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Mental health and HIV risk behavior have been studied with ecological momentary assessment (EMA), but this approach has not been combined with tracking of activity space (where people go and what they encounter there) in people with HIV and their social relations, who may be HIV+ or HIV−. Activity space represents a modifiable risk or protective factor for behavior related to health status and quality of life, in both clinical and nonclinical populations. We conducted an observational study with 286 participants (243 HIV+ and 43 HIV−), roughly matched for socioeconomic status and neighborhood of residence via three waves of snowball sampling. Each participant carried a smartphone for up to 4 weeks, making 5 randomly prompted entries and 1 end-of-day entry each day, plus self-initiated event-contingent entries for sexual activity and drug use. Responses to randomly prompted items provided subjective evaluations of the safety of the participant's current social and physical environment (the place they were and the people they were with). GPS-based location tracking—coupled with publicly available statistic indicating neighborhood-level physical disorder and socioeconomic disadvantage—provided an indicator of each participant's exposure to objective psychosocial hazard. We examined possible relationships of these objective and subjective environmental exposures with risky sexual and intravenous drug-use behavior, knowledge and utilization of antiretroviral treatment and prophylaxis, and momentary mental health (mood and stress, which relate to risky behavior and overall well-being). We found that both risky behavior and mental health were more related to participants' subjective evaluations of their activity space than to objective measures of neighborhood-level disorder, suggesting that, even within an objectively hazardous neighborhood, people who find a niche they perceive as socially and physically safe may engage in less risky behavior and have better well-being. Trial registration Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier NCT01571752. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Western studies have indicated that older women are generally more vulnerable in terms of mobility compared to older men, particularly regarding driving. However, the situation may differ in the context of China. This study, based on activity diaries and semi-structured interviews, focuses on the spatiotemporal behavior of older adults in Tianjin and explores how the constraints posed by activity companions (in terms of type, size, and composition) shape the mobilities of older men and women, including activity locations, travel distances, and transportation modes. The key findings are as follows: First, older women are more engaged with their families due to a higher percentage and longer duration of activities spent with family members. Second, older men tend to have more concentrated travel distances near their homes compared to older women. Third, older women exhibit a broader range of activities in different locations and engage in longer-distance leisure travel with family members when compared to older men. In the context of Western literature, this study discusses older women's enhanced social interactions, their earlier retirement in China, and the impact of COVID-19 as factors that help explain these findings. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of accompanied mobilities among Chinese older adults using geographical theory and methods, emphasizing the importance of flexible work schedules for the workforce and the organization of community-based activities to promote the social interactions and mobilities of older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral geography is often considered a major branch of behavioral geography, which takes into account certain political functionalities. This analysis is particularly important in the case of Iran, where political behaviors and social, behavioral, and geographical complexities take on a unique form. This in turn certainly impacts the combination and function of different political institutions in Iran, especially in the case of presidential elections, at various local, regional, and national scales. In this light, the present study proceeds with an exploratory analysis of spatial data on different electoral sectors to find a balanced spatial division (zoning) of Iran based on principles of electoral geography, which also provides certain indications into existing spatial inequalities. The analysis is based on the assumption that concepts of electoral geography-consisting of a diverse range of spatialpolitical aspects of election-integrated with exploratory analyses, may prove helpful in establishing fair elections in Iran. The results of this study reveal that the distribution of election votes shows a significantly positive general spatial autocorrelation, which is indicative of the spatial clustering of votes in Iran. Regarding the relationship between the distribution of votes and social and economic variables, votes tallied for Rouhani had positive and significant correlations with factors of relative population aged 25 to 64, relative student population studying at higher education, the ratio of university educated population, unemployment rates, rental rates, housing quality, and the rate of urbanization in all cities. However, for Raeesi, the analysis of the votes indicates a positive and significant correlation between relative population aged 0 to 24, population above 64, employment rates, ratio of households with disabled members, house ownership and ruralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of China's urbanization, a large number of new urban spaces such as university towns have emerged. At the same time, the geographical "separation" between university towns and urban centers established on the fringe of the city has gradually emerged. This article uses "islandization" to summarize this phenomenon, and from the perspective of teacher behavior, take Jinan Changqing University Town as an example to explore. Mainly use questionnaire survey method and interview method to analyze the daily behavior characteristics of teachers' commuting, shopping, medical treatment, leisure, etc., and reveal the influencing factors and formation mechanism of the "islandization" of university towns. The study found that the incomplete living service facilities in university towns have made most teachers choose to live in the downtown area. The separation of work and residence has caused teachers to commute with high frequency and time. The life needs of teachers are not fully satisfied in the university city, so daily activities such as shopping, medical treatment, and leisure tend to be carried out in the downtown area. Therefore, it can be seen from the behavior of teachers that there are three levels of space in the Changqing University Town, the center of Changqing District, and the center of Jinan, and the characteristics of islanding of the University Town are obvious. Moreover, islandization is formed under the interrelation and mutual influence of three factors: material, behavior and psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of China's rapid urbanization and higher education reform, a large number of new urban spaces have emerged, in particular, university towns. When promoting urbanization and stimulating economic growth, the isolation of the university town from the central city has become increasingly apparent. This article defined the islandization of the university town and analyzed it from the perspective of the behavior of the main actors of the university town, the students. Taking Jinan Changqing University Town, Jinan City, China as a case study, this article used a survey questionnaire and interviews to investigate the patterns of university town students' off-campus behavior. By constructing an analysis framework, this article discussed the characterization, influencing factors, and formation mechanism of the islandization of the university town. The results indicated that although the daily behavior of students was concentrated