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Maternal relinquishment: reforms, rights, and other myths
No full textCertain perennial controversies within adoption law and practice cannot be ignored. In Ireland, for example, redress schemes enabling access to previously sealed birth or medical records have served to perpetuate discrimination and inequality, while reparations for abuses suffered in Mother and Baby Institutions have excluded certain categories of survivor (McGettrick). In respect of England, the UK Government still refuses to offer apology, in contrast to their Scottish and Welsh counterparts. Moreover, judicial acknowledgement of the intergenerational impacts of severing natal bonds in the present day can often be inconsistent. Recent case law at times harks back to an earlier era: parental consent to an adoption can be dispensed with quite quickly and relatively easily, and judicial bars can be placed on contact, to embed new family, adoptive “permanence.” The right to respect for family life (under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights) remains delicate and is easily infringed—and then justified—within this area of family law.<br/
Optimizing cathode contact layer thickness for enhanced efficiency and durability in solid oxide fuel cell stacks
No full textThe introduction of a contact layer between the cathode and the interconnect effectively reduces their interfacial resistance and improves overall solid oxide fuel cell performance. In this study, LaCo0.4Ni0.6O3 (LCN) was selected as the cathode contact material due to its excellent electrical conductivity, excellent chemical compatibility, and thermal expansion coefficient (TEC) well matched with adjacent cell components. A series of thicknesses of the LCN layer was systematically investigated to elucidate its impact on cell performance. Experimental results demonstrated a peak power output of 104.28 W at 750 °C with an optimal LCN thickness of 0.4 mm, accompanied by robust long-term stability. A 22-cell stack achieved a total power output of 1144.8 W at 750 °C, maintaining stable operation with an average efficiency decay of only 0.5 % over five thermal cycles. Excessive thickness hindered reactant gas diffusion, while inadequate thickness caused localized cathode overheating (“burning”), leading to premature cell failure. These findings underscore the necessity of optimizing LCN contact layer thickness to achieve a balance between electrical performance, gas transport efficiency, and thermal management in SOFC stacks
Late Holocene vegetation dynamics, hydrological change, and fire history on the Seward Peninsula, Arctic Alaska
No full textRecent climate change has significantly impacted Arctic ecosystems, with peatlands being particularly sensitive to shifts in hydrology. A widespread deepening of the water table due to permafrost thaw has driven substantial changes in vegetation composition, accelerated organic matter decomposition, increased carbon emissions, and increased fire activity. However, the complexity of local drivers means that detailed studies on potential peatland trajectories remain limited. To address this gap, we conducted high-resolution, multi-proxy palaeoecological analyses—including plant macrofossils, pollen, testate amoebae, macro- and microcharcoal, and peat stoichiometry—on two radiocarbon-dated peat sequences from Seward Peninsula, Arctic Alaska. Our findings indicate that a deeper water table in recent decades has altered dominant peat-forming species, promoting shrub expansion and a shift from sedge dominance to Sphagnum , brown mosses, and lichens. This water table drop, likely driven by permafrost thaw, has restricted further peat accumulation and led to organic layer degradation. We also document a strong link between increased fire activity following the Little Ice Age—particularly in the second half of 20th century—and periods of deep water tables. Overall, our multi-proxy approach demonstrates that peatlands in this Alaskan region have diverged from the predominantly wet conditions that prevailed before 1850 CE. These hydrological shifts have not only altered plant composition and peat formation but also diminished the ecosystem's carbon storage capacity.</p
Otters appear to have declined throughout Ireland amid increased pressures on water quality but remain ubiquitous
No full textGovernments must report on the conservation status of designated species. We assessed changes in the Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) population throughout Ireland (the whole island) from the 1980s to the 2020s using four National Otter Surveys (n=6,060 sites surveyed) and citizen science data (n=10,980 species records). In 2023-24, otters were recorded at 65% [95% CI 62-68%] of sites in the Republic of Ireland (ROI) and 66% [58-74%] in Northern Ireland (NI). Rivers, lakes and coasts were included. Long-term trends in the population estimate indicated a decline of -24% to -27% (or -3% to -18% after correction for negative methodological biases). Short-term trends suggested -7% to +2% in ROI and -26% to -27% in NI. Otters have been recorded in 95% of hectads (10km squares), with no range reduction over time and remain