A sound education: using podcasts to develop study skills

Coping with the demands of academic study at university level can be a challenging experience for many students, and effective study skills are crucial in achieving academic success. However, librarians and teachers in higher education will know that it is not always easy to engage students in developing their study skills. How can we find new ways of stimulating the interest of our students? An innovative approach to teaching and the exploitation of new technologies can provide solutions and ideas. Podcasting has been very popular in recent years for delivering entertainment, news and other information, but podcasts are also extensively used in education, enabling students to watch or listen at a time that suits them – at home, at work or while travelling. The Skills for learning website was established over ten years ago as part of the library service at Leeds Metropolitan University to support the teaching and learning of study skills. The website offers students a wide range of resources including topics such as academic writing, time management, group skills, reflection and how to do research. There is also a team of tutors who provide workshops and tutorials. We felt that a podcast series could provide an alternative and flexible way of delivering study skills support that might appeal to a new audience. The podcasts could also be used as a stimulus in classroom teaching. As they are usually released episodically, we hoped that subscribers or visitors to our podcast page would become ‘hooked’ on the series and want to tune in to future podcasts. All the podcasts were created in-house by members of the Skills for learning team

Crater morphology and morphometry on the Uranian satellites

Fresh craters on the icy Uranian satellites exhibit a range of morphologies similar to craters on the icy satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. The general structural features found in the craters are described. Estimates of transition diameters from simple to complex crater morphologies are given for the five large Uranian satellites and 1985U1, and plotted with transition diameters on other bodies against surface gravity. Possible large-scale impacts are discussed

Mechanical and thermal properties of planetologically important ices

Two squences of ice composition were proposed for the icy satellites: a dense nebula model and a solar nebula model. Careful modeling of the structure, composition, and thermal history of satellites composed of these various ices requires quantitative information on the density, compressibility, thermal expansion, heat capacity, and thermal conductivity. Equations of state were fitted to the density data of the molecular ices. The unusual thermal and mechanical properties of the molecular and binary ices suggest a larger range of phenomena than previously anticipated, sufficiently complex perhaps to account for many of the unusual geologic phenomena found on the icy satellites

The scaling of secondary craters

Secondary craters are common features around fresh planetary-scale primary impact craters throughout most of the Solar System. They derive from the ejection phase of crater formation, thus secondary scaling relations provide constraints on parameters affecting ejection processes. Secondary crater fields typically begin at the edge of the continuous ejecta blankets (CEB) and extend out several crater radii. Secondaries tend to have rounded rims and bilateral symmetry about an axis through the primary crater's center. Prominent secondary chains can extend inward across the CEB close to the rim. A simple method for comparing secondary crater fields was employed: averaging the diameters and ranges from the center of the primary crater of the five largest craters in a secondary crater field. While not as much information is obtained about individual crater fields by this method as in more complete secondary field mapping, it facilitates rapid comparison of many secondary fields. Also, by quantifying a few specific aspects of the secondary crater field, this method can be used to construct scaling relations for secondary craters

Tectonic determinations of lithospheric thickness on Ganymede and Callisto

The concept of the Maxwell time of a viscoelastic material (4.5) is used in conjunction with calculated thermal profiles to evaluate the significance of tectonic estimates of lithospheric thickness. Thermal lithospheric thicknesses provide fundamental constraints on planetary thermal histories that complement the constraints provided by dateable surface deposits of endogenic origin. Lithospheric constraints are of particular value on the icy satellites where our understanding of both rheology and surface ages is considerably poorer than it is for the terrestrial planets. Certain extensional tectonic features can and have been used to estimate lithospheric thicknesses on Ganymede and Callisto. These estimates, however, refer to the depth of the elastic lithosphere defined by the zone of brittle failure. The relation between the elastic lithosphere and the thermal lithosphere (generally defined by the zone of conductive heat transport) is not straightforward, because the depth of brittle failure depends not only on the thermal profile, but also on rheology and strain rate (or the characteristic time over which stresses build towards failure). Characteristic time considerations are not trivial in this context because stresses generating brittle failure on the icy satellites may be produced by impacts, with characteristic times of seconds to days, or by geologic processes with time scales of hundreds of millions of years

Equal Protection - Property Taxes as a Method of Funding Public Education; San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez

Suit was brought in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas challenging the constitutionality of the Texas school financing system on the theory that it discriminated on a basis of wealth, permitting provision of a higher quality of education to be offered the children in property-rich school districts while residents pay a lower tax rate, thus denying equal protection of the law.\u27 The District Court found the laws forming this system unconstitutional on this basis. Appeal brought the case to the Supreme Court in October of 1972, where it was reversed

Male sexually coercive behaviour drives increased swimming efficiency in female guppies

Sexual coercion of females by males is widespread across sexually reproducing species. It stems from a conflict of interest over reproduction and exerts selective pressure on both sexes. For females, there is often a significant energetic cost of exposure to male sexually coercive behaviours. Our understanding of the efficiency of female resistance to male sexually coercive behaviour is key to understanding how sexual conflict contributes to population level dynamics and ultimately to the evolution of sexually antagonistic traits. Overlooked within this context are plastic physiological responses of traits within the lifetime of females that could moderate the energetic cost imposed by coercive males. Here, we examined whether conflict over the frequency and timing of mating between male and female guppies Poecilia reticulata can induce changes in swimming performance and aerobic capacity in females as they work to escape harassment by males. Females exposed to higher levels of harassment over a 5-month period used less oxygen to swim at a given speed, but displayed no difference in resting metabolic rate, maximal metabolic rate, maximal sustained swimming speed or aerobic scope compared to females receiving lower levels of harassment. The observed increase in swimming efficiency is at least partially related to differences in swimming mechanics, likely brought on by a training effect of increased activity, as highly harassed females spent less time performing pectoral fin-assisted swimming. Sexual conflict results in sexually antagonistic traits that impose a variety of costs, but our results show that females can reduce costs through phenotypic plasticity. It is also possible that phenotypic plasticity in swimming physiology or mechanics in response to sexual coercion can potentially give females more control over matings and affect which male traits are under selection