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A restaurant can be art, but can an artwork create community?
No full textIn September of 2021, I attended a friend’s birthday dinner in the garden of a restaurant in Stoke Newington. It was in the early days of our collective emergence from over twelve months of pandemic restrictions, and every social event still seemed infused with a deep sense of conviviality borne of people relishing face-to-face human contact. The meal itself, however, was probably one of the most underwhelming I have ever had. It was a three-course set menu, with a courgette and green bean salad as a starter, a main of rice with fresh herbs and caramelised onion, and a panna cotta and mixed-berry coulis for dessert. It was ostensibly incredibly cheap, at £7.50 per head, but the portions were smaller than airline food and, egregiously, the rice was so undercooked that it was crunchy. The restaurant, however, was not simply a restaurant. Instead, it was an artwork entitled Shamiyaana by the Karachi-born, London-based artist Rasheed Araeen, first exhibited at the 2017 Athens documenta
Studentification: shining a light on students’ experiences of living among the private rented sector: impacts on wellbeing and study
No full textThis article focuses on ‘Studentification’, characterised by high-density living, often with related issues of nuisance, poor housing standards and crime alongside benefits of local amenities and connectedness to the place of study. Lynch et al. explore the link between housing, health and wellbeing and the importance of the student perspective and the importance of creating more supportive environments for students, if they are to reach their potential
Feminist ecologies: navigating critical intersections
No full textCurrent ecological crises call for academic activism to understand planetary destruction in theorising extraction and injustice, particularly through an interdisciplinary feminist-ecology lens that embraces decolonial/anticolonial feminisms and action. Spatial and temporal contexts for recognising and analysing extractive systems of ecological destruction, when situated in spheres of indigeneity as emancipatory ecologies, can subvert intersectional oppression (based on gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, ability), and other forms of injustice
Introduction: the media and inequality
No full textInequality has become the defining economic issue of our time. Growing public concern about inequality has also led to populist revolts against political elites that have swept America, Britain and parts of Europe. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book outlines the way inequality in its various dimensions have evolved over the past 20 years. It shows that certain ethnic minority groups have suffered disproportionally from poverty and falls in real income. The book reflects the fact that poverty rather than its structural roots in inequality has been the main focus of media attention and research. It shows that the public has an intense interest in understanding the economic consequences of the pandemic but is highly critical of how well media has done its job
The role of autophagy in canine osteosarcoma
No full textCanine osteosarcoma (OS) is a primary tumour in the bone and is mesenchymal in origin. The common sites affected are the metaphyseal regions of long bones, particularly the front limbs of dogs. Osteosarcoma in dogs shares many biological and clinical resemblances in humans with molecular and genetic abnormalities. We have previously shown that autophagy plays a major role in promoting the development of osteosarcoma in humans, however, its role canine in osteosarcoma is unclear. Targeting autophagy as an anticancer therapy is complicated by its nature of dual role: activating autophagy can prevent apoptosis promoting cell survival or it could be a trigger leading to cell death. Drug resistance is thought to be the main cause and overcoming this phenomenon is a key step towards greater efficacy in OS therapy. The current study investigated the role of autophagy in canine OS and further analyzed the migration and metastatic progression of OS when compared to normal canine osteoblasts. The results from this study showed conflicting results at the gene expression level when examining levels of autophagy in canine OS biopsies or primary OS cells, however, at the protein level, OS cell lines treated with doxorubicin or carboplatin showed an increase in LC3 puncta and p62 clearance, detected by Immunofluorescence.
When considering migration, the use of chemotherapeutic drugs had a significant impact on inhibiting or slowing down the rate of cell migration through the wound scratch in primary canine osteoblasts but was significantly less effective in canine OS cells. Preliminary data from our group has shown that migratory body formation can be modulated by co-culturing osteosarcoma cells with bone-marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells. We hypothesized that these migratory bodies are early sarcosphere or sarcosphere precursors that may contain tumour-initiating cells and could mimic the early stages of metastasis. Formation of migratory bodies was directly proportional to the number of cells plated, and these migratory bodies expressed increased levels of stem cell marker genes Nanog, STAT and Oct3/4 and key markers of autophagy (MAP1LC3, ATG5, ATG7 and SQSTM1), emphasizing the importance of autophagy in the induction of the metastatic process.
Chemoresistance is a major challenge in the treatment of both human and canine patients with metastatic OS. Our overall data suggest that autophagy indeed has a prominent role in canine OS, and may be involved in progression, metastatic potential, and chemotherapy resistance
Analysis of the microbiota of human milk and baby faeces in Nigeria, using molecular and culture-based approaches
Get PDFHuman breast milk had been traditionally considered sterile. In recent years, studies have suggested that human milk carries bacteria that may help babies build up a beneficial population of bacteria in their gut, which plays a protective role. This research is the first in Nigeria to explore the bacterial diversity in breast milk and compares it with the gut of breastfed babies in addition to looking at the gut microbiota of formula-fed babies. Nigeria is a developing country and owing to its unique characteristics; it becomes important to investigate the presence of these bacteria in breast milk and have coherent data on the type and diversity of the bacteria in breast milk and babies' guts. This may help to build up more awareness about the importance of breastfeeding and its role in the initiation of infant gut microbiota including its importance in the modulation of the infant immune system in addition to other nutritional benefits.
