30472 research outputs found
Sort by
Discovering the Okapi: western science, indigenous knowledge, and the search for a rainforest enigma
No full textBook synopsis: The captivating history of the okapi and its symbolic role in science, culture, and conservation.
In Discovering the Okapi, Simon Pooley offers a fascinating portrait of the okapi—an elusive short-necked giraffid with zebra stripes, surviving in the rainforests of central Africa's Congo Basin. Combining history, science, and cultural analysis, this book unpacks the complicated layers of Western science and indigenous knowledge that shaped the world's understanding of this unique creature.
Pooley tells the story of the okapi's "discovery" in 1900 by British naturalist Sir Harry Johnston—and the overlooked contributions of the indigenous African people whose expertise made this sighting and subsequent hunt for specimens possible. The book traces how colonial politics and scientific racism shaped early accounts of the animal's study and examines the enduring biases that continue to influence conservation efforts today. The okapi became a symbol of scientific curiosity, colonial power, and conservation challenges, revealing complex intersections among biodiversity, cultural heritage, and environmental stewardship. From its capture and exhibition in European zoos and its representation in Western museums and visual media to its role in African art and mythology, the okapi's story is as much about human history as it is about one extraordinary animal.
The okapi's precarious existence in captivity and the wild exposes how Western and indigenous approaches to conservation can—and must—find common ground for its survival. Richly detailed and deeply personal, Discovering the Okapi urges us to preserve biodiversity in a world of clashing worldviews and to view the okapi not just as an object of fascination, but as a powerful symbol of shared responsibility for our planet's future
A newly identified “Proto‐Kenting Mélange (S. Taiwan)” represents a missing link for a continuous Early Cretaceous Paleo–Pacific subduction–accretion system
Get PDFMost mélanges in exhumed subduction‐accretion complexes are polygenetic, recording significant information about the nature of geological processes during their formation. Here, we apply microchemical analysis and illite K‐Ar dating to constrain the deformation mechanism and timing of the pervasively sheared scaly matrix in the accretionary complex rocks presently known as “Kenting Mélange” in the Hengchun Peninsula (South Taiwan). Our results reveal that parts of the matrix were formed in Cretaceous (96.7 ± 8.6 Ma and 108 ± 18.4 Ma) due to pressure solution. These new, older matrix ages suggest that the Kenting Mélange, which was considered as Cenozoic and interpreted to have been associated with the subduction of the South China Sea, preserves different primary chaotic units (e.g., mélange and/or olistostrome). Our findings imply the Kenting Mélange is actually polygenetic and allow part of Kenting Mélange that we named the “proto‐Kenting Mélange” to be interpreted as a remnant of a primary mélange, which was mixed and/or juxtaposed in the Cenozoic Kenting Mélange. The block‐in‐matrix fabric with a pervasively sheared scaly muddy matrix, along with the preservation of slightly older oceanic crust blocks, suggests that the proto‐Kenting Mélange is most likely an ocean plate stratigraphy mélange. This unit initially formed near a Paleo‐Pacific subduction margin during the latest Early Cretaceous. Our results reveal a nearly 3000‐km‐long physical archive of latest Early Cretaceous subduction–accretion processes, which took place adjacent to the continental margin of East Asia during the consumption of Paleo Pacific ocean floor during the latest Mesozoic
Optimization of intermodal transportation routes for perishable goods considering customer satisfaction
No full textWith the deep integration and innovative development of the Internet and traditional industries, perishable goods such as fresh fruits and vegetables can be sold through more diverse channels to distant regions. The perishable nature of these goods, characterized by short expiration dates and susceptibility to spoilage, presents significant challenges to their transportation. This paper proposed an intermodal transportation route optimization method for perishable goods, considering the use of refrigerated containers and customer satisfaction. The route optimization model minimizes quality loss, transportation costs, and carbon emissions while treating customer satisfaction as a constraint. Using the “Urumqi-Shanghai” intermodal transportation network as an example, the model applies a multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm for solution and conducts sensitivity analysis to explore the impact of changes in transportation modes and customer satisfaction constraints on three objectives, ultimately obtaining the optimal transportation route between the origin and destination.
