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The rhythm of the night – night work and the destabilisation of social reproduction
No full textThe paper locates contemporary night work in Social Reproduction Theory. It makes an empirical contribution, illuminating Fraser’s conceptual ‘crisis of social reproduction’, rooted in worker experience and invigorated through testimony. Drawing on interviews with night workers, largely from the rail and postal sectors, it evidences the compression of social reproductive time. Firstly, nightwork undermines the replenishment of the human body and labour pow-er and the qualitative nature of time for life as a social being. Secondly worker preference for nightwork to facilitate caring responsibilities confirms the withdrawal of state and employer support for childcare and capitalism’s impulse to lower the cost of the reproduction of labour. Those who cannot afford to pay for childcare absorb these costs at an individual level by working unsocial hours where they struggle to combine productive and domestic labour within the 24-hour day -the subjugation of social reproduction to production under neoliberal capitalism.</p
Do monitoring or advisory lead independent directors with financial expertise matter to managerial opportunism?
No full textMotivated by the increasing interest and the monitoring and advisory roles that a lead independent director may play to decrease managerial opportunism; we examine the relationship between monitoring or advisory lead independent directors and managerial opportunism proxied by earnings management. Using a panel data of US firms from 2001 to 2020, we find that monitoring lead independent directors rather than advisory lead independent directors is negative and significantly associated with discretionary accruals. In an additional analysis, we find that advisory rather than monitoring lead independent directors improve earnings persistence and future cash flows, suggesting that both monitoring and advisory lead independent directors play complementary roles when it comes to corporate performance/earnings quality. We also find that, regardless of the role they play within boardrooms, monitoring and advisory lead independent directors with financial expertise have a decreasing effect on discretionary accruals. These findings provide new insights and improve our understanding of how monitoring and advisory lead independent directors contribute to corporate performance in complementary ways.</p
Community activity intervention reduced sitting time and improved population physical activity levels
No full textBackground: The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of the Beat the Street intervention; a gamification intervention to promote physical activity, reduce sitting time and improve wellbeing, among residents of Chelmsford and South Woodham Ferrers.Methods: Pre-post experimental design of the Beat the Street Intervention. Beat the Street gamifies neighbourhoods, incentivising the community to actively travel, collecting virtual points at sensors on selected lamp posts called ‘Beat Boxes’ advertised on maps and phone applications. Participants were asked to complete a baseline questionnaire after registering, and before the six-week “game phase” of the intervention. A follow-up questionnaire was then completed at the end of the intervention. Mean differences were calculated to provide interpretations of differences. Within-subjects differences for all measures were assessed by Wilcoxon Signed Rank separately for children and adults, followed by each demographic grouping. Significance for all analyses was set at p Results: Nine hundred fifteen (n = 313 children) participants reported sitting time and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity both pre- and post-intervention. For both children and adults overall, there was an increase in reported wellbeing and a reduction in reported sitting time daily and sitting time week, while life satisfaction increased for adults overall. Additionally, the percentage of participants classed as inactive decreased for both children and adults.Conclusion: The present findings suggest that the Beat the Street intervention reduced sitting time and increased physical activity among both children and adults in the short term. Further research is needed to assess the long-term impacts and explore objective measures of sitting time to better understand sustained engagement and outcomes.</p
An in-depth exploration into the climate grief experiences of eleven women, using a life story approach
