8383 research outputs found
Sort by
Multilateralism at a Crossroads: Rethinking UK Status and Influence at the UN Security Council
No full textDuring a period of increased global tensions over the future direction of multilateralism, the UN Security Council faces significant questions over its continued legitimacy. Consequently, demands for formal reform initiatives have grown, challenging the unequal distribution of power within the Council and the continued influence of colonial legacies. Yet despite these claims, it is still commonly assumed that the UK must work to retain all the key privileges that come from holding a permanent seat to help maintain its status and prestige. In contrast, we outline how the UK’s current position actually fuels resentment and undermines the post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ agenda. In response, this article offers a non-ideal solution where the UK retains its permanent seat but aligns its use with national interests through bringing forward informal delegation practices and coalition building, as well as developing innovative working methods to generate greater cooperation between permanent and elected members. In doing so we argue that through a more delegated approach the UK could demonstrate its commitment to fairness and multilateralism in a way that wins allies and positions it as a leading advocate for reform even in a time of increased great power competition
Explaining the intention to practice “Leave No Trace” in Hong Kong's country parks: The roles of environmental self-identity, personal moral norms and awareness of consequences
No full textThe persistent littering in Hong Kong's country parks, despite the “Leave No Trace” (LNT) programme initiated in 2015, highlights its limitations. This study, guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), extends the model by adding three new variables–environmental self-identity, personal moral norms, and awareness of consequences–and aims to identify the drivers of LNT intention among park users. Through a questionnaire survey conducted in 12 country parks, 596 valid responses were collected and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results showed that the extended model had enhanced explanatory power. Personal moral norms emerged as the strongest direct factor driving LNT intention, while subjective norms lost their direct influence, and only had an effect on intention when mediated by personal moral norms. Environmental self-identity played a limited role, and awareness of consequences indirectly affected LNT intention, primarily through personal moral norms and to a lesser extent through attitude. These findings deepen the understanding of LNT behaviour, especially highlighting the crucial role of personal moral norms, and provide policymakers and park managers with evidence-based solutions to refine the LNT programme
Understanding the Mutating ‘Third Wave’: Comparing the Drivers of Remote Metropolitan Branch Campuses and International Branch Campuses
Get PDFFor several decades, universities in the UK have been growing and diversifying their revenue by recruiting international students. There have been three sequential waves of internationalisation – export education, then franchising degrees to private providers overseas, and finally the establishment of international branch campuses (IBCs) around the world. More recently, there has been a mutation of this ‘third wave’ with an increasing number of UK universities setting up remote metropolitan branch campuses (RMBCs) in London. This paper compares the motivations of UK universities establishing RMBCs and IBCs. It finds that while there are broad parallels between the reasons for starting an RMBC and an IBC, there are important differences of emphasis and impact. It also finds that RMBCs offer universities a valuable ‘experimental laboratory’ on home soil to pilot new curricula, pedagogies and operating models, which are potentially transferrable back to the home campus
Will Brands With Dynamic Logos Appear More Exciting And Authentic In The Metaverse?
Get PDFThis research explores how dynamic logos, as opposed to static logos, influence consumers’ perception of brand authenticity in the metaverse. An experiment in a metaverse measures responses to dynamic and static logos; particularly, brand authenticity, personality, consistency, and flow. Dynamic logos offer flexibility and adaptability beyond traditional visual identity constraints, which may better fit the exciting nature of these virtual immersive spaces and expectations about them, potentially increasing the perception of brands authenticity and excitement
Delivering excellence for all: How experiential learning can foster inclusive values in tourism and hospitality students
No full textImpact of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) in the UK
No full textDevelopmental Coordination Disorder (Developmental Coordination Disorder) known as Dyspraxia, affecting approximately 5% of children in the UK, is still poorly recognised and insufficiently supported. In this national survey over 240 parents revealed the breadth of its impact—long waits for diagnosis, inconsistent or unavailable therapy, and challenges at school, home, and in daily life. Families describe high emotional stress, limited public understanding, and a lack of coordinated care. Despite recognition at home, many parents report that formal diagnoses do little to improve support, leaving children struggling academically, socially, and psychologically. Beyond difficulties with movement, the condition is linked to increased risk of anxiety, low physical activity, and social isolation. Parents worry about their children’s long-term wellbeing and prospects, while also facing barriers to support for themselves. As public understanding of neurodiversity grows, this report highlights the urgent need to include Developmental Coordination Disorder in that conversation. The new findings underscore how gaps across healthcare, education, and social services are failing thousands of families. With early intervention known to make a difference, greater awareness and systemic change are essential to reduce harm and unlock children’s potential. This download reports the evidence base for these conclusions
Music and Parental Wellbeing: A Position Paper
