23343 research outputs found
Sort by
‘Hammering on the pressure’: Prison governor well‐being and the need for a more humanised approach
Get PDFThe challenges of prison work and the impact on the well-being of prison officers is widely publicised. However, less is known about the well-being of prison governors, and what may impact this: the focus of this research. Semi-structured interviews (n = 63) with prison governors across England, Scotland and Wales, analysed using thematic analysis, indicated core themes around poor well-being, limited work-life balance and feelings of disenchantment. The well-being climate was underpinned by challenges within the occupational culture including the relentless workloads, a so-called ‘macho culture’, competing expectations, a dissonance between responsibility and autonomy, and a lack of role understanding between staff within prisons and those working from HM Prison and Probation Service headquarters. The challenges were exacerbated, but not caused, by Covid-19 and a lack of perceived value among staff, but mitigated to a degree by individual coping and some access to governor-specific support. Implications and future directions are discussed
Forever but not everywhere? Unexpected non-detection of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in major Philippines rivers
Get PDFRecent studies suggest per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are ubiquitous in rivers worldwide. In the Asia-Pacific region, the frequency of PFAS detection in rivers is increasing. However, the overwhelming majority of studies and data represent high population and urbanized river catchments. In this study, we investigate PFAS occurrence in major Philippines river systems characterized by both high and low population densities. In the Pasig Laguna de Bay River, which drains a major urban conurbation, we detected PFAS at concentrations typical of global rivers. Unexpectedly, we did not detect PFAS in river water or sediments in low population density river catchments, despite our instrument detection limits being lower than the vast majority of river concentrations reported worldwide. We hypothesize that septic tanks, as the dominant wastewater treatment practice in Philippines catchments, may control the release of PFAS into groundwater and rivers in the Philippines. However, no groundwater PFAS data currently exist to validate this supposition. More broadly, our findings highlight the need for more representative PFAS sampling and analysis in rivers to more accurately represent regional and global detection frequencies and trends
Wind Turbine Fault-Tolerant Control via Incremental Model-Based Reinforcement Learning
Get PDFA reinforcement learning (RL) based fault-tolerant control strategy is developed in this paper for wind turbine torque & pitch control under actuator & sensor faults subject to unknown system models. An incremental model-based heuristic dynamic programming (IHDP) approach, along with a critic-actor structure, is designed to enable fault-tolerance capability and achieve optimal control. Particularly, an incremental model is embedded in the critic-actor structure to quickly learn the potential system changes, such as faults, in real-time. Different from the current IHDP methods that need the intensive evaluation of the state and input matrices, only the input matrix of the incremental model is dynamically evaluated and updated by an online recursive least square estimation procedure in our proposed method. Such a design significantly enhances the online model evaluation efficiency and control performance, especially under faulty conditions. In addition, a value function and a target critic network are incorporated into the main critic-actor structure to improve our method’s learning effectiveness. Case studies for wind turbines under various working conditions are conducted based on the fatigue, aerodynamics, structures, and turbulence (FAST) simulator to demonstrate the proposed method’s solid fault-tolerance capability and adaptability. Note to Practitioners —This work achieves high-performance wind turbine control under unknown actuator & sensor faults. Such a task is still an open problem due to the complexity of turbine dynamics and potential uncertainties in practical situations. A novel data-driven and model-free control strategy based on reinforcement learning is proposed to handle these issues. The designed method can quickly capture the potential changes in the system and adjust its control policy in real-time, rendering strong adaptability and fault-tolerant abilities. It provides data-driven innovations for complex operational tasks of wind turbines and demonstrates the feasibility of applying reinforcement learning to handle fault-tolerant control problems. The proposed method has a generic structure and has the potential to be implemented in other renewable energy systems
