Personal Reference Research Articles

What is driving food insecurity risks in UK households with children?

Abstract Background Food insecurity is a global public health issue, disproportionately affecting households with children in the UK. Despite increased research attention, there remains a gap in understanding why prevalence of food insecurity is higher in this demographic. This study aims to address this gap. Methods Utilising data from the 2021/22 and 2022/23 Family Resources Survey, an UK annual cross-sectional survey, we investigate the association between sociodemographic and economic factors, and the risk of food insecurity among households with children. Logistic regression analysis was used, with food security treated as a binary outcome variable. Control variables included receiving means-tested benefits, disabilities in a household, region within the UK, and the ethnicity, highest education level and marital status of the household reference person. A total of 41127 households were included, with 10137 being households with children. Results Our preliminary findings reveal stark inequalities, with 12.0% of households with children experiencing food insecurity, compared to 6.4% of households without children (p-value for comparison <0.0001). After adjusting for control variables, the odds of food insecurity among households with children was 1.40 (95% CI: 1.27, 1.54) compared to households without children. Adding equivalised household income after housing costs attenuated the relationship but households with children remained at significantly higher odds of food insecurity (OR: 1.32 (1.20, 1.45)). Conclusions This preliminary analysis demonstrates that, after adjusting for control variables and equivalised household income after housing costs, having children in a household is still associated with a higher risk of food insecurity. This underscores the need to understand the mechanisms underlying this relationship further. Such insights are essential for informing targeted policies and interventions aimed at mitigating food insecurity among households with children. Key messages • Having children independently increases the risk of food insecurity in households in the UK. • Moving forward, our aim is to understand the mechanisms underlying the relationship between households with children and food insecurity.

Conventionalized impoliteness formulae in third-party assessments

Abstract The paper examines the ideological work accomplished by the use of conventionalized impoliteness formulae in third person reference, when the person being criticized or brought into disrepute is not present in the here-and-now of interaction. Drawing on Interactional Linguistics and data from audio-recorded informal face-to-face Greek conversations, the study shows that speakers mobilize conventionalized impoliteness formulae, along with other linguistic resources, in the course of third-party assessments to evaluate sociocultural experience, and establish interlocutors’ shared negative affective stance toward the third party picked on due to their national group membership. This practice reproduces everyday nationalism that unites offenders against national ‘others’. The study enhances our understanding of the recontextualization of conventionalized impoliteness formulae in talk-in-interaction, and the role of affective stance in the discursive formation of (national) identities.

Analysis of Endophoric Reference in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland

This study explores the references in Lewis Carroll's ‘Alice in Wonderland,' using Halliday and Hasan's method of cohesion analysis. Specifically, the present study aims to extract the story's endophoric references (anaphoric and cataphoric) as used by the main character, Alice. By using a qualitative approach, through reading and analyzing the data of Alice’s utterances, it has been revealed that they employ two aspects of reference: anaphoric and cataphoric. There are 153 anaphoric references and 116 cataphoric references. Further, both kinds of reference are divided into two types: personal and demonstrative. It is the personal references that dominate. The researchers were able to clarify the role of anaphora and cataphora in the story as a way of building up cohesiveness in the text, and further recommendations are discussed at the end of the paper.

A A corpus-based study on the use of cohesive devices in the lesson plans of pre-service teachers

This study explores the use of cohesive devices in lesson plans (LPs) prepared by pre-service teachers across various subjects, specifically focusing on English, Math, and Biology majorships in a state university in the Philippines. The research highlights the prevalent use of personal references among English pre-service teachers, who favor the word "you" for its role in maintaining a second- and third-person perspective. In contrast, Math and Biology pre-service teachers predominantly employ nominal substitutions and conjunctions to enhance coherence in their LPs. The study also notes the absence of ellipsis in the analyzed LPs and identifies the predominant use of nominal substitution and extension conjunctions across subjects. By comparing the frequency and types of cohesive devices used, the research underscores the variations in linguistic strategies employed by pre-service teachers of different disciplines. The findings suggest a need for greater awareness and training on the effective use of cohesive devices to improve lesson planning and instructional clarity.

