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Physical education professionals aim to develop quality programmes for physical education. This study aimed to develop and validate a scale using professionals’ perceptions of Quality Physical Education QPE in Asia using twenty-four items regarding QPE quality issues. The items covered status and roles, development of educational elements and supportive features in physical education. A sample of N = 799 sport and physical education professionals from eleven Asian cities participated in this questionnaire survey. Twenty-four items relating to QPE were examined via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using maximum likelihood extraction and direct oblimin rotation methods. Nevertheless, only 20 items were extracted following the EFA examination. Items 1, 9, 14 and 18 were excluded because of low factor loadings. The remaining items were clustered into four subscales: Development and Supportive Elements for Quality Physical Education in Schools (DSFQPE; α = .918), Core Values of Quality Physical Education (CVPE; α = .908), Curriculum Arrangement of Physical Activities (CAPA; α = .884) and Provision and Norms in Physical Education (PNPE; α = .865). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α = .875) indicated excellent internal consistency for the overall measure. Furthermore, the 4 retained factors from the EFA were assessed via robust confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The 4-factor model demonstrated a good fit with the data (CMIN/DF = 3.450, CFI = .928, TLI = .916, PCFI = .801, RMSEA = .078). The study identified a 4-factor structure with internal consistency and acceptable interfactor correlations. The structure seemed to be applicable, including the twenty items identified as useful and necessary tools for the framework of analysis in the investigation of diverse settings for the study of quality physical education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Targeted environmental and ecosystem management remain crucial in control of dengue. However, providing detailed environmental information on a large scale to effectively target dengue control efforts remains a challenge. An important piece of such information is the extent of the presence of potential dengue vector breeding sites, which consist primarily of open containers such as ceramic jars, buckets, old tires, and flowerpots. In this paper we present the design and implementation of a pipeline to detect outdoor open containers which constitute potential dengue vector breeding sites from geotagged images and to create highly detailed container density maps at unprecedented scale. We implement the approach using Google Street View images which have the advantage of broad coverage and of often being two to three years old which allows correlation analyses of container counts against historical data from manual surveys. Containers comprising eight of the most common breeding sites are detected in the images using convolutional neural network transfer learning. Over a test set of images the object recognition algorithm has an accuracy of 0.91 in terms of F-score. Container density counts are generated and displayed on a decision support dashboard. Analyses of the approach are carried out over three provinces in Thailand. The container counts obtained agree well with container counts from available manual surveys. Multi-variate linear regression relating densities of the eight container types to larval survey data shows good prediction of larval index values with an R-squared of 0.674. To delineate conditions under which the container density counts are indicative of larval counts, a number of factors affecting correlation with larval survey data are analyzed. We conclude that creation of container density maps from geotagged images is a promising approach to providing detailed risk maps at large scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cesarean section (CS) is associated with maternal morbidity and mortality in developing countries. This study is conducted to assess factors associated with CS in Pakistan using partial least squares (PLS) algorithm, where categorical factors are modeled. Nationally representative maternal data from Pakistan Demographic and Health Surveys (PDHS) conducted during 2012-2013 is used in this study. Among correlation coefficient based PLS regression proposed algorithms for categorical factors, Pearson’s Contingency Coefficient (CC) PLS coupled with loading weight (LW) appeared to be the most efficient method in terms of model performance and influential factor selection. Region of residence, type of place of residence, mother’s and her partner’s level of education, wealth index, year of birth, previous terminated pregnancy, use of contraception, prenatal care provided by a doctor and nurse/midwife/LHV (lady health visitor), assistance provided by a nurse/midwife/LHV,number of antenatal visits, size of child, antenatal care provided by government hospital, transport facility for medical care, baby birth status, mother’s age at first birth, preceding birth interval and vaccination of hepatitis B-1 and B2 are found to be significantly affecting the CS delivery method. Correlation coefficient based PLS regression