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Film's lessons in vision : towards the virtue of an impure artform
No full textIn this paper, I explore the poetic virtue of filmmaking. In the first part, I look at the virtue of art more generally, drawing on Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain’s Aquinas-inspired conception of poetic virtue. In the rest of the paper, I then map Maritain’s poetic virtue onto the artform of the moving image, its processes of production and reception. Here, I show how poetic intuition is conceived by filmmakers such as David Lynch and translated into the realities of filmmaking in the Sci-Fi mystery thriller, The Silent Messenger, in which I was involved in as producer and performer. Enlisting the help of film philosopher Alain Badiou and film phenomenologist Vivian Sobchack, I claim that for the poetic virtue of film to come into full presence, both filmmaker and viewer need to take responsibility for their moral capacity for gaze. It is only when the viewer loses themselves (their self) in the shared sight of the filmmaker, and the artist respects the audience’s own intellectual creativity, that film can teach us that seeing is always a relational enterprise, one that brings our human relationships – in all its tragedy and beauty – into shared vision
Value of Information framework for natural hazard insurance
No full textNatural hazard insurance plays a critical role in managing financial risks of catastrophic events. Insurance pricing relies on understanding risk-related parameters, which are often subject to uncertainty. Many of these uncertainties can be reduced through targeted data collection, leading to more realistic loss estimates. Incorrect estimates may result in underinsurance or excessive coverage, both carrying financial consequences. By aligning premiums more closely with actual risk, insurers maintain financial stability, while policyholders avoid overpaying or being inadequately covered. This article presents a data-informed decision-making framework that quantifies the benefits of reducing uncertainty and improving loss estimates in natural hazard insurance. It is applied to the challenge of setting insurance premiums for a building exposed to seismic hazard in Patras, Greece. Using Value of Information (VoI) analysis, the study evaluates how acquiring additional data can enhance risk assessment accuracy. Results show that VoI is highest in high-risk scenarios, where uncertainty amplifies potential financial losses, and decreases in lower-risk settings. While data collection often benefits policyholders by reducing financial uncertainty, its value to insurer’s depends on initial premium selection and profitability. The framework identifies conditions under which additional information is most valuable, offering practical insights for improving insurance decisions in hazard-prone regions
Multimodal AI for Scaling Targeted Support : Navigating the FCA Advice–Guidance Boundary
Get PDFThe Financial Conduct Authority’s Advice Guidance Boundary Review (AGBR) seeks to address a persistent advice gap in UK financial services by enabling new forms of scalable, decision-relevant consumer support that sit between generic guidance and personalised financial advice. This challenge is particularly acute in pensions, where consumers face complex, long-term decisions but exhibit low engagement with traditional advice services. This white paper examines the potential of multimodal generative artificial intelligence to deliver targeted support in pensions while remaining within the advice–guidance boundary. Drawing on recent advances in Vision Language Models and multimodal conversational architectures, the paper develops a solution framework for speech-enabled, audio-visual digital advisors that are compliant by design. A Digital Pensions Advisor prototype is presented to demonstrate how such systems can interpret real consumer narratives, recognise and respond appropriately to vulnerability, and maintain boundary discipline when confronted with requests for personalised advice. The paper concludes by outlining a roadmap for strengthening auditability, explainability, and supervisory readiness, and by identifying future research directions, including the role of formal and informal information sources in shaping consumer understanding. Collectively, the findings suggest that multimodal AI can play a meaningful role in scaling targeted support in pensions while preserving regulatory safeguards and consumer trust
Physical education (PE) in Northern Ireland : Conceptualising and structuring PE in a complex landscape
No full textPhysical education (PE) in Northern Ireland (NI) is positioned within a complex and separated educational context. While we know something about the PE curriculum within this landscape, we know little about how PE teachers navigate this complexity. Consequently, we recruited secondary PE teachers from different school types in NI (n = 8) to take part in individual, semi-structured interviews to explore how they understand and structure their PE curriculum. Given this focus, our analysis paid some attention to Bernstein's (1975) concept of boundaries, which helps us to consider the potential impact of curriculum structures in schools. We found that all the PE teachers referred to the overarching national curriculum (the ‘Big Picture’ curriculum), highlighting the opportunities it offers – through weak boundaries – to shape broad, connected and meaningful PE curricula. However, the findings also reveal tensions that limited the extent to which these opportunities could be fully realised. Specifically, given the weak boundaries between sport and national identity in NI, sport (particularly team games) plays a significant role in shaping PE curricula. This, in part, may contribute to the perception among participants that PE is not valued by other teachers or society more broadly. We suggest that weakening boundaries both within the PE curriculum and across the broader school curriculum has the potential to shift the emphasis away from sport towards other forms of knowledge. This could create opportunities for teachers of other subjects to better understand the educative possibilities of PE
