64623 research outputs found
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Risk, uncertainty and ambiguity amid COVID-19: A multi-national analysis of international travel intentions
No full textThis study analyses how Covid-19 shapes individuals’ international tourism intentions in context of bounded rationality. It provides a novel analysis of risk which is disaggregated into tolerance/aversion of and competence to manage risks across three different aspects: general, domain (tourism) and situational (Covid-19). The impacts of risk are also differentiated from uncertainty and ambiguity. The empirical study is based on large samples (total=8,962) collected from the world’s top five tourism source markets: China, USA, Germany, UK and France. Various risk factors show significant predictive powers of individual’s intentions to defer international tourism plans amid Covid-19. Uncertainty and ambiguity intolerance is shown to lead to intentions to take holidays relatively sooner rather than delaying the holiday plans. </p
Feasibility of an automated interview grounded in Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) methodology for selection into the health professions: an international multi-methods evaluation
Full text linkObjectives: Global, Covid-driven restrictions around face-to-face interviews for healthcare student selection have forced admissions staff to rapidly adopt adapted online systems before supporting evidence is available. We have developed, what we believe is, the first automated interview grounded in Multiple Mini-Interview (MMI) methodology. This study aimed to explore test re-test reliability, acceptability, and usability of the system.Design, setting and participants: Multi-method feasibility study in Physician Associate (PA) programmes from two UK and one US university during 2019 - 2020.Primary, secondary outcomes: Feasibility measures (test-retest reliability acceptability and usability) were assessed using intra-class correlation (ICC), descriptive statistics, thematic and content analysis.Methods: Volunteers took (T1), then repeated (T2), the automated MMI, with a seven-day interval (+/- 2) then completed an evaluation questionnaire. Admissions staff participated in focus group discussions.Results: Sixty-two students and seven admission staff participated; 34 students and four staff from UK and 28 students and three staff from US universities.Good-excellent test-retest reliability was observed with T1 and T2 ICC between 0.62-0.81 (p<0.001) when assessed by individual total scores (range 80.6-119), station total scores 0.6-0.91, p<0.005, individual site (all ICC≥ 0.76 p<0.001) and mean test retest across sites 0.82 p<0.001 (95% CI 0.7-0.9).Admissions staff reported potential to reduce resource costs and bias through a more objective screening tool for pre-selection or to replace some MMI stations in a ‘hybrid model’. Maintaining human interaction through ‘touch points’ was considered essential.Users positively evaluated the system, stating it was intuitive with an accessible interface. Concepts chosen for dynamic probing needed to be appropriately tailored.Conclusion: These preliminary findings suggest that the system is reliable, generating consistent scores for candidates and is acceptable to end-users provided human touchpoints are maintained. Thus, there is evidence for the potential of such an automated system to augment healthcare student selection.Strengths and limitations of this study• The underpinning iterative theoretical approach enabled a responsive, dynamic design and development process for a new technology with no known precedent.• The conceptual leap from face-to-face or videoconference facilitated MMIs to a fully automated interview and assessment system may present barriers to stakeholders irrespective of the technology and its’ features.• The multi-method design provided for a diverse set of insights which have been essential to informing the progression of the technology.• We were unable to assess for potential differential performance within sub-groups, as would require a larger sample size
Quantum Annealing for Next-Generation MU-MIMO Detection: Evaluation and Challenges
Full text link© 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Anaerobic digestion of untreated and treated process water from the hydrothermal carbonisation of spent coffee grounds
No full textThis study investigates the long-term performance of the mesophilic (35 °C) anaerobic mono-digestion of process waters (PW) from the hydrothermal carbonisation (HTC) of spent coffee grounds. At an organic loading rate (OLR) of 0.4 gCOD L−1 d−1, initial instability was seen, but after 40 days and supplementary alkalinity, the digestion stabilised with the chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the untreated PW degraded with 37.8–64.6% efficiency and the yield of methane at 0.16 L gCOD−1. An increase in OLR to 0.8 gCOD L−1 d−1 caused a collapse in biogas production, and resulted in severe instability in the reactor, characterised by falling pH and an increasing volatile fatty acid concentration. Comparatively, the digestion of a treated PW (concentrated in nanofiltration and reverse osmosis after removal of the fouling fraction), at OLR between 0.4 and 0.8 gCOD L−1 d−1, was stable over the entire 117 days of treated PW addition, yielded methane at 0.21 L gCOD−1 and the COD was degraded with an average efficiency of 93.5% - the highest efficiency the authors have seen for HTC PW. Further anaerobic digestion of untreated PW at an average OLR of 0.95 gCOD L−1 d−1 was stable for 38 days, with an average COD degradation of 69.6%, and methane production between 0.15 and 0.19 L gCOD−1. The digestion of treated PW produced significantly higher COD degradation and methane yield than untreated PW, which is likely to be related to the removal of refractory and inhibitory organic material in the post-HTC treatment by adsorption of hydrophobic material
