An Earth Science Scrapbook Project as an Alternative Assessment Tool

"Scrapbooking" is a popular hobby and as such, has found its way into educational settings, primarily in middle and elementary school levels. This article describes a scrapbook project that is used both as a means of demonstrating the connections between geology and students' daily lives and as an alternative form of assessment. The project was developed for an introductory Earth Science class for middle school and high school pre-service teachers. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

The use of virtual reality technology in teaching environmental engineering

The Open University (OU) provides a Diploma in Pollution control as part of its undergraduate degree programme. The courses that make up the Diploma are presented in distance learning format using the OU's supported open learning system that has been developed over several decades. Teaching environmental engineering by distance learning presents several challenges in terms of ensuring that students gain an appreciation of the technology in action and receive the motivation and support more-readily available to students taught in a campus setting. The OU has developed a multi-media resources DVD to help meet these challenges for students undertaking an environmental impact assessment project. The DVD contains virtual reality views of the proposed site, maps of the region, supporting technical data, interviews with experts and advice from a virtual tutor. A survey of students using the DVD found that the overwhelming majority found the DVD to be 'very useful' or 'useful'. Understandably, the material that is essential for completing the project received the highest rating, but the background material was still considered to be useful by most students. Similar resources could benefit all students in many areas of engineering and technology

The environmental and financial benefits of recovering plastics From residual municipal waste before energy recovery

A life cycle assessment was carried out to investigate the environmental benefits of removing dense plastics from household waste before burning the waste in an energy from waste (EfW) facility. Such a process was found to improve the climate change and non-renewable resource depletion impacts of the waste management system. A preliminary financial assessment suggests that the value of the plastics recovered in this way would be less than the reduction in electricity income for the EfW. However, if the plastics were separated by the householders and collected in a kerbside recycling scheme, the greater price commanded by the higher-quality reclaimed plastics means that the operation would financially viable Further work is required to assess the effectiveness of using both kerbside collections and mechanical recovery to reduce the plastics content and carbon intensity of EfW feeds

Engagement in Authentic Geoscience Research: Evaluation of Research Experiences of Undergraduates and Secondary Teachers

This article examines the effects of a program involving authentic research on the participants' interest in research, career plans, and attitudes on science. The findings are from the first year of a three-year program funded by the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. In three out of four projects, participants increased their interest in research, with two-thirds planning to change career plans to become more research-oriented. The implications of these findings for providing authentic research opportunities are discussed. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

A Comparison of Approaches and Instruments for Evaluating a Geological Sciences Research Experiences Program

This article describes a study in which changes in knowledge of science and attitudes regarding science among participants in a summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program were examined. It was discovered that existing survey instruments could not detect changes in participants' attitudes over the course of the program and also failed to detect differences between geoscience faculty and a group of college students with limited exposure to college level science. In response to this, researchers developed a new survey instrument based on clusters of statements representing a variety of philosophical positions, from which respondents must pick one statement. It was discovered that open-ended questions about the nature of science provide a potentially richer source of information and that a survey instrument designed to probe more subtle aspects of one's beliefs about science can be used to assess adults who have had a variety of different kinds of exposure to science. The pilot survey instrument may also be able, with modifications, to assess attitude and knowledge changes caused by participation in a scientific research experience. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

‘Priming’ exercise and O2 uptake kinetics during treadmill running

We tested the hypothesis that priming exercise would speed kinetics during treadmill running. Eight subjects completed a square-wave protocol, involving two bouts of treadmill running at 70% of the difference between the running speeds at lactate threshold (LT) and max, separated by 6-min of walking at 4 km h−1, on two occasions. Oxygen uptake was measured breath-by-breath and subsequently modelled using non-linear regression techniques. Heart rate and blood lactate concentration were significantly elevated prior to the second exercise bout compared to the first. However, kinetics was not significantly different between the first and second exercise bouts (mean ± S.D., phase II time constant, Bout 1: 16 ± 3 s vs. Bout 2: 16 ± 4 s; slow component amplitude, Bout 1: 0.24 ± 0.10 L min−1vs. Bout 2: 0.20 ± 0.12 L min−1; mean response time, Bout 1: 34 ± 4 s vs. Bout 2: 34 ± 6 s; P > 0.05 for all comparisons). These results indicate that, contrary to previous findings with other exercise modalities, priming exercise does not alter kinetics during high-intensity treadmill running, at least in physically active young subjects. We speculate that the relatively fast kinetics and the relatively small slow component in the control (‘un-primed’) condition negated any enhancement of kinetics by priming exercise in this exercise modality

Some dynamics of acoustic oscillations with nonlinear combustion and noise

The results given in this paper constitute a continuation of progress with nonlinear analysis of coherent oscillations in combustion chambers. We are currently focusing attention on two general problems of nonlinear behavior important to practical applications: the conditions under which a linearly unstable system will execute stable periodic limit cycles; and the conditions under which a linearly stable system is unstable to a sufficiently large disturbance. The first of these is often called 'soft' excitation, or supercritical bifurcation; the second is called 'hard' excitation, 'triggering,' or subcritical bifurcation and is the focus of this paper. Previous works extending over more than a decade have established beyond serious doubt (although no formal proof exists) that nonlinear gasdynamics alone does not contain subcritical bifurcations. The present work has shown that nonlinear combustion alone also does not contain subcritical bifurcations, but the combination of nonlinear gasdynamics and combustion does. Some examples are given for simple models of nonlinear combustion of a solid propellant but the broad conclusion just mentioned is valid for any combustion system. Although flows in combustors contain considerable noise, arising from several kinds of sources, there is sound basis for treating organized oscillations as distinct motions. That has been an essential assumption incorporated in virtually all treatments of combustion instabilities. However, certain characteristics of the organized or deterministic motions seem to have the nature of stochastic processes. For example, the amplitudes in limit cycles always exhibit a random character and even the occurrence of instabilities seems occasionally to possess some statistical features. Analysis of nonlinear coherent motions in the presence of stochastic sources is therefore an important part of the theory. We report here a few results of power spectral densities of acoustic amplitudes in the presence of a subcritical bifurcation associated with nonlinear combustion and gasdynamics