Assessing the impact of the New Student Support Arrangements (NSSA) on higher education institutions (BIS research paper no.12)

"The research explores the impact on the policies, planning and behaviours of universities nearly four years after the introduction of new arrangements for student support in higher education (known as NSSA). It is set within the context of continued policy focus on increasing and widening participation, rising importance of university performance indicators in student choices, and a challenging economic climate. The research uses qualitative evidence collected from over 120 staff in 15 case studies across England..." - exec. summary

Tuberculosis in prisons in sub-Saharan Africa--a potential time bomb.

No Abstrac

Motion of a droplet for the mass-conserving stochastic Allen-Cahn equation

We study the stochastic mass-conserving Allen-Cahn equation posed on a bounded two-dimensional domain with additive spatially smooth space-time noise. This equation associated with a small positive parameter describes the stochastic motion of a small almost semicircular droplet attached to domain's boundary and moving towards a point of locally maximum curvature. We apply It\^o calculus to derive the stochastic dynamics of the droplet by utilizing the approximately invariant manifold introduced by Alikakos, Chen and Fusco for the deterministic problem. In the stochastic case depending on the scaling, the motion is driven by the change in the curvature of the boundary and the stochastic forcing. Moreover, under the assumption of a sufficiently small noise strength, we establish stochastic stability of a neighborhood of the manifold of droplets in $L^2$ and $H^1$, which means that with overwhelming probability the solution stays close to the manifold for very long time-scales

Enhancing Graduate Attributes: a Preliminary Research Study

The objective of this Teaching Fellowship research project was to establish whether graduate attributes should form part of student education within programmes offered by the Dublin Institute of Technology. This study was conducted during one semester and concentrated on one aspect of graduate attributes which were interview skills. Two videos were scripted, shot and edited that focused on interviews from the perspective of both the interviewer and the interviewee. These videos were showcased with lecturers whose feedback indicated that some improvements were required. Following those improvements the videos were shown to two student groups for feedback. The videos successfully provoked an awareness of the requirements in both situations and were well received. It is recommended that further research be carried out on developing materials and resources that focus on enhancing graduate attributes. These resources could be integrated into a dedicated module and embedded within programmes