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The quest for global green finance participation: Developing countries and barriers to full participation
Get PDFWe examine the case for developing countries’ participation in the ‘green finance’ debate, which deserves reconsideration given the current lack of clarity and agreement on a universal definition of green finance. We demonstrate that initiatives aimed at curbing the worst environmental excesses tend to be characterized by a ‘them and us’ mentality. Developing countries have been marginalized from participating and contributing meaningfully to the debate, with serious ongoing consequences. The only way to meet sustainability priorities with the potential for long-lasting change is to encourage countries to work together in genuinely collaborative partnerships
The development of a therapeutic parenting practice for a digital age; clinical roots to community settings
Get PDFThis is my doctoral thesis by public works, in which I conduct a reflexive audit of my own body of public work, that is my 15-Minute Parenting practice. My question has been whether or not a play-based, therapeutic, self-directed, theoretically robust and psycho-educational parenting practice can bridge the gap between the clinic and the family home. My aim was to develop such a practice and explore its effectiveness amongst my target demographic. It is my assertion that this is possible and I present my 15-Minute Parenting practice as an example of this. I further advocate that the use of multi-media is essential in bringing this 15-Minute Parenting practice to the general public and outline how I have utilised multi-media platforms in amplifying my 15-Minute Parenting practice. I draw upon 4 epistemological strands to explain how 15-Minute Parenting has been developed and how it continues to develop and evolve. At the centre of the 15-Minute Parenting practice is my assertion that play is not only the language of children but is a universal language that can bridge the chasm between adulthood and childhood. In my 15-Minute Parenting practice, I introduce people to the seriousness of play in a fun and playful way advocating that opportunities for shared joy (enjoying and being enjoyed by each other) within moments of meeting (connection) between a parent and child can be transformative in the parent-child relationship. The 15-Minute Parenting practice is encased in a 3-book series but is supported by a weekly podcast of the same name as well as a weekly parenting radio show that airs on an award-winning national radio station in Ireland. I am seeking to highlight the effectiveness of bringing print media, radio, television and social media together in bringing my 15-Minute Parenting practice to a wider audience. The implications of focusing on strengthening and enhancing the parent-child relationship outside of the psychotherapy clinic is a move towards de-psychopathologising what are more mild-moderate behavioural challenges that fall within the range of what might be referred to as “typical” child development. This research also has implications beyond the parent-child relationship and I am exploring questions as to how it might also apply in the lives of (non-parent) adults and what the benefits of a playful state of mind are in all of our lives. With reference to the terminology, I am using in this context statement I wish to emphasise that I view and treat all family constructs as equal. I have worked with a wide variety of family formation and am accepting of all clients. When I say parent-child, please read it as speaking to the relationship between a child and their caregivers (those providing a parental presence), whomsoever they be
Quality assurance of higher education in the South Caucasus
Get PDFThis issue offers insights into how the south Caucasus countries of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia as different sovereign nations with their distinctive cultures and ideologies share a geo-political commonality of recent Soviet occupation with 20% of Georgia territory under occupation. They share a desire to develop, modernise and operate an effective higher education system which, through creativity, ingenuity and imagination supports their educational, cultural and economic ambitions. To that end they all joined the Bologna Process at the Bergen Ministerial Conference in 2005 and have undertaken reforms of their post-colonial futures, intended to improve the quality of higher education within their country and provide opportunities for students and academics’ mobility, improvement in teaching and learning régimes, the creation of quality assurance instruments that provide direction and focus to internal and external quality assessments and accreditation and have begun to focus on their research infrastructures. As members of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), each country has had to address its own higher education sector in order to formally comply with the agreement necessities, which critically required independent quality assurance bodies that had responsibility for programme or institutional accreditation. The consequences for each are different and details of how each has responded cannot be fully covered in this selection of papers in this special issue. What has been achieved, is a representation of responses that shine a light on the way the South Caucasus has answered the requirements for EHEA membership. It acts as a catalyst to discussion on the future direction of higher education in the region, including the furthering of large-scale alteration of national systems to include private institutions alongside nation-supported academies
Combining phytoremediation with bioenergy production: developing a multi‑criteria decision matrix for plant species selection
Get PDFThe use of plants to extract metal contaminants from soils has been proposed as a cost-effective means of remediation, and
utilizing energy crops for this phytoextraction process is a
useful way of attaining added value from the process. To simultaneously attain both these objectives successfully, selection of an appropriate plant species is crucial to satisfy a number of important criteria including translocation index, metal
