Insights on best teaching practices for promoting students' learning

The Department of Educational Sciences and the Department of Electronic and Telecommunications at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) have been working together with the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde (UK), with the aim of improving the teaching and learning of introductory programming courses. Both institutions belong to the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU), with a commitment to "developing and implementing new forms of teaching, training, and research; to assuring an innovative culture within their walls; to experimenting with new forms of management and administration; and to sustaining and nurturing internationally-minded staff" (ECIU). Over the past two years, data has been collected through interviews, questionnaires and class observation, to better understand the organization of the different courses and approaches to teaching and learning. Members of academic staff have been actively involved in trying to enhance the students' learning experience through reflection on teaching methods and trying new ideas to aid student success. During this process we have assimilated insights on teaching philosophies, methods and suggestions for course redesign. As an important piece of the "puzzle", students also provided useful feedback on differing aspects of teaching and course organization. The present paper presents a meta-analysis of our findings on the relevance of teaching practices for promoting students' learning. In addition, we discuss the impact that teaching philosophies and course organization may have on best teaching practices

Turning engineers into reflective university teachers

Increasing attention to quality and innovation in Higher Education (HE) is enhancing the pedagogic knowledge of faculty members and thereby encouraging the academic success of their students. This aim requires, from the institution and teachers, a greater degree of involvement than was previously the case. This is certainly borne out by experience in Portuguese universities. The growing concern of engineers with issues of pedagogy and academic success marks a sea change in the traditional conceptions of teaching and learning in Higher Education. There are, of course, indications that many academics are resistant to change. Our research indicates a tradition among Portuguese and Scottish academics to incline their effort toward research with a resultant decline in interest and effort on teaching. The present paper presents a meta-analysis of research conducted at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) and the University of Strathclyde (United Kingdom) between 2000 and 2004 involving academics who taught first-year introductory Programming courses. The purpose of our study was to promote reflection and research on teaching based issues as a strategy toward improved student learning. The findings of the study raised a number of salient issues for discussion and consideration. In this paper, we present some of these issues, aiming to explore the impact that the findings may have on teachers' attitudes towards teaching and students' learning in introductory programming courses

A Passion for Security: Intervening to Help Software Developers

While the techniques to achieve secure, privacypreserving software are now well understood, evidence shows that many software development teams do not use them: they lack the ‘security maturity’ to assess security needs and decide on appropriate tools and processes; and they lack the ability to negotiate with product management for the required resources. This paper describes a measuring approach to assess twelve aspects of this security maturity; its use to assess the impact of a lightweight package of workshops designed to increase security maturity; and a novel approach within that package to support developers in resource negotiation. Based on trials in eight organizations, involving over 80 developers, this paper demonstrates that (1) development teams can notably improve their security maturity even in the absence of security specialists; and (2) suitably guided, developers can find effective ways to promote security to product management. Empowering developers to make their own decisions and promote security in this way offers a powerful grassroots approach to improving the security of software worldwide

Can HERA See an eu−−>ece u --> e c Signal of a Virtual Leptoquark?

Virtual leptoquarks could be detected at HERA through some nonstandard effects. Here we explore the possibility that virtual leptoquarks could be discovered via $e u --> e c$ scattering, assuming integrated luminosity of 200 pb$^{-1}$ and charm identification efficiency of 1%. We study the implications of low energy data for the leptoquarks couplings and find that the most relevant bound for the HERA cross sections comes from inclusive $c --> e^+e^-~+~any$. This bound implies that the $e u --> e c$ cross sections for virtual leptoquarks are just too small for observation of the signal. With an improvement by a factor of ~2 on the luminosity or on charm identification it could be possible to see virtual leptoquarks with {\it maximum couplings} up to ~1.5 - 2 TeV. However, the prospects for discovering the virtual particles if their couplings are somewhat below present bounds are very dim. We point out that this cross section could be very large for leptoquarks lighter than HERA's kinematical limit, and if such a leptoquark is discovered we recommend searching for a possible $e u --> e c$ signal. Our results may also serve as an update on the maximum cross sections for leptoquark mediated $e u --> \mu c$ scattering.Comment: 15 Pages (LaTeX), including 4 postscript figures at the end of the file. Feynman diagrams available by reques

A genome-wide study of Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium with next generation sequence data

