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Association between school exclusion, suspension, absence, and violent crime
Get PDFFrom Executive Summary:The aim of this research is to test the association between school absence, suspensions and exclusions and subsequent offending and violent behaviour. The existing evidence suggests being in education can reduce the risk that a child will be involved in crime and violence (Department for Education, 2023; Ullman et al., 2024; YEF, 2024b).Despite this, there are limits to what we know. Studies that exclusively rely on administrative data (school, care and offending records) cannot fully control for the range of individual, family, interpersonal and community-level drivers that may also explain the correlation between absence from education and offending. Few existing studies look at the relationships between absence and exclusions and later violence using both police-recorded and self-report crime and violence measures.To build on this, the study described in this report uses linked data between the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), the National Pupil Database (NPD) and Avon & Somerset Police Data. ALSPAC is a cohort study that recruited pregnant women with a due date between April 1991 and December 1992, living in and around Bristol. Almost 15,000 women were recruited, resulting in a sample of 14,901 children alive at one year of age. These children and their parents have been tracked continuously into adulthood. Suspension, exclusion and absence data (from the NPD) have been matched to the children in ALSPAC who attended state-funded schools in Key Stage 4 (when participants were 14-16 years old).The main outcomes of interest for this study are self-reported violent behaviour, as measured by questionnaires at ages 17 and 18 years, and police-recorded crime (total and violent offending separately), as measured in official police records in the 24-month period following the end of either Year 10 or Year 11. The research uses logistic regression, testing the relationship between each exposure and outcome pair (e.g. having a police record and having been suspended) and controlling for a range of individual, behavioural, family and school factors
Navigating the Web of Disinformation: Employing Social Network Analysis to Decode Disinformation Dynamics in Modern Societies
Get PDFA network analysis that ignores social harm is merely a technical exercise. A social critique that ignores the network is incomplete. Navigating the Web of Disinformation closes this critical gap. Mariann Hardey and Wasim Ahmed offer a vital socio-technical examination of digital falsehoods, using Social Network Analysis (SNA) to connect the mechanics of digital diffusion to their real-world consequences. The result is a powerful visual and analytical account of how digital manipulation directly fuels social instability. As a critical contribution to the field, this book equips researchers and policymakers with a practical method to not only identify false information but to understand its social impact, proposing grounded solutions to defend the integrity of public discourse. A vital contribution to the field, this publication equips policymakers, researchers, and practitioners with the insights needed to mitigate the spread of false information
Combined Oriented Data Augmentation Method for Brain MRI Images
Get PDFIn recent years, deep learning’s use in medical imaging has grown exponentially. However, one of the biggest problems with training deep learning models is the unavailability of large amounts of data, which leads to overfitting. Collecting large quantities of labelled medical images is expensive, time-consuming, and depends on specialists’ availability. In this paper, we proposed a novel method namely Oriented Combination MRI (OCMRI) for augmenting brain MRI dataset. The proposed method helps CNN models overcome overfitting and class imbalance problems by combining Brain MRI images to generate new images. The image fusion is performed by selecting two images of the same tumor class if the Mean Squared Error (MSE) between these two images is greater than threshold 1 and lower than threshold 2. Both thresholds are variable, initially set by the user and automatically fine-tuned by the algorithm to control the number of images produced for each class, thus helping to address the data imbalance problem. The proposed approach was evaluated by training and testing the PRCnet model on four publicly available datasets before and after applying the proposed method to the datasets. Where the classification accuracy without data augmentation was 85.19% for dataset A, 90.12% for dataset B, 94.77% for dataset C, and 90% for dataset D respectively. After adding the synthetic data; the accuracy improved to 92.7% for dataset A, 95.37% for dataset B, 96.51% for dataset C and 98% for dataset D respectively
Women’s perspectives of molecular breast imaging: a qualitative study: Epidemiology
Get PDFBackground: Mammography has poor sensitivity in dense breast tissue. Retrospective studies suggest that Molecular Breast Imaging (MBI), has superior diagnostic accuracy to mammography in women with very dense breast tissue. Women’s perspectives of MBI are unknown, but are crucial to understanding the feasibility of, and routes to, adoption into practice. Method: Semi-structured interviews with screened and unscreened women explored acceptability of MBI. Data were analysed thematically. Results: Four themes were generated from nineteen interviews: (1) presumed negative aspects of MBI are acceptable (2) convenience of access, (3) comfort in familiarity and (4) need for shared decisions relating to risk. Presumed negative aspects of MBI, such as radiation dose and forty-minute scan time, were acceptable provided there are benefits. Some participants were concerned about equitable access, such as parking. Participants expressed comfort in existing and familiar screening processes. Participants acknowledged that informing women of their breast density may result in increased anxiety, but it was still felt to be important to ensure women are fully informed of the risks and harms of screening. Conclusions: Women consider MBI to be an acceptable breast imaging modality. High-quality information enabling informed decision-making is essential
The United Kingdom, Targeted Killing, International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law
No full textIt would appear that, to date, the United Kingdom (UK) has engaged in the targeted killing of suspected terrorists on the territory of a third State on four occasions—most recently in June 2024. In responding to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights 2015 Inquiry into a policy of targeted killing outside of armed conflict, the then Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Fallon, indicated that the appropriate legal framework for such drone strikes was international humanitarian law, and that compliance with international humanitarian law would result in compliance with any obligations that the UK also held in international human rights law. The position has been neither confirmed nor refuted since. This article assesses the accuracy of the statement, and finds that neither element is necessarily true
