Decision-support frameworks for MCDA method selection and emission abatement technology assessment in the maritime sector

The maritime industry significantly impacts global trade but is challenged by high emissions contributing to environmental degradation and climate change. Transitioning to sustainable maritime practices necessitates robust decision-aid tools to manage complex, multi-stakeholder scenarios effectively. Decision science, however, often struggles to develop comprehensive decision-aid frameworks due to methodological constraints, inadequate stakeholder representation, and the dynamic nature of maritime operations. The evolution of decision analysis, from traditional single-objective optimization to multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), has advanced decision science by better accommodating diverse stakeholder perspectives and multiple conflicting criteria. Despite these advancements, a critical research gap remains: the lack of systematic frameworks for selecting appropriate MCDA methods specifically tailored to port sustainability and maritime emission abatement decisions.This study addresses this gap by developing a structured MCDA selection framework informed by a systematic literature review conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. The framework categorizes decision problems into four types—ranking, choice, sorting, and clustering—and aligns them with suitable MCDA methods. The review identifies the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a widely used method due to its structured and intuitive hierarchy. However, it also highlights notable limitations, including design and describing alternatives and computational complexity with numerous criteria.To enhance the practicality of AHP, this research integrates a feature-model-based screening process that systematically preselects feasible alternatives. This approach reduces cognitive burden in the decision-making process. The results reveal specific stakeholder preferences influenced by vessel characteristics, voyage types, and regulatory contexts, underscoring the importance of tailored decision support. A comparative analysis of national strategies in Norway and Singapore further highlights the effectiveness of regulatory incentives and collaborative approaches in accelerating technology adoption.The primary contribution of this study is the development of a bottom-up decision-support framework that integrates problem structuring with multi-stakeholder decision modelling for sustainable maritime investments. Its implications extend beyond academia, offering actionable insights for policymakers, shipping companies, and port authorities. Future research should aim to expand stakeholder engagement, incorporate dynamic decision-making models, and integrate behavioural dimensions into sustainability planning.<br/

‘It gives a sense of purpose’ - exploring GP registrars’ views on relational continuity of care: a survey

Background: relational continuity of care has been shown to improve patient outcomes and clinician satisfaction. However, little is known about how GP registrars, the future workforce in general practice, experience this continuity, especially in the context of evolving workforces and increasing use of remote consultations.Aim: this study aimed to explore GP registrars' views on relational continuity of care and identify personal, training, and practice factors that may influence these views, including the impact of digital/remote consulting.Design &amp; setting: a cross-sectional online survey was conducted among GP registrars in the West Midlands, England. The survey explored registrars' experiences and attitudes towards relational continuity, including the impact of remote consulting.Method: the survey combined Likert-scale and multiple-choice questions with free-text responses. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics with logistic regression to identify personal and training factors that might influence views. Content analysis was used for qualitative data.Results: 246 responses were received (estimated 14.5% response rate). Registrars valued relational continuity, particularly for patients with long-term conditions. Barriers such as rotational training, high workload, and limited appointment access were reported. Remote consulting was seen as challenging for building relationships but helpful for follow-up encounters. Few personal or training factors influenced views on relational continuity.Conclusion: despite significant barriers, GP registrars highlighted the importance of relational continuity for patient care and clinician satisfaction. Further research is needed to explore how training models impact continuity, and how training and remote consulting can support the experience of relational continuity in practice

Integration of through-sapphire substrate machining with superconducting quantum processors

A sapphire machining process integrated with intermediate-scale quantum processors is demonstrated. The process allows through-substrate electrical connections, necessary for low-frequency mode-mitigation, as well as signal-routing, which are vital as quantum computers scale in qubit number, and thus dimension. High-coherence qubits are required to build fault-tolerant quantum computers and so material choices are an important consideration when developing a qubit technology platform. Sapphire, as a low-loss dielectric substrate, has shown to support high-coherence qubits. In addition, recent advances in material choices such as tantalum and titanium-nitride, both deposited on a sapphire substrate, have demonstrated qubit lifetimes exceeding 0.3 ms. However, the lack of any process equivalent of deep-silicon etching to create through-substrate-vias in sapphire, or to inductively shunt large dies, has limited sapphire to small-scale processors, or necessitates the use of chiplet architecture. Here, a sapphire machining process that is compatible with high-coherence qubits is presented. This technique immediately provides a means to scale quantum processing units (QPUs) with integrated mode-mitigation, and provides a route toward the development of through-sapphire-vias, both of which allow the advantages of sapphire to be leveraged as well as facilitating the use of sapphire-compatible materials for large-scale QPUs.<br/

