Economic and social deprivation predicts impulsive choice in young children.

Impulsivity is an individual difference in decision-making that is a risk factor for a number of health concerns including addiction and obesity. Although impulsivity has a large heritable component it, the health concerns associated with impulsivity are not uniformly distributed across society. For example, people from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be overweight, and be dependent on tobacco or alcohol. This suggests that the environmental component of impulsivity night be related to economic circumstances and availability of resources. This paper provides evidence that children aged 4 to 12 from the most deprived areas show greater impulsivity in the form of delay discounting than do children from the least deprived areas. The data are discussed with reference to scarcity based models of decision-making and to public health inequalities.

Environmental Aspects of the European Experience in Landscape Planning

Understanding all the possibilities of environmentally oriented landscape planning will contribute to the effective environmental planning of the territory and nature management in general. Accordingly, the purpose of the study was to investigate the experience of the European countries towards the introduction of an effective system of environmentally oriented landscape planning and improvement of territories, as well as their protection. For this purpose, it is necessary to comprehensively study the strengths and weaknesses of existing developments in the field of environmentally oriented landscape planning in Europe. An analysis of the best practices of environmentally oriented landscape planning in such countries as Great Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, etc. has been conducted. The findings allowed to state that the effectiveness of development and implementation of substantial planning for landscape design depends not only on the volume and depth of research, but to a very large extent from their reasonable and productive organisation. The paper summarises that in environmentally oriented landscape planning, it is first necessary to determine the reasons for planning. Before choosing the object and territory of planning, it is necessary to find out: who are the potential customers and investors – their goals and motivation; what are the problem situations and conflicts in nature management in the area; what is the practical use of the results of landscape planning; the purpose of the territory, including cartographic; the availability of source information, and more. And then make decisions regarding the stages of landscape planning, taking into account the environmental component and, accordingly, the implementation of the idea of landscape planning.

Ensuring effective transit of electrical energy using the laws of environmental cybernetics and the foundations of automatic control

The necessity of constant monitoring and maintenance of the environmental component in the organization of electric energy transit is substantiated. An original technique aimed at improving the efficiency of the functioning of the air electric network, based on the laws of environmental cybernetics and the basics of automatic control, is considered. The proposed scientific tools allow you to automatically monitor and control all processes that affect the efficiency of electric energy transit from the point of view of its environmental friendliness, and also allows you to form optimal regulatory influences aimed at stabilizing negative processes and disturbing factors arising inside the artificial electrobiological organism “Electric Line - Nature - Man”, which violate the stability of its ecological state.

Applications in remote sensing and environmental analysis

The present study aims to describe the morphologic and geographic structuring and report a relief morphometric analysis in a cutout of the environmental planning. To do so, geoprocessing techniques were widely used and supported by systemic theory. The main objective is to process relief data in Geographic Information System (GIS) and contribute to the database of characteristics from different local geomorphometric variables. Thus, the theorical basis of the research suggests the use of General System Theory based on their concepts to understand the morphologic structure of the relief at different levels, also the condition of the relief shapes and their classification. This case study occurs methodologically, defining the relief category as an environmental component of direct and vital interaction with other resources and dynamic components, considering mainly the whole environmental system. In this study, the environmental system is the Sucuriú River watershed. Therefore, to get the environmental analysis of the relief, the methodology consists of pre-processing and processing of digital land modeling data based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) records. Those can obtain different characteristics by using the methodology of geomorphometric variables extraction, which are the set of variables subject to land measuring. The results should cartographically reveal the dynamics and structural morphology of the relief, observing important parameters of relief configuration and concluding with the presentation and correlation of the relief shapes dynamics in all the considered environmental system.

Development of ethno-environmental culture among future teachers

The article offers a brief analysis of implementation of ethno-environmental component in academic subjects included in basic academic program "teachers’ training" with two training profiles "Biology and Chemistry" and "Biology and Geography". The subject matter of the article is the curriculum and extracurricular activities that are relative to ethnocultural features. The article is a theoretical overview of Russian and foreign literature on the considered topic. The analysis of the curriculum and extracurricular activities was carried out with the sue of applied examination method. It is concluded that ethno-environmental education of future biology, chemistry and geography teachers is facilitated with a range of conditions developed in the Faculty of Science Education, which include: disciplines of subject-methodical unit aimed on development of environmental thinking, based on ethno-cultural experience of Chuvash; curricular and extracurricular activities aimed on activation of their ecological and ethno-cultural practice. The main forms of upbringing the ethno-environmental culture of future teachers are as follows: master classes in ethno-environmental research; round tables devoted to ethnocultural information about toponyms; ethno-environmental seminars on the problems of protected areas of Chuvashia, etc.

Ecological and philosophical aspects of the pre-professional and professional training of agro-industrial complex specialists

Annotation. The article dedicated to substantiation necessity for serious ecologically oriented pre-professional professional training for future specialists agro-industrial complex of the country based on a holistic and systematic approaches. The vital importance of preservation natural wealth is attributable to the global environmental crisis closely related to the crisis of the spirituality of humanity. The purpose of our study was in the identification the degree of dominance of such a universal human value as “nature” using the express methods “Dominant”. The processing of the results showed that the overwhelming majority of respondents do not see and do not understand the importance of nature in ensuring the life and health of each person and humanity as a whole. This confirms the authors’ idea of the need for reviewing the curriculum and programs with the aim of strengthening their environmental component for the formation a high level of environmental culture of future specialists in the agro-industrial complex, because in their professional activities they are directly related to the use of the natural resources of our country.

