Evaluating Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion activities within Creative Industries Clusters: A report from Creative Informatics

In 2018 UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) created the Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP), which has funded nine large-scale Creative Research and Development Partnerships (CRDPs) across the UK, including Creative Informatics. Creative Informatics (2018–2024) focuses on supporting the Creative Industries in Edinburgh and the South-East Scotland Region to use data to innovate in the production of goods and services. With a network of over 6000 people, and leading to 352 new and safeguarded jobs, Creative Informatics has had a huge impact on the creative industries in its region. But has this been done in a way that advances Equality, Diversity and Inclusion?This report evaluates the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I) activities (based on data published up to July 2023) of Creative Informatics (CI) in the context of other funding, policy and research organisations also operating in the space of the Creative Industries. These organisations are Clwstwr, Bristol + Bath Creative Research + Development, and XR Stories and the associated Research England-funded project, SIGN, which are three other regional beneficiaries of the Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP), and the Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre, which is also part of the CICP. We also offer an overview of ED&I activities by Creative Scotland as a comparable Scottish funder of the Creative Industries.Each of these organisations publishes its own material about ED&I aims, priorities, actions, accountability and reporting, and in this report we introduce the organisations and their self-stated objectives and targets. We then discuss their data collection activities as part of their monitoring practices as well as their reasons for collecting specific data, their comparisons of these data against benchmarks, and how they incorporate intersectionality. Next we look at the collaborators and beneficiaries of projects funded by these organisations and finally we address three recurring issues raised by many of the organisations: how to achieve continued improvement, change at senior levels, and socio-economic inequalities. All of this is placed in the context of wider ED&I activities within the Creative Industries. After introducing this overview of each organisation's activities, our discussion section draws out some common themes and, finally, we offer some recommendations for how to expand upon the evidence and knowledge already circulating in the Creative Industries

Connecting, Collaborating, Creating: The Experiences of Creative Freelancers in Edinburgh in 2022

This report provides a snapshot of the state and needs of creative freelancers in the Edinburgh region in 2022.The last few years have been both interesting and challenging for creative freelancers in Scotland. Given the constraints caused by the Covid pandemic, Brexit, and rising inflation and the cost of living, many freelancers have found themselves having to rethink their practice, strategies and life choices. While this unprecedented period hasn’t yet come to an end, it has highlighted the importance of the creative industries to the creative economy more than ever before.At Creative Edinburgh, we strive to help creative practitioners develop and thrive throughout their journey, and we have done this for over a decade. It is essential for us to understand more about the community that we represent and freelancers play an important role in this large group of creatives. We seek to create a roadmap which will help Creative Edinburgh, but also other sector support agencies, to plan ahead to better support freelancers in the future.Launched by Creative Edinburgh, the largest creative membership organisation in Edinburgh (5400+ members), with support from Creative Informatics, an ambitious research and development programme based in Edinburgh, this report was developed in collaboration with local creative freelance professionals, academic researchers and partnering organisations interested in valuable data relating to the sector, as the activity and growth of the creative sector evolves.Focussed on freelancers and Creative Industry professionals living and working in Scotland, the information collected through this research provides a unique insight into the current status of the local sector, with the effects of Covid-19 and Brexit starting to make an impact. It raises a number of important issues which will be reported to the Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council, Creative Scotland and other stakeholders in view of improving available support and resources

A two-lane mechanism for selective biological ammonium transport

The transport of charged molecules across biological membranes faces the dual problem of accommodating charges in a highly hydrophobic environment while maintaining selective substrate translocation. This has been the subject of a particular controversy for the exchange of ammonium across cellular membranes, an essential process in all domains of life. Ammonium transport is mediated by the ubiquitous Amt/Mep/Rh transporters that includes the human Rhesus factors. Here, using a combination of electrophysiology, yeast functional complementation and extended molecular dynamics simulations, we reveal a unique two-lane pathway for electrogenic NH4+ transport in two archetypal members of the family, the transporters AmtB from Escherichia coli and Rh50 from Nitrosomonas europaea. The pathway underpins a mechanism by which charged H+ and neutral NH3 are carried separately across the membrane after NH4+ deprotonation. This mechanism defines a new principle of achieving transport selectivity against competing ions in a biological transport process

