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The effects of wars: lessons from the war in Ukraine
Get PDFIntroduction and theoretical framework to Policy Studies, Volume 45, 2024 - Issue 3-4: The effects of wars: lessons from the war in Ukraine; Guest editors: Pierre Bocquillon, Suzanne Doyle, Toby S. James, Ra Mason, Soul Park and Matilde Rosina.War remains a central feature of global politics and has been a core focus for politics and international relations, history, economics, sociology as well as other cognate disciplines. The analysis of the effects of war has, however, tended to be compartmentalised by sub-disciplines. This article proposes a heuristic framework to map the effects of war in terms of ripple and backwash across a range of interconnected layers of societies. Through this framework, the article then introduces a set of empirically rich and theoretically informed studies from across multiple disciplines which examine the first consequences of the war in Ukraine. Taken together, these studies show that the war has had deep and complex effects affecting human life; human development; economies; values and attitudes; policy and governance; and power distribution and relations around the world. Although broader international public interest in the war may have waned within weeks of the invasion, the effects of the conflict have been deep and continued in many areas, but also differentiated across space and time. Traditional public policy concepts used to frame the effects of “external shocks” such as punctuated equilibrium and critical junctures may overlook such deep-seated and diverse effects, warranting the multidisciplinary lenses used in this volume
Authorship in artificial intelligence-generated works: Exploring originality in text prompts and artificial intelligence outputs through philosophical foundations of copyright and collage protection
Get PDFData Availability Statement: The author confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and its generative capabilities have propelled innovation across various industries, yet they have also sparked intricate legal debates, particularly in the realm of copyright law. Generative AI systems, capable of producing original content based on user‐provided input or prompts, have introduced novel challenges regarding ownership and authorship of AI‐generated works. One crucial aspect of this discussion revolves around text prompts, which serve as instructions for AI systems to generate specific content types, be it text, images, or music. Despite the transformative potential of AI‐generated works, the legal landscape remains fragmented, with disparate jurisdictional interpretations and a lack of uniform approaches. This disparity has led to legal uncertainty and ambiguity, necessitating a nuanced exploration of originality, creativity, and legal principles in the context of text prompts and resulting outputs. This article seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate by delving into the complexities surrounding AI‐generated works, focusing specifically on the originality of text prompts and their correlation with resulting outputs. While previous literature has extensively examined copyright issues related to AI, the originality of text prompts remains largely unexplored, representing a significant gap in the existing discourse. By analysing the originality of text prompts, this article aims to uncover new insights into the creative process underlying AI‐generated works and its implications for copyright law. Drawing parallels from traditional creative works, such as collages, the article will assess how legal principles apply to AI‐generated content, considering philosophical foundations as well as copyright principles, such as the idea‐expression dichotomy. Furthermore, the article will explore the divergent approaches taken by different jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, United States, and European Union, in determining originality in the context of copyright law. While refraining from providing definitive answers, the article aims to stimulate critical thinking and dialogue among stakeholders. By offering fresh perspectives and insights, it seeks to enrich the discourse surrounding the copyrightability of AI‐generated works and pave the way for informed policy decisions and legal interpretations. The article aims to contribute valuable perspectives to the ongoing debate on copyright and AI, shaping the future trajectory of intellectual property law in the era of artificial intelligence
Post-entry internationalization of born globals: The role of dynamic capabilities in accelerating growth
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The data that has been used is confidential.Academics and policymakers worldwide recognize the importance of born globals (BGs) and actively promote rapid internationalization. Despite this, our knowledge of the post-entry behavior of BGs is limited. We address this problem by investigating the dynamic capabilities that accelerate the post-entry international growth of BGs. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Chinese BG managers, this study reveals the dynamic capabilities that substantiate three key dimensions of international growth: spread, diversification, and sales intensity. Furthermore, we disclose the managerial and organizational capabilities that underpin the sensing and seizing of international opportunities as well as the reconfiguration of the resource base. We contribute to the BG literature and the dynamic capabilities perspective.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (grant number: 72274164, 72362034)
Origin of continental red beds: warming from above or heating from below?
