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Sledding is a common recreational activity in the Alpine region, practiced by families, friends, and at school, but it is rarely considered to cause serious injuries. Current actions to promote safe sledding are limited to announcements at the start of dedicated tracks or to didactic sheets presented by teachers in schools. However, these actions are currently limited and do not allow the development of piloting technique skills. Virtual reality has the potential to develop piloting skills, although the development of a virtual reality for sledding safety education needs to be guided by its acceptability. The purpose of this study was to (1) examine the acceptability of the virtual reality game for sledding safety education from the perspective of different potential user profiles (ie, parents, teachers, and sledders) based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 enriched by the health locus of control (HLC), and (2) understand participants' preferences and needs in terms of features to be integrated to the technology. Three profiles of participants (ie, parents, teachers, or sledders) were recruited through email diffusion from elementary schools, university, and ski resort announcements (Tyrol, Austria). They completed a series of questionnaires measuring: (1) demographic and general information, (2) acceptability of virtual reality sledding game for safety education (named VRodel), (3) perception of HLC, and (4) preferences and needs for VRodel. A total of 122 participants (15 teachers, 43 parents or legal guardians, and 64 sledders) completed the survey. Findings reveal that the constructs of hedonic motivation (β=.43, P<.001), price sensitivity (β=.28, P<.001), and habit (β=.36, P<.001) explained 65% of the variance in behavioral intention to use VRodel. Two acceptability clusters were identified (low and high), but no differences between the acceptability clusters emerged based on age, status, gender, or previous virtual reality use. Internal HLC was positively correlated with all dimensions of acceptability except social influence and facilitating conditions. Some correlations between acceptability constructs were also shown with powerful others' HLC. Participants highlighted the need to include realistic visual details and realistic interactions in the virtual environment for development. The acceptability of a virtual reality game for sledding safety education was quite high, and relationships with HLC were shown in the expected directions. Based on participants' preferences, developers are advised to promote immersion in the game.

Virtual reality (VR) technologies have demonstrated therapeutic usefulness across a variety of health care settings. However, graduate medical education (GME) trainee perspectives on VR acceptability and usability are limited. The behavioral intentions of GME trainees with regard to VR as an anxiolytic tool have not been characterized through a theoretical framework of technology adoption. The primary aim of this study was to apply a hybrid Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and a United Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to evaluate factors that predict the behavioral intentions of GME trainees to use VR for patient anxiolysis. The secondary aim was to assess the reliability of the TAM-UTAUT. Participants were surveyed in June 2023. GME trainees participated in a VR experience used to reduce perioperative anxiety. Participants then completed a survey evaluating demographics, perceptions, attitudes, environmental factors, and behavioral intentions that influence the adoption of new technologies. In total, 202 of 1540 GME trainees participated. Only 198 participants were included in the final analysis (12.9% participation rate). Perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, and enjoyment; social influence; and facilitating conditions predicted intention to use VR. Age, past use, price willing to pay, and curiosity were less strong predictors of intention to use. All confirmatory factor analysis models demonstrated a good fit. All domain measurements demonstrated acceptable reliability. This TAM-UTAUT demonstrated validity and reliability for predicting the behavioral intentions of GME trainees to use VR as a therapeutic anxiolytic in clinical practice. Social influence and facilitating conditions are modifiable factors that present opportunities to advance VR adoption, such as fostering exposure to new technologies and offering relevant training and social encouragement. Future investigations should study the model's reliability within specialties in different geographic locations.

Exposure to unhealthy food and beverage marketing is a major contributor to excessive weight gain among young people and it may disproportionately affect Black and Latinx communities. Appropriate and comprehensive regulations on food and beverage companies are essential, particularly as companies expand their reach and leverage the latest technologies to create marketing experiences using immersive virtual reality (VR). Although immersive VR technology is in its infancy, the potential effects of immersive VR food and beverage marketing on consumption, coupled with the history of racially targeted marketing by food and beverage corporations toward Black and Latinx communities, and the heightened burden of diet-related illnesses in Black and Latinx communities underscore a critical need to investigate immersive VR marketing targeting young people of color. This viewpoint will provide a brief description of VR food and beverage marketing as the newest food and beverage marketing frontier, highlight key concerns and knowledge gaps, and underscore future directions in research.

