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Cultural responsivity in academic research is central to the use of language that is representative and inclusive of Indigenous worldviews on gender and sexuality diversity. This article uses the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) approach to explore current studies' contribution to the use of gender and sexuality diverse terminology and language that is representative of Indigenous worldviews. A systematic review of 85 journal articles (published between January 2000 and June 2021) generates both quantitative results regarding the frequency of terms used and qualitative outcomes of actively used terminologies, geographic regions, identified populations, and gender and sexuality diversity-specific themes in Indigenous studies. A substantial glossary of terminology characteristic of the multiplicity of gender and sexuality diversity was identified, however, further research examining gender and sexuality diversity from the perspective of Indigenous worldviews is needed to align with the best practices of equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a specific data hiding technique, reversible data hiding (RDH) has recently received extensive attention. By this technique, both the embedded data and the original cover image can be exactly extracted from the marked image. In our previous work, a general expansion-shifting model for RDH is proposed by introducing the so-called reversible embedding function (REF). With REF, RDH can be designed and the corresponding rate-distortion formulations can be established, providing an approach to optimize the reversible embedding performance. In this paper, by extending our previous work, optimal REF for one-dimensional histogram is investigated, and all optimal REF are derived in this case when the maximum modification to the cover pixel is limited as a small value. Moreover, based on the derived optimal REF for one-dimensional histogram and multiple histograms modification, a practical RDH scheme is presented and it is experimental verified better than some state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of capacity-distortion performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work's response to global climate change has dramatically increased over the last several years. Similarly, growing attention has been paid to rural social work; less clear, however, is how social work, responsive to global climate change, is developed, deployed, and understood in rural contexts; this systematic review elaborates on current social work contributions (research, practice, and policymaking), promoting environmental justice and sustainability in rural communities. Utilizing the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) approach, this article thematically analyzed and synthesized 174 journal articles on social work-specific interventions and environmental justice. The results illustrate insights into the experiences, practices, or objectives of rural social workers vis-à-vis climate change. Significant themes from the literature demonstrated that gender, age, and race limited access to social work services and climate-related disaster response support in rural settings; this article argues that rural community-driven social work practices focused on environmental justice and sustainability should be encouraged and that policy advocacy attentive to climate change and its impact on vulnerable and marginalized groups should be pursued. Current and prospective social work scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders should collaborate with local rural communities to address their unique needs related to climate change. In turn, grassroots strategies should be co-developed to promote climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, ultimately achieving the goal of building resilient, healthy, and sustainable rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an out-of-province/state and international post-secondary student perspective, this article (a) explores mass email risk communication facilitation during the COVID-19-triggered campus-wide evictions in Canada and the United States; and (b) develops relative recommendations to improve mass email risk communication strategies for future emergency response. Investigating mass email risk communication-related impacts on students in a tertiary educational context has revealed a significant deficit in emergency response research, practice, and policymaking. Mandatory temporary university and college closures during the COVID-19 first wave provided an opportunity to address this research and practice deficit, as most Canadian and American universities/colleges administered their eviction communication via daily mass email chains. Through a phenomenological lens, this study interviewed twenty out-of-province/state and international students, ten from each country respectively, to examine student eviction experiences associated with intensive mass email risk communication. This research identified four factors linked to mass email risk communication: email chain characteristics, student interpretation, interdepartmental cooperation, and frontline voices. Synthesizing these findings, four evidence-based recommendations were developed: to efficiently convey risk information to students, to understand student perceptions and to inform their behaviors, to enhance interdepartmental cooperation, and to enable mutual dialogue in decision making. These recommendations could assist post-secondary institutions, and other organizations, in strengthening their mass email risk communication strategies and advancing organizational emergency response plans for future extreme events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 emergency response of 'staying the blazes home' in Nova Scotia, Canada, frontline social workers worked tirelessly 'out of the home' to secure safe dwellings for those on the street, living in shelters, and/or precariously housed. When the province moves to the reopening and recovery stage, social work strategies will focus on reducing homeless people's vulnerabilities, aiming to offer safe and dignified living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The protection of traditional grassroots place-making knowledge and skills that comprise valuable intangible heritage has not been attracting enough attention in the field of post-disaster reconstruction and recovery. Based on the Guchengping Village's reconstruction that followed the Lushan earthquake (Sichuan, China), the purpose of this paper is to identify the benefits of a co-design approach for post-disaster reconstruction and recovery, in order to ascertain various stakeholders' contributions toward the protection of community-based intangible place-making heritage. