People Use Research Articles

Application Software That Can Prepare for Disasters Based on Patient-Participatory Evidence: K-DiPS: A Verification Report.

This paper describes the design and function of an application that enables vulnerable people to provide medical information for use in disasters, and presents the results of an initial test of its usability in Nankoku, Japan. The application consists of two parts: K-DiPS Solo, a smartphone app, and K-DiPS Online, a web application for disaster management by local governments. We asked vulnerable people or their family caregivers to enter medical information into the app on their smartphones and connected this information to a local government application as a demonstration of a disaster response solution that manages information. We targeted a group of 14 healthy older people. The user information that they entered into the app was stored in the cloud via the communication system of the mobile phone. A ledger of vulnerable people for use in the event of a disaster was automatically created on the web application using the information supplied by the individuals. Local government staff corrected the location information, if necessary, by dragging points plotted on a map. This disaster response solution was shown to connect individuals to government offices, and to enable a consistent flow of information from patient details to stocking of supplies, and for simulation, training, and response during disasters.

Drivers of public plastic (mis)use — New insights from changes in single-use plastic usage during the Covid-19 pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) has influenced resource use and how people interact with their environment, with changing priorities and competing public health factors affecting pro-environmental behaviours at individual, societal, business and political levels.We used data from an online plastic footprint calculator to explore temporal changes, purchasing patterns and consumer behaviours around on-the-go plastic use during the pandemic. We hypothesised that 1) people's plastic use when on-the-go would change in response to the pandemic and related government restrictions and; 2) single-use plastic use on-the-go would decrease during lockdown periods due to restrictions against leaving home.The calculator received 1937 responses, with 13,544 plastic items recorded. Most used were food wrappers (54 % of all items), takeaway containers (12 %) and bottles (9 %). Six out of seven items showed increased use during lockdowns, in-line with our first hypothesis, but not the second. Three times more bottles were used, food wrapper consumption almost doubled, and takeaway container use more than doubled. Increased container use occurred alongside increased takeaway meal consumption during lockdowns. Patterns were similar between different periods of lockdown, with no significant differences in the number used of any items, or percentage of respondents using them. Results indicate that during lockdown, people found it harder to avoid single-use plastic while on-the-go, supporting evidence from other studies that plastic use can be driven by perceptions of hygiene benefits and lack of “safe” alternatives. Our results indicate opportunities to reduce single-use plastic consumption and we provide examples of successful implementation. Our findings evidence that, when properly applied, government-led guidance can effectively support consumer choices for reduced plastic use, encourage use of reusables, increase provision of alternatives, and dispel hygiene myths. The sudden increase in plastic waste due to the Covid-19 pandemic amplifies the need to substantiate plastic reduction policy promises without further delay.

Harnessing The Internet for Inclusive Development: Evidence from Spatial Panel Data Analysis in Indonesia

Technology utilization is often considered one of the main drivers promoting inclusive development. As a form of technology utilization, whether using the internet can promote inclusive development has been a concern for researchers and policymakers. Considering geographical connectivity characteristics, we examine the effects of internet penetration on inclusive development by applying spatial econometric models and using data from 34 provinces in Indonesia from 2015 to 2020. This study reveals that encouraging the internet penetration can significantly improves the inclusive development in a province. However, the increase of internet penetration leads to the decrease of inclusive development in neighboring provinces. The digital divide among provinces in Indonesia can be attributed to this phenomenon. This study also indicates a strong positive spatial correlation of inclusive development. Our findings point to the need for policies to promote people's use of the internet to achieve more benefits from development, balance the digital development to reduce the harmful effects of the digital divide, and consider the spatial aspects when making policies to promote inclusive development.

Effective components on the process of concept and meaning creation and their application in ontologies: focusing on Peirce’s triadic sign model

PurposeThis study aims to focus on the interpretation component of Peirce’s triadic model of sign to identify: the components affecting the interpretation of an object and the components affecting the meaning creation by people for use in ontologies. Ashura was selected because it is a historical event and a meaningful sign in Iranian religious culture.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study was conducted in two steps. In the first step, the Instagram pages of five groups of people were chosen as the sample and examined using qualitative content analysis. In the second step, 18 creators of Ashura works were selected, their lived experience in creating these works was collected using in-depth semi-structured interviews and analysed through phenomenology method.FindingsBased on the results, the concept is context-oriented; one cannot interpret the signs according to one’s personal preferences because the context, social rules and habits limit this interpretation. Accordingly, the use of reference systems and rules of logic, as well as artificial intelligence and computer science tools alone cannot help represent meaning in ontologies. Rather, individual characteristics, contexts, presuppositions and components existing in personal, social and technological worlds are effective on concept formation and meaning creation. Thus, these factors must be considered in ontology, especially for multi-faceted and context-oriented concepts, such as Ashura.Originality/valueThis research adopted a new approach and method to study ontology. This study focused on interpretation and adopted Peirce’s sign model for ontology design.

