Abstract Metaphorical frames are commonly used in public discourse in the United States of America to communicate about climate change and promote climate action. Previous work found climate metaphors to resonate more so with Democrats than with Republicans. Democrats are also more likely to increase their support for climate action. The present study investigated if tailoring climate metaphors to conservatives’ affective domain and personality traits may trigger metaphor realisation. It experimentally tested, for the first time, if a war frame for climate change which better fits with conservatives’ worldview, can induce fear and anger, and if these emotions alongside personality trait aggressiveness predict increasing support for climate action in both liberal (n = 63) and conservative (n = 63) respondents. The findings showed that the war frame induced fear in both groups, especially among Republicans, but not anger, and that it directly impacted climate attitudes, primarily among Democrats. Trait aggressiveness predicted lower support for climate action at baseline but did not predict attitudinal changes. These novel findings show conservatives are not climate apathetic and encourage further research into how the fear triggered by climate metaphors can be channelled into attitudinal changes in climate inactive populations.

Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are common complications for diabetic patients, often exacerbated by complex polymicrobial biofilm infections. While the majority of DFU studies are bacterial focused, fungi have also been identified. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of fungi in DFUs, as well as their potential role and influence on persistence and wound healing. Consecutive DFU swabs were collected from 128 patients (n = 349). Fungal positivity was assessed using enhanced culture and real-time qPCR. Routine microbiology cultures were carried out as part of standard care in the clinics, and their results were then compared to our laboratory investigation. Routine and enhanced culture resulted in similar rates of fungal detection (~9%), whereas qPCR resulted in a higher rate of detection (31%). Notably, the predominant yeast Candida parapsilosis was present in ischaemic and penetrating bone wounds. These findings support existing evidence of fungal presence in DFUs. We demonstrated that routine diagnostic methods are sufficient for fungal detection, but enhanced culture methods allow for more precise fungal identification. Finally, while fungal presence does not appear to impact patient outcomes in our study, their role within these infections remains poorly understood, and further studies are needed to fully understand their relationship to the microbiome.

ABSTRACT Although scholars generally recognize infrastructure development as a pivotal pillar for economic progress, a gap remains in the current literature regarding how transport infrastructure affects GDP growth. This study examines how transport infrastructure impacts GDP growth by reducing trade costs. It confirms that improving the quality of transport infrastructure lowers these costs. Specifically, a 1% improvement in the average transport infrastructure quality between an emerging and a developed economy can reduce bilateral trade costs by up to 0.71%. To estimate the net effect of changes in infrastructure on GDP growth via trade costs, we used the Computational General Equilibrium framework. The results demonstrate significant potential for enhancing GDP growth across different groups of countries based on their level of economic development (i.e. developing countries, emerging countries, and developed countries). The broader implications of transport infrastructure development for the global economy are also examined.

In How Stereotypes Deceive Us, Katherine Puddifoot provides a convincing non-normative account of what stereotypes are, and of the conditions under which we appropriately rely on them in achieving our epistemic and ethical goals. In this paper, I focus on Puddifoot’s discussion of what she takes to be the non-prejudicial use of accurate stereotypes and their role in causing or perpetuating harm. Such use can cause harm but does not, on the face of it, appear to be wrongful in the way that ordinary cases of prejudicially motivated use of stereotypes are. This raises a challenge for identifying when our use of such stereotypes might be unjust or wrongful (and why). In response, I first suggest that prejudice might be located within the context in which one uses a stereotype, rather than within the content of the stereotype itself. In this way, we can indeed distinguish prejudicial (and therefore wrongful) use of accurate stereotypes from non-prejudicial (innocent) use of accurate stereotypes. And second, I suggest that we also ought to question whether the stereotypes being invoked in all cases really are accurate, given the context and scope of application.

University students engaged in online learning often exhibit high levels of academic procrastination. Thus, various studies have investigated this phenomenon to provide solutions to mitigate its impact on academic work. However, these studies largely treated procrastination as a predictor of various outcomes, while other studies that treated procrastination as an outcome annotated the dataset manually. Investigating academic procrastination as an outcome gives a detailed insight to enable effective intervention for students, while manual annotation can be time-consuming and costly with large datasets. Other studies have also used machine learning algorithms to learn on clickstream, demographic, and assessment data to predict procrastination. The results of these studies show that they can be improved using other machine learning algorithms. This study, therefore, uses autoencoder, an artificial neural network, to uncover procrastination patterns ("no procrastinate", "likelihood", "procrastinate") among students’ based on their clickstream, demographics, assessment, and admission data. In doing so, we leveraged the ability of autoencoders to extract meaningful data features and process data that can only be monitored in an online setting. Subsequently, the study uses a logistic regression algorithm to verify the result’s accuracy, precision, F1 score, and recall. The model performed optimally with a minimal precision of 99%. The findings also suggest that older students and students with high academic scores do not often procrastinate. In contrast, students who have taken a course severally often procrastinate.

