34028 research outputs found
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Glocalizing Queer Caricature: RuPaul’s Drag Race UK and the Snatch Game Format
No full textRuPaul’s Drag Race is viewed by many as responsible for popularizing the art of drag around the world. Remakes have appeared in diverse national settings, including Australia, Denmark, the Philippines and the UK. Formats have been seen as evidence of growing globalization in the television industry. The concept of ‘glocalization’, a portmanteau term developed in the 1980s to signify the modification of products and services to suit local audiences, is a more appropriate framework through which to view TV formatting. This article considers the combination of glocalization with queer caricature (drag comic impersonation) via a regular feature of the Drag Race formula: the ‘Snatch Game’ in which drag artists compete by impersonating celebrities. Taking RuPaul’s Drag Race UK as its main case study, it explores how Snatch Game performances evidence differing layers of ‘glocalization’, in its parody of figures from the local/national to the transnational.</p
Waste heat recovery in the air-cooling stage of foundry and steel forging: A thermo-fluid and economic analysis
No full textThe iron and steel industry is recognised as one with high thermal waste, which provides significant opportunity for recovery. This research presents a method of recovering waste heat during the air-cooling process of a steel billet, specifically during the heat treatment and forging stages of manufacture, with temperature ranges between. The work also develops a transient computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model through the use of thermal boundary conditions and the surface to surface (S2S) radiation model to determine the waste heat recovered through an enthalpy change within the chosen heat transfer fluid, Therminol-66. Simulations were expanded with additional validation in the form of a sensitivity analysis, which was processed by reduced-order model development and systematic sensitivity analysis to determine the individual impact of each considered input parameter towards the overall heat recovery ability of the system with the purpose of parameter optimisation. A numerical approach for calculating overall waste heat recovery potential, alongside Carnot potential, being validated by literature with results which lie within the range ofto, suggesting a significant contribution towards industry decarbonisation. It is also proposed that, with the use of an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system, the system is capable of power generation that can be used to offset electrical expenditure, for which a UK based foundry, Castings plc was used as a case study for economic analysis, which resulted in both financial and environmental benefits, with median €2.87/tonne and 3.48kgCO2/tonne savings. Financial KPI analysis of NPV, IRR, and PBP have also shown system performance to be above the benchmarks found in the literature when considering electricity prices for the EU27+UK.</p
RoLID-11K: A Dashcam Dataset for Small-Object Roadside Litter Detection
No full textRoadside litter poses environmental, safety and economic challenges, yet current monitoring relies on labourintensive surveys and public reporting, providing limited spatial coverage. Existing vision datasets for litter detection focus on street-level still images, aerial scenes or aquatic environments, and do not reflect the unique characteristics of dashcam footage, where litter appears extremely small, sparse and embedded in cluttered road-verge backgrounds. We introduce RoLID-11K, the first large-scale dataset for roadside litter detection from dashcams, comprising over 11k annotated images spanning diverse UK driving conditions and exhibiting pronounced long-tail and small-object distributions. We benchmark a broad spectrum of modern detectors, from accuracy-oriented transformer architectures to real-time YOLO models, and analyse their strengths and limitations on this challenging task. Our results show that while CO-DETR and related transformers achieve the best localisation accuracy, real-time models remain constrained by coarse feature hierarchies. RoLID-11K establishes a challenging benchmark for extreme small-object detection in dynamic driving scenes and aims to support the development of scalable, low-cost systems for roadside-litter monitoring. The dataset is available at https://github.com/xq141839/RoLID-11K.</p
Data files for 'Rescuing crop yields under climate change by engineering innate agricultural soil microbiomes'
No full textData and R analyses files for 'Rescuing crop yields under climate change by engineering innate agricultural soil microbiomes'</p
Towards Technological Change with Workers in Mind: Insights from a study into hospitality workplaces navigating digital transformation
No full textThis report presents key findings and recommendations from the first large-scale qualitative study to uniquely examine the ways in which UK hospitality workplaces navigate technological transformation, and how accelerated technological change is altering the nature of hospitality work and reshaping workplace interactions.Funded by the British Academy, this study explores technological change in UK hospitality workplaces from the perspectives of workers, employers and industry stakeholders.The hospitality sector – hotels, bars, restaurants, cafes and fast food outlets – is rapidly embracing technological change. While offering numerous affordances, this can be unsettling for workers and lead to a range of unintended and undesired consequences. These changes, which can seem minor, risk negatively affecting worker well-being, amplifying anxiety and intensifying work.This timely and important study seeks to understand the variegated implications of accelerated technological transformation for workers, employers, the future of hospitality work and wider society, and identify the ways in which workers respond to technological change, and how they can be better supported in navigating the technology-driven reshaping of hospitality work.The study draws on 65 interviews with hospitality workers (chefs, receptionists, reservation staff, housekeepers, bar, café, restaurant and pub workers) as well as managers, employers, technologists, and union and industry representatives. Alongside presenting key findings, the report provides policy and practice recommendations for anticipating and mitigating technology-related challenges; developing a more collaborative approach to addressing issues emerging from technological acceleration; and embedding technology in more responsible, ethical and worker-considerate ways.The study provides a large evidence base to identify and problematise challenges stemming from digital transformation that can be used to influence public and policy debates and provide thought leadership around workforce implications of digital transformation.While the report draws on data collected from the hospitality industry, the findings and recommendations are also applicable to the wider service sector that faces similar challenges.</p
