The role of CAA in helping engineering undergraduates to learn mathematics

The Smith Inquiry (1) makes the following points: Many important stakeholders believe there to be a crisis in the teaching and learning of mathematics. Mathematics is a major intellectual discipline in its own right, as well as providing the underpinning language for the rest of science and engineering. We currently face a situation of long term decline in the numbers of young people continuing to study mathematics post–16

A CFD parametric study of natural gas engine combustion

A CFD parametric study of natural gas engine combustio

Neurophysiological findings in patients 1 year after snake bite-induced neurotoxicity in Sri Lanka

Snake bite causes significant morbidity and mortality in Sri Lanka. Snake venoms contain neurotoxins that block neuromuscular junction transmission. Pre-synaptic neurotoxicity most commonly causes destruction of nerve terminals with recovery by re-growth, whilst post-synaptic neurotoxicity usually involves competition at the acetylcholine receptor. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there were long-term clinical or neurophysiological changes in snake bite survivors 1 year after their envenoming. Detailed neurophysiological tests and clinical examinations were performed on 26 snake bite victims who had presented with neurotoxicity 12 months previously, and their results were compared with controls recruited from the same communities. Significant differences were observed in some nerve conduction parameters in some snake bite cases compared with controls, predominantly in those thought to be due to elapid bites, including prolongation of sensory, motor and F-wave latencies and reduction of conduction velocities. There was no evidence of any residual deficits in neuromuscular junction transmission. These results suggest a possible demyelinating type polyneuropathy. None of the cases or controls had abnormalities on clinical examination. This is one of the few studies to report possible long-term neurological damage following systemic neurotoxicity after snake bite. The clinical significance of these neurophysiological abnormalities is uncertain and further studies are required to investigate whether the abnormalities persist and to see whether clinical consequences develop

Individual differences in students' use of optional learning resources

We investigated ways in which undergraduates use optional learning resources in a typical blended learning environment. Specifically, we recorded how often students attended live face-to-face lectures, accessed online recorded lectures, and visited a mathematics learning support centre during a multivariate calculus course. Four distinct study strategies emerged, but surprisingly none involved making heavy use of more than one resource. In contrast with some earlier research, the general strategy a student adopted was related to their academic achievement, both in the multivariate calculus course, and in their degree programme more widely. Those students who often accessed online lectures had lower attainment than those who often attended live lectures or the support centre. We discuss the implications of these findings and suggest that ‘blended teaching environments’ may be a more accurate description for what have previously been called ‘blended learning environments’

Mobile phones are hazardous microbial platforms warranting robust public health and biosecurity protocols

Advancements in technology and communication have revolutionised the twenty-first century with the introduction of mobile phones and smartphones. These phones are known to be platforms harbouring microbes with recent research shedding light on the abundance and broad spectrum of organisms they harbour. Mobile phone use in the community and in professional sectors including health care settings is a potential source of microbial dissemination. To identify the diversity of microbial genetic signature present on mobile phones owned by hospital medical staff. Twenty-six mobile phones of health care staff were swabbed. DNA extraction for downstream next generation sequencing shotgun metagenomic microbial profiling was performed. Survey questionnaires were handed to the staff to collect information on mobile phone usage and users’ behaviours. Each of the 26 mobile phones of this study was contaminated with microbes with the detection of antibiotic resistance and virulent factors. Taken together the sum of microbes and genes added together across all 26 mobile phones totalised 11,163 organisms (5714 bacteria, 675 fungi, 93 protists, 228 viruses, 4453 bacteriophages) and 2096 genes coding for antibiotic resistance and virulent factors. The survey of medical staff showed that 46% (12/26) of the participants used their mobile phones in the bathroom. Mobile phones are vectors of microbes and can contribute to microbial dissemination and nosocomial diseases worldwide. As fomites, mobile phones that are not decontaminated may pose serious risks for public health and biosecurity

RF-Based Human Activity Recognition : A Non-stationary Channel Model Incorporating the Impact of Phase Distortions

This paper proposes a non-stationary channel model that captures the impact of the time-variant (TV) phase distortion caused by hardware imperfections. The model allows for studying the spectrogram of in-home radio channels influenced by walking activities of the home user under realistic non-stationary propagation conditions. The resolution of the spectrogram is investigated for the von-Mises distribution of the phase distortion. It is shown that high-entropy distributions considerably mask fingerprints of the user activity on the spectrogram of the channel. For an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system, a computationally simple method for mitigating the undesired phase rotation is proposed. Both theoretical and simulation results confirm that the proposed method significantly reduces the impact of the phase distortion, allowing us to retrieve the desired spectrogram imprinted by the activity of the home user. The results of this paper are useful for the development of software-based radio frequency (RF)-based activity recognition systems