Developments in the Law Governing Online Activity: The Criminalisation of Catfishing and Civil Relief in Cases of Image-Based Sexual Abuse

This article considers the practice of catfishing and makes the case for it becoming a criminal offence. It draws on the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person (Amendment) Bill 2024 which proposed the creation of such an offence. Although the Bill collapsed upon the 2024 general election being called, the article urges that the Bill or at least the issue that the Bill seeks to address, namely catfishing, be reconsidered in the new Oireachtas. The article argues that a legislative response to this issue is necessary considering the extensive harm that catfishing can cause and the multiple individuals that it affects. It is further argued that catfishing ought to be a standalone offence notwithstanding assertions that the practice is punishable under pre-existing offences like harassment. The article proceeds to discuss some recent developments in the law governing online activity that the aforementioned Bill will join provided it becomes law. In particular, the developments discussed here raise the prospect that there are now civil as well as criminal law remedies in cases of image-based sexual abuse

Enhancing Cultural Participation of Persons with Disabilities in the European Union: A Policy Brief

Cultural participation is a human right and a vital part of being a member of society. Yet, persons with disabilities face multiple obstacles when participating in cultural life. In the European Union (EU), Eurostat data have shown the significant and persistent ‘disability gap’ in cultural participation, with data showing lower rates of cultural participation among people with disabilities compared with the overall population aged 16 and over across all EU Member States (MS). Barriers faced by persons with disabilities include the absence of adequate or effective legislation ensuring the right to cultural participation, as well as the insufficient consultation and involvement of persons with disabilities in relevant decision-making processes. Additionally, the lack of physical and informational accessibility of cultural sites, goods and services, as well as persistent negative attitudes and stigma around participation of people with disabilities in the Cultural and Creative Sectors (CCS) are significant barriers for persons with disabilities. Structural barriers - such as poverty, social marginalisation and exclusion, along with the lack of adequate support services - contribute to the exclusion of people with disabilities from cultural life. Further, in the EU, barriers to cultural participation are linked to the existing fragmentation of EU accessibility legislation, piecemeal approaches to funding for accessible cultural initiatives as well as to relatively low prioritisation of cultural participation of persons with disabilities in EU disability policy. As provided for in Article 26 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR), persons with disabilities have the right ‘to benefit from measures designed to ensure their independence, social and occupational integration and participation in the life of the community’, which includes participation in culture. Furthermore, Article 30 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) articulates the right of persons with disabilities to participate in cultural life - alongside the right to participate in sport, leisure, and recreation – and lists a number of obligations to be complied with by States Parties to the Convention. Having ratified the CRPD, the EU, alongside its MS, shall implement Article 30 and promote the right to culture of persons with disabilities. However, ensuring meaningful participation in cultural life for people with disabilities is not only a matter of compliance with the CRPD and social justice, but it is also a vital contribution to the richness and diversity of society. When cultural spaces, programmes, and policies are accessible and inclusive, everyone benefits

Comprehensive examination of thermal energy storage through advanced phase change material integration for optimized building energy management and thermal comfort

Several countries all over the world are interested in the energy business. The scientific community is creating new energy-saving experiments in response to the present fossil fuel problems. Buildings are one of the components that use more energy, so it is highly desirable that knowledge is being generated and technology is developing to provide answers to this energy demand. When used in building elements for heating and cooling like coatings, blocks, panels or wall panels, phase change materials (PCMs) have been demonstrated to enhance the capacity for heat storage by absorbing heat as latent heat. Thus, during the past 20 years, research has been done on the application of phase change materials (PCMs) in latent heat storage systems. The most practical way to incorporate PCMs into construction parts is through the macro encapsulation approach, which is examined in this review together with the microencapsulation method. Furthermore, given that additional research is required to process biobased PCMs, we must pay greater attention to them, as evidenced by our examination of the literature on the encapsulation process of PCMs. Due to the lack of information provided in other reviews, there is a section dedicated to the superior PCM with lightweight material to ascertain its macro and microscale thermophysical and mechanical characteristics as well as to determine whether it would be feasible to switch from PCM that are made from petroleum to more ecologically friendly bio-based ones. Above all, this study also focuses on reviewing recent PCM research and evaluating the thermal performance of prototypes used in experimental PCM investigations, i.e., how the layout of design affects several variables and potential applications of PCM

