Open Research Exeter - University of Exeter
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LKA: Large Kernel Adapter for Enhanced Medical Image Classification
No full textDespite the notable success of current Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) methods across various domains, their effectiveness on medical datasets falls short of expectations. This limitation arises from two key factors: (1) medical images exhibit extensive anatomical variation and low contrast, necessitating a large receptive field to capture critical features, and (2) existing PEFT methods do not explicitly address the enhancement of receptive fields. To overcome these challenges, we propose the Large Kernel Adapter (LKA), designed to expand the receptive field while maintaining parameter efficiency. The proposed LKA consists of three key components: down-projection, channel-wise large kernel convolution, and up-projection. Through extensive experiments on various datasets and pre-trained models, we demonstrate that the incorporation of a larger kernel size is pivotal in enhancing the adaptation of pre-trained models for medical image analysis. Our proposed LKA outperforms 11 commonly used PEFT methods, surpassing the state-of-the-art by 3.5% in top-1 accuracy across five medical datasets. The code is available at: https://github.com/misswayguy/LKA.</p
Introduction to the special issue: ‘Biodiversity and finance: Risk, disclosure and double materiality’
No full textNo abstract.</p
Adaptive Rank Allocation for Federated Parameter- Efficient fine-tuning of language models
No full textPre-trained Language Models (PLMs) have demonstrated their superiority and versatility in modern Natural Language Processing (NLP), effectively adapting to various downstream tasks through further fine-tuning. Federated ParameterEfficient Fine-Tuning (FedPEFT) has emerged as a promising solution to address privacy and efficiency challenges in distributed training for PLMs on resource-constrained local devices. However, our measurements reveal two key limitations of FedPEFT: heterogeneous data across devices exacerbates performance degradation of low-rank adaptation, and a fixed parameter configuration results in communication inefficiency. To overcome these limitations, we propose FedARA, a novel Adaptive Rank Allocation framework for federated parameter-efficient fine-tuning of language models. Specifically, FedARA employs truncated Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) adaptation to enhance similar feature representation across clients, significantly mitigating the adverse effects of data heterogeneity. Subsequently, it utilizes dynamic rank allocation to progressively identify critical ranks, effectively improving communication efficiency. Lastly, it leverages rank-based module pruning to automatically remove inactive modules, steadily reducing local computational cost and memory usage in each federated learning round. Extensive experiments show that FedARA consistently outperforms baselines by an average of 6.95% to 8.49% across various datasets and models under heterogeneous data while significantly improving communication efficiency by 2.40×. Moreover, experiments on various edge devices demonstrate substantial decreases in total training time and energy consumption by up to 48.90% and 46.95%, respectively.</p
Essays in Discrimination, Informational Preferences, and Social Preferences Under Uncertainty
No full textThis thesis uses online experimentation to explore discrimination, informational preferences,
and social preferences under uncertainty using methodology commonly found in
experimental economics. The abstracts for each piece of work are as follows:
Chapter 2: The Effect of George Floyd Protests on Experimental Evaluations
We utilize a unique panel of experimental data to investigate whether the George Floyd
protests and Kenosha Unrest affected race in worker evaluations. To manipulate race, we
randomly assigned white and black names to worker-generated output. We establish that
white individuals discriminate solely within in-group domains. Black names received
lower ratings during the most active months of the George Floyd protests and showed no
racial differences around Kenosha Unrest. Outside of active months of social unrest, black
names received higher evaluations. The data suggest that our findings are likely driven by
taste rather than belief-based partiality.
Chapter 3: The Sunk Cost in Performance Beliefs
We test whether real-effort costs influence how people update beliefs about their performance.
We find that paying a cost to observe feedback alters belief adjustments, but is
quite sensitive to informational quality. When feedback is highly accurate, under-inference
is moderate and does not differ between cost conditions. However, when feedback is less
accurate, those who received free feedback showed extreme under-inference, while those
who paid a cost were approximately Bayesian. We argue that behavioral costs can stimulate
responsiveness to feedback in environments that would otherwise motivate significant
conservatism.
Chapter 4: Talent, Sorting, and Redistributive Uncertainty
It is well understood that many laborers choose occupations to maximize earnings with the
intent to donate large sums to charitable causes. However, how others judge this strategy is
less understood, as forgone opportunities are left unknown. Using a third-party dictator
game, we evaluate such judgments. We find that redistribution is less common and more
sensitive to efficiency considerations for equitable allocations. Furthermore, third-parties
punish (reward) inequitable (equitable) allocations, a pattern amplified by deviations from
efficiency. Some evidence suggests that the extent of punishment (reward) is more (less)
weighted in equity than in the efficiency considerations that determined such outcomes.</p
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) eliminates the Own-Age Bias (OAB) as indexed by the Face Inversion Effect (FIE) for own- versus other-age faces.