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative method was employed to assist the professional designers in facilitating the co-design approach by bridging governments closer together with local communities. At the governmental level, focus groups and personal interviews were conducted to discover the government's role in preserving the communities' intangible heritage. At the community level, community-based workshops and family-based design partnerships engaged various community stakeholders to decipher their roles and contributions toward advancing the heritage age. Findings: As the advocates of intangible heritage, all levels of government guaranteed that intangible heritage would be safeguarded in the government strategic plans. At the community level, local residents played a fundamental role as the grassroots protectors. Professional designers utilized cutting edge technologies to improve weaknesses found in the traditional knowledge and skills, by performing the protection in practice. Community-based service agencies promoted the value of heritage to address societal issues. Originality/value: The co-design approach offered a new method of intangible heritage protection in post-disaster reconstruction and recovery by engaging different stakeholders, in order to effectively transfer the governmental strategic plans into community-based action plans, and in turn, enabled the grassroots voice to inform the government policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

College students are a unique population occupying a distinct life-course and transition period between adolescence and adulthood. Although not monolithic in experiences, knowledge, and demographics, this diverse population is particularly susceptible to immediate, short-term, mid-term, and long-term disaster impacts. Recently, disaster research focusing on college students has rightly focused on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Although the pandemic was a public health disaster interrupting social, developmental, and educational processes for students on a global scale, the climate crisis and related environmental disasters continuously threaten college students' individual development, health, and well-being. Thus, it is critical to understand current knowledge focusing on environmental disasters and college students in order to determine future research needs. This article used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach to examine research on college students and disasters over the past ten years (2014–2023). We identified 67 articles, which we analyzed through a mixed methods approach, including descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Results indicate that disaster impacts on college students are an understudied topic in the social sciences, especially in an era of more-frequent and -intense environmental hazards. Our findings demonstrate a need to engage college students in disaster research worldwide so that trade schools, colleges, and universities can collaborate with policymakers to build this unique and disproportionately impacted population's capacity to mitigate against, respond to, and recover from environmental hazards in an ever-changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is increasingly recognized that social work has a vital role to play in shaping effective responses to environmental degradation, climate change and disasters. Innovative teaching and learning strategies can be used to facilitate understanding of complex, interrelated and systemic social, economic and environmental challenges. This article shares the development and design of a new social work course entitled ‘Social work and sustainable social development’. Teaching methods and strategies are provided including individual and group mind maps, case studies and presentations, guest speakers and evaluation methods. Implications for social work education and the profession are discussed in order to build capacity to address environmental justice and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Green social work (GSW) is a nascent framework within the social work field that provides insights regarding social workers' engagement in disaster settings. Although this framework has recently garnered more attention, it remains under-researched and underdeveloped within the context of social work research, education, and practice in Canada and internationally. To further develop GSW in social work education and professional training, we considered how social work students and practitioners can use a learning framework to understand the impact and build their capacities to serve vulnerable and marginalized populations in diverse disaster settings. To do this, we developed a four-step case study approach, as follows: (1) provide detailed background information on the cases, (2) describe how each case is relevant to social work, (3) discuss how each case informs social work practice from a GSW perspective, and (4) provide recommendations for social work practitioners and students using GSW in future disaster-specific efforts. This case study approach centers on natural, technological, and intentional/willful hazards that examine current GSW research–practice engagement in Canada and internationally. Applying this four-step case study approach to three extreme events in Canada and internationally (a natural hazard, a technological hazard, and an intentional/willful hazard) illustrates it as a potential method for social work students and professionals to build their GSW capacities. This will assist in building the resilience of Canadian and international communities—especially those who have been historically marginalized. This article sheds light on how current social work education and professional training should develop new approaches to incorporate the GSW framework