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Childhood and youth studies and the new Curriculum for Wales: Synergies and opportunities
Get PDFIn this paper we outline the academic field known as Childhood and Youth Studies (CYS), a multidisciplinary and international field that places children and young peoples’ lived experiences at the centre of debate, research and practice. CYS has emerged over the past 30-40 years as adistinct field of scholarship influenced by ideas from the fields of sociology, anthropology, geography and history. Our paper discusses the relevance of these key ideas to the work of teachers and school leaders, and in particular within the context of the new curriculum for Wales 2022 which, in a similar way to CYS, places the child at the heart of a holistic approach to education; this lends itself to a timely recognition of the potential synergies between education and CYS as allied and complimentary disciplines
Physical Activity Mobile App (CareFit) for Informal Carers of People With Dementia: Protocol for a Feasibility and Adaptation Study
Get PDFBACKGROUND: Physical activity is a critical component of both well-being and preventative health, reducing the risk of both chronic mental and physical conditions and early death. Yet, there are numerous groups in society who are not able to undertake as much physical activity as they would like to. This includes informal (unpaid) carers, with the United Kingdom national survey data suggesting that 81% would like to do more physical activity on a regular basis. There is a clear need to develop innovations, including digital interventions that hold implementation potential to support regular physical activity in groups such as carers.OBJECTIVE: This study aims to expand and personalize a cross-platform digital health app designed to support regular physical activity in carers of people with dementia for a period of 8 weeks and evaluate the potential for implementation.METHODS: The CareFit for dementia carers study was a mixed methods co-design, development, and evaluation of a novel motivational smartphone app to support home-based regular physical activity for unpaid dementia carers. The study was planned to take place across 16 months in total (September 1, 2022, to December 31, 2023). The first phase included iterative design sprints to redesign an initial prototype for widespread use, supported through a bespoke content management system. The second phase included the release of the "CareFit" app across Scotland through invitations on the Apple and Google stores where we aimed to recruit 50 carers and up to 20 professionals to support the delivery in total. Partnerships for the work included a range of stakeholders across charities, health and social care partnerships, physical activity groups, and carers' organizations. We explored the implementation of CareFit, guided by both Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM) and the Complex Intervention Frameworks.RESULTS: Project processes and outcomes were evaluated using mixed methods. The barriers and enablers for professional staff to signpost and use CareFit with clients were assessed through interviews or focus groups and round stakeholder meetings. The usability of CareFit was explored through qualitative interviews with carers and a system usability scale. We examined how CareFit could add value to carers by examining "in-app" data, pre-post questionnaire responses, and qualitative work, including interviews and focus groups. We also explored how CareFit could add value to the landscape of other online resources for dementia carers.CONCLUSIONS: Results from this study will contribute new knowledge including identifying (1) suitable pathways to identify and support carers through digital innovations; (2) future design of definitive studies in carer populations; and (3) an improved understanding of the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance across a range of key stakeholders.INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/53727.</p
Agronomic amendments drive a diversity of real and apparent priming responses within a grassland soil
Get PDFSoil carbon (C) sequestration is often viewed as a nature-based solution to help mitigate climate change. Key to realising this potential is a better understanding of which C inputs promote greater long-term C storage. The priming effect (PE) is the change in rates of microbial soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition caused by the addition of organic or mineral amendments to soil. The apparent PE (changes in CO2 from microbial biomass turnover) of substrates is often studied as a confounding factor, however, the real PE (decomposition of native SOM) is rarely measured due to uncertainties in C pool differentiation. Here, we used a 50-day mesocosm study to compare the effect of various common soil amendments (wood biochar and ash, protein, amino acids, glucose, cellulose, cattle farmyard manure (FYM), cattle slurry, inorganic N fertiliser, and different ratios of wheat straw:shoot mixes) on the real and apparent PEs of soil, using 5-year old quasi-stable 14C-labelled SOM and 14C-labelled active microbial biomass, respectively. Our results show that there are often significant differences in the real and apparent PE, for the same amendment, with variance in magnitude and, in some case, direction. We identified few consistent drivers of PE across the two assays, however, there was a negative relationship between the initial C:N ratio of the treatment and PEs, suggesting that while the nutrient stoichiometry of the C amendment is important, the usability and quality of the substrate for the microbial community are key to determining its priming response. Equally, context is important for interpretation, as treatments that elicit positive priming may still be replenishing or increasing soil C stocks
An organisational autoethnography of learning to manage academic workplace bullying through micro-resistance and activism
Get PDFThis article is about voice – I use my voice to speak out, and hopefully be heard. I am talking about workplace bullying and humiliation in Higher Education (HE), and particularly in a business school, that caused abject disengagement. I articulate my pitiful, painful story through autoethnography. In doing so, I contribute to both the writing differently movement and to the growing critique of HE. In attempting to deal with workplace bullying, I draw on theories of silence/exit/voice, complaint and disappointment as well as micro-resistance and subtle activism. My purpose is to give voice to bullying and humiliation so others (especially managers) might understand what it feels like, to learn how to deal with it individually (especially those being bullied and humiliated) and to learn how collectively we might act to address it, through micro-resistance and subtle activism
