82 research outputs found

    mNCEA policy brief - The many scales of pelagic habitats

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    This fact sheet is intended to help explain the extreme variation in both abundance and body size exhibited by marine plankton and why those characteristics make them challenging to understand. Plankton in pelagic (open ocean) habitats vary greatly in abundance and body size, presenting significant challenges for assessing the state of pelagic habitats. There are also vast differences in the spatial and temporal scale of events and pressures impacting pelagic habitats, adding complexity and making pelagic habitats challenging to understand. This project was funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as part of the marine arm of the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) programme. The marine NCEA programme is leading the way in supporting Government ambition to integrate natural capital approaches into decision making for the marine environment. Find out more at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/natural-capital-and-ecosystem-assessment-programme

    Does the Affirmative Consent Standard Increase the Accuracy of Sexual Assault Perceptions? It Depends on How You Learn About the Standard

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    Objective: Colleges and universities are increasingly adopting affirmative consent standards of sexual assault, in which consent is defined as conscious and voluntary ā€œyesesā€ given throughout a sexual interaction. We examined the impact of affirmative consent standards on perceptions of assault and consent. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that in sexual assault scenarios involving physical force or verbal coercion, exposure to the consent standard would increase perceptions of assault and decrease perceptions of consent relative to not being exposed to the standard. We then explored whether dehumanization of the perpetrator or the victim mediates the association between assault type and sexual assault perceptions and how this relation changes on the basis of exposure to the affirmative consent standard. Method: We exposed 909 participants (predominantly women: n = 574; predominantly White: n = 677; age: M = 28.61 years, SD = 11.10; students: n = 363, Mechanical Turk workers: n = 546) to an affirmative consent standard in a written policy, a video using a ā€œcup-of-teaā€ metaphor to describe the consent standard, or no information on the standard. Participants rated perceptions of assault, consent, and dehumanization of a man and woman involved in a sexual interaction involving physical force, verbal coercion, or a consensual agreement. Results:Participants who saw the affirmative consent video were more likely to perceive physical assault as assault compared with participants in the no-exposure control condition. Participants who read the affirmative consent definition were no more or less likely to perceive physical assault as sexual assault compared with participants in the control condition. Participants exposed to the text definition perceived the consensual interaction as more assaultive than did participants in the video and control conditions. Perpetrator dehumanization also emerged as a mediator of the relation between assault type and assault perceptions. Conclusions: These results suggest that exposure to consent standards sometimes aids sexual assault decision-making but also leads to confusion, even in scenarios in which consent is normally discernable. Public Significance: Many institutions of higher education use affirmative consent standards, or a ā€œyes means yesā€ approach, in attempts to stop sexual assault. Empirical evidence on how these standards shape perceptions of assault is mixed. University offices of violence prevention and Title IX officers may benefit from considering the manner in which students are educated about consent standards to understand the impact of training on sexual assault decision-making. Includes Supplemental materials

    mNCEA policy brief - Plenty more fish in the sea? Counting the cost of climate change on marine Natural Capital

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    This policy brief describes how predicted changes in productivity across the Atlantic will impact the amount of fish that the marine environment can support. This is bound to have important implications for marine food webs and our continued sustainable use of marine resources. Plankton form the foundation of commercially-valuable food chains to fish ā€¢ Warming, stratification and reduced nutrient supply has already reduced plankton stocks ā€¢ Reduced phytoplankton also means less efficient food chains ā€¢ Even a modest (16-26%) continued decline in phytoplankton will magnify into a 38-55% decline in harvestable fish across the north Atlantic ā€¢ Hotspots of this future decline in fish are in present-day fishing grounds ā€¢ This risk-mapping approach provides a forward look for spatial protection and management This project was funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as part of the marine arm of the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) programme. The marine NCEA programme is leading the way in supporting Government ambition to integrate natural capital approaches into decision making for the marine environment. Find out more at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/natural-capital-and-ecosystem-assessment-programm

    Factors Influencing Mental Health Outcomes of University Personnel During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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    Background: Previous research links the COVID-19 pandemic to negative effects on physical and mental health; however, little is known about how those effects can be mitigated. Additionally, college campuses experience mental health issues regularly, which were heightened during the pandemic. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe the current status of mental health within a university community and identify factors associated with excessive worry during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as mental health, resilience, grit, and other demographic factors. Methods: A questionnaire examining five domains (demographics, COVID-19 distancing behaviors, physical, mental, and social and economic health) was created, validated, and distributed to a college campus in the Southeastern United States. Unadjusted and adjusted ordinal logistic regression models were used to examine the cross-sectional association between worry and mental health measures while controlling for resilience and grit. Results: Participants (n=162) experienced varying levels of stress, anxiety, and depression with moderate levels of resilience (mean=3.76Ā±0.59) and grit (mean=3.32Ā±0.38) and some level of pandemic-related worry. Participants with mild anxiety and stress, and moderate/severe anxiety, stress, and depression were more worried, mitigated by resiliency. Conclusion: Resiliency is an important mitigating factor for mental health; college/university campuses should prioritize establishing resilience within their community

