Media Framing of Financial Mechanisms for Resolving Human–Predator Conflict in Namibia

The decline in carnivore populations is largely exacerbated by lethal methods used to reduce livestock depredation. Financial mechanisms are designed to limit lethal control by reducing the cost of depredation. The media can affect how the general public feel about issues like financial mechanisms but no study has been undertaken to understand the framing of this topic. This article filled this gap by using content analysis of newspapers to analyze economic incentives designed to mitigate human–carnivore conflict in Namibia. Forty-six percent of the articles were framed positively toward incentives, 24% ambivalently, 19% negatively, and 11% neutrally. Compensation was commonly framed positively whereas community-based conservation, trophy hunting, and tourism were framed ambivalently. Incentives were framed more negatively where perceived costs outweighed benefits. These results can help conservationists plan more effective communication interventions and anticipate issues that can affect the success of mitigation strategies

Many flowers, small leaps forward: debating doctoral design in education

As a point of departure for this review I have taken three events in 2000, a time when debate about research degrees in Design seemed to reach a peak. Two were conferences: the Design+Research Conference at Politecnico di Milano and the 2nd Conference on Doctoral Education in Design at La Clusaz, France. The third was a particularly heated online debate by members of the DRS email discussion list during the preceding year. While these three events by no means define the whole territory they do crystallise some issues which continue to characterise the PhD "problem". In looking at these events, and the wider picture of research degrees in design, I would like to draw out two themes. The first of these is the different, but complementary experiences of colleagues in many parts of the world who are wrestling with these issues. The second is the problem of a proliferation of ideas, philosophical positions and rhetoric, which is not matched, as yet, by many visible developments in practice. Perhaps this is not surprising since any small development in this context has a gestation period of at least 3 years and could take much longer to move outside the walls of the institution which has fostered it.</p

Unstated contributions: how artistic inquiry can inform inter-disciplinary research

Since 1990, many creative disciplines, such as art, design and performance, have engaged increasingly with academic research. Accompanying this has been a good deal of interest in ways to employ their professional and creative practices as instruments of inquiry, just as previous disciplines have developed research methods that employ their specialist skills and knowledge. This raises questions about how research in the creative disciplines might contribute to knowledge and understanding. Research and practice in these fields may deal with matter that changes meaning with time or context, especially in art, where audiences may be expected to complete the meaning of creative works for themselves. This paper offers an oversight of these issues. It sets out some examples from the wider community that illustrate how incomplete or tacit contributions to inquiry can be a valuable and sometimes necessary part of the enterprise of creating knowledge, establishing a research model that is relevant in many areas, especially where disciplines collaborate. It goes on to set out tentative principles for such contributions.</p

Fast Cash, Less Filling: Refund Anticipation Loans in North Carolina

This paper reveals the use of refund anticipation loans, also known as RALs, from 2004 to 2006 in North Carolina. It highlights zip codes with the highest concentration of RAL use. It places a connection between the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and demand for RALs. The inference is that this successful federal anti-poverty program is undermined by tax preparation services seeking to capitalize on the financial problems of low-income North Carolinians. Four maps are included at the end of the paper to reveal the geography of RAL use in the state

Visions of a Semantic Molecular Future

Additional booklet insert distributed at the VSMF Symposium held at the Unilever Centre on 2011-01-17The event looks forward. Scholarship (universities, research, teaching, publishing) has been slow to take up the opportunities of this digital century. This is an opportunity to identify and build the future.EPSRC (Pathways to Impact award). Unilever plc (Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics

Open Chemistry

An invited article on Open Chemistry discussing the importance of Open Access and Open Data and stressing the emerging role of the blogospher

Investigating our future: how designers can get us all thinking

This paper, and the presentation it represents, discusses the importance of bringing users into the design process and some of the techniques that can be employed to achieve that. Designing for older people is particularly challenging because most designers do not have direct experience of the ways that people’s lives and expectations change as they become older so it is even more important than usual to give the user a direct voice in the designing. However this is not straightforward. Most people find it difficult to visualise products and environments that do not exist at the moment so we need to help them imagine possibilities and express their needs and desires. Sheffield Hallam University has pioneered methods for using the designer’s creative talents to create situations that allow people to act out new situations and engage with the creative opportunities that they present. These methods are particularly important in the contemporary world where products are connected by complex information systems so we must attend to how people engage with both the physical aspects of a product or environment and the systems that underlie the

Growing our own - recruiting high quality research students by stealth

Most design students assume that their education is preparing them for a career in professional practice. Until recently the idea of working as researchers or studying for a research degree was not an option. In the early 1990s, the Art and Design Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University was set up with a focus on "designerly" research. At that time we did not have a ready supply of suitable experienced researchers, and design graduates were not coming forward as candidates for research degrees. The university's policy at the time required us to include a substantial research methods element in all postgraduate courses, including the vocationally focused MA Design programme. As a result of adopting this policy in a very whole-hearted way, making research methods central to the MA and framing the creative practice of design as both research-driven and investigative, we have "subverted" a number of postgraduate students who might never have considered a research degree, but are now registered for, or in the process of transferring to, PhD studies. This paper describes the features of the MA programme that foster an investigative culture and provides some examples of PhD students whose research has grown from opportunities encountered in the MA. It also discusses the relationship between professional practice and research and the ways in which a research-centred education can prepare graduates for professional leadership. </p

Fast Cash, Less Refund

This paper presents findings on the use of refund anticipation loans in North Carolina in 2007. Refund anticipation loans are high-cost, short-term loans made to tax filers who are owed a refund on their federal taxes. Calculations of APRs for these loans (RALs) can run above 150 percent on an annualized basis. The loans are used by people who are cash-strapped. Loans cost approximately $100, but they allow filers to get their taxes done without paying for their tax prep fees until their refund arrives. The transaction features make this an appealing product to poor working families. Accordingly, their use is highest in areas with high concentrations of poor working families. Our report uses data from the Internal Revenue Service. We focus on North Carolina. The quantitative research is supplemented with a market analysis of these loans. We note that the banks that provide a line of credit to these banks are suddenly constrained. Regulators have intervened to limit these loans. Their concerns include the safety and soundness of the deposits, as well as the inability of the bank partners to document that tax preparers are trained and in compliance with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Lending Act, and the Truth-In-Lending Act. We find that RALs are disproportionately utilized by tax filers in low-income and minority communities. We note that most of these filers qualify for a refund because they get the Earned Income Tax Credit. We compare the use of a RAL with IRA contributions. The report is complemented by GIS mapping