Personal Training Research Articles

An Exploration of Placement Travel and Accommodation Issues for Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Profession Students, Universities, and Practice Educators

Travel and accommodation challenges for student’s access to pre-registration learning environments were explored through a National Health Service England (NHSE) funded project. This was hosted by XXXX Community Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust covering the XXXXX Integrated Care Board (ICB) area. A mixed methods service evaluation was used, using three cross-sectional surveys to discover local university placement teams, practice education facilitators and practice educators and nursing, midwifery and allied health profession student views on placement transport and accommodation challenges. One student focus group was also held to explore issues in more depth. Stakeholder participants described a range of transport and accommodation concerns, including student personal safety, transport routes, timetable challenges, financial and health burdens, and working to fixed shift patterns. Recommendations for practice include flexible shift patterns, car use guidance, free car parking, personal safety training, provision of overnight accommodation to protect wellbeing, and placement costs paid in advance. The project identified the need for a greater range of bus routes from transport providers, plus consideration for a university minibus service to reach rural community settings. The findings from this study will support placement providers and universities to maximise placement opportunities and will improve the student experience across the ICB setting. The results are applicable to other regions.

ВИКРИВАЧ ЯК СУБ’ЄКТ КРИМІНАЛЬНОГО ПРОВАДЖЕННЯ У КРИМІНАЛЬНИХ ПРАВОПОРУШЕННЯХ, ПОВ’ЯЗАНИХ ЗІ ЗБУТОМ НАРКОТИЧНИХ ЗАСОБІВ

One of the key directions in the fight against illegal drug trafficking in Ukraine is the activity of law enforcement agencies, which should be focused on identifying offenders and bringing them to justice. The increase in the number of registered criminal offenses related to the sale of narcotics, as well as the high level of training of persons engaged in this illegal activity, require significant changes in the work of law enforcement agencies. In order to effectively expose such persons, it is necessary to introduce new strategies and approaches to their activities. One of these changes should be the emergence of a whistleblower as a subject of criminal proceedings in the investigated category of offenses. The article examines the role and importance of the whistleblower in criminal proceedings related to the illegal sale of narcotics. It was found that the appearance of this subject in criminal proceedings related to the illegal circulation of narcotics would significantly increase the activity of law enforcement agencies in exposing persons engaged in the sale of prohibited substances. It has been established that the effectiveness of whistleblowers’ activities will primarily depend on the extent to which the state will be able to create appropriate conditions for their cooperation with law enforcement agencies. This involves providing security guarantees, rewards and legal protection for those who provide important information on drug trafficking. In addition, special attention is paid in the study to the rights and guarantees of whistleblowers. Also, a comparison of the guarantees of state protection of whistleblowers and their legal status with whistleblowers in corruption criminal offenses was carried out. It was found that the guarantees for whistleblowers in cases of criminal offenses related to the sale of narcotic drugs are identical to those used in corruption crimes, since these categories of offenses are similar in terms of detection and proof methods. However, a characteristic difference is the issue of remuneration for whistleblowers. Based on the results of the research, relevant conclusions were drawn, and changes to the legislation of Ukraine were proposed. Key words: whistleblower, evidence, pretrial investigation, sale of narcotics, crime prevention, criminal proceedings, criminal offense, drug addiction.

Behavioral Insights into Farmers Adoption of Improved Rapeseed-mustard Cultivation Practices in North Bank Plain Zone of Assam, India

The study examines the adoption behavior of farmers regarding improved rapeseed-mustard cultivation practices in the North Bank Plain Zone of Assam. The primary objective was to analyze the socio-economic factors and adoption levels associated with technological interventions in rapeseed-mustard farming. A purposive simple random sampling method was employed, selecting 240 respondents from four districts. Data were collected using pre-tested interview schedule and analyzed using statistical tools such as frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and correlation coefficient. Results revealed that 67.50 per cent of farmers demonstrated a medium level of adoption, while 21.67 per cent had a high adoption level. Socio-economic factors such as age, education, landholding, annual income, mass media exposure, and risk-bearing ability significantly influenced adoption behavior. Farmers with higher risk-bearing ability (42.92%) and medium to high achievement motivation (70.83%) adopted practices more effectively. Key barriers included inadequate awareness of advanced techniques and limited resources. The findings suggest that targeted extension services like delivering personalized advice, training, and resources that address the specific challenges faced by farmers in adopting improved practices of this crop, knowledge dissemination, and access to resources can enhance adoption levels. Encouraging risk-taking and achievement motivation through capacity-building programs can further improve the adoption of improved cultivation practices.

