Secrets to Success with Project Proposals

This CaSA booklet 5 is a development of a document “Secrets to success with FP7 REGPOT proposals”, written whilst working for the Serbian former Ministry of Science and Technological Development as the Director, Consultative Bureau for International Projects from 2008 to 2011. It was put together specifically to help Serbian scientists improve the quality of their proposals for the FP7 REGPOT scheme, which at that time was the most popular sub-programme of FP7 for Serbian scientists. This original document has been modified through the CaSA Tempus project to make it more general in its approach and philosophy for writing project proposals, though many of the examples come from the FP7 REGPOT sub-programme. The advice is based on experiences of reading proposal drafts written by Serbian scientists, discussions with them and evaluation summary reports (ESRs) for their submitted proposals, as well as on experiences working with academics in the CaSA project. In this project, courses in Academic Skills for university teachers of Serbian agricultural faculties were held in 2014, and these courses included preparation of project proposals. A CaSA questionnaire completed by participants for the Academic Skills courses showed that lack of skills in proposal writing was the second biggest obstacle (after lack of time) to writing project proposals. Thus, the original document has now been updated as part of the CaSA project to focus on Horizon 2020 (H2020). This will meet the needs of university teachers to have a written document based on the Academic Skills course for future reference. The approach of this document is to focus largely on the philosophy needed for success rather than just advice on how to fill in the application forms. It aims to help put the applicants within the minds of the proposal reviewers and the funding programme managers to ensure that what is written is what they want to read and not what the applicant wants to write! This guide accompanies the Balkan Security Network (www.balkansecurity.net) European Project Proposal (EPP) training course PowerPoint™ presentation ‘Excellence in EU Project Proposal Writing’, also available as a YouTube video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jSQU-_tdA4. I hope you find the “Secrets to success ....” useful

Calculated collision induced absorption spectrum for He-Ar

Calculation of collision induced absorption spectra for helium-argo

Getting it Across to your Stakeholders

Increasingly, research projects are expected to provide impact, and without a convincing impact statement, project proposals are now unlikely to get funding. This impact is not only for others in the scientific community, but also a wide range of stakeholders who are interested in knowing what a project has achieved. Getting it across to stakeholders can be achieved in terms of answers to the questions Why? Who? What? How? When? and Where? Why - because researchers are spending other people’s money and need to be accountable for this. Who - as well as other scientists, non-scientific stakeholder groups include industry and commerce, decision- and policy-makers, consumers and general public, as well as the media. What - in addition to traditional scientific presentations, for non-scientist stakeholders, emphasis should be on any practical applications of the research findings and relevance to perceived societal needs or problems. How - non-scientific stakeholders need a much more varied set of measures, beyond just scientific publications and presentations at conferences/symposia. Website, multimedia and social networks are now essential components of an effective dissemination strategy. When - regular events to describe progress with the research, such as press releases and newsletters should be combined with irregular meetings such as conferences, symposia, trade fairs and other stakeholder group meetings. Where - as well as events held at the researcher’s institution, other locations for dissemination activities should be planned locally, nationally and internationally, especially trade and industrial fairs. The increasing importance of research impact is resulting in many large-scale projects including partners with specific expertise in getting it across to stakeholders

The StoreGate: a Data Model for the Atlas Software Architecture

The Atlas collaboration at CERN has adopted the Gaudi software architecture which belongs to the blackboard family: data objects produced by knowledge sources (e.g. reconstruction modules) are posted to a common in-memory data base from where other modules can access them and produce new data objects. The StoreGate has been designed, based on the Atlas requirements and the experience of other HENP systems such as Babar, CDF, CLEO, D0 and LHCB, to identify in a simple and efficient fashion (collections of) data objects based on their type and/or the modules which posted them to the Transient Data Store (the blackboard). The developer also has the freedom to use her preferred key class to uniquely identify a data object according to any other criterion. Besides this core functionality, the StoreGate provides the developers with a powerful interface to handle in a coherent fashion persistable references, object lifetimes, memory management and access control policy for the data objects in the Store. It also provides a Handle/Proxy mechanism to define and hide the cache fault mechanism: upon request, a missing Data Object can be transparently created and added to the Transient Store presumably retrieving it from a persistent data-base, or even reconstructing it on demand.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 4 pages, LaTeX, MOJT00

The Symbiosis of Creativity and Wellness: A Personal Journey

The Symbiosis of Creativity and Wellness project explored how holistic personal wellness practices nurture creativity, and conversely, how creativity fosters personal wellness. The project specifically explored wellness from the standpoint of sleep and circadian rhythms, somaticism and movement, nutrition and hydration, meditation and mindfulness, as well as connection and support. By immersing in research-based wellness practices and building a customized approach to personal wellness, this project not only facilitated measurable personal wellness improvements over the six-week period, but also highlighted more profound insights within the relationship between creativity and wellness. Overall this work resulted in significant lifestyle changes, a more holistic and balanced approach to priorities and time management, and insights towards personal, familial and vocational goals. The experience deepened personal skills in creative thinking, Creative Problem Solving, affective thinking, intuition and mindfulness, as well as forged additional steps on a path towards self-actualization and transformational leadership

The Predictive Roles of the Personal Variables and the Leader Attributes and Behaviors of Department Chairpersons Regarding the Outcomes of Leadership as Perceived by Department Members in Selected Jamaican Universities

