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Beyond #MeToo in Iran:change through informal feminist educational leadership
No full textWomen’s bodies in Iran have historically been used as a medium to operationalise social control and power. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, this social control has tightened, manifesting within a misogynistic regime and patriarchal society where lack of legal protection and the culture of shame and silence suppress conversations on sexual harassment, with lack of sexuality education exacerbating the situation. In this context, those involved in the #MeToo movement stepped into an educational vacuum, providing crucial informal leadership around sexuality education, adding to, and building up to, other movements for women in Iran. In this paper, we discuss how informal leaders have used social media platforms such as Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) to help raise awareness of sexual harassment in Iran, help women find solidarity rather than shame, and create an educational platform for sexuality education. #MeToo was an important stepping stone for #feminism that is continuing to date.</p
Are we really that inclusive?:an examination of the performance of masculinities in rugby union clubs in England, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand
No full textThrough qualitative interviews with rugby players and coaches from England, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand, this study examined whether players were now performing a more caring and respectful form of masculinity, as inclusive masculinity theorists have proposed. Results illustrated that players gained pleasure from linking themselves to hypermasculine performances through celebration of violence, drunkenness, and overt displays of heteronormativity. Moreover, the players distanced themselves from homosexual desire and displayed sexist tendencies. Yet, findings also revealed a modest reduction in on-field violence and greater acceptance of female rugby players and diverse sexualities. These modest and seemingly incoherent shifts in the performance of masculinities were traced to the effect of multiple sociostructural changes, such as rule changes, rather than a broad rise of an inclusive “form” of masculinity
Home remedies:flexibilities to onshore pharmaceutical manufacturing under WTO rules
No full textIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments globally have intensified efforts to localise the production of pharmaceuticals, leveraging local content requirements and incentives to mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities. This shift has revealed tensions with World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations, notably highlighted in Turkey – Pharmaceutical Products (EU). This article explores policy-based flexibilities within the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994, the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs), and the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM) Agreement that may justify measures inconsistent with WTO norms under specific conditions. Analysing public health exceptions, national security imperatives, and government procurement policies, the paper elucidates how these flexibilities can be mobilised to support onshoring initiatives while adhering to international trade obligations. The findings suggest a nuanced approach to reconciling public health goals and economic strategies with global trade rules, providing a critical framework for policymakers navigating the complex interplay between national interests and international legal commitments
Improving the computational efficiency of adaptive audits of IRV elections
No full textAWAIRE is one of two extant methods for conducting risk-limiting audits of instant-runoff voting (IRV) elections. In principle AWAIRE can audit IRV contests with any number of candidates, but the original implementation incurred memory and computation costs that grew superexponentially with the number of candidates. This paper improves the algorithmic implementation of AWAIRE in three ways that make it practical to audit IRV contests with 55 candidates, compared to the previous 6 candidates. First, rather than trying from the start to rule out all candidate elimination orders that produce a different winner, the algorithm starts by considering only the final round, testing statistically whether each candidate could have won that round. For those candidates who cannot be ruled out at that stage, it expands to consider earlier and earlier rounds until either it provides strong evidence that the reported winner really won or a full hand count is conducted, revealing who really won. Second, it tests a richer collection of conditions, some of which can rule out many elimination orders at once. Third, it exploits relationships among those conditions, allowing it to abandon testing those that are unlikely to help. We provide real-world examples with up to 36 candidates and synthetic examples with up to 55 candidates, showing how audit sample size depends on the margins and on the tuning parameters. An open-source Python implementation is publicly available.</p
AlphaPIG:The Nicest Way to Prolong Interactive Gestures in Extended Reality
No full textMid-air gestures serve as a common interaction modality across Extended Reality (XR) applications, enhancing engagement and ownership through intuitive body movements. However, prolonged arm movements induce shoulder fatigue - known as "Gorilla Arm Syndrome"- degrading user experience and reducing interaction duration. Although existing ergonomic techniques derived from Fitts' law (such as reducing target distance, increasing target width, and modifying control-display gain) provide some fatigue mitigation, their implementation in XR applications remains challenging due to the complex balance between user engagement and physical exertion. We present AlphaPIG, a meta-technique designed to Prolong Interactive Gestures by leveraging real-time fatigue predictions. AlphaPIG assists designers in extending and improving XR interactions by enabling automated fatigue-based interventions. Through adjustment of intervention timing and intensity decay rate, designers can explore and control the trade-off between fatigue reduction and potential effects such as decreased body ownership. We validated AlphaPIG's effectiveness through a study (N=22) implementing the widely-used Go-Go technique. Results demonstrated that AlphaPIG significantly reduces shoulder fatigue compared to non-adaptive Go-Go, while maintaining comparable perceived body ownership and agency. Based on these findings, we discuss positive and negative perceptions of the intervention. By integrating real-time fatigue prediction with adaptive intervention mechanisms, AlphaPIG constitutes a critical first step towards creating fatigue-aware applications in XR.</p
