University Research Groups Research Articles

The scarce representation of women university professors in research groups

Women university teachers in Spain simultaneously have teaching and research careers that interrelate to develop their competencies in both fields. However, as in other fields, there is not yet gender equality in representation and leadership. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the presence and role of female university teachers-researchers in the different research groups of public universities in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia that apply for competitive calls for projects, according to the different fields of knowledge to which they belong. A total of 2,445 research groups in nine universities were identified. The largest number of groups belonging to the Humanities field. Among the members of all the groups, there is a lower presence of women compared to men. There is also a negative gender gap in the roles of responsibility and management of research groups, which is reflected in both horizontal and vertical segregation and the existence of a glass ceiling for Andalusian female teachers.

Analysis of Customer Digital Behavior through the Canvas Business Model: An Initial Proposal

The main objective of this work is to propose a framework containing a sequence of actions and steps that can be used to assist managers and organizations in decision-making and improvement of their managerial and commercial performance. This work followed quantitative and qualitative methodology involving a bibliometric research, meta-analysis through the application of secondary data, bibliographic analysis and the exposure of the proposed model for the approval of managers and professors in the area of management and marketing, linked to a research group of a federal university in Rio de Janeiro. The theoretical contribution of the work was to establish a conceptual link between knowledge about customer behavior and business models. The practical contribution was the elaboration and description of a self-applicable theoretical model in the organizational decision-making environment, based on market and commercial elements present in the daily life of the manager and the organization, especially the small ones. The main conclusion was that the theoretical model was approved when appreciated by managers and professors of the area, however, it still needs to be validated quantitatively and in organizational environment for the generalization of its use.

A method for identifying different types of university research teams

Identifying research teams constitutes a fundamental step in team science research, and universities harbor diverse types of such teams. This study introduces a method and proposes algorithms for team identification, encompassing the project-based research team (Pbrt), the individual-based research team (Ibrt), the backbone-based research group (Bbrg), and the representative research group (Rrg), scrutinizing aspects such as project, contribution, collaboration, and similarity. Drawing on two top universities in Materials Science and Engineering as case studies, this research reveals that university research teams predominantly manifest as backbone-based research groups. The distribution of members within these groups adheres to Price’s Law, indicating a concentration of research funding among a minority of research groups. Furthermore, the representative research groups in universities exhibit interdisciplinary characteristics. Notably, significant differences exist in collaboration mode and member structures among high-level backbone-based research groups across diverse cultural backgrounds.

Community Service Perspectives on Climate Change and Social Justice in Western Australia

ABSTRACT Social workers increasingly recognise the relationship between social injustice and climate change, which is underpinned by oppressive systems of power such as colonialism, racism, capitalism, and patriarchy. Climate change exacerbates existing structural inequities, with disproportionately negative impacts on marginalised populations. In their work across diverse fields of social work practice, community service organisations (CSOs) have an important frontline role in supporting communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In the state of Western Australia (WA), a group of CSO leaders and university researchers commenced a feminist participatory action research (FPAR) program about climate justice and community services. In the first FPAR cycle, they undertook a survey, interviews, and workshops with CSO workers to examine social justice impacts of climate change in WA. CSO workers generally self-reported a low understanding of social justice and climate change. They identified climate impacts across themes of health, economic injustices, discrimination and access, housing and displacement, and gendered injustices. The authors contend that as climate change intensifies, CSOs must embed climate justice in their operations and services so that they might adequately prepare for, and respond to, the social justice impacts of climate change. IMPLICATIONS Increased understanding of workers’ perspectives of the social justice impacts of climate change in Western Australia can identify knowledge gaps in the community service sector. Embedding a climate justice lens can assist CSO operations and programs to prepare for, and respond to, the social justice impacts of climate change.

