Open Research Exeter - University of Exeter
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A Study of the Transformation of English Education of the Visually Impaired and Blind at the End of the Last Millennium from Two Perspectives
No full textThis presentation discusses a study of English education of the blind at the end of the last millennium, during the introduction of the 1999 Education (Special Educational Needs) Regulation using the epistemological model of blindness as its instrument of analysis. The study examined the regulation of education of the blind in England from two perspectives: the first perspective is the role of government in supporting education for the blind; the second perspective is the schools working with and supporting children who were visually impaired and blind in this era. The data presented includes an interview with civil servants in the UK Government’s newly named Department of Education and Skills, an interview with a special educational needs co-ordinator in a mainstream school with a Visual Impairment Unit integrated into the school, and an interview with the principal of a traditional school for the blind
Empowering women’s entrepreneurship: an evidence synthesis of policy and practice in developing countries
No full textEvaluations of microfinance and business training programmes that intend to stimulate women’s entrepreneurship, empowerment, and poverty alleviation report a mixed impact, yet theoretical explanations for this conundrum are missing from existing literature. To better understand the various impacts of these specific types of policy intervention, this paper uses a realist synthesis of evaluation evidence to analyse how these programmes work. Guided by an entrepreneurial capital framework, our results highlight that initial programme capital alone (either financial or human) is rarely enough to generate sustained positive impact. Rather, we found that programmes with specific features which facilitate the conversion of economic, human, social, and symbolic capital are key to local economic and social empowerment. Our results highlight five mechanisms which facilitate capital conversion (self-development, collective agency, structuring, resource exchange, psychological membership) and two barriers which restrict it (power relations, resource dispersion). Overall, we contribute to a deeper understanding of women’s empowerment through the design and delivery of women’s enterprise policy programmes
Wishful thinking in response to events: Evidence from the 2021 German federal election
No full textWhen making uncertain judgments about the political future, people consistently see desired outcomes as more likely. But when major events reduce uncertainty about what is possible in the future, how do people's expectations respond? In a panel study conducted during the 2021 German federal election, we find that citizens' predictions of likely coalitions converge after the election takes place, but even after this convergence those expectations remain marked by significant partisan gaps. The election result substantially reduces uncertainty about coalition formation—decreasing, but far from eliminating, differences in expectations between groups with different preferences. Our findings provide a clear case of static wishful thinking (contemporaneous association between preferences and expectations) without dynamic wishful thinking (divergence over time in expectations in line with preferences), suggesting that citizens' expectations of the future, regardless of their prior commitments, respond accordingly to events, but wishful thinking persists even in contexts of dramatically reduced uncertainty
"A Perfect Paradise for Indians, Alligators, Serpents, Frogs": Reptiles and Florida in the Era of the Seminole Wars
No full textThis article explores the cultural and environmental significance of reptiles – in particular, crocodilians and snakes – within U.S. accounts of Florida during the first half of the nineteenth century, with a specific case study of the Second Seminole War of the 1830s and 1840s. Interpreting Florida as a human-reptile contact zone has value both for our understanding of the territory’s U.S. borderland history and for the field of animal history, in which reptiles have remained often at the fringes. I argue that herpetofauna (reptiles and amphibians) shaped in myriad ways the experiences and imaginations of white soldiers and travelers in “frontier” Florida. Race and species at times blurred in fearful Euro-American conceptions of Florida as an inhospitable, water-logged territory – understood as in (disputed) possession of Native Americans, but also the alligators and snakes that seemed to “abound” in its rivers, woods, and everglades, and thus became actors in this historical
“more-than-human” frontier
Explainable AI-Driven Quantum Deep Neural Network for Fault Location in DC Microgrids
