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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether reading a self-help chapter on the body's regulation of weight can change weight control beliefs, and whether such changes in turn predict improvements in body dissatisfaction and self-esteem.

Participants of a mixed racial sample of undergraduate college women (n=154) completed measures of personal weight control beliefs, body dissatisfaction, self-esteem and knowledge before and after they read a self-help education chapter.

Exposure to the education was associated with improvement in knowledge, body dissatisfaction and self-esteem and change in weight control beliefs. Increase in the belief in “striving for a healthy lifestyle with acceptance of one's natural weight” predicted improvement in body dissatisfaction and self-esteem.

This paper provides preliminary evidence that realistic information about weight control can impact weight control beliefs, and that this in turn is associated with improvement in body satisfaction and self-esteem. The major limitation of the study is the lack of control group to ensure changes are not due to factors like social desirability. Future directions would be to replicate this research using a control group, and to look at the role of education and weight control beliefs in eating disordered and bariatric populations.

This is the first study to look at the impact of providing young women with realistic information about the body's regulation of weight and weight loss outcomes on their beliefs about weight control, body dissatisfaction and self-esteem. This information is valuable for health care providers and educators working with young women.

Repetitive lifting tasks have detrimental effects upon balance control and may contribute toward fall injuries, yet despite this causal linkage, risk factors involved remain elusive. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of different weights and lifting postures on balance control using simulated repetitive lifting tasks.

In total, 20 healthy male participants underwent balance control assessments before and immediately after a fatiguing repetitive lifting tasks using three different weights in a stoop (ten participants) or a squat (ten participants) lifting posture. Balance control assessments required participants to stand still on a force plate with or without a foam (which simulated an unstable surface) while center of pressure (CoP) displacement parameters on the force plate was measured.

Results reveal that: increased weight (but not lifting posture) significantly increases CoP parameters; stoop and squat lifting postures performed until subjective fatigue induce a similar increase in CoP parameters; and fatigue adversely effected the participant’s balance control on an unstable surface vis-à-vis a stable surface. Findings suggest that repetitive lifting of heavier weights would significantly jeopardize individuals’ balance control on unstable supporting surfaces, which may heighten the risk of falls.

This research offers an entirely new and novel approach to measuring the impact that different lifting weights and postures may have upon worker stability and consequential fall incidents that may arise.

In a packaging olives manufacturing system, the drained weight of the product plays a decisive role in customer’s satisfaction as well as in financial saving for the organization. The purpose of this study is to minimize the variation of the drained weight of olives in the production system to avoid the negative consequences.

The research develops a practical implementation step-by-step of Six Sigma define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) in reducing the variation of the drained weight of olives.

Data analysis was used at various phases of the project to identify the root causes of rejection and rework. As a result of the necessary interventions and actions to optimize the manufacturing process, the standard deviation of drained weight was significantly reduced by 51.02%, with a 99.97% decrease in the number of parts per million defectives. Thus, the yield of the production process was improved by 8.24%. The estimated annual savings from this project were US$ 228,000 resulting from reduced rejection and rework.

This research may be used in packaging olives production systems as a tool for managers and engineers planning to increase productivity and efficiency while also improving product quality. The study also provided the organization with helpful actions that will be used to guide future Six Sigma operations management on the system. Thus, practical guidelines and solutions are provided.

In this project, for the first time, the Six Sigma methodology has been applied to solve a real-world problem in the packaging olives manufacturing system and to show that the DMAIC approach may assist to improve the efficiency of their operations and hence contribute to their quest toward continuous improvement.

This paper aims to propose a novel model predictive control (MPC) with time varying weights to develop a lateral control law in an automatic carrier landing system (ACLS), which minimizes landing risk and improves flight quality.

First, a nonlinear mathematic model of an F/A-18 aircraft during lateral landing is established. Then the landing model is linearized in the form of state deviations on the equilibrium points. Second, landing risk windows are proposed and a high-dimensional landing risk model is addressed through a back propagation (BP) neural network. The trained samples are acquired based on a pilot behavior model. Third, time varying weights created from the lateral landing risk are introduced into the performance function of MPC. Optimal solution is solved quicker and some state deviations are focused on and eliminated. Fourth, the algebraic inequalities are substituted by the linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), which are easily calculated by the computers.

On a semi-physical platform, the proposed method compares with a traditional MPC algorithm and a modified MPC with an additional term. The test results indicate that the proposed algorithm brings about an excellent landing performance as well as an ability of eliminating landing risk.

The landing phase of a carrier-based aircraft is one of the most dangerous and complicated stages, and the algorithm proposed by this paper plays a vital role in the lateral landing.

This paper establishes a lateral landing risk model, which considers not only the current landing state but also the future touchdown point. This lateral landing risk is integrated into the time varying weights of the MPC algorithm so that the state deviations and landing risk can be both reduced in the rolling optimization.

In real life, excitations are highly non-stationary in frequency and amplitude, which easily induces resonant vibration to structural responses. Conventional control algorithms in this case cannot guarantee cost-effective control effort and efficient structural response alleviation. To this end, this paper proposes a novel adaptive linear quadratic regulator (LQR) by integrating wavelet transform and genetic algorithm (GA).

