Enhancing the Engagement of Disabled Students with Disability Support Services: A Digital Story Approach

Initiatives that recognise diversity within the student population and understand the range of learner variation have been found to help institutions to better recognise and reduce barriers to learning for disabled people. This paper describes the development of a ‘digital story’ designed to inform all students about the disability support services offered by the University of Hertfordshire. The development and utilisation of a digital story to inform students about disability related issues and services was also designed to foster a more informed and tolerant learning community. The findings of the pilot evaluation study have highlighted the digital story to have increased student understandings of what is recognised as a disability. It was also found to have increased the likelihood of them approaching their disabled student’s coordinator. However, it is notable that a majority of students expressed a desire for an in person talk on disability services. It is concluded that although technology is not necessarily a replacement for the ‘personal touch’, new methods should be found to increase the personal feel of the digital story. It is suggested that the final evaluation questionnaire is modified to capture information about why students want an in person talk and how this can best be achieved in a digital format when personal engagement may not be possible.Peer reviewe

Evaluating the impact of policy formation on implementation: the case of the Drinking Water Directive (80/778/EEC)

Acknowledging that polices are rarely made in a rational manner does not prevent the researcher from wanting to understand why particular policy responses were constructed the way they were, and how this can impact upon implementation (Winter, 2003). This paper explores the suitability of four hypotheses developed by Winter (2003) to explain the impact of the policy formation stage on the implementation of public policy. The Drinking Water Directive (80/778/EEC) and its implementation in England/Wales and the Republic of Ireland provide the background for analysis. It is concluded that the policy formation stage of the Directive did contribute to the failures and delays of implementation. In particular, failures of implementation are attributed to conflict, invalid causal theories, political symbolism, and poor attention by policy makers.Peer reviewe

A Heavy-Light Chiral Quark Model

We present a new chiral quark model for mesons involving a heavy and a light (anti-) quark. The model relates various combinations of a quark - meson coupling constant and loop integrals to physical quantities. Then, some quantities may be predicted and some used as input. The extension from other similar models is that the present model includes the lowest order gluon condensate of the order (300 MeV)^4 determined by the mass splitting of the 0^- and the 1^- heavy meson states. Within the model, we find a reasonable description of parameters such as the decay constants f_B and f_D, the Isgur-Wise function and the axial vector coupling g_A in chiral perturbation theory for light and heavy mesons.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figures, RevTex4.

Eliciting a predatory response in the eastern corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus) using live and inanimate sensory stimuli: implications for managing invasive populations

North America's Eastern corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus) has been introduced to several islands throughout the Caribbean and Australasia where it poses a significant threat to native wildlife. Invasive snake control programs often involve trapping with live bait, a practice that, as well as being costly and labour intensive, raises welfare and ethical concerns. This study assessed corn snake response to live and inanimate sensory stimuli in an attempt to inform possible future trapping of the species and the development of alternative trap lures. We exposed nine individuals to sensory cues in the form of odour, visual, vibration and combined stimuli and measured the response (rate of tongue-flick [RTF]). RTF was significantly higher in odour and combined cues treatments, and there was no significant difference in RTF between live and inanimate cues during odour treatments. Our findings suggest chemical cues are of primary importance in initiating predation and that an inanimate odour stimulus, absent of simultaneous visual and vibratory cues, is a potential low-cost alternative trap lure for the control of invasive corn snake populations

Shapes, contact angles, and line tensions of droplets on cylinders

Using an interface displacement model we calculate the shapes of nanometer-size liquid droplets on homogeneous cylindrical surfaces. We determine effective contact angles and line tensions, the latter defined as excess free energies per unit length associated with the two contact lines at the ends of the droplet. The dependences of these quantities on the cylinder radius and on the volume of the droplets are analyzed.Comment: 26 pages, RevTeX, 10 Figure

The effectiveness of neighborhood watch

Background: Neighborhood watch (also known as block watch, apartment watch, home watch and community watch) grew out of a movement in the US during the late 1960s that promoted greater involvement of citizens in the prevention of crime. Since then, interest in neighborhood watch has grown considerably and recent estimates suggest that over a quarter of the UK population and over forty per cent of the US population live in areas covered by neighborhood watch schemes. Objectives: The primary aim of this review is to assess the effectiveness of neighborhood watch in reducing crime