Get PDFData availability: The data underpinning this publication can be accessed from Brunel University London's data repository, Brunelfigshare here under a CCBY licence: https://doi.org/10.17633/rd.brunel.25952824.The formation of continental red beds is generally considered to be related to an arid climate. Heating experiments (performed by L.J. and G.C.) using dried black mud sediment also demonstrate that the reddening may be caused by the transformation of goethite to haematite that begins at approximately 150 °C under anhydrous conditions, and increasing the temperature to 450 °C is positively correlated with the red colour and peak value of haematite. If this process applies to continental red beds, it implies a thermal origin of red beds as a result of high diagenetic temperatures rather than as the cause of their deposition under an arid climate. Namely, subsiding red-bed basins are heated from below rather than warmed from above. Here, we further strengthen this idea by new evidence from borehole cores drilled from red beds in SE China, showing a clear geological section from the surface soil to red beds to bottom granite. The data reveal that the continental red beds formed at least at a temperature within 150–400 °C, and the underlying granite usually formed at temperatures greater than 600 °C. Our results imply a possible relationship between continental red bed events and Earth's thermal cycles.Original Exploration Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42050201), the general project of the State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources (China University of Geosciences (Wuhan)) (Grant No. GPMR202002), the special fund for Special Project of Geological Hazard Control, Guangdong Province, China (Grant No. 2017201), the multi-element three-dimensional urban geological survey project of Zhongshan City, China (Grant No. 442000-201903-2019001-0011 (ZZ21909738)), and the Science and Technology Projects of Guangzhou, China (Grant No. 202201010638)
Surviving Industry Convergence: Ambidexterity via Internal Development, Alliances and Acquisitions
Get PDFSupporting Information is available online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8551.12832#support-information-section .Industry convergence (IC), the blurring of boundaries between previously separate industries, is a pervasive phenomenon. The emergence of new products, resources and competitors as a result of IC poses a threat to firm survival. Importantly, IC differs from other contexts of technological change that bear their origin in an emerging technology that may substitute or make obsolete an existing technology. Yet, little is known about how firms may survive IC. We theorize that the degrees to which firms explore or exploit using their growth modes (i.e. internal development, alliances and acquisitions) by emphasizing an ambidextrous posture may affect their likelihood of survival. We hypothesize that a high degree of exploration in internal development and alliances and a high degree of exploitation in acquisitions positively affect the likelihood of firm survival. Our hypotheses received strong support in a sample of 231 firms from a period of IC between the telecommunication equipment and data networking industries between 1989 and 2003. Our study opens a new research frontier on IC by proposing a novel theoretical approach based on examining the ambidexterity within and across growth modes to better understand firm outcomes during IC. It also contributes to research on growth modes
A review of compressors for high temperature heat pumps
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No data was used for the research described in the article.The development of high temperature heat pumps for waste heat recovery benefits industrial processes by meeting demand, increasing energy efficiency, and reducing emissions. The aim of such systems is to upgrade waste heat streams, typically around 50 °C to 100 °C, to higher temperatures ranging from 100 °C to around 200 °C. A primary challenge in getting the required high temperatures is the compression system. There is a plethora of recently published research papers including reviews that address high temperature heat pumps. However, there has been no comprehensive review addressing compression systems, despite their major influence in the successful development of high temperature heat pumps; this paper provides a comprehensive review of such compressors. Firstly, an overview of heat pump systems is provided, which covers cycle arrangements and working fluid selection. This is followed by a review of the different compressor technologies used, and the development of relevant modelling and design tools. Finally, suggestions for future directions in research for high temperature heat pump compressors are provided. It was found that screw compressors have been the obvious choice for heat pumps due to the experience gained from the refrigeration industry. However, the temperatures they can handle are constrained by the maximum possible limitation to avoid oil degradation. For higher temperatures, better efficiency, and larger capacity, it seems that the alternative is turbo-compressors. Nevertheless, there is a lack of experience in this area and more research and development efforts are required to enable these machines to achieve their potential in high temperature heat pumps
Combinatorial, additive and dose-dependent drug–microbiome associations