Problem Leaders within the Jamaican education system have often been selected either because of their personal aspirations or their emergence. Since institutional success is integrally linked to leadership, an intentional approach to leader identification should be established in an effort to consistently yield the desired outcomes. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to identify the predictive roles of the four personal variables (Leader Gender, Formal Leadership Training, Informal Leadership Training, and Years of Service as an Educator), and the nine leader attributes and behaviors of Bass‟s Full-Range Leadership Model (Idealized-Influence Attributed, Idealized-Influence Behavior, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation, Individualized Consideration, Contingent Reward, Management-by-Exception Active, Management-by- Exception Passive, and Laissez-Faire Leadership) regarding the three outcomes of leadership (Extra Effort, Effectiveness, and Satisfaction) as perceived by Department Members concerning the leadership of their Department Chairpersons in selected Jamaican universities. Such an effort, it is hoped, will identify core characteristics to be used in the process of leader identification, so that success is not achieved merely by happenstance, by the few, but by design, by the majority. Method The HLM 7 Hierarchical Linear and Nonlinear Modeling statistical program was used to analyze the data in this quantitative research. Level-one data were obtained from 148 of 795 Department Members using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Rater Form (5X-Short), and level-two data were obtained from 20 of 41 Department Chairpersons using the researcher-developed Leader Attributes and Behaviors Demographic Information (LABDI) Leader Form. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to organize the data, to provide descriptive statistics, and to cross-validate the findings of the HLM analyses. Findings The process of data analysis revealed that Inspirational Motivation, with a regression coefficient of 0.360 (SE = 0.138, t(119) = 2.602, p \u3c 0.01); Individualized Consideration, with a regression coefficient of 0.372 (SE = 0.119, t(119) = 3.118, p \u3c 0.01); and Management-by- Exception Passive, with a regression coefficient of -0.165 (SE = 0.083, t(119) -1.990, p \u3c 0.05), are the best predictors of Extra Effort. Idealized-Influence Attributed, with a regression coefficient of 0.276 (SE = 0.101, t(119) = 2.745, p \u3c 0.01); Intellectual Stimulation, with a regression coefficient of 0.183 (SE = 0.088, t(119) = 2.085, p \u3c 0.05); and Laissez-Faire Leadership, with a regression coefficient of -0.168 (SE = 0.059, t(119) = -2.849, p \u3c 0.01), are the best predictors of Effectiveness. Idealized-Influence Attributed, with a regression coefficient of 0.261 (SE = 0.111, t(119) = 2.362, p \u3c 0.05); Intellectual Stimulation, with a regression coefficient of 0.324 (SE = 0.097, t(119) = 3.355, p \u3c 0.01); and Individualized Consideration, with a regression coefficient of 0.198 (SE = 0.096, t(119) = 2.072, p \u3c 0.05), are the best predictors of Satisfaction. In addition, none of the four personal variables was found to be a significant predictor of the three outcomes of leadership. The full model explained 71.1% of the variance in Extra Effort, 79.1% of the variance in Effectiveness, and 79.3% of the variance in Satisfaction. These findings indicate the discrediting of each of the three null hypotheses, and the partial acceptance of each of the three research hypotheses. Conclusions If the preferred outcomes of leadership (Extra Effort, Effectiveness, and Satisfaction) are to be realized, then methodologies that strategically identify aspiring, potential, and emergent leaders will need to be determined. The findings of this research indicate the necessity for the conducting of other studies on leadership in the field of education

WATER COMMUNITIES IN THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF MEMBERSHIP SATISFACTION AND PAYMENT BEHAVIOUR

The performance of Water Communities (WCs), a form of self-managing organisation for irrigation, in the Bregalnica region of the Republic of Macedonia is investigated. Analysis, drawing on primary survey data, focuses on the decision of farmers to join a WC (Heckman selection probit model), determinants of farmers’ satisfaction with their membership of WCs (ordered probit model) and factors associated with changes in farmers’ water payment behaviour (non-parametric CLAD model). Key determinants identified include transparency and trust with respect to the structure and operation of the WC, cost recovery rates, farm size and irrigation costs. Membership satisfaction is an important determinant of payment behaviour. Lessons for sustainable self-management are drawn.Irrigation, Self-management, Water User Associations, Eastern Europe, Macedonia,

Binding effects in multivalent Gibbs-Donnan equilibrium

The classical Gibbs-Donnan equilibrium describes excess osmotic pressure associated with confined colloidal charges embedded in an electrolyte solution. In this work, we extend this approach to describe the influence of multivalent ion binding on the equilibrium force acting on a charged rod translocating between two compartments, thereby mimicking ionic effects on force balance during in vitro DNA ejection from bacteriophage. The subtle interplay between Gibbs-Donnan equilibrium and adsorption equilibrium leads to a non-monotonic variation of the ejection force as multivalent salt concentration is increased, in qualitative agreement with experimental observations

Water Communities in the Republic of Macedonia: an empirical analysis of membership satisfaction and payment behaviour

The performance of Water Communities (WCs), a form of self-managing organisation for irrigation, in the Bregalnica region of the Republic of Macedonia is investigated. Analysis, drawing on primary survey data, focuses on the decision of farmers to join a WC (Heckman selection probit model), determinants of farmers’ satisfaction with their membership of WCs (ordered probit model) and factors associated with changes in farmers’ water payment behaviour (non-parametric CLAD model). Key determinants identified include transparency and trust with respect to the structure and operation of the WC, cost recovery rates, farm size and irrigation costs. Membership satisfaction is an important determinant of payment behaviour. Lessons for sustainable self-management are drawn.Irrigation, Self-management, Water User Associations, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,