Assessing self-responsibility in employability competencies development among Australian engineering students: introductory report

Self-responsibility study initially outlined the importance of ‘self-directed Adult learning’ either as the method or the outcome of education. Attention was given to the different interest of individual’s in accepting responsibility for their professional development. In this regard, several sources reveal the need for learners to take their own responsibility for developing employability competencies development. However, the concern must be expressed at the incompleteness of research into the personal responsibility for competency development

The construction and evaluation of four series of lessons to stimulate the flow of ideas in the creative writing of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade pupils.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Emergence as a subject of research, research methods, and engineering knowledge and practice

The paper discusses several views on the definition of the term “emergence” in relation to systems. The paper then discusses several approaches to research which have different purposes in order to identify the relationship of the research approach and the issue of emergence. Through this discussion it is possible to identify the relationship between research methodologies, engineering development and the issue of emergence. In particular, it is shown that the problem of emergence contains the core of a pathway to the engineering of systems

A biophysical model of prokaryotic diversity in geothermal hot springs

Recent field investigations of photosynthetic bacteria living in geothermal hot spring environments have revealed surprisingly complex ecosystems, with an unexpected level of genetic diversity. One case of particular interest involves the distribution along hot spring thermal gradients of genetically distinct bacterial strains that differ in their preferred temperatures for reproduction and photosynthesis. In such systems, a single variable, temperature, defines the relevant environmental variation. In spite of this, each region along the thermal gradient exhibits multiple strains of photosynthetic bacteria adapted to several distinct thermal optima, rather than the expected single thermal strain adapted to the local environmental temperature. Here we analyze microbiology data from several ecological studies to show that the thermal distribution field data exhibit several universal features independent of location and specific bacterial strain. These include the distribution of optimal temperatures of different thermal strains and the functional dependence of the net population density on temperature. Further, we present a simple population dynamics model of these systems that is highly constrained by biophysical data and by physical features of the environment. This model can explain in detail the observed diversity of different strains of the photosynthetic bacteria. It also reproduces the observed thermal population distributions, as well as certain features of population dynamics observed in laboratory studies of the same organisms

High Frequency of Mutations That Expand the Host Range of an RNA Virus

The ability of a virus population to colonize a novel host is predicted to depend on the equilibrium frequency of potential colonists (i.e., genotypes capable of infecting the novel host) in the source population. In this study, we investigated the determinants of the equilibrium frequency of potential colonists in the RNA bacteriophage φ6. We isolated 40 spontaneous mutants capable of infecting a novel Pseudomonas syringae host and sequenced their host attachment genes to identify the responsible mutations. We observed 16 different mutations in the host attachment gene and used a new statistical approach to estimate that 39 additional mutations were missed by our screen. Phenotypic and fitness assays confirmed that the proximate mechanism underlying host range expansion was an increase in the ability to attach to the novel host and that acquisition of this ability most often imposed a cost for growth rate on two standard hosts. Considered in a population genetic framework, our data suggest that host range mutations should exist in phage populations at an equilibrium frequency (3 × 10−4) that exceeds the phage mutation rate by more than two orders of magnitude. Thus, colonization of novel hosts is unlikely to be limited by an inability to produce appropriate mutations

Corticosteroid induced osteoporosis : guidelines for treatment

BACKGROUND: Last year, Australian Family Physician published Guidelines for Management of Postmenopausal Osteoporosis\u27. which were developed by Osteoporosis Australia. Recently, significant advances in our understanding of the treatment of corticosteroid osteoporosis have occurred.OBJECTIVE: The following guidelines also developed by Osteoporosis Australia, and supported by the National Asthma Campaign, are to help general practitioners identify those patients at risk of this problem and to provide information about current treatment strategies.DISCUSSION: Corticosteroids are widely used and effective agents for the control of many inflammatory diseases. Corticosteroid osteoporosis is a common problem associated with the long term high dose use of these medications. <br /

Hybrid Newton-type method for a class of semismooth equations

In this paper, we present a hybrid method for the solution of a class of composite semismooth equations encountered frequently in applications. The method is obtained by combining a generalized finite-difference Newton method to an inexpensive direct search method. We prove that, under standard assumptions, the method is globally convergent with a local rate of convergence which is superlinear or quadratic. We report also several numerical results obtained applying the method to suitable reformulations of well-known nonlinear complementarity problem

DEMONSTRATION OF THE ZIRFLEX PROCESS ON IRRADIATED PWR BLANKET FUEL

Fifteen PWR blanket fuel specimens varying in burnup from 80 to 1100 Mwd/ T, were declad with boiling 6 M NH/sub 4/F-1.0 M NH/sub 4/NO/sub 3/ before the UO/ sub 2/ core was dissolved in 10 M HNO/sub 3/. Uranium and plutonium losses to the decladding solution were less than 0.2% in nearly all runs. While these ments with unirradiated fuel, they are of the same order of magnitude as those obtained in the testing of the hot cell HF was used as the decladding reagent, the uranium and plutonium losses averaged 1.0 and 0.4%, respectively. (auth