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• Academic collaboration rates and citation associations vary substantially between countries and fields

  Thelwall, Michael; Maflahi, Nabeil (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019-12-31)

  Research collaboration is promoted by governments and research funders but if the relative prevalence and merits of collaboration vary internationally different national and disciplinary strategies may be needed to promote it. This study compares the team size and field normalised citation impact of research across all 27 Scopus broad fields in the ten countries with the most journal articles indexed in Scopus 2008-2012. The results show that team size varies substantially by discipline and country, with Japan (4.2) having two thirds more authors per article than the UK (2.5). Solo authorship is rare in China (4%) but common in the UK (27%). Whilst increasing team size associates with higher citation impact in almost all countries and fields, this association is much weaker in China than elsewhere. There are also field differences in the association between citation impact and collaboration. For example, larger team sizes in the Business, Management & Accounting category do not seem to associate with greater research impact, and for China and India, solo authorship associates with higher citation impact. Overall, there are substantial international and field differences in the extent to which researchers collaborate and the extent to which collaboration associates with higher citation impact.
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  Laser Cleaning of Grey Cast Iron Automotive Brake Disc: Rust Removal and Improvement in Surface Integrity

  Ogbekene, Y. F.; Shukla, P.; Zhang, Y.; Shen, X.; Prabhakaran, S.; Kalainathan, S.; Gulia, Kiran; Lawrence, J. (Oldcity Publications USA, 2018-11-30)

  There is a great need for removal of rust and surface damage from corroded engineering parts. This enables the retention of strength and increased longevity of metals and alloys in general. The use of lasers for cleaning, polishing and ablation has proven to be effective and promising overtime. This research is focused on a parametric study of laser cleaning a corroded grey cast iron brake disc. A continuous wave CO2 laser having a wavelength of 10.6μm was used for the study. A systematic approach was employed for the experiments where one parameter was changed while other parameters remained constant. Additional effects of laser cleaning were predicted by a Gaussian process regression approach. The results revealed that the best parameters which cleanly removed the rust were 60W of laser power, 900mm/s traverse speed, and a spot size of 722μm. The enhancement of surface microhardness of laser cleaned specimen was 37% compared to the rusted specimen surfaces. The roughness of the laser cleaned surface was, 1.29μm while the rusted surface comprised of 55.45μm (Ra). Microstructural analysis showed a presence of randomly distributed graphite flakes surrounded by a pearlitic matrix containing ferrite and cementite after laser cleaning. This was similar to that of the un-rusted surface. The hardness, roughness and microstructural content were in close relation with the respective properties of the unrusted automotive brake disc. This showed that the mechanical and physical properties of the brake disc were not altered negatively during the laser cleaning process. Implementation of the laser-cleaning technique in automotive and manufacturing industries should be embraced as it provides a faster, safer and cheaper way of enhancing the surface integrity of components and also paves way for other surface enhancement methodologies to be applied such as blast cleaning or laser shock cleaning for inducing extra strength, by beneficial residual stresses.
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  Effective early learning: a praxeological and participatory approach to evaluating and improving quality in early childhood education

  Pascal, Chris; Bertram, Tony (Revista da FAEEBA, 2018-04-30)

  This paper acknowledges the importance of providing high quality early education to young children if positive long term child outcomes and social mobility for the less advantaged are to be achieved. It offers a strategy to improve pedagogical quality in early childhood settings worldwide where quality remains low for many children and sets out an alternative praxeological model of quality assessment and improvement that is democratic, participatory, inclusive and culturally sensitive rather than universalised and metricised. The Effective Early Learning (EEL) quality evaluation and improvement programme embodies this participatory approach and has been successfully implemented across UK, Portugal and the Netherlands, where evidence has shown its impact in enhancing child wellbeing, child involvement and child dispositions to learn through improving the quality of pedagogical processes and the enabling educative context in which these occur.
• “Something is happening and you don’t know what it is”: The music and entertainment press

