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Food marketing has long been recognized to influence food preferences, consumption and health, yet little is known about the nature and extent of food marketing to young adults – especially with respect to their real-world encounters with food marketing and the appeals they find persuasive. This study aims to engage young adults to explore the persuasive power of food marketing and its platforms of exposure.

Participatory research with 45 young adults, who used a specially designed mobile app to capture the food marketing they encountered for seven days, including information on brand, product, platform and “power” (i.e. the specific techniques that made the advertisement persuasive).

A total of 618 ads were captured for analysis. Results revealed the dominance of digital platforms (especially Instagram, comprising 43% of ads), fast food and beverage brands (48% of ads) and the top persuasive techniques of visual style, special offer and theme.

This study uniquely draws from framing theory to advance the notions of selection and salience to understand food marketing power. It is the first study of its kind to provide a comprehensive look at the platforms and persuasive techniques of food marketing to adults as selected, captured and tagged by participants. It provides timely insights into young adults and food marketing to adults, including where it is encountered, the (generally unhealthy) brands and products promoted and how it is made meaningful.

Direct ink writing (DIW) is a robust additive manufacturing technology for the fabrication of fiber-reinforced thermoset composites. However, this technique is currently limited to low design complexity and minimal heights. This study aims to investigate the feasibility of UV-assisted DIW of composites to enhance the green-part strength of the printed inks and resolve the complexity and the height limitations of DIW technology.

The experimental approach involved the preparation of the thermoset inks that are composed of nanoclay, epoxy, photopolymer and glass fiber reinforcement. Composite specimens were fabricated in complex geometries from these ink feedstocks using UV-assisted, hybrid 3D-printing technology. Fabricated specimens were characterized using optical microscopy, three-point bending mechanical tests and numerical simulations.

The introduced hybrid, UV-assisted 3D-printing technology allowed the fabrication of tall and overhanging thermoset composite structures up to 30% glass fiber reinforcement without sagging during or after printing. Glass fiber reinforcement tremendously enhanced the mechanical performance of the composites. UV-curable resin addition led to a reduction in strength (approximately 15%) compared to composites fabricated without UV resin. However, this reduction can be eliminated by increasing the glass fiber content within the hybrid thermoset composite. Numerical simulations indicate that the fiber orientation significantly affects the mechanical performance of the printed composites.

This study showed that the fabrication of high-performing thermoset composites in complex geometries was possible via hybrid DIW technology. This new technology will tremendously expand the application envelope of the additively manufactured thermoset composites and the fabrication of large composite structures with high mechanical performance and dimensional freedom will benefit various engineering fields including the fields of aerospace, automotive and marine engineering.

This study aims to evaluate and summarize the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and internet-based CBT (ICBT) interventions on relapse prevention and severity of symptoms among individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD). CBT is one of the most used and suggested interventions to manage MDD, whereas ICBT is a novel effective proposed approach.

The review was conducted following the preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocol. A comprehensive and extensive search was performed to identify and evaluate the relevant studies about the effectiveness of CBT and ICBT on relapse prevention and severity of symptoms among patients with MDD.

A total of eight research studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in this systematic review. RCT studies were conducted to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of CBT and ICBT on relapse prevention and severity of symptoms among patients with MDD. It has been found that CBT is a well-supported and evidently based effective psychotherapy for managing depressive symptoms and reducing the relapse and readmission rate among patients diagnosed with MDD. The ICBT demonstrated greater improvements in depressive symptoms during major depressive episodes among patients with MDDS. The ICBT program had good acceptability and satisfaction among participants in different countries.

Despite the significant findings from this systematic review, certain limitations should be acknowledged. First, it is important to note that all the studies included in this review were exclusively conducted in the English language, potentially limiting the generalizability of the findings to non-English speaking populations. Second, the number of research studies incorporated in this systematic review was relatively limited, which may have resulted in a narrower scope of analysis. Finally, a few studies within the selected research had small sample sizes, which could potentially impact the precision and reliability of the overall conclusions drawn from this review. The authors recommend that nurses working in psychiatric units should use CBT interventions with patients with MDD.

This paper, a review of the literature gives an overview of CBT and ICBT interventions to reduce the severity of depressive symptoms and prevent patients’ relapse and rehospitalization and shows that CBT interventions are effective on relapse prevention among patients with MDD. In addition, there is still no standardized protocol to apply the CBT intervention in the scope of reducing the severity of depressive symptoms and preventing depression relapse among patients with major depressive disorder. Further research is needed to confirm the findings of this review. Future research is also needed to find out the most effective form and contents of CBT and ICBT interventions for MDD.

CBT is a psychological intervention that has been recommended by the literature for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). It is a widely recognized and accepted approach that combines cognitive and behavioral techniques to assist individuals overcome their depressive symptoms and improve their overall mental well-being. This would speculate that effectiveness associated with several aspects and combinations of different approaches in CBT interventions and the impact of different delivery models are essential for clinical practice and appropriate selection of the interventional combinations.

This systematic review focuses on the various studies that explore the effectiveness of face-to-face CBT and ICBT in reducing depressive symptoms among patients with major depressive disorder. These studies were conducted in different countries such as Iran, Australia, Pennsylvania and the USA.

Contractual services are characterized by features such as termination fees, long-term commitment, and complex terms. When customers find better deals from other providers, they may want to switch, but contractual obligations prevent them from doing so. Thus, this study aims to draw upon the stimulus-organism-response paradigm and theories of emotion regulation to examine how punitive switching costs (PSCs) can evoke negative emotions (NEs) from customers and, consequently, lead to negative behavioral responses in contractual service settings.

This study collected data from 395 customers of telecommunications companies, fitness centers, tutoring firms/centers, and house leasing companies in Taiwan. We tested the hypotheses using partial least squares structural equation modeling via SmartPLS 3.0.

The results show that NEs partially mediate the relationship between PSC and customers’ switching intention and negative word-of-mouth. This study also finds alternative attractiveness (AA) and service recovery (SR) do not moderate the PSCs–NEs relationship, but AA does directly influence NEs.

First, this study contributes to the literature on switching costs by exploring how PSC exerts a detrimental impact on behavioral responses. Second, this study adds to the literature on service failures by identifying the mediating role of NEs in such a relationship.

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.