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Qualitative evaluation of medium stimuli for creativity in artificial intelligence-powered product design
No full textArtificial intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in modern product design, yet its integration into the design process presents unique challenges. To support designers in AI-powered design ideation, our team developed two types of inspirational stimuli (IS) for AI-powered products (ISfAI): the ISfAI-Sheet (simple stimuli) and ISfAI-Cards (mixed stimuli). This study evaluates the effectiveness of these ISfAI tools in enhancing creativity, using qualitative analysis of feedback collected from questionnaires and practice-based experiments with 26 senior industrial design students. The findings reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the ISfAI tools in fostering creativity and identifying common challenges in their use. Additionally, the research highlights the unique advantages of domain-specific IS, particularly how medium-level stimuli can improve knowledge reasoning processes. These insights will help researchers, designers, and educators in effectively applying these tools and refining ideation techniques in design practice.</p
Regions in Evolution: A History of Regional Planning
No full textThis is a Chapter from the book "Regions in EvolutionA History of Regional Planning" by Daniel Galland, Mark Tewdwr-Jones, John Harrison. Throughout the 20th century, planning and planners were central to our understanding of cities and regions. Today, however, planning is facing powerful challenges – professionally, intellectually, practically – in ways arguably not seen before. Recent developments and trends are raising fundamental questions about how we plan regions. Planning is no longer solely the domain of professional planners but has been opened up to a diverse group of actors, each with their own interests. The study of cities and regions was traditionally taught in planning schools and geography departments, but this link with place and space disciplines is being steadily eroded as research increasingly takes place in and through interdisciplinary research institutes.Against this backdrop, Regions in Evolution provides the first comprehensive account of a hitherto untold history of regions and planning. Told through the unique lens of regional studies, the authors bring to light the role of key individuals, groups and disciplines in shaping research agendas and debate. It reveals voices which were marginalised, planning ideas which were lost, approaches that keep coming back, and challenges that persist. Believing passionately in the values and purpose of regional planning, while sceptical of the one-size-fits-all institutional form that Regional Planning often adopts, the authors develop an argument for planning regional futures based on a multitude of approaches, methods and strategies that might still require someone to make sense of it all.</p
People’s interest in, and experience of, smart home technology – a survey-based study
No full textThis paper reviews people’s interest in and experience of smart home technol-ogy as well as barriers for its adoption. Two survey studies were carried out. The first, based in the UK, surveyed people’s levels of interest in technology in the future smart kitchen. There was clear interest in innovations that increased safety and security, while designs that made life easier through better comfort and convenience were also appreci-ated. The second survey studied the impact of smart home technology on individuals in the UK and South Korea who were experiencing physical discomfort. It was found that while most participants were aware of smart home products, the take up of them was more limited. However, those that were currently using it were generally satisfied with it. Rea-sons for dissatisfaction and prioritised features for the smart home devices are also re-ported as well as recommendations for addressing smart home user issues.</p
Robust and diversified image steganography without embedding through a disentanglement autoencoder
No full textImage Steganography without Embedding (SWE) is an emerging data hiding paradigm. Instead of embedding a secret message into a container image, SWE synthesises a novel image by using the secret message as a latent code. Current SWE methods have achieved high synthesis quality and strong resistance to steganalysis tools. However, it remains challenging to apply the SWE due to two reasons: (i) lack of synthesis diversity and (ii) recovery of secret messages under malicious image attacks. In this paper, we present a novel SWE framework with a disentanglement autoencoder to tackle the above challenges. Specifically, the autoencoder disentangles an image into a structure and texture representation. Then, we exploit the stability of the structure representation to improve secret message recovery reliability, while increasing synthesis diversity by randomising texture representations and employing a chaotic system for structure randomisation to enhance its security. To further achieve a robust message recovery under malicious attacks, an adversarial learning strategy is introduced into our framework, which guarantees high recovery accuracy. Our method outperforms other state-of-the-art SWE methods in terms of synthesis quality, synthesis diversity and secret message recovery accuracy under various image attacks. The source code is publicly available at https://github.com/Lemok00/RDI-SWE.</p