Disparities in spatio-temporal accessibility to fresh foods in Shanghai, China

Disparities in fresh food accessibility are an important topic in health geography. Existing studies focus on the spatial component of food accessibility and are mostly conducted in North America and Europe. This study addresses both the spatial and temporal dimensions of food accessibility and investigates the disparities in fresh food accessibility in the Asian context. We examine the impacts of socioeconomic and built environment factors on spatio-temporal accessibility to supermarkets and wet markets in Shanghai. The opening hours of markets and people's daily time use patterns are considered. Both first-hand questionnaire survey data and second-hand POI and statistic data are used. We find that Shanghai's urban districts have a slightly higher density of wet markets than the suburban districts, but the latter have a much higher density of supermarkets than the former. The built environment at home and workplace is found to be more influential than socioeconomic variables in explaining disparities in fresh food accessibility. Household income, age and private car ownership are associated with fresh food accessibility. The findings of this study enrich the existing literature on food environment and food accessibility and may help policymakers address the deficiency in fresh food accessibility.

Questionnaire survey about the effects of new lifestyles during the pandemic of COVID-19 on upper limb diseases

BackgroundThe novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that emerged in 2019 and spread globally in 2020 has resulted in the imposition of lockdowns or a state of emergency in many cities worldwide. In Japan, a “new lifestyle” is being advocated. We hypothesize that the new lifestyle has changed people's use of their upper limbs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, through this questionnaire study, we aimed to determine the factors associated with exacerbation of symptoms during the pandemic and to investigate the current status of patients who require hand surgery. MethodsThis study was a prospective multi-center questionnaire survey. This study was conducted in Japan from December 2020 to July 2021 at university and general hospitals in nine prefectures. A questionnaire was administered to patients who visited a hospital with symptoms of nerve entrapment syndrome, osteoarthritis, or tenosynovitis. ResultsA total of 502 patients with a mean age of 63.8 years responded. The 240 patients who experienced exacerbation (exacerbated and markedly exacerbated) were compared with other patients (unchanged, improved, and markedly improved). An increase in the time spent on personal computers and smartphones was associated with exacerbation of hand symptoms. Patients who wanted to undergo surgery but were postponed due to COVID-19 accounted for 23.5% of the outpatients. The mean scores for pain, jitteriness, and anxious depression in these patients were significantly higher than those of patients who did not want surgery. ConclusionsOur results suggest that an increase in the time spent on personal computers and smartphones is associated with exacerbation of hand symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients who wanted to undergo surgery but were postponed by COVID-19 experienced greater pain, jitteriness, and anxious depression.

Works of National Painting in the Development of Educational Programs of Pedagogical Specialties

The article actualizes the idea of developing system-modeling approaches to the development of technologies by students of pedagogical universities that ensure the use of works of domestic painting in the educational process. Within the framework of the project «Didactic potential of national painting in the implementation of the program of spiritual revival of the nation», a study is being conducted aimed at meaningful and didactic provision of work with the works of Kazakhstani artists in strict adherence to the program of spiritual revival, the methodological aspect of which is set out in the patriotic act "Tugan Zher". The relevance of the work on the introduction of national painting into the educational process is dictated by modern requirements in a number of scientific studies devoted to various types of Kazakh national art and the use of its potential in the spiritual revival of the nation, the appeal to the works of national painting is considered as an effective means of teaching. The project participants objectify the idea of a syncretic approach to the use of this tool: putting the knowledge paradigm to the fore and taking into account the possibilities of painting as an art form, it is necessary to consider the didactic aspect of using the works of domestic artists in the educational process. The scientific significance of the Project «Didactic potential of national painting in the implementation of the program of spiritual revival of the nation» considers the national spirit of this type of national creativity among the folklore, literary, theatrical, musical heritage of the Kazakh people for use as one of the effective forms of presentation of ethno-cultural views of the Kazakh people. The novelty of the project lies in the fact that it presents a system-modeled description of the work on the spiritual formation of secondary school students through the training of future teachers in the conditions of modern pedagogical universities. The importance of this kind of training is proved by the materials of the conducted experiments, in which both the performers declared in the Project and teachers of different types of schools took part. The selection, verification and description of innovative technologies in working with paintings are focused both on activating the emotional perception of students, and on instilling in them the skills of creative analysis of paintings, and on generalizing theoretical provisions that contribute to the development of the spiritual heritage of the people. The article is an analytical study of those areas of work that should be carried out at the second stage of the study, which determines the relevance and features of the formation of teachers' skills with students of secondary schools within the framework of the «Tugan Zher» program.

