Living Streets

IntroductionDigital solutions and Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovations are often presented as the answer to many challenges faced by healthcare systems around the world. The UK government has made significant investments in this area, yet there have been concerns about the challenges faced when these technologies are implemented in practice. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of professionals, patient groups as well as innovators of introducing a new AI innovation used to detect potential abnormalities for lung cancer in radiology departments in the English NHS and to investigate the implementation challenges from their perspectives.MethodsBetween September 2022 and January 2024, we visited five sites and conducted 34 interviews with radiologists, radiographers and other professionals involved in the implementation of the tool. We also interviewed seven staff from the company who developed and implemented the tool. In addition, three 2-hour focus group workshops, two online and one in person, were conducted in January 2024 with a total of 14 patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) participants from diverse regions, backgrounds and lived experience across England. Following initial coding done inductively, the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was applied as an organising framework to structure and interpret the emerging themes.ResultsBoth professional and PPIE groups recognised the potential of AI in the diagnostic pathway, while generally seeing it as a supportive second pair of eyes rather than an autonomous decision-maker, particularly when delivering sensitive news and information. Professionals’ acceptance depended on how the tool was integrated into existing workflows and its perceived value, with triaging functionality seen as effective, but varying in usefulness depending on local workload pressures. Innovators as well healthcare professionals highlighted a number of implementation challenges, particularly around fragmented legal and regulatory frameworks and unclear governance within the NHS.DiscussionOur findings underscore that successful AI implementation in clinical practice depends not on the technology alone but on its effective integration into existing healthcare contexts and alignment with the beliefs and needs of healthcare professionals, patients and the public.

Drones increasingly feature beyond battlefields, deployed across civil, commercial and hobbyist applications and contexts. So too are off-the-shelf consumer drones increasingly being misused. From their outfitting with improvised weapons to the deployment of drones to harass individuals, both incidents involving consumer drones and the (potential) harms accompanying them, have diversified. Interested in emerging techno-legal geographies of consumer drone misuse, this paper deploys a feminist analytic to interrogate drone-enabled harms. It brings drone geographies into dialogue with feminist legal and digital geographies, to interrogate the drone as a technology encountered and interpreted in legal terms and accompanied by gendered impacts. Responding to calls for the expansion of the methodological toolkit underpinning the drone’s study while also affording geolegal attention to the drone, the paper draws upon focus groups designed in collaboration by a geographer and barrister and bringing together lawyers across diverse specialisms in an exploration of drone misuse and harm. Through analysis of examples of drone misuse and the legal process accompanying its investigation, we underscore both that drones can introduce novel as well as extend existing technology-enabled harms, and that such harms exceed the confines of aviation law, cutting across multiple areas of law. Collectively, we argue that employing a feminist approach in the drone’s critical analysis acts to foreground diversified drone harms and their uneven impacts.

Transition from high school to higher education poses a significant challenge for students, particularly in chemistry, where students’ prior laboratory experience is varied. Traditional laboratory education, focusing on chemical knowledge, scientific methodology, and practical skills, does not focus on the development of translational skills and establishing a proper level of self-efficacy, critical for students’ success as future scientists. To address this problem, we developed the Chemical Kitchen, a transdisciplinary simulation utilizing the parallels between professional gastronomy and chemistry laboratory practices. By engaging students in creative food experiments that mimic chemistry experiments, the course aims to enhance practical skills in a less intimidating environment. We evaluated the impact of the Chemical Kitchen on students’ self-efficacy through pre- and postcourse surveys. We found a significant adjustment in students’ self-efficacy: those with initially lower self-efficacy experienced increases, while those with initially higher self-efficacy saw decreases, showing a “leveling of the playing field” among first-year chemistry students. Qualitative feedback highlighted the course’s success in providing a fun, engaging, and meaningful learning experience, underscoring the importance of innovative teaching methods in enhancing practical skills and confidence. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of the Chemical Kitchen in establishing students’ self-efficacy and practical and transferable skills, offering a novel approach to laboratory education that could be beneficial across various scientific disciplines. Future research is encouraged to explore the long-term effects of such interventions on students’ engagement with science and their overall development as learners.

Cell polarity networks are defined by quantitative features of their constituent feedback circuits, which must be tuned to enable robust and stable polarization, while also ensuring that networks remain responsive to dynamically changing cellular states and/or spatial cues during development. Using the PAR polarity network as a model, we demonstrate that these features are enabled by the dimerization of the polarity protein PAR-2 via its N-terminal RING domain. Combining theory and experiment, we show that dimer affinity is optimized to achieve dynamic, selective, and cooperative binding of PAR-2 to the plasma membrane during polarization. Reducing dimerization compromises positive feedback and robustness of polarization. Conversely, enhanced dimerization renders the network less responsive due to kinetic trapping of PAR-2 on internal membranes and reduced sensitivity of PAR-2 to the anterior polarity kinase, aPKC/PKC-3. Thus, our data reveal a key role for a dynamically oligomeric RING domain in optimizing interaction affinities to support a robust and responsive cell polarity network, and highlight how optimization of oligomerization kinetics can serve as a strategy for dynamic and cooperative intracellular targeting.

This unopposed petition was for the removal of a commemorative plaque, installed without a faculty, on the windowsill of the south wall of the nave of the Grade II* listed church. In order to protect the privacy of any person affected by the judgment, the names of the church and the people involved were anonymised.

In the course of its consideration of a petition for a faculty for a significant re-ordering project, the court commented on the proper approach to such petitions in order to assist their progress through the faculty process.