38139 research outputs found
Sort by
Duration as the Sixth Dimension of the Built Environment Travel Behaviour Framework
Full text linkThe built environment (BE) plays a central role in shaping everyday mobility patterns and determining how physical activity (PA) is integrated into daily life. Foundational BE frameworks such as the 5Ds (density, diversity, design, distance to transit, and destination accessibility) have shaped policy and planning worldwide. However, these frameworks remain predominantly spatial and overlook temporal dynamics. This review addresses this omission by introducing Duration as the sixth dimension (6th D) of the BE framework, reframing accessibility in terms of the lived temporal experience of movement rather than static spatial distance. Travel conditions vary across the day. Routes that are safe and efficient at one time often become congested, stressful, and prohibitive at another. Such variability undermines PA and active transport (AT) and diminishes the health benefits of supportive BE. Methodologically, the review synthesises evidence from 1991 to 2025 across public health, transport planning, BE, and environmental psychology. Pertinent literature (102 shortlisted articles) published in English was retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), and PubMed, which collectively provide comprehensive coverage of multidisciplinary research spanning transport planning, public health, and behavioural sciences. The PRISMA 2020 approach and VOSviewer (version 1.6.20), were used, together with a structured, Excel-based integrative synthesis, to analyse publication trends, conceptual evolution, and integrative patterns in the retrieved literature. The synthesis shows that accessibility, mobility stress, and travel behaviour are strongly time-dependent. This time dependence is systematic rather than incidental across contexts. Globally, commute durations beyond 45 min are associated with lower life satisfaction and poorer health outcomes. Embedding Duration within BE frameworks establishes a time-responsive and equity-sensitive paradigm for healthier and more resilient urban systems
A Body Power Hydraulic Prosthetic Hand
No full textLimb amputations are a growing global challenge. Electrically powered prosthetic hands are heavy, expensive, and battery dependent. Body-powered prostheses offer a simpler and lighter alternative; however, existing designs require high body forces to operate, exhibit poor aesthetics, and have limited dexterity. This study aims to present a design of a hydraulically actuated soft bending finger with a simple and scalable manufacturing process. This is then realised into a five-fingered body-powered prosthetic hand that is lightweight, comfortable, and representative of a human hand. The actuator was formed from two silicone materials of different stiffness (Stiff Smooth-Sil 950 and flexible Ecoflex 00-30) and reinforced with double-helix fibres to generate bending under internal hydraulic pressure. A shoulder-mounted hydraulic system has been designed to convert scapular elevation and protraction into actuator pressure. Finite element analysis and physical tests were performed to examine the bending and blocking force performance of the actuators. The physical actuators achieved bending angles up to 230 degrees at 60 kPa and blocking forces of 5.9 N at 100 kPa. The prosthetic system was able to grasp and hold a 320-g water bottle. The results demonstrate a soft actuator design that provides simple and scalable manufacturing and shows how these actuators can be incorporated into a body-powered prosthesis. This study provides a preliminary demonstration of the feasibility of human-powered prosthetics and necessitates continued research. This work makes progress towards an affordable and functional body-powered prosthetic hand that can improve the lives of transradial amputees
Advancing Energy Storage Technologies Beyond Lithium With Cellulose‐Derived Sustainable Carbon Materials