The language of accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses.

This article uses machine-learning techniques to examine people's use of verbal expressions of confidence. Across the field of academic psychology, it is often assumed that such statements reflect the same underlying information as numeric confidence ratings. We show that verbal confidence is not redundant with numeric confidence but instead contributes unique diagnostic value in predicting the accuracy of a response. We use eyewitness confidence in a lineup identification as our model paradigm. There is potentially great applied value in developing a machine-learning algorithm that can predict eyewitness identification accuracy, such as by reducing false convictions. To this end, we applied a machine-learning methodology to investigate the natural language of accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses. This method revealed that verbal confidence statements provide rich diagnostic information about the likely accuracy of eyewitness identifications. Moreover, verbal confidence statements provide unique diagnostic information that traditional indicators of identification accuracy such as numeric confidence ratings and response times do not provide. However, the diagnostic value of an eyewitness confidence statement depends in part on the face recognition ability of the eyewitness: The natural language of strong face recognizers is more diagnostic than the natural language of weak face recognizers. These results are theoretically interesting but, from an applied perspective, this machine-learning methodology may prove useful to those in the criminal justice system who must evaluate eyewitnesses' verbal confidence statements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Impact of lifestyle changes on home energy consumption during pandemic COVID-19 in Indonesia.

This study aims to grasp the lifestyle changes in residential buildings related to energy consumption since the emergence of Covid-19 in Indonesia. Data collection through online questionnaires was conducted from more than 1,000 households domiciled in the five largest islands of Indonesia (Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua). Firstly, this article summarizes the results of questionnaire, including the household's basic information and the lifestyle changes. It is found that more than 89% of families have implemented Work from Home (WFH) affecting other lifestyle changes during the pandemic. Secondly, the Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA) was conducted to find influential factors on electricity use in residential housing. It was found that the number of family members, the use of air conditioning, and the use of kitchen appliances significantly contributed to the increase in electricity during stay homes period. Thirdly, the characteristics and lifestyle attributes are classified, the largest increase occurred in household groups with middle to upper average electricity consumption before the pandemic. Finally, the discussion results are expected to encourage industry and policymakers to implement energy monitors, especially regarding electricity use in residential homes. In addition, periodic surveys of post-occupancy evaluations (POE) in households need to be implemented to obtain detailed data in monitoring people's lifestyle and energy use behavior. This study can also be used as a report on energy performance in the residential sector to increase awareness of energy savings and encourage the government to develop renewable energy distribution. Especially to avoid an energy crisis due to disasters that force residents to stay at home during a pandemic.

Troubling ambulant research: Disabled people's socio-spatial encounters with urban un/safety and the politics of mobile methods

This paper offers a critical reflection on the use of walking and mobile interviews in the context of research with disabled people whose diverse corporealities and cognitions challenge assumptions about walking as a normative bodily act associated with free, autonomous, mobility. While it has been suggested that mobile methods hold out the potential to open up dialogic and participative spaces of inquiry that capture embodied, affectual, and sensory knowledges in place, there has been less discussion of how social and bodily difference shapes the politics and practices of methods on the move. Drawing on research exploring disabled people's socio-spatial knowledges and experiences of urban un/safety in Ireland, we address this lacuna by reflecting on our use of ‘go-along’ interviews with people with diverse impairments and mobilities. Recognising the barriers that mediate disabled people's use of urban space, we interrogate both what go-along interviews can contribute to our understanding of disabled people's embodied encounters with urban un/safety, but also the limits, challenges and politics of mobile interviews as a form of methodological practice. We suggest there is a need to advance interdisciplinary social science scholarship which troubles ambulant research, and writes social and bodily difference into mobility studies and mobile methods.

Pain and Analgesic Utilization in Medically Underserved Areas: Five-Year Prevalence Study from the Rochester Epidemiology Project.

