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Precarity and second job-holding in the creative economy
Get PDFThere is extensive research on creative occupations, problematising precariousness, pay gaps, unpaid work and other issues. Less research, and little quantitative work, has looked at multiple job-holding. Issues including portfolio careers, moonlighting, “slashies” and side-hustles are emblematic, and core to the discourse surrounding the creative economy. We use the UK's Labour Force Survey to analyse the extent of multiple job-holding in creative work, and identify three types of second job-holding, according to whether the main, second or both jobs are creative. We compare the characteristics of individuals for each type, and use Understanding Society to show how they move between them over time. We find that second-jobholding is twice as common in core creative as other occupations, and that people working outside London are more likely to combine creative with non-creative work. Those with a creative second job are unlikely to move to a single creative job over time.</p
Sixty years of equine anaesthesia - are we getting better at it?
Get PDFOBJECTIVE: To present the essence of the presentation 'CEPEF - what we knew then and what we know now' given at the autumn meeting of the Association of Veterinary Anaesthetists in 2024, celebrating its 60th anniversary.DATABASES USED: (this is not a formal systematic review). PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and the 4th Confidential Enquiry into Equine Perioperative Fatalities (CEPEF4). Search terms used: horse; pony; equine; anaesthesia; anesthesia; recovery; morbidity and mortality.CONCLUSIONS: It is well recognized that general anaesthesia carries a greater risk of mortality in horses than in other domestic species and humans. The history of equine anaesthesia, whose beginnings were not far removed from those of human anaesthesia, is traced from its start in the 19th century. The extent of the risk of equine anaesthesia-related mortality was first formally documented in the 1980s. Subsequent studies have evaluated developments including new drugs and methods of their administration, enhanced monitoring and a range of handling procedures. These changes appear to be associated with a decrease in the mortality risk in healthy horses from around 1% in 2002 to 0.6% in 2025. However, the risk of mortality is still serious, and the results of CEPEF4 outline potential areas for improvement and for further research via the proposed CEPEF5.</p
Practitioners’ and researchers’ perspectives on treatment needs and service provision for online child sexual abuse
Get PDFOnline child sexual abuse (OCSA) presents unique and evolving challenges for young people and those supporting them. Although the long-term psychological impacts of OCSA are increasingly recognised, there remains limited guidance for practitioners on how best to assess and respond effectively to its specific features. This study aimed to explore practitioners’ and researchers’ perspectives on current gaps in service provision, assessment practices, and interventions for young people affected by OCSA. An open-ended online questionnaire was emailed to UK-based practitioners (n=10) and researchers with published expertise in OCSA (n = 36), of whom seven also had clinical experience. (i.e., clinical psychologists, psychiatrists). A total of 46 responses were analysed using thematic content analysis. Most participants defined OCSA broadly as ‘any sexually abusive act by an adult or peer with a digital or online component’. Both practitioners and researchers emphasised the need for responses that include psychoeducation, trauma-informed care, and safeguarding measures. Participants also highlighted challenges unique to OCSA, such as the permanence of abuse imagery and the perceived agency of victims in online interactions, factors which were seen to require specialised responses. Despite these needs, both groups highlighted gaps in specialist support, practitioner training, and co-ordinated multi-agency responses. The findings highlight the urgent need for further research to develop consensus-based, evidence-informed approaches to OCSA-specific assessment and intervention, ensuring services are equipped to meet the needs of this vulnerable population
Taming the Interacting Particle Langevin Algorithm - the superlinear case
Get PDFRecent advances in stochastic optimization have yielded the interacting particle Langevin algorithm (IPLA), which leverages the notion of interacting particle systems (IPS) to efficiently sample from approximate posterior densities. This becomes particularly crucial in relation to the framework of Expectation-Maximization (EM), where the E-step is computationally challenging or even intractable. Although prior research has focused on scenarios involving convex cases with gradients of log densities that grow at most linearly, our work extends this framework to include polynomial growth. Taming techniques are employed to produce an explicit discretization scheme that yields a new class of stable, under such non-linearities, algorithms which are called tamed interacting particle Langevin algorithms (tIPLA). We obtain non-asymptotic convergence error estimates in Wasserstein-2 distance for the new class under the best known rate.</p
