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On the process of image creation with artificial intelligence: Rephotography using Midjourney AI
Get PDFWhen we make images using text-to-image AI systems like Midjourney, what precisely are we making? In the context of significant cultural, political and legal uncertainty about the status of AI-generated imagery, this paper reports on a practical experiment in rephotography. The authors attempted to recreate four notable American photographs in Midjourney: Vivian Maier’s Untitled self-portrait (circa. 1954), Gregory Crewdson’s Untitled (Twilight), (1998-2002), Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936), and Joe Rosenthal’s Flag Raising on Iwo Jima (1945). The practice of rephotography, which seeks on one hand to faithfully reproduce and on the other hand to reveal difference, enables us to compare human and AI-generated photography as practice. We find that the AI system exhibits bias in its default perspective, likely an artefact of training data scraped from the open Internet. Specifically, we find: (1) AI images give prominence to main subjects in a way that appears to reflect a late capitalist, consumer gaze; (2) AI images ‘hallucinate’ details that reduce human intentionality and control; (3) AI images are detached from the social and historical context that gives human photographs meaning. Despite these striking differences, we consider emancipatory and critical potential for AI imagery as an artform. Creative possibilities present themselves in rendering visible the probabilistic links between datasets, user prompts and outputs
Unpacking the impact of collaborative online international learning on educators and students: a reflective case study: navigating workforce and leadership changes in a digital Age
No full textIn the context of heightened internationalisation in Higher Education (HE), the demand for educators proficient in cross-cultural settings has grown substantially. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) has emerged as a cost-effective and impactful alternative to traditional internationalisation methods such as study abroad programmes, which are often constrained by resource limitations. This chapter examines the transformative potential of COIL by reflecting on its implementation across diverse educational contexts and detailing the intercultural competencies that both educators and learners are expected to develop.
Central to COIL's success is the integration of experiential learning tools to foster active collaboration. Additionally, the dynamics of language within COIL are critical, particularly the adoption of English as a lingua franca alongside other languages, such as Italian, to transcend monolingual limitations. This dual-language approach, while innovative, introduces challenges related to racio-linguism, encompassing the intersections of language, race, and culture, which influence students’ learning experiences.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted COIL's importance in ensuring educational continuity. In this chapter, the authors examine how COIL fosters digital empathy, connectedness, and a sense of presence, creating a safe and inclusive platform for global collaboration. Institutional support through the implementation of COIL guidelines has been highly effective in facilitating international competencies among educators and learners. This support promotes COIL as a dynamic pedagogical model that can transform intercultural education, relying on the strategic use of experiential tools and skilled facilitation by educators
Concern about the health effects of climate change according to experiences of climate events: international comparison of UK and Australian adults
Get PDFClimate change is now recognised as a global public health emergency, characterised by increasing frequency and severity of climate hazards worldwide. There is limited evidence on the proportion of the population that has directly experienced climate events, how this varies between countries, and the subsequent micro (focused on oneself) and macro (focused on wider society) perceived impact on health.
We conducted nationally representative surveys of 4,378 individuals in Australia and the United Kingdom in February 2025. Participants reported climate event experiences over five years, micro and macro perceived health threats, and sociodemographic characteristics. Logistic regression models estimated the likelihood of perceiving climate change as a health threat based on experiences of climate events, while population attributable fractions examined the proportion of health concerns cases attributable to specific climate events.
Results revealed significant cross-national differences: 59% of Australian respondents experienced climate events within five years versus 29% in the UK. Heatwaves were the most common experience in both countries and showed the strongest association with perceived health threats to ‘my health’, particularly among Australians (odds ratio: 1.74, 95% CIs: 1.46-2.07). Climate event experiences accounted for 23-35% of perceived climate health threats.
Our findings demonstrate that experiencing climate events elevates health threat perceptions across contrasting geographical contexts. Mental health burden is likely to increase as climate-related events—including heatwaves, wildfires, and floods—become more frequent and severe due to accelerating global heating. This underscores an urgent need for climate change mitigation alongside targeted mental health interventions addressing climate-related psychological impacts
Piezo1 regulates the mechanotransduction of soft matrix viscoelasticity
Get PDFMechanosensitive ion channels such as Piezo1 have fundamental roles in sensing the mechanical properties of the extracellular matrix. However, whether and how Piezo1 senses time-dependent matrix mechanical properties, that is, viscoelasticity, remains unknown. To address this question, we combine an immortalised mesenchymal stem cell line, in which Piezo1 expression can be silenced, with soft and stiff viscoelastic hydrogels that have independently tuneable elastic and viscous moduli. We demonstrate that Piezo1 is a regulator of the mechanotransduction of viscoelasticity in soft matrices, both experimentally and through simulations incorporating Piezo1 into a modified viscoelastic molecular clutch model. Using RNA sequencing, we also identify the transcriptomic responses of mesenchymal stem cells to matrix viscoelasticity and Piezo1 activity, identifying gene signatures that reflect their mechanobiology in soft and stiff viscoelastic hydrogels
Towards scalable age-grading of Aedes albopictus mosquito using mid-infrared spectroscopy and machine learning
