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This study focused on how to quantify the similarities of body shape based on the front and side images, and a shape comprehensive index (I_SC) of female upper body shape based on 2D images was proposed.

In total, 190 young women were shot for front and side images, and 18 shape parameters were automatically extracted, including seven angles and 11 ratio parameters. The coefficient of variation method was used to assign different weights for related parameters, and the I_SC was calculated to describe the body shape of each subject. Five cross-sectional curves of the upper body (e.g. shoulder, chest, waist, abdomen and hip) were selected for exploring the range of shape similarity.

According to the value of I_SC, if the difference among the subjects is within the range of ±0.02, their body shapes can be regarded as similar, and the subject with the minimum distance is considered as the most similar. Error results show that the error range of the angle parameter is from 0.2° to 3.6° and the ratio range is from 0.001 to 0.119. Moreover, the t-test value among the parameters of the similar body is above 0.05, indicating that there is no significant difference for the upper body shape of the similar groups.

This method can quantify body shapes with the upper body characteristics of young women instead of subjective judgment. The study can be extended to other parts of the body and can also provide a new thought for shape similarity retrieval based on 2D images.

The purpose of this paper is to use a wear test to determine the effect of sand on the wear rates of materials typically used in aerospace applications. Once a repeatable wear test has been established, it can be used to test any combination of materials or coatings. The effectiveness of several different test methods will also be evaluated, including the sample height, surface roughness and mass difference. In addition, the current work will observe the differences between applying sand before the samples are brought into contact or after. The wear rates obtained from these tests could also be used to predict the wear of other components in similar abrasive particulate environments.

A modified block-on-flat wear test of anodized aluminum on hard coat anodized aluminum was used to study this. The experiments were performed with and without sand to study the effects of the sand. Two methods of adding sand were also evaluated. Weighing and profilometry were used to study the differences between the tests.

Wear rates have been calculated based on both the change in the masses of the samples and the change in the height between the upper and lower samples over the course of each test. The wear rates from the change in the masses are repeatable with and without sand, but the results for the change in height show no repeatability without sand. In addition, only in the presence of sand do the trends for the two methods agree. The wear rate was found to be non-linear as a function of load and therefore not in agreement with Archard’s Wear Law. The wear rate also increased significantly when sand was present in the contact for the duration of the test. The sand appears to change the wear mechanism from an adhesive to an abrasive mechanism. Black wear particles formed both when there was sand and when there was not sand. The source of these particles has been investigated but not determined.

This work has not been previously published and is the original work of the authors.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence mechanism of new-generation construction workers (NGCWs)’ job satisfaction on the professionalization behavior in China, through theory of planned behavior (TPB), and find the key path to promote the professionalization behavior of China’s construction workers.

A theoretical model of influence mechanism was established through literature research and theoretical deduction based on TPB and structural equation model. The scale of variables was developed, and an empirical study was employed with a sample of 823 NGCWs in China.

The results indicate that job satisfaction can positively affect NGCWs' professionalization behavior. Subjective norm, attitude and perceived behavior control play mediating roles in the influence process. Job satisfaction is more likely to act on professionalization behavior through subjective norm and behavioral intention.

Research results sorely suggest a short-term law about the influence mechanism of NGCWs' job satisfaction on professionalization behavior through a questionnaire study from China’s construction industry. Future research ought to continue to use a longitudinal study to examine it over a considerable amount of time. The results also need to be verified using data from young construction workers in other nations.

This study provides a theoretical basis and feasible management reference for government and construction enterprises in China to promote NGCWs' professionalization behavior from the perspective of job satisfaction. Furthermore, the promotion of NGCWs' job satisfaction and professionalization behavior can do good to building industrialization, sustainable development and high-quality transformation of labor force in the construction industry.

This paper demonstrates the positive influence of job satisfaction on professionalization behavior of NGCWs and finds the most effective affecting path. It fills the research gap about the influence mechanism of job satisfaction on young construction workers' professionalization behavior and enriches the theoretical system of planned behavior of construction workers.

This paper aims to explore factors impacting wearable fitness tracking (WFT) device continued usage intention from perspectives of technology attributes (autonomy benefits), health attributes (self-health management benefits, diet-control benefits and health self-efficacy), and consumer attributes (age, gender, technological innovativeness, symbolic benefits, social benefits and hedonic benefits).

The study integrates constructs from the technology acceptance theories and the health promotion model to develop the research model and hypothesis. The empirical analysis was conducted using data from 217 respondents from India. Logistic regression was used to identify factors that discriminate between groups with low and high continued usage intentions.

Results indicate higher continued usage intention for WFT devices is driven by perceived benefits-health, autonomy, social and hedonic, and individual characteristics-technological innovativeness and perceived health self-efficacy. Further, perceived symbolic benefits, diet control benefits, age, and gender does not discriminate between the groups with low and high continued usage intentions.

