A Study into the assessment and reporting of employability skills of senior secondary students

In order to investigate the most effective ways of assessing and reporting on the employability skills of senior secondary students, the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) commissioned this report. The main activity was to evaluate options for assessing and reporting on eight employability skills against five criteria—validity, reliability, objectivity, feasibility, and usability—and to recommend a preferred approach. This work was undertaken by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in the period July 2007 to January 2008, during which time the (new) Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) became responsible for the initiative. The starting point for this work was to come to terms with the eight employability skills and their respective facets from the Employability Skills Framework (ACCI & BCA, 2002). The employability skills are: Communication; Initiative & Enterprise; Learning; Planning & Organising; Problem Solving; Self-management; Teamwork; and Technology. Facets are elements of the skill that employers have identified as important, with the specific mix and priority of facets being job-dependent. One of the facets of Communication, for example, is ‘Reading independently’. As an adjunct activity to this study, the University of Western Sydney conducted a survey of the current level of employer satisfaction with the eight identified employability skills and how employers assess them (Costley, Power, Watson, Steele, & Sproats, 2007). Consultations were undertaken with employers, and representatives of parent organisations, school systems including teachers and leaders, and Australia’s three peak business organisations, ACCI, BCA, and the Australian Industry Group (AIG). An advisory group set up by DEST had the same representation. In addition, expert input was sought on detailed matters of assessment and reporting

Physiological basis for storage life extension in fresh sweet potato: Final technical report

The overall objective of this project was to work towards the identification of the major physiological and environmental factors affecting perishability of the fresh sweet potato root, and thereby to facilitate the identification of strategies for increasing shelf-life through cultivar selection and improved handling practice

Patient's experience of life after weight loss surgery: Psychological adjustment

Background: Little is known about the psychological impact weight loss surgery has on people’s life.1 A recent systematic review in this area showed some persisting disordered psychosocial wellbeing after the procedure when compared to control groups, especially after longer term follow up typically beyond 4 years.2 This highlighted potential need for psychological support and more research on long term psychological wellbeing after weight loss surgery. Even clearer from the review was the lack of patient perspective on the lived experience of having weight loss surgery which left a gap in knowledge around their needs following the procedure. For that reason, it was felt generating detailed information of the postoperative weight loss surgery experience would be useful to provide health professionals evidence on this patient group’s psychological wellbeing after weight loss surgery, their stance on the need for psychological support, and if relevant, what their ideal psychological support would be. Study aim: To explore people’s long term life experiences after weight loss surgery by discussing their perceived benefits and limitations of having the procedure, and whether their expectations were realised. Methods: Ten individuals who had weight loss surgery between 2 and 6 years ago were recruited within an NHS bariatric surgery service through purposeful sampling and individually interviewed by the researcher. The semi-structured interviews were subsequently transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis

Charge Frustration Effects in Capacitively Coupled Two-Dimensional Josephson-Junction Arrays

We investigate the quantum phase transitions in two capacitively coupled two-dimensional Josephson-junction arrays with charge frustration. The system is mapped onto the S=1 and $S=1/2$ anisotropic Heisenberg antiferromagnets near the particle-hole symmetry line and near the maximal-frustration line, respectively, which are in turn argued to be effectively described by a single quantum phase model. Based on the resulting model, it is suggested that near the maximal frustration line the system may undergo a quantum phase transition from the charge-density wave to the super-solid phase, which displays both diagonal and off- diagonal long-range order.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Current drag in capacitevly coupled Luttinger constrictions

We study the current drag in the system of two electrostatically coupled finite 1D electron channels. We present the perturbation theory results along with the results for two non-perturbative regimes. It is shown that the drag may become absolute, that is, the currents in the channels are equal in a finite window of the bias voltages.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX, 3 postscript figure

Fidelity and leakage of Josephson qubits

The unit of quantum information is the qubit, a vector in a two-dimensional Hilbert space. On the other hand, quantum hardware often operates in two-dimensional subspaces of vector spaces of higher dimensionality. The presence of higher quantum states may affect the accuracy of quantum information processing. In this Letter we show how to cope with {\em quantum leakage} in devices based on small Josephson junctions. While the presence of higher charge states of the junction reduces the fidelity during gate operations we demonstrate that errors can be minimized by appropriately designing and operating the gates.Comment: 9 pages, Revtex, 2 eps figure

A touch of sugar : a multimedia case study to facilitate student dietitians learning about the clinical management of diabetes

This paper describes the development, implementation and evaluation of a multimedia case study on dietetic case management of diabetes. A multimedia web-based program was developed to use the interactive capacity of the web-based environment to enable student dietitians to develop the skills of clinical reasoning and to trigger their learning about the nutritional management of diabetes. A case study of a person with diabetes was developed using a simulated medical history, video clips and sound clips. The students were asked to manage the patient online by responding to the patient\u27s questions, attending a team meeting and outpatient clinic, attending to food service tasks and responding to visual cues. Tutors were able to access the student\u27s responses to submissions online. Evaluation of the program was by questionnaire, which gathered quantitative and qualitative data on the student\u27s perceptions of their experiences in using the web-based case. The students rated the content and the interactive parts of the case highly but experienced technical difficulties and found the case took too much time to complete. <br /

Cotunneling Transport and Quantum Phase Transitions in Coupled Josephson-Junction Chains with Charge Frustration

We investigate the quantum phase transitions in two capacitively coupled chains of ultra-small Josephson-junctions, with emphasis on the external charge effects. The particle-hole symmetry of the system is broken by the gate voltage applied to each superconducting island, and the resulting induced charge introduces frustration to the system. Near the maximal-frustration line, where the system is transformed into a spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chain, cotunneling of the particles along the two chains is shown to play a major role in the transport and to drive a quantum phase transition out of the charge-density wave insulator, as the Josephson-coupling energy is increased. We also argue briefly that slightly off the symmetry line, the universality class of the transition remains the same as that right on the line, still being driven by the particle-hole pairs.Comment: Final version accepted to Phys. Rev. Lett. (Longer version is available from http://ctp.snu.ac.kr/~choims/

Geometric Quantum Computation on Solid-State Qubits

An adiabatic cyclic evolution of control parameters of a quantum system ends up with a holonomic operation on the system, determined entirely by the geometry in the parameter space. The operation is given either by a simple phase factor (a Berry phase) or a non-Abelian unitary operator depending on the degeneracy of the eigenspace of the Hamiltonian. Geometric quantum computation is a scheme to use such holonomic operations rather than the conventional dynamic operations to manipulate quantum states for quantum information processing. Here we propose a geometric quantum computation scheme which can be realized with current technology on nanoscale Josephson-junction networks, known as a promising candidate for solid-state quantum computer.Comment: 6 figures; to appear in J. Phys.: Condens. Mat