695915 research outputs found
Sort by
Body Mass Index and Body Satisfaction: Does Availability of Well-fitting Clothes Matter?
No full textRelatively little is known about the factors that mediate the relationship between high body mass index (BMI) and reduced body satisfaction. This is the first study to investigate whether availability of well-fitting clothes mediates this relationship. Eighty-five women with an age range of 18-81 years were 3D body scanned and weighed and measured at Time 1, and number of retailers stocking their sizes (determined through body scans) was calculated. At Time 2 they completed an online body satisfaction measure. Body satisfaction at Time 2 was predicted by both BMI and availability of well-fitting clothes in UK retailers at Time 1, with the two factors explaining 27% of the variance in body satisfaction. Availability of clothes size partially mediated the relationship between BMI and body satisfaction. Results suggest that the clothing retail sector might contribute to reducing body dissatisfaction by providing a wider range of choices for all sizes of consumer
Sparsity-assisted Fault Feature Enhancement: Algorithm-aware versus Model-aware
No full textVibration signal analysis has become one of the important methods for machinery fault diagnosis. Extraction of weak fault features from vibration signals with heavy background noise remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we first introduce the idea of algorithm-aware sparsity-assisted methods for fault feature enhancement, which extends model-aware sparsityassisted fault diagnosis and allows a more flexible and convenient algorithm design. In the framework of algorithm-aware methods, we define the generalized structured shrinkage operators and construct the generalized structured shrinkage algorithm (GSSA) to overcome the disadvantages of l1-norm regularization based fault feature enhancement methods. We then perform a series of simulation studies and two experimental cases to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Additionally, comparisonswith model-aware methods, including basis pursuit denoising and windowed-group-lasso, and fast kurtogram further verify the advantages of GSSA for weak fault feature enhancement
Discovery and timing of pulsars in the globular cluster M13 with FAST
No full textWe report the discovery of a binary millisecond pulsar (namely PSR J1641+3627F or M13F) in the globular cluster M13 (NGC 6205) and timing solutions of M13A to F using observations made with the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). PSR J1641+3627F has a spin period of 3.00 ms and an orbital period of 1.4 days. The most likely companion mass is 0.16 M. M13A to E all have short spin periods and small period derivatives. We also confirm that the binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1641+3627E (also M13E) is a black widow with a companion mass around 0.02 M. We find that all the binary systems have low eccentricities compared to those typical for globular cluster pulsars and that they decrease with distance from the cluster core. This is consistent with what is expected as this cluster has a very low encounter rate per binary.<br/
‘They Don’t Really Talk About It ‘Cos They Don’t Think It’s Right’: Heteronormativity and Institutional Silence in UK Primary Education.
No full textOf the increasing number of initiatives setting out to challenge heteronormativity in education, the No Outsiders project has arguably been one of the most influential. Conducted across 15 primary schools in England, No Outsiders sought to disrupt heteronormativity through critical pedagogy, gaining widespread academic and media attention in the process. In spite of its prominence, though, there has been a lack of research exploring the effects of this project on children’s attitudes towards sexuality in school. This paper draws on data from an ethnographic study of two UK primary schools – one that was and one that was not involved in No Outsiders – to explore the ‘effects’ of this critical intervention. The research found that whilst homophobia persisted across both schools, children’s understandings of its acceptability differed markedly according to their involvement in equalities pedagogy, with institutional silence interpreted by many as equivalent to school-sanctioned homophobia. The implications of these findings are significant, revealing proactive sexualities pedagogy as essential to countering the damaging effects of institutional invisibility
Validating Goal-Oriented Hypotheses of Business Problems Using Machine Learning: An Exploratory Study of Customer Churn
No full textOrganizations are investing in Big Data and Machine Learn-ing (ML) projects, but most of these projects are predicted to fail. Astudy shows that one of the biggest obstacles is the lack of understand-ing of how to use data analytics to improve business value. This paperpresents Metis, a method for ensuring that business goals and the corre-sponding business problems are explicitly traceable to ML projects andwhere potential (i.e., hypothesized) complex problems can be properlyvalidated before investing in costly solutions. Using this method, businessgoals are captured to provide context for hypothesizing business prob-lems, which can be further rened into more detailed problems to identifyfeatures of data that are suitable for ML. A Supervised ML algorithm isthen used to generate a prediction model that captures the underlyingpatterns and insights about the business problems in the data. An MLExplainability model is used to extract from the prediction model theindividual features and their degree of contribution to each problem. Theextracted weighted data feature are then fed back to the goal-orientedproblem model to validate the most important business problems. Ourexperiment results show that Metis can detect the most inuential problem when it was not apparent through data analysis. Metis is illustrated using a real-world customer churn (customer attrition) problem for abank and a publicly available customer churn dataset
Circular Economy Financing: Clear Winner or Risky Proposition?
