Search

This manuscript presents a novel geofencing method in behavioral research. Geofencing, built upon geolocation technology, constitutes virtual fences around specific locations. Every time a participant crosses the virtual border around the geofenced area, an event can be triggered on a smartphone, e.g., the participant may be asked to complete a survey. The geofencing method can alleviate the problems of constant location tracking, such as recording sensitive geolocation information and battery drain. In scenarios where locations for geofencing are determined by participants (e.g., home, workplace), no location data need to be transferred to the researcher, so this method can ensure privacy and anonymity. Given the widespread use of smartphones and mobile Internet, geofencing has become a feasible tool in studying human behavior and cognition outside of the laboratory. The method can help advance theoretical and applied psychological science at a new frontier of context-aware research. At the same time, there is a lack of guidance on how and when geofencing can be applied in research. This manuscript aims to fill the gap and ease the adoption of the geofencing method. We describe the current challenges and implementations in geofencing and present three empirical studies in which we evaluated the geofencing method using the Samply application, a tool for mobile experience sampling research. The studies show that sensitivity and precision of geofencing were affected by the type of event, location radius, environment, operating system, and user behavior. Potential implications and recommendations for behavioral research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: No studies have examined notifications as they relate to parent stress. We aimed to examine associations between objective daily mobile device notifications and pickups with daily parenting stress. Methods: This was a within‐ and between‐subjects, cross‐sectional study that took place from 2020 to 2021. The study occurred during the coronavirus disease of 2019 pandemic. Data were collected in a low‐contact home visit. This study included 62 parents of 62 children aged 48–71 months. Parents downloaded a passive sensing app on their Android mobile devices collecting data on duration, device notifications and device pickups. Parents completed an end‐of‐day stress survey for 4 days. We used random effects models to examine the variation of daily stress with smartphone duration, notification frequency, pickup frequency and device‐initiated pickups, adjusting for covariates. Results: Parents were on average 37.3 years old (SD ± 5.7) and were predominantly mothers (82.3%). On average, parents received 293 daily notifications and picked up their phones 93 times. Duration of smartphone use and notification frequency were not associated with daily stress. Device‐initiated pickups were associated with daily parent stress. Conclusion: When notifications prompted parents to pick up their phones more often, parents experienced greater stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Brasileira de Direito Processual Penal is the property of Instituto Brasileiro de Direito Processual Penal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Introduction Although antiretroviral therapy (ART) leads to reduced tuberculosis (TB) incidence in people with HIV (PWH), ART recipients remain at higher risk of TB compared to HIV-seronegative people. With accelerated ART rollout in sub-Saharan Africa, increasing proportions of TB cases among PWH in people receiving long-term ART have been reported. Objective To determine TB notifications among PWH by ART status in a mainly urban uptake area in Ethiopia during an 8-year period in connection to the introduction of the ‘test-and-treat’ strategy for HIV. Methods PWH were identified from registers at health facilities providing ART in Adama and surrounding areas, Ethiopia 2015–2022. Annual TB notifications were compared over time. PWH within TB were categorized by ART status at the time of TB diagnosis (pre-ART TB: TB diagnosed before or ≤6 months after starting ART; ART-associated TB: TB diagnosed >6 months after starting ART). Results Among a total of 8,926 PWH, 993 had been diagnosed with TB (11.1%); mean age 40.0 years [SD 11.8], 53.5% were men). Throughout the study period, most TB cases had been notified before ART initiation (617/993; 62.1%). ART-associated TB cases constituted a mean of 37.4% (range 23.8%–44.2%) of all TB cases among PWH annually. Median time from ART initiation to TB diagnosis among ART-associated TB was 6.0 years. Conclusion TB notifications among PWH in this area did not decrease 2015–2022, implying persistently high risk of TB among PWH in this setting. Most TB cases occurred in ART-naïve persons, illustrating late HIV diagnosis in this population.

