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Plant Agency: A Critical View
No full textRecent years have seen an explosion of work in theoretical biology and philosophy of biology on the concepts of the organism, biological agency and biological autonomy, leading to the so-called ‘agency’ perspective in the plant sciences especially. Over much the same period some researchers in the plant sciences have argued that an adequate interpretation of the results of experimental work with whole plant organisms and plant ecologies, especially, requires new theoretical frameworks and concepts to describe the processes of plant life and plant behaviour. These concepts include ‘agency’ and ‘autonomy’, but also – and more controversially – ‘intelligence’, ‘cognition’, ‘sociality’ and ‘kin-recognition’. Some believe that this constitutes a ‘new paradigm’ in and for the plant sciences. Although the interpretation of plant behaviour in these terms is very controversial in the plant sciences, with some dismissing it completely, its claims are often received quite uncritically in parts of the humanities and social sciences and are often communicated to lay publics as if the claims represented established and uncontested scientific views.
Recent years have also seen the emergence of a new area in philosophy: plant philosophy. Unlike philosophy of biology, which is concerned with general biological questions relevant to all living organisms, plant philosophy is concerned to conceptualise the specificity of plant life and with the implications of a proper acknowledgement of this specificity. Some aspects of plant philosophy, more than philosophy of biology, also seem to resonate with the understanding of plants in some traditional ecological knowledge, as, according to some, does the ‘new paradigm’ in the plant sciences. Some also see the acknowledgement of plant agency as an important – perhaps even necessary – part of environmental struggles and environmental justice.
Although they are very different, the discussions of agency in philosophy of biology, in the plant sciences working from the agency perspective, and in advocacy of the ‘new paradigm’ for the understanding of plant life, can all be understood as critical reactions to the dominant ‘reductionist’ tendencies of twentieth-century biology and they all, in different ways use a concept of agency. In this chapter I this ask: can we identify, from a comparison of these areas which concept of agency is most appropriate for thinking plants philosophically?
I argue that although philosophy of biology and in the ‘agency perspective’ in the plant sciences these allow for the extension of agency to plants, they subsume plants within a general philosophy of biology that has nothing to say about plants per se. Although the specifically vegetal concerns of the ‘new paradigm’ in the plant sciences might suggest the possibility of a more fruitful relation to plant philosophy, I argue that the ‘new paradigm’ does not resist the kind of anthropomorphism against which plant philosophy ought to be defined. So where can we find an appropriate concept of agency for plant philosophy? Drawing on John Dupré’s work on the nature of biological concepts I argue that there is no one ‘correct’ concept of agency for plants, in either the sciences or philosophy, although we can identify some of features that a concept of agency for plants specifically would require. As some of these features are characteristic of the concept of the actant in Actor-Network-Theory I end with a critical consideration of that, concluding that while it cannot provide plant philosophy with the concept of a specifically vegetal actant, it does help us to see the main problem and thus to identify the form – but not the content – of a possible solution
Collaborative online international learning: Sustainability mindset in accounting education.
Get PDFThis paper evaluates a collaborative online international learning (COIL) project co-designed with
sustainability practitioners to promote a sustainable development mindset among accounting students.
The project participants were 141 students from six countries, the UK, Ghana, South Africa, the USA,
Germany, and India. They completed an eight-week extracurricular COIL course, involving workshops
focused on the what, why, and how of sustainability concepts. The findings, based on self-reported
perceptions and reflections, indicate that by engaging with COIL, students developed a greater
awareness of environmental, social, and governance principles. The project both enhanced their
understanding of the role of accounting in sustainability, and improved their career readiness. They also
reported developing a stronger personal responsibility toward maintaining sustainability and valued the
exposure to diverse global perspectives. The paper advances accounting education and COIL literature
by theorizing the industry, educator, and student triad as a site of epistemic negotiation, in which
disciplinary knowledge, professional practice, and lived experience intersect to reshape how
sustainability is understood within accounting education. While COILs are increasingly positioned to
resolve internationalization and employability agendas, their capacity to support deeper epistemic and
normative shifts, particularly in accounting education, remains insufficiently theorized or empirically
examined. Conceptually and empirically, the paper contributes further by offering one of the most
internationally expansive COIL projects in accounting education to date, evidencing the benefits of co-
creation with industry to engage students in extracurricular learning. We conclude that thoughtfully
designed COIL initiatives can prepare future accountants for the ethical, global, and sustainability-
oriented challenges of the profession
Predicting Voltage Stability Using Graph Convolutional Networks
