Thinking Skills in the Early Years : A Literature Review

Thinking skills have been included in the National Curriculum alongside ‘key skills’ such as those to do with communication and information and communications technology (ICT). Thinking skills are expected to be developed at all key stages and centre on: information-processing skills, reasoning skills, enquiry skills, creative thinking skills and evaluation skills. This literature review consisted of three phases based on the following research questions: 1. What pedagogical approaches to developing generic thinking skills currently exist for children between the ages of three and seven? 2. What are the generic thinking skills that children are able to demonstrate at this age? 3. What is the relationship between these thinking capabilities and those that the pedagogical approaches aim to develop? The review covered post-2000 literature in the area of thinking skills in the early years. It provides an update of the evidence base upon which thinking skills approaches have been established, suggests areas where more evidence is needed and makes some practical recommendations for researchers, policy makers and practitioners

A field study of thermal comfort in low-income dwellings in England before and after energy efficient refurbishment

This study investigates the effect of England's Warm Front energy efficient refurbishment scheme on winter thermal comfort in low-income dwellings. The analysis is based on an extensive survey of some 2500 dwellings selected from five major urban areas in England over the winters of 2001/02 and 2002/03. The surveys were carried out either before or after the introduction of retrofit insulation and energy efficient heating system. Self-reported thermal comfort (measured on a seven-point scale) and indoor temperature in the living room and in the main bedroom were recorded twice daily at 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. over 11 consecutive days. Results show that Warm Front was effective in increasing the mean indoor temperature from 17.1 °C to 19.0 °C leading to an increase in the proportion of households feeling thermally ‘comfortable’ or warmer from 36.4% to 78.7%. Warm Front also led to a slight increase in the whole house neutral temperature, i.e. the temperature at which most residents feel thermal neutrality, from 18.9 °C to 19.1 °C mainly from reduced clothing level associated with greater energy efficiency. Predicted Mean Vote, which is the standard thermal comfort model in ISO Standard 7730 predicted a higher neutral temperature of 20.4 °C compared to 18.9 °C found to be ideal among the average Warm Front households

UK Climate Projections Science Report: Marine and Coastal Projections

Report available to download at: http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/media.jsp?mediaid=87850&filetype=pd

Community-wide model validation study for systematic assessment of ionosphere models

To address challenges of assessment of modeling capabilities, the CCMC (Community Coordinated Modeling Center) initiated a series of community-wide model validation projects, such as the GEM, CEDAR and GEM-CEDAR Modeling Challenges. The CEDAR ETI (Electrodynamics Thermosphere Ionosphere) Challenge focused on the ability of ionosphere-thermosphere (IT) models to reproduce basic IT system parameters, such as electron and neutral densities, NmF2, hmF2, and TEC. Model-data time series comparisons were performed for a set of selected events with different levels of geomagnetic activity (quiet, moderate, storms). The follow-on CEDAR-GEM Challenge aims to quantify geomagnetic storm impacts on the IT system. On-going studies include quantifying the storm energy input, such as increase in auroral precipitation and Joule heating, and quantifying the storm-time variations of neutral density and TEC. The community-wide model validation activities involve international collaborations (e.g., between the CCMC and UK Met Office) to enhance the studies. In this paper, we focus on results of validation of IT models for reproducing storm impacts on TEC. In order to quantify storm impacts on TEC, we considered several parameters: TEC changes compared to quiet time (the day before storm), TEC difference between 24-hour intervals, and maximum increase/decrease during the storm. We investigated the spatial and temporal variations of the parameters during storm events (e.g., 2006 AGU storm) using ground-based GPS TEC measurements in several longitude sectors where data coverage is relatively better. The latitudinal variations were also studied. We obtained modeled TEC from various IT models. The parameters from the models were compared with each other and with the observed values. We quantified performance of the models in reproducing the TEC variations during the storm using skill scores. Model output and observational data used for the challenge will be permanently posted at the CCMC website (http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov) as a resource for the space science communities to use