16119 research outputs found
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Multi-modal physiological markers of arousal induced by CO2 inhalation in Virtual Reality
Full text linkHigh arousal states, like fear and anxiety, play a crucial role in organisms’ adaptive responses to threats. Yet, inducing and reliably measuring such states within controlled settings presents challenges. This study uses a novel approach of CO2 enriched air vs normal air in a Virtual Reality (VR) context to induce high arousal whilst measuring physiological signals such as galvanic skin response (GSR), facial skin impedance, facial electromyography (fEMG), photoplethysmography (PPG), breathing, and pupillometry. In a single-blind study, 63 participants underwent a regimen involving 20 min of breathing regular air followed by 20 min of 7.5% CO2, separated by a brief interval. Findings demonstrate the efficacy of CO2 inhalation in eliciting high arousal, as substantiated by statistically significant changes for all signals, further validated through high (94%) accuracy arousal classification. This study establishes a method for inducing high arousal states within a laboratory context validated through comprehensive multi-sensor data and machine learning analyses. The study underscores the value of employing a suite of physiological measures to comprehensively describe the intricate dynamics of arousal. The generated database is a promising resource for researching physiological markers of arousal, panic, fear, and anxiety, offering insights that can potentially resonate within clinical and therapeutic realms
New face of platform capitalism in lodging industry: Who and where adopts platform-led loyalty tools?
Full text linkOur study aims to identify segments of the lodging market influenced by platform capitalism, with a focus on the adoption of platform-led, AI-supported loyalty and marketing tools. The empirical objective is to examine the site-specific and situational factors that influence the variability in hoteliers’ willingness to adopt AI-supported loyalty and marketing tools offered by Online Travel Agents (OTAs), as exemplified by the Booking.com’s Genius programme. The analysis focusses on hotels, motels, and guesthouses that operate in Poland in 2024. The Random Forest Classifier was employed to identify feature-based impacts and spatial patterns in the adoption of OTA-led AI-supported loyalty and marketing tools. The findings suggest that the most popular hotels, located in metropolitan areas, offering higher-priced services and demonstrating greater awareness and knowledge of digital marketing and revenue management, are most likely to adopt OTA-led AI-supported loyalty and marketing tools
Preregistration radiography education in sub-Saharan Africa: Impact assessment on graduate competence and employability.
Full text linkINTRODUCTION: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) faces increasing demands for medical imaging; however, radiography education is heterogeneous. This study examines preregistration diagnostic radiography (standalone or combined with radiotherapy) programmes in SSA, assessing how training prepares graduates for clinical practice. METHODS: A quantitative online cross-sectional survey was distributed to SSA radiography educators, recent graduates, and managers to examine preregistration radiography programme structures, workload allocation, and graduate competence. RESULTS: Analysis of 258 responses from 23 SSA countries showed variation in programme duration and modalities. Curricula emphasised projection radiography and general ultrasound, with limited coverage of Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), nuclear medicine (NM), and radiotherapy (RT). Factor analysis revealed that core imaging expertise was the best predictor of graduate competence, with clinical placements being crucial for proficiency in cross-sectional imaging. Competencies in CT and ultrasound demonstrated moderate development at graduation, whereas skills in MRI, NM, and radiotherapy were acquired on the job. Despite comprehensive training in generic skills, both taught and clinical programme characteristics showed significant negative correlation with industry expectations (r = -0.26, p < 0.01 and r = -0.27, p < 0.01, respectively). CONCLUSION: Radiography education in SSA is varied and demonstrates limited graduate preparedness in cross-sectional imaging, with a misalignment to employer expectations. A single-modality exit curriculum model, embedded within a multi-modality threshold competency framework, could improve graduate work-readiness. Better integration of clinical placements and partnerships between academia and industry are essential. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Educational institutions and policymakers in SSA must prioritise curriculum reform that aligns with health system needs and training realities. This should involve implementing targeted strategies to build a workforce capable of meeting evolving demands through enhanced collaborative frameworks, industry-aligned modular curricula, and expanded clinical exposure to cross-sectional imaging modalities
Finding solutions to addressing inequalities in dementia diagnosis and care: Recommendations from a country-wide consultation.
