Evaluation of the University of Warwick's outreach programme, UniTracks : The Warwick Young Achievers' Programme : Report 7 : E-mentoring, 2016-2017

The first offering of the E-Mentoring programme to Year 12 members of UniTracks was a success. The launch event (‘Meet the Mentors and Mentees’), the Brightside e-mentoring platform, and the process of mentoring were all successful elements of the programme. In addition, there was evidence from the mentee interviews that the process of mentoring had strengthen mentees’ attitudes in respect of their academic work, understanding of university, and ability to make informed choices about degree and university choices

The effects of mortality-salience inducing direct-to-consumer prescription drug commercials on viewer attitude toward high and low status brands

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on November 13, 2009).Thesis advisor: Dr. Glenn Leshner.M.A. University of Missouri--Columbia 2009.This research sought to understand whether or not direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads (DTC ads) made people think about their own death (referred to as mortality salience) and what effects these thoughts had on people's opinions of brands of varying status. Study 1 used a free-writing questionnaire to collect brands. Study 2 used scales to rate participant attitude toward 12 DTC ads. Study 2 showed the the ads for Cymbalta and Plavix made people the most anxious; the ads for Detrol LA and Crestor made people the least anxious. Study 3 used word completions to measure for mortality salience. Study 3 also provided additional brand ratings. Study 4 used a lexical decision task to measure for mortality salience; results showed that participants who watched the ads for Cymbalta and Plavix responded faster to death words. The status of brand had no effect on how participants rated the brand. Additional signal detection analysis showed participants to be less sensitive to death words after watching the Cymbalta and Plavix ads. Participant criterion bias did not vary across word type or between condition.Includes bibliographical references

Evaluation of the University of Warwick's outreach programme, UniTracks : The Warwick Young Achievers' Programme : Report 5 : The Big Deal Enterprise Challenge, 2017

Executive Summary The Big Deal Enterprise Challenge is a central element of the University of Warwick’s UniTracks programme. The Big Deal offers Y10 school students who are members of UniTracks, and attend one of the partner schools, a ten week programme where school teams create and develop a business or social enterprise idea with the support of a business mentor. The competition is organised by the Warwick Business School (WBS), in conjunction with the educational charity, the Brightside Trust. For the Big Deal 201711 partner schools put forward teams, each of which had a maximum of five UniTracks members. The competition was a ten week programme, starting with a residential Launch Days at the University of Warwick on Friday 13thJanuary-Saturday, 14thJanuary. This was followed by ten weeks of weekly tasks, mentored via an online resource, and an additional face-to-face mentoring session in the schools, before the Big Deal final, held at the University on Monday, 27th March. The evaluation collected data from the participating young people, using questionnaires delivered at the Launch Days in January, and after the end of the competition, in addition to telephone interviews with a sample of the participants. Observations were also made at the Launch Days by an evaluation researcher. Evaluation data was also gathered, using interviews, from business mentors, school staff, and the Brightside Trust. Brightside also provided the evaluation with data collected via the blogs platform, relating to engagement levels and self-assessment completed by the participants. Findings are presented here relating to each data source, and two recommendations are made. The recommendations relate to: The role of schools and school staff. The gender and ethnicity balance of the Big Deal cohort

CONDOR: Long endurance high altitude vehicle, volume 5

The results of a design study resulting in the proposed CONDOR aircraft are presented. The basic requirements are for the aircraft to maintain continuous altitude at or above 45,000 feet for at least a 3-day mission, be able to comfortably support a two-man crew during this period with their field of vision not obstructed to a significant degree, carry a payload of 200 pounds, and provide a power supply to the payload of 2000 watts. The take-off and landing distances must be below 5000. feet, and time to reach cruise altitude must not exceed 3 hours. The subjects discussed are configuration selection, structural analysis, stability and control, crew and payload accomodations, and economic estimates

Evaluation of the University of Warwick's outreach programme, UniTracks : The Warwick Young Achievers' Programme : Report 6: 'Shooting the Past', 2017

Shooting the Past 2017 was a successful, well appreciated offering for Year 10 members of UniTracks. After the miscarried attempt to offer Shooting the Past in 2016, changes made to the project enabled it to run alongside the long-established The Big Deal Enterprise Challenge in 2017. The young people involved welcomed having a choice of project in their first year as UniTracks’ members, and Shooting the Past should now be seen as a good alternative to the Big Deal. The young people, responsible school staff, and student ambassadors all reported positively on the experience of the project. Highlights for the young people included the residential Launch Days at the University of Warwick, the visit to a local archive, and the chance to research, write, film, edit, and present a documentary film

Evaluating the provision of school performance information for school choice

We develop and implement a framework for determining the optimal performance metrics to help parents choose a school. This approach combines the three major critiques of the usefulness of performance tables into a natural metric. We implement this for 500,000 students in England for a range of performance measures. Using performance tables is strongly better than choosing at random: a child who attends the highest ex ante performing school within their choice set will ex post do better than the average outcome in their choice set twice as often as they will do worse

NLO Cross Sections for the LHC using GOLEM: Status and Prospects

In this talk we review the GOLEM approach to one-loop calculations and present an automated implementation of this technique. This method is based on Feynman diagrams and an advanced reduction of one-loop tensor integrals which avoids numerical instabilities. We have extended our one-loop integral library golem95 with an automated one-loop matrix element generator to compute the virtual corrections of the process $q\bar{q}\to b\bar{b}b\bar{b}$. The implementation of the virtual matrix element has been interfaced with tree-level Monte Carlo programs to provide the full result for the above process.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, contribution to the proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Radiative Corrections (RADCOR 2009), October 25-30 2009, Ascona, Switzerlan

Review of arrangements for disagreement resolution (SEND)

The Children and Families Act 2014 and the related Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0-25 years (SEND code of practice) (DfE, 2015) place a greater emphasis than before on the avoidance of disagreements through a person centred approach to decision-making and open communication between professionals and parents and young people (SEND code of practice, paragraph 11.1). Where disagreements and complaints arise, the legislation and the code make clear that parents and young people should be given information and, where they choose, support to enable participation in disagreement resolution and complaints processes. Local authorities (LAs) must therefore provide an information, advice and support service, an independent local disagreement resolution service and mediation service(s). The mediation service includes mediation advice (i.e. providing information about what mediation is and can offer) and full mediation. Local authorities must inform parents and young people about these services, as well as of complaints procedures, and procedures for appealing to the English First-tier Tribunal SEND. The reforms aim to reduce the incidence of disagreements and to achieve earlier resolution of those that do arise