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Domicide in Gaza: How the Recent War Has Devastated Homes and Lives
No full textThis chapter explores the catastrophic impact of domicide—the deliberate destruction of homes—during the recent war (October 2023–January 2025) on Gaza, highlighting the physical, social, and environmental tolls. It examines how systematic urban destruction has rendered vast areas uninhabitable, displaced nearly the entire population, and devastated critical infrastructure, including housing, healthcare, and education facilities. The chapter provides detailed accounts of the psychological trauma, economic collapse, and environmental degradation resulting from this unprecedented crisis, while drawing attention to the implications for sustainable urban development. The discussion aligns with the goals of Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11), emphasizing the urgent need to rebuild inclusive, resilient, and sustainable communities in Gaza. By leveraging grey literature and peer-reviewed publications, the chapter underscores the necessity of international intervention and coordinated efforts to ensure justice, recovery, and long-term resilience for the affected population
Does physical structure drive food safety behaviors of food handlers? A broken window theory perspective.
No full textThe role of physical structure in food safety is often viewed as a resource for proper food handling practices and pest control. However, it is questioned if physical structure also
influences food handler behavior, drawing a parallel with the broken windows theory in criminology. This theory suggests structural flaws and disorder may contribute to negative
behaviors and a reduced willingness to intervene when deviant behavior occurs. The aim of this study was to measure the valence and extent of physical structure as a positive driver for different food safety behaviors in public school catering scenarios, following the broken windows theory perspective. A sample of 321 public school catering services was assessed using a validated risk assessment checklist and the data was provided to this study for further analysis. A structural equation model was designed to test whether physical structure drives food handler’s personal hygiene, food hygiene, ingredient storage and management and environmental hygiene. Food safety training and documents were included as control variables in the model. The results support the theory, demonstrating that physical structure acts as a driver for personal hygiene (ß=0.36; p<0.001), food hygiene (ß=0.23; p=0.001), ingredient storage and management (ß=0.09; p=0.01), and environmental hygiene (ß=0.49; p<0.001). These findings support the broken windows theory perspective within the food safety context, emphasizing the critical role of well-maintained physical environments in promoting safe food handling behavior
The influence of social media branding on consumer purchase behavior: A comprehensive empirical and thematic analysis
Get PDFThis study investigates the influence of social media branding on consumer purchase behavior through a comprehensive empirical and thematic analysis. By integrating quantitative surveys and qualitative content examination, the research explores how factors such as brand awareness, influencer credibility, and user engagement shape consumer decision-making processes across diverse social media platforms. The findings reveal that authentic and interactive social media branding significantly enhances consumer trust, brand loyalty, and purchase intentions. This research provides valuable insights for marketers aiming to optimize branding strategies in the evolving digital marketplace
A Snapshot of UK Prelab Practices and Instructor Perceptions of their Purpose and Effective Design
Get PDFPrelaboratory exercises are a widely used and powerful method of supporting and maximizing laboratory learning. In this work, we took a snapshot of current prelab practices in the United Kingdom by surveying instructors responsible for running lab courses. We found that prelabs very often took the form of three core activities of “read the manual, watch the video, do the questions”, with about half additionally employing digital lab simulations and a marked decline in traditional prelab practices of live demonstrations or formal lectures. We also investigated the factors that influence prelab design, the challenges of designing or using prelabs, and what instructors felt the purpose of a prelab was. Main challenges were seen as lack of time or resources to design consistent, effective prelabs, and difficulty in ensuring meaningful engagement from students. Instructors felt that prelabs had a number of purposes, such as improving operation of a lab itself or improving students’ learning and affective outcomes by reducing stress or anxiety
Women's Experiences of Care and Support Following Postpartum Psychosis: A Meta-Ethnography
No full textBackground
Postpartum psychosis is a psychiatric emergency that occurs following childbirth. Women are often cared for in general psychiatric units or in psychiatric Mother and Baby units. Postpartum psychosis is associated with a significant risk of relapse. There is a need to explore how women perceive care to understand what works well or needs further improvement.
