The need for incorporating user perception into the repairability indices: Insights from an observational study on small electrical devices

Supplementary data are available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352550925001228?via%3Dihub#s0100 .Repair is a key strategy in advancing a circular economy, as it extends product lifespan and reduces electronic waste. Existing Repairability Indeces assess the potential for repair, although they often focus on professional repairs, often overlooking end-user repair activities. This creates a research gap in understanding how non-professional users experience and perceive repairability. Small household electrical appliances, due to their relatively simple architecture, are sometimes repaired by users themselves rather than taken to a professional repair service. This study contributes to closing this gap by exploring users' perceptions of repairability in small electrical and electronic equipment and examining their alignment with calculated repairability indices. A user observation study (n = 26) was conducted to evaluate three critical stages of the repair process: (1) initial interaction with the fully assembled appliance, (2) the opening process, and (3) interaction with internal components once accessed. The observational study design included a protocol designed to standardise procedures across participants, and structured rubrics to ensure consistency in response interpretation. This rigorous methodological approach ensured reproducibility and enabled a detailed exploration of user behaviour. The results reveal a misalignment between users' perceptions and repairability indices, with perceived repairability scores decreasing by around 35.9 % and 58.8 % compared to the calculated ones, for two specific appliances. In addition, during the observational study, the following key barriers were identified: limited accessibility to internal components, particularly the difficulty of opening the product, and the complexity of fault identification. These findings highlight how user-centered barriers, such as design-related challenges (i.e. opening the appliance) and perceived complexity, differ significantly from the criteria considered in current repairability indices. Furthermore, findings emphasise the need to address user-centred repair challenges through design improvements that enhance accessibility and simplify disassembly, ultimately fostering greater consumer engagement in repair activities.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Generalitat Valenciana (CIACIF/2021/106 and CIBEFP/2023/136) for the development of this study

Transcriptomic Profiling of iPS Cell-Derived Hepatocyte-like Cells Reveals Their Close Similarity to Primary Liver Hepatocytes

Data Availability Statement: The data presented in this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.Supplementary Materials are available online at: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4409/14/12/925#app1-cells-14-00925 .Human-induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived hepatocyte-like cells (HLCs) have been shown to be useful for the development of cell-based regenerative strategies and for modelling drug discovery. However, stem cell-derived HLCs are not identical in nature to primary human hepatocytes (PHHs), which could affect the cell phenotype and, potentially, model reliability. Therefore, we employed the in-depth gene expression profiling of HLCs and other important and relevant cell types, which led to the identification of clear similarities and differences between them at the transcriptional level. Through gene set enrichment analysis, we identified that genes that are critical for immune signalling pathways become downregulated upon HLC differentiation. Our analysis also found that TAV.HLCs exhibit a mild gene signature characteristic of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, but not other selected cancers. Importantly, HLCs present significant similarity to PHHs, making them genuinely valuable for modelling human liver biology in vitro and for the development of prototype cell-based therapies for pre-clinical testing.This research was funded by an SBRI CRACK-IT InMutaGene Challenge 21 award and Testavec Ltd

Academic coaching as a pedagogy to facilitate the navigation of complexity across the health professions education continuum

Data availability statement: The original contributions presented in the paper are included in the article. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.Maintaining currency and managing complexity in a rapidly evolving healthcare environment requires health professionals to be competent in monitoring and regulating their own learning. While health professional educators can scaffold learners to develop this competency, maintaining these skills in the absence of ongoing, structured support can prove challenging. Academic coaching is a pedagogical approach that supports learners to develop as self-regulated learners. This longitudinal support can facilitate learners’ capacity to plan, monitor and evaluate their performance and apply these skills to novel contexts, which is needed to navigate the increasingly complex healthcare environment. In this paper, we introduce the intersecting concepts of self-regulated learning and academic coaching. We suggest ways that academic coaching can be used to support learners in the health professions to continually improve their practice and develop their capacity to cope with complexity. We draw on our experiences of implementing academic coaching into two medical programs in the UK and Australia (school-leaver and graduate entry programs, respectively) and offer considerations for implementing academic coaching across the health professions education continuum.The article processing charge for this publication was supported by a Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute (FHMRI) Publication Grant 2025