Psychological Safety Competency Training During the Clinical Internship From the Perspective of Health Care Trainee Mentors in 11 Pan-European Countries: Mixed Methods Observational Study.

In the field of research, psychological safety has been widely recognized as a contributing factor to improving the quality of care and patient safety. However, its consideration in the curricula and traineeship pathways of residents and health care students is scarce. This study aims to determine the extent to which health care trainees acquire psychological safety competencies during their internships in clinical settings and identify what measures can be taken to promote their learning. A mixed methods observational study based on a consensus conference and an open-ended survey among a sample of health care trainee mentors from health care institutions in a pan-European context was conducted. First, we administered an ad hoc questionnaire to assess the perceived degree of acquisition or implementation and significance of competencies (knowledge, attitudes, and skills) and institutional interventions in psychological safety. Second, we asked mentors to propose measures to foster among trainees those competencies that, in the first phase of the study, obtained an average acquisition score of <3.4 (scale of 1-5). A content analysis of the information collected was carried out, and the spontaneity of each category and theme was determined. In total, 173 mentors from 11 pan-European countries completed the first questionnaire (response rate: 173/256, 67.6%), of which 63 (36.4%) participated in the second consultation. The competencies with the lowest acquisition level were related to warning a professional that their behavior posed a risk to the patient, managing their possible bad reaction, and offering support to a colleague who becomes a second victim. The mentors' proposals for improvement of this competency gap referred to training in communication skills and patient safety, safety culture, work climate, individual attitudes, a reference person for trainees, formal incorporation into the curricula of health care degrees and specialization pathways, specific systems and mechanisms to give trainees a voice, institutional risk management, regulations, guidelines and standards, supervision, and resources to support trainees. In terms of teaching methodology, the mentors recommended innovative strategies, many of them based on technological tools or solutions, including videos, seminars, lectures, workshops, simulation learning or role-playing with or without professional actors, case studies, videos with practical demonstrations or model situations, panel discussions, clinical sessions for joint analysis of patient safety incidents, and debriefings to set and discuss lessons learned. This study sought to promote psychological safety competencies as a formal part of the training of future health care professionals, facilitating the translation of international guidelines into practice and clinical settings in the pan-European context.

Prioritizing Usage of the Survey Respondent Over the Reference Person or Head in the Survey of Consumer Finances

The Survey of Consumer Finances is the gold standard for researchers interested in the finances of American families, yet it is a complex dataset. One methodological choice regards the use of the respondent’s demographics versus those of the reference person. When the respondent and reference person are not the same (40.4% of couples in 2022), many researchers use the demographics of both individuals (e.g., the race of the respondent and the education of the reference person). This mixed usage can introduce misclassification and androcentric bias, and it can shift results significantly (e.g., net worth estimates by education vary by 5.0%–35.2%). We argue that the optimal solution is to always use the demographics of the respondent. This is especially critical when the analyses include race and ethnicity variables (which from 1989 to 2019 were only collected from the respondent), or when they include sex and marital status because the reference person is almost always male in coupled households.

KF-VTON: Keypoints-Driven Flow Based Virtual Try-On Network

Image-based virtual try-on aims to fit a target garment to a reference person. Most existing methods are limited to solving the Garment-To-Person (G2P) try-on task that transfers a garment from a clean product image to the reference person and do not consider the Person-To-Person (P2P) try-on task that transfers a garment from a clothed person image to the reference person, which limits the practical applicability. The P2P try-on task is more challenging due to spatial discrepancies caused by different poses, body shapes, and views between the reference person and the target person. To address this issue, we propose a novel Keypoints-Driven Flow Based Virtual Try-On Network (KF-VTON) for handling both the G2P and P2P try-on tasks. Our KF-VTON has two key innovations: (1) We propose a new keypoints-driven flow based deformation model to warp the garment. This model establishes spatial correspondences between the target garment and reference person by combining the robustness of Thin-plate Spline (TPS) based deformation and the flexibility of appearance flow based deformation. (2) We investigate a powerful Context-aware Spatially Adaptive Normalization (CSAN) generative module to synthesize the final try-on image. Particularly, CSAN integrates rich contextual information with semantic parsing guidance to properly infer unobserved garment appearances. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our KF-VTON is capable of producing photo-realistic and high-fidelity try-on results for the G2P as well as P2P try-on tasks and surpasses previous state-of-the-art methods both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our code is available at https://github.com/OIUIU/KF-VTON .

