51,106 research outputs found
First year student experience
The application was made on behalf of the undergraduate courses team who sought to enhance the first year experience by engaging students in the practice of business. The intention was to develop and signpost enterprising qualities and characteristics in first year learners and develop confidence as well as competence.
The undergraduate review for FBL commenced in September 2009. This offered an opportunity to innovate and build good practice in enterprise learning as a pilot to inform the undergraduate review. The team sought to provide a coherent and relevant set of learning experiences that could be achieved outside structured curriculum that would enable learning through live projects
EVALUATING A STUDENT CENTRED APPROACH TO TEACHING AND LEARNING ON A POST-GRADUATE PROFESSIONAL MODULE
The paper explores the impact of embedding a student centred approach to teaching and learning on a post-graduate professional module with a mixed cohort in terms of previous academic experience and cultural background. It was the first module on the programme and student performance was assessed by summative examination. The student-centred approach was characterised by interactive discussion based delivery, group work and formative assessment and feedback on a weekly basis. In addition students were invited to undertake a mock exam as independent study and formative audio feedback was provided. Student views on the process were surveyed and responses were highly positive. As assessment data suggests that students who engage with the formative process do better at summative assessment, the next step for the tutors will be to explore ways of engaging the students who do not currently participate
Dietary aflatoxin exposure and impaired growth in young children from Benin and Togo: cross sectional study
Fetal and early childhood environment, including the
nutritional status of the pregnant mother and the
infant, are considered critical for growth and risk of
disease in later life. Many people in developing counÂ
tries are not only malnourished but also chronically
exposed to high levels of toxic fungal metabolites
(mycotoxins). One family of mycotoxins, the aflatoxins,
are carcinogenic and immunotoxic and cause growth
retardation in animals. Aflatoxins contaminate staple
foods in West Africa, particularly maize and groundÂ
nuts, as a result of hot, humid storage conditions that
promote fungal growth. High exposure to aflatoxins
occurs throughout childhood in the region, suggestÂ
ing that growth and development could be critically
affected.We assessed exposure to aflatoxins in relation
to anthropometric measures in children in Benin and
Togo
Probabilistic Model Counting with Short XORs
The idea of counting the number of satisfying truth assignments (models) of a
formula by adding random parity constraints can be traced back to the seminal
work of Valiant and Vazirani, showing that NP is as easy as detecting unique
solutions. While theoretically sound, the random parity constraints in that
construction have the following drawback: each constraint, on average, involves
half of all variables. As a result, the branching factor associated with
searching for models that also satisfy the parity constraints quickly gets out
of hand. In this work we prove that one can work with much shorter parity
constraints and still get rigorous mathematical guarantees, especially when the
number of models is large so that many constraints need to be added. Our work
is based on the realization that the essential feature for random systems of
parity constraints to be useful in probabilistic model counting is that the
geometry of their set of solutions resembles an error-correcting code.Comment: To appear in SAT 1
Similar biodiversity of ectomycorrhizal fungi in set-aside plantations and ancient old-growth broadleaved forests
Setting aside overmature planted forests is currently seen as an option for preserving species associated with old-growth forests, such as those with dispersal limitation. Few data exist, however, on the utility of set-aside plantations for this purpose, or the value of this habitat type for biodiversity relative to old-growth semi-natural ecosystems. Here, we evaluate the contribution of forest type relative to habitat characteristics in determining species richness and composition in seven forest blocks, each containing an ancient old-growth stand (> 1000 yrs) paired with a set-aside even-aged planted stand (ca. 180 yrs). We investigated the functionally important yet relatively neglected ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF), a group for which the importance of forest age has not been assessed in broadleaved forests. We found that forest type was not an important determinant of EMF species richness or composition, demonstrating that set-aside can be an effective option for conserving ancient EMF communities. Species richness of above-ground EMF fruiting bodies was principally related to the basal area of the stand (a correlate of canopy cover) and tree species diversity, whilst richness of below-ground ectomycorrhizae was driven only by tree diversity. Our results suggest that overmature planted forest stands, particularly those that are mixed-woods with high basal area, are an effective means to connect and expand ecological networks of ancient old-growth forests in historically deforested and fragmented landscapes for ectomycorrhizal fungi
Fungal infections in liver transplant recipients
