Embracing Diversity in Organisations by Promoting Identity

Recognising diversity in organisations through enabling the promotion of individual identity is key to successful participation and learning. This paper will discuss ethnographic data from a UK debt recovery organisation that explored the lives of the debt collectors. Making use of sociocultural theory, the organisation was constructed as a community of practice. In seeking to understand the mechanisms of learning, it emerged that relationships that were centred on learning and knowledge sharing were key to employees understanding the practices of the organisation. The tacit, nuanced nature of knowledge in this organisation relied on functioning learning relationships and an environment that encouraged the promotion of individual identity to enable successful participation. Employees assumed the roles of more learned other and apprentice, supporting Vygotskian (1978) notions of learning through relationship. The implications of this for organisations are that a blueprint for learning within organisation cannot be created and, instead, businesses should value the diversity of individual identity

Perceptions and experiences of cyberbullying amongst high school students: an interpretive phenomenological analysis.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Cyberbullying is an emerging phenomenon among children and adolescents worldwide. Although the existing literature on cyberbullying is expanding rapidly, there is a lack of qualitative research, particularly in South Africa, which explores adolescents’ perceptions of cyberbullying. Qualitative research allows researchers to uncover the important discourses, which undergird cyberbullying, and explore the nuances of the phenomenon, both of which are often less visible in large-scale quantitative research. The purpose of this study was to explore experiences and perceptions of cyberbullying amongst high school students from an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) perspective. These experiences and perceptions were obtained through one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with six high school students from a school on the South Coast of KwaZulu-Natal. Interview transcripts were analysed using IPA and this approach allowed the researcher to obtain a rich description of the participants’ lived experiences and the processes by which they made sense of their experiences. Six super-ordinate themes were obtained from the data: (1) Perceptions and Characteristics of Cyberbullying, (2) Parent Monitoring, (3) Cyberbullying vs. Traditional Bullying, (4) Perceived Cyber Bystander Motivations, (5) Perceived Cyber Bully Motivation, and finally (6) Individual, Contextual and Societal Factors. Each super-ordinate theme consisted of several sub-themes, which captured and described the participants’ lived experiences. The research findings suggested that although there are similarities between traditional bullying and cyberbullying, the latter appears to have a greater psychological impact on victims. Several factors associated with online activity appear to be appealing to cyberbullies and they are subsequently motivated to participate in bullying online. Furthermore, the cyber bystanders seem to play a passive role in the phenomenon, failing to intervene. This study contributes to the limited literature on this topic available in South Africa, and produces a detailed and comprehensive understanding of the emotions, experiences and perceptions of high school students involved in cyberbullying.Student on university database as Sarah Jane O'Connell

Emplacement of the Little Minch Sill Complex, Sea of Hebrides Basin, NW Scotland

Acknowledgements The work contained in this paper contains work conducted during a PhD study undertaken as part of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Oil & Gas [grant number RG12649-12] and is fully funded by NERC whose support is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to IHS Markit for provision of, and permission to publish an example from their 2D seismic data volumes and gravity and magnetics database, and to Schlumberger for the donation of Petrel seismic interpretation software licences to Aberdeen University. We acknowledge the UKOilandGasData.com website owned by UK National Data Repository administered by Schlumberger, for access to the seismic data volumes and released UK well database. Stephen Jones and Thomas Phillips are thanked for considered and constructive reviews which helped improved and broaden the appeal of the paper. Stephen Daly is thanked for giving helpful editorial steer and comments on how to improve paper. Funding This work was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (RG12649-12). Dougal Jerram is partly supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Center of Excellence funding scheme, project 223272 (CEED)Peer reviewedPostprin

Enabling retention: processes and strategies for improving student retention in university-based enabling programs: final report 2013

This project was funded by the Australian Teaching and Learning Council Ltd and, latterly, the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching, to investigate the nature and causes of student attrition in enabling programs and, in particular, to determine any similarities and differences in these processes in undergraduate programs, and to recommend measures to enhance student retention. The project was undertaken by academics from five Australian universities prominent in the delivery of enabling programs: The University of Newcastle (lead institution), the University of Southern Queensland, the University of South Australia, the University of New England and Edith Cowan University. These programs represent a cross-section of Australian university-based enabling programs

