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Immigrants’ access to health services is a widely researched topic, yet few studies examine immigrants’ use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This study uses the Behavioral Model to compare overall CAM use and use of acupuncture, chiropractic, herbs, yoga, and relaxation by immigrant status (nativity and time in the United States). It then explains the nativity gap in use by assessing knowledge, cost, and need as potential reasons for not using these modalities. Results show that controlling for predisposing, enabling, and need factors, recent immigrants use CAM less than the U.S.-born. Lack of knowledge of CAM modalities partially explains why some recent immigrants do not use acupuncture, chiropractic, or relaxation, while established immigrants cite lack of need as a reason for not using yoga. Cost does not explain immigrants’ lower use of these five modalities. Finally, ethnicity moderates the association between immigrant status and reasons for not using CAM.

COVID-19 continues to spread, and cause increasing deaths. Physicians diagnose COVID-19 using not only real-time polymerase chain reaction but also the computed tomography (CT) and chest x-ray (CXR) modalities, depending on the stage of infection. However, with so many patients and so few doctors, it has become difficult to keep abreast of the disease. Deep learning models have been developed in order to assist in this respect, and vision transformers are currently state-of-the-art methods, but most techniques currently focus only on one modality (CXR).

This work aims to leverage the benefits of both CT and CXR to improve COVID-19 diagnosis. This paper studies the differences between using convolutional MobileNetV2, ViT DeiT and Swin Transformer models when training from scratch and pretraining on the MedNIST medical dataset rather than the ImageNet dataset of natural images. The comparison is made by reporting six performance metrics, the Scott–Knott Effect Size Difference, Wilcoxon statistical test and the Borda Count method. We also use the Grad-CAM algorithm to study the model's interpretability. Finally, the model's robustness is tested by evaluating it on Gaussian noised images.

Although pretrained MobileNetV2 was the best model in terms of performance, the best model in terms of performance, interpretability, and robustness to noise is the trained from scratch Swin Transformer using the CXR (accuracy = 93.21 per cent) and CT (accuracy = 94.14 per cent) modalities.

Models compared are pretrained on MedNIST and leverage both the CT and CXR modalities.

Globally, the governance has shifted from positivist to the regulatory-centric approach, necessitating accurate contouring of regulatory governance framework. The study proposes a novel approach to unravel the regulatory governance framework in the context of the Indian electronics industry – extendable to other sectors in India and other emerging economies.

The research objective has been operationalized through document analysis and thematic analysis of semi-structured interview transcripts in three steps: (1) arrive at parameters of the regulatory governance framework, (2) identify instruments against each parameter and (3) characterize parameters in terms of dominant instruments and their underlying modalities. The authors have adopted a set of 6 Cs modalities (control, communications, competition, consensus, code and collaboration) and regulatory space theory to analyze existing modalities mix in the dominant instruments.

In summary, the study has (1) identified eight macro and twenty micro regulatory governance parameters, (2) mapped regulatory governance parameters with instruments and institutions (3) revealed the top two dominant modalities for each regulatory governance parameter.

The existing modality characteristics of regulatory governance parameters can be used by manufacturers, investors and other stakeholders to make a realistic assessment of regulatory governance and reduce regulatory risk and regulatory burden.

The multidimensional use of parameters, instruments and modalities broadens the understanding of the existing regulatory governance framework and may assist the regulators in optimizing it to meet market requirements.

Although numerous signal modalities are available for emotion recognition, audio and visual modalities are the most common and predominant forms for human beings to express their emotional states in daily communication. Therefore, how to achieve automatic and accurate audiovisual emotion recognition is significantly important for developing engaging and empathetic human–computer interaction environment. However, two major challenges exist in the field of audiovisual emotion recognition: (1) how to effectively capture representations of each single modality and eliminate redundant features and (2) how to efficiently integrate information from these two modalities to generate discriminative representations.

