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The Cerebral Palsy Link Worker (CP LINK) study: Protocol for a feasibility study with integrated process evaluation
No full textBackground Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common lifelong physical disability in the UK and is linked to multiple social, psychological and health inequalities which are often amplified as this group ages. Most middle-aged and older people with CP are supported in their community by General Practitioners (GPs) and complain of disjointed and non-specialised care from people who have a poor understanding of their complex ageing needs. This points to the need for specialised holistic care for this group. Therefore, there is a pressing need to develop ways to support people ageing with CP within their communities.Project aim To evaluate a co-developed specialised CP link worker role to support adults aged 40 and older ageing with CP in North Central London over 1 year.Methods We will undertake an evaluation of the link worker role by gathering data at baseline, 1-week and 3-months from participants who use the service. Feasibility outcomes will include recruitment and retention rates, acceptability of the intervention, completeness and quality of outcome data, and the practicality of collecting and analysing participant-reported outcome measures. Process evaluation outcomes will include insights into how the intervention was delivered and received, fidelity to the intervention model, contextual factors that influenced implementation, potential sustainability, and stakeholder experiences. This project has been co-developed with the charity UP – The Adult Cerebral Palsy Movement, and we will work alongside a lived experience advisory group and stakeholder advisory group throughout the project.</p
IOT cybersecurity risk perception and response strategies among tech startups in Saudi Arabia: a data-driven study
No full textNo description supplied</p
Sex, care and the working body: ambiguities of the gendered racialisation as ‘Eastern European’
No full textThe concept ‘cultural racism’ is influential in scholarship on East–West mobilities in Europe. Balibar coined this term by observing that an essentialisation of ‘cultural difference’ has replaced the ‘biologist focus’ of historical racism. A neat separation between the role of ‘biology’ in history and of ‘culture’ in the present, however, insufficiently grasps how both feature within repertoires of racialisation. Here, we examine this for the racialisation as ‘Eastern European’ in Germany – including by looking at its histories, contemporary trajectories and material effects. Drawing on qualitative research, we trace how ‘Eastern Europeanness’ is produced in two employment sites – elder care and sex work – in which women from Europe's East often work. We find that shifting attributions of bodily and valued-based difference or proximity are mobilised in imaginaries of ‘Eastern Europeans’ in these sectors. These ambiguities constitute a key continuity in the gendered racialisation as ‘Eastern European’, which sustains the extraction of cheap social reproductive labour over generations. This racialisation also has material effects: working in these professions takes a toll on the worker’s physical and mental health. On this basis, we propose a research agenda that thinks racialisation not only from its dichotomies but also from its ambiguities.</p
Trade dynamics of the global dry bulk shipping network
No full textThe primary objective of this study is to determine how global shocks and commodity-specific geographical factors interact to shape the structure, resilience, and vulnerability of the dry bulk shipping network. To do so, we examine the global dry bulk shipping network and its coal, grain, and iron ore sub-networks from 2015 to 2023 using micro-level trade flow data. We find that these networks are highly concentrated around a small number of key export ports, with heavy-tailed degree distributions and strong core-periphery structures. However, the impact of external shocks is sharply commodity-specific: the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a major reorganisation of coal trade communities, while the war in Ukraine fragmented the grain network and drastically reduced Ukraine’s exports. In contrast, iron ore trade patterns remained relatively stable during the same period. Small-world features are present mainly within the densely interconnected core of each commodity network, where bi-directional trades are observed, while most peripheral ports function as either importers or exporters only. These findings clarify how the interplay of geography, trade imbalance, and global disruptions shapes network structure and resilience, offering insights for supply chain risk management in maritime logistics.</p
‘They're going to have to start becoming’: what inclusive capitalism tells us about the changing face of development
No full textIn recent years, business has reimagined corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a proactive market strategy, aligning itself with contemporary development orthodoxies of pro-poor and inclusive growth by enrolling the un- and under-employed into new regimes of finance, consumption, and entrepreneurial labour. This paper examines this latest incarnation of ‘capitalism qua development’, where market inclusion promises new possibilities for an ‘enterprising’ citizenry in the Global South. Through ethnographic case studies of market inclusion initiatives in Kenya—one spearheaded by a transnational corporation seeking to empower women through entrepreneurship, the other by a social enterprise recruiting street youth to sell commodities at the BoP (bottom of the pyramid)—we examine what is produced, obscured, and foreclosed in this iteration of the CSR-development nexus. Moving beyond inclusion as a proxy for material accumulation, we trace how entrepreneurial inclusion unfolds ethnographically, seeding new values and imagined futures, while recasting resilience as moral virtue and precarity as personal failure. In attending to the everyday labour of becoming an entrepreneur, we argue that these initiatives constitute technologies of rule, folding the logics of capital into the spaces of selfhood, aspiration, and social belonging.</p
