Impacts of salmonid fish production on river water quality: a critical appraisal of the evidence

Rivers are recognised as providing valuable goods and services to society, and as hotspots of global biodiversity. Fish farming is an economically important activity associated with river systems; however, the effects of this industry on river health are not entirely understood. Studies evaluating interactions between freshwater fish farms and rivers are limited; therefore, we conducted a systematic review and an appraisal of evidence quality to assess the impacts of salmonid fish farming on river water quality. The review revealed that two main types of water quality indicators are generally applied: physicochemical and biological. The response variables used to determine the effects of fish farm effluent on water quality vary considerably, yet most studies indicate that aquaculture negatively affects the environment. Overall, we highlight the knowledge gaps, including a lack of studies in freshwater aquaculture hotspots. The effects of fish farming on bacterial communities are also not clear due to limited research on these bioindicators. We suggest improvements in study design, including thorough consideration of confounding factors, and the provision of background information on the fish farms

Four papers on monetary policy uncertainty and central bank communication

This thesis presents four essays on monetary policy uncertainty, expectations, perceptions, and central bank communication.The first essay develops a Twitter-based index of monetary policy uncertainty for South Africa, addressing the absence of high-frequency measures in emerging markets. Using a shock-restricted structural VAR, the analysis identifies a link between policy uncertainty and stock market volatility, that is, uncertainty shocks increase volatility in the short run, while volatility shocks also feed back into uncertainty. This provides the first high-frequency measure of monetary policy uncertainty that uses social media in South Africa.The second essay examines the causal relationship between subjective monetary policy uncertainty and subjective stock market volatility using a novel dataset on French households. To address endogeneity concerns, the analysis applies high-dimensional instrumental variable methods, such as IV-Lasso. The results show that higher perceived monetary policy uncertainty leads to significantly higher reported stock market volatility. These findings provide micro-level evidence that uncertainty about monetary policy shapes perceptions of financial market risk, with implications for monetary policy transmission through expectation channels.The third essay evaluates whether French households form policy rate expectations consistent with the Full Information Rational Expectations benchmark. It documents systematic deviations in the form of perception gaps and forecast errors. These biases are shown to influence household behaviour, particularly saving decisions, where larger perception gaps are associated with a lower probability of being in higher saving bands. This evidence supports theories of bounded rationality and limited attention.The final essay applies large language models to central bank press releases and speeches to analyse the content and tone of communication. The results show that communication priorities vary across institutions and affect how policy is perceived by markets and households. This essay demonstrates that central bank communication operates as a policy tool in its own right and illustrates the potential of modern computational methods in the study of monetary policy.<br/

Pro-life policy preferences partly reflect desires to suppress casual sexual behavior, not solely sanctity of life concerns

Pro-life individuals often emphasize sanctity-of-life concerns as driving their opposition to abortion. This implies the straightforward prediction that the more strongly people oppose abortion for such reasons (e.g., “abortion is murder”), the more they will endorse policies preventing abortions (face-value account). An alternative suggests that typically nonconscious reproductive goals (e.g., discouraging casual sex) influence policy preferences; this strategic account predicts a different pattern of policy endorsement: all else equal, abortion opponents will prioritize abortion-preventing policies discouraging casual sex. A pilot study and two preregistered U.S. experiments (N = 1,960) provide relatively greater support for the strategic account: the strongest abortion opponents more strongly endorse policies that prevent abortions by discouraging casual sex (e.g., abortion bans, abstinence-only sex education) over policies that do not (comprehensive sex education)—even controlling for conservatism and religiosity. Commonly voiced arguments against abortion may be more rhetorically effective but less reflective of genuine drivers underlying arguers’ beliefs.</p

Chiral time crystal - modelling the matter-to-life transition

Nonreciprocal molecular interactions are now widely discussed as a mechanism of the matter-to-life transition that is accompanied by emergence of structural chirality. Here we demonstrate an achiral photonic nano-mechanical metamaterial that transitions to a chiral oscillating time crystal state, under illumination with circularly polarized light

