In order to analyse the impacts of production and consumption on social sustainability, Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) has emerged as an extensive and promising, yet still young methodology. S-LCA captures the whole life cycle of a product and aims to include all relevant affected stakeholders. It therefore requires large amounts of data and produces likewise complex results, which makes ...

SUMMARY Summary Social cognitive abilities underpin successful social functioning. They enable humans to fine-tune their behaviour to that of others and to guide behaviour within social relationships. Basic social cognitive abilities emerge during early childhood, but the more elaborate forms continue to develop into adulthood. Understanding how social cognition impacts upon social behaviour is...

Stress resulting from living in large cities (and alienation in certain individuals) fuels the high incidence of psychiatric illnesses in modern metropolises. Some pathology as Schizophrenia and Asperger has deficits on social cognition mechanisms and its presentation may be influenced by social environmental impact. Even more, common mental disease such as depression and personality disorders ...

BACKGROUND Lone parents and their children experience higher than average levels of adverse health and social outcomes, much of which are explained by high rates of poverty. Many high income countries have attempted to address high poverty rates by introducing employment requirements for lone parents in receipt of welfare benefits. However, there is evidence that employment may not reduce pover...

Growing socioeconomic disparity is a global concern, as it could affect population health. The author and colleagues have investigated the health impacts of socioeconomic disparities as well as the pathways that underlie those disparities. Our meta-analysis found that a large population has risks of mortality and poor self-rated health that are attributable to income inequality. The study resul...

The Torres Strait Islands are frequently ‘left off the map’ in research on biophysical change in Australia. There are few observational data sets from which modelling work or inundation studies can be performed—even though these communities may be facing imminent threats to their existence. Some of these islands are only a metre or two above local mean sea level; and in the last two years sever...