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Changes in referential production among Japanese-English bilingual returnee children : A five-year longitudinal study
Get PDFThis study tracked the referential production of 25 Japanese-English returnee children for 5 years upon their return to Japan from an English-dominant environment (Mean age = 9.72 at the time of return) and compared their referential strategies to 27 Japanese monolinguals and 27 English monolinguals, age-matched to the returnee’s age at time of return. Returnees used more redundant noun phrases (NPs) in both languages to maintain references compared to monolingual peers. In English, no changes in NP use were noted over time, but increased exposure to English led to fewer redundant NPs when maintaining references. In their native Japanese (L1), returnees used less NPs for maintaining references and more NPs for reintroducing references, indicating improved reference tracking longitudinally. In sum, returnees’ referential production is more sensitive to L1 re-exposure effects than second language (L2) attrition and crucially, increased L2 exposure minimizes redundant referent production among bilingual returnee children
Knowing-without-reaction in the face of climate change : Minor-art as a model for political subjectivization
No full textDespite broad public awareness of climate change as a critical issue, we paradoxically observe public inertia as a social pattern, particularly in the wealthy-industrialised Global North. Critical scholarship commonly attributes this phenomenon, knowing-without-reaction, in the context of climate change to ideology, suggesting that the distorted image of reality produced and circulated by the capital-state nexus leads to the dearth of progressive political action at the public level. The proposed solution, correspondingly, often takes the form of ideology-critique. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, this paper offers an alternative diagnosis, positing that the phenomenon pertains more to the organisation of desire within capitalism and hence the capitalisation of subjectivity than to the alignment of interests between the capital-state nexus and the public through ideological manipulation. In response, the final section proposes the production of subjectivity (ourselves) anew as a potential remedy. Drawing on Guattari’s insights into art and politics, this section reflects on the lessons that we can draw from the techniques and practices of ‘minor art’ as a pathway to political subjectivisation in the context of climate change. In particular, the final part speculates transversally on two technologies of self-transformation in response to the question, ‘What is to be done?’: opening up through minor art and becoming-a-minor-artist
Recent progress in bio-hydrogen production for sustainable energy and chemical production
No full textTo combat global warming, the decarbonisation of energy systems is essential. Hydrogen (H2) is an established chemical feedstock in many industries (fertiliser production, steel manufacturing etc.) and has emerged as a promising clean energy carrier due to its high energy density and carbon-free usage. However, most H2 is currently produced from fossil fuels, undermining its sustainability. Biomass offers a renewable, carbon-neutral feedstock for H2 production, potentially reducing its environmental impact. This review examines thermochemical, biological, and electrochemical methods of bio-H2 generation. Thermochemical processes - including gasification, fast pyrolysis, and steam reforming - are the most technologically advanced, offering high H2 yields. However, challenges such as catalyst deactivation, tar formation, and pre- and post-processing limit efficiency. Advanced strategies like chemical looping, sorption enhancement, and membrane reactors are being developed to address these issues. Biological methods, including dark and photo fermentation, operate under mild conditions and can process diverse waste feedstocks. Despite their potential, low H2 yields and difficulties in microbial inhibitors hinder scalability. Ensuring that microbial populations remain stable through the use of additives and optimising the bioreactors hydraulic retention rate also remain a challenge Combined fermentation systems and valorising by-products could enhance performance and commercial viability. Electrochemical reforming of biomass-derived compounds is an emerging method that may enhance water electrolysis by co-producing value-added by-products. However, current studies focus on biomass-derived compounds rather than complex biomass feedstocks, limiting commercial relevance. Future research should focus on feedstock complexity, electrocatalyst development, and system scaling. A technology readiness comparison shows that thermochemical methods are the most commercially mature, followed by biological and electrochemical approaches. Each method holds promise within specific niches, warranting continued innovation and interdisciplinary development
Fluid hope in a climate emergency : Lessons from an English citizens’ jury
No full textWhat does it mean to build an authentic politics of hope in a climate crisis? Researchers have explored this question by examining the emergence of different forms of climate hope. This includes urgent, slow, and radical hope, each of which expresses different promises for the future. In this paper, I make the case for attending to ‘fluid hope’ to foreground how different forms of climate hope can be co-constitutive and are subject to being re-configured. I do so by drawing on a case study, that of the Copeland People’s Panel, a citizens’ jury in northern England, where people’s experiences of hope changed in and after the Panel. I conclude by explaining what possibilities the concept of fluid hope affords for empirical study and normative debate about hope in a climate emergency
