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Astronism, Cosmism and Cosmodeism: An Analysis of the Space Religions espousing Transcension
Get PDFIn April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere and enter outer space. This achievement cemented the status of the Soviet Union as a global superpower and intensified its race with the United States to be the first nation to put a person on the Moon. However, what many people are far less aware of is that a proto-transhumanist and quasi-religious movement in the nineteenth century laid the philosophical foundations for the Space Race. At the same time, the writings of its main proponents continue to inspire beliefs at the confluence of religion, space exploration and spirituality. This movement was called Cosmism and was spearheaded by an unusual character named Nikolai Fyodorov, a librarian from Moscow whose idiosyncrasies became just as notorious as his radical beliefs about humanity colonising the Milky Way and using science to resurrect the dead. Fyodorov’s Common Task set out a grand plan for humanity’s future, one in which Homo sapiens would become a spacefaring species and construct a utopian civilisation among the stars. In 1953, Israeli political theorist Mordechai Nessyahu founded Cosmodeism which advocated a similar endeavour of human expansion into the extraterrestrial world but focused its beliefs around the prophecy that spaceflight will see humans eventually become gods in a presently godless cosmos. However, new developments have begun to take place in space religion in the twenty-first century with the youngest religion having been founded only a decade ago in 2013 whose followers are known as Astronists. Astronism repackages human space expansion as a sacred endeavour called transcension, the object of which is to see humanity escape the cosmos entirely and thus relieve itself of all limitations. Studying the interplay between these three space religions will demonstrate how they have contributed to art and film, astronautics and spaceflight, philosophy and literature
‘It’s a problem of the politics, not the place’: A participatory study of young people’s experiences of community belonging and loneliness in a coastal town.
Get PDFCurrent research suggests that where young people live can be related to their experiences of loneliness. However, the evidence for why this is and what young people themselves think about it is limited. Sense of place, defined by both the physical environment and social and cultural aspects of communities, is related to belonging. However, when a community and a place is stigmatised, a tension can exist between ‘feeling’ this stigma and the sense of belonging and attachment to where one is from. Social connections are important to understanding loneliness; strong community connections and a sense of belonging can improve individual outcomes, including reducing loneliness.
This PhD research examined how young people living in the unique environment of a coastal community experience loneliness and how sense of place and belonging to the
community affects these experiences. Knowledge about young people’s experiences of loneliness was generated from participatory research with young people living in the
coastal town of Morecambe, where the relationships between these concepts was explored.
Twenty two young people, aged 13-24, participated in research sessions which took place at their local youth groups. Sessions consisted of engagement activities such as
quizzes and games and three main creative methods were used to generate the data: 1) maps of the local area were used to explore perceptions of different spaces (Seyer-
Ochi, 2006); 2) photovoice was used to examine sense of place through the eyes of young people (Wang & Burris, 1997); and 3) the Splot drawing method (Tolstad et al.,,2017) was adopted to explore their sense of belonging. Data generated included transcripts of group discussions, maps, pictures, photos and other creative outputs that.were thematically analysed with a Young Researchers Group, formed from 13 young people who took part in the data collection.
Key findings included how young people’s perceptions of place were in tension, evidenced through their contrasting experiences of place, as well as themes related to economic exclusion, threat and shame. The variations in young people’s relationship with community were explored, with inconsistencies in when and where they feel belonging apparent, as well as an important finding related to how young people, conceptualise community and the language they use to describe it. Lastly, the different intrinsic and extrinsic factors of loneliness offer subjective insights into young people’s experiences of loneliness with increasing accessibility of mental health support and educational inputs about loneliness proposed as potential supportive measures.
This thesis reveals that young people’s perceptions of the coastal place in which they live is shaped by different socio-environmental factors, including the stigmatisation of place by outside entities. This subsequently has implications for how they experience belonging to geographical communities and to whether they feel lonely. A place-based stigma loneliness model is proposed which offers an approach to understand how these different dimensions interact and impact on whether young people feel lonely. The thesis concludes by reflecting on the implications of this study for future research about young people’s experiences of loneliness and the importance of the physical contexts in which they live their lives
Impressions and Expressions of Compassion in the University Workplace: A Case Study
Get PDFCalls for more compassionate universities have been gaining strength. The Covid-19 pandemic has magnified the detrimental effects of the marketisation and corporatisation of higher education in the UK and the sector finds itself in a desperate need for change because its current systems and structures are causing suffering. Based on a case study of a post-1992 university, this research explores the meaning attached by academics to the notion of workplace compassion (impressions), identifies the type of behaviour and practices associated with workplace compassion (expressions) and suggests ways of implementing them in a university context.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of twenty-two academics in a post-1992 university in the North-West of England where compassion had been introduced and promoted as an aspirational value. The interviews sought to explore the academics’ perceptions of compassion as the university’s aspirational value and its expressions in a university setting, and to recognise the benefits, challenges, controversies and tensions that its presence or absence creates for UK academics in a university setting.