widespread. They prefer large, fast-flowing rivers with rocky substrates, unmaintained banks, and riparian woodlands (trees and shrubs), positively associated with angling (likely due to salmonid prey availability) but negatively associated with peatlands. Eleven pressures were identified, notably site disturbance including agricultural pollution, siltation and water abstraction, which have increased over time. No single pressure threatens otters nationally, but cumulative effects on water quality and ecosystems likely contributed to the decline. Future research should account for potential methodological negative biases disaggregating detection from occupancy probability to more accurately capture the magnitude of any change while future surveys should adopt techniques less vulnerable to biases e.g. environmental DNA detection in water samples
Emerging trends in polysaccharide-based smart PEGylated hydrogels for biomedical applications
No full textPolysaccharide-based PEGylated hydrogels have emerged as multifunctional biomaterials that combine the favourable properties of polyethylene glycol (PEG), such as hydrophilicity, stability, and structural tunability with the biodegradability and biocompatibility of natural polysaccharides. This review presents recent progress in the synthesis and design of hybrid PEG–polysaccharide hydrogels, emphasizing structural modifications and crosslinking strategies involving biopolymers such as hyaluronic acid, alginate, chitosan, agarose, and carrageenan. These systems exhibit adjustable physicochemical properties and responsiveness to various stimuli, including temperature, light, pH, reactive oxygen species, glucose, and enzymatic activities. Such dynamic features enable precise control over drug and growth factor release and facilitate cell adhesion, proliferation, and tissue regeneration. The review also discusses the biomedical applications of these hydrogels in cancer therapy, wound healing, and tissue engineering. Furthermore, it highlights critical translational challenges related to biosafety, immunogenicity, large-scale production, and regulatory pathways, which still hinder clinical implementation. By integrating material design insights with translational perspectives, this work provides an updated overview of opportunities and limitations in advancing PEGylated polysaccharide hydrogels toward safe and effective biomedical use. Continued research on their stability, reproducibility, and functional performance is essential to unlock their full clinical potential.<br/
Committee-structured games in a cooperative framework
No full textWe introduce the notion of committee-structured games (CSG) in a cooperative framework to analyze situations where committees affect players in generating their coalitional values. We represent the sets of committees by hypergraphs and obtain values as a function of both coalitions and hypergraphs. Based on how committee structures affect value generation, we present two models within the CSG framework. In the first model, the total value is generated by the committee set as a whole, while in the second model, it is obtained by aggregating contributions from all subsets of the set of committees. Accordingly, we define the Shapley value for the first model and the Aggregated Shapley value for the second, providing axiomatic characterizations for both. Further, we propose bidding mechanisms to show that the Shapley value and the Aggregated Shapley value for the class of CSG is a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE) of the induced strategic game. Finally, we study an alternative Exchange Economy model by incorporating committees instead of commodities
Investigation of image-guided in vivo irradiation on voiding patterns and bladder contractility in female mice
No full textRadiotherapy for pelvic malignancies impacts the bladder causing urinary symptoms in many patients. Preclinical models using image-guided irradiation enable investigation of the physiology underlying radiation-response in the bladder. We aimed to characterise voiding patterns and bladder contractility following image-guided irradiation of the mouse bladder. Bladders of adult, female mice were irradiated (IRR) with a single fraction (20 Gy) under cone beam computed tomography. Pre- and post-IRR, void spot assays of urination patterns were performed. Contractility of bladder strips was quantified with myography. At 2-weeks, 1-month and 2-months post-IRR, around 50% of mice exhibited increased void locations. At 2-weeks, 50% had increased void spot counts; moreover, the majority exhibited smaller mean and smaller maximum void spot volumes. In bladder strips, neurogenic-contractions were smaller at 2-weeks, independent of their voiding patterns. Some recovery of contraction-amplitude was noted up to 8-months. At 2-weeks, depolarization-contractions and carbachol-contractions were similar in non-IRR and IRR strips; however, ATP-contractions were smaller. Neurogenic-contractions, carbachol-contractions and ATP-contractions had similar sensitivity to the SK channel blocker, apamin. Neurogenic contractions had similar sensitivity to paxilline (BK) and TEA (pan-K+) in non-IRR and IRR tissue. Targeted bladder irradiation resulted in altered urination patterns in the acute post-IRR phase, coincident with reduced neurogenic-contractions which might limit voiding. The ability of the bladder to contract per se and the contribution of K+-channels to contractility was minimally impacted by irradiation. Whilst the underlying mechanisms of the observations require further investigation, the study demonstrates the application of image-guided irradiation for quantifying radiation-induced changes in mouse bladder.<br/
