Paper-work: what module guides have to say about assessment practices

Documents are usually circulated as carriers of transparent information. They can serve as evidence of accountability. In fact, they embody the most desired value of managerialism, where the culture of audit and compliance is fully served and delivered in written and textual form. This article explores assessment by attending to its principal instrument – the document – through which it is organised, monitored and implemented in higher education. It is an invitation to ‘see’ what documents, such as, module guides, ‘do’ for universities and the assessment practices of academics. Under close scrutiny, documents ‘do’ more than record and transfer information. Their associated paper-work expresses and reproduces norms, patterns of thoughts and work habits that are accepted and assumed to be shared in the prevailing outcome-based assessment systems of higher education. This article provides a critical account based on practice-oriented and material-semiotic approaches to assessment. It bears witness to the past and persistent norms and standards that are shaped by documents, paper-work, control, compliance and surveillance and less by pedagogical and student engagement

Rhythms of Academic Mobility

Academic mobility has been discursively circulated in at least two ways: as the cause of transnational identity capital and as the resource for knowledge transfer worldwide. Instead of a preoccupation with neoliberalist and human capital accounts, this article offers a rhythmic perspective and analysis that shifts the matter of academic mobility away from a purely discursive frame of reference. It explores the rhythms of a mobile and migrant academic in an auto-ethnographic and everyday account of human-body encounters. It engages with the unintended realities of the body as the border, especially when it comes to ethnicity and place of origin

Borders of Time: The temporalities of academic mobility

This article challenges the claim that highly skilled international academics who have obtained advanced degrees and transnational identities are offered almost seamless mobility. The state border or territory is not the only line that highly skilled academics must cross as international subjects of mobility. They experience a range of insecurities to do with their immigration status. This includes, but is not limited to, the waiting and processing times associated with immigration rules and visa requirements, which could temporarily suspend mobility rights. The notion of a temporal border is enacted to explore the insecurities that highly skilled academics face. Border crossing for highly skilled migrants is not just a matter of entry passing through territorial lines of nation-states. The border has a ‘thickness’ that stretches through time. Simply put, it takes time to fully cross borders

Quantitative EEG as a Prognostic Tool in Suspected Anti-N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor Antibody Encephalitis

PURPOSE: Anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (anti-NMDAR) encephalitis is a form of autoimmune encephalitis associated with EEG abnormalities. In view of the potentially severe outcomes, there is a need to develop prognostic tools to inform clinical management. The authors explored whether quantitative EEG was able to predict outcomes in patients with suspected anti-NMDAR encephalitis. METHODS: A retrospective, observational study was conducted of patients admitted to a tertiary clinical neuroscience center with suspected anti-NMDAR encephalitis. Peak power and peak frequency within delta (<4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8 - 13 Hz), and beta (13-30 Hz) frequency bands were calculated for the first clinical EEG recording. Outcome was based on the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score at 1 year after hospital discharge. Binomial logistic regression using backward elimination was performed with peak frequency and power, anti-NMDAR Encephalitis One-Year Functional Status score, age, and interval from symptom onset to EEG entered as predictors. RESULTS: Twenty patients were included (mean age 48.6 years, 70% female), of which 7 (35%) had a poor clinical outcome (mRS 2-6) at 1 year. There was no association between reported EEG abnormalities and outcome. The final logistic regression model was significant (χ2(1) = 6.35, P < 0.012) with peak frequency in the delta range (<4 Hz) the only retained predictor. The model explained 38% of the variance (Nagelkerke R2) and correctly classified 85% of cases. Higher peak frequency in the delta range was significantly associated (P = 0.04) with an increased likelihood of poor outcome. CONCLUSIONS: In this exploratory study, it was found that quantitative EEG on routinely collected EEG recordings in patients with suspected anti-NMDAR encephalitis was feasible. A higher peak frequency within the delta range was associated with poorer clinical outcome and may indicate anti-NMDAR-mediated synaptic dysfunction. Quantitative EEG may have clinical utility in predicting outcomes in patients with suspected NMDAR antibody encephalitis, thereby serving as a useful adjunct to qualitative EEG assessment; however, given the small sample size, replication in a larger scale is indicated