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The source data for the figures are provided at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4728981). Raw shotgun sequencing data that support the findings of this study have been deposited at the ENA under accession codes PRJEB41311, PRJEB38742 and PRJEB37249 with public access. Raw spectra for metabolomics have been deposited in the MassIVE database under the accession codes MSV000088043 (UPLC–MS/MS) and MSV000088042 (GC–MS). The metadata on disease groups and drug intake are provided in Supplementary Tables 1–3. The demographic, clinical and phenotype metadata, and processed microbiome and metabolome data for French, German and Danish participants are available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4674360).Code availability:
The new drug-aware univariate biomarker testing pipeline is available as an R package (metadeconfoundR; Birkner et al., manuscript in preparation) at Github (https://github.com/TillBirkner/metadeconfoundR) and at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4721078). The latest version (0.1.8) of this package was used to generate the data shown in this publication. The code used for multivariate analysis based on the VpThemAll package is available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4719526). The phenotype and drug intake metadata, processed microbiome, and metabolome data and code resources are available for download at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4674360). The code for reproducing the figures is provided at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4728981).During the transition from a healthy state to cardiometabolic disease, patients become heavily medicated, which leads to an increasingly aberrant gut microbiome and serum metabolome, and complicates biomarker discovery1,2,3,4,5. Here, through integrated multi-omics analyses of 2,173 European residents from the MetaCardis cohort, we show that the explanatory power of drugs for the variability in both host and gut microbiome features exceeds that of disease. We quantify inferred effects of single medications, their combinations as well as additive effects, and show that the latter shift the metabolome and microbiome towards a healthier state, exemplified in synergistic reduction in serum atherogenic lipoproteins by statins combined with aspirin, or enrichment of intestinal Roseburia by diuretic agents combined with beta-blockers. Several antibiotics exhibit a quantitative relationship between the number of courses prescribed and progression towards a microbiome state that is associated with the severity of cardiometabolic disease. We also report a relationship between cardiometabolic drug dosage, improvement in clinical markers and microbiome composition, supporting direct drug effects. Taken together, our computational framework and resulting resources enable the disentanglement of the effects of drugs and disease on host and microbiome features in multimedicated individuals. Furthermore, the robust signatures identified using our framework provide new hypotheses for drug–host–microbiome interactions in cardiometabolic disease.This work was supported by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement HEALTH-F4-2012-305312 (METACARDIS). Part of this work was also supported by the EMBL, by the Metagenopolis grant ANR-11-DPBS-0001, by the H2020 European Research Council (ERC-AdG-669830) (to P.B.), and by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB1365 to S.K.F. and L.M.; and SFB1052/3 A1 MS to M.S. (209933838)). Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris is the promoter of the clinical investigation (MetaCardis). M.-E.D. is supported by the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre and by grants from the French National Research Agency (ANR-10-LABX-46 (European Genomics Institute for Diabetes)), from the National Center for Precision Diabetic Medicine – PreciDIAB, which is jointly supported by the French National Agency for Research (ANR-18-IBHU-0001), by the European Union (FEDER), by the Hauts-de-France Regional Council (Agreement 20001891/NP0025517) and by the European Metropolis of Lille (MEL, Agreement 2019_ESR_11) and by Isite ULNE (R-002-20-TALENT-DUMAS), also jointly funded by ANR (ANR-16-IDEX-0004-ULNE), the Hauts-de-France Regional Council (20002845) and by the European Metropolis of Lille (MEL). R.J.A. is a member of the Collaboration for joint PhD degree between EMBL and Heidelberg University, Faculty of Bioscience. The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research is an independent research institution at the University of Copenhagen partially funded by an unrestricted donation from the Novo Nordisk Foundation
Book reviews
Get PDFBook review by Jiulian Petley, Honorary and Emeritus Professor of Journalism, Brunel University London, of: Journalism beyond Orwell: A collection of essays. Richard Lance Keeble. Abingdon, Routledge 2020, pp. 235. ISBN: 9780367333560 (hbk), 9780367333553, (pbk) 9780429319365 (ebk); book review by Dr Annmaree Watharow, Research Focused Academic, University of Sydney, Australia, of: Disrupting the academy with lived experience-led knowledge. Maree Higgins and Caroline Lenette (eds) Policy Press, Bristol, 2024, pp. 194. ISBN: 9781447366348 (pbk).Richard Lance Keeble’s latest book on George Orwell collects together a number of his previously published articles and chapters in order to explore the writer’s multi-faceted legacy as a journalist
Neurotransmitter‐related functional connectivity alterations associated with cognitive decline in people with mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer’s disease
Get PDFPoster presentation at AAIC 2024, Philadelphia, PA, USA, 28 July - 1 August 2024.Background:
Early alterations in the ventral tegmental area, a major brainstem dopaminergic nucleus, may be a marker of Alzheimer’ disease (AD). However, how dopamine (DA) may influence neurofunctional and cognitive decline due to AD remains elusive. The aim of this study was to investigate alterations in resting-state functional connectivity (FC) associated with DA distribution in the brain along the AD continuum.
