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A longitudinal study of sensory and quasi-sensory experiences following bereavement using interpretative phenomenological analysis
Get PDFThis longitudinal qualitative study describes the lived experience of ‘sensory and quasi-sensory experiences of the deceased’ following bereavement. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with four bereaved individuals at 6–12 months, 12–18 months, and 18–24 months post-bereavement. Following transcription, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of each account allowed for a description and interpretation of recursive and processual change, over time. The findings report four themes: ‘the deceased as present, nearby, or somehow accessible’, ‘resolution, relocation and configuration’, ‘maneuvering closeness and comfort’, and ‘transforming, unfolding and enacting narrative futures’. The findings show that sensory and quasi-sensory experiences involving the deceased foster continuing bonds and are meaningful. The study outcomes bring novel insights into how such experiences unfold and affect bereavement
Recursive construction of biorthogonal polynomials for handling polynomial regression
Get PDFAn adaptive procedure for constructing polynomials which are biorthogonal to the basis of monomials in the same finite-dimensional inner product space is proposed. By taking advantage of available orthogonal polynomials, the proposed methodology reduces the well-known instability problem arising from the matrix inversion involved in classical polynomial regression. The recurrent generation of the biorthogonal basis facilitates the upgrading of all its members to include an additional one. Moreover, it allows for a natural downgrading of the basis. This convenient feature leads to a straightforward approach for reducing the number of terms in the polynomial regression approximation. The merit of this approach is illustrated through a series of examples where the resulting biorthogonal basis is derived from Legendre, Laguerre, and Chebyshev orthogonal polynomials
A systematic literature review of human-autonomy teams in project management
Get PDFPurpose: The advent of digital technology has increased both the autonomy and complexity of intelligent machines. As data functionality becomes more advanced, the demand for machines to engage in teamwork alongside humans is rising, leading to a transformation of intelligent machines from tools to teammates. As such, human-autonomy team (HAT) is a new concept in digital transformation, and HAT-related research has driven the application and development of artificial intelligence in industry and production. This study explores the prospects of HAT in project management through a systematic literature review of published articles, highlighting current research themes and proposing directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach: While the systematic literature review follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, VOSviewer was employed to assist in keywords co-occurrence analysis to visualize the connections and networks of included articles. A total of 38 publications were retrieved from both Scopus and Web of Science databases to examine the annual publication trends, geographical distribution, research methods and keywords co-occurrence analysis. Findings: The results revealed four mainstream research themes: (1) simulation of human–robotic system integration in project management, (2) algorithm design for human-centered artificial intelligence (AI), (3) the impact of digital transformation on teams towards agile project execution and (4) generative AI model for risk analysis in project management. Originality/value: From both theoretical and practical implications, this study would deepen the role and effectiveness of HAT in project management strategies. The proposed framework suggested potential future directions such as (1) expanded testing scenarios, (2) human factors in evaluation criteria, (3) agile transition issues in HATs and (4) standards for AI model applications in project management. Ultimately, this study would foster a dialogue among researchers and practitioners by encouraging a synergistic approach to the implementation of HAT solutions in project settings
Interaction between indoor and outdoor lighting conditions and accommodation stimuli on ocular biometry