Modeling and Reduction of High Frequency Scatter Noise at LIGO Livingston

The sensitivity of aLIGO detectors is adversely affected by the presence of noise caused by light scattering. Low frequency seismic disturbances can create higher frequency scattering noise adversely impacting the frequency band in which we detect gravitational waves. In this paper, we analyze instances of a type of scattered light noise we call "Fast Scatter" that is produced by motion at frequencies greater than 1 Hz, to locate surfaces in the detector that may be responsible for the noise. We model the phase noise to better understand the relationship between increases in seismic noise near the site and the resulting Fast Scatter observed. We find that mechanical damping of the Arm Cavity Baffles (ACBs) led to a significant reduction of this noise in recent data. For a similar degree of seismic motion in the 1-3 Hz range, the rate of noise transients is reduced by a factor of ~ 50.Comment: 23 pages, 19 figure

Geology and Petroleum Prospectivity of the Sea of Hebrides Basin and Minch Basin, Offshore Northwest Scotland

Funding: This work was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (RG12649-12). Acknowledgements: The work contained in this paper contains work conducted during a PhD study undertaken as part of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Oil and Gas. We are also grateful to IHS Markit for provision of, and permission to publish examples from, their 2D seismic data volumes and gravity and magnetics database, and to Schlumberger for their donation of Petrel seismic interpretation software licences to Aberdeen University. We also thank Geognostics for the kind permission to use the Frogtech Geoscience, 2016 depth to basement map (SEEBASE) of offshore northwest Scotland. We acknowledge the UKOilandGasData.com website, owned by UK National Data Repository administered by Schlumberger, for access to the seismic data volumes and released UK well database. We are also grateful to the UK National Onshore Data Library who kindly provided seismic data (UKOGL request 100891 and 100890) to the University of Aberdeen. Dr. Iain Scotchman and Dr. Clayton Grove are thanked for constructive and helpful reviews, which have improved this paper. Laura-Jane would also like to personally thank the late Professor Bernard Owens, who passed away in July 2019, for his informative discussion on Carboniferous outliers along the west coast early on in her PhD. The views held within this paper do not necessarily represent the views of IHS Markit.Peer reviewedPostprin

Separation of rhodium from iridium through synergistic solvent extraction

There are currently few effective processes for the solvent extraction of rhodium from hydrochloric acid streams, and none that allow rhodium to be selectively extracted over iridium. Realizing this goal could allow rhodium to be recovered earlier in a typical platinum group metal (PGM) refining flowsheet and reduce the environmental impact of PGM refining. In this work, we show that a synergistic combination of a tert-alkyl primary amine LA and various inner-sphere ligands L can be used to recover rhodium via the complex [RhCl5L].HLA2. Although we show that rhodium is extracted by several extractant combinations, it is only readily stripped from the amine/amide synergistic mixture. As this extraction relies on the inner-sphere coordination of the amide to the metal, this process also demonstrates a route to obtain preferential extraction of rhodium over more inert iridium chloridometalates under industrially relevant conditions.</p

Cultivar Differences and Impact of Plant-Plant Competition on Temporal Patterns of Nitrogen and Biomass Accumulation

Current niche models cannot explain multi-species plant coexistence in complex ecosystems. One overlooked explanatory factor is within-growing season temporal dynamism of resource capture by plants. However, the timing and rate of resource capture are themselves likely to be mediated by plant-plant competition. This study used Barley (Hordeum sp.) as a model species to examine the impacts of intra-specific competition, specifically inter- and intra-cultivar competition on the temporal dynamics of resource capture. Nitrogen and biomass accumulation of an early and late cultivar grown in isolation, inter- or intra- cultivar competition were investigated using sequential harvests. We did not find changes in the temporal dynamics of biomass accumulation in response to competition. However, peak nitrogen accumulation rate was significantly delayed for the late cultivar by 14.5 days and advanced in the early cultivar by 0.5 days when in intra-cultivar competition; there were no significant changes when in inter-cultivar competition. This may suggest a form of kin recognition as the target plants appeared to identify their neighbors and only responded temporally to intra-cultivar competition. The Relative Intensity Index found competition occurred in both the intra- and inter- cultivar mixtures, but a positive Land Equivalence Ratio value indicated complementarity in the inter-cultivar mixtures compared to intra-cultivar mixtures. The reason for this is unclear but may be due to the timing of the final harvest and may not be representative of the relationship between the competing plants. This study demonstrates neighbor-identity-specific changes in temporal dynamism in nutrient uptake. This contributes to our fundamental understanding of plant nutrient dynamics and plant-plant competition whilst having relevance to sustainable agriculture. Improved understanding of within-growing season temporal dynamism would also improve our understanding of coexistence in complex plant communities