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Correction:The Regulate your Sitting Time (RESIT) intervention for reducing sitting time in individuals with type 2 diabetes: findings from a randomised-controlled feasibility trial (Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome, (2024), 16, 1, (87), 10.1186/s13098-024-01336-6)
Get PDFIn Table 1 of this article [1], the data in the [Control (n = 35) Intervention (n = 35)] were calculated incorrectly. The correct version of Table 1 is given in this correction. (Table presented.) Demographic characteristics of the participants at baseline Control (n = 35) Intervention (n = 35) All (n = 70) Sex, n (%) Male 13 (37%) 18 (51%) 31 (44%) Female 22 (63%) 17 (49%) 39 (56%) Age (years), mean (SD) 55 (11) 60 (11) 58 (11) Ethnicity, n (%) Black, Asian and minority ethnic 22 (63%) 21 (60%) 43 (61%) White (any White background) 13 (37%) 14 (40%) 27 (39%) Education, mean (SD) Secondary school (e.g., high school) 8 (23%) 10 (29%) 18 (26%) Tertiary (e.g. university and above) 27 (77%) 25 (71%) 52 (74%) Married/cohabiting, n (%) Married/living as married 27 (77%) 17 (49%) 44 (63%) Single/separated/divorced/widowed 8 (23%) 18 (51%) 26 (37%) Employment status, n (%) Disabled 0 (0%) 2 (6%) 2 (3%) Employed full time 23 (66%) 12 (34%) 35 (50%) Employed part time 4 (11%) 4 (11%) 8 (11%) Retired 8 (23%) 14 (40%) 22 (31%) Student 0 (0%) 2 (6%) 2 (3%) Unemployed 0 (0%) 1 (3%) 1 (1%) Had COVID prior to study start, n (%) No 31 (89%) 34 (97%) 65 (93%) Yes 4 (11%) 1 (3%) 5 (7%) Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on work/life, n (%) Currently shielding 6 (17%) 11 (31%) 17 (24%) Newly working from home 11 (31%) 8 (23%) 19 (27%) Unemployed or retired already 6 (17%) 10 (29%) 16 (23%) Lost their job 0 (0%) 1 (3%) 1 (1%) Been furloughed 6 (17%) 0 (0%) 6 (9%) Currently self-isolating 2 (6%) 2 (6%) 4 (6%) None of the above 8 (23%) 4 (11%) 12 (17%) Other 4 (11%) 6 (17%) 10 (14%) Years living with type 2 diabetesa, mean (SD) 11 (8) 12 (11) 11 (9) aData on years living with type 2 diabetes was only available for 54 participants (n = 28 for usual care control group and n = 26 for intervention group) The original article has been corrected.</p
Coarse-to-fine detection of multiple seams for robotic welding
No full textEfficiently detecting target weld seams while ensuring sub-millimeter accuracy has always been an important challenge in autonomous welding, which has significant application in industrial practice. Previous works mostly focused on recognizing and localizing welding seams one by one, leading to inferior efficiency in modeling the workpiece. This paper proposes a novel framework capable of multiple weld seams extraction using both RGB images and 3D point clouds. The RGB image is used to obtain the region of interest by approximately localizing the weld seams, and the point cloud is used to achieve the fine-edge extraction of the weld seams within the region of interest using region growth. Our method is further accelerated by using a pre-trained deep learning model to ensure both efficiency and generalization ability. The proposed method was comprehensively tested on various workpieces featuring both linear and curved weld seams, as well as in physical experiment systems. The results showcase considerable potential for real-world industrial applications, emphasizing the method's efficiency and effectiveness. Videos of the real-world experiments can be found at https://youtu.be/pq162HSP2D4.</p
Dietary intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids is associated with blood glucose and diabetes in community-dwelling older adults
Get PDFObjectives: The present study was conducted to examine the cross-sectional associations between the dietary intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) and cardiometabolic risk factors in a large sample of Italian community-dwelling older adults. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. Longevity Check-up 8+ (Lookup 8+) is an ongoing project that started in June 2015. The project is conducted in unconventional settings (e.g., exhibitions, malls, and health promotion campaigns) across Italy with the aim of fostering the adoption of healthy lifestyles in the general population. For the present study, participants were eligible if they were 65+ years and provided written informed consent. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and blood glucose and cholesterol levels were assessed. A 12-item food frequency questionary was used to estimate the dietary intake of PUFAs, which included omega-3 (α-linolenic acid [ALA], eicosapentaenoic acid [EPA], and docosahexaenoic acid [DHA]) and omega-6 fatty acids. Results: Data of 4461 older adults (♀56%, mean age: 72.9 years, mean body mass index [BMI]: 26.1 kg/m2, blood glucose: 109 mg/dL, total blood cholesterol: 198.5 mg/dL, ALA: 8.8%, EPA: 16.0%, and DHA: 26.1%) were cross-sectionally analyzed. Multilinear regression results indicated that a high consumption of EPA, DHA, and DHA+EPA was negatively and significantly associated with glucose levels. Furthermore, binary regression analysis indicated that the dietary intake of ALA and omega-6 PUFAs was inversely and significantly associated with the prevalence of diabetes. In contrast, BMI values were positively associated with ALA and omega-6 PUFAs, and negatively with the consumption of EPA and DHA+EPA. Conclusions: Findings of the present study indicate that the dietary intake of PUFAs was cross-sectionally, inversely, and significantly associated with blood glucose levels and the prevalence of diabetes in a large sample of Italian community-dwelling older adults.</p
Rosalind Parry. The Art of the Reprint [book review]:Nineteenth-Century Novels in Twentieth-Century Editions
No full textreview of Rosalind Parry. The Art of the Reprint: Nineteenth-Century Novels in Twentieth-Century Editions. Pp. xiii+209 (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Hardback, £85.00
Identification, establishment of connection, and clustering of social risks involved in the agri-food supply chains:a cross-country comparative study
