Opening Educational Practices in Scotland

Open Educational Resources (OER) are frequently heralded as opening up new possibilities for widening access to education, however, the evidence to date is that this has not been achieved at any significant scale. Opening Educational Practices in Scotland (OEPS) is a new three-year project funded by the Scottish Funding council (www.oepscotland.org ). The project, led by the OU in Scotland is intended to involve the whole Scottish Higher Education Sector and has a focus on developing effective practices that can support widening participation and transitions between different phases of the learning journey. The poster highlights some examples of the creation and use of OER in widening participation partnerships that have informed the direction of the project. Early findings suggest that practices around the development, use and reuse of OER can be more important than the content. Working in partnership with organisations in the workplace and community settings, OERs can be used flexibly to offer new pedagogically sound models of learning. If used effectively, OERs have the potential to:- provide a variety of pathways from informal to formal learning; widen participation in education; provide opportunities for learners to access a broader curriculum and relevant skills development; reduce duplication and costs through creating a culture of collaborative development and reuse across the sector. The poster also outlines the objectives of the OEPS project

Constructing and deconstructing the Gokstad mound

Viking Age burial mounds are usually interpreted with reference to their exterior dimensions, the funerary treatment of the deceased and the artefacts placed within them. The process of constructing these mounds, however, may also have played an important role in funerary traditions. Investigations at the Gokstad mound in Norway demonstrate that the building of this mound—in terms of its phases and material expressions—formed an integral part of the overall burial rite. The complex construction sequence contained references to both the physical and mythical landscapes, revealing the potential of the study of burial mound construction at other sites in Viking Age Scandinavia and beyond

Closure Welding Design and Justification for Canister S00645 (Bent Flange)

This report provides the design basis and justification for a closure welding technique using the manual Gas Tungsten Are Welding (GTAW) process. Other aspects affecting closure of Canister S00645, e.g., shielding, facility and administrative requirements, etc., are addressed elsewhere

Thermally Induced Fluctuations Below the Onset of Rayleigh-B\'enard Convection

We report quantitative experimental results for the intensity of noise-induced fluctuations below the critical temperature difference $\Delta T_c$ for Rayleigh-B\'enard convection. The structure factor of the fluctuating convection rolls is consistent with the expected rotational invariance of the system. In agreement with predictions based on stochastic hydrodynamic equations, the fluctuation intensity is found to be proportional to $1/\sqrt{-\epsilon}$ where $\epsilon \equiv \Delta T / \Delta T_c -1$. The noise power necessary to explain the measurements agrees with the prediction for thermal noise. (WAC95-1)Comment: 13 pages of text and 4 Figures in a tar-compressed and uuencoded file (using uufiles package). Detailed instructions of unpacking are include

Historical changes in the phenology of British Odonata are related to climate

Responses of biota to climate change take a number of forms including distributional shifts, behavioural changes and life history changes. This study examined an extensive set of biological records to investigate changes in the timing of life history transitions (specifically emergence) in British Odonata between 1960 and 2004. The results show that there has been a significant, consistent advance in phenology in the taxon as a whole over the period of warming that is mediated by life history traits. British odonates significantly advanced the leading edge (first quartile date) of the flight period by a mean of 1.51 ±0.060 (SEM, n=17) days per decade or 3.08±1.16 (SEM, n=17) days per degree rise in temperature when phylogeny is controlled for. This study represents the first review of changes in odonate phenology in relation to climate change. The results suggest that the damped temperature oscillations experienced by aquatic organisms compared with terrestrial organisms are sufficient to evoke phenological responses similar to those of purely terrestrial taxa

Spiral Defect Chaos in Large Aspect Ratio Rayleigh-Benard Convection

We report experiments on convection patterns in a cylindrical cell with a large aspect ratio. The fluid had a Prandtl number of approximately 1. We observed a chaotic pattern consisting of many rotating spirals and other defects in the parameter range where theory predicts that steady straight rolls should be stable. The correlation length of the pattern decreased rapidly with increasing control parameter so that the size of a correlated area became much smaller than the area of the cell. This suggests that the chaotic behavior is intrinsic to large aspect ratio geometries.Comment: Preprint of experimental paper submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. May 12 1993. Text is preceeded by many TeX macros. Figures 1 and 2 are rather lon

Boundary Limitation of Wavenumbers in Taylor-Vortex Flow

We report experimental results for a boundary-mediated wavenumber-adjustment mechanism and for a boundary-limited wavenumber-band of Taylor-vortex flow (TVF). The system consists of fluid contained between two concentric cylinders with the inner one rotating at an angular frequency $\Omega$. As observed previously, the Eckhaus instability (a bulk instability) is observed and limits the stable wavenumber band when the system is terminated axially by two rigid, non-rotating plates. The band width is then of order $\epsilon^{1/2}$ at small $\epsilon$ ($\epsilon \equiv \Omega/\Omega_c - 1$) and agrees well with calculations based on the equations of motion over a wide $\epsilon$-range. When the cylinder axis is vertical and the upper liquid surface is free (i.e. an air-liquid interface), vortices can be generated or expelled at the free surface because there the phase of the structure is only weakly pinned. The band of wavenumbers over which Taylor-vortex flow exists is then more narrow than the stable band limited by the Eckhaus instability. At small $\epsilon$ the boundary-mediated band-width is linear in $\epsilon$. These results are qualitatively consistent with theoretical predictions, but to our knowledge a quantitative calculation for TVF with a free surface does not exist.Comment: 8 pages incl. 9 eps figures bitmap version of Fig

Absolute Humidity and the Seasonal Onset of Influenza in the Continental United States

Here, the authors demonstrate that variations of absolute humidity explain both the onset of wintertime influenza transmission and the overarching seasonality of this pathogen in temperate regions