University of Hertfordshire

People desire friends who have qualities such as similarity, the ability to provide support, opportunities for socialisation, assistance in achieving self-serving goals and access to potential mates. In the current study, we aimed to examine the degree of overlap between the friends people consider ideal and those they actually have. Using a sample of 6224 participants from 12 countries, we found that, across five dimensions of friendship, ideal and actual friendships considerably overlapped and ideal preferences were significant and strong predictors of actual friendships. Still, the overlap between ideal and actual friendships was not complete; rather, a small deficit emerged, with participants getting less of what they wanted. These results were consistent across the 12 countries in our sample. We also found significant effects of the Dark Triad personality traits on several dimensions of friendship.

The choice of building façade materiality and composition plays a significant role in indoor and outdoor thermal comfort as well as energy efficiency. However, the carbon footprint of most construction materials contributes negatively to climate change, reinforcing the need for Net-Zero Carbon Buildings (NZCBs). Incorporating nature-based materials into façade compositions can help minimize carbon emissions in the building sector. However, their effects on indoor-outdoor climate interactions and energy conservation less well studied. This study analyzed the impact of six different façade compositions—comprising a reference (all concrete), two brick-based designs, two stacked bio-based insulations, and a mixed concrete-bio-based material (hempcrete)—on indoor energy consumption and outdoor thermal conditions using a co-simulation approach with ENVI-met and EnergyPlus. The results showed that during summer, all façade scenarios exhibited warmer external wall surfaces during the daytime, with brick-based walls cooling down while bio-based insulated walls remained warmer at night. In winter, all walls were cooler throughout the day and night. The Mixed Hemp-Crete (MHC) façade consistently stayed cooler across seasons. Other façade compositions influenced ambient air temperature, with daytime warming and nighttime cooling effects observed during summer, indicating the potential of these materials to mitigate urban heat. Peak summer energy consumption increased by 12%–98% across the façade scenarios due to variations in composition, whereas winter energy consumption decreased by 25%–68% compared to the fully concrete façade system. Annually, stacked and mixed bio-based façade scenarios demonstrated a heating consumption reduction of 48%–52%, highlighting their potential to lower energy consumption in regions with long, cold winters. These findings emphasize the significant contribution of nature-based façade materials to global carbon mitigation efforts, offering a promising pathway toward achieving NZCBs. • Simulated six façade types using ENVI-met and EnergyPlus in a temperate climate. • Mixed hempcrete façade improved outdoor thermal comfort, cooling UTCI by up to 1.3°C. • Bio-based façades reduced annual heating energy use by up to 52% vs. concrete walls. • Summer facades warmed daytime air (UTCI +0.6–3.5°C) but cooled night air significantly. • Nature-based façades support Net-Zero goals by boosting energy and thermal efficiency.

ABSTRACT This paper presents a philosophical and praxiological enquiry into a flagship MSc programme in Outdoor and Environmental Education in the UK that emphasises co-creation of knowledge and reflexive practice among students and academic staff. Using a trioethnographic approach, it brings together critical reflections from three researcher-practitioners to examine the programme’s philosophical foundations and consider whether and how its curriculum fulfils the aims it espouses, particularly in relation to climate, social and ecological justice. Drawing on critical and wild pedagogies, and informed by Indigenous movements in environmental education, the paper engages with contemporary educational philosophy to propose the concept of ‘reforesting’. Building on Arendt’s notion of natality, ‘reforesting’ is presented as a way of reimagining new beginnings through critical reflection and collective praxis in higher education. In doing so, the paper contributes to discussions about how education might respond to the climate crisis while sustaining an ethos of hope and solidarity.

Synthesizer is a fast, flexible, modular, and extensible Python package that empowers astronomers to turn theoretical galaxy models into realistic synthetic observations-including spectra, photometry, images, and spectral cubes-with a focus on interchangeable modelling assumptions.By offloading computationally intensive tasks to threaded C++ extensions, Synthesizer delivers both simplicity and speed, enabling rapid forward-modelling workflows without requiring users to manage low-level data processing and computational details.