PurposeThere is a paucity of data on pain diagnoses and analgesic utilization in medically underserved areas (MUAs). This study compared the prevalence of pain diagnoses and analgesic medication use between MUAs and non-medically underserved areas (N-MUAs) in Southern Minnesota and Western Wisconsin using the Rochester Epidemiology Project (REP) database.MethodsFive-year prevalence per 100 people (January 1, 2011 to January 1, 2016) was extracted from the REP database for multiple pain diagnosis variables and analgesic medications. Primary outcomes included comparison of five-year prevalence of each pain diagnosis and analgesic between MUA and N-MUA; and association between index of medical underservice (IMU) score and five-year prevalence for each pain diagnosis and analgesic. Linear regression models were performed to assess associations and significance thresholds were adjusted per the Bonferroni approach to account for multiplicity.ResultsThe prevalence per 100 people for a diagnosis of chronic pain was similar between MUAs and N-MUAs (13.8 ± 2.5 vs 14.6 ± 2.0, P = 0.543). Similarly, prevalence per 100 people for other specific pain diagnoses including nonspecific chest pain, abdominal pain, lumbago, somatoform disorder, and painful respiration did not differ based on MUA status. In terms of analgesic use, prevalence per 100 people for use of opioids, non-opioid analgesics, salicylates, and NSAIDs did not differ based on MUA status. An association between higher IMU scores and lower prevalence of painful respiration was identified, although this was not significant after significance threshold adjustment per the Bonferroni method.ConclusionOur data suggest that there are no differences in several pain diagnoses and analgesic utilization between MUAs versus N-MUAs, and that the IMU score did not predict changes in prevalence of pain diagnoses or analgesic utilization. Future powered and national database studies are warranted to increase validity of findings to other populations outside of Southern Minnesota and Western Wisconsin.

The problem of over-medicalisation: How AOD disease models perpetuate inequity for young people with multiple disadvantage.

Young people who experience multiple disadvantage have been identified as some of the most marginalised and under-serviced people in the alcohol and other drug (AOD) system. In this paper, we draw on a range of research evidence to argue that one of the challenges in responding appropriately to the needs of these young people are models of care which seek to ameliorate 'illness' rather than promote wellness. While disease approaches have some important benefits, overly-medicalised AOD treatment responses also have negative impacts. We argue that disease models rest on understandings of substance use as an individual enterprise and thereby pay insufficient attention to the material disadvantage that shape young people's substance use, creating feelings of shame, failure and a reluctance to return to care if they continue to use. Additionally we draw on literature that shows how disease models construe young people's substance use as compulsive, perpetuating deficit views of them as irrational and failing to account for the specific meanings that young people themselves give to their substance use. By focusing on clinical solutions rather than material and relational ones, medicalised treatment responses perpetuate inequity: they benefit young people whose resources and normative values align with the treatments offered by disease models, but are much less helpful to those who are under-resourced,. We suggest that alternative approaches can be found in First Nations models of care and youth programs that attend to social, cultural, and material wellbeing, making living well the focus of treatment rather than illness amelioration.

Impact of the global pandemic upon young people's use of technology for emotion regulation

Technology plays an increasingly prominent role in emotional lives. Researchers have begun to study how people use devices to cope with and shape emotions: a phenomenon that has been called Digital Emotion Regulation. We report a study of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon young people's digital habits and emotion regulation behaviors. We conducted a two-wave longitudinal survey, collecting data from 154 university students both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, participants were subject to increased emotional distress as well as restrictions on movement and social interaction. We present evidence that participants' emotion regulation strategies changed and became more homogeneous during the pandemic, with participants resorting to digital tools when offline strategies were less available, while also becoming more emotionally dependent upon their devices. This study underscores the growing significance of the digital for contemporary emotional experience, and contributes to understanding the potential role for technology in supporting well-being during high-impact events.

Not just what you did, but how: Children see distributors that count as more fair than distributors who don't

To distribute resources in a fair way, identifying an appropriate outcome is not enough: We must also find a way to produce it. To solve this problem, young children spontaneously use number words and counting in fairness tasks. We hypothesized that children are also sensitive to other people's use of counting, as it reveals that the distributor was motivated to produce the outcome they believed was fair. Across four experiments, we show that U.S. children (N = 184 from the New Haven area; ages four to six; Approximately 58% White, 16% Black, 18% Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 4% other) believe that agents who count when distributing resources are more fair than agents who produce the same outcome without counting, even when both agents invest the same amount of effort. And vice versa, when the same two agents produce an unfair outcome, children now condemn the agent who counted. Our findings suggest that, from childhood, people understand that counting reflects a motivation to be precise and use this to evaluate other people's behavior in fairness contexts.