Full text linkBACKGROUND: Accessing a diagnosis and receiving adequate care and support for dementia can often be subject to various inequalities. Personal-, community-, and infrastructure-level factors can contribute to and often intersect in causing unequal health and care outcomes. With a paucity of evidence to inform solutions for dementia inequalities, the aim of this public consultation exercise was to explore potential solutions to inequalities in dementia diagnosis and care with different dementia stakeholders. METHODS: Utilising a future workshop approach, we conducted 11 in-person and remote consultation workshops to discuss experienced barriers of accessing diagnosis and care; discuss an ideal-world scenario where no barriers exist; and solutions to reach more equitable dementia diagnosis and care with people with dementia, unpaid carers, health and social care professionals, and third sector representatives. Discussions were synthesised by the research team and one public consultation group and mapped against the Dementia Inequalities model. RESULTS: A total of 131 different stakeholders in dementia attended 11 workshops across England. Solutions were identified across three layers of inequalities, with the majority of solutions proposed on a community and infrastructure level. Examples included link workers, a social care career pathway, Community Champions, adequate home equipment, and digital training. Some solutions require Governmental input, such as creating career pathways in the social care workforce, similar to the NHS, to train and maintain good paid carers, as well as a cross-UK national dementia strategy raising the priority of dementia and required changes. CONCLUSIONS: Dementia inequalities could be addressed via diverse and holistic approaches. With limited evidence to date on the impact of some of the proposed solutions, future research needs to build on these recommendations and design and test suitable interventions
Tax, tech, and trash: Synergies in circular economy transitions
Full text linkThis study examines how fiscal and technological factors jointly shape recycling performance within the circular economy framework. Using a balanced panel of eight European Union countries from 2010 to 2024, the analysis integrates System GMM, Fixed-Effects, and Stochastic Frontier Analysis to assess the interaction between landfill taxation and technological efficiency. The results show that the association between landfill taxes and recycling rates strengthens significantly with higher levels of technological efficiency, indicating that technology enhances the effectiveness of fiscalinstruments rather than acting independently. Recycling rates also display strong path dependency, suggesting that historical performance and institutional continuity play a central role in shaping current outcomes. The findings refine Pigovian and ecoinnovation perspectives by demonstrating that fiscal measures are most effective when aligned with technological and institutional capacity. Overall, the study provides empirical evidence that integrating fiscal policy with technological advancement can accelerate progress toward circular economy objectives under the European GreenDeal
Frontiers forged and colonized: Feminist storytelling in digital narrative
Full text linkTruly impactful innovations are developed by outsiders out of a sense of need; those that rise to mainstream recognition and acceptance, however, are colonized by dominant hegemonies. This paper traces cycles of innovation and colonization in literature, publishing, and computing as ancestral domains to electronic literature, which has been subject to the same gendered and othered frontier-colonization cycles that dominated its forebears. Elit was a new frontier for writing and publishing, a strong site of marginalized creativity, until it was codified and colonized into publishing and academia by the dominant class: women could create, but men had the actual and cultural capital to create and develop the structures to platform their work into the dominant discourse. This paper analyzes how feminist and marginalized digital writers resist colonization of their innovations and erasure of their innovations by hacking platforms, subverting narrative conventions, and amplifying hidden voices. The paper examines elements of innovation-colonization cycles in elit and adjacent practices (indie games, fanfic), showcases Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s algorithmically-generated epoetry as a site of subversion, and presents fanfic community Archive of Our own as a preliminary model of value-sensitive and inclusive community design. It argues for the development of feminist-first platforms—digital spaces that actively resist the structural colonization of marginalized storytelling
CA-YOLO for abnormal behavior detection in power systems
No full textUnder the ”dual-carbon” objectives, the digital and intelligent transformation of power systems has accelerated, driving heightened demand for intelligent security. However, issues persist regarding insufficient detection accuracy for human abnormal behavior. To address this, this paper constructs a dataset covering climbing, vaulting,and normal behavior and proposes an abnormal behavior detection model CA-YOLO based on an improved YOLO11n architecture and Coordinate Attention(CA) specifically for this dataset. During the improvement process, the advantages of CA are fully utilised. Firstly, Receptive Field Coordinate Attention Convolution(RFCAConv) is introduced to enhance key region localisation capabilities. Secondly, CA is embedded into the backbone C3k2 module to strengthen multi-scale feature extraction. A CAFusion module is designed to integrate CA for optimising multi-level feature fusion. Additionally, an EMAM-MPDIoU loss function is developed to improve bounding box regression accuracy. Finally,the CA-YOLO model is validated using our self-built abnormal behavior dataset. Experiments demonstrate that compared to YOLO11n, the improved model achieves respective increases of 3%,7%,3.2% and 3% in [email protected], [email protected]:0.95, precision (P) and recall (R), significantly enhancing detection accuracy and robustness. This work offers technical support for intelligent security applications in new-type power systems
Patients’ experiences of treatment and the scar management pathway during the Early Laser for Burn Scars (ELABS) trial: An embedded qualitative study
Full text linkBackground
Due to improvements in acute burn management, burn injuries are a leading cause of morbidity globally. Alongside physical sequelae of burns, there are significant psychological implications. Limited qualitative research exists exploring quality of life (QoL) and delayed reintegration into society; the latter is argued as the greatest unmet challenge in burn rehabilitation. Furthermore, there is a lack of research into non-scar outcomes after pulse dye laser (PDL) treatment of burn scars. This qualitative study examines the patient’s experience of early PDL treatment and its impact upon QoL and social reintegration.
Methods
This qualitative study is nested within a national, multicentre, parallel-arm randomised controlled trial (RCT) across seven National Health Service hospitals in the United Kingdom (Early Laser for Burn Scars (ELABS), Trial registration ISRCTN14392301). The Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Studies were used. Of the 153 participants in the trial, 34 were approached across a range of demographic, burn and site criteria including: gender, age, burn location, depth, total body surface area (TBSA), skin type, site location, and treatment arm. Data was collected using semi-structured telephone interviews. reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the transcribed data.
Results
20 participants were interviewed. Six themes were constructed: frustration with initial burns treatment, feeling disconnected, human costs (with three sub themes: having to adapt, it’s changed how I feel about myself, and it doesn’t just affect me), money worries, reflections on pulse dye laser treatment, and moving forwards.
Conclusion
The scar management journey is long and complex due to significant physical, psychological, financial, and psychosocial impacts. These can negatively affect QoL and reintegration into society. Use of early PDL treatment can ameliorate these challenges by positively impacting upon QoL and supporting individuals whilst they create their ‘new normal’ and adjust to reintegration into society