Get PDFThis article sets out a collective vision for a new Music and Parental Wellbeing Alliance. It starts from the premise that challenges to parental wellbeing represent a persistent, global concern. When unchecked, these challenges can lead to negative consequences for the whole family. Music is common in the lives of many parents around the world; yet despite emerging evidence, it is not yet considered as an option in most parental care pathways. To address this requires a collaborative approach, leading to the founding of the Music and Parental Wellbeing Research Network in 2023. As a network comprising of parents, musicians, music therapists, healthcare practitioners, researchers, arts leaders, and policy experts, we set ourselves the task of proposing and setting out a direction for the field of music and parental wellbeing. We embarked on agreeing the key steps needed to advance the field, and the driving principles underpinning such endeavor, arriving at a vision for our ongoing work: To enable, sustain, and expand an international and interdisciplinary community that works towards ensuring that all parents have the opportunity – and are empowered and equipped – to engage with music that can support their wellbeing. In this short article, we articulate a mission for a new Music and Parental Wellbeing Alliance that is focused on achieving our vision through SHAPING evidence and practice, SUPPORTING professionals working in the field, and SHARING the potential of music in supporting parental wellbeing. We invite readers to join us in progressing this mission
The Role of AI in Enhancing Customer Service and Personalization
No full textThe tourist experience has been transformed by the rapid development of technology and technology-supported solutions adopted in the tourism, hospitality, and event industry, including but not limited to, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) (Buhalis et al., 2019; Tlili et al., 2021). It is worth noting that AI and AI-driven solutions have been playing a crucial role in enhancing the automation and personalization of events (Ogle & Lamb, 2019). Against this backdrop, this chapter aims to critically review the current academic discourse of how AI-driven solutions have enhanced tourist experiences, from the use of smart venue technology in contemporary hospitality and events management to voice and intelligent agents, face and gesture recognition, voice assistants, and immersive reality (Bulchand-Gidumal et al., 2023; Kumar et al., 2021). The chapter provides a critical review of the role played by AI-driven solutions and applications in enhancing experiences in these domains and identifies the gaps for future research directions. Practitioners in the hospitality and event sectors can know what types of AI-driven solutions are available to adopt based on their specific circumstances and enhance customers’ experiences, and attendee convenience
A Libidinal Economy of Professional Wrestling
No full textIn the world of professional wrestling, the insistence that the action contributes towards a legitimate sporting contest – despite its being a pre-determined performance – is known as kayfabe. This article focuses on the intensities behind the media spectacle, the passion and excitement, to conceptualise how kayfabe is communicated between professional wrestlers, live audiences and television viewers. It is argued that professional wrestling is given its legitimacy by the co-production of passion in the form of communication; that this exchange of passion can be understood in terms of a libidinal economy; and that this libidinal economy is both sustained and disrupted by its mediation. As a media spectacle, professional wrestling is caught between its appeal to television viewers as a primary audience and its reliance on arena crowds to communicate its legitimacy and corroborate its storytelling. Without the presence of fans in attendance, kayfabe would be reduced to a kind of empty control – a top-down insistence that the television audience goes along with the pretence. It is concluded that professional wrestling is a communication of shared passions or else it loses its coherence as a spectacle
AI-Driven Diagnosis of Lassa Fever: Evidence from Nigerian Clinical Records
Get PDFBackground
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), particularly Lassa fever, remain a significant public health challenge in Nigeria, often presenting with symptoms similar to malaria. These similarities contribute to misdiagnoses, delayed treatments, and increased mortality. The need for rapid and accurate disease differentiation has created an opportunity for machine learning applications in medical diagnostics.
Method
This study developed an ensemble machine learning model to detect Lassa fever and distinguish it from malaria using clinical datasets collected from the Infectious Disease Hospital, Akure, and the Benue State University Teaching Hospital, Makurdi. The dataset, comprising confirmed Lassa fever and malaria cases, underwent preprocessing steps including data cleaning, handling missing values, balancing via SMOTE, and feature selection using ANOVA. Three base classifiers: Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN), and Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), were combined using a hard voting ensemble technique. Model performance was evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score.
Results
The ensemble model outperformed the individual classifiers, achieving an accuracy of 98.7%, precision of 98.3%, recall of 100%, an F1-score of 99.1%, and ROC-AUC of 96.88%. These results represent a significant improvement over existing approaches, with the ensemble model demonstrating 8.7% higher accuracy compared to the best individual classifier (KNN at 90%) and substantially outperforming traditional diagnostic methods that typically achieve 60-70% accuracy in differentiating Lassa fever from malaria in resource-limited settings. These results indicate a robust capacity for differentiating Lassa fever from malaria based on symptomatology.
Conclusion
The ensemble learning approach demonstrated high effectiveness in improving disease detection accuracy, making it a practical tool for early diagnosis and clinical decision support in resource-limited healthcare settings. Its deployment could significantly reduce misdiagnosis and enhance NTD surveillance in Nigeria