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Planning equitable on-street residential EV charging infrastructure : Evidence from Dublin City
No full textThe growing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) presents challenges to the equitable deployment of charging infrastructure. Ensuring equitable access to residential charging stations is critical for supporting widespread EV adoption across diverse communities. As such, research on applying charging equity theories to the placement of residential charging stations remains essential. Based on the Irish national household travel survey and census data, this study introduces a Monte Carlo simulation model for charging demand estimation. Grounded in utilitarianism, sufficientarianism, and vertical equity, a multi-objective optimisation model is proposed for siting and sizing charging stations, along with their connections to transformers across disadvantaged, intermediate and advantaged communities. A case study in Dublin examines the proposed models under various EV penetration scenarios. The results reveal the spatial and temporal distribution of day-of-week charging demands across 524 communities. Subsequently, 63 and 82 stations with 102 and 166 chargers, and powered by 63 and 74 transformers, are planned for the 30 % and 50 % EV penetration scenarios, respectively. The findings highlight that neglecting charging demand heterogeneity can result in under- or over-supply of infrastructure. The study further emphasises that incorporating diverse charging equity theories into planning objective and constraint formulation can significantly promote equitable charging accessibility across disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged communities. The model is primarily applicable to residential areas that mix disadvantaged and other communities, rely heavily on on-street parking, and exhibit stable EV adoption
Paraglacial conditions, climate and isostacy control river incision and terrace development; the example of the River Lune, NW England
No full textWithin Britain, post-last-glacial river terraces are frequently indicators of catchment-wide extrinsic eustatic and isostatic drivers, as the landscape adjusted through paraglacial conditions and latterly experienced temperate climates. Climate drove changes in river discharge and sediment loads at the catchment scale, mediated by local intrinsic controls on terrace formation. The terraces of the River Lune, NW England, are described and related primarily to climatic drivers with a subordinate role for isostacy. Localized drivers include: 1) glacial over-deepening; 2) terrace effacement due to change in the river style; 3) a moraine blocking the river course; 4) the influence of bedrock gorges. Humans may have had a reinforcing effect on climatically-driven terrace formation. The terrace levels are from highest to lowest: T1 to T3. The T1 level is a degraded, broad, glacifluvial surface; an ice-front braidplain that formed early during deglaciation (c. < 19 ka). The T2 level consists of gravel deposits on straths cut into bedrock, till or the T1 deposits, where the river bed aggraded during the Windermere Interstadial, then incised during the Younger Dryas. The T1 and T2 levels formed during the last glacio-eustatic sea level fall. The T3 level is broadly synonymous with the modern floodplain, which developed from the Early Mediaeval Period, due both to changes in climate and human use of the catchment. In upstream reaches, this level is in the process of abandonment. Major bedrock controls on terrace formation occur at the Lune Gorge and at the Knot Anticline. The latter limited isostatic and eustatic drivers from propagating incision upstream from the modern coast
Pharmaceutical pollution from healthcare : a systems-based strategy for mitigating risks to public and environmental health
Get PDFSummary Human pharmaceuticals are increasingly being detected in environments around the world, with growing international calls to mitigate the ecological and human health risks posed by these novel entities. Exposure to pharmaceutical pollutants can negatively affect the behaviour, reproduction and health of wildlife, contributing towards declining ecological health and global biodiversity loss. Pharmaceuticals in the environment are also driving rising levels of antimicrobial resistance, a major public health threat. Developing strategies to mitigate these public and environmental health risks has been greatly limited by diverse and often conflicting stakeholder interests and the need to retain the major human health and socioeconomic benefits that pharmaceuticals provide. Here, we propose a multi-stakeholder, systems- based approach for high-income countries to develop transformational national mitigation strategies. Applying this to a UK case study highlighted the growing risks caused by the unsustainability of the current UK healthcare pharmaceutical system and enabled us to identify 37 synergistic intervention points that target both the tangible “easy wins” and the deep-rooted social drivers of the issue. We believe our approach will support high-income countries to minimise the public and environmental health risks associated with pharmaceutical pollution by driving long-term sustainability across the pharmaceutical life cycle, for a positive pharmaceutical future
Prioritizing human-centered cancer care in a digital era