Older People's Use of Digital Technology During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic is having a major impact on the lives of everyone, but in particular on the health and well-being of older people. It has also disrupted the way that individuals access services and interact with one another, and physical distancing and “Stay at Home” orders have seen digital interaction become a necessity. While these restrictions have highlighted the importance of technology in everyday life, little is known about how older adults have responded to this change. Methods: Two surveys, one in 2019 and another in 2020 collected data on a combined total of 1923 older adults aged 65 years and older in Canada. These looked at how older adults think about and use technology, with the 2020 survey additionally questioning how COVID-19 has impacted their use and attitudes towards technology. Results: While older adults feel more isolated in 2020, many feel positive about the benefits of technology and have increased technology use during the pandemic to support their health, wellness, and communication needs. Discussion: The results highlight the potential of technology for supporting older adults in various aspects of healthy aging. While these results point to the opportunities afforded by technology, challenges remain, such as how social and economic factors influence technology uptake.

Digital sexual citizenship and LGBT young people's platform use

Drawing on original interviews and digital ethnography conducted with 20 LGBT young people, and using critical platform studies and a design-centric approach, this paper demonstrates how platform use has enabled LGBT young people maintain sexual identity authenticity, normalise fluidity, reimagine community through allied algorithmic mediation, negotiate the threat of peer surveillance, and refuse platform norms so as to self-narrate gender affirmation, organise collective resources and repudiate the performance of online inauthenticity. This paper considers these practices as emergent acts of digital sexual citizenship that are becoming prevalent in countries with no sexual rights and argues that platform affordances furnish the infrastructure for LGBT young people to evade the state surveillance of homosexuality and find allied friendships, romantic partners and safe communities.

The Multifaceted Impact of COVID-19 on Social Media Users' Wellbeing and Relationship With Urban Nature

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has unfolded, the media is increasingly recognizing the value of urban nature, with greenspace use increasing. In cities, where people often lack access to private greenspaces, parks and other urban greenspaces offer opportunities for exercise and physically distanced socializing. Previous research has demonstrated the benefits of urban greenspaces to both physical and mental health, during times of relative stability. Here, we seek to examine how people's responses to greenspace are affected by a global pandemic, which uniquely affects both physical movements and mental wellbeing in the population at large. We compare tweets focused on nature- and greenspace-related keywords and hashtags from March to July 2019 with tweets from the same period in 2020 for metropolitan regions in the United States. We also examine the influence of stay-at-home restrictions in 2020. These posts reinforce findings from conventional survey approaches showing that people's relationship to greenspace is multifaceted. Furthermore, the results of our pre–post analysis of people's outdoor use suggest that the pandemic has had a differential impact on these multifaceted dimensions of people's engagement with nature. By applying a multidimensional construct of wellbeing, we identify Positive emotion, Positive relationships, and Meaning as subfactors of wellbeing that potentially can be increased by urban nature. These findings are important in demonstrating that greenspace in cities played a critical role in individuals' resilience and wellbeing during the early months of the pandemic and highlighting the need for maintaining and expanding access to urban greenspaces in the future, for the benefit of all city residents.

What Do People Think Is an Emotion?

In emotion research, both conceptual analyses and empirical studies commonly rely on emotion reports. But what do people mean when they say that they are angry, afraid, joyful, etc.? Building on extant theories of emotion, this paper presents four new studies (including a preregistered replication) measuring the weight of cognitive evaluations, bodily changes, and action tendencies in people's use of emotion concepts. The results of these studies suggest that the presence orabsence of cognitive evaluations has the largest impact on people's emotion attributions, and bodily changes and action tendencies are considered to depend on cognitive evaluations. Implications for theories of emotion (concepts) and the interpretation of emotion reports are discussed.

An Effective Algorithm to Improve Recommender Systems using Evolutionary Computation Algorithms and Neural Network

The growing Internet access and easy access to it have resulted in a significant increase in e-content, which, along with many benefits, has caused problems for users. Internet users simply cannot find the content they need from this massive amount of data. Users are faced with a lot of suggestions for choosing goods, buying items, selecting music and videos, and more. Advantage systems can be used to overcome these problems. Today, with the spread of people’s use of cyberspace, such as web sites and social networks, and increasing the need for conscious and clever selection of people, recommender systems has been extensively investigated. Although the neural network can identify the connections between the inputs and outputs of a dataset, but in order to achieve the proper performance of the neural network, a proper structure should be considered. We will use the mantle algorithm to determine this structure. The mantle algorithm is a form of traditional genetic algorithm that uses local search to reduce the time to achieve optimal response. Genetic algorithms are created to search across the search space, while the local search, the neighborhood of the neighborhood, finds every response found by the genetic algorithm to find better answers. This algorithm seeks to find the optimal values for the parameters of the neural network method, so optimal solutions of the memetic algorithm is considered to be used to set parameters for the neural network method. The results of this study show the desirable performance of the proposed approach in this study.

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