Decoding the narcissistic brain

There is a substantial knowledge gap in the narcissism literature: less than 1% of the nearly 12,000 articles on narcissism have addressed its neural basis. To help fill this gap, we asked whether the multifacetedness of narcissism could be decoded from spontaneous neural oscillations. We attempted to do so by applying a machine learning approach (multivariate pattern analysis) to the resting-state EEG data of 162 participants who also completed a comprehensive battery of narcissism scales assessing agentic, admirative, rivalrous, communal, and vulnerable forms. Consistent with the agency-communion model of narcissism, agentic and communal forms of grandiose narcissism were reflected in distinct, non-overlapping patterns of spontaneous neural oscillations. Furthermore, consistent with a narcissistic admiration and rivalry concept model of narcissism, we observed largely non-overlapping patterns of spontaneous neural oscillations for admirative and rivalrous forms of narcissism. Vulnerable narcissism was negatively associated with power across fast and slow wave frequency bands. Taken together, the results suggest that the diverse forms of narcissism can be reliably predicted from spontaneous neural oscillations. The findings contribute to the burgeoning field of personality neuroscience

Optimising task allocation to balance business goals and worker well-being for financial service workforces

PurposeFinancial service companies manage huge volumes of data which requires timely error identification and resolution. The associated tasks to resolve these errors often put financial analyst workforces under significant pressure leading to resourcing challenges and increased business risk. To address this challenge, we introduce a formal task allocation model which considers both business orientated goals and analyst well-being. MethodologyWe use a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to find the optimal allocation and scheduling of tasks to analysts. The proposed solution is able to allocate tasks to analysts with appropriate skills and experience, while taking into account longer-term staff well-being objectives. FindingsWe demonstrate our GA model outperforms baseline algorithms, current working practice, and is applicable to a range of single and multi-objective real-world scenarios. We discuss the implementation of our AI powered model with workforce managers in-the-loop. OriginalityA key gap in existing allocation and scheduling models, is fully considering worker well-being. This paper presents an allocation model which explicitly optimises for well-being

Effects of stimulus temperature and skin hydration levels on wetness erception at the Underarm

Background: experiencing wetness on the skin because of sweating or contact with fluids can induce thermal discomfort. Millions of people apply antiperspirant deodorant products to the underarm to minimise this negative experience. However, the mechanisms underpinning wetness perception at the underarm and the influence of underlying stratum corneum hydration remain under investigation. We aimed to evaluate the role of stimulus temperature and skin hydration levels on wetness perception at the underarm in young participants.Materials and methods: ten healthy participants (5 M/5 F; 29 ± 7 years) underwent a quantitative sensory test during which they reported the perceived magnitude of wetness perception from a short-duration static application of a cold-wet (i.e., 5°C below local skin temperature), neutral-wet (i.e., equal to local skin temperature) and warm-wet (i.e., 5°C above local skin temperature) stimuli. Wetness perception was assessed on a 100-mm visual analogue scale (0 = dry; 100 = completely wet), with a repeated measures design exploring the effects of overhydration (+21 %) and dehydration (−40 %) of the underarm's skin.Results: our results indicated a higher wetness perception (p = 0.012) during the cold-wet (40 mm, 95 % CI: 25, 56) than during the warm-wet (25 mm, 95 % CI: 12, 39), and neutral-wet stimuli (24 mm, 95 % CI: 7, 40). Furthermore, overhydration of the underarm’ stratum corneum can lead to an increase in wetness perceptions upon contact with cold-wet stimuli only (mean increase: 20 mm, 95 % CI: 3, 36; p = 0.024; corresponding to 20 % increase).Conclusion: our findings provide novel fundamental insights into the underarm's perceptual responses to wetness, which could inform understanding of the determinants of wet feel associated with periods of sweating and the application of antiperspirant products

