Automated small-scale plant imaging system

For research laboratories, the use of commercial plant phenotyping systems is costly and often do not meet the requirements of the research project. As such, a small-scale plant imaging systems was developed for a biology research group at Washington University in St. Louis. A previous iteration of the device had been prototyped; however, several design requirements were not met, or were not mechanically efficient. Therefore, this paper proposes a second design consisting of a new bridge, trolley and canopy that can be transported easily by the user, and can be made with commercially available parts

Early childhood education and care and poverty: Working paper prepared for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

This review of the existing body of knowledge concerning the links between poverty and early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision1 aims to inform the realisation of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s 2015 UK anti-poverty strategy development programme. It has three main objectives: To explore the relationship between poverty and early childhood service quality, affordability and accessibility. To examine mostly domestic and some international research evidence on the prevention and reduction of poverty through early childhood policy and practice interventions. To recommend what should be included in JRF’s UK anti-poverty strategies in relation to early childhood education and care. This evidence review is one of a series of 34 such reviews commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) to inform a programme of anti-poverty strategies for the UK to be published in 2015/16. Thus the definition of poverty employed here is the one developed by JRF to underpin this programme: ‘When a person’s resources (mainly their material resources) are not sufficient to meet their minimum needs (including social participation)’. In the case of young children, this definition is mediated by the conditions within the households they live in and decisions made by parents as proxies for their children

Introduction: Life Writing through Refugee Tales

This cluster took off from an interdisciplinary and international workshop hosted at the University of Vienna in May 2022. Some of the original contributors turned their presentations into articles for this cluster; other articles were recruited later on. The original idea for both the workshop and cluster was inspired by the UK’s Refugee Tales project, founded and organized by David Herd and Anna Pincus. Some of the articles collected here discuss the life writing aspect of this project from different angles and positions: Patience Agbabi as contributing author to the first Refugee Tales volume, Sandra Mayer as a scholar of literary celebrity, and Sylvia Mieszkowski as cultural analyst. Other articles take a look at other projects in which displaced persons work on life narratives alongside citizens of the host countries: Jessica Gustafsson writes about the Swedish Flyktpodden podcast and Helga Ramsey-Kurz about the Austrian ARENA initiative. Two articles provide the collection with an opening frame, as they focus on the paradoxes that are perpetually produced by immigration law and the cultural conceptions of ‘the refugee’ in the European context (Judith Kohlenberger) and in Austria, specifically for minors (Ayşe Dursun and Birgit Sauer). An Afterword by one of the founders and organizers of Refugee Tales (David Herd) closes the cluster, offering an assessment of the project’s role in the context of the UK’s political situation in the summer of 2023, just after both Houses of Parliament passed the Illegal Migration Bill, which the UN has publicly denounced as contrary to international law

Review of policies and interventions for low-income families with young children

The current project focuses on the coordination, commissioning and delivery of services across the health, housing and education sectors and will analyse the role they play in alleviating poverty for families with children under the age of five. The project will be undertaken in three phases, and this report outlines the findings from phase one of our programme of work: 1. A literature review: this will map the child poverty policy landscape and the possible services that can be provided at a local level. It will also look at child poverty definitions, local child poverty coordination and evaluations of services. Subsequent phases will include 2. Local area visits 3. Engagement work with children and familie

A project to assist Family Actions's Building Bridges practitioners with the use of the Index of Family Relations as an outcome measurement: final report

With support from DCSF’s Parenting Fund, Family Action commissioned a team of researchers from the University of East London to evaluate the utility of the Index of Family Relations (IFR) for continued use as an outcome measure to evaluate its work

A project to assist Family Action’s Building Bridges practitioners with the use of the Index of Family Relations as an outcome measurement (Final Report).

This report describes the methods and findings of a partnership project between Family Action practitioners and managers, and a research team led by Angela Harden and Eva Lloyd of the University of East London. Since 1999, Family Action has been providing services in a number of locations across England under the Building Bridges name, working with families affected by parental mental health problems and other complex needs. Since 2004, Building Bridges projects have been using four separate validated psychometric tools to measure family functioning, parental satisfaction, self‐esteem and depression in order to evaluate the impact of its services on outcomes for parents and their children: the Index of Family Relations (IFR); the Kansas Parental Satisfaction Scale; the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale; and the Depression Rating Scale. Some years ago, the Building Bridges service model was independently evaluated (Morris, 2007). In the light of Family Action’s commitment to ongoing monitoring and evaluation of its work, a decision was taken to build on the findings of the 2007 evaluation. The focus selected for further research was an important cultural issue identified by Morris (2007: 25) regarding the appropriateness of the Index of Family Relations for black and minority ethnic (BME) communities, in particular Bangladeshi and Somali families. With support from DCSF’s Parenting Fund, Family Action commissioned a team of researchers from the University of East London to evaluate the utility of the IFR for continued use as an outcome measure to evaluate its work

What is known about the long-term economic impact of centre-based early childhood interventions?

There is a substantial literature about cost-benefi t studies of social welfare interventions. It is widely assumed, and widely quoted by politicians and policymakers, that early childhood interventions in particular are effective and bring returns in the order of seven dollars saved for every one dollar spent. These savings do not appear to be apparent until the children who received the intervention reach adulthood. We wished to scrutinise this evidence in detail

How effective are measures taken to mitigate the impact of direct experience of armed conflict on the psychosocial and cognitive development of children aged 0–8?

This report looks at research that assesses the effectiveness of measures taken to mitigate the impact of direct experience of armed conflict on the psychosocial and cognitive development of children aged 0–8