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Linking Form and Function in Birds: The Ecology, Mechanics, and Evolution of Avian Cranial Kinesis
Get PDFBirds exhibit cranial kinesis, which allows rotation of their upper beaks relative to their skulls. Despite centuries of research into form-function relationships in birds, broad-scale, quantitative study of cranial kinesis has been largely overlooked. Here, I quantify the cranial kinetic system through modelling with four-bar linkages, created using just 5 landmarks placed on lateral images of bird skulls. This provides performance data on the ability of the system to transfer or amplify motion both without the beak, through Kinematic Transmission, and with the beak, by means of a novel metric: Gape Ratio. This work, conducted on 487 species of neognatheous birds, is the broadest study using avian functional skull trait data to date, and represents the first attempt at quantifying cranial kinesis to understand clade-wide form-function relationships between the skull and feeding ecology in birds.I demonstrate that avian cranial kinesis, modelled by four-bar linkages, can be used to separate birds based on their feeding ecology and also offers insights into the adaptations of the cranial kinetic systems of specific feeding groups. I also find the presence of mechanical sensitivity, where the mechanical outputs of the four-bar system are more sensitive to the changes in some links than others. Additionally, I uncover the presence of mechanical equivalence, whereby multiple linkage morphologies result in similar mechanical outputs; a feature that appears to be ubiquitous in biological four-bar systems. Both are facilitated by the fact that, unlike what has been found in similar studies of other animals, which link is most sensitive, and sensitivity to changes in the linkage morphology, varies among birds. Building on these findings, I then investigate the implications of mechanical sensitivity for the mode and tempo of the evolution of components of the avian four-bar linkage system, demonstrating that mechanical sensitivity helps to facilitate morphological diversification. Further, I also find that the components of the four-bar linkage system differ in their evolutionary rates based on feeding ecology, suggesting that although there is a great deal of diversity and flexibility, specific parts of the system appear to be constrained and influenced by strong selection.Overall, these findings have contributed to our understanding of avian feeding form-function relationships and to our knowledge of avian cranial kinesis more broadly. This work highlights a number of exciting areas of future investigation and demonstrates the power of this simple mechanical performance metric in combination with the ever-growing use of big data
Editorial: Holistically healthy humans: championing mental and physical wellbeing in education
Get PDFThe Life, Literature and Legacy of Luis J. Rodríguez: In the Long Run
No full textAn authoritative anthology on Luis Rodríguez’s life and works, offering a range of perspectives on his many different accomplishments and activities • Offers a range of perspectives on multiple aspects of his many different accomplishments and activities that can be used in secondary and university curricula. • Gathers peer author reflections that offer insights on Rodriguez’s aesthetics for readers and writers to study and use, thus filling a gap between academic oriented scholarship and popular journalism about Rodriguez and his work. • Introduces new unpublished works by Rodriguez himself and archival materials relating to his career for further use in teaching and research as well as general interest.Luis Rodríguez is a prominent Latinx poet, memoirist and activist renowned for his candid visceral accounts of urban working-class life that includes youth gang violence, incarceration and drug abuse, gruelling factory work and union organising activities and collective approaches to redemption and political empowerment, which have resonated across multiple communities in the United States and abroad. Accordingly, whilst Rodríguez has been the focus of some critical scholarship, huge segments of his life, work and legacy remain unexamined. This anthology has commissioned new and unique critical essays and reflections on Rodríguez’s life and works, putting forward new ideas about bringing the voices of 'barrio organic intellectuals' to the fore. The anthology deliberately includes traditional academics as well as more public intellectuals and creative writers from across Europe and the Americas to reflect Rodriguez’s own diverse outputs as a prisoner author and activist
Underground Lives Research 2025: Enablers and barriers for successful move on from the National Referral Mechanism
No full textExecutive Summary:Since 2011, Hestia has supported thousands of survivors of modern slavery as they navigate the Government’s National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the framework designed to identify and support victims of trafficking and exploitation. From the point of referral, through the recovery and reflection period, and up to the receipt of a Conclusive Grounds decision, Hestia provides person-centred, trauma-informed support to meet a wide range of practical and emotional recovery needs. Once a survivor receives a positive Conclusive Grounds decision, they are entitled to up to 45 days of further support before exiting the NRM. For many survivors we know that this period is simply not long enough. They often find themselves ‘stuck’ within the system, repeatedly applying to extend their support while being unable to move forward independently. This research explores what a positive Conclusive Grounds decision really means for survivors of modern slavery, and aims to understand their most pressing recovery needs at that point. It also examines what can realistically be achieved during the short move-on period and identifies the key enablers and barriers to progress
Improved electric load forecasting using quantile long short-term memory network with dual attention mechanism
No full textThe robust and accurate load forecasting is necessary to ensure effective power market operations and optimize load dispatch strategies. Deep learning models have recently gained popularity because of their strong ability to learn data patterns. However, conventional deep-learning models still encounter difficulties in precisely predicting complex load patterns. This paper addresses the difficulties of forecasting intricate load patterns, where conventional deep learning models often fail. Therefore, a novel quantile long short-term memory network with dual attention is proposed for hour-ahead short-term load forecasting. By combining dual attention processes with quantile regression-based long short-term memory networks, the proposed framework effectively captures the temporal dependencies of the complex load pattern. The gates recurrent unit and hybridized methodologies of recurrent neural networks are among the baseline techniques against which the proposed method is thoroughly tested using datasets from Panama City and the Islamabad Electric Supply Company. The proposed quantile long short-term memory network with dual attention mechanism has demonstrated notable performance gains with 2.35% and 5.36% reduction in mean absolute percentage error in comparison to the best-performing models, from the set of baseline models, for the Panama and IESCO datasets, respectively. These results demonstrate the proposed method’s effectiveness in providing more improved and accurate forecasts for enhanced grid stability and economic dispatch efficiency
