Transforming students through peer assessment and authentic practice

This briefing document reports on a seminar where participants were provided with the opportunity to consider how they can provide authentic assessment and involve students as peers and mentors in the assessment process within their own discipline areas. The session explored the potential benefits of these approaches and also addressed the fears and possible drawbacks of such approaches, creating the opportunity to explore these in more detail and discuss solutions and approaches to avoid. The workshop was built around three different experiences of assessment practice in the higher education sector. It used a combination of speed geeking and a world cafe to allow participants to move around the room and listen to a short presentation on each experience and contribute to a related question in a conversational manner. The first experience was based on the use of students to provide feedback to their peers on formative work. The second experience used students from one subject area to help ‘mentor’ students in a different subject area. The final experience used a conference with external delegates to provide an authentic assessment experience for students

Bringing technical authoring skills to life for students through an employer audience

It is crucial that students in the computing area are equipped with strong research and technical authoring skills and expertise. These are transferable lifelong skills which are sometimes difficult to develop and can be viewed as ‘dull’ by the students. This study explores a more authentic and lively approach to delivering and assessing a module on technical authoring to undergraduate computing students. Students were asked to produce work for presentation at a conference aimed at external participants mainly from local industry and business. This challenged the students in terms of their technical authoring skills and brought a professionalism and realism to the module. There were other less obvious benefits from this approach. Students gained in confidence through the work they presented but also through being ‘delegates’ at the conference and engaging in the question and answer sessions. Student feedback on the module was positive and constructive and their assessment work was of a high standard

Ternary hypervalent silicon hydrides via lithium at high pressure

Hydrogen is rarely observed as ligand in hypervalent species, however, we find that high-pressure hydrogenation may stabilise hypervalent hydrogen-rich materials. Focussing on ternary silicon hydrides via lithium doping, we find anions composed of hypervalent silicon with H ligands formed under high pressure. Our results reveal two new hypervalent anions: layered-SiH−5 and tricapped triangular prismatic SiH2−. These differ from octahedral SiH2− described in earlier studies. In addition, there are further hydrogen-rich structures, Li3SiH10 and Li2SiH6+δ, which may be stabilised at high pressure. Our work provides pointers to future investigations on hydrogen rich materials

High pressure chemical reactivity and structural study of the Na-P and Li-P systems

Pressure enables the synthesis of (Na/Li)3P compounds at RT bypassing established chemical methods while at higher pressure, both undergo a pressure-induced phase transition.</p

Structure Prediction Drives Materials Discovery

Progress in the discovery of new materials has recently been driven by the development of reliable quantum-mechanical approaches to crystal structure prediction. The properties of a material depend very sensitively on its structure, and therefore structure prediction is the key to computational materials discovery. Structure prediction was considered to be a formidable problem, but the development of new computational tools has allowed the structures of many new and increasingly complex materials to be anticipated. These widely applicable methods, based on global optimisation and relying on little or no empirical knowledge, have been used to study crystalline structures, point defects, surfaces and interfaces. In this review we present examples of computationally-driven discovery of new materials that will enable new technologies and lead to a better understanding of physical and chemical phenomena in materials

Coexistence of plastic and partially diffusive phases in a helium-methane compound.

Helium and methane are major components of giant icy planets and are abundant in the universe. However, helium is the most inert element in the periodic table and methane is one of the most hydrophobic molecules, thus whether they can react with each other is of fundamental importance. Here, our crystal structure searches and first-principles calculations predict that a He3CH4 compound is stable over a wide range of pressures from 55 to 155 GPa and a HeCH4 compound becomes stable around 105 GPa. As nice examples of pure van der Waals crystals, the insertion of helium atoms changes the original packing of pure methane molecules and also largely hinders the polymerization of methane at higher pressures. After analyzing the diffusive properties during the melting of He3CH4 at high pressure and high temperature, in addition to a plastic methane phase, we have discovered an unusual phase which exhibits coexistence of diffusive helium and plastic methane. In addition, the range of the diffusive behavior within the helium-methane phase diagram is found to be much narrower compared to that of previously predicted helium-water compounds. This may be due to the weaker van der Waals interactions between methane molecules compared to those in helium-water compounds, and that the helium-methane compound melts more easily

Magnetic nanoparticle-mediated gene delivery to two- and three-dimensional neural stem cell cultures: magnet-assisted transfection and multifection approaches to enhance outcomes

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Pickard, M. R., Adams, C. F., & Chari, D. M. (2017). Magnetic Nanoparticle‐Mediated Gene Delivery to Two‐ and Three‐Dimensional Neural Stem Cell Cultures: Magnet‐Assisted Transfection and Multifection Approaches to Enhance Outcomes, Current Protocols in Stem Cell Biology, 40(1), 2D.19.1-2D.19.16, which has been published in final form athttps://doi.org/10.1002/cpsc.23 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.Neural stem cells (NSCs) have high translational potential in transplantation therapies for neural repair. Enhancement of their therapeutic capacity by genetic engineering is an important goal for regenerative neurology. Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) are major non-viral vectors for safe bioengineering of NSCs, offering critical translational benefits over viral vectors, including safety, scalability, and ease of use. This unit describes protocols for the production of suspension (neurosphere) and adherent (monolayer) murine NSC cultures. Genetic engineering of NSCs with MNPs and the application of 'magnetofection' (magnetic fields) or 'multifection' (repeat transfection) approaches to enhance gene delivery are described. Magnetofection of monolayer cultures achieves optimal transfection, but neurospheres offer key advantages for neural graft survival post-transplantation. A protocol is presented which allows the advantageous features of each approach to be combined into a single procedure for transplantation. The adaptation of these protocols for other MNP preparations is considered, with emphasis on the evaluation of procedural safety

Double-layer ice from first principles

The formation of monolayer and multilayer ice with a square lattice structure has recently been reported on the basis of transmission electron microscopy experiments, renewing interest in confined two-dimensional ice. Here we report a systematic density functional theory study of double-layer ice in nanoconfinement. A phase diagram as a function of confinement width and lateral pressure is presented. Included in the phase diagram are honeycomb hexagonal, square-tube, hexagonal-close-packed, and buckled-rhombic structures. However, contrary to experimental observations, square structures do not feature: our most stable double-layer square structure is predicted to be metastable. This study provides general insight into the phase transitions of double-layer confined ice and a fresh theoretical perspective on the stability of square ice in graphene nanocapillary experiments.J.C. and A.M. are supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement No. 616121 (HeteroIce project). A.M. and C.J.P. are supported by the Royal Society through a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. C.J.P. and G.S. are also supported by EPSRC Grants No. EP/G007489/2 and No. EP/J010863/2. C.G.S is supported by the Royal Society (UF100144). We are also grateful to the London Centre for Nanotechnology and UCL Research Computing for computational resources and to the UKCP Consortium (EP/ F036884/1) for access to Archer