Photonics breakthroughs 2024: advances in B5G Radio-Power Over Fiber fronthaul

Specific demands of providing power to equipment in remote areas or hazardous environments, including populated areas, requiring high throughputs and ultra-low latency in beyond 5G (B5G) mobile communications that are based on Radio over Fiber (RoF) have made Power over Fiber (PoF) attractive. This paper reviews a breakthrough of a long-distance hollow core fiber (HCF) fronthaul (up to 11.1 km) able to meet the requirements of B5G optical mobile networks, where the transmission medium is common to both 5G NR and PoF signals. This work is placed in context and compared with results provided by other authors, showing the relevance of the outcomes and subsequent future possibilities. It also creates a discussion in which the performance of other fiber technologies may be compared, as new B5G fronthauls with special attention paid to transmission in a single fiber, avoiding noise transfer between high power laser PoF source and 5G-NR data that affects the signal quality. PoF energy delivery efficiencies are also analyzed, achieving up to 9.9 % efficiency (from launched optical power to electrical power on the load) for a 3.1 km HCF and 0.9 % for a 11.1 km HCF. The PoF signal is used to supply a Bluetooth Low-Energy load

Harmful sharenting in the UK: Protecting children from digital harm

Sharenting - the sharing of children’s personal information by parents on social media - has become a widespread practice. While often well-intentioned, it exposes children to harm. Examples include identity-related crimes, harassment, cyberbullying, contact by strangers, and privacy breaches. The ProTechTheminterdisciplinary research project brings together social and computer science expertise to investigate sharenting risks. The project reveals that current regulations, platforms’ safety provisions, and parental cybersecurity measures are insufficient to protect affected children from digital harm. This brief outlines key harms of sharenting and proposes both evidence-based and actionable policy recommendations for a safer digital future

Roadmap on specialty optical fibers

Optical fibers, long an enabling technology for telecommunications, are proving to play a central role in a growing number of modern applications, starting from high speed broad band internet to medical surgery and entering across the entire spectrum of scientific, military, industrial and commercial applications. Specialty optical fibers either special waveguide structure or novel material composition becomes heart of all fiber based advanced photonics devices and components. This rapidly evolving field calls on the expertise and skills of a broad set of different disciplines: materials science, ceramic engineering, optics, electrical engineering, physics, polymer chemistry, and several others. This roadmap on specialty optical fibers addresses different technologies and application areas. It is constituted by fourteen contributions authored by world-leading experts, providing insight into the current state-of-the-art and the challenges their respective fields face. Some articles address the area of multimode fibers, including the nonlinear effects occurring in them. Several other articles are dedicated to doped, plastic, and soft-glass fibers. Large mode area fibers, hollow-core fibers, and nanostructured fibers are also described in different sections. The use of some of such fibers for optical amplification and to realize several kinds of optical sources—including lasers, single photon sources and supercontinuum sources—is described in some other sections. Different approaches to satisfy applications at visible, infrared and terahertz spectra regions are also discussed. Throughout the roadmap there is an attempt to foresee and to suggest future directions in this particularly dynamic area of optical fiber technology

A comparison of Gaussian processes and polynomial chaos emulators in the context of haemodynamic pulse–wave propagation modelling

Computational modelling of the cardiovascular system is a promising future direction for patient-specific healthcare. However, the computational cost of these simulators is a bottleneck for their practical use in clinic for real-time digital twins. Emulation can overcome this, yet an extensive investigation into cardiovascular emulators is warranted. In this study, we emulate two one-dimensional haemodynamics models of the pulmonary circulation and compare two common emulation strategies: Gaussian processes (GPs) and polynomial chaos expansions (PCEs). We start by reducing the parameter space of the models through global sensitivity analysis, and then compare both emulation strategies using a multivariate, time-series output quantity of interest and a reduced representation using principal component analysis. We compare the emulators in both forward emulation on test data, as well as in their ability to infer parameters in the inverse problem. Our results indicate that GPs slightly outperform PCEs consistently across every comparison, and that a similar performance is obtained for the emulators of the time-dependent output and reduced output.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Uncertainty quantification for healthcare and biological systems (Part 1)’