This study presents a real-time hand tracking and collision detection system for immersive mixed-reality boxing training on Apple Vision Pro (Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA, USA). Leveraging the device’s advanced spatial computing capabilities, this research addresses the limitations of traditional fitness applications that lack precision for technique-based sports like boxing with visual-only hand tracking. The system is designed to provide objective feedback by recognizing boxing-specific gestures with sub-centimeter accuracy and validating biomechanical correctness during punch execution. A three-stage pipeline consisting of geometric filtering, biomechanical validation, and punch technique assessment rejects accidental or improper motions. Experimental evaluation involving 12 participants demonstrated a gesture recognition accuracy of 96.3% and a technique validation accuracy of 88.5%. The system consistently operated at 60 FPS with low latency and high robustness across diverse lighting conditions. These results indicate the potential of Apple Vision Pro as a platform for precision sports training and highlight the educational impact of mixed reality in democratizing access to high-quality boxing instruction. The proposed framework is extensible to other skill-based sports requiring fine motor control and real-time feedback.

Spatial Computing (SC), the use of technology to blur the boundaries between physical and digital into an efficient, intuitive, high performance set of tools, holds huge promise for engineering design. With dramatic and accelerating industry prominence but little research in the design field, there is a need to generalize and frame SC for design. This paper contributes an operational framework for Spatial Engineering (SE) systems highlighting the roles of physical and digital users, objects, environments, and data, and five capabilities required for implementation. It then identifies value propositions for SE evidenced from review of the design field, including design activities in which value is generated. Finally, it presents research opportunities centered on good practice, system interaction and technology, and balancing overhead with the value that these systems provide.

Multimodal user interfaces promise natural and intuitive human–machine interactions. However, is the extra effort for the development of a complex multisensor system justified, or can users also be satisfied with only one input modality? This study investigates interactions in an industrial weld inspection workstation. Three unimodal interfaces, including spatial interaction with buttons augmented on a workpiece or a worktable, and speech commands, were tested individually and in a multimodal combination. Within the unimodal conditions, users preferred the augmented worktable, but overall, the interindividual usage of all input technologies in the multimodal condition was ranked best. Our findings indicate that the implementation and the use of multiple input modalities is valuable and that it is difficult to predict the usability of individual input modalities for complex systems.

Purpose The hospitality and tourism industry is strongly influenced by new and immersive technologies, such as augmented reality (AR), to enhance customer experiences across a diverse set of touchpoints throughout the visitor journey. This paper aims to provide a holistic understanding of AR marketing for this industry context, present a number of fundamental premises of AR marketing within it and establish an agenda for future AR research. Design/methodology/approach This study reviews current literature on AR marketing, hospitality and tourism and industry use cases for the creation of a proposed conceptual framework to guide scholars and managers. Based on that, the authors propose fundamental premises. Findings The three fundamental premises of AR marketing presented are the need to clearly differentiate between AR and virtual reality within hospitality and tourism; the use of AR for the on-trip experience; and the combined focus on content, context, customer and computing devices for a successful strategic implementation of AR. Research limitations/implications This study serves as a first point of reference for the strategic integration of AR into hospitality and tourism marketing, both from an industry and academic point of view. Practical implications The authors provide a number of managerial recommendations based on our three fundamental premises. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to holistically characterize AR marketing in the hospitality and tourism context. It also highlights the fundamental premises of successful AR marketing and future directions of AR research today and in a spatial computing future.

Human movement is one of the forces that drive the spatial spread of infectious diseases. To date, reducing and tracking human movement during the COVID-19 pandemic has proven effective in limiting the spread of the virus. Existing methods for monitoring and modeling the spatial spread of infectious diseases rely on various data sources as proxies of human movement, such as airline travel data, mobile phone data, and banknote tracking. However, intrinsic limitations of these data sources prevent us from systematic monitoring and analyses of human movement on different spatial scales (from local to global). Big data from social media such as geotagged tweets have been widely used in human mobility studies, yet more research is needed to validate the capabilities and limitations of using such data for studying human movement at different geographic scales (eg, from local to global) in the context of global infectious disease transmission. This study aims to develop a novel data-driven public health approach using big data from Twitter coupled with other human mobility data sources and artificial intelligence to monitor and analyze human movement at different spatial scales (from global to regional to local). We will first develop a database with optimized spatiotemporal indexing to store and manage the multisource data sets collected in this project. This database will be connected to our in-house Hadoop computing cluster for efficient big data computing and analytics. We will then develop innovative data models, predictive models, and computing algorithms to effectively extract and analyze human movement patterns using geotagged big data from Twitter and other human mobility data sources, with the goal of enhancing situational awareness and risk prediction in public health emergency response and disease surveillance systems. This project was funded as of May 2020. We have started the data collection, processing, and analysis for the project. Research findings can help government officials, public health managers, emergency responders, and researchers answer critical questions during the pandemic regarding the current and future infectious risk of a state, county, or community and the effectiveness of social/physical distancing practices in curtailing the spread of the virus. DERR1-10.2196/24432.

