Design integration and noise studies for jet STOL aircraft. Task 7C: Augmentor wing cruise blowing valveless system. Volume 1: Static testing of augmentor noise and performance

Static performance and acoustic tests were conducted on a two-dimensional one-third-scale augmentor flap model that simulated a cruise blowing augmentor system designed for a scale augmentor flap model that simulated a cruise blowing augmentor, which offers a degree of 150-passenger STOL airplane. The cruise blowing augmentor, which offers a degree of simplicity by requiring no fan air diverter valves, was simulated by fitting existing lobe suppressor nozzles with new nozzle fairings. Flow turning performance of the cruise blowing augmentor was measured through a large range of flap deflection angles. The noise suppression characteristics of a multilayer acoustic lining installed in the augmentor were also measured

Questions of quality in repositories of open educational resources: a literature review

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials which are freely available and openly licensed. Repositories of OER (ROER) are platforms that host and facilitate access to these resources. ROER should not just be designed to store this content – in keeping with the aims of the OER movement, they should support educators in embracing open educational practices (OEP) such as searching for and retrieving content that they will reuse, adapt or modify as needed, without economic barriers or copyright restrictions. This paper reviews key literature on OER and ROER, in order to understand the roles ROER are said or supposed to fulfil in relation to furthering the aims of the OER movement. Four themes which should shape repository design are identified, and the following 10 quality indicators (QI) for ROER effectiveness are discussed: featured resources; user evaluation tools; peer review; authorship of the resources; keywords of the resources; use of standardised metadata; multilingualism of the repositories; inclusion of social media tools; specification of the creative commons license; availability of the source code or original files. These QI form the basis of a method for the evaluation of ROER initiatives which, in concert with considerations of achievability and long-term sustainability, should assist in enhancement and development. Keywords: open educational resources; open access; open educational practice; repositories; quality assuranc

Question design in nurse-led and GP-led telephone triage for same-day appointment requests: a comparative investigation

Objective: To compare doctors’ and nurses’ communication with patients in primary care telephone triage consultations. Design: Qualitative comparative study of content and form of questions in 51 telephone triage encounters between practitioners (general practitioners (GPs)=29; nurses=22) and patients requesting a same-day appointment in primary care. Audio-recordings of nurse-led calls were synchronised with video recordings of nurse's use of computer decision support software (CDSS) during triage. Setting: 2 GP practices in Devon and Warwickshire, UK. Participants: 4 GPs and 29 patients; and 4 nurses and 22 patients requesting a same-day face-to-face appointment with a GP. Main outcome measure: Form and content of practitioner-initiated questions and patient responses during clinical assessment. Results: A total of 484 question–response sequences were coded (160 GP; 324 N). Despite average call lengths being similar (GP=4 min, 37 s, (SD=1 min, 26 s); N=4 min, 39 s, (SD=2 min, 22 s)), GPs and nurses differed in the average number (GP=5.51, (SD=4.66); N=14.72, (SD=6.42)), content and form of questions asked. A higher frequency of questioning in nurse-led triage was found to be due to nurses’ use of CDSS to guide telephone triage. 89% of nurse questions were oriented to asking patients about their reported symptoms or to wider-information gathering, compared to 54% of GP questions. 43% of GP questions involved eliciting patient concerns or expectations, and obtaining details of medical history, compared to 11% of nurse questions. Nurses using CDSS frequently delivered questions designed as declarative statements requesting confirmation and which typically preferred a ‘no problem’ response. In contrast, GPs asked a higher proportion of interrogative questions designed to request information. Conclusions: Nurses and GPs emphasise different aspects of the clinical assessment process during telephone triage. These different styles of triage have implications for the type of information available following nurse-led or doctor-led triage, and for how patients experience triage

Camden Childcare Needs Assessment

The Camden Childcare Needs Assessment is a mixed methods study that has sought to consider the childcare needs of parents in the borough, including considering where there is unmet demand, the adequacy of the timing of childcare provision and parental views on the cost and quality of provision. The study aims to contribute to the planning of future childcare in the borough. Aims The Camden Childcare Needs Assessment aims to: - develop a clear and concise picture of the demand for childcare from Camden residents - identify unmet needs in childcare provision in Camden The objective of the project is to enable the Local Authority to plan childcare expansion and support sustainable service development

Race and the space in between: Practitioner reflections on anti-racist practice in one Froebelian early years setting

The rise of ‘Black Lives Matters’ has brought to the fore a need to unsettle early years praxis that positions race as separate from the individual, as a problem to be solved through the tokenistic provisioning of resources. In this paper, we explore how a team of early years practitioners were able to bridge the space between themselves and the multicultural community in which they worked. An interpretative onto-epistemology supported the crafting of the research design as a case study that provided insight into multiple meanings through participants’ narratives during weekly informal anti-racist reflective meetings, focus group discussions and individual interviews. “Political correctness”, social justice and children’s rights emerged that highlighted the importance of intra-actions arising between practitioners, their history, society and the environment. Consequently, new conceptualisations of race and anti-racist praxis emerged that transformed their practice and their way of being in the world

Demographic growth and the distribution of language sizes

It is argued that the present log-normal distribution of language sizes is, to a large extent, a consequence of demographic dynamics within the population of speakers of each language. A two-parameter stochastic multiplicative process is proposed as a model for the population dynamics of individual languages, and applied over a period spanning the last ten centuries. The model disregards language birth and death. A straightforward fitting of the two parameters, which statistically characterize the population growth rate, predicts a distribution of language sizes in excellent agreement with empirical data. Numerical simulations, and the study of the size distribution within language families, validate the assumptions at the basis of the model.Comment: To appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys. C (2008

Ambivalence of the anisotropy of the vortex lattice in an anisotropic type-II superconductor

We present a geometry-based discussion of possible vortex configurations in the mixed state of anisotropic type-II superconductors. It is shown that, if energy considerations assign six nearest neighbors to each vortex, two distinct modifications of the vortex lattice are possible. It is expected that certain conditions lead to a first order phase transition from one modification of the vortex lattice to the other upon varying the external magnetic field.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figure