Fatigue risk management in healthcare: A scoping literature review

Background: Occupational fatigue among healthcare professionals is a complex, multifaceted issue associated with increased likelihood of medical error, compromised patient safety and negative impacts on staff mental and physical health. While safety-critical sectors such as aviation and rail have implemented formal systems to manage fatigue-related risks, it remains unclear whether similarly structured approaches exist or operate effectively within healthcare.Objective: This scoping literature review aimed to examine the current state of knowledge regarding fatigue risk management strategies and countermeasures in healthcare and explore the barriers and facilitators to their implementation. This review sought to highlight gaps and provide insights into advancing fatigue risk management practices within the healthcare context. Methods: A systematic literature search to June 2025 was conducted across Medline, CINAHL Ultimate, and Scopus databases. Search terms were developed based on key concepts related to healthcare professions and fatigue risk management. Studies were included if they examined fatigue risk management strategies, countermeasures or organisational perceptions of fatigue in healthcare.Results: Thirty-two studies met the inclusion criteria, including quantitative (n = 18), qualitative (n = 9), and mixed-methods (n = 5) designs. Findings were grouped into conceptual categories based on the study focus and/or intervention type. The majority of studies (n = 18) evaluated isolated interventions including informal/individual fatigue management strategies, napping, use of biomathematical models to predict fatigue risk, fatigue education, and the impact of scheduling practices. Only two studies reported on comprehensive, multi-component programmes. Nine studies explored staff perceptions and attitudes toward fatigue-related strategies, and three examined broader organisational understanding or design principles related to fatigue management. Key barriers to implementation included normalised cultural attitudes towards fatigue, limited managerial support, and inadequate infrastructure. Facilitators included improved staffing levels, better workload distribution, supportive leadership, and the development of non-punitive safety cultures that encouraged fatigue reporting.Conclusions: Despite growing awareness of the risks associated with occupational fatigue, healthcare systems continue to rely on fragmented, informal, and largely individual approaches to fatigue management. In contrast to other high-risk industries, healthcare has yet to embed fatigue management within formal safety governance structures. Advancing practice in this area requires a shift toward system-level thinking that is supported by organisational leadership, effective fatigue monitoring, and workforce education. Additionally, this shift also demands a cultural reorientation that recognises fatigue as a predictable and manageable safety risk that necessitates organisational accountability rather than individual resilience to prioritise both staff wellbeing and patient safety.<br/

A vision of air

The invisibility of air means that it is it easy to for us to ignore. Yet in recent times it has moved from being a presence that we rarely have to think about, to becoming a fear-provoking and unquantifiable substance, containing diseases and pollutants that need to be filtered out or blown away in order to be made safe. How, then, do we deal with such an invisible yet explicitly material entity? How do we see it? This article explores some of the different ways that air is exposed and visualized, from early scientific experiments with air through to the material consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. It moves through various fields of research: science and technology, art practice, public health, and building design; taking us through the identification, conceptualization, measurement and datafication of air, as well as the actuality of our experience. Ultimately, it is argued that to have any hope of achieving clean air, we must first learn to work through its invisibility and understand its precarity, through the formation of a broad community of practice

Optimal design of dynamic experiments for scalar-on-function linear models with application to a biopharmaceutical study

A Bayesian optimal experimental design framework is developed for experiments where settings of one or more variables, referred to as profile variables, can be functions. For this type of experiment, a design consists of combinations of functions for each run of the experiment. Within a scalar-on-function linear model, profile variables are represented through basis expansions. This allows finite-dimensional representation of the profile variables and optimal designs to be found. The approach enables control over the complexity of the profile variables and model. The method is illustrated on a real application involving dynamic feeding strategies in an Ambr250 modular bioreactor

A day from Dominic Watters' Fieldwork [Foodbank]

As part of the community research for his PhD and the TRI-SoMe Chicken project, Dominic visits the same foodbank he and his daughter relied on just years prior. This auto-ethnographic note explores the challenges and insights that both being a researcher and service user can uncover. There is a need for forgotten about people to be included in the conversation around tackling food insecurity and this piece begins to look at this tension as a member of the community rather than someone helicoptered in