Co-Designing a New Yoga-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Survivors of Stroke: A Formative Evaluation

Movement-based mindfulness interventions (MBI) are complex, multi-component interventions for which the design process is rarely reported. For people with stroke, emerging evidence suggests benefits, but mainstream programs are generally unsuitable. We aimed to describe the processes involved and to conduct a formative evaluation of the development of a novel yoga-based MBI designed for survivors of stroke. We used the Medical Research Council complex interventions framework and principles of co-design. We purposefully approached health professionals and consumers to establish an advisory committee for developing the intervention. Members collaborated and iteratively reviewed the design and content of the program, formatted into a training manual. Four external yoga teachers independently reviewed the program. Formative evaluation included review of multiple data sources and documentation (e.g., formal meeting minutes, focus group discussions, researcher observations). The data were synthesized using inductive thematic analysis. Three broad themes emerged: (a) MBI content and terminology; (b) manual design and readability; and (c) barriers and enablers to deliver the intervention. Various perspectives and feedback on essential components guided finalizing the program. The design phase of a novel yoga-based MBI was strengthened by interdisciplinary, consumer contributions and peer review. The 12-week intervention is ready for testing among survivors of stroke.

Correcting Imprecise Object Locations for Training Object Detectors in Remote Sensing Applications

Object detection on aerial and satellite imagery is an important tool for image analysis in remote sensing and has many areas of application. As modern object detectors require accurate annotations for training, manual and labor-intensive labeling is necessary. In situations where GPS coordinates for the objects of interest are already available, there is potential to avoid the cumbersome annotation process. Unfortunately, GPS coordinates are often not well-aligned with georectified imagery. These spatial errors can be seen as noise regarding the object locations, which may critically harm the training of object detectors and, ultimately, limit their practical applicability. To overcome this issue, we propose a co-correction technique that allows us to robustly train a neural network with noisy object locations and to transform them toward the true locations. When applied as a preprocessing step on noisy annotations, our method greatly improves the performance of existing object detectors. Our method is applicable in scenarios where the images are only annotated with points roughly indicating object locations, instead of entire bounding boxes providing precise information on the object locations and extents. We test our method on three datasets and achieve a substantial improvement (e.g., 29.6% mAP on the COWC dataset) over existing methods for noise-robust object detection.

An Analysis of the Circumstances of Tolerance Status Among University Students

The study was conducted to analyse the need for a training manual for undergraduate students to promote tolerance through heritage education. The objective of the study was to probe the observations of faculty members regarding the status of tolerance among university undergraduate students. This study was qualitative. The population of the study consisted of public sector universities of province Punjab. A total of 20 faculty members were selected through a simple random sampling technique. The researcher used the semi-structured interview schedule to investigate the perception of faculty members. Nvivo software was used for qualitative data analysis. The qualitative investigation indicated that the students' behavior is often intolerant. Results showed that two significant factors that contribute to intolerance among students were caste and gender differences respectively. Religion also plays an essential role in the occurrence of such incidents, which develop a situation of doing or dying. The intolerance towards different faiths and sects was observed. Students often did not show harmony and respect for others. Lack of balance and non-acceptability of others’ opinions creates conflict.

Pelatihan Komputer Dasar Berbasis Aplikasi Microsoft Office bagi Siswa SMK Negeri 3 Merauke Provinsi Papua

The purpose of this community service is to improve basic computer skills based on the Microsoft Office application for students of SMK Negeri 3 Merauke. This community service method used training with material presentation techniques and questions and answers. The training participants were 34 students of class X Multimedia Department. There were 2 (two) activities carried out, namely: the preparation of a Microsoft office training manual and a questionnaire response to training participants as well as the implementation of basic computer training activities online. The instruments used are response questionnaires and activity documentation. The results of this community service activity indicate that overall each indicator of the response of basic computer training participants is in the 'good' and 'very good' categories. The average percentage of responses is 98.23 which is included in the 'very good' category.

EXPRESS: Manual training of mental rotation performance: Visual representation of rotating figures is the main driver for improvements

Studies have demonstrated that manual and mental rotation show common processes. Training studies have shown that a manual and concurrent visual rotation improves mental rotation performance. In this study, we separated the visual rotation from the manual rotation. 121 participants were randomly assigned to visual training, manual rotation training, or manual training without rotational movement. Before and after the training session of 30 minutes, they had to solve a chronometric mental rotation test. Data were analyzed with linear mixed models and showed an improvement in mental rotation performance for all groups. However, this improvement did not differ between groups. Due to the independence of the form and occurrence of the manual activity, this suggests that it is not the motor activity but the concurrent visual rotation that leads to improvements in mental rotation tasks. Therefore, the visual component in mental rotation tasks has to be investigated in more detail.