No full textWe investigate individuals’ reduced ability to recognize faces of other ages, a phenomenon known as the Own-Age Bias (OAB). This study utilized a double-blind, between-subjects design in which anodal tDCS (10 minutes duration, 1.5 mA intensity, targeting the Fp3 location) was applied to disrupt the face inversion effect (FIE), which reflects higher recognition performance for upright compared to upside-down faces. Young adults participated in an old/new recognition task, where upright and inverted ‘own-age’ faces (19– 30 years) and ‘other-age’ faces (older, 69–80 years) were presented. In the sham/control condition (n=24), we observed a robust OAB, indicated by a significantly larger FIE for ownage faces compared to other-age faces. Importantly, in the anodal tDCS condition (n=24), the FIE for own-age faces was significantly reduced compared to the sham condition, effectively eliminating the cross-age interaction index of the OAB. We interpret our results through a perceptual expertise-based account of the OAB.</p
Eco-Otherness and Interconnectedness: Re-thinking Land, Trees, and Nonhuman Agency in Palestinian and North African Literature
No full textThis thesis examines the representation of ecological ‘otherness’ and interconnectedness in Palestinian and North African literature, exploring the entanglement of environmental degradation, colonial violence, and cultural memory. While ecocriticism has traditionally focused on Western literary traditions, this study positions Arab literature as a vital contributor to global environmental humanities, challenging anthropocentric and Eurocentric paradigms. By foregrounding nonhuman agency, the thesis underscores how ecological narratives in Palestinian and North African literature resist colonial frameworks and assert environmental resilience.
Drawing on eco-postcolonialism, the research engages with concepts such as eco-ṣumūd (ecological steadfastness), eco-memory, and the Qur’anic notion of umamun amthālukum (‘communities like your own’) to explore the ways trees, animals, and landscapes function as active agents of resistance and cultural preservation. Through a close textual analysis of works by Maḥmūd Darwīsh, Ghassān Kanafānī, Tawfīq Ziyād, Ibrāhīm al-Kōnī, Mīrāl al-Ṭaḥāwī, and Algerian folklore, the study demonstrates how natural elements are not merely symbolic but emerge as participants in ecological and political struggles.
Palestinian literature reveals how the uprooting of trees—particularly olive and citrus groves—serves as both an environmental assault and a symbolic act of dispossession, severing cultural and historical ties to the land. Conversely, these trees become vessels of eco-memory, silently preserving Palestinian identity through their rootedness. Meanwhile, North African desert narratives reimagine human-animal relationships, challenging colonial commodification through indigenous ecological knowledge. In The Bleeding of the Stone, Asūf acts as a guardian of the desert animal, the waddan (Barbary sheep), resisting its exploitation and embodying a spiritual and ecological ethos that counters extractivist logics. In Gold Dust, the camel assumes a profound role as a companion and symbol of survival, while in The Tent, the mare represents cultural stability, whose loss destabilises both identity and belonging. Additionally, the folktale The Orphan’s Cow introduces a narrative of justice and stewardship, further reinforcing the interdependence between human and nonhuman worlds.
