Search results

Conceptual physical education (CPE) classes have been widely offered to promote a healthy lifestyle in higher education settings. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a CPE course on health-related fitness (HRF) levels among college freshmen.

A pre- and post-test research design was used. In total, 50 freshmen in a US university were enrolled in a 13-week CPE course. Their HRF levels were assessed by the Fitnessgram at the beginning and the end of the course.

Students significantly enhanced their aerobic capacity, upper-body muscle strength and endurance, abdominal muscle strength and endurance, and decreased body fat percentage. No significant improvement in flexibility was found among the total sample. However, non-kinesiology students significantly enhanced their flexibility while the opposite trend was found among kinesiology students. Female students reduced more body fat percentage, while male students increased their aerobic capacity more rapidly than their female counterparts.

The CPE course could yield significant improvement in HRF among freshmen, regardless of sex or major. Universities may consider offering CPE courses for all students and mandate such courses as a degree requirement.

This empirical study investigated HRF level changes that occurred after a CPE course intervention among college freshmen. Sex and major difference in HRF changes were revealed. The interventions included in the CPE course could help improve freshmen's HRF levels in future intervention programs in a similar setting.

Lesson study (LS) is generally regarded as a pathway for teachers' professional development and a method for teachers' instructional research. LS has been regarded as having the potential to drive large-scale reform but little is known about how it does so from a district level. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal how lesson study promote district education reform.

This study offers an in-depth case study of how District Y of Shanghai, China, took LS as the primary method in promoting its District Project of Building Curriculum Leadership in Schools. By analyzing the key project documents and achievements in project promotion, and interviews with the major Project leaders at District and school levels, this study explored the practice and impact of LS as a tool to promote district reform.

In the District Project, LS has been a medium to address each individual school's real problems of practice and turn them into reform vision and reform will in alignment with District goals. Five levels of school curriculum texts have been planned, designed, translated, implemented, reflected on, updated and mutually adjusted systematically through LS to ensure consistency in transforming District reform vision into classroom practice. Different models of teaching-research community building were found in sampled project schools and professional expertise was built with district support to promote reform. The curriculum leadership development through LS has shaped reform leader schools and formed a collection of LS exemplars circulated in schools as high-quality curriculum packages, which laid the foundation for district-wide reform.

The innovative practice of LS in China's education reform has expanded its reach from within one classroom to the entire district curriculum system and made it an important tool to drive large-school district-based education reform.

Financial stress has been found to contribute to mental health deterioration associated with job loss. This study examined whether specific types of income support programs (e.g., unemployment benefits and welfare) reduce the negative impacts of job loss on middle-aged women’s mental health in the United States. Two samples of women previously employed before their mental health assessments in their 40s and 50s were selected from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). We conducted regression analysis to predict their mental health scores using employment and income support program status. The model also controlled for baseline health before job loss, socioeconomic status, and demographic and family life characteristics. Compared to their continuously employed counterparts, 50 +  women who had job loss without unemployment benefits had significantly worse mental health. However, those receiving unemployment benefits did not have significantly worse mental health. Unemployment benefits’ ameliorating effect was not found in the 40 +  sample; and welfare programs did not have similar mental health effects. Our findings suggest that certain types of income support policies are beneficial to the mental health of certain cohorts of middle-aged women. For different groups of women, additional and alternative measures are needed to reduce the mental health damage of job loss.

This study examines how the structure of referent networks, or the social network defined by knowing others’ reward levels, affects perceptions of distributive justice. The homogeneity of rewards in the referent network, the amount of inequality in the referent network, and an individual’s reward level are all associated with distributive justice perceptions. Several moderating relationships are also examined.

We relied on data from a controlled laboratory experiment to test a series of theoretically derived hypotheses.

