeastern Italy, with the key site of Fumane Cave, is one among the regions of Mediterranean Europe worthy of consideration for reconstructing this colonization process and its cultural dynamics. Within the framework of a critical discussion of the technological definition of the Protoaurignacian and its relationship with contemporaneous industries on a regional and supra-regional scale, we present the results of a detailed analysis of the lithic technology from units A2-A1 based on reduction sequence and attribute analyses. Results show that bladelets are the first goal of production and they do not originate from reduced blade cores but from a broad range of independent and simultaneous core reduction strategies. One implication is that the most commonly used technological trait that is said to define the Protoaurignacian has been over-emphasized and that the Protoaurignacian is technologically consistent across its geographical extent. Additional data based on carinated core technology imply that this techno-complex shares a common technological background with the Early Aurignacian and that no features are restricted to one of the two facies. Furthermore, the major difference between the Protoaurignacian and Early Aurignacian appears to be more typological in nature, with retouched bladelets being less common in the Early Aurignacian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents new models on the origin, speed and mode of the wave-of-advance leading to the definitive occupation of Europe’s outskirts by Anatomically Modern Humans, during the Gravettian, between c. 37 and 30 ka ago. These models provide the estimation for possible demic dispersal routes for AMH at a stable spread rate of c. 0.7 km/year, with the likely origin in Central Europe at the site of Geissenklosterle in Germany and reaching all areas of the European landscape. The results imply that: 1. The arrival of the Gravettian populations into the far eastern European plains and to southern Iberia found regions with very low human occupation or even devoid of hominins; 2. Human demography was likely lower than previous estimates for the Upper Paleolithic; 3. The likely early AMH paths across Europe followed the European central plains and the Mediterranean coast to reach to the ends of the Italian and Iberian peninsulas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: There is evidence that greater neighbourhood walkability (i.e., neighbourhoods with more amenities and well-connected streets) is associated with higher levels of total walking in Europe and in Asia, but it remains unclear if this association holds in the Canadian context and in chronic disease populations. We examined the relationships of different walkability measures to biosensor-assessed total walking (i.e., steps/day) in adults with type 2 diabetes living in Montreal (QC, Canada). Materials and Methods: Participants (60.5±10.4 years; 48.1% women) were recruited through McGill University-affiliated clinics (June 2006 to May 2008). Steps/day were assessed once per season for one year with pedometers. Neighbourhood walkability was evaluated through participant reports, in-field audits, Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-derived measures, and the Walk Score®. Relationships between walkability and daily steps were estimated using Bayesian longitudinal hierarchical linear regression models (n = 131). Results: Participants who reported living in the most compared to the least walkable neighbourhoods completed 1345 more steps/day (95% Credible Interval: 718, 1976; Quartiles 4 versus 1). Those living in the most compared to the least walkable neighbourhoods (based on GIS-derived walkability) completed 606 more steps per day (95% CrI: 8, 1203). No statistically significant associations with steps were observed for audit-assessed walkability or the Walk Score®. Conclusions: Adults with type 2 diabetes who perceived their neighbourhoods as more walkable accumulated more daily steps. This suggests that knowledge of local neighborhood features that enhance walking is a meaningful predictor of higher levels of walking and an important component of neighbourhood walkability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Assessment and identification of spatial structures in the distribution and abundance of invasive species is important for unraveling the underlying ecological processes. The invasive agricultural insect pest Halyomorpha halys that causes severe economic losses in the United States is currently expanding both within United States and across Europe. We examined the drivers of H. halys invasion by characterizing the distribution and abundance patterns of H. halys and native stink bugs (Chinavia hilaris and Euschistus servus) across eight different spatial scales. We then quantified the interactive and individual influences of temperature, and measures of resource availability and distance from source populations, and their relevant spatial scales. We used Moran’s Eigenvector Maps based on Gabriel graph framework to quantify spatial relationships among the soybean fields in mid-Atlantic Unites States surveyed for stink bugs. Findings: Results from the multi-spatial scale, multivariate analyses showed that temperature and its interaction with resource availability and distance from source populations structures the patterns in H. halys at very broad spatial scale. H. halys abundance decreased with increasing average June temperature and distance from source population. H. halys were not recorded at fields with average June temperature higher than 23.5°C. In parts with suitable climate, high H. halys abundance was positively associated with percentage developed open area and percentage deciduous forests at 250m scale. Broad scale patterns in native stink bugs were positively associated with increasing forest cover and, in contrast to the invasive H. halys, increasing mean July temperature. Our results identify the contrasting role of temperature in structuring regional patterns in H. halys and native stink bugs, while demonstrating its interaction with resource availability and distance from source populations for structuring H. halys patterns. Conclusion: These results help predicting the pest potential of H. halys and vulnerability of agricultural systems at various regions, given the climatic conditions, and its interaction with resource availability and distance from source populations. Monitoring and control efforts within parts of the United States and Europe with more suitable climate could focus in areas of peri-urban developments with deciduous forests and other host plants, along with efforts to reduce propagule pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]