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Co-creating cultural narratives for sustainable rural development:a transdisciplinary learning framework for guiding place-based social-ecological research
Get PDFPlace-based social-ecological research is crucial for understanding local sustainability challenges. However, lack of transferability of insights to other locations and to larger scales remains challenging. In this paper, we present a novel transdisciplinary learning framework that links notions of cultural heritage, landscape, and social-ecological systems thinking to support sustainable rural development. Continuous dialogue, learning, and collaboration among communities and stakeholders, including researchers, take centre stage in this framework. We outline the four steps of the framework, conceptually integrating and operationalising how dialogue, learning, and collaboration can take place in each step. We tested the framework in the CULTIVATE project (https://www.cultivate-project.net), which explored the role of cultural heritage narratives in supporting sustainable rural development in four European UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. The framework successfully guided our research and comparative cross-case analysis, thereby contributing to aggregate learnings from place-based social-ecological research to develop knowledge at the national or global scale.</p
‘They attacked you just like that’:Negotiating racial epistemics in making claims about racism
Get PDFSocial psychological research on race and racism has shown that claims about racism are not always accepted or received as valid reports. In this paper, I offer racial epistemics as one mechanism by which race-talk takes place. I examine how ascribing category-bound entitlements to experiential or other knowledge about racism is variously realised and complicated in the production of claims about racism. Through examining news media accounts where Black persons were invited to talk about their experiences of racism in India, I show that despite ascribing a privileged epistemic position to Black persons, recipients (interviewers and other panellists) could make salient epistemic entitlements to commonsense, specialised, or other forms of (racial) knowledge in collaboratively establishing, confirming or correcting, and challenging claims about racism in India. The findings are discussed in relation to the broader understanding of racism in social psychology. The data are in Indian English
A randomised double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of pramipexole in addition to mood stabilisers for patients with treatment-resistant bipolar depression (the PAX-BD study)
Get PDFA consensus on the definition of positive animal welfare
Get PDFThe concept of animal welfare is evolving due to progress in our scientific understanding of animal biology and changing societal expectations. Animal welfare science has been primarily concerned with minimizing suffering, but there is growing interest in also promoting positive experiences, grouped under the term positive animal welfare (PAW). However, there are discrepancies in the use of the term PAW. An interdisciplinary group arrived at a consensus that 'PAW can be defined as the animal flourishing through the experience of predominantly positive mental states and the development of competence and resilience. PAW goes beyond ensuring good physical health and the prevention and alleviation of suffering. It encompasses animals experiencing positive mental states resulting from rewarding experiences, including having choices and opportunities to actively pursue goals and achieve desired outcomes'. The definition also considers individual and species-specific differences. It provides a framework for researchers to investigate PAW and thereby generate innovative, informative and reproducible science. Studies of PAW can contribute to a richer picture of an animal's life and may elucidate the biological foundations of happiness. The definition creates opportunities to inspire scientific progress in animal biology and to align animal care practices, legislation and markets with societal expectations.</p
Synthesising a corpus of Gaelic traditional narrative with cross-lingual text expansion
Get PDFAdvances in large language modelling have disproportionately benefited high-resource languages due to their vastly greater training data reserves. This paper proposes a novel cross-lingual text expansion (XLTE) technique using multilingual large language models (MLLMs) to mitigate data sparsity in low-resource languages (LRLs). We apply XLTE to the domain of traditional Scottish Gaelic storytelling, aiming to generate coherent, long-form narrative texts by leveraging MLLMs’ cross-lingual capabilities. The effectiveness of this technique is demonstrated using GPT-4o, with supervised fine-tuning (SFT) providing a reduction in perplexity and decreased neologism over baseline models. Despite these improvements, qualitative analyses reveal stylistic divergences between synthesised and genuine data. Nevertheless, XLTE offers a promising, scalable method for synthesising training sets in other languages and domains, opening avenues for further improvements in low-resource language modelling
Empower new code citizens to reflect and communicate on code security
Get PDFWe present an approach based on short games and knowledge cards designed to help developers with neither formal training nor security knowledge gain the knowledge and ability to communicate on code security, in order to reduce the potential for vulnerabilities
Remote ischaemic post conditioning in NE:A feasible and simple paradigm for self-protection in the brain?
