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The Responsibility of a Christian Thinker: T. S. Eliot, World War II, and Post-War Reconstruction
No full textThis essay will examine T. S. Eliot's contribution to the pre-war and wartime debates on “planning for freedom” and post-war reconstruction. On the eve of World War II, Eliot joined a group of Britain's leading intellectuals, including J. H. Oldham, Fred Clarke, Michael Polanyi, Karl Mannheim, and John Middleton Murry, who formed the Moot, committed to finding alternatives for social and cultural revitalization. The outbreak of war provided them with a stimulus for a debate on social organization, political order, and educational reform, at the heart of which was religion and the role of Christianity. Having diagnosed the social order as flawed, they considered the possibility of what Eliot called “the conversion of social consciousness.” They drew on leading contemporary theologians: Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Jacques Maritain, and Charles Williams. Considering Eliot's participation in the Moot, the Chandos group, the Joint Standing Committee of Religion and Life, and the Sword of the Spirit, as well as his contributions to Theology, the New English Weekly, and The Christian Newsletter, this essay will evaluate Eliot's engagement with Christian theology and sociology. It will also explore its impact on Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party
Bank Liquidity, Interbank-Rate Setting and Heterogeneous Lending Responses
Get PDFCentral banks move the interbank borrowing rate through nominal operations that alter the private sector’s portfolio of fiat money and government bonds. This paper elucidates a mechanism by which such operations move the interbank rate, thereby affecting bank lending and thence the wide economy. At the core is a liquidity constraint to which bank lending is subject. By affecting the maximal tightness of banks’ liquidity constraints, the aggregate portfolio of fiat money and bonds determines the interbank rate. Accordingly, an operation that alters the portfolio moves the interbank rate. The tightness of the liquidity constraint depends on a bank attribute related to money circulation and affects banks’ responses to monetary policy. When the central bank (say) decreases the interbank rate, liquidity-unconstrained banks decrease their lending rates, but contrary to received wisdom, maximally constrained banks increase theirs
EDI reflective tool for enhancing inclusivity in healthcare education: A feasibility study
Get PDFBackground
Healthcare education in the UK is undergoing a seismic shift in response to (delayed) emergent “realisations” and pressures on educators to recognise and accept themselves as social actors with a role in the pursuit of social justice. Aiding and providing space for critical reflection and reflexivity is one avenue for these essential transformative practices. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of an EDI reflective tool in changing higher educational practices in healthcare programmes to enhance inclusivity in teaching and learning spaces. This EDI reflective tool was developed by educators with dual experience of healthcare training in global north and global south contexts, to empower those responsible for educating student health professionals in the United Kingdom (UK) to ensure inclusivity in teaching content and resources.
Materials and methods
This study adopted a mixed-methods approach using a convergent parallel design, The study involved an online
questionnaire which collected quantitative and qualitative data on the EDI reflective tool, as well as focus groups and interviews to gather perceptions on the feasibility of the tool, and its potential to change educators’ behaviours and practices. The EDI reflective tool comprises of ten sections pertaining to various aspects of curriculum, teaching, and learning, each with 2-5 prompt questions which are to be used by educators to guide reflection and empower change. Eight participants completed the questionnaire, including educators of speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and global public health. Two 1:1 interviews, and two focus groups comprising 3 participants each were conducted using a scripted interview guide. The questionnaire data was
analysed using descriptive statistics and an informal content analysis. The transcribed data from the responses of 8 participants (2 interviews and 2 focus groups) were analysed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2020). Four themes were identified. A sample of data were analysed by multiple researchers, which were then reviewed and reflexively merged to ensure robustness. The data was triangulated through critical conversations and reflexive discussions by the researchers.
Results
Participants were largely satisfied with the wording and language of the statements on the EDI reflective tool.
There was high agreement from participants for most of the statements about the feasibility of the tool. Some
suggestions were made to improve the wording of the statements. Ways to move from reflection to action were
highlighted in the qualitative data from the questionnaire. Participants indicated they felt confident implementing the tool in future. Themes included were the barriers, struggles and challenges in embedding EDI in healthcare education and the impact of using an EDI reflective tool on educational practices. Participants highlighted the importance of raising awareness of EDI-related issues through staff and student training and bringing conversations about EDI within teaching/learning spaces, student voice groups and programme committee meetings.
