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Exploratory analysis of inter-connected factors related to secondary school absenteeism:Caregivers’ perspectives
No full textSecondary school absenteeism in the UK arises from complex, interconnected issues within and beyond school systems, making it difficult for some pupils to attend full-time. This study adopted an ecosystemic approach to examine factors related to pupils' absence from caregivers’ perspectives. Caregivers (N = 198) completed online surveys. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to determine how school participation, absenteeism, pupil and caregiver characteristics, and caregivers’ attitudes predict absenteeism severity among UK pupils aged 11–16. Results show that habitual absence increases with age, particularly for pupils with co-occurring conditions, those who faced exclusion, and caregivers who are doubtful about the benefits of education. The beliefs held by some caregivers that school do not constitute part of the solution may result in insufficient support for students' reintegration into the school, thereby perpetuating absenteeism. National policies should address overlapping issues outside education that contribute to the resource gap for pupils facing attendance barriers
Which Trees Matter Most? The Role of Private Garden Trees and Woodland Cover for 3-30-300 Success in Seven English Cities
No full textThe 3–30–300 rule is a tool to evaluate access to trees and greenspaces and is gaining popularity in Europe but not yet in the UK. We calculate a 3–30–300 score per building to measure success at the rule in the local authority areas of seven English cities, examining how overall canopy cover and where the canopy is situated (e.g. woodland, street, private garden) influence performance. We find that a maximum of 2.1 % of buildings in the locations studied meet all three rules. Land use analysis indicates that increasing the density of trees in private gardens and increasing woodland cover are the most important factors for improving performance at the 3-tree and 30 % components in UK neighbourhoods. These recommendations should be applied to UK urban areas to improve overall performance at the 3–30–300 rule and increase access to trees and their benefits. We also explore how sensitive the results of the 3–30–300 analysis are to methodological choices by comparing results of network and line-of-sight analyses to simple buffers for the 3-tree and 300 m components of the rule, finding that more simple methods result in higher 3–30–300 scores and therefore suggest better 3–30–300 performance
Does understanding moderate aesthetic appraisals of proofs?
Full text linkThe relationship between understanding and aesthetic appraisal in mathematics is an open question, with implications for both the philosophy of mathematics and mathematics education. In this study, we investigated how undergraduate students’ understanding of a mathematical proof relates to their perception of its aesthetic value. Participants were asked to evaluate the proof's aesthetics and to complete three different assessments of their understanding. The results reveal that self-reported understanding was moderately associated with aesthetic appraisals, while two performance-based measures of understanding showed close-to-zero relationships. These findings challenge the view that aesthetic judgements in mathematics are merely disguised epistemic judgements, and suggest that future research should focus on exploring the non-epistemic factors that shape aesthetic judgements. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for educational practices that seek to promote aesthetic experiences.</p
On the Periodic Service Scheduling Problem with Non-Uniform Demands
Full text linkThis paper introduces the Periodic Service Scheduling Problem with Non-uniform Demands, in which the best service policy for a set of customers with periodically recurring demand through a given finite planning horizon has to be determined. Service to customers is provided at every time period by a set of potential service providers, each of them with an activation cost and a capacity. The decisions to be made include the servers to be activated at each time period together with a service schedule and server allocation for every customer that respect the periodicity of customer demand and the capacity of the activated servers, which minimize the total cost of the activated servers. We give a first Integer Linear Programming formulation with one set of decision variables associated with each of the decisions of the problem. Afterwards, we develop a logic-based Benders reformulation where one set of variables is projected out and constraints that guarantee the feasibility of the solutions are introduced. The separation problem for the new set of constraints is studied, and an exact Branch & Logic-Benders-Cut algorithm for the reformulation is proposed together with several variations and enhancements. The particular cases in which all servers are identical and in which all parameters are time-invariant are also studied. Extensive computational experiments assess the superiority of the logic-based Benders reformulation over the first formulation
Virus-inclusive single nucleus RNA-sequencing reveals two distinct endothelial response patterns in infectious salmon anaemia