algorithms may serve more efficiently as a multivariate technique to treat high-dimensional categorical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately predicting reference evapotranspiration (ET0) with limited climatic data is crucial for irrigation scheduling design and agricultural water management. This study evaluated eight machine learning models in four categories, i.e. neuron-based (MLP, GRNN and ANFIS), kernel-based (SVM, KNEA), tree-based (M5Tree, XGBoost) and curve-based (MARS) models, for predicting daily ET0 with maximum/maximum temperature and precipitation data during 2001–2015 from 14 stations in various climatic regions of China, i.e., arid desert of northwest China (NWC), semi-arid steppe of Inner Mongolia (IM), Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), (semi-)humid cold-temperate northeast China (NEC), semi-humid warm-temperate north China (NC), humid subtropical central China (CC) and humid tropical south China (SC). The results showed machine learning models using only temperature data obtained satisfactory daily ET0 estimates (on average R2 = 0.829, RMSE = 0.718 mm day−1, NRMSE = 0.250 and MAE = 0.508 mm day−1). The prediction accuracy was improved by 7.6% across China when information of precipitation was further considered, particularly in (sub)tropical humid regions (by 9.7% in CC and 12.4% in SC). The kernel-based SVM, KNEA and curve-based MARS models generally outperformed the others in terms of prediction accuracy, with the best performance by KNEA in NWC and IM, by SVM in QTP, CC and SC, and very similar performance by them in NEC and NC. SVM (1.9%), MLP (2.0%), MARS (2.6%) and KNEA (6.4%) showed relatively small average increases in RMSE during testing compared with training RMSE. SVM is highly recommended for predicting daily ET0 across China in light of best accuracy and stability, while KNEA and MARS are also promising powerful models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Extensive studies have been carried out over the years to determine the maximum acceptable weight that a worker is capable of lifting in a given situation among Occidental populations across Europe and US. Nonetheless, studies that place emphasis on using lifting frequency as the quantifying task parameter, especially in developing countries such as Malaysia, appear to be in scarcity. Hence, this study determined the maximum acceptable frequency of lift (MAFL) for combined manual material handling (MMH) tasks amongst Malaysian males. Method: Two lifting loads were considered in this study: 1 kg and 5 kg. Each subject adjusted his frequency of lifting using a psychophysical approach. The subjects were instructed to perform combined MMH task as fast as they could over a period of 45 minutes without exhausting themselves or becoming overheated. The physiological response energy expenditure was recorded during the experimental sessions. The ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) for four body parts (forearms, upper arm, lower back and entire body) were recorded after the subjects had completed the instructed task. Results: The mean frequencies of the MMH task had been 6.8 and 5.5 cycles/minute for lifting load of 1 and 5 kg, respectively, while the mean energy expenditure values were 4.16 and 5.62 kcal/min for 1 and 5 kg load, respectively. These displayed a significant difference in the Maximum Acceptable Frequency of Lift (MAFL) between the two loads, energy expenditure and RPE (p < 0.05) whereby the subjects appeared to work harder physiologically for heavier load. Conclusion: It can be concluded that it is significant to assess physiological response and RPE in determining the maximum acceptable lifting frequency at varied levels of load weight. The findings retrieved in this study can aid in designing tasks that do not exceed the capacity of workers in order to minimise the risk of WRMSDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we designed a delayed payment mechanism in laboratory second price auctions (SPAs), under which subjects received a cash endowment two weeks after the experiment day and had to use their own money to pay the experimental losses (if any) on the experiment day. We compared the effect of delayed payment on overbidding in the induced value SPAs with the conventional “on-the-spot” payment mechanism where the subjects received an endowment on the experiment day, and the prepaid mechanism where the subjects received the endowment two weeks before the experiment day. Each auction was repeated for 20 rounds to provide sufficient learning opportunities to the bidders. Our results showed that bids converged to the corresponding values over auction rounds and overbidding was reduced by previous losses, consistently with the adaptive learning theory. Moreover, overbidding seems to depend significantly on bidders’ cash holding, and the magnitude of the payment treatment effects depends crucially on liquidity constraints. In the presence of liquidity constraints, both delayed and prepaid payment mechanisms reduced overbidding, while in the absence of liquidity constraints, only the delayed endowment mechanism reduced overbidding. Furthermore, when controlling the degree of liquidity constraints, subjects with higher GPAs were less likely