Dimensions of recognition through relational labour in erotic content creation in Brazil

Relational labour has become a critical concept for understanding the consequences of the ongoing relationship between creators and their audiences on social media. This article draws on this discussion to address Brazilian erotic content creators’ perceptions of the impact of relational labour on their sense of self and subjective identity. Combining the concept with the idea of recognition as conceived in the Psychodynamics of Work, the article explores the subjective investment and identity development involved in the continual creator–audience intersubjective relationships. Based on 31 in-depth interviews with Brazilian erotic creators, the article reveals a deep subjective investment in performing relational labour and its impact on creators’ self-esteem and self-relationship, with the potential to strengthen their subjective identity and social value. Nevertheless, the symbolic rewards of relational labour are an effort rather than a guarantee, especially in highly stigmatised work where the distribution of in intersubjective relationships is uneven

Optimisation of heterogeneous wave energy converter arrays: A control co-design strategy

The commercial development and deployment of wave energy converters (WECs) will require arranging these devices in groups known as ‘arrays’, similar to the deployment other large-scale renewable energy systems, such as wind farms, or tidal arrays. This study explores a novel control co-design (CCD) strategy for heterogeneous arrays of point absorber-type WECs, focusing on the simultaneous optimisation of buoy hull geometry and array layout to harness multi-directional wind and swell wave energy. The WEC array operates under a newly developed global centralised control algorithm, which supports displacement constraints, but allows for the assessment of array performance in the frequency domain. This approach has the potential to significantly speed up the numerical solution of the control co-design optimisation problem, compared to more traditional time-domain-based methods. The array optimisation problem is solved using a global optimisation method. The performance function aims to optimise the positive network effect of interactions between devices in the array, while simultaneously considering cost issues, quantified by device sizes. The investigation identifies optimal device geometry and array layouts for clusters of three, four, and five WECs, in two different wave climates: Irish and Portuguese coasts, allowing the sensitivity of optimal solutions to different wave climates to be studied

The psychological complex in contemporary education policy

This paper brings together work in critical psychology and network governance to build a distinctive critique of how education policy mobilises the psychological complex to reinscribe deficit accounts of children and young people. While contemporary work in the critical analysis of the global educational policy assemblage has uncovered the undercurrents of scientism working to frame mainstream discourses, this paper excavates the manifestation of this through the ‘psy-complex’, which works to construct specific, narrow visions of possibilities and pupil subjectivities. To achieve this, the paper draws on critical psychological research to interrogate the dominance of, and position awarded to, psychology in the research report that informs the education inspection framework used by Ofsted to inspect schools in England. The discourses and assumptions produced and reproduced through this resource are of profound influence in wider constructions of, understandings of, and responses to educational contexts. We argue that the framework draws on the psy-complex to reinscribe deficit accounts of children and young people while perpetuating systemic inequities. We call for a more critical approach to research in psychology and education within which cultural, social, and historical contexts of inequality in education and childhood are deployed in explanations of educational inequalities

Fungal siderophores and their analogues alter microbial growth and biochemistry: expanding the repertoire of antimicrobial strategies.

In recent years, the concerns of rising anti-microbial resistance (AMR) in bacteria and fungi have grown due to the rate at which pathogens gain resistance to antimicrobials compared to the rate of antibiotic discovery. As a result, investigations into the role of siderophores, natural iron chelators produced by microbes under iron limiting conditions, are being carried out to see if these small metabolites can be used to bypass AMR by either limiting the amount of available iron or using them as carriers for ‘Trojan-Horse’ antibiotics. It was observed that Triacetylfusarinine C (TAFC), a siderophore native to Aspergillus fumigatus, significantly inhibited Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii growth in a dose-dependent manner (p < 0.05) and increased the production of a hitherto unknown catecholate, potentially enterobactin-related, siderophore in K. pneumoniae with a singly charged [M+1H]1+ of 924.34. Quantitative proteomic analysis revealed that K. pneumoniae treated with TAFC or gliotoxin (GT), another metabolite produced by A. fumigatus, exhibited disruption of metal homeostasis pathways, protein synthesis and electron transfer. Furthermore, Diacetylfusarinine C (DAFC), a TAFC analogue, was successfully conjugated to chitosan, a biopolymer, and separately to the chemotherapy drug methotrexate (MTX). The DAFC polymer exhibited increased iron-binding activity relative to free TAFC and the gallium chelate of DAFC-MTX (GaDAFC-MTX) conjugate significantly inhibited the growth of A. fumigatus on solid agar by 50 % (p < 0.005) and in liquid culture by 60% (p < 0.005). Interestingly, the GaDAFC-MTX conjugate significantly inhibited TAFC production by 95% (p < 0.005) and overall siderophore production by 50% (p < 0.05) whereas free MTX only inhibited the production of TAFC (p < 0.005). It is concluded that siderophores not native to K. pneumoniae can be used to limit the available environmental iron and that TAFC and derivatives are suitable candidates for developing Trojan-Horse antifungals

Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence

In a rapidly changing climate, evidence-based decision-making benefits from up-to-date and timely information. Here we compile monitoring datasets (published at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15639576; Smith et al., 2025a) to produce updated estimates for key indicators of the state of the climate system: net emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate forcers, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, the Earth's energy imbalance, surface temperature changes, warming attributed to human activities, the remaining carbon budget, and estimates of global temperature extremes. This year, we additionally include indicators for sea-level rise and land precipitation change. We follow methods as closely as possible to those used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One report. The indicators show that human activities are increasing the Earth's energy imbalance and driving faster sea-level rise compared to the AR6 assessment. For the 2015–2024 decade average, observed warming relative to 1850–1900 was 1.24 [1.11 to 1.35] °C, of which 1.22 [1.0 to 1.5] °C was human-induced. The 2024-observed best estimate of global surface temperature (1.52 °C) is well above the best estimate of human-caused warming (1.36 °C). However, the 2024 observed warming can still be regarded as a typical year, considering the human-induced warming level and the state of internal variability associated with the phase of El Niño and Atlantic variability. Human-induced warming has been increasing at a rate that is unprecedented in the instrumental record, reaching 0.27 [0.2–0.4] °C per decade over 2015–2024. This high rate of warming is caused by a combination of greenhouse gas emissions being at an all-time high of 53.6±5.2 Gt CO2e yr−1 over the last decade (2014–2023), as well as reductions in the strength of aerosol cooling. Despite this, there is evidence that the rate of increase in CO2 emissions over the last decade has slowed compared to the 2000s, and depending on societal choices, a continued series of these annual updates over the critical 2020s decade could track decreases or increases in the rate of the climatic changes presented here

Book Review: Educational research practice in Southern contexts: recentring, reframing and reimagining methodological canons: edited by Sharlene Swartz, Nidhi Singal and Madeleine Arnot, Oxon, Routledge, 2024, 359pp., £35.69 (paperback) and available Open Access, ISBN 9781003355397

Book Review: Opening with a sketch of the rather tense landscape of contemporary educational scholarship, Swartz, Singal, and Arnot, present a pressing aim to “open up the debate about ‘what works’ when researching Southern contexts” (p. 1). The editors’ deep reflection on this challenge impressively highlights their focus not just on the level of method, as so many edited volumes on research methods do; this itself revealing the effects of coloniality, which has sheared critical imaginaries from the production of knowledge fuelled by the “cognitive perspective of Eurocentrism” and a “growing techno critization” of knowledge production(Quijano, 2002). Instead, the focus goes deeper to encompass ontological and epistemological concerns, prior to “learning about first-hand experience of conducting research in such[Southern] contexts” to “recognise different cultural ways of being, knowing, and doing”(p. 1; original emphases), that lie outside the dominant Northern Anglophone systems of understanding, which have been deeply imbricated in domination and violence. Subsequently, the organisation and structure of this book is harmonious to the editors’ overarching goals and encourages the reader to engage with a diverse, robust and situationally rich volume of scholarship, taking them through themes of Centring, Reframing and Reimagining approaches to educational research, informed by postcolonial and decolonial perspectives

Reaching out: Exhibition: An Damer a landmark in Irish Theatre

An exhibition to mark Seachtain na Gaeilge 2025, was presented by Special Collections & Archives at Maynooth University Library, about the Damer Theatre. An Damer was an Irish language theatre operated by Gael Linn in the Unitarian Church, Saint Stephen’s Green, Dublin from 1955 until 1981