Epistemic Deprivation

It is often claimed that gender data gaps (GDGs) are unjust, but the nature of the injustice has not been interrogated. We argue that injustices arising from such data gaps are not merely socio-political but also epistemic: they arbitrarily skew the epistemic landscape in favour of one group over another. GDGs place a greater epistemic burden on women and gender minorities; they have to do more to avoid error and the pay-off is worse: they have a smaller pool of true beliefs on which to act. We suggest that there are both pragmatic and conceptual reasons to differentiate the injustice arising from GDGs from other more familiar varieties (such as testimonial and hermeneutical injustice), and so we introduce the new concept of epistemic deprivation to capture this injustice.Output Status: Forthcoming/Available Onlin

Spuren des Alltags an ungewöhnlichen Orten: Ein Blick über den Tellerrand in deutscher und schottischer Heimerziehung

Case records hold life-long significance for those who spent their childhoods in looked after care. Across Europe, public inquiries into the care and treatment of children in care have examined the content of records and have highlighted their limitations. This paper presents data from phase one of a wider study; ‘Archiving Residential Children’s Homes in Scotland and Germany (ARCH)’, which undertook content analysis of the archives of two residential settings, Aberlour and Freistatt. Findings highlight that records were kept and maintained not only by the institution but also for the institution. Despite this, children’s everyday lives were noticed and captured, albeit it often accidentally and incidentally. The ways in which these every day encounters were narrated and constructed suggest the power of the overarching ethos in place in the two settings and the adults’ orientations towards their role and purpose. Although different in tone and remit, both archives capture traces of daily life and tell us something about what a childhood in Freistatt or Aberlour might have been like. By examining the case recording practices in the past, we raise questions about what this means for contemporary social work and its responsibilities in relation to archiving children’s everyday childhoods

Children consider others’ need and reputation in costly sharing decisions

Children’s sharing decisions are shaped by recipient characteristics such as need and reputation, yet studies often focus on one characteristic at a time. This research examines how combinations of recipient characteristics impact costly sharing decisions among 3- to 9-year-old children (N = 186). Children were informed about the material need (needy or not needy) and reputation (sharing or not sharing) of potential recipients before having the opportunity to share stickers with them. Results indicated that sharing was higher when the recipient was needy and increased more when the recipient had a reputation for sharing. Children shared over half of their stickers with a needy, sharing recipient, and less than half with a not needy, not sharing recipient. Children shared equally with recipients who were needy and not sharing or not needy and sharing, suggesting no preference for either characteristic. To explore the emotional benefits of sharing, children rated their own and the recipient’s mood before and after sharing, showing a greater increase in ratings of the recipient’s mood when more resources were shared. These findings suggest that children consider multiple recipient characteristics in their sharing decisions, demonstrating altruism toward those in need and indirectly reciprocating past sharing based on reputation

Care Poverty and Unmet Needs: Inequalities in Theory and Practice

This chapter places the theory of care poverty in the context of other theories of care and provides an overview of the conflicts inherent in these theories, including the idea of ‘social citizenship’ – the right to access resources to meet needs, in this case care needs. Ideas about care poverty are used to offer a theoretical way of synthesising previous conflicting theories of care, testing this against kinship versus formal care provision. The chapter concludes that the concept of care poverty enables us to talk about the need for care as a social right, to reframe our thinking away from vulnerabilities and needs and towards a more emancipatory approach to care provision. As well as ontological power, the concept also has political power. The care poverty theory needs to be empirically tested and there is work to be done in comparative social policy to examine the ideas, institutions and actors that exacerbate and alleviate care poverty

Participatory visual methods and the mobilization of community knowledge: Working towards community-derived disaster risk management in the context of advancing climate change

Understanding climate-related challenges and generating effective interventions against them often lacks the knowledge of those who directly experience those challenges as a lived reality. We use the 'Water and Fire' project as an example of a research process undertaken to mobilize community knowledge on environmental disaster risk management. We worked with site-specific groups of community-based co-researchers who live in three marginalized areas of Cape Town that are susceptible to fire outbreaks, flooding, and water scarcity. We took a layered participatory visual methods approach, including digital storytelling, community mapping and photovoice, to differentially demonstrate how these hazards are experienced at household, neighbourhood, and community levels from the perspective of community-based co-researchers. The ongoing inquiry enabled the co-researchers to illustrate and describe the biggest challenges they face and propose what they see as the most practical and promising solutions. We then facilitated a process of participatory analysis, triangulation of data and democratic decision-making amongst the co-researchers, through which they formulated a series of community-derived 'Best Bets' to better manage disaster risks. As part of the analysis, the co-researchers selected the stories, maps and photographs they wanted to present at stakeholder engagement events in making a case for the relevance and urgency of their Best Bets. We conclude that the participatory visual methods approach taken in the 'Water and Fire' project can be used as a model to strengthen the mobilization of local knowledge and further possibilities for community-derived disaster risk management in the context of advancing climate change