More Than Muscle: Exploring Bodybuilders’ Experiences of Body Image
Get PDFThis thesis portfolio comprises three parts: a systematic literature review, an empirical paper and appendices. This thesis aimed to explore bodybuilders’ experiences of body image, with a particular focus on subjective experiences using qualitative methodology.Part One: Systematic Literature ReviewThe systematic literature review explored how bodybuilders experience body image, addressing a gap in the predominantly quantitative and pathologizing literature. Eleven qualitative or mixed-methods studies were included, revealing four main themes: the desire to change the body, the positive impact of bodybuilding, body dissatisfaction, and the tension between muscularity and femininity. The findings show bodybuilding’s dual nature, providing both empowerment and distress, with bodybuilders reporting increased confidence but also persistent dissatisfaction. Female bodybuilders experienced additional challenges due to societal expectations of femininity. The review emphasizes the need for more qualitative research and psychological support tailored to bodybuilders, as well as culturally diverse, non-pathologizing studies.Part Two: Empirical PaperThe empirical paper explored how natural competitive female bodybuilders experience their bodies and psychological well-being throughout the competitive process. Through semi-structured interviews with 11 bodybuilders, qualitative data were analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Four overarching themes were generated: experiences of the body prior to beginning bodybuilding, experiences of the ever-changing body, coping with the ever-changing body, and the bodybuilder identity. Findings indicated that negative body image and the desire to change the body may initiate bodybuilding, with body image dissatisfaction being pronounced during transitional periods. However, this distress was transient as participants adjusted to their bodies, reframing body image concerns within a performance-focused and competitive context. The study calls for further research and highlights the potential role of psychological support for individuals experiencing distress.Part Three comprises the Appendices:The appendices provide additional material supporting the systematic literature review and the empirical paper and offer further insight into the researcher’s position through the epistemological and reflective statements
No Longer 'Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards'? Advances in Local State- Voluntary and Community Sector Relationships During Covid-19
Get PDFDespite the significant influence of localism on policy discourses in the UK in recent decades, there has been limited evidence of any fundamental changes in state-civil society relationships. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 created a new context for cross-sectoral collaboration, as the local Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) and local communities moved to the forefront of the crisis response. This paper draws upon 49 semi-structured interviews with local authorities (LAs) and VCS organisations across England, Scotland and Wales, to explore how the pandemic has reshaped LA-VCS collaboration. Examining the evolution of a range of local collaborative frameworks during the Covid-19 crisis, the article examines what enabled these collaborations to develop, how they operated and what insights can be derived regarding both the conditions for collaboration to flourish and the capacity to sustain this going forward. The findings offer insights into what more progressive forms of collaboration might look like during the transition from crisis and into 2 recovery. It contributes to broader debates about whether the models deployed during Covid-19 represent a pathway to more consensus-based collaboration after a decade of antagonism between civil society and the state
The Application of Human Rights Treaties as Domestic Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Get PDFThe reading of the post-revolution 1979 Constitution of Iran gives the im pression that Iran is a dualist state, but this article argues that, on its proper analysis together with Article 9 of the Civil Code 1928, Iran is a monist state and human rights treaties Iran has acceded to are directly applicable in the legal system of Iran. The misperception stems from the fact that the 1979 Constitution is silent on the status and/or hierarchy of ratified treaties. We argue that there is no conflict between the Constitution and Article 9, as the former sets out the procedure for the ratification of treaties and the latter determines their status in domestic law, i.e., granting ratified treaties the status of “the force of law.” We, alternatively, argue that even if the conflict is real, it can be avoided by following the Islamic law approach, as Islamic law treats ratified treaties as binding and directly applicable in Islamic states such as Iran. The 1979 Constitution has given supremacy to Islamic law, and it prevails over other laws. We argue and hope that direct application of ratified human rights treaties would make a significant contribution to the enjoyment of human rights in Iran
HFL-GAN: scalable hierarchical federated learning GAN for high quantity heterogeneous clients
Get PDFThis paper introduces a novel approach for training generative adversarial networks using federated machine learning. Generative adversarial networks have gained plenty of attention in the research community especially with their abilities to produce high quality synthetic data for a variety of use-cases. Yet, when combined with federated learning, those models suffer from degradation in both training time and quality of results. To address this challenge, this paper introduces a novel approach that uses hierarchical learning techniques to enable the efficient training of federated GAN models. The proposed approach introduces an innovative mechanism that dynamically clusters participant clients to edge servers as well as a novel multi-generator GAN architecture that utilizes non-identical model aggregation stages. The proposed approach has been evaluated on a number of benchmark datasets to measure its performance on higher numbers of participating clients. The results show that HFL-GAN outperforms other comparative state-of-the-art approaches in the training of GAN models in complex non-IID federated learning settings
