Exercise motives impact on physical activities measured using wearable devices.

Health officials advocate for increased physical activity to address negative health consequences. While previous studies have investigated what motivates different individuals to exercise, the motives were not verified using unbiased measurements. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), including wearables, are essential for collecting and sharing data necessary for improving health initiatives. The purpose of this study was to use objective measures collected by wearable devices (Fitbit) to track activity and explore whether specific exercise motives impact participants' physical activities. Ninety-six college freshmen enrolled in the 90-day study. During orientation, participants completed an Exercise Motives Inventory-2 (EMI-2), and their current physical state was baselined. Partial Least Squares (PLS)-Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to model the relationship between variables. The results revealed a relationship between Interpersonal Motives, Health Motives, and Fitness Motives, and participants' physical activities. Those striving to facilitate a change in exercise behavior in young adults should leverage activities that align with their motives of interest and consider the use of wearable devices to track physical activity.

While many think that individuals can use exercise alone to lose weight, exercise only accounts for roughly 25% of weight loss. However, physical activity has many other benefits including to combatting health conditions and improving sleep, mood, and energy levels. With all of the health benefits, we feel one must understand which motives interest individuals to exercise. The purpose of this study is to determine which exercise motives influence participant's physical activities using objective measures as collected by a wearable device. To do so, we recruited 96 college Freshmen to participate in this 90-day study. Participants completed the Exercise Motives Inventory-2 (EMI-2) and received a Fitbit during a pre-study orientation where we also collected their weight, height, and blood pressure. A Fitbit was issued so that we could track their activity using an unbiased measurement. Motivators for this age group included Interpersonal Motives, Health Motives, and Fitness Motives, and participants' physical activities. These individuals were not influenced by Body-Related or Psychological Motives.

Deep Vision for Breast Cancer Classification and Segmentation.

(1) Background: Female breast cancer diagnoses odds have increased from 11:1 in 1975 to 8:1 today. Mammography false positive rates (FPR) are associated with overdiagnoses and overtreatment, while false negative rates (FNR) increase morbidity and mortality. (2) Methods: Deep vision supervised learning classifies 299 × 299 pixel de-noised mammography images as negative or non-negative using models built on 55,890 pre-processed training images and applied to 15,364 unseen test images. A small image representation from the fitted training model is returned to evaluate the portion of the loss function gradient with respect to the image that maximizes the classification probability. This gradient is then re-mapped back to the original images, highlighting the areas of the original image that are most influential for classification (perhaps masses or boundary areas). (3) Results: initial classification results were 97% accurate, 99% specific, and 83% sensitive. Gradient techniques for unsupervised region of interest mapping identified areas most associated with the classification results clearly on positive mammograms and might be used to support clinician analysis. (4) Conclusions: deep vision techniques hold promise for addressing the overdiagnoses and treatment, underdiagnoses, and automated region of interest identification on mammography.

Phase-Change Hyperbolic Heterostructures for Nanopolaritonics: A Case Study of hBN/VO2.

Unlike conventional plasmonic media, polaritonic van der Waals (vdW) materials hold promise for active control of light-matter interactions. The dispersion relations of elementary excitations such as phonons and plasmons can be tuned in layered vdW systems via stacking using functional substrates. In this work, infrared nanoimaging and nanospectroscopy of hyperbolic phonon polaritons are demonstrated in a novel vdW heterostructure combining hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and vanadium dioxide (VO2 ). It is observed that the insulator-to-metal transition in VO2 has a profound impact on the polaritons in the proximal hBN layer. In effect, the real-space propagation of hyperbolic polaritons and their spectroscopic resonances can be actively controlled by temperature. This tunability originates from the effective change in local dielectric properties of the VO2 sublayer in the course of the temperature-tuned insulator-to-metal phase transition. The high susceptibility of polaritons to electronic phase transitions opens new possibilities for applications of vdW materials in combination with strongly correlated quantum materials.

Efficiency of Launching Highly Confined Polaritons by Infrared Light Incident on a Hyperbolic Material.

We investigated phonon-polaritons in hexagonal boron nitride-a naturally hyperbolic van der Waals material-by means of the scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy. Real-space nanoimages we have obtained detail how the polaritons are launched when the light incident on a thin hexagonal boron nitride slab is scattered by various intrinsic and extrinsic inhomogeneities, including sample edges, metallic nanodisks deposited on its top surface, random defects, and surface impurities. The scanned tip of the near-field microscope is itself a polariton launcher whose efficiency proves to be superior to all the other types of polariton launchers we studied. Our work may inform future development of polaritonic nanodevices as well as fundamental studies of collective modes in van der Waals materials.

Laparoscopic bladder diverticulectomy.

Acquired bladder diverticulae are herniations of the bladder mucosa through detrusor muscle. Due to the ineffective emptying of the bladder diverticulum, urine accumulation may lead to urinary tract infection, stone disease, and lower urinary tract malignancy in the diverticulum. We report a case of laparoscopic bladder diverticulectomy for transitional cell carcinoma in an acquired bladder diverticulum. To our knowledge, this is the third case of laparoscopic diverticulectomy for a tumor. We report our experience with this case and the technical challenges encountered during the operation, together with literature review.