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Economic Freedom and the Quality of Education
Get PDFThis paper finds robust evidence that economic freedom improves the quality of education. This is probably mainly because economic freedom incentivizes parents to invest in high-quality education for their children and helps them to do so. It also incentivizes and helps both governments and private providers to deliver high-quality education. The paper uses two different indicators of educational quality: PISA scores and the World Bank's harmonized test scores. The magnitudes of the estimated effects of economic freedom on both indicators are substantial. They are even larger once the indirect impact of economic freedom via GDP per capita and, to a lesser extent, once the indirect impact via government education expenditure is taken into account. The paper uses data on up to 49 countries for PISA scores and up to 137 countries for World Bank scores. It accounts for the endogeneity of economic freedom and controls for all major determinants of educational quality.</p
Fiber Bundling in SiO<sub>2</sub> Particle-Modified Glass Fiber Felt Composites Enables Synergistic Enhancement of Short-Beam Shear Strength and Thermal Insulation
Get PDFThis study tackles challenges in improving both thermal insulation and short-beam shear strength (SBSS) of glass fiber felt composites (GFFCs). It proposes modifying glass fiber felts with silica (SiO2) particles using a waterborne epoxy sizing agent. SiO2 particles (0, 5, and 9 wt%) were loaded onto fibers using ultrasonic-assisted dispersion. Sandwich composites were then made by the vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARI) process. Results indicate SiO2 modification changes the interface structure. Dense fiber bundles formed in the 9 wt% samples. XPS-confirmed increased polar groups. The C-O/C-C ratio rose from 0.32 to 0.54. This structure increased SBSS by 28.8%, from 4.62 to 5.95 MPa. The failure mode also changed from fiber pull-out to combined resin/fiber fracture. Thermal conductivity decreased significantly in the thickness direction by 24.3%, from 0.1938 W/(m·K) to 0.1467 W/(m·K). However, the decrease was only slight in the in-plane direction. This physical strategy achieves mechanical reinforcement and heat flow control through fiber bundling. It offers a new approach for low-cost, large-scale production of high-performance thermal insulation structural materials.</p
Applying Generative Out-Of-Distribution Detection using Generative Models as an Ethically-Aligned Screening Tool in Malaria Microscopy
No full textHow to create accessible research summaries for the Developmental Language Disorder community
Get PDFBACKGROUND: Eighty-five percent of medical research goes to waste, partly because it is not appropriately communicated to stakeholders. This represents a critical issue for the research community, especially because individuals who are impacted by research should be able to readily access that research. Making research findings accessible to key stakeholders is an important step in implementation science and in enabling research to have meaningful impacts. Plain language summaries are a tool to make research more accessible to individuals with communication disorders. While guidelines exist to support researchers to develop plain language summaries for some populations, no such guidelines exist for the developmental language disorder (DLD) community.AIMS: We aimed to develop evidence-informed guidelines to support researchers to create plain language summaries that are accessible for individuals with DLD, their families, and the broader community. This discussion paper describes the development of these guidelines and how they may be implemented by researchers who conduct research on the topic of DLD.METHODS: We drew from existing plain language summary guidelines for other populations and knowledge of various barriers that may impact the DLD community's ability to access scientific research. We used this knowledge to create guidelines for researchers to develop plain language summaries of their research relating to the DLD population. This includes guidelines for creating written, visual, audio and video summaries. We consulted with an adult with DLD, an implementation scientist, and a speech-language pathologist regarding the suitability of the guidelines.MAIN CONTRIBUTION: The plain language summary guidelines are publicly available via https://osf.io/ydkw9. They include templates and examples, as well as suggestions for writing and visual styles. We encourage strengths-based language, seeking feedback from non-experts, and sharing the summaries on social media. We have also developed an online repository for researchers to disseminate their plain language summaries via DLD advocacy groups.CONCLUSIONS: The written, audio and video plain language summaries that researchers create using our guidelines can be used to disseminate research to the DLD community. This can facilitate science implementation and maximise the impact of DLD research. The plain language summaries may also help individuals with DLD better understand the research that has been conducted about them. This may in turn support their engagement with services and empower them to make evidence-informed choices for themselves and partner in co-designing new research. Future research could explore the perspectives of the DLD community and researchers regarding the implementation of these