Technological change with workers in mind: A toolkit for employers
No full textBased on extensive research, this document offers accessible guidance on how to implement technological change, while maintaining good workplace relations and mitigating the workplace disruptions that inevitably come with technological change.Hospitality employers are investing in new technologies to speed operations, address staff shortages, introduce efficiencies and increase productivity. New technological solutions are transforming hotel receptions, housekeeping departments, kitchens and restaurant floors. From large hotels to fast food chains and independent restaurants and cafes, businesses are bringing in new systems to manage staff workloads, streamline processes, automate tasks and monitor operations.This often rapid change can be unsettling for workers. If not managed with workers in mind, it can negatively impact on worker well-being, resulting in higher staff turnover and workplace stress as well as affecting customer satisfaction and workplace operations. But much can be done to mitigate this.</p
Multi-Level Analysis Of Climate Change Mainstreaming In Tanzania
No full textClimate change mainstreaming is widely promoted as a means of integrating adaptation and mitigation into development planning, yet progress remains uneven in many climate-vulnerable countries. This paper examines the factors shaping varying degrees of climate change mainstreaming across development frameworks and sectors in Tanzania Mainland. The study combines systematic screening of sixty-three national policies, strategies, Acts, and programmes with fifty-six semi-structured key informant interviews conducted between 2020 and 2023. Rather than treating the presence of climate terminology as evidence of integration, the analysis triangulates document screening with stakeholder perspectives to assess how policies influence budgeting, coordination, and implementation in practice. The findings show that mainstreaming outcomes are driven less by policy language than by macro-level governance dynamics, including institutional mandates, fiscal rules, sector relevance, and the historical timing of policy development. National frameworks provide strategic direction, but their influence is mediated by budget ceilings and legal authority. The paper contributes to climate policy debates by demonstrating how mainstreaming often occurs in form rather than in substance and by highlighting the importance of governance conditions in translating policy commitments into action.</p
Targeted supplementation with bioactive plants sustainably improves goat health and decreases antiparasitic drug use on smallholder farms
No full textGoats play a significant role in farming communities in semi-arid tropical areas with limited cropping capacity; however, production is limited by endoparasites, especially gastrointestinal nematodes (GINs). Control of GINs is typically mediated by anthelmintic drugs, but can be costly or ineffective where anthelmintic-resistant GINs are present. To manage anthelmintic resistance and improve herd health at lower costs, farmers can implement Targeted Selective Treatment (TST) strategies to treat animals based on performance or health traits. The study aimed to quantify the impacts of plant-based interventions on goat health, nutrition, and parasite infections when applied in a targeted selective feeding regime under an arid environment. Here we trialled a farmer-led TST scheme using a worm diagnostic tool for sheep and goats based on checking five points on the animal body; nose (purulent discharge), eye (colour of the conjunctivae), jaw (subcutaneous pitting oedema), back (body scoring condition, and tail (mild to severe diarrhoea). This method, termed the Five Point Check or FAMACHA, was used to periodically measure goat health, with anthelmintic interventions provided only to individuals in poor condition. In addition to TST with anthelmintic, a plant-TST was trialled on 50% of the farms where goats in borderline or poor condition were supplemented with local bioactive plants (Viscum rotundifolium L. or Terminalia sericea). Plant-TST treatment significantly reduced worm burden (P < 0.001) from a mean of 485 EPG pre-treatment to 269 EPG post-treatment, with 75% of goats having a FEC of ≤ 400 EPG. Further, goats under plant-TST had significantly improved health outcomes (p < 0.001 FAMACHA scores) compared to TST-anthelmintic. Goats under plant-TST were 46.6% less likely to require any anthelmintic treatment. Plant- and anthelmintic-TST had a similar FEC reduction (55.5% and 52.5%, respectively). Plant-TST offers a low-resource means to sustainably manage GINs in in goats in semi-arid conditions.</p
Barriers and opportunities to smallholder goat enterprise in Botswana
No full textSmallholder households across rural sub-Saharan Africa often rely on goats to support their livelihoods, food security, and financial security, and as a risk mitigation strategy. Across the region, goat health and performance outcomes vary greatly, and it is often difficult to quantify the impact of the animal health-nutrition nexus on livelihood outcomes. Two socio-economic surveys were conducted to this end in Botswana. Firstly, a general cross-sectional survey of 787 rural households to assess the correlation between food and/or financial security and livestock practices. Secondly, a more nuanced survey of a sub-group of 44 goat-owning smallholders to understand the systemic interlinkages between livelihood outcomes, veterinary care, and goat management. While the importance of livestock to rural communities was confirmed by a positive association with improved food, financial and asset security, household variation was explained more by herd size and self-reported importance of goat ownership to households, than to goat health condition. Four main barriers were identified which negatively influenced goat ownership and herd survivability patterns: (1) low turnover rates and poor access to capital investment; (2) Limited use of supplementary feeds; (3) Poor access to veterinary services; and (4) Age and gender. Strategies to improve the productivity and sustainability of goat enterprises within the region should focus on overcoming these barriers, with the potential in doing so to improve food and financial security, and equality outcomes.</p
Jantze Homes – Linoprinting
No full textA catalogue for the artist, Jantze Holmes – a Lincoln based artist working in print and paint. Her work explores connections between landscape, memory and belonging, shaped by an enduring interest in the natural world. Through layered imagery and process-led making, she creates pieces that invite quiet reflection on place, history and personal narrative.</p