mainly in the university town, the student's needs could not be fully satisfied in the university town alone. Therefore, students needed to go to the central area of Jinan City, China for important activities, which included studying, working part-time jobs, shopping, recreation, and medical treatment. The main mode of transportation for the students that left the university town was public transport, which was considered inconvenient and costly in terms of time. Student behavioral characteristics indicated that the university town was spatially separated from society, which is a significant feature of islandization. The imperfection in the spatial factors was the basis of the islandization of the university town, which further triggered the behavior and psychological isolation of the students. In addition, spatial, student behavior, and psychological factors interacted and reinforced each other, which eventually formed a vicious circle and led to the increased isolation of the university town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Identifying the behavior of tourists and explaining the behavior of the researchers has been one of the important topics of tourism, and the current goal is to evaluate the factors on the behavior of domestic and foreign tourists of Mashhad with the geographical region. Data and method: This research is a descriptive-analytical survey with the aim of developing the regulation and information in the field and using a researcher-made questionnaire. Statistically, there are domestic and foreign tourists, and based on the recorded statistics, the number of incoming tourists in 2018 was 22,025,167 and the number of foreign tourists was 1,239,926. According to Cochran's formula, there were 384 Iranians people as a statistical sample for tourists and 384 people were obtained as a sample of foreign tourists’ statistics and were distributed among the statistical population through random sampling method. Results: According to the findings of the questionnaires, it was found that the behavior pattern of tourists shows that foreign tourists travel a greater distance from Razavi Holy Shrine (65 km) for tourism elements available around Mashhad city. Therefore, their behavioral pattern is scattered. This is while domestic tourists are mostly located around the Holy Shrine and up to a radius of 30 kilometers from the Razavi Shrine, and their behavioral pattern is clustered around the Shrine of Imam Reza (A.S.). Conclusion: The results obtained from the analysis of the questionnaires were determined; the economic factor with an average of 3.7 has the greatest impact on the behavior patterns of tourists, and the environmental factor with an average of 2.7 has the lowest value, and among the factors affecting the spatial behavior patterns of foreign tourists, the highest average is related to the socio-cultural factor with 3.3 and the lowest is related to the physical-infrastructural factor with 2.09. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

n this study, the attitudes of individuals to development planning and their environmental perceptions about the harms and consequences of programs in the rural community of the central part of Varzeqan county have been studied and analyzed. The research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of nature and method and with exploratory design method, it has two methodological components .in phase One, using the qualitative method of "guided introspection research", the performance of the participating mind and thought was observed and reported. Then, in the second phase, based on the results of the qualitative section, the tool was developed using the SEM, using the PLS method. This study has 30 participants who have been selected by snowball sampling. The results show that "non-participation of stakeholders in development programs" along with "lack of proper foresight" are important factors in the development of damages related to the development phase and "weak monitoring mechanisms" are important factors in the emergence of damages in the implementation of development programs. According to the prevailing view in development plans, the results show that despite significant development and infrastructure activities in rural areas, development plans have not been able to achieve the objectives. Inadequate use of technology and its inefficiency, lack of institutionalized systematic participation due to poor design and application of an optimal model in this field, inadequate establishment of conversion industries, and insufficient attention to rural tourism are the most important consequences of rural development planning harms in the study area.

Universal accessibility and barrier-free experience of public spaces such as parks are at the frontier of social sustainability and disability research. Such accessible and quality public spaces are characterized by enjoyable sensory stimuli and facilitating factors determining the process of sensory experience creation. Among visitors with sensory impairment such as different ranges of hearing loss, an understanding and a comparison of this process with that of general visitors is largely absent. This paper presents a comparative investigation of the sensory experience creation process between visitors with hearing impairment (HI) and that of general visitors in the Hong Kong Wetland Park. This study incorporates a series of field visits to the Wetland Park with a sample of 104 HI participants and their self-reported, questionnaire-based survey, in parallel with 279 general visitor surveys. Through an inter-group statistical comparison between HI sub-groups of severe hearing loss and mild hearing loss and general visitors who reported no hearing difficulty, the findings suggest three variables with significant difference, namely, experienced tactile sense, interactions with other visitors, and feelings of attachment to the Wetland Park. HI experience-based recommendations are categorized into park features and environment and programming and experience enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourists became carriers of Covid 19 disease and, eventually, became victims of the disease on their own. In this study, we aim to identify the key factors of behavioral geography affecting the tourism situation of Shiraz metropolis when facing infectious diseases and Covid-19 and scenario-building with a future-studies approach. The present study, in terms of purpose is applied research which has been conducted in terms of survey method at the exploratory level and based on the future-studies approach. The propulsive forces are determined by the Delphi method, and then these factors are determined based on the degree of importance level and uncertainty, prioritization ,and the most critical factors, and the software-Mic Mac- is used to write possible scenarios. In the scripting stage, 34 general variables were identified and defined in this software. Findings indicate that among these variables, behavioral behavior, immigration, inflation and social capital are the most influential key factors of behavioral geography influencing the tourism industry of Shiraz metropolis dealing with infectious diseases.

In this study, it is examined retirement migrants’, who prefer to live in Kazdağı Mountain National Park and its settlements in the vicinity, thoughts and perceptions regarding this area, and whether these thoughts and perceptions are related. The aim of the study is to question whether there is a meaningful relationship between retirement migrants’ perceptions and thoughts regarding human and natural environment of Kazdağı Mountain. In this study, mixed model was adopted. In this context, 127 retirement migrants were surveyed, while 30 retirement migrants were applied mind map technique. As a result of the research, it was understood that retirement migrants' perceptions about KMNP were related with their thoughts. It is determined that those who find the environment around KMNP good, beautiful, tidy and well-kept have positive thoughts about the natural environment. Retirement migrants in the sample also find the research area as airy, natural, calm and peaceful.