3D printing of realistic body phantoms: Comparison of measured and simulated organ doses on the example of a CT scan on a pregnant woman

AbstractBackgroundMedical examinations or treatment of pregnant women using ionizing radiation are sometimes unavoidable. In such cases, the risk of harm to the embryo and fetus after exposure to ionizing radiation must be carefully estimated. However, no commercially available anthropomorphic body phantoms of pregnant women are available for dose measurements. A promising possibility for the production of body phantoms for patient groups that are not adequately represented by the phantoms of reference persons is 3D printing. However, this approach is still in the evaluation phase.PurposeTo print the abdomen of a woman in the late stage of pregnancy and compare the dose distribution measured using thermoluminescence dosimeters (TLDs) in the printed phantom for two different computed tomography (CT) protocols with the corresponding results of Monte Carlo simulations on voxel models of the pregnant woman.Materials and methodsThe physical phantom was produced through multi‐material extrusion printing using different print materials identified in previous studies to simulate homogeneous soft tissues and the mean compositions of maternal and fetal bones. The 3D printed abdomen was combined with a conventionally produced anthropomorphic female phantom to obtain a whole‐body phantom of a pregnant woman. Dose values resulting from two different CT scans acquired at tube voltages of 80 and 120 kV were measured using TLDs positioned in the physical phantom and cross‐validated with the results of Monte Carlo simulations performed for two different voxel models. The first was a voxelized model of the produced phantom itself and the second a realistic digital model of a pregnant woman. Representative CT values of the materials used in the printed phantom were determined from the acquired CT images.ResultsThe CT values of maternal and fetal tissue structures in the phantom are comparable to CT values of real human tissues. The difference between most organ doses measured in the 3D printed phantom and simulated in the voxel models was below 20% and equivalent within the measurement uncertainties. Only the dose to the fetal head was up to 50% higher and not equivalent for the realistic model and the 80 kV‐protocol. As expected, the agreement was better for the voxelized than for the realistic model. For both models a slight energy dependence was observed, with larger deviations for the 80‐kV protocol especially for organs located in the pelvic region.ConclusionIndividualized physical body phantoms, such as that of a pregnant woman, can be produced using 3D printing. The good agreement between measured and simulated doses to the fetus cross‐validates both dosimetric methods. Therefore, this study demonstrates the suitability of 3D printing phantoms for patients not adequately represented by commercially available body phantoms of reference persons.

Grammatical Cohesion in the Introduction Chapters of Linguistics Ph.D. Theses Written by Anglophone Academic Writers

Effective formal writing skills are crucial for educational success and improved academic status; however, writing in English can be challenging, especially for inexperienced English writers and for&amp;nbsp;those individuals for whom English is not&amp;nbsp;their primary language. One often experienced challenge is the appropriate use of cohesive devices (CDs) to organize texts and enhance their semantic potential. Thus, this study analyzed the grammatical CDs utilized by Anglophone Academic Writers (AAWs) in the introduction chapters of 45 Ph.D. theses (86,000 words) in the field of linguistics using Halliday and Hasan&amp;rsquo;s CDs taxonomy. The analysis showed that AAWs mainly employed references, particularly personal and demonstrative, followed by conjunctions, particularly additive ones, as their dominant CDs. Additive conjunctions helped establish the coherent progressions of ideas in the introductions, while personal references, especially first-person pronouns, conveyed authorial presence. Demonstrative references emphasized important ideas discussed in the theses. The strategic application of these grammatical CDs effectively directed readers through the introductions, creating a logical flow for the writers&amp;rsquo; points. Therefore, this study presents valuable insights into the cohesive writing practices of AAWs, which can be used to enhance writing instruction and help novice English writers in improving their formal writing skills.

