University of Sussex

Online transactions have grown to gain significant attention from various stakeholders in governments, business, and research practitioners all over the world. A decade ago, the first cryptocurrency transaction was executed to pave the way for a new era of online transactions. However, there is a relatively low adoption of blockchain-based cryptocurrency transactions as a payment method by service providers, organizations, and customers. Further, there is no study investigating the adoption of cryptocurrency technology as a payment method in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, this research proposes a new adoption model to investigate the acceptance of a blockchain-based cryptocurrency as a payment method in Saudi Arabia (BCAP-SA). A thorough research of the literature has yielded only a few studies covering external factors over a range of technical, economic, personal, and environmental aspects in different parts of the world. Hypotheses have been developed for each factor which will be examined by both qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (surveys) methods. The proposed study aims to offer service providers with insights about which factors customers would concentrate on if they were to accept blockchain-based cryptocurrency as a payment method.

The possibility of ideography is an empirical question. Prior examples of graphic codes do not provide compelling evidence for the infeasibility of ideography, because they fail to satisfy essential cognitive requirements that have only recently been revealed by studies of representational systems in cognitive science. Design criteria derived from cognitive principles suggest how effective graphic codes may be engineered.

This paper provides solutions for a single-leader-dual-follower (SLDF) teleoperation system to collaboratively transport an object. First, to regulate the direct-teleoperated follower robot (DFR), we employ a relative pose transformation algorithm, based on “re-fixing” the leader and DFR together, to enable that the operator can ergonomically guide DFR without requiring any specific initial position, ensuring a higher teleoperation precision at the same time. Second, to regulate the assistive follower robot (AFR), we provide an efficient technique to acquire the right orientation to achieve holding. In addition, we devise an adjustable artificial potential field method (APFM) to autonomously regulate AFR's position to a ready-to-hold pose, where the operator's motion is involved. At last, based on the combination of the auto-regressive model and the impedance model, we generate a reference trajectory for AFR to follow, which enables the followers to hold a rigid or deformable object with a desired contact force. Simulations and experimental results verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been applied to the field of medical engineering since its beginning. It takes into account individual differences and tailors treatment to patients. At present, the design and additive manufacturing of personalized medical implants and prostheses has become the optimal approach, and it has proved to be a reliable solution for many patients who require prosthesis implantation. Many metallic, ceramic and polymeric materials can be used for medical implants. These biomaterials need to have good cell compatibility, without toxic ion release and with similar mechanical properties to human tissues, as well as a suitable degradation rate. However, obtaining an ideal material for tissue engineering via material design is still a problem to be overcome. In this chapter, different types of biomaterials as well as their modification methods are introduced. In addition, recent advances in biomaterial based additive manufacturing are covered, for example, designing an ideal structure which can not only bear loads or stresses but also transfer nutrients required for cell differentiation. More and more biological applications will certainly emerge in the future with the advancement of additive manufacturing technology and biomaterials.

Research Summary Drawing on institutional economics and the legitimacy‐based view of political risk, we investigate the factors determining the realization of cross‐border investments by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), whose investments often suffer from a lack of legitimacy in host countries. Using matching models on all the realized and potential investments, we find that investments are more likely to materialize when the SWF home country and the host country enjoy cordial political relations or are involved in a trade agreement. Contrary to the theoretical predictions, SWF politicization does not per se represent an impediment to the realization of investments. Rather, it has a negative effect on the likelihood of an investment's realization only in the presence of trade agreements. Managerial Summary A recent trend in the global economy is the increasing cross‐border investment activity undertaken by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), large investment vehicles where financial and political goals often co‐exist. On the grounds of possible financial or political destabilization, SWFs' cross‐border investments attract scrutiny and suspicion in host countries, hindering their realization. We analyze SWF‐ and country‐level factors that may determine the successful realization of SWFs' cross‐border acquisitions. We suggest that managers ex ante select target firms and host countries by considering their fund's governance and degree of independence from home‐country politics in interaction with bilateral (home‐host country) political and economic relations, so as to secure legitimacy for their investments and maximize the chances that cross‐border investment strategies may materialize.

Professor Per Davidsson is the recipient of the 2023 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. Throughout an extraordinarily productive career, he has made invaluable contributions in building the field of entrepreneurship. His early studies on entrepreneurship and culture and his studies on the growth of small businesses played an important role in the emergence and development of entrepreneurship as a scholarly field of research. He has also, continuously, made more conceptual contributions by critically probing the development of the field, and engaged in writing foundational books that have been used extensively in higher education institutes. By probing and challenging traditional assumptions throughout his career, he has contributed to the refinement and renewal of the field.