Co-creacion de innovaciones orientadas a la sostenibilidad turistica en Barcelona
Full text linkThis report is a policy briefing containing the main findings of the PhD project Co-Creation of Sustainability-Oriented Innovations (SOIs) in Tourism. This project was conducted in close partnership with the Barcelona City Council to co-design institutional innovations to address sustainability challenges in the city by widely engaging stakeholders in a participatory process. To enable an open participatory process, the project was nested in the Consell de Turisme i Ciutat, which gathers key public, private and civil society organizations to discuss the main tourism development issues in the city of Barcelona. The project gathers data by conducting individual interviews, and a series of stakeholder workshops to better understand the complexity of designing SOIs collectively. Amongst the main findings, this report identifies how individual and collective conceptual nuances of innovation and sustainability affect the stakeholders' ability to embark on sustainability innovations in tourism. Further, it describes collective objectives, drivers and barriers that stakeholders identified when developing SOIs. The report also offers an analysis of current tourism specific and non-tourism SOIs in Barcelona and potential ways in which these existing SOIs could be leveraged to facilitate systemic change. One of the key findings of the study is a collection of co-created SOIs by the stakeholders, which are analysed in terms of their sustainability impact and their type of innovation. These SOIs include a wide range of policy actions and interventions related to management, product development and marketing, education, incentives and monitoring and evaluation. Amongst these SOIs, during the project, the stakeholders decided to focus on expanding on four SOIs which could have a greater potential to create systemic change in the sustainable development of the city and thus in the tourism sector. These four SOIs are presented in this report as one-page business plans to facilitate its potential application. Finally, the study provides a series of recommendations to enhance collaboration and governance mechanisms to allow SOIs to thrive as collective actions that are powered by legitimacy, trust and a fair distribution of power. In this line, to empower stakeholders to utilize the findings of this project the report introduces the idea of creating a Sustainability Innovation LivingLab.</p
Trajectory design of Earth-enabled Sun occultation missions
Full text linkUnderstanding the solar corona and its structure, evolution and composition can provide new insights regarding the processes that control the transport of energy throughout the solar atmosphere and out into the heliosphere. However, the visible emission coming from the corona is more than a million times weaker than the emission from the photosphere, implying that direct corona observations are only possible when the disk of the Sun is fully obscured. In this paper we perform a feasibility study of a Sun occultation mission using the Earth as a natural occulter. The challenge is that the occultation zone created by the Earth does not follow a Keplerian trajectory, causing satellites placed in this region to quickly drift away from eclipse conditions. To increase the number of revisits while optimizing the propellant budget, we propose optimal trajectories in the Sun–Earth-Spacecraft circular restricted three body problem that account for scientific and engineering constraints such as limited power budget and mission duration. Chemical propulsion, electric propulsion and solar sailing configurations are compared in terms of performance and mission feasibility, revealing how 24 h of corona observations would be possible every 39 days with as little as 199 m/s of í µí»¥í µí±\u89. The feasibility of the solar sail approach is hereby demonstrated, making it a challenging engineering alternative to currently available technologies
Sticking around: Cell adhesion patterning for energy minimization and substrate mechanosensing
No full textElectrocatalytic CO2 conversion to C2 products: Catalysts design, market perspectives and techno-economic aspects
No full textSocial Stratification in Meaningful Work: Occupational Class Disparities in the United Kingdom
Full text linkA critique of the marketisation of long-term residential and nursing home care
Full text linkLong-term care across the OECD has undergone a progressive marketisation and financialisation in recent decades, characterised by the embedding of neoliberal market values such as competition, consumer choice and the profit motive. In this Personal View, we argue that these make poor guiding principles for the care sector, identifying the dysfunctional dynamics that arise as a result, and reflecting on the clinical implications of each, with a focus on facility-based care. We outline why providers can scarcely respond to competitive forces without compromising care quality. We explain why the promotion of consumer choice cannot effectively motivate improvements to quality of care. And we explore how privatisation opens the door to predatory financial practices. We conclude by considering how far proposals for reform can take us, ultimately arguing for a rejection of neoliberal market ideology, and calling for sector-wide discussions about what principles would be more fitting for a caring economy
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