No full textDigital health tools improve the efficiency and quality of cancer care and are poised to have an even greater impact in the future. However, the extent to which these tools will enhance both disease-centered and human-centered care depends on which values, outcomes, and processes diverse stakeholders and sectors prioritize. Human-centered care recognizes the uniqueness and inherent value of individuals and values the inimitability of human relationships. In this Viewpoint, we call for prioritization of human-centered care in the design and implementation of digital health tools. After summarizing key ethical frameworks, we provide examples of digital innovations from Brazil, India, and the United States that demonstrate how choices in design, implementation, and evaluation can enhance human-centered care provision. In addition, we provide recommendations to support clinicians, researchers, and health systems in prioritizing human-centered care, including the involvement of patients, caregivers, and communities in all phases of design and implementation. Funding No funding was used in the creation of this manuscript. WER, ASE, and JEN are partially supported by the NIH/National Cancer Institute comprehensive cancer center award P30 CA008748. WER is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program
Disciplinary Research Ethics Cultures in Disaster Settings : Understandings from Researchers After 3.11 in Japan
No full textResearch ethics can be bound by implicit disciplinary understandings of what constitutes risk and how these should be mitigated in the field. The area of health research in post-disaster contexts draws in researchers from a variety of disciplines who are interested in a range of questions. In analysing researchers’ experiences of research ethics in the context of the 3.11 disaster in Japan, this paper investigates the ways in which disciplinary cultures of ethics are problematised and negotiated in this setting. It explores researchers’ perceptions of the ways in which different disciplines understand ethical practice, how these differences are illuminated in the context of working in close proximity with affected communities in a post-disaster setting, and how research ethics committees are negotiated in relation to disciplinary difference. The paper indicates some ways in which diverse cultures of research ethics might be better managed in future contexts
Errors, fast and slow
No full textHuman errors in cognitive, attentional, and decision-making tasks are sometimes faster than correct responses, and sometimes slower, even for the same fixed task and experimental implementation. Several existing models can fit response time distributions exhibiting these phenomena. However, it is hard to predict ex ante (i.e., before data collection) when errors will be fast or slow. Relying on 20 different datasets comprising 31 experiments from different domains, we empirically validate a simple nonparametric model which successfully predicts when errors will be faster or slower than correct responses. The predictions also include a generalized Stroop effect, as well as error rate differences. The model applies to generalized conflict tasks, where the interaction of multiple processes determines behavior, and makes predictions which depend on whether those processes are in alignment or conflict in a given trial, which can be determined before data collection (e.g., congruent vs. incongruent trials). This yields new testable hypotheses which are overwhelmingly supported in the data. The model’s predictions can also be seen as a test of whether process multiplicity is a reasonable assumption in a given task
Trajectories of children's physical activity volume and intensity across the school year : the Ready, Set, Move project
No full textAverage acceleration (AvAcc) and intensity gradient (IG) are accelerometer metrics which when combined describe the volume and intensity distribution of physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep across the 24-h cycle. Little is known about trajectories of children's AvAcc and IG over time on weekdays and weekends. This study describes school year trajectories of children's weekday and weekend AvAcc and IG. During 2023-24 249 children (8-9 years old; 51.4% girls) wore accelerometers for 24 h⋅day over 7-days at three time points (Autumn, Winter/Spring, Summer). AvAcc and IG were calculated for weekdays and weekends. K-means cluster analyses were performed on Autumn data to group participants according to their combined AvAcc and IG profiles. Linear mixed models examined school year weekday and weekend AvAcc and IG trajectories for the whole sample (Aim 1) and for the clusters (Aim 2). Aim 1: There were significant increases in weekday AvAcc in Summer compared to Winter/Spring (β = 3.94, 95% CI = 1.20, 6.68) and Autumn (β = 4.43, 95% CI = 2.47, 6.40), but not IG. Weekend AvAcc and IG were relatively stable. Aim 2: Three cluster groupings of children were identified (Most Active, Somewhat Active (weekdays) / Active (weekends), and Least Active). Weekday AvAcc increased significantly from Winter/Spring to Summer in all groups (+ 3.6-4.6 mg, 95% CIs > 0) and from Autumn to Summer in the less active groups only (+ 5.2-5.8 mg, 95% CIs > 0). IG remained stable for the Most and Somewhat Active groups, with a significant increase from Autumn to Summer observed in the Least Active group (+ 0.05, 95% CI = 0.01-0.09). There were no significant within-cluster group changes in weekend AvAcc or IG, although the Least Active children had the most positive AvAcc and IG trajectories. Weekday physical activity volume but not intensity increased over the school year, while both dimensions of weekend activity had stable trajectories. Weekday and weekend cluster groups had distinct physical activity profiles which followed subtly different AvAcc and IG trajectories. The results reinforce the complementary insights provided by studying AvAcc and IG together and have implications for children's physical activity intervention programming
