32151 research outputs found
Sort by
Exploring ethical dimensions of AI-enhanced language education : a literature perspective
Get PDFAdvances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in generative AI, continue to affect language education paradigms. The integration of AI in language education raises deep-seated ethical concerns such as privacy and data security, potential biases and hidden ideologies in the output, transparency and accountability, dependency and autonomy, digital divide, and job displacement and professional development. The article analyzes these ethical concerns and introduces the multifaceted dimensions of ethics associated with AI in language education. This article comprehensively examines the potential biases of AI in language education. These biases can be algorithmic, demographic, cultural, linguistic, temporal, confirmation, ideological and political. The analysis includes factors contributing to biases, such as training data , labelling and annotation, product design decisions, policy decisions, and algorithms. This paper analyzes algorithmic transparency and advocates for more transparent AI systems to address bias in algorithms. Violations of student privacy emerge as one of the profound ethical issues in the discourse on AI-enhanced language education. The article also examines the challenges and risks associated with the protection of student data privacy, emphasizing the need for robust privacy frameworks to alleviate concerns regarding privacy, human agency and the lack of transparency in the collection of an excessive amount of personal information. By synthesizing the key findings, the paper will conclude with a potential framework of ethical guidelines for the responsible and ethical integration of AI in language education.Peer reviewe
IRA associates : understanding non-member participation in the provisional IRA
Get PDFThe wider scholarship on ethno-nationalist terrorism and more specifically, research into the Provisional Irish Republican Army, has long endeavoured to identify the individual actors involved in furthering violence and the motivations which led to their involvement. However, the study of who directly and indirectly participated in the violence of the Northern Ireland Conflict has largely overlooked individuals who directly participated in IRA activities as non-members. This paper begins to fill this knowledge gap by exploring the role of non-members who participated in one or more IRA activities and maintained long-term relationships with the movement as IRA associates. This paper analyses seven IRA associates- a priest, a gangster, a smuggler, two IRA veterans, a British heiress and a schoolteacher turned IRA emissary. Together, they help to form a picture of the relationships and motivational factors which led this diverse cadre of individuals to participate in IRA activities as associates and contributes to a more complete understanding of the range of individuals who participated in IRA activities during the Troubles. The multi-faceted analysis and broader understanding of participation in the Provisional IRA which this research uncovers also demonstrates the need for a more complex and nuanced analysis of non-member or civilian participation in terrorism and political violence as a whole.Peer reviewe
ParaHox genes in chordate evolution and development
No full textThe ParaHox cluster comprises three genes, Gsx, Xlox/Pdx, and Cdx, which are crucial developmental regulators involved in anterior-posterior patterning of the gut and central nervous system. ParaHox genes are evolutionarily related to Hox genes and exhibit similar genomic organisation and regulatory features, including clustering and collinearity, whereby gene order correlates with spatial and/or temporal expression. Understanding how ParaHox genes are regulated, and how this regulation has evolved across chordates, offers insights into gene cluster evolution and embryonic development. Moreover, misregulation of ParaHox genes is linked to diseases such as type II diabetes and colon cancer, highlighting their biomedical relevance.
This thesis investigates the regulatory architecture, evolutionary history, and functional roles of ParaHox genes in three representative chordates: Branchiostoma floridae, Ciona intestinalis, and Gallus gallus. This thesis builds on existing research by providing a broader and more detailed analysis of regulatory inputs within the ParaHox cluster, especially in amphioxus, and identifies conserved regulatory regions across other chordates.
For instance, I demonstrate a cross-regulatory loop between Cdx and Xlox, suggesting an ancestral deuterostome mechanism. In addition, I show that topologically-associated domain (TAD) boundaries are conserved around intact ParaHox clusters, mirroring those seen in the Hox clusters. Several regulatory regions in amphioxus are shown to drive tissue-specific expression in Ciona, marking them as promising candidates for further analysis.
This study also identifies and characterises a novel vertebrate Cdx paralogue, Cdx4-like, in Gallus gallus, which likely originated at the base of the tetrapods and is associated with calcium secretion in the oviduct. Finally, I identify beta-galactosidase as a regional marker in the ascidian gastrointestinal tract, likely regulated by ParaHox genes and potentially conserved from the bilaterian ancestor.
