Abstract Dr. Fasih Haider FBCS, Research Fellow at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh and Entrepreneurial Lead at Innovate UK ICURe Program, explains how AI can analyse how we speak to detect early signs of neurological and mental health conditions, and also highlights important considerations around bias, regulation and ethics.

Book Review: Cicely Saunders and Total Pain: Holism, Narrative, and Silence at the End of Life Wood,J. (2025). Cicely Saunders and total pain: Holism, narrative, and silence at the end of life. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. ISBN: 1399531069. Hardback, 256 pages. $130.00.

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Iris Sanou and Mathangi Lakshmipathi are co-first authors on ‘ Temporal dynamics of Sertoli and germ cell development in human foetal and prepubertal testis’, published in BIO. Iris is a PhD student in the lab of Dr Callista L. Mulder at Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Professor Dr Rod Mitchell at The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, investigating guiding cryopreserved testicular tissue through in vitro maturation and spermatogenic differentiation to restore male fertility and develop new strategies for the treatment of male infertility. Mathangi is a PhD student in the lab of Dr Callista L. Mulder at Amsterdam UMC, focusing on understanding and recreating the human testicular somatic niche in vitro to advance fertility preservation and male reproductive health.

Scottish universities have, in recent decades, been buffeted by a range of new demands, most immediately financial, but also demographic, cultural and technological. Understandably, perhaps, faced with this multiplicity of quotidian pressures, universities have lost sight of any wider sense of purpose. This article seeks to place a conceptual frame around the condition of higher education, prompting engagement with the question of what the purpose of universities in Scotland ought to be or could be. To do so, we turn to the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, a Scottish-born philosopher of world renown. A primary concern for MacIntyre is the fragmentation of moral purpose in societies organised around (neo)liberal principles. He argues that this has led to an inability to reason together around important moral questions. The consequence of this is that moral judgments are viewed as no more than expressions of personal preference, attitude or feeling. MacIntyre addressed the role of university education in the Gifford Lectures he gave at the University of Edinburgh in 1988 and in related writing. This article will revisit the salience of his work in light of the current issues facing higher education.

peripheral acts (2023-ongoing) is a body of 30 monoprints on Japanese paper. Created as part of my practice-based doctoral project, Obdurate matter? Unfolding potential in materials, apparatuses, and procedures of printmaking through speculative practice (2021-2025), at Edinburgh College of Art, the series of prints explores the possibilities held within the repeated printing of scrim fabric in CMYK formation. Through instances of visual, material, and processual variation – apparent in each print's differing colour, tone, and moiré patterning; in impressions of scrim's irregular and fluid weave, and moments of human error – the works draw out and attend to the ways in which unanticipated, and perhaps even unwanted, variation within repetitive printerly acts can prove to be generative. Positioned in the context of the printed 'error', the perceived awkwardness and discomfort in such interfering factors are presented as both practical and conceptual thresholds where inherited conventional perceptions can be renegotiated. In this text, I consider how my choice of substrate for peripheral acts – tosa washi paper – serves to extend the themes and position outlined above. Through examination of the paper's materiality, physicality, and behaviour, between contexts of the print workshop, the artist's studio, and the exhibition site, I explore how the works unveil the liveliness of printed matter. This discussion draws from theories of 'the fold' (Deleuze 1993; Marks 2014), in addition the field of new materialism and the works of Barad (2007), Bennett (2010), and Coleman, Page, and Palmer (2019) to speculate as to how print matter can come to unfold in practice. It seeks to uncover a new or overlooked printerly vibrancy, and consider the possible effects of this approach in the context of contemporary printmaking and the expanded field.

Edinburgh's dark tourism industry thrives on its macabre anatomical history, in particular its nineteenth-century legacy of grave-robbing, illicit dissection, and the infamous Burke and Hare murders. This essay explores how the city's dual identity, as a hub of medical innovation and a stage for Gothic horror, has shaped its modern tourism landscape. Focusing on five key sites-the Surgeons' Hall Museums, the University of Edinburgh's Anatomical Museum, Greyfriars Kirkyard, the Old College dissection rooms, and Burke and Hare walking tours-the analysis reveals how Edinburgh confronts its controversial past through deliberate preservation and public engagement. These attractions force visitors to grapple with ethical dilemmas: Are displays of human remains educational tools or exploitative spectacles? Does commercializing tragedy trivialize victims or preserve historical memory?The essay examines the ethical tensions inherent in anatomical tourism, comparing Edinburgh's approach to institutions such as London's Hunterian and Philadelphia's Mütter Museums. It highlights modern debates over consent, repatriation, and the balance between education and entertainment. While critics decry the "Disneyfication" of dark history through sensationalized ghost tours, proponents argue that these narratives foster public engagement with medical ethics. Emerging solutions, such as augmented reality exhibits, community-led curation, and ethical tourism frameworks, suggest a path forward for responsible heritage management.Ultimately, Edinburgh's anatomical tourism offers a unique lens toward the examination of the costs of scientific progress. By refusing to sanitize its past, the city challenges visitors to confront uncomfortable questions about exploitation, memory, and the moral boundaries of medical study. This case study highlights the potential of dark tourism to transcend morbidity and provoke meaningful dialogue about history's complex legacies.