Humans greatly differ in how they cope with stress, a natural behavior learnt through negative reinforcement. Some individuals engage in displacement activities, others in exercise or comfort eating, and others still in alcohol use. Across species, adjunctive behaviors, such as polydipsic drinking, are used as a form of displacement activity that reduces stress. Some individuals, in particular those that use alcohol to self-medicate, tend to lose control over such coping behaviors, which become excessive and compulsive. However, the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying this individual vulnerability have not been elucidated. Here we tested the hypothesis that the development of compulsive adjunctive behaviors stems from the functional engagement of the dorsolateral striatum (DLS) dopamine-dependent habit system after a prolonged history of adjunctive responding. We measured in longitudinal studies in male Sprague Dawley rats the sensitivity of early established vs compulsive polydipsic water or alcohol drinking to a bilateral infusion into the anterior DLS (aDLS) of the dopamine receptor antagonist α-flupentixol. While most rats acquired a polydipsic drinking response with water, others only did so with alcohol. Whether drinking water or alcohol, the acquisition of this coping response was insensitive to aDLS dopamine receptor blockade. In contrast, after prolonged experience, adjunctive drinking became dependent on aDLS dopamine at a time when it was compulsive in vulnerable individuals. These data suggest that habits may develop out of negative reinforcement and that the engagement of their underlying striatal system is necessary for the manifestation of compulsive adjunctive behaviors.

Critical to the trajectory and outcome of urban sustainable energy transitions is the ability of government institutions to foster conditions for change and innovation. In this paper, a theoretical perspective combining state power and local governance capability is used as a lens to examine the transition of the energy system in South Africa based on semi-structured interviews with a range of relevant stakeholders, supplemented by analysis of published academic and policy literature. The discussion highlights uneven transitional pathways across the country caused by variations in 'capability', together with continuing conflicting interests within the system which require more politically-informed policy processes. ARTICLE HISTORY

Background Recent years have seen record levels of migration to Europe. Female migrants are at heightened risk of developing mental health disorders, yet they face barriers to accessing mental health services in their host countries. This systematic review aims to summarise the barriers and facilitators to accessing mental health support for female migrants in Europe. Methods The review follows PRISMA guidelines, and the protocol was pre-published on PROSPERO. Six electronic databases were searched: CINAHL, Global Health Database, Medline, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO and Web of Science. Thematic analysis was undertaken on the identified studies. A feminist quality appraisal tool was applied. Results Eight qualitative, six quantitative and five mixed methods studies were identified. Barriers included a lack of information, stigma, religious and cultural practices and beliefs, and a lack of consideration of gender-specific needs within the health system. Gender-sensitive services, supportive general practitioners and religious leaders facilitated access. Conclusions The design of mental health research, services, policies, and commissioning of support for migrants must consider female migrant needs. Mental health support services must be culturally aware and gender sensitive. Registration The review protocol was registered on the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO, registration number CRD42021235571.

Limited research has explored the specific impact of voice-hearing experiences upon the social relating of adolescents. This study examined the associations of voice-hearing in youth with social relating, and putative explanatory factors. An observational, cross-sectional design using a clinical comparison group was employed to examine historical and concurrent associations with voice-hearing. Thirty-four young people (age 14–18 years) with voice-hearing experiences and 34 young people who did not hear voices were recruited from NHS mental health services. Participants completed measures about social relating and potential explanatory factors. Analyses of covariance were used to examine between-group differences. Voice-hearers scored higher on negative schematic beliefs (self-beliefs, partial η ² = .163, p = .001; other-beliefs, partial η ² = .152, p =. 002) and depressive and anxiety symptoms (partial η ² = .23 and partial η ² = .24, p-s <. 001 respectively). The two groups did not differ significantly on childhood trauma levels (partial η ² = .02, p = .273), however, the voice-hearing group scored lower on premorbid adjustment (partial η ² = .19, p < .001). Hearing voices in help-seeking youth could be an indicator for social relating issues and holding negative schematic beliefs, and may be an indicator for of increased psychopathological complexity. Although poorer premorbid adjustment might indicate an early vulnerability to social relating difficulties, voice-hearing might be an aggravating factor and one that requires treatment.

Isabella Weber’s book is a prodigious contribution to the political economy of Chinese development. One of the text’s most valuable contributions is its identification of the consistently anti-inflationary stance of CCP policy. Its coverage of debates surrounding price stability and liberalisation during the shifts away from the plan in the late 1980s is particularly valuable. Here, I focus on the question of inflation, which since 2021 has dramatically appeared on the agenda for the first time in the professional lives of many political economists and geographers in the global north. The book provides valuable, fine-grained evidence from contemporary Chinese policymakers (above all through a reading of Zhao Ziyang’s writings) to make the case that the inflationary pressures experienced in China as the government experimented with reforming the planned economy during the late 1980s were not principally monetary phenomena – nor were they understood as such by contemporary actors. I build on the text by showing how it demonstrates the relevance of exploring the inflation question at a variety of spatial scales. I conclude by considering how contemporary Chinese policymakers may negotiate this inflationary ‘scale-jumping’.