Exploring Associations Between Motor Competence, Executive Function, and Academic Attainment in Children in England
Get PDFMotor competence supports physical, emotional, and mental health but its cognitive impact is understated. Motor–cognitive links remain underexplored, and motor competence’s role in academic attainment, including executive functions’ mediating influence, is limited. This research aimed to (a) investigate associations between motor competence and executive functions in 8–9-year-old children in England and (b) examine whether greater motor competence has a positive impact on executive function and academic attainment. Two hundred and forty-seven children (51.4% girls, age: 8.7 ± .4 years, 77.7% white British, 5 ± 3.1 deprivation decile, 73.3% healthy weight) across Pennine Lancashire completed a motor competence circuit and executive function tests. Attainment across reading, writing, and mathematics assessed academic attainment. Direct effects were found between motor competence and executive function (β = −2.55, 95% CI [−4.87, −0.24]), motor competence and academic attainment (β = 0.57, 95% CI [0.16, 0.98]), and executive function and academic attainment (β = -0.13, 95% CI [−0.24, −0.02]). Executive function mediated the indirect motor competence-academic attainment association (β = 0.20, p = .01). Multigroup analyses found a significant deprivation group effect ( p = .03). The motor–cognitive phenomenon is complex, requiring future research. The findings show that motor and cognitive skills intertwine to support academic achievement. Therefore, educational approaches that integrate these skills may improve attainment
Systematic design choices for fine-tuning text-classification models : Projection space, task instructions, and label encoding
Get PDFText classification (TC) is a foundational task in natural language processing (NLP), where supervised fine-tuning (SFT) of pre-trained language models (PLMs) has become the dominant paradigm. However, systematic investigations of three key design choices within fine-tuning frameworks for TC are still lacking: (1) using a classification head projecting to the label space versus the vocabulary space, (2) augmenting input text with task instructions, and (3) integrating label text directly into training sequences. To address this gap, we introduce a principled 2 2 2 design matrix and conduct an empirical study grounded in this unified methodological framework across four core benchmark datasets (two Chinese and two English) using both encoder-only and decoder-only PLMs, and further validate our findings on multi-label and long-document benchmarks. Results indicate that classification heads projecting to the label space or the vocabulary space achieve comparable performance. Explicit task instructions, while effective in few-shot in-context learning (ICL), do not consistently improve performance in supervised fine-tuning. Notably, although decoder-only models exhibit the capability to learn from label-appended sequences, this behavior superficially resembles ICL and fundamentally arises from architectural alignment between label placement and causal next-token supervision rather than genuine reasoning over label semantics. These results provide both analytical insight into PLM supervision dynamics and actionable design guidelines for efficient TC workflows. 1 1 All source code and processed datasets are publicly available at https://github.com/JianLyu07/design_choices
Border managment in Europe : The political dynamics of (de)Europeanization
No full textThis chapter examines the evolution of border management in Europe through the lens of critical border studies. It explores how European Union (EU) policies have influenced border control, emphasizing the tension between security and humanitarianism. While EU institutions shaped Member State actions through European Integrated Border Management (EIBM), national governments continue to assert sovereignty over their borders. The chapter introduces the concepts of "EUropeanization" and "de-Europeanization" to describe the dynamic processes of border governance. EUropeanization refers to the diffusion of EU-sponsored border knowledge, surveillance technologies, and data infrastructures, while de-Europeanization captures instances where member states opt out of or resist EU border policies. This dual process is evident in cases like Poland’s refusal to cooperate with Frontex during the 2021 Belarus border crisis or in the externalization of border control to non-EU states. The discourse surrounding border management has shifted from fundamental rights to narratives of security and deterrence, increasingly legitimizing state violence. Ultimately, the chapter argues that the Europeanization of border management is neither uniform nor irreversible, as states navigate competing imperatives of control, humanitarianism, and political self-interest. The exclusionary logic of border control remains dominant, necessitating further critical inquiry into its consequences for migrants and border practitioners alike