36750 research outputs found
Sort by
'Equal Pay or we Walk Away': Litigation and Industrial Action in the Glasgow City Council Equal Pay Dispute
No full textThis article demonstrates the uneven development of trade union strategies on equal pay within UK local government through an examination of the shift from litigation to industrial action in the Glasgow City Council equal pay dispute. It analyses new oral history interviews with key actors involved in the Glasgow City Council dispute (union officials, grassroots activists, lawyers) to identify four critical incidents between 2016 and 2018 that prompted trade unions (particularly the GMB) to prioritise equal pay. It considers the extent to which equal pay legislation has acted as a resource for or barrier to achieving equal pay and concludes that the combination of legal and industrial strategies was central to reaching a settlement in the Glasgow City Council dispute
Vibrissal sensing in mammals in a changing world
Get PDFMammalian vibrissae are part of a specialised, sensitive and precise sensory system. They are involved in multimodal reception, including vibrotactile and electric sensing, which might make them particularly prone to multiple perceptual elements of environmental change. This Review considers the important implications of environmental change for vibrissal form, behaviour and neural signalling. Findings reveal that environmental change can impact all modalities of vibrissal sensing. Increasing exposure to new plant species, pathogens and chemicals in the environment impacts vibrissal growth, sensitivity and neural processing. Acoustic noise and altered air and water flow regimes will cause vibrissal shaft oscillations and may even have the capacity to mask critical stimuli, such as prey signals, although this has not yet been studied. Despite evidence of vibrissal sensing being robust to environmental change in some contexts, such as being able to regulate warm temperatures, many environmental impacts remain poorly understood. There is a need to better understand the levels of pollution and noise in the environment and incorporate these as relevant environmental stimuli in experiments to investigate their impact on vibrissal sensing. Adopting a broader taxonomic focus would also give greater insight into species-specific vibrissal adaptations, many of which can be seen in this Review in response to dietary adaptations. Adopting these approaches in future studies will enhance our understanding of the resilience and vulnerability of vibrissal sensing in the face of rapid environmental change
Dietary resilience of coral reef fishes to habitat degradation
Get PDFThe ability of consumers to adjust their diet in response to resource shifts is a key mechanism allowing the persistence of populations and underlying species' adaptive capacity. Yet on coral reefs, one of the marine habitats most vulnerable to global change, the extent to which species alter their diet and the consequences of dietary shifts for consumer performance and ecosystem functioning remain poorly understood. Here, we tested how dietary versatility can mediate the effects of habitat degradation on two invertivorous reef fishes—Chaetodon capistratus, a browser, and Hypoplectrus puella, an active predator—and whether diet shifts relate to variation in body condition and growth. We integrated DNA‐based gut content analyses (metabarcoding), otolith analysis, body condition and field surveys to link diet profiles to growth and relative body condition across reefs differing in coral cover. Metabarcoding revealed significant dietary variation in both species across reefs with different levels of coral cover. However, the response was more pronounced in the browser, whose diet was anthozoan‐dominated on healthier reefs, whereas it was annelid‐dominated on degraded reefs. We found significantly more variable body condition on degraded reefs in the browser, while the body condition of the active predator decreased in larger individuals on degraded reefs. Our results suggest that while dietary versatility serves as a mechanism to cope with degraded environments, the degree to which dietary shifts can buffer against the effects of habitat degradation varies between species. Overall, the variation in trophic niche across sites suggests that food webs and energy flow differ at relatively small scales between healthy and degraded reefs
The COVID-19 pandemic five years on: Material memories of pandemic dressing
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic precipitated unprecedented transformations in global dressing practices, reconfiguring the cultural, political and economic frameworks within which clothing operates. This Special Issue of Fashion, Style & Popular Culture interrogates the sartorial shifts that emerged during the pandemic and their enduring legacies. Bringing together twelve research articles, a visual essay and an interview, ‘Dressing through Pandemics’ examines how dress functioned simultaneously as protective technology, sociopolitical symbol, ethical statement and site of creative adaptation. Central to these dynamics was the face mask, which evolved from clinical personal protective equipment to contested emblem of care, compliance or defiance and into an object of aesthetic innovation and branding. The Special Issue contributors adopt diverse disciplinary perspectives including fashion theory, psychology, cultural studies, material culture and consumer behaviour to analyse pandemic dressing across diverse geographies