Review of progress in implementing the recommendations of Sir Gareth Roberts regarding employability and career development of PhD students and research staff:A report for Research Councils UK by an independent review panel October 2010

The need for improvement in the development of research careers and researchers’ training in transferable skills was highlighted in two particular recommendations (numbers 4.2 and 5.3) in the 2002 report ‘SET for success: the report of Sir Gareth Roberts’ Review - the supply of people with science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills’ (Roberts, 2002). As a consequence of that review, Research Councils UK (RCUK)1 have invested about £120 million, usually referred to as ’Roberts’ Money’, in research organisations to address this concern in all research disciplines. The last ‘Roberts’ Money’ payment will be for the period up to March 2011; it was therefore proposed to assess the progress made with taking forward these specific recommendations. An independent panel was formed by RCUK to undertake this review in 2010. The terms of reference for the panel are in Annex A. In summary, the panel was asked to review progress made and to advise RCUK and the higher education (HE) sector about future requirements for the development and training of researchers. In the course of their review, the panel considered a wide range of existing reports, interviewed key stakeholders in the HE sector and elsewhere, as well as drawing on their own knowledge and expertise. This report presents the findings of the panel’s review.

Open Access in the UK Briefing on the UK Open Access Case Study

Open Access (OA) policies have been adopted at the national, institutional and funder levels in the UK and various infrastructural support mechanisms are available to facilitate open access. In July 2012, following an independent study on ‘Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications’ the UK Government announced its OA policy. The Government’s policy determines that ‘support for publication in open access or hybrid journals, funded by Article Processing Charges (APCs), [i]s the main vehicle for the publication of research’. At the same time that the UK Government announced its OA policy, the UK’s major research funder, the Research Councils UK (RCUK), revised its OA policy announcing its ‘preference for immediate [Gold] Open Access with the maximum opportunity for re-use’. In March 2014, the UK Funding Councils announced their OA policy for the post-2014 Research Evaluation Framework (REF). The policy requires the deposit of peer-reviewed article and conference proceedings in repositories (Green OA) and is applicable from 1 April 2016. By and large, two distinct OA routes are being promoted by the UK Government and RCUK (Gold OA) and the Funding Councils (Green OA). This scenario requires that continued efforts are made to ensure that advice and support are provided to universities, academic libraries and researchers on the distinct OA policies and on policy compliance. The UK research institutions have been adopting OA policies from as early as 2003 and there currently are 85 institutional OA policies. Despite distinct OA policies having been adopted by policymakers, national research funders and research institutions, the UK’s movement towards OA has been a result of stakeholders coordinated efforts and is considered to be a case of good practice.

Identifying capacity building cluster impact in the West Midlands

specific themes in Energy, Health Technologies and Finance via KTP (6), CASE (18), Placement (6) and Voucher (3) projects across the themes. Through the analysis of responses to an assessment questionnaire, reports from and interviews with a number of researchers, academics and industry sponsors engaged in KTP, CASE, and Placement projects we attempt to identify, analyse and assess the impact of these research projects. We adopt the Research Councils UK (RCUK) definition of research impact as 'the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy'. In addition to identifying academic impact, we identify evidence of social and economic impact, for example, that it has been taken up and used by policy makers, and practitioners and has led to improvements in services or business. Helpful and un-helpful factors, identified during the execution of the research projects, are also considered.

Exploring the rural passenger experience, information needs and decision making during public transport disruption

Acknowledgements The research described here is supported by the award made by the RCUK Digital Economy programme to the dot.rural Digital Economy Research Hub; award reference: EP/G066051/1. Further, we would like to acknowledge the RCUK research grant EP/J000604/2.

Simulation of greenhouse gases following land-use change to bioenergy crops using the ECOSSE model : a comparison between site measurements and model predictions

This work contributes to the ELUM (Ecosystem Land Use Modelling & Soil Carbon GHG Flux Trial) project, which was commissioned and funded by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI). We acknowledge the E-OBS data set from the EU-FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com) and the data providers in the ECA&D project (http://www.ecad.eu).