Context-dependent foraging habitat selection in a farmland raptor along an agricultural intensification gradient

Gradients of agricultural intensification in agroecosystems may determine uneven resource availability for predators relying on these man-made habitats. In turn, these variations in resource availability may affect predators’ habitat selection patterns, resulting in context-dependent habitat selection. We assessed the effects of gradients of landscape composition and configuration on habitat selection of a colonial farmland bird of prey, the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), relying on 76 GPS-tracked nestling-rearing individuals from 10 populations scattered along an agricultural intensification gradient. Analyses were conducted considering two ecological levels of aggregation (the population and the individual) and two spatial scales of habitat availability (the colony surroundings and the individual home-range). Overall, non-irrigated croplands and semi-natural grasslands were the most preferred habitats at both spatial scales. At the colony scale, lesser kestrels showed a preference for grassland compared to non-irrigated crops, whereas the opposite was the case within individual home-ranges. Conversely, croplands were positively selected with comparable intensity at both spatial scales. Strong selection for grassland at the colony scale highlights the importance of this semi-natural habitat for the species. The weaker preference for grassland at the home-range scale is likely due to the phenology and structure of the vegetation in the late breeding season. Spatial scale differences in selection patterns may thus derive from spatiotemporal changes in resource availability through the breeding season. The strength of selection for the two most used habitats varied markedly among individuals. At the spatial scale of the colony, individual selection strength for grasslands increased with decreasing compositional diversity of the surrounding landscape, suggesting that agroecosystem heterogeneity may at least partly buffer the loss of semi-natural habitats. At the within homerange scale, higher cropland availability reduced the strength of individual preference for this habitat, suggesting a negative functional response possibly related to density-dependent processes acting on foraging movements. Our study provides evidence that farmland species show context-dependent habitat selection patterns in response to landscape gradients shaped by agricultural intensification as well as by intrinsic characteristics and habitat availability. Our findings highlight the importance of addressing both individual and population-level variability and considering multiple spatial scales in studies of habitat selection to inform species’ management and conservation

Pratiques documentaires numériques à l'université

Cet ouvrage, coordonné par Ghislaine Chartron, professeur au conservatoire des Arts et métiers (CNAM) et responsable de l'Institut national des techniques de la documentation (INTD). Annaïg Mahé, maître de conférences à l'Unité régionale de formation à l'information scientifique et technique (Urfist) de Paris et à l'école des Chartes, et Benoît Epron, maître de conférences à l'enssib, se propose d'explorer les pratiques documentaires dans l'enseignement supérieur et la recherche au moment clé du développement, voire de la croissance exponentielle de l'utilisation des outils numériques. À l'heure d'une maturité croissante de l'offre documentaire numérique et de ses potentiels dans tous les champs scientifiques, que connaissons-nous vraiment de la réalité des pratiques documentaires à l'université et dans les organismes de recherche ? Faire le point sur cette question fut l'objectif de la journée d'étude « Diversité des pratiques documentaires numériques dans les champs scientifiques » organisée à l'enssib en juillet 2009, qui a souhaité réunir un ensemble de travaux récents couvrant une large palette d'observations des pratiques dans la recherche et l'enseignement universitaire. Cette diversité concerne les méthodologies convoquées (quantitatives et qualitatives), les différents supports (notamment revues et ouvrages) et les différents champs disciplinaires (physique des hautes énergies, mathématiques et informatique, sciences de l'éducation, sciences politiques) : des mises en perspective plus transversales sont par ailleurs complémentaires. Les points de vue abordés sont internationaux

Creating Sustainable Internet of Things Futures : Aligning Legal and Design Research Agendas

