The European Para Sport Coaching Workforce: A Quasi-Professional Space

Coaches in Paralympic and disability sport (Para coaching) play a significant societal role by providing opportunities for disabled people in sport and physical activity. Such is its importance; this role is now recognised by the European Union and its professionalisation agenda. Therefore, drawing on Abbott’s theory of professions and Thomas’ social relational model of disability, this original transnational study considers critically the characteristics of the European Para coaching workforce. Data collection followed a mixed methodology via an online survey of Para coaches (N = 275). Combining quantitative and qualitative data, the analysis generated three higher order themes, “Exclusion, differentiated labour force and working contexts,” “Uneven coach education and development opportunities” and “Impairment effect as a source of coaches professional knowledge.” These themes illuminate Para coaching as a quasi-professional space shaped by specific workforce characteristics and those mediated by sporting domains. The findings and recommendations prompt significant considerations for policy makers, coach educators, and sport organisations

Hauntology, Online Journaling, Ghosts, and Temporal Ruptures in Early Childhood Education and Care

This edited volume operationalizes the figure of the ghost and subsequent hauntings through Derrida’s framing of 'hauntology'—in an effort to attend to the liminal spaces that exist between presence and absence throughout social studies contexts (and beyond). Traditionally, social studies education and its tenets of economics, civics, geography, government, and history have been concerned with how bodies become (re)produced, (re)located, destroyed, and remembered across vectors of time. However, as this work argues, the maintenance of strict demarcations of time becomes problematic by closing opportunities for students to engage with the complex ways that (material) bodies shift within temporal encounters. As such, this book is primarily concerned with pursuing—and positioning—such haunted encounters as generative lines of inquiry that grant us (e.g., educators, students, researchers) the ability to think differently about history, the present, and the future. In a distinct move toward a 'pastpresentfuture', this volume challenges the boundaries of social studies teaching, learning, and research by interrupting majoritarian temporal/material positionings that stymie how social and ecological justice is narrativized, understood, and perhaps most significantly, attained in the future

Hotspot Issue Handling and Reliable Data Forwarding Technique for Ocean Underwater Sensor Networks

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) have emerged as a promising technology for a wide range of ocean monitoring applications. The UWSNs suffer from unique challenges of the underwater environment, such as dynamic and sparse network topology, which can easily lead to a partitioned network. This results in hotspot formation and the absence of the routing path from the source to the destination. Therefore, to optimize the network lifetime and limit the possibility of hotspot formation along the data transmission path, the need to plan a traffic-aware protocol is raised. In this research, we propose a traffic-aware routing protocol called PG-RES, which is predicated on the ideas of Pressure Gradient and RESistance concept. The proposed PG-RES protocol initially detects its neighboring area using a node request message to build a routing directory that includes the communication cost to each neighboring node. Then, by adjusting the routing process according to network conditions in a proactive mode, PG-RES mitigates traffic burden in the nodes along the transmission path to the sink, so the chances of hotspot occurrence are reduced in the underwater environment. The simulation results have revealed that the proposed PG-RES protocol achieves superior performance than the other techniques in terms of average energy usage, packet delivery ratio, network lifetime, and transmission delay. The PG-RES protocol demonstrated a reliable data transmission with a packet drop ratio that was 13.92% lower than EEDOR-VA and 3.66% lower than VHARD-FS. The development of this protocol aims to support real-time applications in highly isolated ocean environments, where reliable data forwarding and hotspot handling are essential for timely data transmission.</p

Review: Sensing Technologies for the Optimisation and Improving Manufacturing of Fibre-Reinforced Polymeric Structures

