291 research outputs found
Overcoming Assessment Challenges - Tipping the Balance
It is well known to primary teachers that effective assessment of children requires a multi-faceted approach (Sparks Linfield 1994). Equally, written feedback on a piece of work is often not understood by the pupils themselves (Sparks Linfield 1995). As one proceeds through secondary and tertiary education, this situation changes little, with the best attempts to set âperfect' assessments still leading to misinterpretation by students. It is also true that students often do not always recognise what is meant by the term âfeedback' and have difficulty in interpreting and understanding the feedback that they receive, even with the most careful and targeted advice in advance. (Sutcliffe et al 2014) In 2010 the National Union of Students released a âCharter for Assessment and Feedback' which outlined ten principles for effective assessment and feedback. Despite this charter, the National Student Survey (NSS) in 2014 still showed twenty-eight percent of students were not satisfied. âAssessment and feedback was again rated the lowest by students, with just seventy-two percent saying they were satisfied with this, the same level as last year.' (Grove 2014) This poster considers research carried out in 2014 when the Year 2 cohort of students on a Bachelor of Arts Primary Education course were asked to complete a questionnaire inviting views on feedback on assessment they found most helpful in clarifying things they did not understand. Analysis of completed questionnaires revealed that although students' experiences of feedback and assessment within their first year of study had broadly matched the principles outlined within the NUS Charter, twenty-five percent of students still were not satisfied. Results from the cohort showed a desire for a range of types of feedback including a wish for face-to-face discussion to enable them to both assess their understanding of feedback comments and feed-forward actions. In addition, a common theme emerged: a lack of perception by students of their own roles and responsibilities within the assessment/feedback cycle. Recommendations are made for ways to overcome the challenge to provide assessment feedback that aims to give total satisfaction
Conserving Approximations in Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory
In the present work we propose a theory for obtaining successively better
approximations to the linear response functions of time-dependent density or
current-density functional theory. The new technique is based on the
variational approach to many-body perturbation theory (MBPT) as developed
during the sixties and later expanded by us in the mid nineties. Due to this
feature the resulting response functions obey a large number of conservation
laws such as particle and momentum conservation and sum rules. The quality of
the obtained results is governed by the physical processes built in through
MBPT but also by the choice of variational expressions. We here present several
conserving response functions of different sophistication to be used in the
calculation of the optical response of solids and nano-scale systems.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, revised versio
Statistical characterization of the forces on spheres in an upflow of air
The dynamics of a sphere fluidized in a nearly-levitating upflow of air were
previously found to be identical to those of a Brownian particle in a
two-dimensional harmonic trap, consistent with a Langevin equation [Ojha {\it
et al.}, Nature {\bf 427}, 521 (2004)]. The random forcing, the drag, and the
trapping potential represent different aspects of the interaction of the sphere
with the air flow. In this paper we vary the experimental conditions for a
single sphere, and report on how the force terms in the Langevin equation scale
with air flow speed, sphere radius, sphere density, and system size. We also
report on the effective interaction potential between two spheres in an upflow
of air.Comment: 7 pages, experimen
Bosonization of interacting fermions in arbitrary dimension beyond the Gaussian approximation
We use our recently developed functional bosonization approach to bosonize
interacting fermions in arbitrary dimension beyond the Gaussian
approximation. Even in the finite curvature of the energy dispersion at
the Fermi surface gives rise to interactions between the bosons. In higher
dimensions scattering processes describing momentum transfer between different
patches on the Fermi surface (around-the-corner processes) are an additional
source for corrections to the Gaussian approximation. We derive an explicit
expression for the leading correction to the bosonized Hamiltonian and the
irreducible self-energy of the bosonic propagator that takes the finite
curvature as well as around-the-corner processes into account. In the special
case that around-the-corner scattering is negligible, we show that the
self-energy correction to the Gaussian propagator is negligible if the
dimensionless quantities are
small compared with unity for all patches . Here is the cutoff
of the interaction in wave-vector space, is the Fermi wave-vector,
is the chemical potential, is the usual dimensionless Landau
interaction-parameter, and is the {\it{local}} density of
states associated with patch . We also show that the well known
cancellation between vertex- and self-energy corrections in one-dimensional
systems, which is responsible for the fact that the random-phase approximation
for the density-density correlation function is exact in , exists also in
, provided (1) the interaction cutoff is small compared with
, and (2) the energy dispersion is locally linearized at the Fermi the
Fermi surface. Finally, we suggest a new systematic method to calculate
corrections to the RPA, which is based on the perturbative calculation of the
irreducible bosonic self-energy arising from the non-Gaussian terms of the
bosonized Hamiltonian.Comment: The abstract has been rewritten. No major changes in the text
Nucleus-Electron Model for States Changing from a Liquid Metal to a Plasma and the Saha Equation
We extend the quantal hypernetted-chain (QHNC) method, which has been proved
to yield accurate results for liquid metals, to treat a partially ionized
plasma. In a plasma, the electrons change from a quantum to a classical fluid
gradually with increasing temperature; the QHNC method applied to the electron
gas is in fact able to provide the electron-electron correlation at arbitrary
temperature. As an illustrating example of this approach, we investigate how
liquid rubidium becomes a plasma by increasing the temperature from 0 to 30 eV
at a fixed normal ion-density . The electron-ion
radial distribution function (RDF) in liquid Rb has distinct inner-core and
outer-core parts. Even at a temperature of 1 eV, this clear distinction remains
as a characteristic of a liquid metal. At a temperature of 3 eV, this
distinction disappears, and rubidium becomes a plasma with the ionization 1.21.