Virtual reality (VR) therapy has gained attention as a promising intervention in stroke rehabilitation, particularly for its potential to enhance motor function and promote neuroplasticity. However, its specific effects on balance, mobility, and gait remain underexplored. This review aims to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of VR therapy on the recovery of lower limb function in stroke survivors. Randomized controlled trials comparing VR therapy with conventional therapy were eligible for inclusion. All studies were identified through databases, such as MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and PsycINFO (up to July 2024). The primary outcomes included balance, assessed using the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), and mobility, measured with the Timed Up and Go Test (TUG) and 10-Meter Walk Test (10-MWT). Secondary outcomes included gait parameters (stride length and step length), the Functional Reach Test (FRT), the Dynamic Gait Index (DGI), and the Falls Efficacy Scale-International (FES-I). RevMan version 5.4 (The Cochrane Collaboration) software was used for the meta-analysis. A total of 2145 studies were screened, and 24 randomized controlled trials that met the inclusion criteria were included, involving 768 participants. Meta-analysis results showed that VR therapy, compared to conventional therapy, significantly improved BBS (mean difference [MD] 3.29, 95% CI 0.52-6.06; P=.02), TUG (MD -1.67, 95% CI -2.89 to -0.46; P=.007), and step length (MD 3.59, 95% CI 0.50-6.69; P=.02). However, no significant difference was observed between the 2 groups in 10-MWT (MD -0.91, 95% CI -3.33 to 1.50; P=.46), stride length (MD 5.63, 95% CI -0.73 to 11.99; P=.08), FRT (MD 2.68, 95% CI -0.30 to 5.67; P=.08), DGI (MD 1.08, 95% CI -0.41 to 2.58; P=.16), and FES-I (MD 0.16, 95% CI -2.92 to 3.24; P=.92). In the subgroup analyses, significant improvements in balance and mobility were observed in patients receiving greater than or equal to 20 sessions, with BBS improved by 5.14 points (95% CI 0.43-9.85; P=.03) and TUG reduced by 1.98 seconds (95% CI -3.33 to -0.63; P=.004). In addition, patients who received VR therapy more than 6 months after stroke showed greater improvements in BBS (MD 1.64, 95% CI 0.14-3.14; P=.03), compared to those who received VR therapy between 7 days and 6 months after stroke. Long-term VR-based therapies are more effective in improving functional ability after stroke. VR therapy has demonstrated significant potential for enhancing lower limb recovery, especially when applied with frequencies of ≥20 sessions.

Low influenza vaccination rates in China pose a serious public health threat. The vaccination prevents infection, but widespread vaccine hesitancy remains a significant barrier. Short, animated storytelling videos may help by conveying health messages in an engaging, culturally neutral format that transcends literacy barriers. We aim to investigate whether scalable, short, animated storytelling videos, using different storytelling techniques-humor, analogy, and emotion-could reduce influenza vaccine hesitancy among Chinese adults. In this single-blind, parallel-group, randomized controlled trial, we recruited adults in China through quota sampling. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 short, animated storytelling video intervention groups, each using a different storytelling technique (humor, analogy, or emotion) or a control group in a 1:1:1:1 ratio. After watching the video or being assigned to the control group, participants completed the questionnaire. Influenza vaccine hesitancy was compared between each intervention group and the control group, respectively, as well as between different intervention groups, with P values adjusted for multiple comparisons. A total of 12,000 participants met the inclusion criteria. Participants in any scalable animated storytelling video group showed lower hesitancy than controls (mean difference -0.41, 95% CI -0.60 to -0.23; P<.001). Specifically, both intervention groups with humor (video A) and analogy (video B) storytelling techniques resulted in significantly lower hesitancy compared to the control group, with mean differences of -0.44 (99.17% CI -0.75 to -0.13; P<.001) for video A and -0.55 (99.17% CI -0.86 to -0.24; P<.001) for video B. However, the intervention group with emotion video (video C) did not show significant effects compared to the control group, nor were there significant differences compared with the other 2 intervention groups. In subgroup analyses, video A effectively reduced vaccine hesitancy among urban residents and participants from southern and southwestern China. Video B was effective within participants aged 40-49 years, both sexes, both urban and rural residents, those with a college education or higher, households with an income of CN ¥90,000-180,000 (the 2021 official exchange rate of CN ¥1=US $0.155 was used for reference, based on World Bank data), and participants from the southwestern region and the western economic belt. Our study showed that storytelling videos, especially with humor and analogy, reduced hesitancy among Chinese adults. Our results highlight the importance of selecting appropriate narrative strategies for health communication, particularly for vaccine hesitancy across various demographic and regional contexts. Given the scalability, low cost, and high accessibility of short, animated storytelling videos, integrating them into national health campaigns could enhance vaccine uptake and mitigate hesitancy in underserved populations. Future research should explore the long-term impacts of these interventions on vaccine uptake and their adaptability to other preventive health measures.