ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE AND CAPACITY FOR COMMUNITY-LED DEVELOPMENT

Financial Economics,

Interactive teaching units in physics

The concept of the interactive teaching unit first emerged in the late 1970s (Reid,1978; Johnstone and Reid, 1979) arising from a major research project which wasseeking to explore the development of attitudes relating to the themes covered in the study of chemistry. From this project, a sound educational underpinning wasdeveloped (Johnstone and Reid, 1981).Much later, the use of interactive units has been extended to skills development, social issues awareness and the applications of science subjects in real-life situations (Reid, 1999; Clarkeburn et al., 2000; Lennon, et al., 2002). Sets of units were developed in chemistry and biology and, more recently, a range of four teaching units in physics was developed under LTSN funding

The Eurovision St Andrews collection of photographs

This report describes the Eurovision image collection compiled for the ImageCLEF (Cross Language Evaluation Forum) evaluation exercise. The image collection consists of around 30,000 photographs from the collection provided by the University of St Andrews Library. The construction and composition of this unique image collection are described, together with the necessary information to obtain and use the image collection

The Thermal Degradation of Polymer Blends of Polyacrylonitrile

The introductory chapter reviews both general aspects of polymer degradation and, in more detail, the relationships between the chemical structure and thermal stability of vinyl polymers. A brief description of polymer blends and their usage is given together with a survey of recent work upon the thermal behaviour of such systems. Chapter 2 summarizes the experimental aspects of the work. The first section deals with the preparation and purification of polymers used in subsequent chapters. The second part described the thermal analysis techniques and procedures which were used in examination of both polymers and polymer blends. The thermal degradation of polyacrylonitrile and of blends of polyacrylonitrile and polymethylmethacrylate is studied in detail in Chapter 3. The decomposition of polymethylmethacrylate is shown to undergo significant changes upon blending. The effect has been found to vary with blend composition and has been attributed to reaction with gaseous volatiles evolved from polyacrylonitrile decomposition. The rate of coloration and thermal degradation of nitrile polymers has been previously shown to be influenced by both the nature and amount of initiating structures either within the polymer chain or present as additives. In Chapter 4 the degradation of polyacrylonitrile in the presence of chlorinated polymers is found to be similarly influenced and in each system examined separation of the exothermic nitrile oligomerization process from chain scission reactions is evident. In Chapter 5 polyacrylonitrile blends containing polystyrene and polymethylacrylate are studied. Molecular mass results obtained after isothermal degradation of the blends reveal a reduction in chain scission which is consistent with a reduction in intermolecular chain transfer reactions between degrading polystyrene and polymethylacrylate. The thermal behaviour of both polymethacrylonitrile and blends of polyacrylonitrile and polymethacrylonitrile is examined in Chapter 6. The results of blend degradation indicate nitrile oligomerization to occur in polymethacrylonitrile accompanied by a reduction in the evolution of methacrylonitrile. A range of methylmethacrylate-methacrylamide copolymer compositions is discussed in Chapter 7. Thermal decomposition is shown to result in cyclization reactions between adjacent comonomer units which effectively reduces the methacrylate monomer yield. Similarities are drawn between copolymer behaviour and polymethylmethacrylate degradation in the presence of polyacrylonitrile

Static and dynamic structure in design patterns

technical reportDesign patterns are a valuable mechanism for emphasizing structure, capturing design expertise, and facilitating restructuring of software systems. Patterns are typically applied in the context of an object-oriented language and are implemented so that the pattern participants correspond to object instances that are created and connected at run-time. This paper describes a complementary realization of design patterns, in which the pattern participants are statically instantiated and connected components. Our approach separates the static parts of the software design from the dynamic parts of the system behavior. This separation makes the software design more amenable to analysis, enabling more effective and domain specific detection of system design errors, prediction of run-time behavior, and more effective optimization. This technique is applicable to imperative, functional, and object-oriented languages: we have extended C, Scheme, and Java with our component model. In this paper, we illustrate this approach in the context of the OSKit, a collection of operating system components written in C

Social Capital of Last Resort: The Role of Religion, Family, and Trust among People with Low Socio-Economic Status

This qualitative study finds evidence that poverty and homelessness undermine primary social relationships for many low-income people, eroding social capital, and that generalized trust may not be a good proxy for social capital, at least among a largely homeless population. This study also finds a surprising number of references to God, religion and spirituality among largely homeless populations when talking about their social networks, which addresses literature suggesting that church affiliation and religion may be unique in the formation of social capital. Twelve focus groups were conducted with a total 46 participants self-identified as low-income to explore social capital. A simplified model of the network- and resource-based theories of social capital was used to ask low-income participants who they would place in their social circles and what types of resources, demands and expectations arise out of the people in each of the circles. The study also used survey-type questions about generalized trust to generate discussion about levels of trust among participants and reasons for those levels of trust, as well as asking about current and past membership in various associations to address civic engagement. There was no evidence of a relationship between available resources through social networks and their reported trust levels