No full textFault location in DC microgrids (DCMGs) is a critical challenge due to the system’s inherent complexities and the demand for high reliability in modern power systems. This study proposes an explainable artificial intelligence (XAI)-based quantum deep neural network (QDNN) framework to address fault localization challenges in DCMGs. First, voltage signals from the DCMG are collected and analyzed using high-order synchrosqueezing transform to detect traveling waves (TWs) and extract critical fault parameters such as time of arrival, magnitude, and polarity of the first and second TWs. These features are fed into the proposed QDNN model that integrates advanced learning techniques for accurate fault localization. The cumulative distance from the fault point to the bus connecting the DCMG to the power network is considered the output vector. The model uses a combination of deep learning and quantum computing techniques to extract features and improve accuracy. To ensure transparency, an XAI technique called Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) is applied, enabling system operators to identify critical fault features. The SHAP-based explainability framework plays a critical role in translating the model’s predictions into actionable insights, ensuring that the proposed solution is not only accurate but also practically implementable in real-world scenarios. The results demonstrate the QDNN framework’s superior accuracy in fault localization even in noisy environments and with high-resistance faults, independent of voltage levels and DCMG configurations, making it a robust solution for modern power systems
Synthetic Privacy-Preserving Trajectories with Semantic-aware Dummies for Location-Based Services
No full textTrajectory synthesis with a series of fake locations has been deemed as a promising obfuscation technology to preserve the individual privacy of users in Location-Based Services (LBSs). However, a number of previous approaches fail to take into consideration the geographic distance and motion direction of the real locations to synthesize trajectories. As a result, most of them always cannot represent the statistical characteristics of real trajectories in a privacy-preserving manner, and thus suffer from various attacks through data analysis. To tackle this issue, this paper presents SPSD, a novel privacy-preserving trajectory synthesis approach with a k-anonymous guarantee, through extracting the semantic, geographic and directional similarity of locations from the real trajectories to create plausible trajectories. SPSD first classifies all historical trajectory data into a series of sets for location identity, by introducing the visiting time and visiting duration, which can clearly represent the semantic information of locations. Then, 4k locations and 2k of 4k ones have been selected from each set to act as the initial disguises of each corresponding real location, with quantitative semantic and geographic similarities, respectively. In order to find enough fake locations for each real location in less time, the candidate locations have been narrowed down to k in direction recovery through step-by-step screening, with the k-anonymous property. Experiment results built on the real-world trajectory datasets indicate that SPSD has outperformed the previous approaches in terms of semantic similarity, directional accuracy and security resistance to synthesize privacy-preserving trajectories at the tolerable time cost
Visionaries and Crackpots, Maniacs and Saints: Existential Risk and the Politics of Longtermism
No full textDespite advancing strong claims about our collective priorities, longtermism has received little attention in debates in political philosophy. I first provide an account of longtermism that highlights the way it departs from established work on intergenerational justice. The view offers a novel account of the value of the future and is concerned about existential risks that might curtail that value. I then argue that longtermism's focus on existential risk is implausible, leading proponents to adopt unattractive political positions. In particular, I show that Toby Ord’ “grand strategy” for humanity is antidemocratic and elitist, and that William MacAskill's “political experimentalism” implies a crude libertarianism. Longtermists are uninterested in political thought and often seem unaware of the strength of the positions they adopt, or indeed of how those positions depart from those of fellow advocates
The effects of climate on bat morphology across space and time
No full textAccording to Bergmann's and Allen's rules, climate change may drive morphological shifts in species, affecting body size and appendage length. These rules predict that species in colder climates tend to be larger and have shorter appendages to improve thermoregulation. Bats are thought to be sensitive to climate and are therefore expected to respond to climatic changes across space and time. We conducted a phylogenetic meta-analysis on > 27 000 forearm length (FAL) and body mass (BM) measurements from 20 sedentary European bat species to examine body size patterns. We assessed the relationships between body size and environmental variables (winter and summer temperatures, and summer precipitation) across geographic locations, and also analysed temporal trends in body size. We found sex-specific morphological shifts in the body size of European bats in response to temperature and precipitation