726 research outputs found
Digital Learning Across Boundaries: Augmented and virtual reality supporting changemaking in an international context.
Digital Learning Across Boundaries: Developing Changemakers is a three year Erasmus+ project involving ten schools and universities across five European countries. This research focuses on one strand that involved English and Danish partners collaborating on the theme of using technology to support physical activity, or exergaming, during designated ‘international days’. • Can digital technologies such as VR and AR help school pupils to develop changemaker attributes? • How is changemaking demonstrated in practice by pupils through the use of digital technologies? • Does technology-supported changemaking support the development of intercultural awareness? We present emerging evidence to support the use of VR and AR tools with mobile devices for I. developing empathy and intercultural awareness through collaboration and immersion in different spaces II. developing an understanding of the changemaker process through blending digital and physical learning environment
Digital Learning Across Boundaries : Augmented and virtual reality supporting effective international learning
The Digital Learning Across Boundaries (DLAB): Developing Changemakers project is a three-year Erasmus+ funded project, currently in its first year. The project addresses the need to align European education-al practice with ways in which digital technology is changing how and what we learn, and how we apply this in education. It also draws inspiration from the changemaker movement, which seeks to build the skills and attributes for individuals to find innovative solutions to society’s challenges. Participants comprise around fifty university lecturers, student teachers, and school teachers, together with their school pupils across five European countries: Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Spain and England. Key themes, then, are developing digital literacy and using digital skills to foster cultural literacy as teams of school pupils, student teachers, teachers and lecturers from partner countries work together to prototype solutions to issues they have identified together
Digital Learning Across Boundaries: Immersive technologies supporting changemaking in an international context
The Digital Learning Across Boundaries: Developing Changemakers (DLAB) project uses immersive technologies in education to explore three challenges across three years: physical, personal and environmental. This paper focuses on the first of these, bringing together the themes of digital making and changemaking to cross physical boundaries by raising awareness about physical inactivity in 11 and 12 year old school pupils. Immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality enabled the development of empathy and intercultural understanding among participants, fostered an understanding of changemaking, and created environments for sharing prototype exergames. Research data is analysed to seek evidence of the development of changemaker attributes and impact within a sample group of 60 English school pupils
Stellar populations of Virgo cluster early-type dwarf galaxies with and without discs: a dichotomy in age?
[Abridged] Using VLT/FORS2 spectroscopy, we have studied the properties of
the central stellar populations of a sample of 38 nucleated early-type dwarf
(dE) galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. We find that these galaxies do not exhibit
the same average stellar population characteristics for different morphological
subclasses. The nucleated galaxies without discs are older and more metal poor
than the dEs with discs . The alpha-element abundance ratio appears consistent
with the solar value for both morphological types. Besides a well-defined
relation of metallicity and luminosity, we also find a clear anti-correlation
between age and luminosity. More specifically, there appears to be a
bimodality: brighter galaxies, including the discy ones, exhibit significantly
younger ages than fainter dEs. Therefore, it appears less likely that fainter
and brighter dEs have experienced the same evolutionary history, as the
well-established trend of decreasing average stellar age when going from the
most luminous ellipticals towards low-luminosity Es and bright dEs is broken
here. The older and more metal-poor dEs could have had an early termination of
star formation activity, possibly being "primordial" galaxies in the sense that
they have formed along with the protocluster or experienced very early infall.
By contrast, the younger and relatively metal-rich brighter dEs, most of which
have discs, might have undergone structural transformation of infalling disc
galaxies.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS; 22 pages, 20 figure
Enhanced thrombin generation in patients with cirrhosis-induced coagulopathy
BACKGROUND: Prothrombin time (PT) and the international normalized ratio (INR) are still routinely measured in patients with liver cirrhosis to 'assess' their bleeding risk despite the lack of correlation with the two. Thrombin generation (TG) assays are global assays of coagulation that are showing promise in assessing bleeding and thrombosis risks. AIM: To study the relationship between the INR and TG profiles in cirrhosis-induced coagulopathy. METHODS: Seventy-three patients with cirrhosis were studied. All TG parameters were compared with those from a normal control group. Contact activation was prevented using corn trypsin inhibitor. TG was also assayed in the presence of Protac(®). The endogenous thrombin potential (ETP) ratio was derived by dividing the ETP with Protac® by the ETP without Protac®. RESULTS: The INR (mean 1.7) did not correlate with the ETP and the velocity of TG (P > 0.05). There was no difference between the lag time and ETP of the two groups (P > 0.05). The velocity of TG was increased in cirrhosis (67.95 ± 34.8 vs. 45.05 ± 25.9 nM min⁻¹ ; P = 0.016) especially in patients with INRs between 1.21 and 2.0. Both the ETP with Protac(®) and the ETP ratio were increased in cirrhosis (mean 1074 ± 461.4 vs. 818 ± 357.9 nM min, P = 0.004 and 0.80 ± 0.21 vs. 0.44 ± 0.15, P ≤ 0.0001, respectively). CONCLUSION: Despite a raised INR, TG parameters are consistent with a hypercoagulable profile in cirrhosis-related coagulopathy. This confirms that the PT or INR should not be used to assess bleeding risk in these patients, and other parameters, such as TG, need to be explored as clinical markers of coagulopathy