Strategy and Tactics for Introducing Generative Artificial Intelligence into the Instrumental Distance Learning System DL.GSU.BY

This paper provides the strategy and tactics for introducing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into the instrumental distance learning system DL.GSU.BY. The strategy consists of sequential implementation of the following stages of development: creating opportunities for convenient work with GenAI in the DL system; launching electronic GenAI students to automatically complete training courses in the DL system and comparative analysis of the achievements of various GenAI among themselves and with real students; accumulation and dissemination of studentsʼ experience working with GenAI; improving the quality of training using GenAI by developing a system of preprompts for tasks and subjects; further personalization of training through the implementation of advanced techniques for using GenAI (active GenAI, Learning by Teaching). GenAI implementation tactics consistently and in details describe practical steps to implement the strategy.

Improving the Competence of Writing Scientific Papers for Family Planning Field Workers Through the Reverse Writing Method and Socio Emotional Franchising

The aim of this research is to find a writing training pattern that makes it easier for Indonesian Family Planning Field Workers and raises motivation to write, which can have an impact on the lack of results in the form of writing from Family Planning Field Workers. This research uses a mix method with research and development, namely the ADDIE method. Researchers developed online training using “writing with the reverse method” for Indonesian family planning field workers and became a solution for initiative during activities and post pandemic COVID-19 by establishing good collaboration with the population and family planning training center. The output of the innovation is in the form of three printed books, a Copyright certificate for the book Population Education and Family Planning, training tools in the form of the scientific writing training curriculum, training modules, teaching materials, broadcast materials and also learning designs as well as a Memorandum of Understanding between the training and publishing partners and private training providers. The conclusion of this research is that there is an increase in the writing skills of family planning instructors by 87% with the output in the form of participants’ written works. With the concept of mutual benefit and inclusion, it is hoped that this networking activity in improving family planning field workers writing competency will be a means for Indonesian family planning and population Board employees to grow together. It is recommended that this activity be sustainable and have more leverage in the future.

Environmental and personal factors that influence gym members with disabilities

Individuals with disabilities (IWD) are at increased risk for chronic health conditions. Much of this risk can be countered through exercise, yet most IWD do not achieve enough exercise to meet recommended guidelines. IWD exercise in gyms; however, barriers to gym-based exercise exist. Utilizing The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF), this study explored environmental and personal factors that serve as barriers and facilitators to gym-based exercise among IWD from the perspective of those surpassing, meeting, and partially meeting the USDHHS physical activity guidelines. Ten participants (N = 10) with a range of disabilities were interviewed. Thirteen base questions focused on their experiences with their gym’s class offerings, environment, communities, and staff members. A thematic analysis was employed. Three themes emerged: environmental and personal factors intersect to mold IWD gym interactions, factors influencing gym use by IWD extended beyond gym design, and personal trainers need special training but should not apply special treatment when working with IWD. Further research is needed by health-behavior researchers to better understand personal factors that differ between IWD and where to intervene within gym environments.

Guidance on the assessment of learning outcomes for those designing procedures and projects - Report of an ETPLAS Working Group.

This document provides assessment criteria for evaluation of each of the Learning Outcomes of the Modules specified (in addition to the Core Modules) for those designing procedures and projects in the Education and Training Framework guidance document by the European Commission and endorsed by the Member States Competent Authorities. This Working Group was tasked to produce these criteria by the Education & Training Platform for Laboratory Animal Science, which was funded by the European Commission to this aim. The assessment criteria address knowledge and skills (including critical thinking) expected to be acquired during education and training of persons preparing to design research procedures and projects using animals under the scope of Directive 2010/63/EU. Recognizing the diversity of expertise and experiences of those being educated and trained, we provide two levels of attainment, an ideal response and one that would be acceptable for each Learning Outcome. The balance between ideal and acceptable could be decided by the particular course providers and/or assessors, according to their local requirements. We envisage that the use of these assessment criteria by training providers and accrediting or approving bodies will help harmonize the education and training for those who will design procedures and projects using animals for scientific purposes. In Europe, this may also contribute to mutual recognition of training, and facilitate free movement of scientists.

