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Hadithi ya Afrika: A collaborative project using dramatherapy and creative writing
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2011 the author.Hadithi ya Afrika (‘stories from Africa’ in kiSwahili) is an arts-in-the-community project that works with African communities who have experienced a life-changing event or decision, but who wouldn't ordinarily have any voice in the wider world. The principal investigators lead the project volunteers through a series of dramatherapy and creative writing workshops. The dramatherapy workshops create a ‘remembering experience’ in which the volunteers relive their memories of the period of their lives in which they made the decision. The creative writing workshops then teach the volunteers the writing skills to create an interesting and communicable story out of these memories, in a process Hadithi ya Afrika refers to as ‘story-capturing.’ At the end of the story-making process, an anthology is created from the stories about the event that has had such an impact on their lives. The anthology is written in both English and the first language of the volunteers. Sarah Penny was funded by Brunel University to start up the project in March 2011. The pilot project was held at St Francis Adult Education Centre in Langa Township in Cape Town. The six learner-participants in the pilot explored their experience of being educated in the rural areas of South Africa in the aftermath of Bantu Education, and their subsequent relocation to Cape Town in search of a better higher education and career path.Brunel Universit
Reading-related skills of kindergarteners from diverse linguistic backgrounds
This study examined whether measures used to identify children at risk for reading failure are appropriate for children from different language backgrounds. Tasks assessing literacy and phonological and language processing at the beginning and end of kindergarten were administered to 540 native English speakers (NS), 59 bilingual children (BL), and 60 children whose initial exposure to English was when they began school (ESL). Although the BL and ESL children performed more poorly than the NS children on most measures of phonological and linguistic processing, the acquisition of basic literacy skills for children with different language backgrounds developed in a similar manner. Furthermore, planned contrasts between the language groups did not explain the variance in the children’s literacy performance in May. Instead, alphabetic knowledge and phonological processing were important contributors to early reading skill. Therefore, children learning English may acquire literacy skills in English in a similar manner to NS children, although their alphabetic knowledge may precede and facilitate the acquisition of phonological awareness in English
Local properties of patterned vegetation: quantifying endogenous and exogenous effects
Dryland ecosystems commonly exhibit periodic bands of vegetation, thought to
form due to competition between individual plants for heterogeneously
distributed water. In this paper, we develop a Fourier method for locally
identifying the pattern wavenumber and orientation, and apply it to aerial
images from a region of vegetation patterning near Fort Stockton, Texas. We
find that the local pattern wavelength and orientation are typically coherent,
but exhibit both rapid and gradual variation driven by changes in hillslope
gradient and orientation, the potential for water accumulation, or soil type.
Endogenous pattern dynamics, when simulated for spatially homogeneous
topographic and vegetation conditions, predict pattern properties that are much
less variable than the orientation and wavelength observed in natural systems.
Our local pattern analysis, combined with ancillary datasets describing soil
and topographic variation, highlights a largely unexplored correlation between
soil depth, pattern coherence, vegetation cover and pattern wavelength. It
also, surprisingly, suggests that downslope accumulation of water may play a
role in changing vegetation pattern properties
How typical is the Coma cluster?
Coma is frequently used as the archetype z~0 galaxy cluster to compare higher
redshift work against. It is not clear, however, how representative the Coma
cluster is for galaxy clusters of its mass or X-ray luminosity, and
significantly: recent works have suggested that the galaxy population of Coma
may be in some ways anomolous. In this work, we present a comparison of Coma to
an X-ray selected control sample of clusters. We show that although Coma is
typical against the control sample in terms of its internal kinematics
(substructure and velocity dispersion profile), it has a significantly high
(~3sigma) X-ray temperature set against clusters of comparable mass. By
de-redshifting our control sample cluster galaxies star-formation rates using a
fit to the galaxy main sequence evolution at z < 0.1, we determine that the
typical star-formation rate of Coma galaxies as a function of mass is higher
than for galaxies in our control sample at a confidence level of > 99 per cent.