Full text linkViral replication in endothelial cells is a hallmark of many viral diseases, underscoring the importance of understanding mechanisms that restrict viral replication and the associated consequences for vascular health. Pathogenic infectious salmon anaemia virus (ISAV, Isavirus salaris) targets endothelial cells of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.), causing severe disease and economic losses in aquaculture. Using single nucleus RNA-sequencing at pre-clinical (12 days post infection, dpi) and clinical (16 dpi) stages of infection, we characterized the endothelial transcriptional response to ISAV at unprecedented resolution. ISAV RNA was predominantly detected in endothelial cells, which, along with mononuclear phagocytes, showed the highest number of differentially regulated genes at both time points. To retain statistical power, timepoint-specific analyses were performed on all endothelial subsets combined. Differentially expressed genes at 12 dpi were enriched for pathways related to NOD-like receptor signaling, antiviral responses, and regulation of apoptosis, but by 16 dpi shifted toward pathways associated with cellular senescence, apelin signaling, and insulin signaling. At both time points, we identified two distinct infection-related states: (1) a virus-permissive state, characterized by differential expression of genes involved in the regulation of small GTPase signalling and downstream processes including intracellular trafficking, cytoskeletal remodelling, and control of cell growth and death; and (2) a bystander phenotype, marked by activation of cytokine and chemokine signalling and degradation of viral products. This study is the first to capture cell type-specific responses to ISAV infection, and to characterize the in vivo endothelial response to active viral replication at single-cell resolution in any species.</p
Generation Scotland Mass Spectrometry Protein GWAS Summary Statistics
No full textThis dataset corresponds to the study "Genome-wide analysis of 439 mass spectrometry-based proteomic profiles in a population of 15,035 Scottish individuals". The files included are the summary statistics from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of 439 mass spectrometry measured proteins in Generation Scotland. The GWAS was run using the fastGWA command in GCTA. Age, sex and 20PCs were included as covariates and a genetic relationship matrix (GRM) was used to account for family structure
Stillbirth in intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy and timing of severely elevated bile acid concentrations: an observational cohort study
Full text linkExploring the Emergence of New Territorial Divides after Devolution: An Analysis of the Socio-Political Gap between Capital Cities and Peripheral Areas in Scotland and Wales
No full textThe dataset contains results from a survey conducted in Scotland and Wales, examining public opinion on devolved governance. It explores perspectives on the role of capital cities at both the state-wide and devolved levels, as well as the territorial distribution of the benefits of devolution
Spatial and social cognition jointly determine multimodal demonstrative reference:Experimental evidence from Turkish and Spanish
Full text linkAll languages in the world have demonstrative terms such as ‘this’ and ‘that’ in English, which have traditionally been treated as spatial words. Here we aim to provide experimental evidence that demonstrative choice is jointly determined by spatial considerations (e.g., whether the referent is near or far) and socio-cognitive factors (e.g., the listener's attention focus). We also test whether demonstrative choice varies depending on the speaker's use of pointing, to provide evidence for a multimodal account of demonstrative systems. We focus on the Turkish system and compare it with the Spanish one to better understand the cross-linguistic variability of 3-term demonstrative systems. Corpus studies have suggested that the Turkish proximal ‘bu’ and distal ‘o’ mark a spatial contrast between near and far space, whereas the medial ‘şu’ is used to direct the listener's attention to a new referent. Supporting this analysis, an online experiment using a picture-based demonstrative-choice task revealed that the medial form ‘şu’ was preferred when the listener was looking at the wrong object. The results of a second experiment using video stimuli further showed that the medial ‘şu’ was preferred when the speaker pointed to the referent to direct the listener's attention, whereas the proximal demonstrative was used in near space and the distal in far space, mostly in joint attention and without pointing. The results of a third experiment in Spanish showed radically different patterns of demonstrative-pointing use. The medial ‘ese’ was preferred in joint attention, whereas the proximal ‘este’ and distal ‘aquel’ were selected to direct the listener's attention towards the intended referent but without an effect of pointing. Our results confirm that demonstrative choice within a given system is determined by both spatial and socio-cognitive factors, interacting with pointing patterns and varying across languages. Leveraging recent experimental work in several languages, we interpret these findings as further evidence for the weighted parameters framework (e.g., referent position and listener attention), which explains demonstrative choice beyond previous categorical analyses
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