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Assessing French Readability for Adults with Low Literacy: A Global and Local Perspective
No full textThis study presents a novel approach to assessing French text readability for adults with low literacy skills, addressing both global (full-text) and local (segment-level) difficulty. We introduce a dataset of 461 texts annotated using a difficulty scale developed specifically for this population. Using this corpus, we conducted a systematic comparison of key readability modeling approaches, including machine learning techniques based on linguistic variables, fine-tuning of CamemBERT, a hybrid approach combining CamemBERT with linguistic variables, and the use of generative language models (LLMs) to carry out readability assessment at both global and local levels.</p
Between a rock and a hard place: exploring the lived experience of disability and climate injustice
No full textThis paper examines disability and climate injustice among rural livelihoods in Kenya and Uganda, foregrounding the importance of understanding, respecting and embedding the lived experiences of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in climate adaptation practice. Previous studies have highlighted the need to approach transformative adaptation through interventions that address the unjust knowledge and power relations that create vulnerability. Social injustice in essence describes the interlinked processes through which people come to be stuck between a rock and a hard place; a poignant way of characterizing the vulnerable situations that many PWDs have to navigate within everyday lives increasingly permeated by climate risk. Our study engages with everyday disability knowledges to explore how the disproportionate climate risks they experience intersect with processes of marginalization and a lack of access to the benefits of climate interventions. In both Kenya and Uganda, local adaptation decision-making structures involve explicit representation of PWDs. Despite this important progress, key dimensions through which exclusion and social injustices unfold are identified. The experiential knowledge of PWDs is essential to deepen our understanding of what it takes to build inclusive, mutual learning processes into transformative climate adaptation efforts, strengthening climate justice.</p
Urban governance by numbers: Toward a regulatory framework for smart and sustainable city metrics
No full textThis article examines the increasing use of digital and sustainability metrics by cities for policy guidance, while simultaneously addressing regulatory gaps surrounding these metrics. Through a policy analysis and theoretical synthesis of urban governance, data ethics, and sustainability transitions, the study reveals that current metric systems are often fragmented, proprietary, and misaligned with policy objectives and local needs, leading to risks such as distorted outcomes, commercial and technocratic capture, and greenwashing. The article proposes regulatory frameworks for smart and sustainable city indicators based on five core principles: transparency, interoperability, accountability, ethical data stewardship, and adaptiveness. The framework is mapped across local, national, and international levels, suggesting novel adaptive regulatory mechanisms, from soft law instruments and city-led initiatives to stronger mandates and auditing frameworks, for its implementation. By advocating for “regulating the regulators of smart urban progress” – the metrics themselves – this study builds a normative and practical case for more effective, equitable, and sustainable urban development.</p
Agent-Based Modeling of Renewable Energy Management in the UAE
No full textLocal United Arab Emirates (UAE) inhabitants have shown heightened awareness and
interest in renewable energy (RE), resulting in a rise in the installation of solar
photovoltaic (PV) systems in their residences; however, electric utility earnings have
decreased due to this tendency. Energy decision-makers are concerned about
discriminatory resident access to incentives and publicly funded solar PV frameworks. To
reduce solar PV installations, utilities and energy players have adjusted RE initiatives.