Development of an Education and Training Program for New Intensive Care Unit Staff: Ladders to Success

The nursing manpower shortage intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, inadequate clinical internship durations during this period led to recent nursing graduates reflecting insufficient clinical skills. These issues, coupled with the inherent complexity of work in intensive care units (ICUs), have increased stress and decreased self-confidence among new staff, leading to higher turnover rates. This study was designed to develop and then evaluate the effectiveness of a tailored ladderized training program for improving clinical care skills and self-confidence in new ICU staff. An individualized ladderized training program for new staff was developed based on the conceptual PDDRO (plan, design, do, review, outcome) framework. In addition to the program, a 3-stage critical care training regimen was implemented to strengthen technical, physical assessment and judgment, and communication and teamwork skills. A multivariate evaluation approach was employed to evaluate the level to which participants improved in terms of clinical skills and self-confidence, and a competency-related personalized training model was used to guide their progress until all of the training goals were achieved. Fifty new staff members completed the 3-stage critical care training program. In terms of program effectiveness, mean scores increased from 79.3 (pretest) to 92.3 (posttest) for awareness and 1.69 to 2.53 for work competency self-confidence. These increases were significant, and indicated the participants had collectively improved from "some self-confidence" to "a lot of self-confidence". Moreover, the retention rate of new staff increased from 75% before the intervention to 84% afterward. Interviews with the participants found the program had improved their mastery of clinical care skills and confidence in their future ability to perform care tasks. Advance implementation of ladderized training can facilitate the establishment of a new nursing staff training system in hospitals to improve the post-pandemic recovery and reconstruction of nursing manpower systems in Taiwan. This program may serve as a successful model for training new staff and retaining human resources as part of the ongoing effort to promote a stable and high-quality workplace environment for nurses.

Gradient Inversion Attacks: Impact Factors Analyses and Privacy Enhancement.

Gradient inversion attacks (GIAs) have posed significant challenges to the emerging paradigm of distributed learning, which aims to reconstruct the private training data of clients (participating parties in distributed training) through the shared parameters. For counteracting GIAs, a large number of privacy-preserving methods for distributed learning scenario have emerged. However, these methods have significant limitations, either compromising the usability of global model or consuming substantial additional computational resources. Furthermore, despite the extensive efforts dedicated to defense methods, the underlying causes of data leakage in distributed learning still have not been thoroughly investigated. Therefore, this paper tries to reveal the potential reasons behind the successful implementation of existing GIAs, explore variations in the robustness of models against GIAs during the training process, and investigate the impact of different model structures on attack performance. After these explorations and analyses, this paper propose a plug-and-play GIAs defense method, which augments the training data by a designed vicinal distribution. Sufficient empirical experiments demonstrate that this easy-to-implement method can ensure the basic level of privacy without compromising the usability of global model.

The Relationship between Service Quality Perceived by Users of Personal Training Senters, Conversion Barriers and Customer Satisfaction

The Relationship between Service Quality Perceived by Users of Personal Training Senters, Conversion Barriers and Customer Satisfaction

The impact of neoliberalist government reform and regulatory oversight on private training providers in the UK technical education sector

PurposeAdopting the lens of ambidexterity, this paper examines decision-making within private technical education providers as they attempt to meet workforce and UK government training demands against a backdrop of unprecedented pace of global change in technology.Design/methodology/approachQualitative data, drawn from semi-structured interviews of participants within a private training provider, was analysed thematically to investigate common patterns, clarify understanding and identify development areas to inform government bodies and private provider apprenticeship delivery practices.FindingsThe findings reveal the extent to which neoliberalism is potentially undermining technical education reform and increasing regulation whilst decreasing trust and reducing authentic partnerships between key stakeholders, together negatively impacting ambidextrous decision-making.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is limited by the use of a monolingual, monocultural sample; therefore, a broader cross-section of respondents from a wider range, size and geographical location of training providers may result in a deeper understanding of the varying tensions and challenges associated with technical education reform.Practical implicationsThis work seeks to inform policymakers of the wider consequences of neoliberalism and provide recommendations for government bodies and technical training providers to work collaboratively in seeking solutions to the barriers in delivering vocational training fit for a future-proof workforce.Originality/valueThis paper builds on a limited body of research examining the dual impact of once in a lifetime technological challenges and the consequence of neoliberalism upon ambidextrous decision-making within private providers of post-16 technical education.

