9095 research outputs found
Sort by
Inaugural Editorial: The role of finance, accounting and governance in sustainability and sustainable development
Get PDFWireless Sensing for Volatile Organic Compound and Tool Condition Monitoring in Diamond Turning
No full text
Exploring the interplay between equity groups, mental health and perceived employability amongst students at a public Australian university
Get PDFThis article explores the interplay between perceived employability (PE), mental health, and equity group membership amongst students at a large public urban university in Australia. The article reports from a study conducted between 2017 and 2022, during which students self-assessed their PE. Differences in PE by equity group membership were assessed using responses to structured fields in the questionnaire (n = 24,329). Custom measures were constructed using student responses to open-ended fields to proxy student wellbeing based on sentiment analysis and mention of mental health or synonymous terms (n = 12,819). Analyses included two-way tests of differences between groups and multivariate analyses considering the effect of equity group membership and mental health concerns on employability beliefs. Results indicate that students with a disability, with English as a second language, or with wellbeing concerns report lower perceived employability. Of all the PE dimensions, academic self-efficacy is most consistently affected by equity group membership and wellbeing concerns. Further, wellbeing concerns are more prevalent for students with disabilities. The findings strengthen support for policy and institutional initiatives focusing on student wellbeing in general but also specifically for equity groups that are already associated with poorer employability beliefs. In particular, students with disabilities appear to have poorer self-esteem and academic self-efficacy and are more likely to have mental health concerns
Slurry acidification is as effective as slurry injection at reducing ammonia emissions without increasing N2O emissions: A short-term mesocosm study
Get PDFAgriculture currently accounts for 90% of UK ammonia (NH3) emissions, however, national legally-binding targets are seeking to reduce this by 16% by 2030, relative to 2005 levels. One area which has been targeted to help achieve this target is the lowering of NH3 emissions during livestock manure handling and storage. Slurry acidification represents one potential strategy to abate NH3 throughout the slurry management chain, however, is not currently used in the UK. To address this knowledge gap, two mesocosm-scale experiments were set up to assess the potential for slurry acidification to reduce NH3 emissions at application and to measure impacts on NH3 emissions and short-term changes to soil mineral dynamics and N2O emissions. Experiment 1 determined the impacts of acidified cattle slurry (pH 6.5, 5.5, and 4.8) to conventional (non-acidified) slurry when simulating surface broadcasting. Experiment 2 assessed the impact of conventional and acidified slurry (pH 5.5) using simulated surface broadcasting and shallow injection of cattle slurry. Our results showed that acidification significantly abated NH3 (% of NH4-N applied) from 61.6% for conventional slurry to 26.6% at pH 5.5, and 2.5% at pH 4.8. Acidified surface broadcast was as effective at abating NH3 emissions to injected conventional slurry, and also delayed nitrification, while not significantly altering N2O emissions from conventional slurry. Our results strongly suggest that slurry acidification could be a viable strategy to help the UK reach its NH3 reduction target and exceed the current abatement potential through combining low emissions spreading techniques with acidification
Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) of James Latham Accoya® Cladding Finish Line
Get PDFThis Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) examines the environmental impact of Lathams Sansin-coated Accoya cladding, assessing the cradle-to-gate lifecycle stages, including material sourcing, transportation, manufacturing, coating application, and packaging. Conducted in compliance with EN 15804: 2012 + A2: 2019 and PCR 2019:14 v1.3.3, the study provides a comprehensive analysis of resource consumption, waste generation, and energy use, enabling informed decision-making for sustainable construction practices.The results indicate that per 1m² of Sansin-coated cladding, 21.00 kg of CO₂e emissions are produced, decreasing to 7.38 kg CO₂e when biogenic carbon uptake is considered. As with the uncoated version, the Accoya wood remains the dominant environmental hotspot, with additional but relatively minor impacts from the Sansin coating process, transportation, and energy consumption. While the application of the Sansin sealer adds an extra step to the manufacturing process, its contribution to overall environmental impact remains small compared to the raw material itself. The study underscores that the most effective strategy for reducing the product’s carbon footprint is minimising wood waste during production. These findings offer key insights for environmentally conscious consumers and industry professionals looking to balance durability with sustainability in cladding materials
The Reality of the Situation: A Survey of Situated Analytics