Privacy-preserving distributed optimization for economic dispatch in smart grids

The material in this paper was not presented at any conference. This paper was recommended for publication in revised form by Associate Editor Daniele Casagrande under the direction of Editor Florian Dorfler.This paper discusses a distributed economic dispatch problem (EDP) of smart grids while preventing sensitive information from being leaked during the communication process. In response to the problem, a novel privacy-preserving distributed economic dispatch strategy is developed via adding an exponentially decaying random noise to minimize the total cost of the grid while ensuring the privacy of sensitive state information. The quantitative relationship between the privacy and the estimation accuracy of eavesdroppers is profoundly disclosed in the framework of (ς, σ)-data-privacy. Furthermore, a sufficient condition on the iteration step size is achieved to ensure that the well-designed algorithm can converge to the optimal value of the addressed EDP exactly by resorting to the classical Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, simulation results verify the effectiveness of the carefully constructed privacy-preserving scheme.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 62373251, U21A2019, 62222312 and 62473285; in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2022YFB4501704; in part by the Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Action Plan Project of China under Grant 22511100700; and in part by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities

Association between total daily sedentary time and cardiometabolic biomarkers in older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Supplementary Materials are available online at: https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/jpah/22/9/article-p1086.xml?content=supplementary-materials .Background: Older adults engage in the highest levels of sedentary behavior across all age groups. Yet, the extent to which sedentary time is associated with cardiometabolic health in older adults is unclear. This systematic review and meta-analysis examined associations between daily sedentary time and cardiometabolic biomarkers in older adults. Methods: Peer-reviewed articles which studied the association between daily sedentary time and ≥1 cardiometabolic biomarker in participants aged ≥60 years were eligible. Five electronic databases (PubMed, CINAHL, MEDLINE, Web of Science, and PsycINFO) were searched. Screening, data extraction, and study quality were undertaken independently by 2 reviewers. Meta-analyses were undertaken using random-effects models based on correlation and regression coefficients. Methodological quality was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute checklist. Results: Twenty-eight articles were included with sample sizes ranging from 30 to 62,754 participants. Increasing daily sedentary time was adversely associated with body mass index (Hedge g: 0.32; P = .001), waist circumference (Hedge g: 0.45; P < .001), body fat percentage (Hedge g: 0.61; P = .012), and fat mass (Hedge g: 0.30; P = .018). There were also unfavorable associations with systolic blood pressure (Hedge g: 0.37; P = .047), blood glucose (Hedge g: 0.30; P = .044), triglycerides (Hedge g: 0.36; P = .039), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (Hedge g: 0.34; P = .034). Conclusions: Increased daily sedentary time is adversely associated with body composition, systolic blood pressure, and blood biomarkers in older adults. Therefore, limiting sedentary behavior should be considered an important target in this population group for improved cardiometabolic health

Three essays on financial development macroeconomic volatility and monetary policy

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis thesis consists of three studies that cover topics in the increasingly in uential eld of nancial development and monetary policy. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the case of Brazil by (i) investigating whether (and how di¤erently) deposits in public and in private banks a¤ect economic growth over extremely long- time horizons using an uncommon econometric framework and (ii) revisiting the growth- nance nexus using a new econometric approach and a new and unique data set. More speci cally in Chapter 2 utilizes a PARCH framework and data for Brazil from 1870 to 2018 we nd that the main explanatory factors, solely in terms of their negative lagged indirect/direct (short-run) e¤ects on economic growth in Brazil, turn out to be the domestic nancial development indicators. Further, we nd robust evidence that the U.S. interest rate a¤ects growth positively both indirectly (via its volatility) and directly (both in the short- and long-run). Our results are robust to the inclusion of other economic variables i.e. trade openness and public de cit. We also argue that domestic nancial development in uences growth negatively in the short-run but positively in the long-run, whereas the impact of international nancial integration is positive in both cases. Furthermore, the impact of private and public ownership on economic growth tends to be both direct and indirect. However, our parameter estimations highlight the signi cantly higher (in absolute magnitude) negative indirect and direct short-run e¤ects of public banks (compared to those of private banks) on growth. Finally, trade openness and public de cit in uence output growth negatively in the short-run. Our results are robust to the inclusion of population, in ation, and authority score as well as dummy variables. Chapter 3 uses the smooth transition framework and annual time series data for Brazil (i.e. annual growth rate of gross domestic product (gdp), nancial development, trade openness and a set of political instability indicators) covering the period from a very long time window, from 1890 to 2003. The new data we use in this chapter is for political instability. Our research contributes further to the literature by extending the track of political instability back to the year of 1890. More speci cally, we constructed our own informal and formal political instability series from 1890 to 1919 (a period with high political uncertainty in Brazil). Our main ndings are that (a) nancial development has a mixed (positive and negative) time-varying impact on economic growth (which signi cantly depends on jointly estimated trade openness thresholds); (b) trade openness has a positive e¤ect, whereas (c) the e¤ect of political instability, both formal and informal, on growth is unambiguously negative. Finally, Chapter 4 continues the investigation on the empirical magnitude of the scal multipliers and its determinants in the U.S.. We estimate the e¤ects of unanticipated government spending shocks on output using quarterly U.S. data, 1986-2017. Our contribution is to estimate time-varying scal multi- pliers conditional on di¤erent states of the business cycle by smooth-transition estimation, characterising multipliers by the sign of the spending shocks

