Assessment of student's professional and personal attitudes

Conference Theme: Assessment of Competence in Medicine and the Healthcare ProfessionsSession 2Q - Posters: Students and Learning Characteristics: no. 2Q11BACKGROUND: Undergraduate research gives our MBBS Year 3 medical students opportunity to consolidate their evidence-based knowledge gained in previous two years of their medical education and apply the research principles to the selected topic. Medical students are frequently recruited as subjects for this students-led research. Favourite research topics include medical students’ knowledge and attitudes towards different ...postprin

Volumetric Properties and Stiffness Modulus of Asphalt Concrete Mixtures Made with Selected Quarry Fillers: Experimental Investigation and Machine Learning Prediction

In recent years, the attention of many researchers in the field of pavement engineering has focused on the search for alternative fillers that could replace Portland cement and traditional limestone in the production of asphalt mixtures. In addition, from a Czech perspective, there was the need to determine the quality of asphalt mixtures prepared with selected fillers provided by different local quarries and suppliers. This paper discusses an experimental investigation and a machine learning modeling carried out by a decision tree CatBoost approach, based on experimentally determined volumetric and mechanical properties of fine-grained asphalt concretes prepared with selected quarry fillers used as an alternative to traditional limestone and Portland cement. Air voids content and stiffness modulus at 15 °C were predicted on the basis of seven input variables, including bulk density, a categorical variable distinguishing the aggregates’ quarry of origin, and five main filler-oxide contents determined by means of X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. All mixtures were prepared by fixing the filler content at 10% by mass, with a bitumen content of 6% (PG 160/220), and with roughly the same grading curve. Model predictive performance was evaluated in terms of six different evaluation metrics with Pearson correlation and coefficient of determination always higher than 0.96 and 0.92, respectively. Based on the results obtained, this study could represent a forward feasibility study on the mathematical prediction of the asphalt mixtures’ mechanical behavior on the basis of its filler mineralogical composition

Spinning, drawing and physical properties of polypropylene nanocomposite fibers with fumed nanosilica

Nanocomposite fibers of isotactic polypropylene – fumed silica AR805 were prepared by melt compounding using a two-step process: melt-spinning and hot drawing at various draw ratios up to 15. Transmission electron microscopy revealed uniform dispersion of the silica nanoparticles in polypropylene matrix, although at higher concentrations and lower draw ratios the nanoparticles showed increasing tendency to form small agglomerates. On the other hand, at low concentrations the uniform distribution of fumed silica improved mechanical properties of the composite fibers, especially at higher draw ratios. Crystallinity and melting temperature of fibers were found to significantly increase after drawing. Elastic modulus at draw ratio = 10 rose from 5.3 GPa for neat PP up to 6.2–8.1 GPa for compositions in the range 0.25–2 vol% of the filler. Moreover, higher tensile strength and creep resistance were achieved, while strain at break was rather insensitive to the filler fraction. Considering all experimental results, a failure model was proposed to explain the toughness improvement during the drawing process by the induced orientation of polymer chains and the formation of voids