Aims
This review aimed to explore women's experiences of care and support for postpartum psychosis.
Design
A systematic review using meta-ethnographic methods was conducted.
Data Sources
Comprehensive searches were conducted between 4 March 2024 and 4 March 2025 on five databases (CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Web of Science). Backward and forward chain searching was also undertaken.
Review Methods
Critical appraisal was conducted following screening. Reciprocal and refutational translation were used to form the synthesis, and a line of argument was developed. The eMERGe reporting guidelines were used.
Results
Fifteen studies were included within this synthesis. All the studies were conducted in high income countries and included 235 women. Three main themes were developed. ‘Navigating the unknown’ explored women's perceptions of postpartum psychosis as a less well-known condition, and their informational needs. ‘The double-edged sword of care’ found that there were helpful elements of formal mental health care, but that accessing care was sometimes traumatic, stigmatising and conflicting to women's identities. ‘Seeking consolation and recovery’ explored women's need for psychological support and experiences of peer support.
Conclusion
The findings of this review highlighted women's needs in respect to informational support, medication support, psychological support and in-patient care settings. Mother and baby units were strongly preferred by women.
Impact
The findings highlighted a need for specialised care for postpartum psychosis.
Patient or Public Contribution
There were no patient or public contributions.
Trial Registration
Prospero (CRD42024515712
On the Performance Analysis of UE-VBS-Based Wireless Communications: Network Outages, Resource Utilization, and Optimization
Get PDFUser Equipment as a Virtual Base Station (UE-VBS) computing paradigm represents a significant advancement in wireless networking. It enables User Equipment (UE) to form: i) Virtual Base Stations (VBSs) by dynamically integrating Cluster Heads (referred to as UE-VBSCH), or Virtual Relays (referred to as UE-VBSRL), in the far-edge domain. This research focuses on enhancing the Quality of Service (QoS) (and thereby improving user experience) in networks supported by UE-VBS computing through outage prediction, network optimization, and advanced wireless techniques. In addition, the paper presents a detailed outage probability analysis and explores the trade-off between efficiency and reliability (namely, spectral and energy efficiency and link-level reliability (outage probability)), which are core contributions of this work. For a representative urban density of 2 UEs per m2, a single-hop UE-VBS slice lowers the outage probability from 0.78 to 0.23, raises the peak area-spectral efficiency to 4.3 bits−1 Hz−1 ( ≈4.8× the baseline), and delivers an energy efficiency of 2.4×105 bit J−1 ( ≈4.6× improvement). These concrete figures substantiate the claimed gains and illustrate how UE-VBS computing simultaneously improves efficiency and reliability. Specifically, it provides a thorough examination of UE-VBS computing’s capacity to enhance service quality, reduce congestion, and promote energy efficiency. Also, it empirically confirms UE-VBS computing’s superior performance, including mitigating coverage gaps coverage gaps are localized areas inside a nominally covered cell where received SINR falls below the outage threshold because of shadowing or cell-edge distance), optimizing network traffic, and reducing battery consumption compared to traditional networks/non-UE-VBS computing-supported networks. Enhanced QoS aims to minimize the challenges associated with restricted network coverage, ensuring consistent data transmission rates and improving overall user satisfaction. The potential exists for adopting effective network traffic offloading to mitigate the heavy traffic on primary base stations known as Next Generation Node B (gNodeB). Consequently, this can result in enhanced spectrum utilization and heightened data throughput. Leveraging UE-VBS computing also contributes to power conservation and fosters sustainability
Navigating shame to negotiate sexual agency among British-born South Asian women: A grounded theory study.
No full textConstructivist grounded theory was used to explore perceptions and experiences of sexual health among British-born South Asian women, aged 18-25 who lived in North-West England. We aimed to explore whether and how women were influenced by religion and socio-cultural factors. Participants (n=16) took part in either interviews or focus groups.
