311,569 research outputs found

    Education data reality: A continued conversation

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    The Digital Futures Commission launched its report entitled Education Data Reality in its breakfast briefing on the 29th June 2022. The launch featured an introduction to the Education Data work stream of the Digital Future Commission by Sonia Livingstone, a presentation of the key findings by Sarah Turner, the lead author and a response from Al Kingsley, CEO of NetSupport and Chair of two Multi-Academy Trusts. The event concluded with a vibrant Q&A session, leaving many interesting questions for further discussion

    Delivery of e-lectures

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    The countryside in urbanized Flanders: towards a flexible definition for a dynamic policy

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    The countryside, the rural area, the open space, … many definitions are used for rural Flanders. Everyone makes its own interpretation of the countryside, considering it as a place for living, working or recreating. The countryside is more than just a geographical area: it is an aggregate of physical, social, economic and cultural functions, strongly interrelated with each other. According to international and European definitions of rural areas there would be almost no rural area in Flanders. These international definitions are all developed to be used for analysis and policy within their specific context. They are not really applicable to Flanders because of the historical specificity of its spatial structure. Flanders is characterized by a giant urbanization pressure on its countryside while internationally rural depopulation is a point of interest. To date, for every single rural policy initiative – like the implementation of the European Rural Development Policy – Flanders used a specifically adapted definition, based on existing data or previously made delineations. To overcome this oversupply of definitions and delineations, the Flemish government funded a research project to obtain a clear and flexible definition of the Flemish countryside and a dynamic method to support Flemish rural policy aims. First, an analysis of the currently used definitions of the countryside in Flanders was made. It is clear that, depending on the perspective or the policy context, another definition of the countryside comes into view. The comparative study showed that, according to the used criteria, the area percentage of Flanders that is rural, varies between 9 and 93 per cent. Second, dynamic sets of criteria were developed, facilitating a flexible definition of the countryside, according to the policy aims concerned. This research part was focused on 6 policy themes, like ‘construction, maintenance and management of local (transport) infrastructures’ and ‘provision of (minimum) services (education, culture, health care, …)’. For each theme a dynamic set of criteria or indicators was constructed. These indicators make it possible to show where a policy theme manifests itself and/or where policy interventions are possible or needed. In this way every set of criteria makes up a new definition of rural Flanders. This method is dynamic; new data or insights can easily be incorporated and new criteria sets can be developed if other policy aims come into view. The developed method can contribute to a more region-oriented and theme-specific rural policy and funding mechanism