No full textClimate change poses several risks to our current way of life. In this context, this thesis argues that there is an urgent need to consider climate change and the impacts thereof within the personal and societal sphere. This thesis explores climate grief, which is inspired by ecological grief, a concept pioneered by Cunsolo & Ellis (2018). Due to the localised impacts of climate change, this thesis suggests that grief responses can extend beyond the ecological or environmental dimension.Based on the need to innovate social research methods within the environmental sciences (Lertzman 2015), a novel adaptation of the Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) was designed to study climate grief experiences amongst eleven women in the United Kingdom. The data analysis was supported by Worden’s model (2001) on regular grief experiences as well as psychoanalytical approaches inspired by Hollway and Jefferson’s(2000) work. The findings illustrate that climate grief was dominated by three main emotions, including sadness & sense of loss, anger and fear. The emotional experiences, most clearly demonstrated through the expression of anger, were often enmeshed in social dynamics.An evaluation of the method is also provided, demonstrating the advantages and limitations of using life story methods to study emotions and social phenomena. While BNIM can elicit rich data and is a valuable method in examining hidden emotions, it can be labour intensive, as it requires additional interpretative work. Although SQUINs may pose ethical risks for the participant and researcher, these can be managed by incorporating several practices which enhance psychological safety within and beyond the interview setting.</p
‘I’m not trained, I’m not qualified’: a systematic review of the mental health literacy amongst British university academics
No full textFor most university students, their tutors or lecturers play an important role when they are experiencing mental health problems (MHPs), and these academics have a responsibility to support students during this. This review aimed to examine the current mental health literacy (MHL) amongst university academics. A systematic review of studies that explored the MHL of academics at UK universities was conducted. It followed the PRISMA guideline and is registered on PROSPERO. Searches were undertaken on six databases, accessed through EBSCO. The studies were limited to peer-reviewed, academic journals, published from 2014 onwards and in English. A further search of reference lists and related citations was conducted. The studies were assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme Checklist and the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. A thematic analysis was conducted following Braun and Clarke’s six steps. Six studies, including qualitative and mixed methods were included. Four main themes were identified: the academics’ ability to recognise MHPs, the academics’ ability to manage MHPs, support that the university provides to academics and adverse effects experienced by the academics from supporting students. This review has found that there is a lack of support from universities for their academics in managing students with MHPs through inadequate training and guidance, due to national policies. Therefore, academics struggle to recognise and manage MHPs in students while experiencing difficulties in managing their own workload and wellbeing. This review recommends that universities should increase their support for academics through training, guidance and accessible support systems.</p
Explainable AI based dynamic cybersecurity risk management for cyber insurability
No full textCybersecurity risk is one of the primary and growing concerns for ensuing security and resilience of organizations, regardless of their size and type. While proactive risk management is effective, it is challenging due to the evolving and sophisticated threat landscape, exploitation of known and unknown vulnerabilities, and a dynamic security context. The dynamic security context further complicates to calculate the accurate risk level, leading to risk perception that can vary between different stakeholders. However, the demand for adopting cyber insurance is increasing as an effective risk mitigation strategy to avoid any potential loss. In this context, this paper proposes an Explainable AI (XAI) based dynamic cybersecurity risk management approach for informed cyber insurability decision making. The approach utilizes an Large Language Model (LLM) based framework for real-time, contextualized risk level assessment and adopts XAI techniques such as feature contribution and correlation, to justify the decision making. A comprehensive evaluation using an industrial use case and experiment demonstrates the applicability of the proposed approach. The experiment part uses a widely used vulnerability dataset to predicate high exploitable vulnerabilities and links them with the identified assets of the use case scenario. The result shows 96.9% accuracy for the exploitable vulnerability identification and XAI operationalisation justifies the selection of right security control and the cyber insurability decision based on the residual risk.</p
Genetic testing in cardiomyopathies: do we need to redefine the UK national testing criteria?