Large Language Model Based Mutations in Genetic Improvement

Ever since the first large language models (LLMs) have become available, both academics and practitioners have used them to aid software engineering tasks. However, little research as yet has been done in combining search-based software engineering (SBSE) and LLMs. In this paper, we evaluate the use of LLMs as mutation operators for genetic improvement (GI), an SBSE approach, to improve the GI search process. In a preliminary work, we explored the feasibility of combining the Gin Java GI toolkit with OpenAI LLMs in order to generate an edit for the JCodec tool. Here we extend this investigation involving three LLMs and three types of prompt, and five real-world software projects. We sample the edits at random, as well as using local search. We also conducted a qualitative analysis to understand why LLM-generated code edits break as part of our evaluation. Our results show that, compared with conventional statement GI edits, LLMs produce fewer unique edits, but these compile and pass tests more often, with the OpenAI model finding test-passing edits 77% of the time. The OpenAI and Mistral LLMs are roughly equal in finding the best run-time improvements. Simpler prompts are more successful than those providing more context and examples. The qualitative analysis reveals a wide variety of areas where LLMs typically fail to produce valid edits commonly including inconsistent formatting, generating non-Java syntax, or refusing to provide a solution

Fluvial flooding and plastic pollution – The delivery of potential human pathogenic bacteria into agricultural fields

The frequency of plastic debris entering agricultural land is likely going to increase due to increased discharge into surface waters and more frequent flood events. Microbial biofilm on the surfaces of plastic pollution (known as the ‘plastisphere’) in freshwater environments often includes human pathogenic bacteria capable of causing disease. Pathogens have been detected on the surface of plastics in freshwater environments, but it is yet to be determined whether plastic debris can also transport pathogens into agricultural fields during flooding. Therefore, this study quantified the presence of viable pathogenic bacteria on the surface of plastic pollution at five agricultural fields along two rivers. All visible plastic debris, including sewage-associated plastic waste, were collected along a perpendicular 100 m transect from the riparian zone into each field. All plastic pieces were screened for five target bacteria (Escherichia coli, intestinal enterococci, Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp., and Klebsiella spp.) using selective media, and positively identified colonies subsequently tested for antimicrobial resistance. In all five fields, there were higher volumes of plastic in the areas closer to the river, with 75% ± 24% of plastic collected within 30 m from the riverbank. Overall, 49% of all plastic collected in agricultural fields was colonised by phenotypically positive colonies for at least one or more target bacteria, with resistance to commonly prescribed antibiotics detected among several of these target bacteria. Therefore, the transport of contaminated plastic debris from fluvial floodwater into agricultural fields could pose an as yet unquantified risk of introducing potentially harmful bacteria into agricultural systems and the ultimately into the food chain

Macroeconomic determinants of the stock market: A comparative study of Anglosphere and BRICS

This study examines and compares the macroeconomic determinants of stock markets in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and Anglosphere (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) countries given their different economic structures. Using quarterly data from 1995Q3 to 2023Q3, we employ a panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration approach to analyse the long-run relations between real stock prices and the key macroeconomic variables of real GDP, consumer price index (CPI), policy rates, and money supply. Our findings show that in Anglosphere countries, there is a significant positive elastic long-run relation between stock prices and real GDP, and a significant negative elastic relation with CPI. Thus, economic growth enhances stock market performance while inflation adversely affects it in these developed economies. For BRICS countries, we identify a significant positive inelastic long-run relation between stock prices and CPI, indicating that stock markets in these emerging economies act as an inflation hedge. Policy rates and money supply are not significant for either group. These results highlight that different macroeconomic dynamics influence stock markets across developed and emerging economies, implying different risk characteristics. The Anglosphere stock markets are driven by the competing macroeconomic effects arising from GDP and CPI, whereas for the BRICS stock markets, inflationary conditions are of primary importance. The study offers insights for investors and policymakers regarding asset allocation strategies and the formulation of policies tailored to different economic blocs

Changes in behaviour and serotonergic system of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) fry related to different levels of black soldier fly larvae meal inclusion in the diet: Exploring the use of nutritional enrichment for its use as positive welfare in aquaculture.

nsects are gaining attention for its efficiency in converting low-value substrates into high-quality protein, aligning with principles of the circular economy. This study investigates black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens, BSFL) as a protein source. BSFL meal offers a balanced nutritional profile and functional compounds that may enhance fish welfare. However, limited research exists on its effects on fish behaviour and it´s use as an operational welfare indicator (OWI), a crucial aspect for ensuring high welfare standards and understanding the impact on salmon performance. This study evaluated the feeding behaviour of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) fry conditioned from their first feeding stage with four isocaloric and isoproteic diets containing increasing levels of defatted BSFL meal (0, 8, 16, and 24 %), being continuously fed for 24 hours a day, over 21 days. Daily, four 30-minute video recordings (00, 06, 12, and 18 h) were analysed to observe fish activity using a group scan sampling method. The data were fitted to a sinusoidal model to identify circadian rhythm patterns. In addition, brain samples were collected at the end of the experiment for serotonergic activity analysis. Absolute real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was used to measure the gene expression of rate-limiting serotonin-synthesis enzymes (tryptophan hydroxylase 1a and tryptophan hydroxylase 2), while high-performance liquid chromatography with electrochemical detection (HPLC-EC) quantified serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5HT) and its primary oxidative metabolite, 5-hydroxyindolacetic acid (5HIAA). The results show that black soldier fly larvae meal (BSM) diets significantly affect fish behaviour. Low inclusion levels (8 %) emerged as promising for salmon nutritional enrichment, promoting natural behaviour patterns that could be associated with positive welfare. However, higher inclusion levels (24 %) negatively impacted welfare, as evidenced by reduced feed intake and anxiety-like behaviours linked to lower serotonergic turnover. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating behavioural measures when designing feeding protocols. Further research is essential to assess the long-term effects of BSM inclusion on salmon welfare and key performance parameters