Earning its keep: a social return of investment study of CCCU Arts & Culture at the Old Lookout Gallery, Broadstairs

In 2013 The Department of Media, Art & Design developed an inter-faculty research project with three aims focused upon evaluation, marketing and SROI: i. To evaluate the 2013 programme of events at The Old Lookout from the points of view of the artist(s) in residence; local businesses; gallery users (visitors) and non-users of the Gallery. ii. To gather marketing data in relation to the local communities knowledge of the Old Lookout Gallery and the programme of activities it offered and through this data improve subsequent advertising. iii. To pilot measures of Social Return on Investment (SROI) and if salient offer the tools for use across the University (and by partners) in order to provide a measure of SROI for other venues and activities. There are two types of Social Return on Investment (SROI): • Evaluative, which is conducted retrospectively and based on actual outcomes that have already taken place • Forecast, which predicts how much social value will be created if the activities meet their intended outcomes

Educating children with life limiting and life threatening conditions

There are about 49,000 children and young people in the UK with a life limiting or life threatening condition; very many are in mainstream schools and the numbers are rising. Conditions include cancer, cerebral palsy, brain injury and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. This workshop shared the findings from research which sought to understand teachers' views and experiences of working with children with these conditions, and to identify the support that they need. The multi-disciplinary research team used the findings to write a practical handbook for teachers and school-based staff. It aims to address teachers' concerns about; medical care, responding to government policies, children's emotional and behavioural needs, bereavement, how to communicate with children, families and professionals, teaching and learning strategies, and a school culture that includes support for teachers. We will share the book and try to answer your questions

Contraceptive confidence and timing of first birth in Moldova: an event history analysis of retrospective data

Objectives: To test the contraceptive confidence hypothesis in a modern context. The hypothesis is that women using effective or modern contraceptive methods have increased contraceptive confidence and hence a shorter interval between marriage and first birth than users of ineffective or traditional methods. We extend the hypothesis to incorporate the role of abortion, arguing that it acts as a substitute for contraception in the study context.Setting: Moldova, a country in South-East Europe. Moldova exhibits high use of traditional contraceptive methods and abortion compared with other European countries.Participants: Data are from a secondary analysis of the 2005 Moldovan Demographic and Health Survey, a nationally representative sample survey. 5377 unmarried women were selected.Primary and secondary outcome measures: The outcome measure was the interval between marriage and first birth. This was modelled using a piecewise-constant hazard regression, with abortion and contraceptive method types as primary variables along with relevant sociodemographic controls.Results: Women with high contraceptive confidence (modern method users) have a higher cumulative hazard of first birth 36?months following marriage (0.88 (0.87 to 0.89)) compared with women with low contraceptive confidence (traditional method users, cumulative hazard: 0.85 (0.84 to 0.85)). This is consistent with the contraceptive confidence hypothesis. There is a higher cumulative hazard of first birth among women with low (0.80 (0.79 to 0.80)) and moderate abortion propensities (0.76 (0.75 to 0.77)) than women with no abortion propensity (0.73 (0.72 to 0.74)) 24?months after marriage.Conclusions: Effective contraceptive use tends to increase contraceptive confidence and is associated with a shorter interval between marriage and first birth. Increased use of abortion also tends to increase contraceptive confidence and shorten birth duration, although this effect is non-linear—women with a very high use of abortion tend to have lengthy intervals between marriage and first birth

The correlates of natural method use in Moldova: is natural method use associated with poverty and isolation?

Natural method use is often associated with high levels of unwanted births and induced abortions. This study investigates the correlates of natural method use in Moldova, a country with one of the highest proportions of natural contraceptive users in Europe. We hypothesize that economic and spatial disadvantage increase the reliance on natural methods whereas exposure to FP programs decreases the probability of natural method use. The analysis considers a sub-sample of 5860 sexually-active women from the 2005 Demographic and Health Survey. Results from multilevel multinomial models, controlling for relevant characteristics and data structure, show that economic disadvantage increases the probability of natural method use; but the overall effect is small. Higher FP media exposure reduces natural method use; however this effect attenuates with age. We conclude that FP efforts directed towards the poorest may have limited impact, but interventions targeted at older women could reduce the burden of unwanted pregnancies

Dimension-adaptive bounds on compressive FLD Classification

Efficient dimensionality reduction by random projections (RP) gains popularity, hence the learning guarantees achievable in RP spaces are of great interest. In finite dimensional setting, it has been shown for the compressive Fisher Linear Discriminant (FLD) classifier that forgood generalisation the required target dimension grows only as the log of the number of classes and is not adversely affected by the number of projected data points. However these bounds depend on the dimensionality d of the original data space. In this paper we give further guarantees that remove d from the bounds under certain conditions of regularity on the data density structure. In particular, if the data density does not fill the ambient space then the error of compressive FLD is independent of the ambient dimension and depends only on a notion of ‘intrinsic dimension'

Exciton Dynamics in the J-Aggregates of a Carbocyanine Dye

We report on the exciton dynamics in the J-aggregating dye 5,5',6,6'-tetrachloro-1,1'-diethyl-3,3'-di(4-sulfobutyl)-benzimidazolocarbocyanine, which is known readily to form J-aggregates, even at room temperature and at a low concentration. We performed a series of time-correlated single-photon-counting experiments at different emission wavelengths and at different temperatures in the range between 1.5 and 125 K. Additionally, the temperature dependence of the relative fluorescence quantum yield was determined

Dynamic PCBM:Dimer Population in Solar Cells under Light and Temperature Fluctuations

Photoinduced dimerization of phenyl‐C61‐butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) has a significant impact on the stability of polymer:PCBM organic solar cells (OSCs). This reaction is reversible, as dimers can be thermally decomposed at sufficiently elevated temperatures and both photodimerization and decomposition are temperature dependent. In operando conditions of OSCs evidently involve exposure to both light and heat, following periodic diurnal and seasonal profiles. In this work, the kinetics of dimer formation and decomposition are examined and quantified as a function of temperature, light intensity, blend composition, and time. The activation energy for photodimerization is estimated to be 0.021(3) eV, considerably smaller than that for decomposition (0.96 eV). The findings are benchmarked with a variety of conjugated polymer matrices to propose a descriptive dynamic model of PCBM:dimer population in OSCs, and a framework is proposed to rationalize its interplay with morphology evolution and charge quenching. The model and parameters enable the prediction of the dynamic and long‐term PCBM:dimer populations, under variable temperature and light conditions, which impact the morphological stability of OSCs

Acoustic Enhancement of Polymer/ZnO Nanorod Photovoltaic Device Performance

Leverhulme Trust and EPSRC. Grant Numbers: EP/J500021/1, EP/G037515/1