Enhancing the engagement of higher education academics in knowledge transfer through a rewards and incentives scheme using an action research approach

This research project considers approaches to enhancing the engagement of academics with Knowledge Transfer in UK Higher Education. The research, undertaken within the Health and Education School of Middlesex University, utilised an innovative approach through the application of an Action Research (AR) framework in supporting personal and organisational development. Through insider-researcher led AR Cycles, knowledge and theory was developed co-productively, leading to the development, implementation and embedding of a Rewards and Incentives Scheme (R&IS) to enhance academics’ engagement with KT. The research involved the use of on-line surveys, in-depth interviews and Action Research Groups to engage academics as participants in the process. Original contribution to the field is demonstrated through outcomes of the application of a highly reflexive AR framework, including higher level reflection at each stage of several AR Cycles, culminating in the expression of theory and thinking at a meta-level of learning. AR offered an innovative approach to engaging academics in KT through shaping and implementing policy as part of participatory approaches, culminating in the R&IS. The thesis itself adopts an innovative structure to reflect the AR framework utilised. Within the limitations of generalisability of an AR approach, the research findings are of value in a wider context, suggesting that: • The motivation to engage in KT involves a complex mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, but in this particular study it was largely influenced by intrinsic factors such as having a positive impact in society • Academics in the health and education sectors may not respond positively to commercial-style descriptors of KT and econometric measures alone would not be a true reflection of KT activity levels • AR can be an effective approach to support management-led interventions and change management around a specific objective • Rewards and incentives could play an effective part in management initiatives to engage academics in KT

Preliminary Results for LP VPE X-Ray Detectors

Thick epitaxial layers have been grown using Low Pressure Vapour Phase Epitaxy techniques with low free carrier concentrations . This type of material is attractive as a medium for X-ray detection, because of its high conversion efficiency for X-rays in the medically interesting energy range.Comment: 4 pages. PS file only - original in WORD. Also available at http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/preprints/97/07

Socially inclusive governance?: a comparison of local anti-poverty strategies in the UK and the Netherlands

It is commonplace for intellectuals and political figures to speak of popular involvement in decision-making as an essential basis for a well-functioning and legitimate democracy, while at the same time institutions of liberal democracy are under threat and face crisis in the west. In response a rhetoric of socially inclusive and participatory governance has taken hold as a means for democratic renewal - a 'third-way' between the outmoded dogma of the command state and free market - one that encourages participation of local people in a plurality of non-state organisations in civil society. Rather than banish ailing representative institutions, new perspectives seek to pluralise and radicalise them, particularly as existing socialism continues to decline, carrying with it a mounting impasse within traditional thinking on the Left. Debates on socially inclusive governance and the deep implications for a democratic and plural socialism are pressing, and require critical attention. Research for this thesis deals centrally with the debate on socially inclusive governance by comparing actual mechanisms for popular involvement in local anti-poverty strategies in the UK and the Netherlands. Comparing these issues in North Tyneside and Rotterdam, this research shows that despite novel attempts towards involvement at grassroots level, this ideal is belied by a more restricted reality. Radical democracy requires intervention along an explicit participatory ideology external to the internal logic of governance pluralism. Any project for radical and plural democracy, moreover, needs to be mindful of the nature of the relationship between state and civil society, and retain a normative conception of the 'third-sector'. Despite enduring institutional specificities and contextual path-dependence, a deepening process of international neo-liberalisation has engendered a tendency for welfare regime convergence in the UK and the Netherlands. Certain possibilities exist for policy transfer between these different institutional contexts

Judgments Convention: Application to Governments

The Hague Judgments Convention 2019 makes the classic distinction between private law matters within its scope (civil or commercial matters) and public law matters outside its scope. It also follows the same position in relation to State immunity used in the Hague Choice of Court Convention 2005 (see Art. 2(5) in 2019 and 2(6) in 2005). The innovative parts of the 2019 Convention relate to the exclusions from scope in Article 2 relating to the armed forces, law enforcement activities and unilateral debt restructuring. Finally, in Article 19, the Convention creates a new declaration system permitting States to widen the exclusion from scope to some private law judgments concerning a State, or a State agency or a natural person acting for the State or a Government agency. This article gives guidance on the correct Treaty interpretation of all these matters taking full account of the work of the Hague Informal Working Group dealing with the application of the Convention to Governments and the other relevant supplementary means of interpretation referred to in Article 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties

Modeling the mobility of living organisms in heterogeneous landscapes: Does memory improve foraging success?