No full textThe transition to sustainable, high-performance alternatives to lithium-ion systems is accelerating research progress in electrochemical energy storage. Cellulose-derived carbons, made from abundant, renewable biomass, are emerging as promising candidates, offering natural environmental friendliness, adjustable structure, and functional versatility. This review examines the hierarchical architecture of cellulose, its carbonization pathways, and the influence of extraction and processing methods on precursor properties. Advances in synthetic techniques, from heteroatom doping to creating composite hybrids, are discussed for their role in controlling porosity, conductivity, and electrochemical behavior. Structure-property relationships and function of these carbons are analyzed in the context of sodium-, potassium-, zinc-, and magnesium-ion batteries, as well as hybrid supercapacitors. Important material properties, including electrical conductivity, mechanical strength, thermal stability, and morphological control, are analyzed in relation to device performance. Challenges related to scalability, electrolyte compatibility, and cycle life are addressed, with a focus on sustainable synthesis and integration routes. This review uniquely integrates cellulose-derived carbon across multiple postlithium energy storage systems with a focus on scalable synthesis and electrochemical optimization
Can Fans Be Public Diplomats? Participatory Diplomacy at the Eurovision Song Contest
No full textUsing the portmanteau concept of participatory diplomacy (Carniel, 2024), this article explores how Eurovision fans understand and experience the politics of the song contest, and how they see the song contest as a site for enacting their diplomatic agency as members of a transnational global public. Participatory diplomacy is a concept that describes the intersection of the fan studies concept of participatory culture with the political concept of public diplomacy. It argues that the way that fans and audiences interact with a popular culture text like Eurovision can and is used as a site of political expression and, more importantly, political agency
A robust artificial intelligence informed over complete rational dilation wavelet transform technique coupled with deep learning for long-term rainfall prediction
No full textThe intensity of heavy rainfall, driven by climate change, has significant effects worldwide, including flash flood, droughts, water degradation, landslides and crop damages. To ameliorate these impacts, accurate forecasting is crucial to address the dynamic nature of rainfall for sustainable utilization. But the non-linearity inherited within the rainfall significantly influence the model precision. Artificial Intelligence (AI) models have shown promising results in detecting complex rainfall patterns. This paper proposed a hybrid model using overcomplete rational dilation discrete wavelet transform (ORDWT) integrated with autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and long-short-term memory (LSTM), constructing ORDWT-ARIMA-LSTM to forecast one-month ahead rainfall. The ORDWT provides multi-scale decomposition and better shift-invariance, while ARIMA with LSTM captures complementary dynamics across ORDWT coefficients, lowering errors. Aiming to extract more representative features, the ORDWT coefficients are investigated, and then sent to the ARIMA-LSTM for prediction. The ORDWT–ARIMA–LSTM achieved highest performance for Melbourne Airport: Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) = 2.9, Mean Absolute Error (MAE) = 1.93, RSE = 0.215, Willmott's Index (WI) = 0.990, Nash–Sutcliffe Index (ENI) = 0.970; Melbourne Botanical Gardens: RMSE = 3.84 MAE = 2.65, RSE = 0.287, WI = 0.710, ENI = 0.962; and Preston Reservoir: RMSE = 3.94 MAE = 2.87 RSE = 0.310, WI = 0.973, ENI = 0.971. The ORDWT–ARIMA–LSTM reduced RMSE by 4.5 % and MAE by 5.3 % on average across stations against comparing models. Results confirmed the efficiency of ORDWT–ARIMA–LSTM in rainfall forecasts, providing valuable support in weather, water management, droughts and floods
Fatigue of the respiratory muscles
No full textThe respiratory system is tasked with the transfer of oxygen from air to blood as well as the regulation of carbon dioxide and pH. Cyclical contraction of the respiratory muscles permits relative blood gas homeostasis in healthy humans even under conditions of high ventilatory work. The respiratory muscles are ideally suited to perform repeated and sustained contractions. However this is not without limits and fatigue occurs under physiologically relevant conditions such as exercise. Our chapter places emphasis on the healthy human performing exercise. We first characterize the demands placed on the respiratory muscles and follow with a description of how to assess fatigue. We then discuss the mechanisms and consequences of fatigue and the effect of low oxygen availability. Recent work that reports sex-based differences in fatigue of the diaphragm is presented along with the effects of training the respiratory muscles. We end with a series of unresolved questions
"Developing players as people and learners": How reflective of orthodox masculinity traits are the preferred pedagogies of five regional rugby union coaches?
