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Internationally publicized cases of police violence against unarmed black men have led to calls for accountability in policing. Increased footage of police–public interactions, specifically through the form of police body-worn cameras (BWCs), is encouraged and considered an innovation that can improve the policing profession. However, BWC adoption is likely more feasible in big city departments than in small and rural departments, who respond to many of the same issues as their larger counterparts. The purpose of this study is to explore perceptions of BWC among leaders of small and rural police departments.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors surveyed 349 chiefs of small and rural Pennsylvania police departments and conducted qualitative follow-up interviews with 53 chiefs.

The results indicate that both adopters and non-adopters esteem BWC in a positive light, particularly toward the ability to improve professionalism and police–community relations. Other findings and implications of these results will be discussed.

This study focuses on small and rural police departments, which make up the majority of police departments but are often understudied.

The proliferation of recording technologies has increased the prevalence of police intervention videos in news media. Although previous research has explored the influence of such coverage on public opinion, the mechanisms underlying this impact have received limited attention. This study investigates the role of information credibility in the assessment of police interventions portrayed in news media videos.

A total of 634 participants were shown a mock-up TV news report that included a description and a brief clip of a police use-of-force event. A survey was conducted before and after the presentation of the report.

Camera perspective, anchor tone, viewer gender and pre-existing perceived TV news credibility were found to influence how credible the mock-up news report was perceived. Participants who judged the news report as complete and credible tended to have a more favourable opinion of the police intervention. Perceived credibility also acted as a moderator in the relationship between video and receiver characteristics and the assessment of the police intervention.

These findings offer valuable insights for law enforcement agencies and their public affairs units to develop effective strategies for managing public opinion.

This research highlights how important perceived credibility is in influencing public opinion and how different factors such as video and receiver characteristics can impact credibility assessment.

An increasing aging population and an increasing number of people suffering from musculoskeletal disorders have increased the demand for wearable robots. Comfortable, wearable robots that can be worn like clothing are currently being investigated. However, the embedded components may be displaced owing to the flexibility of the fabrics, which can lower the sensing accuracy and limit natural body movements. This study aims to develop clothing-type wearable platforms to minimize the displacement of embedded components such as sensors and actuators while maintaining comfort.

Four designs were developed using materials with different seam lines, that can serve as anchoring details, and flatlock stitches considering body movements and musculoskeletal structures. The wear evaluation experiment was filmed using a speed camera and analyzed using the TimeViewer software and SPSS 26.0. Based on these results, four clothing-type wearable platform designs were developed.

The variation in the location of a point in the armhole among the designs was marginal. Participants were satisfied with the functionality, practicality, wearability, efficiency and ease of use of the developed designs. A final clothing-type wearable platform was developed by applying a design with the least change in location, a suitable design for each area and wear comfort.

The results of this study contribute to the development of wearable robots by establishing clothing design data to minimize changes in sensor and actuator movements.

This study explores how police culture is experienced by women officers serving in positions where they are significantly underrepresented (i.e. leadership and elite specialty units) and the environmental factors that shape these experiences.

A qualitative analysis of transcripts from interviews with 71 women serving in male-dominated roles was conducted (N = 39 ranking women; N = 32 women on elite units).

Participants described five occupational, organizational and assignment-level factors that shaped their workplace experiences. While some contextual forces at play are similar for women working patrol (e.g. traditional police culture, the underrepresentation of women in law enforcement) unique position-level factors were also identified (e.g. the high-risk and consequential nature of the work).

While the cultural environment for women patrol officers has improved in the past few decades, the same cannot be said for women working in positions that are still dominated by men. More attention to this area of policing is needed to ensure gender diversity is achieved throughout organizations and not only in positions deemed suitable for women.

The study extends research on women in policing beyond the focus on patrol. Further, it explores the assignment- and rank-based perspectives of police culture, which are largely absent from the literature.

This study aims to develop a safe, wearable clothing system that combines visibility-enhancing and emergency–accident-responding functions for two-wheeled vehicle (TWV) users' safety assistance.

First, the wearable system (WS) allowing users to control turn signals, brake lights and emergency flasher only with head movements was developed. Second, multiconnected systems were developed between WSs and a smartphone application (AS), providing accident occurrence recognition, driving photo capture–storage and emergency notification functions. Third, usability testing in each function was performed to assess the operability of the systems.

The intuitive interface, which uses head movement as gesture commands, was effectively operated for controlling turn signals, brake lights and emergency flasher when driving, despite differences in user physique and boarding structure among TWVs. In addition, using Bluetooth low energy and Wi-Fi protocols simultaneously can establish automatic accident recognition–notification and driving photo capture–storage–display functions by linking two WSs with one AS.

This study presents a case using relatively accessible technologies within the fashion industry to improve users' safety and provide fundamental data for convergence education for smart fashion products, highlighting the significance of this study in this convergence era.

The WSs and the AS of a TWV user visually evoke the attention of other drivers and pedestrians, reducing the risk of accidents; social contribution regarding public safety will be possible by allowing the system to autonomously inform emergencies and receive emergency medical treatment quickly when the accident occurred.

Devices for step estimation are body-worn devices used to compute steps taken and/or distance covered by the user. Even though textiles or clothing are foremost to come to mind in terms of articles meant to be worn, their prominence among devices and systems meant for cadence is overshadowed by electronic products such as accelerometers, wristbands and smart phones. Athletes and sports enthusiasts using knee sleeves should be able to track their performances and monitor workout progress without the need to carry other devices with no direct sport utility, such as wristbands and wearable accelerometers. The purpose of this study thus is to contribute to the broad area of wearable devices for cadence application by developing a cheap but effective and efficient stride measurement system based on a knee sleeve.