In a post-pandemic context, everyday life, technology and media have become increasingly focused in the home. This has implications for how people will live with automated and smart technologies in possible futures, for electricity demand, transition to net zero emissions and ultimately planetary health. Here, we explore these unfolding circumstances through the prism of notifications, and their capacity to mediate uncertainties while enabling people to engage in anticipatory modes of home organisation which ensure their physical comfort and produce a sense of ontological security in pandemic and climate crisis situations. In possible futures, the notification may vary from its current characteristics, but would enable people to engage with everyday automated technologies and systems in ways that acknowledge values of place, safety and care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smartphones are useful—albeit disruptive—devices. Cognitive control research conceptualizes smartphone disruption as external interference. Actively using a smartphone and hearing smartphone notifications while trying to accomplish a goal can impair performance. In the current project, performance was compared across these contexts. Participants were presented with reading passages and retention was assessed through a quiz. The reading portion was completed without interference (control), while a hidden smartphone vibrated, or while participants responded to text messages. Participants in the interference conditions performed equally poor and worse than those in the control condition. Completion time followed a different pattern. Participants in the vibration condition took longer to complete the quiz than those in the texting condition but did not differ from those in the control condition. Results are situated in Clapp and Gazzaley's (2012) interference framework and suggest that smartphone vibrations are an external stimulus that can trigger internal interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant proportion of smartphone notifications are indicative of human behaviour (e.g. delivery updates for purchased items, physical activity summaries, and notification of updates to subscribed content). However, present attempts to understand human behaviour from smartphone traces typically focus on sensors such as location, accelerometer and proximity, overlooking the potential for notifications as a valuable data source. In this paper, we propose a general framework that provides end-to-end processing of notifications to understand behavioural aspects. We realise the framework with an implementation that tackles the specific use case of establishing prior buying behaviour from associated notifications. To evaluate the framework and implementation, we conduct a longitudinal user study in which we collect more than 250, 000 notifications, from twelve users, over an average of three months. We apply knowledge-based and machine learning techniques to those notifications to assess the tasks of the proposed framework. The results show a substantial difference in the performance between the methods used to extract behavioural features from the collected notifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), effective since 12 October 2023, empowers the European Commission to investigate third-country financial contributions to EU companies distorting the internal market. The regulation covers a wide range of foreign contributions and introduces notification obligations for mergers and public procurement. The European Commission can also initiate investigations independently, impose corrective measures and impose fines for failure to notify. Companies must adapt their internal processes and consider the impact on costs and timelines. Before undertaking transactions or tenders, collecting information on foreign contributions is crucial, even below notification thresholds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional mobile applications are one of the brand-new approaches to psychological interventions in different areas, including stress. The study aims to analyze a mobile application for Persian users on perceived stress and improve mindful skills. This study is a one-group pretest-posttest design with a quasi-experimental research design. Three instruments were used in this study, including the Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), and the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS). Eighty-five students participated in an 8-week mindfulness mobile app (Aramgar) for at least 10 minutes per day intervention. They responded to validated outcome measures of stress and mindfulness at baseline after the 8-week continued access period. Aramgar is designed based on mindfulness-based stress reduction. Paired t-tests showed significant differences in general perceived stress (P = 0.03) and total score of mindfulness (P = 0.002) before and after Aramgar. The analysis of Aramgar’s quality regarding engagement, functionality, aesthetics, and information quality showed that specialists assessed the quality appropriately. Using functional mobile apps provides simplicity for mental health services. Therefore, to strengthen and develop the mentioned services, it is recommended that the necessary information technology infrastructures be provided and limitations for designing and running mental health mobile apps be removed.

The Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) plays a pivotal role in regulating food safety in the European Union by enabling the competent authorities in each Member State to issue warnings for removing unsafe or illegal items from the market. This article undertakes a comprehensive analysis of RASFF data on Slovak food from 2002 to 2020, to investigate the trends in notifications, actions executed, hazard categories, and product categories within the food industry. Our scrutiny of the RASFF data revealed fluctuations in the counts of alerts and information notifications across years, indicating periods of heightened hazard detection and enhanced transparency within the system. Various measures, including destruction, recall, notification, and prohibition, were employed to address these hazards and ensure the safety and compliance of food products. The hazard categories exhibited sporadic patterns, underscoring the necessity for ongoing surveillance and regulatory interventions. Specific product categories, such as dietetic foods, food supplements, and fortified foods, registered higher incidences of hazards in specific years, implying the need for intensified safety precautions. These findings highlight the importance of sustained efforts in maintaining food safety and managing risks within the industry.

In this scoping review, we aim to study the decision‐making process regarding referrals concerning children and families at risk within child protection and child welfare systems. Particularly, we focus on the decision made immediately after receiving the referral. We conducted two rounds of searches across 17 different databases. We used 17 and 19 different terms translated into four languages respectively. Twenty‐seven articles were included within a period of 14 years. After describing the field following the type of social service system and geography, the decision‐making ecology (DME) framework was applied. The issue of decision‐making in social service is complex. Overall, the results showed that the field is somewhat well studied, methodologically and thematically, showing an overweight of studies conducted in the UK and the USA, indicating a need for more research in Nordic child and family welfare systems. We argue that decision‐making regarding referrals is a context‐bound phenomenon with mainly external factors, such as types of social service systems, and organisational factors, as substantial influences to decision‐making. Overall, this calls for more local and context‐bound research in each country and across organisational boundaries within the same country if we want to know what affects the decisions made immediately after receiving a referral and thereby gaining important knowledge on the safeguarding of children and families at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al-Bahith Al-Aalami is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract Background Tuberculosis remains a major public health priority and is the second leading cause of mortality from infectious disease worldwide. TB case detection rates are unacceptably low for men, the elderly and children. Disruptions in TB services due to the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated these and other inequalities. Methods We modelled trends in age- and sex- disaggregated case notifications for all forms of new and relapse TB reported to the World Health Organization for 45 high TB, TB/HIV and MDR-TB burden countries from 2013 to 2019. We compared trend predicted notifications to observed notifications in 2020 to estimate the number of people with TB likely to have missed or delayed diagnosis. We estimated the risk ratio (RR) of missed or delayed TB diagnosis for children (aged