  Glen, Patrick; Conboy, Martin; Finkelstein, David (University of Edinburgh, 2020-01-01)

  Coleman joined the Melody Maker at their Fleet Street office in 1960, and at first found it hard to adjust to a different style of showbiz journalism. He couldn't see what was ‘newsworthy’ about a string of Cliff Richard tour dates and preferred to stir up a row with the BBC or research a heavily angled investigation into the music business. Feeling frustrated, he planned to defect to the Daily Telegraph. Then he encountered a classic put-down from a Telegraph executive at his job interview. Asked where he worked, he replied: ‘The Melody Maker.’ And before that? ‘The Manchester Evening News.’ After a long pause, the executive inquired icily: ‘Tell me, Mr Coleman, why did you leave journalism?’ The anecdote, taken from Roy Coleman’s obituary (Independent 13 September 1996) reveals a common preconception about the entertainment press: it was a journalistic backwater, a place for fanatics and second-rate journalists, where publishers made easy money. The view misses the significance of a medium where the entertainment industry and the public came together to discuss the creative practices, performances and commercial products of artistes. These journalistic and publishing practices were not performed in isolation: the entertainment press, often implicitly but also knowingly, constructed and represented broader understandings of society, politics and culture.
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  Rapport final: Forum sur la gouvernance forestière, Brazzaville 2018

  MBZIBAIN, AURELIAN; Nyirenda, Richard; Nkodia, Alfred; Moukouri, Serge; Nzala, Donatien; Baur, Dani (University of Wolverhampton, Centre for International Development and Training, 2019-01-24)

  Les forêts du Bassin du Congo constituent l’un des plus importants réservoirs de biodiversité dans le monde. Elles fournissent des moyens de subsistance à plus de 75 millions de personnes qui comptent sur les ressources naturelles locales. Mais à cause de la mauvaise gouvernance observée, cette richesse tend à disparaître au fil des temps, ce qui représente une menace pour la survie des populations qui y sont installées. De nombreuses initiatives ont vu le jour pour pallier cette situation parmi lesquelles la certification forestière, REDD+ et les APV-FLEGT. Les pays du bassin du Congo ont fait de la gouvernance forestière une priorité au sein de la Commission des Forêts d’Afrique Centrale (COMIFAC). Pour y parvenir, il est évident que toutes les parties prenantes à la gestion durable des forêts se sentent concernées et doivent s’impliquer. Dans cette perspective, le projet C4CV, cofinancé par l’Union européenne et le DFID a organisé le Forum régional sur la Gouvernance Forestière (FGF) en République du Congo. Ce projet est mis en œuvre au Cameroun, en République centrafricaine, en République démocratique du Congo, au Gabon et en République du Congo. Sous la direction du CIDT de l’université de Wolverhampton, les organisations partenaires dudit projet dans les cinq pays sont : le Centre pour l’Information Environnementale et le Développement Durable (CIEDD), le centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement (CED) et Forêts et développement Rural (FODER) au Cameroun ; l’Observatoire de la Gouvernance Forestière (OGF) en RDC ; Brainforest au Gabon ; le Cercle d’Appui à la Gestion Durable des Forêts (CAGDF) en République du Congo, y compris le Field Legality Advisory Group (FLAG) en tant que partenaire régional et le World Resources Institute (WRI) en tant que partenaire international. Calqué sur le modèle des réunions semestrielles de mise à jour sur l’exploitation illégale à Chatham House, le FGF vise à contribuer aux buts plus étendus du projet CV4C à travers le partage d’expériences et la sensibilisation, et en promouvant le profil des processus APV-FLEGT et REDD+. La 11ème édition du FGF a été organisée en collaboration avec le Partenariat pour les Forêts du Bassin du Congo (PFBC), en vue de la préparation de la Rencontre des Parties de haut niveau, prévue pour la semaine du 26 novembre 2018 à Bruxelles.

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