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Geofencing to Accelerate Digital Transitions in Cities: Experiences and Findings from the GeoSence Project
No full textGeofencing is a tool that offers innovative solutions to manage and control traffic, transport, and mobility. The technology enables cities to define digital zones and to create dynamic rules for mobility within these zones. Here we report on three geofencing use cases, their results and lessons learned that were conducted as part of the joint European project GeoSence. In the city of Gothenburg, the performance of a geofencing-based retro-fitted intelligent speed assistance system was tested and evaluated in 20 vehicles of publicly procured transport services to support drivers in complying with new speed regulations around schools. In Munich, geofencing was used to implement and enforce a new station-based parking regulation for shared e-scooters in the city’s old town. Thirdly, in Stockholm preconditions, processes and workflow for continuous changes and updating of the underlying digital geodata bases were analysed to better understand institutional and practical challenges to implement geofencing-based digital transitions in future. Findings from the use cases and project accompanying surveys are evaluated regarding the general topics of transport management, including issues of data sharing and management, stakeholder involvement, technical & vehicle readiness, feasibility of technical platforms, as well as institutional problems related togovernance, policies, resources and the acquiring of necessary competencies
Data for_Open Data Reuse Behaviours of Researchers From Cultural Heritage Institutions in the UK
No full textExploring the Interplay of AI-Generated Art and its Creative Potential in Digital Media
No full textThis research explores and analyses the relationship between AI and the concept of creative expression within the realm of games art, as well as whether AI can potentially benefit or harm this form of expression in the industry. To do so, this dissertation investigates existing research relevant to this topic, as well as various case studies of digital media products that have already been impacted using AI-generated art. These findings will then be applied to a comprehensive comparison process, in which AI-generated artistic components will be viewed alongside assets made without the use of artificial intelligence by research participants so that various factors can be analyzed. Through this empirical research, factors such as production time, ethical considerations, accuracy and aesthetic appeal are discussed to shed light on the broader implications and benefits of AI-generated art on the creative landscape
Syria’s many local-s: Diaspora formation and humanitarian action among Syrians in Manchester
No full textSyrian-led humanitarianism since 2011 has been explored through the lenses of mass displacement, social media, personal networks, and its integration into the international humanitarian system. Comparative studies have found that differential opportunity structures in countries in the Global North and in the Middle East explain Syrian-led civil society organisations’ varying trajectories. By contrast, this article takes a narrower case study approach, drawing on interview and ethnographic data to explore the sociohistorical context in Manchester that gave rise to Action for Humanity (AH), the United Kingdom’s biggest Syria-focused aid organisation. Putting into conversation theory from Diaspora, Middle Eastern, and Humanitarian Studies, we argue that the Middle East’s transregionalisms go hand in hand with growing roots. AH’s practices are anchored in its diaspora’s specific migration history and translocal networks, and subject to change, as more Syrians keep arriving. We analyse how one Syrian diaspora has rallied around humanitarian activities and, conversely, been reproduced through volunteering and donating. AH brand the organisation as “Syrian” to international donors keen on “localising aid”, while facilitating British-Syrians’ remote support for their homeland. We attend to digital, affective, and embodied processes of diaspora formation among Manchester’s Syrians, as AH mobilises, and operates, across Syria’s multiple “local-s”
The Conversation: Being cold doesn’t make you sick, so why are illnesses more common in winter?
No full textUnhealthy lifestyle factors and the risk of incident depressive symptomatology in older adults: Findings from the Three-City study
No full textBackground
The association between unhealthy lifestyle factors and incident depressive symptoms has seldom been studied in the specific context of late-life depression.
Methods
Data were drawn from the Montpellier and Dijon centres of the Three-City study with community-dwellers (aged ≥65 years) followed at five time-points over 12 years. Analysis was performed on 3495 dementia-free participants, with no history of major depression, no antidepressant use and a CES-D score < 16 at inclusion. Lifestyle factors at inclusion included alcohol consumption, smoking, sleep disturbances, diet, social activity engagement and physical activity level. A cumulative unhealthy lifestyle index was built with one-point allocated per unhealthy lifestyle factor. Incident depressive symptomatology (DepS) was defined as a CES-D score ≥ 16 or antidepressant use.
