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Fear and Loathing in our Local Authorities: Reflections from behind the keyboard
No full textOn the Block is an occasional column which allows authors to express themselves in unconventional or provocative ways. In this issue we publish a piece by an anonymous author whose experience of working in a local authority leads to questions about the constraints of practice within the current context
Vitality and Sustainability of Traditional Music: Survey of Devotional Singing Groups (dāphā khalaḥ) in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal
Get PDFDāphā bhajan is a participatory genre of Hindu–Buddhist devotional music, sung by groups of farmers and other Newar singers in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. It is deeply integrated with local neighbourhood communities, but owing to recent disasters (the 2015 earthquake, the 2020–2022 Covid-19 pandemic) and ongoing cultural changes, its sustainability is in doubt. In 2022–2023 the authors conducted a survey of selected groups to investigate the performers’ perspectives. In this preliminary report we find that dāphā groups showed resilience in recovering from the recent disasters, the main effect of which was to exacerbate ongoing systemic problems. Chief among these is the difficulty of recruiting and training new members, to which some groups are responding with innovative solutions. But a range of other interconnected issues also emerged. We conclude that although many groups exhibit continuing vitality and an integrated relationship with the local communities in which they are embedded, their dependence on traditional models may be unsustainable without a degree of change
The Tin State
Get PDFWhat does change look, sound, and feel like? After Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes, everything is remade in tin. Walking through this newly reflective landscape, we see how things are transformed in both material and political terms, as post-disaster reconstruction proceeds in tandem with the process of post-conflict federal restructuring. This short piece of flash ethnography takes us beyond the immediate destruction and trauma into the sensory world of the post-earthquake ‘tin state’, offering a view into how people experience the long-term shifts in sensibility that both environmental and social change provoke
Slow but steady: data management training for students a key to research culture change, especially for humanities
No full textIn June of 2022, the University of St Andrews implemented a new data management plan (DMP) requirement. Each PhD student would be required to submit a DMP at their first annual review, and the RDM team worked to train and support students and supervisors. Over the course of the year, it became clear that 99% of students had never completed a DMP before, most did not know what a data management plan was, and many did not realise that data publication and sharing is an important early consideration.
Trainings sought to equip students not just for meeting the requirement, but for good data management throughout future research endeavours. Training targeted students as broadly as possible with a variety of formats and resources, emphasising education of students with humanities backgrounds. Support offered included:
Training types included:
Informal drop-in writing workshop sessions
One-to-one consultations (open to both students and staff)
Webpage information dissemination
Blogs, especially targeting the humanities
Twitter—building relationships through supporting young researchers
An electronic research notebook (ERN) and accompanying training and support
Over the first year, total student attendance was high. Nine of 18 schools requested specialised training, and students from 17 of 18 schools were reached. Of these, humanities schools were first to request training and therefore set the tone for future training. Students demonstrated general preference for online training with the exception of writing workshops, which were overwhelmingly preferred in-person.
While STEM students’ concerns focused on support for practical, early-lifecycle considerations, humanities students prioritised definitions of data and exploration in group settings. The focus of these discussions generally centred on applying meanings of ‘data’ to individual research projects. Such insights from humanities-focussed training informed the delivery of STEM training with positive results. Over the year, training developed a student-centred, question-based approach. This approach involved students from different disciplines in discussion and information processing that was meaningful to their individual projects.
Developing this training for both humanities and STEM disciplines included strategic question-asking during one-to-one meetings, keeping a question diary, reflecting on trainings and adjusting future trainings accordingly in a waterfall approach, and practicing anonymous engagement exercises during classroom trainings. Blogs, webpage information, email query responses, and ERN support as applicable to the DMP program took on the same focus of awareness and leaving room for question-asking and user-driven development. Current training continues to emphasise awareness and engagement in ways meaningful to both STEM and humanities projects. Looking forward, and as a review of last year’s DMPs is completed, training will also target increased DMP quality across disciplines
Stealing the Master\u27s Tools
No full textIn an attempt to disrupt traditional paradigms of academic publishing, a decolonial initiative was forged between a group of health inequalities researchers. We began ‘Stolen Tools’, a pioneering open-access journal providing a platform for racialised minority voices. Stolen Tools aims to open up research by putting \u27people before papers\u27, and accepting authors at their ideation stage. It augments their scholarly journey by pairing them with seasoned academic mentors, presents research alongside commissioned art work, and adopts an open review process with recorded discussions between authors and reviewers. Our model envisions a more inclusive, anti-racist, and democratic academic publishing landscape where diverse narratives and epistemologies are accorded a rightful place within academic scholarship. This talk introduces our model, reflects on our progress so far, and discusses the challenges yet to come.  