Mapping the local ambidextrous chirality in thin films of NTB phase by circular dichroism spectra
Get PDFCircular dichroism mapping (CDM) method was introduced by utilizing the highly collimated light beam of synchrotron radiation (SR) available at Diamond Light Source B23 beamline for scanning the thin films of the NTB phase. We apply SR-CDM to two achiral dimeric materials exhibiting the NTB phase: symmetric DTC5C9 and dissymmetric DTC5C9CB. The SR-CDM measurements directly capture the chiral information in the local NTB domains, providing the ultimate complement to the theoretical predictions of the helical structures: the spontaneous symmetry breaking in NTB phase is ambidextrous. The macroscopic chirality of the NTB phase is determined by the combination of doubly degenerate locally chiral domains in the illuminated area. Additionally, we investigate the temperature dependence, as well as the dynamic nature of the local chirality in the NTB phase by in-situ SR-CDM, confirming a chiral conversion influenced by the state of enantiomeric aggregation and a progressive unwinding of the helical structure in left-handed domains as the crystallization temperature is approached
Exploring health visitors' role in partnering with parents to reduce alcohol-related developmental disorders in England: a mixed-methods study
Get PDFExtract: Health Visitors' Role in Discussing AlcoholAddressing alcohol consumption from the antenatal period through the first 5 years aligns with Making Every Contact Count.This rarely happens due to organisational and individual-level barriers such as limited training on alcohol screening and knowledge of best practice in response to level of risk-drinking. There is a gap in knowledge has informed this study by exploring how HVs can be agents of change alongside parents in reducing the prevalence/mitigating the risk of alcohol-related developmental disorders in England
(Un)intentionality bias in action observation revisited
Get PDFWhen observing individuals in action, we often infer their goals and intentions. Yet, in situations where actions are ambiguous and could be either intentionally generated or not, there is a tendency to perceive these actions as internally driven. This intentionality bias is influenced by individual differences in schizotypal cognitive style. In this study, we examined how healthy individuals distinguish between intentional and unintentional actions when perceiving actions of a finger attached to a pulling device. Participants reported to use different strategies to infer intentionality (e.g., action onset, perceived movement speed, hand and finger posture) and tended to attribute more intentionality to actions where the posture of the finger aligned with the final goal of the action (i.e., a bent finger pushing a button was perceived more intentional than a straight finger doing the same action). Moreover, the perceived action intentionality varied depending on the individual schizotypal cognitive style. The tendency to perceive the action as intentional when it was done with a bent finger rather than a straight finger decreased as the participants' schizotypal scores increased. These findings suggest that intentionality attribution is not based on processes that automatically infer intentions as the primary cause of human actions. Rather than being an intentional bias, we believe that attributing and denying intentions requires the coherent integration of high- and low-level cognitive processes modulated by individual differences
Registered Report Stage 2. How Well Do Children Remember Fast-Mapped Words? A Pre-Registered Meta-Analysis of Retention Following the Mutual Exclusivity Response
No full textThere is widespread evidence that children display a mutual exclusivity response upon encountering new words. Children displaying this behaviour will select a novel, name-unknown object in response to a novel label, rather than a familiar, name-known object. The mutual exclusivity response has been viewed as a means of fast-mapping vocabulary—enabling the retention of new words with minimal and incidental exposure. Thus, it may play an important role in driving early vocabulary growth. Yet, while the mutual exclusivity response may initially guide the correct choice of a novel word's referent, it does not necessarily result in retention for even brief durations. In this pre-registered meta-analysis, we examined the evidence for the retention of novel noun mappings disambiguated through the mutual exclusivity response. While a large effect size was observed for the mutual exclusivity response, consistent with past research, there was a smaller effect for subsequent retention—which was substantially attenuated by Bayesian publication bias correction. Our findings are consistent with models of word learning in which referent selection is not governed by the same processes underlying referent retention
A Feminist Political Ecology of household waste management in an urban township, South Africa
Get PDFIn the Global South, women disproportionately shoulder the burden of household waste management. Development Studies suggest that this persistent feminization of waste-related activities is rooted in cultural, social, and economic factors that confine women to private domestic spaces. Examining these gendered disparities within the intimate sphere of the home highlights issues of patriarchal power and female oppression. However, the intersections of multiple oppressions, particularly those tied to women’s interactions with household waste, remain underexplored. This paper critically investigates the relationship between gender and household waste management in Lamontville Township, South Africa. Drawing on household surveys and in-depth interviews, the study contributes to Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) scholarship, focusing on gendered knowledge and oppression. The intersectional analysis reveals how patriarchal cultural norms, socio-economic status, marital status, and proximity to waste collectively (re)produce gendered power relations and unequal exposure to household waste. FPE thus emerges as a valuable framework for exposing entrenched disparities tied to new forms of discrimination from the (neo)apartheid era, which have constrained women’s autonomy in South Africa’s urban areas. By understanding these intersecting inequalities, this research offers insights for policies aimed at dismantling gendered oppression in household waste management practices