Search Results (26)

Background: In a global panorama marked by a progressive rise in obesity, metabolic syndrome, and chronic non-communicable disease prevalence, nutrition education (NE) might play a pivotal role in restoring adoption and strengthening adherence to dietary patterns that protect human health. Therefore, the primary purpose of this work is to review the existing scientific literature studying NE programs aimed at schoolchildren in the decade 2014–2024 and evaluate the effectiveness of intervention tools. Methods: During the first phase of this research, a qualitative analysis was conducted to track similarity in intervention tools and strategies used in nutrition education programs. In the second phase, a quantitative analysis was carried out, extracting common parameters among studies and assessing their potential influence in improving adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD). Results: A high degree of heterogeneity was observed in educational program designs and intervention tools, which were usually not properly described and justified. All studies that measured adherence to the MD registered an improvement after the intervention, in some cases even higher than 10%. However, this study found no relationship between common parameters (i.e., number of formal tools, number of non-formal tools, lesson duration, and program length) used in NE and the improvement in students’ adherence to MD. Conclusions: This research has contributed to outlining a general framework of NE and to promoting a systematic approach in this research field. Full article

The aim of this research is to investigate and use a variety of immersive multisensory media techniques in order to create convincing digital models of fossilised tree trunks for use in XR (Extended Reality). This is made possible through the use of geospatial data derived from aerial imaging using UASs, terrestrial material captured using cameras and the incorporation of both the visual and audio elements for better immersion, accessed and explored in 6 Degrees of Freedom (6DoF). Immersiveness is a key factor of output that is especially engaging to the user. Both conventional and alternative methods are explored and compared, emphasising the advantages made possible with the help of Machine Learning Computational Photography. The material is collected using both UAS and terrestrial camera devices, including a multi-sensor 3D-360° camera, using stitched panoramas as sources for photogrammetry processing. Difficulties such as capturing large free-standing objects using terrestrial means are overcome using practical solutions involving mounts and remote streaming solutions. The key research contributions are comparisons between different imaging techniques and photogrammetry processes, resulting in significantly higher fidelity outputs. Conclusions indicate that superior fidelity can be achieved through the help of Machine Learning Computational Photography processes, and higher resolutions and technical specs of equipment do not necessarily translate into superior outputs. Full article

Applying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and vision-based analysis methods to detect bridge surface damage significantly improves inspection efficiency, but the existing techniques have difficulty in accurately locating damage, making it difficult to use the results to assess a bridge’s degree of deterioration. Therefore, this study proposes a method to generate panoramic bridge surface images using multi-view images captured by UAVs, in order to automatically identify and locate damage. The main contributions are as follows: (1) We propose a UAV-based image-capturing method for various bridge sections to collect close-range, multi-angle, and overlapping images of the surface; (2) we propose a 3D reconstruction method based on multi-view images to reconstruct a textured bridge model, through which an ultra-high resolution panoramic unfolded image of the bridge surface can be obtained by projecting from multiple angles; (3) we applied the Swin Transformer to optimize the YOLOv8 network and improve the detection accuracy of small-scale damages based on the established bridge damage dataset and employed sliding window segmentation to detect damage in the ultra-high resolution panoramic image. The proposed method was applied to detect surface damage on a three-span concrete bridge. The results indicate that this method automatically generates panoramic images of the bridge bottom, deck, and sides with hundreds of millions of pixels and recognizes damage in the panoramas. In addition, the damage detection accuracy reached 98.7%, which is improved by 13.6% when compared with the original network. Full article