To achieve this goal, pilot research was undertaken in the UK using milk samples from seven mothers and faeces from their breastfed babies to allow for the optimization of the methodology starting from sample collection. The presence of five bacterial genera, including bifidobacteria, lactobacilli, streptococci, staphylococci, and enterococci, in the breast milk and faeces, was investigated using a traditional culture approach followed by species identification by MALDI-TOF Biotyper, as well as a culture-independent method by extracting total microbial DNA from these samples and then using qPCR. Following that, samples of breast milk from 50 breastfeeding mothers in Nigeria, as well as the faeces of their babies, and the faeces of 8 solely formula-fed babies, were collected and analysed using culture technique and 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (16S rDNA) NGS sequencing (MiSeq Illumina).
Human milk has a highly personalised microbiota with a lot of inter-individual variabilities, according to the present study. It was revealed that the milk microbiota of mothers from Nigeria is characterised by the high dominance of phylum Firmicutes (61%) mainly represented by the orders Lactobacillales and Bacillales next to the phylum Actinobacteria (26%) largely represented by Micrococcales and Corynebacteriales and then Proteobacteria (10.5%) represented by Caulobacterales and Pseudomonadales. In the faeces of breastfed babies, there was high dominance of members of Actinobacteria (62.6%), Proteobacteria (24%), and Firmicutes (11.6%) represented by bifidobacteria, Escherichia/Shigella as well as streptococci respectively. Within a sample diversity (i.e., alpha diversity) revealed that the milk of Nigerian mothers had higher observed bacterial richness and diversity for a single sample when compared to the gut of breastfed babies. Beta diversity also revealed that human milk and baby faeces had obvious differences, but it is predicted that about 51% of bacteria in baby faeces may have originated from human milk as revealed by source tracker analysis. Furthermore, it was revealed that breastfed babies had lower microbial diversity, but a higher abundance of certain bacteria such as bifidobacteria in their gut compared to formula-fed babies. Faecalibacterium was also exclusively found in the gut of formula-fed babies. The delivery mode revealed an association with gut microbiota, while parity revealed an association with mother’s milk; for example, babies born by C-section had a higher abundance of Klebsiella in their gut compared to babies born naturally via the vagina, while multiparous mothers had a higher abundance of Brevundimonas in their milk.
This study, in addition to providing an overview of the microbiota found in mother's milk and babies' faeces in Nigeria, provides evidence that mothers can transmit bacteria to their breastfed babies via breastmilk; that babies' gut microbial composition varied depending on the type of food they received; and that some maternal or baby factors may influence maternal milk or gut microbiota
Transparency and disclosure in supply chains: modern slavery and worker voice
Get PDFUnder section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (MSA), large British companies are required to report on their efforts to monitor and protect the labour rights of their employees and workers on an annual basis. There are however criticisms. First, there is no requirement to audit Modern Slavery statements and this raises question over the credibility of the information that companies report. Second, the MSA is a soft governance tool that allows too much reporting flexibility. While the original intention behind this was to encourage companies to get to know their supply chains in the first place and subsequently focus on improving their reporting over time, there have been general calls to tighten up the non-mandatory reporting requirements of the MSA in the hope that this would in turn result in better quality of reporting. In this report, we present the key findings for our detailed examination of the Modern Slavery Statements of the largest 100 British companies. In order to examine the statements, we devised a detailed index, based on (a) the mandatory and optional aspects of the Modern Slavery Act (2015, s. 54), (b) content recommended by CORE (2017) and (c) additional criteria based on consultation with The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, an internationally based labour rights NGO with an office in London. We focus on 6 information categories. Apart from the General Information, which covers mostly mandatory disclosures, the remaining five categories were optional under section 54. These five categories are: Organisation and Structure of Supply chains, OS; Due Diligence, DD; Risk Assessment, RA; Codes of Conduct/Policies/Strategy(ies), CPS; and Training collaboration, TC. We find that of the five non-mandatory information categories, companies prioritise reporting on two: RA procedures and DD processes These are the categories of most importance to investors. We find that any changes to reporting on these two categories are positively linked to reporting on CPS but not to those on OS and TC. While the level of reporting for all the three latter categories were lower than reporting on RA and DD, the reason why changes in CPS is closely linked those of the RA and DD lies in the way companies report to illustrate their parallel efforts to devise the necessary CPS to support the outcome of RA and facilitate the implementation of DD processes. However, the same could not be said about OS and TC. It was evident that while companies are reluctant to draw attention to potential challenges and problematic areas along their supply chains, they show limited efforts on their training programmes, raising questions over how in-depth corporate efforts have been in changing their culture on labour rights issues and/or perhaps the more serious challenges that they encounter in the process of devising training programmes. While our findings reveal an interesting reporting pattern, we can see areas that we still have very limited knowledge of before any meaningful proposals can be made to move the labour rights reporting agenda forward. We anticipate that there are complexities and challenges that companies face along their supply chains, especially in areas that are outside their national jurisdictions and where the legal framework can be either weak or non-existent and/or regional norms and cultures are in a way that can make it controversial or costly for companies to devise training programmes at local level