Get PDFPurpose : To investigate the impact of different lighting conditions, accommodative stimuli, and their interaction on ocular biometry. Methods : Twenty healthy young adults (6 myopes, 14 emmetropes; mean age 20.6 (range, 19-22) years) participated in the study. After a 10 min washout period of viewing a target >4 m away, participants were exposed to 30 min indoor ambient lighting (≤1000 lux) without any accommodative stimulus (0 D). Following this, they were exposed sequentially to 10 min of 3 D and 5 D accommodative stimuli with a washout period of 10 min in between the two stimuli. The same protocol was repeated for outdoor ambient lighting (≥10,000 lux) on a different day. Axial length (AL) and sub-foveal choroidal thickness (SFCT) were measured using Lenstar LS900 before and immediately following each experimental condition. All data were collected between 9 am and 1 pm. A repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyse the main effects and interaction of lighting and accommodative stimuli on changes in ocular biometry. All results are reported as average ±SEM. Results : Both SFCT and AL showed main effect of accommodation (0, 3, 5 D) and lighting conditions (indoor, outdoor). A significant interaction between lighting and accommodation was found for the changes in SFCT (P<0.05) but not for AL (P=0.821). In unaccommodated eyes, SFCT showed a mean difference of 13.8±2.9 µm (P<0.001) between outdoor and indoor lighting conditions, whereas, under 3 D and 5 D of accommodation, the difference was 5.6±3.1 µm (P=0.095) and 3.4±3.1 µm (P=0.286). Equally, the mean differences in SFCT between different accommodative stimuli were higher for outdoor lighting (0–3 D: 14.9±2.4 µm, P<0.001; 0–5 D: 22.1±2.6 µm, P<0.001; 3–5 D: 7.2±2.1 µm, P=0.01) compared to indoor lighting (0–3 D: 6.8±2.1, P<0.05; 0–5 D: 11.67±3.18 µm, P<0.01; 3–5 D: 4.9±2.9, P=0.308) (Fig. 1). Change in ocular biometry was not different among myopes and emmetropes. Conclusions : Outdoor lighting for 30 min can induce choroidal thickening relative to indoor lighting in unaccommodated eyes. Outdoor lighting shows a protective effect against choroidal thinning induced by both 3 D and 5D of accommodative stimulation. This abstract was presented at the 2025 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Salt Lake City, Utah, May 4-8, 2025
Computer-guided optical clearing for transcranial laser speckle imaging of cortical blood flow through synergistic tartrazine-induced cranial bone transparency
Get PDFThe clinical deployment of transcranial laser speckle-contrast imaging (LSCI) is limited by pronounced multiple scattering in cranial bone, which substantially reduces probing depth and distorts estimates of cerebral blood flow parameters. In this study, a hybrid strategy combining computational optical clearing (COC) with tartrazine-induced optical clearing of cranial bone is proposed and experimentally validated. Topical application of a 30% (w/v) tartrazine solution reduces the scattering coefficient of cranial bone from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text]mm[Formula: see text] by refractive index matching and by decreasing the intratissue heterogeneity of their spatial distribution. Residual quasi-static scattering components persisting after tartrazine-induced optical clearing are selectively removed by COC based on principal component analysis filtering, yielding an approximately twofold increase in vessel contrast-to-noise ratio (from 1.5 to 3.1) and exposing vascular networks invisible with conventional transcranial LSCI. This algorithm automatically ranks components in descending order of their contribution to the total variance: components with large eigenvalues correspond to quasi-static structures (cranial bone and stationary brain tissue), whereas those with small eigenvalues contain the dynamic signal arising from blood flow. Applying the Guttman–Kaiser criterion enables selective reconstruction of the dynamic component while suppressing background scattering. This synergistic approach opens new possibilities for noninvasive, high-contrast visualization of cerebral blood flow and represents a promising, qualitatively new direction in the development of physico-digital optical clearing technologies
Critical success factors for implementing self-powered wearable internet of things sensors in construction: A systematic literature review and conceptual framework:A systematic literature review and conceptual framework
Get PDFWith the advancement of wearable electronics, the material properties, energy systems, and applications of self-powered wearable Internet of Things (IoT) sensors (SWIoTs) have been developed and reviewed across various industries. However, no study has identified and categorized the critical success factors (CSFs) for implementing SWIoTs in construction or developed a conceptual framework for their adoption. This study presents a systematic literature review aimed at identifying CSFs, developing conceptual frameworks, and discussing potential applications, research gaps, and future directions. Following PRISMA guidelines, 339 journal articles from the Scopus database were analyzed to extract insights into publication trends, key journals, and research methodologies. The results identified 28 CSFs, categorized into five domains: (1) sensor materials and user