Get PDFSupply chain risk management (SCRM) literature is heterogeneous. While much attention has been given to the economic and environmental dimensions, the social dimension has so far received less focus. Thus, this study analyzes the social risks involved in the agri-food supply chains (AFSCs) of Argentina and China by employing an integrated approach. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data, followed by using a combination of three complementary data analysis methods: thematic analysis to identify social risks, total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to build interrelationships among the identified social risks, and fuzzy MICMAC (cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification analysis) to cluster social risks into four categories. Next, we conducted a comparative analysis between the two countries. Theoretical contributions are mainly threefold. First, we identified various social risks involved in the AFSCs of Argentina and China, including those just touched on by scholars, such as cultural issues, government’s weak monitoring system, the power differential between managers and subordinates, inappropriate disposal of agrichemical containers, and the lack of basic literacy skills. Second, we believe that our study is the first to establish connections among the identified AFSC social risks, which represents the originality of this work. Third, we discover that cultural issues is the key risk that has the highest capability to elicit other social risks involved in the AFSCs. Our work extends scholarship’s knowledge to understand AFSC social risks from the cultural perspective. This study also generates contributions to policymakers, migrant associations, and the government tax departments of Argentina and China.</p
Practice supervision
No full textThis second chapter starts with the key requirements for the welcoming of students and apprentices as newcomers to the practice environment from the perspective of promoting a sense of belongingness. A distinction is made between the needs of practice and workplace learners in the context of apprenticeship and for supervision to be characterised by a facilitative approach. The development of professional identity through practice learning is explored to ensure that supervisors can support a range of learners to explore their values and beliefs as part of a process of authentic professional learning.</p
Introduction:Entrepreneurial innovation in the international business of tourism
No full textThe scholarly interrogation and critical application of pivotal tourism concepts have underscored an emergent need in both academic discourse and practical realms of management. A discerning assessment of the trajectory of this academic landscape attributes this burgeoning interest to rigorous, paradigm-shifting research contributions emanating from a few elite business schools over the past decades. Seminal researches, some tracing back to the previous millennium and published in journals of repute like the Journal of Tourism Management, not only deconstructed essential tourism sectors but also paved the way for a paradigm shift in the industry’s structure, thus instigating an intricate research agenda. This agenda encapsulates a panoptic view of tourism business theory, juxtaposed with intricate facets of entrepreneurship, evolving trends, imminent challenges, and novel formats.<br/
Activation functions study for the trustworthiness supervisor artificial neural networks
Get PDFExamining and potentially adjusting one’s cognitive processes in response to dissatisfaction with one’s performance is a fundamental aspect of intelligence. Remarkably, such sophisticated abstract concepts necessary for achieving Artificial General Intelligence can be effectively incorporated into basic Machine Learning algorithms. In this study, we introduce a method for replicating self-awareness through a supervisory Artificial Neural Network (ANN), which monitors patterns in the activation functions of an underlying ANN to identify signs of substantial uncertainty within the underlying ANN and, consequently, the reliability of its predictions. The underlying ANN in this context is a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) ensemble primarily utilized for tasks related to facial recognition and facial expression analysis. We evaluate the performance of the supervisory ANNs using various activation functions as they learn to gauge the dependability of predictions made by the Inception v3 CNN ensemble. To conduct computational experiments, we employ a facial data set that incorporates makeup and occlusion factors. These experiments are designed to mimic real-world conditions where the training data set exclusively consists of images without makeup or occlusion, while the test data set comprises images featuring makeup and occlusion. This partitioning ensures the model is tested under challenging out-of-training data distribution scenarios.</p
Examining the military spending economic growth nexus in the presence of informality: evidence from the Balkan peninsula
Get PDFThis paper examines the military expenditure (milex) economic growth nexus, in selected Balkan and peripheral countries from 1990 to 2022, considering the presence of informality within an institutional framework. Specifically, we employ Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to formulate an index of informality and use the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) and Fully-Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) methods to identify the long-run equilibria. To provide a more comprehensive insight, the study also incorporates two types of causality tests – Dumitrescu-Hurlin and Juodis et al. – to determine the direction of the relationships. Our findings indicate that in the long-run milex can be detrimental to economic growth whilst informality boosts it.</p
Ten tips when instigating an assessment transformation programme
No full textHigher education is facing pressure to reform assessment. But how to get started? Steve Briggs offers 10 tip
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