Developing learner autonomy and critical thinking in masters' students

This paper analyses the idea of student autonomy, which was discussed within the specific context of the MSc in Social Research Methods offered by the London Metropolitan University’s Department of Applied Social Sciences (DASS) - more specifically within the Qualitative Research Methods module. Within this module, an assessment structure and application of assessment methods has been developed, designed to stimulate and foster autonomous learning, skills and personal development in participating students. This kind of autonomy, it is argued, is a key component of best higher education practice and is an integral part of the Learning and Teaching Strategy (LTS) for DASS

Alea Capta Est: Foucault’s Dispositif and Capturing Chance

It is somewhat of a mystery why one of Foucault's most important concepts—that of ‘dispositif’—is still quite vague in social and political theory; and while a small number of analyses have moved understanding forward, it remains stubbornly opaque. This paper argues that a strengthening of Foucault's concept can be achieved by (i) integrating elements of Althusser’s formulation of a dispositif (with its links to aleatory (‘chance’) events), and (ii) a detailed examination of the shared conceptual history between dispositifs and discursive formations. Regarding (i), the paper contends that dispositifs restrict three types of aleatory event: first, a ‘continuous present’ exerted upon objects and subjects; second, overdetermining repetitious occurrences; and third, negating the effects of unexpected aleatory events. The paper also argues that dispositifs are capable of producing certain forms of aleatory change. Regarding (ii), four developmental thresholds of dispositifs are identified: strategic emergence, political elaboration, overdetermined a priori, and aleatory dominance. These two developments are argued to move Foucault's concept from being descriptive and largely passive to becoming a more theoretically active resource—what Deleuze terms changing the analytical (i.e. analysis of the past) to the diagnostic (i.e. interrogation of the present)

A public ideation of shape-changing applications

The shape-changing concept where objects reconfigure their physical geometry has the potential to transform our interactions with computing devices, displays and everyday artifacts. Their dynamic physicality capitalizes on our inherent tactile sense and facilitates object re-appropriation. Research both within and outside HCI continues to develop a diverse range of technological solutions and materials to enable shape-change. However, as an early-stage enabling technology, the community has yet to identify important applications and use-cases to fully exploit its value. To expose and document a range of applications for shape-change, we employed unstructured brainstorming within a public engagement study. A 74-participant brainstorming exercise with members of the public produced 336 individual ideas that were coded into 11 major themes: entertainment, augmented living, medical, tools & utensils, research, architecture, infrastructure, industry, wearables, and education & training. This work documents the methodology and resultant application ideas along with reflections on the approach for gathering application ideas to enable shape-changing interactive surfaces and objects

Urinary proteomic profiling in severe obesity and obstructive sleep apnoea with CPAP treatment.

INTRODUCTION: Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is common in obesity and is associated with cardiovascular and metabolic complications. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) in OSA may lead to physiological changes reflected in the urinary proteome. The aim of this study was to characterise the urinary proteome in severely obese adult subjects with OSA who were receiving CPAP compared with severely obese subjects without OSA. METHODS: Severely obese subjects with and without OSA were recruited. Subjects with OSA were receiving CPAP. Body composition and blood pressure measurements were recorded. Urinary samples were analysed by Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry (CE-MS). RESULTS: Twenty-seven subjects with OSA-on-CPAP (age 49±7years, BMI 43±7 kg/m(2)) and 25 controls without OSA (age 52±9years, BMI 39±4 kg/m(2)) were studied. Age and BMI were not significantly different between groups. Mean CPAP use for OSA patients was 14.5±1.0 months. Metabolic syndrome was present in 14(52%) of those with OSA compared with 6(24%) of controls (p=0.039). A urinary proteome comprising 15 peptides was identified showing differential expression between the groups (p<0.01). Although correction for multiple testing did not reach significance, sequences were determined for 8 peptides demonstrating origins from collagens, fibrinogen beta chain and T-cadherin that may be associated with underlying cardiovascular disease mechanisms in OSA. CONCLUSIONS: The urinary proteome is compared in OSA with CPAP and without OSA in severe obesity. The effects of CPAP on OSA may lead to changes in the urinary peptides but further research work is needed to investigate the potential role for urinary proteomics in characterising urinary peptide profiles in OSA

Mobilouds: An Energy Efficient MCC Collaborative Framework With Extended Mobile Participation for Next Generation Networks

Given the emergence of mobile cloud computing (MCC), its associated energy implications are witnessed at larger scale. With offloading computationally intensive tasks to the cloud datacentres being the basic concept behind MCC, most of the mobile terminal resources participating in the MCC collaborative execution are wasted as they remain idle until the mobile terminals receive responses from the datacentres. This is an additional wastage of resources alongside the cloud resources are already being addressed as massive energy consumers. Though the energy consumed of the idle mobile resources is insignificant in comparison with the cloud counterpart, such consumptions have drastic impacts on the mobile devices causing unnecessary battery drains. To this end, this paper proposes Mobilouds which encompass a multi-tier processing architecture with various levels of process cluster capacities and a software application to manage energy efficient utilization of such process clusters. Our proposed Mobilouds framework encourages the mobile device participation in the MCC collaborative execution, thereby reduces the presence of idle mobile resources and utilizes such idle resources in the actual task execution. Our performance evaluation results demonstrate that the Mobilouds framework offers the most energy-time balancing process clusters for task execution by effectively utilizing the available resources, in comparison with an entire cloud offloading strategy using 5G/4G networks