guidelines.PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: A lot of research goes to waste. This is partly because researchers rarely share their results with the non-scientific community. People with communication disorders might find it hard to understand research papers. We made guidelines to help researchers explain their research to people with developmental language disorder (DLD. We brought together existing advice on how to explain research in a clear way. We sought advice from people with different experiences and perspectives, including an adult with DLD. The guidelines are at https://osf.io/ydkw9. The guidelines include advice on how to add pictures to research summaries. We also explain how to make a video or podcast summarising research. We encourage researchers to share their research summaries on social media. This means their research can reach more people and can make a difference. It is important that people with DLD understand DLD research. This might help them to understand their diagnosis and take part in future research.WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject For research to make a difference, it must be appropriately communicated to its stakeholders; however, only 1.5% of academic journals require authors to write plain language summaries. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This paper presents publicly available guidelines for researchers to create written, visual, audio and video plain language summaries aimed to be accessible for individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD) and their families. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Researchers can use plain language summaries to disseminate research to the wider community. This can help individuals with DLD better understand the research that has been conducted about them and may empower them to meaningfully partner in co-designing new research.</p
Bilevel Learning via Inexact Stochastic Gradient Descent
Get PDFBilevel optimization is a central tool in machine learning for high-dimensional hyperparameter tuning. Its applications are vast; for instance, in imaging it can be used for learning data-adaptive regularizers and optimizing forward operators in variational regularization. These problems are large in many ways: a lot of data is usually available to train a large number of parameters, calling for stochastic gradient-based algorithms. However, exact gradients with respect to parameters (so-called hypergradients) are not available, and their precision is usually linearly related to computational cost. Hence, algorithms must solve the problem efficiently without unnecessary precision. The design of such methods is still not fully understood, especially regarding how accuracy requirements and step size schedules affect theoretical guarantees and practical performance. Existing approaches introduce stochasticity at both the upper level (e.g., in sampling or mini-batch estimates) and the lower level (e.g., in solving the inner problem) to improve generalization, but they typically fix the number of lower-level iterations, which conflicts with asymptotic convergence assumptions. In this work, we advance the theory of inexact stochastic bilevel optimization. We prove convergence and establish rates under decaying accuracy and step size schedules, showing that with optimal configurations convergence occurs at an rate in expectation. Experiments on image denoising and inpainting with convex ridge regularizers and input-convex networks confirm our analysis: decreasing step sizes improve stability, accuracy scheduling is more critical than step size strategy, and adaptive preconditioning (e.g., Adam) further boosts performance. These results bridge theory and practice, providing convergence guarantees and practical guidance for large-scale imaging problems
Rethinking internationalisation:‘Tenable, sustainable, durable, and healthy’ higher education beyond the pandemic. Insights from England and Hungary
Get PDFThis article discusses the sustainability of higher education internationalisation and changing practice during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. While many previous studies frame the understanding of sustainable internationalisation within the discourse of environmental and financial sustainability, we view the sustainability of internationalisation in terms of ‘educational sustainability’ – a developmental process that is characterised by new paradigms, policies, purposes and practice of internationalisation, and its adequacy for the post–COVID-19 era. Our study draws upon the thematic analysis of a wide range of academic literature, national and institutional policy documents and sixty interviews in six universities in England and Hungary. Conceptually, we argue that sustainable internationalisation beyond the pandemic is about prioritising making educationitself authentic and sustainable, realising human potential and building social capacity. In practical terms, such authentic education must be rooted in place and tradition, open and participatory, and must not be industrialised and commercialised
Figures for publication 'The origin of the Poynting flux associated with transient luminous events'