Get PDFThe advent of low-cost, accessible, and high-performance augmented reality (AR) has shed light on a situated form of analytics where in-situ visualizations embedded in the real world can facilitate sensemaking based on the user’s physical location. In this work, we identify prior literature in this emerging field with a focus on situated analytics. After collecting 47 relevant situated analytics systems, we classify them using a taxonomy of three dimensions: situating triggers, view situatedness, and data depiction. We then identify four archetypical patterns in our classification using an ensemble cluster analysis. We also assess the level which these systems support the sensemaking process. Finally, we discuss insights and design guidelines that we learned from our analysis
Temporal and spectral electrooculographic features in a discrete precision task
Get PDFThis study aimed to evaluate the utility and applicability of electrooculography (EOG) when studying ocular activity during complex motor behavior. Due to its lower spatial resolution relative to eye tracking (ET), it is unclear whether EOG can provide valid and accurate temporal measurements such as the duration of the Quiet Eye (QE), that is the uninterrupted dwell time on the visual target prior to and during action. However, because of its greater temporal resolution, EOG is better suited for temporal-spectral decomposition, a technique that allows us to distinguish between lower and higher frequency activity as a function of time. Sixteen golfers of varying expertise (novices to experts) putted 60 balls to a 4-m distant target on a flat surface while we recorded EOG, ET, performance accuracy, and putter kinematics. Correlational and discrepancy analyses confirmed that EOG yielded valid and accurate QE measurements, but only when using certain processing parameters. Nested cross-validation indicated that, among a set of ET and EOG temporal and spectral oculomotor features, EOG power was the most useful when predicting performance accuracy through robust regression. Follow-up cross-validation and correlational analyses revealed that more accurate performance was preceded by diminished lower-frequency activity immediately before movement initiation and elevated higher-frequency activity during movement recorded from the horizontal channel. This higher-frequency activity was also found to accompany a smoother movement execution. This study validates EOG algorithms (code provided) for measuring temporal parameters and presents a novel approach to extracting temporal and spectral oculomotor features during complex motor behavior
The ENTWINE iCohort Study, a multinational longitudinal web-based study of informal care
Get PDFInformal care is a key pillar of long-term care provision across Europe and will likely play an even greater role in the future. Thus, research that enhances our understanding of caregiving experiences becomes increasingly relevant. The ENTWINE iCohort Study examines the personal, psychological, social, economic, and geographic factors that shape caregiving experiences. Here, we present the baseline cohort of the study and describe its design, recruitment methods, data collection procedures, measures, and early baseline findings. The study was conducted in nine countries: Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The study comprised a web- based longitudinal survey (baseline + 6-month follow-up) and optional weekly diary assessments, conducted separately with caregivers and care recipients. From 14 August 2020 to 31 August 2021, 1872 caregivers and 402 care recipients were enrolled at baseline. Participants were recruited via Facebook, and to a lesser extent via the study website or caregiver/patient organisations. Caregiver participants were predominantly female (87%) and primary caregivers (82%), with a median age of 55 years. A large proportion (80%) held at least post-secondary education, and two-thirds were married/partnered. Over half of the caregivers were employed (53%) and caring for a person with multiple chronic conditions (56%), and nearly three-quarters were caring for either a parent (42%) or a spouse/partner (32%). About three-quarters of care recipient participants were female (77%), not employed (74%), and had at least post-secondary education (77%), with a median age of 55 years. Over half of the care recipients were married/partnered (59%), receiving care primarily from their spouses/partners (61%), and diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions (57%). This study examining numerous potential influences on caregiving experiences provides an opportunity to better understand the multidimensional nature of these experiences. Such data could have implications for developing caregiving services and policies, and for future informal care research.<br/
Converging evidence that left extrastriate body area supports visual sensitivity to social interactions
Get PDFNavigating our complex social world requires processing the interactions we observe. Recent psychophysical and neuroimaging studies provide parallel evidence that the human visual system may be attuned to efficiently perceive dyadic interactions. This work implies, but has not yet demonstrated, that activity in body-selective cortical regions causally supports efficient visual perception of interactions. We adopt a multi-method approach to close this important gap. First, using a large fMRI dataset (N=92), we found that the left-hemisphere Extrastriate Body Area (EBA) responds more to face-to-face than non-facing dyads. Second, we replicated a behavioural marker of visual sensitivity to interactions: categorisation of facing dyads is more impaired by inversion than non-facing dyads. Third, in a pre-registered experiment, we used fMRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation to show that online stimulation of the left EBA, but not a nearby control region, abolishes this selective inversion effect. Activity in left EBA, thus, causally supports the efficient perception of social interactions