and contexts. Case studies explore the politicization and aestheticization of masks in North America, Europe and Africa; the psychological and emotional dimensions of pandemic self-presentation; and the acceleration of DIY and craft-based fashion practices. Further contributions address shifts in retail landscapes, digital consumption and sustainability discourses, revealing how pandemic conditions reshaped consumer values and expectations of authenticity. By situating clothing within the broader material and symbolic economies of pandemic life, this collection demonstrates that dress was not a peripheral concern but a central medium through which individuals and communities navigated crisis, expressed identity and imagined futures. Five years on, the legacies of pandemic dressing remain visible in heightened sensitivity to protective dress, increased integration of digital retail and a recalibration of fashion’s relationship to care, resilience and social belonging. ‘Dressing through Pandemics’ affirms the critical importance of clothing as both an embodied practice and a cultural artefact in times of global disruption
An analytical downburst model and its application to a moving train wind loading
Get PDFFor the first time, a simple analytical model of a downburst has been developed that correctly reproduces the shape of the radial velocity close to the ground, i.e., in a region applicable to trains and low-rise buildings. The proposed model satisfies the continuum and Euler momentum equations, has been used to obtain an expression for the pressure field, and also includes an intensity decay function to represent the time-varying life cycle of a downburst. The model is used to obtain an insight into the wind-induced forces on a train arising from a downburst. A novel outcome of this research is the finding that, whilst higher train speeds increase the risk of train overturning, taking dynamic effects arising from the flow acceleration related to the train movement into consideration reduces the values of train overturning moments. A parametric study is performed to examine the influence of train speed, downburst translation velocity, and relative distance and angle between the train and downburst paths on the resulting overturning moment coefficients. This methodology has been included in a stochastic analysis for specified distributions of downburst parameters and operational train data to undertake a risk analysis. The research shows that the reduction of train speed has a very significant effect on decreasing accident risk
Interpretable machine learning models for beta thalassemia prediction: an explainable AI approach for smart healthcare 5.0
Get PDFIntroduction: An inherited blood disorder that bounds the production of beta globin, an important protein that has a handsome contribution in the development of hemoglobin and Red Blood Cells (RBC). This protein also enables cells to carry oxygen to tissues throughout the human body. Genetic variation in hemoglobin beta gene signals the body to make beta globin chains is the cause of beta thelasemia with three major types major, intermediate and minor. There is a need of an expert system for the diagnosis of this particular disease. Methods: This study introduces an interpretable Expert system for the prediction of Beta Thelesemia incorporating Explainable AI (XAI) techniques to enhance clinical needs. Principle component Analysis (PCA) with Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) is applied on the Beta Thalassemia Carrier (BTC) dataset 5066 patients to reduce the dimentiality and balance the output classes. Machime learning classifiers such as Neural Networks, Recurrent Neural Networks and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) is applied. Results: The latest one will give the 99.30% accuracy, 99.33% precision, 99.33% recall, 99.33% specificity, and 99.33% f1 score. Discussion: Furthermore ensuring the models transparency and interpretability, the proposed method integrates SHapley Ad-ditive exPlanations (SHAP) and Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME), enabling both global and local interpretability of model predictions. SHAP gives us insight into important features at the global level, while LIME explains individual predictions, making the model's decisions more comprehensible for clinical applications
Establishment and Functional Characterization of Bovine Endometrial Epithelial Organoids
No full textPre-implantation embryonic loss constitutes a major barrier to reproductive efficiency in livestock, yet the extrinsic determinants of embryonic survival remain poorly defined. Intra3 organoid fluid (IOF) faithfully recapitulates native tissue secretions across multiple organ systems. We hypothesized that bovine endometrial epithelial organoids (BEEO) would produce IOF that mirrored in vivo uterine luminal fluid composition and extend embryo culture duration in vitro. We pursued three objectives: (a) establish and morphologically characterize BEEO, (b) define BEEO transcriptomic and secretory responses to estradiol (E2), medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), and interferon-tau (IFNτ), and (c) determine whether BEEO-derived IOF can support in vitro embryonic development beyond Day 8 (hatched blastocyst stage) under conventional culture conditions. BEEO were established from primary endometrial tissue (n=4) and maintained a stable epithelial phenotype through multiple passages. Transcriptomic profiling revealed robust responses to stimulation, with E2, MPA, and IFNτ inducing distinct gene expression programs consistent with in vivo effects. IOF metabolomic analysis confirmed hormone-dependent regulation of IOF secretory output, with E2+MPA (diestrus mimic) enhancing the production of metabolites implicated in conceptus development. Remarkably, IOF from diestrus mimic-stimulated BEEO, despite being diluted approximately seven-fold in PBS, maintained embryo survival rates comparable to optimized commercial medium, and exceeded PBS-only controls. These findings position BEEO as a physiologically relevant model for dissecting maternal-embryo interactions in vitro and identifying targets to improve fertility in cattle and other livestock
