Collaborative testing in Sport and Exercise Degrees: A comparison of first and third year students\u27 perceptions

Collaborative testing is recognised as an effective assessment approach linked to positive student outcomes including enhanced test performance and reduced assessment anxiety. While collaborative testing approaches appear beneficial to university students in general, it is unclear whether students from different year levels benefit to the same extent. Therefore, the overarching aim of this study was to compare the perceptions and performances of first and third- year undergraduate students taking part in collaborative testing on multiple occasions during a semester. It was predicted that first-year students would perceive the collaborative testing opportunities as more beneficial than third-years given their limited formative experiences with university assessment. Further, it was expected that students would generally perform at a higher level on collaborative versus individual tests in line with previous work. Student performance and perceptions of collaborative testing were collected on two occasions within a semester over a period of two years in both a first-year and third-year course. Quantitative and qualitative results revealed that first-year students were more receptive and perceived more benefits relating to collaborative testing than third-years despite the fact both cohorts generally performed at a higher standard on the collaborative versus individual components. These findings suggest that while collaborative testing is considered beneficial to most, if not all, students, the benefits appear to be greater for first-year student cohorts

Real-time independent vector analysis with Student's t source prior for convolutive speech mixtures

International audienceA common approach to blind source separation is to use independent component analysis. However when dealing with realistic convolutive audio and speech mixtures, processing in the frequency domain at each frequency bin is required. As a result this introduces the permutation problem, inherent in independent component analysis, across the frequency bins. Independent vector analysis directly addresses this issue by modeling the dependencies between frequency bins, namely making use of a source prior. An alternative source prior for real-time (online) natural gradient independent vector analysis is proposed. A Student's t probability density function is known to be more suited for speech sources, due to its heavier tails, and is incorporated into a real-time version of natural gradient independent vector analysis. In addition , the importance of the degrees of freedom parameter within the Student's t distribution is highlighted. The final algorithm is realized as a real-time embedded application on a floating point Texas Instruments digital signal processor platform , where simulated recordings from a reverberant room are used for testing. Results are shown to be better than with the original (super-Gaussian) source prior

A comparative analysis of morphological, physiological, and biochemical adaptation to abiotic stress in intertidal porcelain crabs, genus Petrolisthes

Organismal tolerance to abiotic environmental stresses contributes significantly to setting the distribution limits of organisms, as demonstrated by vertical zonation patterns in the marine intertidal zone. In this thesis, the ultimate (evolutionary) and proximate (mechanistic) causes of tolerance to temperature and emersion stresses associated with the intertidal zone were examined using porcelain crabs, genus Petrolisthes. Species of Petrolisthes from intertidal and subtidal microhabitats of four biogeographic regions of the Eastern Pacific were used in phylogenetically-based comparative analyses of morphological, physiological, and biochemical adaptation to environmental stress. A phylogenetic tree based on the sequence of the 16sRNA gene was developed to facilitate these analyses. Organismal thermal tolerance limits are adapted to match maximal microhabitat temperatures. Acclimation of thermal tolerance limits suggests that temperate intertidal zone species are living close to their thermal maximum in nature. Respiratory responses to emersion vary among species from different vertical zones. Experimental examination of oxygen consumption rates and lactate accumulation during emersion suggests that intertidal species are able to respire in air using thin membranous regions on the ventral meral segments of their legs (leg membranes). Leg membrane size is positively correlated with body size across species, but not within a single species. Evolutionary analyses indicate that leg membranes may not have evolved for purposes of aerial respiration, but their presence may have allowed intertidal and subtidal species to achieve larger body sizes and higher metabolic rates. The thermal stabilities of an enzyme, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), from 22 species of Petrolisthes varied widely, but were not correlated with maximal habitat temperatures. Comparative analyses did not indicate any evolutionary relationship between LDH thermal stability and microhabitat conditions. Experimental evidence suggests that interspecific differences in LDH stability are genetically based, and are due both to intrinsic properties of the LDH molecules and extrinsic protein stabilizers. Elucidation of the mechanism(s) of LDH stabilization in Petrolisthes may provide novel insight to the field of protein stabilization. These results studies suggest that individual traits may be subjected to differing levels of selection, and thus the analysis of environmental adaptation requires careful consideration of the biological significance of the traits being examined

Auxiliary function based IVA using a source prior exploiting fourth order relationships

International audienceIndependent vector analysis (IVA) can theoretically avoid the permutation ambiguity present in frequency domain independent component analysis by using a multivariate source prior to retain the dependency between different frequency bins of each source. The auxiliary function based independent vector analysis (AuxIVA) is a stable and fast update IVA algorithm which includes no tuning parameters. In this paper, a particular multivariate generalized Gaussian distribution source prior is therefore adopted to derive the AuxIVA algorithm which can exploit fourth order relationships to better preserve the dependency between different frequency bins of speech signals. Experimental results confirm the improved separation performance achieved by using the proposed algorithm

Wet Paint: Visual Culture in a Changing Britain – A Round Table Debate

Political decisions and debates regarding the interregional and interna- tional partnerships that constitute Great Britain, including those over Scottish Independence, EVEL (English Votes for English Laws) and proposed legislation on an ‘in/out’ referendum on British membership of the European Union, have contributed to, and intensified, the examination of Britain’s institutions, as well as its national emblems and arche- types. In light of such a dynamic situation, Visual Culture in Britain has asked representatives of British universities, the museum sector and research centres to respond to the idea of a changing Britain through the prism of British art and visual culture, using cogent examples wherever possible, and to outline their observations, understandings and positions within this rapidly developing context