A theoretical framework focusing on how women navigated shame to negotiate sexual agency was developed. Culture and religious values prohibited sex-based relationships before marriage, which meant accessing support could prove problematic. Women demonstrated different levels of agency through finding ways to maintain secret relationships and to navigate access to healthcare services
Towards Improved Privacy in AI and Machine Learning Applications: Challenges and way forward.
Get PDFArtificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems depend heavily on large datasets to function effectively. These datasets contain details of people and can be names, addresses, account numbers, credit card numbers, health data, and behaviour data, among others. Such enormous amounts of data are typically collected, stored, and analysed. This could lead to privacy violations if not sensitively done. Privacy violations are caused by causes such as inadequate security, illegal access, or hacking, all of which have negative repercussions for the individuals and businesses involved. This study aims to identify the privacy concerns unique to AI and ML applications and assess the efficacy of different privacy-preserving approaches. Specifically, the study seeks to identify the privacy challenges to AI and ML applications and evaluate the effectiveness of various privacy-preserving techniques that apply to AI and ML applications. This study used a qualitative research approach based on case studies, and data was acquired from secondary sources such as published papers, websites, and publications. It has been found that recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have shown a new dawn in corporate functions, guiding efficiency, innovations, and insights across several industries. Although the use of personal data by these technologies has been extensively adopted, it has raised several privacy issues. The research identified certain privacy issues specific to AI and ML applications, such as overfitting, data leakage, illegal access, model inversion attacks, re-identification, and Privacy audits. It can be concluded that, despite the continuous development of AI and ML technologies and their successful deployment in all fields of human activity, privacy remains one of the most pressing concerns that are yet to be adequately addressed. Designing AI and ML applications to achieve superior levels of performance while maintaining individual privacy is a complex task that will require a combination of technical, normative, and ethical approaches, as well as the collaborative efforts of technical experts, ethicists, legislators, and users. Techniques such as Data Anonymisation and Pseudonymisation, differential privacy, federated learning, homomorphic encryption and secure multi-party computation should be used to improve privacy in AI and ML application
Relationships between the 'Big-5' personality traits with memorable tourism experiences and revisit intentions: The effects of mediation
No full textThe aim of this study is to ascertain the effects of ‘Big-5’ personality traits (PT) on memorable tourism experience (MTE), and revisit intentions (RI). The study uses a convenience sample of 239 tourists returning home from Larnaca international airport in Cyprus. The data analysis is based on confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and mediation analysis of MTE dimensions between PT and RI. The findings reveal that most relationships between the five dimensions of PT and the seven dimensions of MTE are not statistically significant except for the relationships of neuroticism to novelty, and openness to refreshment. All the dimensions of MTE are positively and significantly related to RI, and the sub-constructs of PT are not statistically significant on RI. Mediation analysis reveals that there is only a partial mediation for all seven antecedents of MTE between agreeableness and RI. Implications: Since the validity of personality traits as predictors of MTE and RI is rather low, new scales for MTE and PT should be used in future attempts instead of the scales of the seven dimensions of MTE and the ‘Big-5’ personality traits involved in this study. Researchers should further extend the dimensions of MTE and PT
Frontline police responses to domestic abuse incidents involving children
No full textThe Domestic Abuse Act 2021 acknowledged the devastating impact domestic abuse can have on children and young people (UK Public General Acts, 2021). The Act recognised children who see, hear or experience the effects of domestic abuse as victims of domestic abuse in their own right. Identifying children experiencing domestic abuse is therefore crucial, and police called to a domestic abuse incident can play a critical role in this.
The Home Office commissioned Ipsos UK in partnership with the Connect Centre, University of Lancashire to carry out research. The research reviewed frontline police officer responses to domestic abuse incidents involving children. It aimed to better understand current practice, processes, attitudes and behaviours among responding officers when attending these incidents