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ESG stock markets and clean energy prices prediction: Insights from advanced machine learning
Get PDFIn the post-Paris agreement, the clean energy market has grown significantly due to its undeniable environmental sustainability. Therefore, this study aims to predict clean energy stock prices by analyzing ESG stock markets in ten countries using a batter of machine learning (ML) techniques and NGBoost. The analysis integrates Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) values to improve interpretability, offering insights into model performance. The dataset spans from January 1, 2014, to September 22, 2023, covering global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Results indicate that NGBoost outperforms other models, with a significant correlation between clean energy stock prices and ESG market variables. Notably, ESG markets in India and the USA show strong predictive power for clean energy stocks, while those in Australia and South Africa contribute less. These findings underscore the potential of ML techniques in forecasting clean energy equity trends, providing insights for investors, policymakers, and venture capitalists. The study highlights the importance of considering the degree of market connectivity in portfolio construction, emphasizing a shift from traditional investments to sustainable ones like clean energy. This research adds value to clean energy market analysis by incorporating advanced ML methods and SHAP values, especially during periods of global disruption. These results are important for asset allocation and risk management, supporting investors in transitioning from ordinary to sustainable investments
Impact of a hearing intervention on the levels of leisure-time physical activity and T.V. viewing in older adults: results from a secondary analysis of the ACHIEVE trial
Get PDFBackgroundAge-related hearing loss is common among older adults and may influence physical activity and sedentary behaviors, such as TV viewing. This study examined whether a hearing intervention could affect these behaviors over three years.Methods977 participants (mean age of 76.8, 53.5% female, 11.5% Black), recruited from the ARIC study (n=238) and de novo (n=739) with hearing loss (pure-tone average=39.4 dB), were randomized to a hearing intervention or a health education control group. Physical activity, leisurely walking, and TV viewing were interrogated at baseline and three-year follow-up. We used regression models adjusted for demographic and hearing loss severity to examine the impact of the intervention on the change in the frequency of engaging in these activities.ResultsAt baseline, 57.6% of participants engaged in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), 29.1% in high-frequency leisurely walking, and 46.8% in high-frequency TV viewing. Over three years, MVPA decreased to 48.8%, while leisurely walking and TV viewing increased. After three years, the hearing intervention group had similar odds of engaging in MVPA (ratio of odds ratios [ROR] = 1.03, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.93 to 1.14), leisurely walking (ROR = 1.04, 95% CI: 0.93 to 1.17), and TV viewing (ROR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.87 to 1.02) compared to the control group. Results were consistent across recruitment sources (ARIC and de novo).ConclusionA hearing intervention did not significantly influence physical activity, walking, or TV viewing behaviors in older adults over three years. Additional strategies may be needed to change physical and sedentary behaviors in this population
Clean Hospitals Day 2025: The human factors of healthcare environmental hygiene
No full textAnnouncement: Clean Hospitals Day 2025
#Clothbummums: Strategies for increasing the adoption of cloth nappies in the UK
No full textA co-creation workshop was held at Edinburgh Napier University on 1st July 2025 as part of an ongoing research initiative into cloth nappy engagement. The workshop brought together key stakeholders—including parents, businesses, NGOs, social enterprises and Zero Waste Scotland—to collaboratively explore strategies for increasing the adoption of reusable nappies. The day consisted of three fundamental sessions. Session 1 (Research Overview) involved both academics sharing research insights from their recently published work, highlighting consumer well-being as an integral part of successful cloth nappy engagement. They showcased how fashionable products and the processes involved in using them boost a sense of control and mastery, thereby enhancing well-being as a result. Session 2 (Mapping Barriers & Drop-Off points) involved a co-created activity identifying key barriers and drop-off points, including key challenges such as upfront costs, time and effort, societal perceptions and pressures and knowledge gaps relating to effective use. Importantly, this cocreated activity enabled us to shed light on often-neglected actors in this process, identifying a new user group – individuals and organisations that provide guidance and support on cloth nappy usage and the unique challenges they face. Finally, the session provided a comprehensive view of the journey of cloth nappy engagement, starting much earlier than previously thought, at the very beginning of pregnancy, with key points along the way, including the 12-week and 20-week scans, as well as the unique needs at each of these stages. Session 3 (Designing Interventions for the Toolkit) involved an evaluation of key existing toolkits and user manuals related to cloth nappy usage, gathering insights from all stakeholders on what works and what doesn’t for different types of users. Based on the insights from this workshop and the research we shared with the various stakeholders, we were able to identify the following gaps in existing approaches: (1) little to no discussion of well-being throughout the cloth nappy-related guides and communications, (2) a general sacrifice-based view of cloth nappies focusing on saving money or saving on CO2 emissions with little focus on benefits, and (3) no insights or addressing of what potential users worry about the most: the extra chores. Recommendations from this workshop call for improved support, access, and guidance on cloth nappy resources across the UK. The workshop piloted a multistakeholder co-created intervention to increase cloth nappy engagement, which will become the stepping stone for further collaborative development and implementation of an accessible cloth nappy toolkit which addresses the challenges faced by different cloth user groups
Vulnerability of energy firms to climate risk: Does fintech development help?