to overbid and the delayed endowment mechanism significantly reduced overbidding compared to other payment mechanisms. These results suggest that overbidding in SPAs might be caused by bounded rationality and could be reduced by adaptive learning especially when overbidding becomes “truly” costly to subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: HIV spread in injecting drug users (IDU) occurs efficiently between individuals within their social networks. While methadone maintenance treatment has long known to be effective in combating HIV transmission in IDU, the impacts of one’s social connections and HIV status have not been well characterised. A study was conducted with the objective of differentiating the pattern of treatment participation between HIV-positive and negative methadone users and to understand its association with social connections with peers. Methods: Attendance data in one calendar year were extracted from a territory-wide electronic clinical record database of over 8000 methadone users attending 19 clinics in Hong Kong, a city with a relatively low HIV prevalence in injecting drug users. A case-control design was used by matching HIV positive methadone users with HIV negative controls. A temporal-social co-occurrence approach was adopted to construct a social network. Multiple logistic regression and network-based analyses were conducted. Results: In 2016, a total of 8332 methadone users had attended a clinic at least once, giving 1694016 attendance records that were included in the study. Some 432 methadone, 54 of whom HIV positive, were included in the case-control analyses. Multivariable logistic regression model showed that HIV-positive status was associated with drug injection history (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.28, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.19–4.38), not working fulltime (aOR 3.34, 95% CI 1.15–9.72), ethnic minority (aOR 2.59, 95% CI 1.33–5.02) and minimum daily dose of at least 20mg (aOR 3.64, 95% CI 1.08–12.26). Those having connections with other peers were older (aOR 1.02, 95% CI 1.00–1.04), had a higher mode dose (aOR 1.03, 95% CI 1.02–1.04) and had been admitted to methadone programme for longer time (aOR 1.07, 95% CI 1.02–1.13). Among those with connections, HIV-negative users did not have more connections (median degree centrality 21.00 vs 34.50, p = 0.26) but the network structure was stronger (clustering coefficient 0.65 vs 0.53, p = 0.03). Conclusion: The weak and sparse linkages may explain the generally low HIV prevalence and incidence in opioid-dependent persons in Hong Kong. Social support could play a constructive role in harm reduction and ethnic minority community-based organisations could help and reinforce treatment adherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Factors associated with persistently high Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevalence levels in several districts of India are not well understood. This study was undertaken to determine the association of socio-demographic characteristics, economic factors, awareness about HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), and condom use with consistently high HIV prevalence in the Indian districts and to ascertain whether these associations differed across various regions of India. Methods: This study was carried out including all 640 districts of India. Secondary analysis of data obtained from the Census of India-2011, HIV Sentinel Surveillance in India and District Level Household Survey-III was done. Population profile, socio-economic characteristics, levels of HIV/STI/condom awareness and condom use, were compared between the districts with and without consistently high HIV prevalence. Due to the presence of collinearity among predictor variables, we used principal component analysis and the principal component scores were included as covariates for further analysis. Considering the districts at level 1 and the regions at level 2, multi-level analysis was done by generalised linear mixed models. Variance partition coefficient and median odds ratio were also calculated. Results: Sixty-three districts with consistently high HIV prevalence were found clustered in the South and the North-east regions of India. Population size, density and urbanisation were found to be positively associated with consistently high HIV prevalence in these districts. Higher levels of literacy, better socio-economic status, higher proportion of population in reproductive age group and late marriages were positively associated with consistently high HIV prevalence in all regions of India except in the Southern region. Higher levels of knowledge about the role of condoms in HIV prevention and condom use were associated with low HIV prevalence at the district level. Conclusions: Considerable heterogeneity among factors associated with consistently high HIV prevalence at the district level in different regions of India necessitates special region-specific strategies for HIV control. Increasing awareness about HIV alone is not sufficient for controlling the HIV epidemic and there is a need to raise knowledge levels about preventive measures against HIV and promote the use of condoms amongst population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: