8383 research outputs found
Sort by
Time Series Analysis for Tractor Sales using SARIMAX and Deep Learning Models
Get PDFTime series forecasting is known for playing vital role in many industries to make important decisions and strategies. This study concentrates on providing accurate insights that can help manufactures and stakeholders of agriculture machinery industry on future sales of tractors by applying both traditional and deep learning models like SARIMAX which is extension of SARIMA and deep learning models. Research starts by observing history data which include years of tractor sales then preprocess the data to find its quality and stationarity further applying SARIMAX model to find trends and seasons and cycles in the data and this model is evaluated by famous metrics like Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE).Deep learning models like Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Bidirectional LSTM, CNN LSTM Encoder Decoder, Convolutional Neural networks (CNN). They can help in enhancing the forecasting accuracy by handling all the non-linear relationships and their dependencies in the timeseries and this study will provide comparative analysis of deep learning models and SARIMAX model. Where SARIMAX outperformed the deep learning models with RMSE score 0.01 and provide forecast of next year’s tractor sales using SARIMAX model from the study and use q-q plot, residual plots and ACF and PACF graphs to make sure forecast was done accurately
Kitsch in entrepreneurship: meal kits, taste and the art of socio-economic enterprise
No full textIn the socio-economic world—a world in which we all, as both consumers and producers, live a range of experiences—enterprising exemplars of the kitsch abound. Our most overtly kitschy produced and consumed objects range from the classic lava lamp to products available through enterprising commerce outlets that leverage the idea of kitsch within their brand identity. In this chapter, I argue that while the overtly kitsch may find its niche, a normalised entrepreneurship practice—fashioned through a contemporary dialectic-informed, capitalistic education—risks the promotion of a more subtle, yet insidious form of kitsch in enterprise. Here, given the consensus that socio-economic entrepreneurship (and therefore its education) is vital to the growth of capitalist economies, any deviation from a potential universal value of truth, understood in the theme of this present work, as intended action on the part of the entrepreneurship practitioner toward the realisation of something of the absent other—a truth in a value exchange between producer and consumer—tends to the kitsch in enterprise. Invoking a methodology of applied analytical philosophy, I view the case of the meal-kit through the lens of a faux-art of enterprise. I argue that this faux entrepreneurial phenomenon favours appearance and external form; a form of enterprising value transaction that preys on convenience, prettiness and pleasure in an exemplar of ‘entrepreneurial enterprise for enterprise’s’ sake
Maturity status influences perceived training load and neuromuscular performance during an academy soccer season
Get PDFCommonly we see large within-age-group variations in physique, including body mass, stature, and percentages of predicted adult height, which suggests that age-specified training loads are flawed. Aims were to investigate how maturation impacts training load and neuromuscular response within academy soccer and, to provide recommendations for practitioners. Fifty-five male soccer players (age 14.5 ± 1.2 years; stature 172 ± 10 cm; body mass 59.8 ± 10 kg; 94.1 ± 1.8 % predicted adult height) reported differential ratings of perceived exertion (AU) across a season. Neuromuscular performance (countermovement jump, reactive strength index, absolute and relative leg stiffness) was measured using at three timepoints across the season. Perceived exertion and neuromuscular performance were examined using linear mixed modelling, supplemented with non-clinical magnitude-based decisions. Analysis indicates every 5% increase in maturity status results in players perceiving overall session intensity 6.9 AU lower and 13.9 AU lower for a 10% maturity shift. Both 5% and 10% changes in maturity most likely resulted in higher countermovement jump, with likely to very likely differences observed for RSI and ABS. Maturity substantially influences neuromuscular performance over the season. Therefore, maturity-specific load prescription may prevent significant within age-group differences in accumulated load, possibly reducing injury risk and/or burnout
Art, prejudice and privilege: disciplinary elitism, students from poor and working-class communities and epistemic justice
No full textThis Chapter illuminates the challenges of studying art at university for students from poor and working-class communities. In the UK art is simultaneously perceived as a cultural enhancement in the service of the elite, and a skills-based discipline unworthy of an honour’s degree. This combination of privilege and prejudice is toxic for undergraduates from lower socio-economic backgrounds. At university, Contextual Studies curricula seek to correct the misapprehension of art’s non-academic standing by inculcating students into highly complex conceptual discourses. Young people from disadvantaged communities in the UK are unprepared for this new pedagogical environment because they have been steered towards art by an education system that writes both them and art off as academically lacking.
