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What Glastonbury is like for deaf people – one of the festival’s DeafZone coordinators explains
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Developing an Intervention to Improve Sexual Health Assessment and Care in Men With Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Get PDFAim: To co‐produce a prototype intervention to help nurses improve the assessment and care of the sexual health needs of men with inflammatory bowel disease. Background: Inflammatory bowel disease can have a significant impact on the sexual health and well‐being of men, but has largely been neglected in research and clinical guidelines. Men with the disease report that sexual health is not discussed during consultations, while healthcare practitioners describe a lack of confidence to initiate sexual health assessments. At present, no evidence‐based tool exists to support nurses in detecting, assessing, and providing care for the sexual health of men with the disease. Design: A mixed‐methods study shaped by phase 1 of the Medical Research Council's framework for the development of complex interventions. Methods: (1) Cross‐sectional surveys of (i) men with inflammatory bowel disease, (ii) nurses, and (iii) inflammatory bowel disease services to determine the current state of sexual health provision across the UK National Health Service. (2) Semi‐structured interviews with men and the partners of men with IBD and asynchronous focus groups with health professionals to explore appropriate and acceptable ways to provide sexual healthcare. (3) Three consecutive co‐production workshops inclusive of men with the disease, healthcare professionals, and stakeholders to formulate a prototype intervention. Implications for the Profession and/or Patient Care: This study will create an evidence‐based prototype intervention that will provide nurses with the knowledge and skills required to effectively assess the sexual health needs of men with inflammatory bowel disease and provide appropriate, patient‐centred care. Patient Contribution: The study design was supported by a patient group. The study delivery will be supported by a patient co‐investigator and stakeholder group inclusive of men with lived experience of the disease. Reporting Method: This report adheres to the SPIRIT 2013 checklist for standard protocol items for clinical trials. Trial Registration: clinicaltrials.gov ID: NCT0656275
Informal Practice as a Driver of Change: The UN Security Council and Darfur
Get PDFIn recent years the UN Security Council has come under increasing criticism, particularly in light of its failure to address the most pressing threats to international peace and security. As tensions between major powers have grown the relative paralysis of the Council has led to growing calls for significant change and reform. Yet much of the discourse surrounding the Council’s current status has predominantly focused on the overall legitimacy of the institution itself in regard to its rules and functions. In notable contrast to this literature, Jess Gifkins in her book Inside the UN Security Council takes us deeper into the inner workings of the Council, to address how decisions get made and the techniques utilised by member states to build legitimacy for their actions
The impact of Abdominal Wall Hernia (AWH) on patients’ social and sexual relationships: a Qualitative Analysis
Get PDFBackground: Abdominal Wall Hernia (AWH) impacts interpersonal relationships, which are vital to human wellbeing [1, 2], however social and sexual dimensions of AWH remain underexplored. This study investigates the impact of AWH on social disconnection and sexual intimacy challenges, and how this could be viably assessed in health related quality of life (HRQoL) assessment tools. Methods: A qualitative approach using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was employed [3]. Fifteen participants (8 men and 7 women, aged 36–85 years) were purposively sampled. Data collected via semi-structured interviews was analysed iteratively until no new themes emerged [4]. Results: AWH significantly impacted participants' interpersonal relationships, mainly through ‘difficulties in connecting socially’ and ‘changes in sexual relationships’. Participants' social withdrawal was driven by physical limitations, altered self-perception, and stigma, leading to loneliness and reduced engagement. Changes in sexual relationships were shaped by pain, body image concerns, and perceived sexual pressure, often diminishing physical intimacy. Despite these challenges, emotional intimacy frequently persisted, largely due to empathetic and supportive partners. Postoperative improvements were highlighted as pivotal in restoring body confidence and intimacy. Conclusions: This study illustrates the profound social and sexual disruptions AWH causes. These effects should be included in holistic and patient centred care, and incorporated into HRQoL assessment tools. Preoperative counselling should include issues of social connection and intimacy, whilst postoperative care should integrate structured support networks, psychoeducational interventions, and psychosexual counselling. Future research should pilot, revise and test the effectiveness of such measures
Exploring the Role of Nature-Based Solutions in Reducing CO2 Emissions and Supporting Urban Climate Resilience in Nigeria
No full textThis chapter documents specific nature-based solutions (NbS) actions and projects across key sectors of the Nigerian economy. It then assesses the potential of NbS to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improve urban livelihoods in Nigeria. A review of existing literature highlights a variety of sectoral NbS initiatives in energy, agriculture, forestry, urban development, and waste management. These initiatives showcase NbS as viable pathways for achieving environmental sustainability (e.g., CO2 and urban climate resilience) and socioeconomic resilience (e.g., livelihood and income generation). Findings reveal significant sectoral differences in implementation across Nigeria. The energy sector leads in GHG reduction (92.8%) through projects like wind farms and solar mini-grids, while waste management excels in livelihood enhancement (75%) via recycling and upcycling initiatives. These trends reflect differing priorities: energy projects emphasize renewable access, agriculture focuses on climate-smart practices, forestry prioritizes carbon sequestration, and urban NbS promotes green infrastructure. Sector-specific insights highlight the need to integrate NbS into local contexts while building technical capacity. Critical enablers for NbS scaling up include policy incentives, financial mechanisms, and capacity-building efforts. With strategic support, NbS can significantly reduce CO₂ emissions and help Nigeria adapt to climate change. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the role of integrated, sustainable development in addressing both climate and socioeconomic challenges, paving the way for a resilient future
Participatory Music Practitioners’ Skills, Experience and Pathways for Learning: Perspectives from Belgium and the UK.