Utility companies provide solar PV-assisted installations. Nonetheless, adopting such
frameworks requires a comprehensive feasibility study of all elements to achieve a win–
win condition for all stakeholders, namely energy consumers, grid operators, solar PV
company owners, regulators, and financiers. This article predicts the success of numerous
local UAE solar PV models using agent-based modeling (ABM) to assess stakeholders’
measurements and objectives. Agents represent prosumers who choose solar PV. The
effects of their installation choices on stakeholder performance measures are studied over
time. ABM results show that suitable solar community pricing policies can benefit all
stakeholders. Therefore, enhanced RE implementation rates can grow equitably. Also,
electric utility companies can recoup profit losses from solar PV installations, and solar
PV firms can thrive. The proposed modeling technique provides a viable policy design
that supports all parties, preventing injustice to any stakeholder.</p
Distributed Nonlinear Conic Optimisation With Partially Separable Structure
No full textIn this paper we consider the problem of distributed nonlinear optimisation of a separable convex cost function over a graph subject to cone constraints. We show how to generalise, using convex analysis, monotone operator theory and fixed-point theory, the primal-dual method of multipliers (PDMM), originally designed for equality constraint optimisation and recently extended to include linear inequality constraints, so that it can also accommodate cone constraints. The resulting algorithm can be applied to a variety of optimisation problems, including the important class of semidefinite programs with partially separable structure, in a fully distributed fashion, without relying on interior-point methods. In addition, the algorithm demonstrates robustness to transmission losses and data quantisation. We derive update equations by applying the Peaceman-Rachford splitting algorithm to the monotonic inclusion related to the lifted dual problem. The cone constraints are implemented by a reflection method in the lifted dual domain where auxiliary variables are reflected with respect to the intersection of the polar cone and a subspace relating the dual and lifted dual domain. Convergence results are provided for both synchronous and stochastic update schemes, and the proposed algorithm is demonstrated through an application to fully distributed sensor localisation based on semidefinite programming.</p
“For the City Yet to Come”: South African Speculative Fiction and Futurity at the Urban Edge
No full textThis article reads contemporary South African speculative fictions as African futurisms and portents on the African “city yet to come” (Simone). In Masande Ntshanta’s Triangulum (2019), Lauren Beukes’ Moxyland (2008) and Zoo City (2010) and Muthi Nhlema’s short story, “Ta O’Reva” (2015), vulnerable informal urban communities are depicted as expendable human resources, subject to industrial pollution and disease, data and body-parts farming and cloning. Plagues figure literally as human disease but also metaphorically as signs of extractive capitalism. Situating South African speculative fiction within the field of world-literary studies, the article sheds light on the genre’s contribution towards the critique of capitalist modernity, thereby challenging any preconceptions of speculative fiction’s inherent conservatism. The article augments world-literary studies with an account of a radical potentiality in the context of communities existing at the sharp end of global capitalism. For, whilst each text depicts a world that is “one, and unequal”, as Franco Moretti conjectured in advocating for distant reading of structural inequality represented in world?literature, at the same time, each registers this potentiality at the level of literary form. Speculative fiction opens the imaginative space in which the tension between immiseration and such potentiality can be realised, or what Darko Suvin calls “a mapping of possible alternatives</p
What factors are important to patients when considering a revision total knee replacement in a network model of care? An exploratory qualitative analysis
No full textBACKGROUND: Revision knee replacement carries significant implications for healthcare systems both clinically and financially. Rationalising revision knee replacement surgery in fewer, more experienced hospitals and their surgeons has the promise of reduced reoperation rates and lower costs. However, this may create additional logistic and financial challenges for patients. This study aimed to explore the factors important to patients in the decision-making process for revision knee replacement surgery in a regional network model of care. METHODS: An exploratory analysis was performed using semi structured interviews with 7 patients (median age 75 years: range 61 to 86) with experience of revision knee replacement either as a previous patient, family member or lay member of a research group. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and de-identified and analysed using a descriptive thematic analysis. RESULTS: Four themes were important in participants' accounts: importance of returning to normality; faith in surgical expertise; travel for major surgery; travel for shorter hospital visits. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the theory of travelling further for better results is universally acknowledged by patients, but that age, mobility and dependency often place restrictions on accessibility. Utilising local services for shorter hospital visits before and after revision surgery is an attractive option for patients hoping to benefit from surgical expertise.</p
Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry for older medical inpatients: The HOME Study RCT of its effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.