Enhancing Cybersecurity and Resilience in Distribution Networks via Hybrid Partitioning and GAN-Driven Dynamic Reconfiguration
Get PDFThis paper presents a structured hybrid grid partitioning framework designed to enhance cyber-physical resilience and scalability in distribution networks, particularly under high electric vehicle (EV) penetration and evolving cyber threats. The framework integrates three tightly coupled layers. First, a graph-based clustering stage introduces spectral-informed adaptive hierarchical clustering (SIAHC), which combines global spectral features with composite electrical distance metrics to generate modular, self-sufficient, and topologically coherent subnetworks, supporting power loss minimisation, voltage stability, and topological robustness. Second, an optimisation-based refinement layer employs the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) for scalable, distributed coordination across partitions, ensuring feasibility under power flow and voltage constraints. Third, a feedback-informed data-driven layer integrates a Bayesian LSTM variational autoencoder (LSTM-VAE) to forecast cost components and learn clustering parameters, and a conditional Wasserstein GAN (cWGAN-GP) to simulate adversarial scenarios and enable adaptive fallback control under cyber intrusions. The framework is validated on IEEE 33-bus and 123-bus systems with high penetration of EVs, energy storage, and photovoltaics. Results demonstrate improved clustering quality, reduced power loss and voltage deviations, fast convergence, and enhanced cyber-resilience
Intense solar radiation constrains plant species richness in global grasslands
No full textThe search for predictors of plant diversity has challenged scientists for decades. Here we identify intense photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) as a major factor constraining plant species richness in global grasslands. We show that the strength of the negative relationship between species richness and PAR increases with increasing elevation and that species richness is more strongly correlated with intense PAR than with UV-B radiation, climate variables, and atmospheric nitrogen deposition. In addition to species richness, plant biomass was also negatively correlated with PAR at higher elevations, indicating that intense PAR also constrains plant biomass in montane grasslands. Furthermore, we show that the decrease in plant species richness with increasing PAR is mainly caused by a decrease in species richness of forbs, sedges, and rushes. In contrast, species richness of grasses was only negatively correlated with PAR at high elevations, and species richness of legumes was not significantly correlated with PAR. Our results suggest that PAR constrains plant species richness in global grasslands and limits the extent to which plant species of specific functional groups can migrate uphill in response to climate warming
Rethinking language, cognition and assessment in psychosis : How bilingualism challenges psychiatry and how natural language processing can help
Get PDFDynamic properties of entry games with firms adopting different adjustment mechanisms
Get PDFThis paper investigates the dynamic properties of three entry games in a market initially composed of N gradient-adjusting firms. The entrant may adopt one of three output adjustment mechanisms: gradient adjustment, best response, or local monopolistic approximation (LMA). Under the assumptions that the entrant’s marginal cost does not differ significantly from the average marginal cost of the incumbents and that the number of incumbent firms is no less than four, we establish an ordering of the stability regions, indicating that less information in the adjustment mechanism may lead to stronger market stability. With respect to bifurcations, we find that the entry model of a best response firm differs qualitatively from the other two. Furthermore, numerical simulations reveal that this model may exhibit 1:3, 1:4, and 1:5 resonance bifurcations
HISTONCHO : A dataset of intervention histories for onchocerciasis control & elimination in sub-Saharan Africa
No full textIn sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), onchocerciasis control has been implemented for many decades, beginning in 1974 under the Onchocerciasis Control Programme in West Africa (OCP) and in 1995 in Central and East Africa (plus Liberia) under the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC). Since the establishment of the Expanded Special Project for Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ESPEN) in 2016, data on mass drug administration (MDA) with ivermectin has been centrally compiled for all endemic countries at implementation unit (IU) level, beginning in 2013. This paper presents HISTONCHO, a dataset collating detailed information on interventions, including vector control, from 1975 through to 2022, using the ESPEN portal (2013-2022), regional and country reports, implementation partners' records, and published literature. Reconstructing such intervention histories is crucial for an understanding of their evolution, modelling their impact, and tailoring future interventions. We discuss strengths and limitations associated with the ESPEN database, and how HISTONCHO can be improved to support modelling of intervention strategies as well as onchocerciasis control and elimination efforts by endemic country programmes