Exploring the role of ICT-enabled social innovation for the active inclusion of young people

This Report presents the final results of the study ‘ICT-enabled social innovation services for active inclusion of young people’ (IESI-Youth) which has been commissioned by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) and implemented by Arcola Research in 2014. The overall objective of the study was to review the state of the art in the domain of active inclusion services for young people, with a specific focus on how ICTs can support active inclusion of disadvantaged youth to strengthen their skills and capacities and support them to participate fully in employment and social life. The study was conducted as preparatory activity contributing to the development of the broader research project on 'ICT enabled Social Innovation in support of the Implementation of the Social Investment Package (IESI) being implemented by JRC-IPTS in collaboration with DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (DG EMPL).JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Self-assessing of the emotional intelligence and organizational intelligence in schools

The paper presents the results of an evaluation of the Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Organisational Intelligence (OI) competences self-assessment tools developed and applied by the IGUANA1 project. In the paper Emotional Intelligence and Organisational Intelligence competences are discussed, their use in action research experiments to assess and support the development of innovation in schools is presented, together with the results of these experiments. The paper also discusses how innovation support in schools was linked to a 'Theory of Change' approach in the IGUANA project and applied to support innovation plans developed by Portuguese and Lithuanian schools. Finally, the results of the use of the Theory of Change approach are discussed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The state of web accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities: a rapid evidence assessment

Increased digitisation of day-to-day activities was occurring prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic only accelerated the virtual shift, making web accessibility an urgent issue, especially for marginalised populations. Despite decades of work to develop, refine, and implement web accessibility standards, people with cognitive disabilities regularly experience many barriers to web accessibility. To inform ongoing work to improve web accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities, a systematic review was conducted. The main question guiding this review is: what are the state-of-the-art of interventions that support web accessibility for citizens, 9 years of age and up, living with cognitive impairment? A set of 50 search strings were entered into three academic databases: SCOPUS, ProQuest, and Web of Science. Systematic screening procedures narrowed the search returns to a total of 45 included papers. A data analysis revealed themes associated with the lived experiences of people with cognitive disabilities, tools for improving web accessibility, and methodological best practices for involving people with cognitive disabilities in research. These findings have immediate implications for ongoing research and the development of meaningful solutions to the problem of web accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Anthropometric profiles of elite athletes

Quantifying body composition is central to monitoring performance and training in athletes, however limited sport-specific anthropometric reference data, assessed and reported in a standardised manner, is available. This study provides anthropometric profiles in elite male athletes from different sports. Elite male athletes (n = 73) from National squads of boxing (n = 10), cricket (n = 21), swimming (n = 23), hockey (n = 10) and eventing (n = 9) were assessed for body mass, height, eight skinfolds (triceps, subscapular, biceps, iliac crest, supraspinal, abdominal, thigh and medial calf), body circumferences (arm, waist, hip, thigh and calf) and muscle circumferences (arm, thigh, calf) using ISAK standardised guidelines. For all athletes, large variability exists for measures of skinfold thickness at each skinfold site. Swimming (64.6 ± 16.1 mm) and boxing (63.5 ± 16.1 mm) were similar for the sum of eight skinfolds (Σ8SKF) but swimming had lower Σ8SKF compared to cricket (86.1 ± 21.3 mm; p = .011) and eventing (89.9 ± 30.7 mm; p = .028). Hockey (81.9 ± 26.3 mm) and eventing had the most varied Σ8SKF. Thigh body (p=.006) and muscle circumferences (p = .005) were significantly reduced in boxing compared to hockey. No differences were seen between sports for arm (p = .346; ES = .06) and calf (p = .382; ES = .06) muscle circumferences. The anthropometric profiles for elite athletes from various sports during pre-season training will be a useful resource for sports professionals when monitoring and interpreting body composition data. Large variation exists in anthropometric profiles between the different athletes and different sports, highlighting the necessity to have sport-specific normative ranges available to allow optimal monitoring of individual athletes particularly varying across sports as well as age, training status and position

Improving the Thermal Stability of a CCD Through Clocking

Modern precise radial velocity spectrometers are designed to infer the existence of planets orbiting other stars by measuring few-nm shifts in the positions of stellar spectral lines recorded at high spectral resolution on a large-area digital detector. While the spectrometer may be highly stabilized in terms of temperature, the detector itself may undergo changes in temperature during readout that are an order of magnitude or more larger than the other opto-mechanical components within the instrument. These variations in detector temperature can translate directly into systematic measurement errors. We explore a technique for reducing the amplitude of CCD temperature variations by shuffling charge within a pixel in the parallel direction during integration. We find that this "dither clocking" mode greatly reduces temperature variations in the CCDs being tested for the NEID spectrometer. We investigate several potential negative effects this clocking scheme could have on the underlying spectral data.Comment: Submitted to JATIS, special issue from the ISPA 2018 conference. 11 pages, 9 figure

Promoting general practice in medical schools. Where are we now?

In November 2016, the Medical Schools Council and Health Education England published a joint report chaired by Professor Val Wass: ‘By choice – not by chance’ to raise the profile of general practice as a positive career choice for medical students. We sought to evaluate the impact of the report by firstly, asking the views of Heads of GP teaching at UK medical schools whether and how the report has supported them in raising the profile of general practice and secondly, describing the initiatives developed by medical schools in a national survey. There was a perception reported by heads of GP teaching that the report has been highly influential in facilitating the promotion of general practice as a career to medical students. We describe multiple specific initiatives developed in response to the report’s recommendations. The national survey confirmed that whilst there is significant variation across medical schools in their response to the specific recommendations in the report, definite progress is being made. A number of areas that need particular consideration have been highlighted and we would recommend that future surveys are completed at appropriate time intervals to review further progress

Solar Contamination in Extreme-precision Radial-velocity Measurements: Deleterious Effects and Prospects for Mitigation

Solar contamination, due to moonlight and atmospheric scattering of sunlight, can cause systematic errors in stellar radial velocity (RV) measurements that significantly detract from the ~10 cm s−1 sensitivity required for the detection and characterization of terrestrial exoplanets in or near habitable zones of Sun-like stars. The addition of low-level spectral contamination at variable effective velocity offsets introduces systematic noise when measuring velocities using classical mask-based or template-based cross-correlation techniques. Here we present simulations estimating the range of RV measurement error induced by uncorrected scattered sunlight contamination. We explore potential correction techniques, using both simultaneous spectrometer sky fibers and broadband imaging via coherent fiber imaging bundles, that could reliably reduce this source of error to below the photon-noise limit of typical stellar observations. We discuss the limitations of these simulations, the underlying assumptions, and mitigation mechanisms. We also present and discuss the components designed and built into the NEID (NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler spectroscopy) precision RV instrument for the WIYN 3.5 m telescope, to serve as an ongoing resource for the community to explore and evaluate correction techniques. We emphasize that while "bright time" has been traditionally adequate for RV science, the goal of 10 cm s−1 precision on the most interesting exoplanetary systems may necessitate access to darker skies for these next-generation instruments

The NEID spectrometer: fibre injection system design

NEID is a high resolution echelle spectrograph designed to enable extremely precise Doppler radial velocity observations of stars in the 380-930nm wavelength range1. It has recently been installed at the 3.5m WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, and is currently being commissioned. The design is based on a white pupil layout with a monolithic parabolic primary mirror and a 195mm pupil size on the R4 Echelle grating. Here we describe the optical and mechanical design, assembly, and alignment of the fiber injection system which converts the native focal ratio of the sky, calibration, and science fibers to the focal ratio required to form the 195mm collimated beam