Engineering education research - the UK perspective at a time of change

Engineering education in the United Kingdom is at the point of embarking upon an interesting journey into uncharted waters. At no point in the past have there been so many drivers for change and so many opportunities for the development of engineering pedagogy. This paper will look at how Engineering Education Research (EER) has developed within the UK and what differentiates it from the many small scale practitioner interventions, perhaps without a clear research question or with little evaluation, which are presented at numerous staff development sessions, workshops and conferences. From this position some examples of current projects will be described, outcomes of funding opportunities will be summarised and the benefits of collaboration with other disciplines illustrated. In this study, I will account for how the design of task structure according to variation theory, as well as the probe-ware technology, make the laws of force and motion visible and learnable and, especially, in the lab studied make Newton's third law visible and learnable. I will also, as a comparison, include data from a mechanics lab that use the same probe-ware technology and deal with the same topics in mechanics, but uses a differently designed task structure. I will argue that the lower achievements on the FMCE-test in this latter case can be attributed to these differences in task structure in the lab instructions. According to my analysis, the necessary pattern of variation is not included in the design. I will also present a microanalysis of 15 hours collected from engineering students' activities in a lab about impulse and collisions based on video recordings of student's activities in a lab about impulse and collisions. The important object of learning in this lab is the development of an understanding of Newton's third law. The approach analysing students interaction using video data is inspired by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, i.e. I will focus on students practical, contingent and embodied inquiry in the setting of the lab. I argue that my result corroborates variation theory and show this theory can be used as a 'tool' for designing labs as well as for analysing labs and lab instructions. Thus my results have implications outside the domain of this study and have implications for understanding critical features for student learning in labs. Engineering higher education is well used to change. As technology develops the abilities expected by employers of graduates expand, yet our understanding of how to make informed decisions about learning and teaching strategies does not without a conscious effort to do so. With the numerous demands of academic life, we often fail to acknowledge our incomplete understanding of how our students learn within our discipline. The journey facing engineering education in the UK is being driven by two classes of driver. Firstly there are those which we have been working to expand our understanding of, such as retention and employability, and secondly the new challenges such as substantial changes to funding systems allied with an increase in student expectations. Only through continued research can priorities be identified, addressed and a coherent and strong voice for informed change be heard within the wider engineering education community. This new position makes it even more important that through EER we acquire the knowledge and understanding needed to make informed decisions regarding approaches to teaching, curriculum design and measures to promote effective student learning. This then raises the question 'how does EER function within a diverse academic community?' Within an existing community of academics interested in taking meaningful steps towards understanding the ongoing challenges of engineering education a Special Interest Group (SIG) has formed in the UK. The formation of this group has itself been part of the rapidly changing environment through its facilitation by the Higher Education Academy's Engineering Subject Centre, an entity which through the Academy's current restructuring will no longer exist as a discrete Centre dedicated to supporting engineering academics. The aims of this group, the activities it is currently undertaking and how it expects to network and collaborate with the global EER community will be reported in this paper. This will include explanation of how the group has identified barriers to the progress of EER and how it is seeking, through a series of activities, to facilitate recognition and growth of EER both within the UK and with our valued international colleagues.

The Sex Offender Research Council’s Annual Report: An Analysis of the Sex Offender Special Sentence in Iowa, November 2014

To study the effects of the special sentence, two groups of sex offenders were analyzed: those serving a special sentence and a pre-special sentence cohort of offenders. Recidivism rates were compared between the two groups over a three-year period. For the special sentence group, the recidivism tracking period began at the beginning of an offender’s special sentence supervision start date. For the comparison group, the recidivism tracking period was observed following an offender’s sentence expiration, meaning that they were not under any type of correctional supervision when examined.

Cdk1 Restrains NHEJ through Phosphorylation of XRCC4-like Factor Xlf1

Eukaryotic cells use two principal mechanisms for repairing DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs): homologous recombination (HR) and nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ). DSB repair pathway choice is strongly regulated during the cell cycle. Cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (Cdk1) activates HR by phosphorylation of key recombination factors. However, a mechanism for regulating the NHEJ pathway has not been established. Here, we report that Xlf1, a fission yeast XLF ortholog, is a key regulator of NHEJ activity in the cell cycle. We show that Cdk1 phosphorylates residues in the C terminus of Xlf1 over the course of the cell cycle. Mutation of these residues leads to the loss of Cdk1 phosphorylation, resulting in elevated levels of NHEJ repair in vivo. Together, these data establish that Xlf1 phosphorylation by Cdc2(Cdk1) provides a molecular mechanism for downregulation of NHEJ in fission yeast and indicates that XLF is a key regulator of end-joining processes in eukaryotic organisms.