    Tracing sources of cadmium in agricultural soils: a stable isotope approach

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    Cadmium (Cd) is a biotoxic heavy metal, which is accumulated by plants and animals and thereby enters the human food chain (Gray et al. 2003). The application of phosphate fertilisers has also resulted in the long-term accumulation of Cd in agricultural soils around the world, including New Zealand (NZ). In 1997, the main source of NZ phosphate fertilisers was changed from Nauru island phosphate rocks (450 mg Cd kg-1 P) to a variety of phosphate rocks with lower Cd concentrations, in order to meet more stringent Cd limits in P fertiliser. Following this change, the accumulation of Cd in topsoil samples from the Winchmore research farm (South Island, NZ) was evaluated and was found to have plateaued post-2000 (McDowell, 2012). In this study, stable isotope analysis was used to trace the fate of Cd in Winchmore farm soils in order to determine the cause of the plateau. The isotope ratio of Cd (δ114/110Cd) was measured in pre-2000 and post-2000 phosphate fertilisers, phosphate rocks, topsoil (0-7.5 cm) and control (unfertilised) subsoil (25-30 cm) samples from the Winchmore site. The analysed topsoil samples were archived samples collected over the period 1959-2015. The isotopic compositions of fertilised topsoils ranged from δ114/110Cd = 0.08 ± 0.03 to δ114/110Cd = 0.27 ± 0.04, which were comparable to pre-2000 fertilisers (δ114/110Cd = 0.10 ± 0.05 to 0.25 ± 0.04) but distinct from the post-2000 fertilisers (δ114/110Cd range of -0.17 ± 0.03 to 0.01 ± 0.05) and control subsoil (δ114/110Cd = -0.33 ± 0.04) (Salmanzadeh et al., 2017). We combined this stable isotope data with Bayesian modelling to estimate the contribution of different sources of Cd. An open source Bayesian isotope mixing model implemented in Matlab (Arendt et al., 2015) was used here with some modifications to estimate the fractional contribution of different sources of Cd through time including pre- and post-2000 fertilisers, and the control soil. The Matlab code of Arendt et al., 2015 was modified to consider only one isotope system (rather than two), and fewer sources. This modelling confirmed the dominant contribution (about 80%) of Nauru-derived (i.e. pre-2000) fertilisers in increasing the Cd concentration in Winchmore soils. To help constrain the soil Cd mass balance we used an existing model (CadBal) (Roberts and Longhurst, 2005), to estimate residual soil Cd and output fluxes based on known P fertiliser application rates, the initial Cd concentration, farm and soil type, and soil dry bulk density. We incorporated the isotope data into the mass balance expression in order to evaluate the performance of CadBal in estimating the past topsoil Cd accumulation and predicting the future concentrations and isotope ratios of Cd (up to 2030 AD). The results of mass balance modelling confirm that recent applications of phosphate fertilisers have not resulted in an accumulation of Cd during the most recent period, thus Cd removal by either leaching or crop uptake has increased, which is consistent with the modelled isotope data (Figure 1). We can conclude that it becomes possible to distinguish the sources of Cd within the soil using stable Cd isotopes (Imseng et al., 2018) and that the residual Cd in topsoil at Winchmore still mainly originates from historical phosphate fertilisers (Salmanzadeh et al., 2017). One implication of this finding is that the contemporary applications of phosphate fertiliser are not resulting in further Cd accumulation. We aim to continue our research into Cd fate, mobility, and transformations in the NZ environment by applying Cd isotopes in soils and aquatic environments across the country. Figure 1. Results of Cd mass balance modelling in CadBal for the period of topsoil fertilisation including a prediction up to the year 2030 AD. (a) Mean concentration of Cd in the dryland treatment of Winchmore long-term irrigation trial (symbols) and the CadBal model (lines) outputs (red symbols = this study- plot 15 of Winchmore site; grey symbols = McDowell study-average of all plots; solid black line = dryland optimized CadBal from McDowell (2012) for all irrigation plots; black dashed line = Plot 15 dryland optimized CadBal-this study, first scenario; blue line = Plot 15 dryland optimized CadBal-this study, second scenario; red line = Plot 15 dryland optimized CadBal-this study, third scenario; red dashed line = Plot 15 dryland optimized CadBal-this study, fourth scenario); (b) Measured and modelled Cd isotope ratios based on CadBal outputs, isotope ratios measured in fertilisers and the fractionation factors of Wiggenhauser, et al. (2016); lines designate modelling scenarios as in (a), red dots are the third scenario with no fractionation (α factor not applied); (c) modeled scenario 3 (solid) and scenario 4 (dashed) isotope ratios in topsoil (red lines), leachate (blue lines) and pasture (green lines)

    Quality modeling in electronic healthcare: a study of mHealth Service

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    Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential to radically transform health services in developing countries. Among various ICT driven health platforms, mobile health is the most promising one because of its widespread penetration and cost effective services. This paper aims to examine Quality Modeling in Electronic Healthcare by using PLS based SEM

    A stable and accurate control-volume technique based on integrated radial basis function networks for fluid-flow problems

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    Radial basis function networks (RBFNs) have been widely used in solving partial differential equations as they are able to provide fast convergence. Integrated RBFNs have the ability to avoid the problem of reduced convergence-rate caused by differentiation. This paper is concerned with the use of integrated RBFNs in the context of control-volume discretisations for the simulation of fluid-flow problems. Special attention is given to (i) the development of a stable high-order upwind scheme for the convection term and (ii) the development of a local high-order approximation scheme for the diffusion term. Benchmark problems including the lid-driven triangular-cavity flow are employed to validate the present technique. Accurate results at high values of the Reynolds number are obtained using relatively-coarse grids

    Virtues of violence: a testimonial performance or, an affidavit of lies, excuses and justifications

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    This is a performance lecture of statements/ records/ made up lies. We collected testimonies that spoke of some of the violences that we are facing – from Greece and Turkey - but these glimpses of frustration, bruising, broken dreams are evident everywhere, with different masks and excuses: ‘neoliberalism’/ ‘extremism’/ ‘factionism’/‘unionism’. All have the common suggestion: that this is how we play the game
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