Life cycle costing of diesel, natural gas, hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell bus systems: An Australian case study

The transit authority in Perth, Western Australia, has put several alternative fuel buses, including diesel-electric hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell buses, into revenue service over the years alongside conventional diesel and natural gas buses. Primary data from this fleet is used to construct a Life Cycle Cost (LCC) model, providing an empirical LCC result. The model is then used to forecast possible scenarios using cost estimates for next generation technologies. The methodology follows the Australian/New Zealand Standard for Life Cycle Costing, AS/NZS 4536:1999. The model outputs a dollar value in real terms that represents the LCC of each bus transportation technology. The study finds that Diesel buses deliver the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The diesel-electric hybrid bus was found to have a TCO that is about 10% higher than conventional diesel. The premium to implement and operate a hydrogen bus, even if industry targets are attained, is still substantially greater than the TCO of a conventional diesel bus, unless a very large increase in the diesel fuel price occurs. However, the hybrid and hydrogen technologies are still very young in comparison to diesel and economies of scale are yet to be realised

The perceptions of professional nurses regarding the implementation of staff development programmes in a public hospital in Gauteng, South Africa

Article: This article addresses the topic of staff development programmes and how it is being implemented in a public hospital in Gauteng. This research is important because the National Department of Health in South Africa views staff development programmes as a national priority, it features in the National Core Standards for quality. Readers of an article of this nature will most probably be managers, and generally individuals who are interested in staff Development and improving the provision of patient care. The study from which this article originates was a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design. Data was collected by means of focus group interviews with a purposive sample of professional nurses who were identified from staff development attendance lists and who were willing to participate in the study. Data was analysed using Tesch’s method of qualitative data analysis. The findings of the larger study on which this article is based revealed two main themes namely that of ineffective management practices and negative staff attitudes towards the implementation of staff development programmes. Recommendations were made towards effective management practices to facilitate the implementation of staff development programmes. This will assist planners and managers of staff development programmes to encourage nurses, and to show them the value of staff development

Teaching and learning considerations during the COVID 19 pandemic: Supporting multimodal student learning preferences

Background. The advent of COVID‑19 and the subsequent national lockdown has catapulted higher education institutions into emergency remote teaching (ERT). A principal challenge in this shift is the ability to stimulate student interest towards engagement with, and retention of, course content. The creation of teaching and learning (T&L) resources and activities using a combination of the visual, aural, read/write and kinaesthetic (VARK) modes is fundamental in ensuring student engagement. Objectives. To determine the learning style profiles of undergraduate students and to explore how student learning profiles may be incorporated in T&L approaches during ERT. Methods. This descriptive study profiles the learning preferences of undergraduate students in a health science faculty using the VARK questionnaire. The study further outlines modifications in T&L implemented to support the varied learning preferences during the COVID‑19 ERT response. Results. Our findings demonstrate that the majority of our students have a multimodal learning preference, with the kinaesthetic modality being the most preferred. Voice-over PowerPoint presentations with transitioning images, and audio files, supported the visual and aural learners through asynchronous engagement. Additionally, online discussion forums and applied projects (such as theme park designs) enhanced asynchronous learning by stimulating the visual, read/write and kinaesthetic preferences, respectively. Microsoft Team sessions with PowerPoint presentations supported visual and aural learning preferences through synchronous engagement. Conclusions. Rethinking traditional T&L approaches towards supporting the diverse student learning preferences is critical in student-centred T&L amidst the many challenges that ERT has precipitated. Academics need to be dynamic in their T&L approaches and intuitive in their awareness of how subject content may be modified/enhanced in the ERT environment

Patterns of Interaction in a Computer Conference Transcript

An analysis of the interaction patterns in an online conference from a distance education graduate course was conducted, using an approach that focused on the transcript's interactional and structural features. A new tool for transcript analysis, the TAT (Transcript Analysis Tool), was used to analyze interactional features, while structural elements suggested by social network theory were examined. Analysis of the patterns of interaction in the conference showed interaction was variable, and that while all participants were engaged, intensity and persistence of participation were unequal among individual participants in several ways. The TAT showed the proportions of five major types of sentences in the transcript, corresponding to different modes of interaction (questions, statements, reflections, engaging comments, and quotations/citations). The findings showed that the TAT seemed to relate usefully to other work in this area, and that social network principles were valuable in the analysis of conference interaction

The collectivity of British alcohol consumption trends across different temporal processes : a quantile age‐period‐cohort analysis

Background and aims UK alcohol consumption per capita has fallen by 18% since 2004 while the alcohol‐specific death rate has risen by 6%. Inconsistent consumption trends across the population may explain this. Drawing on the theory of the collectivity of drinking cultures and age‐period‐cohort analyses, we tested whether consumption trends are consistent across lighter and heavier drinkers for three temporal processes: (i) the life course, (ii) calendar time, (iii) successive birth cohorts. Design Sex‐specific quantile age‐period‐cohort regressions using repeat cross‐sectional survey data. Setting Great Britain, 1984‐2011. Participants Adult (18+) drinkers responding to 17 waves of the General Lifestyle Survey (total N=175,986). Measurements Dependent variable: The 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th, 95th and 99th quantiles of the logged weekly alcohol consumption distribution (excluding abstainers). Independent variables: seven age groups (18‐24, 25‐34 … 65‐74, 75+), five time periods (1984‐1988 … 2002‐2006, 2008‐2011) and 16 five‐year birth cohorts (1915‐1919 … 1990‐1994). Additional control variables: ethnicity and UK country. Findings Within age, period and cohort trends, changes in consumption were not consistently in the same direction at different quantiles of the consumption distribution. When they were, the scale of change sometimes differed between quantiles. For example, consumption among women decreased by 18% (CI95: ‐32% ‐ ‐2%) but increased by 11% (CI95: 2% ‐ 21%) at the median and by 28% (CI95: 19%‐38%) at the 99th quantile, implying consumption fell among lighter drinkers and rose among heavier drinkers. This type of polarised trend also occurred between 1984‐1988 and 1996‐2000 for men and women. Age trends showed collectivity but cohort trends showed a mixture of collectivity and polarisation. Conclusions Countervailing alcohol consumption and alcohol‐related harm trends in the UK may be explained by lighter and heavier drinkers having different period and cohort trends as well as by the presence of cohort trends that mean consumption may rise in some age groups while falling in others