The journey towards better healthcare sustainability in Asian nations demands a comprehensive investigation into the impact of urban governance, poverty, and female literacy on infant mortality rates. This study undertakes a rigorous exploration of these key factors to pave the way for evidence-based policy interventions, utilizing data from a panel of six selected Asian countries: Pakistan, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, spanning the years 2001 to 2020. The findings reveal that adequate sanitation facilities, higher female literacy rates, and sustained economic growth contribute to a reduction in infant mortality. Conversely, increased poverty levels and limited women’s autonomy exacerbate the infant mortality rates observed in these countries. The Granger causality analysis validates the reciprocal relationship between urban sanitation (and poverty) and infant mortality rates. Furthermore, the study establishes a causal relationship where female literacy rates Granger-cause infant mortality rates, and conversely, infant mortality rates Granger-cause women’s autonomy in these countries. The variance decomposition analysis indicates that sustained economic growth, improved female literacy rates, and enhanced women’s empowerment will likely impact infant mortality rates in the coming decade. Consequently, in low-income regions where numerous children face potentially hazardous circumstances, it is imperative to allocate resources towards establishing and maintaining accessible fundamental knowledge regarding sanitation services, as this will aid in reducing infant mortality rates.

Tomato is one of the major solanaceous vegetables, which has a unique place in the global vegetable market. Instead of being a high-value crop, there is still a need to do improvement in its potential against various biotic and abiotic stressors that adequately demolish its real yield. Alternaria solani (causing early blight disease) is designated as one of the fatal organisms that may reduce tomato crop yield by up to 80%. There were lots of methods, viz., chemical, cultural and biological suggested to overcome it. However, chemical strategies are much in vogue, but they have several negative consequences for human health and the ecosystem. Enlightening this issue, the efficacy of various treatments, viz., chemical fungicides (Amistar Top^®, Nativo^®, and Contaf^®), biochar and fungal bioagent (Trichoderma viride) was assessed under both in vivo and in vitro conditions. Induced resistance is mediated by several regulating pathways, like salicylic acid and jasmonic acid. These mediating pathways manipulate different physiological processes like growth and development, stress tolerance, and defence mechanisms of the plant. The assessment of results revealed that among all treatments biochar at 3.25% by weight consistently displayed remarkable effectiveness against the early blight infection by triggering resistance and improving the overall performance of tomato plants. This result is attributed to improved soil health, fastening mineralization as well as absorption processes, and boosting the plant’s immunity with the use of a higher concentration of biochar. Hence, it could be recommended for the overall improvement of tomato crop and its sustainability.

Based on the collective forest with common use rights, the social-ecological system analysis framework and autonomous governance theory proposed by Elinor Ostrom are introduced in the forest eco-economic system to analyze the interaction logic among the first-level subsystems and the secondary variables of the forest eco-economic system and the variables related to the autonomous governance of the system to explore the synergistic mechanisms affecting the forest eco-economic system. The results show that: in the case of information asymmetry, collective actions of governmental and non-governmental organizations will aggravate the dilemma of forest eco-economic synergistic development; actors extract forest resource units from the forest resource system to achieve economic benefits; and renewable resources of forest ecosystems can be sustained in the long term when the average extraction rate of humans from forest ecosystems does not exceed the average replenishment rate.

This paper contributes to a long-standing debate in development practice: under what conditions can externally established participatory groups engage in the collective management of services beyond the life of a project? Using 10 years of panel data on water point functionality from Indonesia’s rural water program, the Program for Community-Based Water Supply and Sanitation, the paper explored the determinants of subnational variation in infrastructure sustainability. It then investigated positive and negative deviance cases to answer why some communities successfully engaged in system management despite being located in difficult conditions as per quantitative findings and vice versa. The findings show that differences in the implementation of community participation, driven by local social relations between frontline service providers, that is, village authorities and water user groups, explain sustainable management. This initial condition of state-society relations influences how the project is initiated, kicking off negative or positive reinforcing pathways, leading to community collective action or exit. The paper concludes that the relationships between frontline government representatives and community actors are important and are an underexamined aspect of the ability of external projects to generate successful community-led management of public goods.

In order to study the temperature change trend of the surrounding geotechnical soil during the operation and thermal recovery of the medium-deep geothermal buried pipe and the influence of the geotechnical soil on the operational stability of the vertical buried pipe after thermal recovery. Based on the data of geological stratum in Guanzhong area and the actual engineering application of medium-deep geothermal buried pipe heating system in Xi’an New Area, the influence law of medium-deep geothermal buried pipe heat exchanger on surrounding geotechnical soil is simulated and analyzed by FLUENT software. The results show that: after four months of heating operation, in the upper layer of the geotechnical soil, the reverse heat exchange zone appears due to the higher fluid temperature; in the lower layer of the geotechnical soil, the temperature decreases more with the increase of depth and shows a linear increase in the depth direction; without considering the groundwater seepage, after eight months of thermal recovery of the geotechnical soil after heating, the maximum temperature difference after recovery is 3.02 ℃, and the average temperature difference after recovery is 1.30 ℃ The maximum temperature difference after recovery was 3.02 ℃ and the average temperature difference after recovery was 1.30 ℃. The geotechnical thermal recovery temperature difference has no significant effect on the long-term operation of the buried pipe, and it can be operated continuously and stably for a long time. Practice shows that due to the influence of various factors such as stratigraphic structure, stratigraphic pressure, radioactive decay and stratigraphic thermal conductivity, the actual stratigraphic temperature below 2000m recovers rapidly without significant temperature decay, fully reflecting the characteristics of the Earth’s constant temperature body.