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Constitutional remedies for enforcement of fundamental rights in Ethiopia and India:A comparative study
No full textIncorporating constitutional remedies is essential for enshrining fundamental rights in a constitution. Yet, variation exists among modern states with respect to constitutional remedies to protect fundamental rights against state actions. The mere incorporation of fundamental rights could be an otiose unless they are buoyed and reinforced by standard enforcement mechanisms. Including constitutional remedies in a constitution plays an important role in preserving and defending fundamental rights. This paper examines the status and content of constitutional remedies in the Indian and Ethiopian constitutions, focusing on their implication for enforcement of fundamental rights. This study demonstrates that the Indian Constitution provides constitutional remedies and allows citizens to move directly to the Supreme Court to enforce their fundamental rights. By contrast, the Ethiopian Constitution not only suffers from a lack of constitutional remedies but also inhibits courts from reviewing legislation, executive actions and administrative decisions that infringe fundamental rights. We conclude that constitutional and legislative measures to ensure the peaceful enjoyment of fundamental rights are an essential element of any federal system
When Intangible Cultural Heritages Meet Artificial Intelligence:Existential Crisis or New Flourish – An Intellectual Property Perspective
No full textInterpersonal and individual effects of an app-based Christian and Islamic heart meditation intervention in healthy adults:protocol of a stratified randomised controlled trial
Full text linkBackgroundThe academic development and widespread adoption of meditation practices for well-being and therapy have predominantly focused on secularised adaptations of Buddhist and Hindu techniques. This study aims to expand the field by investigating Christian and Islamic meditation that emphasize the spiritual significance of the heart through elements of visualisation and recitation. It compares the effects of spiritual heart-centred meditation with mindfulness meditation and a waitlist control, focusing on dimensions of social functioning, psychophysiology, cognition, and mental health.MethodThis study employs a stratified 3-arm randomised controlled method with mixed-method repeated measures across three assessment time points: before intervention (T1), after an 8-week intervention (T2), and at a 3-month follow up (T3). The three conditions include spiritual meditation (either Christian or Islamic), mindfulness meditation (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction – MBSR), and a waitlist. Participants will be stratified into Christian and Muslim samples and randomly allocated to the spiritual meditation, MBSR, or waitlist control conditions. Importantly, participants assigned to the spiritual meditation condition will be matched to the spiritual meditation program corresponding to their religion. The intervention will be administered through a mobile phone app with daily 20-minute guided meditation sessions for eight weeks. Primary outcomes pertain to the domain of interpersonal functioning, focusing on prosociality, forgiveness, empathy, and perspective taking. Secondary outcomes include physiology: pain tolerance, pain intensity, stress reactivity assessed via heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), psychophysiological reactivity associated with a forgiveness task as measured through HR and HRV, attention (alerting, orienting, and executive attention networks), and mental health (stress, depression, anxiety, subjective well-being, positive and negative affect).DiscussionThis trial aims to test the effects of an app-based Christian and Islamic meditation, compared to secular mindfulness and a waitlist, using a randomised controlled trial. If the results yield positive outcomes, this study will support the efficacy of these contemplations, offering practitioners a way to enhance their well-being within their religious framework
Breaking Barriers:Women’s Voices in Jazz Research and Performance
No full textResearch interest in women and jazz has only emerged consistently in recentyears and as part of a broader societal shift towards recognising and address‑ing gender disparities across different industries. The perception and accept‑ance of women as professionals within the music industry is a relatively newdevelopment, characterised by ongoing challenges that continue to obstructtheir progress. Underrepresentation in decision‑making roles not only affectsthe careers of individual women but also prolongs systemic inequalities thathave an impact on the music landscape. Compensation disparities are a keyconcern for women in music. Most often, female artists and professionalsearn less than males, even when other key factors such as career experienceare considered. This wage gap can discourage women from pursuing a musiccareer or create financial instability, which can further exacerbate the chal‑lenges they face in an already competitive environmen
Interpersonal and individual effects of an app-based Christian and Islamic heart meditation intervention in healthy adults:protocol of a stratified randomised controlled trial
Full text linkBackgroundThe academic development and widespread adoption of meditation practices for well-being and therapy have predominantly focused on secularised adaptations of Buddhist and Hindu techniques. This study aims to expand the field by investigating Christian and Islamic meditation that emphasize the spiritual significance of the heart through elements of visualisation and recitation. It compares the effects of spiritual heart-centred meditation with mindfulness meditation and a waitlist control, focusing on dimensions of social functioning, psychophysiology, cognition, and mental health.MethodThis study employs a stratified 3-arm randomised controlled method with mixed-method repeated measures across three assessment time points: before intervention (T1), after an 8-week intervention (T2), and at a 3-month follow up (T3). The three conditions include spiritual meditation (either Christian or Islamic), mindfulness meditation (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction – MBSR), and a waitlist. Participants will be stratified into Christian and Muslim samples and randomly allocated to the spiritual meditation, MBSR, or waitlist control conditions. Importantly, participants assigned to the spiritual meditation condition will be matched to the spiritual meditation program corresponding to their religion. The intervention will be administered through a mobile phone app with daily 20-minute guided meditation sessions for eight weeks. Primary outcomes pertain to the domain of interpersonal functioning, focusing on prosociality, forgiveness, empathy, and perspective taking. Secondary outcomes include physiology: pain tolerance, pain intensity, stress reactivity assessed via heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), psychophysiological reactivity associated with a forgiveness task as measured through HR and HRV, attention (alerting, orienting, and executive attention networks), and mental health (stress, depression, anxiety, subjective well-being, positive and negative affect).DiscussionThis trial aims to test the effects of an app-based Christian and Islamic meditation, compared to secular mindfulness and a waitlist, using a randomised controlled trial. If the results yield positive outcomes, this study will support the efficacy of these contemplations, offering practitioners a way to enhance their well-being within their religious framework