No full textThis data is to illustrate the data analysis, and exemplary results of the data described in the corresponding publication entitled 'The origin of the Poynting flux associated with transient luminous events'. During the observation campaign of January 2023 from South Africa, 9 Transient Luminous Events (TLE) were recorded by monochrome TV camera and 6-axis electric and magnetic field sensors. For the first time, simultaneous observations of the azimuth angles of arrival calculated for the parent positive lightning discharge location, the associated optical TLE photon flux, and the six-axis radio wave Poynting vector are combined. In all cases, the TLEs did not occur directly above the initiating lightning strike and with sufficient horizontal displacement to allow unambiguous discrimination of the azimuth angle of arrival. The Poynting flux came from the general direction of the TLE parent lightning strike
Dataset for, "Fermi liquid theory of d-wave altermagnets: demon modes and Fano-demon states"
No full textThis dataset contains all raw data required to reproduce the findings of these studies, as presented in Figures 1–3. All data files are in .txt format and are organised into three separate folders, each corresponding to one figure
The 2025 Active Metamaterials Roadmap
Get PDFActive metamaterials are engineered structures that possess novel properties that can be changed after the point of manufacture. Their novel properties arise predominantly from their physical structure, as opposed to their chemical composition and can be changed through means such as direct energy addition into wave paths, or physically changing/morphing the structure in response to both a user or environmental input. Active metamaterials are currently of wide interest to the physics community and encompass a range of sub-domains in applied physics (e.g. photonic, microwave, acoustic, mechanical, etc.). They possess the potential to provide solutions that are more suitable to specific applications, or which allow novel properties to be produced which cannot be achieved with passive metamaterials, such as time-varying or gain enhancement effects. They have the potential to help solve some of the important current and future problems faced by the advancement of modern society, such as achieving net-zero, sustainability, healthcare and equality goals. Despite their huge potential, the added complexity of their design and operation, compared to passive metamaterials creates challenges to the advancement of the field, particularly beyond theoretical and lab-based experiments. This roadmap brings together experts in all types of active metamaterials and across a wide range of areas of applied physics. The objective is to provide an overview of the current state of the art and the associated current/future challenges, with the hope that the required advances identified create a roadmap for the future advancement and application of this field
Material properties of new and historic fibrous plaster for building modelling
Get PDFFibrous plaster, a composite material traditionally consisting of dihydrate gypsum plaster and hessian fibre reinforcement, has been extensively used as a ceiling and decorative material in theatres, museums and other grand civic and private residences since 1856. The partial collapse of the Apollo Theatre, London, in 2013 dramatically highlighted the importance of effective surveying, and conservation of fibrous plaster ceilings which are often suspended from structural members with fibrous plaster wadding ties. The longevity of fibrous plaster is affected by the environment to which ceilings are exposed. In theatres, during performances temperature and relative humidity levels increase due to heat and moisture generated by audiences, then decrease once the performance has ended, resulting in peaks in recorded environmental data during a series of shows. External weather conditions also influence the roof space environment. In order to evaluate whether levels of temperature and, particularly, relative humidity pose the risk of condensation on a fibrous plaster ceiling (which can lead to biodegradation), it is important to determine material properties and environmental conditions for simulation modelling. In addition to density and porosity, key material parameters are thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity and vapour resistance factor. This study focuses on the determination of the latter three parameters with fibrous plaster test specimens using both traditional beta plaster and hessian fabric (‘scrim’) along with modern alternative repair materials such as stronger alpha plaster, Jesmonite and RE Aramid Gel™. For thermal conductivity and specific heat tests, several historic samples of fibrous plaster from Victorian and Edwardian-era buildings were also tested and compared to the results for new plaster. Results show a difference in thermal conductivity in specimens, ranging from 0.48 W/mK for new beta gypsum plaster with hessian scrim reinforcement, to 0.11 W/mK for historic ceiling specimens. Historic samples also have one or multiple layers of paint on the decorated underside which can also influence the thermal conductivity and vapour resistance. ‘Wet cup’ tests conducted on newly manufactured fibrous plaster with hessian reinforcement resulted in a mean vapour resistance factor of 11.9. Beta plaster has a specific heat capacity at 20ºC in the region of 800 J/KgC, with alpha plaster and Jesmonite being ≈600 J/KgC and RE Aramid Gel™ ≈1200 J/kgC. These material properties can be used to assess the possibility of a condensation event occurring using hygrothermal simulation software in conjunction with environmental data
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