Success and Failure in Tertiary Education, with Reference to School Attended : A Re-Examination

The first part of this paper reviews the research evidence accumulated to date which bears on the question, How useful is information about a student\u27s secondary school for an assessment of his likelihood of succeeding in tertiary studies? Knowledge of whether a student entering university or college comes from a State, Catholic or other Private school appears to be useful to personnel making admissions decisions. The differing academic performance of students from these three types of schools is largely, unrelated to faculty choice, tertiary entrance qualifications, aptitude and intelligence. The way a student approaches his University or college work seems to depend instead on how he has been taught and the way he has been expected to study at school, given adequate ability and opportunity. The second part of the paper re-examines this idea and presents the results of a multivariate study of University Arts and Science students, and student teachers in a College of Advanced Education. Information about a student\u27s school of entry was useful when added to matriculation score for selected faculties but the location of the school should also be taken into account. It is tentatively suggested that this latter variable modifies to some extent the school or teaching factor first proposed by Hohne in 1951

Study Behaviour and Tertiary Academic Achievement

Sufficient time and effort expended in study have been shown to be essential pre-requisites to satisfactory examination performance at tertiary level. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the relationship between academic achievement and the variables of student attitudes toward study, effort expended in studying, the availability of a study room and scholarship status. All these variables were significantly related to examination performance during various years of the courses studied. The effects of the study variables operated differentially for males and females in the sample

Modeling and Compensation of Nonlinear Distortion in Horn Loudspeakers

Horn loaded compression drivers are widely used in the area where high sound pressure levels together with good directivity characteristics are needed. Major disadvantage of this kind of drivers is the considerable amount of nonlinear distortion. Due to the quite high air pressures in the driver the air is driven into its nonlinear range. This paper describes a technique to reduce the distortion caused by this phenomenon. Using a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), a feedforward compensation technique, based on an equivalent lumped parameter circuit, is implemented and tested in real–time in series with the loudspeaker. Measurement and simulation results are given. The overall conclusion is that a distortion reduction is obtained in the frequency span from 600 to 1050 Hz

Attitude Change in Response to an In-Service Teacher Education Programme

How can I tell how successful this course has been? is becoming an increasingly common question in tertiary education. This interest in tertiary teaching and learning is reflected in the fact that one-half of all Australian universities now have tertiary teaching units. There are a number of reasons why evaluation is important. Firstly, discrepancies between the actual and the ideal situation can be detected, causes identified and corrective measures instituted at all stages of the evaluative model, to serve the interests of increased efficiency and improved staff and student satisfaction. Secondly, courses which are continually being evaluated are better able to meet changing demands from students, from the society which the educational institution is serving, and also better able to adjust to internal changes in staff numbers and expertise. Thirdly, evaluation properly conducted can provide a statement of accountability

Recombination dramatically speeds up evolution of finite populations

We study the role of recombination, as practiced by genetically-competent bacteria, in speeding up Darwinian evolution. This is done by adding a new process to a previously-studied Markov model of evolution on a smooth fitness landscape; this new process allows alleles to be exchanged with those in the surrounding medium. Our results, both numerical and analytic, indicate that for a wide range of intermediate population sizes, recombination dramatically speeds up the evolutionary advance

Analytical study of the effect of recombination on evolution via DNA shuffling

We investigate a multi-locus evolutionary model which is based on the DNA shuffling protocol widely applied in \textit{in vitro} directed evolution. This model incorporates selection, recombination and point mutations. The simplicity of the model allows us to obtain a full analytical treatment of both its dynamical and equilibrium properties, for the case of an infinite population. We also briefly discuss finite population size corrections

Mutator Dynamics on a Smooth Evolutionary Landscape

We investigate a model of evolutionary dynamics on a smooth landscape which features a ``mutator'' allele whose effect is to increase the mutation rate. We show that the expected proportion of mutators far from equilibrium, when the fitness is steadily increasing in time, is governed solely by the transition rates into and out of the mutator state. This results is a much faster rate of fitness increase than would be the case without the mutator allele. Near the fitness equilibrium, however, the mutators are severely suppressed, due to the detrimental effects of a large mutation rate near the fitness maximum. We discuss the results of a recent experiment on natural selection of E. coli in the light of our model.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Joint evolution of multiple social traits: a kin selection analysis

General models of the evolution of cooperation, altruism and other social behaviours have focused almost entirely on single traits, whereas it is clear that social traits commonly interact. We develop a general kin-selection framework for the evolution of social behaviours in multiple dimensions. We show that whenever there are interactions among social traits new behaviours can emerge that are not predicted by one-dimensional analyses. For example, a prohibitively costly cooperative trait can ultimately be favoured owing to initial evolution in other (cheaper) social traits that in turn change the cost-benefit ratio of the original trait. To understand these behaviours, we use a two-dimensional stability criterion that can be viewed as an extension of Hamilton's rule. Our principal example is the social dilemma posed by, first, the construction and, second, the exploitation of a shared public good. We find that, contrary to the separate one-dimensional analyses, evolutionary feedback between the two traits can cause an increase in the equilibrium level of selfish exploitation with increasing relatedness, while both social (production plus exploitation) and asocial (neither) strategies can be locally stable. Our results demonstrate the importance of emergent stability properties of multidimensional social dilemmas, as one-dimensional stability in all component dimensions can conceal multidimensional instability

A 0.5 MW/10 Hz option of the spallation source AUSTRON

In 1993-94 a feasibility study for AUSTRON, a neutron spallation source, was made on behalf of the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research. At that time, the machine was synchrotron cycling at 25 Hz and delivering an average beam power of 205 kW at 1.6 GeV. An option to double the power by doubling the frequency was foreseen. Now a more ambitious development of the original concept is proposed that aims at 0.5 MW at 1.6 GeV, pulsed at either 50 Hz or 10 Hz. The slow repetition rate is achieved by the addition of a storage ring holding four consecutive (single bunch) pulses from the 50 Hz synchrotron until a fifth pulse is accelerated and transferred to the target with the four stored ones. In this way, an energy per pulse of 50 kJ (one half of the pulse energy of the 5 MW ESS) is obtained, yielding about 3.5*10/sup 16/ thermal neutrons/(s cm/sup 2/). This peak flux matches well a number of innovative instruments and allows unprecedented resolution for some more conventional ones. On August 20, 1998, the Austrian Government has unanimously decided to contribute one third of the total cost of the facility and invites international partners to participate. (13 refs)