Metaverse in financial industry: Use cases, value, and challenges

The Metaverse is an emerging technology with the potential to revolutionize business processes and models across various industries. Financial institutions, including universal banks, are actively exploring its applications in financial services. Despite the concept of the Metaverse being around for several years, there is a notable gap in studies examining its value proposition for financial services. To address this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with experts from the Metaverse and financial sectors. We formulate interview questions to comprehensively explore the Metaverse, seeking to gain insight into its diverse aspects, scope and implications for financial service providers. These inquiries are structured around five primary themes, including the understanding of the Metaverse, potential use cases, benefits, impacts, and challenges. Based on our interview findings, we examine the factors that impede the alignment between academic research and industry practices. Finally, we outline the future research directions

Beyond the BBFC: Local and regional film censorship in Britain

This book length study explores the complex practices of local and regional film censorship within the UK in different historical periods. The processes of film censorship vary widely across different areas and regions, according to different periods, the composition of particular councils and the influence of external events. This work will build on work carried out in recent years which identifies the limited reach of the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) and the ways in which local authorities and councils worked to impose their own methods of film censorship through particular interpretations of the Cinematograph Acts of 1909 and 1959. It will explore contentious local cases and look at the different ways in which local authorities in different areas are operating to control local film culture

Rethinking human rights: critical insights from Palestinian youth

Palestinians have used the language of human rights to articulate their struggle against the Israeli occupation and internationalise the injustices they face. Palestinian young people learning about human rights at school experience a dissonance between the aspirational and internationalised framework of those norms and the layers of injustice of their own lived experience. Drawing on research in the occupied West Bank, this book explores the three layers of marginalisation faced by Palestinian young people – the Israeli occupation that denies them their humanity; the Palestinian pseudo-state that denies them a voice; and patriarchal structures that deny them agency – to show how these barriers influence their understanding of, and scepticism towards, human rights. Influenced by decolonial theories, this book illuminates how space needs to be created for the counter-narratives of the oppressed in human rights discourse, which may not align with more conventional representations of human rights. It contends that human rights and, by extension, human rights education in the Palestinian context (and beyond) needs to be critiqued, decolonised and ultimately transformed

The medical licensing assessment will fall short of determining whether a UK medical graduate behaves ethically

UK medical graduates will soon need to pass the medical licensing assessment, which assesses skills and knowledge in ethics using multiple choice questions (eg single best answer questions) and objective structured clinical examination. However, educational leaders have recognised that these methods lack the sophistication needed to accurately assess medical ethics. The reasons are two-fold. First, there may be a knowledge and practice gap in medical schools when it comes to preparing students for the assessment. To this end, this article shares peer advice about how best to use objective structured clinical examinations and single best answer questions for assessing medical ethics to help prepare students for the medical licensing assessment. Second, the design of the assessment is unlikely to adequately measure graduates' ethical values and behaviour in real world scenarios. Further work is needed to design assessments that are sophisticated enough to examine candidates' ethical reasoning and their actual behaviour.</p

Influence of giant reed (Arundo donax L.) culms processing procedure on physicochemical, rheological, and thermomechanical properties of polyethylene composite

Giant reed (Arundo donax L.) is a plant species with a high growth rate and low requirements, which makes it particularly interesting for the production of different bioproducts, including natural fibers. This work assesses the use of fibers obtained from reed culms as reinforcement for a high-density polyethylene (HDPE) matrix. Two different lignocellulosic materials were used: i) shredded culms and ii) fibers obtained by culms processing, which have not been reported yet in literature as fillers for thermoplastic materials. A good stress transfer for the fibrous composites was observed, with significant increases in mechanical properties; composites with 20% fiber provided a tensile elastic modulus of almost 1900 MPa (78% increase versus neat HDPE) and a flexural one of 1500 MPa (100% increase), with an improvement of 15% in impact strength. On the other hand, composites with 20% shredded biomass increased by 50% the tensile elastic modulus (reaching 1560 MPa) and the flexural one (up to 1500 MPa), without significant changes in impact strength. The type of filler is more than its ratio; composites containing fibers resulted in a higher performance than the ones with shredded materials due to the higher aspect ratio of fibe

Exploring wave–vegetation interaction at stem scale: analysis of the coupled flow–structure interactions using the SPH-based DualSPHysics code and the FEA module of Chrono

Aquatic vegetation in the littoral zone plays a crucial role in attenuating wave energy and protecting coastal communities from hazardous events. This study contributes to the development of numerical models aimed at designing nature-based coastal defense systems. Specifically, a novel numerical application for simulating wave–vegetation interactions at the stem scale is presented. The numerical model employed, DualSPHysics, couples the meshfree Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) fluid solver with a structural solver to accurately capture the two-way interactions between waves and flexible vegetation. The proposed numerical model is validated against experimental data involving a submerged rubber cylinder representing an individual vegetation stem, subjected to regular waves. The results demonstrate excellent agreement in hydrodynamics, force transfer, and the swaying motion of the flexible cylinder. Importantly, the approach explicitly captures energy transfer between the fluid environment and the individual stem. The numerical results indicate persistent turbulent flow along the vegetation stem, even when its swaying speed matches that of the surrounding environment. This reveals the presence of vortex shedding and energy dissipation, which challenges the concept of passive swaying in flexible aquatic vegetation.<br/

Leveraging high-performance HRM practices and knowledge sharing for managing technological and social change in emerging market healthcare providers

We investigate the factors that affect healthcare service innovation resulting from digitalization. We develop a conceptual model asserting that adopting digital technologies for healthcare service innovation will require effective knowledge-sharing antecedents and high-performance human resource management (HPHRM) practices. Using a grounded theory approach, we present evidence from the healthcare industry in an emerging market setting of multiple qualitative case studies. We note how HPHRM practices create a social context for employees and managers to share their knowledge through face-to-face and technologically-mediated applications for delivering innovative healthcare services. We highlight the importance of employee empowerment, job autonomy, social interaction ties, trust, and shared goals for improving knowledge sharing and developing innovative healthcare solutions. Therefore, our study highlights the impact on the design of workplaces engaged in developing innovative healthcare solutions and the role of specific HPHRM practices in supporting the same.<br/