Get PDFAdjuvant Atezolizumab for Early Triple-Negative Breast Cancer:The ALEXANDRA/IMpassion030 Randomized Clinical Trial
Get PDFIMPORTANCE Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive subtype with a high incidence in young patients, a high incidence in non-Hispanic Black women, and a high risk of progression to metastatic cancer, a devastating sequela with a 12- to 18-month life expectancy. Until recently, one strategy for treating early-stage triple-negative breast cancer was chemotherapy after surgery. However, it was not known whether the addition of immune therapy to postsurgery chemotherapy would be beneficial. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the addition of immune therapy in the form of atezolizumab to postoperative chemotherapy in patients with the high-risk triple-negative breast cancer subtype. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In this open-label international randomized phase 3 trial conducted in more than 330 centers in 31 countries, patients undergoing surgery as initial treatment for stage II or III triple-negative breast cancer were enrolled between August 2, 2018, and November 11, 2022. The last patient follow-up was on August 18, 2023. INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized (1:1) to receive standard chemotherapy for 20 weeks with (n = 1101) or without (n = 1098) the immune therapy drug atezolizumab for up to 1 year. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary end point was invasive disease-free survival (time between randomization and invasive breast cancer in the same or opposite breast, recurrence elsewhere in the body, or death from any cause). RESULTS The median age of enrolled patients was 53 years and most self-reported as being of Asian or White race and neither Latino nor Hispanic ethnicity. The study independent data monitoring committee halted enrollment at 2199 of 2300 planned patients. All patients stopped atezolizumab following a planned early interim and futility analysis. The trial continued to a premature final analysis. With invasive disease-free survival events in 141 patients (12.8%) treated with atezolizumab-chemotherapy and 125 (11.4%) with chemotherapy alone (median follow-up, 32 months), the final stratified invasive disease-free survival hazard ratio was 1.11 (95% CI, 0.87-1.42; P = .38). Compared with chemotherapy alone, the regimen of atezolizumab plus chemotherapy was associated with more treatment-related grade 3 or 4 adverse events (54% vs 44%) but similar incidences of fatal adverse events (0.8% vs 0.6%) and adverse events leading to chemotherapy discontinuation. Chemotherapy exposure was similar in the 2 treatment groups. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE The addition of the immune therapy drug atezolizumab to chemotherapy after surgery did not provide benefit among patients with triple-negative breast cancer who are at high risk of recurrent disease.</p
Rhodococcus parequi sp. nov., a new species isolated from equine farm soil closely related to the pathogen Rhodococcus equi
Get PDFWe present the description of the new species, Rhodococcus parequi, found during phylogenomic investigations of a global collection of strains identified as Rhodococcus(Prescottella) equi. Strain PAM 2766T was isolated from horse-breeding farm soil in Normandy, France, and was indistinguishable from R. equi based on the usual identification tests. Whole genome phylogenetic analyses located PAM 2766T in the same Rhodococcus sublineage as R. equi, together with Rhodococcus agglutinans, Rhodococcus defluvii, Rhodococcus soli, Rhodococcus subtropicus, Rhodococcus spongiicola and Rhodococcus xishaensis. PAM 2766T is most closely related to, but sufficiently distinct from R. equi DSM 20307 T to be considered as a separate species. Average Nucleotide Identity (ANI) and Average Amino Acid Identity (AAI) values are 88.60% and 92.35, respectively, well below the species cutoff. The PAM 2766T draft genome is ~5.3 Mb in size with 68.98% G+C mol content. PAM 2766T is aerobic, non-motile, and produces smooth, creamy to buff-coloured colonies very similar to those of R. equi. It phenotypically differs from the latter by the ability to grow at 5ºC, a strongly positive urease test at 24 h, and specificities in the carbon and nitrogen source utilization profile as determined by phenotype microarray screens. Our data indicate that PAM 2766T belongs to a novel species, for which the name Rhodococcus parequi sp. nov. is proposed. R. parequi was avirulent in macrophage infection assays and is assumed to be non-pathogenic. The type strain is PAM 2766T (= CETC 30995T = NCTC 14987T)
Imposing innovation:How ‘innovation speak’ maintains postcolonial exclusion in Peru
Get PDFInnovation is regarded as a central driver of societal progress via its perceived role in enhancing economic growth and competitive advantage. As a result, ideals associated with innovation have long influenced development theory, policy and practice, particularly in relation to how nation-states, industries and communities might overcome structural barriers to poverty, unemployment, and more. In recent decades, development discourse has come to embrace a more individualised perspective that views business models, design-thinking and entrepreneurship as key engines of economic creativity and growth. This trend, known as innovation speak, is today a globally dominant paradigm influencing nearly every aspect of economic and social policy, from education to healthcare. In this paper, we argue that innovation speak reinforces colonial power relations, particularly the socioeconomic exclusion and cultural subordination of racialised communities. Focusing on Peru as an empirical setting, our study employs semi-structured interviews with key informants, analyses policy instruments, and draws insights from research diaries documenting a visit to an Indigenous-led innovation initiative. Through our analysis, we illuminate how innovation speak permeates development discourse, policy and tools, with the effect of reinforcing a globally dominant capitalist imaginary that posits market- and growth-centric forms of innovation as the presumed path to national development, to the exclusion of other approaches practised and prioritised by Indigenous groups. Our study thus contributes to a more nuanced understanding of innovation speak, coloniality, and the discourses that today dominate development policy and practice in many Global South nations
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