A novel key-frame extraction-based attention fusion network (KE-AFN) is proposed for audiovisual emotion recognition. KE-AFN attempts to integrate key-frame extraction with multimodal interaction and fusion to enhance audiovisual representations and reduce redundant computation, filling the research gaps of existing approaches. Specifically, the local maximum–based content analysis is designed to extract key-frames from videos for the purpose of eliminating data redundancy. Two modules, including “Multi-head Attention-based Intra-modality Interaction Module” and “Multi-head Attention-based Cross-modality Interaction Module”, are proposed to mine and capture intra- and cross-modality interactions for further reducing data redundancy and producing more powerful multimodal representations.

Extensive experiments on two benchmark datasets (i.e. RAVDESS and CMU-MOSEI) demonstrate the effectiveness and rationality of KE-AFN. Specifically, (1) KE-AFN is superior to state-of-the-art baselines for audiovisual emotion recognition. (2) Exploring the supplementary and complementary information of different modalities can provide more emotional clues for better emotion recognition. (3) The proposed key-frame extraction strategy can enhance the performance by more than 2.79 per cent on accuracy. (4) Both exploring intra- and cross-modality interactions and employing attention-based audiovisual fusion can lead to better prediction performance.

The proposed KE-AFN can support the development of engaging and empathetic human–computer interaction environment.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the role of various levels of modality richness [text-visual, audiovisual and augmented reality interactive technology (ARIT)] on vivid memories (visual sensory detailed, emotionally intense, first-person perspective and coherent) and exploratory behavior. To clarify which modality richness online retailers use is more appropriate to create a virtual reality simulation experience to fill a significant gap in the sensory interactive marketing paradigm.

A task-based laboratory study was conducted to provide users with private try-on space. A total of 429 valid questionnaires were collected, and partial least squares path modeling was adopted to test hypotheses.

The results indicate that various levels of modality richness (text-visual, audiovisual and ARIT) positively affect vivid memories (visual sensory detailed, emotionally intense, first-person perspective and coherent), and vivid memories successfully induce exploratory behavior.

The study results could also help retailers and brands with clear guidance in designing and creating simulation experience services and choosing the best way to present products. With the results of this research, retailers will also be able to grasp better the critical points of introducing innovative technology into the service experience and then create the benefits of digital economic growth.

Exploring which digital interactive technology online retailers use is more appropriate to create a virtual reality shopping experience to fill a significant gap in the sensory interactive marketing paradigm. Exploring the antecedents of vivid memories in a digital sensory interactive experience contributes to the body schema literature and the script theory. We draw from construal level theory (CLT) to clarify the impact of various levels of modality richness on driving the difference in sensory simulation schema to break through the limited findings of previous studies, namely using CLT to interpret psychological distance.

Oregon Graduate Institute reports a laboratory experiment that compared three different communications modalities (face‐to‐face, audio‐only, and audio and video) across two co‐operative tasks, which can be characterized as visual and non‐visual. In each task, effectiveness varied as a significant function of modality. However, the directions of these functions were opposite. That is, for the visual task conversants were more effective in the face‐to‐face and audio and video modalities than in the audio‐only modality; for the non‐visual task, conversants were more effective in the audio‐only modality than in the face‐to‐face modality. Additional analysis of the non‐visual tasks suggests that modality affects the extent to which asymmetry of knowledge results in asymmetry of influence between conversants.

The purpose of this study is to reduce the semantic distance by proposing a model for integrating indexes of textual and visual features via a multi-modality ontology and the use of DBpedia to improve the comprehensiveness of the ontology to enhance semantic retrieval.

A multi-modality ontology-based approach was developed to integrate high-level concepts and low-level features, as well as integrate the ontology base with DBpedia to enrich the knowledge resource. A complete ontology model was also developed to represent the domain of sport news, with image caption keywords and image features. Precision and recall were used as metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the multi-modality approach, and the outputs were compared with those obtained using a single-modality approach (i.e. textual ontology and visual ontology).

The results based on ten queries show a superior performance of the multi-modality ontology-based IMR system integrated with DBpedia in retrieving correct images in accordance with user queries. The system achieved 100 per cent precision for six of the queries and greater than 80 per cent precision for the other four queries. The text-based system only achieved 100 per cent precision for one query; all other queries yielded precision rates less than 0.500.

This study only focused on BBC Sport News collection in the year 2009.

The paper includes implications for the development of ontology-based retrieval on image collection.