Maternal Toxoplasma gondii infection perturbs foetal and maternal fetal interface metabolism, exposing the foetus to kynurenine
Get PDFIntroduction: Toxoplasma gondii infection during pregnancy can result in abortion or congenital infection. Events in the maternal-foetal interface, which form a selective barrier between the maternal and foetal circulations and where critical immunological adaptations occur, are critical in determining the pregnancy outcome. Recent studies have demonstrated that T. gondii infection can alter host metabolism, but how T. gondii infection alters the placenta or the foetus metabolome has not been reported. Methods: Herein, for the first time, we use liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LCMS) in the BALB/c murine model of congenital T. gondii to address this shortcoming. Results: Maternal infection resulted in dysregulation of free amino acids with significant decreases in the levels of arginine, proline, threonine, methionine, leucine, glycine and glutamine detected in the decidua. Similar changes were noted in the placenta, although differences were less pronounced. In contrast, amino acid levels were not significantly altered in the foetal extracts. Results demonstrate that T. gondii infection induces the highest number of metabolite changes in the maternal serum. However, a subset of these changes was also found in the maternal-foetal interface and in the developing foetus. Maternal infection resulted in changes to arginine metabolism and downregulation of the urea cycle. Specifically, ornithine, arginosuccinate and citrulline were significantly decreased in all three tissues following maternal infection. Increased levels of spermidine were evident in the placenta and foetal extracts and not in the decidua from maternally infected mice. This indicates that maternal T. gondii infection downregulates the urea cycle, while increasing flux into polyamine biosynthesis in the decidua, placenta and foetus. Maternal infection resulted in an alteration to the tryptophan degradation pathway. Significantly decreased levels of kynurenine were seen in the decidua and placenta of maternally infected mice in comparison with the uninfected controls. In contrast, there was a significant increase in kynurenine in foetal extracts from maternally infected mice. Some metabolites from microbiome origin, including indoxylsulfate and 4-guanidinobutanoate, were changed compared with the controls, suggesting the potential of T. gondii to change the host microbiome. Discussion: The data presented herein demonstrate that T. gondii infection during pregnancy alters the metabolome of the maternal-foetal interface and developing foetus. Notably increased kynurenine and decreased tryptophan levels were found in the foetal tissue. As kynurenine is known to be produced during maternal immune activation and has been implicated in the development of psychoneurological diseases these changes could have important implications for the offspring over their lifetime
CO2LOGIX : a first-order model of pressure-constrained CO2 geological storage growth at the basin scale
Get PDFSubsurface pressure increases from CO2 injection can constrain injectivity and safe operating margins, reducing the dynamic capacity of CO2 geological storage systems. Engineered pressure management approaches are effective but carry additional cost and risk. Understanding the magnitude, interaction and evolution of this at the regional and multi-project scale is limited by computational demands and uncertainty over future deployment trajectories. This presents a limitation for climate-policy-informing frameworks such as Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), which typically consider only static capacity in carbon capture and storage technology growth. We present CO2LOGIX, a model which evaluates the scale of subsurface pressure buildup under different growth trajectories with high computational efficiency. We demonstrate the value of CO2LOGIX through a UK case study. The model combines well-established analytical solutions describing pressure diffusion in the subsurface with a flexible logistic growth model, which informs well deployment rates and can be adjusted to reflect realistic development scenarios. In a scenario based on historic industry growth rates, unmitigated pressure reaches upper bounds after 83 years, with ~ 12 GtCO2 stored by 2100 – well above national targets of 4-6 GtCO2. However short-term rates remain low (5 MtCO2/year by 2030 and 30 MtCO2/year by 2050), below recommended targets. Faster growth scenarios cause earlier pressure limit breaches, reducing available unmitigated capacity or requiring costly mitigation. Our findings underscore the importance of incorporating realistic pressure feedbacks between injection rates and long-term storage potential into IAMs. CO2LOGIX provides a holistic, first-order framework to anticipate and manage pressure limits in large-scale CO2 storage deployment
Playing with place : co-designing landscapes through games in healthcare settings
