3,433 research outputs found
Vibrant and engaging online social learning: an innovative response to threatened part-time study in Higher Education
Austerity measures and increased tuition fees place heightened pressures on universities to provide sustainable, cost effective, high quality provision. This paper analyses how a team of staff in a School of Education at a UK University are leading collaborative work with partner colleges, to deliver a model that ameliorates the financial pressures, whilst developing high quality student-centred engagement for part-time students. When face-to-face teaching sessions were significantly reduced, an online academic social network for tutors and students was introduced to encourage collaboration, peer support and âcoffee roomâ discussion. Feedback from participants through focus groups and surveys confirmed a social support network as important for engagement and was perceived as supporting achievement, even by those who were reluctant to join the network. Recommendations include: more time face-to-face at the beginning of the course, more online tutor presence and scaffolded activities to build confidence in using an academic social network
Testing of a Human Powered Vehicle
The University of Akronâs Human Powered Vehicle Team designed a high performing, fully functioning vehicle that is safe, efficient, and practical for the 2018-2019 season. These objectives were the main priorities when it came to the initial stages of designing the vehicle. In addition, the vehicle was designed in accordance with the ASME 2019 Human Powered Vehicle Challenge guidelines to satisfy all the rules and requirements. Additional priorities have been created to teach practical engineering skills and techniques to the students participating in the project through different points in the production process including research, vehicle design, manufacturing, and testing.
The majority of the work was completed at the University of Akron during the 2018-2019 academic year by undergraduate students from a variety of engineering disciplines. Sub-teams were created to focus on the different regions and systems of the vehicle, including but not limited to, the fairing, steering, suspension, communication, testing, and frame areas. These teams allowed members to take ownership of specific projects and gain in-depth knowledge surrounding their distinct task.
Inspired by UAâs Formula Combustion Vehicle, the team is debuting its first monocoque chassis constructed from a carbon fiber/epoxy composite with an aramid honeycomb core. Harambe is a recumbent tadpole trike with all components direct mounted to hardpoints on the chassis. The vehicle will have a fully integrated RPS which will protect against the potential event of an accident or roll-over. Additionally, the vehicle includes a front wheel suspension system, bell crank steering that makes use of a centered steering wheel, contoured seats, and a Bluetooth communication system between the driver and the rest of the team
Landscapes and their relation to hominin habitats : case studies from Australopithecus sites in eastern and southern Africa
We examine the links between geomorphological processes, specific landscape features, surface water drainage, and the creation of suitable habitats for hominins. The existence of mosaic (i.e. heterogeneous) habitats within hominin site landscape reconstructions is typically explained using models of the riverine and gallery forest settings, or the pan or lake setting. We propose a different model: the Tectonic Landscape Model (TLM), where tectonic faulting and volcanism disrupts existing pan or river settings at small scales (~ 10â25 km). Our model encompasses the interpretation of the landscape features, the role of tectonics in creating these landscapes, and the implications for hominins. In particular, the model explains the underlying mechanism for the creation and maintenance of heterogeneous habitats in regions of active tectonics. We illustrate how areas with faulting and disturbed drainage patterns would have been attractive habitats for hominins, such as Australopithecus, and other fauna. Wetland areas are an important characteristic of surface water disturbance by fault activity; therefore we examine the tectonically-controlled Okavango Delta (Botswana) and the Nylsvley wetland (South Africa) as modern examples of how tectonics in a riverine setting significantly enhances the faunal and floral biodiversity. While tectonic landscapes may not have been the only type of attractive habitats to hominins, we propose a suite of landscape, faunal, and floral indicators, which when recovered together suggest that site environments may have been influenced by tectonic and/or volcanic activity while hominins were present. For the fossil sites, we interpret the faulting and landscapes around australopithecine-bearing sites of the Middle Awash (Ethiopia) and Makapansgat, Taung, and Sterkfontein (South Africa) to illustrate these relationships between landscape features and surface water bodies. Exploitation of tectonically active landscapes may explain why the paleoenvironmental signals, anatomy, diets, as well as the fauna associated with Australopithecus appear largely heterogeneous through time and space. This hypothesis is discussed in light of potential preservation and time-averaging effects which may affect patterns visible in the fossil record. The model, however, offers insight into the landscape processes of how such habitats are formed. The landscape features and range of habitat conditions, specifically the wetter, down-dropped plains and drier, uplifted flanks persist in close proximity for as long as the fault motion continues. The Tectonic Landscape Model provides an alternative explanation of why mixed habitats may be represented at certain sites over longer timescales
