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Modeling speed limit compliance in shared spaces
Get PDFIntroduction: While shared spaces (also known as shared zones) encourage interaction among road users, non-compliance with posted speed limits is a key safety concern. Most research concerning drivers’ speeding behavior in shared spaces has predominantly centered on descriptive analyses and statistical testing, neglecting to account for the effects of shared space features, vehicle types, and traffic characteristics on speeds. As a result, there exists a significant knowledge gap regarding how the attributes of shared zones, surrounding traffic, and vehicle platoons impact driver speeds. Method: Speed data from two shared spaces in Australia were analyzed using left-censored Tobit regression models (non-compliant: continuous, compliant: zero) to assess drivers’ compliance with posted speed limits. Results: Results showed that the magnitude and probability of speeding were significantly reduced by the number of conflicts involving the vehicle and the provision of parking spaces in shared spaces. Conversely, vehicles such as cars, two-wheelers, and those with surrounding vehicles speeding exhibited lower compliance probabilities, while heavy vehicles and those following them showed higher likelihoods of compliance. However, the time of day or day of week had no significant influence on drivers’ speeding behavior, indicating consistent traffic interactions and compliance behaviors throughout the week. Conclusions: This study identifies key factors influencing speeding behavior in shared spaces and provides insights for identifying countermeasures and promoting safer interactions. Practical applications: The findings can help urban planners and policymakers set appropriate speed limits, develop better shared space designs, and enhance safety for all users, particularly those who are the most vulnerable.</p
Conscious Food Systems:Supporting Farmers’ Well-Being and Psychological Resilience
Get PDFAmid escalating ecological degradation, social fragmentation, and rising mental health challenges—especially in rural and agricultural communities—there is an urgent need to reimagine systems that support both planetary and human flourishing. This viewpoint examines an emerging paradigm in agriculture that emphasizes the role of farmers’ inner development in fostering practices that enhance ecological health, community well-being, and a resilient food system. A key goal is to draw more academic attention to growing communitycalls for more holistic, relational, and spiritually grounded approaches to food systems as an important focus for ongoing research. Drawing on diverse case studies from Japan, India, and Europe, we examine how small-scale and natural farming initiatives are integrating inner development, universal human values, and ecological consciousness. These case studies were developed and/or refined through a program led by the Conscious Food Systems Alliance (CoFSA), an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that seeks to integrate inner transformation with sustainable food systems change. The initiatives are intended as illustrative examples of how agriculture can transcend its conventional, anthropocentric role as a food production system to become a site for cultivating deeper self-awareness, spiritual connection, and regenerative relationships with nature. Participants in these cases reported significant shifts in mindset—from materialistic and extractive worldviews to more relationaland value-driven orientations rooted in care, cooperation, and sustainability. Core practices such as mindfulness, experiential learning, and spiritual ecology helped reframe farming as a holistic process that nurtures both land and life. These exploratory case studies suggest that when farmers are supported in aligning with inner values and natural systems, they become empowered as agents of systemic change. By linking personal growth with planetarystewardship, these models offer pathways toward more integrated, life-affirming approaches to agriculture and future academic research
AI and Algorithmic Aesthetics
No full textAI and Algorithmic Aesthetics investigates contemporary relations between aesthetics and new digital technologies manifested through Artificial Intelligence models in fine-art making processes. It asks questions about human and non-human relations – specifically the affect these relations have on the way we create, view and consume fine-art and other aesthetic products. In doing so, it aims to develop a critical analytical framework for thinking about the ever-changing ways in which we produce fine-art through and with digital machines. It suggests ways of critically understanding creative processes which embrace mutation and interconnections between humans and machines as opposed to static understandings of this relationship as imposed by Western humanist ideology. Artificial Intelligence, or AI is a phrase used to describe a field of computer science that attempts to simulate human intelligence in machines. Generative Artificial Intelligence or genAI is used to describe a very specific type of AI, one that creates content (images, text, audio and video) based on previously learned material. Contributors draw on both AI and genAI within their chapters, exploring how these technologies are used as both a constructive metaphor for thinking about aesthetics and artmaking processes as well as a problematic for culture and society. For example, both AI and GenAI technologies are positioned, by those that create them, as ‘open source’, yet they are highly regulated technologies: corporations, technological protocols and things like access to the internet decide and regulate them, and in extension the human and nonhuman subjects interacting with it and the aesthetic objects they co-create. So, while the process of creating fine-art with AI and genAI heavily relies on the artist themselves, its meanings and usage are also decided and enacted by the corporations that create it and its technical limitations. In being this way, the relationship between aesthetics and AI brings complex tensions to the fore: in restricting and enabling creation, thus providing valuable examples, which enable a deeper understanding of contemporary aesthetics, technological innovation, fine-art making processes and the relationship between the three.Aesthetics and AI operate through rich material-discursive realms, engaging a multiplicity of actors, both human and otherwise, such as technology companies, technical protocols, academia, the government, museums and galleries and the fine-art market. The market for AI (and by default AI art) responds to normative, anthropocentric expectations of the ‘human’ -- specifically the attendant attributes of ‘intelligence’, ‘genius’ and ‘creativity’. Thus, it implies both an automation and externalization of a perceived inside and requires a more complex material-discursive understanding: AI and its attendant models is created by a very specific set of people (white, Euro-American men) who are driven by certain values and norms. These values and norms affect the bodies, both human and otherwise, which encounter AI and make art with it. In the context of this book, the relationship between AI and aesthetics then serves as an example of how the power that digital technologies like AI wield affect bodies. More specifically it offers a critical understanding of the way artistic experimentation with AI can challenge this power and the different modes of becoming that may emerge out of these challenges
