E-Pedagogy of Handheld Devices 2013 Survey: Patterns of student use for learning

The Pedagogy of Ebooks (E-Ped) project began in 2012 and seeks to document, analyse and explain the changing study practices of UK distance learning students as they employ, adapt and integrate the use of new portable digital devices such as e-book readers and tablets into their learning. This report describes the results of an undergraduate survey undertaken in 2013 at the Open University (UK) which asked students how they used e-readers, tablets and smartphones for study. This research represents a snapshot of the rapidly changing interaction between technology and education, and highlights issues and opportunities for Higher Education in supporting student adoption of appropriate technologies and development of effective new methods of study

Management of multi-method engineering design research: a case study

There is a need for a research management methodology that will utilise research methods on an individual basis and when combined in a multi-method approach. An agreed methodology would enable rapid progress in achieving agreement on the main issues within engineering design research. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have developed a conceptual management methodology, testing it on three engineering design research projects. This paper describes the methodology and presents results indicating its ability to enable rigorous triangulation of research results obtained via different methods and across different research projects forming the basis of an effective management tool

'Command of the Air': Alfred T. Mahan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston S. Churchill and an Anglo-American Personal Diplomacy of Air Power

Explanations of the importance of Allied air power during World War II often look to the supporting military theorists such as Gen. William L. Mitchell and Marshal Hugh Trenchard to explain the rhetoric, if not the reality, of the air campaign. These theorists and their military acolytes undoubtedly had a significant impact on the deployment of air power, but they had much less to say on its use as a diplomatic tool. Study of both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill demonstrates that they had a sophisticated appreciation of how to use air power to achieve their foreign policy goals within the realm of personal diplomacy. For both Roosevelt and Churchill, the origin of this appreciation lay in their early experiences of political office and particularly in their exposure to the work of naval strategist Capt. Alfred T. Mahan. As wartime national leaders, both came to share a discourse of personal air power diplomacy acting to simultaneously refine, challenge and reinforce each other’s conceptions. Viewed in this light, clear Anglo-American fields of cooperation in deterrence, coercion, persuasion and moral diplomacy emerge. Closer examination of this Anglo-American discourse and exchange adds to our understanding of the role of personal air power diplomacy at the national level in this era. It also brings into relief both the consensus and tensions surrounding air power within the Anglo-American wartime alliance. Ultimately, it suggests that there was a good deal of continuity in the personal air power diplomacy of both leaders as they strove to integrate atomic weapons into their calculations and confronted the developing Cold War

Influence of microstructure on the cutting behaviour of silicon

We use molecular dynamics simulation to study the mechanisms of plasticity during cutting of monocrystalline and polycrystalline silicon. Three scenarios are considered: (i) cutting a single crystal silicon workpiece with a single crystal diamond tool, (ii) cutting a polysilicon workpiece with a single crystal diamond tool, and (iii) cutting a single crystal silicon workpiece with a polycrystalline diamond tool. A long-range analytical bond order potential is used in the simulations, providing a more accurate picture of the atomic-scale mechanisms of brittle fracture, ductile plasticity, and structural changes in silicon. The MD simulation results show a unique phenomenon of brittle cracking typically inclined at an angle of 45°–55° to the cut surface, leading to the formation of periodic arrays of nanogrooves in monocrystalline silicon, which is a new insight into previously published results. Furthermore, during cutting, silicon is found to undergo solid-state directional amorphisation without prior Si–I to Si-II (beta tin) transformation, which is in direct contrast to many previously published MD studies on this topic. Our simulations also predict that the propensity for amorphisation is significantly higher in single crystal silicon than in polysilicon, signifying that grain boundaries eases the material removal process

Distance Learners’ Use of Handheld Technologies: Mobile Learning Activity, Changing Study Habits, and the ‘Place’ of Anywhere Learning

This study investigates how and where distance learners use handheld devices and the impact this has on learning habits, access to learning content and quality of work. It analyses the spatial dimension of ‘anytime anywhere’ learning and, with a focus on anywhere learning, it explores students’ ongoing negotiation of the flow between and across study locations. The study concludes by proposing two new concepts: the ‘flow of places’ and ‘place of space.’ These should help direct the framing of future studies into the places, spaces, and mobility of formal and informal seamless learning. A dataset comprising 446 responses from undergraduate students enrolled at the UK’s largest distance learning university was analysed in respect to three research questions. All age groups, study levels, and disciplines were represented. Five key findings are: students now use handheld devices for study-related learning; the distribution of study-related learning tasks was similar in all seven study places; there is a strong, statistically-significant correlation between the number of study places in which handheld are used and the number of study task types performed; two fifths of students using a handheld device for learning have noticed a change in study habit and benefit to learning; and multiple regression analysis shows three variables (number of study places, number of study tasks, and change in study habits) are predictors of finding it easier to access learning materials and improved quality of learners’ work

Systematic derivation of a rotationally covariant extension of the 2-dimensional Newell-Whitehead-Segel equation

An extension of the Newell-Whitehead-Segel amplitude equation covariant under abritrary rotations is derived systematically by the renormalization group method.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev. Letters, March 18, 199