Reference group, personality dan social class: perannya terhadap keputusan belanja produk skincare

This research aims to analyze the role of reference groups, social class, and personality in determining shopping decisions for skincare products at the TikTok Shop. Gen Z dominates most consumers of skin care products and TikTok users in Indonesia. The study employs a qualitative approach with data collection conducted through a survey in Malang City. The sample is 180 respondents, conducted through purposive sampling with a few criteria, namely Gen Z, as active TikTok users who have purchased at TikTok Shop. Data analysis used multiple linear regression. The results show that partially or simultaneously, the three independent variables, namely reference group, social class, and personality, influence the decision to shop for skincare products at TikTok Shop. Therefore, the decision to shop for skincare products in Gen Z was influenced by the preferences they received from the reference group and then adjusted based on each individual's personal needs and purchasing power.

Grammatical Cohesion Analysis in the Short Story “The Devoted Friend” by Oscar Wilde

This study examined about grammatical cohesion that applied in the short story “The Devoted Friend. The aims of the research is to identify the different forms of grammatical cohesiveness and their applications in the short narrative "The Devoted Friend." The descriptive qualitative method was used to analyze the data. The study's findings were communicated both formally and informally. The data was taken from Oscar Wilde's short story "The Devoted Friend," and it was examined using Halliday and Hasan's (1976) cohesion theory to look at the various forms of grammatical cohesion and how they are used. The results indicate that the short story uses two different forms of grammatical cohesion: conjunction and reference. Within the short story "The Devoted Friend," there are three different kinds of references: demonstrative, comparative, and personal. There are three different kinds of conjunctions: causal, adversative, and additive conjunctions. The most prevalent type of grammatical cohesion in the short story is personal reference occurs 124 times, whereas comparative reference occurs 13 times, making it the least frequently occurring type.

Beliefs about emotion usefulness are nuanced: degree of personal reference and emotional valence predict affective distress

ABSTRACT The beliefs people hold about emotions are implicated in a variety of outcomes including emotion regulation success and overall well-being. However, research on the dimensions of such beliefs is limited, typically addressing broad beliefs about all emotions and focusing only on their controllability. This study investigated emotion usefulness beliefs, specifically, and further parsed dimensions of personal reference (general vs. personal emotions) and valence (positive vs. negative). Study 1 (N = 343), applying a 2 × 2 factorial ANOVA, revealed that participants believed negative emotions in general to be more useful than their own negative emotions, with no such difference emerging for positive emotions. Multiple regression analyses indicated that personal beliefs about emotions better predicted affective distress than general beliefs. Study 2 (N = 531) replicated these findings and employed confirmatory factor analyses to psychometrically assess the distinctiveness of these emotion belief dimensions. Evaluating a two-factor model, four-factor model, and three-factor bifactor model, results showed that both the four-factor and bifactor models fit the data well, whereas the two-factor model did not. These findings suggest that beliefs about emotion in general and beliefs about one’s own emotions may not be fundamentally distinct, but rather different dimensions of the same underlying emotion usefulness belief.

Роль родителей в профессиональном самоопределении детей

The article analyzes the role of parents in children’s professional self-determination. The authors conducted a sociological survey among graduates of pedagogical, medical, and technical universities in Yaroslavl. The results showed that key factors in professional self-identification are family values and a reference person, rather than the opinions of friends or advertising in the media. Children from families with a service-oriented mission (e.g., teachers, military personnel, firefighters, police officers, healthcare workers) typically follow their parents’ life path. The majority of students surveyed acknowledged that their parents’ opinion plays an important role in their choice of future education and profession. However, only a small number of parents preferred to stay out of the way when it comes to choosing their children's educational and professional path. The study revealed that the professional goals of most children from doctor’s families coincided with those of their parents. On the other hand, students who entered university under parental coercion were found to have lower academic performance. These students are more likely to suffer from stress, apathy and alcohol dependence compared to those who independently and consciously chose their place of study. Students who, thanks to their parents’ support, actively developed through after-school activities (for example, dance or sports), quickly identified their strengths and weaknesses, and consciously chose their university and future profession. The author notes that medical education is an elite and inherited profession, as many students in medical universities have family members related to medicine. Obviously, in the context of social change, it's difficult to find a stable, well-respected, well-paying job that allows for social connections.