The critical analysis of the main concepts of the geography of tourism was carried out. It was found that the most popular among them are devoted to the destinations of tourists, which is correct for recreation, and for tourism only half is adequate because of the one-sidedness, since the usual environment where the tourist comes from is ignored, where, in fact, recreational needs are formed that only afterwards will be satisfied in the destination. In order to avoid this drawback, it is proposed to consider tourism as a form of population migration through tourist flows connecting the places of origin and destination of tourists, which makes it possible to see this phenomenon holistically. As a theoretical and methodological foundation, the paradigm of behavioral geography was chosen, which considers the territorial behavior of people through their life lines, which appear in tourism as tourist trips. At the same time, it matters mass behaviors as unidirectional numerous trips that form tourist flows. The dialectical nature of the tourist flow is revealed, when the places of origin and destination of tourists are united by the mechanical movement of people, based on the opposition of temporary stay in a destination to permanent residence in the usual environment. As the main author's vision, a conceptual model of the formation and distribution of international tourist flows in the geographical space, which is also relevant for domestic tourism, is proposed and substantiated. It is built on the illumination of the apperception of the usual environment through the formation of dynamic stereotypes, as well as on the basis of the proposed basic tourist motives. These include the motives of migration, comfort, contrast, and aesthetics. The motive of migration that pushes tourists out from the usual environment is consistent with the well-known concept of escapism as a break from the routine of everyday life. The motive of contrast that attracts to destinations different from people's usual environment is described by the tourist's inversion behavior suggested by Graburn. All these motives have found their substantiation on the basis of I. Pavlov's dynamic stereotypes which were helpful in disclosure of one lacking link in understanding the motive of comfort. Basing on all aforesaid motives combined into motivational system structured according to such geographical components of tourism flows as usual environment and destinations, and against the background of such properties of geographical space as length and heterogeneity, a conceptual model of territorial behavior of people in the modus of tourists was suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the great interest in the study of crime and its relationship with the environment where it occurs, the work has focused on the protagonists of this phenomenon, that is, the perpetrators. The importance of the study of criminal behavior at the individual level is the realization that crimes, even when treated as a whole, represent processes brought about by individuals. In this regard one counts on the scientific studies on crime advanced by Geography, with emphasis on the spatial behavior of the authors of crimes. The objective of this work is to approach the major behavioral geography theories applied to the study of crime, in order to create a theoretical framework that can dialogue with other fields of knowledge, notably the social and criminological sciences, in attempting to understand criminal phenomena based on space. This is an exploratory study; a review of the specialized literature. As a product, a brief compilation of theories has been achieved that may contribute to new approaches to the criminal phenomenon. The main theories are the Mental Maps, Awareness Spaces, Journey to Crime and Geographic Profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The factors affecting tourist behavior are complex and diverse, but research on its effect from a purely spatial perspective is still limited. The aim of this paper is to explore the dichotomous interaction between tourists and islands: the behavioral patterns of tourists in island destinations and the mechanisms by which island spaces constrain tourist behavior. This study uses fine-grained global positioning system (GPS) tracking data actively authorized and released by tourists. We empirically studied tourist behavior from a spatial constraint perspective and discovered the following: island space has a strong influence and constraining effect on tourist behavior; different spatial attributes have different constraining effects on tourist behavior; and people with different identities interact with different attributes of space to produce different spatial properties, resulting in a ‘harmony-contradiction’ model of spatial interaction. These findings are of great value in expanding the perspective of spatial constraints and exploring the interactions between people and land. They are also of great practical significance in promoting spatial planning synergy, facilitating the construction of high-quality island-based tourism destinations, and building a harmonious relationship between people and land.

The global outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has caused a considerable impact on humans, which expresses the urgency and importance of studying its impacts. Previous studies either frequently use aggregated research methods of statistic data or stay during COVID-19. The afterward impacts of COVID-19 on human behaviors need to be explored further. This article carries out a non-aggregated study methodology in human geography based on big data from social media comments and takes Nanjing, China, as the research case to explore the afterward impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the spatial behavior of urban tourists. Precisely, we propose the methodology covers two main aspects regarding travel contact trajectory and spatial trajectory. In contact trajectory, we explore three indicators—Connection Strength, Degree Centrality, and Betweenness Centrality—of the collected attractions. Then, in spatial trajectory, we input the results from contact trajectory into ArcGIS by using the Orientation–Destination Model and Standard Deviation Ellipse to explore the influences on the spatial pattern. By setting up comparative groups for the three periods of before, during, and after the COVID-19 in Nanjing, this study found that, in the post-epidemic era, (1) the spatial behavior of urban tourists showed a state of overall contraction; (2) the objects of contraction changed from urban architectural attractions to urban natural attractions; (3) the form of contraction presents concentric circles with the central city (Old City of Nanjing) as the core; (4) the direction of contraction heads to the large-scale natural landscape in the central city, which highlights the importance of green open spaces in the post-epidemic era.