A Review of Gait Coordination Control Methods for Lower Limb Exoskeleton Robots Based on Visual Models

The ongoing evolution of exoskeleton technology has rendered the exclusive reliance on a single vision technology an impractical approach to addressing the complexities of diverse environments and individual requirements. This paper therefore explores the potential of combining traditional visual models with movement intention prediction based on surface electromyography (sEMG) and virtual reality (VR) technology in the context of gait control. The study concluded that traditional visual models are capable of providing accurate environmental perception and gait planning; however, they are deficient in forecasting user intentions. Surface electromyography (sEMG) technology can supplement this deficiency with muscle activity signals, enabling the system to respond dynamically to user needs. Concurrently, virtual reality (VR) technology furnishes users with a more personalized training program through immersive environmental simulation and feedback. The combination of these three technologies not only enhances the system's real-time responsiveness but also exhibits commendable adaptability in complex terrain and rehabilitation training. This paper examines the three fundamental technologies of lower limb exoskeleton robots in gait control and their fusion applications, with the objective of enhancing the system's intelligence and adaptability, providing a direction for the future development of lower limb exoskeleton technology, and highlighting the challenges and potential of multimodal data fusion and computational optimisation.

Research on the promotion effect of personalized training program based on biomechanics on the physical health of college students

Biomechanics-based personalized training programs can significantly improve physical health among college students, but there is limited evidence on how these programs affect spinal twist stretch function and overall health, despite previous research demonstrating the potential benefits of such programs. In this study, the influence of a biomechanics-based personalized training program investigates the physical health of a college student population. This study involved 68 college students, divided into two groups: 34 participants undergoing a personalized biomechanics-based training program (Group A) and 34 participants following a standard exercise regimen (Group B). The training program included exercises designed to enhance spinal twist stretch activation and stability. The participants’ core muscle activation was recorded through EMG from rhomboids, latissimus dorsi, and external obliques, while kinematic data were obtained from a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The assessments were done pre and post-8-week structured nutrition and physical activity modification period. These data are stimulated using SPSS, to compare pre and post-test measurements within each group and to determine the differences between spinal twist stretch and global physical health gains using paired t-tests, analyze of variance (ANOVA) descriptive statistics, and correlation analysis. The result demonstrated that Group A significantly improved spinal twists, stretch, and physical health among college students. Exercises targeting specific biomechanical principles exhibited more pronounced spinal twist stretch activation. The program improved trunk stability and movement accuracy, with a moderate correlation between muscle activation and overall physical health improvements. This approach improved core stability and muscle function but also led to better overall health outcomes compared to standard exercise regimens.

A peer teaching module for medical residents on critical appraisal of medical articles: context and pilot testing

BackgroundThe ability of healthcare providers to access and use published research correctly is crucial for the quality of healthcare services, enabling selection of the most effective treatment modalities, and avoidance of medical errors. Physicians need strong critical appraisal (CA) skills to manage rapidly evolving medical knowledge.MethodsA standard peer-teaching module was prepared for medical residents on CA. The module included topic-specific educational materials, discussion articles, and question sets and was pilot-tested among medical residents, allowing for revisions based on participants’ feedback. Training module was prepared by a senior epidemiologist and a community medicine (public health) resident, based on the context of a similar graduate course; the resident underwent four months of personal training preceding the pilot testing, which was conducted as a 12-week program in September-November 2023, supervised by experts. Online training extended our reach to resident working nationwide. Recruitment was enabled via social media and various medical specialty organizations. Evaluations included initial, session-specific, and final tests for measuring progress in knowledge on CA, based on participants’ self-assessments, and external auditors’ scoring of the process.ResultsA total of 52 residents from 19 universities and nine specialty programs participated in pilot testing. Of these, 48 completed the program through the post-test, with 83% (n = 40) scoring above 65%, received a certificate of achievement. Median scores showed a 32% increase in knowledge, a 75% increase in confidence in CA skills, and a 50% decrease in stress-related to CA practice. Additionally, 82.5% (n = 33) of those who completed the module expressed interest in offering similar training sessions to their local peers.ConclusionThe online peer teaching of the CA module successfully increased participants’ knowledge and self-confidence in critical appraisal.Clinical trial numberNot applicable.

