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Simulation of PEM Fuel Cell Shutdown Purging Using VOFbased Workflow
No full textGas purging is a critical operation in low-temperature PEM fuel cells (PEMFC) for removing the accumulated liquid water, preventing freezing after shutdown, and maintaining the cell’s durability. In this work, a high-fidelity workflow based on the Volume-of-Fluid (VOF) method is presented for simulating shutdown purging in PEMFC’s with parallel channels. The initialization of liquid water is derived from PEMFC multi-physics simulations, complemented with experimental assumptions of corner attachment and droplet sizes forming on the surface of the gas diffusion layer (GDL). The workflow is tested on the purging of a cathode flow field which has been shut down after operating at 0.4 V for 10 min
Navigating public health research in UK secondary schools: key challenges and opportunities identified by researchers
Full text linkObjective Conducting health research with adolescents involves navigating complex challenges at both organisational and individual levels. As part of evaluating the EACH-B (Engaging Adolescents with Changing Behaviour) intervention—a school-based randomised controlled trial aimed at improving diet and physical activity in adolescents, we explored researchers’ insider experiences of programme implementation. The study investigates real-world implementation challenges and protocol adaptations in the EACH-B trial to provide practical guidance for public health interventions in schools. Applying the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), data were collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 10 members of the research team.
Results Researchers identified significant barriers within the ‘Inner’ settings (internal research processes) and ‘Outer’ settings (external school environment and policy landscape). Research delivery was hindered by post-pandemic school priorities—specifically academic recovery and mental health support which limited the feasibility of maintaining adolescent engagement and school access. Researcher-led adaptations emerged as a critical, yet often hidden, component of maintaining trial fidelity. The study concludes that reflexive ‘insider’ perspectives and flexible designs are essential to align research with shifting school priorities. These adaptive strategies provide a blueprint for
more resilient and feasible public health intervention
The economics of shipping decarbonisation: Carbon, production, and allocative efficiencies
Full text linkExisting shipping environmental regulations largely omit the economic dimension which, in turn, delays the industry's clean energy transition. This paper investigates the efficiency of global shipping on economic foundations. We apply a stochastic frontier analysis to assess the interactions between capital, operation, earnings, and transport work, both across all major shipping segments and at an individual-vessel level. The empirical results indicate that carbon efficiency of vessel types decreases with speed. Larger vessel types produce more carbon emissions for a given level of TC earnings and costs. At an individual vessel level, higher production efficiency is observed in vessels that are newer, spend more time at sea, have installed more energy saving technologies (ESTs), and belong to companies with stronger EST investment policy. Technical and operational inefficiencies raise the total cost of owning and operating a vessel by 7%, with market price dynamics and inefficient allocation of economic resources increasing it by 25%. An increase in fuel price of 38% or a reduction in speed of 13.5% does not severely affect a vessel's overall efficiency and total cost. Policy interventions need to be carefully designed in order not to negatively impact the overall efficiency of global shipping
Juggling Paradoxical Goals: Unpacking persisting dysfunctional dynamics
Full text linkParadoxical goals, such as demands in industrial R&D for exploratory learning and short-term business performance, may foster synergistic possibilities, but also surface tensions that can paralyse actors. Defensive responses can trigger vicious cycles, where over-focusing on one goal provides actors with temporary comfort, but intensifies the pull from the neglected goal. Paradox studies identify typical initiators of vicious cycles and have started to unpack managerial interventions to reverse into virtuous dynamics. Yet, we still know little about how dysfunctional dynamics drive persisting vicious cycles. Our in-depth longitudinal qualitative case study of an ICT corporate research lab reveals multifaceted and nested dysfunctional dynamics at the heart of persisting vicious cycles. Our study makes three interconnected contributions to the paradox literature. First, while extant studies suggest that managerial interventions can enable organizations to reverse vicious into virtuous cycles, our findings show that interventions may backfire and instead re-fuel dysfunctional dynamics. Particularly when paradoxical goals are almost impossible to attain in practice, managerial interventions that treat the symptoms of over-focusing on one goal instead of addressing the impossibility of the task, can feed dysfunctional dynamics. Second, our process model shows how defensive responses are continually ‘becoming’. Unpacking the shifting nature of defensive responses introduces granularity into current conceptualizations of paradox dynamics but also enriches our understanding of how the management of paradoxes may sometimes feature as an impossible task. Third, our model shows how dysfunctional dynamics are nested across organizational levels. Extending current insights on paradox nestedness, we show that persisting vicious cycles are fuelled by the interlocking effects of senior management interventions to restore dynamic equilibrium and counter-balancing defensive responses at lower organizational levels. We stress the key role of middle managers in contextualizing paradoxical demands into concrete everyday activities that employees can comprehend, while attending to employees’ concerns
The Beauty of Nature Without People: An Investigation of the Roles of People, Nature, and Interpersonal Touch in Painting Preference
Full text linkWhile art, nature, and social interactions are key elements of a healthy culture and lifestyle, how nature and social factors in paintings impact the viewer experience still remains unclear. This study aimed to explore how the number of depicted people, the presence of interpersonal touch, and the setting (indoor vs. outdoor) affect art preference. A total of 420 paintings were rated (online survey) on their liking across 300 participants. Across participants, paintings without people were significantly liked over paintings with people, which was especially prominent in depictions of outdoor settings. Furthermore, while people liked paintings without touch, this was only the case for paintings of outdoor depictions. The study also explored how these preferences were modulated by individual differences. The findings underscore the relevance and importance of social aspects in art and how this interacts with the viewer's individuality
