Since the COVID-19 crisis has caused the cancellation of a great number of travel plans in the last two years, this study examines the prospects of the post-COVID-19 era, during which we expect tourism will return strongly. The impact of the epidemic on people’s attitudes toward tourism, particularly their tourist choices, appears to be a major challenge for post-COVID-19 international tourism development. Very little is known about tourists’ accommodation preferences during the period emerging after the COVID-19 crisis. With a long and challenging experience of lockdowns, stress, and fear of disease, the current study attempts to examine peoples’ preferences for hotel attributes during the post-COVID-19 era. It examines factors contributing to peoples’ preferences for hotels with biophilic attributes. A total of 507 Iranian undergraduate and graduate students participated in the study. They answered questions on their perceived stress, level of depression, the specific burden of COVID-19, the perceived benefits of nature, and their preferences for biophilic design attributes in their accommodation. The online survey was conducted from August to October 2021. We found that the burden of COVID-19 increased the stress level of the respondents, which consequently increased the chance of depression. We further found that perceived stress and the benefits of nature significantly affect tourists’ preferences for exposure to nature and hotels with biophilic attributes. Based on the data, we suggest that the demand for biophilic buildings will be strongly increased during the post-COVID-19 era.

This paper challenges the fact that the absolute freedom for residents to locate themselves wherever they want can lead to sustainable cities. Urban sprawl is the corollary to this freedom. Urban sprawl has become a controversial issue. Lines of thought among academics, practitioners, and local authorities have been diverse. Some academics advocate the compact city as an antidote to urban sprawl, some scholars doubt the ability of conventional notions of containments to create sustainability, and others are fascinated by urban technologies and believe in the feasibility of these technologies, whereas local authorities impose policies, one after the other, without effective results. The problematic point is the absence of a comprehensive approach to undermining the urban sprawl sustainably. On the other hand, the physical urban compactness alone cannot meet containment aims. The study therefore study poses a question: Is there a theory or policy that can accommodate all of these ideas? This study attempts to find a sustainable compromise through a critical review of the impact of auto-mobility on urban affairs and to solve the dialectical contradictions between the protagonists of compactness and their counterparts who advocate urban sprawl. The review ends with a comparison between urban initiatives and theories related to auto-mobilities, and highlights the approaches to sustainable urbanism. The conclusion is that all classic planning theories have neglected the sociocultural impact on the urban realm, and that the current initiatives and mutual debates consider the resident just as a physical object who cannot contribute effectively to sustainable urban syntax. The study concludes that urban sprawl can also be a compacted zone if authorities ensure the equity of loci-services. Then, the preference for housing locations will not be a challenge to urban residents’ movements to settle closer to their work. In the end, the inhabitants will share in making an integrated and real urban containment.

During the past year, health care environments have struggled to cope with the various impacts of COVID-19 around the world. Health care facilities need to help strengthen resistance to pathogen threats and provide care for patients and health workers in the safest possible way. Architectural design strategies can play a significant role in infection prevention and control. The current study aims to examine the experiences of health workers with hospital spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. Identifying the difficulties they face, the present study attempts to shed light on the role of the health care layout configuration in combating pandemics. The authors conducted observations at four hospitals and a series of online semi-structured interviews with 162 health care staff from March to May 2020. The study indicated that space configuration and the hospitalization of patients, layout and circulation of the environment, operation services such as indoor environment conditions, maintenance of health care system, and organizational support for health care staff were the most critical factors affecting infection control in health care environments. The initial zoning and separation of patients were the most effective methods of controlling infection. Hospitals with clustered plan layouts were found to be the most effective buildings for the zoning of COVID-19 patients during the pandemic and for infection control.

The purpose of this research was to identify “threshold” concepts in introductory statistics courses by surveying engineering students. Threshold concepts are those ideas that bind a subject together and are fundamental to the thinking and practice within a discipline. In this exploratory study, the aim was to answer the following questions: What are the learners’ assessments of the proposed threshold concepts? Based on the learners’ assessments, which of the four threshold characteristics best describes the selected threshold concepts? What are the final proposed threshold concepts that incorporate the learners’ perspectives? What is the perception held by learners about the theory’s impact on the learning and teaching processes? Using qualitative and quantitative exploratory analysis to answer these questions, all students in the College of Engineering and Applied Science who took one of the 29 sections of the course Introductory Statistics offered at the University of Colorado at Boulder were surveyed. The findings reveal there are differences in threshold concepts identified by instructors and learners. The learners added 11 concepts to the 18 proposed by the instructors as threshold concepts. Based on these inputs, a list of potential threshold concepts incorporating the two perspectives—that of instructor and that of learner—was created, and a framework of knowledge to support curriculum design was developed. An important suggestion for future research is to explore how to incorporate these threshold concepts in redesigning the syllabi of such courses, depending on the proposed framework.