Access to Justice for All: Towards an \u27Expansive Vision\u27 of Justice and Technology
The Canadian dialogue regarding access to justice has taken an important turn in the last few years, more robustly conceptualizing what is to be accessed (âdeliverablesâ) and who is intended to benefit (âbeneficiariesâ), as well as recognizing that access to justice initiatives that benefit some citizens or groups of citizens cannot be presumed to benefit all citizens. Recent initiatives shift focus away from particular kinds of deliverables (e.g. access to lawyers and courts) and/or particular groups of beneficiaries (e.g. the middle class) toward a more âexpansive visionâ of access to justice. The expansive vision not only integrates and prioritizes a variety of deliverables, but also explicitly recognizes that socioeconomic and other structural differences among citizens affect their respective abilities to benefit both from the justice system itself and from initiatives designed to improve access to justice. These developments hold important promise not just for responding to what has been called an access to justice âcrisisâ in Canada, but also for tailoring responses in ways that are mindful of the differing needs and situations of all citizens. In this paper, and in keeping with this expansive vision, we argue that this more robust approach to access to justice must also be brought to bear on the specific dialogue around access to justice and technology
Group S- ARLISS Project
Our project was the ARLISS competition project, more specifically the second part of the project where the vehicle must survive a drop and drive to a known location over rough desert terrain. We interviewed our professor, Dr. Potter, who had previous experience with the project to understand what was required in our design. The project started with creating concept ideas and deciding on one, which initially was an airplane to avoid designing a landing mechanism and having to drive over rough terrain. However, this design proved to have too many flaws and was scrapped. The new design was a small rover with a single motor and a oneway bearing with a parachute attached. Most of the parts in this design were 3D printed, save for the axle, parachute, battery, steel rod supports, and the oneway bearing. This design choice greatly reduced the overall weight of the design, giving us room to add extra components if necessary. Our initial prototype used PLA filament for the wheels and had the parachute in the center of the axle. This caused the parachute to not open up entirely when the rover was dropped. The battery also shifted during the drop, changing the center of gravity and making the rover fall on its wheel at an angle, causing the axle to be damaged. After these results, we redesigned the rover by focusing on the wheels, axle, the parachute, and brackets holding the battery. We designed the brackets to hold the battery at the roverâs center of gravity. Since we had extra weight to spare, we changed the axle from aluminum to steel to improve the strength of the rover. A second parachute attachment was added and the parachute attachments were moved to the ends of the axle to allow the parachute to open up more. The wheels were changed from PLA material to TPE to make the wheels more flexible and able to absorb more of the impact when the rover lands on the ground. When re-testing our final prototype, the rover was able to transverse over more rough terrain. The rover was also able to survive multiple drops without any significant damage and was able to operate after being dropped
Structure and functional motifs of GCR1, the only plant protein with a GPCR fold?
Whether GPCRs exist in plants is a fundamental biological question. Interest in deorphanizing new G
protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), arises because of their importance in signaling. Within plants, this
is controversial as genome analysis has identified 56 putative GPCRs, including GCR1 which is
reportedly a remote homologue to class A, B and E GPCRs. Of these, GCR2, is not a GPCR; more
recently it has been proposed that none are, not even GCR1. We have addressed this disparity
between genome analysis and biological evidence through a structural bioinformatics study, involving
fold recognition methods, from which only GCR1 emerges as a strong candidate. To further probe
GCR1, we have developed a novel helix alignment method, which has been benchmarked against the
the class A â class B - class F GPCR alignments. In addition, we have presented a mutually consistent
set of alignments of GCR1 homologues to class A, class B and class F GPCRs, and shown that GCR1
is closer to class A and /or class B GPCRs than class A, class B or class F GPCRs are to each other.