An efficient algorithm for partially matched services in internet of services

Internet of Things (IoT) connects billions of devices in an Internet-like structure. Each device encapsulated as a real-world service which provides functionality and exchanges information with other devices. This large-scale information exchange results in new interactions between things and people. Unlike traditional web services, internet of services is highly dynamic and continuously changing due to constant degrade, vanish and possibly reappear of the devices, this opens a new challenge in the process of resource discovery and selection. In response to increasing numbers of services in the discovery and selection process, there is a corresponding increase in number of service consumers and consequent diversity of quality of service (QoS) available. Increase in both sides’ leads to the diversity in the demand and supply of services, which would result in the partial match of the requirements and offers. This paper proposed an IoT service ranking and selection algorithm by considering multiple QoS requirements and allowing partially matched services to be counted as a candidate for the selection process. One of the applications of IoT sensory data that attracts many researchers is transportation especially emergency and accident services which is used as a case study in this paper. Experimental results from real-world services showed that the proposed method achieved significant improvement in the accuracy and performance in the selection process

EVALUATION OF THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY OF INSTALLED-IN-PLACE POLYURETHANE FOAM INSULATION BY EXPERIMENT AND ANALYSIS

In the thermal analysis of the 9977 package, it was found that calculated temperatures, determined using a typical thermal analysis code, did not match those measured in the experimental apparatus. The analysis indicated that the thermal resistance of the overpack in the experimental apparatus was less than that expected, based on manufacturer's reported value of thermal conductivity. To resolve this question, the thermal conductivity of the installed foam was evaluated from the experimental results, using a simplified analysis. This study confirmed that the thermal resistance of the experimental apparatus was lower than that which would result from the manufacturer's published values for thermal conductivity of the foam insulation. The test package was sectioned to obtain samples for measurement of material properties. In the course of the destructive examination a large uninsulated region was found at the bottom of the package, which accounted for the anomalous results. Subsequent measurement of thermal conductivity confirmed the manufacturer's published values. The study provides useful insight into the use of simplified, scoping calculations for evaluation of thermal performance of packages

Radiative Transfer Modeling of a Coniferous Canopy Characterized by Airborne Remote Sensing

Solar radiation beneath a forest canopy can have large spatial variations, but this is frequently neglected in radiative transfer models for large-scale applications. To explicitly model spatial variations in subcanopy radiation, maps of canopy structure are required. Aerial photography and airborne laser scanning are used to map tree locations, heights, and crown diameters for a lodgepole pine forest in Colorado as inputs to a spatially explicit radiative transfer model. Statistics of subcanopy radiation simulated by the model are compared with measurements from radiometer arrays, and scaling of spatial statistics with temporal averaging and array size is discussed. Efficient parameterizations for spatial averages and standard deviations of subcanopy radiation are developed using parameters that can be obtained from the model or hemispherical photography

Can the collective intentions of individual professionals within healthcare teams predict the team's performance : developing methods and theory

Background: Within implementation research, using theory-based approaches to understanding the behaviours of healthcare professionals and the quality of care that they reflect and designing interventions to change them is being promoted. However, such approaches lead to a new range of methodological and theoretical challenges pre-eminent among which are how to appropriately relate predictors of individual's behaviour to measures of the behaviour of healthcare professionals .The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between the theory of planned behaviour proximal predictors of behaviour (intention and perceived behavioural control, or PBC) and practice level behaviour. This was done in the context of two clinical behaviours – statin prescription and foot examination – in the management of patients with diabetes mellitus in primary care. Scores for the predictor variables were aggregated over healthcare professionals using four methods: simple mean of all primary care team members' intention scores; highest intention score combined with PBC of the highest intender in the team; highest intention score combined with the highest PBC score in the team; the scores (on both constructs) of the team member identified as having primary responsibility for the clinical behaviour. Methods: Scores on theory-based cognitive variables were collected by postal questionnaire survey from a sample of primary care doctors and nurses from northeast England and the Netherlands. Data on two clinical behaviours were patient reported, and collected by postal questionnaire survey. Planned analyses explored the predictive value of various aggregations of intention and PBC in explaining variance in the behavioural data. Results: Across the two countries and two behaviours, responses were received from 37 to 78% of healthcare professionals in 57 to 93% practices; 51% (UK) and 69% (Netherlands) of patients surveyed responded. None of the aggregations of cognitions predicted statin prescription. The highest intention in the team (irrespective of PBC) was a significant predictor of foot examination Conclusion: These approaches to aggregating individually-administered measures may be a methodological advance of theoretical importance. Using simple means of individual-level measures to explain team-level behaviours is neither theoretically plausible nor empirically supported; the highest intention was both predictive and plausible. In studies aiming to understand the behaviours of teams of healthcare professionals in managing chronic diseases, some sort of aggregation of measures from individuals is necessary. This is not simply a methodological point, but a necessary step in advancing the theoretical and practical understanding of the processes that lead to implementation of clinical behaviours within healthcare teams

Dot-base62x: building a compact and user-friendly text representation scheme of ipv6 addresses for cloud computing

Cloud computing has dramatically reshaped the whole IT industry in recent years. With the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, services running in Cloud computing will face problems associated with IPv6 addressing: the notation is too long (39 bytes), there are too many variants of a single IPv6 address and a potential conflict may exist with conventional http_URL notation caused by the use of the colon (:). This paper proposes a new scheme to represent an IPv6 address with a shorter, more compact notation (27 bytes), without variants or conflicts with http_URL. The proposal is known as dot-base62x as it is an IPv6 address with Base62x and uses the well-known period (or dot) as a group delimiter instead of the colon. The relative merits and demerits of other works that predate this paper have been reviewed and critically evaluated. Cloud computing, as a continuously emerging mainstream of network-based applications, is likely to be a forerunner in the use of IPv6 as the base protocol. As a result, Cloud computing will benefit most from the new, compact and user-friendly textual representation of IPv6 address proposed by this paper