Get PDFReal-time voltage stability assessment is critical for secure power grid operation, yet traditional simulation-based methods suffer from high computational latency. While machine learning offers a promising alternative, standard models often fail to leverage the inherent topology and physics of the power grid. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a novel graph deep learning framework to predict the fast voltage stability index (FVSI). The key technical contributions of this work are threefold: (1) the introduction of a novel physics-informed graph attention network (PI-GAT), where the attention mechanism is explicitly guided by physical line impedance to enhance model interpretability and accuracy; (2) the first formulation of FVSI prediction as a spatiotemporal graph learning problem, accompanied by a comprehensive benchmark of architectures, including temporal GCN (TGCN); and (3) the integration of a dropout-based framework to provide practical, real-time uncertainty quantification for predictions. Evaluations on the IEEE 14-bus system demonstrate that the proposed graph-based models are significantly more accurate and robust than classical baselines. This framework offers a scalable, interpretable, and uncertainty-aware solution for real-time voltage monitoring
Blockchain-based user-centric privacy-preserving framework for vehicular data sharing and monetization
No full textModern connected vehicles continuously generate large volumes of data, enabling new data-sharing and monetization services while simultaneously raising serious concerns about privacy, access control, and scalability. Recent
blockchain-based approaches improve transparency and user control, but often rely on coarse-grained access policies, costly symmetric key management,
and limited scalability, making them unsuitable for realistic, high-volume
vehicle data markets. Moreover, purely owner-centric access control may
conflict with legitimate requirements from authorized third parties, such as
manufacturers or regulatory authorities. In this paper, we propose a scalable, privacy-preserving framework for vehicle data sharing and monetization that combines blockchain-based smart contracts with attribute-based
and identity-based encryption. The framework enables fine-grained, policy-driven access control while preserving data confidentiality and supporting authorized exceptional access when required. We evaluate the proposed design
through security analysis and experimental measurements1
, demonstrating
that it achieves strong privacy guarantees with modest overhead and scales
to realistic workloads
Writing the Waterways: Memoir, Place and the Mapping of Identity
Get PDFThis thesis uses place writing and memoir to explore twenty years of boat life as a single mother, mostly spent moored on the banks of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. It also tracks my experience of walking the waterways of Manchester, thereby creating a personal map of the city and a way of belonging within it. Writing about canals is often London-centric or based in the south of England, following a single journey or a relatively short period of time on the water. It also largely misses out the reality of bringing children up on a boat. Through the narrative of how the waterways have shaped my identity over two decades, I bring a new and longitudinal perspective to the canal-writing field, uncovering the ways in which the marginality of this world challenges conventional narratives of home and belonging. Through both the creative and critical elements, I question the role gender plays in canal life and canal literature.
The opening critical reflection provides the context for the creative work, providing an analysis of canal literature which details its progress from the viewpoint of a privileged outsider dabbling in the exotic world of the working boatman, as the fulcrum between working boat life and boating for leisure, and through to more recent experiences of continuous cruising in London. It also explores the impact of psychogeographic thinking on the walking research, the structure of the writing itself, and the differing perspectives of writing place in urban and rural settings. Finally, the act of writing memoir as creative non-fiction is considered, looking at how the lyrical intensity of place writing can immerse the reader within moments of significant experience utilising a fluent slippage between past, present and future.
The creative element is then presented in three main sections: a chronological memoir of boat life up to the point of my divorce; an immersive exploration of life as a single, home-schooling mother living on a boat; and the overlapping move towards a new phase of life, shown through a collage of urban canal and river walks within the boundaries of the M60. The concluding section brings an end to this era of life, as I leave two decades of boat life behind
Entrepreneurial exit: A systematic review and research agenda
Get PDFDespite its high importance and widespread occurrence, entrepreneurial exit remains an under-researched topic in entrepreneurship literature. The current body of knowledge on entrepreneurial exit is fragmented, with multiple definitions, phases, contextualization, and interpretations. This study synthesizes the entrepreneurial exit literature through a systematic review and content analysis of 103 articles, clarifying the conditions under which entrepreneurial exit is viewed positively or negatively. It proposes a novel multiphase phenomenological framework that integrates diverse perspectives, offering a clearer understanding of the current research and guiding future inquiries in this important topic
Reference data for peripheral quantitative computed tomography for assessment of bone geometry and strength in Indian children and youth
Get PDFIntroduction: Currently, there is a paucity of data for bone geometry and strength parameters for Indian children. This is essential because of differences in stature, body composition, and bone outcomes between Indian children and Western populations on which existing reference data are based. As dual energy X-ray absorptiometry is size dependent, we conducted the present study with the objective of generating age and sex-specific reference centile curves for peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) for Indian children and adolescents.
Methods: A cross-sectional, observational study was conducted from November 2017 to July 2022 on 961 (501 boys) healthy children aged 8 to 18 years from Pune, India. The XCT-2000 pQCT scanner (Stratec Inc, GmbH, Pforzheim, Germany) was used to measure volumetric trabecular density at 4 % site and volumetric cortical density, polar stress-strain index, cortical thickness, and muscle area at 66 % site of left radius.