The way consumer Internet of Things (IoT) devices are built is leading to electronic waste (eWaste) growth. This arises from planned obsolescence, bundling of ‘smartness’ creating more routes to device failure, and lacking hardware modularity and repairability. Understanding how to best to tackle these issues requires an interdisciplinary perspective bridging design, law, and the social science research. The legal landscape is shifting, encouraging design of repairable and long-lasting IoT, and reducing routes to redundancy. This one-day workshop explores the interface between design and legal research to address the socio-technical challenges around designing sustainable consumer IoT devices. The workshop will: map out the societal, legal, and environmental implications of IoT; envision the opportunities and barriers to designing more sustainable IoT; and share best practice and tools how to move towards more sustainable IoT futures

Vegetation height and structure drive foraging habitat selection of the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni) in intensive agricultural landscapes

Habitat selection in animals is a fundamental ecological process with key conservation implications. Assessing habitat selection in endangered species and populations occupying the extreme edges of their distribution range, or living in highly anthropized landscapes, may be of particular interest as it may provide hints to mechanisms promoting potential range expansions. We assessed second- and third-order foraging habitat selection in the northernmost European breeding population of the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), a migratory falcon of European conservation interest, by integrating results obtained from 411 direct observations with those gathered from nine GPS-tracked individuals. The study population breeds in the intensively cultivated Po Plain (northern Italy). Direct observations and GPS data coincide in showing that foraging lesser kestrels shifted their habitat preferences through the breeding cycle. They positively selected alfalfa and other non-irrigated crops during the early breeding season, while winter cereals were selected during the nestling-rearing phase. Maize was selected during the early breeding season, after sowing, but significantly avoided later. Overall, vegetation height emerged as the main predictor of foraging habitat selection, with birds preferring short vegetation, which is likely to maximise prey accessibility. Such a flexibility in foraging habitat selection according to spatio-temporal variation in the agricultural landscape determined by local crop management practices may have allowed the species to successfully thrive in one of the most intensively cultivated areas of Europe. In the southeastern Po Plain, the broad extent of hay and non-irrigated crops is possibly functioning as a surrogate habitat for the pseudo-steppe environment where most of the European breeding population is settled, fostering the northward expansion of the species in Europe. In intensive agricultural landscapes, the maintenance of alfalfa and winter cereals crops and an overall high crop heterogeneity (deriving from crop rotation) is fundamental to accommodate the ecological requirements of the species in different phases of its breeding cycle

Correction : a two-lane mechanism for selective biological ammonium transport

Williamson G, Tamburrino G, Bizior A, Boeckstaens M, Mirandela GD, Bage MG, Pisliakov A, Ives CM, Terras E, Hoskisson PA, Marini AM, Zachariae U, Javelle A. 2020. A two-lane mechanism for selective biological ammonium transport. eLife 10:e57183. doi: 10.7554/eLife.57183 Published 14 July 2020 In Figure 4 panel B, we inadvertently used the same image to represent the lack of yeast growth for both D160A and D160E variants of AmtB. This has been corrected and D160E now has the appropriate image. As both the original and corrected panel show the same result, the text and figure legend remain unchanged. The article has been corrected accordingly

Manually Annotating Gender Biased Language in University of Edinburgh Heritage Collections Archival Metadata Descriptions

These datasets contains metadata descriptions extracted from the University of Edinburgh's Heritage Collections (HC) Archives' catalogue in to create an annotated dataset for training text classification models to detect gender biased language. Four descriptive metadata fields were extracted for all collections, subcollections, and items in the HC Archives' online catalog. The ``Title'' field is the name of the archival record, which either documents a single or group of archival material. The ``Biographical / Historical'' field contains information about the people, time period, and places associated with the collection, subcollection, or item being described. The ``Scope and Contents'' field summarizes the contents of the collection, subcollection, or item to which the field belongs. Though not all records include the ``Processing Information'' field, those that do typically record the person who wrote the description for the collection, subcollection, or item's descriptive metadata fields, and the date the description was written. The datasets were manually annotated by five annotators according to the Taxonomy of Gendered and Gender Biased Language. The annotated datasets include the annotated text span, the description in which that text span appears, the label with which the text span was annotated, and a note explaining an annotator's rationale for applying the label to the text span. Please refer to the datasets' associated GitHub repositories and papers for further details on their creation and contents