Techniques and metrics for evasion attack mitigation
No full textEvasion attacks pose a substantial risk to the application of Machine Learning (ML) in Cybersecurity, potentially leading to safety hazards or security breaches in large-scale deployments. Adversaries can employ evasion attacks as an initial tactic to deceive malware or network scanners using ML, thereby orchestrating traditional cyber attacks to disrupt systems availability or compromise integrity. Adversarial data designed to fool AI systems for cybersecurity can be engineered by strategically selecting, modifying, or creating test instances. This paper presents novel defender-centric techniques and metrics for mitigating evasion attacks by leveraging adversarial knowledge, exploring potential exploitation methods, and enhancing alarm detection capabilities. We first introduce two new evasion resistance metrics: adversarial failure rate (afr) and adversarial failure curves (afc). These metrics generalize previous approaches, as they can be applied to threshold classifiers, facilitating analyses for adversarial attacks comparable to those performed with Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve. Subsequently, we propose two novel evasion resistance techniques (trainset size pinning and model matrix), extending research in keyed intrusion detection and randomization. We explore the application of proposed techniques and metrics to an intrusion detection system as a pilot study using two public datasets, ‘BETH 2021’ and ‘Kyoto 2015’, which are well-established cybersecurity datasets for uncertainty and robustness benchmarking. The experimental results demonstrate that the combination of the proposed randomization techniques consistently produces remarkable improvement over other known randomization techniques.<br/
The gut microbiome mediates the association between a flavonoid-rich diet and MASLD in a population-level analysis
No full textPurposeA growing body of evidence suggests diets rich in flavonoids may protect against metabolic-dysfunction associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) development and progression. As the gut microbiome is important in the biotransformation of flavonoids to their constituent bioactive metabolites, studies on the potential mediating role of the gut microbiome in the association between dietary flavonoid intakes and MASLD are warranted but lacking. Thus, this study aims to examine the associations between a diet rich in flavonoids and MASLD, and assess the potential mediating role of the gut microbiome.MethodsIn a cross-sectional analysis (n = 531), using the FlavoDiet score (FDS), we assessed the association between a flavonoid-rich diet and MASLD (ascertained by magnetic resonance imaging) using multivariable logistic and linear regression. Additionally, we used mediation analysis to identify and assess potential 16S-derived gut microbiome mediators.ResultsEach doubling of the FDS was associated with a 27% lower odds of MASLD (OR: 0.73 [95% CI 0.54–0.98], p = 0.04) after multivariable adjustment. 9.2% of this association was mediated by a greater abundance of the genus Eisenbergiella (indirect effect ß = − 0.006 [95% CI − 0.019, to − 0.000], p = 0.04).ConclusionThese findings suggest that a flavonoid-rich diet is associated with better liver health, and that the abundance of the Eisenbergiella taxa may in part explain the association between a flavonoid-rich diet and MASLD.<br/
Beyond conventional routes: an approach to understanding leptospirosis transmission dynamics through mathematical modeling with real data from Thailand
No full textLeptospirosis is a zoonotic disease caused by Leptospira bacteria, that occurs mainly in tropical regions such as Thailand. This study presents a mathematical model that captures the dynamics of Leptospira transmission. The model incorporates direct and environmental transmission pathways and notably includes an exposed human compartment, an often-neglected element in existing leptospirosis models. We combined several control interventions, including environmental management, reservoir control, and human treatment to explore strategies for mitigating disease spread. The equilibrium points of the system are identified, and their stability properties are analyzed. Using real data from Thailand, we estimate key parameters and perform a global sensitivity analysis to identify the dominant factors driving leptospirosis transmission. Finally, we evaluate optimal control theory and conduct a comparative cost-effectiveness analysis of the proposed interventions. Our findings suggest that environmental management is the most effective and potentially cost-effective strategy to reduce leptospirosis transmission