Contacting forests in different ways and conducting public perception evaluations of forests are important ways to evaluate forest construction. In order to explore the differences between on-site and manual post-collection indoor evaluations in forest landscape surveys, we combined subjective evaluation and objective indicator monitoring (eye movement characteristics, physiological indicators) based on different forest observation scales. We compared and analyzed the suitability of the following four visual approaches: on-site observation, manual collection, followed by indoor viewing normal photos (NP), videos (VD), and virtual reality panoramas (VR), in terms of public preference, perception, and psychological emotion. The results showed the following: (1) Compared with the on-site evaluation, the three indoor visual approaches (NP, VD, and VR) showed no significant difference in “landscape beauty” and “spatial perception”. VD also showed no significant difference in “landscape perception”, “seeing”, and “plant color preference” and had the strongest substitution for site evaluation. (2) With the exception of small-scale landscapes, in which on-site evaluation showed no substitutability, for the rest of the landscape scales, each of the three indoor visual approaches showed substitutability for on-site evaluation to varying degrees. (3) When conducting physiological and psychological surveys, watching videos and VR are more ideal. In terms of eye tracking, VR is closest to on-site observation. Practice shows that video was closer to on-site observation in most landscape preferences and perceptions. VR was suitable for presenting public visual behavioral characteristics, and NP showed some advantages in landscape beauty and spatial perceptions. The findings of the study can provide a scientific basis for the selection of visual approaches in future landscape evaluation. Full article

In the field of technological construction tools, 360-degree panorama provides a panoramic virtual reality capable of representing the construction environment in great detail. While there are many studies on their pedagogical and safety applications, few studies address the benefits of their use in construction monitoring and control. For this reason, the present research aims to explore its application and benefits for monitoring and control, the research for which begins with a literature review of the application of 360-degree panoramas in construction, where the authors identified the main benefits. In the second stage, the authors analyzed two case studies of its application: the first is based on the construction of a retail project, and the second is based on an infrastructure project. After the implementation, the researchers conducted interviews with the team members responsible for implementing 360-degree panorama. The main benefits of 360-degree panorama are as follows: a complete overview of the construction site situation, verification of the distribution of the space used, documentation of the current project situations, as well as progress control and quality control. These results will hopefully help to improve the understanding of this tool’s current state of the art in the construction field and open the door to future investigations on cost–benefit analysis that facilitate the application of this tool in construction sites. Full article

This research project investigates the potential of 360-panorama tours to improve the situated and contextual interpretation, virtual visitation, and spatial understanding of recorded or simulated built heritage sites. Our chosen case study was the Subiaco Hotel, a significant heritage building designed by Summerhayes Architecture, which we documented using 360-degree photographs and linked with other media to create an interactive 360-panorama tour. Today, 360-degree panorama tours such as Google Street View enable the virtual exploration of heritage sites and historic buildings. They demonstrate limited interaction and immersion across a range of platforms and devices, without the requirement of expensive virtual reality headsets, but typically do not integrate other media to leverage spatially richer ways to communicate the historical developments of architectural interiors and exteriors. The primary goals of this study were to establish a comprehensive step-by-step workflow for creating an interactive tour of a significant heritage site, demonstrate how other media such as text, videos, and 3D models can be linked, gather feedback from cultural heritage professionals, and offer future research directions and development guidelines. Apart from detailing an optimized workflow for developing interactive 360-degree virtual tours for heritage buildings, we also offer guidelines for optimal panoramic tour creation and implementation. Full article

Bilingual teaching has experienced rapid growth in the Spanish educational panorama and numerous university programmes have emerged with the aim of training future CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) teachers. However, there is little research assessing the level of linguistic competence in Spanish and foreign languages of future teachers, especially those who are studying for a bilingual degree. Although this work is part of a broader project that analyses bilingual lexical competence in subjects related to the Social Sciences and Experimental Sciences, we focus on the analysis of lexical availability of content related to the teaching of science. The sample consisted of 46 students of the Degree in Primary Education at the University of Extremadura. Using a lexical availability test, lexical production in Spanish and English is analysed and compared to determine whether the fact of studying in English affects the acquisition and consolidation of lexical knowledge in Spanish. The results show that there are no significant differences in lexical production between Spanish and English. In addition to the quantitative data, results from the qualitative analysis are presented, analysing the most available words and the organisation of the lexicon in both languages. Full article

