26207 research outputs found
Sort by
Exploring science with children from under-represented groups through Minecraft Clubs: Insights from a decade of practice
No full textThe Science Hunters programme engages children from under-represented groups with science, technology, engineering, and maths using the popular computer game Minecraft. Through a series of projects dating back to 2015, Science Hunters has delivered eight ‘Minecraft Clubs’ for children with Special Educational Needs, care-experienced children, and children in low socioeconomic status areas. Science concepts are used as themes to build around, rather than the key focus of the activity, which is communal gameplay and having fun. Delivery has been developed through reflective practice, which is drawn upon to extract key takeaways for engaging children from specific groups with science outside of traditional settings
Microbial communities in semi-mature oak trees are resilient to drought, nutrient limitation, and pathogen challenge
No full textGlobal forest biomes face increasing stressors and disease outbreaks that threaten ecosystem health. Tree-associated microbiota are vital for tree resilience, yet their responses to biotic and abiotic stressors in mature trees remain poorly understood. Using an experimental woodland plot of 144 Quercus petraea trees subjected to drought (rain exclusion), nutrient stress (ringbarking), and biotic treatments (bacterial pathogens and beetle larvae) to simulate acute oak decline, we tracked microbial communities in leaf, stem, and root/rhizosphere tissues across four time points over 2 years. Oak trees hosted distinct microbial communities across tissue types, which remained largely stable under stress. Rain exclusion significantly altered microbiota composition, though these changes explained less than 1% of total variance. Actinobacteriota, linked to drought tolerance, increased in the root/rhizosphere of rain-excluded trees. These findings reveal a surprising resilience of oak-associated microbial communities to environmental and biotic disturbances, highlighting their potential role in forest ecosystem stability
Intermediating policy affordances in creative clusters: The boost initiative
Full text linkSince 2012 UK policy surrounding regional development has increasingly prioritised the development of creative clusters to support and bolster the country's creative economy. The Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP) is one such example of the current models of support being enacted through this policy and is mainly delivered by universities who act as intermediaries between the creative sector and government. The primary mechanism of support involves micro-funding initiatives aimed at supporting creative small, micro and medium-sized enterprises (SMME) within a given, usually medium to short, timeframe. However, as the sector is largely composed of micro-enterprises and freelancers, ongoing instability due to these types of funding cycles often leave organisations vulnerable once support ends resulting in a need to either ameliorate the impacts of these types of policies or holistically rethink these types of policy models. This paper examines the BSU Boost initiative (formerly Counting House), developed at Bath Spa University (BSU), as a case study of a ‘policy instrument affordance’ within the UK's creative cluster policy environment. Drawing on Hellström and Jacob's (2017) theoretical framework of policy instrument affordances, this paper argues that Boost operates as an intermediary mechanism that bridges critical gaps in public funding cycles. It offers new possibilities—or affordances—for creative micro-enterprises by enabling them to access grants that would otherwise be out of reach due to pre-financing requirements. Through a reflexive case study methodology, the paper details how these affordances do not emerge from the policy instrument alone but rely on active intermediation by the university. Acting as an intermediary, BSU translates complex policy into practical support through Boost, but faces challenges like administrative friction and sustainability concerns. This case highlights the importance—and limitations—of university-led intermediation in making policy affordances real for creative clusters. Accordingly, this initiative serves as an illustrative case of alternative mechanisms for addressing the limitations inherent in short-to medium-term policy frameworks designed to support creative clusters
Participant permanence: Exploring and enhancing experiences of research involvement in UK adults with vision impairment through an Online Participant Engagement Network (OPEN)