This is an ambitious and important book.It forms the second instalment of Richard Oram's threevolume Environmental History of Scotland, covering a millennium and a half, from AD 400 to 2021.As its title indicates, the volume under review examines the 'Little Ice Age', defined as the period between the climatic deterioration in the late Middle Ages and the middle decades of the 19th century.It charts Scotland's transition from medieval to modern times through the lens of the two-way interchange between environment and humanity which lies at the heart of environmental history.Focusing on the rural environment and the agrarian economy and society, Oram explores how environmental factors, especially climate change, affected patterns of land use and economy, and also how changing patterns of human activity and resource exploitation resulted in environmental change.This interplay sets the agenda for the study.Four strands run through the book: the history of woodlands; arable land and pasture; fuel supply; and fishing.Although not formally divided into sections, the chapters are grouped chronologically into four periods: the 'new normal' of the late-medieval climatic cooling; the 'age of shocks and transitions' across the 16th and 17th centuries, culminating in the harvest failures and famine of the 'Seven Ill Years' (1695-1702); the 18th century through to 1790; and the 'sting in the tail' of the weather extremes in the period 1790 to 1850.This gives the book a strong chronological structure, though it means that discussion of individual themes (woodland management; peat exploitation; enclosure; fisheries, for example) is fragmented and scattered.Throughout, Richard Oram has mustered a hugely impressive breadth and richness of detailed evidence, drawing on environmental data, published work by historians, geographers and archaeologists, and a wide range of printed and manuscript primary sources.As well as tracing the four themes, the book provides a detailed reconstruction of Scotland's climate, decade by decade (in later periods, almost year by year), explaining in an accessible way the environmental indicators which can be used as proxies for climate data.The bulk of the reconstruction comes from a thorough trawl through documentary evidence (diaries, estate records, travel journals and so on) and thus represents a distinctively historical contribution to Scotland's climate history.However, it has to be said that the abundance of factual detail can result in the catalogue of short-term weather events obscuring longer-term trends in climate.The thematic chapters are full of stimulating ideas, which consistently question assumptions and received narratives.The human response to environmental change is displayed on many fronts.Oram argues that the 16th and 17th centuries saw a change in mindset, presaging the Improvement rhetoric of the 18th century, in which landowners responded to shortages resulting from environmental shock by attempting to increase productivity, including the more intensive management of woodland.The use of seaweed as a fertilizer on arable ground, recorded from the 15th century, appears to have taken off at a time when greater quantities were washed up on the shore during extreme weather and storms.He notes the recurrent disputes and violence over peat mosses in the quest for adequate supplies of domestic fuel, exacerbated by the difficulty of securing fuel supplies when wet summer weather prevented cut peats from drying.Tensions over access to resources contributed to wider social and economic stresses -Oram argues that the environmental impacts of climate change contributed directly to the political and religious upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries.Later environmental shocks -such as the sudden and wide fluctuations in herring numbers as a result of changing oceanic circulation patterns in the 18th and early 19th centuries, or the devastating effects of potato blight in the 1840s -also had wide social, economic and political consequences.On the other side of the coin, human activity had major impacts on the environment, especially during the 'age of improvement', which naturally forms the dominant theme from the decades around 1700. 'Improved' farming had many faces: land reform (the replacement of joint-tenancy quasisubsistence farming by commercial single tenancies); enclosure and partition of the land; land drainage; the conversion of muir and moss into arable ground; and single-species woodland plantations.It thus changed the face of Scotland and Oram vividly draws out the changing colour

This study aims to investigate the potential benefits and efficacy of incorporating Artificial Intelligence into mental health interventions for individuals battling social anxiety. The objective is to evaluate how different AI interventions influence the reduction of symptoms, social functioning, and overall quality of life. The research will examine the feasibility of AI as a means of delivering Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and compare its effectiveness with established therapeutic approaches. The methodology involves a systematic literature review and comprehensive database searches. The findings suggest that AI therapy chatbots, which use machine learning to deliver individualized interventions, present an accessible and scalable alternative for mental health assistance, with the potential to relieve anxiety and depression symptoms. Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) efficiently tackles social anxiety, although further study on AI's effectiveness in this setting is needed.

Abstract In this study, we explore how the Phoenix Park murders were written about in public and private discourse, utilising the Nineteenth Century Newspaper Corpus, personal diaries and historiography. With the use of social actor analysis (van Leeuwen, 2008), we examine how events underwent ‘transformations’ as they moved from reality to record, and how over time these records worked to shape the dynamics of memory, particularly in relation to notions of accountability. Gladstone was blamed by The Times for allowing the murders to take place but, by focussing on personal relationships, the Liberal press portrayed events far more sympathetically. Soon after Gladstone’s death, an influential biography by his friend, John Morley, worked to prove that Gladstone’s reputation was beyond reproach.

The electronic quality of two-dimensional systems is crucial when exploring quantum transport phenomena. In semiconductor heterostructures, decades of optimization have yielded record-quality two-dimensional gases with transport and quantum mobilities reaching close to 108 and 106 cm2 V−1 s−1, respectively1–10. Although the quality of graphene devices has also been improving, it remains comparatively lower11–17. Here we report a transformative improvement in the electronic quality of graphene by employing graphite gates placed in its immediate proximity, at 1 nm separation. The resulting screening reduces charge inhomogeneity by two orders of magnitude, bringing it down to a few 107 cm−2 and limiting potential fluctuations to less than 1 meV. Quantum mobilities reach 107 cm2 V−1 s−1, surpassing those in the highest-quality semiconductor heterostructures by an order of magnitude, and the transport mobilities match their record9,10. This quality enables Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations in fields as low as 1 mT and quantum Hall plateaux below 5 mT. Although proximity screening predictably suppresses electron–electron interactions, fractional quantum Hall states remain observable with their energy gaps reduced only by a factor of 3–5 compared with unscreened devices, demonstrating that many-body phenomena at spatial scales shorter than 10 nm remain robust. Our results offer a reliable route to improving electronic quality in graphene and other two-dimensional systems, which should facilitate the exploration of new physics previously obscured by disorder.