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Reimagining Difficult Heritage Using the Power of Horror Storytelling: Introducing the DREAD Model (1711 Irish Witch Trial Video Game Case Study)
Get PDFFor over a century, the horror genre has served as a powerful medium for exploring societal anxieties, including issues of power, repression, identity, memory, and the forces that threaten people in society. Despite its rich potential, the narrative, aesthetic, and technical mechanics of contemporary horror media remain largely untapped by heritage practitioners aiming to reach new audiences through experiential engagements with difficult history. This article examines how the storytelling frameworks and mechanics of contemporary horror media can be thoughtfully applied to the dissemination of difficult heritage, fostering empathy, creative reflection, ethical inquiry, and experiential learning. Amid a growing emphasis on immersive storytelling in the heritage sector, this study addresses a gap in academic literature concerning innovative interpretative strategies for presenting challenging historical narratives. The central case study, 1711 Ireland: A Witch’s Fate (2025), is a serious video game developed through the 1711 Islandmagee Witches Creative and Digital Project, exemplifying a practice-as-research methodology. This approach highlights how knowledge is generated through the act of creative production, underscoring the potential of dark popular media to reimagine difficult heritage interpretation. The findings reveal that “horror content,” “horror presentation,” and “the fantastic” can recontextualize difficult heritage in ways that resonate with contemporary audiences. This is important considering that dark, entertaining cinematic recreations now occupy a central position in transmitting difficult history to younger generations. By proposing a conceptual framework and DREAD model (Difficult Heritage Reimagined: Engagement, Aesthetics, and Dark Storytelling) to guide the creative adaptation of difficult heritage through the prism of horror, this article offers a timely and unique contribution to academia and industry. It provides practical insights for professionals seeking to leverage contemporary horror media’s emotional and imaginative power to engage audiences with difficult historical narratives. This research emphasizes the strategic importance of innovation in difficult heritage dissemination, demonstrating how dark popular media can enhance audience engagement and broaden the scope of heritage interpretation practices
Glaucoma identification with retinal fundus images using deep learning: Systematic review
Get PDFGlaucoma is a leading cause of blindness, affecting millions of people worldwide. It is a chronic eye condition that damages the optic nerve and, if left untreated, can lead to vision loss and a decreased quality of life. Therefore, there is a need to explore practical and reliable mechanisms for glaucoma identification. This study systematically reviews deep-learning approaches for glaucoma identification using retinal fundus images from 2018 to 2024. Compared to existing survey studies, we cover the latest research, including several public retinal fundus image datasets, and focus on segmentation, classification based on convolutional neural networks and vision transformers, and explainability. The findings of this study, including comparisons of existing methods and key insights, will assist researchers and developers in identifying the most suitable techniques for glaucoma detection
Exploring agricultural innovation: an empirical investigation of factors influencing the adoption and non-adoption of smart fertilizer technology among farmers in developing countries
Get PDFThis study examines the adoption and non-adoption of smart fertilizer technology among farmers in developing countries, addressing the critical challenges of food security, resource efficiency, and sustainability. Guided by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT), the research highlights the role of cost-effectiveness, return on investment, and cultural factors in adoption decisions. Using a cross-sectional quantitative survey, data were collected from 353 farmers in Pakistan’s key granary regions through convenience sampling. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analyzed the relationships among key variables, validating the measurement and structural models. The findings reveal that economic constraints, inadequate technical support, and entrenched traditional practices hinder adoption, while education, training, and collaborative efforts among governments, NGOs, and private sectors enhance accessibility and acceptance. The study’s novelty lies in integrating socio-economic, cultural, and psychological dimensions to provide a holistic understanding of adoption behaviors. By leveraging UTAUT and EVT, the research contributes to theory and practice, emphasizing the importance of tailored education programs, cost-reduction policies, and sustained technical support to promote smart fertilizer adoption. Policymakers and stakeholders are encouraged to design context-specific interventions to address barriers and foster sustainable agricultural innovations
Arterial Stiffness and Wave Reflection Responses Following Heavy and Moderate Load Resistance Training Protocols
Get PDFThis study compared the acute effects of resistance training (RT) between a moderate (ML) and a high loading (HL) intensity (12RM vs. 4RM, respectively), with the same intensity of effort on arterial stiffness and wave reflection in young healthy adults. Eleven healthy adults (age 36.4 ± 6.8 years) performed two RT protocols, ML and HL, in a randomized order. Both RT sessions consisted of three sets of deadlifts and three sets of bench presses, with 2 min rest between sets and exercises. Loading intensity was 12RM and 4RM for the ML and HL conditions, respectively. Measurements of pulse wave velocity (PWV) and pulse wave analysis (PWA; e.g., augmentation index) were collected at baseline, immediately post, and 15 min post-training. ML elicited significantly greater increases in carotid-femoral PWV (from 6.4 ± 0.3 to 7.3 ± 0.5), and augmentation index normalized to 75 bpm (from −5.1 ± 1.1) than HL (all p < 0.05). These findings demonstrate that an acute bout of RT performed to volitional failure using lower loads and higher repetitions impose a greater workload on the arterial and cardiovascular system in comparison to a RT scheme with heavier loads and lower repetitions.</p