Full text linkFor individuals with vision impairment (VI), there can be physical and technical barriers to participating in research and accessing research outputs. As a result, researchers often target smaller VI samples and individuals with VI are left under-involved and underrepresented in the VI research discourse. This study aimed to evaluate the accessibility and utility of the Online Participant Engagement Network for Vision Impairment Research (OPEN VI Research) and explore the broader experiences of research involvement in individuals with VI to develop guidelines for researchers studying this area. Qualitative data were collected through a semi-structured focus group with seven adults with VI, and analysed using a dual inductive reflexive thematic analysis approach. Three overarching meta-themes emerged through the analysis: ‘access’, ‘participant permanence’ and ‘motivation’. It was identified that preferences for being reached to take part in research and optimisation for accessible web-design differed based on individual needs associated with varying levels of VI. The importance of researchers recognising participants with VI as active contributors, before, during and after participation, was also outlined. In addition, despite some participants expressing negative experiences of researchers failing to follow-up post-participation, it was found that focus group members remained highly motivated to continue to take part in research. To address these findings, guidelines for researchers were developed based on participant suggestions and discussed in relation to relevant literature. This study fills the gap in the literature on individuals with VI’s views and experiences of research involvement and the suggested guidelines have the potential to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of the practice of researchers of VI
A qualitative study to inform a parental education intervention for unintentional child injury prevention in rural Nepal
No full textIntroduction: Unintentional home injuries are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among children under five in Nepal, particularly in rural areas. Despite this burden, culturally appropriate community-based prevention strategies remain limited. This study explored community perspectives to inform the design and delivery of a parental education intervention for childhood home injury prevention.Methods: A qualitative study was conducted in Sunkoshi Rural Municipality, Sindhupalchok District, in December 2024. Seven focus group discussions were held with 56 mothers of preschool-aged children, and 11 key informant interviews were conducted with Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs), health-facility in-charges, a school health nurse, and local government officials. Data were analysed thematically using NVivo 14, guided by the Health Belief Model.Results: Five major themes were identified: (1) Perceived household hazards and common child injuries, (2) Behaviours leading to child injuries, (3) Barriers and facilitators for prevention, (4) Prevention and control practices, and (5) Design and delivery of Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials. Burns and falls were the most frequently reported injuries, often resulting from unsafe cooking areas, open fires, and poor supervision. Barriers to prevention included limited parental awareness, competing household priorities, and unsafe home environments, whereas community cooperation and FCHV support acted as facilitators. Participants favoured simple, visual, and low-cost educational materials, such as posters, flipcharts, and videos, delivered through participatory group discussions led by FCHVs.Conclusion: Parents and community stakeholders demonstrated strong interest in home injury prevention education. Embedding culturally tailored parental education within existing community health platforms, particularly FCHVs and mothers’ groups, represents a feasible, scalable, and sustainable approach to reducing childhood injuries in rural Nepal
PV2ES-BiRTM: Variational auto encoder sampling-based deep learning framework for emotion recognition from speech signals
No full textSpeech emotions are crucial for enabling the interactions between humans and machines, as well as for assisting in evaluating the emotional state of individuals. The techniques implemented for the emotional recognition established better detection, but could be liable to vulnerabilities regarding the accuracy, computational efficiency, understanding of spectral features, and multi-class classifications. To overcome such limitations, the research proposes a Perceptive Vulpus variational Autoencoder sampled Bidirectional recurrent long short-term memory (PV2ES-BiRTM) framework that delivers accurate recognition through an encoder-decoder system. The method utilized a variational autoencoder (VAE) that generated samples with an understanding of the latent space representations. The preprocessing minimized the complexities with the reduction of non-stationary noises, and the Mel Spectral Chromo frequency transform (MSCFT) improved the performance with the extraction of composite time-domain and spectral features. The Perceptive Vulpus Acclimate Search Optimization Algorithm (PVuAS) is incorporated to tune the hyperparameters, leading to the robust classification of multiple emotional classes. Furthermore, the model is compared against the prevailing methods, which exhibit effective performance, having a Positive predictive value of 0.974, a Negative predictive value of 0.969, and a Matthew’s correlation coefficient of 0.945
“That’s the dream, right?”: Reflections on the co-design of an environmental digital twin by flood risk management professionals