The Effect of Social Media and Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Fear of Missing Out (FoMo) within Kuwait’s Context

This study examines the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Social Media (SM) on the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) among general social media users in Kuwait and employees of the Ministry of Interior (MOI) of Kuwait. Employing a mixed-methods approach, data was gathered from a diverse sample including social media experts, academics, Kuwaiti users, and MOI personnel. In-depth interviews were conducted and analysed using NVivo software. Qualitative findings highlight significant ethical concerns, particularly regarding privacy and transparency in the integration of AI within social media platforms. Participants emphasized both individual and collective responsibility in curbing the overuse of AI-driven features. Quantitative results indicate that FoMO is widely perceived as an addictive behaviour, and many respondents find it ethically acceptable to utilize FoMO in marketing strategies. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how AI-driven algorithms influence user behaviour on social media. It underscores the responsibility of platforms to strike a balance between personalized content delivery and ethical considerations. The findings also call for stronger policy interventions to address privacy violations and the lack of transparency surrounding AI technologies

Post-politics and the Anthropocene: towards a post-foundational environmental political theory

The concept of post-politics has played a key role in diagnosing Anthropocene discourse and showing how it has reinforced the managerial, technocratic, and market logics of much environmental politics. From the homogenising and naturalising discourse of humankind as a destructive species to the fetishisation of CO2 in carbon offsetting projects and the strategic mobilisation of emergency narratives: all partake in the depoliticisation of the environmental debate. Yet, the diagnosis has also been criticised for not giving enough leverage to alternative voices and for restricting the scope of what ‘proper’ political action can consist of. In this chapter, I show how a re-engagement with the sophisticated theoretical underpinnings of post-foundational political theory can provide us with the tools to move beyond these controversies. While defending the post-political thesis, I argue that a genuine post-foundational engagement with the Anthropocene should also recognise the altered, much more politicised historical conjuncture in which we live today

