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Enabling health data analyses across multiple private datasets with no information sharing using secure multiparty computation
Get PDFThe UK's health datasets are among the most comprehensive and inclusive globally, enabling groundbreaking research during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, restrictions on data sharing between secure data environments (SDEs) imposed limitations on the ability to carry out joint analyses across multiple separate datasets. There are currently significant efforts underway to enable such analyses using methods such as federated analytics (FA) and virtual SDEs. FA involves distributed data analysis without sharing raw data but does require sharing summary statistics. Virtual SDEs in principle allow researchers to access data across multiple SDEs, but in practice, data transfers may be restricted by information governance concerns.Secure multiparty computation (SMPC) is a cryptographic approach that allows multiple parties to perform joint analyses over private datasets with zero information sharing. SMPC may eliminate the need for data-sharing agreements and statistical disclosure control, offering a compelling alternative to FA and virtual SDEs. SMPC comes with a higher computational burden than traditional pooled analysis. However, efficient implementations of SMPC can enable a wide range of practical, secure analyses to be carried out.This perspective reviews the strengths and limitations of FA, virtual SDEs and SMPC as approaches to joint analyses across SDEs. We argue that while efforts to implement FA and virtual SDEs are ongoing in the UK, SMPC remains underexplored. Given its unique advantages, we propose that SMPC deserves greater attention as a transformative solution for enabling secure, cross-SDE analyses of private health data.</p
Governing synthetic data in the financial sector
Get PDFSynthetic datasets, artificially generated to mimic real-world data while maintaining anonymization, have emerged as a promising technology in the financial sector, attracting support from regulators and market participants as a solution to data privacy and scarcity challenges limiting machine learning (ML) deployment. This article argues that synthetic data’s effects on financial markets depend critically on how these technologies are embedded within existing ML infrastructural ‘stacks’ rather than on their intrinsic properties. We identify three key tensions that will determine whether adoption proves beneficial or harmful: (1) data circulability versus opacity, particularly the ‘double opacity’ problem arising from stacked ML systems, (2) model-induced scattering versus model-induced herding in market participant behavior, and (3) flattening versus deepening of data platform power. These tensions directly correspond to core regulatory priorities around model risk management, systemic risk, and competition policy. Using financial audit as a case study, we demonstrate how these tensions interact in practice and propose governance frameworks, including a synthetic data labeling regime to preserve contextual information when datasets cross organizational boundaries.</p
Managing early-onset type 2 diabetes in the individual and at population level
Get PDFEarly-onset type 2 diabetes, diagnosed before age 40-years, is an increasingly prevalent condition with a more aggressive disease trajectory than late-onset type 2 diabetes. It is associated with accelerated microvascular and macrovascular complications, reduced life expectancy, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Despite its rising incidence, globally, management strategies remain largely extrapolated from studies in older adults, with limited evidence specific to younger populations. This review aims to highlight the unique challenges in the management of early-onset type 2 diabetes and why current models of care are inadequate. We highlight that early-onset type 2 diabetes necessitates proactive and combination treatment strategies to address weight, the faster β-cell decline, worse insulin resistance and rapidly progressing hyperglycaemia. However, there is minimal evidence on how best to do this and clinical inertia risks contributing to glycaemic burden. Cardiovascular risk assessment tools underestimate long-term risk, contributing to low use of statin and antihypertensive therapy. Reproductive health remains a key concern, yet preconception and pregnancy care are inadequate, with low adherence to recommended interventions. Healthcare systems are not optimised to address the distinct needs of young adults, and gaps in transitional care (from paediatric to adult services) contribute to disengagement and adverse outcomes. Addressing these challenges requires tailored management strategies that consider the unique metabolic and psychosocial factors in this population. In this review, we summarise the evidence base for management of early-onset type 2 diabetes, the key evidence gaps and discuss the multi-sectoral and trans-disciplinary elements needed to achieve population-level prevention in an effort to reverse these concerning trends.<br/
Mangroves support an estimated annual abundance of over 700 billion juvenile fish and invertebrates
Get PDFMangroves are a critical habitat that provide a suite of ecosystem services and support livelihoods. Here we undertook a global analysis to model the density and abundance of 37 commercially important juvenile fish and juvenile and resident invertebrates that are known to extensively use mangroves, by fitting expert-identified drivers of density to fish and invertebrate density data from published field studies. The numerical model predicted high densities throughout parts of Southeast and South Asia, the northern coast of South America, the Red Sea, and the Caribbean and Central America. Application of our model globally estimates that mangroves support an annual abundance of over 700 billion juvenile fish and invertebrates. While abundance at the early life-history stage does not directly equate to potential economic or biomass gains, this estimate indicates the critical role of mangroves globally in supporting fish and fisheries, and further builds the case for their conservation and restoration.</p
The once and future tree:Ontic space, the anthropocene, and the Sycamore Gap
Get PDFThe felling of the iconic tree at the Sycamore Gap in Northumberland, England, in September 2023 was met with national outrage. The tree was believed to be over 300 years old and was the subject of countless paintings, photographs, and social media posts, earning it the moniker of "most photographed tree in Britain". The reaction to this act of vandalism went beyond expectation, with locals describing the loss as akin to a wound on the soul of the community. Mourners far and wide expressed similar outpourings of grief. In this paper, we explore how the natural world relates to questions of ontological security. We argue that the destruction of nature represents a violation of our sense of "home."However, we also explore how the persistent dualism of human and nonhuman in Western thought is an ontological security mechanism. The Sycamore Gap Tree is a perfect distillation of this, as much of the media coverage has "untreed"the tree to such a degree that it is no longer part of the "natural"world but rather a part of the British "home"and national story. Stories of what the tree "saw"and "felt"dominated the news cycle. In presenting the tree as part of "our world,"these narratives reinforce a fundamental narrative of human ontological security in opposition to the natural world.</p
