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Collaborative requirements development in a wiki on a software engineering course
The Potential for Student Performance Prediction in Small Cohorts with Minimal Available Attributes
The measurement of student performance during their progress through university study provides academic leadership with critical information on each studentâs likelihood of success. Academics have traditionally used their interactions with individual students through class activities and interim assessments to identify those âat riskâ of failure/withdrawal. However, modern university environments, offering easy on-line availability of course material, may see reduced lecture/tutorial attendance, making such identification more challenging. Modern data mining and machine learning techniques provide increasingly accurate predictions of student examination assessment marks, although these approaches have focussed upon large student populations and wide ranges of data attributes per student. However, many university modules comprise relatively small student cohorts, with institutional protocols limiting the student attributes available for analysis. It appears that very little research attention has been devoted to this area of analysis and prediction. We describe an experiment conducted on a final-year university module student cohort of 23, where individual student data are limited to lecture/tutorial attendance, virtual learning environment accesses and intermediate assessments. We found potential for predicting individual student interim and final assessment marks in small student cohorts with very limited attributes and that these predictions could be useful to support module leaders in identifying students potentially âat risk.â.Peer reviewe
Antineutrino Geophysics with Liquid Scintillator Detectors
Detecting the antineutrinos emitted by the decay of radioactive elements in
the mantle and crust could provide a direct measurement of the total abundance
of uranium and thorium in the Earth. In calculating the antineutrino flux at
specific sites, the local geology of the crust and the background from the
world's nuclear power reactors are important considerations. Employing a global
crustal map, with type and thickness data, and using recent estimates of the
uranium and thorium distribution in the Earth, we calculate the antineutrino
event rate for two new neutrino detectors. We show that spectral features allow
terrestrial antineutrino events to be identified above reactor antineutrino
backgrounds and that the uranium and thorium contributions can be separately
determined.Comment: Published paper differs from original submitted preprint because
reviewers suggested updated continental crust U/Th abundances. Kamioka
geographical location error was in preprint, partially corrected in published
version. This version is the same as the published paper, with Kamioka fully
corrected. Because of recent interest in this topic, this version is being
made available, despite this work being 8 years ol
Pollyâs story : using structural narrative analysis to understand a trans migration journey
There is scant theoretical and empirical research on experiences of trans and its significance for social work practice. In this paper we premise that research on trans identity and practice needs to be located in particular temporal, cultural, spatial/geographical contexts and argue that a structural narrative analytical approach centring on plot, offers the opportunity to unravel the âhowâ and âwhyâ stories are told. We posit that attending to narrative structure facilitates a deeper understanding of trans peopleâs situated, lived experiences than thematic narrative analysis alone, since people organise their narratives according to a culturally available repertoire including plots. The paper focuses on the life and narrative of Polly, a male-to-female trans woman, and her gender migration journey using the plot typology âthe Questâ. We are cognisant of the limitations to structural narrative analysis and Western conventions of storytelling, and acknowledge that our approach is subjective; however, we argue that knowledge itself is contextual and perspective ridden, shaped by researchers and participants. Our position holds that narratives are not â and cannot â be separated from the context in which they are told, and importantly the resources used to tell them, and that analysing narrative structure can contextualise individual unique biographies and give voice to less heard communities
Who are these youths? Language in the service of policy
In the 1990s policy relating to children and young people who offend developed as a result of the interplay of political imperatives and populist demands. The âresponsibilisationâ of young offenders and the âno excusesâ culture of youth justice have been âmarketedâ through a discourse which evidences linguistic changes. This article focuses on one particular area of policy change, that relating to the prosecutorial decision, to show how particular images of children were both reflected and constructed through a changing selection of words to describe the non-adult suspect and offender. In such minutiae of discourse can be found not only the signifiers of public attitudinal and policy change but also the means by which undesirable policy developments can be challenged