Materials:
Eighty-six older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), 58 with mild dementia due to AD and 76 cognitively unimpaired (CU) participants of the multicentre VPH-DARE@IT project were included. Participants underwent comprehensive clinical, neuropsychological and MRI assessments
Methods:
Functional MRI data were pre-processed by using the REACT pipeline to obtain FC maps informed by DA receptor and transporter PET/SPECT atlas for the whole brain and for the nigrostriatal and mesocorticolimbic pathways. Whole-brain FC maps informed by acetylcholine (ACh) were also extracted for comparison. A cognitive composite score (Cog-CS) was calculated as the average of neuropsychological test z-scores. Between-group differences in neurotransmitter-informed FC were assessed using ANCOVA models in SMP12. Moreover, the association between FC maps and both Cog-CS and episodic memory scores was investigated in the whole sample. Age, education, sex, total intracranial volume and recruitment site were included as covariates.
Results:
The AD group showed mesocorticolimbic DA-related FC decline in the bilateral precuneus, and increase in the thalamus, while the MCI group showed nigrostriatal FC decline in the left superior temporal gyrus. ACh-related FC decline was observed in both MCI and AD, compared with CU, in fronto-parietal and temporal areas. The Cog-CS was positively associated with ACh-related FC only in posterior cingulate, temporal and cerebellar areas. Episodic memory performance was correlated positively with ACh- and DA-related FC in occipito-parietal areas and negatively with DA-related FC in thalamic and fronto-temporal areas.
Conclusions:
FC alterations associated with both Ach and DA may be sensitive to cognitive decline due to AD. These findings, first of this kind, may offer useful insights to test recently proposed hypotheses on the involvement of these neuromodulatory systems in driving AD-related neuropathological changes as well as to investigate the mechanisms of action of novel treatments
Risk factors for subjective and objective cognitive decline in sexual minority older adults
Get PDFPublic Health Podium Presentation: Epidemiology at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC24), Philadelphia, PA, USA, 28 July-1 August 2024.Background:
Sexual minority older adults (SMOAs) report subjective cognitive decline (SCD) more than heterosexual older adults (HOAs). Inconsistent findings have emerged about the risk of cognitive decline in SMOAs. This study aimed to compare the impact of multiple psycho-social risk factors on both objectively assessed and subjectively reported cognitive decline between HOAs and SMOAs.
Method:
Two samples of self-identified HOAs (n = 4180) and SMOAs (n = 92) who completed Waves 8 and 9 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing were selected. Reliable change indices for episodic and semantic memory were created to assess longitudinal cognitive changes. SCD was self-assessed for both memory and general cognition. Mental and cardiovascular health, marital status, loneliness, and socio-economic status (SES) were investigated as risk factors for cognitive decline. The effect of each risk factor and their interaction effects with sexual orientation on memory changes and SCD were tested, respectively, with general linear and logistic regression models. Age, education, and sex were included as covariates. A sensitivity analysis was carried out in a sub-sample (n = 92, per group) matched for demographics.
Result:
Cognitive changes and rates of SCD were similar between SMOAs and HOAs. All risk factors, apart from marital status, were associated SCD risk, while only SES was associated with decline in episodic memory (β = .01, p = .038). A SES×sexual orientation interaction was found for semantic memory (β = -.06, p = .042); among those in the lowest quintile, SMOAs had better semantic memory preservation over time than HOAs. A sensitivity analysis found among those in the highest quintile, SMOAs had worse semantic memory decline than HOAs.
Conclusion:
SCD was associated with a multitude of risk factors, in line with previous evidence of SCD as a heterogeneous construct. This was similar between SMOAs and HOAs. Longitudinal changes in semantic memory were, instead, differentially impacted by SES in the groups. Sensitivity analysis confirmed a potential lack of protective effect in SMOAs, although the groups did not differ for SES. These findings may be interpreted within the framework of material deprivation, which is more likely among SMOAs and may contribute to their cognitive decline more severely than in HOAs
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