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Kidney-heart crosstalk: the extracellular vesicles connection
No full textChronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a major public health concern, closely linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), which remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in this population. While traditional risk factors such as hypertension and diabetes are prevalent in CKD, disease-specific mechanisms—including chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, mineral disturbances, and the accumulation of uremic toxins—further amplify cardiovascular vulnerability. In CKD, both the abundance and molecular cargo of circulating extracellular vesicles (EVs) are altered, reflecting the underlying metabolic and inflammatory milieu. These EVs propagate endothelial dysfunction, vascular calcification, inflammation, thrombosis, and cardiac remodelling by transferring bioactive molecules such as proteins and microRNAs to target cells. Emerging evidence suggests that EVs not only serve as biomarkers for early detection and risk stratification of CVD in CKD but may also represent novel therapeutic targets. Preclinical studies demonstrate the potential of stem cell-derived and engineered EVs to promote cardiac repair and modulate pathological signalling. However, translation into clinical practice requires rigorous standardization, safety validation, and well-designed human trials. This review synthesizes current knowledge on the mechanisms by which EVs bridge renal dysfunction and cardiovascular pathology, discusses their utility as biomarkers, and outlines a research agenda for harnessing their therapeutic potential in CKD-associated CVD
The acceleration of artificial intelligence: rethinking organisation and work in an era of rapid technological change
No full textArtificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the epistemic, organisational, and institutional foundations of contemporary organisations, yet management and organisation studies are only beginning to theorise the implications of this shift. Existing research often treats “AI” as a singular construct, despite the fact that predictive, generative, agentic, and embodied systems rely on different computational logics and produce distinct organisational consequences. This article reviews and synthesises the rapidly expanding literature on AI and organising and interrogates the limits of such conceptual flattening. Drawing on developments across the field, we show how different modes of AI reshape core organisational constructs, including expertise, judgement, coordination, authority, and institutional adaptation. We advance a heuristic framework that differentiates among contemporary AI systems and clarifies their organisational affordances. The article concludes by outlining a research agenda that highlights shifting loci of agency, emerging decision architectures, and the normative and institutional challenges introduced by increasingly capable computational systems
The housing market value of public transport accessibility to employment in post-pandemic England
Get PDFThe rise in home/hybrid working post-pandemic across multiple countries has been linked to significant shifts in housing demand away from urban centres. This paper explores evidence for this shift through changes in the value placed on public transport services in house prices. We analyse changes across 74 travel-to-work areas in England using data from 2.6 million house sales listings combined with novel measures of public transport accessibility to employment (PTAE). Multilevel hedonic models capture changes in willingness-to-pay for PTAE at the Travel-to-Work Area level with meta-analysis models used to analyse variations between and within cities. Overall, there was a reduction in willingness-to-pay for PTAE post-pandemic but this was confined to smaller cities and those with lower housing affordability. Within cities, reductions were greater in locations better served by public transport and with greater potential for home/hybrid working though the latter was also confined to smaller cities and those with lower affordability. Results align with evidence on increasing trends of counter-urbanisation in the UK and Europe and pose challenges for future sustainable urban development policies but also highlight the variations between urban contexts
Degradable polyphosphoester-based aqueous two-phase systems and water-in-water emulsions
Get PDFCompletely water-based multicompartment systems have gained significant interest in polymer chemistry recently, mainly due to their interesting properties for molecular separation, material design and catalytic environments. Herein, we present new aqueous two-phase systems and water-in-water emulsions based on a polysaccharide and a polyphosphoester, namely dextran (Dex) and poly(ethylene ethyl phosphonate) (PPE), respectively. The aqueous two-phase formation is investigated via a phase diagram, and water-in-water emulsions are formed making use of silica nanoparticles as stabilizers. The system is designed to investigate the effect of polymer orthogonal degradation and the role of either Dex or PPE in breaking the two-phase systems or the emulsions. This development is a considerable step forward enhancing control over aqueous multi-phase systems, by making use not only of polymer components but also of their degradation to design desired properties. These properties might be a relevant avenue for developments in the research area of all-aqueous systems for encapsulation, delivery and release as well as membraneless-organelle mimics
The right to know in the information polity
Get PDFIn a world struggling with a surfeit of misinformation and disinformation, the task of justifying a citizen’s right to reliable information, the so-called ‘right to know’, is urgent and unavoidable. To that end, the article deploys the theory of justice of John Rawls, a leading figure in Anglophone political philosophy in the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. The ‘neo-Rawlsians’ are introduced as a school which has sought to apply Rawlsian thinking to the new age. According to neo-Rawlsians, there is a strong case for information now to be recognised as a primary good belonging to Rawls’s liberty principle. However, the article seeks to break new ground by, instead of treating the right to know as a standalone civil liberty, placing it under what Rawls calls the ‘fair value of political liberty’. The advantage of this move is that it converts it from a ‘negative’ (formal) to a ‘positive’ (proactive) liberty. While reducing its scope, the manoeuvre entails that the state comes under a moral and, hopefully, legal obligation to guarantee that citizens become apprised of important political information, such as election information. The article ends by discussing some of the ways in which neo-Rawlsian thinking might be developed for the digital age
Exploring the effects of pharmacological treatments on suicidality in children and adolescents: a structured review of the literature and narrative synthesis
Get PDFBackground: Suicide rates have risen among young people, making it a leading cause of adolescent death worldwide. Although several pharmacological treatments have been approved in the context of definite underlying conditions, their broader efficacy in reducing suicidality remains unclear.