Collectively, these findings enhance our understanding of the conservation and diversification of ParaHox gene regulation in chordate evolution and development
A marine and salt marsh sediment organic carbon database for European regional seas (EURO-CARBON)
Get PDFFunding: AELG, CL, AMA, MJC, SLP and DKJ acknowledge funding from MPA Europe under the HORIZON EUROPE Framework Program (Grant Agreement 101059988). DKJ, HG, KH and NM acknowledge funding by the European Union under the Horizon Europe program through OBAMA-NEXT (Grant Agreement no. 101081642). HG, KH and NM acknowledge funding by the European Union under the Horizon Europe program through C-BLUES (Grant Agreement no. 101137844). HG, KH, JT, KG and SF acknowledge funding from Norwegian Blue Forest Network (www.nbfn.no); GB, HG, and KH acknowledge funding from the Norwegian Environment Agency through KELPCOAST (grant number 24087438). MEA, MB, MD and MG acknowledge funding from the foundation for Baltic and East European studies (Östersjöstiftelsen) (grant numbers: 21-GP-0005 and 21-PD2-0002) and FORMAS (grant number: 2021-01280). DB, NB, VK and SK acknowledge funding from BRIDGE-BS (Grant Agreement 101000240) and the LTER-BG infrastructure (Agreement No. DО1-320/30.11.2023, National Roadmap for Research Infrastructure, financed by the Ministry of Education and Science of Bulgaria). CPS, WKL, NAGMvH and OMZ acknowledge funding by the ERC Synergy grant MARIX (8540088) and the Netherlands Earth System Science Center (NESSC 024002001), financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). WKL acknowledges funding by the Dutch Research Council (NWO VI.Veni.222.332). IM was supported by a Juan de la Cierva Incorporación postdoctoral fellowship of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (JC2020-045917-I). MRE acknowledges funding from the LIFE Programme under the project LIFE ADAPTA BLUES (LIFE18/CCA/ES/001160). K.Kuliński acknowledges funding from the Polish National Science Center, grant no. 2023/49/B/ST10/02690, under the project ALKALIS. K.Koziorowska acknowledges funding from the Polish National Science Center, grant no. 2019/34/E/ST10/00167, under the project PROSPECTOR and the European Union within the Horizon Europe programme, project 101136480 — SEA-Quester. J.M.N. acknowledges the support of national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT), under the projects UIDB/04292/2020, UIDP/04292/2020, granted to MARE, and LA/P/0069/2020, granted to the Associate Laboratory ARNET. CBdlS, RS, and MM received Portuguese national funds from FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology through projects UIDB/04326/2020, UIDP/04326/2020, LA/P/0101/2020, 2020.03825.CEECIND, and 020.06996.BD. SC acknowledges the support from MARCO-BOLO, funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe Programme (Grant Agreement No. 101082021). M.A.M and O.S. were supported by I+D+i projects RYC2019-027073-I funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and FEDER, and MEDCHANGE funded by AEI. E.T.A., C.A.G-E, P.T.E. acknowledge funding by DRESSAGE (MIS5045792, Operational Program ‘Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation’, EPAnEK 2014-2020, NSRF), and LIFE-TRANSFER (LIFE 19 NAT/IT/000264) projects. N.P.J. was supported by a Juan de la Cierva fellowship (JDC2022-048342-I). MF was funded by Juan de La Cierva Formación (FJC2019-038970-I) and PTA2022-021307-I, MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by FSE+. SP is supported by a Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione project (PZ00P2_223468). AMR received the support of a fellowship from ”la Caixa” Foundation (LCF/BQ/PI23/11970014)” and project CNS2023-145492 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033 y European Union “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR. AIS and AIL were supported by Portuguese funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT)/MCTES, under the project PORBIOTA, and the UID Centro de Estudos do Ambiente e Mar (CESAM) + LA/P/0094/2020; and AIS through the contract DOI:10.54499/CEECIND/00962/2017/CP1459/CT0008.Marine and salt marsh sediments contain large amounts of organic carbon (OC) and are therefore important in the global carbon cycle. Here, we collated previously published and unpublished measurements of sediment OC in marine and salt marsh sediments in European regional seas (EURO-CARBON; available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14905489). To the extent possible the OC data were complemented by variables such as sediment porosity and dry bulk density. The EURO-CARBON dataset holds 61306 individual data entries of sediment OC content from different regions of European regional seas. Around three quarters (76%) were collected in coastal and deep sea bare sediments, 18% from salt marshes, 7% from seagrass habitats, and 0.03% from macroalgal habitats. For all habitats and sediment depth layers the OC content varied between seagrass (2.37 ± 5.96 %; 3.03 %) > bare sediment (1.88 ± 2.03 %; 1.20 %). The EURO-CARBON dataset will serve as a basis for future work, and it will be an important resource for researchers, managers, and policymakers working towards protecting sediment OC pools.Peer reviewe
