224092 research outputs found
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Wicked politics and trashy economics: gender and scandalous expertise
No full textWho gets to speak with authority about the economy? Countering problematic identity-blindness, we develop a framework for exploring how identity designates whose economic expertise is perceived as authentic and authoritative according to the intersectional exclusions of gender, race and class. These exclusionary power dynamics are key to a fuller understanding of the politics of economic expertise, shaping not only who gets to speak with authority about the economy, but also how the economy is conceptualised through models and methods that exclude the full range of economic activity from analysis and debate. We apply these insights to the case of Brexit, and the performance of economic expertise during and after the referendum campaign, focusing on two bodies – Economists for Free Trade (EFT) and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)
How technology can help visually impaired young adults participate in physical activity
No full textDesigning new technologies to address daily activities’ issues for visually impaired users can be challenging for design and software development teams. Designers and developers often do not know what design approach to undertake. There is currently no guidance on how to design, test, and evaluate design solutions considering the needs of visually impaired users as well as the application of accessibility, usability, and user experience early in the mobile interaction design. The aim of this research was to identify better ways to design a solution to aid visually impaired young adults to seek information and social support to get more active. This aim was addressed by a practical approach to conduct and learn iteratively from the design process and through the research questions. The research questions investigated how relevant design guidelines can be developed that are appropriate for designers and developers who accessibility experts are not. This applied Design Thinking and Agile UX methodologies as the main approaches to guide the design and development of a minimum viable product for a mobile application. This involved adapting methods and techniques for prototyping, testing, user evaluation, and interview with visually impaired young adults, sports coaches, guides, and volunteers to gain insights from their perspectives about the physical activity experience of visually impaired young adults and the service provision. This informed the app features to improve accessibility, usability, and user experience in the design requirements. An affinity diagram was used in the triangulation analysis of the findings, which contributed to the development of the design guidance for creating mobile apps for visually impaired users. The guidance received positive evaluations from designers, developers, and accessibility specialists, along with valuable suggestions for further improvement. The key findings address what designers and developers need to know about design approaches and considerations for mobile application for visually impaired users. Building a minimum viable product and applying Design Thinking as a mindset throughout the design process enabled a deeper understanding of the needs of visually impaired young adults and the mobile app's context of use. This approach not only guides the development of accessible mobile applications but also helps enhance user experiences by addressing key challenges and exploring potential new features
Queering connections: Glitchy kinship
No full textThis is the fifth iteration of the collaborative exhibition project ‘Queering Connections’. Based on an ongoing collaboration between sociologist Lizzie Reed and visual artist Milou Stella, the exhibition brings Stella’s recent work into conversation with selected Artists’ Books from the University of Southampton Library’s internationally renowned Artists’ Book Collection located at Winchester School of Art.Connection can describe an inheritance: of stories, objects, or genetics. It can describe a link in a chain, something repeated, copied, and intertwined with what has come before. A connection can also be something we feel: kinship, belonging, the affective links we have to other people or animals, to objects, stories, or to our pasts and futures. Queering can mean a moment of interruption, change, or deconstruction. It might describe a rupture, gap or glitch in an otherwise orderly chain of copies.Glitchy Kinship asks what happens when connections are interrupted, changed, distorted, and reconstructed. How do glitches create possibilities for new kinships between words, images, feelings, people, objects and imaginations? How can connection stretch, anchoring us to one another across time and space? In summary: what happens when ‘connection’ is ‘queered’? The pieces presented here invite you to consider what happens as we collect, connect, queer, forget, and reconstruct the personal and the socio-cultural - our environments, norms, language, and stories
Comparing apples and oranges in youth depression treatments? A quantitative critique of the evidence base and guidelines
No full textObjectives: should a young person receive psychotherapy or medication for their depression, and on what evidence do we base this decision? In this paper, we test the factors across modalities that may influence comparability between medication and psychotherapy trials. Methods: we included 92 RCTs of psychotherapy and medication for child and adolescent depression (mean age 4-18 years). Using meta-analyses, we compared a) participant characteristics and b) trial characteristics in medication and psychotherapy trials. Lastly, we examined whether psychotherapy controls are well-matched to active conditions. Results: participants in medication RCTs had higher depression severity and were more frequently male compared to psychotherapy RCTs. There was a dramatic difference in the within-subject improvement due to placebo (SMD=-1.9 (95% CI: -2.10 to -1.7)) vs psychotherapy controls (SMD=-0.6 (95% CI: -0.86 to -0.32)). Within psychotherapy RCTs, control conditions were less intensive on average than active conditions. Conclusions: medication and psychotherapy RCTs differ on fundamental participant and methodological characteristics, thereby raising questions about their comparability. Psychotherapy controls often involve little therapist contact and are easy-to-beat comparators. These findings cast doubt on the confidence with which psychotherapy is recommended for youth depression, and highlight the pressing need to improve the evidence base.<br/
Impact of dust and tilt angle on the photovoltaic performance in a desert environment