A textile strain sensor is designed by weft knitting silver-plated nylon yarn together with nylon DTY and covered elastic yarn using a 1 × 1 rib structure. The area occupied by the silver-plated yarn within the structure served as the strain sensor. It worked such that, upon being subjected to stress, the electrical resistance of the sensor increases and in turn, is restored when the stress is removed. The strip with the sensor is knitted separately and subsequently sewn to the knee sleeve. The knee sleeve is then connected to a custom-made signal acquisition and processing system. A volunteer was employed for a wearer trial.

Experimental results establish that the number of strides taken by the wearer can easily be correlated to the knee flexion and extension cycles of the wearer. The number of peaks computed by the signal acquisition and processing system is therefore counted to represent stride per minute. Therefore, the sensor is able to effectively count the number of strides taken by the user per minute. The coefficient of variation of over-ground test results yielded 0.03%, and stair climbing also obtained 0.14%, an indication of very high sensor repeatability.

The study was conducted using limited number of volunteers for the wearer trials.

By embedding textile piezoresistive sensors in some specific garments and or accessories, physical activity such as gait and its related data can be effectively measured.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of piezoresistive sensing in the knee sleeve for stride estimation. Also, this study establishes that it is possible to attach (sew) already-knit textile strain sensors to apparel to effectuate smart functionality.

This paper reviews the pros and cons of different parametric modeling methods, which can provide a theoretical reference for parametric reconstruction of 3D human body models for virtual fitting.

In this study, we briefly analyze the mainstream datasets of models of the human body used in the area to provide a foundation for parametric methods of such reconstruction. We then analyze and compare parametric methods of reconstruction based on their use of the following forms of input data: point cloud data, image contours, sizes of features and points representing the joints. Finally, we summarize the advantages and problems of each method as well as the current challenges to the use of parametric modeling in virtual fitting and the opportunities provided by it.

Considering the aspects of integrity and accurate of representations of the shape and posture of the body, and the efficiency of the calculation of the requisite parameters, the reconstruction method of human body by integrating orthogonal image contour morphological features, multifeature size constraints and joint point positioning can better represent human body shape, posture and personalized feature size and has higher research value.

This article obtains a research thinking for reconstructing a 3D model for virtual fitting that is based on three kinds of data, which is helpful for establishing personalized and high-precision human body models.

This chapter is dedicated to understanding the idea of international as a key notion to the development of globalisation and to promoting the rescaling of spaces and subjects in contemporary higher education. The author discusses the concept of scale as a performative device that activates the capacities of bodies. Instead of seeing scale as a naturalised and hierarchical structure of spatial distribution, the author understands it as an ensemble of discourses and practices that produce scalar effects. Globalisation uses scale to promote the idea that subjects would become ‘international’ by being linked to privileged spaces and bodies in the Global North. In this sense, globalisation is not merely about nodes where certain flows converge. Rather, the author understands it as the political conditions that control and constrain the space for certain flows to occur and not others. Using assemblage analysis, the author presents and analyses three scenes taken from his ethnographic records that have as a guiding line the materialisation of the international. These scenes report the experience of being a Latin American doctoral student attending a congress in the United States, a tense situation experienced at a Chilean university academic event, and the unpretentious manifestation of an elaborate idea of internationality from a personal experience of a trip to India. The results point to three elaborations of the international: an optimistic view of a shared world, a geopolitical internationality and the production of a global corporeality.

This chapter reports on research that explores new and emerging extended reality [XR] technologies and how they might provide opportunities to trial, investigate, and put into practice their potential to reverse processes of atomisation, polarisation, and intercultural discomfort, in our contemporary society. This transdisciplinary practice-led research was underpinned by disciplines of computer science and engineering, social sciences, history, diverse community economics, human ecology, and Indigenous psychology. The collaboration between these various disciplines with the Māori and non-Māori community members allowed researchers to understand current societal stressors, prioritise relationality, and explore our shared values in the creation of XR experiences for exhibition in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums [GLAM] sector.

A discursive design framework motivated, inspired, provoked, persuaded, and reminded inspiring collaborators, and visitors to the exhibitions, the value of (re)connecting with people and overcoming interracial awkwardness through these curated experiences. The XR technologies provided women a platform to discuss and reimagine first encounters between people from different cultural backgrounds. The technologies included a 180° stereoscopic projection, Common Sense, in which Māori Elder Irene Hancy shared her insight about social engagement and haptic HONGI in which visitors were greeted by a Māori woman Tania Remana via augmented reality. This research has been motivated by a desire to promote and support intercultural understanding in Aotearoa New Zealand, and it extends research by other non-Māori and Māori scholars.

At the moment, in terms of both research and commercial products, smart shoe technology and applications seem not to attract the same magnitude of attention compared to smart garments and other smart wearables such as wrist watches and wrist bands. The purpose of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by discussing issues regarding smart shoe sensing technologies, smart shoe sensor placements, factors that affect sensor placements and finally the areas of smart shoe applications.

Through a review of relevant literature, this study first and foremost attempts to explain what constitutes a smart shoe and subsequently discusses the current trends in smart shoe applications. Discussed in this study are relevant sensing technologies, sensor placement and areas of smart shoe applications.

This study outlined 13 important areas of smart shoe applications. It also uncovered that majority of smart shoe functionality are physical activity tracking, health rehabilitation and ambulation assistance for the blind. Also highlighted in this review are some of the bottlenecks of smart shoe development.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review paper focused on smart shoe applications, and therefore serves as an apt reference for researchers within the field of smart footwear.