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FENGBO-WIND - Farming the ENvironment into the Grid: Big data in Offshore Wind
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The proposed project will develop an integrated computational simulation approach capable of handling the complex interactions between the local atmosphere, the coastal ocean and sedimentary environment, farm aerodynamics, turbine response and grid integration in offshore wind farms. This will target a substantial reduction in the cost of energy in offshore wind by exploiting: high-fidelity optimization of array design and operation, tailored to a specific site and able to deal with realistic marine atmospheric boundary layer conditions, in particular the very slow dissipation of rotor wakes; combined with big-data analysis of very-large-scale simulations of the whole system under extreme conditions, to minimize integrity risks without overly conservative safety factors. Both situations will be investigated within the context of the development of offshore farms off the Chinese coast, which brings particular challenges regarding coastal characteristics (e.g. high sediment concentrations) and extreme events (in particular typhoons). To achieve this we propose a multiscale approach to wind farm design and network integration that considers, first, a more accurate characterisation of extreme events (and active mitigation strategies) in the analysis through highly-resolved computer simulation; second, new optimization techniques for the design and operation of wind farms that allow for sustained power extraction using relevant knowledge of both the marine atmosphere and individual turbine (aeroservoelastic) dynamics; and third, robust grid design and operation strategies that accommodate wind resource variability and maximise the sustainability of energy generation. FENGBO-WIND will carry out the most ambitious computer simulations to date on farm dynamics and farm/environment interaction, to build physics-based predictive capabilities on farm output and investigate long-term interactions between farms and their local environment. An interdisciplinary consortium of experts, including Earth/environmental scientists, civil and electrical engineers, and fluid dynamicists, have been assembled to tackle this challenging computational problem. The team will have access to (1) the world's largest supercomputer (Sunway TaihuLight) to carry out full system simulations of energy output and farm state for specific environmental scenarios, (2) operational data from existing wind farms off the Chinese coast as well as conditions at a target site through a partnership with a local grid company, and (3) performance data for a state-of-the-art wind turbine design from the leading Chinese manufacturer. The results will be benchmarked against state-of-the-art industrial design tools and protocols for grid integration for offshore wind farms.
Newton Mobility Grants (Year 4 Round 2) NSFC
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme supports researchers in Newton Fund countries to develop collaborations with UK researchers. These awards are particularly suited to initiate new collaborative partnerships, between scholars who have not previously worked together, or new initiatives between scholars who have collaborated in the past.
Newton Mobility Grants (Year 5 Round 1)
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme supports researchers in Newton Fund countries to develop collaborations with UK researchers. These awards are particularly suited to initiate new collaborative partnerships, between scholars who have not previously worked together, or new initiatives between scholars who have collaborated in the past.
Newton Advanced Fellowships (Year 5 Round 2) NSFC
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme focuses on mid-career researchers in Newton Fund countries, and develops their research strengths by providing support for training and development in collaboration with a UK partner with the intention of transferring knowledge and research capabilities to researchers in partner countries.
Newton International Fellowships (Year 6 Round 1) NSFC
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Enables talented early career post-doctoral researchers from partner countries to spend two consecutive years undertaking research at a UK host institute. The fellowship supports talented early career researchers from partner countries to develop their research capabilities by hosting them with some of the best research departments in the UK.
Historicising Natures, Cultures and Laws in the Etosha-Kunene Conservation Territories of Namibia
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Large Grant designed to generate in-depth knowledge regarding changing conservation policy and its socioecological impacts, specifically in relation to challenges of multilingualism. Benefits local populations, conservationists and policy makers in Namibia. SDGs 10,15
Do neighbourhoods matter? Country- cluster- and individual effects on attitudes towards intimate partner violence in low- and middle-income countries
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The study will address significant knowledge gaps in our understanding of women's and men's attitudes towards intimate partner violence against women (IPV) at the neighbourhood-level in 54 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) across Central-, East- and South Asia, the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North- and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Adaptation and mitigation strategies to cope with the effects of extreme heat in developing countries: implications for climate change.
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The increase in extreme temperatures associated to global warming and climate change are creating drastic effects at a planetary scale. These impacts seriously disrupt economic activities, particularly among the most vulnerable in the developing world, such as traditional farmers or low productivity informal workers in urban areas. Their ability to cope with environmental disruptions and to adapt to a changing climate can have strong implications in terms of vulnerable households' wellbeing. The goal of the proposed research is to deepen our understanding on how environmental events associated with climate change affect income generating activities and individuals' subsequent adaptive behaviour in developing countries. Accounting for these responses is very important to obtain more precise estimates of the economic costs of climate change, to identify potential winners and losers, and to inform the design of context-specific mitigating policies.