and drought tolerance, fast growth rate, high lignocellulosic content, good biomass production, adequate calorific value, second generation attribute, and a good rooting system. In this study, we proposed a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to aid decision-making on plant species based on information generated from a systematic review survey. Eight species Helianthus annuus (sunflower), Brassica juncea (Indian mustard), Glycine max (soybean), Salix spp. (willow), Populus spp. (poplar), Panicum virgatum (switchgrass), Typha latifolia (cattails), and Miscanthus sinensis (silvergrass) were examined based on the amount of hits on a number of scientific search databases. The data was normalized by estimating their min–max values and their suitability. These criteria/indicators were weighted based on stipulated research objectives/priorities to form the basis of a final overall utility scoring. Using the MCDA, sunflower and silvergrass emerged as the top two candidates for both phytoremediation and bioenergy production. The multi-criteria matrix scores assist the process of making decisions because they compile plant species options quantitatively for all relevant criteria and key performance indicators (KPIs) and its weighing process helps incorporate stakeholder priorities to the selection process
Investigation of solar assisted air source heat pump heating system integrating compound parabolic concentrator-capillary tube solar collectors
Get PDFSolar assisted air source heat pump heating systems are capable of achieving green heating where solar availability essentially affects its operation performance and application potentials, especially in higher-latitude regions, such as UK. Compound parabolic concentrator solar collectors can achieve high collector efficiency at high hot water temperature, benefitting to improve solar collection and corresponding thermal energy storage capacities. Though compound parabolic concentrator solar collectors have been widely investigated, application of such collector for solar assisted air source heat pump system is not studied yet. The paper reports numerical simulations of solar assisted air source heat pump heating systems that integrate compound parabolic concentrator-capillary tube solar collectors for domestic heating in the UK. The results show that, for the same seasonal performance factor, the size of the concentrated solar collector required is 12 m2 whereas the size of the flat plate solar collector required is 18 m2. This suggests one third reduction in the size of solar collector, significant reduction in cost and convenience for installation. The results also show the potential to further reduce the size of the concentrated solar collector to 9 m2 or less. The high collector efficiency of the compound parabolic concentrator-capillary tube solar collector enables much small size of solar collector, significantly lower cost and convenient for installation and wide rollout of solar assisted air source heat pump heating system to locations where solar irradiance is relatively lower
Service use preceding and following first referral for psychiatric emergency care at a short-stay crisis unit: A cohort study across three cities and one rural area in England
Get PDFBackground: Internationally, hospital-based short-stay crisis units have been introduced to provide a safe space for stabilisation and further assessment for those in psychiatric crisis. The units typically aim to reduce inpatient admissions and psychiatric presentations to emergency departments. Aims: To assess changes to service use following a service user’s first visit to a unit, characterise the population accessing these units and examine equality of access to the units. Methods: A prospective cohort study design (ISCTRN registered; 53431343) compared service use for the 9 months preceding and following a first visit to a short-stay crisis unit at three cities and one rural area in England. Included individuals first visited a unit in the 6 months between 01/September/2020 and 28/February/2021. Results: The prospective cohort included 1189 individuals aged 36 years on average, significantly younger (by 5–13 years) than the population of local service users (<.001). Seventy percent were White British and most were without a psychiatric diagnosis (55%–82% across sites). The emergency department provided the largest single source of referrals to the unit (42%), followed by the Crisis and Home Treatment Team (20%). The use of most mental health services, including all types of admission and community mental health services was increased post discharge. Social-distancing measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic were in place for slightly over 50% of the follow-up period. Comparison to a pre-COVID cohort of 934 individuals suggested that the pandemic had no effect on the majority of service use variables. Conclusions: Short-stay crisis units are typically accessed by a young population, including those who previously were unknown to mental health services, who proceed to access a broader range of mental health services following discharge
The impact of temporal synchronisation imprecision on TRF analyses
Get PDFHuman sensory perception requires our brains to extract, encode, and process multiple properties of the sensory input. In the context of continuous sensory signals, such as speech and music, the measured electrical neural activity synchronises to properties such as the acoustic envelope, a phenomenon referred to as neural tracking. The ability of measuring neural tracking with non-invasive neurophysiology constitutes an exciting new opportunity for applied research. For example, it enables the objective assessment of cognitive functions in challenging cohorts and environments by using pleasant, everyday tasks, such as watching videos. However, neural tracking has been mostly studied in controlled, laboratory environments guaranteeing precise synchronisation between the neural signal and the corresponding labels (e.g., speech envelope). There exist various challenges that could impact such a temporal precision in, for instance, out-of-lab scenarios, such as technology (e.g., wireless data acquisition), mobility requirements (e.g., clinical scenarios), and the task (e.g., imagery). Aiming to address this type of challenge, we focus on the predominant scenario of continuous sensory experiments involving listening to speech and music. First a temporal response function analysis is presented on two different datasets to assess the impact of trigger imprecision. Second, a proof-of-concept re-alignment methodology is proposed to determine potential issues with the temporal synchronisation. Finally, a use-case study is presented that demonstrates neural tracking measurements in a challenging scenario involving older individuals with neurocognitive decline in care homes.
