Engagement with virtual learning environments : a case study across faculties

Original article can be found at: www.herts.ac.uk/blip Copyright University of HertfordshireThe Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) at the University of Hertfordshire (UH) not only supports institutional and national strategies in learning and teaching, but represents a significant investment in capital. Studies show that VLEs offer a variety of pedagogical benefits and usage of such systems can be effectively measured through the analysis of a system’s log files. However, although the increase in engagement with the VLE at UH as a whole has been considerable over recent years, there appears to be a wide variation in engagement across faculties, suggesting that tutors of some faculties could benefit from increased support to improve engagement. For example, during each of the academic years under study, the range of student engagement between two particular faculties dif-fered by at least 290%. Having identified faculties that show consistently low VLE engage-ment, we need to ask why this is, and ask whether there needs to be further investigation into the reasons behind this disparity.Peer reviewe

Grant\u27s Lieutenants: From Chattanooga to Appomattox

Analyzing Grant\u27s Command Structure Ulysses S. Grant ranks as the greatest general to emerge from the United States Army during the Civil War, the man whose strategic vision and tenacious, no-nonsense leadership style ensured the death of the Confederacy. While Grant may have been indi...

Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War

We are embattled still Americans wrestle with collective memory The Civil War is the most widely studied period in United States history and it is also one of the most poorly understood. The myths and distortions that pass for this nation\u27s collective memory depict the most deadl...

Aluminium-mediated carbon–carbon coupling of an isonitrile

Cp*Al reacts with diphenylacetylene to form a Cp*-substituted 1,4-dialuminacyclohexene, which mediates the coupling of isonitriles to form a new zwitterionic diamide ligand with a carbocationic backbone.</p

Collaborative, academic-industry research approach for advancing systems engineering

In contrast to many technology-based research programmes on which industry and academia may collaborate, a programme in systems engineering – a discipline which is practitioner-focused – requires a different approach to enabling exploitation of research outputs. Those outputs tend to be process, approach and methodological in nature rather than specifically tools and technologies. The NECTISE* research programme is a multi-year, industrially-led research activity focused on developing the systems of systems (SoS) techniques required for Network Enabled Capability. The research consortium includes ten UK universities working in a multi- and cross-disciplinary manner to create more agile approaches to SoS Engineering. This paper will report the integration approaches taken in this research programme and the ways in which exploitation of the research may be achieved and demonstrated. NECTISE is composed of four topic groups investigating Systems Architectures, Through Life Systems Management, Decision Support, and Control and Monitoring, together with a number of cross-cutting themes. It has been driven by industry-derived requirements, and the industry-academic interface is enabled by the transformation of the requirements into a set of research questions. The formulation of such questions will be discussed. A major integrating activity is a set of four demonstrations that take place at regular intervals through the five-year programme. The TTCP** GUIDEx*** was found to be a helpful framework in which to integrate the various component researches for demonstration. The use of scenarios as a means of experimentation and demonstration is long-established; in NECTISE, a scenario approach is taken that embraces not only the military field of operation in which NEC is realised, but also the acquisition and support enterprise that delivers capability components to the military. In this paper, the development of the scenario, its use as a demonstration vehicle, and its role in integration across the research programme will be described, together with an assessment of the extent to which such an approach may aid exploitation of research outputs. Systems approaches have been both the focus of this research programme and the mechanisms through which it is being delivered. We shall assert that a systems approach can be a significant enabler of effective industry-academic collaborative research and we shall identify the important learning that has taken place in NECTISE in this regard. * Network Enabled Capability Through Innovative Systems Engineering ** The Technical Cooperation Program *** Guide for Understanding and Implementing Defense Experimentation (GUIDEx

Ligand coordination modulates reductive elimination from aluminium(III)

Oxidative addition to low-valent main-group centres is a major class of reactivity for these species. Here, we present a mechanistic study of the much rarer reverse process – reductive elimination – in Al(iii) systems, and unravel ligand effects in this process.</p

Progressive metabolic impairment underlies the novel nematicidal action of fluensulfone on the potato cyst nematode Globodera pallida

Background: Fluensulfone is a new nematicide with an excellent profile of selective toxicity against plant parasitic nematodes. Here, its effects on the physiology and biochemistry of the potato cyst nematode Globodera pallida have been investigated and comparisons made with its effect on the life-span of the free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to provide insight into its mode of action and its selective toxicity. Results: Fluensulfone exerts acute effects (≤ 1 h; ≥ 100 μM) on stylet thrusting and motility of hatched second stage G. pallida juveniles (J2s). Chronic exposure to lower concentrations of fluensulfone (≥ 3 days; ≤ 30 μM), reveals a slowly developing metabolic insult in which G. pallida J2s sequentially exhibit a reduction in motility, loss of a metabolic marker for cell viability, high lipid content and tissue degeneration prior to death. These effects are absent in adults and dauers of the model genetic nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Conclusion: The nematicidal action of fluensulfone follows a time-course which progresses from an early impact on motility through to an accumulating metabolic impairment, an inability to access lipid stores and death