Statistical tests for Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium have been an important tool for detecting genotyping errors in the past, and remain important in the quality control of next generation sequence data. In this paper, we analyze complete chromosomes of the 1000 genomes project by using exact test procedures for autosomal and X-chromosomal variants. We find that the rate of disequilibrium largely exceeds what might be expected by chance alone for all chromosomes. Observed disequilibrium is, in about 60% of the cases, due to heterozygote excess. We suggest that most excess disequilibrium can be explained by sequencing problems, and hypothesize mechanisms that can explain exceptional heterozygosities. We report higher rates of disequilibrium for the MHC region on chromosome 6, regions flanking centromeres and p-arms of acrocentric chromosomes. We also detected long-range haplotypes and areas with incidental high disequilibrium. We report disequilibrium to be related to read depth, with variants having extreme read depths being more likely to be out of equilibrium. Disequilibrium rates were found to be 11 times higher in segmental duplications and simple tandem repeat regions. The variants with significant disequilibrium are seen to be concentrated in these areas. For next generation sequence data, Hardy–Weinberg disequilibrium seems to be a major indicator for copy number variation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Production and characterisation of waste lignin and biodiesel-derived residues as potential bitumen modifiers

Most pavements around the world are built with asphalt comprising bituminous binders derived from fossil fuels. Bitumen traditionally fulfils the role of a binder in asphalt mixtures and provides tensile resistance and cohesion to the mixture. The binder’s rheological and adhesive properties allow these asphalt mixtures to withstand daily stresses such as traffic loads and environmental conditions without suffering excessive damage. Growing environmental concerns surrounding petroleum-derived bitumens have motivated the search for biobinders (binders manufactured from biomass) to be used in asphalt mixtures. In particular, waste biomass products are of interest due to their availability and impact on sustainability, but they generally need to be thermochemically treated before being used as biobinders. Biobinders have shown great potential to reduce bitumen demand and have exhibited good performance in terms of resisting common distresses affecting roads. However, detailed characterisation is still needed before they can be used in practice. The main objective of this project was to produce and characterise binders manufactured from waste biomass that can be used in pavements and encourage the development of sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions in pavement engineering. In this context, the focus of this project was to understand the chemical and rheological properties of waste lignin and biodiesel-derived residues in order to assess their suitability as potential biobinders. For this purpose, biobinders were produced via hydrothermal liquefaction and/or pyrolysis to obtain a higher viscosity bio-bitumen product. The research initially focused on the production and rheological characterisation of a lignin-containing paper waste residue via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL). Although far too low yields of the paper waste biobinder were produced via HTL, these early results revealed that these biobinders are soft materials with lower stiffness compared to conventional bitumens. With further testing, a potential application for this material could be enhancing high-temperature performance due to an increased elastic response at these temperatures. Following this, the research centred on investigating the chemical and rheological properties of two biodiesel-derived residues before and after thermal treatment labelled Biofuel Oils (BFO). A comprehensive chemical characterisation was undertaken on the neat biomaterials before blending with bitumen in order to characterise the differences between the residues. This then led to the bio-modification of three penetration grade bitumens and the analysis of their rheological and ageing characteristics. The results showed that hydrothermal liquefaction is not an appropriate thermochemical treatment for the production of a higher viscosity biobinder from BFO materials due to the thermal decomposition of higher molecular weight compounds. However, the BFO can be upgraded to a higher viscosity product via thermal (pyrolytic) treatment to distil off lower molecular weight compounds. The rheological testing revealed that the addition of the BFO (original or pyrolysed) softens the bitumens by decreasing the complex modulus and increasing the viscous response. However, there is an increased stiffness and elastic response in the pyrolysed BFO compared to the starting materials. Although the biomodified bitumens showed the same ageing tendency as conventional materials, ageing occurred at a faster rate, which can be considered the main drawback of their performance. In light of the results obtained for the materials studied, the BFO can be considered a promising material in the improvement of low temperature cracking and fatigue performance due to the decrease in stiffness and increase in viscous response compared to aged or low penetration grade bitumens including recycled asphalt mixtures. With further research, a possible application for the higher viscosity pyrolysed BFO could be as an additive for warm mix asphalt pavements due its softer consistency than conventional materials. As a result, future work could focus on the implications of scale-up in the laboratory to produce higher quantities of the pyrolysed BFO for comprehensive asphalt mixture work