Between college and work in the Further Education and Training College sector

Students studying Civil Engineering (CE) at the Further Education and Training (FET) colleges spend periods of time in the classroom and workshop as well as in the workplace during experiential learning. The overall purpose of education and training in the college sector is generally understood as preparing students for employability, and difficulties in colleges performing this role are well known. In this article, these difficulties are examined in a novel way. The everyday perspectives of lecturers and supervisors about student learning in their college programmes and their work experience are translated into more theoretical language, using activity theory. A theoretical argument is made, which suggests that different sites of learning create different purposes, and that these different purposes derive from a distinction between knowledge and practice, which in turn has historical roots. The study concludes by suggesting that a new, common object of integrating theory and practice at all the sites would better link the college and workplace education and training systems, and tentatively suggests how this new object could be put into practice.Key words: activity theory; civil engineering; further education and training; theory and practic

Publications received by the regional editor (from Jan 2010 to Dec 2011)

Publications in Indian Studies

Priming T2 in a visual and auditory attentional blink task

Participants performed an attentional blink (AB) task including digits as targets and letters as distractors within the visual and auditory domains. Prior to the rapid serial visual presentation, a visual or auditory prime was presented in the form of a digit that was identical to the second target (T2) on 50% of the trials. In addition to the "classic" AB effect, an overall drop in performance on T2 was observed for the trials on which the stream was preceded by an identical prime from the same modality. No cross-modal priming was evident, suggesting that the observed inhibitory priming effects are modality specific. We argue that the present findings represent a special type of negative priming operating at a low feature level. Copyright 2008 Psychonomic Society, Inc

Pip and pop: Nonspatial auditory signals improve spatial visual search

Searching for an object within a cluttered, continuously changing environment can be a very time-consuming process. The authors show that a simple auditory pip drastically decreases search times for a synchronized visual object that is normally very difficult to find. This effect occurs even though the pip contains no information on the location or identity of the visual object. The experiments also show that the effect is not due to general alerting (because it does not occur with visual cues), nor is it due to top-down cuing of the visual change (because it still occurs when the pip is synchronized with distractors on the majority of trials). Instead, we propose that the temporal information of the auditory signal is integrated with the visual signal, generating a relatively salient emergent feature that automatically draws attention. Phenomenally, the synchronous pip makes the visual object pop out from its complex environment, providing a direct demonstration of spatially nonspecific sounds affecting competition in spatial visual processing. Keywords: attention, visual search, multisensory integration, audition, visio

Shining new light on mammalian diving physiology using wearable near-infrared spectroscopy

Investigation of marine mammal dive-by-dive blood distribution and oxygenation has been limited by a lack of non-invasive technology for use in freely diving animals. Here, we developed a non-invasive near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) device to measure relative changes in blood volume and haemoglobin oxygenation continuously in the blubber and brain of voluntarily diving harbour seals. Our results show that seals routinely exhibit preparatory peripheral vasoconstriction accompanied by increased cerebral blood volume approximately 15 s before submersion. These anticipatory adjustments confirm that blood redistribution in seals is under some degree of cognitive control that precedes the mammalian dive response. Seals also routinely increase cerebral oxygenation at a consistent time during each dive, despite a lack of access to ambient air. We suggest that this frequent and reproducible reoxygenation pattern, without access to ambient air, is underpinned by previously unrecognised changes in cerebral drainage. The ability to track blood volume and oxygenation in different tissues using NIRS will facilitate a more accurate understanding of physiological plasticity in diving animals in an increasingly disturbed and exploited environment

Large scale analysis of expressed genes in common wheat

To assess associations between occlusal tooth wear and shortened dental arches (SDA) in Chinese 40 years and older subjects. From a sample of 1462 urban and rural adults, those presenting with SDA (n = 150) were compared with a control group of 65 randomly selected subjects with complete dentitions (CDA). Occlusal wear was assessed using a modified Smith and Knight index - the occlusal tooth wear index (OWTI) - and analysed using multivariate (logistic) regression. There was no significant effect from SDA on severe occlusal wear (OTWI score 3 or 4: OR = 2.016; 95% CI = 0.960-4.231; P = 0.064). Higher age was associated with severe occlusal wear (P values </=0.007) and with higher mean OTWI scores; urban had less often severe occlusal wear than rural residents (OR = 0.519; P = 0.008). Higher mean OTWI scores were associated with rural residents, except for anterior teeth. Females had lower mean OTWI score for anterior teeth (effect = -0.153; P = 0.030). Premolars in SDA had higher mean OTWI scores compared with those in CDA (effect = +0.213; P = 0.006). In SDA, more posterior occluding pairs (POPs) were associated with lower mean OTWI sores for anterior teeth (effect: -0.158; P = 0.008) and higher scores for molars (effect: +0.249, P = 0.003). Subjects with SDA or CDA presented comparable occlusal wear, but premolars in SDA tend to have higher probability for having occlusal wear. Fewer numbers of POPs were associated with more wear in anterior teeth