The potential for AI to revolutionize conservation: a horizon scan
Get PDFArtificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging tool that could be leveraged to identify the effective conservation solutions demanded by the urgent biodiversity crisis. We present the results of our horizon scan of AI applications likely to significantly benefit biological conservation. An international panel of conservation scientists and AI experts identified 21 key ideas. These included species recognition to uncover 'dark diversity', multimodal models to improve biodiversity loss predictions, monitoring wildlife trade, and addressing human–wildlife conflict. We consider the potential negative impacts of AI adoption, such as AI colonialism and loss of essential conservation skills, and suggest how the conservation field might adapt to harness the benefits of AI while mitigating its risks
Controlling stimulus ambiguity reduces spurious creative ideation variance in a cyclic adaptation of the alternative uses task
Get PDFIn the alternative uses task (AUT), a well-established creativity assessment, participants propose alternative uses for common items (e.g., a brick) within a 2–3 min timeframe. While idea evaluation is likely involved, the emphasis is strongly on idea generation. Here, we test the value of presenting a word overlapping an image compared to a word only prompt, and we introduce a cyclic adaptation of the AUT explicitly calling on participants to choose their best idea. In Experiment 1, as compared to word only, word + image prompts increased idea fluency but reduced idea originality and variability within a group of native Polish speakers. Thus, word + image prompts improve AUT baselining. In Experiment 2, different participants produced as many ideas as possible within two minutes (List) or their single best idea at the end of each of three 30 s ideation cycles (Cycle). Although originality did not differ between List and Cycle overall, the first three ideas in List were rated as less creative than the ideas in Cycle. Overall, we conclude that using disambiguating images reduces spurious interindividual variability in the AUT while introducing idea evaluation in the task allows us to assess creativity beyond idea generation
On the optimization of green multimodal transportation: A case study of the West German canal system
Get PDFIn this study, we address a biobjective multimodal routing problem that consists of selecting transportation modes and their respective quantities, optimizing transshipment locations, and allocating port orders. In the objective functions, we minimize total transportation costs and use the EcoTransit methodology to minimize total greenhouse gas emissions. The optimization model selects the transportation mode and transshipment port where quantities are transshipped from one mode to another. We compare inland waterway transportation and trucks encountering infrastructure failures that require rerouting or modal shifting in a real-life case study on the supply of goods for the chemical industry in the West German canal system. We propose a population-based heuristic to solve large instances in a reasonable computation time. A sensitivity analysis of demand, of varying lock times, and of infrastructure failure scenarios was conducted. We show that compared with inland waterway transportation, multimodal transportation reduces costs by 23% because of longer lock times. Our analysis shows that the use of inland waterway transportation only during infrastructure failures imposes nearly 28% higher costs per day depending on the failure location compared to that of the case of no failures. We also show that the use of a multimodal transportation system helps to reduce this cost increase in lock failure scenarios
A proposal for using benefit-risk methods to improve the prominence of adverse event results when reporting trials
Get PDFAdverse events suffer from poor reporting within randomised controlled trials, despite them being crucial to the evaluation of a treatment. A recent update to the CONSORT harms checklist aims to improve reporting by providing structure and consistency to the information presented. We propose an extension wherein harms would be reported in conjunction with effectiveness outcome(s) rather than in silo to provide a more complete picture of the evidence acquired within a trial. Benefit-risk methods are designed to simultaneously consider both benefits and risks, and therefore, we believe these methods could be implemented to improve the prominence of adverse events when reporting trials. The aim of this article is to use case studies to demonstrate the practical utility of benefit-risk methods to present adverse events results alongside effectiveness results. Two randomised controlled trials have been selected as case studies, the Option-DM trial and the SANAD II trial. Using a previous review, a shortlist of 17 benefit-risk methods which could potentially be used for reporting RCTs was created. From this shortlist, three benefit-risk methods are applied across the two case studies. We selected these methods for their usefulness to achieve the aim of this paper and which are commonly used in the literature. The methods selected were the Benefit-Risk Action Team (BRAT) Framework, net clinical benefit (NCB), and the Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) 3 × 3 table. Results using the benefit-risk method added further context and detail to the clinical summaries made from the trials. In the case of the SANAD II trial, the clinicians concluded that despite the primary outcome being improved by the treatment, the increase in adverse events negated the improvement and the treatment was therefore not recommended. The benefit-risk methods applied to this case study outlined the data that this decision was based on in a clear and transparent way. Using benefit-risk methods to report the results of trials can increase the prominence of adverse event results by presenting them alongside the primary efficacy/effectiveness outcomes. This ensures that all the factors which would be used to determine whether a treatment would be recommended are transparent to the reader