Understanding the Authorial Writer: a mixed methods approach to the psychology of authorial identity in relation to plagiarism.

Academic writing is an important part of undergraduate study that tutors recognise as central to success in higher education. Across the academy, writing is used to assess, develop and facilitate student learning. However, there are growing concerns that students appropriate written work from other sources and present it as their own, committing the academic offence of plagiarism. Conceptualising plagiarism as literary theft, current institutional practices concentrate on deterring and detecting behaviours that contravene the rules of the academy. Plagiarism is a topic that often elicits an emotional response in academic tutors, who are horrified that students commit these ‘crimes’. Recently, educators have suggested that deterring and detecting plagiarism is ineffective and described moralistic conceptualisations of plagiarism as unhelpful. These commentaries highlight the need for credible alternative approaches to plagiarism that include pedagogic aspects of academic writing. The authorial identity approach to reducing plagiarism concentrates on developing understanding of authorship in students using pedagogy. This thesis presents three studies that contribute to the authorial identity approach to student plagiarism. Building on the findings of previous research, the current studies used a sequential mixed-methods approach to expand psychological knowledge concerning authorial identity in higher education contexts. The first, qualitative, study used thematic analysis of interviews with 27 professional academics teaching at institutions in the United Kingdom. The findings from this multidisciplinary sample identified that academics understood authorial identity as composed of five themes; an individual with authorial identity had confidence; valued writing; felt attachment and ownership of their writing; thought independently and critically; and had rhetorical goals. In addition, the analysis identified two integrative themes representing aspects of authorial identity that underlie all of the other themes: authorial identity as ‘tacit knowledge’ and authorial identity as ‘negotiation of identities’. The themes identified in the first study informed important aspects of the two following quantitative studies. The second study used findings from the first study to generate a pool of questionnaire items, assess their content validity and administer them to a multidisciplinary sample of 439 students in higher education. Psychometric analyses were used to identify a latent variable model of student authorial identity with three factors: ‘authorial confidence’, ‘valuing writing’ and ‘identification with author’. This model formed the basis of a new psychometric tool for measuring authorial identity. The resultant Student Attitudes and Beliefs about Authorship Scale (SABAS) had greater reliability and validity when compared with alternative measures. The third study used confirmatory factor analysis to validate the SABAS model with a sample of 306 students. In addition, this study identified aspects of convergent validity and test-retest reliability that allow the SABAS to be used with confidence in research and pedagogy. The overall findings of the combined studies present a psycho-social model of student authorial identity. This model represents an important contribution to the theoretical underpinnings of the authorial identity approach to student plagiarism. Differing from previous models by including social aspects of authorial identity, the psycho-social model informs future pedagogy development and research by outlining a robust, empirically supported theoretical framework.University of Derby Teaching Informed Research studentship

Differential Uptake of Gold Nanoparticles by 2 Species of Tadpole, the Wood Frog (Lithobates Sylvaticus) and the Bullfrog (Lithobates Catesbeianus)

Engineered nanoparticles are aquatic contaminants of emerging concern that exert ecotoxicological effects on a wide variety of organisms. We exposed cetyltrimethylammonium bromide–capped spherical gold nanoparticles to wood frog and bullfrog tadpoles with conspecifics and in combination with the other species continuously for 21 d, then measured uptake and localization of gold. Wood frog tadpoles alone and in combination with bullfrog tadpoles took up significantly more gold than bullfrogs. Bullfrog tadpoles in combination with wood frogs took up significantly more gold than controls. The rank order of weight-normalized gold uptake was wood frogs in combination \u3e wood frogs alone \u3e bullfrogs in combination \u3e bullfrogs alone \u3e controls. In all gold-exposed groups of tadpoles, gold was concentrated in the anterior region compared with the posterior region of the body. The concentration of gold nanoparticles in the anterior region of wood frogs both alone and in combination with bullfrogs was significantly higher than the corresponding posterior regions. We also measured depuration time of gold in wood frogs. After 21 d in a solution of gold nanoparticles, tadpoles lost \u3e83% of internalized gold when placed in gold-free water for 5 d. After 10 d in gold-free water, tadpoles lost 94% of their gold. After 15 d, gold concentrations were below the level of detection. Our finding of differential uptake between closely related species living in similar habitats with overlapping geographical distributions argues against generalizing toxicological effects of nanoparticles for a large group of organisms based on measurements in only one species

Academics’ understandings of the authorial academic writer: a qualitative analysis of authorial identity