An optimal range of shoe-surface traction (grip) exists to improve performance and minimise injury risk. Little information exists regarding the magnitude of traction forces at shoe-surface interface across a full season of elite football (soccer) using common football shoes. Objective: To assess variation in shoe-surface traction of six different football shoe models throughout a full playing season in Qatar encompassing climatic and grass species variations. Methods: Football shoes were loaded onto a portable shoe-surface traction testing machine at five individual testing time points to collect traction data (rotational and translational) on a soccer playing surface across one season. Surface mechanical properties (surface hardness, soil moisture) and climate data (temperature and humidity) were collected at each testing time point. Results: Peak rotational traction was significantly different across shoe models (F = 218, df = 5, p <0.0001), shoe outsole groups (F = 316.2, df = 2, p < .0001), and grass species (F = 202.8, df = 4, p < 0.0001). No main effect for shoe model was found for translational traction (F = 2.392, p = 0.07). Conclusions: The rotational (but not translational) traction varied substantially across different shoe types, outsole groups, and grass species. Highest rotational traction values were seen with soft ground outsole (screw-in metal studs) shoes tested on warm season grass. This objective data allows more informed footwear choices for football played in warm/hot climates on sand-based elite football playing surfaces. Further research is required to confirm if these findings extend across other football shoe brands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Safety climate, which provides a snapshot of safety culture, is rarely measured in Indonesian healthcare organisations because there are no validated surveys that can be administered in its native language, Bahasa Indonesia. The objectives of this study were to translate and linguistically adapt the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire into Bahasa Indonesia, and investigate the internal construct validity and reliability of the translated survey. Methods: The Safety Attitudes Questionnaire was translated into Indonesian language through forward and backward translation. The internal construct validity and reliability of the translated survey was assessed using Rasch analysis which examines overall model fit, unidimensionality, response format, targeting, internal consistency reliability and item bias. Results: A total of 279 nurses (response rate 82%) completed the Indonesian version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. Most respondents were Division 2 registered nurses (n = 209; 75%), female (n = 174; 62%), and aged less than 30 years (n = 187; 67%). All six domains of the Indonesian version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire demonstrated unidimensionality (t-test less than 0.05 threshold value). However, suboptimal targeting (ceiling effect) was observed in all domains, and had at least one misfitting item (item fit residual beyond ±2.5) Item bias was also evident in most domains. Conclusion: This study has translated and validated an Indonesian version of the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire for the first time. Whilst there was general support to sum items to obtain domain scores, further work is required to refine the response options as well as the wording and number of items in this survey to improve its overall measurement properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of night-shift work, and the association of night-shift work with alcohol use disorders(AUDs), as well as with health-related quality of life(HRQL), in Korean adult workers. A total of 26,895 adult workers aged 20–59 years were included in the analysis. AUDs were assessed using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test(AUDIT), and HRQL was measured by the EuroQol-5D questionnaire with five main dimensions. We found an interaction effect between gender and working status on AUDs (p = 0.0065), suggesting that women are more fragile than men in terms of the effects of night work but not regarding HRQL (p = 0.1729). Female night workers had higher risk of AUDs than female day workers (odds ratio(OR): 2.23, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.48–3.38) but this effect was not noted in male night workers (OR: 0.97, 95% CI: 0.69–1.37). Lower HRQL was found in depression dimension for night workers compared to day workers (OR: 1.37, 95% CI: 1.00–1.89), whereas day-night regular shift workers were protected from depression. Risk of AUDs and lower HRQL were identified in female night workers but not in male night workers. This association suggests that women are more fragile than men in terms of the effects of night work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the running pace and step characteristics among various competitive-level 400-m hurdlers through inter-group and intra-athlete comparisons. We analysed spatiotemporal data involving the split time, mean step length (SL) and mean step frequency (SF) for 13 male world-class and 14 male national-level 400-m hurdlers. We analysed 16.5 ± 3.9 races for