120 research outputs found
Capabilities for transdisciplinary research
Problems framed as societal challenges have provided fresh impetus for transdisciplinary research. In response, funders have started programmes aimed at increasing transdisciplinary research capacity. However, current programme evaluations do not adequately measure the skills and characteristics of individuals and collectives doing this research. Addressing this gap, we propose a systematic framework for evaluating transdisciplinary research based on the Capability Approach, a set of concepts designed to assess practices, institutions, and people based on public values. The framework is operationalized through a mixed-method procedure which evaluates capabilities as they are valued and experienced by researchers themselves. The procedure is tested on a portfolio of âpump-primingâ research projects in the UK. We find these projects are sites of capability development in three ways: through convening cognitive capabilities required for academic practice; cultivating informal tacit capabilities; and maintaining often unacknowledged backstage capabilities over durations that extend beyond the lifetime of individual projects. Directing greater attention to these different modes of capability development in transdisciplinary research programmes may be useful formatively in identifying areas for ongoing project support, and also in steering research system capacity towards societal needs
What is robotics made of? The interdisciplinary politics of robotics research
Under framings of grand challenges, robotics has been proposed as a solution to a wide range of societal issues such as road safety, ageing society, economic productivity and climate change. However, what exactly is robotics research? From its inception, robotics has been an inherently interdisciplinary field, bringing together diverse domains such as engineering, cognitive science, computer science and, more recently, knowledge from social sciences and humanities. Previous research on interdisciplinarity shows that this mode of knowledge production is often driven by societal concerns and political choices. The politics of who gets to make these choices and on what terms is the focus of empirical research in this paper. Using a novel mixed-method approach combining bibliometrics, desk-based analysis and fieldwork, this article builds a narrative of interdisciplinarity at the UKâs largest public robotics lab, the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. This paper argues for the recognition of the plural ways of knowing interdisciplinarity. From citation analysis, through tracing of the emerging fields and disciplines, to, finally, the investigation of researchersâ experiences; each method contributes a distinct and complementary outlook on âwhat robotics is made ofâ. While bibliometrics allows visualising prominent disciplines and keywords, document analysis reveals influential and missing stakeholders. Meanwhile, fieldwork explores the logics underpinning robotics and identifies the capabilities necessary to perform the research. In doing so, the paper synthesises plural ways of locating politics in interdisciplinary research and provides recommendations for enabling âstructural preparedness for interdisciplinarityâ
The Impact of a Parkinsonâs Disease Workshop on Studentâs Attitudes and Competencies Towards Interprofessional Collaboration
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Workshop: Lassoing unicorns: how to map capabilities for better interdisciplinary research
Sometimes doing interdisciplinary work feels like trying to lasso unicorns. Working with big players from foreign disciplines and interdepartmental drifters. Negotiating over language and frameworks. Agreeing common research questions. All the while trying to gather data and do good work. Building on methods developed in ESRC and Horizon 2020 funded projects on interdisciplinary research, this workshop will: a) introduce the concept interdisciplinary capabilities - the disciplinary skills and informal aptitudes needed for people like environmental engineers, ecological economists and machine learning developers to work well together. b) present a mixed-method approach to mapping capabilities using bibliometric analysis and interviews. c) offer hands-on reflexive exercises on personal âcapability mappingâ, tailored to workshop participants The session will help scholars of all levels recognise power and knowledge in research and identify opportunities to steer that research together
Hadro-Chemistry and Evolution of (Anti-) Baryon Densities at RHIC
The consequences of hadro-chemical freezeout for the subsequent hadron gas
evolution in central heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC energies are
discussed with special emphasis on effects due to antibaryons. Contrary to
naive expectations, their individual conservation, as implied by experimental
data, has significant impact on the chemical off-equilibrium composition of
hadronic matter at collider energies. This may reflect on a variety of
observables including source sizes and dilepton spectra.Comment: 4 pages ReVTeX incl. 3 ps-figs, submitted to PR
Thermal analysis of production of resonances in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