No full textBACKGROUND: Older medical inpatients have complex biopsychosocial problems, which often lead to prolonged hospital stays. Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry was designed to help ward teams manage biopsychosocial complexity and thereby reduce the time that older medical inpatients spend in hospital. OBJECTIVES: To assess the experience, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of enhancing medical care with Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry in The HOME Study. DESIGN AND SETTING: A parallel-group, multicentre, individually randomised controlled trial with process and economic evaluations in 24 medical wards of three National Health Service hospitals. PARTICIPANTS: Patients aged ≥ 65 years, admitted in an emergency and expected to remain in hospital for at least 2 days from the time of enrolment. INTERVENTIONS: Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry clinicians (consultation-liaison psychiatrists supported by assisting clinicians) made proactive biopsychosocial assessments of patients' problems, then delivered discharge-focused care as integrated members of ward teams. Usual care was provided by ward teams. PROCESS EVALUATION: Observations on training Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry clinicians and the care they provided; Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry clinicians' experiences of working in the new service model; patients' and ward staff members' experiences of Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. PRIMARY OUTCOME: Time spent as an inpatient (during the index admission and any emergency re-admissions) in the 30 days post randomisation. SECONDARY OUTCOMES: Rate of discharge for the total length of the index admission; discharge destination; length of the index admission post randomisation truncated at 30 days; number of emergency re-admissions, number of days in hospital and rate of death in the year post randomisation; the patient's experience of the hospital stay and view on its length; anxiety; depression; cognitive function; independent functioning; health-related quality of life; overall quality of life. ECONOMIC EVALUATION: Cost-effectiveness of Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry over 1, 3 and 12 months from a hospital perspective. RESULTS: Two thousand seven hundred and forty-four participants were enrolled (1399 male, 1345 female; mean age 82.3 years; 2565 White; 1373 Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, 1371 usual care). Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry was experienced positively by patients (43 interviews) and ward staff (54 interviews). The mean time spent in hospital in the 30 days post randomisation was 11.37 days (standard deviation 8.74) with Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and was 11.85 days (standard deviation 9.00) with usual care; adjusted mean difference -0.45 (95% confidence interval -1.11 to 0.21; p = 0.18). The only statistically and clinically significant difference in secondary outcomes was the rate of discharge, which was 8.5% higher [rate ratio 1.09 (95% confidence interval 1.00 to 1.17); p = 0.042] with Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry - a difference most apparent in patients who stayed for > 2 weeks. Compared with usual care, Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry was estimated to be modestly cost saving and cost-effective over 1 and 3, but not 12, months. MAIN LIMITATION: Uncertain generalisability to other populations, hospitals and healthcare systems. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first randomised controlled trial of Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry is experienced by older medical inpatients and ward staff as enhancing medical care. It is also likely to be cost saving in the short term. Although the trial does not provide strong evidence that Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry reduces time in hospital, it does support and inform its future development and evaluation. FUTURE RESEARCH: Effectiveness of different forms of Proactive Integrated Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry; predictors of long hospital stays; barriers to and facilitators of the implementation of biopsychosocial medical care. STUDY REGISTRATION: This study is registered as Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN86120296. FUNDING: This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme (NIHR award ref: 15/11/16) and is published in full in Health and Social Care Delivery Research; Vol. 13, No. 41. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information.</p
Offshore wind farms act as de facto marine reserves
No full textMarine biodiversity faces increasing threats, necessitating effective conservation strategies beyond just marine protected areas. As offshore wind farms (OWFs) expand to meet the demand for renewable energy, these could offer an additional benefit by restricting fishing, one of the greatest threats to marine ecosystems globally. However, this remains untested at scale. Here we assessed the impact of OWF construction on fishing effort across 34 European OWFs from 2016 to 2022. Our findings reveal a significant reduction in overall fishing effort up to 2.5 km beyond OWF borders. Seiners and trawlers are most restricted (up to 4.2 km and 3.7 km respectively), while fixed gear and dredge fisheries showed no significant reduction. These results highlight the de facto exclusionary effect of OWFs on fishing, extending well beyond their boundaries. This restrictive effect could be strategically leveraged to support marine conservation efforts, particularly in areas where conventional fisheries management has been insufficient.</p
From information free-riding to information sharing: how have humans solved the cooperative dilemma at the heart of cumulative cultural evolution?
No full textCumulative cultural evolution, where populations accumulate ever-improving knowledge, technologies and social customs, is arguably a unique feature of human sociality and responsible for our species’ ecological dominance of the planet. However, at the heart of cumulative cultural evolution is a cooperative dilemma. Assuming asocial learning is more costly than social learning, social learners can act as ‘information free-riders’ by copying innovations from asocial learners without paying the cost. This cost asymmetry will reduce innovation, inhibiting cumulative culture. Innovators might respond by protecting their knowledge and keeping the benefits to themselves—‘information hoarding’—but then others cannot build on their discoveries and again cumulative culture is inhibited. Here we formally model information free-riding and information hoarding within a cumulative cultural evolution framework using both analytical and agent-based models. Model 1 identifies the conditions under which information sharing can evolve in the face of information free-riding and hoarding. Models 2–4 then show how three mechanisms known to favour cooperation in non-informational contexts—kin selection, partner choice and cultural group selection—can also solve the informational cooperative dilemma and facilitate cumulative cultural evolution, each with distinct signatures potentially detectable in historical, ethnographic and other empirical data.</p