Juggling Academic Practice and Care: Collaborative Autoethnography within a Basque University Research Group

Many university scholars, including the authors of this article, acknowledge that they feel like they are riding an emotional roller coaster with academic success, as well as many project failures. Except for our PhD thesis, many of us complete our research tasks in relatively established research groups. However, little research has examined the potential these groups might have to mitigate feelings of academic isolation. To fill in this gap, we designed two methodological steps. First, we adopted the Woolfian metaphor of a room of our own, where we composed individual vignettes regarding our feelings of isolation. We read each other's texts and then, in a second step, moved to a “living room” to negotiate our emerging ideas, echoing a Collaborative Autoethnography. Two full professors and two early-career researchers reflected on and talked about their feelings of academic isolation, from their personal and professional standpoints. Despite the differences in job stability, the four participants acknowledged having felt isolated and abandoned. We argue that viewing research groups not as a community of practice, but a community of care is a more humane and desirable framework to model university research groups in these current times of exacerbating neoliberalism.

Beyond the Linear Model: Constructing Basic and Applied Knowledge by Russian Scientists (the Case of Biologists)

The article analyzes the perception of the difference between fundamental and applied scientific knowledge using the case of a particular group of Russian scientists. The sample consisted mainly of researchers who work in university laboratories, research centers and research groups specializing in biology and biosafety. Using a qualitative analysis of interviews with representatives of this group, the authors examine the ways of constructing a border between theoretical and applied research. The interpretation of the results is carried out using the scales of Boltanski and Thйvenot’s concept of “worlds of justification”. The conceptual model for separating fundamental and applied knowledge was Donald Stokes’ model of the relationship between science and technology, the socalled “Pasteur’s Quadrant.” The research demonstrates that Russian scientists prefer to engage in fundamental science, less often choosing applied projects. They use strategies to “fence off” from applied tasks or simulate the applied nature of their research. The boundaries between the categories of fundamental and applied are flexible and reassembled in each research project depending on the context, financial conditions, and applied competencies of the participants involved. When solving applied problems becomes inevitable, scientists prefer to refer to this as engaging in “non-genuine” science. The authors conclude that the traditional division into fundamental and applied research does not correspond to the daily practices of research activities.

Safeguarding Our Heritage—The TRIQUETRA Project Approach

Cultural heritage (CH) sites are frequently exposed to natural elements, and their exposure becomes particularly precarious with the onset of climate change. This increased vulnerability places these sites at risk of deterioration or complete destruction. Risks such as land deformation, floods, acid rain, and erosion significantly threaten historic monuments, while water-related hazards, significantly influenced by both climate change and human activities, present a particularly grave risk to these invaluable sites. Considerable research efforts have focused on safeguarding CH sites. However, there remains a deficiency in systemic approaches towards identifying and mitigating risks for CH sites. The TRIQUETRA project proposes a technological toolbox and a methodological framework for tackling climate change risks and natural hazards threatening CH in the most efficient way possible. It aims at creating an evidence-based assessment platform allowing precise risk stratification as well as a database of available mitigation measures and strategies, acting as a Decision Support System (DSS) towards efficient risk mitigation and site remediation. TRIQUETRA is a European project that brings together a diverse group of researchers with varied expertise, encompassing university research groups, research institutes, public entities, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises. In this article, TRIQUETRAs overall methodology is presented, and preliminary results concerning risk identification, TRIQUETRAs knowledge base, as well as novel sensors and coatings, are discussed.

