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Despite the breakthrough achievements in understanding structural and functional alterations of brain connectivity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the exact nature and type of such alterations are not yet clear due to conflicting reports of hyper-connectivity, hypo-connectivity, and—in some cases—combinations of both. In this work, we bring order to the debate using a network comparison technique to capture mesoscopic-scale differential patterns of functional connectedness. In particular, we leverage recent algorithmic advances in extracting contrast subgraphs to identify maximally different mesoscopic connectivity structures between two sets of networks from typically developed individuals and ASD subjects across different developmental stages. A significantly larger connectivity among occipital cortex regions and between the left precuneus and the superior parietal gyrus was found in ASD subjects. At the same time, reduced connectivity characterized the superior frontal gyrus and the temporal lobe regions. More importantly, our results reconcile within a single framework multiple previous separate observations about functional connectivity alterations in ASD.

Recently, China has undergone rapid urbanization in terms of population and urban land growth. However, there are notable lags in the people-oriented dimensions of urbanization, including urban social services, environmental services, and socioeconomic equity, which are crucial for achieving SDG11 (sustainable cities and communities). Here, considering the complex dimensions of urbanization, we examined 16 people-oriented urbanization indicators across four dimensions, namely, economic, social, environmental, and equity dimensions, from 2005 to 2020, and their relationships with population/land urbanization at multiple scales (national, regional, and urban agglomeration scales), and among different city sizes, via the paired t test and the evenness index. Notably, between 2005 and 2020, these urbanization indicators of China showed an overall upward trend, with changes ranging from 1.09 to 53.95 times. Among the 16 people-oriented urbanization indicators, the economic and social indicators lagged behind the land and population urbanization, whereas the environmental indicators caught up. The evenness index among these indicators showed a U-shaped change pattern, which indicated that people-oriented urbanization was coming up with population/land urbanization since the implementation of China new-type urbanization plan in 2014 until 2020. In the future, increasing investment in social service systems and implementing place-based coordination strategies are necessary to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.

We study how housing market conditions shape the housing careers of Australians. Utilising data from the Australian Census spanning from 1991 to 2021, we observe significant differences in ownership rates at age 30 across birth cohorts. Moreover, these differences widen significantly as housing affordability falls. Using synthetic cohort techniques, we evaluate the persistence of these differences. Our results reveal that while the homeownership rates of younger cohorts 'catch up' somewhat with those of their older counterparts, a substantial gap remains at age 50. Early access to homeownership is also linked to the ownership of larger homes by middle age. Our study underscores the long-term consequences of housing market conditions on homeownership trajectories.

Ship emissions represent a significant environmental issue, directly connected to the fuel consumption and highly investigated in the last decade. Fuel consumption of a vessel is a key factor in the research of ship energy efficiency, its environmental impact, optimization and economic performance. Fuel consumption is mainly evaluated by available mathematical models, and the estimated value is used in further calculations, thus the results conceal an error. Evaluating the average fuel consumption also disables the possibility to analyze the fuel usage in different operating modes. Further, both technical and operational optimization aim at reducing fuel consumption. To achieve a quality improvement of a ship’s system, the input data on consumption needs to have minimal errors. This paper presents different methods of fuel monitoring and evaluation as well as the development of a modern fuel measurement system for fishing vessels. A short overview of fuel consumption models is given and the focus is shifted to fuel monitoring devices. Fuel monitoring devices are effective tools for determining the exact consumption and investigating the energy efficiency of vessels. The application of flow meters and fuel level sensors in the Croatian fishing fleet is presented and an example of measurements collected by the devices is included.