Access to specialist veterinary oncology services may be influenced by geographic, demographic, and patient-related factors. Understanding travel burden is important for identifying potential barriers to care and designing more equitable service delivery models. This study quantified the distance travelled by owners seeking specialist oncology care at a UK veterinary teaching hospital and examined whether species, age, breed, and insurance status were associated with travel patterns. A retrospective review was conducted of all dogs and cats presenting to the Oncology Service at the Hospital for Small Animals, University of Edinburgh, between 1 December 2018 and 31 October 2025. Owner postcodes were used to calculate distances from residence to the hospital. Distances were compared across species (dog vs. cat), breed (pure-breed vs. mixed-breed), age (<7 vs. ≥7 years), and insurance status (insured vs. uninsured). A total of 3074 cases were included. In univariate analysis, dogs travelled significantly further than cats (p < 0.001), pure-breed animals travelled significantly further than mixed-breed animals (p < 0.001), and younger animals travelled significantly further than older animals (p = 0.002). In multivariate analysis, species, age, and insurance status were significant, with dogs (p < 0.001), younger animals (p = 0.012), and uninsured animals (p = 0.008) travelling further. These findings highlight potential geographic inequities in access to specialist care and underscore the need for alternative service-delivery strategies to improve accessibility, particularly for cats and younger animals.

This study is based on a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 1,908 publications containing the key concept of generative linguistics between 1975 and 2025. The aim of the study is to systematically reveal the temporal trends, thematic orientations, and publication patterns of generative linguistics literature through these publications indexed in the Web of Science database. Performance analysis, conceptual mapping, co-occurrence and co-citation networks, historiographic analysis, and thematic trend analyses were employed in the research. The findings show that generative linguistics gained momentum rapidly after 2010, especially from 2018 onwards, with international visibility reaching its highest level in the period 2021-2024. The field's institutional leaders include the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, the University of Edinburgh, and Stanford University. The US, China, and the UK stand out as the most productive countries. Conceptually, the literature has expanded from classical linguistics topics, such as syntax, grammar, and semantics, to new AI-focused themes, including artificial intelligence, generative AI, ChatGPT, and large language models. This intellectual line, which began with Chomsky's theoretical contributions, has taken a new direction with the emergence of deep learning and natural language processing studies since 2017. In general, generative linguistics is evolving into an interdisciplinary research field that integrates artificial intelligence while maintaining its deep theoretical foundations, and it is expected to exhibit strong growth potential in the coming years.

Abstract In the fast-evolving field of AI for healthcare, there is a growing trend of combining acoustic and linguistic features from speech data to improve ML model performance for cognitive impairment detection. This paper evaluates a hyperparameter-tuned SVM model trained on three feature sets derived from pretrained Transformer-based models: acoustic CrisperWhisper embeddings, linguistic BERT embeddings, and both. Using 150 data points (94F, ages 51-99) equally distributed across healthy, MCI, and dementia classes, sourced from DementiaBank and challenge datasets from the University of Edinburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, no statistically significant differences (χ²=3.45, p = 0.178) were found in the accuracy scores of the model trained on the three feature sets across 30 validation datasets. The mean validation accuracy scores of the model trained on acoustic, linguistic, and combined embeddings were 72% (SD = 0.233), 63% (SD = 0.221), and 57% (SD = 0.202), respectively. However, there were statistically significant differences (χ²=58.067, p &amp;lt; 0.001) in the accuracy scores of the model trained on the feature sets across 30 training datasets. Among significant pairwise comparisons, the training accuracy scores of the model trained on acoustic embeddings (M = 1, SD = 0) were significantly higher than those using linguistic embeddings (M = 0.847, SD = 0.008; W = 0, n = 30, p &amp;lt; 0.001) and those using acoustic+linguistic embeddings (M = 0.875, SD = 0.012; W = 0, n = 30, p &amp;lt; 0.001). The results suggest that while acoustic embeddings alone yielded the highest accuracy, hyperparameter tuning failed to mitigate overfitting, and acoustic+linguistic embeddings did not improve model performance. However, given the small dataset size, these findings should be interpreted with caution. Future directions for improving model performance will be discussed during the presentation.