No full textDust accumulation on photovoltaic (PV) modules significantly reduces their performance, especially in desert environments. Cleaning can be costly or not feasible. This paper presents a comprehensive study of PV modules performance in a desert environment, focusing on the impact of dust on power output reduction at various tilt angles to determine the optimal angle in uncleaned conditions. Seven pairs of PV modules were installed on the roof of the Faculty of Engineering in Jeddah City at angles of 0°, 15°, 25°, 45°, 60°, 70°, and 90°. The output power of both the cleaned and dusty modules was recorded over a 12-month period. The results show that dust accumulation, tilt angle, and rain significantly reduce power. The optimal tilt for maximum average output power varies with the seasonal position of the sun and the amount of dust on the module’s surface. After 183 days of dust accumulation without rain, the power reduction for the dusty modules reached 80.4%, 75.6%, and 60.2% at tilt angles of 0°, 15°, and 25°, respectively. In the rainy period, the highest performance of the dusty modules was observed at a 45° tilt angle, with a power reduction of 5.9%. Conversely, during the dry period and throughout the year, the tilt angle that generated the highest power output was 25°, with power reduction of, respectively, 28.7% and 20.7%. These findings provide valuable insights into the impact of dust and tilt on PV module performance and contribute to the development of predictive models and optimization strategies for solar panel systems in harsh desert conditions. This research highlights the importance of strategic tilt selection to enhance the performance and longevity of PV installations in desert environments
Drivers of warm water variability in Atlantic hurricane regions
No full textTropical North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content has increased materially over the past 40-50 years, and has been linked to an uptick in major hurricane landfalls. This increasing damage potential has led to fears for the future from extreme events. In this thesis, the volume of water warmer than 26.5 °C is used to diagnose observed historical and modelled future changes in the underlaying fuel source available for the development of intense hurricanes. The processes driving changes in this fuel source are examined using complimentary Eulerian and Lagrangian techniques.From the Eulerian perspective, observed month-to-month volume changes in water warmer than 26.5 °C in the North Atlantic can be explained by changes in the anomalous volume of warm water transformed across the 26.5 °C isotherm by atmospheric heat flux; this is primarily attributed to surface heat gain in some years. An inference is that ocean heat transport is more important for warm water volume anomaly development in other years. Transformed volume changes are calculated using the Water Mass Transformation Framework in temperature space. Anomalies are notably driven by latent heat flux, which is highly correlated with wind speed and cloud fraction over most of the warm water surface.The residual warm water volume accumulated by ocean heat transport also plays a key role in heat content accumulation in the tropical North Atlantic. Lagrangian analysis is used to analyse heat flux along ocean currents into the Main Development Region (MDR) for Atlantic hurricanes. ARIANE particle tracking output highlights that a large number of particles are resident in the MDR (20-40%), and relatively fewer particles are transported into the MDR via the North Brazil Current (5-15%) or Ekman drift across 10 °N six months before the start of hurricane season, in years with high hurricane activity. The results are consistent with the view that a reduced meridional circulation is likely to lead to accumulation of warm water in the tropical North Atlantic and more active hurricane seasons.Both Eulerian and Lagrangian analyses are applied to a high-resolution climate model, HadGEM3-GC31-HH, to examine evolving mechanisms impacting the growth of the Atlantic Warm Pool under future high anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Warm water convergence due to reduced ocean transport is confirmed to be the driver of additional future heat available to fuel major hurricane development in this model. The total heat accumulation along modelled particle tracks crossing 10 °N and ending at 20 °N after 6 months, which are warmer than 26.5 °C, is 14% higher (4.2 GW) in 2041-2050 than 2001-2010. The results imply an increasing importance for ocean transport over atmospheric heat flux as the Atlantic continues warming
Analysis of the real-time phases of adaptation through the lens of an emergent risk: sargassum adaptation policy analysis in the Caribbean
No full textSince 2011, countries across the Tropical Atlantic have experienced severe influxes of the seaweed sargassum, with near- and onshore ecological, economic, and social impacts locally and regionally. Not all affected countries have had the same response to this emergent environmental challenge. Here, we explore the first ten years of policies produced in response to sargassum influx risk across islands in the Wider Caribbean Region, considering the variation in form, content and aim of sargassum adaptation policies. This assessment of the variation in Caribbean adaptation policies allows for lessons to be identified for rapid adaptation to emergent environmental challenges generally. We find that several countries have no national policy for sargassum adaptation, and many sub-national island jurisdictions have no island-specific policies. Whilst there is increasing anecdotal evidence of private and local adaptations taking place to address sargassum influx events, there remains significant scope for government leadership and resource support in adapting to this emergent threat. The lesson is that private adaptations to emergent threats may be quicker to develop and execute than policy adaptation, but longer-term, larger-scale adaptations depend on evidence-based, widely supported government policies with clear avenues of funding
Progress in Er-doped fibers for extended L-band operation of amplifiers
No full textErbium (Er)-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) have revolutionized optical fiber communication, facilitating long-distance, large-capacity, and high-reliability data transmission. The explosive growth in transmission capacity, particularly in dense-wavelength-division-multiplexed (DWDM) communication systems, necessitates the development of efficient EDFAs beyond the C-band (1530-1565 nm) and traditional L-band (1565-1610 nm). However, the expansion of bandwidth is limited by signal-induced excited-state absorption (ESA) effects in EDFs, highlighting the importance of optimizing fiber core compositions with appropriate co-dopants and concentrations in designing extended L-band EDFs. High-performance EDFAs in the extended L-band require improvements in gain, bandwidth, noise figure, and efficiency. This paper reviews the spectroscopic properties of EDFs in alumino-silicate, phospho-silicate, and ternary AlPO4-SiO2 glass hosts, with a particular focus on ESA effects. We review the current state of the art of extended L-band EDFAs in single-stage amplification, emphasizing silica-based glass hosts with tailored material compositions of the fiber core. Various novel co-dopants are discussed, like ytterbium (Yb), cerium (Ce), and yttrium (Y). We also explore the optimization on the pump wavelengths and amplification schemes, including single-pass and double-pass configurations. In addition, this review addresses both the temperature and radiation effects of L-band EDFAs, demonstrating the potential of radiation-resistant EDFAs for advancing aerospace-based optical communications
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