Science communicators, flat-eathers, or fitness coaches: who is citing scientific publications in youtube video descriptions?

Science communicators, flat-eathers, or fitness coaches: who is citing scientific publications in youtube video descriptions?

Diagnostic Accuracy and Safety of Endoscopic – Guided Office-Based Biopsies for Laryngeal and Pharyngeal Lesions at St. Luke’s Medical Center

Objective: To determine the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and safety of endoscopic guided office-based biopsies (OBB) in diagnosing laryngeal and pharyngeal neoplasms at the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City and Global City. Methods:Design: Diagnostic Accuracy StudySetting: Two Tertiary Private Training HospitalsParticipants: Records of patients with pharyngeal and laryngeal lesions who underwent endoscopic-guided OBB were included in the study describing safety. Only patients with subsequent operative biopsies were included in assessing diagnostic accuracy. Results: Thirty-six (36) patients were included: 28 (77.78%) males and 8 (22.22%) females, with median age of 61.5 (IQR 52-73 years). Nearly half (16/36; 44.44%) of the office-based biopsies yielded malignant histopathology results, 19.44% had high grade dysplasia while 36.11% had benign findings. Of 10 patients with operative biopsy for definitive diagnosis, 8 were correctly diagnosed with carcinoma while one had a change in diagnosis from benign to malignant. Office based biopsy was well tolerated and had no complications reported. Overall, the sensitivity of OBB in predicting malignancy was 88.89%, specificity was 100%, positive predictive value was 100%, and negative predictive value was 50%. Conclusion: Office-based biopsy is an accurate, reliable and safe modality for screening suspicious pharyngeal and laryngeal neoplasms, and may be part of routine screening during initial endoscopy among selected patients with suspicious pharyngeal and laryngeal neoplasms. Further investigation and larger population studies may provide more robust insights on effectiveness and safety of office-based biopsy in diagnosis of pharyngeal and laryngeal neoplasms.

Federated Learning: A Comparative Study of Defenses Against Poisoning Attacks

Federated learning is a new paradigm where multiple data owners, referred to as clients, work together with a global server to train a shared machine learning model without disclosing their personal training data. Despite its many advantages, the system is vulnerable to client compromise by malicious agents attempting to modify the global model. Several defense algorithms against untargeted and targeted poisoning attacks on model updates in federated learning have been proposed and evaluated separately. This paper compares the performances of six state-of-the art defense algorithms—PCA + K-Means, KPCA + K-Means, CONTRA, KRUM, COOMED, and RPCA + PCA + K-Means. We explore a variety of situations not considered in the original papers. These include varying the percentage of Independent and Identically Distributed (IID) data, the number of clients, and the percentage of malicious clients. This comprehensive performance study provides the results that the users can use to select appropriate defense algorithms to employ based on the characteristics of their federated learning systems.

Toward Improving Human Training by Combining Wearable Full-Body IoT Sensors and Machine Learning.

This paper proposes DigitalUpSkilling, a novel IoT- and AI-based framework for improving and personalising the training of workers who are involved in physical-labour-intensive jobs. DigitalUpSkilling uses wearable IoT sensors to observe how individuals perform work activities. Such sensor observations are continuously processed to synthesise an avatar-like kinematic model for each worker who is being trained, referred to as the worker's digital twins. The framework incorporates novel work activity recognition using generative adversarial network (GAN) and machine learning (ML) models for recognising the types and sequences of work activities by analysing an individual's kinematic model. Finally, the development of skill proficiency ML is proposed to evaluate each trainee's proficiency in work activities and the overall task. To illustrate DigitalUpSkilling from wearable IoT-sensor-driven kinematic models to GAN-ML models for work activity recognition and skill proficiency assessment, the paper presents a comprehensive study on how specific meat processing activities in a real-world work environment can be recognised and assessed. In the study, DigitalUpSkilling achieved 99% accuracy in recognising specific work activities performed by meat workers. The study also presents an evaluation of the proficiency of workers by comparing kinematic data from trainees performing work activities. The proposed DigitalUpSkilling framework lays the foundation for next-generation digital personalised training.

