Erasmus Language students in a British University – a case study

Students’ assessment of their academic experience is actively sought by Higher Education institutions, as evidenced in the National Student Survey introduced in 2005. Erasmus students, despite their growing numbers, tend to be excluded from these satisfaction surveys, even though they, too, are primary customers of a University. This study aims to present results from bespoke questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with a sample of Erasmus students studying languages in a British University. These methods allow us insight into the experience of these students and their assessment as a primary customer, with a focus on language learning and teaching, university facilities and student support. It investigates to what extent these factors influence their levels of satisfaction and what costs of adaptation if any, they encounter. Although excellent levels of satisfaction were found, some costs affect their experience. They relate to difficulties in adapting to a learning methodology based on a low number of hours and independent learning and to a guidance and support system seen as too stifling. The results portray this cohort’s British University as a well-equipped and well-meaning but ultimately overbearing institution, which may indicate that minimising costs can eliminate some sources of dissatisfaction

Discrete integrable systems and Poisson algebras from cluster maps

We consider nonlinear recurrences generated from cluster mutations applied to quivers that have the property of being cluster mutation-periodic with period 1. Such quivers were completely classified by Fordy and Marsh, who characterised them in terms of the skew-symmetric matrix that defines the quiver. The associated nonlinear recurrences are equivalent to birational maps, and we explain how these maps can be endowed with an invariant Poisson bracket and/or presymplectic structure. Upon applying the algebraic entropy test, we are led to a series of conjectures which imply that the entropy of the cluster maps can be determined from their tropical analogues, which leads to a sharp classification result. Only four special families of these maps should have zero entropy. These families are examined in detail, with many explicit examples given, and we show how they lead to discrete dynamics that is integrable in the Liouville-Arnold sense.Comment: 49 pages, 3 figures. Reduced to satisfy journal page restrictions. Sections 2.4, 4.5, 6.3, 7 and 8 removed. All other results remain, with minor editin

Genetic evidence and integration of various data sources for classifying uncertain variants into a single model.

Item does not contain fulltextGenetic testing often results in the finding of a variant whose clinical significance is unknown. A number of different approaches have been employed in the attempt to classify such variants. For some variants, case-control, segregation, family history, or other statistical studies can provide strong evidence of direct association with cancer risk. For most variants, other evidence is available that relates to properties of the protein or gene sequence. In this work we propose a Bayesian method for assessing the likelihood that a variant is pathogenic. We discuss the assessment of prior probability, and how to combine the various sources of data into a statistically valid integrated assessment with a posterior probability of pathogenicity. In particular, we propose the use of a two-component mixture model to integrate these various sources of data and to estimate the parameters related to sensitivity and specificity of specific kinds of evidence. Further, we discuss some of the issues involved in this process and the assumptions that underpin many of the methods used in the evaluation process