Engineered pavements cover a large fraction of cities and offer significant potential for urban heat island mitigation. Though rapidly increasing research efforts have been devoted to the study of pavement materials, thermal interactions between buildings and the ambient environment are mostly neglected. In this study, numerical models featuring a realistic representation of building-environment thermal interactions, were applied to quantify the effect of pavements on the urban thermal environment at multiple scales. It was found that performance of pavements inside the canyon was largely determined by the canyon geometry. In a high-density residential area, modifying pavements had insignificant effect on the wall temperature and building energy consumption. At a regional scale, various pavement types were also found to have a limited cooling effect on land surface temperature and 2-m air temperature for metropolitan Phoenix. In the context of global climate change, the effect of pavement was evaluated in terms of the equivalent CO2 emission. Equivalent CO2 emission offset by reflective pavements in urban canyons was only about 13.9e46.6% of that without building canopies, depending on the canyon geometry. This study revealed the importance of building-environment thermal interactions in determining thermal conditions inside the urban canopy.
Weight gain during the childbearing years and failure to lose pregnancy weight after birth contribute to the development of obesity in postpartum Latinas.
Methods
Madres para la Salud [Mothers for Health] was a 12-month, randomized controlled trial exploring a social support intervention with moderate-intensity physical activity (PA) seeking to effect changes in body fat, fat tissue inflammation, and depression symptoms in sedentary postpartum Latinas. This report describes the efficacy of the Madres intervention.
Results
The results show that while social support increased during the active intervention delivery, it declined to pre-intervention levels by the end of the intervention. There were significant achievements in aerobic and total steps across the 12 months of the intervention, and declines in body adiposity assessed with bioelectric impedance.
Conclusions
Social support from family and friends mediated increases in aerobic PA resulting in decrease in percent body fat.