Get PDFHospital greenspaces have the potential to contribute to public health, environmental sustainability, and the wellbeing of patients, staff, and visitors through meaningful interactions with nature. While it is widely acknowledged that time spent in nature benefits health and wellbeing, there remains uncertainty of which individual landscape elements are linked to particular outcomes. Moreover, tools to support shared decision-making in the early stages of healthcare estate planning are scarce. This research developed, tested, and evaluated a novel co-design tool that translates evidence on human–nature connections into a tangible method for co-designing NHS greenspaces. The outcome was Mosaic Landscapes, a serious game that combines indexed landscape elements with persona-based role play. Landscape elements were derived from environmental quality indicators and mapped against potential biopsychosocial–spiritual health outcomes. Mosaic Landscapes was tested in ten engagement contexts including knowledge exchange, exhibition, and healthcare sessions. Qualitative data were gathered through observations, facilitator reflections, and participant surveys. The results were evaluated using a new combined Salutogenic–Sekhon integrated evaluation framework. Mosaic Landscapes demonstrated positive outcomes in terms of engagement, acceptability, and applicability across settings. Findings suggest that Mosaic Landscapes offers a practical and adaptable method for integrating health evidence into place-based design within institutional contexts
Collision avoidance decision-making method for unmanned surface vehicles considering uncertain navigation intent of target ships
Get PDFIn complex and dynamic maritime environments, the uncertain navigation intent of target ships (TS) poses a significant challenge for the collision avoidance strategies of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). To address above issue, an autonomous collision avoidance method that integrates recursive Bayesian estimation, a masked attention mechanism, and the soft actor-critic (SAC) algorithm is proposed in this paper. Specifically, the recursive Bayesian model is employed to estimate the navigation intentions of TS in real time, for enabling the construction of intent-aware state representations that enhance the modeling capability for uncertain target behaviors. In addition, a maximum target count is predefined, and the masked attention mechanism is incorporated into the actor and critic networks of SAC to resolve the mismatch between the fixed input dimensionality of neural networks and the dynamically varying number of TS. Simulation demonstrates that the proposed method outperforms traditional collision avoidance methods and other state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based strategies in terms of key performance metrics such as collision avoidance success rate, minimum distance, and average risk. Furthermore, real-field experiments validate the proposed method’s adaptability to real-world maritime environments and its potential for practical deployment
Movement behaviour guidelines and prevalence in the early years
No full textThere is increasing interest in movement behaviours (physical activity, sedentary behaviour including screen time and sleep) in the under-5s. From policymakers through practitioners to families, there is a demand for guidance on important questions such as: How much time should the under-5s spend in these behaviours for optimal health and optimal development? How much is harmful? Does time spent in one of the behaviours influence time spent on the other behaviours? What percentage of infants, toddlers and 3–4-year-olds spend too much or too little time on these behaviours
Persistent traumatic stress exposure : rethinking PTSD for frontline workers
Get PDFFrontline workers across health, emergency, and social care sectors are repeatedly exposed to distressing events and chronic stressors as part of their occupational roles. Unlike single-event trauma, these cumulative exposures accrue over time, generating persistent psychological and physiological strain. Traditional diagnostic frameworks, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), were not designed to capture the layered and ongoing nature of this occupational trauma. This commentary introduces the concept of Persistent Traumatic Stress Exposure (PTSE), a framework that reframes trauma among frontline workers as an exposure arising from organisational and systemic conditions rather than solely an individual disorder. It aims to reorient understanding, responsibility, and intervention from a purely clinical lens toward systems, cultures, and organisational duties of care. PTSE is presented as an integrative paradigm informed by contemporary theory and evidence on trauma, moral injury, organisational stress, and trauma-informed systems. The framework synthesises findings from health, emergency, and social care settings, illustrating how repeated exposure, ethical conflict, and institutional pressures contribute to cumulative psychological harm. PTSE highlights that psychological injury may build across shifts, careers, and lifetimes, requiring preventive, real-time, and sustained responses. The framework emphasises that effective support is dependent on both organisational readiness, the structural conditions that enable trauma-informed work, and organisational preparedness, the practical capability to enact safe, predictable, and stigma-free responses to trauma exposure. PTSE challenges prevailing stigma by framing trauma as a predictable occupational hazard rather than a personal weakness. It aligns with modern occupational health perspectives by advocating for systems that strengthen psychological safety, leadership capability and access to support. By adopting PTSE, organisations can shift from reactive treatment models toward proactive cultural and structural protection, honouring the lived realities of frontline workers and promoting long-term wellbeing and resilience
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