Angels in the architecture - and devils in the detail: how the learning space impacts on teaching and learning

An innovative classroom design pioneered in the US, which aims to facilitate greater student engagement, has been piloted in a UK University for the first time. This case study reflects on some of the advantages and the challenges of this technology rich learning space and considers its impact on curriculum design in a module which aims to develop academic, research and digital skills in first year students on an undergraduate Health and Social Care course

Synonymy and stratigraphic ranges of Belemnopsis in the Heterian and Ohauan Stages (Callovian-Tithonian), southwest Auckland, New Zealand.

Belemnopsis stevensi, Belemnopsis maccrawi, and Belemnopsis sp. A (Challinor 1979a) are synonymous; B. stevensi has priority. New belemnite material from Kawhia Harbour and Port Waikato, together with graphical study methods, indicates that many small fragmentary specimens associated with B. stevensi in the lower part of its stratigraphic range are probably the same taxon. B. stevensi has been found only in the Middle and Upper Heterian Stage (Lower Kimmeridgian) at Kawhia and only in the Lower Ohauan Stage (Upper Kimmeridgian) at Port Waikato. This apparently disjunct distribution is attributed to poor exposure in the relevant sections. Belemnopsis kiwiensis n.sp., Belemnopsis cf. sp. B, Belemnopsis sp. B, Belemnopsis sp. D, and Belemnopsis spp. are associated with B. stevensi near the lowest known point in its stratigraphic range. The distribution of stratigraphically useful belemnites within the Heterian and Ohauan Stages is: Conodicoelites spp. (Lower Heterian; correlated with Lower Callovian); Belemnopsis annae (Lower and Middle Heterian; Lower Callovian/Lower Kimmeridgian); Belemnopsis stevensi (Middle Heterian/Lower Ohauan; Kimmeridgian); Belemnopsis keari (Upper Heterian; Kimmeridgian); Belemnopsis trechmanni (Upper Ohauan; Upper Kimmeridgian/Middle Tithonian). The apparently extreme range of Belemnopsis annae remains unexplained. Klondyke Sandstone (new) is recognised as the basal member of Moewaka Formation (Port Waikato area)

A common contrast pooling rule for suppression within and between the eyes

Recent work has revealed multiple pathways for cross-orientation suppression in cat and human vision. In particular, ipsiocular and interocular pathways appear to assert their influence before binocular summation in human but have different (1) spatial tuning, (2) temporal dependencies, and (3) adaptation after-effects. Here we use mask components that fall outside the excitatory passband of the detecting mechanism to investigate the rules for pooling multiple mask components within these pathways. We measured psychophysical contrast masking functions for vertical 1 cycle/deg sine-wave gratings in the presence of left or right oblique (645 deg) 3 cycles/deg mask gratings with contrast C%, or a plaid made from their sum, where each component (i) had contrast 0.5Ci%. Masks and targets were presented to two eyes (binocular), one eye (monoptic), or different eyes (dichoptic). Binocular-masking functions superimposed when plotted against C, but in the monoptic and dichoptic conditions, the grating produced slightly more suppression than the plaid when Ci $ 16%. We tested contrast gain control models involving two types of contrast combination on the denominator: (1) spatial pooling of the mask after a local nonlinearity (to calculate either root mean square contrast or energy) and (2) "linear suppression" (Holmes & Meese, 2004, Journal of Vision 4, 1080–1089), involving the linear sum of the mask component contrasts. Monoptic and dichoptic masking were typically better fit by the spatial pooling models, but binocular masking was not: it demanded strict linear summation of the Michelson contrast across mask orientation. Another scheme, in which suppressive pooling followed compressive contrast responses to the mask components (e.g., oriented cortical cells), was ruled out by all of our data. We conclude that the different processes that underlie monoptic and dichoptic masking use the same type of contrast pooling within their respective suppressive fields, but the effects do not sum to predict the binocular case