Conclusions
Decolonisation, non-discriminatory practice, and social justice should lie at the heart of transformative healthcare education. Findings from this study suggest that our EDI reflective tool has the potential to create safe spaces for critical conversations and deeper reflections to enhance inclusivity in educational practices
Cumulative risk of undiagnosed mental distress in the UK general population: The role of protected characteristics
Get PDFThis study explores cumulative risk and mental health care inequalities focusing on “at-risk” protected characteristics. Data was extracted from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009–2022). Respondents were categorised by the number of “at-risk” characteristics (0 to 5+). The relationship between number of “at-risk” protected characteristics and mental distress measured via the General Health Questionnaire-12 was explored using linear regression. Mental distress increased with the accumulation of two or more at-risk characteristics, with larger coefficients evident for men. The relationship between undiagnosed mental distress and number of “at-risk” protected characteristics was explored using multinomial regression. Risk of undiagnosed mental distress increased with the accumulation of one or more "at-risk" characteristics for both men and women. Men with 5+ protected characteristics (RRR = 8.84) and women with four protected characteristics (RRR = 4.03) experienced greatest risk of undiagnosed mental distress. Descriptive analysis revealed increased risks for younger, disabled and/or gay or bisexual men; and younger, ethnic minority and/or lesbian or bisexual women. Findings suggest that young lesbian, gay and bisexual people may experience greatest disadvantage in relation to access to NHS mental health care and that young gay or bisexual men with a disability experience extreme disadvantage relative to other men
A Precoding Perturbation Method in Geometric Optimization: Exploring Manifold Structure for Privacy and Efficiency
Get PDFInherent broadcast characteristics can raise privacy risks of wireless networks. The specifics of antenna ports, antenna types, orientation, and beamforming configurations of a transmitter can be susceptible to manipulation by any device within range when the signal is transmitted wirelessly. Personal and location information of users connected to the transmitter can be intercepted and exploited by malicious actors to track user movements and profile behaviors or launch targeted attacks, thus compromising user privacy and security. In this paper, we propose a novel precoding perturbation approach for privacy preservation in wireless communications. Our approach perturbs the precoding matrix of the transmitter using a Riemannian manifold (RM) structure that adaptively adjusts the magnitude and direction of perturbation based on the geometric properties of the manifold. The approach ensures robust privacy protection while minimizing the distortion of the transmitted signals, thus balancing privacy preservation and data utility. Privacy can be preserved without relying on additional cryptographic mechanisms, resulting in the computational and communication overhead reduction. Our approach operates directly on the transmission of signals, making them inherently secure against eavesdropping and interception. Simulation results underscore the superiority of the approach, showing a 17.21% improvement in privacy preservation while effectively maintaining data utility
Leadership transitions and survival: Coups, autocoups, and power dynamics
Get PDFThis thesis addresses a significant gap in the literature on irregular leadership transitions by systematically integrating autocoups—cases where incumbent leaders extend their constitutionally mandated terms through extra-constitutional means. It refines the conceptual definition of autocoups, resolving existing ambiguities to align them more closely with conventional coup frameworks. Based on this refined definition, the thesis presents a novel global dataset of autocoup events from 1945 to 2023, encompassing 83 documented cases, of which 64 were successful. Using this dataset, the study conducts a large-N analysis to identify the structural determinants of autocoups. The findings reveal that regimes with concentrated executive power, such as presidential democracies and personalist regimes, are significantly more prone to employing autocoups as a strategy for power retention compared to other regime types. This pattern contrasts with traditional coups, which have historically been more prevalent in military regimes. The analysis subsequently examines leadership survival, utilising survival analysis techniques to evaluate the political longevity of leaders who assumed office through regular means, traditional coups, or autocoups. Contrary to the hypothesis that the mode of power acquisition significantly influences leadership survival—particularly the expectation that autocoup leaders would enjoy longer tenures than those installed through traditional coups—the results suggest that, when excluding very short-lived tenures (i.e., less than 180 days), the mode of accession does not exert a statistically significant effect on leadership duration; instead, regime type emerges as the primary determinant: leaders in military and personalist regimes exhibit significantly higher hazard ratios for removal compared