TableCanoniser:interactive grammar-powered transformation of messy, non-relational tables to canonical tables
No full textTableCanoniser is a declarative grammar and interactive system for constructing relational tables from messy tabular inputs such as spreadsheets. We propose the concept of axis alignment to categorise input types and characterise the expanded scope of our system relative to existing tools. The declarative grammar consists of match conditions, which specify repeating patterns of input cells, and extract operations, which specify how matched values map to the output table. In the interactive interface, users can specify match and extract patterns by interacting with an input table, or author more advanced specifications in the coding panel. To refine and verify specifications, users interact with grammar-based provenance visualisations such as linked highlighting of input and output values, tree-based visualisation of matching patterns, and a mini-map overview of matched instances of patterns with annotations showing where cells are extracted to. We motivate and illustrate our work with real-world usage scenarios and workflows.</p
Factors and challenges of withdrawal from postgraduate studies:interviews with Chinese international students
No full textAn increasing number of Chinese postgraduate students, both in China and internationally, are sharing on social media their experiences of withdrawing from their studies. However, there is little research examining the factors associated with their withdrawal. This project aimed to examine why and how Chinese international students in Australia withdrew or considered withdrawing from their postgraduate programs
Between ‘fetal viability’ and the ‘viability of families’:decision-making for extremely premature infants in Spain
No full textNeonatal expertise and technologies have been perfected over the last decades, improving preterm infants' survival rates and allowing a gradual reduction in the gestational age limits of fetal viability. Using the concept of viability as a starting point, we analyze decision-making processes regarding extremely preterm newborns at the limits of viability. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in a public hospital in Barcelona between March and November 2023, we examine the knowledge forms, rationalities and values that healthcare workers employ when guiding families in decisions about infants' viability. In this respect, we thoroughly analyze the actors involved and the extent of their agency. The findings point out that although neonatal decisions in Spain are embedded in an ethos of “individual responsible choice,” they are in practice collectively produced and shaped by two main (sometimes conflicting) drivers: the perceived means of families to face the challenges posed by infants with high chances of severe sequelae (the ‘viability of families’), and the preterm patients' perceived “will to live” (‘fetal viability’). The study highlights how viability in this context needs to be understood within the structural socioeconomic constraints and struggles to make and raise families in Spain.</p
There's a Bug in your Ice-cream:Teaching Software Testing with Role-plays
No full textRole-play activities have been used for many years in some computing disciplines, particularly object-oriented programming, as an aid to understanding abstract content and inspiring deep engagement with the subject matter. Software quality and testing can be considered to be a dry and uninteresting aspect of computing, as it contains many abstract concepts. As such, we decided to use role-play activities to try and improve student learning and engagement in an introductory software quality and testing unit. In the role-play activities students were given a short case study relating to an ice-cream machine, and took on the role of either a tester or the machine. Testers were given a description of the machine's purpose and its inputs. Machines were given the same description, and instructions describing how to respond to inputs. Testers then worked to find the bugs in the machine by verbally interacting with them. In evaluating the role-plays, we found that they had a statistically significant positive effect on students' confidence in their software testing skills. They also resulted in significantly positive student sentiment, and a strong perception that the role-plays were helpful to their learning. Our results are consistent with those reported in other disciplines, and strongly support the potential of role-play activities in teaching software quality and testing.</p
Recommendations for Successful Development and Implementation of Digital Health Technology Tools
No full textDigital health technology tools (DHTTs) have the potential to transform health care delivery by enabling new forms of participatory and personalized care that fit into patients’ daily lives. However, realizing this potential requires careful navigation of numerous challenges. This viewpoint presents the authors’ experiences and perspectives on the development and implementation of DHTTs, addressing both established practices and controversial topics. This article offers a practical guide organized into 10 recommendations derived from a multidisciplinary lecture series and associated workshop discussions on “Digital Health and Digital Biomarkers” held at the University of Luxembourg in 2023-2024. Key messages include the need to understand specific health care challenges, form interdisciplinary teams, incorporate patient feedback, select appropriate measurement technologies, ensure data integration and interoperability, apply advanced data science techniques, use scalable designs and open standards, comply with regulatory requirements, and maintain continuous evaluation and improvement. While the guide highlights essential practices, it also addresses contentious issues such as balancing innovation with regulatory compliance, addressing ethical concerns in artificial intelligence adoption, managing privacy versus the need for comprehensive data integration and open science, and managing the financial sustainability of DHTTs. The authors argue that digital health’s greatest potential lies in its ability to provide participatory and personalized care, but this requires a delicate balance between technological advances and ethical, legal, and social implications. Overall, this workshop-derived viewpoint aims to help health care professionals, engineers, developers, and researchers not only adopt best practices but also address and resolve the controversial aspects inherent in the development of DHTTs.</p