The study shows that several aspects about the structure of the referent network are important for shaping perceptions of distributive justice. Specifically, the reward heterogeneity and amount of inequality in the network are found to be negatively associated with distributive justice, while reward levels are found to be positively associated with distributive justice. Furthermore, the effect of reward levels on distributive justice is moderated by both (i) the presence of a referential standard for rewards and (ii) the amount of inequality in the network.

While being among the first studies to demonstrate effects of referent networks on perceptions of fairness, it is unclear how group memberships combine with referent network effects and which factors may blur these relationships in uncontrolled environments. Subsequent scholarship on the effect of referent networks on justice perceptions should leverage multiple data sources.

Research on the effects of referents on justice perceptions has focused on particular referent individuals. We recast this issue in terms of referent networks, which highlights the empirical reality that individuals have a variety of sources or alters which could operate as referents.

Due to the fierce market competition, many organizations seek global suppliers because of lower procurement costs and better product quality. However, selecting suitable global suppliers is one of the complicated decision-making tasks for decision-makers due to the involvement of various qualitative and quantitative factors. The primary purpose of this research is to design an integrated approach for global supplier selection and order allocation in the context of developing an environment-friendly supply chain under data uncertainty.

Initially, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) is used to calculate the selected criteria weights. After that, the weights obtained from FAHP are inserted into the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) to examine the performance of selected suppliers and determine their final ranks. Finally, the obtained results from FTOPSIS are incorporated into the multi-choice goal programming (MCGP) model, which involves multi-aspiration levels to allocate the optimal order quantity to the selected global suppliers.

A real-time case study of the automotive industry is presented to demonstrate the efficiency and practicality of the suggested approach. The case study and sensitivity analysis results show that the proposed model effectively tackles suppliers' evaluation and order allocation data uncertainty.

Incorporation of risks, environmental management and economic factors during global supplier selection in the automotive sector has not been given much attention in the past literature. So, this research aims to fulfill the gap by developing an integrated approach that can tackle data uncertainty effectively.

In the second half of 2003 and the first half of 2004, the Chinese Government adopted a moderately tight macroeconomic policy, which aroused widespread attention from home and abroad. This is because China's deepening of reform and openness has led to its increasing economic links with the outside world. Starting from analysing the characteristics of the Chinese economy in 2003, this article discusses the issue of contractive macroeconomic regulation. The article highlights that the growth of the Chinese economy in 2003 has two features. One is that China 's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) exceeded US$1 ,000, which indicates the Chinese economy may possibly maintain the momentum for rapid growth for a fairly long period. The second is that its year-to-year GDP growth reached 9.3 per cent, putting an end to the continual sliding trend of the economy between 1993 and 1999. It also put a stop to the Chinese economy's continual sluggish growth of between 7 and 8 per cent between 1998 and 2002, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. The Chinese economy has embarked on a fast track in the new round of the economic cycle. However, in the third and fourth quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004, China's GDP growth was as high as 9.6, 9.9 and 9.8 per cent, respectively, sparking a supply crisis in the coal, power, fuel and transportation sectors. As a result, important raw materials, such as steel and cement, faced a supply bottleneck and price inflation pressures intensified, Consequently, the Chinese Government, in a timely move, has adopted a moderately contractive macroeconomic policy to prevent the economy from fluctuating drastically and to avoid serious inflation to ensure a rapid, stable and sustainable economic growth. This is not only conducive to the growth of the country's economy itself, but also favorable for the development of the international trade and foreign investment in China.

This paper aims to answer questions pertinent to whether or not services provided by smart hotels are really what customers are looking for, as well as to ascertain what are some unintended experiences guests may encounter. In essence, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first in the field to acknowledge the paradox of smart service.

This inquiry adopts a qualitative approach with data-driven from online customer reviews and semistructured interviews. Thematic analysis was undertaken to interpret review comments.

Results point to a new phenomenon, which is coined as the smartness paradox. In particular, customers on one hand enjoy an array of smart-infused experiences that jointly offer patrons a sense of a futuristic lifestyle. On the other hand, smart devices superimpose a number of hindrances that bring guests dismay and annoyance.