to the reference category of dominant-party regimes, consistent with trends observed following traditional coups. The thesis further explores the broader institutional consequences of irregular power transitions, focusing on their impact on democratisation. Using Polity V scores as a proxy for democratic quality and applying a country-fixed effects model, the analysis finds that autocoups are associated with a sustained decline in democratic indicators, both immediately after the event and over a two-year period; in contrast, traditional coups exhibit a "U-shaped" effect: although Polity V scores decline sharply in the immediate aftermath, they typically recover to pre-coup levels within two years. These findings highlight the divergent political trajectories triggered by coups and autocoups, underscoring the need for increased scholarly and policy attention to the persistently detrimental impact of autocoups on democratic governance. Collectively, these findings illuminate the distinct characteristics, causes, and impacts of coups and autocoups. The research makes several substantive contributions: it clarifies the conceptual boundaries of autocoups, provides a new empirical foundation for their systematic study, and offers robust comparative insights into how different modes of irregular power transition affect leadership survival and institutional development. These findings have significant implications for academic scholarship and policy-making, particularly in the context of global democratic backsliding and the resilience of political institutions
Bayesian semiparametric multivariate realized GARCH modeling
Get PDFThis paper introduces a novel Bayesian semiparametric multivariate GARCH framework for modeling re- turns and realized covariance, as well as approximating their joint unknown conditional density. We extend existing parametric multivariate realized GARCH models by incorporating a Dirichlet Process mixture of countably infinite normal distributions for returns and (inverse-)Wishart distributions for realized covariance. This approach captures time-varying dynamics in higher-order conditional moments of both returns and realized covariance. Our new class of models demonstrates superior out-of-sample forecasting performance, providing significantly improved multiperiod density forecasts for returns and realized covariance, and competitive covariance point forecasts
Sociolinguistics and the Bedouin/Sedentary split: Jordan as a case study
Get PDFThe article focuses on the terms ‘Bedouin’ and ‘Sedentary’ that have been widely used to classify Arabic dialects, arguing that their usefulness as social categories in Arabic sociolinguistics is limited and can be misleading. The discussion is illustrated through analysis of sociolinguistic developments in Jordan, highlighting the multiple social meanings that these terms can assume as they interact with gender, religion and religiosity, occupation, state formation and national identity.
Keywords: Arabic sociolinguistics, Bedouin–Sedentary split, Jordanian Arabi
Working together in dementia care
Get PDFThis report is a summary of the partners involved in this event, overview of the presentations, the workshops, discussions and a presentation of the feedback
Deep multi-task learning for farm animal monitoring from images
Get PDFLarge-scale applications of camera equipment has reduced the cost of image and video acquisition, making image and video processing technology be widely used in daily life. However, most deep learning tasks often require a large amount of labeled data for training purpose. But it is difficult to obtain labeled data in many practical application scenarios, which limits effective applications of deep learning techniques. Multi-task deep learning is a method of artificially combining multiple deep learning tasks in series according to specific task objectives in order to meet the main task requirements. In the application of monitoring farm animals, usually only videos can be used as input, and it is difficult to obtain sufficient and effective training data. Therefore, it is more suitable to adopt the multi-task learning method for the application. This thesis makes the novel contributions on how to use multi-task learning methods to achieve the monitoring of farm animals. Firstly, to handle with the common issue of sparse training data in farm animal deep learning tasks, a target detection method is proposed. It achieves this goal with a small amount of training data in application scenarios, and the object detection results are further improved by adding a monocular depth estimation sub-task. Secondly, an animal body length measurement method is proposed which is based on multiple sub-tasks: monocular depth estimation, target segmentation and key point detection. Compared with traditional 2D length measurement methods, the experiment results show a promised improvement. Finally, a multi-task based animal face recognition method is proposed. Again, the proposed method uses the combination of multiple sub-tasks, including monocular depth estimation and 3D convolution feature extraction. The proposed methods of object detection and face recognition have been tested and evaluated on public datasets and our own data sets. Compared with other methods, the results show that this methods have higher accuracy and better scene adaptability in the practical application scenes