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There are urgent calls for new approaches to map the global urban conditions of complexity, diffuseness, diversity, and connectivity. However, existing methods mostly focus on mapping urbanized areas as bio physical entities. Here, based on the continuum of urbanity framework, we developed an approach for cross-scale urbanity mapping from town to city and urban megaregion with different spatial resolutions using the Google Earth Engine. This approach was developed based on multi-source remote sensing data, Points of Interest – Open Street Map (POIs-OSM) big data, and the random forest regression model. This approach is scale-independent and revealed significant spatial variations in urbanity, underscoring differences in urbanization patterns across megaregions and between urban and rural areas. Urbanity was observed transcending traditional urban boundaries, diffusing into rural settlements within non-urban locales. The finding of urbanity in rural communities far from urban areas challenges the gradient theory of urban-rural development and distribution. By mapping livelihoods, lifestyles, and connectivity simultaneously, urbanity maps present a more comprehensive characterization of the complexity, diffuseness, diversity, and connectivity of urbanized areas than that by land cover or population density alone. It helps enhance the understanding of urbanization beyond biophysical form. This approach can provide a multifaceted understanding of urbanization, and thereby insights on urban and regional sustainability.

Bhutan remains a largely non-industrialized country, making minimal contributions to global warming and climate change. Yet, the country suffers from the clutches of the adverse effects of climate change. Among them, the impact of climate change on mental health including psychological distress, acute stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder is well known. In this article, we aim to describe the various mental health issues that the country is facing or is likely to face in the future as a result of climate change.

Equal access to social infrastructures is a fundamental prerequisite for sustainable development, but has long been a great challenge worldwide. Previous studies have primarily focused on the accessibility to social infrastructures in urban areas across various scales, with less attention to rural areas, where inequality can be more severe. Particularly, few have investigated the disparities of accessibility to social infrastructures between urban and rural areas. Here, using the Changsha–Zhuzhou–Xiangtan urban agglomeration, China, as an example, we investigated the inequality of accessibility in both urban and rural areas, and further compared the urban-rural difference. Accessibility was measured by travel time of residents to infrastructures. We selected four types of social infrastructures including supermarkets, bus stops, primary schools, and health care, which were fundamentally important to both urban and rural residents. We found large disparities in accessibility between urban and rural areas, ranging from 20 min to 2 h. Rural residents had to spend one to two more hours to bus stops than urban residents, and 20 min more to the other three types of infrastructures. Furthermore, accessibility to multiple infrastructures showed greater urban-rural differences. Rural residents in more than half of the towns had no access to any infrastructure within 15 min, while more than 60% of the urban residents could access to all infrastructures within 15 min. Our results revealed quantitative accessibility gap between urban and rural areas and underscored the necessity of social infrastructures planning to address such disparities.

Gut-liver axis and cellular homeostasis play key roles in alcohol liver disease (ALD). Nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2 (Nrf2) is a stress-sensitive guarantor of cellular homeostasis. We investigated whether the beneficial effects and underlying mechanisms of Jia-ga-song Tang (JGST) against ALD were associated with gut-liver axis and cellular homeostasis. A predictive network depicting the relationship between Jia-Ga-Song-Tang (JGST) and alcoholic liver disease (ALD) was designed by Network pharmacology. Next, 5% v/v Lieber-DeCarli alcohol liquid diet was used to establish the ALD. JGST protected the liver damage, repaired the intestines to alleviate the Two-hit on the liver, and balanced the cellular homeostasis. It was manifested in repairing the liver and intestinal pathological structure, reducing serum ALT, AST, and liver TG, TC, MDA, CAT, and increasing liver GSH, and intestine GSH-Px. JGST mainly inhibited the liver mRNA levels of HO-1, NQO1, GCLC, FASN, and PPARα and activated the intestinal mRNA levels of HO-1 and NQO1, while inhibiting the liver protein levels of HO-1, NQO1. Furthermore, LPS and LBP in the plasma and the expression of inflammatory factors such as IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-6, TGFβ1, CD14, and Myd88 were reduced after treatment to prove that JGST protects the liver from Two-hit. Ethanol was used to intervene in HepG2 and IEC-6 to establish an ALD cell model and treated by Germacrone, ML385, and TBHQ. repaired the intestinal barrier, and inhibited Nrf2 in IEC-6, but protect the HepG2 by activating Nrf2 to balance cellular homeostasis. Our results reinforce that JGST provides an effective protective method for alcoholic liver disease (ALD) by regulating Gut-liver axis and cellular homeostasis.

The article evaluates whether progressive medical conditions among outpatients lead to the greater use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and to examine whether disease severity influences CAM use in the U.S. Medical diagnosis and severity were gathered from the medical files of outpatient clinics at Hotel Dieu Hospital. The results of the survey found that 23 percent of the patients were using CAM and those with cerebral palsy had the highest usage. It was also identified that the progressiveness of the medical conditions had no effect on CAM use.