Biomed News – a biomedical literature expertise sharing system based on machine learning and expert curation
No full textApproximately 30,000 biomedical research abstracts are published each week on PubMed. This provides an enormous resource for new information that needs to be retrieved by individuals who desire access to it – researchers, industry, funders, policy makers, clinicians, patients, and the public. This enormous amount of information is conventionally retrieved using searches or tables of contents. However, these methods can be overwhelming, broad and irrelevant. Biomed News is a free platform that provides a ranked abstract list on a weekly basis. Topic experts select abstracts relevant to their area of expertise. These selections are used by supervised machine learning to identify relevant papers in subsequent weekly issues. This reduces the amount of time required to identify new abstracts. Biomed News also provides an opportunity for selectors to share their weekly topic issues with other interested parties. Biomed News currently has around 90 experts from countries all over the world who are at different stages of their career. We aim for Biomed News to be a user-friendly platform covering all areas of biomedical research that allows new abstracts to be discovered rapidly, shared with interested parties, recorded permanently and available openly. Currently, Biomed News has many reports specific to many different diseases and contributes to the dissemination and discovery of new knowledge that can be accessed openly and providing recognition of selectors
Quantification of extra-cardiac damage following acute myocardial infarction using cis- and trans-4-[18F]fluoro-L-proline PET imaging
Get PDFThe preclinical surgically-induced models of myocardial infarction (MI) have been extensively utilised for studying the wound healing response in the mammalian heart. It is well-established that these invasive procedures induce marked acute systemic inflammation and adverse haemodynamic derangements, which can result in extra-cardiac tissue injury and remodelling; however, the extent of this has not yet been robustly characterised. Here, using a rat permanent coronary artery ligation (PL) model of MI and the cis- and trans-4-[18F]fluoro-l-proline positron emission tomography (PET) probes, targeting active misfolded and triple-helical collagen biosynthesis, respectively, we conducted an exploratory time-course analysis of the associated extra-cardiac tissue remodelling post-injury. Our results showed an increased cis-4-[18F]fluoro-l-proline PET signal in the liver (P = 0.02; two sample t-test) and lung (P = 0.03; two sample t-test) at the acute day 7 timepoint in the MI group compared to the Sham group (n = 3-6), which was not apparent at the later timepoints (days 14, 28, and 84). Ex vivo quantification of the deposited collagen in extra-cardiac tissues using Sirius red histochemical staining and the total hydroxyproline assay validated the apparent time course trends observed with [18F]fluoro-l-proline PET. These findings suggest that the liver and lungs are susceptible to acute injury in the rat PL model of MI and align with numerous clinical reports of extracardiac injury in MI patients. Moreover, our results highlight the suitability of [18F]fluoro-l-proline PET as a systems-based imaging technique for investigating active collagen biosynthesis across multiple organs
Has the International Climate Regime Failed and Missed Its Purpose? Loss and Damage and Human Rights Perspective
Get PDFIn recent years, as the impact of climate change has become increasingly serious, the international climate change regime has been accused of failure and is considered to have deviated from its original goals. This article analyzes the rationality of the above view from the perspectives of loss and damage and human rights protection. In terms of dealing with loss and damage, the international climate change regime has established a preliminary framework to address this issue and has increased the attention of countries to loss and damage. However, it is not practical enough. Developed countries evade historical responsibility and are unwilling to deal with it separately from mitigation and adaptation. At the same time, there is a lack of funds and it is unable to support the effective operation of relevant mechanisms. In terms of human rights protection, the climate regime has established a basic protection framework and provided a basis for climate litigation. However, there is a lack of specific implementation clauses and sufficient legally binding force, and it has achieved little in solving problems such as insufficient public participation, inadequate protection of the rights and interests of vulnerable groups, and climate migration. In summary, although the international climate change regime has made some progress in the legislative framework, it has almost failed due to insufficient practical operational capacity and it is difficult to achieve the expected goals. In the future, it is urgent to further refine the implementation rules, strengthen the mandatory nature of relevant laws, and provide sufficient and stable financial support for mechanisms such as loss and damage, so as to promote substantial breakthroughs in climate governance
Probing the Disk Kinematics of M31 with DESI
Get PDFM31’s stellar rotation curve and disk line-of-sight dispersion is presented using kinematic data from a novel DESI M31 survey in combination with similar datasets. After removing the foreground, the disk region is isolated and the velocity field deprojected. A flat ring model is fit to the velocity field of M31 out to 30 kpc using a maximum-likelihood routine. The stellar rotation curve is found to flatten to ∼220 km/s, and a disk line-of-sight velocity dispersion of ∼60 km/s is derived. The results extend M31’s rotation curve to 30 kpc and support the picture in which M31 has thicker disk than the Milky Way
Considerations of Intersectionality in Psychological research
No full textAt the forefront of the increasingly popular intersectionality agenda in psychology is the wellbeing of individuals. The British Psychological Society states that a key principle of psychological research is to “consider societal benefits” and “contribute to the common good” (BPS, 2021). There is an abundance of evidence on the harmful outcomes of negative intergroup relations and systemic oppression on marginalised individuals. For example, marginalised groups often experience educational and economic disadvantages (Porter, 2011) alongside both physical and mental health disparities (English et al., 2022; Mitchell et al., 2021; Stevens-Watkins et al., 2014). Consequently, psychology as a discipline should prioritise advocating for a more equitable society.