Overall, the research has revealed significant divergence in the views of academics on impressions and expressions of compassion in the context of a university. It is considered to be fundamental to the professional identity of academics because it is inextricably linked to their student-facing role and to academic collegiality. The research has disclosed that compassion is both beneficial and detrimental to academics. It creates tensions, challenges and controversies due to complex power relations with students as consumers and to the conflict between the commercial nature of modern universities and academics’ professional values. The issue of hierarchy associated with authoritarianism further adds to the complexity of expressing compassion in a university setting. Managers’ attempts to employ what is perceived as false or artificial compassion trigger strong negative emotions and link these expressions to deception, manipulation and even violence.
This study makes a significant contribution to the literature on compassion and workplace compassion in three key areas: (i), the research context; (ii) the critical approach; and (iii) most significantly, in terms of the research findings. In addition, the empirical research contributes to practice by suggesting ways of implementing compassion in a university context
Availability and type of stroke services across India: a survey study
Get PDFBackground: Stroke unit care is known to improve patient outcomes but throughout India there are few dedicated stroke units.
Aim: Our aim was to undertake a survey of stroke services, stroke workforce, and engagement in stroke research across India.
Design and Methods: A hospital-based survey tool, informed by the World Stroke Organization (WSO) Roadmap to Delivering Quality Stroke Care and through discussions with local stakeholders was developed. The tool explored the availability of stroke units, diagnostic services, telemedicine, thrombolysis, thrombectomy, stroke workforce, education and training opportunities, services to support stroke survivors and their families, and organisational involvement in research. Data were analysed descriptively and grouped by hospital status (private or public).
Setting: A convenience sample of health care professionals representing hospitals providing stroke care in India.
Participants: Respondents comprised physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, researchers and speech and language therapists. Where more than one representative from a hospital completed the survey tool, the responses from the most senior member of staff were selected and included in the analysis.
Results: Ninety-five hospitals participated (December 2017 and August 2019), resulting in data representing 15 states and 2 union territories. Fifty (53%) hospitals were private and 45 (47%) were public. Fifty-six (59%) hospitals reported treating a total of 20661 stroke patients over a 12-month period (median 300; Inter Quartile Range (IQR) 173 to 461). Only half of all hospitals had a dedicated stroke unit with a total of 596 stroke beds (median 9 beds per unit; IQR 6 to 11).
Limitations: The hospitals in this study were mainly recruited via two national conferences and an International conference (International Conference on the Essentials of Stroke Care); the INSTRuCT network, the Indian Stroke Association and the Indian Academy of Neurology. There was a high completion rate from representatives in Kerala; 14 States and 5 Union Territories were not represented. . We did not seek to identify all hospitals caring for stroke patients and therefore do not know the number of non-identified/ non-responding sites and as such the findings may not be representative. . It was not possible to gain individual contact information for hospital and regional government administrators who may have access to stroke data. It is likely that there have major changes to stroke services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conclusion: Dedicated stroke units, stroke-specific staff, education, training and research opportunities, diagnostic services and specialist treatments were mostly available within private hospitals however there is a paucity of available stroke services data Further research is needed to map stroke service provision in a wider range of tertiary stroke care providers and stroke units.
Future Work: Currently there is variability in the levels and types of stroke unit resources) available. The recent WSO and National Accreditation Board of Hospitals and Healthcare providers (NABH) joint Stroke Centre certification programme aims to create the standardised delivery of stroke care across India.. Future work will involve working with the WSO and NABH to facilitate the inclusion criteria of evidence-based Care Bundles, as part of NABH accreditation across India.
Funding Details: “This research was funded by the National Institute for Health Care Research (NIHR) Global Health Research programme (16/137/16) using UK aid from the UK Government to support global health research. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the UK government. Research will be published in the NIHR Global Health Research Journal.
Specialist intellectual disability liaison nurses in general hospitals in England: cohort study using a large mortality dataset
Get PDFObjective Intellectual disability liaison nurses in general hospitals could enhance access to high-quality, adapted healthcare and improve outcomes. We aimed to explore associations between the input of intellectual disability liaison nurses and the quality of care in people with intellectual disability who are admitted to hospital.
Design Retrospective analysis of a national dataset of mortality reviews.
Setting General hospitals in England.
Participants 4742 adults with intellectual disability who died in hospital between 2016 and 2021 and whose deaths were reviewed as part of the Learning from Lives and Deaths mortality review programme.
Outcome measures We used logistic regression to compare the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of those who did, and did not, receive input from an intellectual disability liaison nurse. We explored associations between liaison nurse input, care processes and overall quality of care.
Results One-third of people with intellectual disability who died in hospital in England between 2016 and 2021 had input from an intellectual disability liaison nurse. Intellectual disability liaison nurse input was not evenly distributed across England and was more common in those who died of cancer. Having an intellectual disability liaison nurse involved in an individual’s care was associated with increased likelihood of reasonable adjustments being made to care (adjusted OR (aOR) 1.95, 95% CI 1.63 to 2.32) and of best practice being identified (aOR 1.37, 95% CI 1.17 to 1.60) but was not associated with a rating of overall quality of care received (aOR 0.94, 95% CI 0.78 to 1.12).