No full textIntroduction: Inherited cardiac conditions, including dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), may have a monogenic cause identified through genetic testing (GT). Confirmation of pathogenic gene variants can have important implications for the patient and their relatives. The UK National Genomic Test Directory (NGTD) provides strict criteria on the indications for GT; however, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) recommends wider GT. We reviewed the prevalence of pathogenic genotypes in patients undergoing GT who did not meet the NGTD criteria. Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of patients who underwent GT with a confirmed diagnosis of HCM or DCM attending the Essex Inherited Cardiac Conditions Clinic between January 2023 and January 2025. Results 257 patients were included in the analysis, with 136 patients with DCM (52.9%) and 121 patients with HCM (47.1%). The diagnostic yield of GT was 19.9% in DCM and 17.4% in HCM. 14.8% of gene-positive patients with DCM and 14.3% of gene-positive patients with HCM did not meet current UK testing criteria, predominantly due to age of onset. All gene-positive patients in the DCM subgroup not meeting current NGTD criteria for testing had evidence of myocardial fibrosis. Conclusion: A significant minority of patients (1 in 7) with cardiomyopathy and a pathogenic genotype did not meet current UK testing criteria; each patient has an average of 4 first-degree relatives at risk who will benefit from predictive GT. We propose the adoption of the wider ESC guidance, removing the strict age-related cut-offs and being guided more by the severity of the phenotype, particularly involving myocardial scarring.</p
Advanced cardiogenic-shock team versus standard care in cardiogenic SHOCK: a single centre service evaluation project
No full textBackground: Cardiogenic shock (CS) complicating acute myocardial infarction (AMI) carries high mortality. Early revascularisation improves survival, but the effect of structured multidisciplinary care on outcomes remains underexplored. Methods and results: ACT-SHOCK is a service evaluation at a UK tertiary cardiac centre. Between May 2023 and May 2024, 82 patients with AMI-related CS requiring emergent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were identified using protocolised physiological criteria and managed by an Advanced Cardiogenic-Shock Team (ACT). The ACT comprised interventional cardiologists, intensivists, anaesthetists, critical care staff and cardiac physiologists, coordinating PCI and ongoing care. Outcomes were compared with 83 historical controls from the year preceding ACT roll-out, who received standard care without ACT activation. Primary endpoints were 30-day and 1-year all-cause mortality; secondary outcomes included predictors of 30-day mortality. Within the ACT cohort, elevated lactate, critical care admission, invasive ventilation, out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) Shock Stage E at first medical contact predicted 1-year mortality. Adjusted analyses showed ACT management was associated with lower 1-year mortality compared with standard care (HR 0.53, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.92; p=0.026). Although 30-day mortality was lower in the ACT group, this did not reach statistical significance (HR 0.71, 95% CI 0.39 to 1.29; p=0.26). Escalation from coronary care to critical care during the recovery phase occurred more promptly in the ACT group (9.7% vs 2.4%, p=0.09). At 24 hours, a smaller proportion of ACT patients remained in SCAI stages D/E compared with standard care (42% vs 48%; p=0.003). Conclusions: Implementation of physiological criteria to identify CS and activation of a multidisciplinary ACT in a UK tertiary centre was associated with earlier detection and improved 1-year survival in AMI-related CS. These pilot data support further study across multiple UK centres to inform national policy and standardise care pathways.</p
Port politics and the city: Valparaíso’s trajectories from contestation to consensus over Terminal 2
No full textValparaíso's port-city relationship has been reshaped by tensions between port expansion for economic growth and heritage-led urban tourism following UNESCO's 2003 designation. This article examines these dynamics around the proposed Terminal 2 project across two periods (2015–2016; 2023), using interviews with key actors. It traces a shift from conflict to partial collaboration after the project's failure, suggesting institutional learning. While moments of consensus emerged among authorities, businesses, and civil society, fragmented governance and competing urban agendas continue to produce uncertainty about the future of the port-city relationship.</p
An Applied Active Inference Group Practice for Transdisciplinary Collaboration - 5th Applied Active Inference Symposium
No full textTransdisciplinary projects often falter not because of technical gaps, but because of difficulties in communication, alignment, and meaning-making across mixed domains. This session introduces a structured group practice, inspired by therapeutic traditions including Circling which has recently been developed by Guy Sengstock and John Vervaeke. Such group work encourages perspective-taking, and reflective listening. Participants explore the “here-and-now” of interaction through paraphrasing and impact-checking with the goal of improving shared understanding and collective insight around possibilities for transdisciplinary collaboration. We propose that this type of group practices can be understood as a form of applied Active Inference. With…Generative model alignment - Participants continually update their beliefs about others’ intentions and perspectives.Precision calibration (relevance realization) - The practice highlights which signals deserve confidence and which need revisiting.Epistemic action - Asking clarifying questions and mirroring are ways of actively sampling to reduce uncertainty.Shared anticipations - Over time, the group develops coordinated protention and a collective salience landscape.In this session, participants learned the basics of this group practice, experience short, facilitated practices, and reflect on how such methods can support transdisciplinary teams in industry.</p
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