This special issue follows the discussions held at the 2024 Edition of The Workshop on the History of Artificial Intelligence (WHAI 2024), celebrated in Santiago de Compostela within the framework of the 27th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2024). In WHAI, presentations were held about the starting and evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) in several European regions, and about the contribution of European research and researchers to specific paradigms and to the history of AI in general. Following these discussions, this issue includes the extended versions of two papers presented at WHAI, one on how AI originated at the University of Edinburgh and another on the contributions of European researchers to the foundations and applications of model-based reasoning. The special issue is now enriched with a historical perspective of AI in Catalonia, the motivation for the AI community to build and disseminate the timeline of the History of AI in Europe and a proposal for a Collective Memory of Artificial Intelligence, which expands the timeline initiative. All papers are a contribution to The History of AI Timeline, an open project for the future, which also began with WHAI2024 and will be updated and enriched through the discussions of subsequent editions of WHAI.

This article explores the struggle of British women to gain access to medical education and practice during the second half of the nineteenth century. It presents an analysis of documentary and narrative sources as well as contemporary scholarly literature. Central focus is given to the activities of Britain’s first female physicians. The reasons behind the development of women’s medicine are examined, along with its connection to the broader fight for women’s rights. Prejudices within Victorian society against female doctors are discussed. Florence Nightingale’s contribution to professionalizing nursing and validating women’s contributions to healthcare is highlighted. The role of the Women’s Medical Society and College established by J. Edmunds is analyzed, including the causes leading to their closure. Challenges faced by British women attempting to obtain a degree from Edinburgh University between 1869 and 1874 are addressed. Attention is also paid to the establishment of the London School of Medicine for Women, which became foundational for women’s medicine throughout the Empire. Key events include the Medical Act of 1876 that allowed women to legally practice medicine and the lifting of restrictions on female membership in the British Medical Association. Ultimately, it is concluded that through overcoming societal stereotypes and drawing support from progressive segments of society, this small group of pioneering British women demonstrated the necessity and importance of professional female medical care beyond traditional roles such as nurses or midwives.

This paper examines milestones and unique service aspects of six research-intensive Higher Education Institutions’ approaches to research data management policy and service, almost one decade on from their respective beginnings, based on findings from a 2024 internal benchmarking study conducted by the University of Oxford, which consisted of interviews with library-based research data management service providers at five peer UK institutions. Both similarities and differences are examined, and milestones are mapped against external events and policies in the RDM field. Future directions, and areas of convergence and divergence especially, will be explored across six institutions: the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester and Oxford, Imperial College London, and University College London (UCL).

This paper lays out some quite successful developments in the teaching of social anthropology in Scottish secondary schools and further education colleges. It is written in a personal style because much of the initial work was carried out by the author who describes the path she navigated and introduces the people who helped her along the way. The project was started with advice from members of Scottish university anthropology departments and proceeded through a complicated series of encounters with the bureaucracy of the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which has gradually introduced various possibilities for study. Some detail is provided about each of these developments, all of which took time to grow due to a general lack of knowledge about the subject in Scotland. We are now working on developing complete awards, described at the end of the paper. The project has received continual support from the Scottish Qualifications Authority, and all the Scottish universities with Anthropology departments, including, most recently, a generous grant from the University of Edinburgh to help the Royal Anthropological Institute’s initiative to offer a course to train new teachers working within the Scottish system.

Abstract Addressing the nature emergency on veterinary campuses will challenge us to embrace the 30 × 30 Biodiversity Challenge and explore the life-giving processes that sustain life in our bio-regional home areas. In this case study, a group of transdisciplinary collaborators explore three entanglements that profoundly represent this key aspect of the metacrisis of the Anthropocene, doing so through a series of experiential workshops. By focusing on specific entangled features of the Easter Bush campus, at the University of Edinburgh, we are able to explore boundary making practices and to develop some sense of the relational whole and our place in the whole. The features that called for our attention included the river flowing through the campus and a local badger sett, dug into the refuse tip that past generations of humans have created beside the river. This work allows a series of recommendations about outdoor learning for eco-literacy, multispecies dialogue and justice to be proposed. The inter- and intra-connections between nature restoration and human restoration uncovered through this work, highlight that there are One Health justice issues here that we would do well to pay attention to in seeking to nurture more sustainable futures. This has implications for habitat restoration on veterinary campuses, for pedagogical practice and curriculum reform. Such reforms will need to recognise the damage caused by reductive science, the absence of systems thinking and process philosophy in teaching and the failure to promote spaces and opportunities for nature connection and outdoor learning. Information © The Authors 2025

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Xiang Wan (万向) is first author on ‘ Identification of locally activated spindle-associated proteins in oocytes uncovers a phosphatase-driven mechanism’, published in JCS. Xiang (向) is a postdoc in the lab of Hiroyuki Ohkura at Institute of Cell Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK, investigating how chromosomes are correctly segregated during cell division.