The changing contours of climate politics
No full textWhile climate change was on the political agenda for at least a decade before Global Environmental Politics was established, what climate change politics is has dramatically shifted through its lifetime. Framed initially in terms of a collective action problem and interstate cooperation, both how climate policy and politics is practiced, and how we have come to understand it, have changed. This article charts and provides explanations for the principal shifts in how we understand climate change as political, focusing on: 1) the constantly diversifying sets of sites and actors involved; 2) its expanding scope, from interstate negotiations to the full range of daily practices; 3) the “climatization” of many realms of political and social life; and 4) its increasing framing as a problem of political-economic transformation. We conclude by interrogating whether politics as such is now something that can only fully be understood and practiced via many interventions and conflicts where climate change is central.</p
[Abstract] Cognitive frailty and arterial stiffness – findings from the FRAXI study
No full textBackgroundCognitive frailty, defined as the presence of physical frailty and cognitive impairment in the absence of dementia, is a common finding among older adults. The causative factors for cognitive frailty are not well understood. It is known that vascular factors such as arterial stiffness are associated with ageing and frailty. In the Frailty and arterial stiffness-role of oxidative stress and inflammation (FRAXI) study, the correlation between cognitive frailty (assessed by the mini-mental state examination (MMSE)), clinical frailty score (CFS) and arterial stiffness was explored.MethodsThe longitudinal FRAXI study included fifty community dwelling adults ≥70 years (mean age ± standard deviation: 79 ± 5 years, 46% male), with CFS ≤ 6 and no active malignancy, who were followed up for six months. Measures of arterial stiffness included pulse wave velocity (PWV, Complior®) and cardio-ankle vascular index, measured at baseline. Other study measurements: MMSE, timed up and go test), sarcopenia, geriatric depression scale, interleukin-6 and high sensitivity C-reactive protein biomarkers were measured at baseline and 6 months.ResultsAll fifty participants were assessed for cognition using MMSE, with mean CFS at baseline of 3.5 (±SD 1.4) and at follow up, 4.0 (± SD 1.5). At baseline, MMSE strongly correlated with both functional and phenotypic frailty as assessed by Charlson’s Comorbidity Index (r = −0.3; p ConclusionCognitive frailty correlates strongly with measures of vascular ageing. Arterial stiffness can be used as a vascular measure to identify older adults at risk of cognitive impairment.</p
Going Analogue in a Post-Digital Society
No full textIn an age where digital technologies permeate nearly every aspect of daily life, a curious countertrend has emerged: a deliberate return to analogue practices and experiences. Whether it’s jotting thoughts in a leather-bound notebook, sending handwritten letters, or choosing a mechanical over a smart watch, many individuals are embracing the physical and the slow. This is the landscape of the post-digital society. As Nicholas Negroponte observed in 1998, “the digital revolution is over”—digital technologies are no longer novel but deeply embedded in the everyday.This chapter explores the motivations behind the analogue resurgence as a response to the overwhelming pace, abstraction, and ephemerality of digital life, revealing how materiality, slowness, and sensory engagement offer forms of resistance, meaning-making, and connection in a post-digital society. These shifts have significant implications for critical marketing, as they challenge dominant narratives of innovation, reconfigure consumer-brand relationships, and open up new avenues for research on value creation, authenticity, and consumer agency in a post-digital society. </p
Smoking and drinking among the Gypsy and Traveller communities: a population study in England
No full textBackground and aims Gypsy and Traveller communities in the United Kingdom (UK) face substantial health challenges. Smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol likely contribute to health disparities, but there is little national data on the prevalence or heaviness of smoking and drinking among these communities. We aimed to estimate the prevalence and heaviness of smoking and drinking among the UK Gypsy and Traveller communities compared with people from other UK ethnic groups.Design/setting Observational study using data collected between 2013 and 2025 in a series of monthly cross‐sectional surveys of representative samples of the adult population in England.Participants Adults aged 18+, between 2013 and 2025 (total n = 226 339; Gypsy or Traveller n = 213).Measurements Marginal means were derived from regression models and used to estimate the prevalence of current smoking and drinking (both of which includes daily and non‐daily), and the heaviness of smoking (cigarettes per day) and drinking [Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test‐Consumption (AUDIT‐C) score, units per week and estimated weekly alcohol consumption] by ethnicity; adjusted for age, gender and survey year.Findings Current smoking prevalence was markedly higher among Gypsy and Travellers [33.0%, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 26.3–39.8%, n = 81] than among the “Other White” ethnic group (18.7%, 95% CI = 18.5–18.9%; P Conclusions People from Gypsy and Traveller communities in the United Kingdom appear to be more likely to smoke compared with other UK ethnic groups, and those who smoke and/or drink do so at more harmful levels compared with other UK ethnic groups.</p