This study constructed a Household Heating Burden index to reveal the prevailing unaffordability of rural residential clean heating in 2020 both with and without regional subsidies based on a high-resolution township-level clean heating retrofitting dataset. Phasing out operating subsidies for rural clean heating in northern China would raise household heating spending by 36.2% on average, adding about 523.3 CNY per household. The burden would fall most heavily on lower-income households in parts of Hebei, Henan, Shandong, and Shanxi. Carbon-credit revenues from clean heating under China's voluntary emissions reduction system could offset only a limited share of those added costs, but distributed rooftop photovoltaics show stronger promise. In some areas, rooftop solar could compensate for roughly one-third to nearly two-thirds of the extra heating expense, suggesting that tailored subsidy phase-out plans combined with rural solar deployment could make clean heating more economically sustainable.

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers examined the impact of total working hours, which include paid work and unpaid work such as housework, childcare, and caregiving, on nonrestorative sleep and mental health.

Linda Coogan Byrne is a leading publicist, DEI strategist, and author. She also is the founder of Why Not Her?, a gender equity campaign aiming to challenge systemic bias in media and the music industry.

In a new Frontiers in Communication article that presents an analysis of gender-based exclusion in the Irish and UK music industries between 2018 and 2024, Coogan Byrne argues that ‘gendered gatekeeping’ – the act of consciously underrepresenting female artists on the radio, at festivals, and in streaming – is not accidental but institutionalized. In the following guest editorial, she describes the effort behind Why Not Her?, highlights outcomes, and offers a perspective on the road ahead.

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about extensive changes in people’s everyday lives. Research shows that despite this, people’s mental health in Estonia did not deteriorate on average as much as initially feared.