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Supporting students’ academic and wellbeing outcomes in Ghana: The role of teacher-student relationships and school resources
No full textNo abstract available
A system dynamics model of community-based health insurance system in Bangladesh
Get PDFCommunity-based health insurance (CBHI), also known as micro or mutual health insurance, is managed by local non-government organization, hospitals and cooperative societies to mobilize local resources to provide healthcare services to the underserved marginalized population. The effectiveness of voluntary CBHI as a financing mechanism for achieving universal health coverage (UHC) is widely debated and remains a global concern, with many experts questioning its long-term sustainability and feasibility. Overcoming the barriers to implement a sustainable CBHI is a policy priority for Bangladesh and will reflect on a global debate about the role of CBHI in attaining UHC. The goal of this study is to identify appropriate policies which support a sustainable CBHI and to assess the impact of these policies over time. A System Dynamics approach is used to build a model, simulate, and evaluate policy scenarios. The model was parameterized using data from the literature, primary data collected from a CBHI scheme in Bangladesh and expert opinion. Although there is potential for a sustainable CBHI scheme in Bangladesh, achieving this requires coverage of over 60 % of the target population to ensure risk sharing among insured members, external or mandatory public financing as a seed money until attaining self-sufficiency (i.e., ability to generate enough revenue to maintain the scheme without external funding), and a robust regulatory framework. Even though Bangladesh is known as the birthplace of microfinance and the land of non-governmental organizations with many successful community initiatives, it is unlikely that CBHI would achieve sustainability in the long run without these essential components. The challenging conditions for the financial sustainability of CBHI in Bangladesh raise significant concerns about its feasibility as a financing mechanism for achieving UHC in any other settings
Do inflation expectations become more anchored during a disinflation episode? Evidence for euro area firms
No full textDoes a successful disinflation contribute to the anchoring of inflation expectations? We provide novel survey evidence on the dynamics of euro area firms' inflation expectations during the disinflation episode since 2022. We show that firms' short-term inflation expectations declined steadily towards the inflation target as the disinflation progressed. However, we also document a thick tail in longer-term inflation expectations, substantial disagreement about the inflation outlook, and an increased sensitivity of longer-term inflation expectations to short-term inflation expectations. These findings suggest that it may take more time to bring inflation expectations fully in line with central bank objectives
Managing brand assets internally: turning employees into an integral source of brand equity
No full textThe brand is often the most prized asset a company owns. While this intangible asset may be examined from different stakeholders’ perspectives, most research on brand equity has focused primarily on customers and the firm, thus often neglecting the importance of employees. This research draws on three studies to advance a dynamic model, which appreciates the complexity of employee-based brand equity (EBBE) by focusing on its development process and outcomes. Study 1, based on 21 interviews with employees and the pertinent literature, proposes that EBBE consists of four sequential and interdependent blocks: brand-building, brand assimilation, brand affinity and brand enactment. Study 2 uses survey data from 420 employees and leverages the advantages of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to support the EBBE development model and its propositions, demonstrating its effects on key outcomes such as employee performance and customer feedback. Finally, Study 3 validates the EBBE model and its dynamic nature on a new sample of US employees and resampled datasets based on employment duration to validate its structural power, dynamic nature and explanatory capacity. This is the first research to examine EBBE as a complex, dynamic process, shedding light on its development and guiding organizations in managing brands by emphasizing employees as key stakeholders
Robust Understanding of Human-Robot Social Interactions through Multimodal Distillation
Get PDFThere is a growing need for social robots and intelligent agents that can effectively interact with and support users. For the interactions to be seamless, the agents need to analyse social scenes and behavioural cues from their (robot’s) perspective. Works that model human-agent interactions in social situations are few; and even those existing ones are computationally too intensive to be deployed in real time or perform poorly in real-world scenarios when only limited information is available. We propose a knowledge distillation framework that models social interactions through various multimodal cues, and yet is robust against incomplete and noisy information during inference. We train a teacher model with multimodal input (body, face and hand gestures, gaze, raw images) that transfers knowledge to a student model which relies solely on body pose. Extensive experiments on two publicly available human-robot interaction datasets demonstrate that our student modelachievesan average accuracy gain of 14.75% over competitive baselines on multiple downstream social understanding tasks, even with up to 51% of its input being corrupted. The student model is also highly efficient - less than 1% in size of the teacher model in terms of parameters and its latency is 11.9% of the teacher model
Analyzing Character Representation in Media Content using Multimodal Foundation Model: Effectiveness and Trust
No full textRecent advances in AI has enabled automated analysis of complex media content at scale and generate actionable insights regarding character representation along such dimensions as gender and age. Past work focused on quantifying representation from audio/video/text using various ML models, but without having the audience in the loop. We ask, even if character distribution along demographic dimensions are available, how useful are they to the general public? Do they actually trust the numbers generated by AI models? Our work addresses these questions through a user study, while proposing a new AI-based character representation and visualization tool. Our tool based on the Contrastive Language Image Pretraining (CLIP) foundation model to analyze visual screen data to quantify character representation across dimensions of age and gender. We also designed effective visualizations suitable for presenting such analytics to lay audience. Next, we conducted a user study to seek empirical evidence on the usefulness and trustworthiness of the AI-generated results for carefully chosen movies presented in the form of our visualizations. We note that participants were able to understand the analytics from our visualization, and deemed the tool `overall useful'. Participants also indicated a need for more detailed visualizations to include more demographic categories and contextual information of the characters. Participants' trust in AI-based gender and age models is seen to be moderate to low, although they were not against the use of AI in this context
Genetic architecture and risk of childhood maltreatment across 5 psychiatric diagnoses
No full textImportance: Childhood maltreatment (CM) is associated with psychiatric disorders. The underlying mechanisms are complex and involve genetics.