Results
Over the median 9.02-year follow-up (range: 1.56–12.75), 922 participants (26.4 %) had incident DepS. Regarding the cumulative index, the DepS risk increased by 18 % [95 % CI, 12 %–16 %], per additional UHL risk factor. In the multi-adjusted model including the 6 factors, smoking (HR, 1.70 [95 % CI, 1.33–2.17]), sleep disturbances (HR, 1.37 [95 % CI, 1.20–1.57]) and low social activity engagement (HR, 1.20 [95 % CI, 1.04–1.39]) were independently associated with DepS. The risk increased for all two-by-two combinations of these three factors, the highest being for sleep disturbances combined with smoking (HR, 2.84 [95 % CI, 1.82–2.45]). Of those occurring in isolation, only sleep disturbances reached significance (HR, 1.18 [95 % CI, 1.00–1.39]).
Conclusion
The risk of DepS onset increased hand-in-hand with the number of unhealthy lifestyle factors. Interventions targeting unhealthy lifestyles, and in particular sleep disturbances, smoking and social isolation, could have a substantial public health impact on reducing late-onset depression
Future Ecologies of Clay
No full textFuture Ecologies of Clay: Due to their ephemeral or mutable nature, ‘expanded clay practices’ pose challenges to institutional collections more accustomed to housing permanent objects. A UK-based research project is working with clay-based museum collections to rethink their current collecting strategies and taxonomies to better serve future readings of such artworks
Disarming the Knight-Errant: Remaking Wuxia in My Own Swordsman
No full textThis chapter examines how My Own Swordsman, a violence-free wuxia comedy, remakes a genre long censored for its perceived moral threat to youth. Historically linked to vigilantism and rebellion, wuxia has repeatedly come under state scrutiny. As a compelling study for illustrating the rehabilitative nature of postsocialist censorship, Swordsman reframes the genre as ideologically safe and morally uplifting by drawing on comedic elements and witty banter in place of martial violence. Director Shang Jing celebrates the show’s reliance on “wisdom and reason,” emphasising “spiritual strength” over aggression, while CCTV censor Lu Shanjia positions his intervention in the series as “creative authorship.” Their narratives reflect a broader phenomenon in which censorship is not rehabilitative but also collaborative between television professionals and censors. This chapter also analyses how censorship discourse draws legitimacy from youth confessions—public narratives in which young viewers attribute delinquency to wuxia and endorse its regulation. These confessionals work as dividing practices that discipline the young and reinforce the genre’s moral rehabilitation. Ultimately, this chapter argues that censorship in China not only eliminates perceived harm but actively reconstructs cultural meaning to interpellate youth as both moral subjects and loyal neoliberal consumers of state-approved narratives
Intelligent Democracy: Responding to the New Democratic Scepticism
No full textJonathan Benson’s Intelligent Democracy is a direct response to the ‘new democratic scepticism’ in political theory and political economy. As Benson explains, these varying forms of scepticism have roots in some contrasting economic traditions, ranging from mainstream Neoclassical economics to Hayekian political economy. However, they share an epistemological line of argument that argues democracy lacks the capacity to acquire and act upon knowledge. Benson’s case for the intelligence of democracy responds to this scepticism on its own terms. He challenges the shared emphasis of these sceptics upon the intelligence of markets. Adopting an explicitly normative conception of intelligence, democracy, he argues, is suited to capturing ‘other regarding’ ethical values that tend to be externalised by markets. For Benson, rather than elections alone, a plurality of institutions is required to foster such intelligence. Situated in the ‘philosophy, politics and economics’ (PPE) tradition, Benson’s work offers a re-balancing of the pro-market orientation of the current PPE literature on democracy and markets. The book offers a potential framework for comparing different institutional arrangements that might involve different configurations of political and market processes
Introduction: Violence Against Women: Asylum, Voice, and Testimony
No full textIn November 2024, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) released figures suggesting that 60 million women and girls around the world have been forcibly displaced and face high risk of sexual and gender-based violence. The Introduction sets out the existing conditions for asylum-seeking and refugee women who are survivors of violence. It presents the volume’s central claim, that asylum systems currently in place in most countries of the Global North fail to protect many women who have survived such violence. The editors argue for greater discussion on how survivors can and should be protected and supported, setting out the key terms and issues taken up across the chapters. The Introduction foregrounds the global refugee protection system as a narrowing space for protection of women and girls. It explores the hostile environment and violence against women and girls and the obstacles women encounter in the UK asylum system. Foregrounding the concerns of the volume, the editors bring these issues into dialogue with a consideration of how the arts and humanities might amplify women’s voices and contribute to the centring of the issues women encounter to counter the silence imposed on women survivors of violence in the asylum process