Privacy preserving large language models: ChatGPT case study based vision and framework

AbstractThe generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools based on Large Language Models (LLMs) use billions of parameters to extensively analyse large datasets and extract critical information such as context, specific details, identifying information, use this information in the training process, and generate responses for the requested queries. The extracted data also contain sensitive information, seriously threatening user privacy and reluctance to use such tools. This article proposes the conceptual model called PrivChatGPT, a privacy‐preserving model for LLMs consisting of two main components, that is, preserving user privacy during the data curation/pre‐processing and preserving private context and the private training process for large‐scale data. To demonstrate the applicability of PrivChatGPT, it is shown how a private mechanism could be integrated into the existing model for training LLMs to protect user privacy; specifically, differential privacy and private training using Reinforcement Learning (RL) were employed. The privacy level probabilities are associated with the document contents, including the private contextual information, and with metadata, which is used to evaluate the disclosure probability loss for an individual's private information. The privacy loss is measured and the measure of uncertainty or randomness is evaluated using entropy once differential privacy is applied. It recursively evaluates the level of privacy guarantees and the uncertainty of public databases and resources during each update when new information is added for training purposes. To critically evaluate the use of differential privacy for private LLMs, other mechanisms were hypothetically compared such as Blockchain, private information retrieval, randomisation, obfuscation, anonymisation, and the use of Tor for various performance measures such as the model performance and accuracy, computational complexity, privacy vs. utility, training latency, vulnerability to attacks, and resource consumption. It is concluded that differential privacy, randomisation, and obfuscation can impact the training models' utility and performance; conversely, using Tor, Blockchain, and Private Information Retrieval (PIR) may introduce additional computational complexity and high training latency. It is believed that the proposed model could be used as a benchmark for privacy‐preserving LLMs for generative AI tools.

BN SO55 - Rare case of Ectopic pancreatitis in stomach and its Surgical Management

Abstract Background This presentation covers the case of Mr. D, a 38-year-old male who presented with upper abdominal pain and vomiting, initially treated as gastritis but later developing more complex symptoms. This case highlights the diagnostic challenges and management of ectopic pancreatitis, a rare condition characterized by pancreatic tissue located outside its usual anatomical position.Mr. D, a personal trainer with a history of asthma and Meckel's diverticulum excision, experienced recurring epigastric pain, bloating, and early satiety. His pain was particularly related to eating, fasting and often disrupted his sleep. Despite treatment with proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), his symptoms persisted, prompting further investigation Method Initial investigations including ultrasound, chest X-ray, and ECG showed no significant abnormalities. However, subsequent gastroscopy and CT scans suggested a gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), leading to referral for endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) and biopsy. The findings indicated a highly vascular, mixed echogenic lesion in the submucosa, likely a GIST, but initial biopsies were inconclusive Results Following conservative treatment, Mr. D's inflammation significantly reduced, though he experienced recurrent pain necessitating surgical intervention. Diagnostic laparoscopy and gastroscopy revealed extensive adhesions and an inflammatory mass. The patient underwent a pyloric-preserving sleeve gastrectomy, with histology confirming pancreatic heterotopia with inflammation and cystic degeneration. Post-operatively, Mr. D initially struggled with dietary intake but improved over time, tolerating a solid diet by the last follow-up. Conclusion This case underscores the complexity of diagnosing and managing rare conditions like ectopic pancreatitis. It highlights the importance of a multidisciplinary approach and the potential need for surgical intervention when conservative management fails. The presentation aims to provide valuable insights into the diagnostic process, the role of MDT discussions, and the therapeutic challenges associated with ectopic pancreatitis.