Sixty-two adults who underwent orthotopic liver transplantations between February 1981 and June 1983 were followed for a mean of 170 days after the operation. Twenty-six patients developed 30 episodes of significant fungal infection. Candida species and Torulopsis glabrata were responsible for 22 episodes and Aspergillus species for 6. Most fungal infections occurred in the first month after transplantation. In the first 8 weeks after transplantation, death occurred in 69% (18/26) of patients with fungal infection but in only 8% (3/36) of patients without fungal infection (P<0.0005). The cause of death, however, was usually multifactorial, and not solely due to the fungal infection. Fungal infections were associated with the following clinical factors: administration of preoperative steroids (P<0.05) and antibiotics (P<0.05), longer transplant operative time (P<0.02), longer posttransplant operative time (P<0.01), duration of antibiotic use after transplant surgery (P<0.001), and the number of steroid boluses administered to control rejection in the first 2 posttransplant months (P<0.01). Patients with primary biliary cirrhosis had fewer fungal infections than patients with other underlying liver diseases (P<0.05). A total of 41% (9/22) of Candida infections resolved, but all Aspergillus infections ended in death. © 1985 by The Williams & Wilkins Co
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Early time dynamics of laser-ablated silicon using ultrafast grazing incidence X-ray scattering
Controlling the morphology of laser-derived nanomaterials is dependent on developing a better understanding of the particle nucleation dynamics in the ablation plume. Here, we utilize the femtosecond-length pulses from an x-ray free electron laser to perform time-resolved grazing incidence x-ray scattering measurements on a laser-produced silicon plasma plume. At 20 ps we observe a dramatic increase in the scattering amplitude at small scattering vectors, which we attribute to incipient formation of liquid silicon droplets. These results demonstrate the utility of XFELs as a tool for characterizing the formation dynamics of nanomaterials in laser-produced plasma plumes on ultrafast timescales
Shear Modes, Criticality and Extremal Black Holes
We consider a (2+1)-dimensional field theory, assumed to be holographically
dual to the extremal Reissner-Nordstrom AdS(4) black hole background, and
calculate the retarded correlators of charge (vector) current and
energy-momentum (tensor) operators at finite momentum and frequency. We show
that, similar to what was observed previously for the correlators of scalar and
spinor operators, these correlators exhibit emergent scaling behavior at low
frequency. We numerically compute the electromagnetic and gravitational
quasinormal frequencies (in the shear channel) of the extremal
Reissner-Nordstrom AdS(4) black hole corresponding to the spectrum of poles in
the retarded correlators. The picture that emerges is quite simple: there is a
branch cut along the negative imaginary frequency axis, and a series of
isolated poles corresponding to damped excitations. All of these poles are
always in the lower half complex frequency plane, indicating stability. We show
that this analytic structure can be understood as the proper limit of finite
temperature results as T is taken to zero holding the chemical potential fixed.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figures, added reference
Holographic non-relativistic fermionic fixed point and bulk dipole coupling
Inspired by the recently discovered non-relativistic fermionic fixed points,
we investigate how the presence of bulk dipole coupling modifies the spectral
function at one of these novel fixed points. As a result, although the infinite
flat band is always visible in the presence of the bulk dipole coupling as well
as chemical potential, the band is modified in a remarkable way at small
momenta up to the order of magnitude of bulk dipole coupling. On the other
hand, like a phoenix, a new Fermi surface sprouts from the formed gap when the
bulk dipole coupling is pushed up further such as to overshadow the charge
parameter, which is obviously different from what is found at the relativistic
fixed points.Comment: JHEP style, 1+17 pages, 9 figures, 1 table, typos corrected,
references added, version to appear in JHE
New Constraints (and Motivations) for Abelian Gauge Bosons in the MeV-TeV Mass Range
We survey the phenomenological constraints on abelian gauge bosons having
masses in the MeV to multi-GeV mass range (using precision electroweak
measurements, neutrino-electron and neutrino-nucleon scattering, electron and
muon anomalous magnetic moments, upsilon decay, beam dump experiments, atomic
parity violation, low-energy neutron scattering and primordial
nucleosynthesis). We compute their implications for the three parameters that
in general describe the low-energy properties of such bosons: their mass and
their two possible types of dimensionless couplings (direct couplings to
ordinary fermions and kinetic mixing with Standard Model hypercharge). We argue
that gauge bosons with very small couplings to ordinary fermions in this mass
range are natural in string compactifications and are likely to be generic in
theories for which the gravity scale is systematically smaller than the Planck
mass - such as in extra-dimensional models - because of the necessity to
suppress proton decay. Furthermore, because its couplings are weak, in the
low-energy theory relevant to experiments at and below TeV scales the charge
gauged by the new boson can appear to be broken, both by classical effects and
by anomalies. In particular, if the new gauge charge appears to be anomalous,
anomaly cancellation does not also require the introduction of new light
fermions in the low-energy theory. Furthermore, the charge can appear to be
conserved in the low-energy theory, despite the corresponding gauge boson
having a mass. Our results reduce to those of other authors in the special
cases where there is no kinetic mixing or there is no direct coupling to
ordinary fermions, such as for recently proposed dark-matter scenarios.Comment: 49 pages + appendix, 21 figures. This is the final version which
appears in JHE
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