The hidden influence on Kant: Pope’s presence inKant’s life and oeuvre

Midst of the recently growing attention and importance that poetry is gaining in the Studia Kantiana there is a hidden influence on Kant that this article unveils: Alexander Pope’s presence throughout Kants life and the influence of his Essay on Man on Kant’s philosophy. The relation between Kant and Pope is clarified based upon comparative examples of both works and their commentators, targeting specially Pope’s direct mentions; personal reference from Kant to Pope will be used to reassure the sizeof his admiration and therefore his subjective predisposition to be influenced by. The article unfolds proving that A) Kant had contact with the poem before even publishing his first article in 1746; B) there is sufficient evidence to confirm its direct influence on the initial phase of Kants work; C) Pope’s presence can be tracked throughout Kant’s life as an unshakeable and steady estate of personal reference; and that D) Popes mentions are equally distributed throughout Kants entire work. The paper concludes an undeniable and yet neglected influence of Pope on Kant and argues for an approach of Kant’s philosophy as a progressive andinterconnected whole based on a plan to combat human’s pride

Recurrent Appearance Flow for Occlusion-Free Virtual Try-On

Image-based virtual try-on aims at transferring a target in-shop garment onto a reference person, and has garnered significant attention from the research communities recently. However, previous methods have faced severe challenges in handling occlusion problems. To address this limitation, we classify occlusion problems into three types based on the reference person’s arm postures: single-arm occlusion , two-arm non-crossed occlusion , and two-arm crossed occlusion . Specifically, we propose a novel Occlusion-Free Virtual Try-On Network (OF-VTON) that effectively overcomes these occlusion challenges. The OF-VTON framework consists of two core components: (i) a new Recurrent Appearance Flow based Deformation (RAFD) model that robustly aligns the in-shop garment to the reference person by adopting a multi-task learning strategy . This model jointly produces the dense appearance flow to warp the garment and predicts a human segmentation map to provide semantic guidance for the subsequent image synthesis model. (ii) a powerful Multi-mask Image SynthesiS (MISS) model that generates photo-realistic try-on results by introducing a new mask generation and selection mechanism . Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed OF-VTON significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods by mitigating the impact of occlusion problems. Our code is available at https://github.com/gxl-groups/OF-VTON .

A Comparison of Machine-Graded (ChatGPT) and Human-Graded Essay Scores in Veterinary Admissions

Admissions committees have historically emphasized cognitive measures, but a paradigm shift toward holistic reviews now places greater importance on non-cognitive skills. These holistic reviews may include personal statements, experiences, references, interviews, multiple mini-interviews, and situational judgment tests, often requiring substantial faculty resources. Leveraging advances in artificial intelligence, particularly in natural language processing, this study was conducted to assess the agreement of essay scores graded by both humans and machines (OpenAI's ChatGPT). Correlations were calculated among these scores and cognitive and non-cognitive measures in the admissions process. Human-derived scores from 778 applicants in 2021 and 552 in 2022 had item-specific inter-rater reliabilities ranging from 0.07 to 0.41, while machine-derived inter-replicate reliabilities ranged from 0.41 to 0.61. Pairwise correlations between human- and machine-derived essay scores and other admissions criteria revealed moderate correlations between the two scoring methods (0.41) and fair correlations between the essays and the multiple mini-interview (0.20 and 0.22 for human and machine scores, respectively). Despite having very low correlations, machine-graded scores exhibited slightly stronger correlations with cognitive measures (0.10 to 0.15) compared to human-graded scores (0.01 to 0.02). Importantly, machine scores demonstrated higher precision, approximately two to three times greater than human scores in both years. This study emphasizes the importance of careful item design, rubric development, and prompt formulation when using machine-based essay grading. It also underscores the importance of employing replicates and robust statistical analyses to ensure equitable applicant ranking when integrating machine grading into the admissions process.