What Evidence on Whose Terms?:Policy-Relevant Religion Or Belief Research
No full textThis chapter explores a range of key methodological and methods issues in religion or belief research and evidence- based policymaking. The issues involved might be summarized by the questions ‘What evidence?’ and ‘On whose terms?’. They are explored with reference to two research projects led by the author. The projects were on ‘Religious Discrimination in England and Wales’, which was contracted with the UK Government Home Office (1999– 2001); and on ‘Religion and Belief, Discrimination and Equality in England and Wales: Theory, Policy and Practice 2000– 2010’, which was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities and Economic and Social Research Councils (2010– 2013). The issues explored include working within contractual constraints and pre-set terms of reference; handling relationships with community representatives and with politicians, civil servants, and government in- house research staff; disseminating research results through the media; and working through ethical issues as scholars, citizens, and individuals involved in research of this kind
Small-scale mining, environmental destruction and democracy capture:the Government of Ghana’s failed ‘war on galamsey’
No full textThis article lifts a veil on democracy in Ghana to reveal how political elites have captured democratic processes and institutions to procure private wealth and political benefits. It does so by investigating why the Government of Ghana’s ‘war on galamsey’ (2017-2024) against illegal small-scale gold mining and associated environmental degradation failed so spectacularly. Our explanation focuses on the complicity and involvement of politicians and government officials in the very illegal mining practices that they purport to oppose, as evidenced by various scandals. In turn, such exposés highlight a situation of ‘democracy capture’ in which a political elite and associated business class has appropriated the benefits of state control, inclusive of enrichment from illegal mining with state protection. ‘Democracy capture’ in Ghana is intertwined with the ‘monetisation’ of electoral politics, requiring ever-increasing funds, including from illegal mining, to contest highly competitive elections. Characterising Ghana’s polity as one of ‘democracy capture’ exposes significant shortcomings in Ghana’s electoral democracy and tarnishes its reputation as a model democracy in Africa
Understanding And Harnessing Trust In Faith Spaces To Address Structural Inequalities
No full textStructural inequalities, the pervasive disparities in wealth, resources, and access to services, continue to produce negative outcomes for marginalized and minoritized communities. This article examines how faith spaces can be leveraged as inclusive dialogic environments to help address such inequalities. We build on the concept of dialogic spatiality to explore how trust in both the institutions and individuals facilitating community dialogue underpins engagement and outcomes in faith-based social action programs. The study draws on three case studies in the United Kingdom, where faith-based initiatives targeted what are often regarded as “hard to reach” groups to improve health outcomes or social integration. Findings indicate that participants’ trust is fostered by shared values in faith settings, the hyper-local presence of faith institutions, and pre-existing social networks, leading to engagement in ways not achieved by secular or statutory approaches. However, trust does not automatically transfer to public agencies unless those agencies actively participate and build relationships. The paper offers an original contribution by applying interpersonal and organisational trust frameworks to faith-led interventions, demonstrating how trusted community spaces function as “safe spaces” for critical conversations and as bridges to formal services. Practical recommendations are provided for co-designing interventions with faith-based organisations, making public services more accessible, and ultimately advancing equity and social cohesion
Essential Not Optional:Celebrating the Creative Arts in Higher Education, University of Lincoln, 26–27 June 2024
Get PDFThe First X-Ray Polarimetry of GRS 1739–278 Reveals Its Rapidly Spinning Black Hole
Get PDFWe present a joint spectropolarimetric analysis of the black hole X-ray binary GRS 1739–278 during its 2025 mini-outburst, using simultaneous observations from IXPE and NuSTAR. The IXPE data show a polarization degree (PD) of PD = (2.3% ± 0.4%) and polarization angle (PA) of PA = 62° ± 5° in the 2−8 keV range. The model-independent analysis reveals that PD increases from ∼2% at 2 keV to ∼10% in the 6–8 keV band, while PA remains stable across the IXPE band within statistical uncertainties. Broadband spectral modeling of the combined IXPE and NuSTAR datasets shows that hard Comptonization contributes negligibly in this soft-state observation, while a substantial reflected component is required in addition to the thermal disk emission. We then model the IXPE Stokes spectra using the kynbbrr model. The best fits indicate that high-spin configurations enhance the contribution of the reflected returning radiation, which dominates the observed polarization properties. From the kynbbrr modeling, we infer an extreme black hole spin of a 0.994 0.003 0.004 = + and a system inclination of i 54 4 = 8 ° ° + ° . Owing to the large contribution from the returning radiation, the observed polarization direction is nearly parallel to the projected system axis, the position angle of which is predicted at 58° ± 4°. Our results demonstrate that X-ray polarimetry, combined with broadband spectroscopy, directly probes the geometry and relativistic effects in accretion disks around stellar-mass black holes