High-capacity generative image steganography approach for hiding multiple secret images
No full textCurrent high-capacity image steganography methods face challenges in balancing hidden capacity, imperceptibility, and recovery quality. Existing embedding-based image-in-image steganography approaches tend to produce detectable artifacts when hiding multiple images, whereas existing generative methods struggle to conceal full-sized secret images and often generate unrealistic stego images. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel generative steganography approach that hides multiple secret images in a single realistic generated image. Our main contributions include a meticulously designed autoencoder that compresses and injects secret images into the shallow layer of the generator to increase hidden capacity, a three-stage optimization strategy for stable training to enhance the recovery quality of secret images, and an automatic image selection procedure which explores the advantage of generation diversity to enhance the imperceptibility of stego images. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms embedding-based approaches by achieving higher recovered image quality with a PSNR value of 30.45 dB when concealing four images while maintaining stronger resistance against steganalysis tools, with an accuracy of 50%. Against generative approaches, our method achieves a higher hidden capacity while preserving a superior visual quality of stego images, with a FID of 6.97, surpassing the suboptimal method's FID of 22.72.</p
Urban Latitude Series: Dashboards and AI tools
No full textThis session examines how emerging technologies are redefining how urban information is gathered, analysed, co-created and communicated.Presenters: Dr Firat Batmaz (Postgraduate Programme Leader for Data Science and Computer Science: Loughborough University, United Kingdom) & Dr Sara Saravi (AI in EDI lead for AIED group: Loughborough University, United Kingdom) | Yashena Naidoo (Junior Researcher: Gauteng City-Region Observatory, South Africa) & Dr Laven Naidoo (Senior Researcher: Gauteng City-Region Observatory, South Africa).This session was convened and facilitated by Dr Yolandi Burger as part of the seedcorn project titled "Exploring urban heritage storytelling in digital urban observatories through international collaboration and knowledge exchange".© the authors</p
The association between glucose dynamics and energy intake in young, healthy women
No full textBackground: Glucose has been implicated in the control of appetite and food intake. This study investigated whether glycaemic patterns relate to energy intake and whether appetite-related hormones mediate this relationship.Methods: Thirty healthy young women (age: 25 ± 4 years; BMI: 21.4 ± 2.0 kg/m2) arrived at the laboratory at 8:00 AM after an overnight fast. Upon arrival, participants completed a 30-minute resting period, during which the cannula was inserted, and all fasted glucose measurements were collected. Glucose was measured every 5 minutes using FreeStyle Libre 2™ continuous glucose monitors (CGM), and one venous plasma glucose (VPG) sample was obtained immediately after cannula insertion. Following the 30-minute fasting measurement period, participants consumed a fixed breakfast and then remained in the laboratory for an additional 240 minutes. Glucose was monitored via CGM every 5 minutes and VPG was measured every 15 minutes after breakfast. Energy intake was assessed at 240 minutes using an ad-libitum homogeneous pasta meal. Subjective appetite ratings were collected fasted and every 15 minutes after breakfast. Appetite-related hormones, including insulin, acylated ghrelin (AG), total glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and oxyntomodulin (OXM) were measured in the fasted state, immediately after breakfast (t = 0 minute), and subsequently at 30-minute intervals after breakfast until t =240 minutes. Menstrual cycle phase was recorded and included as a covariate in all analyses. Associations between glycaemic variables and satiety or energy intake were examined using generalised linear models with a gamma distribution and log link function, adjusting for BMI and menstrual cycle phase. Bootstrap-based causal mediation analyses were conducted to evaluate whether appetite-related