No full textTraditionally male-dominated contact sport environments such as the football codes are seen as primary propagators of attitudes and values associated with “orthodox” masculinity. Administrators, spectators, media commentators and parents contribute to the promotion of traditional Australian cultural ideals of masculinity such as physical toughness, aggression, competitiveness, stoicism and emotional reticence as desirable masculine traits. Male coaches, too, are seen as significant institutional agents in this indoctrination process. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of five regionally based volunteer rugby union coaches’ lived experiences, coaching practices and the beliefs underpinning them was undertaken. While these coaches were brought up in heavily masculine environments where sport was an avenue to demonstrate and assert themselves as males along orthodox lines, these same formative environments taught them to accept and care for others. Contrary to the traditional image of regional male coaches operating in a hypermasculine contact sport environment, these coaches demonstrated tendencies reflecting alternative versions of masculinity, expressing a preference for humanistic pedagogical practices centred on caring, empathy, compassion and communication. With scarce research into regional sports coaches’ beliefs and coaching practices, these findings fill a gap in the literature and provide sporting organisations and coach educators with insights into their volunteer coaching workforce
Designing robust adaptive ensemble deep learning based decomposition technique for sea level variability prediction
No full textSea level variability is an urgent climate risk, threatening to vanish islands and coastal areas. Forecasting future sea level rise accurately is fundamental to support experts for flooding and erosion control. In this paper, a novel sea level variability forecast model (CG-CEEMDANsingle bondHFS-AEM) is proposed integrating correlation graph (CG), a complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN), Hilbert feature selection approach (HFS), adaptive ensemble model (AEM), and oppositional learning sparrow search algorithm (OLSSA). The AEM is a novel ensemble model that combines the strengths of GRU, self-attention LSTM and XGBoost models based on dynamic weights assignment strategy, adjusting to real-time changes in sea level rise by updating the weights according to the error and performance of the models. Firstly, the input data is pre-processed using correlation graph to remove lower correlated variables and fill the missing values in the data. After that the CEEMDAN technique is employed to decompose the data, followed by HFS to select the most efficient features. The selected features are then employed into the AEM model where the OLSSA is adopted to select the optimal hyper-parameters of the proposed model. To verify the efficiency of the proposed CG-CEEMDANsingle bondHFS-AEM against comparing models, extensive experiments were conducted to forecast sea level variability for Hillary and Burnie stations in Australia. The results shows that the proposed model obtained the highest accuracy in terms of goodness-of-fit metrics against the state-of-the-art benchmark comparing models. The proposed model can offer a valuable tool for coastal planning and policy making under the recent climate change
Detection and prevention: evaluation of a nurse-led satellite sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing clinic initiative in an Australian correctional centre
Full text linkPurpose
The purpose of this study was to determine if a satellite sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing clinic increased STI/blood-borne virus testing and detection in a correctional setting in Australia.
Design/methodology/approach
A cohort study of males incarcerated in a correctional centre in Queensland, who voluntarily attended a satellite STI testing clinic over six months. Data were collected on purpose designed data collection sheets. A retrospective medical chart audit was conducted from three-months before commencement of the clinic until the end of the clinic period. Attendance rates for three-months following the clinic’s completion were also considered. Attendance rates, treatment rates, time to treatment, follow-up rates, reinfection rates and client satisfaction were analysed using descriptive statistics, including program sustainability.
Findings
Success of the STI clinic was evidenced by an increase in attendance rates from 32/242 (13.2%) to 242/242 (100%), pre-intervention to the intervention, respectively. Treatment rates increased from 10/242 (4.1%) to 41/242 (16.9%) pre-intervention to intervention, respectively, and an increase in time to treatment from 43.11 (Std. Dev 36.77) mean days pre-intervention to 54.62 (Std. Dev 42.06) mean days during the intervention. Follow-up rates also increased from 5/242 (2.1%) pre-intervention to 24/242 (9.9%) during the intervention. Of the 242 participants, 52 received a positive STI/diagnosis with 44 being diagnosed with hepatitis C. Satisfaction was high with a mean score of 9.7 out of 10 (Std. Dev 0.685). Attendance rates showed no significant difference three-months pre- (n = 32) to post-intervention (n = 35), however, support for the intervention has continued. Future practice should incorporate satellite STI testing clinics as weekly practice.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to consider satellite STI testing within the corrections environment in Australia. The study uniquely showcased how the satellite STI clinic achieved increased STI testing attendance rates, treatment rates, follow-up rates and high satisfaction rates