Academy of Medical Sciences Staff delivery costs
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Newton Fund. Programme Delivery costs for Academy of Medical Sciences
Academy of Medical Sciences Travel & Subsistence delivery costs
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Newton Fund. Programme Delivery costs for Academy of Medical Sciences
Academy of Medical Sciences Miscellaneous delivery costs
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Newton Fund. Programme Delivery costs for Academy of Medical Sciences
A school closer to home: using mealtimes to foster language development, improve girls' nutrition and align home and school in rural Kenya and Zambia
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
We develop a new way to address educational disadvantage in rural Africa, through a collaboration between academics from Kenya, Zambia and the UK, teachers, families and community groups. The connection between home and school is key to sustainable education: (i) parents must recognise the school's priorities if they are to support their child's continuing education, (ii) teachers need to understand their pupils' home environment so they can build on positive home experiences and (iii) schools must build on children's existing skills and knowledge and fit with their goal of a successful life in their community. There is currently a serious disconnect between home and school in Africa and this is exacerbated in rural Kenya and Zambia by the predominance of non-local teachers who often don't speak pupils' native languages. We aim to connect home and school learning by targeting Early Childhood Education and Development programmes (ECDE; age 4 - 6). Unlike primary and secondary schools, ECDE centres recruit teachers from the local community. The relationship between parents and teachers is closest in ECDE settings, providing a crucial opportunity to build bridges between home and school. It is also a critical opportunity for mitigating early disadvantages for girls and empowering females in leadership roles since ECDE teachers are predominantly female. We prioritise language and nutrition as fundamental to all later learning, and aim to (i) identify positive practices in the home that benefit early language development and nutrition and (ii) to work together with ECDE teachers as researchers to empower them to develop teacher and parent networks to share best practice in school and at home. We target mealtimes for our observations of behaviour and language since they are a particularly rich time for social interaction, and the focus on eating gives an authentic setting for natural communication. Our objectives are (i) to measure home and school mealtime behaviour and language to identify practices that are most crucial for raising the quality of language children are exposed to (e.g., whether adults and children sit together; whether they have a television) (ii) to observe eating behaviours in the home, assess the extent to which girls' eat less food, or less nutritious foods, and identify practices that raise levels of female nutrition (e.g., girls may eat more if they share food as a family, rather than when girls and women eat separately) (iii) to work together with our teacher-researchers and community advisors to co-develop a teacher-network and parent outreach programme, based on evidence from objectives 1 and 2. The aim is to raise awareness and share practices that increase the quality of language children are exposed to at home and in school and raise levels of female nutrition, motivated by evidence of gender inequalities. Objective 3 will be achieved firstly by working together to identify key messages that are culturally appropriate and achievable (e.g., switch the TV off before eating at home; encourage teachers to sit together with pupils when eating in ECDE centres). Second, by working together in practitioner networks, guidance will be developed to inform a parent outreach programme to be shared with well-established groups in the community. The network will also provide a platform for teachers to conduct their own research, share research findings and discuss best practice. Importantly, it will provide a vital link to teachers in primary and secondary education, to develop continuity in children's education. Finally, the evidence base we provide through objectives 1 and 2, and the networks created in objective 3 provide a powerful basis for contributing to the development of the new ECDE curriculum in Kenya and to lobby for similar priorities in Zambia.