The main goal of this paper is to study the effects of (1) trust in government medical experts and (2) proximity to a recent disease outbreak on vaccine propensity. More specifically, we explore how these variables affect attitudes with regards to measles. Using original survey data, collected in January/February 2017, we obtain three main empirical findings. First, contrary to our expectations, an individual’s proximity to a recent measles outbreak has no independent effect on vaccination attitudes. Second, corroborating previous studies in the field, we find that trust in institutions such as the CDC has a positive effect on our dependent variable. Third, there is a significant interactive relationship between proximity and trust in governmental medical experts. While distance from a previous measles outbreak has no effect on vaccination attitudes for respondents with medium or high levels of trust, the variable exerts a negative effect for subjects with little confidence in government medical experts. In other words: low-trust individuals who live farther away from a recent measles outbreak harbor less favorable views about vaccination for this particular disease than low-trust respondents who live close to an affected area. This implies that citizens who are skeptical of the CDC and similar institutions base their vaccination decision-making to some degree on whether or not a given disease occurs in close vicinity to their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary game dynamics in structured populations has been extensively explored in past decades. However, most previous studies assume that payoffs of individuals are fully determined by the strategic behaviors of interacting parties, and social ties between them only serve as the indicator of the existence of interactions. This assumption neglects important information carried by inter-personal social ties such as genetic similarity, geographic proximity, and social closeness, which may crucially affect the outcome of interactions. To model these situations, we present a framework of evolutionary multiplayer games on graphs with edge diversity, where different types of edges describe diverse social ties. Strategic behaviors together with social ties determine the resulting payoffs of interactants. Under weak selection, we provide a general formula to predict the success of one behavior over the other. We apply this formula to various examples which cannot be dealt with using previous models, including the division of labor and relationship- or edge-dependent games. We find that labor division can promote collective cooperation markedly. The evolutionary process based on relationship-dependent games can be approximated by interactions under a transformed and unified game. Our work stresses the importance of social ties and provides effective methods to reduce the calculating complexity in analyzing the evolution of realistic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics of spatial hierarchical processes displays fascinating images of the evolution of attraction basins of towns. Assuming in the present paper a random character of such complex processes, gravitational modeling is employed to depict changes in the nature of fuzzy boundaries between attraction basins in a hexagonal world, i.e. the geographical pattern central in the renowned and influential Christaller–Lösch central place theory in geography. The paper presents various interesting stylized maps of such stochastic processes. Our findings demonstrate that the collective behavior of actors in geographic space shows a white noise pattern that mirrors a fuzzy gravitation towards large population concentrations. These results support the validity of the conventional central place theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly studies and common accounts of national politics enjoy pointing out the resilience of ideological divides among populations. Building on the image of political cleavages and geographic polarization, the regionalization of politics has become a truism across Northern democracies. Left unquestioned, this geography plays a central role in shaping electoral and referendum campaigns. In Europe and North America, observers identify recurring patterns dividing local populations during national votes. While much research describes those patterns in relation to ethnicity, religious affiliation, historic legacy and party affiliation, current approaches in political research lack the capacity to measure their evolution over time or other vote subsets. This article introduces “Dyadic Agreement Modeling” (DyAM), a transdisciplinary method to assess the evolution of geographic cleavages in vote outcomes by implementing a metric of agreement/disagreement through Network Analysis. Unlike existing approaches, DyAM offers a stable measure for political agreement and disagreement—accounting for chance, statistically robust and remaining structurally independent from the number of entries and missing data. The method opens up to a range of statistical, structural and visual tools specific to Network Analysis and its usage across disciplines. In order to illustrate DyAM, I use more than 680,000 municipal outcomes from Swiss federal popular votes and assess the evolution of political cleavages across local populations since 1981. Results suggest that political congruence between Swiss local populations increased in the last forty years, while regional political factions and linguistic alignments have lost their salience to new divides. I discuss how choices about input parameters and data subsets nuance findings, and consider confounding factors that may influence conclusions over the dynamic equilibrium of national politics and the strengthening effect of globalization on democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The availability alongside growing awareness of medicine has led to increased self-treatment of minor ailments. Self-medication is where one ‘self’ diagnoses and prescribes over the counter medicines for treatment. The self-care movement has important policy implications, perceived to relieve the National Health Service (NHS) burden, increasing patient subsistence and freeing resources for more serious ailments. However, there has been little research exploring how self-medication behaviours vary between population groups due to a lack of available data. The aim of our study is to evaluate how high street retailer loyalty card data can help inform our understanding of how individuals self-medicate in England. Transaction level loyalty card data was acquired from a national high street retailer for England for 2012–2014. We calculated the proportion of loyalty card customers (n ~ 10 million) within Lower Super Output Areas who purchased the following medicines: ‘coughs and colds’, ‘Hayfever’, ‘pain relief’ and ‘sun preps’. Machine learning was used to explore how 50 sociodemographic and health accessibility features were associated towards explaining purchasing of each product group. Random Forests are used as a baseline and Gradient Boosting as our final model. Our results showed that pain relief was the most common medicine purchased. There was little difference in purchasing behaviours by sex other than for sun preps. The gradient boosting models demonstrated that socioeconomic status of areas, as well as air pollution, were important predictors of each medicine. Our study adds to the self-medication literature through demonstrating the usefulness of loyalty card records for producing insights about how self-medication varies at the national level. Big data offer novel insights that add to and address issues that traditional studies are unable to consider. New forms of data through data linkage may offer opportunities to improve current public health decision making surrounding at risk population groups within self-medication behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that partisans are increasingly avoiding members of the other party—in their choice of neighborhood, social network, even their spouse. Leveraging a national database of voter registration records, we analyze 18 million households in the U.S. We find that three in ten married couples have mismatched party affiliations. We observe the relationship between inter-party marriage and gender, age, and geography. We discuss how the findings bear on key questions of political behavior in the US. Then, we test whether mixed-partisan couples participate less actively in politics. We find that voter turnout is correlated with the party of one’s spouse. A partisan who is married to a co-partisan is more likely to vote. This phenomenon is especially pronounced for partisans in closed primaries, elections in which non-partisan registered spouses are ineligible