This study repositions Arab literature as a critical force in postcolonial ecocriticism, challenging dominant frameworks that marginalise ecological dimensions of colonial violence. By integrating Arab ecological narratives into global debates on environmental justice and anti-colonial thought, it underscores the agency of the natural world in shaping cultural memory, resistance, and survival. Rather than treating Arab texts as supplementary to Western ecocriticism, the study asserts their role in expanding the field’s theoretical boundaries. In doing so, it calls for a paradigm shift—one that moves beyond inclusion to actively engaging with the ecological perspectives embedded in Arab literary traditions, recognising them as essential to rethinking environmental agency in postcolonial contexts.</p
Heritage cosmopolitics and the contemporary past of the southcentral Andes
No full textThe chapter discusses the results of a multi-sited archaeological ethnography in Tiwanaku (Bolivia) and the Calchaquí Valleys (Northwest Argentina) at the intersection of critical heritage studies and the archaeologies of the contemporary past in the southcentral Andes. Local memories of conflicts triggered by the deployment of state and transnational policies over cultural and natural resources reveal the persistence of modern-colonial legacies in the fragile consensus around Indigenous heritage. The articulation of cosmopolitical and decolonial thinking with archaeological and ethnographic sensibilities strengthens interdisciplinary efforts to decentralize heritage-making practices from anthropocentric and Western-based models and values. The research emphasizes the socio-material connections, multiple temporalities, and socionatural relatedness of Indigenous heritage beyond the authorized frameworks of modern (pluri)national states and transnational development agencies. By unpacking the archives of authorized discourses that facilitate extractive development models over natural and cultural resources, the two case studies highlight the cosmopolitics of heritage in the emergence of ecologically constituted collective subjects routed in anti-colonial struggles and care of the land as a more-than-human social participant.</p
'Being disabled is a radicalising experience’: from eco-ableism to solidarity in climate activism
No full textThe urgency of concerns to address the impact of climate change have instigated prominent climate movements in the UK, such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. While the potential exclusion of racialised and working-class communities from such movements has been problematised, disabled people – and the integral expertise within the disabled people’s movement – remain largely overlooked. Drawing on findings from qualitative and arts-based research with disabled people in Bristol, UK, we explore how campaigns promoting pro-environmental behaviour change, reinforce a neoliberal agenda, instilling individual guilt, distracting from the need for systemic change, and further marginalising the perspectives of disabled people. We echo calls by the wider climate justice movement for systemic change, prioritising collective action against the root causes of climate and wider social injustices. Despite often being portrayed as separate issues, the oppression of disabled people and the causes of climate change are largely driven by capitalism. If attention is focused on the symptoms of crisis, disabled people will continue to be framed as among the many unfortunate, but inescapable, victims. If the focus is instead on causal injustice, then the insights and experiences of disabled people become central to building resistance, understanding and struggles for justice. We therefore call for shared learning, solidarity and collaboration between these movements for justice. Such alliances, focused on the urgent need for systemic change, could enable accessible forms of activism, that build strength in numbers; sustain care for self and others; and promote visions of new ways of organising society characterised by solidarity and care.</p
Blockade Law in the Contemporary Context: the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Broader Trends (TPC)
No full textThe dissertation draws primarily on customary international law to conclude that Russia has not undertaken a maritime blockade of Ukraine in the conflict but instead declared a form of maritime zone. The analysis finds that despite the absence of a maritime blockade, the conflict is illustrative of broader contemporary questions for the law of blockade, which the research goes on to consider.
These include that the Law of Armed Conflict relating to starvation applies only to belligerent populations, that there are multiple ways in which those breaching the Law of Naval Warfare and law of blockade may be held accountable, including domestic and international legal forums such prize courts and the ICC and ICJ, and through enforcement by neutral States. The dissertation extrapolates from the use of new technology in the conflict, including increasingly long-distance weaponry, uncrewed and autonomous systems and considers what these mean for blockade law. In doing so, it argues that faced with grey-zone activities falling short of blockade but having similar effects, States which are committed to maintaining the law of blockade and global maritime commerce must undertake to clearly articulate the law and assist neutral States that are victims of breaches of the Law of Naval Warfare in challenging and preventing this, whether through strategic messaging, assistance in international institutions or facilitating neutral convoy operations.
The dissertation highlights areas of the San Remo Manual which may warrant reconsideration in its ongoing redrafting, including the provisions on proportionality and starvation in blockade.
The dissertation concludes that maritime blockade will remain an essential component of the Law of Naval Warfare in future and affirms the importance of multi-lateral efforts to clearly articulate the law such as the redrafting of the San Remo Manual.</p
Raw data for "Trapped Scholte modes supported by soft elastic cylindrical rods underwater"
No full textThe raw data to accompany the paper titled "Trapped Scholte modes supported by soft elastic cylindrical rods underwater", published in Physical Review E, Volume 113, article 025505. https://doi.org/10.1103/sshw-sgccArticle abstractThis paper documents trapped Scholte modes; nonradiative surface acoustic modes that exist on fluid-loaded elastic cylindrical rods. Unlike previously reported surfacelike waves on cylindrical rods, the Scholte modes identified here are localized to the interface between the rod and the surrounding fluid. The study investigates plastic rods submerged in water, which allows exploration of the domain where the Scholte velocity is significantly slower than the speed of sound in water. The supported Scholte modes are shown to become increasingly localized to the solid-fluid interface at high frequencies, as their phase velocities tend toward that of the Scholte wave on a planar interface. This was modeled numerically using the finite element method and experimentally verified using cast acrylic rods underwater.</p