Supporting Oral Language Development
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Children with a small vocabulary are at a disadvantage for all aspects of learning. Unless there is targeted support, children who start slow will continue to fall behind their language-rich peers. A powerful way to ensure all children are ready for learning, particularly in school, is to offer high quality oral language education early in a child's life. The power of early language intervention is supported by a large body of evidence showing a combined foundation of strong spoken language and listening comprehension cascading to reading and writing skills. However, little is known about the efficacy of oral language interventions in low- and middle-income countries where communities are often multilingual. We aim to address this gap in the literature through a mixed-methods study with children ages of 3-to-6 living in India and the Philippines. The study will examine oral language development under the particular complexities of multilingual urban poor settings. Research in these settings is of importance as there is reason to believe resources that spontaneously support children's language development may be under strain for the urban poor (e.g. reduced social networks, a new school language), making them a particularly vulnerable group for school failure. A co-developed project The proposed project was co-developed by multiple agencies. Government partners shared that a pressing systemic concern was the low literacy rates in primary schools. Community partners stressed the need for evidence on quality programs that will work in local schools and university partners echoed the need for a comprehensive program of research. We therefore propose to understand children's language development in-context and will test an intervention that could potentially better prepare children for primary school. The research sites will be Udupi district in India and Quezon City in the Philippines. Defining characteristics of these sites include the multiple languages around the child and a policy commitment to either mother-tongue or multilingual education. Hence, these contexts offer an opportunity to research a topic that is understudied in not just DAC countries but also internationally: children's oral language development and oral language intervention in a multilingual setting. Objectives and Outputs The primary objective of this research is to provide descriptive and causal evidence on quality (in early childhood development and pre-primary education) and readiness (for primary education) through three studies that aim to a) map opportunities and barriers to oral language development, b) validate assessments to track children's developing oral language and c) examine a targeted intervention delivered by teachers one year before entry into primary school. We will map opportunities and barriers by following thirty children over one day to record their language experiences, examining language knowledge of their conversation partners, and conducting an ethnographic inquiry of classes they attend. We will finetune fifteen assessments by analyzing 3000 data points on each test and, in a study with 800 children, evaluate a language intervention designed with teachers that draws upon folk tales and local narratives. This inter-disciplinary project will provide an approach to reach the Sustainable Development Goal of effective learning outcomes for all children by focusing on the language bedrock of early childhood learning. Outputs include evidence briefs for policy makers and open access toolkits for educators. Multiple bodies of data for the research community will expand the evidence-base in these contexts. These include a word bank, an archive of child language, a rich description of talk in the classroom, performance data and outcomes data. Taken together, the proposed research could potentially act as a catalyst for informed early childhood education in India, the Philippines, and other DAC countries.
GOAL: Supporting government and partners in strengthening health systems for better mental health of Syrian refugees and host communities in Lebanon
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
GOAL focuses on the challenge of supporting health systems providing for the mental health needs of people affected by protracted displacement, focusing on Lebanon. Poor mental health causes long-term suffering and disability, is a barrier to realising full potential of individuals and society, and impedes progress in achieving the SDGs. Poor mental health is often more common among protracted refugee populations than non-crisis affected populations. Effective mental health services exist, but there are major gaps in access to them, especially among refugee populations. The challenge is how to best deliver such services, including the design of health systems required to support this delivery. This is particularly challenging in protracted displacement settings which can place substantial additional pressure on already strained health systems and where an influx of international aid and actors can risk weakening national government-led responses. GOAL is a partnership between universities, the National Mental Health Programme at the Ministry of Public Health and civil society organisations in Lebanon. It addresses the following questions in the UKRI-GCRF Protracted Displacement call: (i) what should governments at every level do in order to anticipate and efficiently manage protracted stays, reduce refugees' dependence on humanitarian aid and implement systems that facilitate refugee /IDP integration, inclusion and social wellbeing? (ii) How can health care systems for the displaced be expanded to cover areas that are usually neglected in refugee/IDP settings such as (though not limited to) treatment of chronic illnesses, disability and mental health? (iii) How does gendered access to services, economic and cultural opportunities and levels of power influence differently the experiences, opportunities and limitations of men and women? The overall aim of GOAL to support government and partners in strengthening the ability of health systems to meet the mental health needs of refugee and host communities affected by protracted displacement, focusing on Lebanon as it is home to over one million Syrian refugees. It addresses two health system topics, governance and financing, identified as priority areas by key stakeholders in Lebanon and by external independent experts. GOAL's research is framed by the use of Transition Theory and gender is addressed as a cross-cutting issue informing all aspects of the project research. It follow a co-production approach, working closely with key stakeholders - particularly mental health service users. Quantitative and qualitative methods will be used and interdisciplinarity fostered. We also work with mental health service users to produce innovative materials (e.g. animations and augmented reality digital images) communicating the benefits of participation from people with lived experience of mental disorders in research and policy-making processes, and for advocacy and teaching. GOAL has capacity strengthening activities to provide technical training to project partners and key stakeholders, and to support institutional capacity and individual career progression. The main immediate beneficiary will be the National Mental Health Programme at the Ministry of Public Health in Lebanon. Other beneficiaries will include key stakeholders including mental health service users, NGOs, and UN agencies, both in Lebanon and other countries responding to protracted displacement situations. The proposal responds to SDG 3 (good health and well-being) and DFID's strategic objectives of strengthening resilience and response to crises, and tackling extreme poverty and helping the world's most vulnerable.