Conclusions Intellectual disability liaison nurses see only a minority of people with intellectual disability who are admitted to hospital in England. Increasing the availability of intellectual disability liaison nurses could improve care for this disadvantaged group
Investigation of Neuromuscular Activation in Older Female Adults during a Dynamic and Challenging Virtual Reality Activity: A Cross-Sectional Study.
Get PDFThe use of virtual reality (VR) in older adults promotes improvements in mobility, strength, and balance. Changes in neuromuscular activation have been found to be associated with these improvements; however, during VR activities, this aspect has not been thoroughly investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate neuromuscular activation among older female adults during VR activities. Sixteen older female adults, with the use of VR, performed dynamic punching movements involving elbow flexion/extension for one minute, and the muscle activation of the bicep brachii was recorded with electromyography (EMG) and normalized to the maximal voluntary isometric contraction of elbow flexion. The one-minute activity was divided into three time phases: 0–10 s, 25–35 s, and 50–60 s. The five highest EMG amplitude values (%) in each phase were selected and averaged. Differences between phases were analyzed using repeated ANOVA (αadj = 0.017). The EMG amplitude for the first phase was 39.1 ± 2.6%, that for the second phase was 44.8 ± 3.0%, and that for the third phase was 49.6 ± 3.1%. Statistically significant differences were found in all phases, with the first phase demonstrating a lower EMG amplitude (%) compared to the second (p = 0.002) and third phases (p = 0.000). The third phase demonstrated a higher EMG amplitude (%) compared to the second phase (p = 0.025). Engagement in VR activities can have significant effects on neuromuscular activation in older female adults, with our findings revealing a significant increase in the EMG amplitude within one minute of commencing a dynamic and challenging activity such as virtual boxing
Towards Anomaly Detection in Embedded Systems Application Using LLVM Passes
Get PDFSoftware security exploits, such as Return-Oriented Programming (ROP) attacks, have persisted for more than a decade. ROP attacks inject malicious behaviors into programs, posing serious risks to computing devices, and they can be par-ticularly challenging to detect in systems with limited resources. In this paper, we introduce an approach that exploits Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) passes, programmatic transformations applied during compilation, to detect ROP attacks in ARM-based embedded systems. By customizing LLVM passes, developers can integrate tailored security checks and optimizations into embedded systems requirements. Our approach is motivated by the use of Hardware Performance Counters (HPCs) for certain mitigations, which are not commonly available on all embedded systems. The experimental evaluation of our approach for de-tecting ROP attacks in real-world applications shows that it is feasible and can be extended to detect new attacks independently of an Operating System (OS). The storage overhead induced by our approach is approximately 55%
Crisis Resolution & Home Treatment for Individuals with Complex Emotional Needs
No full textFindings from a recent qualitative evidence synthesis (Haslam, et al. 2024) highlight that mental health crisis care for individuals with Complex Emotional Needs (CEN) is lacking.
Specifically, where risk issues intersected with the diagnostic label of personality disorder, experiential accounts illustrate the potential for power imbalances within the caring relationship especially around decisional aspects of crisis care.
When viewing service users through a risk lens, clinicians were reported by peers as being ‘fearful’, and their practice described as being ‘defensive’.
Furthermore, they were experienced by service users as being dismissive, service users reporting feeling that they were not ‘listened to’ or that their perceived needs were not taken seriously
Polyp Segmentation Generalisability of Pretrained Backbones
Get PDFDue to the low availability of annotated data for training polyp segmentation models, e.g. Sanderson and Matuszewski (2022), which typically take the form of an autoencoder with UNet-style skip connections (Ronneberger et al., 2015), it is common practice to pretrain the encoder, also known as the backbone. This has almost exclusively been done in a supervised manner with ImageNet-1k (Deng et al., 2009). However, we recently demonstrated that pretraining backbones in a self-supervised manner generally provides better fine-tuned performance, and that models with ViT-B (Dosovitskiy et al., 2020) backbones typically perform better than models with ResNet50 (He et al., 2016) backbones (Sanderson and Matuszewski, 2024).
In this paper, we extend this work to consider generalisability. I.e., we assess performance on a different dataset to that used for fine-tuning, accounting for variation in network architecture and pretraining pipeline (algorithm and dataset). This reveals how well models generalise to a somewhat different distribution to the training data, which arise in deployment as a result of different cameras, demographics of patients, and other factors. Our results provide further insights into the strengths and weaknesses of existing architectures and pretraining pipelines that should inform the future development of polyp segmentation models
Amis Indigeneity in Taiwan
Get PDFThis comment explores the cultural heritage and challenges of the Amis, Taiwan's largest recognized Indigenous group. Drawing on Povinelli's ‘The Cunning of Recognition,’ it argues that state recognition perpetuates power imbalances and commodifies Amis culture. It examines the Amis age-set system, its role in preserving traditional knowledge, and its challenges due to modernization. It highlights the importance of community-led initiatives like ’Etolan Style in fostering cultural expression, economic empowerment, and the revitalization of Amis heritage in a post-colonial world