Exploring Italian consumers’ willingness to pay for sustainable fashion: the roles of eco-consciousness and vintage preference

The former study suggests that Italian consumers are willing to pay premiums for new bio-based products but expect discounts on second-hand clothing, revealing a sustainability bias. This study adds more insights into such a bias by examining factors influencing consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for bio-based clothing and their expected discounts for second-hand items. Using Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 402 Italian consumers, the findings reveal that environmental concerns are positively associated with premiums for bio-based clothing, while higher income and education levels are also associated with the higher premium that consumers are willing to pay. For second-hand clothing, the preference for vintage appeal is linked to lower expected discounts. Men and younger consumers tend to expect higher discounts for second-hand clothing. By providing insights into Italian consumers’ sustainable fashion choices, this study offers implications for businesses, policymakers, and researchers aiming to promote eco-conscious consumption and sustainability in the fashion industry

A comprehensive study on the efficacy of a wearable sleep aid device featuring closed-loop real-time acoustic stimulation

Difficulty falling asleep is one of the typical insomnia symptoms. However, intervention therapies available nowadays, ranging from pharmaceutical to hi-tech tailored solutions, remain ineffective due to their lack of precise real-time sleep tracking, in-time feedback on the therapies, and an ability to keep people asleep during the night. This paper aims to enhance the efficacy of such an intervention by proposing a novel sleep aid system that can sense multiple physiological signals continuously and simultaneously control auditory stimulation to evoke appropriate brain responses for fast sleep promotion. The system, a lightweight, comfortable, and user-friendly headband, employs a comprehensive set of algorithms and dedicated own-designed audio stimuli. Compared to the gold-standard device in 883 sleep studies on 377 subjects, the proposed system achieves (1) a strong correlation (0.89 ± 0.03) between the physiological signals acquired by ours and those from the gold-standard PSG, (2) an 87.8% agreement on automatic sleep scoring with the consensus scored by sleep technicians, and (3) a successful non-pharmacological real-time stimulation to shorten the duration of sleep falling by 24.1 min. Conclusively, our solution exceeds existing ones in promoting fast falling asleep, tracking sleep state accurately, and achieving high social acceptance through a reliable large-scale evaluation

Physical therapy for sleep apnea: a smartphone application for home-based physical therapy for patients with obstructive sleep apnea

PurposeIn this study, we described “PT for Sleep Apnea”, a smartphone application for home-based physical therapy of patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA).MethodsThe application was created in a joint program between the University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City (UMP), Vietnam, and National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Taiwan. Exercises maneuvers were derived from the exercise program previously published by the partner group at National Cheng Kung University. They included exercises for upper airway and respiratory muscle training and general endurance training.ResultsThe application provides video and in-text tutorials for users to follow at home and a schedule function to assist the user in organizing the training program, which may improve the efficacy of home-based physical therapy in patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea.ConclusionIn the future, our group plans to conduct a user study and randomized-controlled trials to investigate whether our application can benefit patients with OSA

Case Report: A novel hemizygous missense PDHA1 variant in a Vietnamese boy with pyruvate dehydrogenase E1-alpha deficiency

A pyruvate dehydrogenase complex deficiency causes a reduction in adenosine triphosphate production and energy insufficiency, leading to neurological disorders. An abnormal E1-alpha protein originating from the PDHA1 gene with pathogenic variants is unable to communicate with E1-beta for the formation of the E1 enzyme, decreasing pyruvate dehydrogenase complex activity. In this study, we report a Vietnamese boy with lethargy, severe metabolic acidosis, increased serum lactate, hyperalaninemia, lactic acidosis, and globus pallidus lesions. Whole-exome sequencing and variant filtering identified a hemizygous missense variant NM000284.4 (PDHA1): c.479T>G (p.Phe160Cys) in the patient. The variant c.479T>G caused a single nucleotide substitution on exon 5 and was predicted to be a disease-causing variant in the in silico analyses. We present the first report with a genetic analysis of a Vietnamese patient with pyruvate dehydrogenase E1-alpha deficiency (PDHAD). Sanger sequencing demonstrated that the patient inherited the variant from his mother who harbored the variant in a heterozygous state, but no PDHAD symptoms were observed in her. In addition, a prenatal test of the patient's mother revealed a fetus with a normal genotype. Furthermore, the patient's father and sister both carried a normal allele. Based on the American College of Medical Genetics criteria, the variant c.479T>G was predicted to be a likely pathogenic variant. Using the combination of the patient’s genotype and phenotype, he was definitively diagnosed with pyruvate dehydrogenase E1-alpha deficiency. Our findings expand the mutational spectrum of neurological disorders and provide the scientific basis for genetic counseling for the patient's family