Full text linkA Digital Twin (DT) dynamically represents the near-real-time status of a system, allowing users to visualise its current and forecasted status, and test interventions. Emerging technologies, such as DTs, could be transformative for working practices in environmental risk management. However, the development of DTs for environmental management and disaster risk reduction involves extensive challenges. Within Flood Risk Management (FRM), this process is complicated by the involvement of multiple professional stakeholders with diverse statutory responsibilities, priorities, and needs. There is also no formal method for the design of DTs or established method of accounting for end user needs. Processes tend to be top-down and technology driven, rather than bottom-up and user focused. This paper presents one of the first attempts to explore user co-design within the development of a DT. It stems from FLOODTWIN - an interdisciplinary DT demonstrator project for FRM in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire (United Kingdom), a region with complex, compound flood risk. Using data from participatory workshops and interviews, we explore the project’s co-creation process with professional FRM stakeholders, mapping emerging opportunities and challenges in the development of DTs and their interfaces from a qualitative, ethnographic perspective. We reflect on the diverse perspectives of professional users, how they engage with emerging technologies, the politics of data-sharing, and the role of academic research in shaping future development of DTs in FRM practice. We present a new evidence-base to inform future research on the co-creation of digital tools in multi-agency decision-making for FRM and wider environmental management. The paper proposes a research planning framework for navigating co-design processes in future projects to develop environmental DTs. In so doing, the paper also illustrates ways in which sub-optimal water risk management is socially constructed, and not merely a technical challenge to be surmounted
Systemic spillovers in high-growth private market sectors: Determinants and portfolio implications
Full text linkThis study investigates the systematic spillover dynamics across high-growth private market sectors and their key drivers, with particular emphasis on portfolio diversification implications. Using a time-varying parameter vector autoregression framework, we document substantial and persistent return spillovers, with AI, HealthTech, FinTech, and Mobility Tech acting as dominant transmitters, and AgTech, BioPharma, ClimateTech, and Cybersecurity serving primarily as receivers. Spillover intensity peaks during post-pandemic capital inflows and green policy expansions, and declines during monetary tightening and geopolitical shocks. Employing robust regression and eXplainable AI approaches, we identify short-term interest rates, trade policy uncertainty, and geopolitical risk as the most influential determinants of connectedness. Portfolio tests show that minimum correlation and connectedness strategies outperform minimum variance portfolios, achieving higher risk-adjusted returns and better tail-risk protection. Our results provide new insights into the structural dynamics of high-growth private markets and offer a practical framework for spillover-aware asset allocation
Index of landscape conservation for urban nature-based solutions. A methodological shift and proof-of-concept
Full text linkUrbanisation disrupts ecosystem functions and alters landscape conservation. The literature stresses the role of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in cities in preserving and restoring these functions. However, the relationship between NbS and urban landscape conservation remains underexplored, and dedicated metrics to assess the effectiveness of NbS within the urban landscape mosaic require further research. In response to this gap, this study introduces a methodological shift through a novel spatially explicit framework that recalibrates the Index of Landscape Conservation (ILC). The framework enables scenario-based projection of NbS interventions, tailored to the hybrid nature of urban ecosystems. This approach was tested in a developed urban district (Lyde Green, South Gloucestershire, UK), where the ILC was applied at the scale of a minimum Homogeneous Urban Unit (HUU). Findings show the effectiveness of the ILC framework to capture the conservation status of the urban landscape; the analysed HUU achieved an ILC value of 0.49, corresponding to a medium level of conservation. Scenario modelling revealed that paving private gardens could lower the ILC to 0.39 (i.e., low-level), whereas installing green roofs on 50 % of built-up areas could raise it to 0.53 (i.e., high-level). These findings show that the ILC framework can be a robust and adaptable tool for planners and decision-makers, supporting early-stage scenario discussions and spatial prioritisation of NbS tailored to land-cover characteristics. The research concludes by outlining limitations and future studies on the methodological and operational developments of the ILC framework
Corrigendum: Interpretation guidance for MHRA regulatory considerations for phage therapeutic products
Full text linkCorrection to Interpretation guidance for MHRA regulatory considerations for phage therapeutic product