Structural Risk Modelling-Indian Mergers & Acquisitions
Get PDFPrimary survey data of Indian M&A transactions were used to test the hypotheses on latent risk factors. A structural equation model (SEM) model was estimated to assess the composite risk factors considering financial, non-financial, and sustainability risks. The results reveal that reforms in management and human resources can control up to 23 percent of overall risk. Ensuring appropriate technology will take away another 22 percent risk. Macroeconomic stability can reduce risks of the firms by 12 percent. Then sustainability factors reduce risk by 11 percent and another 11 percent of risk can be controlled by a sound financial sector. Thus overall novelty of this research is to critically evaluate the existing framework and propose a holistic M&A risk assessment model that captures contemporary technical, management and HR, economic issues underlying challenges of business enterprises in India. The research gap in assessing sustainability M&A risks is an extended version of the existing M&A synergy gain theory
Peace Go With You EP
No full text'Peace Go With You' is the second EP from Rowan Oliver's 'Quickbeam' album. Tracklisting for the 4-track EP is as follows:1 – Peace Go With You2 – Road Of Dreams3 – People (Not Statues)4 – Peace Go With You (Bonus Beats)Having built years of music industry experience collaborating with a wide range of artists, Rowan’s forthcoming album represents the first solo release by this versatile musician. Developed organically over several years, the entirely instrumental album distils a kaleidoscope of stylistic influences into a unique musical identity. The resulting sonic patchwork includes acoustic folk textures colliding with dubby electronics, soaring string sections that hint at David Axelrod and Charles Stepney, swampy Meters-style funk, Nuyorican horn arrangements and a spectrum of global percussion, all underpinned by groove-driven beats. Wistful melodies weave through the tracks, evoking a sense of both optimism and melancholy that will appeal to fans of Sven Wunder, Quantic or Fabiano do Nascimento.Rowan was Goldfrapp’s drummer for seven years, performing on their early platinum albums and tours, and has worked as a session musician and producer with an extensive list of artists including Plaid, Mara Carlyle, Paul Oakenfold, Marilyn Manson, Spacer, Add N To (X) and Max de Wardener. His playing can be heard across releases on labels such as Soul Jazz, Mute, Warp, Interscope, 679, Perfecto, Pussyfoot and Freerange, and his global gigging experience ranges from tiny anarchist squat venues to enormodome stadiums, and from Glastonbury Festival (UK) to Fuji Rock (Japan). Way back in 2004, his remix of Goldfrapp’s ‘Strict Machine’ reached #1 in the US Billboard Dance chart
Understanding Biesta's three purposes of education: A framework proposal
Get PDFThe purpose of ‘doing’ education is often unconsidered or assumed in educational thinking and practice, despite the diversity of understandings. Gert Biesta's perspective that education has a threefold purpose of qualification, socialisation and subjectification is among the most known. However, the interpretation of Biesta's thinking is challenging, namely, due to intrinsic complexity and contradiction between the domains of purpose and a loose use of the author's theory that tends to conflate and overlook core elements of each purpose. The current work proposes an innovative framework to support the understanding and application of Biesta's three purposes of education and is a contribution in overcoming the theoretical and empirical constraints faced. The framework proposed is composed of two levels: a theoretical level, resulting from the deductive interpretation of Biesta's thinking on purpose, where the core domains and subdomains of education are depicted; and an empirical level, resulting from the application of the framework to research data, in which a potential expansion of the three purposes is presented. Overall, this original work demonstrated the framework's adequacy as an analytical tool for education research on the issue of purpose and the adaptability of Biesta's theory and the framework developed to future studies
Palliative care: what's the evidence?
