Current Issue : October-December Volume : 2026 Issue Number : 4 Articles : 5 Articles
Background and aims: In recent years, the increased prevalence of youth vaping in the United Kingdom (UK) may have coincided with a proliferation in the use of ‘illicit’ (unregulated) vapes. Media or educational content about illicit vaping aimed at young people is scarce and poorly understood. This study aimed to systematically assess the content of both TikTok videos and educational resources relating to illicit vaping. Methods: A systematically conducted analysis of educational and social media resources. Manual searches were conducted in the UK to collect URLs and metadata for publicly available TikTok videos using eight illicit vaping-related hashtags. Video content was coded across inductively derived thematic domains. Educational resources were collected via relevant search terms on Google; illicit vape content was appraised across five domains and the quality of each resource was assessed. Results: A total of 58 TikTok videos were categorised across nine thematic domains. The most prevalent themes were ‘Apathy Towards Law’ (57%), ‘Entertain/Humour’ (50%) and ‘Sub-culture and Shared Experience’ (50%), generating a combined total of 21 million likes. Educational resources were rated as ‘good’ quality overall (56%) but underperformed in domains related to ‘Illicit Vapes Health Risk Depiction’ and ‘Relevance and Appeal to Youth’. In contrast to the ‘homemade’, ‘entertaining’ and sometimes ‘glamourising’ presentation of the TikTok videos, educational resources adopted a serious tone and were often disengaging. Conclusions: Illicit vaping content differs between TikTok videos and educational resources, exhibiting differences in sentiment, information and youth appeal. TikTok videos typically receive high engagement and frequently depict themes of apathy towards the law, entertainment and shared experience. Educational resources are generally of good quality but contain limited information on illicit vape health risks and lack youth relevance....
Sports broadcasts, being highly visual, present significant accessibility barriers for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals, limiting their participation and social inclusion. Traditional audio description often lacks the detail and immediacy needed for fast-paced live sports. This systematic review identifies and synthesizes empirical evidence on assistive technologies and audio description methods aimed at improving sports broadcast accessibility for BLV viewers. Following PRISMA guidelines, we reviewed 13 studies published between 2018 and 2025, examining technologies such as spatial audio, haptics, tactile displays, and automation driven by artificial intelligence (AI) using computer vision (CV). Findings indicate these technologies show potential in enhancing user comprehension of gameplay, immersion, and social participation, particularly by conveying crucial spatial and dynamic information. While AI-powered automation offers scalability, challenges remain in achieving real-time robustness, semantic depth in descriptions, and practical implementation. The review discusses methodological approaches, highlights strengths and weaknesses, and identifies key research gaps, proposing future work focused on advancing AI, refining non-visual rendering, and addressing the ecosystem for truly inclusive sports media experiences....
At present, virtual commentators used in sports video broadcasting still exhibit issues such as unnatural facial expressions and inconsistencies between lip movements and audio synchronization. These problems prevent audiences from obtaining a more authentic viewing experience. In order to improve the facial realism, the synchronization between lip and audio, and the naturalness of expression of the virtual narrator in sports video communication, this study proposes a virtual narrator model based on the enhancement of Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). This model is an end-to-end framework. Firstly, the style-based generation network Style-based GAN2 (StyleGAN2) is used to generate a highly realistic and adjustable static narrator portrait. Then, Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) is used to encode the Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs), phonemes, and prosodic features of the explanatory audio, and the parameters of the 3D Morphable Model (3DMM) are guided to generate accurate facial action sequences. Finally, the neural rendering technology, based on a time sequence smoothing constraint, is introduced to fuse the generated dynamic portrait with the background video of sports events, thereby synthesising the final commentary video. The experimental results show that the video generated by this model reaches 18.7 in Fréchet Inception Distance (FID), and the lip synchronization error is 5.1. In comparative evaluations against real-world videos across different sports scenarios, an average of 50% of participants considered the generated videos to be “difficult to distinguish from those featuring real humans.” The ablation experiment further confirmed the effectiveness of key designs such as style mixing and timing smoothing loss. After the removal of the SM (Style Mixing) module, the model’s FID increased by 2.6. Eliminating the temporal smoothing loss led to increases of 0.7 in both the lip-sync error and LMD (Landmark Distance). Furthermore, removing the AT (Adversarial Training) module resulted in a 6.9 increase in the model’s FID. To sum up, the proposed model can generate virtual commentary content with high visual realism, accurate lip synchronization, and natural expression, which provides a feasible technical idea for the intelligent production of sports communication....
We investigate self-sustained oscillations on microdrum resonators manufactured with molybdenum disulfide, under continuouswave laser excitation. Control over these oscillations is demonstrated building a simple radio-over-laser link. Applying a DC voltage bias to the device, we strain it and tune the system into an optical resonance condition at which point the drumhead enters a self-sustained mechanical oscillation regime. This modulates the outgoing light at a fixed VHF frequency that depends on the MoS2 membrane tension. Exploiting this effect, a frequency modulated message can be encoded into the laser beam by varying the voltage bias around the resonance condition. These developments can have potential applications in free-space optical communications, range finding, sensing, underwater optical wireless communications and eventually microwave photonics when the working frequencies in both the optical and RF parts are increased....
Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) is transforming how consumers create and share content online. This study examines how the availability of Gen AI influences the volume and characteristics of consumer reviews. We exploit the sudden, four-week ban of ChatGPT in Italy as a quasi-experiment and implement a difference-in-differences design comparing TripAdvisor reviews of 1930 hotels in Italy to 2979 hotels in Germany, France, Spain, and Greece, where no ban was imposed. Our results show that ChatGPT availability leads to higher review volume and length, particularly for reviews written on desktop devices. The findings are consistent with reduced effort from Gen AI usage as a potential underlying mechanism. In addition, ChatGPT availability leads to more subjective review content and more extreme sentiment in review text. These findings contribute to the emerging literature on the consumer impact of Gen AI and provide insights into how AI-assisted content generation influences online word-of-mouth behavior....
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