Innovation Management in University Research Groups

Innovation Management in University Research Groups

Üsküdar University Research groups represent Türkiye in the G20 – N20 with their studies

Üsküdar University Research groups represent Türkiye in the G20 – N20 with their studies

Leadership styles, collaborative integrative behavior and ambidexterity in university research groups

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to understand the influence of the transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles and collaborative integrative behavior of the team with respect to organizational ambidexterity (the combination of exploration and exploitation learning) in university research groups.Design/methodology/approachFrom a survey conducted with a sample of 506 researchers, members of 165 research groups, working in an emerging economy, a multiple regression model analysis was performed.FindingsFindings of this study provide evidence that the coordinator's transformational leadership and the collaborative integrative behavior of the team positively influence organizational ambidexterity of research groups. Transactional leadership and laissez-faire style do not show any significant influence.Originality/valueThis study addresses the lack of knowledge regarding organizational learning in research groups to explore and exploit knowledge through research result transfer processes based on the organizational ambidexterity logic in higher education institutions (HEIs) from emerging economies. The study aims to contribute to the literature on leadership styles and ambidexterity in HEIs in emerging economies, particularly in Latin America, where there is still a scarcity of research on the attributes of effective leadership.

Impact of Bonding Capital and Bridging Capital on Scientific Results of Research Groups

Abstract This article aims to analyze the impact of bonding capital and bridging capital on the scientific results of research groups. The paper contributes to the literature on social capital by going beyond the idea of a linear relationship and reviews the balance between the advantages and disadvantages of bonding capital and its interaction with bridging capital. An empirical study was carried out with 1127 Colombian university research groups from the field of engineering and technology. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that the benefits of bonding social capital are maintained up to a level of centrality, above which the returns of the groups are reduced, adopting an inverted U shape. Moreover, when the members of the research groups diversify their research activities and fulfil relationships that go beyond the limits of their group, this curvilinear relationship is moderated, improving the opportunity to successfully exploit the social capital derived from dense and cohesive ties. The novel contribution of this study lies in linking different types of social capital —bonding and bridging capital—to test their impact on the results of the research groups and in the proposal and testing of a moderate curvilinear relationship, which allows us to advance in this line of research.

Research Group Compliant Behaviour and Regulatory Choice under Incomplete Internal Control Supervision in Colleges and Universities

Subject to the realistic dilemma of insufficient supervision ability, the incomplete internal control supervision of scientific research projects will exist widely in colleges and universities in China for a long time and tend to be normal. Furthermore, exploring and designing effective internal control regulation strategies to deal with the violations of the research group have become an urgent practical problem to be solved in the internal control of colleges and universities. Based on the key supervision of the research group in Colleges and universities, this paper deeply discusses the dynamic choice of compliance behavior, the effectiveness of regulation strategy and its optimal design of the research group under the key supervision mechanism by using the method of game analysis. The research shows that under the condition of obvious constraints on the ability of school supervision, the carefully designed key supervision mechanism can become a powerful tool to guide and control the benign behavior of research groups in Colleges and universities.

Оптимизация медиамодели патриотического воспитания студентов в вузе: социолингвистический аспект

The research is carried out from sociolinguistics perspective and is aimed at development of an integrated approach to improving the effectiveness of patriotic education at universities. The project was carried out by research groups of Chelyabinsk and Kurgan State Universities, including a complex of studies conducted at theoretical and experimental levels. The experimental part included a survey of 360 students conducted in order to determine the most effective ways to optimize the university media product aimed at forming an objective idea of patriotism as a significant state value. Based on the results of the study, the authors proposed a step-by-step methodology for implementing a patriotic media project in the university media environment. Recommendations for development of media environment in which patriotism is viewed as a significant state and individual value is broadcast are presented from the standpoint of sociology, pedagogy and linguistics.

Screening Charity Recipients: Health Philanthropy, Medical Diagnosis, and Kidney Disease Prevention in Sri Lanka

Over the last several decades, epidemics of chronic kidney disease of unknown aetiology (CKDu) have appeared in Mesoamerica, North Africa, and South Asia. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a CKDu-affected village in Sri Lanka, I explore how one CKDu ‘hotspot’ came into being following population screening interventions by a community development organisation, a philanthropic foundation, and a university research group. While the production of test results proved vital to the mobilisation of further research and public health resources for the community, this ethnography reveals philanthropy could be seen to have shaped by screening as much as screening was seen to have influenced by philanthropy. The example of medical screening and philanthropic interventions in Ginnoruwa illustrates how bioindicators of failing kidney function became a key metric for demarcating the community into populations of the deserving (or not so deserving) poorly, which in turn helped to create the pattern of disease prevalence and concentration that led to the community being designated a ‘hotspot’. In Ginnoruwa, philanthropy and screening did not operate independently but constituted a novel hybrid, which I refer to as ‘philanthropic science’.