Birth across the Borders: exploring contextual education as a catalyst for improved maternal health.
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Families that lose a mother in pregnancy or childbirth face many challenges. They are left with a gap that can lead to a loss of income and poverty. It can cause a lot of family pressures, especially for girls are left to care for younger children and are not able to go to school. Many of these families come from communities that are already poor, with very little infrastructure and limited access to decent healthcare. This can cause a much higher risk of death, both for mothers and babies, especially in poor countries. Opportunities are more limited because families lack money and education. Myanmar is a South East Asian country that has had many years of tension and conflict between the different people groups. Many of these groups live in remote mountainous areas where basic resources and infrastructure such as electricity are limited. There is often little healthcare in these areas with very few doctors, nurses or midwives to care for mothers and their families. One in 23 women in Eastern Myanmar either die or come close to death during pregnancy or childbirth. These challenges are all very typical in developing countries across the world today, but a lot can be changed with education that makes sense to mothers and families in their situations. Working together with our local partners we intend to learn more about the specific challenges facing families in four regions of Myanmar. From this we will co-develop three education programmes which will be especially adapted for each region. One of these programmes will help families and communities understand the processes of pregnancy and birth, recognise what is normal, what is unusual and what is dangerous and to know what to do and where to go to get help. Our second programme will further train health workers to understand the different signs and symptoms that are dangerous in pregnancy and birth and find ways to help mothers in time to prevent complications. Poverty is very high in parts of Myanmar, so our third programme is for community leaders and local people to support them to start and grow businesses. This way families can afford to eat well and get good healthcare when they need it. Our project will focus on remote regions in Myanmar and together we plan to learn how to find ways to overcome the legacy of many years of poverty and conflict. This project will include staff from our universities in Northern Ireland and Thailand as well as local partners who come from or have been working in the region for many years. Through this project we hope to help support the work of all our partners and improve education for mothers, families and communities. A key part of our project is making sure that the education they receive makes sense in their situations and includes their beliefs and customs leading to improved health, social and economic opportunities and accessible healthcare. We plan to share what we do with other organisations working in Myanmar who may also benefit from our research. Finally, it is hoped that our research will contribute to current policies and practices in partnership with the government of Myanmar and the ethnic health organisations.
Understanding and addressing the impact of stressful live events on the mental health of older adults in Colombia
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Deliver signficant reseach funding for internationally competitative and innovative collaborative projects between researchers from Colombia and United Kingdom that will allow the pursuit of shared research interests.
Participatory research to support the development of culturally sensitive mental health and wellbeing services for the Kankuamo people of Colombia
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Deliver signficant reseach funding for internationally competitative and innovative collaborative projects between researchers from Colombia and United Kingdom that will allow the pursuit of shared research interests.
Jordan-UK El Hassan bin Talal Research Chair in Sustainability
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The Jordan – UK El Hassan bin Talal Research Chair in Sustainability is a joint initiative between the British Academy and the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan (RSS). Its aim is to enhance the research and innovation capacity of Jordan for long-term sustainable development. The initiative is supported by the Newton-Khalidi Fund. This call is open to applicants with established expertise in any area relevant to the challenges of sustainability, particularly in the context of Jordan. Such areas could relate to, but need not necessarily be limited to: food security, water, energy and the environment, cities and infrastructure, climate change, sustainable livelihoods, health and well-being, migration and displacement, inequalities, and education. Specific objectives include expanding research and innovation capacity within the social sciences and humanities in Jordan with a particular focus on the area of sustainable development and issues of relevance and importance to the local context; and improving Jordan’s international research and innovation competitiveness while responding to socio-economic challenges in the country.
Newton International Fellowships (Year 6 Round 1) CAS
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Enables talented early career post-doctoral researchers from partner countries to spend two consecutive years undertaking research at a UK host institute. The fellowship supports talented early career researchers from partner countries to develop their research capabilities by hosting them with some of the best research departments in the UK.
Newton Advanced Fellowships (Year 7 Round 1)
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme focuses on mid-career researchers in Newton Fund countries, and develops their research strengths by providing support for training and development in collaboration with a UK partner with the intention of transferring knowledge and research capabilities to researchers in partner countries.
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