Get PDFEnergy firms, given their importance to overall economic activity, are increasingly seen as sources of systemic risk. Considering the relation of climate-change risk to energy sources, it is sensible to consider energy firms as vulnerable to climate-change. We investigate whether fintech development bolsters energy firms (valuations and dividends) as these firms face greater climate risk. Using an international sample of listed energy firms from 2016 to 2023 (2379 (1972) firm-year observations for our firm value model) and ordinary least squares regression, we find that fintech development cushions the adverse impact of climate risk on energy firm values and dividends. Findings are robust to firm fixed effects and generalized method of moments models, additional control variables, and alternative measurements of value and dividends. Our results suggest that Fintechs may act as a channel for energy firms to withstand the negative repercussions of climate change, thereby supporting the efforts of regulators to promote Fintechs. Moreover, when confronted with high climate risk, our results suggest that managers could utilize Fintechs to increase firm value and dividends
Illuminating Humanity: Narrative Medicine Practices for Crisis Negotiators
Get PDFThis exploratory paper examines how the practical application of narrative medicine (NM) has the capability to support police hostage/crisis negotiators. Narrative medicine ensures that the humanity and dignity of both medical professional and patients are constantly addressed while the patient is being treated for their illness. While the medical professional purposefully involves the patient’s story as a crucial part of the process, it is suggested that negotiators can adapt a similar approach when assisting a person in crisis. This paper explores the foundation of NM and important terms through the lens of its application and potential contribution in police-related crisis work. In conclusion, synthesizing narrative practices and skills with police crisis incidents can benefit negotiators professionally while also contributing to enhancing their personal resilience and overall wellbeing
FairBias: Mitigating bias in medical image diagnosis with mixed noise and class imbalance
No full textIn medical image diagnosis, class-unbalanced and noisy datasets provide a challenge to deep learning algorithms. Biased models, poor performance for minority classes, and a decline in confidence in AI-based diagnosis are the results of these problems. These problems, especially class imbalance, are not adequately addressed by current approaches like QMix. To address these challenges, we propose FairBias, a novel framework that integrates class-aware sample separation, bias-aware loss functions, dynamic class reweighting, and advanced data augmentation to mitigate bias while maintaining high diagnostic accuracy. FairBias achieves significant fairness improvements by reducing the True Positive Rate (TPR) gap between majority and minority subgroups from 15 % to 5 % on datasets such as CheXpert and Breast MRI/FFDM. Additionally, FairBias narrows the Equal Opportunity (EO) disparity from 12 % to 3 % and improves Demographic Parity (DP) by ensuring that predicted positive rates across subgroups differ by less than 2 %. These fairness enhancements are achieved without compromising diagnostic performance, as evidenced by AUC values of 0.97 on Breast MRI/FFDM, 0.95 on Hep-2, 0.92 on SOKL, and 0.96 on CheXpert. Furthermore, FairBias demonstrates robustness under high noise ratios, achieving a Kappa score of 88.5 % on the Hep-2 dataset with 55 % Mis-Labeled Low-Quality Samples (MLQS) and 20 % Mis-High-Quality Samples (MHQS), outperforming state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods like QMix and vlm-fairness. It obtains AUC values of 0.97 on Breast MRI/FFDM, 0.95 on Hep-2, 0.92 on SOKL, and 0.96 on CheXpert. By addressing both mixed noise and class imbalance, FairBias ensures equitable and accurate disease diagnosis, particularly for minority classes that are often overlooked by existing systems. The framework’s limitations, including computational complexity and generalization to new modalities, are discussed, along with future directions to enhance its scalability and applicability. Overall, FairBias presents a significant step toward fairer and more reliable AI-driven medical image diagnosis, bridging critical gaps in current SOTA techniques
Plundrarna [Fantomen 10/2025]
No full textSiblings Kit and Heloise Walker intervene when scavengers took advantage of lawlessness in post-disaster Bengali.This 23-page story written by David Bishop was illustrated by Janusz Ordon
#KateGate: How the passionate energy of publics’ social media posts affected the royal communications crisis
Get PDFThis paper analyzes how passionate publics creatively reshaped the crisis narrative during the British Royal Family’s 2024 #KateGate controversy. When the Royal Communications team released vague and inconsistent messages about Princess Kate’s absence from public life, a narrative void emerged—one rapidly filled by publics operating across social media platforms. Drawing from a decade of immersive netnographic research on royal fandom and influencer networks, this study reveals how publics responded with a surge of humor, visual creativity, digital remixing, and alternative storytelling. Rather than casting publics as passive consumers of PR, this paper positions them as participatory cultural actors who interpret, contest, and even co-author institutional messages. Passion, in this context, is not just an emotion but a structuring force which organizes attention, drives critique, and sustains the viral circulation of memes, remixes, and reframed messages. By tracing how collective intelligence materializes through digital play and satire, the study contributes to crisis communication theory by advancing a cultural model of PR engagement. It urges PR professionals to look beyond sentiment analysis and consider how passionate publics detect inconsistencies, challenge legitimacy, and propose alternative narratives. Publics are not a problem to be managed but are potential collaborators and opponents in PR professionals’ active shaping of meaning
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