Urban planning is critical to managing rapid urban growth, particularly in African regions experiencing high urbanization rates. This study focuses on Bol, Lake Chad Province, a city facing significant challenges due to inadequate planning frameworks compounded by recurrent humanitarian and climate crises. It fills an empirical gap by analyzing how local planning mechanisms respond to these socio-environmental complexities, with a focus on the interplay between institutional structures, legislative frameworks, and resource allocation. The study assesses urban planning practices in Bol to identify challenges and opportunities, with the aim of improving institutional effectiveness, aligning policies with realities, and integrating climate resilience strategies. Using a qualitative methodology, it combines field surveys, stakeholder interviews, and document analysis, using SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and PESTEL (Political, Economic, Sociocultural, Technological, Environmental, Legal) frameworks for data analysis. The findings reveal that ineffective institutions, poor inter-sectoral coordination, outdated legislative frameworks and resource constraints hamper sustainable urban development in Bol. To address these issues, the study proposes to strengthen local institutional capacities, foster stakeholder collaboration, and modernize urban planning policies through participatory approaches. The study highlights the need to integrate resilience strategies into urban settings to mitigate climate change impacts and improve governance. These measures not only address immediate challenges, but also advance urban planning theory and provide a basis for future research on adaptation strategies in crisis-prone regions. This study offers practical insights for policy makers and contributes to developing more sustainable and resilient urban planning systems in similar contexts.
This study addresses the rising concerns of technostress experienced by teachers due to the increased reliance on educational technology in both classroom and online settings. Technostress, defined as the adverse psychological effects arising from the use of information communication technologies, has been documented to impact teacher performance and overall well-being. Despite the importance of educational technology in enhancing teaching and learning experiences, many educators report elevated levels of anxiety, stress, and pressures associated with their use of these tools. This study presents practical strategies to help teachers alleviate or prevent technostress while using educational technology. This study used a quantitative approach with a survey conducted among 113 university and schoolteachers. The data analysis included frequency and percentage distribution of categorical variables, Cronbach's alpha for reliability, chi-square test, and exploratory factor analysis to identify strategies for symptom prevention. The results indicated that while many teachers experienced symptoms of technostress due to several factors, some did not. The study concluded with specific strategies, and many teachers agreed highly. The implications of this study are profound for educational institutions, policymakers, and teacher training programs as they underscore the necessity of providing comprehensive training, support, and resources to help educators manage technostress effectively. By integrating these strategies into professional developmental programs and fostering a supportive teaching environment, schools and universities can promote better mental health for teachers, improving students' educational outcomes.
In recent years, e-sports, as an emerging form of competition, has been rapidly integrated into the daily life of college students, and with its rich interactivity, instant feedback and teamwork, e-sports provides them with an effective channel for emotional catharsis and psychological regulation. This study takes students from four universities as the survey object and adopts quantitative research method to analyze the relationship between different types of e-sports activities and psychological stress resistance through questionnaire survey method combined with spss. The samples were randomly sampled, and a total of 500 valid questionnaires were collected. The results of the study show that: 1. In terms of participation, the ability of students to withstand academic stress and life stress is significantly improved, and e-sports is an effective way to regulate emotions and relieve stress; 2. the three types of games (First-person Shooter, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, Real-Time Strategy Game) have different impacts on stress tolerance, of which FPS has the greatest impact on stress tolerance; 3. the frequency of playing e-sports affects your stress tolerance; 4. teamwork and strategy play an important role in e-sports resilience.
Extensive research on pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) reveals a significant knowledge gap in understanding the influence of social class, perceived status and the middling tendency on pro-environmental behaviour. Using the International Social Survey Programme Environment dataset, and conducting multilevel mixed-effects linear regressions, we find that the middling tendency and biased status perceptions significantly influences pro-environmental behaviour. Those who deflate their social position have higher pro-environmental behavior and this reinforces the idea that pro-environmental behaviour is driven by a post-materialist effect rather than a status enhancement effect. Moreover, the objective middle class is still a stronger contributor to higher PEB levels compared to subjective middle class. We also find the relation between class, status and PEB vary by country. These findings provide vital insights into the intricate and heterogenous dynamics between class, status and pro-environmental behaviour among different countries and shed light on class and status as driving forces behind pro-environmental behaviour.
The silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) exhibit unique and tunable plasmonic properties. The size and shape of these particles can manipulate their localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) property and their response to the local environment. The LSPR property of nanoparticles is exploited by their optical, chemical, and biological sensing. This is an interdisciplinary area that involves chemistry, biology, and materials science. In this paper, a polymer system is used with the optimization technique of blending two polymers. The two polymer composites polystyrene/poly (4-vinylpyridine) (PS/P4VP) (50:50) and (75:25) were used as found suitable by their previous morphological studies. The results of 50, 95, and 50, 150 nm thicknesses of silver nanoparticles deposited on PS/P4VP (50:50) and (75:25) were explored to observe their optical sensitivity. The nature of the polymer composite embedded with silver nanoparticles affects the size of the nanoparticle and its distribution in the matrix. The polymer composites used are found to have a uniform distribution of nanoparticles of various sizes. The optical properties of Ag nanoparticles embedded in suitable polymer composites for the development of the latest plasmonic applications, owing to their unique properties, were explored. The sensing capability of a particular polymer composite is found to depend on the size of the nanoparticle embedded in it. The optimum result has been found for silver nanoparticles of 150 nm thickness deposited on PS/P4VP (75:25).
Environmental Education (EE) programs are of crucial importance. EE are aimed at global citizenship to generate new knowledge and new, more participatory and conscious ways of acting in the environment. This study, therefore, wants to verify the effectiveness of a training intervention that is based on education on climate change issues and on the active participation of subjects in the dimension of the small psychological group. At the intervention 309 students took part, equally distributed by gender (52.1% males), 64.4% enrolled in primary school, 35.6% enrolled in lower secondary school. A quantitative protocol was administered to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. The study shows an increase in pro-environmental behaviors and their stability even after 15–30 days. The intervention seems to be effective in triggering pro-environmental behaviors and maintaining them in the following weeks. The results of this study highlight the need to develop environmental education pro-grams in schools to increase levels of knowledge and awareness on the issue of climate change.
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