Real-time flood risk assessment requires integrated frameworks that not only forecast flood dynamics accurately [1] but also capture how people respond to rapidly changing hazard conditions [2,3]. This study develops a novel real-time flood impact assessment framework that couples AI-driven flood forecasting (Long Short-Term Memory) with an agent-based model (ABM) to evaluate human mobility disruption and behavioural adaptation during flood events.The outputs of the flood forecasting model are dynamically transferred to an ABM that represents urban populations, daily activity schedules, and transport networks. Agent (i.e., road users with different demographic attributes) decision-making is governed by a novel risk priority index (RPI), which integrates direct flood exposure, official communication, and demographic vulnerability of agents. Watts-Strogatz small-world network was used to consider the interaction of agents and realistically represent information diffusion, allowing the dissemination of risk awareness.Results reveal substantial real-time impacts on urban mobility, with significant increases in travel times, particularly during peak hours. Moreover, incorporating behavioural adaptation through the RPI in agent-based modelling highlights the critical role of flood-risk information sharing among. A balanced combination of personal flood experience (Individual RPI) and socially shared information (average RPI of neighbouring agents) leads to faster and more effective formation of risk awareness across the population. The proposed AI-driven, agent-based framework enables real-time evaluation of flood impacts on population groups and transport systems, offering a powerful tool for emergency response planning and operational flood risk mitigation by local authorities.

Urban and pluvial flooding increasingly threaten green infrastructure, particularly trees, which play a critical role in urban resilience, drainage, and ecosystem services [1]. Despite their importance, the physical mechanisms governing tree uprooting under pluvial flood conditions remain poorly quantified, especially with respect to flow characteristics, soil properties, and planting design [2].This study presents a comprehensive experimental investigation into the impact of pluvial flooding on tree stability, with a specific focus on uprooting processes under controlled hydraulic conditions. More than 200 flume experiments were conducted using bonsai trees as scaled physical analogues of urban trees. The experiments were designed to systematically examine the influence of flow intensity, planting configuration, and soil depth on tree uprooting. Tests were carried out with both single-tree and two-tree arrangements to assess the effects of interaction between neighbouring trees. A wide range of flow conditions was imposed, representing low, medium, and high-intensity pluvial flooding scenarios, while soil depth was varied to simulate different urban planting constraints.The results demonstrate that tree uprooting is strongly governed by design layout parameters, particularly tree height and the spacing between trees. Closely spaced trees exhibited altered flow patterns and load distributions, leading to either increased stability due to flow shielding or enhanced vulnerability due to soil disturbance, depending on the configuration. Soil depth was found to be a critical controlling factor, with shallower soils significantly reducing root anchorage capacity and increasing the likelihood of uprooting under flood conditions.Analysis of flow intensity revealed the existence of a threshold behaviour. While low-intensity flows generally resulted in negligible structural response, medium- and high-intensity flows produced comparable levels of hydrodynamic loading, with no substantial increase in uprooting probability beyond a critical flow threshold. This indicates that once a certain hydraulic forcing is exceeded, additional increases in flow intensity do not proportionally amplify adverse impacts. Instead, the transition across this threshold marks the onset of significant instability and uprooting risk.These findings highlight the non-linear nature of tree–flow–soil interactions during pluvial flooding and underscore the importance of considering layout design and subsurface constraints in urban tree planting strategies. The identification of critical thresholds for adverse impacts has practical implications for flood-resilient urban planning, suggesting that appropriate spacing, height selection, and soil depth provision can substantially enhance tree stability under extreme rainfall events.[1] Piadeh, F., Bakhtiari, V., Piadeh, F. (2026). Automated novel real-time framework for rainfall data imputation in flood early warning systems, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 1164(B), p.113348. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engappai.2025.113348[2] Défossez, P., Veylon, G., Yang, M., Bonnefond, J.M., Garrigou, D., Trichet, P., Danjon, F. (2021). Impact of soil water content on the overturning resistance of young Pinus Pinaster in sandy soil, Forest Ecology and Management, 480, p.118614.

This workshop proposes looking at errors in humans and robots. The workshop will focus along three axes: Human, Robot and Interaction induced errors. Errors in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) pose a crucial challenge for the deployment of robots. Errors can affect the safety and trust of users, therefore it is important for empowering society that these robots can handle errors robustly. The workshop intends to foster interdisciplinary discussion among researchers in robotics, HCI, cognitive science, and social sciences, to encourage the development of robust, user-centered, and socially responsible HRI systems. The invited speakers, paper presentations and discussions will focus around topics of detecting errors, handling errors, adapting to errors, restoring trust, using intentional errors, communication strategies, issues of expectation as well as look at design, interdisciplinary and ethical approaches to research. In this way we will help inform research into errors, and develop robotic systems capable of robust interaction and collaboration.