No full textThe age structure and dynamics of mosquito populations are crucial for understanding their ability to spread diseases and assessing the effectiveness of anti-mosquito control measures. However, available methods to age-grade mosquito populations are labour-intensive and imprecise, particularly for Aedes species. We investigated the potential of Mid-Infrared Spectroscopy (MIRS) combined with Supervised Machine Learning (ML) to rapidly and accurately predict the age of adult females and males of the arbovirus vector, Aedes albopictus. First, we demonstrated the ability of MIRS-ML to age male and female mosquitoes reared under laboratory conditions. Second, we optimised the model with adults emerged from wild collected eggs reared under natural conditions in a semi-field facility, to expose them to more realistic ambient conditions. For each sex we developed three ML models based on the resolution of the predicted adult age class: low (grouping of the mosquitoes by age in 9-day interval), medium (6 days) and high resolution (3 days) from 1 to 15 or 33 days for males and females, respectively. The prediction accuracy decreased as the resolution increased. In males, the accuracy dropped from 99% (low resolution model) to 93% (medium resolution model) and 85.8% (high resolution model); in females the low and medium resolution models showed 89.4% and 78.5% accuracy, which decreased to 72.6% for the high resolution. In a simulated vector control intervention, the high-resolution models allowed to detect shifts in the age-structure of Ae. Albopictus populations with minimal sampling effort (< 100 specimens). Finally, we validated MIRS-ML on two unseen data and reconstructed plausible age structures in (1) laboratory-reared and (2) field-collected Ae. albopictus males and females. Overall, the results represent a first step towards the development of a sound and reproducible MIRS-ML approach for age-grading of Ae. albopictus populations in the wild
Languages, Compilers, Analysis - From Beautiful Theory to Useful Practice: Essays Dedicated to Alan Mycroft on the Occasion of His Retirement
No full textThis Festschrift is dedicated to Alan Mycroft who formally retired from the University of Cambridge after almost 40 years. Following a BA in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1977, Alan took the Diploma in Computer Science in 1978. He then completed a PhD in Edinburgh in 1981 on Abstract Interpretation and Optimising Transformations for Applicative Programs under the supervision of Rod Burstall and Robin Milner. After an EPSRC postdoctoral fellowship at Edinburgh and a research assistant position at Chalmers University, he returned to the University of Cambridge in 1984 and remained there until his retirement in 2023.
Alan is well-known for pioneering contributions to programming language theory and applications, covering both design and implementation. His work ranges from compilation and optimisation techniques, through semantics, static analysis, and type systems, to parallel, concurrent, and dataflow programming. He co-created the Norcroft C compiler with Arthur Norman, he co-authored the book Java 8 in Action: Lambdas, Streams, and Functional-Style Programming, and he co-founded the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a hugely successful initiative to develop programming skills and thinking for all ages.
In addition to his excellent research profile, Alan has been an inspiring teacher, mentor, and collaborator, always generous with encouragement and feedback. The impact and scope of his career is reflected in the breadth of topics in this volume, a fitting tribute to him
The 2026 Scottish Election: Housing Evidence Priorities for a New Government
No full textScotland approaches the 2026 election amid a formally declared national housing emergency. This report reviews developments since the last election in 2021, drawing on our own research and interviews with housing sector leaders and politicians, and sets out evidenced priorities for the next Scottish Government.
Despite strong strategic ambitions in Housing to 2040, progress has stalled, particularly across affordable supply and homelessness, with challenges also in planning, land reform and governance.
The evidence points to a need for both short-run action (particularly to address homelessness non-compliance) and sustained long-term, systemic reform.
The report sets out four priority areas for the next government to consider: 1) resetting affordable and social supply; 2) governance and structural reform; 3) planning, land and infrastructure; and 4) homelessness prevention and housing support.
Achieving a well-functioning housing system will require political will, renewed capacity, cross-sector coordination, and consistent application of robust evidence
Pietro Pacciani or the ‘fool’ of the Florentine Hills
No full textThis article provides an interdisciplinary, reflective analysis of Pietro Pacciani (1925–1998), widely constructed as the principal suspect in the “Monster of Florence” murders (1968–1985). It examines how Pacciani was produced as both a juridical subject and a cultural symbol, situating this process within scholarship on criminality, deviance, and the figure of the “human monster” (Foucault, 1974–75). The central claim is that the enduring plausibility of Pacciani’s guilt cannot be explained solely through individual biography, but through the institutional and representational conditions that enabled a particular narrative of culpability to stabilise despite persistent contradictions culminating in a systematic characterisation of a carnivalesque ‘foolery’. But was he really so? Methodologically, the study combines close reading and contextual analysis of legal records with comparative analysis of literary and journalistic sources and Italian media coverage, especially based on materials never translated in English. This triangulation enables a rigorous account of how courtroom procedures, investigative logics, and media economies interacted to consolidate a public “myth” of Pacciani – one organised around an ambivalent repertoire of stupidity and cunning. Rather than treating “foolery” as a personal trait, the article conceptualises it as a systemic narrative device that both concealed and revealed investigative error, institutional (in)competence, and political pressures. By repositioning Pacciani as a paradoxical figure – simultaneously scapegoat, folk-devil, and diagnostic mirror – the article contributes to criminological and cultural-sociological debates on moral panic, evidentiary uncertainty, and the social production of evil in late twentieth-century Italy. It also demonstrates how these interpretive frameworks persist in contemporary true-crime formats (podcasts, docuseries), where older moral economies are reactivated for global audiences
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