Female Involvement in Information Technology Degrees: Perception, Expectation and Enrolment

The aim of this research was to identify the social, marketing and academic factors that effect the expectations and enrolment of students in university degrees. Of particular interest were the factors that differentiate female and male perceptions of Information Technology degrees from degrees in other discipline areas. Multidimensional scaling was used to analyse and compare high-school student subject dissimilarity ratings with perceptions of discipline areas at Southern Cross University. It was found that females tend to avoid information technology degrees, not because such degrees are considered difficult, but because they do not offer scope for teamwork and social interaction

Lives in the balance? Gender, age and assets in late-nineteenth-century England and Wales

Studies of wealth-holding in nineteenth-century Britain focus either on establishing aggregate measures or on individual case studies. These do not allow for a comparative analysis of the way that the composition of wealth was influenced by age and gender. This article explores the importance of these factors using both a case-study approach and a more comprehensive analysis of wealth left at death for a sample of 1,444 individuals. By establishing the age at death for 1,274 of these individuals, together with evidence from a series of death duty records, it is possible to determine the composition of assets by age and gender. For both men and women, shares became more important over the life course. Real estate was more important for men of all ages compared to women, for whom safe investments in government securities assumed greater significance with age. These findings confirm that both age and gender influenced the amount and composition of wealth and demonstrate that these factors need to be taken into account in any model that seeks to make generalizations about the pattern of wealth-holding in the population at large. Emphasizing these demand-side factors provides a different perspective on the rise of Britain as a 'nation of investors'

Guidelines for monitoring the success of peatland restoration

The aim of this guidance is to provide information to enable peatland restoration projects to develop appropriate monitoring programmes. Degraded peatlands are restored for a wide range of reasons. Restoration objectives can include protecting and enhancing biodiversity, improving water quality, reducing flood risk and protecting cultural heritage or carbon stores. Restoration projects need monitoring programmes to show whether these objectives are being met and to help them to adapt practices to respond to environmental changes

Short-term effectiveness of drain-blocking in suppressingenzymic peat decomposition and DOC export

It has become evident that there is a general problem of increasing colour in the water draining from areas of accumulated peat in upland Britain. It was agreed in early 2007 to set up a preliminary investigation into the causes of change in colour using methods based on characterising the breakdown and oxidation of peat. These make use of techniques to measure the activities of extracellular enzymes which catalyse the process of decomposition independently from the microbial population. The overall aim of this investigation was to investigate the effect of grip blocking on the enzymic decomposition of peat and the consequential production of colour. The main study area is located within Langdon Moor, part of the Raby Estate. Peat samples were collected at 5 m intervals along transects perpendicular to a natural gully and a blocked grip. At each 5 m interval peat samples were collected at 5 depths down to 85 cm depth. Peat samples were analysed in the laboratory for carbon-related enzyme activities, microbial activity, colour and phenolic concentration.There were clear differences between enzyme activities in surface peat when compared with peat from greater depth at both study sites. There were no significant differences in magnitude of enzyme activity levels in surface peat from either area. However, there were significant differences between the areas for a number of parameters including enzyme activities in peat collected from depths between 5 and 85cms. These results suggest that increased retention of water within Langdon moor, as a result of grip blocking has caused a significant impact on the amount of colour and phenolic compounds with increasing depth relative to the amounts in a naturally drained area. Furthermore, the relationship between water colour and the concentration of phenolic compounds has been altered in the area of the blocked grip. This indicates some difference, yet to be elucidated, in the processes producing the colour deriving from the two drainage states.There were also significant differences in amounts of colour and phenolic compounds, but not enzyme activities with increasing distance from the blocked grip in contrast to the naturally drained area where amounts were less variable. This again indicates a significant influence of altered drainage patterns on the amount and quality of the coloured compounds produced from the breakdown of peat.Further detailed research will be required to determine whether this phenomenon is site specific or widespread in peatlands, and to the cause and effect of changing enzyme activity, phenolics and colour in peatlands. This preliminary study has only focused on one site per management treatment and therefore, at this stage, the results must be considered to be preliminary and site specific to Langdon moor rather than applicable to peatlands in general.Despite the small size of the study, we have achieved a good indication that there are significant differences between the two sites with contrasting drainage histories that were chosen for study and that it is possible to determine the involvement of a number of soil enzymes in the breakdown processes. It should now be possible to produce a properly convincing dataset with enough replicate study sites included which could quantify spatial variation that will undoubtedly be there at this scale. Now that the methods have been implemented, the funding requirements are relatively modest so that a level similar to that originally provided by Peatscapes (£4k) would enable a design that could cover a substantive area of Langdon Moor in enough detail to clearly demonstrate the impact of impeded drainage on this managed area