The temperature variations of bound levels in each ion and the average
ionization are calculated in Rb plasmas at the same time. Using the
density-functional theory, we also derive the Saha equation applicable even to
a high-density plasma at low temperatures. The QHNC method provides a procedure
to solve this Saha equation with ease by using a recursive formula; the charge
population of differently ionized species are obtained in Rb plasmas at several
temperatures. In this way, it is shown that, with the atomic number as the only
input, the QHNC method produces the average ionization, the electron-ion and
ion-ion RDF's, and the charge population which are consistent with the atomic
structure of each ion for a partially ionized plasma.Comment: 28 pages(TeX) and 11 figures (PS
Effective action and density functional theory
The effective action for the charge density and the photon field is proposed
as a generalization of the density functional. A simple definition is given for
the density functional, as the functional Legendre transform of the generator
functional of connected Green functions for the density and the photon field,
offering systematic approximation schemes. The leading order of the
perturbation expansion reproduces the Hartree-Fock equation. A renormalization
group motivated method is introduced to turn on the Coulomb interaction
gradually and to find corrections to the Hartree-Fock and the Kohn-Sham
schemes.Comment: New references and a numerical algorithm added, to appear in Phys.
Rev. B. 30 pages, no figure
Investigation of fluidized bed behaviour using electrical capacitance tomography
The temporal and crossâsectional distributions of particles in a 127âmm diameter fluidized bed have been obtained using a new generation, highâspeed electrical capacitance tomography. Two planes of eight electrodes were used and mounted at 160âmm and 660âmm from the gas distributor which was a 3âmm thick porous plastic plate (maximum pore size of 50 ÎŒmâ70 ÎŒm). 3âmm diameter, nearlyâspherical polyethylene granules made up the bed. Experiments at sampling frequencies of 200â2000 crossâsections per second and gas superficial velocities from just below the minimum fluidization to 83% above minimum fluidization velocities were used. The time series of the crossâsectional average void fractions have been examined both directly and in amplitude and frequency space. The last two used probability density functions and power spectral densities. The information gathered shows that the fluidized bed was operating in the slugging mode, which is not surprising given the size of the particles. It has been found that an increase in the excess gas velocity above the minimum fluidization velocity resulted in an increase in the mean void fraction, an increase in the length and velocity of the slug bubbles as well as the bed height, and a slight decrease in the slug frequency. The results are presented in a level of detail suitable for comparison with later numerical simulation
COAST (Cisplatin ototoxicity attenuated by aspirin trial): A phase II double-blind, randomised controlled trial to establish if aspirin reduces cisplatin induced hearing-loss
Background: Cisplatin is one of the most ototoxic chemotherapy drugs, resulting in a permanent and irreversible hearing loss in up to 50% of patients. Cisplatin and gentamicin are thought to damage hearing through a common mechanism, involving reactive oxygen species in the inner ear. Aspirin has been shown to minimise gentamicin-induced ototoxicity. We, therefore, tested the hypothesis that aspirin could also reduce ototoxicity from cisplatin-based chemotherapy. Methods: A total of 94 patients receiving cisplatin-based chemotherapy for multiple cancer types were recruited into a phase II, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial and randomised in a ratio of 1:1 to receive aspirin 975 mg tid and omeprazole 20 mg od, or matched placebos from the day before, to 2 days after, their cisplatin dose(s), for each treatment cycle. Patients underwent pure tone audiometry before and at 7 and 90 days after their final cisplatin dose. The primary end-point was combined hearing loss (cHL), the summed hearing loss at 6 kHz and 8 kHz, in both ears. Results: Although aspirin was well tolerated, it did not protect hearing in patients receiving cisplatin (p-value = 0.233, 20% one-sided level of significance). In the aspirin arm, patients demonstrated mean cHL of 49 dB (standard deviation [SD] 61.41) following cisplatin compared with placebo patients who demonstrated mean cHL of 36 dB (SD 50.85). Women had greater average hearing loss than men, and patients treated for head and neck malignancy experienced the greatest cHL. Conclusions: Aspirin did not protect from cisplatin-related ototoxicity. Cisplatin and gentamicin may therefore have distinct ototoxic mechanisms, or cisplatin-induced ototoxicity may be refractory to the aspirin regimen used here
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