Get PDFParticipatory music practices—understood here as practices that inherently connect musical and social aims—are growing globally through diverse activity, research and scholarship. Practitioners, as facilitators of such initiatives, are often pivotal to their success and sustainability. This study foregrounds practitioner perspectives to consider what skills and experience they deem necessary for effective practice and ways in which they prepare(d) for practice. It was developed as part of an international research project titled Music for social impact: Practitioners’ contexts, work and beliefs and draws on survey responses and in-depth interviews conducted in Belgium and the United Kingdom. We analysed the data via an inductive approach, using practitioner narratives as a guiding perspective. Across geographical and project differences, practitioners reported similar necessary skills and experience, which we distinguished within three domains: musical, pedagogical and social. Practitioners honed their skills and experience through a variety of preparations; with experiential and peer-learning frequently mentioned. Such on-the-job learning, particularly when working with marginalised communities, raises ethical considerations about how best to prepare and support early-stage practitioners in navigating diverse practice contexts. We suggest that peer-guided experiential learning, cultivating self-directed study and critical reflection, offers an important pathway for practitioners to hone musical, pedagogical and social skills necessary for effective practice
What is the impact of viewing social media style images in different contexts on body satisfaction and body size estimation?
Get PDFPrevious research indicates that viewing images of bodies on social media can have an adverse effect on how individuals feel about their own bodies. Prior research has presented stimuli in various contexts, with some studies employing a lab-based approach and others attempting to replicate the social media context. However, there has been little research that considers how seeing these images in different contexts might have different effects. Methodological issues, such as these, have been highlighted as limiting the conclusions we can draw about the impact of social media on various well-being measures, including disordered eating and body satisfaction. In this study, we recruited 230 female participants via a university participation platform and exposed them to social media-style images of bodies, either in the lab or on a social media profile that they viewed on their own device. We then measured body satisfaction and body size judgments before and after this exposure. Results indicate that seeing images in a social media context, specifically in the Instagram app, seems to have a different impact than seeing the same images in a lab setting, such that in a lab setting there were no changes to body satisfaction or size estimation, but when using the smartphone app participants experienced changes in these measures. We also note that the effect of seeing these images is related to individual social media use and underlying disordered eating thoughts and behaviours. Future research should consider in more depth the characteristics of social media platforms that might exacerbate negative effects of seeing content in these contexts
Enhancing Image Classification Performance through Hybrid Self-Supervised Learning Strategies
Get PDFImage classification is a cornerstone of computer vision, with the applications spanning healthcare, autonomous driving and security. The dependence on large labeled datasets for supervised learning poses significant challenges, particularly in specialized fields where the labeled data is scarce and expensive to obtain. Self-supervised learning (SSL) has emerged as a promising paradigm, enabling models to learn useful representations from unlabelled data by designing pretext tasks that generate pseudo-labels. SSL faces limitations in handling complex data distributions and achieving robust generalization. This paper explores hybrid self-supervised learning strategies that combine multiple SSL techniques, such as contrastive learning, masked image modeling, and clustering, to enhance image classification performance and reduce dependence on labeled data. This study proposes a comprehensive framework that integrates data augmentation, feature extraction, and hybrid learning mechanisms, evaluated on the CIFAR-100 dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that hybrid SSL approaches achieve significant improvements in performance. The combination of SimCLR and masked image modeling (MAE) achieves a Top-1 accuracy of 77.8% on the clean test set and 71.4% on the domain-shifted set, and self-distillation with contrastive learning (DINO) achieves the highest Top-1 accuracy of 78.4% on the clean test set and 72.1% on the domain-shifted set. Advanced data augmentation techniques, such as CutMix and RandAugment, additionally enhance model robustness, with SwAV (contrastive clustering) achieving 76.5% Top-1 accuracy on the clean test set and 70.1% on the domain-shifted set. The findings highlight the effectiveness of hybrid SSL methods in addressing the challenges of limited labelled data, offering valuable insights for future research and applications in image classification