Big Data and ecosystem research programmes

The size and complexity of data sets generated within ecosystem-level programmes merits their capture, curation, storage and analysis, synthesis and visualisation using Big Data approaches. This review looks at previous attempts to organise and analyse such data through the International Biological Programme and draws on the mistakes made and the lessons learned for effective Big Data approaches to current Research Councils United Kingdom (RCUK) ecosystem-level programmes, using Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS) and Environmental Virtual Observatory Pilot (EVOp) as exemplars. The challenges raised by such data are identified, explored and suggestions are made for the two major issues of extending analyses across different spatio-temporal scales and for the effective integration of quantitative and qualitative data.

French linguistics research and teaching in UK and Irish HE institutions

Introduction: The research and teaching of French linguistics in UK higher education (HE) institutions have a venerable history; a number of universities have traditionally offered philology or history of the language courses, which complement literary study. A deeper understanding of the way that the phonology, syntax and semantics of the French language have evolved gives students linguistic insights that dovetail with their study of the Roman de Renart, Rabelais, Racine or the nouveau roman. There was, in the past, some coverage of contemporary French phonetics but little on sociolinguistic issues. More recently, new areas of research and teaching have been developed, with a particular focus on contemporary spoken French and on sociolinguistics. Well supported by funding councils, UK researchers are also making an important contribution in other areas: phonetics and phonology, syntax, pragmatics and second-language acquisition. A fair proportion of French linguistics research occurs outside French sections in psychology or applied linguistics departments. In addition, the UK plays a particular role in bringing together European and North American intellectual traditions and methodologies and in promoting the internationalisation of French linguistics research through the strength of its subject associations, and that of the Journal of French Language Studies. The following sections treat each of these areas in turn. History of the French Language There is a long and distinguished tradition in Britain of teaching and research on the history of the French language, particularly, but by no means exclusively, at the universities of Cambridge, Manchester and Oxford.

The food superstore revolution:changing times, changing research agendas in the UK

This article considers the changing scope of research into UK food superstores over some three decades. Rather than catalogue changing market shares by format, we seek instead to show how such change links to national policy agendas. Academic research has evolved to address the growing complexities of the social, technological, economic and political impacts of the superstore format. We exemplify this by tracing the progression of retail change in Portsmouth, Hampshire, over 30 years. We discover that academic research can conflict with the preconceptions of some public policy makers. The position is exacerbated by a progressive decline in public information – and a commensurate rise in factual data held by commercial data companies – that leaves policy makers with a choice of which data to believe. This problem casts a shadow over the objectivity of macro-policy as currently formulated. Concerns currently arise because the UK Competition Commission (2006–2009 but ongoing) starts each inquiry afresh with a search for recent data. Furthermore, it has recently called for changes to retail planning – the very arena in which UK superstore research commenced.

EQUAL: New horizons for ageing research

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) extending quality of life (EQUAL) initiative, specifically supports interdisciplinary user-focused design, engineering and technology research concerned with enhancing the independence and quality of life of older and disabled people. This paper briefly describes a recent programme to encourage the adoption of a broader perspective on the lives and needs of older people that have been pursued by EPSRC through its extending quality life (EQUAL) initiative. EPSRC is the principle supporter design, engineering and technology research in UK universities. The paper illustrates the scope of EQUAL.

Delivering high-level food industry skills for future food security through Advanced Training Partnerships

The UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s Advanced Training Partnerships initiative represents a significant investment in the provision of high-level skills for the UK food industry sector to address global food security from farm to fork. This paper summarises the background, aims and scope of the Advanced Training Partnerships, their development so far, and offers a view on future directions and evaluation of impact.

Galactose Recognition by the Apicomplexan Parasite Toxoplasma gondii

Toxosplasma gondii is the model parasite of the phylum Apicomplexa, which contains numerous obligate intracellular parasites of medical and veterinary importance, including Eimeria, Sarcocystis, Cryptosporidium, Cyclospora, and Plasmodium species. Members of this phylum actively enter host cells by a multistep process with the help of microneme protein (MIC) complexes that play important roles in motility, host cell attachment, moving junction formation, and invasion. T. gondii (Tg)MIC1-4-6 complex is the most extensively investigated microneme complex, which contributes to host cell recognition and attachment via the action of TgMIC1, a sialic acid-binding adhesin. Here, we report the structure of TgMIC4 and reveal its carbohydrate-binding specificity to a variety of galactose-containing carbohydrate ligands. The lectin is composed of six apple domains in which the fifth domain displays a potent galactose-binding activity, and which is cleaved from the complex during parasite invasion. We propose that galactose recognition by TgMIC4 may compromise host protection from galectin-mediated activation of the host immune system.