One way to alleviate this discrepency and bring Coma in-line with the control
sample would be to have the distance to Coma to be slightly lower, perhaps
through a non-negligible peculiar velocity with respect to the Hubble
expansion, but we do not regard this as likely given precision measurements
using a variety of approaches. Therefore in summary, we urge caution in using
Coma as a z~0 baseline cluster in galaxy evolution studies.Comment: accepted for publication in MNRA
Application of Incident Command Structure to clinical trial management in the academic setting: principles and lessons learned
Background Clinical trial success depends on appropriate management, but practical guidance to trial organisation and planning is lacking. The Incident Command System (ICS) is the ‘gold standard’ management system developed for managing diverse operations in major incident and public health arenas. It enables effective and flexible management through integration of personnel, procedures, resources, and communications within a common hierarchical organisational structure. Conventional ICS organisation consists of five function modules: Command, Planning, Operations, Logistics, and Finance/Administration. Large clinical trials will require a separate Regulatory Administrative arm, and an Information arm, consisting of dedicated data management and information technology staff. We applied ICS principles to organisation and management of the Prehospital Use of Plasma in Traumatic Haemorrhage (PUPTH) trial. This trial was a multidepartmental, multiagency, randomised clinical trial investigating prehospital administration of thawed plasma on mortality and coagulation response in severely injured trauma patients. We describe the ICS system as it would apply to large clinical trials in general, and the benefits, barriers, and lessons learned in utilising ICS principles to reorganise and coordinate the PUPTH trial. Results Without a formal trial management structure, early stages of the trial were characterised by inertia and organisational confusion. Implementing ICS improved organisation, coordination, and communication between multiple agencies and service groups, and greatly streamlined regulatory compliance administration. However, unfamiliarity of clinicians with ICS culture, conflicting resource allocation priorities, and communication bottlenecks were significant barriers. Conclusions ICS is a flexible and powerful organisational tool for managing large complex clinical trials. However, for successful implementation the cultural, psychological, and social environment of trial participants must be accounted for, and personnel need to be educated in the basics of ICS
Rocket exhaust plume computer program improvement. Volume 1: Summary: Method of characteristics nozzle and plume programs
A summary is presented of the various documents that discuss and describe the computer programs and analysis techniques which are available for rocket nozzle and exhaust plume calculations. The basic method of characteristics program is discussed, along with such auxiliary programs as the plume impingement program, the plot program and the thermochemical properties program
Space shuttle SRM plume expansion sensitivity analysis
The exhaust plumes of the space shuttle solid rocket motors can have a significant effect on the base pressure and base drag of the shuttle vehicle. A parametric analysis was conducted to assess the sensitivity of the initial plume expansion angle of analytical solid rocket motor flow fields to various analytical input parameters and operating conditions. The results of the analysis are presented and conclusions reached regarding the sensitivity of the initial plume expansion angle to each parameter investigated. Operating conditions parametrically varied were chamber pressure, nozzle inlet angle, nozzle throat radius of curvature ratio and propellant particle loading. Empirical particle parameters investigated were mean size, local drag coefficient and local heat transfer coefficient. Sensitivity of the initial plume expansion angle to gas thermochemistry model and local drag coefficient model assumptions were determined
Assessment of analytical techniques for predicting solid propellant exhaust plumes and plume impingement environments
An analysis of experimental nozzle, exhaust plume, and exhaust plume impingement data is presented. The data were obtained for subscale solid propellant motors with propellant Al loadings of 2, 10 and 15% exhausting to simulated altitudes of 50,000, 100,000 and 112,000 ft. Analytical predictions were made using a fully coupled two-phase method of characteristics numerical solution and a technique for defining thermal and pressure environments experienced by bodies immersed in two-phase exhaust plumes
Empirical Study of Simulated Two-planet Microlensing Event
We undertake the first study of two-planet microlensing models recovered from
simulations of microlensing events generated by realistic multi-planet systems
in which 292 planetary events including 16 two-planet events were detected from
6690 simulated light curves. We find that when two planets are recovered, their
parameters are usually close to those of the two planets in the system most
responsible for the perturbations. However, in one of the 16 examples, the
apparent mass of both detected planets was more than doubled by the unmodeled
influence of a third, massive planet. This fraction is larger than, but
statistically consistent with, the roughly 1.5% rate of serious mass errors due
to unmodeled planetary companions for the 274 cases from the same simulation in
which a single planet is recovered. We conjecture that an analogous effect due
to unmodeled stellar companions may occur more frequently. For seven out of 23
cases in which two planets in the system would have been detected separately,
only one planet was recovered because the perturbations due to the two planets
had similar forms. This is a small fraction (7/274) of all recovered
single-planet models, but almost a third of all events that might plausibly
have led to two-planet models. Still, in these cases, the recovered planet
tends to have parameters similar to one of the two real planets most
responsible for the anomaly.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables; submitted to ApJ; for a short video
introducing the key results, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhK4a6sbfO
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