comfort, (2) sensor structural design and topology, (3) sensor performance and functionality, (4) system integration and application, and (5) energy harvesting and power consumption. Two loop conceptual frameworks, the classification-based loop conceptual framework and the CSF-based loop conceptual framework, illustrate the interdependence among these CSFs. The potential applications of CSFs for SWIoTs include (1) structural health monitoring, (2) worker safety and human-centric monitoring, and (3) real-time machinery health monitoring. Three key research gaps were identified: (1) optimizing SWIoTs materials for biomechanical resilience and environmental adaptability, (2) advancing mission-critical energy harvesting for building energy systems, and (3) enhancing architecture-agnostic interoperability for large-scale deployment. Future research should focus on ergonomic SWIoTs design, durable and self-healing materials, hybrid energy harvesting, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven energy management, and scalable, interoperable sensor integration. This is the first study to systematically classify the CSFs and uncover the conceptual framework of SWIoTs in the construction industry, thereby contributing to a strategic-level roadmap for their implementation in construction
Defending Against Knowledge Poisoning Attacks During Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Get PDFRetrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a powerful approach to boost the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) by incorporating external, up-to-date knowledge sources. However, this introduces a potential vulnerability to knowledge poisoning attacks, where attackers can compromise the knowledge source to mislead the generation model. One such attack is the PoisonedRAG in which the injected adversarial texts steer the model to generate an attacker-chosen response to a target question. In this work, we propose novel defense methods, FilterRAG and ML-FilterRAG, to mitigate the PoisonedRAG attack. First, we propose a new property to uncover distinct properties to differentiate between adversarial and clean texts in the knowledge data source. Next, we employ this property to filter out adversarial texts from clean ones in the design of our proposed approaches. Evaluation of these methods using benchmark datasets demonstrate their effectiveness, with performances close to those of the original RAG systems
Training‐free few‐shot construction tool and material detection using pre‐trained vision‐language model
Get PDFDirect visual understanding of construction entities, such as tools and materials (T&M), underpin construction management and resource scheduling. Traditional supervised learning methods suffer from high annotation cost, severe computational demands, and limited datasets. In contrast, training‐free approaches offer an effective alternative well‐suited for construction scenarios constrained by data scarcity and limited resources. Besides, vision‐language models (VLMs) can directly learn image semantics through natural language supervision and also demonstrate strong zero‐shot detection capabilities without requiring retraining. Existing methods often exhibit limited image–text semantic alignment in construction scenarios, which restricts their effectiveness in construction tasks. Therefore, there is an urgent need for approaches that can enhance cross‐modal understanding in such domain‐specific contexts. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a training‐free, knowledge‐enhanced VLM to recognize T&M in construction tasks. The proposed approach leverages image matching and image–text knowledge alignment strategies, thereby utilizing the training‐free nature of existing VLMs while benefiting from enhanced performance brought by knowledge integration. This method offers a novel solution for construction management and robotic collaboration tasks that are traditionally constrained by data and computational resource dependencies
Antiseizure medications consumption in 73 countries and regions from 2012 to 2022: a longitudinal trend study
Get PDFBackground: International trends in antiseizure medication use across countries from different geographical regions and income levels remain underexplored. Valproic acid (valproate) use has raised concerns due to its teratogenic risks, with World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines recommending lamotrigine or levetiracetam as first-line therapy for epilepsy in women and girls of childbearing potential, advising against valproate use in this population. This study aimed to assess multinational trends in antiseizure medication (ASM) consumption from 2012 to 2022 in the context of evolving policy and regulatory actions. Methods: In this longitudinal trend study, we used pharmaceutical sales data of antiseizure medications from the IQVIA-Multinational Integrated Data Analysis System (MIDAS) between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2022, covering 73 countries/regions. The list of ASMs included in this study was based on the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) Classification, N03A. We obtained the mid-year national/regional population estimates of each country from the United Nations Population Division and the total epilepsy (active idiopathic and secondary epilepsy) population from the Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. 