This Chapter critiques the credibility deficit of art and class by mobilising examples of contemporary practice in conjunction with the relational pedagogical strategy devised for York St John University’s Contextual Studies programme. This curriculum rejects the presumption that studying art is a process of cultural assimilation and transformation, a thinly veiled means of self-aggrandising social mobility. Instead, its pedagogical approach introduces students to the history of art while drawing on what that they bring to campus, enabling them to build the epistemic confidence to produce creative outputs that voice the felt experience of class in a space where they know it will be heard, and valued
My favourite part was learning different ways to play: qualitatively evaluating a socially prescribed creative play programme
Get PDFAbstract
Objectives:
Social prescription is classically thought of as an initiative for older people. This qualitative study aimed to evaluate the first socially prescribed creative play programme for families of 0-3-year-old children in the UK, examining the experience of the parents throughout the stages of the programme.
Study Design:
The evaluation ran longitudinally over 5 weeks using interview, field note, and questionnaire data.
Method:
The evaluation was carried out over 5 weeks in 2022 using intervention leaders’ and researcher’s field notes, nine parent semi-structured interviews, and 17 parent questionnaires on their experiences. Data were analysed using inductive interpretive thematic analysis.
Results:
After analysis of the corpus of data, three themes that interacted with each other were identified: Support Systems that Parents Trust, Calming in Chaos, and Practical Parenting Utility. Parents said that they were more likely to sign up for the programme when they trusted the recommender and the organization running the programme. They found the SP group more relaxed and calm than other groups, and their daily lives. The knowledge about health behaviours and modelling of play were the main take home skills reported.
Conclusion:
In order for parents to be receptive to practical parenting knowledge the SP aimed to foster, parents must first establish trust in a calming atmosphere. Social links and child development were the key factor parents identified linking to wellbeing.
Key Words: Play intervention, social prescribing, parent play, play in infanc
The Journey of a Yemeni Female Entrepreneur: An Intermittent and Ambiguous Rihla?
No full textEntrepreneurship, especially for females from a Middle Eastern patriarchal cultural context, does not just follow a predetermined plan but emerges from a journey in which obstacles have to be overcome and boundaries traversed, not usually characterised by smooth transitions. An entrepreneurial journey of a woman from Yemen to Yorkshire that involves change in civil, economic, and familial statuses is described in this chapter.
In the literature on the journeys of international, intercultural female migrants framed by a long-term transition from an underdeveloped nation like Yemen to a highly developed one such as the United Kingdom, the support of family and friends and their informal networks act as bases of social capital, framing female entrepreneurship both in the start-up phase and after. It is supposed that female entrepreneurs tend to use personal networks to obtain human support and financial resources and that these opportunities may be rather equally open throughout many phases of the life cycle. But even if this picture is generally accurate, events such as those of familial ties cut by divorce and the ensuing lack of familial support for the available restructuring of reclaiming individual identity, the entrepreneurial journey may or may not be frustrating.
This chapter is based on ongoing field research into the journey of an Arab female entrepreneur. The initiating theoretical framework focussed on the potential impact of informal social capital and assumed that what appeared to be a rather even and seamless forward progression implied some forward planning and individual agency, as the forward motion seemed evident and the personal characteristics of the focal person appeared to support this interpretation and the outcome appeared to be successful.
A subsequent reading of the research material reveals another interpretation, highlighting the importance of events, serendipitous incidents, and responses in contributing to a Rihla that represents a success story, building on the experiences of multiple liminalities in the social spaces of gender, ethnicity, migrancy, divorce, social status, and limited skill set only partly and intermittently implicating social networks to create the elements of life course management towards a new and unanticipated familial, social, and business identity, a reclamation of identity and economic security in a new national context.
For this kind of journey, we suggest the borrowing of the Arabic term “Rihla”; this word became widely known as the name of the official match ball for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022, but originates in a term meaning both a journey and of the story of a journey and the learning that can be derived from the events that occur within that journey. The best-known classical Rihla in Arabic literature is that of Ibn Battuta, originating in Morocco in 1325 AD, as he set out to complete the Hajj, the journey to the Holy places of Mecca and Medina, usually followed by a return to the traveller’s homeland, but Ibn Battuta did not return until he had covered 70,000 miles and visited North Africa, India, the Middle East, and China with innumerable sideways journeys from where he happened to be to places that he had not intended to visit. His completed journey had taken two decades rather than the expected twelve months of the conventional Hajj, involving Constantinople, Damascus, Jerusalem, Delhi, Timbuktu, Beijing, and Granada. En route, he was beset by events, wars, pestilence, favourable and unfavourable circumstances, and virtuous, wicked, and ordinary people. His Rihla was an account of things that were not anticipated or planned but were experienced and subsequently written about.
In reality, venture creation tends to be anything but linear. It is messy, chaotic and ambiguous. The entrepreneur gets to a particular stage and encounters obstacles and new information that necessitate adjustments to decisions made in a previous stage.