Emotional imaginaries as a resource in navigating social change
Get PDFThe novel concept of emotional imaginaries adapts Castoriadis’s theories about social imaginaries, to consider the ways in which we imagine feelings by drawing on shared cultural meanings. For instance, people draw on songs, films, nightmares and dystopias to make sense of their emotions, especially in the face of change. This paper uses Mass Observation (MO) directive responses to examine how some British people employed emotional imaginaries in navigating past crises: the declaration of war in 1939, the events of September 11, 2001 and the COVID outbreak in 2020. These illustrative findings suggest that emotional imaginaries help them make sense of complex feelings and unknown terrors in troubling times. However, the examples show some MO writers rejecting dominant emotional imaginaries and others turning to relational forms of emotional reflexivity in navigating uncertainty. The concept of emotional imaginaries thus aids our sociological understanding of how making sense of feelings is important in navigating social change
Influence of silica crystallinity and fineness in clinker raw meal on the formation of tri-calcium silicate polymorphs
Get PDFThis study aims to deepen the understanding of the formation of tricalcium silicate (alite) polymorphs in synthetic clinker, produced under controlled conditions that simulate industrial scenarios, with the goal of contributing to more sustainable practices in Portland cement production. The innovation of this research lies in the combined evaluation of the effects of crystallinity and particle size of silica—in the forms of crystalline quartz and amorphous silica gel, across different granulometric ranges—on the nucleation and stabilization of the M1 and M3 monoclinic polymorphs of alite. Using advanced characterization techniques such as laser granulometry, X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, and optical microscopy, it was demonstrated that increasing the silica particle size, regardless of crystallinity, reduces the alite content and promotes an increase in the content of free lime and belite. Furthermore, the silica particle size directly influences the size of alite crystals, while the interaction between crystallinity and particle size has a significant impact on the stabilization of alite polymorphs. These findings are essential for optimizing the clinker manufacturing process, potentially reducing energy consumption and promoting the production of more reactive forms of cement, thereby contributing to sustainability in the cement industry.</p
Review: Assessing available genetic diversity estimates of rare breeds of livestock
Get PDFThe United Kingdom is home to many local and rare livestock breeds. The local breed populations are highly adapted to specific environments in the United Kingdom and these and other rare breeds provide solutions to niche needs. Rare breeds often contribute more than expected to overall species genetic diversity, which is important because genetic variation is needed for adapting to new challenges. It is therefore very important from both United Kingdom and global perspectives to maintain genetic diversity of rare livestock breeds in the United Kingdom, and to do this, we need to evaluate the monitoring of genetic diversity to identify gaps in our knowledge and prioritise resources reserved for conservation purposes. The objectives of this study were to survey the literature to: (1) summarise genetic/genomic characterisation (effective population size (Ne) and inbreeding) of domestic populations (livestock and equine) in the United Kingdom and Ireland; (2) compare number of populations on the United Kingdom’s Rare Breeds Survival Trust watch list and the number of United Kingdom and Irish populations in the peer-reviewed literature with inbreeding, genetic diversity and/or Ne estimates; and (3) compare annually reported (census-based) estimates of Ne with (inbreeding- and DNA-based) estimates from peer-reviewed literature. We found a total of 37 publications with Ne or inbreeding estimates for United Kingdom or Ireland livestock populations, published from 1975 to 2024. While many (42%) of the breeds on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust watchlist have been included in publications, there are still many breeds, and a few species (turkey, duck and geese) with no publicly available pedigree- or DNA-based genetic diversity measures. We found census-based Ne estimates were, on average, higher than DNA-based estimates, likely due to violated assumptions when estimating Ne with census-based data because of the way livestock mating systems are designed. Most peer-reviewed papers estimated genetic diversity measures using pedigree, microsatellite markers, or single nucleotipe polymorphisms (SNP) markers. To identify breed-unique variants responsible for adaptive traits in rare breeds, more studies using whole-genome sequencing will be needed. Altogether, we have summarised genetic diversity estimates of United Kingdom livestock populations, identifying gaps in knowledge.<br/