The results may be limited to the context of the sample and the factors considered. The study suggests future research areas.

The paper offers insights for marketers, governments, insurance firms, and related healthcare services on promoting higher usage of WFT devices to yield dual benefits of preventive healthcare and higher profitability.

The study extends existing research by examining factors across consumer, health, and technological domains in a single framework and adds to the limited research in the context of usage of WFT devices in developing countries.

In keeping with recent body image social trends, consumer demand for the adoption of plus-size models is increasing, although the use of thin models remains prevalent. The current study explores how consumers process information about fashion products displayed on different sizes of models in advertisements, focusing on model and consumer body sizes and both genders. As an underlying mechanism explaining how the relationship between model and consumer body sizes shapes consumer purchase intention, this study explores the role of guilt, shame and mental imagery.

The current study uses a text analytics technique to identify female consumers' general opinions of thin models in advertising. Employing a 3 (consumer body size: normal, overweight, obese) × 2 (model body size: thin, plus-size) × 2 (gender: male, female) between-subjects online experiment (n = 718), the main study comparatively analyzes the influences of plus-size and thin models on consumer responses.

The results reveal that, despite body positivity movements, thin models still generate negative emotions among female consumers. For obese female consumers, advertisements featuring plus-size models produce fewer negative emotions but not more mental imagery than advertisements featuring thin models. Conversely, for obese male consumers, advertisements featuring plus-size models generate more mental imagery but not more negative emotions than advertisements featuring thin models. The results also reveal that the relationship between consumer body size and guilt is moderated by perceived model size, which is also moderated by gender in generating mental imagery. While guilt plays a mediating role in enhancing mental imagery, resulting in purchase intention, shame does not take on this role.

This study is the first to present an integrated model that elucidates how consumers with varying body sizes respond to different sizes of models in advertising and how these responses impact purchase intentions.

Our findings only apply to contexts where consumers purchase fashion clothing in response to advertisements featuring thin versus plus-size models.

Exposing normal-size consumers to plus-size models generates less mental imagery, and thus, practitioners should seek to match the body sizes of the models featured in advertising to the body sizes of their target audience or ad campaigns that include both plus-size and thin models may help improve message persuasiveness in fashion advertising. Moreover, guilt-appeal advertising campaigns using thin models would appeal more to thin consumers of both genders than shame-appeal advertising.

Analysis of architectural space is commonly conducted by examining architectural drawings that project spatial information by means of walls and partitions. To capture the lived experience of space, which is richer than what we can see from drawings, a new method is proposed to quantify the cognitive dimension of space and re-present it as an audible format.

Using an urban vernacular house in Seoul as a case study, this research takes a syntactic approach to quantify one's changing perception through their movement from the main gate to the most private reception room. Based on Luigi Moretti's theory of hollow space, a new method is proposed to measure the level of spatial pressure exerted on a navigating body. The numerical data of spatial pressure are then converted to a sound using musical techniques of the chromatic scale and chorale textures.

Building on Moretti's abstract concept, it has been shown that a rule-based quantification of users' spatial perception is possible. In addition, unlike conventional approaches of treating architecture as a static entity, this study showed an alternative approach to represent it as a sequence of sensorial experience that can be readily converted to a sound of music.

This research developed a quantification method to measure the perception of pressure inside buildings by revisiting Luigi Moretti's theory proposed in 1952. It has been also demonstrated that the visual stimuli in space can be translated into an audible experience. This new method is applicable to a wide range of buildings including important historic architecture.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the functionalities, safety regulations and product applications of herb Stevia rebaudiana extract. This plant material is embedded with multiple functionalities such as antioxidant, antidiabetics, anti-inflammation and antimicrobial. The regulations released from global authorities are covered to ensure the safety premise of stevia. Besides, the product applications of the extract of aerial parts of the herb S. rebaudiana helps us to recognize its value from commercial side.

Relevant literatures are selected and obtained from main scientific databases such as Google Scholar, Web of Science, PubMed and trade magazines published between 2000 and 2023. The keywords and their possible combinations such as sweetening, antioxidant, antidiabetics, anti-inflammation, safety and product development were used to ensure the preciseness and completeness of literature searching. Major data such as sweetness, total phenolic content and dose together with latter critical conclusions from searched publications were appropriately used and discussed. In this review, approximately 150 scientific literatures were meticulously ordered and analyzed. In applications, it is the first time that sentiment analysis was used to obtain a market assessment of the stevia-containing products.

This review paper helps rearrange the scientific affairs of those stevia extract’s functions like sweetening, antioxidant, antidiabetics and inflammation. Sweetness indexes of steviol glycosides were summarized together for comparison while various in vitro and in vivo approaches were reviewed to quantify those functions’ capacities and to depict the related mechanism. The regulation of steviol glycoside compounds such as rebaudioside A was established by global authorities such as US Food and Drug Administration and Joint FAO/World Health Organization Expert Committee to ensure the safety endorsement before commercialization. Then, this study discussed about the market performance of stevia ingredients or products with the self-developed data analytics. This study also investigated the product development progress of stevia-containing food products in the categories of beverage, bakery, dairy and confectionery. Those stevia-containing food consumer goods can be acceptable by certain consumers.