Research Mobilities in Education

As debates continue about how teachers might use research, ‘evidence-informed’ teaching is increasingly a focus of attention in international contexts, encouraged in Europe through the European Council. In England this work is accelerating compared to other European countries (Pellegrini & Vivanet 2021) with ‘evidence-informed’ teaching embedded within professional frameworks, including the early career framework designed to support teacher professional development (DFE 2019). However, while use of research to inform teaching appears to be increasing, patterns of use are uneven, conceptualisations of research within such frameworks are limited and little is known about how teachers encounter research. In addressing this problem through a focus on primary school literacy, this paper shares new understandings of what we term research mobilities to gain insights into how research moves to and between teachers and what stops it from doing so. A growing literature on research mobilisation highlights the complexities associated with research dissemination, use and interpretation within education (eg., Cain 2015; Cain et al. 2019; Maxwell, et al. 2019; Meusberger 2017; Whitty et al. 2016). However very little attention has been paid to how educational research moves ‘in the wild’ through complex and intersecting networks generated by communications, digital technologies and a shifting landscape for professional learning. In this paper we explore what happens to educational research evidence as it moves (or not) to teachers. We attend particularly to those movements that are unplanned or unforeseen by researchers – for example as evidence is promoted, critiqued and/or re-framed on social media channels or through policy documents and research dissemination platforms. We draw on the initial findings of an ESRC funded research project in which we track the movements of research findings linked to literacy education to and among primary teachers and argue that interdisciplinary methods are needed if we are to fully understand the range of actors that combine to produce the movements of research. Where movements of educational research have been studied (Neal et al. 2015), no distinction has been made between the movements of different kinds of research (eg., that differ in methodology or topic). Understanding such movements matters as, if certain kinds of research evidence gain disproportionate influence or are made less visible, and/or if findings become distorted or overgeneralised as they are mediated in different ways, this will have a significant – if indirect – impact on children’s learning. Moreover, while prior research has explored how individuals and organisations broker research (Knight & Lyall 2013, Nutley & Walter 2007), there is little in-depth knowledge of how digital technologies are changing teachers’ encounters with research, for example, how algorithms, AI, machine learning, or hashtags on social media and recommender systems shape interactions between teachers and research. In an increasingly digitised environment for professional learning, these insights are needed (Thompson 2018) particularly as digital actors continue to combine in unexpected and unanticipated ways by those who design and use these digital systems (Hansen 2015). To investigate the complex actors and the relations between them that propel (or block) movements of research evidence, we adopt a sociomaterial approach that foregrounds the role of human and digital actors in mobilising research evidence (Adams & Thompson 2016, Burnett & Merchant 2020, Thompson & Adams 2020). Employing such heuristics, we will begin to examine, in this paper, how different actors combine in dynamic and often unexpected ways to generate appearances, disappearances and/or reworkings of research evidence. Our paper will therefore also offer a discussion on new theoretical and methodological resources for understanding the movements of research across education and other social sciences. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used The study we are drawing on here employs a flexible and innovative multi-method approach incorporating ethnographic and digital research methods to gain different vantage points on research movements, combining attention to movements of research in primary literacy education at macro level with fine-grained analysis of individual teachers’ experiences and the translations of specific pieces of research. In this paper we will engage with and discuss qualitative data from one strand of the project, namely a data set co-produced with teachers that illuminates the scope, nature and mediation of teachers’ encounters with research in primary literacy education within varying personal and school contexts. In our investigations of teachers’ encounters with research in primary literacy education, we work with teachers to develop an adaptation of ‘lifelogging’ to record creatively their everyday encounters with research, and we invite them to share reflections on their experiences in focus groups and individual interviews. Participants produce visual representations of their experience (Salmons 2014) and discuss their approach to lifelogging with other participants and the researchers during focus groups to promote a deeper level of reflection. Interview and focus group data are analysed thematically, generating an in-depth analysis of common themes and variation in teachers’ lived experiences of encounters with research and the influence of context on those encounters. This qualitative strand of our project then produces rich and entangled short narratives and stories that attend to specific encounters among teachers and research through a collage of textual and visual reflections. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings Through exploring the movement of research evidence in primary literacy education we contribute to understanding of ‘research mobilities’. A new approach to theorisation of research mobilities is required to understand any patterns in the kinds of research that moves to teachers; to understand how it moves; and to trace what happens to the meaning of research as it moves. Our paper therefore supports a critical understanding of research mobilisation that goes beyond notions of dissemination and knowledge exchange to foreground the complexity of research movements. This theorisation of research mobilities will have implications for international researchers interested in research mobilisation/knowledge exchange across education

Placental abnormalities associated with post-natal mortality in sheep somatic cell clones

We report on cloning experiments designed to explore the causes of peri- and post-natal mortality of cloned lambs. A total of 93 blastocysts obtained by nuclear transfer of somatic cells (granulosa cells) were transferred into 41 recipient ewes, and pregnancies were monitored by ultrasound scanning. In vitro derived, fertilized embryos (IVF, n = 123) were also transferred to assess oocyte competence, and naturally mated ewes (n = 120) were analysed as well. Cloned embryos developed to the blastocyst stage and implanted at the same rate as IVF embryos. After day 30 of gestation, however, dramatic losses occurred, and only 12 out of 93 (13%) clones reached full-term development, compared to 51 out of 123 (41.6%) lambs born from the IVF control embryos. Three full-term lamb clones were delivered stillborn, as a result of placental degeneration. A further five clone recipients developed hydroallantois. Their lambs died within 24 h following delivery by caesarian section, and displayed degenerative lesions in liver and kidney resulting from the severe hydroallantois. One set of twins was delivered by assisted parturition at day 150, but died 24 h later due to respiratory distress syndrome. The remaining two clone recipients underwent caesarian section, and the corresponding two lambs displayed signs of respiratory dysfunction and died at approximately 1 month of age due to a bacterial complication. Blood samples collected from the cloned lambs after birth revealed a wide range of abnormalities indicative of kidney and liver dysfunction. Macroscopical and histopathological examination of the placentae revealed a marked reduction in vascularization, particularly at the apex of the villous processes, as well as a loss of differentiation of the trophoblastic epithelium. Our results strongly suggest that post-mortality in cloned lambs is mainly caused by placental abnormalities