Demographic predictors of engagement with mathematics and statistics support
No full textThis paper investigates demographic predictors of engagement with mathematics and statistics drop-in support at Coventry University which has an extensive and well-used mathematics and statistics support provision. The analysis focuses on students from a set of 12 disciplines where there is clear mathematics and/or statistics content. It explores the effect of gender, entry requirements, course stage, ethnicity, age, nationality and disability. Two dimensions of engagement with mathematics and statistics support are examined: the binary dimension of engaged (at least once) or not and, for those who did engage, the number of times they did. These two dimensions are modelled through a two-stage hurdle model using a binomial logistic regression model to predict engagement and a negative binomial distribution model to predict the number of visits made by a student who does engage. These results provide valuable insights into how higher education institutions can tailor their support depending on the demographic population and engagement at their universities
Project control practices to enable sustainable project management
No full textPurpose Project control is essential for ensuring that sustainability goals are achieved in sustainable project management (SPM). However, research into the specific and holistic control practices that can be adopted at the execution phase in SPM remains limited. This study explores the project control practices that enable the control and attainment of sustainability goals in SPM, drawing on data from expert panels. Design/methodology/approach A novel hesitant-fuzzy Delphi approach was integrated with hesitant-fuzzy interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC). Findings The results show that, of the 21 control practices identified in the literature, 12 were selected by panels of 13 experts as the prioritised practices relevant to the control and attainment of sustainability goals in SPM. Expanding on control theory, we further show the characteristics of the prioritised practices by categorising them using the novel MICMAC and ISM conceptual frameworks across low, medium and high uncertainty scenarios. Practical implications Our managerial implications provide recommendations for adopting flexible, actionable and context-sensitive execution control practices to influence outcomes and behaviours towards targeted sustainability goals in both project processes and deliverables. Originality/value This study offers an original contribution to the SPM literature by identifying and empirically testing the contextual relevance of project execution control practices, revealing how their prioritisation and interdependence shift across varying project contexts
Visualising the cochlea, improvisation, and embodied interaction:the shape of sound installation and performance at Coventry’s Anglican Chapel, Paxton’s Arboretum London Road Cemetery
Full text linkThe Shape of Sound project is a site-specific installation and performance exploring how movement affects the sounds that we hear by creatively interpreting the anatomy of the inner ear. Using qualitative research methods such as Experiential Anatomy and inductive thematic analysis, this study asks how the historic and acoustic past of Coventry’s Anglican Chapel can co-curate contemporary installation and performance. This paper expands on the process, namely, the practice of visualizing the cochlea and embodied interaction. The relationship between sound and history created by the installation and performances housed within the Anglican Chapel (Coventry) is examined. These processes facilitated engagement with soundscapes in the immersive experience of the project. The researchers utilise the artist’s, performers, visitors, audiences’, and workshop participants’ reflections on the installations, performances, and workshops that have taken place in Coventry (United Kingdom) in 2021–2022. The project found that experiencing a space through creative or arts-based methods can prompt visitors to experience soundscapes. Combined with their affective experience, participants benefited through guidance towards a deeper understanding of the place and surroundings. The concluding section discusses the future of the project in the context of the sound signature of spaces housing the Carthusian order of monks
Building Energy Consumption Prediction Using CatBoost With Hybrid Random Search and Bayesian Optimization
Full text linkResidential buildings are major contributors to global energy consumption, with cooling and heating loads representing a substantial portion of this demand. Accurate estimation of these energy loads is critical for the design of energy-efficient buildings. This study proposes an innovative approach to predict the energy consumption of residential buildings, focusing on cooling load and heating load.The CatBoost model, optimized through a hybrid technique that combines Random Search and Bayesian Optimization, is employed to enhance prediction accuracy and computational efficiency. The performance of the proposed model is compared with several machine learning algorithms, including SVR, GBM,Random Forest, AdaBoost, and XGBoost, to assess its effectiveness in estimating energy consumption.In addition, an analysis of feature importance identifies key input parameters, such as overall height, relative compactness, and roof area that influence the forecasting of cooling and heating loads. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid-optimized CatBoost model outperforms all other methods that have targeted the same dataset in the literature, achieving an RMSE of 0.045654, MAE of 0.031149, MSE of 0.002084, and R2 of 0.998102 for cooling load prediction, and an RMSE of 0.024707, MAE of 0.018723, MSEof0.000610, and R2 of 0.999451 for heating load prediction. These findings provide practical insightsfor engineers and architects to enhance building design and energy efficienc
Exploring economic inequality with critical qualitative approaches in psychology
No full textThis editorial introduces our special issue showcasing how qualitative research methods can be used in psychological research to explore economic inequality. Economic and class-based inequalities are global problems that have a negative impact on people’s well-being. The papers within the special issue demonstrate how differing methodological approaches such as discursive psychology, thematic analysis, and interpretative phenomenological analysis can be utilised to offer insights into the complexity of economic inequality as a social justice issue. Qualitative methods allow researchers to examine the social and cultural nuances of inequality with a critical lens in differing contexts. Within the special issue, economic inequality can be viewed intersectionally as qualitative methods allow the researcher to provide an in-depth and nuanced analysis. Taking a critical qualitative approach, this special issue shows how individualistic, neoliberal and meritocratic arguments are used to justify and maintain harmful class-based inequalities and offer opportunities to better understand and challenge them