Ensemble machine learning for Monkeypox transmission time series forecasting
Get PDFPublic health is now in danger because of the current monkeypox outbreak, which has spread rapidly to more than 40 countries outside of Africa. The growing monkeypox epidemic has been classified as a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization (WHO). Infection outcomes, risk factors, clinical presentation, and transmission are all poorly understood. Computer- and machine-learning-assisted prediction and forecasting will be useful for controlling its spread. The objective of this research is to use the historical data of all reported human monkey pox cases to predict the transmission rate of the disease. This paper proposed stacking ensemble learning and machine learning techniques to forecast the rate of transmission of monkeypox. In this work, adaptive boosting regression (Adaboost), gradient boosting regression (GBOOST), random forest regression (RFR), ordinary least square regression (OLS), least absolute shrinkage selection operator regression (LASSO), and ridge regression (RIDGE) were applied for time series forecasting of monkeypox transmission. Performance metrics considered in this study are root mean square (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean square error (MSE), which were used to evaluate the performance of the machine learning and the proposed Stacking Ensemble Learning (SEL) technique. Additionally, the monkey pox dataset was used as test data for this investigation. Experimental results revealed that SEL outperformed other machine learning approaches considered in this work with an RMSE of 33.1075; a MSE of 1096.1068; and a MAE of 22.4214. This is an indication that SEL is a better predictor than all the other models used in this study. It is hoped that this research will help government officials understand the threat of monkey pox and take the necessary mitigation actions
An empirical model to assess the education ranking using Data Analytics
No full textThe study aims to assess the quality of education sector in the context of Dubai Schools, using Mixed Method Research Methodology, by integrating both Quantitative and Qualitative Data.
The investigation involves utilization and analysis of numerical and descriptive data using appropriate statistical techniques and data analysis tools to achieve the objectives of the research. The study aims at identifying past trends and quality determinants that have a contributory impact on school ratings, using Visualization techniques. In addition, stratification of population of Dubai schools on the basis of curricula and performance levels are performed using Machine Learning algorithms and transformation of existing categorical school ratings to numerical values.
The results from these algorithms describe unique characteristics within each classification, thereby directing relevant schools to work upon essential weak areas. In furtherance to this, primary and secondary data from parents of Dubai school students are gathered, and this investigation reveals unbiased feedback of Dubai Schools from multiple angles. The research also examines and concludes the best practices and key areas of improvements of Dubai Schools using Natural Language Processing which benefits educational stakeholders. All methods are applied to real-life data to make inferences, recommendations and predictions into the future for the enhancement of Dubai Schools
Digital poverty in the UK: analysis of secondary data
Get PDFThis report presents findings of digital poverty in the UK by analysing two datasets from each of two sources:
- First, two OFCOM surveys, each of over 3,000 respondents1;
- Second, two Labour Force Survey (LFS) datasets from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), before and during the Covid-19 pandemic (Covid), each of over 68,000 respondents2.
Results confirm the association of digital poverty with deprivation3. Various factors are identified to be associated with digital poverty in the UK such as (1) age, (2) lack of confidence in reading and writing, (3) lower socio-economic classification, (4) disability, (5) lower housing tenure, (6) lack of qualifications, (7) more than one person in household, (8) urban rather than rural, and (9) ethnic minority. Lack of reading and writing was a major predictor of digital poverty among young people aged 16-24. Another important finding is a lack of motivation for having the Internet4. Comparing data between during and before Covid, the results indicate that Covid disproportionately affected more disadvantaged groups in that those of lower socio-economic classification (SEC) and disabled suffered more digital poverty during Covid than before.
A range of moderators were tested in order to examine the effect of each on the association between the variety of factors above and digital poverty:
- lack of qualifications is associated with digital poverty more in the North than in the South of the UK;
- age is much more strongly associated with digital poverty for those living in rented accommodation rather than owned;
- lack of qualifications is more strongly associated with digital poverty for rural rather than urban residents;
- age is more strongly associated with digital poverty for females than males;
- for ethnic minorities, disability is much more strongly associated with digital poverty than for the white majority.
Digital poverty has an impact on productivity that is even greater during than before Covid, and people in digital poverty tend to be in lower-paid jobs both during and before Covid. The findings reveal that people in London, Southeast and Southwest regions are suffering less from digital poverty than the rest of the UK. The main challenges associated with tackling digital poverty are discussed followed by our recommendations to overcome those issues