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A new psychosocial goal-setting and manualised support intervention for independence in dementia (NIDUS-Family): longer-term outcomes of a randomised controlled trial.
Get PDFBACKGROUND: The new psychosocial goal-setting and manualised support intervention for independence in dementia (NIDUS-Family) is a manualised dementia care intervention. AIMS: To evaluate whether goal-setting plus NIDUS-Family is more effective than the control condition (goal-setting and routine care) in supporting dyads' (family carers and care recipients with dementia) attainment of personalised goals; and to determine participant-perceived goal relevance over 24 months. METHOD: We randomised dyads from community settings (2:1): to NIDUS-Family, a manualised psychological intervention tailored to goals that dyads set by selecting modules, delivered in 6-8 video call/telephone sessions over 6 months then 2-3 follow-ups monthly for 6 months; or to control. Outcomes were goal attainment scaling (GAS) (primary) at 18 and 24 months, functioning, quality of life, time until care home admission or death, carer anxiety and depression. Primary analysis, a mixed-effects model, accounted for randomisation group, study site, time, intervention arm facilitator and repeated measurements. RESULTS: In the period 2020-2021, 204 participants were randomised to intervention and 98 to control; 164 (54.3%) and 141 (46.7%) dyads completed 18- and 24-month outcomes, respectively.In the primary analysis, including 277 participants contributing 6-, 12-, 18- or 24-month outcomes, adjusted GAS mean differences (intervention-control) at 18 and 24 months were 11.78 (95% CI 6.64, 16.93) and 8.67 (95% CI 3.31, 14.02), respectively. Secondary outcome comparisons were not significant. The hazard ratio for dying or care home admission was 0.80 (95% CI 0.45, 1.42; intervention versus control), and 0.87 (95% CI 0.41, 1.82) and 0.59 (95% CI 0.26, 1.33) for death and care home admission, respectively. Among baseline GAS goals, carers considered 436 (78.0%) relevant at 18 months and 383 (78.5%) at 24 months. CONCLUSIONS: NIDUS-Family improved attainment of GAS goals over 2 years. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN11425138
Exploring the impact of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression change efforts (SOGIECE) in the UK since 1861
No full textSexual orientation, gender identity and expression change efforts (SOGIECE) is an umbrella term for various efforts that aim to alter, suppress, or deny Queer people their existence and conform them to a hetero-cisgender identity. The United Nations, the British Medical Association, and the National Health Service have acknowledged these efforts as pseudoscientific, unethical, and harmful to health and well-being whilst contravening human rights. In the 21st century, change efforts in various manifestations continue to harm Queer people in the UK and globally. Limited scholarly attention has been given to SOGIECE's developing practices within the UK. This includes a limited understanding of how these practices have developed historically and the multifaceted factors that have shaped these practices within the UK's policy and political context. This research aims to fill this gap by contributing new insights to a critical, historical examination of the policy, practice, and drivers of change efforts in the UK. Framed through a Critical Historical Sociology lens, this research takes a multi-method approach using bibliometric analysis, interviews, and historical review. This work will explore how change efforts in the UK have been made and remade since the removal of the death penalty for male same-sex intercourse in 1861 over time, providing insights into their practice and ongoing barriers to eliminating these efforts in the present day. Findings from this work highlight that SOGIECE practices within the UK have waxed and waned in their overtness and intensity. Transforming from a state-sponsored to a state-censored practice, SOGIECE now operates at the fringe of society. Existing through adaptive online providers alongside family, religious, and clandestine pseudo-scientific interventions directed by Queerphobic attitudes. Current barriers to eliminating change efforts include political instability affecting consistent policy adoption of protective bans, increased Queerphobic rhetoric and hate crimes, and continued sponsoring of these practices by transnational organizations
Accelerating discovery through integration: a DFT validated machine learning framework for screening MOF photocatalysts
No full textThe discovery of Metal–Organic Framework (MOF) photocatalysts for CO2 reduction is hindered by the computational cost of quantum chemical screenings. To overcome this barrier, we introduce a Machine Learning (ML)-accelerated workflow that integrates the speed of ML with the accuracy of Density Functional Theory (DFT). While a DFT-based screening of over 20 000 MOFs identified 105 promising candidates in nearly a month, a ML-driven approach using the Molecular Graph Transformer (MGT) required only 4.5 hours. Here, we present a quantitative assessment of ML performance compared with hybrid DFT for MOF electronic screening, showing that prediction errors are related to the chemistry of the MOFs. We therefore derive an error-aware ML candidate selection strategy that raises DFT candidate recovery from 20% to 70% while keeping a sensible selection set. Building on this, we propose a practical ML to DFT screening workflow in which ML serves as a fast pre-filter to define a small subset for hybrid DFT evaluation, enabling efficient discovery of promising MOFs