Thanks to recent technological advances, it is now possible to track with an unprecedented precision and for long periods of time the movement patterns of many living organisms in their habitat. The increasing amount of data available on single trajectories offers the possibility of understanding how animals move and of testing basic movement models. Random walks have long represented the main description for micro-organisms and have also been useful to understand the foraging behaviour of large animals. Nevertheless, most vertebrates, in particular humans and other primates, rely on sophisticated cognitive tools such as spatial maps, episodic memory and travel cost discounting. These properties call for other modeling approaches of mobility patterns. We propose a foraging framework where a learning mobile agent uses a combination of memory-based and random steps. We investigate how advantageous it is to use memory for exploiting resources in heterogeneous and changing environments. An adequate balance of determinism and random exploration is found to maximize the foraging efficiency and to generate trajectories with an intricate spatio-temporal order. Based on this approach, we propose some tools for analysing the non-random nature of mobility patterns in general.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, improved discussio

The Structural Integrity of Composite Materials and Long-Life Implementation of Composite Structures

Funder: University of CambridgeAbstract: Empirical or semi-empirical design methodologies at the macroscopic scale (structural level) can be supported and justified only by a fundamental understanding at the lower (microscopic) size scale through the physical model. Today structural integrity (SI) is thought as the optimisation of microstructure by controlling processing coupled with intelligent manufacturing of the material: to maximise mechanical performance and ensure reliability of the large scale structure; and to avoid calamity and misfortune. SI analysis provides quantitative input to the formulation of an appropriately balanced response to the problem. This article demonstrates that at the heart of the matter are those mechanisms of crack nucleation and growth that affect the structural integrity of the material: microscopic cracking events that are usually too small to observe and viewed only by microscopy

Depressive symptoms and quality of life in people with age-related macular degeneration

Purpose: To examine quality of life and associated factors in people with Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD). Methods: One hundred and forty-five AMD participants (mean age 78.0 +/- 7.7 years) and 104 age- and gender- matched controls (mean age 78.1 +/- 5.8 years) comprised the study populations for this case-control study. Depressive symptoms were measured with the Goldberg Anxiety and Depression (GAD) scale; general health and daily functioning was assessed with the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 (SF-36) and questions relating to assistance required for daily living activities. Results: People with AMD performed more poorly than controls on the GAD depression scale, and physical functioning subscale of SF-36. 44.4% of people with AMD had clinically significant depressive symptoms compared to 17.5% of controls (p < 0.001). Multiple regression analysis revealed that AMD was independently associated with depressive symptoms and a path model indicated that AMD led to depressive symptoms both directly and indirectly via reduced general health and social functioning. Conclusion: Psychological and functional outcome measures are reduced in people with AMD. Earlier recognition and treatment of depressive symptoms in people with AMD may be crucial to maintaining quality of life in this group

Intermittent Fasting After Spinal Cord Injury Does Not Improve the Recovery of Baroreflex Regulation in the Rat

Modest recovery of somatic function after incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI) has been widely demonstrated. Recently we have shown that spontaneous recovery of baroreflex regulation of sympathetic activity also occurs in rats. Dietary restriction in the form of every other day fasting (EODF) has been shown to have beneficial effects on the recovery of motor function after SCI in rats. The goal of this study was to determine if EODF augments the improvement of baroreflex regulation of sympathetic activity after chronic left thoracic (T8) surgical spinal hemisection. To determine this, we performed baroreflex tests on ad-lib fed or EODF rats 1 week or 7 weeks after left T8 spinal hemisection. One week after T8 left hemisection baroreflex testing revealed that gain of baroreflex responsiveness, as well as the ability to increase renal sympathetic nerve activity (RSNA) at low arterial pressure, was significantly impaired in the ad-lib fed but not the EODF rats compared with sham lesioned control rats. However, baroreflex tests performed 7 weeks after T8 left hemisection revealed the inability of both ad-lib and EODF rats to decrease RSNA at elevated arterial pressures. While there is evidence to suggest that EODF has beneficial effects on the recovery of motor function in rats, EODF did not significantly improve the recovery of baroreflex regulation of sympathetic activity

Vortex Erosion in a Shallow Water Model of the Polar Vortex

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.The erosion of a model stratospheric polar vortex in response to bottom boundary forcing is investigated numerically. Stripping of filaments of air from the polar vortex has been implicated in the occurrence of stratospheric sudden warmings (SSWs) but it is not understood in detail what factors determine the rate and amount of stripping. Here a shallow water vortex forced by topography is used to investigate the factors initiating stripping and whether this leads the vortex to undergo an SSW. It is found that the amplitude of topographic forcing must exceed some threshold (of order 200–450 m) in order for significant stripping to occur. For larger forcing amplitudes significant stripping occurs, but not as an instantaneous response to the forcing; rather, the forcing appears to initiate a process that ultimately results in stripping several tens of days later. There appears to be no simple quantitative relationship between the amount of mass stripped and the topography amplitude. However, at least over the early stages of the experiments, there is a good correlation between the amount of mass stripped and the global integral of wave activity, which may be interpreted as a measure of the accumulated topographic forcing. Finally there does not appear to be a simple correspondence between amount of mass stripped and the occurrence of an SSW.Robin Beaumont was supported during this research with a PhD studentship funded by an EPSRC Doctoral Training Grant