WRR4, a broad-spectrum TIR-NB-LRR gene from Arabidopsis thaliana that confers white rust resistance in transgenic oilseed brassica crops
White blister rust caused by Albugo candida (Pers.) Kuntze is a common and often devastating disease of oilseed and vegetable brassica crops worldwide. Physiological races of the parasite have been described, including races 2, 7 and 9 from Brassica juncea, B. rapa and B. oleracea, respectively, and race 4 from Capsella bursa-pastoris (the type host). A gene named WRR4 has been characterized recently from polygenic resistance in the wild brassica relative Arabidopsis thaliana (accession Columbia) that confers broad-spectrum white rust resistance (WRR) to all four of the above Al. candida races. This gene encodes a TIR-NB-LRR (Toll-like/interleukin-1 receptor-nucleotide binding-leucine-rich repeat) protein which, as with other known functional members in this subclass of intracellular receptor-like proteins, requires the expression of the lipase-like defence regulator, enhanced disease susceptibility 1 (EDS1). Thus, we used RNA interference-mediated suppression of EDS1 in a white rust-resistant breeding line of B. napus (transformed with a construct designed from the A. thaliana EDS1 gene) to determine whether defence signalling via EDS1 is functionally intact in this oilseed brassica. The eds1-suppressed lines were fully susceptible following inoculation with either race 2 or 7 isolates of Al. candida. We then transformed white rust-susceptible cultivars of B. juncea (susceptible to race 2) and B. napus (susceptible to race 7) with the WRR4 gene from A. thaliana. The WRR4-transformed lines were resistant to the corresponding Al. candida race for each host species. The combined data indicate that WRR4 could potentially provide a novel source of white rust resistance in oilseed and vegetable brassica crops
Choice of sprint start performance measure affects the performance-based ranking within a group of sprinters: which is the most appropriate measure?
Sprint start performance has previously been quantified using several different measures. This study aimed to identify whether different measures could influence the performance-based ranking within a group of 12 sprinters, and if so, to identify the most appropriate measure. None of the 10 performance measures ranked all sprinters in the same order; Spearman's rho correlations between different block phase measures ranged from 0.50 to 0.94, and between block phase measures and those obtained beyond block exit from 0.66 to 0.85. Based on the consideration of what each measure quantifies, normalised average horizontal external power was identified as the most appropriate, incorporating both block velocity and the time spent producing this velocity. The accuracy with which these data could be obtained in an externally valid field setting was assessed against force platform criterion data. For an athlete producing 678 ± 40 W of block power, a carefully set-up manual high-speed video analysis protocol produced systematic and random errors of +5 W and ± 24 W, respectively. Since the choice of performance measure could affect the conclusions drawn from a technique analysis, for example the success of an intervention, it is proposed that external power is used to quantify start performance
Measurement of the scintillation time spectra and pulse-shape discrimination of low-energy beta and nuclear recoils in liquid argon with DEAP-1
The DEAP-1 low-background liquid argon detector was used to measure
scintillation pulse shapes of electron and nuclear recoil events and to
demonstrate the feasibility of pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) down to an
electron-equivalent energy of 20 keV.
In the surface dataset using a triple-coincidence tag we found the fraction
of beta events that are misidentified as nuclear recoils to be (90% C.L.) for energies between 43-86 keVee and for a nuclear recoil
acceptance of at least 90%, with 4% systematic uncertainty on the absolute
energy scale. The discrimination measurement on surface was limited by nuclear
recoils induced by cosmic-ray generated neutrons. This was improved by moving
the detector to the SNOLAB underground laboratory, where the reduced background
rate allowed the same measurement with only a double-coincidence tag.
The combined data set contains events. One of those, in the
underground data set, is in the nuclear-recoil region of interest. Taking into
account the expected background of 0.48 events coming from random pileup, the
resulting upper limit on the electronic recoil contamination is
(90% C.L.) between 44-89 keVee and for a nuclear recoil
acceptance of at least 90%, with 6% systematic uncertainty on the absolute
energy scale.
We developed a general mathematical framework to describe PSD parameter
distributions and used it to build an analytical model of the distributions
observed in DEAP-1. Using this model, we project a misidentification fraction
of approx. for an electron-equivalent energy threshold of 15 keV for
a detector with 8 PE/keVee light yield. This reduction enables a search for
spin-independent scattering of WIMPs from 1000 kg of liquid argon with a
WIMP-nucleon cross-section sensitivity of cm, assuming
negligible contribution from nuclear recoil backgrounds.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physic
Analysis of the low-energy electron-recoil spectrum of the CDMS experiment
We report on the analysis of the low-energy electron-recoil spectrum from the
CDMS II experiment using data with an exposure of 443.2 kg-days. The analysis
provides details on the observed counting rate and possible background sources
in the energy range of 2 - 8.5 keV. We find no significant excess in the
counting rate above background, and compare this observation to the recent DAMA
results. In the framework of a conversion of a dark matter particle into
electromagnetic energy, our 90% confidence level upper limit of 0.246
events/kg/day at 3.15 keV is lower than the total rate above background
observed by DAMA by 8.9. In absence of any specific particle physics
model to provide the scaling in cross section between NaI and Ge, we assume a
Z^2 scaling. With this assumption the observed rate in DAMA differs from the
upper limit in CDMS by 6.8. Under the conservative assumption that the
modulation amplitude is 6% of the total rate we obtain upper limits on the
modulation amplitude a factor of ~2 less than observed by DAMA, constraining
some possible interpretations of this modulation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
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