41 high-income, 20 upper-middle income and 12 lower-middle-income countries/regions were included in this study. Antiseizure medication consumption rate was expressed as defined daily doses per 10,000 inhabitants per day (DDD/TID). Linear mixed models were used to estimate multinational, regional, and income-level trends in consumption over time. Findings: Multinational antiseizure medication consumption increased throughout the study period, with an average annual percentage change of +2·58% (95% CI +1·85% to +3·32%), rising from 40·96 DDD/TID (31·94-52·52) in 2012 to 52·87 DDD/TID (42·17-66·27) in 2022. The highest change in consumption was in South-eastern Asia (+5·20%, +3·41% to +7·03%), followed by Western Asia (+4·70%, +0·58% to +8·99%) and Southern Asia (+3·80%, +1·52% to +6·14%). Newer generation antiseizure medications such as levetiracetam (+21·72%, +13·86% to +30·11%) and lamotrigine (+7·48%, +6·34% to +8·63%) showed growth in consumption, while consumption of older medications such as phenobarbital (-2·85%, -9·50% to +4·29%), phenytoin (-11·19%, -17·58% to -4·30%), and carbamazepine (-1·09%, -1·95% to -0·23%) declined. In 2022, the consumption rate of high-income countries (88·36 DDD/TID, 71·69-108·90) was more than four times of lower-middle-income countries (15·63 DDD/TID, 8·75-27·91). Valproate remained the most widely used antiseizure medication globally (10·93 DDD/TID, 8·68-13·77) in 2022, with stronger growth observed in lower- (+4·24%, +1·73% to +6·81%) and upper-middle-income (+3·10%, +0·95% to +5·29%) countries, compared with high-income countries (+0·86%, -0·07% to +1·79%). Interpretation: Multinational antiseizure medication use increased between 2012 and 2022, particularly for newer medications like levetiracetam and lamotrigine. Disparities in access to antiseizure medications across countries of varying income levels persist, with valproate consumption remaining predominant. This underscores the urgent need to align prescribing practice with safety guidelines, in order to optimise patient outcomes. Since patient-level characteristics are not available in IQVIA-MIDAS, further research is warranted to examine consumption rates across different population groups. Funding: This study is partially supported by the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health (D24H) funded by AIR@InnoHK, administered by Innovation and Technology Commission of the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
Baseline Characteristics of the TOPaZ Study: Randomised Trial of Teriparatide and Zoledronic Acid Compared with Standard Care in Adults with Osteogenesis Imperfecta
Get PDFIntroduction Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) is a rare disorder causing multiple fractures throughout life. No treatment has been shown to reduce the risk of fractures in OI. Here, we present the baseline characteristics of participants in the Treatment of Osteogenesis Imperfecta with Parathyroid Hormone and Zoledronic Acid (TOPaZ) trial. The aim of the trial is to determine whether teriparatide and zoledronic acid are superior to standard care in reducing the risk of clinical fractures. Methods We summarised data on the baseline characteristics of TOPaZ participants, including demographics, genetic diagnosis, clinical features, bone density measurements, previous treatments, and fracture history. Results We recruited 350 adults with a clinical diagnosis of OI in 27 European referral centres between June 2017 and October 2022. Overall, 266 (76.2%) had type I OI, 55 (15.8%) had type IV, and 19 (5.4%) had type III. The type was unknown in 9 (2.6%). Blue sclera were noted in 80.8%, and 35.8% had dentinogenesis imperfecta. Bisphosphonates had been administered to 28.1% in the 2 years prior to enrolment. Pathogenic variants in COL1A1 or COL1A2 were found in 87.6%. Fractures occurring in the 2 years prior to enrolment were not associated with bone density. Conclusions The TOPaZ population represents a unique cohort with which to study the genetic epidemiology and outcome of OI in relation to bone density and biochemical markers of bone turnover. When the trial reports, it will also provide new insights into the effect of an anabolic therapy, followed by antiresorptive treatment in the management of OI
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