to participate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid growth of mobile payment and geo-aware systems as well as the resulting emergence of Big Data present opportunities to explore individual consuming patterns across space and time. Here we analyze a one-year transaction dataset of a leading commercial bank to understand to what extent customer mobility behavior and financial indicators can predict the use of a target product, namely the Individual Consumer Loan product. After data preprocessing, we generate 13 datasets covering different time intervals and feature groups, and test combinations of 3 feature selection methods and 10 classification algorithms to determine, for each dataset, the best feature selection method and the most influential features, and the best classification algorithm. We observe the importance of spatio-temporal mobility features and financial features, in addition to demography, in predicting the use of this exemplary product with high accuracy (AUC = 0.942). Finally, we analyze the classification results and report on most interesting customer characteristics and product usage implications. Our findings can be used to potentially increase the success rates of product recommendation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yonaguni Island is a remote and isolated westernmost island in Japan, which is the fastest aging country in the world. This study evaluated the current status of medical supply-and-demand on the island and compared these results with previous surveys carried out in rural parts of Japan. This was a retrospective cohort study conducted at the Yonaguni Municipal Clinic, the only medical facility in Yonaguni Island. The participants were patients who visited the clinic over one year, between July 2015 and June 2016. We calculated the rate per 1,000 persons per month of clinic visits, referrals to off-island medical facilities (e.g., hospitals and specialist clinics), referrals to off-island emergency departments, off-island hospitalizations after referral, home visits, and overnight observations at the clinic. In total, 6,197 patients (males, 46.3%) visited the clinic. The rate of clinic visits per 1,000 persons per month was 516.4 (Standard deviation [SD] 28.1, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 500.5–532.3). The rate per 1,000 persons per month was 14.0 (SD 3.9, 95% CI: 11.8–16.2) for off-island referrals, 3.8 (SD 2.1, 95% CI: 2.6–5.0) for referrals to emergency departments, 4.8 (SD 2.6, 95% CI: 3.3–6.2) for hospitalizations, and 3.2 (SD 1.7, 95% CI: 2.2–4.1) for home visits. The rate of clinic visits was higher in Yonaguni Island than in other rural areas, although the rate of off-island referrals was lower. There were no significant differences between the number of referrals to emergency departments, hospitalizations, and home visits in Yonaguni Island, in comparison to other studies. Our study showed that patients presenting with emergencies had similar rates of healthcare-seeking behavior to those reported in previous studies in Japan; however, the referral rate was lower. We assessed the ecology of medical care in this district by evaluating patient behavior on an isolated island where access to medical care is geographically limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analyses of geographic variations in the prevalence of major chronic conditions, such as overweight and obesity, are an important public health tool to identify “hot spots” and inform allocation of funding for policy and health promotion campaigns, yet rarely performed. Here we aimed at exploring, for the first time in Luxembourg, potential geographic patterns in overweight/obesity prevalence in the country, adjusted for several demographic, socioeconomic, behavioural and health status characteristics. Data came from 720 men and 764 women, 25–64 years old, who participated in the European Health Examination Survey in Luxembourg (2013–2015). To investigate the geographical variation, geo-additive semi-parametric mixed model and Bayesian modelisations based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques for inference were performed. Large disparities in the prevalence of overweight and obesity were found between municipalities, with the highest rates of obesity found in 3 municipalities located in the South-West of the country. Bayesian approach also underlined a nonlinear effect of age on overweight and obesity in both genders (significant in men) and highlighted the following risk factors: 1. country of birth for overweight in men born in a non-European country (Posterior Odds Ratio (POR): 3.24 [1.61–8.69]) and women born in Portugal (POR: 2.44 [1.25–4.43]), 2. low educational level (secondary or below) for overweight (POR: 1.66 (1.06–2.72)] and obesity (POR:2.09 [1.05–3.65]) in men, 3. single marital status for obesity in women (POR: 2.20 [1.24–3.91]), 4.fair (men: POR: 3.19 [1.58–6.79], women: POR: 2.24 [1.33–3.73]) to very bad health perception (men: POR: 15.01 [2.16–98.09]) for obesity, 5. sleeping more than 6 hours for obesity in unemployed men (POR: 3.66 [2.02–8.03]). Protective factors highlighted were: 1. single marital status against overweight (POR: [0.60 (0.38–0.96)]) and obesity (POR: 0.39 [0.16–0.84]) in men, 2. the fact to be widowed against overweight in women (POR: [0.30 (0.07–0.86)], as well as a non European country of birth (POR: 0.49 [0.19–0.98]), tertiary level of education (POR: 0.34 [0.18–0.64]), moderate alcohol consumption (POR: 0.54 [0.36–0.90]) and aerobic physical activity practice (POR: 0.44 [0.27–0.77]) against obesity in women. A double burden of environmental exposure due to historic mining and industrial activities and past economic vulnaribility in the South-West of the country may have participated to the higher prevalence of obesity found in this region. Other demographic, socioeconomic, behavioural and health status covariates could have been involved as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a Schelling model in which people are modelled as agents following simple behavioural rules which dictate their tolerance to others, their corresponding preference for particular locations, and in turn their movement through a geographic or social space. Our innovation over previous work is to allow agents to adapt their tolerance to others in response to their local environment, in line with contemporary theories from social psychology. We show that adaptive tolerance leads to a polarization in tolerance levels, with distinct modes at either extreme of the distribution. Moreover, agents self-organize into communities of like-tolerance, just as they congregate with those of same colour. Our results are robust not only to variations in free parameters, but also experimental treatments in which migrants are dynamically introduced into the native population. We argue that this model provides one possible parsimonious explanation of the political landscape circa 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Food supplements, and in particular those containing botanicals (plant food supplements, PFS), have in recent decades been of great interest both to consumers and to food/pharmaceutical industries. Objectives: The aim of this paper is to examine replies by Italian consumers to the PlantLIBRA consumers' survey in order to: 1) assess the behaviour of an Italian population with respect to the use of PFS, and to compare it with that of other 5 countries involved in the whole survey; 2) identify different habits in the 4 Italian cities selected according to their geographical distribution; 3) collect independent information on the actual intake of PFS and consumers' behaviour. Subjects/setting: 397 Italian consumers enrolled, 187 males (49.5%) and 191 female (50.5%). The distribution of subjects among the 4 cities included was: Milan 99; Venice 90; Rome 96 and Catania 96. Results: The interest in PFS in Italy is high, the prevalence of "regular" consumers being 22.7%. Some differences were observed between the 4 cities involved: the pattern of use during the year was specific to each city; consumers in Milan reported reasons to use PFS significantly different from those in the whole Italian sample and did not indicate supermarkets as an important place of purchase; respondents from Rome and Catania more frequently used family doctors and pharmacists as a source of recommendation. Some significant difference among cities, sex and age groups were observed when the most frequently used botanicals were ranked. Conclusions: The results provide new insights on the socio-economic characteristics and lifestyle of Italian PFS consumers, on their reasons for and pattern of use, and on their behaviour and expectations. The value of this information is not restricted to the specific country (Italy) but allows for a more general evaluation of the pattern of use, according to habits and geographical area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Sri Lanka has a population of 21 million and about 80,000 snakebites occur annually. However, there are limited data on health seeking behavior following bites. We investigated the effects of snakebite and envenoming on health seeking behavior in Sri Lanka. Methods: In a community-based island-wide survey conducted in Sri Lanka 44,136 households were sampled using a multistage cluster sampling method. An individual who reported experiencing a snakebite within the preceding 12 months was considered a case. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to obtain details of the bite and health seeking behavior among cases. Results: Among 165,665 individuals surveyed, there were 695 snakebite victims. 682 (98.1%) had sought health care after the bite; 381 (54.8%) sought allopathic treatment and 301 (43.3%) sought traditional treatment. 323 (46.5%) had evidence of probable envenoming, among them 227 (70.3%) sought allopathic treatment, 94 (29.1%) sought traditional treatment and 2 did not seek treatment. There was wide geographic variation in the proportion of seeking allopathic treatment from <20% in the Western province to > 90% in the Northern province. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that seeking allopathic treatment was independently associated with being systemically envenomed (Odds Ratio = 1.99, 95% CI: 1.36–2.90, P < 0.001), distance to the healthcare facility (OR = 1.13 per kilometer, 95% CI: 1.09 to 1.17, P < 0.001), time duration from the bite (OR = 0.49 per day, 95% CI: 0.29–0.74, P = 0.002), and the local incidence of envenoming (OR = 1.31 for each 50 per 100,000, 95% CI: 1.19–1.46, P < 0.001) and snakebite (OR = 0.90 for each 50 per 100,000, 95% CI: 0.85–0.94, P < 0.001) in the relevant geographic area. Conclusions: In Sri Lanka, both allopathic and traditional treatments are sought following snakebite. The presence of probable envenoming was a major contribution to seeking allopathic treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has recently become possible to study the dynamics of information diffusion in techno-social systems at scale, due to the emergence of online platforms, such as Twitter, with millions of users. One question that systematically recurs is whether information spreads according to simple or complex dynamics: does each exposure to a piece of information have an independent probability of a user adopting it (simple contagion), or does this probability depend instead on the number of sources of exposure, increasing above some threshold (complex contagion)? Most studies to date are observational and, therefore, unable to disentangle the effects of confounding factors such as social reinforcement, homophily, limited attention, or network community structure. Here we describe a novel controlled experiment that we performed on Twitter using ‘social bots’ deployed to carry out coordinated attempts at spreading information. We propose two Bayesian statistical models describing simple and complex contagion dynamics, and test the competing hypotheses. We provide experimental evidence that the complex contagion model describes the observed information diffusion behavior more accurately than simple contagion. Future applications of our results include more effective defenses against malicious propaganda campaigns on social media, improved marketing and advertisement strategies, and design of effective network intervention techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid global proliferation of social media, there has been growing interest in using this existing source of easily accessible ‘big data’ to develop social science knowledge. However, amidst the big data gold rush, it is important that long-established principles of good social research are not ignored. This article critically evaluates Mitchell et al.’s (2013) study, ‘The Geography of Happiness: Connecting Twitter Sentiment and Expression, Demographics, and Objective Characteristics of Place’, demonstrating the importance of attending to key methodological issues associated with secondary data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OpenStreetMap, a crowdsourced geographic database, provides the only global-level, openly licensed source of geospatial road data, and the only national-level source in many countries. However, researchers, policy makers, and citizens who want to make use of OpenStreetMap (OSM) have little information about whether it can be relied upon in a particular geographic setting. In this paper, we use two complementary, independent methods to assess the completeness of OSM road data in each country in the world. First, we undertake a visual assessment of OSM data against satellite imagery, which provides the input for estimates based on a multilevel regression and poststratification model. Second, we fit sigmoid curves to the cumulative length of contributions, and use them to estimate the saturation level for each country. Both techniques may have more general use for assessing the development and saturation of crowd-sourced data. Our results show that in many places, researchers and policymakers can rely on the completeness of OSM, or will soon be able to do so. We find (i) that globally, OSM is ∼83% complete, and more than 40% of countries—including several in the developing world—have a fully mapped street network; (ii) that well-governed countries with good Internet access tend to be more complete, and that completeness has a U-shaped relationship with population density—both sparsely populated areas and dense cities are the best mapped; and (iii) that existing global datasets used by the World Bank undercount roads by more than 30%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving high coverage of HIV testing services is critical in many health systems, especially where HIV testing services remain centralized and inconvenient for many. As a result, planning the optimal spatial distribution of HIV testing sites is increasingly important. We aimed to assess the relationship between geographic distance and uptake of HIV testing services among the general population in Guangzhou, China. Utilizing spatial epidemiological methods and stratified household random sampling, we studied 666 adults aged 18–59. Computer-assisted interviews assessed self-reported HIV testing history. Spatial scan statistic assessed the clustering of participants who have ever been tested for HIV, and two-level logistic regression models assessed the association between uptake of HIV testing and the mean driving distance from the participant’s residence to all HIV testing sites in the research sites. The percentage of participants who have ever been tested for HIV was 25.2% (168/666, 95%CI: 21.9%, 28.5%), and the majority (82.7%) of participants tested for HIV in Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, public hospitals or STIs clinics. None reported using self-testing. Spatial clustering analyses found a hotspot included 48 participants who have ever been tested for HIV and 25.8 expected cases (Rate Ratio = 1.86, P = 0.002). Adjusted two-level logistic regression found an inverse relationship between geographic distance (kilometers) and ever being tested for HIV (aOR = 0.90, 95%CI: 0.84, 0.96). Married or cohabiting participants (aOR = 2.14, 95%CI: 1.09, 4.20) and those with greater social support (aOR = 1.04, 95%CI: 1.01, 1.07) were more likely to be tested for HIV. Our findings underscore the importance of considering the geographical distribution of HIV testing sites to increase testing. In addition, expanding HIV testing coverage by introducing non-facility based HIV testing services and self-testing might be useful to achieve the goal that 90% of people living with HIV knowing their HIV status by the year 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion processes in social networks often cause the emergence of global phenomena from individual behavior within a society. The study of those global phenomena and the simulation of those diffusion processes frequently require a good model of the global network. However, survey data and data from online sources are often restricted to single social groups or features, such as age groups, single schools, companies, or interest groups. Hence, a modeling approach is required that extrapolates the locally restricted data to a global network model. We tackle this Missing Data Problem using Link-Prediction techniques from social network research, network generation techniques from the area of Social Simulation, as well as a combination of both. We found that techniques employing less information may be more adequate to solve this