Results: We have presented percentile curves for total, trabecular, and cortical density for age, as well as cortical area and cortical thickness for height. A maximum increase in total volumetric density to the preceding age group of 10.7 % was observed in boys at the age of 17 years, whereas a maximum increase of 8 % was observed in girls at the age of 15 years. Average increase in trabecular density was 0.2 % per year. Cortical density was significantly higher in girls (8.7 %) from the age of 13 years as compared to boys. Cortical thickness was significantly higher in girls (13.3 %) as compared to boys at 12 years, while it was higher in boys (9.1 %) at 16 years and 18 years. A steep increase was observed in the cortical area for height and cortical thickness for height in both sexes.
Conclusion: We have established reference curves for pQCT parameters in Indian children and adolescents to aid in the assessment of pediatric bone geometry
Adaptive Curriculum Design in a Transnational Dual Masters Programme
Get PDFTransnational education (TNE) programmes frequently encounter tensions between maintaining academic rigour and addressing local contextual realities. This case study examines a part-time dual-award MSc in Financial Technology (FinTech), jointly delivered by a UK public university and a private higher education institution (HEI) in the Philippines. Framed through the glonacal agency heuristic, the paper explores how curriculum design and delivery are shaped by global academic standards, national regulatory frameworks and local student needs. Drawing on institutional reflections and student feedback, the study analyses the programme's adaptive curriculum strategy, quality assurance mechanisms and industry-aligned content. The dual-award structure, where each institution confers its own qualification, requires careful coordination to meet the standards of the UK's Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), the UK's Office for Students (OfS) and the Philippines' Commission on Higher Education (CHED). Findings reveal that local agency plays a decisive role in ensuring contextual relevance, particularly for the challenges faced by mid-career professionals balancing part-time study with urban constraints. The paper contributes to the TNE literature by illustrating a practical model of cross-border delivery that integrates academic compliance, student responsiveness and collaborative governance
A TRPV4-dependent calcium signaling axis regulates lamellipodial actin architecture to promote cell migration
No full textCell migration is crucial for development and tissue homeostasis, while its dysregulation leads to severe pathologies. Cell migration is driven by the extension of actin-based lamellipodial protrusions powered by actin polymerization, which is tightly regulated by signaling pathways, including Rho GTPases and calcium (Ca ) signaling. While the importance of Ca signaling in lamellipodial protrusions has been established, the molecular mechanisms linking Ca to lamellipodia assembly are unknown. Here, we identify a novel Ca signaling axis involving the mechano-gated channel transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4), which regulates lamellipodial protrusions in various cell types. Using Ca and Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) imaging, we demonstrate that TRPV4-mediated Ca influx upregulates RhoA activity within lamellipodia, which then facilitates formin-mediated actin assembly. Mechanistically, we identify Ca /calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) and tumor endothelial marker 4 (TEM4) as key mediators relaying the TRPV4-mediated Ca signal to RhoA. These data define a molecular pathway by which Ca influx regulates small GTPase activity within a specific cellular domain-lamellipodia-and demonstrate its critical role in organizing the actin machinery and promoting cell migration in diverse biological contexts. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2026 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Does the Intent Match the Output: Aligning Development Goals With Training Load in Youth Basketball
Get PDFThis study investigated the alignment between external training load metrics and coach‐prescribed development goals in an elite youth basketball setting. External training load data from training drills were collected over two years from 25 elite male youth basketball players in a full‐time residential academy. At the start of each term, coaches developed and assigned individual developmental goals (IDGs) for each player. Using inductive thematic analysis, these IDGs were retrospectively grouped into four overarching development goal categories (defensive, offensive, skill, and physical) and 16 specific goal types (e.g., cutting, shooting, and load tolerance). Separately, external load metrics were recorded during all on‐court training sessions using Catapult Vector S7 devices. To align IDGs with external load metrics, two multinomial logistic regression models were developed to classify (1) development goal category and (2) specific goal type (SGT) using per‐minute external load metrics. Both models achieved 66% classification accuracy (Kappa = 0.60). Key predictors, such as high‐intensity deceleration counts, vertical PlayerLoad, and high‐speed running distances, were retained in both models following stepwise selection. Model performance was strong, with large reductions in AIC (ΔAIC = 1224.1 and 2540.7, respectively), demonstrating that coach‐assigned IDGs were associated with distinct external load profiles. Additionally, accumulated training time differed significantly across specific goal types, reflecting systematic variation in emphasis across the season. These findings demonstrate that external training load metrics reflect the structure of coach‐assigned development goals, offering a data‐driven framework to evaluate alignment between training design and physical demands in youth basketball