hormones mediated any significant associations between glycaemic responses and satiety or energy intake.Results: CGM-derived glucose nadir (lowest concentration) and dip (deviation of nadir from baseline as a percentage) were significantly associated with subsequent energy intake. A higher glucose nadir was associated with lower energy intake (β = 0.17, p = 0.003), whereas a greater glucose dip was associated with higher energy intake (β = 0.007; p < 0.001). When standardised, a one standard deviation (SD) increases in glucose nadir corresponded to an approximately 13% reduction in energy intake, while a one-SD increase in glucose dip corresponded to an approximately 16% increase in energy intake. Glucose nadir (CGM: β = 0.23, p = 0.041; VPG: β = 0.26, p = 0.008) and dip (CGM: β = 0.01, p = 0.006; VPG: β = 0.012, p < 0.001) derived from both CGM and VPG were also significantly associated with overall satiety measured immediately before the ad libitum lunch. A one-SD increase in glucose nadir was associated with higher satiety (CGM: 20% increase; VPG: 20% increase), whereas a one-SD increase in glucose dip was associated with lower satiety (CGM: 15% reduction; VPG: 17% reduction). Causal mediation analyses provided no evidence that insulin, acylated ghrelin, total GLP-1, or oxyntomodulin mediated these associations (p ≥ 0.09). Conclusions: Glucose dynamics including nadir and dip may influence satiety and subsequent energy intake. These data support for a role of glucose in models of appetite regulation.</p
Supplementary information files for "Increased common corticospinal input during eyes-closed unilateral stance in people with chronic ankle instability"
No full textSupplementary files for article "Increased common corticospinal input during eyes-closed unilateral stance in people with chronic ankle instability"Neuromuscular control deficits and altered spinal and corticospinal mechanisms are central to chronic ankle instability (CAI) and its persistent symptoms, but the role of ankle muscle coordination and common neural inputs during unipedal stance in CAI remains unexplored. This study aimed to compare intermuscular coherence between individuals with CAI and healthy controls during single-leg stance and investigate functionality of intermuscular coherence to postural control. Sixteen CAI and 16 healthy control (HC) participants performed single-leg balance tasks under eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions. The surface electromyograms were recorded from tibialis anterior (TA), peroneus longus (PL), gastrocnemius medial head (GM), and soleus (SOL) muscles. Coherence was analysed for PL-TA, PL-SOL, PL-GM, SOL-TA and SOL-GM muscle pairs in the delta (0.5-5 Hz) and beta (15-35 Hz) frequency bands. The CAI group exhibited greater beta-band intermuscular coherence for PL-SOL, PL-GM and SOL-TA during eyes-closed stance but not in eyes-open conditions, compared to healthy controls, suggesting increased common corticospinal inputs to agonist-antagonist muscle pairs. Higher beta-band coherence in the antagonistic muscle pairs correlated with reduced COP complexity, suggesting that strengthened beta-band indicates reduced postural adaptability. These findings suggest increased common corticospinal inputs to agonist-antagonist muscle pairs in CAI individuals, suggesting reduced postural adaptability during eyes-closed stance. Future research should address methodological considerations and validate protocol for intermuscular coherence analysis during single-leg stance. Future studies should also include CAI copers to determine whether their common corticospinal inputs have returned to healthy levels, supporting the potential effectiveness of targeted neuromodulatory or rehabilitation interventions.</p
Ethnic representation, deprivation and seizure outcomes in a UK tertiary epilepsy clinic
No full textBackground: Ethnic disparities in healthcare access are well-documented, but their impact on epilepsy outcomes in the UK remains unclear. We examined ethnic representation and seizure outcomes in a tertiary epilepsy clinic.Methods: Retrospective analysis of 1,609 adults attending Manchester Centre for Clinical Neurosciences (2020–2024). Ethnic distribution was compared with census data. Logistic regression assessed associations between ethnicity and seizure freedom, adjusting for age, sex, and deprivation.Results: Asian (6.4 %), Black (1.4 %), and Mixed (1.7 %) patients were underrepresented compared to Greater Manchester demographics (13.6 %, 4.0 %, 3.0 % respectively; all p p = 0.36).Conclusions: Ethnic minorities are underrepresented in this tertiary epilepsy clinic yet achieve comparable outcomes once engaged in care, indicating disparities in access rather than treatment quality. Culturally competent care delivery, community outreach, and systematic review of referral pathways are needed to ensure equitable access to specialist services.</p