In this paper, a new box-counting method to achieve a highly specific topological fingerprinting of architecture in relation to the position of the observer and in the context of its surroundings is proposed. Central to this method is the use of 360-degree spherical panoramas as a basis for fractal measurement. Thus, a number of problems of the comparative analysis of the fractal dimension in the field of architecture are explicitly and implicitly addressed, first and foremost being the question of choosing image boundaries while considering adjacent vegetation, urban elements, and other visually present objects for Gestalt analysis of a specific building. Second, the problem of distance and perspective as part of the aesthetic experience based on viewer and object location were taken into account and are addressed. The implications of the use of a spherical perspective as described in this research are also highly relevant for other methods of aesthetic measures in architecture, including those implementing collaborative design processes guided by digital tools and machine learning, among others. Full article

This article focuses on the recent advances in the field of reinforcement learning (RL) as well as the present state–of–the–art applications in games. First, we give a general panorama of RL while at the same time we underline the way that it has progressed to the current degree of application. Moreover, we conduct a keyword analysis of the literature on deep learning (DL) and reinforcement learning in order to analyze to what extent the scientific study is based on games such as ATARI, Chess, and Go. Finally, we explored a range of public data to create a unified framework and trends for the present and future of this sector (RL in games). Our work led us to conclude that deep RL accounted for roughly 25.1% of the DL literature, and a sizable amount of this literature focuses on RL applications in the game domain, indicating the road for newer and more sophisticated algorithms capable of outperforming human performance. Full article

Despite the fact that the member countries of the European Union initiated a reform of university education two decades ago to promote employability, giving importance to soft skills beyond the purely technical ones of each degree, there is still an important contrast between the demand for this type of skills on the part of the labor market and the educational offerings of universities. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the impact that the concept of employability and soft skills really has on the scientific community and the patterns of collaboration between the European Union, the UK and Switzerland, among researchers in these matters, through a bibliometric study of the scientific publications in the area, collected in the databases Web of Science and Scopus during the period from 1996–2022, presenting the most significant bibliometric data through a descriptive and quantitative methodology. The main results allow us to detect, among other conclusions, an increase in scientific production from 2010 but minimal scientific collaboration, since 90% of the total number of works were signed by a single author. Two countries, the UK and Australia, have 80% more scientific production on these topics than Spain. This bibliometric study offers a descriptive and analytical panorama, from diachronic and synchronic perspectives, of the main bibliometric variables in two of the databases with the greatest impact among the scientific community (WOS and Scopus), allowing researchers and institutions to visualize the most developed study trends and the strongest emerging lines of research. The necessary rapprochement between the university and the company, in this way, will help the university to know its present situation but also to discover what learning strategy it should consider reducing the training gap in competences. Full article

A test of independence is commonly used to determine differences (or associations) between samples in a nominal level measurement. Fisher’s exact test and Chi-square test are two of the most widely applied tests of independence used in the data analyses in different areas such as information technologies, biostatistics, psychology and health sciences. In some cases, contingency tables with null entries (also called random zeros) arise, particularly if the number of samples is small, and the variables analyzed are multilevel. This situation becomes a problem because if one or more entries in a contingency table are zero or have small values, then the tests of independence produce unreliable results. In this paper, we propose a method to address that issue. The method merges one or more levels of the variables analyzed to create contingency tables with only one degree of freedom, avoiding applying a test of independence on contingency tables with random zeros. The source code (Python) of the method is publicly available for use. The results obtained using our method give a complete panorama of the associations between the variables of a data set. To show the effectiveness of our approach to find dependencies between variables, we use four data sets publicly available on the Internet. Full article