This investigation brings smart service failure to the fore to highlight several key failure themes that could jeopardize the entire operation with debased customers’ satisfaction and loyalty inclination.

The smartness-paradox framework used in the present inquiry entails both approach and avoidance consequences customers enact depending on their smart experiences.

Due to the conflicts between left turn traffic and opposite straight-going traffic in urban traffic network, some of the traffic lanes cannot be used to discharge vehicles during its green phases and the intersection capacity can be greatly reduced. This study/paper aims to reduce the effect of conflicts and increase its capacity through the reasonable pre-signal phase time with the exchangeable lanes.

This paper took into consideration various influence factors to intersection capacity and formulated the capacity optimization model based on 0-1 mixed-integer programming model. This model is efficiently solved by standard branch-and-bound algorithms.

The authors took an intersection as an example and solved the optimal signal timing and entrance lane capacity via this model. Then, simulations were carried out to verify the effect of the exchangeable lanes strategy of this intersection through the simulation software VISSIM and take the traffic volume and delay as outputs, which indicated that this model has better performance.

The front-end control strategy can not only exploit the full potential of the intersection but also significantly improve the operational efficiency of the intersection. It plays a positive role in improving urban intersection congestion.

This paper aims to explore the adsorption kinetics of syringin from Syringa oblata Lindl. leaves on macroporous resin and develop an efficient, simple and recyclable technology for the separation and purification of syringin.

Static adsorption and desorption properties of six resins were tested to select a suitable resin for the purification of syringin. Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models were used to estimate the adsorption behavior of syringin on AB-8 resin. Breakthrough point and eluent volume were determined by dynamic adsorption and desorption tests. High-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry was applied to identify the syringin in the purified product [syringin product (SP)]. Antioxidant and antibacterial activities of SP in vitro were evaluated by free radical scavenging ability and biofilm formation inhibitory tests.

AB-8 exhibited the most suitable adsorption and desorption capacity. Adsorption isotherm parameters indicated favorable adsorption between AB-8 and syringin. The optimal results were as follows: for adsorption, the sample concentration was 1.85 mg/mL, the sample volume was 3.5 bed volume (BV), the flow rate was 0.5 mL/min; for desorption, the ethanol concentration was 70%, the elution volume was 2.5 BV, the elution velocity was 1.0 mL/min. SP with 80.28% syringin displayed the potent antioxidant activities and inhibitory effects on biofilm formation of Streptococcus suis.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, there are no reports on purifying syringin from Syringa oblata Lindl. leaves using macroporous resins. This paper may also provide a theoretical reference for the purification of other phenylpropanoid glucosides.

Fixed mode noise and random mode noise always exist in the image sensor, which affects the imaging quality of the image sensor. The charge diffusion and color mixing between pixels in the photoelectric conversion process belong to fixed mode noise. This study aims to improve the image sensor imaging quality by processing the fixed mode noise.

Through an iterative training of an ergoable long- and short-term memory recurrent neural network model, the authors obtain a neural network model able to compensate for image noise crosstalk. To overcome the lack of differences in the same color pixels on each template of the image sensor under flat-field light, the data before and after compensation were used as a new data set to further train the neural network iteratively.

The comparison of the images compensated by the two sets of neural network models shows that the gray value distribution is more concentrated and uniform. The middle and high frequency components in the spatial spectrum are all increased, indicating that the compensated image edges change faster and are more detailed (Hinton and Salakhutdinov, 2006; LeCun et al., 1998; Mohanty et al., 2016; Zang et al., 2023).

In this paper, the authors use the iterative learning color image pixel crosstalk compensation method to effectively alleviate the incomplete color mixing problem caused by the insufficient filter rate and the electric crosstalk problem caused by the lateral diffusion of the optical charge caused by the adjacent pixel potential trap.