To further probe GCR1, we have aligned transmembrane helix 3 of GCR1 to each of the 6 GPCR
classes. Variability comparisons provide additional evidence that GCR1 homologues have the GPCR
fold. From the alignments and a GCR1 comparative model we have identified motifs that are common
to GCR1, class A, B and E GPCRs. We discuss the possibilities that emerge from this controversial
evidence that GCR1 has a GPCR fol
Edaphic and Topographic Constraints on Exploitation of the Central Kenya Rift by Large Mammals and Early Hominins
Our aim in this paper is to create a large-scale palaeoenvironmental and spatio-temporal framework for interpreting human land use and exploitation of large mammals in the Central Kenya Rift over the past 2 million years, with particular reference to the Nakuru-Elmenteita-Naivasha basin and its adjacent rift flanks on the Kinangop Plateau and Mau escarpment. We pay particular attention to the tectonic and volcanic history of the region, and to the system of lakes that have undergone periodic expansion and contraction during the Pleistocene in response to climatic and tectonic controls. We use this information to reconstruct topographic features as they would have existed at different periods of the past and their likely influence on patterns of large-mammal movements. In addition we present a systematic mapping of variations in the mineral nutrients of soils â soil edaphics â based on 150 analyses of trace elements in modern soil and vegetation samples. Soil edaphics play an important role in animal and human health today, with serious deficiencies in some areas, and would have exerted an important constraint on animal distributions and movements in the past. We show how soil-edaphic properties vary across the region and demonstrate a close relationship between them and the underlying geology and sediments, which allows us to project patterns back into the past and extrapolate them over larger areas. Using this combination of variables, we construct maps that help to place archaeological sites into their wider regional setting. We show that the Acheulean site of Kariandusi occupies a unique window of opportunity in place and time for trapping mammals constrained to move through a narrowly defined topographic bottleneck between edaphically-rich areas. We infer that the site was used for a simple form of ambush hunting and briefly explore the implications for differential site use, formation, preservation and visibility
An Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery at Walkington Wold, Yorkshire
This paper presents a re-evaluation of a cemetery excavated over
30 years ago at Walkington Wold in east Yorkshire. The cemetery is
characterized by careless burial on diverse alignments, and by the fact that
most of the skeletons did not have associated crania. The cemetery has been
variously described as being the result of an early post-Roman massacre, as
providing evidence for a âCelticâ head cult or as an Anglo-Saxon execution
cemetery. In order to resolve the matter, radiocarbon dates were acquired and
a re-examination of the skeletal remains was undertaken. It was confirmed that
the cemetery was an Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery, the only known example
from northern England, and the site is set into its wider context in the paper
Hope for the best âŠbut expect the worst: A qualitative study to explore how women with recurrent miscarriage experience the early waiting period of a new pregnancy
Objective To investigate how women experience the
initial period of a new pregnancy after suffering recurrent
miscarriage (RM).
Design A qualitative study, nested within a randomised
controlled feasibility study of a coping intervention for RM,
used semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Interviews
were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed
using a thematic network approach.
Setting Participants were recruited from the Recurrent
Miscarriage Clinic and Early Pregnancy Unit in two tertiary
referral hospitals in the UK.
Participants 14 women with RMs and who had
previously participated in the randomised controlled trial
(RCT) feasibility component of the study were recruited.
Results Seven organising themes emerged from the
data: (1) turmoil of emotions, (2) preparing for the worst,
(3) setting of personal milestones, (4) hypervigilance, (5)
social isolation, (6) adoption of pragmatic approaches, (7)
need for professional affirmation.
Conclusions The study established that for women with a
history of RM, the waiting period of a new pregnancy is a
traumatic time of great uncertainty and emotional turmoil
and one in which they express a need for emotional
support. Consideration should be given to the manner
in which supportive care is best delivered within the
constraints of current health service provision
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