Healthcare accessibility (HCA) is directly related to the general well-being of citizens, and the HCA index model is widely used in HCA evaluation. However, the evaluation results of the HCA index model are rough and potentially misleading because it cannot measure the coordination of a country’s performance across the various evaluation dimensions. This study aimed to introduce a coupling coordination degree model to remedy this defect of the HCA index model, conduct a more meticulous evaluation for the global HCA development over the past two decades, present a panorama of global HCA current status, and further contribute precise strategies to enhance global HCA development. Combining the HCA index model and the coupling coordination model, we used the Global Health Observatory (GHO) data to evaluate the development levels of HCA in 186 countries across the world from 2000 to 2018. The results showed that, first, global HCA development has shown a slow upward trend over the past two decades. Second, of the selected 60 representative countries in 2018, the HCA in 86.7% of high-income countries belonged to the optimum development type, the HCA in 73.4% of upper-middle-income countries was in the antagonism-coordination stage of the transition development category, and the HCA in 66.7% of low-income and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) was in the inferior and worst development forms. Third, the Spearman’s correlation coefficient between HCA index and HCA coupling coordination degree was 0.787 (p < 0.001). The above results indicate that the dilemma of HCA development in LMICs lies not only in the poor healthcare resources, but also in weak ability to allocate healthcare resources effectively. As the lack of healthcare resources cannot be alleviated in a short time, LMICs ought to prioritize effective healthcare resources allocation, such as developing new basic healthcare kits adapted to low-resource setting. Full article

To validate the accuracy and reliability of onboard sensors for object detection and localization for driver assistance, as well as autonomous driving applications under realistic conditions (indoors and outdoors), a novel tracking system is presented. This tracking system is developed to determine the position and orientation of a slow-moving vehicle during test maneuvers within a reference environment (e.g., car during parking maneuvers), independent of the onboard sensors. One requirement is a 6 degree of freedom (DoF) pose with position uncertainty below 5 mm (3σ), orientation uncertainty below 0.3° (3σ), at a frequency higher than 20 Hz, and with a latency smaller than 500 ms. To compare the results from the reference system with the vehicle’s onboard system, synchronization via a Precision Time Protocol (PTP) and system interoperability to a robot operating system (ROS) are achieved. The developed system combines motion capture cameras mounted in a 360° panorama view setup on the vehicle, measuring retroreflective markers distributed over the test site with known coordinates, while robotic total stations measure a prism on the vehicle. A point cloud of the test site serves as a digital twin of the environment, in which the movement of the vehicle is visualized. The results have shown that the fused measurements of these sensors complement each other, so that the accuracy requirements for the 6 DoF pose can be met while allowing a flexible installation in different environments. Full article

Recently, the JPEG working group (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 WG1) developed an international standard, JPEG 360, that specifies the metadata and functionalities for saving and sharing 360-degree images efficiently to create a more realistic environment in various virtual reality services. We surveyed the metadata formats of existing 360-degree images and compared them to the JPEG 360 metadata format. We found that existing omnidirectional cameras and stitching software packages use formats that are incompatible with the JPEG 360 standard to embed metadata in JPEG image files. This paper proposes an easy-to-use tool for embedding JPEG 360 standard metadata for 360-degree images in JPEG image files using a JPEG-defined box format: the JPEG universal metadata box format. The proposed implementation will help 360-degree cameras and software vendors provide immersive services to users in a standardized manner for various markets, such as entertainment, education, professional training, navigation, and virtual and augmented reality applications. We also propose and develop an economical JPEG 360 standard compatible panoramic image acquisition system from a single PTZ camera with a special-use case of a wide field of view image of a conference or meeting. A remote attendee of the conference/meeting can see the realistic and immersive environment through our PTZ panorama in virtual reality. Full article

In connection with the constant growth of demand for high-quality food products, there is a need to develop effective methods for storing agricultural products, and the registration and predicting infection in the early stages. The studying of the physical properties of infected plants and seeds has fundamental importance for determining crop losses, conducting a survey of diseases, and assessing the effectiveness of their control (assessment of the resistance of crops and varieties, the effect of fungicides, etc.). Presently, photoluminescent methods for diagnosing seeds in the ultraviolet and visible ranges have not been studied. For research, seeds of winter wheat were selected, and were infected with one of the most common and dangerous diseases for plants—fusarium. The research of luminescence was carried out based on a hardware–software complex consisting of a multifunctional spectrofluorometer “Fluorat-02-Panorama”, a computer with software “Panorama Pro” installed, and an external camera for the samples under study. Spectra were obtained with a diagnostic range of winter wheat seeds of 220–400 nm. Based on the results obtained for winter wheat seeds, it is possible to further develop a method for determining the degree of fusarium infection. Full article