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Ecospirituality predicts pro-environmental outcomes across cultures
Full text linkThe idea that nature has spiritual qualities is common across cultures. In North American samples, evidence supports a link between ecospirituality and pro-environmental outcomes. The generalizability of this claim, however, remains untested. A cross-cultural sample of religious individuals from 15 countries spanning 5 world religions (N=11,186) is used to (1) estimate the association between ecospirituality and three pro-environmental outcomes: pro-environmental behavioural intentions, policy support, and financial donations; and (2) assess the pathways by which ecospirituality translates to pro-environmentalism. The results of pre-registered analyses showed ecospirituality positively predicted each of the pro-environmental outcomes similarly across diverse cultural and religious populations. Moreover, the associations between ecospirituality and pro-environmental outcomes were mediated by the same variables across cultures: (1) moral responsibility for nature, (2) gratitude to nature, and (3) self-efficacy over environmental issues. Ecospirituality unites diverse cultural worldviews in motivating care for nature, making it a potentially powerful foundation for global environmental stewardship
Limits on the international mobility of planning ideas and practices : some historical lessons
No full textThis chapter adopts a historical approach and a wide geographical perspective to examine the international circulation of ideas and practices, as planning knowledge from one country spreads and is applied elsewhere. Examples of travelling ideas and practices include cases variously involving affluent Western countries, the former Soviet bloc and former colonial and present post-colonial worlds. This chapter shows that planning ideas and practices are rarely successfully transferred internationally in unchanged form. Instead, they become re-inventions of imported ideas and practices as a conscious or unconscious process of adjustment, adaptation, hybridisation, or synthesis occurs. Context and agency are hugely important if global circuits of planning knowledge are to be positively harnessed. To work effectively in new settings, exogenous ideas, and practices ideally need thorough deconstruction and reassembly to reflect local needs and capacities. This is more likely in affluent countries with democratic, pluralistic governance, mature civil societies, and developed technical capacities. However, even these circumstances cannot guarantee successful deployment of exogenous knowledge. Inappropriate transfers of planning ideas and practices have been more likely in poorer countries with less democratic regimes, where civil societies and technical capacities are less developed. These risks increase if control of which ideas and practices are adopted (and how this occurs) lies outside the receiving country, so that they are, to some extent, imposed, however noble the underlying intentions. Mitigation of these risks can occur if some local negotiation is possible. Otherwise, unmediated ideas and practices from elsewhere are likely to be actively contested within the new host country
Public health approaches to children affected by parental incarceration : the central role of school nursing in supporting a vulnerable population
No full textSchool nurses are uniquely positioned to support children affected by parental incarceration, yet these children remain a substantial but largely hidden group within health, education, and social care. Despite growing political attention to this concern in the United Kingdom, many such children continue to go unidentified and without appropriate support. This paper outlines the national scale and urgency of the issue, examines the emotional, developmental, and social impacts on children who experience parental incarceration, and considers how schools can act as protective environments. Drawing on key theoretical frameworks, it highlights the cumulative effects of the associated adversity and the gaps in current identification and support processes. The central argument advanced is that school nurses, working within the Healthy Child Programme, can provide early intervention, sustained therapeutic oversight and coordinated multiagency support. The paper concludes by calling for systematic national recognition of these children as a vulnerable group and for a continued systematic, well-resourced model of care, including specialist school nursing roles
AgroLLM : connecting farmers and agricultural practices through Large Language Models for enhanced knowledge transfer and practical application
Full text linkLarge language models (LLMs) offer new opportunities for agricultural education and decision support, yet their adoption is limited by domain-specific terminology, ambiguous retrieval, and factual inconsistencies. This work presents AgroLLM, a domain-governed agricultural knowledge system that integrates structured textbook-derived knowledge with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and a Domain Knowledge Processing Layer (DKPL). The DKPL contributes symbolic domain concepts, causal rules, and agronomic thresholds that guide retrieval and validate model outputs. A curated corpus of nineteen agricultural textbooks was converted into semantically annotated chunks and embedded using Gemini, OpenAI, and Mistral models. Performance was evaluated using a 504-question benchmark aligned with four FAO/USDA domain categories. Three LLMs (Mistral-7B, Gemini 1.5 Flash, and ChatGPT-4o Mini) were assessed for retrieval quality, reasoning accuracy, and DKPL consistency. Results show that ChatGPT-4o Mini with DKPL-constrained RAG achieved the highest accuracy (95.2%), with substantial reductions in hallucinations and numerical violations. The study demonstrates that embedding structured domain knowledge into the RAG pipeline significantly improves factual consistency and produces reliable, context-aware agricultural recommendations. AgroLLM offers a reproducible foundation for developing trustworthy AI-assisted learning and advisory tools in agriculture