patterns across space, but no clear temporal changes due to high interspecific variability. Across Europe, male FAL decreased with increasing summer and winter temperatures, and BM increased with greater precipitation. In contrast, both FAL and BM of female bats increased with summer precipitation and decreased with winter temperatures. Our data can confirm Bergmann's rule for both males and females, while females' BM variations are also related to summer precipitation, suggesting a potential link to resource availability. Allen's rule is confirmed only in males in relation to summer temperature, while in females FAL and BM decrease proportionally with increasing temperature, maintaining a constant allometric relationship incompatible with Allen's rule. This study provides new insights into sex and species-dependent morphological changes in bat body size in response to temperature and precipitation patterns. It highlights how body size variation reflects adaptations to temperature and precipitation patterns, thus providing insights into potential species-level morphological responses to climate change across Europe
Neuroscience, biopolitics and new professional subjectivities in education
No full textWhile neuroscience increasingly influences education globally, little attention has been paid to neuroeducation’s capacity to reshape teacher professionalisation and subjectivities, particularly in the Global South. To address this gap, we conducted fieldwork in Chile using three main methods: semi-structured interviews, archival documentation and a novel mapping of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and master’s programmes in neuroscience and education for teachers. This mapping focused on the justifications, aims and expertise behind these programmes, as well as their discursive activity across different spaces. Building on biopolitics and further developing the notion of pedagogies of brain awareness, our analysis demonstrates neuroscience’s growing ascendancy in teacher professionalisation and the emergence of a new professional subjectivity. Pedagogies of brain awareness highlight the conditions, discursive logics, practices and subjective orientations that have been constructed around the brain and its affordances. We argue that the new subjectivities manifested by pedagogies of brain awareness are enabled by performativity-driven marketisation and privatisation in education, a pathologising style of problematisation, responsibilisation and epistemic inequalities that overlook socio-historical epistemologies. These dynamics ultimately curtail teachers’ critical subjectivation capable of interrogating neuro-discourses within a broader constellation of power and pedagogical knowledges, and undermine the project of transdisciplinary collaboration
Oceanographic and Biotic Changes in Australia During Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Events
No full textThis thesis investigates two key periods of ocean deoxygenation during the mid-Cretaceous: Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE 2, ~94 Ma) and the Mid-Cenomanian Event (MCE, ~96.5 Ma). These events are associated with high global temperatures, elevated CO2, and increased primary productivity, which is recorded in marine sediments as positive δ13C excursions. However, high-latitude Southern Hemisphere records of these events remain scarce, and bulk isotopic analyses often obscure regional differences, complicating global correlations. Moreover, the volcanic sources triggering these events, including potential contributions from various Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs), remain debated.
This project addresses these gaps by studying sediment cores from the Mentelle Basin (SW Australia), a key high (palaeo-)latitude Southern Hemisphere site (~62°S in the mid-Cretaceous). Utilising carbon isotopes from bulk carbonate, organic carbon, and benthic foraminifera species, alongside biostratigraphy and a range of other geochemical proxies, both OAE 2 and the MCE were successfully identified. This work presents the first Southern Hemisphere record of the MCE, confirming its global significance. Species-specific carbon isotope data also allowed for detailed correlations of OAE 2 stages with other global records.
Benthic foraminiferal data indicate sustained marine productivity during and beyond the peak of OAE 2, corroborated by proxies for enhanced nutrient runoff and upwelling. Elevated mercury (Hg/TOC) levels, alongside an increasingly radiogenic signal from young source material indicated by Nd and Sr isotopes, suggest significant volcanic activity from the nearby Kerguelen LIP, particularly before and during OAE 2. These findings suggest that submarine volcanic eruptions from the Kerguelen LIP likely played a key role in triggering environmental changes, including productivity-driven ocean deoxygenation caused by an intensified hydrological cycle delivering enhanced nutrient input to the Mentelle Basin.
This thesis provides new insights into the role of Southern Hemisphere volcanism in driving Cretaceous anoxic events, offering a valuable contribution to the global understanding of mid-Cretaceous environmental change