Investigating machine learning-based detection of depression and anxiety in young people using voice biomarkers
Get PDFResilience narratives and their impact on the future and peacebuilding perceptions of young Syrian refugee recipients of education in emergencies social-emotional learning interventions
No full textBehaviour-Based Trust Assessment for the Internet of Things Systems Using Multi-Classifier Ensemble Learning and Dempster-Shafer Fusion
Get PDFWith the rapid proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), robust trust management has become imperative to ensure security in these IoT systems. Prior machine learning approaches to IoT trust management have exhibited suboptimal performance, failing to capture the dynamic behaviour and complex discriminative features of IoT devices. To address these challenges, we design an evocative trust management scheme for user’s authentication based on Dempster Shafer's evidence theory, which can persuade the normal activities of IoT device systems. We establish a set of discriminating features to predict the trustworthiness of a network node by assessing its observed behaviours. These behaviours being assessed encompass several characteristics such as throughput, delay, jitter, and network latency. As such, nodes that demonstrate elevated data transmission rates, and have anomalous traffic patterns could potentially be categorised as untrustworthy. In addition, the existence of persistently high latency will impede trust prediction algorithms, this will consequently alter the overall behaviour of the node, ultimately affecting the trustworthiness of the entire network. We also design a framework for the fusion of evidence based on the belief degree and reputation-based evidence to avoid misclassification resulting in evidence conflicting. The resultant fusion outcomes are transformed into category labels which serve as the prediction outcome of the multi-classifier ensemble scheme. We evaluate our proposed scheme with and without the best discriminative features on performance metrics including accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, detection rate, and false alarm rate. Comprehensive experiments on a transformed UNSW NB15 dataset demonstrate the better performance of our proposed framework, especially in the application of evidence conflicting
Adventure tourism micro enterprises (ATMEs) and responding to crisis events: a case study of Ireland's Atlantic Wild Atlantic Way (WAW)
No full textBetween Sickness and Sin: Models of Male Homosexuality in Northern Ireland c. 1960-1990
Get PDFThe contemporary LGBTQ+ history of Northern Ireland has emerged relatively recently. This article examines two negative models that fed into understandings of male homosexuality between the early 1960s and the end of the 1980s, and some of the discourses that emanated from them. Using contemporary comment, theological and medical writings, and oral history testimonies, this article charts the fortunes of models of ‘sickness’ and ‘sinfulness’. A campaign to secure law reform in the 1970s forced churches to confront the ‘problem’ of homosexuality. I demonstrate the complexity of responses from two major Protestant churches, the tentative emergence of a challenge from radical Christians and how this landscape has been obscured by the notoriety of an infamous fundamentalist campaign. As was the case in England, the notion of homosexuality as a pathology gained traction in Northern Ireland only in the 1950s and 1960s, leading to medical conversion practices, such as aversion therapy, which attempted to ‘cure’ men of same-sex desire. However, discourses conflicted, with regional social conditions resulting in ‘sickness’ co-existing uneasily with ‘sin’. And although it was opposed by a strain of evangelical thought, social conditions fostered by conservative religiosity enabled pathologisation to linger on through the 1980s.<br/
Alternative City, an historical geography of Barcelona
Get PDFSpain is a deeply complex country. Yet the notion of Spain as a ‘country’ is contested as the modern boundaries of the country contain a number of regional groupings that do not necessarily identify as being Spanish. While the Spanish Constitution recognises the existence of these other cultural ‘nations’ within the modern nation and affords them a degree of autonomy in recognition of their linguistic and cultural differences there remains significant tension between certain regions and the Spanish political centre that has often erupted into violent conflict. This study will focus on the region of Catalonia through a historical geography lens and address the role cultural heritage plays within Catalan society and how it is positioned within the nationalist and separatist movement. Following the end of violent conflict in the Basque country, the independence movement within Catalonia has emerged as the most visible across modern Spain. Within the Catalan separatist movement the histories of the region have been reimagined and integrated into core narratives around independence. Cultural heritage sites and objects have been appropriated to play an intrinsic role in supporting political aims, with a variety of cultural institutions and state-sponsored monumentality playing an active part in the formation and dissemination of particular identity-based narratives. These are centred around the themes of a separate and culturally distinct Catalan nation which has been subject to extended periods of oppression by the varying manifestations of the Spanish state. At various levels, from the subtle to the blatant, heritage institutions are propagating a message of cultural difference and perceived past injustice against the Catalan people, and preform a more consciously active, overt and supportive role in the independence movement