Coping strategies for staff involved in assessment of laboratory write-ups

Laboratory-based practical exercises, which are an important and time-consuming part of many science degree courses, may be directed towards a variety of learning objectives. Some of these have traditionally been assessed by staff marking the student's written account of the laboratory experiment (the laboratory write-up) but increasing student numbers, which may have doubled or quadrupled on some modules, have made it difficult to sustain this approach. In addition, there is evidence that the formative element of the assessment (i.e. the comments written by staff on the laboratory write-up) is not fully utilized by students who are often only interested in the mark given. This paper reports on experience with the various strategies which may be used to cope with the increased marking load while maintaining or improving the learning gain from the formative element of the assessment. The adoption of a balanced mixture of strategies may present the best solution to the problem but must be tailored to local circumstances

The Findings of an Assessment Audit: an NTFS Project Report

An Assessment Audit is described consisting of 47 questions, each being scored 0 to 4, by the module team depending on the extent to which the audit point was satisfied. Scores of 2 or less indicated unsatisfactory provision. Audits were carried out on 14 bioscience- or medicine- based modules in 13 universities. There was great variability between modules in the hours spent by: • teachers in direct contact with students (12 to 914); • teachers involved in the process of assessment (2 to 372); • students actually being assessed (2 to 60 hours per student); • students in the teaching and learning process (35 to 300). The highest scoring module obtained 133 out of 188 (71%) with 11 out of 47 items scored at 2 or less while the lowest scoring module obtained 47% with 27 items scoring 2 or less. Features consistently poorly addressed were: • consideration of learning objectives/assessment in other modules taken by the student; • consideration of consistency among multiple markers; • use of known mark sets to validate data processing; • availability of exemplar answers; • feedback on end-of-module assessments. A common issue concerns the isolation of modules and module teams. This suggests the need for a strengthening of the course thread and emphasis on the totality of the student learning experience rather than the individual module. The audit provides a framework within which course teams can reflect on and improve the quality of the assessment in their module

The bimodal color distribution of small Kuiper Belt objects

We conducted a two-night photometric survey of small Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) near opposition using the wide-field Hyper Suprime-Cam instrument on the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope. The survey covered about 90 deg^2 of sky, with each field imaged in the g and i bands. We detected 356 KBOs, ranging in absolute magnitude from 6.5 to 10.4. Filtering for high-inclination objects within the hot KBO population, we show that the g-i color distribution is strongly bimodal, indicative of two color classes - the red and very red subpopulations. After categorizing objects into the two subpopulations by color, we present the first dedicated analysis of the magnitude distributions of the individual color subpopulations and demonstrate that the two distributions are roughly identical in shape throughout the entire size range covered by our survey. Comparing the color distribution of small hot KBOs with that of Centaurs, we find that they have similar bimodal shapes, thereby providing strong confirmation of previous explanations for the attested bimodality of Centaurs. We also show that the magnitude distributions of the two KBO color subpopulations and the two color subpopulations observed in the Jupiter Trojans are statistically indistinguishable. Finally, we discuss a hypothesis describing the origin of the KBO color bimodality based on our survey results.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in AJ, supplemental table accessible on online journa

Multiband photometry of a Patroclus-Menoetius mutual event: Constraints on surface heterogeneity

We present the first complete multiband observations of a binary asteroid mutual event. We obtained high-cadence, high-signal-to-noise photometry of the UT 2018 April 9 inferior shadowing event in the Jupiter Trojan binary system Patroclus-Menoetius in four Sloan bands $-$ $g'$, $r'$, $i'$, and $z'$. We use an eclipse lightcurve model to fit for a precise mid-eclipse time and estimate the minimum separation of the two eclipsing components during the event. Our best-fit mid-eclipse time of $2458217.80943^{+0.00057}_{-0.00050}$ is 19 minutes later than the prediction of Grundy et al. (2018); the minimum separation between the center of Menoetius' shadow and the center of Patroclus is $72.5\pm0.7$ km $-$ slightly larger than the predicted 69.5 km. Using the derived lightcurves, we find no evidence for significant albedo variations or large-scale topographic features on the Earth-facing hemisphere and limb of Patroclus. We also apply the technique of eclipse mapping to place an upper bound of $\sim$0.15 mag on wide-scale surface color variability across Patroclus.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in A

Staphylinidae from Under Bark and at Sap of Trees, a Preliminary Survey of Species Possibly Beneficial to Forestry (Coleoptera)

Two hundred and one species of Staphylinidae known to be found under bark or at sap of trees are listed. The possibility of these insects being important elements in the population dynamics of forest pests is discussed. An indication is given of the distribution and habitat of each species

A hypothesis for the color bimodality of Jupiter Trojans

One of the most enigmatic and hitherto unexplained properties of Jupiter Trojans is their bimodal color distribution. This bimodality is indicative of two sub-populations within the Trojans, which have distinct size distributions. In this paper, we present a simple, plausible hypothesis for the origin and evolution of the two Trojan color sub-populations. In the framework of dynamical instability models of early Solar System evolution, which suggest a common primordial progenitor population for both Trojans and Kuiper belt objects, we use observational constraints to assert that the color bimodalities evident in both minor body populations developed within the primordial population prior to the onset of instability. We show that, beginning with an initial composition of rock and ices, location-dependent volatile loss through sublimation in this primordial population could have led to sharp changes in the surface composition with heliocentric distance. We propose that the depletion or retention of H$_{2}$S ice on the surface of these objects was the key factor in creating an initial color bimodality. Objects that retained H$_{2}$S on their surfaces developed characteristically redder colors upon irradiation than those that did not. After the bodies from the primordial population were scattered and emplaced into their current positions, they preserved this primordial color bimodality to the present day. We explore predictions of the volatile loss model - in particular, the effect of collisions within the Trojan population on the size distributions of the two sub-populations - and propose further experimental and observational tests of our hypothesisComment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in A