    A systematic scoping review of health-promoting interventions for contact centre employees examined through a behaviour change wheel lens

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    Purpose: Social determinants of health and poor working conditions contribute to excessive sickness absence and attrition in contact centre advisors. With no recent review conducted, the current scoping review is needed to investigate the volume, effectiveness, acceptability, and feasibility of health-promoting interventions for contact centre advisors. This will inform the adoption and implementation of evidence-based practice, and future research. Methods: Searches conducted across four databases (MEDLINE, PsycInfo, CINAHL, Web of Science) and reference checking in February 2023 identified health-promoting interventions for contact centre advisors. Extracted and coded data from eligible interventions were systematically synthesised using the nine intervention functions of the Behaviour Change Wheel and behaviour change technique taxonomy. Results: This scoping review identified a low number of high quality and peer-reviewed health-promoting intervention studies for contact centre advisors (28 studies since 2002). Most interventions were conducted in high-income countries with office-based advisors, predominantly using environmental restructuring and training strategies to improve health. Most interventions reported positive effectiveness results for the primary intended outcome, which were broadly organised into: i) health behaviours (sedentary behaviour, physical activity, smoking); ii) physical health outcomes (musculoskeletal health, visual health, vocal health, sick building syndrome); iii) mental health outcomes (stress, job control, job satisfaction, wellbeing). Few interventions evaluated acceptability and feasibility. Conclusion: There is little evidence on the effectiveness, acceptability, and feasibility of health-promoting interventions for contact centre advisors. Evidence is especially needed in low-to-middle income countries, and remote/hybrid, nightshift and older advisors, and advisors living with disability

    mNCEA policy brief - Mind the Gap ā€“ The need to continue long-term plankton monitoring

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    This policy brief argues that while it is beneficial to explore novel plankton survey technology, it is essential that we also continue to maintain traditional long-term monitoring programmes to generate the necessary information to inform policy. Changes in plankton have important implications for the continued provision of ecosystem services, including supporting commercial fish stocks, carbon sequestration, and oxygen production. Such changes can only be detected by studying long-term, consistent plankton datasets which are needed to understand the pressures driving these changes and how we can manage them. Traditional long-term plankton monitoring relies on light microscopy to identify and count plankton taxa, with methods fully supported by national / international QA/QC standards and providing high quality trusted data. Novel technologies, including imaging and molecular methods, offer more efficient means of collecting some types of plankton data, filling targeted knowledge gaps left by traditional monitoring. However, these data are often semi-quantitative, lacking in QA/QC standards, and/or in taxonomic resolution. While these technologies are developed it remains critical to maintain the continuity of traditional plankton monitoring to inform policy assessments of important changes in biodiversity. Losing these time-series, many of which span multiple decades, would impair our ability to detect important change in pelagic habitats, as most changes cannot be detected from short-term data. This would also accelerate the loss of taxonomic expertise, already under threat globally, diminishing our UK skill-base. Novel technologies should be explored in parallel to traditional monitoring, as they can provide complementary data to support policy assessments and research, however, it is important that we do not attempt to replace traditional monitoring with new technology before it has been thoroughly integrated into long-term monitoring programmes. This project was funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as part of the marine arm of the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) programme. The marine NCEA programme is leading the way in supporting Government ambition to integrate natural capital approaches into decision making for the marine environment. Find out more at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/natural-capital-and-ecosystem-assessment-programme

    Extinction of cue-evoked drug-seeking relies on degrading hierarchical instrumental expectancies

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    There has long been need for a behavioural intervention that attenuates cue-evoked drug-seeking, but the optimal method remains obscure. To address this, we report three approaches to extinguish cue-evoked drug-seeking measured in a Pavlovian to instrumental transfer design, in non-treatment seeking adult smokers and alcohol drinkers. The results showed that the ability of a drug stimulus to transfer control over a separately trained drug-seeking response was not affected by the stimulus undergoing Pavlovian extinction training in experiment 1, but was abolished by the stimulus undergoing discriminative extinction training in experiment 2, and was abolished by explicit verbal instructions stating that the stimulus did not signal a more effective response-drug contingency in experiment 3. These data suggest that cue-evoked drug-seeking is mediated by a propositional hierarchical instrumental expectancy that the drug-seeking response is more likely to be rewarded in that stimulus. Methods which degraded this hierarchical expectancy were effective in the laboratory, and so may have therapeutic potential

    Researching AI Legibility Through Design

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    Everyday interactions with computers are increasingly likely to involve elements of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Encompassing a broad spectrum of technologies and applications, AI poses many challenges for HCI and design. One such challenge is the need to make AIā€™s role in a given system legible to the user in a meaningful way. In this paper we employ a Research through Design (RtD) approach to explore how this might be achieved. Building on contemporary concerns and a thorough exploration of related research, our RtD process reflects on designing imagery intended to help increase AI legibility for users. The paper makes three contributions. First, we thoroughly explore prior research in order to critically unpack the AI legibility problem space. Second, we respond with design proposals whose aim is to enhance the legibility, to users, of systems using AI. Third, we explore the role of design-led enquiry as a tool for critically exploring the intersection between HCI and AI research
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