The ‘Great Plane’:The designed landscape at Loudoun Castle, East Ayrshire, Scotland, 1690 to the early 1900s
Get PDFThe designed landscape at Loudoun Castle, Ayrshire in southwest Scotland, is of the highest importance in the history of Scottish landscaping, It is a formal landscape of extending avenues aligned on distant focal points–a style now recognised as the Scottish Historical Landscape. This essay is a detailed account of Loudoun’s design and development based on primary sources which include archival documents and maps, and contemporary aerial and Lidar survey. The methods used include archival research, map digitisations, land survey, aerial and land photography, as well as the analyses of cultural, historical and symbolic content and a pertinent historiographical issue. The attribution of the design to the Earl of Mar was first made in the nineteenth century and this essay confirms this from an archival source. Mar’s collaborators are identified as Hugh Campbell, 3rd Earl of Loudoun (c.1677–1731), the executant architect on site was Alexander McGill (died 1734) and the architect, James Gibbs (1682–1754) contributed now lost garden buildings. Finally, the essay presents a stylistic analysis of the design and links Loudoun with other plans by the Earl of Mar, placing it within the Scottish and the wider European contexts of the period.</p
Destructive testing and failure analysis of a full-scale composite tidal turbine blade
Get PDFTidal stream turbines play a pivotal role in harnessing marine energy, yet their reliability remains a critical challenge, impeding the cost-effectiveness of tidal energy. Deviations in blade performance can significantly impact turbine efficiency, potentially leading to unbalanced loads and consequential damage to the turbine and ad- jacent blades. Experience of blade failure, attributed to factors including material fatigue, manufacturing defects, environmental conditions, and operational stresses, under- scores the urgency for comprehensive investigation and development of mitigation strategies. This study addresses these challenges by subjecting a composite tidal blade to a series of incremental static and fatigue tests, culminating in controlled failure experiments conducted at the FastBlade structural fatigue testing facility. The facility’s advanced capabilities include a regenerative digital displacement hy- draulic pump system yielding substantial energy savings; an advanced multi-camera digital image correlation system; and an acoustic emission crack detection system. Using these we systematically explore the factors contributing to blade failure. The failure modes examined in this study include: metal-composite bond failure; crack propagation in thick-section composites; and adhesive failure of the hydrodynamic outer skin. Our findings have significant implications for the structural engineering, composite ma- terial, and tidal energy development communities. Notably, our study offers valuable insights into the mechanisms underlying both blade failure under extreme loads and the accumulation of damage in large, thick composite struc- tures. This research represents an important step towards enhancing the reliability and efficiency of tidal turbine blades, thus advancing the viability of tidal stream energy as a sustainable power source
Connectedness in weighted consensus division of graphical cakes between two agents
Get PDFAustin's moving knife procedure was originally introduced to find a consensus division of an interval/circular cake between two agents, each of whom believes that they receive exactly half of the cake. We generalise this in two ways: we consider cakes modelled by graphs, and let the two agents have unequal, arbitrary entitlements. In this setting, we seek a weighted consensus division – one where each agent believes they received exactly the share they are entitled to – which also minimises the number of connected components that each agent receives. First, we review the weighted consensus division of a circular cake, which gives exactly one connected piece to each agent. Next, by judiciously mapping a circle to a graph, we produce a weighted consensus division of a star graph cake that gives at most two connected pieces to each agent — and show that this bound on the number of connected pieces is tight. For a tree, each agent receives at most h+1 connected pieces, where h is the minimal height of the tree. For a connected graphical cake, each agent receives r+2 connected pieces, where r is the radius of the graph. Finally, for a graphical cake with s connected components, the division involves at most s+2r+4 connected pieces, where r is the maximum radius among all connected components.</p
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