Kissing by the book : form and feeling in Victorian poetry
No full textThis thesis argues for the importance of the kiss in Victorian poetry as a metapoetic device. Through close attention to the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, Arthur Symons, and Oscar Wilde, it argues that the kiss allows not only for a means of tracing poetic inheritance, but a way of figuring and creating the affective powers of poetry. Characterised by an intensely self-conscious awareness of its own positioning as a historicised, socially informed, and deeply embodied practice, the Victorian kiss grants an exploration of the mutability of both poetry and body, emerging dialectically out of the relation between the body and culture. The Victorians create new forms of kisses, demonstrating a remarkable sensitivity to the plasticity of culturally informed categories. To this end, the thesis engages in the analysis of visual media – including paintings, photography, and film – as the kiss is informed through a meeting between the visual and the poetic, a meeting often imaginatively configured as its own form of kiss
The early Earth as an analogue for exoplanetary biogeochemistry
Get PDFFunding: EES was financially supported by a NERC Frontiers grant (NE/V010824/1) and a Leverhulme Trust grant (RPG-2022-313) during this project. SLO acknowledges support from NASA Exobiology, NASA Habitable Worlds, NASA ICAR, and the Heising-Simons Foundation. EM was supported financially by the Energy Resources Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.Planet Earth has evolved over the past 4.5 billion years from an entirely anoxic planet with possibly a different tectonic regime to the oxygenated world with horizontal plate tectonics that we know today. For most of this time, Earth has been inhabited by a purely microbial biosphere albeit with seemingly increasing complexity over time. A rich record of this geobiological evolution over most of Earth’s history thus provides insights into the remote detectability of microbial life under a variety of planetary conditions. Here we leverage Earth’s geobiological record with the aim of (a) illustrating the current state of knowledge and key knowledge gaps about the early Earth as a reference point in exoplanet science research; (b) compiling biotic and abiotic mechanisms that controlled the evolution of the atmosphere over time; and (c) reviewing current constraints on the detectability of Earth’s early biosphere with state-of-the-art telescope technology. We highlight that life may have originated on a planet with a different (stagnant lid) tectonic regime and strong hydrothermal activity, and under these conditions, biogenic CH4 gas was perhaps the most detectable atmospheric biosignature. Oxygenic photosynthesis, which is responsible for essentially all O2 gas in the modern atmosphere, appears to have emerged concurrently with the establishment of modern plate tectonics and the emergence of continental crust, but O2 accumulation to modern levels only occurred late in Earth’s history, perhaps tied to the rise of land plants. Nutrient limitation in anoxic oceans, promoted by hydrothermal Fe fluxes, may have limited biological productivity and O2 production. N2O is an alternative biosignature that was perhaps significant on the redox-stratified Proterozoic Earth. We conclude that the detectability of atmospheric biosignatures on Earth was not only dependent on biological evolution but also strongly controlled by the evolving tectonic context
People Person
No full textThe title People Person reflects the collection's subject matter in multiple ways. Poems such as "Elephant Mug" or “Kjøleskap og Magnet” resonate with the title of the collection, as the speaker is portrayed as a genuine people person capable of sentimentality and nostalgia. However, the title is also meant to be viewed with irony, as numerous poems explore an ambivalence toward human connection or societal norms. "Going to Sleep Without Your Socks On" is one of several poems that lean toward a skeptical observation of people, which becomes a central theme in my collection.
Additionally, the collection aims to challenge the idea of personhood. My poetry contains a heightened curiosity toward nonhuman creatures from nature and from myth, onto which I often project human qualities. The slug in “Sentience” and the walrus “Freya” are among the nonhuman people to be encountered in the poems, who are mourned, appreciated, and portrayed with the same level of respect that a human subject would receive. These creatures are personified for them to be viewed with empathy and appreciation by the reader.