problem, especially when data granularity is an issue. We validated the network models created with our techniques on a number of real-world networks, investigating degree distributions as well as the likelihood of links given the geographical distance between two nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aggressive behavior can be defined as any behavior intended to hurt another person, and it is associated with many individual and social factors. This study examined the relationship between emotional regulation and inhibitory control in predicting aggressive behavior. Seventy-eight participants (40 males) completed self-report measures (Negative Mood Regulation Scale and Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire), a stop signal task, and engaged in a modified version of Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) exercise, in which the outcome was used as a measure of direct physical aggression. We used a hierarchical, mixed-model multiple regression analysis test to examine the effects of emotion regulation and inhibitory control on physical reactive aggression. Results indicated an interaction between emotion regulation and inhibitory control on aggression. For participants with low inhibitory control only, there was a significant difference between high and low emotion regulation on aggression, such that low emotion regulation participants registered higher aggression than high emotion regulation participants. This difference was not found among participants with high inhibitory control. These results have implications for refining and targeting training and rehabilitation programs aimed at reducing aggressive behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being able to characterise the patterns of communications between individuals across different time scales is of great importance in understanding people’s social interactions. Here, we present a detailed analysis of the community structure of the network of mobile phone calls in the metropolitan area of Milan revealing temporal patterns of communications between people. We show that circadian and weekly patterns can be found in the evolution of communities, presenting evidence that these cycles arise not only at the individual level but also at that of social groups. Our findings suggest that these trends are present across a range of time scales, from hours to days and weeks, and can be used to detect socially relevant events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral geography, one of the sub-branches of geography, examines how differently people perceive the environment where they live and what the factors that are influential on these different perception processes are, considering the variations in people’s areas of interest, socio-cultural background, education, and level of consciousness. Actually, every person has his/her unique geography, and this geography is interpreted by being shaped in line with people’s age, gender, experience, needs, and wishes (Aliagaoglu, 2007; Bunting, Guelke, 1979). So, there is a permanent and mutual interaction between the environment and human beings. During the interaction concerned, the environment sends several messages to the people and people’s evaluating and straining them is expressed as perception (Orer, 1993). The fact that elements of physical and human geography are effective on people’s perception of the environment has made it inevitable that the issue of “perception of the environment” be included in the behavioral geography. Cities are settlement units where the mutual interaction between human beings and the environment can be observed in the most considerable and active way. Within this framework, how human being-environment relationships are perceived and expressed by people constitutes the basic research subject in the subbranch of behavioral geography. In this study, the environmental perceptions, by the students at Ege University, of Izmir that is the city where students at Ege University live and that has maintained the urban tradition since the past and the reasons for this were examined. For the field research on the matter, the students in the Faculty of Letters that attracted the attentions with its departments that were nested more with urban life were selected as the sample. The students were asked questions to determine their perception of the urban environment in Izmir, and it was intended to obtain their opinions about their degrees of satisfaction with the city they lived in and the aspects of the city that they liked or felt uncomfortable with. Furthermore, the participants were asked to write the connotations of Izmir and to reflect them on their mental maps with symbols. The obtained information was turned into figures by means of statistical methods and transferred into tables and graphs. In addition, connotations were made. Considering this, depending on the education, cultural background and areas of interest of the students in the Faculty of Letters, it was intended to make a comparative evaluation of the variation in their perception of the city of Izmir.

We introduce a scheme for immersing real human users in urban simulations, and for enabling them to transpose their embodied behavior into models. We achieve this by inverse augmentation, flipping traditional philosophies of augmented reality. Rather than beginning with real-world scenes and embellishing them with graphics, we proceed from a base of synthetic, modeled, streetscapes filled with agent characters, which we augment with real human users. Participants are then allowed to use their natural abilities to explore the simulation scenarios. We achieve this by employing mobile virtual reality to allow users to build dynamic presence in a fused geosimulation and virtual geographic environment that they can physically view and walk around in. Our central argument is that inversion of this kind allows for the detail and nuances of human behavior to be brought directly into simulation, where they would traditionally be difficult to capture and represent. We show that close matches between real physical activity on the ground and actions in the model world can be achieved, as measured by spatial analysis and encephalography of user brain activity. We demonstrate the usefulness of the approach with an application to studying pedestrian road-crossing behavior. [Display omitted] • We introduce an inverse augmentation scheme for mapping real human physical behavior to a simulation comprising a coupled Virtual Geographic Environment with realistic behavior-driven agent models for vehicles and pedestrians. • Agents are designed with very high-fidelity detail and implemented as geographic automata for efficient functioning within VGE systems. • All agent characters in the model react naturally to human participants as they would in the real world, including gaze and interest, velocity-based steering, avoiding collisions, and engaging in conversation. • We performed experiments to monitor the brain activity of users while engaged in the experiments using sensor-assisted electroencephalography. While preliminary, this work suggests that users' neurological appreciation for the simulation has bearing on (and perhaps linkage to) their real-world brain activity of perception, action, and cognition. • We demonstrate that the system (including the agent models) can be transferred from VR to augmented reality (AR), opening the possibility that new methods of Augmented Geographic Environments (AGEs) may be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly assumed that how individuals identify on the political spectrum–whether liberal, conservative, or moderate–has a universal meaning when it comes to policy stances and voting behavior. But, does political identity mean the same thing from place to place? Using data collected from across the U.S. we find that even when people share the same political identity, those in “bluer” locations are more likely to support left-leaning policies and vote for Democratic candidates than those in “redder” locations. Because the meaning of political identity is inconsistent across locations, individuals who share the same political identity sometimes espouse opposing policy stances. Meanwhile, those with opposing identities sometimes endorse identical policy stances. Such findings suggest that researchers, campaigners, and pollsters must use caution when extrapolating policy preferences and voting behavior from political identity, and that animosity toward the other end of the political spectrum is sometimes misplaced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High fertility rates among disadvantaged subgroups are a public health problem because fertility levels significantly affect socioeconomic conditions and a population’s