Advancing Theoretical Integration of Distrust: A Multilevel Examination of Its Theoretical Foundations, Dynamics, and Mechanisms
Full text linkThis paper addresses persistent gaps in distrust scholarship by systematically reviewing studies published from 1998 to 2024. We refine distrust as a construct distinct from trust, mistrust, and suspicion, shaped by unique cognitive, emotional, and behavioral mechanisms. Substantial evidence supports that distrust is not merely the absence of trust but an independent phenomenon. Our review synthesizes research on how distrust emerges, escalates, and spills over across market settings. We develop a comprehensive model illustrating key themes and propositions at individual, dyadic, organizational, and systemic levels. This analysis reveals the complex antecedents of distrust, its varied influences on decision-making and market interactions, and the measurement challenges arising from conflating distrust with low trust. By offering a unified framework, this review promotes the theoretical integration of distrust and offers practical guidance for mitigating its impact
Extracting deterministic finite automata from RNNs via hyperplane partitioning and learning
No full textRecurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have achieved remarkable success in handling sequential data. However, they lack interpretability. Extracting Deterministic Finite Automata (DFAs) from black-box models can provide insight into their decision-making processes. This research focuses on extracting DFAs from RNNs trained on regular languages using an exact learning framework. The proposed approach employs the L algorithm to learn a DFA, and it demonstrates how a hyperplane-based method can be used to partition the RNN state space when evaluating equivalence queries
Rule Extraction from Fake News Classifiers
No full textThis study explores the decision-making processes of machine learning models for text classification problems. Using a fake news dataset as a test case, the study compares neural networks and machine learning approaches to fake news detection. This text-based problem has a feature space of 12,569 dimensions, and the necessity of the full dimensionality of the data is explored. In addition to developing effective classifiers, this study aims to investigate neural network interpretability by applying an explainable AI framework to extract human-understandable rules from trained models. The rule extraction process, taking a pedagogical approach, investigates the decision making of models. A Boolean function based model was developed, and the extent to which this rule-based system over a reduced feature set is successful is evaluated
Gendering the safety net: Social protection policy and the limits to Decent Work in Cambodia’s garment sector
No full textThe adoption of the Social Protection Floors Recommendation (SPFR) by the International Labour Conference in 2012 is widely recognised as an “historic” (Deacon 2013) and “radical” (Cichon 2013) reorientation of social protection, promising a new “universal and comprehensive” approach. Despite the SPFR’s bold ambitions, however, the implementation of social protection floors at global- and national-level has proven uneven. In practice, the social protection floors initiative has generally been “subordinate” (Seekings 2019) to the Decent Work agenda. Particularly in many lower-income settings in the global South, for instance, vertical expansion of benefits to waged workers through social insurance has taken precedence over the SPFR’s more radical promise to horizontally expand the frontiers of social assistance. In Cambodia, for example, entrenched norms of fiscal and social conservativism have focused policy attention on expanding benefits provided to the 700,000 workers in the country’s largest formal industry – the garment sector – rather than expanding the scope of social protection to include the yet more numerous informal or agricultural sector workforce. In this paper, we examine the consequences of this lopsided social protection strategy for its apparent beneficiaries: women working within the garment industry. We argue that the focus on extending support for formal workers, at the exclusion of informal workers is, in fact, detrimental to both groups. To illustrate these arguments, we draw on original data from the GCRF-funded ReFashion project, a longitudinal study tracing the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on a cohort of 200 garment workers in Cambodia over 24 months. We use this rich and grounded data to develop an emic perspective on social protection programming that shows how, in the absence of a robust social protection floor, gendered norms in Cambodia compel women to fill the gaps in social protection programming by the state. Women workers in the garment sector effectively fund a social safety net for family members through remittance transfers. However, garment sector salaries alone are insufficient for this task, leading to a “debtfare” (Soederberg 2014) model, in which workers finance these costs through increasing resort to personal debt. The result is a crisis of over-indebtedness among workers in the garment industry that undermines the achievement of Decent Work in the sector. We suggest that Covid-19 offers a moment for reflection, like that which followed the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and inspired the SPRF itself, to learn from the vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic and recentre a radical vision of social protection that delivers for all
Gender Identity Profiles in Autistic and Non‐Autistic Cisgender and Gender Diverse Youth, and Their Caregivers
Full text linkThis preregistered study examined whether the gender identity phenotype differs between autistic and non‐autistic children and adolescents, as well as whether gender identity traits aggregate similarly within their families. Study 1 involved four matched groups of autistic and non‐autistic gender diverse youth referred to a UK specialist gender clinic, as well as cisgender autistic and non‐autistic youth (n = 45 per group). Participants completed measures of gender typicality, discontentedness, anticipated future identity, and (parent‐reported) dysphoria. Despite large and significant differences between cisgender and gender diverse youth across all gender‐related measures, there were no significant differences between autistic and non‐autistic participants within either gender group. Study 2 assessed recalled childhood gender behaviors and current gender dysphoria in the caregivers of participants from each group (N = 203). Caregivers of gender‐referred youth, regardless of autism status, reported higher current dysphoric traits than caregivers of cisgender youth, but no differences were observed in recalled childhood gender‐related behavior. Overall, the findings indicate that the gender phenotype of autistic youth is comparable to that of non‐autistic youth within the same gender identity group, challenging the assumption that gender diversity in autism arises from different underlying mechanisms. Clinically, these results support equitable access to gender‐related care for autistic and non‐autistic gender diverse youth
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