No full textA major shift in private and public investment is needed to forge a transition to a circular economy. A recent surge of activity from policy makers, the financial industry, and other stakeholders suggests commitment and progress toward providing resources to facilitate this process. In this forum article, we provide a measured, and in some respects critical and corrective, assessment of these developments. We highlight the risk that progress toward a circular economy will be curtailed by strategic decisions based on contestable understanding, fuzzy indicators, and inadequate information. Before major industry actors implement international investment standards and innovative financing vehicles and ramp up investment, we call for more effective oversight to prevent the circular economy from becoming yet another compromised and ultimately ineffectual sustainability concept
ESBMC: Scalable and Precise Test-Case Generation based on the Floating-Point Theory
No full textESBMC is an SMT-based bounded model checker for real-world C programs. Such programs often represent real numbers using the floating-points, most commonly, the IEEE floating-point standard (IEEE 754-2008). Thus, ESBMC now includes a new floating-point arithmetic encoding layer in our SMT backend, that encodes floating-point operations into bit-vector operations. In particular, ESBMC can use off-the-shelf SMT solvers that offer support for bit-vectors only to encode floating-point arithmetic
Irradiation Assessment of a Lightweight Industrial Robot:Towards Faster, Safer and Sooner Waste Decommissioning
No full textRobotic systems have been successfully applied in the nuclear industry for several decades as a safeapproach to minimize the exposure dose of human operators. As nuclear waste management anddecommissioning gathers pace, there is an emerging interest integrating modern off-the-shelf industrialrobots in nuclear robotic systems which make use of complex electronics and software to improvefunctionality over traditional machines. The use of the industrial robots will significantly increase the paceof development of automated waste management systems at a reduced cost, and although these off-theshelfrobots are proven robust in typical industrial environments, performance in radioactive environmentsis less clear. This paper investigates the performance degradation of a lightweight industrial robot (KUKAiiwa 7 LBR 800) in a controlled radiation field, aiming to simulate conditions in highly radioactive nuclearwaste handling facilities. The degradation of the industrial robot’s performance is identified whilemeasuring the air kerma dose-tolerance of sensitive components, via a systematic experimentalmethodology. The experience from this experiment has demonstrated the significant capabilities ofindustrial robots, which tolerated a large gamma dose of 164 Gy before a system failure. Future tests areplanned, aiming to enable faster, safer and sooner waste management and decommissioning using complexrobotic system
Framing engagement that resonates: Organising advocacy for corporate social and environmental accountability
No full textThis paper examines how advocacy organisations organise engagements to advance corporate social and environmental accountability. We present an in-depth case study examining how an influential Dutch advocacy organisation enacted its engagement with companies to promote the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting and management practices. Drawing on the construct of strategic framing, we unpack the characteristics that supported the development of a resonant engagement frame that set the boundaries and expectations around the organisation’s engagement with companies. We unveil how several internal organisational deficiencies impeded the quality of these engagements, thereby threatening this frame resonance. The paper extends our understanding of the nature and role of strategic framing in the construction of CSR reporting and advances our limited knowledge of how CSR advocacy organisations’ internal operations impact on their engagement efforts. This allows us to better comprehend how these organisations can set engagement agendas and mobilise support for collaborative CSR change initiatives
Mixed matrix membranes derived from a spirobifluorene polymer of intrinsic microporosity and polyphenylene networks for the separation of toluene from dimethyl sulfoxide
No full textA spirobifluorene polymer of intrinsic microporosity (PIM-SBF) and polyphenylene networks based on triphenylbenzene (TPB), hexaphenylbenzene (HPB) and octaphenylquinquephenyl (OPQ) were synthesised and characterized. Uncrosslinked membranes of PIM-SBF proved suitable for the separation of a toluene/DMSO mixture (77:23 volume ratio) by pervaporation at 65°C, giving a separation factor of 3.9 and a flux of 2.0 kg m-2 h-1. The addition of 5 wt% HPB network enhanced the separation factor, while OPQ and TPB networks increased the flux that could be achieved