The Project of Organizing Non-Stop Traffic at T-Intersections (Tyumen Case Study)

The constant growth in the number of cars and trucks in single industry towns is forcing road design engineers to find ways convenient for all road users and pedestrians to move at intersections. Fulfilling such conditions is a difficult task but it can be solved, especially if there are many T-shaped intersections along the entire length of the road. Most often they are located along the line of railways, heating mains, river or lake banks, parks, etc. Since there are no adjacent roads, it is possible to ensure continuous movement of cars, but only in one direction.The objective of this work is to substantiate the project aimed at ensuring unhindered traffic at T-intersections of vehicles following 50 let VLKSM street in the city of Tyumen.To achieve this objective, the method of observation and recording, as well as the analysis of operation of optical devices that regulate passage of cars at intersections were used. With newly designed travel mode, there is no infringement of rights in relation to other motorists and pedestrians since the traffic light mode for the rest of segments keeps the same counting in seconds. A system of safe pedestrian crossing is envisaged along with an improvement in the environmental component of the whole city.For initial adaptation of motorists to new conditions, it is proposed to use a side green vertical arrow attached to the traffic light and signal columns that delimit traffic lanes for a «slow merge» into the flow of those leaving the secondary road. An undeniable advantage of this type of design is the minimum cost of reconstruction of intersections. Based on author’s own observations, it can be argued that this project increases traffic of vehicles moving from the central part of the city to the eastern part by 1,5–1,8 times.

Dynamics of Water Accounting Balance for Assessing Water Stress Vulnerability Considering Social Aspects

To advance proper planning, water accounting (WA) could provide the possibility of linking physical and operational data to their interdisciplinary attributes. In its new form, WA, combined with a dynamic model considering socio-economic aspects, is a valuable tool for rectifying today's water issues. The social water-accounting-based system dynamics (SWA-SD) provides a feedback-based platform to better support flexible decision-making. Analyzing the indicators that correspond to water security in the context of DPSIR (driving force-pressure-state-impact-response) and SWA-SD combined with principal component analysis (PCA) for identifying data patterns is applied to a generic study area suffering from water stress to assess the environmental, economic, and social vulnerabilities. The water accounting has to be based on water balance data (called water accounting balance). As a practical solution to generate water balance data, a time series by the use of basic climatic and hydrologic data is synthesized. According to the results, the water stress and urbanization index were increased by a factor of 43% and 64% in 2020 during a 20-year time horizon, respectively, which is alarming for the region. Moreover, the economic and social water resources vulnerability shows an upward trend, and the environmental component shows many highs (as much as 2.24) and lows (as low as 0.73) due to different supply measures responded to the increasing demands. This study provides a basis that can be replicated for other developing regions to quantify this type of important planning information and for implementing different socially sensitive triggers and technically feasible to measure water vulnerabilities.

The concept of Buen Vivir in the context of green theory in international relations

The authors consider the peculiarities of emergence of Buen Vivir сoncept in the context of increasing importance of the environmental factor in international relations. The authors present the main ideas of this concept, which became a logical response to environmental challenges – first from the autonomous societies of Latin America, and then found its reflection at the state level in countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia. At the same time, for the first time in Russian historiography, we present an analysis of this concept connection to the development of such a direction in international relations as environmentalism, as well as what place it can occupy in the international relations theory. The main results of the research are as follows: 1) the role and significance of the environmental factor in modern IR is increasing, while politicization of environmental problems is observed; 2) the number of studies on topics related to environmentalism in IR is increasing, with them becoming one of the dominants of not only public, but also a research discourse; 3) the concept of sustainable development did not fully comply with existing demands, which predetermined the emergence in Latin America of a separate concept of development, with an emphasis on the environmental component, being a Latin American ‘response’ to the search of a model for regulating the relationship of mankind with the environment in order to preserve it; 4) the concept of Buen Vivir was most successfully implemented in Ecuador and Bolivia as these countries are home to a significant number of Native Indians, and their worldview is closely intertwined with the key ideas of the concept.

The political economy of non-communicable diseases

Non-communicable diseases are the major cause of death and disability globally, but are largely preventable. The five major modifiable risk factors are tobacco use, alcohol use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, and air pollution—all of which have a strong environmental component. Implementation of policy to address non-communicable diseases (NCDs), however, has focused on individual responsibility rather than creating supportive environments for health promotion and NCD prevention, in part because of industry influence. A political economy perspective is helpful in considering how economic interests intersect with political decisions to shape the environments in which individuals live. When ‘environments of risk’ are considered from a political economy perspective, it enables us to critically assess sociopolitical factors that generate product environments characterized by health-harming products, built environments that condition physical inactivity over physical activity, and marginalization of pollution reduction. The enormous size and reach of these ‘industries of risk’ translates into significant political power. Industry actively exerts power in formal decision-making forums (‘decision-making power’), shapes the agenda in political debates (‘non-decision-making power’), and exercises ideological power in ways that are contrary to NCD prevention. Despite the power wielded by industry interests in the policy process, there has been innovation and meaningful policy change for NCD prevention. Key strategies include: assembling strong, local evidence to underpin policy; developing strong coalitions of actors with public health interests; preparing for push-back from industry; and developing specific proposals for healthier economic policy.