Significance Statement
Human cognitive functions can be studied by measuring neural tracking with non-invasive neurophysiology as participants perform pleasant, everyday tasks, such as listening to music. However, while recent work has encouraged the use of this approach in applied research, it remains unclear how robust neural tracking measurements can be when considering the methodological constraints of applied scenarios. This study determines the impact of a key factor for the measurement of neural tracking: the temporal precision of the neural recording. The results provide clear guidelines for future research, indicating what level of imprecision can be tolerated for measuring neural tracking with speech and music listening tasks in both laboratory and applied settings. Furthermore, the study provides a strategy to assess the impact of imprecision in the synchronisation of the neural recording, thus developing new tools for applied neuroscience
The synergistic effect of operational research and big data analytics in greening container terminal operations: a review and future directions
Get PDFContainer Terminals (CTs) are continuously presented with highly interrelated, complex, and uncertain planning tasks. The ever-increasing intensity of operations at CTs in recent years has also resulted in increasing environmental concerns, and they are experiencing an unprecedented pressure to lower their emissions. Operational Research (OR), as a key player in the optimisation of the complex decision problems that arise from the quay and land side operations at CTs, has been therefore presented with new challenges and opportunities to incorporate environmental considerations into decision making and better utilise the ‘big data’ that is continuously generated from the never-stopping operations at CTs. The state-of-the-art literature on OR's incorporation of environmental considerations and its interplay with Big Data Analytics (BDA) is, however, still very much underdeveloped, fragmented, and divergent, and a guiding framework is completely missing. This paper presents a review of the most relevant developments in the field and sheds light on promising research opportunities for the better exploitation of the synergistic effect of the two disciplines in addressing CT operational problems, while incorporating uncertainty and environmental concerns efficiently. The paper finds that while OR has thus far contributed to improving the environmental performance of CTs (rather implicitly), this can be much further stepped up with more explicit incorporation of environmental considerations and better exploitation of BDA predictive modelling capabilities. New interdisciplinary research at the intersection of conventional CT optimisation problems, energy management and sizing, and net-zero technology and energy vectors adoption is also presented as a prominent line of future research
A survey into the use of priming techniques implemented by athletes and coaches to improve athletic performance
Get PDFThis study aimed to examine the frequency and modes of psychological priming techniques and strategies being implemented by athletes of a variety of performance levels. A 15-question, anonymous questionnaire was developed and shared via social media sites. The survey implemented a quantitative method approach to collect background information (e.g., demographics, competition, and training history), the prevalence of priming, and the methods used. Ninety subjects met the inclusion criteria (71 men, 18 women, 1 subject did not identify their sex), with a median age of 28 7.47 (24-33) years and training age of 11 7.57 (8-18) years. Self-selected participation level accounted for 11 professional, 17 semi-professional, and 54 amateur level athletes. Priming strategies were implemented by 79% of subjects without the use of a coach, 10% used strategies with their coach, and 11% did not prime. For athletes, music was the preferred choice (27%), followed by instructional self-talk (24%), motivational self-talk (23%), applied physical actions (20%), and watching videos clips (6.3%). Coaches preferred motivational statements with 55% implementing this technique, followed by 27% utilizing inspiring team talks, and only 18% playing music. Of those that implemented a priming strategy, 66% found them to be either “very” or “extremely effective”. With 38% of subjects feeling priming accomplished this through increased motivation, 22% felt it reduced their fear and anxiety, 21% thought it improved their intensity, 15% felt it increased strength and power, and 2% felt it improved endurance. The chi-square test also found a significant (c = 0.27; p = 0.011) relationship with the use of priming to increase motivation. These results demonstrate priming strategies are being used irrespective of coach intervention, therefore educating coaches and athletes on the implementation of priming techniques has its place when aiming to improve athlete performance