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Walking in cities: navigating post-pandemic urban environments
No full textThis book brings together an international group of artists and writers to respond to the question of how our new world orders force us to reconsider urban walking and urban spaces in ways which extend into the digital sphere of online dialogue and screen sharing. In their reflections on walking cities in lockdown, the artists and writers contributing to this book share a number of complementary themes. Key to this is the question of how we walk in post-pandemic cities and how such walking might motivate or be motivated by transgressive, atomised or collective thoughts, affects, relations and experiences. Here we see how navigating cities in lockdown requires us to re-territorialise, improvise, create and de- or re-politize. There is, for example, a clear distinction between the severe lockdown measures that were introduced in Cape Town and the liberal appeal to good citizenship that northern hemisphere cities such as Stockholm chose to rely on. These measures impact on the way we experience urban walking and, in each case, lead to deeper reflections about the heightened presence of ideological structures embedded within the urban
The UK’s intersectoral mobility landscape: trends and economic impacts
Get PDFExecutive summary: The mobility of researchers across roles in universities, industry, and government agencies throughout their careers is key to maintaining and boosting the UK’s position as a world-class research and innovation nation and to improving the quality and quantity of the impacts made by research. Mobility between university, industry, and government agencies could be considered to range from individuals permanently transitioning between sectors to those holding simultaneous affiliations across multiple sectors. The latter instance involves various mechanisms, including placements and research- and teaching-based collaborations. To make boundaries porous and take a holistic approach to mobility, it is thus important to consider the interrelationships between a wide array of different activities supporting mobility.
This report conceptually analyses the potential economic benefits of the enactment of the NCUB’s recommendations, together with how the policy and funding landscape in the UK has changed owing to the integration of mobility
Artificial Intelligence-based cybersecurity for the Metaverse: research challenges and opportunities
Get PDFThe metaverse, known as the next-generation 3D Internet, represents virtual environments that mirror the physical world. It is supported by innovative technologies such as digital twins and extended reality (XR), which elevate user experiences across various fields. However, the metaverse also introduces significant cybersecurity and privacy challenges that remain underexplored. Due to its complex multi-tech infrastructure, the metaverse requires sophisticated, automated, and intelligent cybersecurity measures to mitigate emerging threats effectively. Therefore, this paper is the first to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven cybersecurity techniques for the metaverse, examining academic and industrial perspectives. First, we provide an overview of the metaverse, presenting a detailed system model, diverse use cases, and insights into its current industrial status. We then present attack models and cybersecurity threats derived from the unique characteristics and technologies of the metaverse. Next, we review AI-driven cybersecurity solutions based on three critical aspects: User authentication, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and the security of digital assets, specifically for Blockchain and Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs). Finally, we highlight challenges and suggest future research opportunities to enhance metaverse security, privacy, and digital asset transactions
Changing ideological regimes: CEO succession with a shift in political ideology and new CEO early departure
Get PDFWe examine the effects of CEO succession coupled with a change in political ideology – when a conservative CEO is replaced by a liberal CEO or vice versa. We argue that in such CEO transitions, the new CEOs must alter their predecessors’ ideological imprints to imbue strategic leadership with their own values, which increases their executive job demands in the critical early years of their tenure and raises the likelihood of their early departure. We also suggest that this relationship is moderated by two strategic leadership interface (SLI) factors that influence the executive job demands these new CEOs face: (a) the retention of the ideologically incongruent predecessor as board chair, and (b) the ideological fit between the new CEO and the incumbent executive team. We first test our framework using data from 2286 CEO successions in S&P 1500 firms. We then conduct an experimental study to ensure causality and confirm executive job demands as a mediating mechanism underlying the relationship. Overall, our study advances the disruption theory of succession by shedding light on the deeply held mechanisms that lead to early failure in CEO transitions
Internet gaming disorder and risky behaviours among Czech adolescents: a nationally representative study
Get PDFBackground and aims: The aim of the present study was to estimate the complex association between Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD), substance use, and other risky behaviours in Czech adolescents whilst providing prevalence estimates of IGD and psychometric information regarding the Czech Internet Gaming Disorder Scale–Short-Form (IGDS9-SF). Methods:
A representative sample of 3,950 Czech adolescents was recruited through stratified random sampling in the school setting. Results:
Disordered gamers showed frequent use of specific substances such as pharmaceuticals, methylenedioxymethamphetamine, and lysergic acid diethylamide. In contrast, non-gamers had higher prevalence of alcohol, cigarettes, sedatives and tranquillisers, and marijuana use. A logistic regression, utilising IGDS9-SF raw scores and average daily gaming time, revealed a U-shaped relationship between gaming and both alcohol and cigarette use. Additionally, conduct problems such as bullying, and risky in-game behaviours were more prevalent among disordered gamers, with the exception of forging parents' signatures. The overall prevalence of IGD was 3.62% (95% CI = [3.1%, 4.3%]), with higher rates in males (5.89%; 95% CI = [4.9%, 7.0%]) than in females (1.45%; 95% CI = [1.0%, 2.1%]). Discussion and conclusions: The Czech IGDS9-SF used in the present study showed adequate psychometric properties. The association between gaming and substance use behaviours may be specific and multifaceted depending on the severity of the gaming-related problems. Furthermore, disordered gamers may become more vulnerable due to a higher incidence of conduct problems, bullying (victimisation), and in-game risky behaviours such as engagement with microtransactions mechanics (e.g., loot box) within video games
Increased risk of hallucinations among people with cancer: role of loneliness, job satisfaction, sleep and a moderated-mediated model of anxiety and life satisfaction
Get PDFBeing diagnosed with cancer and coping with fears about potential death might trigger acute distress. Previous research found that patients with cancer are 1.85 times more at risk of developing mental illness. Whereas previous studies investigated the risk of schizophrenia, no studies have investigated the risk of individual psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations. This was an analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing involving 7,586 adults of whom 1,082 have cancer. There were 19 (0.3%) who self-reported hallucinations, and logistic regression showed that cancer patients had higher odds of hallucinating. Loneliness, discrimination, poor job satisfaction, poor life satisfaction, anxiety, low level of autonomy/control and having restless sleep were also associated with hallucinations. Cancer patients had higher odds of poor life satisfaction, which was also predicted by loneliness, discrimination, job satisfaction, anxiety symptoms, autonomy/control and restless sleep. Further results of a moderated mediation model showed that cancer, loneliness, and job satisfaction were directly associated with hallucinations, and life satisfaction was a mediator. Anxiety symptoms also moderated the relationships with hallucinations. Cancer is associated with a higher risk of hallucinations, and other aspects of mental wellbeing (e.g., anxiety and life satisfaction) are also important. Interventions are needed which safeguard mental health after cancer diagnosis and during treatment.
Keywords: Anxiety; Hallucinations; Job satisfaction; Life satisfaction; Mental illness and cancer
NOTE: non-parametric oversampling technique for explainable credit scoring
Get PDFCredit scoring models are critical for financial institutions to assess borrower risk and maintain profitability. Although machine learning models have improved credit scoring accuracy, imbalanced class distributions remain a major challenge. The widely used Synthetic Minority Oversampling TEchnique (SMOTE) struggles with high-dimensional, non-linear data and may introduce noise through class overlap. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have emerged as an alternative, offering the ability to model complex data distributions. Conditional Wasserstein GANs (cWGANs) have shown promise in handling both numerical and categorical features in credit scoring datasets. However, research on extracting latent features from non-linear data and improving model explainability remains limited. To address these challenges, this paper introduces the Non-parametric Oversampling Technique for Explainable credit scoring (NOTE). The NOTE offers a unified approach that integrates a Non-parametric Stacked Autoencoder (NSA) for capturing non-linear latent features, cWGAN for oversampling the minority class, and a classification process designed to enhance explainability. The experimental results demonstrate that NOTE surpasses state-of-the-art oversampling techniques by improving classification accuracy and model stability, particularly in non-linear and imbalanced credit scoring datasets, while also enhancing the explainability of the results
The Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC): driving competition and collaboration in the graph data management space
Get PDFGraph data management is instrumental for several use cases such as recommendation, root cause analysis, financial fraud detection, and enterprise knowledge representation. Efficiently supporting these use cases yields a number of unique requirements, including the need for a concise query language and graph-aware query optimization techniques. The goal of the Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC) is to design a set of standard benchmarks that capture representative categories of graph data management problems, making the performance of systems comparable and facilitating competition among vendors. LDBC also conducts research on graph schemas and graph query languages. This paper introduces the LDBC organization and its work over the last decade
AAFS (Victorian branch) Symposium: Science and medicine in the courts—Learning from the wrongful conviction of Kathleen Folbigg
No full textKathleen Folbigg spent 20 years in jail, wrongly convicted for
smothering her four infant children. An unprecedented second
judicial Inquiry found they died naturally. New genetic and psychiatric
evidence unlocked the wrongful conviction, but it was always
questionable. A Symposium held by the AAFS (Victorian Branch)
detailed the timeline of the numerous events, then identified and
discussed the issues. What were the failings and why were they
missed? What part did expert witnesses, judges and lawyers play in
this wrongful conviction? Did the prosecution appeal to misogyny?
How did the first Inquiry get it so wrong? How did it fail to correctly
understand the genetics? Was Ms Folbigg treated disrespectfully,
and if so, what did that mean about fact finding? How did the
failures of disclosure affect the original conviction and its various
appeals? What explains the NSW Court of Appeal’s decision to reject
an appeal based on jury misbehaviour during Ms Folbigg’s trial?
Should we be more careful about the language we use in criminal
trials? There was general agreement that the frailties of Kathleen
Folbigg’s convictions were readily visible from the beginning. Will
the criminal justice system learn the lessons that emerge from this
case
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