Cross-species extrapolation of chemical sensitivity

Ecosystems are usually populated by many species. Each of these species carries the potential to show a different sensitivity towards all of the numerous chemical compounds that can be present in their environment. Since experimentally testing all possible species-chemical combinations is impossible, the ecological risk assessment of chemicals largely depends on cross-species extrapolation approaches. This review overviews currently existing cross-species extrapolation methodologies, and discusses i) how species sensitivity could be described, ii) which predictors might be useful for explaining differences in species sensitivity, and iii) which statistical considerations are important. We argue that risk assessment can benefit most from modelling approaches when sensitivity is described based on ecologically relevant and robust effects. Additionally, specific attention should be paid to heterogeneity of the training data (e.g. exposure duration, pH, temperature), since this strongly influences the reliability of the resulting models. Regarding which predictors are useful for explaining differences in species sensitivity, we review interspecies-correlation, relatedness-based, traits-based, and genomic-based extrapolation methods, describing the amount of mechanistic information the predictors contain, the amount of input data the models require, and the extent to which the different methods provide protection for ecological entities. We develop a conceptual framework, incorporating the strengths of each of the methods described. Finally, the discussion of statistical considerations reveals that regardless of the method used, statistically significant models can be found, although the usefulness, applicability, and understanding of these models varies considerably. We therefore recommend publication of scientific code along with scientific studies to simultaneously clarify modelling choices and enable elaboration on existing work. In general, this review specifies the data requirements of different cross-species extrapolation methods, aiming to make regulators and publishers more aware that access to raw- and meta-data needs to be improved to make future cross-species extrapolation efforts successful, enabling their integration into the regulatory environment

Integrating life cycle assessment and environmental risk assessment: a critical review

Life cycle assessment (LCA) and Environmental risk assessment (ERA) are highly complementary; several studies have attempted to bridge the two approaches by means of integration for a more comprehensive assessment of environmental impacts. This paper reviews existing studies on LCA and ERA integration to establish an understanding of the benefits and challenges of different integration approaches and provide suggestions for future approaches for integrating LCA and ERA. A total of 36 reviewed studies employed a variety of approaches and used different indicators in reporting the results of the integrated assessment, making direct comparison difficult. The most common integration method is the subset integration, and 17 of the reviewed studies employed this approach. 1 out of all the reviewed studies used a parallel integration, while the remaining studies employed other approaches including “complimentary use”, “sequential” and “multi-option”. Some of the reviewed studies were case study specific, while others employed a methodological approach, but most of these studies did not present the procedure for integration. Common barriers to integration of LCA and ERA include the lack of data (e.g., on toxicity) and differences in model structure of LCA and ERA. The majority of the proposed approaches presented in the reviewed studies are inclined towards one of LCA or ERA, resulting in the omission of important components from the other, and leading to the inability of these approaches to address properly the needs of both LCA and ERA simultaneously. There is no clarity on the available information or data required to progress in this area and a clear pathway for practitioners to follow when integrating LCA and ERA, is also lacking. A comprehensive approach that provides opportunity to address both LCA and ERA objectives, based on case study needs, is required to harness the benefits of integrating LCA and ERA. This should be built around the theories and principles of both tools to encompass all relevant impacts and risks and to ensure complementarity. A conceptual framework that provides flexibility for modifications, to suit relevant case studies, would provide direction to practitioners on the general concepts to adopt, and ensure consistency in the overall approach of integrated LCA and ERA

Broadcasting graphic war violence: the moral face of Channel 4

Drawing on empirical data from Channel 4 (C4) regarding the broadcasting of violent war imagery, and positioned within Goffman’s notion of the interaction ritual (1959, 1967), this article investigates how C4 negotiate potentially competing commercial, regulatory and moral requirements through processes of discretionary decision-making. Throughout, the article considers the extent to which these negotiations are presented through a series of ‘imaginings’ – of C4 and its audience – which serve to simultaneously guide and legitimate the decisions made. This manifestation of imaginings moves us beyond more blanket explanations of ‘branding’ and instead allows us to see the final programmes as the end product of a series of complex negotiations and interactions between C4 and those multiple external parties significant to the workings of their organization. The insights gleaned from this case study are important beyond the workings of C4 because they help elucidate how all institutions and organizations may view, organize and justify their practices (to both themselves and others) within the perceived constraints in which they operate

Stray-light contamination and spatial deconvolution of slit-spectrograph observations

Stray light caused by scattering on optical surfaces and in the Earth's atmosphere degrades the spatial resolution of observations. We study the contribution of stray light to the two channels of POLIS. We test the performance of different methods of stray-light correction and spatial deconvolution to improve the spatial resolution post-facto. We model the stray light as having two components: a spectrally dispersed component and a component of parasitic light caused by scattering inside the spectrograph. We use several measurements to estimate the two contributions: observations with a (partly) blocked FOV, a convolution of the FTS spectral atlas, imaging in the pupil plane, umbral profiles, and spurious polarization signal in telluric lines. The measurements allow us to estimate the spatial PSF of POLIS and the main spectrograph of the German VTT. We use the PSF for a deconvolution of both spectropolarimetric data and investigate the effect on the spectra. The parasitic contribution can be directly and accurately determined for POLIS, amounting to about 5%. We estimate a lower limit of about 10% across the full FOV for the dispersed stray light. In quiet Sun regions, the stray-light level from the close surroundings (d< 2") of a given spatial point is about 20%. The stray light reduces to below 2% at a distance of 20" from a lit area for both POLIS and the main spectrograph. A two-component model of the stray-light contributions seems to be sufficient for a basic correction of observed spectra. The instrumental PSF obtained can be used to model the off-limb stray light, to determine the stray-light contamination accurately for observation targets with large spatial intensity gradients such as sunspots, and also allows one to improve the spatial resolution of observations post-facto.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures, accepted by A&A. Version V2 revised for language editin