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Best practice for farmed insect welfare: lessons from black soldier flies
No full textThere is a growing concern for the welfare of farmed insects, due to recognition of their probable sentience and their increasing use. Ensuring good welfare requires implementing best practice in welfare assessment and in developing evidence-based welfare guidelines for housing and husbandry. This case study on black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) examines some potential methods for both, highlighting current knowledge gaps and the most urgent research priorities for insect welfare
How could climate change affect the magnitude, duration and frequency of hydrological droughts and floods in West Africa during the 21st century? A storyline approach
Get PDFIn recent decades, West Africa has been increasingly exposed to hydrological droughts and floods. However, the extent to which these changes are related to climate change and are likely to persist during the 21st century remains poorly understood. To address this gap, this study integrates plausible regional climate change storylines, derived from the 6th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIP6), into physically based hydrological modelling experiments utilising the latest high-resolution setup of Open Source LISFLOOD (OS-LISFLOOD). Despite some limitations over the Sahelian region, OS-LISFLOOD shows good performances in representing the hydrological cycle and specific characteristics of hydrological droughts and floods. While CMIP6 models consistently project warming temperatures over West Africa, greater zonal contrasts and model discrepancies are found in projected rainfall changes. Overall, CMIP6 models tend to project more (less) rainfall, as well as more (less) intense rainfall, over the eastern (western) region of West Africa. However, wetter (drier) conditions are projected over larger regions in CMIP6 models simulating weaker (stronger) warming in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean temperatures. Future changes in hydrological droughts and floods mirror changes in precipitation. In the 21st century, we find robust significant increases (decreases) in the magnitude (duration) of floods. Meanwhile reduced (increased) intensity of shorter (longer) duration hydrological droughts are found in the eastern (western and coastal) regions of West Africa. Our study stresses the importance of considering future changes in hydrological droughts and floods for effective water resource management and risk reduction across this highly vulnerable region
Immersive sacred heritage: enchantment through authenticity at Glastonbury Abbey
Get PDFThis paper reflects on how immersive approaches can be designed to respect the spiritual ethos of sacred heritage. Glastonbury Abbey (Somerset, UK) provides a case study of ‘mixed reality’ immersive interpretation, including gamification, at an open-air sacred heritage site which attracts a diverse range of spiritual seekers (Christian, ‘New Age’ and Neo-Pagan). A cross-disciplinary team collaborated to design for authenticity, mediating ethical challenges by integrating spiritual heritage in embodied, playful approaches. Immersive methods offer unique opportunities for sacred heritage sites to engage imaginatively and inclusively with their spiritual heritage, connecting visitors with intangible heritage and drawing on embodied spiritual practices such as pilgrimage. Authenticity and biography emerge in this research as powerful conceptual tools to reconcile potential tensions between immersive storytelling and the spiritual values of place. Authentic objects, materials, spaces and stories are valued by visitors and host communities because they confirm the chain of proximity to the sacred, a direct connection to the life history of the saint, deity or mythical persona that is commemorated by the sacred place
Oblique agency: mapping the globalised workflows of television dubbing and their impact on practitioners
Get PDFThis article offers a comprehensive analysis of how increasingly globalised infrastructures, marked by industry expansion, consolidation and the impact of streamers, affect the workflows and practices within local dubbing industries. Informed by extensive, original interviews with managerial and creative dubbing practitioners, and industry fieldwork observations since 2017, the article is located within a post-Bourdieuian framework, exploring what significant change for the field and its habitus has meant for agency. Having identified a persistent lack of engagement with the dubbing of television in existing scholarship across several disciplines, the article considers how dubbing practitioners negotiate a wider industrial push towards more streamlining, standardisation and more attendance to issues concerning equity, diversity and inclusion.
Here, the article offers the notion of oblique agency, to capture how creative agency is moved away from local creative practitioners, through more managerial oversight, prescriptive guidance and tools, and feedback cultures shaped by corporate agendas. Simultaneously, some agency is left to these practitioners, most acutely felt in the case of dubbing contemporary television (marked by narrative and tonal complexity), due to a lack of investment and recognition of dubbing as inherently creative. The article takes care to explore the complexities of these dynamics, especially a pronounced heterogeneity of views, including simultaneous criticism and enjoyment by creative practitioners, as well as a considerable gap between their perspectives and those of managerial practitioners. In this way, the article seeks to make a much needed contribution to nuanced engagement with dubbing infrastructures and working practices
Impact of coffee-derived chlorogenic acid on cognition: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Get PDFCoffee drinking has been associated with benefits for various health outcomes, with many attributed to the most prevalent family of polyphenols within coffee, chlorogenic acids (CGA). Whilst reviews of the association between coffee and cognition exist, evidence exploring effects of coffee-specific CGA on cognition has yet to be systematically synthesised. The purpose was to systematically review the current literature investigating the relationship between CGA from coffee and cognitive performance. A further objective was to undertake a meta-analysis of relevant randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Observational and intervention studies were included if they considered coffee-based CGA consumption in human participants and applied a standardized measure of cognition. Furthermore, intervention studies were required to define the CGA content and include a control group/placebo. Studies were excluded if they examined CGA alone as an extract or supplement. A search of Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and PsycINFO resulted in including 23 papers, six of which were interventions. The evidence from the broader systematic review suggests that CGA from coffee may need to be consumed chronically over a sustained period to produce cognitive benefits. However, the meta-analysis of RCTs showed no benefits of coffee CGA intake on cognitive function (d= 0.00, 95% CI: -0.05, 0.05). Overall, this review included a limited number of studies, the sample sizes were small, and a wide range of cognitive measures have been utilised. This indicates that further, good quality interventions and RCTs are required to systematically explore the conditions under which coffee CGA may provide benefits for cognitive outcomes