Production of resonances is considered in the framework of the
single-freeze-out model of ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. The
formalism involves the virial expansion, where the probability to form a
resonance in a two-body channel is proportional to the derivative of the
phase-shift with respect to the invariant mass. The thermal model incorporates
longitudinal and transverse flow, as well as kinematic cuts of the STAR
experiment at RHIC. We find that the shape of the pi+ pi- spectral line
qualitatively reproduces the preliminary experimental data when the position of
the rho peak is lowered. This confirms the need to include the medium effects
in the description of the RHIC data. We also analyze the transverse-momentum
spectra of rho, K*(892), and f_0(980), and find that the slopes agree with the
observed values. Predictions are made for eta, eta', omega, phi, Lambda(1520),
and Sigma(1385).Comment: minor modifications, a reference adde
3D Fluid Flow Estimation with Integrated Particle Reconstruction
The standard approach to densely reconstruct the motion in a volume of fluid
is to inject high-contrast tracer particles and record their motion with
multiple high-speed cameras. Almost all existing work processes the acquired
multi-view video in two separate steps, utilizing either a pure Eulerian or
pure Lagrangian approach. Eulerian methods perform a voxel-based reconstruction
of particles per time step, followed by 3D motion estimation, with some form of
dense matching between the precomputed voxel grids from different time steps.
In this sequential procedure, the first step cannot use temporal consistency
considerations to support the reconstruction, while the second step has no
access to the original, high-resolution image data. Alternatively, Lagrangian
methods reconstruct an explicit, sparse set of particles and track the
individual particles over time. Physical constraints can only be incorporated
in a post-processing step when interpolating the particle tracks to a dense
motion field. We show, for the first time, how to jointly reconstruct both the
individual tracer particles and a dense 3D fluid motion field from the image
data, using an integrated energy minimization. Our hybrid Lagrangian/Eulerian
model reconstructs individual particles, and at the same time recovers a dense
3D motion field in the entire domain. Making particles explicit greatly reduces
the memory consumption and allows one to use the high-res input images for
matching. Whereas the dense motion field makes it possible to include physical
a-priori constraints and account for the incompressibility and viscosity of the
fluid. The method exhibits greatly (~70%) improved results over our recently
published baseline with two separate steps for 3D reconstruction and motion
estimation. Our results with only two time steps are comparable to those of
sota tracking-based methods that require much longer sequences.Comment: To appear in International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV
Three-Dimensional two-pion source image from Pb+Pb Collisions at Sqrts_NN=17.3 GeV: New constraints for source breakup dynamics
Source imaging methodology is used to provide a three-dimensional two-pion
source function for mid-rapidity pion pairs with MeV/c in central
() Pb+Pb collisions at =17.3 GeV. Prominent non-Gaussian
tails are observed in the pion pair transverse momentum (outward) and in the
beam (longitudinal) directions. Model calculations reproduce them with the
assumption of Bjorken longitudinal boost invariance and transverse flow
blast-wave dynamics coupled with "outside-in burning" in the transverse
direction; they also yield a proper time for breakup and emission duration for
the pion source.Comment: Six pages 4 figs. Submitted for publicatio
The meaning of compassion fatigue to student nurses: an interpretive phenomenological study
Background: Compassion fatigue is a form of occupational stress which occurs when individuals are exposed to suffering and trauma on an ongoing basis. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of compassion fatigue among student nurses following their first clinical placement in a UK health care setting during 2015. Methods: The aim of this study was to explore studentsâ thoughts and feelings about compassion fatigue using reflective poems as a source of data. An interpretive phenomenological approach was taken using a purposeful sampling strategy which aimed to explore in depth meaning of the concept as experienced by the students. Results: From this study it is clear that students experience compassion fatigue and this has a psychological effect on their wellbeing and ability to learn in the clinical practice setting. Reflective poetry writing enabled articulation of feelings which were at times negative and linked to the studentâs status as a novice nurse. Conclusions: Students experience compassion fatigue and educators need to find ways to provide support in both clinical and university settings. Positive practices such as shared reflection and the use of creative teaching methods might be beneficial, to support exploration of feelings, build resilience and effective ways of coping
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