Objective: To investigate the polygenic architecture of CM-exposed individuals across psychiatric conditions and if genetics modulates absolute CM risk in the presence of high-impact risk factors such as parental psychiatric diagnoses.
Design, Setting, and Participants: The population-based case-cohort iPSYCH was used to analyze 13 polygenic scores (PGS) in CM-exposed individuals across 5 psychiatric International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) diagnoses benchmarked against controls. Individuals were stratified into PGS quantiles, and absolute CM risk was calculated using Cox regression. Sex-specific analyses were also performed. Data were analyzed from June 2022 to December 2024.
Exposures: PGS of phenotypes of psychiatric disorders, CM, educational attainment, and substance use.
Main Outcomes and Measures: PGSs were generated using summary statistics from genome-wide association studies of phenotypes representing psychiatric disorders, CM, educational attainment, and substance use and tested for their association with CM across psychiatric disorders.
Results: This study included 102 856 individuals (mean [SD] age, 22.6 [7.1] years; 54 918 male [53.4%]) 8 to 35 years old. A total of 2179 CM-exposed individuals were analyzed across individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; n = 22 674), autism (n = 18 941), schizophrenia (n = 6103), bipolar disorder (n = 3061), depression (n = 28 896), and controls (n = 34 689). PGSs for ADHD and educational attainment were associated with CM across all psychiatric diagnoses. The absolute CM risk was increased in the highest PGS groups, eg, for ADHD, the absolute CM risk was 5.6% in the highest ADHD-PGS quartile whereas it was only 3.3% in the lowest ADHD-PGS quartile (hazard rate ratio quantile 4 vs quantile 1 = 1.81; 95% CI, 1.47-2.22). CM risk was more than twice as high for children with parents with a psychiatric diagnosis (5.7%) than for children with parents without a psychiatric diagnosis (2.5%), but even in the presence of this risk factor, individuals could still be stratified into risk groups based on their genetics. No genetic differences between CM-exposed males and females were observed, but there were striking sex differences in absolute CM risk, which reached 5.6% for females in the highest ADHD-PGS quartile and 2.0% for males.
Conclusions and Relevance: Results of this case-control study suggest that individuals with high ADHD-PRS and/or low educational attainment–PRS had an associated elevated risk of CM. Extra attention should be given to individuals at high risk for CM across all 5 psychiatric diagnoses, ie, females with a high ADHD-PGS and/or a parent diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder
Delayed mating in the malaria vector Anopheles funestus compared to Anopheles arabiensis (Diptera: Culicidae).
Get PDFMating is a vital behavior for mosquito reproduction, yet it remains poorly understood under captive conditions. We examined the copulation dynamics of 2 key malaria vectors, Anopheles funestus sensu stricto Giles and Anopheles arabiensis Patton, under laboratory settings in Tanzania. We conducted observations in 24-h cycles and monitored copulation events and insemination of females, initially using flashlights for nighttime visibility, followed by red lights in subsequent experiments. We observed how variations in mosquito age and artificial lighting influenced mating success for these 2 mosquito species within cages under controlled conditions. We found that An. arabiensis copulated relatively soon after emergence, with 32.4% of individuals mating by day 3 postemergence, whereas An. funestus showed delayed activity, reaching a similar mating frequency by day 8. The introduction of artificial red light significantly accelerated copulation in An. funestus but did not affect An. arabiensis. Sperm transfer and mating plug delivery in over 92% of copulating pairs of both species was confirmed by dissection. Mating occurred primarily at night, with distinct peaks at 10 PM for An. arabiensis and 11 PM for An. funestus. In conclusion, our findings revealed species-specific differences in reproductive behavior, which could improve the colonization of An. funestus, a species historically challenging to rear in captivity. These insights also may facilitate the development of new vector control technologies, such as sterile insect techniques and genetic-based approaches, that exploit mosquito mating behavior
'Robert Burns: forgery and "Antique Smith"'
No full textThis blog for the National Trust of Scotland looks at the forgeries of Robert Burns by the prolific nineteenth-century forger Alexander Howland 'Antique' Smith held by the NTS in the Robert Burns Birthplace Museu
Revisioning School Experience Partnerships
No full textThe Partnership Model of School Experience used at the University of Glasgow has been in place since 2011. The model was reviewed and scholarship activity exploring its evolution has been carried out. The overarching aim has been to develop and strengthen our model for the support and assessment of student teachers on school placement with an emphasis on equity and inclusion. This paper will discuss the themes and understandings about partnership as a concept emerging from the data while also providing an overview of our response. This work is placed in the context of the unique characteristics of teacher education in Scotland, and how these provide both opportunities and constraints.
Several research methodologies have been used to record the voices of the partners in the model, expert interviews, focus groups and questionnaires. Nominal group technique and appreciative enquiry were used in student voice data collection.
Analysis of data from practitioner expert interviews allowed key themes to be identified. Relationships and communication, identity, teacher learning, and challenges featured strongly. Student voice, focussed on appreciative enquiry, which allows us to identify the positive attributes of school experience and university-based preparation for placement to inform future practice.
For student teachers, experience in schools is hugely significant to their progress as learners and to the development of their teacher identity. Lofthouse and Thomas (2014) have referred to school placement as a ‘vulnerable workplace learning practice’ and student teachers report increasingly variable experiences. The Partnership Model was developed to help mitigate negative placement experiences by providing a dedicated university-based teacher educator to support the student and develop partnerships with the teacher mentors. This study seeks to understand the extent to which this aim has been achieved and what needs to be done to ensure that the student experience is consistent and positive in future
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