Geographic isolation, rurality, and outcomes after critical illness: a retrospective cohort study of emergency admissions to critical care units in Scotland 2010-2021
Get PDFBackgroundThe association between rurality, geographic isolation and outcomes in critical care is complex, and important to the design and implementation of robust healthcare systems. MethodsA cohort study of adult (≥16 years) emergency admissions to critical care units in Scotland 2010-2021. Data were linked across national inpatient records, the critical care database, and mortality records. Geographic isolation was determined by modelled travel time to intensive care unit and emergency department, and rurality by the national 8-fold Urban Rural Classification. Standardised admission rates were calculated, alongside survival analysis for all-cause mortality by isolation and rurality with intensive care unit and hospital length of stay, and emergency hospital readmissions in the year following critical care admission.Results 50,914 first emergency admissions to critical care over the study period were included in the analyses. Age-sex standardised admissions were 24.2% (95%CI 19.4-28.2) lower for the most isolated areas ≥180 minutes from intensive care unit, compared to those at <30 minutes. No significant associations were demonstrated between mortality and any category of isolation, and at only one category of rurality, with greater mortality in other urban areas (settlements of 10,000 to 124,999 people) compared to large urban areas (settlements of ≥125,000 people) with adjusted Hazard Ratio 1.05 (95%CI 1.01-1.08).ConclusionsAdmission rates to critical care were lower in more isolated, and more rural areas. Further research should explore the mechanisms for these findings and consider if strengthened access to critical care transfer and resource in remote areas may improve health outcomes.<br/
Pawsitive patch:Using a robotic dog in children's animal welfare education
Get PDFZoomorphic robots are a promising substitute for live animals in situations where their involvement is impractical or impossible. One significant application is in animal welfare education, which plays a key role in shaping children’s relationships with animals and the natural world. In this work we present the evaluation of an educational intervention using a custom zoomorphic robot that communicates dog sentience and welfare needs to 10–11-year-old children (N = 104). The results show that the intervention as a whole is an effective animal welfare education intervention, as it succeeded in improving children’s belief in dog sentience, recognition of dog emotions, knowledge of dog welfare needs, and attachment to pets. While there was no significant effect of the zoomorphic robot over the same intervention delivered using a stuffed toy, children who interacted with the robot reported higher intrinsic motivation to participate in the intervention, suggesting potential future use as a proxy animal, particularly to sustain engagement in longer-term interventions
Navigating cultural intimacies:Long-lasting friendships in the Scottish South Asian diasporas
Get PDFIn research on the UK’s South Asian communities, the family has generally been taken to be a ‘self-fulfilling’ unit and the existence of friendships within and across these communities remains empirically unexplored and conceptually under-theorised. This is even more so the case for friendships among older South Asians. This article therefore explores the workings of decades-long friendships of the Scottish South Asian diasporas, particularly those that are formed outside these communities, to ask: how and why do friendships last across sometimes deep cultural differences? Taking inspiration from Lynn Jamieson’s theorisation of ‘practices of intimacy’, yet in a relative departure, this article positions intimate relationships as socially situated, wherein cultural and racial difference is embodied by the individuals in these friendships, even as the friendships are themselves also embedded within wider racial and socio-cultural hierarchies. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 40 male and female participants (50+ years) from the Indian Sikh and Pakistani Muslim communities, I offer three main arguments that: cultural or racial difference is not contingent to these friendships but inherently constitutive of the relationships; deep ‘value-navigations’ which cut across differences can both cultivate and sustain long-lasting friendships; and what I term practices of cultural intimacy are at the core of how and why these friendships last.</p
Pasolini and Stendhal, from Bologna to Rome:Stages of a novelistic crystallisation
Get PDFStarting from the analysis of an unpublished letter that Pasolini had addressed to Stendhal, and which he wanted to use as the preface-dedication of his first novel, this essay proposes a Stendhalian journey through the evolution of Pasolini's novels. This journey follows the stages of the crystallization of love, as Stendhal had represented them in the drawing of a journey from Bologna to Rome. For both writers, the departure from Bologna is the original scene of a romantic and romantic failure. The last stage of this journey, in Rome, is marked by the critical readings of Roland Barthes and Leonardo Sciascia
Energy distribution in a large-scale structural fire test: The convective heat loss
Get PDFA key concept in structural fire engineering is the compartment fire, crucial for estimating thermal boundary condition in structural analysis. However, there are no complete quantifications on the energy distribution into load-bearing structural members for the steel-composite structures in large compartments in cases where the convective heat loss via the openings has been measured. This is due to the limitations in test scale, instrumentation resolution, and inability to estimate convective heat loss without calorimeter hoods for accurate HRR estimation. This study investigates the thermal energy distribution of a large compartment focusing on the convective heat loss through the opening, utilising the experimental data of a full-scale structural fire test conducted at the National Fire Research Laboratory (NFRL), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA. In the experiment, gas burners operated for 131 minutes, providing a fire load density of approximately 1252 MJ/m². The peak gas temperature beneath the composite floor exceeded 1100 °C. In our study, the convective heat loss was quantified as 51.2 GJ utilising the measured gas velocities and thermocouple temperatures at the openings. In comparison, the 20 MW calorimetry hood estimated a total convective heat loss of 52.8 GJ. Those two estimates represent 63% and 65% of the total supplied energy of 81.3 GJ from the gas burners, respectively. Note that this apparent good agreement should be interpreted with caution, considering the uncertainties of this simplified bi-linear assumptions on the velocity profile along the opening height
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