Towards the Integration of Key Skills (KS) into an Undergraduate Curriculum in an Irish Higher Education Institution (HEI)

This paper addresses the distinct area of ‘Key Skills’ and specifically investigates the ‘integration’ of same into Undergraduate Degree programmes in an Irish HEI. The three major influences of such an integration approach are inter alia: The influence at an institutional level The individual academic level and, The student factors. These three factors can inhibit or facilitate integration and as such the inhibiting and facilitating aspects of each are dealt with.The paper also addresses the specific example of an Irish HEI and the possible challenges involved in incorporating such key skills, taking cognizance of the three main influences. Writers like Chada [1] (2006) observe that HEI’s are currently under tremendous pressure to develop abilities in their students that are in some way transferable to contexts outside their field of study and posit that: “if the provision of skills development is to incorporate knowledge and understanding, analysis, creativity and evaluation, then integration of skills is the only viable option”. (Chada, 2006, p.21) [1]. In Ireland, education budget cutbacks in Higher Education (HE) are increasingly leading to demands that the sector must be accountable and able to justify its value to the country from a purely economic perspective. From DIT’s perspective, the integration of these required skills can best be achieved by integrating the requisite skills-set into and across all programme modules on a consistent basis. The issues involved in making this happen in this HEI are explored. This working paper signposts a research process presently being utilised to explore the influences of the aforementioned key pillars in the learning of key skills in an Irish HEI. As such, the reader is presented with emergent work and is invited to contribute to this early stage of my research process

Advanced superalloy protection systems evaluation Final report

Metalliding parameters developed for sequential deposition of manganese, aluminum, and tantalum alloys as protective coatings for superalloy

Light-controlled resistors provide quadrature signal rejection for high-gain servo systems

Servo amplifier feedback system, in which the phase sensitive detection, low pass filtering, and multiplication functions required for quadrature rejection, are preformed by light-controlled photoresistors, eliminates complex circuitry. System increases gain, improves signal-to-noise ratio, and eliminates the necessity for compensation

Google+ vs Facebook: The Comparison

Social networks are a varyingly popular tool used to connect with friends, colleagues and/or family. Recently, Facebook has been at the top of the social network food chain, with Bebo and MySpace decreasing in users and the huge increase of users joining Facebook in such a short time. Google have just recently launched Google+, a social networking site. This is not the first time that Google have attempted to break into the social networking scene but it is possible that these failed attempts may have taught them something. As Facebook’s user base is extremely diverse, spreading across different countries, races, ages, professions, and interests, to name a few, this network is a good model to compare new rival Google+ to. Google+ has set out to do the same things as Facebook but better to try and steal away some of that high power and necessity that Facebook has gained. Facebook has News feed, Google has Stream. Facebook has Lists, Google has circles. Facebook has like’s, Google has +1. Facebook accounts for 10% of overall internet usage. This paper will look at various comparables between the two social networks and analyse the better functionality, design and ease of use. It will then conclude a verdict on which is the better social network to use overall.

Simulation of organismic morphology and behavior by synthetic poly-alpha-amino acids

Simulation of organismic morphology and behavior by synthetic poly-amino acid

Fk506 “rescue” for resistant rejection of renal allografts under primary cyclosporine immunosuppression

Seventy-seven patients with ongoing acute rejection on initial CsA therapy were converted to FK506 to attempt graft salvage. Fifty-nine patients had undergone primary transplantation and 18 had been retransplanted; there were 52 cadaveric and 25 living-donor transplants. The indications for conversion to FK506 were ongoing, biopsy-confirmed rejection in all patients, including vascular rejection in 20. The median interval to rescue was 2 months (range 2 weeks to 36 months) after transplantation. Sixty-one of the 77 patients (79%) had already received one or more courses of an antilymphocyte preparation (OKT3: n=33; ALG or ATG: n=1; OKT3+ALG/ATG: n=27). Of the 77 patients, 57 (74%) have been successfully rescued and still have functioning grafts with a mean follow-up of 14 months, with a mean serum creatinine of 2.35±0.97 mg/dl. Eighteen patients were already dialysis-dependent at the time of conversion to FK506; of these, 9 (50%) were successfully salvaged and have a mean serum creatinine of 2.3 mg/dl. Of the 61 patients previously treated with antilymphocyte preparations, 48 (79%) were rescued. In those salvaged, prednisone doses have been lowered from 22.2±7.2 mg/day preconversion to 7.5±5.6 mg/day postconversion, and 12 patients are on FK506 monotherapy. In nondiabetics, mean serum glucose was 101.4±20.5 mg/dl preconversion and 93.2±22 postconversion (P=0.07), uric acid 7.3±2.3 and 7.1±1.5 mg/dl (P=0.53), and triglycerides 199.2±101.6 and 167.2±106.4 mg/dl (P=0.06). Cholesterol levels were significantly lower following FK conversion (207.7±46.5 mg/dl pre. vs. 188.3±39.7 post, P=0.007). FK506 is capable of salvaging renal allografts with ongoing acute rejection on CsA therapy, even when antilymphocyte preparations have been ineffective. © 1994 by Williams and Wilkins