Chain-Of-Caption: Training-Free Improvement Of Multimodal Large Language Model On Referring Expression Comprehension
Get PDFGiven a textual description, the task of referring expression comprehension (REC) involves the localisation of the referred object in an
image. Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have achieved
high accuracy on REC benchmarks through scaling up the model
size and training data. Moreover, the performance of MLLMs can
be further improved using techniques such as Chain-of-Thought and
tool use, which provides additional visual or textual context to the
model. In this paper, we analyse the effect of various techniques
for providing additional visual and textual context via tool use to
the MLLM and its effect on the REC task. Furthermore, we propose a training-free framework named Chain-of-Caption to improve
the REC performance of MLLMs. We perform experiments on RefCOCO/RefCOCOg/RefCOCO+ and Ref-L4 datasets and show that
individual textual or visual context can improve the REC performance without any fine-tuning. By combining multiple contexts,
our training-free framework shows between 5% to 30% performance
gain over the baseline model on accuracy at various Intersection over
Union (IoU) thresholds
Making and occluding plant knowledge in Britain: Hans Sloane (1660–1753), his herbarium, and its afterlives
No full textThis thesis explores the role of plant collections in the making of knowledge in the early modern period. The research demonstrates that the early modern herbarium is a rich and valuable source for exploring the practices and processes of plant knowledge production, but also that, as a technology, it is constitutive of such knowledge, informing and occluding knowledge transmission and exchange. Plants have been gathered, dried and assembled by European collectors for a variety of purposes since the sixteenth century, yet the processes of construction of such collections are poorly understood. Furthermore, there have been few studies of the relationship between such plant collections, the global and colonial encounters in which they are situated, and other plant knowledge worlds. This thesis investigates how herbaria functioned in plant knowledge production in Britain, how plant collections have been mediated to us (both as institutional deposits, and across time), and how, as a technology, they have shaped and limited public knowledge of plants. These questions are investigated through a study of the large collection of dried plants assembled by Hans Sloane (1660–1753). Part One analyses Sloane’s own catalogue of his plant collection, together with a study of the uses and management of the herbarium in the two hundred years after Sloane’s death, to demonstrate the mobility of the collection, how parts of it were destroyed and discarded, and how it has been successively reinterpreted. Part Two outlines the construction and analysis of a major new dataset that models Sloane’s herbarium, and shows the variegated nature of the collection and its history. Finally, Part Three reads against this data, to reveal the entanglements of natural things, and some occluded dimensions of the cultures of plant knowledge production. This thesis thereby illustrates some of the ‘hidden histories’ and epistemic injustices that herbaria may embody
Multimodal distribution network design problem for returnable transport items with uncertainty
Get PDFAbstract This paper investigates a stochastic Returnable Transport Items (RTI) distribution network design problem for an RTI service provider responsible for managing RTI flows under uncertain demand and returns. The objective is to determine the optimal number and location of intermediate facilities to accommodate RTI flows while making repositioning decisions across the network. A two-stage stochastic programming model is developed to minimise costs associated with network design, RTI storage, the choice of direct or indirect shipping, and the allocation of multiple transportation modes in both forward and reverse flow channels. To address this complex problem, a robust sample average approximation method is proposed, with its efficiency evaluated through statistical validation. Additionally, the stochastic model’s effectiveness is assessed by computing the expected value of perfect information and the value of stochastic solutions. Comprehensive numerical experiments, including 64 instances with varying cost and robustness coefficients, provide managerial insights. The results demonstrate that efficient RTI network design significantly impacts multi-period operational decisions and highlights the critical role of RTI depots in mitigating demand uncertainty. Furthermore, the robust stochastic optimisation approach employed delivers high-quality solutions with an optimality gap of less than 1% within reasonable computational times. This study highlights the importance of integrating robust decision-making in RTI network design, offering practical insights for managing uncertainty and optimising cost efficiency across complex RTI networks.</jats:p