into the social work curriculum at large in order to prepare for future extreme events while incorporating environmental and social justice into research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Compounding pre-existing diverse vulnerabilities, pet owners living with (dis)abilities are expected to confront more challenges than their peers without (dis)abilities. However, there is a paucity of literature investigating COVID-19-specific impacts on access to veterinary medical and behavioral services from the lens of persons with (dis)abilities (PWDs). Through semi-structured in-depth interviews, this study highlights PWDs' difficulties, three-fold: (1) COVID-19 has worsened PWDs' already precarious financial capacity to pay for veterinary services, (2) existing assistance and support programs do not effectively address PWDs' unique requirements to support their companion animals' health needs, and (3) public health protocols triggered public transportation challenges for PWDs who must now also adapt to complicated curbside services. Building PWD-driven social assistance and support programs would help reduce these challenges and promote health and well-being for both PWDs and their companion animals. The research aims to explore COVID-19 health and safety protocol impacts on companion animal guardians living with (dis)abilities relating to veterinary medical and behavioral service access. The COVID-19 global public health crisis has impacted almost all international communities; however, vulnerable and marginalized groups have been disproportionately affected. Within the human–companion animal domain, COVID-19-driven societal impacts (e.g., social, health, and economic) not only boomed with new companion animal guardians, but also negatively influenced guardians' access to veterinary services. Although studies have examined guardian-related COVID-19-specific challenges, there is a paucity of concentration on vulnerable populations, such as persons with disabilities (PWDs). Responding to this research deficit, this study recruited twelve companion animal guardians to participate in semi-structured in-depth interviews, and eight (67%) of the twelve participants self-identified as PWDs. From a PWD perspective, this research reveals three pandemic-triggered primary barriers, preventing PWDs from pursuing veterinary services: (1) service affordability, (2) assistance program feasibility, and (3) veterinary service accessibility. This article argues that PWD-driven approaches could improve existing assistance and support programs to address PWDs' unique requirements, promoting a healthy human–animal bond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-resolved experiments with more than one period of incoherent time evolution are becoming increasingly accessible. When applied to a two-level system, these experiments separate homogeneous and heterogeneous contributions to kinetic dispersion, i.e., to nonexponential relaxation. Here, the theory of two-dimensional (2D) multiple population-period transient spectroscopy (MUPPETS) is extended to multilevel, excitonic systems. A nonorthogonal basis set is introduced to simplify pathway calculations in multilevel systems. Because the exciton and biexciton signals have different signs, 2D MUPPETS cleanly separates the exciton and biexciton decays. In addition to separating homogeneous and heterogeneous dispersion of the exciton, correlations between the exciton and biexciton decays are measurable. Such correlations indicate shared features in the two relaxation mechanisms. Examples are calculated as both 2D time decays and as 2D rate spectra. The effect of solvent heating (i.e., thermal gratings) is also calculated in multidimensional experiments on multilevel systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Discovery of women's leadership roles as rescuers, decision makers and breadwinners. • Empowering women's leadership will reduce vulnerability and advance resiliency. • Supporting gender equality engagement for communities affected by disasters. • Examination of women's leadership at three post-disaster stages of their lifespans. Community engagement in disaster risk reduction activities assists women to discover and build their capacity for leadership before, during, and after disaster. In the study of the entire process after an extreme event, previous research has been scarce in the examination of women of different ages' capacities of engagement, leadership, and resilience. Developed during 10 years of ongoing research after the Wenchuan earthquake, this paper employs qualitative research methodology that scrutinizes women's leadership at different stages of their lifespans during all the post-disaster stages (emergency rescue, short-term reconstruction, and long-term recovery and mitigation) that took place after the Wenchuan earthquake, in the rural areas of Sichuan Province, China. This paper discovers that (1) during the emergency rescue stage, women became rescuers augmenting and supporting the urgent response; (2) during the short-term reconstruction stage, women served as decision makers guiding the reconstruction of housing and communities; and (3) during the long-term recovery and mitigation stage, many women took on the role of breadwinner, managing the family livelihood and long-term development. From the perspective of built environment, this paper argues that women's leadership in managing existing and obtaining new resources (internal and external), in parallel effort alongside the official missions, not only strengthened the men's dominant aftermath efforts, but also promoted gender equity engagement in post-disaster reconstruction and recovery as well as powerfully advanced resilience capacity at individual, family, and community levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An improved PPVO-based reversible data hiding scheme is proposed. • All pixels close to the to-be-predicted pixel are taken as prediction context, contributing to the prediction accuracy enhancement • A new embedding strategy is proposed by conducting multiple histograms generation and modification with multi-sized prediction contexts. • Proposed scheme can be superior to some state-of-the-art RDH methods. Most pixel-value-ordering (PVO) based reversible data hiding (RDH) methods conduct pixel prediction on