This review paper precisely presents the evidential information about the stevia’s multiple functionalities with mechanisms and global regulation milestones. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is then the first time to probe the stevia-containing products’ market performance through data analytics.

This study aims to quantify and compare the environmental impacts of Marble-stone and Kota-stone flooring options widely used for buildings in India. The study discusses the possibility of carbon sequestration through Bamboo cultivation in India.

The study has followed a standard life cycle assessment (LCA) framework based on ISO 14040 guidelines. Three distinct phases have been compared on midpoint and endpoint assessment categories – raw material, polishing and disposal. Primary data has been collected from the construction site in India, and secondary data has been collected from the Ecoinvent 3.0 database. Previous studies have been referred to discuss and calculate the area of bamboo cultivation required to sequestrate the generated carbon from the flooring.

The study has found that endpoint category damage to resources, and midpoint categories of climate change, metal depletion and agricultural land use are highly impacted in building floorings. The study has also found that the Marble-stone floor generates higher environmental impacts than the Kota-stone floor in most of the midpoint and endpoint impact categories. This difference is significant in the raw material phase due to the different compositions of stones. The study also found that Bamboo has excellent potential to act as a carbon sink and mitigate the generated carbon.

This study excludes human labour, cutting and distribution of floor tiles made of Marble-stone and Kota-stone. The researcher can use the study to evaluate, compare and benchmark the various building flooring options from the environmental perspective. The study aids to the body of knowledge available on the various building flooring options by presenting the LCA or the environmental impacts generated by two flooring options. It is expected that the architects and builders can use these results to develop carbon-neutral buildings. This study provides a methodology for governments, constructors, builders and individuals to evaluate, compare and benchmark the various construction materials from the environmental perspective by computing the environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of the materials.

This study compares two widely used building flooring options using the LCA methodology and evaluates the potential of bamboo cultivation near the buildings for carbon sinks. The study is unique because it shows the environmental impacts of two flooring options and the carbon sequestration method to mitigate/absorb the generated environmental impacts in or around the building itself through bamboo cultivation. This study may set the foundation for carbon-neutral buildings.

This study aims to deal with the evaluation of institutional development and effectiveness of regional parliaments; it provides a scientific contribution to the development of the field of parliamentary studies by developing a set of indicators to present a parameter for evaluating regional parliaments with application to the Arab Parliament. The study concluded with the development of a parameter of 35 indicators to measure institutionally, efficiency and effectiveness of the institution, with application to the Arab Parliament, as well as developing an integrated assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in the institutional aspects and organizational efficiency.

The study is predicated on the principle of institutional approach and the systems analysis. The curriculum is applied to the Arab Parliament as an institution to quantify efficiency and efficacy according to the implementation of a set of proposed practical indicators. The study additionally applies both Huntington’s institutional standards such as Adaptability, Involution, Autonomy and Coherence, as well as the indicators of institutions efficiency according to PrePanti such as Openness, Reception (R), Autonomy (A), Balance (B), Congruence (C), Internal Efficacy (I), Reformulation (R) and Roles (R), which refer to the first seven Latin letters “First RABCIRR”.

The researcher endeavored to answer the main questions; How to quantify the degree of institutionalization, its impact on the efficiency and efficacy of regional parliaments. The researcher’s approaches and the standards of efficiency and efficacy figured a comprehensive set of indicators that composed an integrated parliamentary standard to assess the degree of institutionalization, efficacy and efficiency of regional parliaments as a scientific contribution based on the Arab Parliament that can be applied to all regional parliaments.

This research is an attempt to create a Parliamentary Index to complement the previous scientific initiatives and efforts in developing such an index, which consists of 35 indicators and its application to the Arab Parliament. This research uses the principles of institutional approach, system analysis methodology and efficiency. The approach is applied to the Arab Parliament as a regional parliament to measure efficiency and effectiveness by applying a set of the proposed indicators.

This chapter examines the shifting significance of data ownership and athlete rights as they pertain to the growth and expansion of the global sports gambling industry. It provides a nuanced overview of the ‘datafication’ of society, tracing how the omnipresent embrace of digital technologies has expediated new forms of organisational, political and corporate surveillance from which concerns over privacy, rights to ownership and the misuse of personal data arise. The chapter moves on to discuss how the extraction and trade of data has revolutionised how elite sport is performed, manufactured, broadcast and consumed, shedding critical light on the role of the gambling industry in the exchange of human data as a market commodity. These insights inform a series of socio-legal and ethical questions about the relationships between athlete data and the sports gambling industry for the purpose of signposting emerging issues and opportunities for critical sociological research and intervention.