Open Research Exeter - University of Exeter
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The conflict between personal interests and group interests during a pandemic
No full textWe use online experiments to study how the public behaves during a major public
health event (e.g., a pandemic). For a new infectious disease, decisions by the public
are highly dependent on the warning information that they receive. We study the
impact of an early warning system and information intervention on public behavior.
Early warning systems and different types of information sharing can be adapted to
influence the decisions by the public between their own interests and the interests
of society. Even when a pandemic is severe and it is more beneficial to stay at
home for society, some people tend to continue working, leading to a more rapid
spread of the pandemic. Once the pandemic is brought under control, a number of
people may still avoid going to work, slowing economic recovery. We find that if the
government does not intervene and direct people, they will behave selfishly, which
is detrimental to the overall interests of society. By intervention, the government
can improve the welfare of society.</p
On a family of simple skew braces
No full textSeveral constructions have been given for families of simple braces, but few examples are known of simple skew braces which are not braces. In this paper, we exhibit the first example of an infinite family of simple skew braces which are not braces and which do not arise from nonabelian simple groups. More precisely, we show that, for any primes p, q such that q divides (pp−1)/(p−1), there are exactly two simple skew braces (up to isomorphism) of order ppq.</p
Three‐dimensional photogrammetry‐based monitoring to enhance site‐level carbonate budget assessments of coral reefs
No full textCensus‐based carbonate budget assessments synthesize metrics on biologically derived carbonate production and erosion rates to generate estimates of net carbonate production (NCP). ReefBudget is a widely used in‐water carbonate budget approach, but this methodology can be field‐intensive and logistically challenging, limiting spatial data coverage. Large‐area imagery (LAI) is increasingly used to evaluate benthic communities and offers applications to leverage existing monitoring programs for use in carbonate budget assessments. Here, we introduce a Photogrammetry‐Based Carbonate Budget (PBCB) tool that uses site‐level LAI datasets to expand the spatial coverage of data obtainable for carbonate budget assessments. To validate the PBCB approach, long‐term monitoring data from Cheeca Rocks (Florida, USA) were used to compare PBCB carbonate budgets to in‐water ReefBudget surveys and a transect‐based LAI technique (six 100 m2 plots sampled in 2018, 2019, and 2022). The PBCB method provided estimates of NCP similar to those of prior methodologies, enabling a means to expand transect‐based approaches to larger three‐dimensional datasets. While methodological variations were observed for the PBCB approach, such as lower estimates of CCA carbonate production and higher microbioerosion, these did not meaningfully impact NCP due to their relatively low contributions to reef budgets at the site. Coral species richness was > 2× higher using the PBCB method, suggesting that this site‐level technique better captures the heterogeneous nature of coral reefs. This new tool represents an advancement to carbonate budget assessments by enabling larger spatial estimates of benthic carbonate production/erosion from LAI, thereby providing a more comprehensive and scalable evaluation of reef growth and persistence.</p
Probabilistic forecasting and anomaly detection in sewer systems using Gaussian processes
No full textThis study investigates the capability of Gaussian process regression (GPR) models in the probabilistic forecasting of water flow and depth in a combined sewer system. Traditionally, deterministic methods have been implemented in sewer flow forecasting and anomaly detection, two crucial techniques for a good wastewater network and treatment plant management. However, with the uncertain nature of the factors impacting on sewer flow and depth, a probabilistic approach which takes uncertainties into account is preferred. This research introduces a novel use of GPR in sewer systems for real-time control and forecasting. To this end, a composite kernel is designed to capture flow and depth patterns in dry- and wet-weather periods by considering the underlying physical characteristics of the system. The multi-input, single-output GPR model is evaluated using root mean square error (RMSE), coverage, and differential entropy. The model demonstrates high predictive accuracy for both treatment plant inflow and manhole water levels across various training durations, with coverage values ranging from 87.5% to 99.4%. Finally, the model is used for anomaly detection by identifying deviations from expected ranges, enabling the estimation of surcharge and overflow probabilities under various conditions.</p
A sector-specific probabilistic approach for 4D aircraft trajectory generation
No full textGenerating realistic four-dimensional trajectories is a fundamental challenge in air traffic control (ATC) that is relevant to both operational tasks and to effective simulation of airspace for the purposes of training controllers and designing new airspaces and/or procedures. Traditional trajectory generation methods are deterministic and use physics-based models with well-calibrated physical parameters and speed schedules. However, these models require knowledge of the clearances issued to aircraft in order to produce a full trajectory. Tools which can marginalise over these clearances to generate a four-dimensional trajectory are valuable in simulations as they emulate the behaviour of human controllers in background sectors, while also reflecting the level of uncertainty present in the system. Consequentially, this work proposes a probabilistic method for generating 4D aircraft trajectories that are specific to a sector of airspace, incorporating multiple routes and allowing local procedures such as co-ordinated entry and exit points to be modelled. The proposed model couples a model for generating plausible aircraft ground tracks with data-driven climb and descent models specific to an aircraft's (ICAO) wake turbulence category. A simple algorithm combines the lateral and vertical trajectories together to produce a four-dimensional (4D) trajectory. A busy sector in the United Kingdom's upper airspace was the focus of the study, which used a dataset comprising one month of aircraft surveillance data. It was found that the proposed model offered improved modelling of aircraft performance and the lateral path followed by aircraft compared to existing, deterministic methods of trajectory generation.</p
Intersex people and household income: Evidence from a nationally representative survey in Chile
No full textWe provide the first evidence on income disparities by sex characteristics using nationally representative data from Chile’s 2022–2023 National Survey on Health, Sexuality, and Gender. Our sample includes 530 intersex respondents, representing 2.77 % of Chile’s population aged 18–64 years. We find substantial household income penalties: on average, intersex female and intersex male individuals belong to households with incomes that are 28.1 log points and 27.9 log points lower than those of endosex male individuals, respectively. These disparities persist even after demographic characteristics, education, region, sexual orientation, and gender identity are controlled for.</p
A three-stage model for infrared small target detection with spatial and semantic feature fusion
No full textDeep learning enhances infrared small target detection performance, but substantial challenges persist due to the extremely small target size. In mainstream encoder-decoder networks, downsampling operations cause small targets to lose spatial information and potentially become obscured in the background, leading to missed detections.