image blocks, while a recently proposed pixel-based PVO (PPVO) method changes the blockwise prediction in PVO to pixelwise manner and achieves better embedding performance. However, in PPVO, the prediction is not accurate since some pixels close to the to-be-predicted one are not utilized. Moreover, pixels with different local complexity are not fully exploited and the embedding performance of PPVO is not optimized. Thus, to better determine the prediction context as well as full use the image local correlation, an improved PPVO-based RDH method is proposed in this paper. First, to improve the prediction accuracy, a new predictor is proposed in which the prediction context is properly selected. Then, for the optimized performance, a new embedding strategy is proposed based on multiple histograms generation and modification with multi-sized prediction contexts. Experimental results verify that the proposed method is superior to PPVO and some other state-of-the-art RDH methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novel chemotherapeutics photo-inactivate Staphylococcus aureus and destruct Staphylococcus aureus bioflim through type I and type II mehcanism of photodyanmic therapy. Photocatalysis of NAD(P)H upon white light irradiation may contribute to its excellent antimicrobial activity. [Display omitted] • The cationic photosensitizers was designed for photo-induced antimicrobial and antibiofilm activity towards free Staphylococcus aureus and biofilm. The most effective compound exhibited multiple type I/II photosensitization and coenzyme NAD(P)H photocatalytic activity upon excitation, causing membrane damage and protein/nucleus acids leakage. The challenge of antibiotic resistance worldwide has brought an urgent need to explore novel drugs for bacterial infections. Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy has been proven to be a potential antimicrobial modality but is limited by biofilms. In this study, we synthesized three cationic photosensitizers with strong photoinduced antimicrobial and antibiofilm activities toward gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus. The indole–pyridine compounds illustrated multiple type I/II photosensitization and coenzyme NAD(P)H photocatalytic activity upon excitation. A mechanistic study showed that intracellular reactive oxygen generation and NAD(P)H oxidation caused membrane damage, leading to protein/nucleus acid leakage. This research provides insights into the development of novel chemotherapeutics with synergetic photodynamic and photocatalytic reactivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methods matter. They influence what we know and who we come to know about in the context of hazards and disasters. Research methods are of profound importance to the scholarly advancement of the field and, accordingly, a growing number of publications focus on research methods and ethical practices associated with the study of extreme events. Still, notable gaps exist. The National Science Foundation-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) network was formed, in part, to respond to the need for more specific information about the status and expertise of the social science hazards and disaster research workforce. Drawing on data from 1,013 SSEER members located across five United Nations (UN) regions, this article reports on the demographic characteristics of SSEER researchers; provides a novel inventory of methods used by social science hazards and disaster researchers; and explores how methodological approaches vary by specific researcher attributes including discipline, professional status, researcher type based on level of involvement in the field, hazard/disaster type studied, and disaster phase studied. The results have implications for training, mentoring, and workforce development initiatives geared toward ensuring that a diverse next generation of social science researchers is prepared to study the root causes and social consequences of disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a need to better understand long-term disaster recovery and reconstruction challenges in diverse communities. This case study was part of a larger study undertaken by the Rebuilding Lives Post-Disaster research partnership, where field research was conducted in disaster-affected communities in Canada, the USA, Australia, India, Pakistan, and Taiwan. The objective of this exploratory case study was to focus on experiences of affected migrant workers from diverse communities in Florida, USA, in relation to long-term disaster recovery and reconstruction work following hurricanes, to ensure that lessons learned from these experiences could inform best practices and policy. The study focused particularly on the role of community processes and dynamics in shaping postdisaster recovery. Qualitative research explored diverse experiences of participants through interviews with government officials, community leaders, and disaster responders. The study found that migrant workers faced challenges due to the lack of consideration with regard to immigration status, linguistic, and cultural needs in disaster recovery. IMPLICATIONS Disaster recovery processes need to consider the diversity of affected populations to ensure assistance and responses meet the differing needs of all community members in postdisaster recovery. All members of diverse communities should be included in disaster response and longer-term recovery efforts. Social workers can assist in ensuring that diversity is a consideration in disaster and emergency management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disasters result in devastating human, economic, and environmental effects. The paper highlights women's active participation in community-based disaster recovery efforts drawing from the results of the ‘Rebuilding Lives Post-disaster: Innovative Community Practices for Sustainable Development’ by an international research partnership. Two case studies are presented from Pakistan and the USA to demonstrate how women contribute to building resilience and promoting sustainable development in diverse post-disaster contexts. The policy and practice implications are relevant for discussions regarding the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals and framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]