Methods: A structured review was conducted on pharmacological treatments for suicidality in under 18s. PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, and Cochrane Library were searched from inception to 31 July 2025. Eligible studies included patients <18 years with suicidality treated with antidepressants, mood stabilisers, or antipsychotics. Exclusion criteria were non-pharmacological interventions, non-suicidal self-injury-only studies, reviews, and grey literature. Both interventional and observational designs were considered. Four authors independently screened, extracted, and appraised data using Joanna Briggs Institute tools. The primary outcome was suicidality reduction, synthesised narratively. This study is registered with PROSPERO, CRD42024548628.
Findings: Twenty-three articles out of 1747 met inclusion criteria, totalling 2235 participants. Risk of bias across studies was low-to-moderate for nearly all studies (22/23). However, the majority employed weaker study designs and targeted underlying diagnoses, with suicidality rarely assessed as a primary outcome. Esketamine (four studies, n = 211) and ketamine (four, n = 6) use in major depressive disorder induced rapid reduction of acute suicidality within 24 h. In the longer term, lithium (three, n = 923) was beneficial in reducing suicidality in youths with bipolar disorder. Sertraline, citalopram, escitalopram, fluoxetine and duloxetine (six, n = 906) yielded inconsistent results. Other agents, including valproate, lamotrigine and antipsychotics such as clozapine and quetiapine exhibited some benefit in reducing suicidality, but findings were limited to small-scale studies.
Interpretation: Evidence remains scarce and heterogeneous. Esketamine and lithium appear promising for acute and chronic suicidality, respectively. Further high-quality studies investigating suicidal thoughts and behaviours as independent treatment targets are needed to guide clinical decision-making
Multi-scale mechanics and remodelling of focal adhesions and the extracellular matrix
No full textWe present a multiscale continuum framework predicting the mechanical behaviour of focal adhesions (FAs) in response to the interactions exchanged with the extra-cellular matrix (ECM) and living cells. Our study, in particular, focuses on the time-dependent remodelling of both FAs and the ECM induced by cell stimuli and incorporates the effect of microscale heterogeneities characterizing their architecture. Using a one-dimensional model of shear-lag type, we describe FAs as a layered assembly composed of three key elements: the adhesion plaque, integrin receptors and the surrounding ECM. The adhesion plaque and ECM are modelled as linearly elastic fibres undergoing axial deformation, while integrins are treated as mechanical connectors capable of transmitting both elastic and non-elastic forces. In extending previous models available in the existing literature, we emphasize that the entire analysis is grounded in biological evidence and supported by experimental studies. The resulting multiscale approach, based on asymptotic homogenization, leads to the computation of elastic effective coefficients in closed form, and they are employed to solve numerically a benchmark problem representing cell-matrix systems mediated by FAs, whose key insights are discussed
Cumulative oesophageal dose and risk of high-grade toxicity in thoracic re-irradiation: a dose/toxicity analysis
Get PDFBackground and purpose:
Re-irradiation (re-RT) in recurrent thoracic cancer is being performed more often and can cause severe toxicity. Information is lacking on safe re-irradiation dose constraints. We modelled the relationship between cumulative oesophageal dose and grade 3 or worse (≥G3) oesophageal toxicity to develop dose constraints.