This study demonstrates the strength of using a multi-modality ontology integrated with DBpedia for image retrieval to overcome the deficiencies of text-based and ontology-based systems. The result validates semantic text-based with multi-modality ontology and DBpedia as a useful model to reduce the semantic distance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic importance of visual aesthetics and presentation modality for consumer responses to fashion luxury brand content posted on Instagram.

A content analysis of 40,679 posts on the official Instagram accounts of 15 global luxury brands was conducted.

Brand posts using expressive aesthetic image received more likes and comments on Instagram than those with classical aesthetics. Brand video content received more likes and comments than static content. There was also a significant interaction between visual aesthetics and presentation modality in generating likes and comments. Brand content adopting expressive aesthetic and audio-visual modality generated more responses when using audio-visual modality, while content using classical aesthetics produced more responses in a visual-only format.

As visual aesthetics and modality resulted in different responses to Instagram ads, luxury marketers should consider using appropriate approaches when creating brand posts on Instagram.

This is one of the few studies examining the effectiveness of visual aesthetics and presentation modality in Instagram advertising, especially in luxury fashion brand context.

The purpose of this study is to understand whether increasing the number of sensory modalities being stimulated impacts consumers’ in-store emotional responses (i.e. in-store enjoyment and arousal), store image perception and brand attitude.

The study used a between-subjects experimental design to examine 551 individuals’ perceptions and emotional responses in four sensory modalities stimulation conditions (i.e. visual, visual-smell, visual-taste and visual-smell-taste). The study used virtual reality visualisation technology and psychophysiological measurements (i.e. skin conductance and facial expression) to improve the ecological validity of the study design.

The current study supports the importance of multisensory in-store atmospheric design. When increasing the number of sensory modalities being stimulated, more positive emotional responses and perceptions were recorded. Additionally, increasing the number of sensory modalities also increased perceived intensity, and perceived intensity mediate the relationship between the stimulation of multisensory modalities and perception.

The study is without its limitations. For instance, the scope of the study was limited by the exclusion of auditory and haptic stimulation, the lack of manipulation of sensory intensity and the absence of sensory congruency examination.

This study contributes to retail and marketing practices by providing evidence to assist the retail design of in-store sensory cues and customer experiences.

This research uses both self-reported measures and biometric measures to test the sole effect of sensory modalities being stimulated on consumer evaluation. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine store atmospheric designs with psychophysiological methodologies and an immersive, two-story-high, 180-degree-visual-field and dome-shaped display.

High levels of stress reported at college campuses has led to the need for stress management interventions. College students often do not know how to deal with the increase in stress during college which may lead to ineffective ways to manage stress, such as drugs, alcohol, and under the worst circumstance, suicide. Several universities have implemented stress relieving centers where students can participate in various modalities to relax and reduce symptoms of stress. The purpose of this paper is to compare four stress reduction modalities on the amount of physiologic and perceived stress (PS) reduction in a stress relief center.

Archival information of 5,526 students (2,759 female, 2,767 male) were analyzed. During their time at the relaxation center, these students would participate in one of four relaxation modalities (massage chair, chi machine, rejuvenation lounger, or sitting meditation). Upon entering and exiting the center, PS, systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) were measured. The dependent variables were compared from pre- to post-relaxation with paired tests. Gain scores were calculated for each dependent variable and compared between modalities with an ANOVA and post hoc independent t-tests. The α was set at=0.05 for statistical significance.

Results indicated that all four modalities showed an overall decrease in stress-related symptoms for both men and women (p<0.05). There was no statistical difference in dependent variable gain scores between the relaxation modalities (p>0.05) for men. There was no statistical difference in dependent variable gain scores between the relaxation modalities (p>0.05) for women except for SBP and DBP where the massage chair, chi machine, and sitting meditation all reduced SBP and DBP to a greater degree than the rejuvenation lounger (p<0.05).

The results of this study suggest that the use of these stress reduction modalities (massage chair, chi machine, rejuvenation lounger, or sitting meditation) is effective at transiently reducing physiologic and perceived measures of stress of college students. Universities should recognize the importance of stress relief centers in order to help students manage stress symptoms and effectively manage their daily stress levels.