Integrating an Institutional CRIS with an OA IR

Poster describing and illustrating work undertaken by ULCC and Symplectic to integrate an existing Symplectic Elements Current Research Information System with a new externally available EPrints Open Access repository, including support for harvesting full-text from UK PubMed Central

Previously unpublished Odonata records from Sarawak, Borneo : part 1, Kuching Division excluding Kubah National Park, and Samarahan Division

Records of Odonata from Kuching and Samarahan, the western administrative divisions of Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo, are presented. Forty-two species are listed from Bako National Park, and eighty-nine species are listed from various other locations. Notable records, not yet publishedin detail elsewhere, include Aciagrion ?fasiculare, Bornargiolestes species, Pericnemis species cf triangularis, Coeliccia new species and Tetrathemis flavescens

Critical appreciative processes as a methodology for studying the production of consciousness

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) was developed as an approach to organization development that involves groups of people in discovering the 'best of what is' to drive social change. Several researchers, however, found that an exclusive focus on 'positive stories' is not tenable in practice. This paper explores their advocacy of ‘critical appreciative processes’ by reporting findings from a Big Lottery Research Project on the lives of Pakistani women living in Sheffield (England). Our findings track transformative learning amongst six Pakistani research assistants who ran AI workshops, Open Space events and conducted 1-to-1 interviews with thirty-nine other Pakistani women. They collectively deconstructed and reconstructed the meaning of social practices within their community, triggering both personal and collective processes of change. The paper’s value lies in the way Appreciative Inquiry, Critical Theory and Grounded Theory have been combined to theorise how critical appreciative process can advance study of the production of consciousness within a community

Appreciative inquiry as a method of transforming identity and power in Pakistani women

This paper describes a three-year action research project that used Appreciative Inquiry to work with marginalised Pakistani women living in Sheffield. The research encountered many of the difficulties and dilemmas that have been previously identified in the theory and practice of Appreciative Inquiry. However it was also successful in bringing about a significant transformation in the ability of participants to develop critical thinking; enabling them to subvert and challenge the identities that had been constructed for them by sources of power within their community and culture. The paper describes the innovative application of Appreciative Inquiry whilst bringing a new theoretical perspective which responds to the need for Appreciative Inquiry to critically address issues of power as it plays out in the life of a community

Previously unpublished Odonata records from Sarawak, Borneo : part 2, Kubah National Park

Records of Odonata from Kubah National Park, near Kuching in west Sarawak, are presented. Eighty-five species are known from the national park. Notable records include Drepanosticta drusilla, Rhinocypha species cf spinifer, Bornagriolestes species, Anaciaeschna species and Macromidia genialis erratica

What is critical appreciation? Insights from studying the critical turn in an appreciative inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) was developed in the late 1980s as a process to encourage social innovation by involving people in discovering the ‘best of what is’. Recent research has suggested that AI practitioners’ focus on positivity is now inhibiting AI’s focus on generative theory. This paper responds by asking the question “what is critical appreciation?”, then seeks answers by studying the critical turn in a Big Lottery Research project. By tracking the narratives of research assistants (RAs) as they describe the ‘life worlds’ and ‘systems’ in their community, we clarify the recursive processes that lead to deeper levels of appreciation. We contribute to the development of critical appreciative processes (CAPs) that start with a critical inquiry (CI) to deconstruct experience and then engage critical appreciative processes during the remainder of the AI cycle to construct new experiences. The initial CI establishes which system imperatives colonise the life world of participants whilst subsequent critical-appreciative processes build participants’ aspirations to design new social systems

Ghost direction detection and other innovations for Ms. Pac-Man

Ms. Pac-Man was developed in the 1980s, becoming one of the most popular arcade games of its time. It still has a significant following today and has recently attracted the attention of artificial intelligence researchers, in part, due to the fact that the agent must react in real time in order to navigate its way through the maze. This pape

Non-invasive radial artery blood pressure monitoring using error compensated tactile sensors and patient specific oscillometry

[Abstract not available