Models of sensory processing and learning in physical substrates (such as the cortex) need to efficiently assign credit to synapses in all areas. In deep learning, a well-established solution is error backpropagation; this however carries several biologically implausible requirements, such as weight transport from feed-forward to feedback paths. We present Phaseless Alignment Learning (PAL), a biologically plausible approach for learning efficient feedback weights in layered cortical hierarchies. Our dynamical system enables the simultaneous learning of all weights with always-on plasticity, and exclusively utilizes information locally available at the synapses. PAL is entirely phase-free, avoiding the need for forward and backward passes or phased learning, and enables efficient error propagation across multi-layer cortical hierarchies, while maintaining bio-physically plausible signal transport and learning.

Over time, international environmental law has increasingly accommodated principles of equity and justice. Yet, climate equity remains a contentious, if not exclusionary, concept. This article applies new materialist theory and a posthuman perspective to climate equity. It explores the concept of climate (in)equity as enshrined in existing climate jurisprudence, and attempts to reimagine the concept in order to incorporate the subjectivity and interests of non-human matter into an otherwise enclosed and marketized climate-change legal discourse. The analysis in this article finds that prejudicial approaches to climate equity that prioritize dominant human subjects produce unjust consequences for excluded, vulnerable human populations and for non-human subjects, with these unjust consequences shaping both policy and lived experience. The article suggests that adopting new materialist/posthuman ontological and epistemological pluralism will support the incorporation of human–non-human entanglements in climate equity, and that such a determination must extend to reforming the inequitable enclosures and exclusions driven by the climate equity assemblage.

The Arabian Sea accounts for a small fraction of Tropical Cyclones—about 2% of the annual global mean. However, the damage they might inflict there and along its coastlines, which are thickly populated, is considerable. This study explores the influence of the changes in the vertical profiles of atmosphere and oceanic environment throughout the seasons of March–June (MAMJ) and October–December (OND) in clustering the cyclogenesis over the Eastern Arabian Sea (EAS) next to the Indian West coast in recent decades. Further investigation has been done into the precise contribution of atmospheric and oceanic factors to fluctuations in cyclone intensity throughout the MAMJ and OND seasons separately. Two seasons have been studied independently in order to better understand the distinct influences of the vertical fluctuation of atmospheric factors and the thermal structure of the oceanic subsurface on cyclogenesis. More severe cyclones are caused by high tropical cyclone heat potential, and ocean subsurface warming present in this sea region influences the genesis of storms mostly during MAMJ. On the other hand, mid tropospheric relative humidity and thermal instability influences more on increasing cyclogenesis and its clustering over EAS during OND season. The findings suggest that large-scale oceanic subsurface conditions have a crucial influence on cyclogenesis over EAS through oceanic sensitivity to atmospheric forcing. This cyclone tendency and its clustering over EAS needs attention in terms of forecasting, catastrophe risk reduction, and climate change adaptation due to the security of coastal urban and rural habitats, livelihoods, and essential infrastructure along the coasts.

ABSTRACT The present research investigated to what extent two Western cultures, France and the United States, differed in making status- related judgements based on a person’s familial class background. Consistent with the eco-historical origins of French and American status beliefs, Study 1 (N = 77) showed that French more than American participants perceived an unknown community member with higher (compared to lower) familial class background to have greater status-related characteristics. Study 2 (N = 213) showed that French more than American participants also expected a job candidate with higher (compared to lower) familial class back-ground to attain higher status in the workplace. Study 3 (N = 231) experimentally manipulated upward mobility beliefs in a monocultural sample of American participants. Results showed that when participants were made to believe that upward mobility in society was low (but not when high), information about a person’s familial class background was the basis of status-related judgements. Our findings speak to the importance that sociocultural contexts play for the understanding of different aspects of social class. RESUMEN En esta investigación exploramos las diferencias entre dos culturas occidentales, la francesa y la estadounidense, a la hora de emitir juicios sobre el estatus de una persona basados en sus antece-dentes socioeconómicos familiares. De acuerdo con los orígenes eco-históricos de las creencias francesas y estadounidenses en torno al estatus, el Estudio 1 (N = 77) reveló que los participantes franceses, en mayor medida que los estadounidenses, percibían características relacionadas con un mayor estatus social en un miembro desconocido de su comunidad cuando los antecedentes socioeconómicos familiares de este eran de nivel alto (frente a otro de nivel bajo). El Estudio 2 (N = 213) reveló que los participantes franceses, en mayor medida que los estadounidenses, también esperaban que un candidato con antecedentes socioeconómicos familiares de alto nivel (frente a otro de nivel bajo) alcanzase un estatus más elevado en el trabajo. En el Estudio 3 (N = 231) se manipularon experimentalmente las creencias sobre la movilidad social ascendente de una muestra monocultural de participantes estadounidenses. Los resultados muestran que cuando los partici-pantes creían que el nivel de movilidad social era bajo (a diferencia de cuando era alto), la información relacionada con los antecedentes socioeconómicos familiares de una persona constituye la base de los juicios sobre el estatus social de esta. Nuestros resultados ponen de relieve la importancia que los contextos socioculturales desempeñan en nuestro conocimiento de los distintos aspectos de la jerarquía social.