In each time interval, multiresolution analysis of real-time structural responses returns filtered time signals dominated by different frequency bands. Minimization of cost function in each frequency band obtains control law and gain matrix that depend on temporal-frequency band, so suppressing resonance-induced filtered response signal can be directly achieved by regulating gain matrix in the temporal-frequency band, leading to emphasizing cost-function weights on control and state. To efficiently subdivide gain matrices in resonant and normal frequency bands, the cost-function weights are optimized by a developed procedure associated to genetic algorithm. Single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) and multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) structures subjected to near- and far-fault ground motions are studied.

Resonant band requires a larger control force than non-resonant band to decay resonance-induced peak responses. The time-varying cost-function weights generate control force more cost-effective than time-invariant ones. The scheme outperforms existing control algorithms and attains the trade-off between response suppression and control force under non-stationary excitations.

Proposed control law allocates control force amounts depending upon resonant or non-resonant band in each time interval. Cost-function weights and wavelet decomposition level are formulated in an elegant manner. Genetic algorithm-based optimization cost-efficiently results in minimizing structural responses.

Lean manufacturing (LM) has attracted the attention of industries all over the world. Many operation managers have implemented or will be implementing LM because of the benefits reported by other companies or because their customers have demanded it. This paper aims to present a case study of a medium‐sized valve manufacturer in which the decision of implementing LM is made by analyzing the capabilities, practices, tools and techniques of alternative manufacturing systems apart from understanding its effect on the decision areas of the operations department.

A multi attribute decision making (MADM) model, namely, the analytic network process (ANP) has been used for this purpose, which structures the problem related to selection of alternative manufacturing systems in a hierarchical network form. In this problem, it links the performance measures or competitive priorities, decision areas, and the elements with alternatives available to the decision maker and provides a holistic framework for the selection of alternative manufacturing systems to achieve the competitive priorities of the organisation under study.

From an extensive analysis of the results, under the given circumstances, it is evident that implementation of a lean manufacturing system (LMS) is a better alternative, as it would result in overall improvement in the performance of an organisation in comparison with the alternatives.

This paper demonstrated a step‐by‐step approach of the ANP model using a case study of a small‐ and medium‐sized enterprise, which makes it more suitable for managers to learn and adopt such MADM models to support their decisions.

To the author's knowledge, there is no paper available in the existing literature that discusses the application of ANP in the field of LM.

Three events of significance to this country took place in 1899 – the British Food Journal was launched, Australia retained the Ashes, and the Boer War hostilities commenced. If challenged on the order of their importance, cricketers and Empire‐builders may be excused their preference. However, looking at it purely from the standpoint of pro bono publico, the dispassionate observer must surely opt for the birth of a certain publication as being ultimately the most beneficial of the three.

A question of interest is whether online social networks are effective in promoting behavioral changes and weight loss. The purpose of this paper is to examine the contagion effect of an online buddy network on individuals’ self-monitoring behavior.

This study collects data from an online weight-loss community and constructs an online buddy network. This study compares the effects of the network structure of the buddy network and the actor attributes when predicting self-monitoring performance by employing the auto-logistic actor attribute models.

This study confirms the contagion effect on weigh-in behavior in the online buddy network. The contagion effect is significantly predictive when controlling for actor attribute and other network structure effects.

There is limited evidence that one’s weight-related behavior can be affected by online social contacts. This study contributes to the literature on peer influence on health by examining the contagion effect on weight-related behavior between online buddies. The findings can assist in designing peer-based interventions to harness influence from online social contacts for weight loss.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of artificial intelligence methods in quality control and improvement. The paper introduces a systematic approach for the design of fuzzy control charts of tip shear carpets.

There are certain steps for designing fuzzy control charts. All input, state and output variables of the carpet plant and partition of the universe of discourse were first determined. The interval spanned by each variable and the number of fuzzy subsets each assigned with a linguistic label were identified. Then, the adaptive capability of neural network was used to determine the membership functions for each fuzzy subset. The fuzzy relationship functions between the inputs and outputs were assigned to form the fuzzy rule base (controller) in order to normalize the variables and certain intervals. Fuzzification of input parameters and max‐min composition of rules for inferring crisp outputs was the next step. The aggregation of fuzzified outputs and defuzzification of the outputs were the last step of this study, which helped to produce crisp outputs for latex weight.

Fuzzy linguistic terms were employed for overall quality assessment and rating of the end product. The outcomes of neuro‐fuzzy system were good supplements to other statistical process control tools.

Lack of qualified domain experts, knowledge acquisition of process parameters and time limitation for training of neuro‐fuzzy model were primary limitations.

The approach is more flexible and meaningful to identify the quality distribution of a product. The qualitative aspect of human reasoning for decision making was employed in this approach.

The paper is original and the first such work for local industry.

Weight‐management programmes to address obesity are an important strategy for improving community health. Some enrollees in this type of a programme are long term, repeatedly enrolling term after term, while others are short term, enrolling on average for two terms. This paper describes and compares the experiences of long‐ and short‐term enrollees of a community weight‐management programmes. Six long‐term and six short‐term enrollees in the maintenance stage of their behaviour change volunteered to participate in interviews. Both groups found the programme to be beneficial and enjoyable, and said they had learned strategies for weight control that empowered them to manage and sustain their weight loss. Long‐termers identified they had greater need for weight monitoring and ongoing support. The recommendations are to review aspects of such programmes, address ongoing support outside the class and investigate further the greater reliance of long‐term enrollees on external support.