From Lake Victoria to the Tap: Antibiotic Resistance and Pathogenic Contamination of Kisumu City Water Supply and Wastewater Network
Get PDFWaterborne diseases and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) pose mounting public health threats across sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in rapidly urbanising regions dependent on untreated or poorly treated surface waters. This study applied shotgun metagenomic sequencing to characterise microbial communities, virulence factors and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in water samples collected from Lake Victoria, River Wigwa, Dunga Water Treatment Plant, Nyalenda Wastewater Stabilisation Ponds and the tap water outlet in post-treatment supply pipe in Kisumu city (Kenya). Bacterial taxa dominated all metagenomes, with 121 classes represented. Cyanobacteria, particularly Planktothrix, were highly abundant in lake and tap water, whereas wastewater and river samples exhibited greater taxonomic diversity. Major human pathogens, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, Acinetobacter baumannii and Bacillus cereus/anthracis, were detected in nearly all samples, with unexpectedly high prevalence in tap water. Viral indicators of faecal contamination (adenoviruses, enteroviruses and torque teno viruses) corroborated widespread wastewater influence. Functional gene profiling revealed a rich resistome comprising aminoglycoside-modifying enzymes, β-lactamases, vancomycin-resistance operons and disinfectant-resistance determinants. The highest ARG and virulence gene frequencies occurred in tap and treatment-plant water, suggesting that incomplete disinfection and biofilm persistence promote the proliferation and exchange of ARGs between environmental and pathogenic taxa. In contrast, Lake Victoria water exhibited lower ARG abundance, reflecting natural self-purification processes. These findings underscore the inadequate water treatment and open wastewater systems create ecological ‘hotspots’ for ARG selection and horizontal gene transfer. Metagenomic surveillance integrated into One Health frameworks can enhance risk forecasting and guide interventions to mitigate AMR emergence and dissemination in freshwater systems serving over 35 million people across the Lake Victoria basin
How SMEs explore international opportunities by learning from failure: The effects of entrepreneurial risk-taking and normative institutions
Get PDFThis study examines how learning from failure shapes international opportunity (IO) exploration among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets. Drawing on dynamic capability and organizational learning perspectives, we theorize that learning from failure fosters IO exploration through entrepreneurial risk-taking. Furthermore, we argue that the strength of this indirect relationship depends on the normative institutional environment in the SME’s home country. Using both symmetrical (PLS-SEM) and asymmetrical (fsQCA) methods, we analyse data from 146 Chinese SMEs. The results support our framework: entrepreneurial risk-taking is a key mechanism through which learning from failure is linked to IO exploration. Notably, we find that the stronger the home country normative institutions, the weaker the indirect effect. In addition, our configurational analysis reveals multiple pathways in which learning from failure, risk-taking, and institutional context combine to generate either high or low levels of IO exploration
Strengthening the rule of law: the necessity of protecting human rights defenders from criminalisation
No full textThis article draws an explicit and much needed connection between Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) and the principle of the rule of law, arguing that the growing criminalisation of HRDs undermines the rule of law, especially in liberal states that claim to uphold strong rule of law commitments. HRDs are central to promoting human rights, exposing injustice, challenging discrimination and corruption, and pushing for accountability. When they are criminalised, their ability to carry out this work is severely restricted, creating a downward spiral: criminalisation weakens the rule of law, which in turn enables further repression and legal decline. The article addresses a gap in the existing literature by bringing together work on the rule of law with scholarship on HRDs and their criminalisation. It adopts both doctrinal and socio-legal methods and engages with feminist and post-colonial critiques to argue that HRDs operate within, and promote, a substantive understanding of the rule of law grounded in justice, equality, and human rights. The article concludes by arguing for resistance to the criminalisation of HRDs and outlies social and institutional strategies to support HRDs and strengthen the rule of law