Efficient and Fast Synthesis of Few-Layer Black Phosphorus via Microwave-Assisted Liquid-Phase Exfoliation

High‐quality, few‐layer black‐phosphorus (BP) flakes are prepared in a common organic solvent with very short processing times using microwave‐assisted liquid‐phase exfoliation. A comprehensive range of analysis, combined with density‐functional theory calculations, confirms that the product prepared using the microwave technique is few‐layer BP with small‐ and large‐area flakes. The suspended exfoliated BP sheets show excellent stability, while samples dispersed onto silicon from the suspensions exhibit low oxidation levels after several days in ambient conditions. This straightforward synthesis method is facile, efficient, and extremely fast, and does not involve use of any surfactant or ultrasonication steps and will facilitate future development of phosphorene research

Surgical treatment of scoliosis in a rare disease: arthrogryposis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The reported incidence of scoliosis in arthrogryposis varies from 30% to 67% and, in most cases, the curves progress rapidly and become stiff from early age.</p> <p>The authors report six cases of scoliosis in arthrogryposis to assess the role of surgical treatment.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Six cases (3 males, 3 females; mean age at surgery 13.2 years) with arthrogryposis multiplex congenita associated with the characteristic amyoplasia were reviewed: they were operated on for scoliosis at the authors' Spine Surgery Department between 1987 and 2008.</p> <p>Surgery was performed using the Harrington-Luque instrumentation (2 cases), the Luque system (1), a hybrid segmental technique with hooks and screws (1) and spinal anchoring with pedicle screws (2).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The patients were clinically and radiologically reviewed at a mean follow-up of 4.2 years, ± 2.7 (range, 1 to 9 years). Three minor postoperative complications were encountered; a long-term pulmonary complication was seen in one case after reintervention and was successfully resolved after 10 days. Surgery was successful in the other 5 cases, where solid arthrodesis was achieved and no significant curve progression was observed at follow-up.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The experience acquired with the present case series leads the authors to assert that prompt action should be taken when treating such aggressive forms of scoliosis. In case of mild spinal deformities in arthrogryposis, brace treatment should be attempted, the evolution of the curves being unpredictable; however, when the curve exceeds 40° and presents with marked hyperkyphosis, hyperlordosis or pelvic obliquity, surgery should not be delayed.</p

On-chip manipulation of single photons from a diamond defect

Operating reconfigurable quantum circuits with single photon sources is a key goal of photonic quantum information science and technology. We use an integrated waveguide device containing directional couplers and a reconfigurable thermal phase controller to manipulate single photons emitted from a chromium related color center in diamond. Observation of both a wavelike interference pattern and particlelike sub-Poissionian autocorrelation functions demonstrates coherent manipulation of single photons emitted from the chromium related center and verifies wave particle duality. © 2013 American Physical Society

Environmental differences between sites control the diet and nutrition of the carnivorous plant Drosera rotundifolia

Background and aims: Carnivorous plants are sensitive to small changes in resource availability, but few previous studies have examined how differences in nutrient and prey availability affect investment in and the benefit of carnivory. We studied the impact of site-level differences in resource availability on ecophysiological traits of carnivory for Drosera rotundifolia L. Methods: We measured prey availability, investment in carnivory (leaf stickiness), prey capture and diet of plants growing in two bogs with differences in N deposition and plant available N: Cors Fochno (0.62 g m−2 yr.−1, 353 μg l−1), Whixall Moss (1.37 g m−2 yr.−1, 1505 μg l−1). The total N amount per plant and the contributions of prey/root N to the plants’ N budget were calculated using a single isotope natural abundance method. Results: Plants at Whixall Moss invested less in carnivory, were less likely to capture prey, and were less reliant on prey-derived N (25.5% compared with 49.4%). Actual prey capture did not differ between sites. Diet composition differed – Cors Fochno plants captured 62% greater proportions of Diptera. Conclusions: Our results show site-level differences in plant diet and nutrition consistent with differences in resource availability. Similarity in actual prey capture may be explained by differences in leaf stickiness and prey abundance