An increasing proportion of the population is not covered by the current RDA for vitamin C – interrogation of EPIC-Norfolk and NHANES 2017/2018 cohorts

With the rising prevalence of obesity globally, increasing proportions of the population may not be covered by current recommended daily allowances (RDAs) that are supposed to provide 97.5% of the population with a sufficient nutrient status but are typically based on a healthy young 70 kg male reference person. Using the EPIC-Norfolk (UK) and the NHANES (US) cohorts, we estimated the effect of body weight on the dose-concentration relationship to derive weight-based requirements to achieve an ‘adequate’ plasma concentration of vitamin C estimated to be 50 µmol/L. Inverse correlations between body weight and vitamin C were observed in both cohorts (p < 0.0001). Moreover, only about 2/3 of the cohorts achieved an adequate plasma vitamin C status by consuming the RDA or above, while only 1/3 to 1/2 of the cohorts achieved adequacy by an intake of the local RDA ± 10%. Using vitamin C as an example, the present data demonstrate that a considerable and expectedly increasing proportion of the world population is unable to achieve an adequate target plasma concentration with the current recommended daily intakes of vitamin C. This needs to be considered in future public health recommendations.

WaRENet: A Novel Urban Waterlogging Risk Evaluation Network

In this article, we propose a novel urban waterlogging risk evaluation network (WaRENet) to evaluate the risk of waterlogging. The WaRENet distinguishes whether an urban image involves waterlogging by classification module, and estimates the waterlogging risk levels by multi-class reference objects detection module (MCROD). First, in the waterlogging scene classification, ResNet combined with Se-block is used to identify the waterlogging scene, and lightweight gradient-weighted class activation mapping (Grad-CAM) is also integrated to roughly locate overall waterlogging areas with low computational burden. Second, in the MCROD module, we detect reference objects, e.g., cars and persons in waterlogging scenes. The positional relationship between water depths and reference objects serves as risk indicators for accurately evaluating waterlogging risk. Specifically, we incorporate switchable atrous convolution (SAC) into YOLOv5 to solve occlusions and varying scales problems in complex waterlogging scenes. Moreover, we construct a large-scale urban waterlogging dataset called UrbanWaterloggingRiskDataset (UWRDataset) with 6,351 images for waterlogging scene classification and 3,217 images for reference objects detection. Experimental results on the dataset show that our WaRENet outperforms all comparison methods. The waterlogging scene classification module achieves accuracy of 95.99%. The MCROD module obtains mAP of 54.9%, while maintaining a high processing speed of 70.04 fps.

Person Reference and a Preference for Association in Emergency Calls

ABSTRACT Person reference is pervasive in talk. Conversation analytic work has identified preferences in person reference relating to recognitional reference. However, the principles shaping nonrecognitional reference are less well understood. We propose a preference for association in an institutional setting in which recognition is not relevant. Our data are calls to the New Zealand police emergency line that were institutionally classified as family harm. Using a collection methodology, we found that nonrecognitional person reference typically takes the form my x which directly associates speaker and referent, for example, “my partner,” “my ex-partner,” “my dad.” Initial references that suggest no association (e.g. “someone” or “an abusive guy”) were subsequently revised by callers using self-repair or targeted by call takers through questions that seek clarification about association. The shifts from nonassociative to associative references demonstrate participants’ orientations to the relevance of association and are evidence of a preference for association in the setting under examination. Data are in English.

Strategy formulation to support automation and digitalization initiative: A case study of an aerospace component manufacturer in Indonesia

Purpose: Strategy formulation is part of organization design study to evaluate decision thoroughly, then enable organization to achieve company goal. This study aims to formulate strategy of automation and digitalization for PT XYZ, to be ready for welcoming future growth of demand by maintain competitive cost within the same industry. Method: The study collects primary data from focus group discussion with selected participant of PT XYZ, located in Bandung, Indonesia, with participant selection based on information rich person reference. Data collection and analysis utilize qualitative and quantitative approach, and utilize three steps of strategy formulation (input stage, matching stage and decision stage). Results: Strategy formulation steps as per theory, applicable to finalize strategy to support industry 4.0 transformation at PT XYZ. Focus Group Discussion able to collect organization aspiration, to ensure strategy will align to company objective. Combine steps with latest internal and external factor analysis method, such as PESTLE (Political Economy Social Technological Environment), VRIO (Value Rarity InImitable Organize), Porter Value Chain analysis and QSPM (Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix) help broaden the perspective of the participant during discussion. The study resulted eight strategies, which then simplified by data reduction approach to be four. A decision of sequence implementation also agreed during focus group discussion with participants. Contributions: By conducting this study, author expect it will prove the practical implementation of strategy formulation in industry 4.0 transformation for aerospace industry in Indonesia and Asia.