Causes of evolutionary divergence in prostate cancer

Data Availability: Components of the PPCG data set can be accessed through different portals in accordance with the required level of data protection for each data type. The main data constituents, and respective modes of access, are listed in detail in the companion manuscript by GM Jakobsdottir [ref. 19].A preprint version of the article is available at arXiv:2503.13189v1 [q-bio.GN], https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.13189 . It has not been certified by peer review. Submission history: From: Emre Esenturk [v1] Mon, 17 Mar 2025 14:00:02 UTC (818 KB).Code Availability: Codes are available to reviewers. Open-source repository will be made available at the time of publication.Cancer progression involves the sequential accumulation of genetic alterations that cumulatively shape the tumour phenotype. In prostate cancer, tumours can follow divergent evolutionary trajectories that lead to distinct subtypes, but the causes of this divergence remain unclear. While causal inference could elucidate the factors involved, conventional methods are unsuitable due to the possibility of unobserved confounders and ambiguity in the direction of causality. Here, we propose a method that circumvents these issues and apply it to genomic data from 829 prostate cancer patients. We identify several genetic alterations that drive divergence as well as others that prevent this transition, locking tumours into one trajectory. Further analysis reveals that these genetic alterations may cause each other, implying a positive-feedback loop that accelerates divergence. Our findings provide insights into how cancer subtypes emerge and offer a foundation for genomic surveillance strategies aimed at monitoring the progression of prostate cancer.Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO), which is funded by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III and recognized by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) as a ‘Severo Ochoa’ Centre of Excellence (ref. CEX2019000891-S). Both A.F.-S. and G.M. also received support from Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grants PID2019-111356RA-I00 and PID2023-151298OB-I00 (MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033). Additionally, A.F.-S. was awarded a fellowship from La Caixa Foundation (ID 100010434; LCF/BQ/DR21/11880009). V.J.G. acknowledges infrastructure backing from the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (BRC-1215–20014). V.M.H. received support from the Petre Foundation via the University of Sydney Foundation (Australia). H.H.H. is supported by project grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) (142246, 152863, 152864, 159567 and 438793). This work was also funded by NHMRC project grants 1104010 (C.M.H., N.M.C.) and 1047581 (C.M.H., N.M.C.), as well as through a federal grant from the Australian Department of Health and Ageing awarded to the Epworth Cancer Centre, Epworth Hospital (N.M.C., C.M.H.). We acknowledge further financial support from Australian Prostate Cancer Research and the University of Melbourne, Australia. M.L. received funding from National Cancer Institute grants P50CA211024, P01CA265768, R01 CA259200, from the U.S.A. Department of Defense (DoD) grants PC160357 and PC200390, as well as from the Prostate Cancer Foundation (22CHAL05). Additional support for SAPCS analytical costs came from the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI) Award R01CA285772-01 and a U.S. Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) Challenge Award (2023CHAL4150). Genomic sequencing and investigation of Southern African Prostate Cancer Study (SAPCS) data received funding from the U.S. Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) Prostate Cancer Research Program (PCRP), which included an Idea Development Award (PC200390, TARGET Africa) and HEROIC Consortium Awards (PC210168 and PC230673, HEROIC PCaPH Africa1K). R.M. and A.T.P. are supported by The Lorenzo and Pamela Galli Medical Research Trust, and A.T.P. also holds an Investigator Grant (2026643) from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). B.P. is the recipient of a Victorian Health and Medical Research Fellowship awarded by the Victoria State Government, Australia. K.D.S. is funded by The Novo Nordisk Foundation (grant nos. NNF20OC0059410, NNF21OC0071712), The Danish Cancer Society (grant no. R352-A20573), and Independent Research Fund Denmark (grant no. 9039-00084B). J.R. acknowledges support from a CIHR Project Grant (grant no. PJT-162410) and an Investigator Award from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), which is itself funded by the Government of Ontario. Work at the University of Konstanz was supported by the university and an Exploration Grant from the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation to A.J.G. J.W. received grants from the Danish Cancer Society (#R147-A9843, #R374-A22518), the Danish Council for Independent Research (#8020-00282, #3101-00177A), the Novo Nordisk Foundation (#NNF200C0060141), and Sygeforsikringen Danmark (#2022-0198). A.L. is supported by Cancer Research UK (C57899/A25812), The John Fell Fund (0012782), the Health Technology Assessment (NIHR 131233), and the John Black Charitable Foundation (TRANSLATE Triallinked biobank). Y-J.L. receives funding from Orchid, Prostate Cancer Research UK & Movember (MA-CT20-011, RIA22-ST2-006) and Cancer Research UK (C16420/A18066). A full list of funding organizations for the Pan Prostate Cancer Group is provided in a companion manuscript [ref. 19: to be published as supplementary material in due course]

Social Entropy Informer: A Multi-Scale Model-Data Dual-Driven Approach for Pedestrian Trajectory Prediction

Pedestrian trajectory prediction is fundamental in various applications, such as autonomous driving, intelligent surveillance, and traffic management. Existing methods generally fall into two categories: model-driven approaches and data-driven approaches. However, both approaches have inherent limitations when applied to real-world scenarios, particularly in capturing the complex interactions between pedestrians and modeling the stochastic nature of human motion. Notably, there is a lack of research on integrating the strengths of model-driven and data-driven paradigms, which can better address these challenges. This paper aims to fill these limitations by proposing a novel model-data dual-driven approach, called Social Entropy Informer (SEI), for pedestrian trajectory prediction. SEI simultaneously models local and global pedestrian interactions while incorporating information entropy to capture human motion’s inherent randomness and uncertainty quantitatively, which provides a robust framework for predicting pedestrian trajectories. Furthermore, we propose a new loss function derived from information theory, which accounts for the stochasticity of pedestrian movement and enhances the model’s ability to generalize across diverse scenarios. The SEI framework integrates feature extraction, entropy-based stochastic modeling, and the new loss function, improving prediction accuracy and model interpretability. Experimental results demonstrate that SEI outperforms other benchmark methods in prediction accuracy.10.13039/501100013088-Qinglan Project of Jiangsu Province of China; Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (Grant Number: 23KJB520038); Research Enhancement Fund of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) (Grant Number: REF-23-01-008); Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR), King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (Grant Number: GPIP: 108-135-2024)