Modeling of precipitation over Africa: progress, challenges, and prospects
Get PDFIn recent years, there has been an increasing need for climate information across diverse sectors of society. This demand has arisen from the necessity to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate variability and change. Likewise, this period has seen a significant increase in our understanding of the physical processes and mechanisms that drive precipitation and its variability across different regions of Africa. By leveraging a large volume of climate model outputs, numerous studies have investigated the model representation of African precipitation as well as the underlying physical process. These studies have assessed whether the physical processes are well depicted and whether the models are fit for informing mitigation and adaptation strategies. This paper provides a review of the progress in precipitation simulation over Africa in state-of-the-science climate models and discusses the major issues and challenges that remain
An efficient multimodal attentional principal component analysis for continual learning-based dynamic process monitoring
Get PDFTraditional multimode process monitoring methods extract features from time series data. Due to the catastrophic forgetting effect, data-driven multimode dynamic process monitoring is challengingbased on a single monitoring model paradigm, i.e. the learned knowledge from previous modes may diminish as operating conditions undergo changes between modes, yet it is impractical to access all past data to retrain the model. In this work, a novel efficient method of multimodal attentionalprincipal component analysis (M-APCA) with continual learning ability is introduced. Under the assumption that data from successive modes are received sequentially, dynamic process data are modeled using an attention mechanism to capture the relationship between data and the latent space, whereby meaningful information is concentrated as dynamic features which are extracted via a vector autoregressive model. In order to overcome the catastrophic forgetting problem, the idea of replay continual learning is employed. Specifically, past modes’ data which are significant to reflect the operating conditions, are selected and stored. These are repeatedly used in tandem with sequential data as replay data. Two types of attention mechanisms are considered and analyzed, each of which is specifically designed to learn from data in an unsupervised manner, so the overall algorithm is efficient both in time and storage costs. The proposed attentional principal component analysis and M-APCA are analyzed against several state-of-the-art methods to highlight the virtues of the proposed method. Compared with multimode monitoring methods, the effectiveness is demonstrated through case studies of: a continuous stirred tank heater, the Tennessee Eastman process and a practical coal pulverizing system
Fear of imprecision as the beginning of wisdom: commentary on ‘Definitional Drift Within the Science of Forgiveness’
Get PDFThe provocative paper ‘Definitional Drift Within the Science of Forgiveness’ challenges us to define forgiveness in a way that is precise, accurate, and instructive for therapists. I take up the challenge, drawing on the materials in ‘Definitional Drift’, adopting the Aristotelian method of definition the authors rightly commend, and using the system of binary classification handed down from Porphyry to produce a definition of forgiveness that meets this all-important challenge
Monitoring spatiotemporal patterns in the genetic diversity of a European butterfly species
Get PDF1) The importance of genetic diversity has been recognised by the Convention on Biological Diversity but attempts at monitoring or improving the genetic diversity of populations have been minimal.
2) Here we investigate changes over time in the genetic diversity of a wild insect species (Maniola jurtina) and present a large-scale investigation into contemporary spatial genetic diversity.
3) Using microsatellite markers, we calculate multiple measures of genetic diversity and divergence for M. jurtina populations over eight years in the UK and compare these findings with long term abundance trends.
4) We also conduct a large-scale spatial analysis into the genetic diversity and population structuring of M. jurtina across Europe.
5) All UK populations sampled have high levels of gene flow and genetic diversity, with genetic diversity stable over time.
6) Across Europe we find some population structuring between populations in the UK and the European mainland, suggesting restricted geneflow between the two regions.
7) The monitoring of a wild species’ genetic diversity is an achievable aim, and one that could be carried out for many species, particularly Lepidoptera. Future approaches may aim to develop higher resolution genetic markers and cover a wider range of species.
8) The use of abundance data offers additional insight, and we find that concurrent, dedicated genetic monitoring can provide effective tracking of biodiversity trends
Complementary schools as ‘breathing spaces’: identity, multilingualism and critical pedagogies in heritage language education
Get PDFWhilst mainstream schools in England may encourage multilingualism by insisting on the study of foreign languages, multilingual children are not always provided with support for the maintenance of their heritage languages and cultures. In response to this shortcoming, communities organise themselves to support their young members by setting up extra-curricular education institutions or associations, also called complementary schools, which contribute to the cultural and linguistic maintenance of minority communities. Through emblematic extracts from a fourteen-month ethnographic research in an Italian complementary school in London, this article examines how HL learners engage in and reflect on their multilingual practices and how they develop agency in their learning environment. The findings illustrate how critical modes of teaching and learning that make space for multilingualism can provide children with unique opportunities to discover, explore and experiment with their multilingual and multicultural selves, which, in turn, permit them to access linguistic resources and legitimise multilingual learner identities. Expanding on Fishman’s notion of ‘breathing space’, the article suggests that complementary schools represent a space where minority languages but also pedagogical practices can breathe and develop