From suffering towards communal well-being: experiences of a Dalcroze-inspired workshop for a community in crisis.

This qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological study aims to describe the meaning that members of the Parys community ascribed to their experiences of a Dalcroze-inspired workshop. Stakeholders were a number of local residents of Parys, a scenic town situated on the banks of the Vaal River in South Africa's Free State Province. Local residents were asked to share their water-related experiences at a workshop organized by a North-West University research group. It became clear from their stories that they had experienced severe stressful circumstances. They had suffered stress because of the health risks posed by polluted water and the frequent lapses in the town's water supply system. Dalcroze-inspired activities were used to facilitate this meeting. Data were collected through focus group interviews, open-ended individual interviews, photos, videos, and observations. All these data were consolidated in one heuristic unit in ATLAS.ti, a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software program. The codes were organized into categories and themes. Friese's (2014) notice, collect and think (NCT) method for computer-assisted qualitative data analysis was used. From the data analysis, five themes emerged related to the Dalcroze-inspired activities. It included: joyful experiences, which facilitated social interaction that made it possible for personal relationships to be transformed. Virtues arose from this transformation, and participants' experience was that the group engagement supported their well-being. We, therefore, argue that the Dalcroze approach can be used in communities in crisis to facilitate conflict resolution and transform relationships.

The Commercialization of Medium-Voltage Induction Motor Rotor Diagnostics Equipment: Helping Prevent In-Service Failures of Induction Motors and Processes

The R&D process for commercializing diagnostics equipment for detecting rotor faults in MV induction motors is described in this article. This was the result of a five-year collaborative effort among three independent parties: the equipment end user, equipment developer/supplier, and a university research group, where the tasks performed by each party are summarized in <xref ref-type="fig" rid="fig1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Figure 1</xref> . The steps taken for successful development are given, along with a performance summary of the end product for which the first units have been in field use since 2017.

Overview of Drug Therapy of COVID-19 with Safety and the Potential Clinical Benefits

Abstract: The discovery and development of the drug/vaccine for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the process of developing a preventive vaccine or treatment drug to reduce the severity of COVID-19. Internationally, hundreds of pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, university research groups, and the World Health Organization (WHO) have developed vaccines for the past few centuries. Currently, they are continuously putting effort into developing possible therapies for COVID-19 disease, which are now at various stages of the preclinical or clinical research stage. In addition, researchers are trying to accelerate the development of vaccines, antiviral drugs, and postinfection treatments. Many previously approved drug candidates are already studied to alleviate discomfort during the disease complication. In this paper, we reviewed the research progress of COVID- 19 therapeutic drugs.