Over the last three decades, composite structures have become increasingly more common in everyday life, such as in wind turbines as part of the solution to produce clean energy, and their use in the aerospace industry due to their advantages over conventional materials. Most of these advantages are dependent upon the reliability and quality of the manufacturing process to ensure that there are no defects/faults or imperfections during manufacturing. Thus, it is critical to monitor the enclosed environment of moulds during fabrication in real time. This need has caused many researchers—past and present—to create or apply many sensing technologies to achieve real-time monitoring of the manufacturing processes of composite structures to ensure that the structures can meet their requirements. A consequence of these research activities is the myriad of sensing schemes, (for example, optical, electrical, piezo, and nanomaterial schemes and the use of digital twins) available to consider, and the investigations all of them have both strengths and weaknesses for a given application, with no apparent option having a distinct advantage. This review reveals that the best possible sensing solution depends upon a large set of parameters, the geometry of the composite structure, the required specification, and budget limits, to name a few. Furthermore, challenges remain for researchers trying to find solutions, such as a sensing scheme that can directly detect wrinkles/waviness during the laying-up procedure, real-time detection of the resin flow front throughout the mould, and the monitoring of the resin curing spatially, all at a spatial resolution of ~1 cm with the required sensitivity along with the need to obtain the true interpretation of the real-time data. This review offers signposts through the variety of sensing options, with their advantages and failings, to readers from the composite and sensing community to aid in making an informed decision on the possible sensing approaches to help them meet their composite structure’s desired function and tolerances, and the challenges that remain

A-SSGC: Adaptive Graph Construction Capturing Physicochemical Commonalities for Industrial Fault Diagnosis

Accurate identification of subtle faults in industrial manufacturing remains a critical challenge, driving increased adoption of machine learning (ML) techniques. However, classical ML models often overlook complex inter-sample relationships rooted in shared physicochemical properties, thereby compromising diagnostic accuracy.Addressing this, we propose Adaptive Synergistic Similarity Graph Construction (A-SSGC), a novel algorithm that adaptively fuses multiple graph construction methods. ASSGC employs an adaptive sparsification strategy, guidedby node degrees, to capture physicochemical commonalities among samples effectively. A-SSGC significantly outperforms traditional ML models, basic graph construction techniques, and both unsupervised and semi-superviseddeep graph construction approaches. It consistently outperforms these baselines across representative graph neural networks on multiple industrial manufacturing datasets. Visualization of the constructed graphs confirms theability of A-SSGC to reveal physicochemical commonalities, thereby enhancing interpretability and supporting deeper analytical insights. By effectively capturing these commonalities, A-SSGC improves diagnostic performance. It also shows strong potential as a versatile tool for industrial data analysis, contributing to improved automation and reliability in manufacturing processes

"‘My dad said, ‘come on, enough is enough'"– why have social workers decided to leave England’s child protection workforce?"

Originality: England’s child protection workforce is in a state of crisis, characterised by record sickness, vacancy and agency rates. However, research exploring the factors underpinning this has focussed on current practitioners ‘intention to leave’ social work roles – with a dearth of enquiry exploring with former practitioners their rationale for leaving. Purpose: This paper reports on a study with 72 former child protection social workers. Design: The study adopted an iterative mixed method design (comprising of focus groups, questionnaire and individual interviews). Findings: Results highlighted the stressful nature of the job on practitioner health; the tendency to be targeted for threats, abuse, violence, and/or intimidation; and the job not being what practitioners had expected it to be, as key themes in reasons for leaving child protection practice. Implications: Implications highlight the need to improve working conditions within the English child protection system – including in the context of caseload size, the bureaucratic burden’, and organisational cultures prioritising compliance with process, over time with children. Also, the need for greater awareness of, and support for, threats, abuse, violence and intimidation against social workers. Furthermore, a move away from completely ‘agile’ working models with the goal of addressing feelings of isolation, improving access to peer support, and better delineation between ‘work-life’ and ‘home-life’