Research on authorial identity has focused almost exclusively on the attitudes and beliefs of students. This paper explores how academics understand authorial identity in higher education. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 professional academics and analysed using thematic analysis, identifying themes at two levels. At the semantic level was a main theme called ‘the authorial writer’, with five subthemes: ‘authorial confidence’, ‘valuing writing’, ‘ownership and attachment’, ‘authorial thinking’, and ‘authorial goals’. At the latent level were two integrative themes: ‘tacit learning’ and ‘negotiating identities’. The semantic subthemes represent attributes that could be targets for pedagogic interventions. The integrative themes suggest processes in the development of authorial identity, which can inform more effective teaching. By identifying attributes and processes associated with authorial identity, these findings help towards a psychological understanding of authorial identity, informing development of more effective pedagogy to help students improve their academic writing and avoid plagiarism.Postgraduate studentship awarded to Kevin Yet Fong Cheung by the Teaching Informed by Research fund at the University of Derb

Survival following Treatment of Aortoesophageal Fistula with Dual Esophageal and Aortic Intervention

Aortoesophageal fistulas are a rare but commonly fatal complication of esophageal cancer. Reports of successfully managed cases are few, with high mortality and morbidity usually resulting from failure to control the initial massive haemodynamic insult. We report the case of a 47-year-old Caucasian man with recently diagnosed advanced esophageal cancer who suffered an episode of massive haematemesis. Emergency gastroscopy revealed an arterial bleeding point in the proximal esophagus. A self-expanding metal esophageal stent was placed to achieve initial partial haemostasis. CT angiography confirmed an aortoesophageal fistula. An endoluminal stent device was thus inserted within the thoracic aorta stabilising the bleeding point. The patient subsequently made an uneventful recovery and was discharged on long-term antibiotics for palliative care. He survived for 2 months at home before dying of disseminated malignancy. The successful use of esophageal stenting as a means of achieving haemostasis, allowing time for endovascular intervention, is as yet a relatively unexplored area of management of this rare condition

Fuzzy Risk-Based Life Cycle Assessment for Estimating Environmental Aspects in EMS

Environmental aspects plays a central role in environmental management system (EMS) because it is the basis for the identification of an organization-s environmental targets. The existing methods for the assessment of environmental aspects are grouped into three categories: risk assessment-based (RA-based), LCA-based and criterion-based methods. To combine the benefits of these three categories of research, this study proposes an integrated framework, combining RA-, LCA- and criterion-based methods. The integrated framework incorporates LCA techniques for the identification of the causal linkage for aspect, pathway, receptor and impact, uses fuzzy logic to assess aspects, considers fuzzy conditions, in likelihood assessment, and employs a new multi-criteria decision analysis method - multi-criteria and multi-connection comprehensive assessment (MMCA) - to estimate significant aspects in EMS. The proposed model is verified, using a real case study and the results show that this method successfully prioritizes the environmental aspects

Effect of interfractional shoulder motion on low neck nodal targets for patients treated using volume modulated arc therapy (VMAT)

Purpose: To quantify the dosimetric impact of interfractional shoulder motion on targets in the low neck for head and neck patients treated with volume modulated arc therapy (VMAT).Methods: Three patients with head and neck cancer were selected. All three required treatment to nodal regions in the low neck in addition to the primary tumor site. The patients were immobilized during simulation and treatment with a custom thermoplastic mask covering the head and shoulders. One VMAT plan was created for each patient utilizing two full 360° arcs and a second plan was created consisting of two superior VMAT arcs matched to an inferior static AP supraclavicular field. A CT-on-rails alignment verification was performed weekly during each patient’s treatment course. The weekly CT images were registered to the simulation CT and the target contours were deformed and applied to the weekly CT. The two VMAT plans were copied to the weekly CT datasets and recalculated to obtain the dose to the deformed low neck contours.Results: The average observed shoulder position shift in any single dimension relative to simulation was 2.5 mm. The maximum shoulder shift observed in a single dimension was 25.7 mm. Low neck target mean doses, normalized to simulation and averaged across all weekly recalculations were 0.996, 0.991, and 1.033 (Full VMAT plan) and 0.986, 0.995, and 0.990 (Half-Beam VMAT plan) for the three patients, respectively. The maximum observed deviation in target mean dose for any individual weekly recalculation was 6.5%, occurring with the Full VMAT plan for Patient 3.Conclusion: Interfractional variation in dose to low neck nodal regions was quantified for three head and neck patients treated with VMAT. Mean dose was 3.3% higher than planned for one patient using a Full VMAT plan. A Half-Beam technique is likely a safer choice when treating the supraclavicular region with VMAT.-------------------------------------------Cite this article as: Casey K, Wang P, Tung S, Rosenthal D. Effect of interfractional shoulder motion on low neck nodal targets for patients treated using volume modulated arc therapy (VMAT). Int J Cancer Ther Oncol 2014; 2(2):020218. DOI: 10.14319/ijcto.0202.1