Eilmer: An open-source multi-physics hypersonic flow solver

This paper introduces Eilmer, a general-purpose open-source compressible flow solver developed at the University of Queensland, designed to support research calculations in hypersonics and high-speed aerothermodynamics. Eilmer has a broad userbase in several university research groups and a wide range of capabilities, which are documented on the project's website, in the accompanying reference manuals, and in an extensive catalogue of example simulations. The first part of this paper describes the formulation of the code: the equations, physical models, and numerical methods that are used in a basic fluid dynamics simulation, as well as a handful of optional multi-physics models that are commonly added on to do calculations of hypersonic flow. The second section describes the processes used to develop and maintain the code, documenting our adherence to good programming practice and endorsing certain techniques that seem to be particularly helpful for scientific codes. The final section describes a half-dozen example simulations that span the range of Eilmer's capabilities, each consisting of some sample results and a short explanation of the problem being solved, which together will hopefully assist new users in beginning to use Eilmer in their own research projects. Program summaryProgram Title: EilmerCPC Library link to program files:https://doi.org/10.17632/gy2ds2fyxm.1Developer's repository link:https://github.com/gdtk-uq/gdtkCode Ocean capsule:https://codeocean.com/capsule/7226427Licensing provisions: GPLv3Programming language: D, LuaSupplementary material:https://gdtk.uqcloud.netNature of problem: Eilmer solves the compressible Navier-Stokes equations with a particular emphasis on flows at hypersonic speeds. The code includes modelling for high-temperature gas effects such as chemical and vibrational nonequilibrium. Eilmer can be used for the simulation for unsteady and steady flows.Solution method: The code is implemented in D [1] and built on a finite-volume formulation that is capable of solving the Navier-Stokes equations in 2D and 3D computational domains, discretised with structured or unstructured grids. Grids may be generated using a built-in parametric scripting tool or imported from commercial gridding software. The inviscid fluxes are computed using the reconstruction-evolution approach. In structured-grid mode, reconstruction stencils up to fourth-order spatial accuracy are available. In unstructured-grid mode, least-squares reconstruction provides second-order spatial accuracy. A variety of flux calculators are available in the code. Viscous fluxes are computed with compact stencils with second-order spatial accuracy. For unsteady flows, explicit time-stepping with low-order RK-family schemes are available, along with a point-implicit Backward-Euler update scheme for stiff systems of equations. For steady flows, convergence can be greatly accelerated using a Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov update scheme, which seeks a global minimum in the residuals using a series of large pseudo-timesteps. Domain decomposition is used for parallel execution using both shared memory and distributed memory programming techniques.Additional comments including restrictions and unusual features: Eilmer provides a programmable interface for pre-processing, post-processing and user run-time customisations. The programmable interface is enabled using a built-in embedded interpreter for the Lua programming language [2]. Run-time customisations include used-defined boundary conditions, source terms and grid motion.

Language policy and multilingualism in semi-peripheral higher education research: Two cases from a University in Catalonia

This study aims to contribute to the limited literature on language policy in research, where the increasing domination of English has raised concern about the displacement of other languages. The present ethnographic (multiple) case study tackles this issue from the context of Catalan higher education, whose institutions find themselves in the conundrum of being called to support local language/s and at the same time to embrace the preeminent international language: English. Multiple types of data have been collected from two university research groups, and analyzed through thematic and content analysis as well as through critical discourse analysis. Results suggest that the lack of specific strategies regarding language use in research may result in the imposition of English and in the displacement of local languages. Yet, Catalan institutions’ semi-peripheral position in the global academia, with less pressure than the center, might afford opportunities for alternative practices that might challenge dominant tendencies.

A production bounce-back approach in the Cloud manufacturing network: case study of COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Industry 4.0 paradigm has enabled manufacturing systems with reformations for Cloud-based manufacturing business models. This reformation can create resilient structures as an inevitable opportunity for manufacturing supply networks. This is achieved by using service composition capabilities in Cloud manufacturing network which significantly enhances supply network performance when encountering disruptions. Focusing on redundancy as one of the most effective approaches to resiliency, a new model for manufacturing service composition is proposed. The model considers a minimum level of subentropy when responding to the demands at the process level while controlling the entropy overall at supply network level. This creates a balanced policy for entropy at the network level, and subentropies at the process level to both fulfill an optimal redundancy for disruption fulfillment and controling the complexity throughout the network. A case study is considered for manufacturing ventilator production COVID-19 pandemic. The capabilities of the proposed model for optimal application of unused firm capacities from other supply networks like military and university research groups have been discussed. The proposed model is also investigated for fulfillment of disruptions like COVID-19 equipment supply network with mentioned capabilities. These capabilities fulfill the transition of manufacturing business models to a service-oriented paradigm with resilient structures.