Teaching Surgery Through Immediate Preoperative Small-Group Discussions

Immediate preoperative small-group discussions provide a structured model for contemporary surgical education. The discussions provide an opportunity for collaborative learning that integrates the individual and collective development of technical and nontechnical surgical skills, including leadership and teamwork. Important academic and life-long learning skills are also developed to facilitate a seamless transition toward becoming an independent surgeon. In addition, the model can play a vital role in optimizing surgical efficiency and ensuring patient safety by serving as a comprehensive surgical safety checklist, reconfirming the definitive surgical plan

Impact of food, beverage, and alcohol brand marketing on consumptive behaviours and health in children and adults:A systematic review and meta-analysis

Exposure to unhealthy food, beverage, and alcohol marketing can contribute to inadequate diet and excess alcohol consumption, both risk factors for diet-related non-communicable diseases including obesity and cancer. By not featuring specific products, brand-only marketing strategies circumvent restrictions that assess healthiness at the product level and restrict accordingly. Currently, there is no global or national government policy that explicitly addresses brand marketing for unhealthy products linked to diet-related non-communicable diseases. This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizes contemporary evidence on the effects of food, beverage, and alcohol brand-marketing on diet-related cognitive outcomes (preference, choice), diet-related behavioral outcomes (purchase requests, purchase, consumption), and health-related outcomes (body weight, body mass index, obesity) in children and adults. Included studies manipulated acute marketing exposure, with at least one brand-only marketing condition. Fourteen databases were searched (including MEDLINE and PubMed) for articles published from January 2004 to February 2024. Nineteen eligible studies were identified and assessed for bias; five were included in the meta-analysis assessing effects on consumption. Findings from the review suggest brand marketing for food, beverages, and alcohol can influence preference, choice, and purchase intent. The meta-analysis found no evidence of a significant effect of brand-only marketing on consumption. Overall, evidence was limited and of mixed quality so further robust research is needed to inform regulatory action. Government policies for reducing brand-only marketing are needed to protect vulnerable populations from brand marketing promoting unhealthy consumption behaviors that increase the risk of non-communicable disease

A clinical case report on biceps femoris T-junction surgical repair &amp; rehabilitation of an international footballer

This clinical case study details the management of an international footballer who sustained a high-grade biceps femoris T junction tendon injury. Following surgical repair of the tendon, the player completed a phased return to training rehabilitation programme that was designed to progressively expose load and function from a strengthening, physical conditioning and technical performance aspect. This case report outlines the phases and subsequent aims in conjunction with shared decision-making processes that assisted to ensure a successful rehabilitation. This case report considers the alignment of “normal” training load and volume as a comparative marker as well as additional comparative physical profiling metrics to further inform suitability to return to training. This case report further outlines the importance of individualised rehabilitation as well as longitudinal monitoring upon returning to training to reduce further risk of (re)injury and return to performance

Informal learning in music education: exploring theory in practice

‘Informal learning in music education: exploring theory in practice’ will examine how informal learning pedagogy is understood, implemented and experienced in music education. Informal learning promotes increased student choice and autonomy, and benefits of the approach include increased student motivation, inclusion and authenticity. Informal learning became particularly popular in music education over two decades ago, and the approach has evolved and become adapted in practice. This book will draw upon two key research projects that trace the development and evolution of informal learning that span across ten years of study. Research Project One was conducted in two phases: interviews with three key figures who have played a key role in the development of the approach (Green, D’Amore and Gower), and four in-depth case studies of secondary schools where informal learning was being implemented in England. Research Project Two was also conducted in two phases: an interview with Musical Futures leadership (Hannan), and eight interviews with primary and secondary school music teachers who have implemented informal learning in the United Kingdom and internationally. The book has been organized according to key findings and themes that have been generated from the research to frame contemporary thinking about informal learning pedagogy, including benefits, challenges, tensions and adaptations. In light of the findings, new terminology will be proposed to more closely capture informal learning implementation in contemporary practice: a pedagogy of informal – formal equilibrium. Furthermore, timely and important implications for research, practice and policy will be offered to facilitate the future sustainability of the approach