DUMP: A Database of Useful MCQs for Physics

This communication describes the output of a Development Project awarded in 2005 to fund a collaborative project between the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews. The project aimed to take an in-house collection of over 400 multiple choice / multiple response questions on topics in introductory Physics (gathered and developed over many years of teaching) and publish them in an interactive, online, browsable collection, freely available to educators to use as a resource for their teaching. The system that we have created has functionality similar to online shopping or auction sites such as Amazon and eBay (without the cost!). In this communication we will outline some of the rationale that led us to attempt this project, describe the issues and challenges for the project, illustrate ways the system can be used to support teaching and learning and conclude with thoughts for the future progress and sustainability of such systems, including plans for the continuing development of the output from this project

How Design of Online Learning Materials can Accommodate the Heterogeneity in Student Abilities, Aptitudes and Aspirations

We describe the challenges facing higher education in terms of the heterogeneity of the cohort of students that arrive at university. The reasons why such diversity exists are many: students differ widely in terms of their preparedness for study at university, their degree choice aspirations and the issue of motivation for study of a particular subject. We illustrate how well-designed e-learning course materials can support many of the particular facets of heterogeneity by offering an inherently non-linear pathway through a collection of materials, so as to offer a degree of personalisation of the learning experience.\ud Drawing on our own experience of several years’ development of extensive online materials to support the traditional teaching methods of a large first year physics course at the University of Edinburgh, we highlight three aspects of the design of e-learning materials that facilitate this personalisation. These are: a highly granular source of individual learning objects; online constructions (‘one-downs’ and ‘popups’) that provide additional depth and breadth of material; and the ability to import external resources adapted to the local context

Archaeal abundance in post-mortem ruminal digesta may help predict methane emissions from beef cattle

The Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health and SRUC are funded by the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) of the Scottish Government. The project was supported by DEFRA and DA funded Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Inventory Research Platform. Our thanks are due to the excellent support staff at the SRUC Beef Research Centre, Edinburgh, also to Graham Horgan of BioSS, Aberdeen, for conducting multivariate analysis.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Carbon Monitoring System Flux Net Biosphere Exchange 2020 (CMS-Flux NBE 2020)

Here we present a global and regionally resolved terrestrial net biosphere exchange (NBE) dataset with corresponding uncertainties between 2010-2018: Carbon Monitoring System Flux Net Biosphere Exchange 2020 (CMS-Flux NBE 2020). It is estimated using the NASA Carbon Monitoring System Flux (CMS-Flux) top-down flux inversion system that assimilates column CO2 observations from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) and NASA\u27s Observing Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2). The regional monthly fluxes are readily accessible as tabular files, and the gridded fluxes are available in NetCDF format. The fluxes and their uncertainties are evaluated by extensively comparing the posterior CO2 mole fractions with CO2 observations from aircraft and the NOAA marine boundary layer reference sites. We describe the characteristics of the dataset as the global total, regional climatological mean, and regional annual fluxes and seasonal cycles. We find that the global total fluxes of the dataset agree with atmospheric CO2 growth observed by the surface-observation network within uncertainty. Averaged between 2010 and 2018, the tropical regions range from close to neutral in tropical South America to a net source in Africa; these contrast with the extra-tropics, which are a net sink of 2.5±0.3 Gt C/year. The regional satellite-constrained NBE estimates provide a unique perspective for understanding the terrestrial biosphere carbon dynamics and monitoring changes in regional contributions to the changes of atmospheric CO2 growth rate. The gridded and regional aggregated dataset can be accessed at http://doi.org/10.25966/4v02-c391 (Liu et al., 2020).

Mapping hydroxyl variability throughout the global remote troposphere via synthesis of airborne and satellite formaldehyde observations

The hydroxyl radical (OH) fuels tropospheric ozone production and governs the lifetime of methane and many other gases. Existing methods to quantify global OH are limited to annual and global-to-hemispheric averages. Finer resolution is essential for isolating model deficiencies and building process-level understanding. In situ observations from the Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission demonstrate that remote tropospheric OH is tightly coupled to the production and loss of formaldehyde (HCHO), a major hydrocarbon oxidation product. Synthesis of this relationship with satellite-based HCHO retrievals and model-derived HCHO loss frequencies yields a map of total-column OH abundance throughout the remote troposphere (up to 70% of tropospheric mass) over the first two ATom missions (August 2016 and February 2017). This dataset offers unique insights on near-global oxidizing capacity. OH exhibits significant seasonality within individual hemispheres, but the domain mean concentration is nearly identical for both seasons (1.03 ± 0.25 × 10^6 cm^(−3)), and the biseasonal average North/South Hemisphere ratio is 0.89 ± 0.06, consistent with a balance of OH sources and sinks across the remote troposphere. Regional phenomena are also highlighted, such as a 10-fold OH depression in the Tropical West Pacific and enhancements in the East Pacific and South Atlantic. This method is complementary to budget-based global OH constraints and can help elucidate the spatial and temporal variability of OH production and methane loss