The results show that intermodal transportation of perishable goods generally has cost advantage over single-mode transportation. The constraint on customer satisfaction can eliminate uneconomical routes and provide more options to meet the changing customer demands. An increase in customer satisfaction can also reduce the quality loss of perishable goods during transportation. These improvements confirm the effectiveness of the proposed intermodal transportation route optimization model and the importance of incorporating customer satisfaction into the choice of transportation route for perishable goods. The proposed model is expected to provide valuable insights into model development and its applications for transporting perishable goods
Community health practitioners and child sexual abuse in the family, 1970s-2010s
Get PDFThis open access book is an innovative history of community health practitioners’ responses to the seemingly intractable problem of men (and on rare occasions, women) sexually abusing children within the private family home. It is situated within a social history of the development of British community-based health professions in the last decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on archival research and newly gathered in-depth oral history interviews, the monograph argues that expectations placed upon community-based doctors, nurses and mental health staff since the 1980s in relation to predicting and preventing the sexual abuse of children by men they know are incongruous. Beneath a surface acquiescence to the need to protect children from such abuse or to intervene early lie cultural, social and structural barriers that prevent its fulfilment. The book is a first in specifically interrogating the recent history of the role of community health practitioners within the modern 'child protection workforce', and contributes to growing scholarship on the history of emotions in the medical professions
From reviews to product titles: how to nudge consumer purchase decisions
Get PDFAmidst the fierce competition in the online retail environment, the key to a retailer’s success lies in achieving and maintaining a product that stands out. This study aims to determine the nudging effect of product title phrasing on consumer purchasing behavior, providing insights for online retailers into consumers' perceived preferences and offering recommendations to enhance purchase intent. This study uses data from JD.com's self-branded products to investigate the impact of consumer perception on product titles. To capture the degree of customer perceived fit of product titles in their reviews, we propose a perceived fit intensity index, measured through topic modeling and string matching techniques. A multiple regression model examining the relationship between product perception and sales reveals that keywords in product titles significantly affect consumers’ purchasing decisions. These findings inform the design of phrasing nudges for product titles. The effectiveness of these nudges is further validated through additional online experiments. This study focuses on the impact of product titles on sales in online retail platforms, providing a detailed analysis of how keywords influence consumer purchasing behavior. Our findings offer practical insights into optimizing product titles for better sales performance, and contribute to the existing literature on online retailing and nudge theory
Two-stage mining of linkage risk for data release
Get PDFPrivacy risk mining, a crucial domain in data privacy protection, endeavors to uncover potential information among datasets that could be linked to individuals’ sensitive data. Existing anonymization and privacy assessment techniques either lack quantitative granularity or fail to adapt to dynamic, heterogeneous data environments. In this work, we propose a unified two-phase linkability quantification framework that systematically measures privacy risks at both the inter-dataset and intra-dataset levels. Our approach integrates unsupervised clustering on attribute distributions with record-level matching to compute interpretable, fine-grained risk scores. By aligning risk measurement with regulatory standards such as the GDPR, our framework provides a practical, scalable solution for safeguarding user privacy in evolving data-sharing ecosystems. Extensive experiments on real-world and synthetic datasets show that our method achieves up to 96.7% precision in identifying true linkage risks, outperforming the compared baseline by 13 percentage points under identical experimental settings. Ablation studies further demonstrate that the hierarchical risk fusion strategy improves sensitivity to latent vulnerabilities, providing more actionable insights than previous privacy gain-based metrics
Kinship and belonging in “Open Adoption”: how do children make sense of their family connections?
Get PDFThe study’s objective was to examine how 25 children in “open adoption” placements: 12 children (5–11 years old) and 13 adolescents (12–18 years old) represented and discussed their family connections in different family types, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual-parented families. Children were interviewed and completed two visual depictions of their family relationships: (1) the Kinetic Family Drawing [KFD], and (2) the Apple Tree Family [ATF]. Interview data were quantified to consider four axes of family depiction: (1) Number, (2) Inclusion, (3) Order, and (4) Closeness to family members. Children included significantly fewer family members on the KFD than on the ATF. All children included adoptive parents on both measures while 17% included birth parents on the KFD and 47% on the ATF. Children tended to first include adoptive family members on the KFD and the ATF and positioned themselves closer to their adoptive family than to their birth parents on both. No significant differences between family types (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual vs. Heterosexual Parent/s) were found. The KFD captures the quality of family relationships whereas the ATF encourages depiction of a wide array of family connections. Our findings point to similar good parent-child relationships across lesbian, gay, and heterosexual parented adoptive families
Cellular, bone-like tissue in the bucklers and thorns of the thornback ray Raja clavata (Batoidea, Chondrichthyes)
No full textChondrichthyans (cartilaginous fishes) have lost the cellular bone characteristic of other jawed vertebrate skeletons. However, we identify cellular bone-like tissue in modified scales with enlarged bases, called ‘bucklers’ and ‘thorns’, which are distinctive for one group of extant batoids (rays). As placoid scales, they possess spines of orthodentine and osteodentine, but a unique basal structure. This consists of a cell-rich material, previously misidentified as an acellular tissue. Newly formed basal tissue grows appositionally and episodically from a cell-rich periosteum-like layer and closely resembles cellular bone, with entombed cells situated between bundles of attachment fibres anchoring the scale to the underlying dermal tissue and the ‘periosteum’ to the scale surface. In histologically more mature tissue, the cell spaces and attachment fibres are remodelled, forming enlarged, elongated spaces. The result is a unique mineralized tissue in these rays, initially sharing similarities with cellular bone, but with a mature state where cell spaces are modified throughout the base, by proposed remodelling of the matrix. Our findings of cellular bone forming the attachment tissues in ray scales demonstrate the chondrichthyan capacity to deposit bone-like tissues within the odontode module, contrary to previous understandings of hard tissue evolution in vertebrates
Resource allocation with cooperative agents
Get PDFWe study the problem of cooperative resource allocation in multi-agent systems, focusing on scenarios such as
hospital networks. In our model, agents (e.g., hospitals) redistribute limited resources, such as medical personnel,
in a way that satisfies both local constraints and global equity objectives. We devise ad-hoc optimization strategies
for a static scenario, where resource needs are fixed over time. We empirically evaluate the proposed approaches
through a set of experiments. Our results demonstrate that our approaches are highly effective
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Birkbeck Institutional Research Online? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!