Due to my interest in novel writing, I have a strong narrative impulse that informs my poetry. The poems “Last Christmas” or “Write As If Everyone You Know Is Dead” can be read as short stories in verse. With the collection being people-centric, character building played an integral role in the writing process, hence I gravitated towards narrative prose in the storytelling to achieve the desired characterization of the subject matter.
Another significant aspect of my writing is tone. People and relationships constitute the collection’s central theme, and the tone often determines the outcome of the speaker’s relationships with the subjects. It is through tone – whether wistful (“Pesto”) or somber (“London Pub, Oslo”) that the reader can deduce the message behind the poems. The conversational tone of poems such as “Crush!” have become a signature quality of my writing. However, as I began writing the collection I felt inclined to move away from the confessional poetry I’m used to writing, as I wanted to provide a collection with a versatile range of tones, to coincide with the speaker’s varying relationships
The Dayton peace process : a keyhole into Russian and Chinese engagement with liberal peacebuilding
Get PDFFunding: Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.The paper examines the roles of Russia and China in a long-standing peace process in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the broader implications of this for liberal peacebuilding. Using an original dataset of statements from UN Security Council debates (2000–2023), we analyse shifts in their discourse and sentiments. While both countries experienced a negative trend in sentiments towards the liberal peacebuilding project in BiH over time, there are substantial differences in their approaches. Russia places a far greater emphasis on rejection of liberal components of the process (integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions, attempts to preserve the unity of BiH by empowering central institutions to perform their function, and attempts to sanction genocide denial). Meanwhile, China primarily raised concerns around procedural matters but did not object to the liberal components. The findings show that Russia and China’s actions complicate liberal peacebuilding efforts but also highlight the need for adaptable strategies that consider the diverse motivations and actions of emerging powers in different peacebuilding sites. They also underscore the need to move beyond the West vs. non-West dichotomy.Peer reviewe
From ferromagnetic semiconductor to antiferromagnetic metal in epitaxial CrxTey monolayers
Get PDFFunding: The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant Nos. EP/X015556/1, EP/X015599/1, and EP/M023958/1) and the Leverhulme Trust (Grant no. RL-2016-006).Chromium ditelluride, CrTe2, is an attractive candidate van der Waals material for hosting 2D magnetism. However, how the room-temperature ferromagnetism of the bulk evolves as the sample is thinned to the single-layer limit has proved controversial. This, in part, reflects its metastable nature, vs. a series of more stable self-intercalation compounds with higher relative Cr:Te stoichiometry. Here, exploiting a recently developed method for enhancing nucleation in molecular-beam epitaxy growth of transition-metal chalcogenides, we demonstrate the selective stabilisation of high-coverage CrTe2 and Cr2+εTe3 epitaxial monolayers. Combining X-ray magnetic circular dichroism, scanning tunnelling microscopy, and temperature-dependent angle-resolved photoemission, we demonstrate that both compounds order magnetically with a similar TC. We find, however, that monolayer CrTe2 forms as an antiferromagnetic metal, while monolayer Cr2+εTe3 hosts an intrinsic ferromagnetic semiconducting state. This work thus demonstrates that control over the self-intercalation of metastable Cr-based chalcogenides provides a powerful route for tuning both their metallicity and magnetic structure, establishing the CrxTey system as a flexible materials class for future 2D spintronics.Peer reviewe
Hyperphosphorescent OLEDs : harnessing the power of MR-TADF terminal emitters
Get PDFFunding: E.V.P. was funded by the European Union from its Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon Europe (2021–2027), under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 101108406. E.Z.-C. thanks the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the UK (Grant Nos. EP/W007517/1, EP/W015137/1, and EP/Z535291/1) for support, and the authors acknowledge support from JSPS Core-to-Core Program (Grant No. JPJSCCA20220004).Hyperphosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (HP-OLEDs) represent an attractive solution to persistent efficiency roll-off and device stability issues, combining phosphorescent sensitizers with fluorescent terminal emitters to achieve efficient, narrowband emission. This review discusses advances in HP-OLEDs where the terminal emitter is a multiresonance thermally activated delayed fluorescence compound. Recent breakthroughs in device performance, including examples demonstrating both high maximum external quantum efficiencies (EQEmax) and excellent color purity, are highlighted. This review summarizes design strategies, challenges, and future directions for improving the efficiency, stability, and spectral performance of HP-OLEDs.Peer reviewe
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage St Andrews Research Repository? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!