1,867 research outputs found
An Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of The Higher Education Anatomy Educational Software Mastering Anatomy & Physiology
Higher education in the 21st century contends with a greater variety of conditions than ever before. Classes can operate in a full-time, part-time, hybrid, seated, or online format. This diversity in modality can lead to inconsistent curricula with inconsistent rigor. Instructors are challenged with designing a curriculum they believe to be rigorous but at the same time engaging to their students. This research focused on the evaluation of the higher education software program Mastering Anatomy & Physiology (MAP) from Pearson Education. The research included an analysis of student scores who had repeated an identical introductory anatomy course in a strictly online format. Quantitative data for this research included student performance on identical assessments over a period of two and a half calendar years, or eight academic grading periods. The research also included data collected from a focus group which consisted of anatomy instructors who have used the software as a critical part of their course instruction. The results of this research were inconclusive. Some data suggested that MAP is an effective tool in online instruction of anatomy curricula while other data suggested it had little/no effect. Additional studies of the software including larger sample sizes are recommended
Native and non-native sources of carbohydrate correlate with abundance of an invasive ant
Invasive species threaten many ecological communities and predicting which communities and sites are invasible remains a key goal of invasion ecology. Although invasive ants often reach high abundances in association with plant-based carbohydrate resources, the source and provenance of these resources are rarely investigated. We characterized carbohydrate resources across ten sites with a range of yellow crazy ant abundance in Arnhem Land, Australia and New Caledonia to determine whether yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) abundance and trophic position correlate with carbohydrate availability, as well as the relative importance of native and non-native sources of carbohydrates to ant diet. In both locations, measures of yellow crazy ant abundance strongly positively correlated with carbohydrate availability, particularly honeydew production, the number of tended hemipterans, and the number of plants with tended hemipterans. In Arnhem Land, 99.6% of honeydew came from native species, whereas in New Caledonia, only 0.2% of honeydew was produced by a native hemipteran. More honeydew was available in Australia due to three common large-bodied species of Auchenorrhyncha honeydew producers (treehoppers and leafhoppers). Yellow crazy ant trophic position declined with increasing yellow crazy ant abundance indicating that in greater densities the ants are obtaining more of their diet from plant-derived resources, including honeydew and extrafloral nectar. The relationships between yellow crazy ant abundance and carbohydrate availability could not be explained by any of the key environmental variables we measured at our study sites. Our results demonstrate that the positive correlation between yellow crazy ant abundance and honeydew production is not contingent upon the provenance of the hemipterans. Native sources of carbohydrate may play an underappreciated role in greatly increasing community invasibility by ants
Nutrient management on the Lincoln University dairy farm: "nutrient budgeting for efficient production"
Nutrient management plays an important role in any dairy farming system. Soil fertility
status and fertiliser inputs are key drivers of pasture and animal production, whilst fertiliser
represents a significant annual cost to the farm. At the same time, intensive agricultural systems
also face the challenge of minimising or reducing nutrient loss in order to maintain
environmental quality. Therefore 'best practice' may involve nutrient management in terms of
balancing production, economic, environmental and efficiency goals. With ever increasing
regulation and compliance requirements for the New Zealand farmer, best practice nutrient
management will play an increasingly important role in achieving long term sustainability of the
farming system.
This paper gives an overview of the use of nutrient budgeting as a method of effective
and efficient on-farm nutrient management. The paper will focus on nutrient management on
the Lincoln University Dairy Farm (LUDF), including soil fertility monitoring and targets, the
decision making process and the use of the nutrient budget output. Aspects of environmental
research on the LUDF will also be discussed, including the quantification of nitrogen (N) losses,
and results from research into nitrogen loss mitigation technology (eco-n nitrification inhibitor)
Lime, phosphorus and sulphur response of French serradella (Ornithopus sativus) grown in an acid upland soil
Soil acidity severely restricts legume persistence and growth in grazed upland agriculture in New Zealand. An alternative and potentially acid tolerant forage legume, French serradella (Ornithopus sativus), was examined in a climate controlled experiment. Plants were grown for 48 weeks in an acid (pHH20 4.9) upland soil and shoot yield measured every 8 weeks. Treatments were fully replicated combinations of lime (CaCO3; 0, 2, 4 or 8 t ha-1), phosphorus (P; 0, 50, 150 or 500 mg P L soil-1) plus various controls. Shoot yield varied significantly between lime treatments (P < 0.001), but were not strongly affected by P rate. Importantly, yields on the unlimed control treatments were 85% of maximum yield, suggesting that high yields are potentially achievable on even very acid soils. french serradella grew 16.9 g DM pot-1compared to 5.3 g DM pot-1 for the commonly grown reference species, subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum). French serradella showed significant potential as a new pasture legume suitable for acidic upland soils
Anomalous heat transport in binary hard-sphere gases
Ā© 2019 American Physical Society. Equilibrium and nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (MD) are used to investigate the thermal conductivity of binary hard-sphere fluids. It is found that the thermal conductivity of a mixture can not only lie outside the series and parallel bounds set by their pure component values, but can lie beyond even the pure component fluid values. The MD simulations verify that revised Enskog theory can accurately predict nonequilibrium thermal conductivities at low densities and this theory is applied to explore the model parameter space. Only certain mass and size ratios are found to exhibit conductivity enhancements above the parallel bounds and dehancement below the series bounds. The anomalous dehancement is experimentally accessible in helium-hydrogen gas mixtures and a review of the literature confirms the existence of mixture thermal conductivity below the series bound and even below the pure fluid values, in accordance with the predictions of revised Enskog theory. The results reported here may reignite the debate in the nanofluid literature on the possible existence of anomalous thermal conductivities outside the series and parallel bounds as this Rapid Communication demonstrates they are a fundamental feature of even simple fluids
Critical States in Disordered Superconducting Films
When subject to a pair-breaking perturbation, the pairing susceptibility of a
disordered superconductor exhibits substantial long-ranged mesoscopic
fluctuations. Focusing on a thin film subject to a parallel magnetic field, it
is proposed that the quantum phase transition to the bulk superconducting
condensate may be preempted by the formation of a glass-like phase with
multi-fractal correlations of a complex order parameter. Although not
universal, we argue that such behavior may be a common feature of quantum
critical phenomena in disordered environments.Comment: 7 pages, 1 eps figur
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