Digital twin-based prediction of battery parameters from limited initial data using an optimised time-series multi-layer perceptron
Full text linkDigital twin (DT) technology is increasingly leveraged for real-time monitoring and predictive modelling of battery systems. However, existing machine learning (ML)-based approaches for battery parameter estimation often rely on large historical datasets, limiting their applicability during the early stages of operation. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid framework that enables accurate battery parameter prediction and early anomaly detection with minimal initial data. The approach integrates a time-series multi-layer perceptron (TS-MLP) model optimised by a genetic algorithm (GA) to dynamically select input intervals that minimise prediction error. To enhance anomaly detection, an optimised one-class support vector machine (OC-SVM) is trained using both real and synthetically generated anomalies via Gaussian process regression (GPR), ensuring robust performance from early cycles. The proposed method is validated on NASA’s 18650 lithium-ion battery dataset. Results show that the model accurately predicts next-cycle cell temperature with a minimum R
of 0.9875 and a maximum RMSE of 0.34 °C. This framework provides a reliable and data-efficient solution for early-stage battery diagnostics in DT environments
Differences and similarities between developmental coordination disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder : a scoping review
No full textDevelopmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are common neurodevelopmental disorders that often co-occur and have similar secondary symptoms. While DCD and ADHD are considered separate conditions, their commonalities create challenges for differential diagnosis and support. Therefore, this preregistered broad-spanning scoping review includes systematic literature searches to summarize all available studies on DCD and/or ADHD. Sixty-eight articles were classified into the following categories: (a) neuroimaging; (b) genetic and twin studies; (c) methylphenidate; (d) cognition; (e) motor skills; (f) physical activity and physical therapy; (g) perception, sensory processing, and visuomotor integration; (h) psychosocial factors and well-being; and (i) symptom presence and management. Most studies included samples under 18 years old, and almost no studies were replicated. Common themes supported that individuals with co-occurring DCD and ADHD have more difficulties than those with one condition. While we found numerous neural and functional overlaps between DCD and ADHD, several features consistently differentiated the conditions, for example, sensorimotor difficulties in DCD. Thus, we conclude that DCD and ADHD are similar conditions with a few differential features; however, co-occurring DCD + ADHD has unique burdens not observed in either condition alone. Extensive replication is needed to determine the precursors, stability, and changeability of DCD and/or ADHD
Conforming to UNSDG12.3: Food Loss and Waste Reporting in UK Universities
Full text linkPurpose: Reducing Food Waste and Loss (sustainable development goal (SDG) 12.3) is imperative for countries across the global North and South, albeit with differing challenges to address. Through a conceptual case study approach of the United Kingdom’s policy and progress regarding SDG 12.3, this chapter provides an informed overview of how this target is interdependent with other SDGs. It illuminates how this interdependence has led to some lack of clarity in reporting communications within the university sector.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The chapter highlights global challenges and policy responses to food loss and waste, and how these underpin SDG 12.3. This conceptual article spotlights a lack of consistency in SDG targets and university ranking approaches through an exploratory examination of a leading SDG ranking for universities and associated university website communications.
Findings: An evaluation of how food loss and waste are captured in global university rankings and guidance frameworks finds that these need to be developed to be more consistent with SDG targets and indicators. In particular, university reporting on SDG 2 Zero Hunger captures actions on food waste reduction that, according to the SDG targets, should more naturally align with SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production.
Practical Implications: More rigorous and transparent reporting and communications on food waste and loss reporting aligned to the SDG targets can eliminate confusion caused by closely intersecting areas (such as SDG 2 and SDG 12). This has implications for the university sector in positioning the exemplary best practices to lead the way for other sectors
When to mix it up? : sorting, inequality, and re-distributive taxation
No full textThis paper examines optimal taxation in a labour market with assortative matching and two-sided heterogeneity. Positive assortative matching, where high-type workers pair with similar types, enhances production efficiency but increases income inequality. Using a matching model with transferable utility, we analyse optimal redistributive tax schedules under various market equilibria. Our findings show that supermodularity in production does not guarantee positive matching as optimal, and increasing mixed-skill matching reduces inequality. In mixed matching equilibria, the optimal tax is regressive at higher incomes but progressive at lower incomes. Tax progressivity decreases with higher productivity of mixed-matching pairs and a greater proportion of skilled workers. Government policy aims to reduce inequality through direct transfers and influencing worker sorting, with significant implications for tax policy design amidst technological changes and evolving skill distributions