Get PDFPalliative care is essential for people with an advanced life-limiting illness. Most palliative care is delivered by healthcare professionals who do not specialise in palliative care (‘non-specialists’). Multidisciplinary specialist palliative care services manage more complex problems, providing more comprehensive support when needed. Both ‘non-specialist’ and specialist palliative care improve patient and family outcomes and reduce formal healthcare costs. However, there are inconsistencies in the delivery of, and access to, ‘non-specialist’ and specialist palliative care. These inconsistencies and inequities lead to unrecognised and unmet palliative care needs. There is also inconsistent referral to specialist palliative care services. Unless there are greater resources and training, these issues will be exacerbated by an increasing need for palliative care with changing population demographics
What Constitutes High-Quality Paediatric Palliative Care? A Qualitative Exploration of the Perspectives of Children, Young People, and Parents
Get PDFBackground: Globally, over 21 million children need palliative care each year. Although guidelines exist to support paediatric palliative care delivery, they are not informed by the experiences of children themselves. Objective: We aimed to determine what constitutes good quality palliative care from the perspectives of children with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions and their parents. Methods: We analysed semi-structured qualitative interviews using reflexive thematic analysis informed by the European Association for Palliative Care charter of palliative care for children and young people, and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model. Participants included 26 children aged 5–17 years, and 40 parents of children aged 0–17 years, with a range of cancer and non-cancer diagnoses in nine UK paediatric palliative care services (hospitals and hospices). Results: Quality paediatric palliative care can be both enacted or interrupted across the five domains of the bioecological model. Honest timely communication with the child and family (microsystem), and collaborative relationships between care teams and others in the child’s life (mesosystem), are vital. Care experiences are negatively affected by inequities in care provision (exosystems), and society’s reluctance to discuss mortality in childhood (macrosystem). Children need to enjoy what matters to them, and maintain social connections, and plan for the future, even if facing a shortened life (chronosystem). Conclusions: Children and parents are experts in their condition and should be actively involved in care discussions, through communication tailored to the child’s pace and preferences, and support advocating for and coordinating care services. Fostering strong and collaborative relationships builds trust and helps children and families to feel safe, included and supported
Platelets Image Classification Through Data Augmentation: A Comparative Study of Traditional Imaging Augmentation and GAN-Based Synthetic Data Generation Techniques Using CNNs
No full textPlatelets play a crucial role in diagnosing and detecting various diseases, influencing the progression of conditions and guiding treatment options. Accurate identification and classification of platelets are essential for these purposes. The present study aims to create a synthetic database of platelet images using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and validate its effectiveness by comparing it with datasets of increasing sizes generated through traditional augmentation techniques. Starting from an initial dataset of 71 platelet images, the dataset was expanded to 141 images (Level 1) using random oversampling and basic transformations and further to 1463 images (Level 2) through extensive augmentation (rotation, shear, zoom). Additionally, a synthetic dataset of 300 images was generated using a Wasserstein GAN with Gradient Penalty (WGAN-GP). Eight pre-trained deep learning models (DenseNet121, DenseNet169, DenseNet201, VGG16, VGG19, InceptionV3, InceptionResNetV2, and AlexNet) and two custom CNNs were evaluated across these datasets. Performance was measured using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. On the extensively augmented dataset (Level 2), InceptionV3 and InceptionResNetV2 reached 99% accuracy and 99% precision/recall/F1-score, while DenseNet201 closely followed, with 98% accuracy, precision, recall and F1-score. GAN-augmented data further improved DenseNet’s performance, demonstrating the potential of GAN-generated images in enhancing platelet classification, especially where data are limited. These findings highlight the benefits of combining traditional and GAN-based augmentation techniques to improve classification performance in medical imaging tasks
Simulated heat waves affect cell fate and fitness in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum
Get PDFThe effects of heatwaves at organism and population levels have been widely investigated; however, little is known about how they affect the development of cell populations and the fitness of the resulting organism. Disruptions caused by heatwaves are especially critical during early developmental stages in organisms lacking parental developmental protection or care. Here we use the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, a soil microbe with a life cycle that transitions between single-cell and multicellular stages. D. discoideum thrives optimally at 22°C and elevated temperatures impair (27°C) or completely arrest (30°) growth, development and spore yield. We established a simulated heatwave model in which vegetative cells were exposed to 27°C for 3 days and studied the effects on the expression of early and cell type specific developmental genes using real time quantitative PCR. A single heatwave severely impaired the expression of cyclic AMP-dependent early developmental gene markers (carA, acaA, pkaR, gtaC, tgrC1 and csaA) as well as that of prespore markers (cotB and spiA), while the expression of the prestalk marker ecmA was less affected. When mixed with heat-stressed cells, reporter cells expressing β-galactosidase grown at 22°C preferentially occupy the spore mass of the fruiting body. Chimera assays of wild type and reporter cells grown at optimal temperature or subjected to a heatwave confirmed a decreased fitness (contribution to chimeric fruiting bodies). We conclude that exposure of unprotected organisms at the single cell stage to a single heatwave has the potential to negatively impact their ability to cope with environmental extremes