IntroductionAdolescence is a key period of development for mental health; however, little is known about how (cumulative) daily life experiences impact long-term mental health development in this period, and vice versa. ‘Mental health in the moment’ (MHIM) is an accelerated cohort measurement burst study designed to illuminate these links.Methods and analysisThe current protocol describes the rationale and design for MHIM, which aims to recruit and follow up approximately 500 adolescents across five age cohorts (in secondary school years S1–S5, aged 11–16 at baseline) and follow them over a 5-year data collection period. Data collection will include online surveys and ecological momentary assessments bursts every 6 months, annual caregiver surveys, the collection of stress biomarker data at three key measurement points and continuous radar-based sleep measurement for a subsample of participants. The study is informed by a young person advisory group input throughout its lifecycle. Data will be analysed using techniques such as dynamic structural equation modelling. The study can provide insights into mental health development from a multitimeframe developmental perspective, including insights into ‘daily life’ intervention targets for improving adolescent mental health.Ethics and disseminationThe study received ethical approval from the philosophy, psychology and language science ethics committee at the University of Edinburgh (404-2425/3) and the findings will be published in a series of peer-reviewed publications.

Deletions in EC1.45, a non-coding element upstream of SOX2, cause craniofacial developmental differences. In their study, Hannah Long and colleagues study the contribution of this enhancer to facial variation and evolution by investigating Neanderthal-specific variations. To learn more about this work, we spoke to co-first authors Kirsty Uttley and Hannah Jüllig, and the corresponding author Hannah Long, a Group Leader at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in the Institute of Genetics and Cancer at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

The foundation of “new quality productive forces” lies in BTIT integration, but China faces challenges of talent shortage and technology dependence. Zhejiang University pioneered biomedical informatics education in China and, in 2018, launched a dual-award undergraduate program in biomedical informatics (BMI) with the University of Edinburgh,The BMI program, integrating “medicine + biology + informatics”, aims to cultivate global-minded, interdisciplinary talents proficient in cutting-edge technologies. This paper, taking the award-winning institute Zhejiang University-University of Edinburgh Institute (ZJE) as an example, explores the four-dimensional talent cultivation system in biomedical informatics dual award program at ZJE, addressing challenges in traditional biomedical informatics education to foster leading talents with computational biology skills, global competence, and industry-innovative thinking.

ABSTRACT Girish Ram Mali is a group leader at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, UK. He completed his doctoral work with Prof. Pleasantine Mill at the MRC Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh (UK), studying human ciliopathies and ciliary dynein assembly. He subsequently moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (UK), where, under the supervision of Dr Andrew Carter, he studied the assembly and regulation of ciliary dynein. Girish established his independent research group in 2022 at the School of Biochemistry, University of Bristol, UK, and in 2023 he moved to the Dunn School of Pathology. His lab seeks to understand motile cilia and what makes them move with a focus on axonemal dynein assembly factors (DNAAFs), which shepherd the folding and assembly of individual dynein subunits into functional macromolecular motors that power ciliary motion. We spoke with Girish over Zoom to learn more about his career path, scientific mentorship, and how science is a human endeavour.

On 2 July 1965, the Duke of Edinburgh gave a speech to a group of students at Edinburgh University, during which he commented about the developing situation in Rhodesia. The Duke’s comments were fairly innocuous, and extended only to suggesting that all parties should avoid a ‘bloodbath’ by rushing into a sub-optimal agreement. This was seized upon by the press in Britain and abroad as evidence of royal interference in politics, and a week-long furore ensued, which included a complaint by Kenyan foreign minister. This article looks at the arguments that were deployed by the critics and defenders of Prince Philip to show both how different sides viewed the Rhodesian crisis, and to explore the constitutional issues surrounding the Royal Family and political debate. It argues that the key issue of the period was the timeline surrounding increased African involvement in government in Rhodesia, which is why the Duke’s comments were seen as so controversial. It also suggests that this episode demonstrates how developing communications technology and changed world politics meant that the Prince’s speech had more impact than it might previously have done, which in turn led to commentators questioning his freedom to express views publicly.