—Kuratko and Morris (2021
Reliability and sensitivity of using Isometric strength and sprint speed measures in adolescent female athletes
No full textThe aim of this study was to establish the reliability and sensitivity of isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP) and sprint speed (5 m, 40 m, and maximal sprint speed) in adolescent women, before exploring the stability of this across maturation to provide maturity-specific benchmarks. A total of 147 female athletes (age: 13.8 ± 2.8 years; stature: 157.1 ± 13.1 cm; body mass: 51.2 ± 15.3 kg; percentage of predicated adult height: 94.3 ± 6.6) performed IMTP and sprint trials on 2 occasions, separated by 7-days. Within- and between-session reliability was determined using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), coefficient of variation, and Bland-Altman limits of agreement, with sensitivity detected by signal-to-noise ratios for small (SWC0.2) and moderate (SWC0.5) worthwhile change. A between-group analysis of variance and Cohen's d-effect sizes determined differences between biological maturity groups (pre-, mid-, and post-peak height velocity [PHV]). All isometric strength and sprint performance markers demonstrated either “moderate” or “acceptable” within-session reliability, except for time to peak force (PF) and 40 m sprint. Despite metrics all having “high” or above ICC (0.55–0.98), only PF offered a “good” sensitivity when using SWC0.2, with most offering better sensitivity with SWC0.5. Noise was higher between sessions, resulting in “poor” signal-noise ratios, likely associated with the bias favoring retest trials. Reliability and sensitivity findings were consistent across maturational stages, demonstrating either “moderate” or “acceptable” reliability. There were clear differences between maturity groups for all measures, particularly between mid-PHV and post-PHV. Practitioners can be assured that IMTP and sprint performance measures are reliable within this population but require thorough familiarization processes before confidence in interpreting meaningful changes
Can you imagine how much talent is being wasted because of perfectionism
No full text“Perfection is death; imperfection is art,” says Manuel Vicent. “Do not fear perfection, you will never achieve it,” said Salvador Dalí. “Nobody is perfect,” says popular wisdom. But the number of famous quotes about how unattainable – and infertile – the search for perfection can be does not seem to have made an impact: perfectionism is more present than ever in today’s competitive and hyper-demanding society. Paradoxically, learning to manage it could contribute not only to a significant improvement in mental health but also to increasing the chances of success. This is according to Dr. Andrew P. Hill , who currently leads a research group that examines the consequences of perfectionism on performance at York St. John University in England
The role of artificial intelligence in transforming maternity services in Africa: prospects and challenges
Get PDFMaternal and neonatal health outcomes in Africa remain a significant public health challenge.1 Despite ongoing efforts to enhance maternity services, many women across the continent do not receive the necessary antenatal care (ANC), and a substantial number of births and deliveries still occur outside health facilities, leading to preventable complications and fatalities.2 In the same vein, postnatal care (PNC), which is also crucial for the health and well-being of mothers and their babies, is also underutilised.2
This trajectory continues because Africa faces hurdles, such as limited healthcare infrastructure, shortages of skilled healthcare providers, and socio-cultural barriers that impede access to maternity care.3 Consequently, these challenges contribute to delayed or inadequate care, exacerbating adverse maternal and neonatal health outcomes.4 Furthermore, the high prevalence of infectious diseases complicates pregnancy and childbirth, increasing risks for both mothers and infants.5
Given these pressing issues, this commentary discusses the potential of leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to bridge the gaps in maternity care, such as ANC, health facility deliveries and PNC across the continent. AI could offer substantial promise in addressing these gaps in maternity services delivery and utilisation, with various applications that could detect maternal health issues such as pregnancy-related complications or preterm labour.6 Similarly, AI can also predict post-delivery complications.7 By leveraging AI, there is a significant opportunity to enhance maternal and newborn health outcomes in Africa, ensuring comprehensive and timely care throughout the maternity continuum
Godzilla at 70: Time for Kaijū Studies
Get PDFThis article contextualises the history of kaijū scholarship and looks particularly at the swell of publishing that has emerged in the last decade. It argues that the release of a series of new Godzilla films has led to a greater focus on the kaijū film, but that there is recurrence of critical themes that have persisted throughout scholarship on giant monster movies since the 1960s. This provides a literature review to understand how kaijū media has been critiqued, defined and challenged in response to the near three-quarter century history of kaijū cinema to consider if studies of the kaijū media provide the impetus to look at the kaijū as deserving of its own field of study. If zombie studies and vampire studies can occupy their own emerging fields of study, why not the kaijū? If the figure of the kaijū asks the biggest questions of our cultures, then do the giant monsters not deserve their own field? But, if this is an emerging field of study, the article poses, it needs to be more than kaijū film studies