each world-class hurdler and 19.8 ± 6.0 races for each national-level hurdler (the total number of analysed runs was 491) using publicly available television and internet broadcasts. Inter-group comparisons showed that both first- and latter-halves split times of the world-class hurdlers were significantly shorter than those of the national-level hurdlers. In the latter-half phase, no significant differences of SL and SF were observed between the world-class and national level hurdlers. Intra-athlete comparisons showed that no athletes favoured only first-half phase in terms of running speed in short finish times. In contrast, finish times of all hurdlers were sensitive to running speed in the latter-half phase. In the latter half of the race, 18 of the 27 hurdlers were identified as being SF reliant during speed enhancements; running speed of the other 9 hurdlers were also sensitive to high SF. In conclusions, important findings regarding high performance in inter-group comparisons do not always corresponded with those in intra-athlete comparisons. All athletes and coaches should first prioritize maintaining high running speeds in the latter half of 400-m hurdles rather than in the first half of the race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex nature of mental well-being is reflected in the great diversity of variables thought to represent aspects of mental flourishing. Discovering the underlying structure of mental well-being is important for a full understanding of this complex construct. Using data from 3 countries (the United States, Japan, and Iran), we performed multi-dimensional scaling to analyze the representation of 9 hedonic and eudaimonic well-being variables in a 2-dimensional psychological space. The analyses revealed 2 interpretable underlying dimensions across cultures and gender groups. The first dimension—eudaimonic well-being versus hedonic well-being—is well-known to well-being researchers. The second dimension—existential relatedness versus Epicurean independence—has not been recognized before. Existential relatedness is the characteristic of being meaningfully interconnected with things other than oneself, and is mainly based on the variables positive relations with others, personal growth, purpose in life, and life satisfaction. Epicurean independence is the characteristic of being relatively free of painful experiences and not feeling the need to have ones’ views accepted by anyone but oneself. Epicurean independence is mainly based on the variables autonomy and absence of negative affect. We explain these dimensions in detail and discuss the implications for well-being research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test and compare different incentives in motivating water conservation using a randomized controlled trial. In a field experiment carried out with Singaporean households, regular feedback was given, with informative, normative and monetary incentives provided to different groups. Evidence shows that all households saved an average of 4 Litres of water per person per day, with no difference in treatment effect found across various groups. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the water saving effect is also found to be more significant with high baseline users, who saved up to 5.9 Litres per person per day. High baseline households also respond more positively to the non-monetary incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationship of weather conditions, together with sex and country of origin, with running performance in the Boston Marathon from 1972 to 2018. A total of 580,990 observations from 382,209 different finishers were analyzed using Generalized Additive Mixed Models. Different groups and subgroups were considered such as all runners, near elite 101:200 finishers, near elite 21:100, annual top ten finishers and annual winners. Weather conditions, over the hours of the event, were average air temperature (°C), total precipitations (mm), wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) (°C), wind speed (km/h), wind direction (head wind, side wind, tail wind) and barometric pressure (hPa). These effects were examined in a multi-variable model, together with: sex, country of origin, calendar year, an interaction term country:sex and a spline smooth term in function of calendar year and sex. The average temperature, when increasing by 1°C, was related to worsened performance (by 00:01:47 h:min:sec for all finishers and by 00:00:20 h:min:sec for annual winners). Also, the pressure and wet-bulb globe temperature, when increasing, were related to worsened performances. Tail wind improved performances of all groups. Increasing precipitation was significantly (p<0.05) related to worsened performances in all groups except annual winners. Increasing wind speed was also related to worsened performances in all finishers and near elite groups. Kenyans and Ethiopians were the fastest nationalities. The sex differences (men faster than women in all groups) were the largest in near elite groups. Our findings contributed to the knowledge of the performance in Boston Marathon across calendar years, considering as main effects weather conditions, country of origin and sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]