The development of the reflective practitioner through digital storytelling

This paper presents a multiple case study on the use of digital storytelling to support the development of reflection and digital skills in professional education. Students from two universities, one group studying health and social care, the other training to be teachers, were asked to produce two artefacts, at the beginning and end of their respective modules, in which they reflected on the aspects of professional and personal learning. The artefacts, some of which were produced in groups, others by individual students, were analysed for recurring themes, levels of reflection and digital competence, particularly in the use of open educational resources. Findings from the analysis support the use of digital storytelling methods to develop a range of key skills pertinent to professional education in general but concluded that the deeper levels of reflection may be most evident in individual artefacts produced in the later stages of professional education. The study provides some important insights for teaching and learning in professional education as it suggests that digital storytelling provides a highly engaging way of introducing both reflective and open educational practices

Digital artefacts for reflection on identity in the first year of teacher education: the teacher I want to be

This paper presents an analysis of digital reflective narratives of identity constructed by student teachers in their first year in a Spanish University. The literature review demonstrates the multidimensional nature of teacher identity, showing that, during the transition of their first year at University, student teachers’ ideas of identity reflect a highly emotional and committed stance on childhood and social justice. The innovative approach taken in the current work includes a review of the possibilities of digital artefacts, as OER, for reflection. The conclusion discusses the importance of scaffolding approaches to the development of teacher identity through a reflective methodology

Crop failure rates in a geoengineered climate: impact of climate change and marine cloud brightening

International audienceThe impact of geoengineering on crops has to date been studied by examining mean yields. We present the first work focusing on the rate of crop failures under a geoengineered climate. We investigate the impact of a future climate and a potential geoengineering scheme on the number of crop failures in two regions, Northeastern China and West Africa. Climate change associated with a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases the number of crop failures in Northeastern China while reducing the number of crop failures in West Africa. In both regions marine cloud brightening is likely to reduce the number crop failures, although it is more effective at reducing mild crop failure than severe crop failure. We find that water stress, rather than heat stress, is the main cause of crop failure in current, future and geoengineered climates. This demonstrates the importance of irrigation and breeding for tolerance to water stress as adaptation methods in all futures. Analysis of global rainfall under marine cloud brightening has the potential to significantly reduce the impact of climate change on global wheat and groundnut production

CMB power spectrum parameter degeneracies in the era of precision cosmology

Cosmological parameter constraints from the CMB power spectra alone suffer several well-known degeneracies. These degeneracies can be broken by numerical artefacts and also a variety of physical effects that become quantitatively important with high-accuracy data e.g. from the Planck satellite. We study degeneracies in models with flat and non-flat spatial sections, non-trivial dark energy and massive neutrinos, and investigate the importance of various physical degeneracy-breaking effects. We test the CAMB power spectrum code for numerical accuracy, and demonstrate that the numerical calculations are accurate enough for degeneracies to be broken mainly by true physical effects (the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, CMB lensing and geometrical and other effects through recombination) rather than numerical artefacts. We quantify the impact of CMB lensing on the power spectra, which inevitably provides degeneracy-breaking information even without using information in the non-Gaussianity. Finally we check the numerical accuracy of sample-based parameter constraints using CAMB and CosmoMC. In an appendix we document recent changes to CAMB's numerical treatment of massive neutrino perturbations, which are tested along with other recent improvements by our degeneracy exploration results.Comment: 27 pages, 28 figures. Latest CAMB version available from http://camb.info/. Reduced number of figures, plot legend corrected and minor edits to match published versio

Generation of Curvature Perturbations with Extra Anisotropic Stress

We study the evolution of curvature perturbations and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum in the presence of an hypothesized extra anisotropic stress which might arise, for example, from the dark radiation term in brane-world cosmology. We evolve the scalar modes of such perturbations before and after neutrino decoupling and analyze their effects on the CMB spectrum. A novel result of this work is that the cancellation of the neutrino and extra anisotropic stress could lead to a spectrum of residual curvature perturbations which is similar to the observed CMB power spectrum. This implies a possible additional consideration in the determination of cosmological parameters from the CMB analysis.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures; improved discussio