communication Archives

Meet the Editorial team – Adele Walker

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Research Outreach - an interview with Adele Walker. View of Maiden Castle, Dorset, the hill fort.

Get to know Adele Walker, one of our editors on the team at Research Outreach. Can you give us some insight into your background and how you came to be working at Research Outreach? I’m an archaeologist by training – I learned my craft at an impressive Iron Age hillfort called Maiden Castle in Dorset. I fell in love with the […]

Multiple sclerosis: Caregiver involvement may improve patient care and treatment

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Professor Kesselring discusses the positives and negatives surrounding family involvement in the provision of care for people with MS and any potential downsides that may occur as a result.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease with unpredictable progression, causing huge distress to the entire family of people living with the disease. Professor Jürg Kesselring at the Department of Neurology & Neurorehabilitation, Kliniken Valens in Switzerland, reviews the discussions he and other internationally acclaimed neurologists participated in regarding caregiver involvement in doctor consultations for people with MS. Although such an […]

World Cleanup Day 2022: Help #cleanup our planet

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World Cleanup Day 2022 - a globe is wrapped in a plastic bag

Put on your rubber gloves and help #cleanup the planet on World Cleanup Day 2022. This 17th of September, millions of international volunteers will join forces to pick up trash and remove waste that pollutes the Earth. Let’s Do It World leads the collective effort to rid the world of pollution, mobilised into action by the horrific truth that only […]

When children’s storytelling says so much more

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Effective storytelling can be challenging.

We take for granted that our children tell stories. But what if they can’t? Oral storytelling is a bridge to literacy, yet many children do not develop this skill naturally. Research has shown that narrative skill at school entry predicts writing and reading comprehension up to ten years later. Narrative intervention is a form of language therapy and a classroom […]

Communication technologies for supporting better healthcare

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Clear and effective communication is of paramount importance in healthcare, both for patients and healthcare staff. Dr Anne Moorhead, senior lecturer in health communication at Ulster University, investigates how technologies, including social media, health apps, and telehealth services, play a role in enhancing communication within healthcare. With the recent accelerated shift to remote consulting and use of telehealth following the […]

Birds prefer sound texture over sound order

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For zebra finches, the subtle nuances in sound texture or timbre are more important than the sequence of repeated sounds.

How exactly do birds ‘talk’ to one another? And might research into how birds listen to birdsong help us understand communication both in humans and birds? Dr Robert Dooling and his team, based at the University of Maryland, USA, showed that – for zebra finches at least – the subtle nuances in sound texture or timbre are more important than […]

What team communication can tell us about team effectiveness

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Meetings. Love them or hate them, they’re a regular feature of working life and there are countless studies on how to plan, run and make the most of them. Few studies, however, take a detailed view of the nature of the communication, interaction and collaboration that take place within meetings, especially team meetings. The research of Marcella Hoogeboom and Celeste […]

Homelessness and language difficulties

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Dr Graham Pluck of Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, is a psychologist with an interest in cognitive research and neuroscience. His most recent research has focused on the relationship between homelessness and language in Quito, Ecuador. Here, we take a closer look at his findings, suggesting that homeless adults in Quito perform well below the levels that would be […]

The European Science Foundation: Forging funding strategies and scientific connections

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The European Science Foundation is working with the European Space Agency.

In its almost half a century of existence, the European Science Foundation has established itself as a critical member of the European science community, active in influencing and shaping the research landscape. CEO Nicolas Walter shared with Research Outreach what part the foundation plays now and how he hopes science and research will develop in Europe (and the world!) in […]

Couples bickering: Disaffiliation and discord in Chinese conversation

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In “Couples Bickering”, Guodong Yu, Yaxin Wu and Paul Drew use conversation analysis on candid, everyday conversations in Mandarin from China in order to understand communication and social action. Using the relationships in interaction of arguments and conflicts found in conversations between couples, they show how there are many linguistic and grammatical ways that conflict can be limited to bickering, […]