Introduction: Social support can positively affect individuals’ well-being, mental health, and perceived quality of life. When migrants leave their country of origin, they might lose their strong social networks and supporting ties. As reshaping social networks after migration might be challenging, this study aims to examine female migrants’ perceptions of ChatGPT’s potential to serve as a source of social support in four dimensions: emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal. Methods: Employing a qualitative research method, we conducted online semi-structured interviews with 64 female migrants working in the Gulf countries for less than a year. We recruited 300 educated, working female migrants in the Gulf countries through LinkedIn. A total of 64 volunteers agreed to participate in the interviews. They were familiar with ChatGPT-3.5 and had used its free version to receive social support for at least two weeks before the interviews. We used a qualitative framework analysis to examine participants' perspectives, applying thematic coding to highlight important aspects of perceived social support. Two researchers independently coded the data to ensure the analysis was thorough, and peer debriefing was carried out to validate the results. Results: This study found that ChatGPT brings substantial promise as an emotional, instrumental, informative, and appraisal support source but suffers from some caveats. It was perceived to be able to provide emotional support well to instill trust and privacy, as well as comfort. It was highly beneficial for professional tasks, skill development, and rapid access to accurate information, instruments, and informational support. However, its responses often lacked real human warmth. The generic, robotic tone was devoid of authentic human interaction. Within the findings of this study, no explicit limitations were found in these areas. What ChatGPT brought to appraisal support was logical ‘feedback’; however, the provided feedback was very poor, failing to offer solid conclusions, and was devoid of the needed depth for deep, personalized reasoning. These findings underscore the necessity for future improvements in AI to conquer these flaws and improve its completeness and efficiency when offering help. Conclusion: The study concluded that ChatGPT offered valuable emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal support for female migrants.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate how three factors—stable traits (the severity of ADHD symptoms), momentary states (mental fatigue), and classroom context (class size and area)—influence students’ attention in actual classroom settings. The study compares the distinct and combined contributions of trait, state, and context using the time-pressured d2 Test of Attention, which is given in situ and guided by the dual-pathway and cognitive-energetic models of ADHD. Methodology A cross-sectional survey design was employed to examine the relationships among ADHD symptom severity, mental fatigue, and student attention. Data were collected in April 2025 from 134 Iranian university students during regular classroom sessions. ADHD symptom severity was measured using the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS-v1.1) 6-Item Screener, mental fatigue with the Mental Fatigue Scale (MFS), and attention through the D2 Test of Attention, which assessed accuracy and processing speed under time constraints. Classroom size (square meters) and class size were included as control variables. Data analysis was performed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4 to evaluate both direct and moderating effects. Results The findings revealed a significant negative relationship between ADHD symptom severity and student attention, indicating that higher ADHD symptoms were associated with lower attention performance. However, the hypothesized moderating effect of mental fatigue on this relationship was not supported. Additionally, classroom size and the class size showed significant effects, with smaller class sizes and more spacious classrooms linked to increased attention. Conclusion This study underscores the significant impact of ADHD symptom severity on student attention, independent of mental fatigue. It highlights the importance of classroom factors in shaping attentional performance and calls for future research to further explore these dynamics through longitudinal and experimental designs. Originality/value We integrate classroom ecology—class size and usable area per student—into an in-situ objective attention task (d2), isolating trait (ADHD symptoms) from state (mental fatigue) influences. Despite theory-driven expectations, mental fatigue did not moderate ADHD’s impact, indicating a state-insensitive, trait-dominant pathway under time-pressured selective-attention demands. These findings refine dual-process and cognitive-energetic accounts by highlighting environmental context (space and group size) as the more consequential amplifier of ADHD-linked attentional deficits.