welfare. This paper aims to analyze the sociodemographic, behavioral, and reproductive factors associated with fertility rates among Brazilian women aged between 15–49 years. A Poisson regression was used to analyze data from the 2006 PNDS (Pesquisa Nacional de Demografia e Saúde da Criança e da Mulher), which evaluates socioeconomic, demographic, geographic, reproductive, behavioral, and chronic disease variables. The results show that the following characteristics are positively associated with an increase in the number of children born: being aged 20–24, residing in the North, being nonwhite, not being in paid employment, having lower education levels, having lower socioeconomic status, being in a stable union, having the first sexual intercourse before the age of 16 and having the first child before the age of 20. Thus, it is important to implement efficient family planning policies targeting these subgroups in order to improve life conditions, reduce inequalities and avoid the adverse outcomes of high fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networking sites (SNS) are used for social and professional interaction with people. SNS popularity has encouraged researchers to analyze the relationship of activities performed on SNS with user behavior. In doing so, the term “user behavior” is rather used ambiguously with different interpretations, which makes it difficult to identify studies on user behavior in relation to SNS. This phenomenon has encouraged this thorough research on the characteristics of user behavior being discussed in the literature. Therefore, in this study, we aim to identify, analyze, and classify the characteristics associated with user behavior to answer the research questions designed to conduct this research. A mapping study (also called scoping study), which is a type of systematic literature review, is employed to identify potential studies from digital databases through a developed protocol. Thematic analysis is carried out for the classification of user behavior. We identified 116 primary studies for full analysis. This study found seven characteristics associated with behavior that have direct influence on SNS use and nine factors that have an indirect effect. All studies were conducted largely under seven areas that set the context of these studies. Findings show that the research on SNS is still in its early stage. The range of topics covered in the analyzed studies is quite expansive, although the depth in terms of number of studies under each topic is quite limited. This study reports that activities performed on SNS are either associated with user behavior or reflect personality characteristics. The findings of this study could be used by practitioners to evaluate their SNS platforms and develop more user-centered applications. These studies can also help organizations to understand better the needs of their employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual behavior is influenced by factors intrinsic to the decision-maker but also associated with other individuals and their ownerships with such relationship intensified by geographic proximity. The land management literature is scarce in the spatially integrated analysis of biophysical and socio-economic data. Localized land management decisions are likely driven by spatially-explicit but often unobserved resource conditions, influenced by an individual’s own characteristics, proximal lands and fellow owners. This study examined stated choices over the management of family-owned forests as an example of a resource that captures strong pecuniary and non-pecuniary values with identifiable decision makers. An autoregressive model controlled for spatially autocorrelated willingness-to-harvest (WTH) responses using a sample of residential and absentee family forest owners from the U.S. State of Missouri. WTH responses were largely explained by affective, cognitive and experience variables including timber production objectives and past harvest experience. Demographic variables, including income and age, were associated with WTH and helped define socially-proximal groups. The group of closest identity was comprised of resident males over 55 years of age with annual income of at least $50,000. Spatially-explicit models showed that indirect impacts, capturing spillover associations, on average accounted for 14% of total marginal impacts among statistically significant explanatory variables. We argue that not all proximal family forest owners are equal and owners-in-absentia have discernible differences in WTH preferences with important implications for public policy and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perspectives in humanenvironment geography with an Anglo-American perspective and evaluate the reflection of these perspectives in Turkish geography with a historical approach. One of the most common definitions of Geography states that geography is the study of human-environment relationships. This definition has been understood in terms of environmental influences until the last 100 years. However, due to social, technological and political developments on one hand, and development of scientific thought on the other, new interpretations of human-environment relationship emerged. The first objections to environmental determinism, which favored the environmental influences, based on the fact that the biophysical environment gives opportunities and it is up to the human groups to choose among various options. The technological and social developments have diminished the influence of the environment and stressed the culture and adaptation capabilities. Thus a new possibilistic approach has emerged and constructed the base for cultural ecology. Especially in the last 40-50 years environmental perception replaced the previous concepts as a result of ever increasing human mobility. On the other hand the large-scale projects and cultural constructions marked the human as changing the face of the Earth. Cultural ecological perspective replaced by political ecology shortly after because of increasing influence of political processes, policy effect and power relations between different socio-cultural groups. Characterized by regional geography methodologically and by environmental deterministic approaches philosophically, Turkish geography is far from following these paradigmatic shifts in a meaningful way. This research discusses all these different approaches and processes in Turkish geography and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How the spatial expansion of a species changes at a human time scale is a process difficult to determine. We studied the dispersal pattern of the French white stork population, using a 21-year ringing/resighting dataset. We used the graph-theory to investigate the strength of links between 5 populations (North-East, North-West, Centre, West, and South) and to determine factors important for the birds’ movements. Two clusters of populations were identified within the metapopulation, with most frequent movements of individuals between North-Eastern and Centre populations, and between North-Western and Western populations. Exchanges of individuals between populations were asymmetrical, where North-Eastern and North-Western populations provided more emigrants than they received immigrants. Neither the geographical distance between populations, nor the difference in densities influenced the number of individuals exchanging between populations. The graph-theory approach provides a dynamic view of individual movements within a metapopulation and might be useful for future population studies in the context of conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural orientation is defined as an individual’s cultural preferences when encountering imported culture while still living in the native culture. Data was analyzed from 1305 Chinese university students attending universities in Beijing, Kunming, and Wuhan. Cultural orientation was assessed with the Chinese Cultural Orientation Questionnaire, which assesses both Western and Traditional Chinese cultural orientations. The analysis used hierarchical logistic regression with nondrinkers as the reference group and controlling for demographic factors (age, gender, and urban/rural background). Western cultural orientation was found to significantly increase the odds of recent drinking. The results indicated that higher Western cultural orientation was, after gender, the second most important factor associated with Chinese college student drinking frequency. Traditional Chinese cultural orientation was not associated with drinking frequency. This study highlights an unexpected outcome of globalization on students who have not left their home cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]