Offshore education : offshore education in the wider context of internationalisation and ICT: experiences and examples from Dutch higher education

This report presents a study on offshore education conducted by a consortium of Dutch higher education researchers and commissioned by the Digital University (DU). The study explored the extent to which Dutch higher education institutions are involved in offering their educational services abroad (offshore education). After thoroughly embedding offshore education in the wider contexts of internationalisation and ICT policies, the study particularly explores the practical experiences with a number of real-life offshore activities of Dutch higher education. As a warm-up to this report, a few interesting cases are briefly touched upon below

Framing the Immigration Policy Agenda: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Media Effects on Dutch Immigration Policies

This study applies a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) design to examine how configurations of quantitative and qualitative aspects of media coverage associate with changes on the policy agenda. We analyze media coverage of sixteen focusing events related to Dutch immigration policies—an intractable policy controversy that is regularly under media scrutiny. In addition to the quantity of media attention, we take into account whether dominant framing in media coverage is contesting the current policy frame and whether the framing in the media is consonant. Our analysis indicates that frame contestation is a necessary condition for media effects. Quantity of media attention and frame consonance are relevant indicators of changes on the policy agenda only when the majority of media coverage is contesting the current policy frame. Furthermore, we found that in the case of intractable policy controversies, media f

A 100 mW monolithic Yb waveguide laser fabricated using the femtosecond laser direct-write technique

A femtosecond laser-written monolithic waveguide laser (WGL) oscillator based on a distributed feedback (DFB) architecture and fabricated in ytterbium doped phosphate glass is reported. The device lased at 1033 nm with an output power of 102 mW and a bandwidth less than 2 pm when bidirectionally pumped at 976 nm. The WGL device was stable and operated for 50 hours without degradation. This demonstration of a high performance WGL opens the possibility for creating a variety of narrow-linewidth laser designs in bulk glasses.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted journal manuscrip

Risk of postoperative acute kidney injury in patients undergoing orthopaedic surgery—development and validation of a risk score and effect of acute kidney injury on survival:observational cohort study

Funding: This study was funded by Tenovus Tayside, Chief Scientist Office, Scotland and a travelling fellowship from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. The funders had no role in the study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data; writing of the report; or the decision to submit the article for publication. The researchers are independent of the funders.Non peer reviewedPublisher PD

Energy exchange between two orthogonally polarized waves by cascading of two quasi-phase-matched quadratic processes

We demonstrate energy exchange between two orthogonally polarized optical waves as a consequence of a two-color multistep parametric interaction. The energy exchange results from cascading of two quasi-phase-matched (QPM) second-harmonic parametric processes, and it is intrinsically instantaneous. The effect is observed when both the type-I (ooe) second-harmonic generation process and higher QPM order type-0 (eee) second-harmonic generation processes are phase-matched simultaneously in a congruent periodically-poled lithium niobate crystal. The two second-harmonic generation processes share a common secondharmonic wave which couple the two cross-polarized fundamental components and facilitate an energy flow between them. We demonstrate a good agreement between the experimental data and the results of numerical simulations

e-Learning cookbook. TPACK in professional development in higher education

Information and communication technology (ICT) makes it possible to bring information to everyone who wants to learn. Rapid advances in technology offer strong support for using ICT in teaching. Online education can intensify and improve students' learning process, and enables us to reach more students than by traditional means. The number of courses and modules being offered online is increasing rapidly worldwide. Although online education can reach more people nowadays and new and challenging learning experiences can be created with it, in the average university course the digital dimension too often remains limited to simply publishing the existing face-to-face course content online. It is crucial that lecturers have and can obtain knowledge about how to design technology-enhanced teaching. Technical advances can be expected to continue in the future, and those who wish to implement educational technology in their own teaching practice must reckon on becoming lifelong learners. This fits the culture of academic teachers perfectly: they are already lifelong learners and creators of new knowledge within their discipline. This book is based on the notion that a lecturer who uses ICT in teaching must learn how to apply his or her knowledge about content, pedagogy and technology in an integrated manner. The idea of integrating these three types of knowledge is based on the TPACK model, which stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge model. The material for this book was developed in a Dutch higher education innovation project known as MARCHET (Make Relevant Choices in Educational Technology, MARCHET, 2009-2011)

A Directly-Written Monolithic Waveguide-Laser Incorporating a DFB Waveguide-Bragg Grating

We report the fabrication and performance of the first C-band directly-written monolithic waveguide-laser. The waveguide-laser device was created in an Erbium and Ytterbium doped phosphate glass host and consisted of an optical waveguide that included a distributed feedback Bragg grating structure. The femtosecond laser direct-write technique was used to create both the waveguide and the waveguide-Bragg grating simultaneously and in a single processing step. The waveguide-laser was optically pumped at approximately 980 nm and lased at 1537nm with a bandwidth of less than 4 pm.Comment: 6 pages, 13 references, 4 figure

Spatial and temporal variations in plant water-use efficiency inferred from tree-ring, eddy covariance and atmospheric observations

Plant water-use efficiency (WUE), which is the ratio of the uptake of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis to the loss of water through transpiration, is a very useful metric of the functioning of the land biosphere. WUE is expected to increase with atmospheric CO2, but to decline with increasing atmospheric evaporative demand – which can arisefrom increases in near-surface temperature or decreases in relative humidity.We have used Δ13C measurements from tree rings, along witheddy covariance measurements from Fluxnet sites, to estimate thesensitivities of WUE to changes in CO2 and atmospheric humidity deficit.This enables us to reconstruct fractional changes in WUE, based on changes inatmospheric climate and CO2, for the entire period of the instrumental global climate record. We estimate that overall WUE increased from 1900 to2010 by 48 ± 22 %, which is more than double that simulated by thelatest Earth System Models. This long-term trend is largely driven byincreases in CO2, but significant inter-annual variability and regional differences are evident due to variations in temperature and relativehumidity. There are several highly populated regions, such as western Europeand East Asia, where the rate of increase of WUE has declined sharply in thelast 2 decades. Our data-based analysis indicates increases in WUE thattypically exceed those simulated by Earth System Models – implying thatthese models are either underestimating increases in photosynthesis orunderestimating reductions in transpiration