Connecting the Missing Link: Bringing Together Global Philanthropists and Global Community Philanthropy Organizations

In a project begun in 2011, Synergos brought together individual philanthropists and leaders of community philanthropy organizations (CPOs) from around the world to learn about and understand the potentially transformative benefits of forming partnerships to address societal problems.This project has opened a number of doors to creating opportunities for community foundations and philanthropists to extend their reach as well as significantly increase the impact of their work. It has substantially raised awareness and has also created safe spaces for constructive dialogue on how to move forward in working together. These spaces can now be transformed into more practical "laboratories" to address community problems

What drives innovative output in emerging clusters? Evidence from the wine industry

Industrial clusters, innovative output, firm knowledge base, network closure, structural holes, external openness, wine

Evaluation of the Scottish Borders Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) programme

In the light of decades of worldwide research that implies that the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) programme has potential to enhance learning and attainment (Romney and Samuels, 2001) a pilot programme was launched in Scottish Borders Council schools in September 2005. Since the programme includes activities to help pupils to control impulsive behaviour, most pupils selected for the programme had a history of underachieving due to social, emotional or behavioural problems. The FIE programme is described in Section 1. There are two strands to the pilot project: one is equipping teachers to deliver the FIE programme to the most vulnerable pupils, the other is the adoption of the Feuerstein approach to mediating learning across schools. While the first strand is very resource intensive, the second strand can operate with more modest investment. In 2005-2006, 32 primary and secondary teachers, including members of school Senior Management Teams, volunteered for the Feuerstein accredited training and began to deliver the FIE programme with the selected pupils for around 80 minutes per week. Scottish Borders Newly Qualified Teachers (probationers) also participated for three days in the area of the Feuerstein training that deals specifically with mediated learning. Since there is extensive research evidence that the quality of the teacher’s mediation is a major influence on learning, early career training in mediation was thought likely to yield long-term dividends. This evaluation is one of many of FIE programmes. The Scottish Borders programme is a pilot project that had been operational for around six months (excluding school holiday weeks) when the evaluation began. Typically, published evaluations are of FIE programmes that have been running for at least two years and often these programmes provided more lessons than in the Borders pilot project

Developing Future UK Energy Performance Standards: The St Nicholas Court project, Final Report

The St Nicholas Court Project was set up to explore the implications of an enhanced energy performance standard for new housing for the design, construction and performance of timber framed dwellings. The energy performance standard, EPS08, is modelled on proposals made by the DETR in June 2000 for a possible review of Part L of the Building Regulations in the second half of the present decade. The overall goal of the project was to support the next revision of Part L through an enhanced body of qualitative and quantitative evidence on options and impacts. The seeds of the project were contained in a report – Towards Sustainable Housing - commissioned by Joseph Rowntree Foundation at the start of the last review of this part of the Building Regulations. The project itself has been based on the St Nicholas Court Development which involves the design and construction of a group of 18 low energy and affordable dwellings on a brown field site in York (see site plan below). The research project was established in two stages. Initial funding was provided by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the spring of 1999. This ensured the involvement of the research team from the outset of the development process. Additional funding was provided from late 2000 by the Housing Corporation and by the DETR through the Partners in Innovation programme (responsibility for which now lies with the DTI). The research project was originally divided into five phases – project definition, design, construction, occupation, and communication and dissemination. Delays in site acquisition initially allowed the design phase to be extended, but ultimately forced the abandonment of the construction and occupation phases, and the scaling down of the communication and dissemination phase. Despite the delays, the development itself will now go ahead, with construction starting in mid-2003

Systematic Review of High School Dropout Prevention Programs

This systematic literature review aims to introduce an innovative method of qualitative data analysis to the sparse empirical research of high school dropout prevention efforts. Through a framework of social capital theory, this study explores the social factors connected to at-risk schools and students. For decades, high school dropout and graduation has been a national focus. However, uncovering empirical studies evaluating the effectiveness of coordinated efforts is rare. This systematic literature serves two purposes, to fill gaps in the literature, and to integrate an innovative evaluation method for dropout prevention efforts. With a systematic literature review method, seven databases that embody various disciplines were explored. The literature search and data analysis sought to unveil empirical research and additionally, any innovative efforts being made in addressing poor school performance. Of 2,744 search results, 18 studies met inclusion criteria. This study highlights the social factors contributing to and preventing dropout. Data from the included studies and programs were compared to the concepts of bonding and bridging social capital. The findings suggest that research of dropout prevention programs lack empirical methodology, lack appreciation for social factors, produce mixed results, and don’t share any innovative theoretical frameworks. No studies or programs appeared to measure, analyze, or target in-depth social factors impacting the school, student population, or families

How to Solve Classification and Regression Problems on High-Dimensional Data with a Supervised Extension of Slow Feature Analysis

Supervised learning from high-dimensional data, e.g., multimedia data, is a challenging task. We propose an extension of slow feature analysis (SFA) for supervised dimensionality reduction called graph-based SFA (GSFA). The algorithm extracts a label-predictive low-dimensional set of features that can be post-processed by typical supervised algorithms to generate the final label or class estimation. GSFA is trained with a so-called training graph, in which the vertices are the samples and the edges represent similarities of the corresponding labels. A new weighted SFA optimization problem is introduced, generalizing the notion of slowness from sequences of samples to such training graphs. We show that GSFA computes an optimal solution to this problem in the considered function space, and propose several types of training graphs. For classification, the most straightforward graph yields features equivalent to those of (nonlinear) Fisher discriminant analysis. Emphasis is on regression, where four different graphs were evaluated experimentally with a subproblem of face detection on photographs. The method proposed is promising particularly when linear models are insufficient, as well as when feature selection is difficult

Bridging the Gap - On Easing the Transition from Arab Secondary to Western Third Level Learning.

Learning and achievement issues among Foundation Year (FY) students at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) Bahrain have been responded to by the Language and Culture Unit to address the educational problems that have arisen as a direct consequence of the differences in skills students have on leaving secondary school and the skills that are required at third level institutions. The findings of the study assess the extent to which an integration of sustainable development into course objectives and learning outcomes takes place and how the content of the course responds to specific students’ needs. The research consists of an in-depth quantitative and qualitative case study that evaluates the extent to which the course enables the transition from a secondary to a third level institution and teaches the students the skills required to ‘survive’ at a westerntype university. In support of our claim, the results from this case study will be presented and implications of a more general relevance will be suggested. Our model of an academic skills intervention programme can be applied to other higher education institutions where issues of transition from secondary to third level learning may be problematic