Materials and methods:
We performed a literature search for reports of thoracic re-RT and selected studies that quoted cumulative oesophageal maximum dose (cDmax) in equivalent dose in 2 Gy fractions (EQD2) and ≥G3 toxicity. Additional collected data were inter-treatment interval and concurrent chemotherapy use (conCT) at re-irradiation. Logistic regression analyses were performed. The models were used to predict the cDmax associated with a 5% ≥G3 toxicity rate. Model performance was assessed using the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC).
Results:
We identified 21 studies (505 patients), with 49 ≥G3 toxic events. The median oesophageal cDmax and interval were 84.8 Gy3 (3.7 – 220.6 Gy3 EQD2) and 15.5 months (1–162) respectively. Use of conCT and oesophageal cDmax were significantly associated with toxicity on univariable and multivariable modelling (both p < 0.001). The maximum likelihood doses associated with 5% risk of ≥G3 toxicity with/without chemotherapy were cDmax 43.0 Gy3 (95% CI: −18.5, 108.8) and 94.2 Gy3 (95% CI: 79.6, 142.8) respectively. The model had a PCC of 0.75 (p = 0.013) suggesting good correlation to the dataset.
Conclusion:
The models predict a 5% toxicity at cDmax 43.0 Gy3 and 94.2 Gy3 EQD2 with/without chemotherapy. This supports a cDmax constraint of <95 Gy3 EQD2 to limit ≥G3 toxicity to under 5%, consistent with the American Radium Society constraints (<100 Gy3 EQD2). ConCT with re-irradiation has a large radiosensitising effect. Limitations of this study include the use of old, retrospective data resulting in wide CIs around the predictions and insufficient data to predict a volumetric constraint. Further modelling with more detailed dose data is required to refine and validate these predictions
Climate (in)justice: decolonizing public sector climate accountability and accounting in and for the Majority World
No full textPurpose:
While climate change has caused catastrophic consequences for both human and non-human habitats in the Anthropocene era, its impacts are unevenly distributed across the globe. Existing global climate change policies, discourses and practices – promulgated and adopted worldwide – fail to account for the systemic structural, political, historical, cultural, social and economic inequalities between the Majority and Minority World. Inspired by the decolonization agenda, this paper aims to deconstruct the Western technocratic theorization of public sector climate accounting and accountability from a Majority World perspective.
Design/methodology/approach:
Theoretically, the paper draws from a critical “climate justice” lens and Latour's (2017) concept of “Down to Earth” to critique the limitations of dominant scientific and technocratic approaches of public sector climate accounting and accountability, which have perpetuated socio-environmental injustice. It also advocates for a new climatic regime – “Terrestrial” – that offers an alternative politics which leads towards the earth. Empirically, the paper draws from three empirical narratives to illustrate how climate injustices materialize in practice in the Majority World.
Findings:
The paper argues that meaningful climate accountability requires reimagining political orientations beyond Minority–Majority national frontiers and adopting a planetary ethic that restores humanity's relationship with the earth. It urges international agencies and Global South states to address climate injustice by implementing a practical climate accounting and accountability framework comprising: (1) prioritizing local resilience and adaptive capacity over mitigation-focused agendas; (2) resisting neo-colonial extractive practices and exploring commonwealth governance alternatives; (3) fostering communitarian, Indigenous-informed participation; (4) rejecting hierarchical, technocratic approaches; and (5) developing alternative contextually grounded practices sensitive to local socio-political, cultural and environmental realities.
Research limitations/implications:
Future research on public sector accounting and accountability for climate change must move beyond descriptive assessments towards transformative frameworks addressing climate injustice in the Majority World. This includes examining the empirical application of novel climate accounting models above, theorizing the potential and limitations of accounting tools for adaptation, advancing participatory accountability practices, exploring alternative accounting possibilities and extending inquiry into commonwealth governance. Latour's ideas – especially the “new climatic regime”, the terrestrial approach and the empirical science of nature-as-process – also provide valuable avenues for reimagining how climate accounting can be theorized and enacted in practice.
Practical implications:
The paper develops a practical climate accounting and accountability framework in and for the Majority World, encapsulating five key features: (1) prioritizing local resilience and adaptive capacity over mitigation-focused agendas; (2) resisting neo-colonial extractive practices and exploring alternative models of commonwealth governance; (3) fostering communitarian, Indigenous-informed participatory initiatives; (4) rejecting hierarchical, technocratic approaches to accounting and accountability; and (5) advancing contextually grounded practices attuned to local socio-political, cultural and environmental realities, thereby addressing climate injustice in the Majority World.
Originality/value:
Little research theorizes public sector climate accounting and accountability from the Majority World perspectives
Data sources:
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