To tackle this issue, the proposed three-stage model integrates the encoder-decoder architecture with an upsampling-free subnetwork to fuse spatial and semantic information, thereby enabling accurate small target detection. The first two stages focus on extracting precise semantic features through a Patch-based Multi-scale Feature Enhancement Module (PMFEM), which effectively captures target features at different scales. The final stage employs a specially designed sub-network without upsampling to prevent spatial information loss that typically occurs in traditional downsampling processes. This sub-network incorporates the Cross-feature Fusion Block (CFB) combined with 2D Selective Scan (SS2D) to effectively preserve spatial information while fully utilizing high-level semantic features.
Experimental results on the SIRST, NUDT-SIRST, and IRSTD-1k datasets show that the model outperforms most state-of-the-art methods, specifically achieving IoU scores of 79.04 % on SIRST, 81.57 % on NUDT-SIRST, and 64.76 % on IRSTD-1k.</p
ESD Ideas: Climate tipping is not instantaneous – the duration of an overshoot matters
No full textClimate tipping points are not committed to occur automatically upon crossing critical thresholds in global warming, as is often assumed. Instead, it is possible to temporarily overshoot a threshold without causing tipping, provided the duration of the overshoot is short. In this Idea, we demonstrate that restricting the time over 1.5 °C would considerably reduce tipping point risks.</p
The spiders that lost their personalities: assessing long-term behavioural individuality in social Stegodyphus dumicola
No full textAcross animal taxa, many species show behavioural individuality, that is, repeatable between-individual differences in behaviour. Numerous studies link behavioural individuality to major ecological and evolutionary processes. Here we conceptualize how such links hinge critically on the often untested assumption that individuality persists over long-term, ecologically relevant time frames. We test this assumption in an emerging model, the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola, by assaying individuals every 2 weeks, for a total of nine times over 4 months for three different behavioural phenotypes: boldness and fleeing in solitary settings, and prey capture latency in a social setting. Repeatable differences in boldness and fleeing were initially strong but faded within weeks and failed to predict behaviour later in life. Only fleeing remained moderately repeatable at the end of the study period. Prey capture in a social setting was not repeatable throughout the study period. Our results suggest that care must be taken when attempting to link short-term individuality, that is assumed to represent stable trait values, with ecological and evolutionary outcomes. We discuss the importance of quantifying both long-term repeatability and plasticity of behaviour, by using repeated assays across ontogeny in model organisms, to fully understand links between individuality and ecological and evolutionary processes.</p
Epistemic authority, judgment and the uncomfortable problem of conspiracism
No full textThis commentary pushes further at Ridgeway’s central claim: that geographers have largely ignored conspiracism not because it lacks relevance, but because it poses an unsettling challenge to the discipline’s assumptions about knowledge, legitimacy, and political virtue. Ridgeway argues that while poststructuralist critiques have opened space for alternative knowledge systems, the academy selectively authorises certain subaltern voices while silencing others—particularly those deemed politically troubling or epistemically suspect, such as conspiracists. The commentary examines Ridgeway’s critique of how conspiracism is typically framed in academic discourse and her argument that these approaches treat conspiricism as already constituted. In response to these critiques and to her call to address conspiracism as an as yet unknown entity, I suggest an examination of conspiracism through a lens
of authority rather than power, attending to the relational, affective, and spatial conditions that produce and sustain epistemic trust in conspiracist narratives. Finally, I support Ridgeway’s call for geographers to reckon with their own judgments and role in authorising knowledge, but suggest that reticence and hesitation to name something merely defers and deflects the problem of judgment.</p