Parents Making Meaning of HighâConflict Divorce
This article reports on the findings of an empirical study conducted with 25 parents in British Columbia, Canada, who experienced a highâconflict divorce and later came to see the experience as having been transformative despite the difficulties they faced. While considerable research and policy initiatives frame highâconflict divorce as an individual and interpersonal problem, there is less reference to the fact that these disputes occur in a social, political, and legal context that also changes over time and across generations. There has been little research examining longâterm divorce outcomes, and no research to date examining how mothers and fathers who experienced a highâconflict divorce process overcome their difficulties and make meaning of their experiences retrospectively. This interdisciplinary study starts to fill these gaps. Following an overview of the study findings, the article highlights common themes arising from parents' narratives with a particular focus on agency, voice, and meaningâmaking across the life course. I argue that by taking a long view of the challenges participants faced, it is possible to move away from decontextualised understandings of highâconflict divorce
'Working outâ identity: distance runners and the management of disrupted identity
This article contributes fresh perspectives to the empirical literature on the sociology of the body, and of leisure and identity, by analysing the impact of long-term injury on the identities of two amateur but serious middle/long-distance runners. Employing a symbolic interactionist framework,and utilising data derived from a collaborative autoethnographic project, it explores the role
of âidentity workâ in providing continuity of identity during the liminality of long-term injury and
rehabilitation, which poses a fundamental challenge to athletic identity. Specifically, the analysis
applies Snow and Andersonâs (1995) and Perinbanayagamâs (2000) theoretical conceptualisations
in order to examine the various forms of identity work undertaken by the injured participants, along
the dimensions of materialistic, associative and vocabularic identifications. Such identity work was
found to be crucial in sustaining a credible sporting identity in the face of disruption to the running
self, and in generating momentum towards the goal of restitution to full running fitness and reengagement
with a cherished form of leisure.
KEYWORDS: identity work, symbolic interactionism, distance running, disrupted identit
South Atlantic paleobathymetry since early Cretaceous
We present early Cretaceous to present paleobathymetric reconstructions and quantitative uncertainty estimates for the South Atlantic, offering a strong basis for studies of paleocirculation, paleoclimate and paleobiogeography. Circulation in an initially salty and anoxic ocean, restricted by the topography of the Falkland Plateau, Rio Grande Ridge and Walvis Rise, favoured deposition of thick evaporites in shallow water of the Brazilian-Angolan margins. This ceased as sea oor spreading propagated northwards, opening an equatorial gateway to shallow and intermediate circulation. This gateway, together with subsiding volcano-tectonic barriers would have played a key role in Late Cretaceous climate changes. Later deepening and widening of the South Atlantic, together with gateway opening at Drake Passage would lead, by mid-Miocene (âŒ15 Ma) to the establishment of modern-style thermohaline circulation
Solar System Processes Underlying Planetary Formation, Geodynamics, and the Georeactor
Only three processes, operant during the formation of the Solar System, are
responsible for the diversity of matter in the Solar System and are directly
responsible for planetary internal-structures, including planetocentric nuclear
fission reactors, and for dynamical processes, including and especially,
geodynamics. These processes are: (i) Low-pressure, low-temperature
condensation from solar matter in the remote reaches of the Solar System or in
the interstellar medium; (ii) High-pressure, high-temperature condensation from
solar matter associated with planetary-formation by raining out from the
interiors of giant-gaseous protoplanets, and; (iii) Stripping of the primordial
volatile components from the inner portion of the Solar System by super-intense
solar wind associated with T-Tauri phase mass-ejections, presumably during the
thermonuclear ignition of the Sun. As described herein, these processes lead
logically, in a causally related manner, to a coherent vision of planetary
formation with profound implications including, but not limited to, (a) Earth
formation as a giant gaseous Jupiter-like planet with vast amounts of stored
energy of protoplanetary compression in its rock-plus-alloy kernel; (b) Removal
of approximately 300 Earth-masses of primordial gases from the Earth, which
began Earth's decompression process, making available the stored energy of
protoplanetary compression for driving geodynamic processes, which I have
described by the new whole-Earth decompression dynamics and which is
responsible for emplacing heat at the mantle-crust-interface at the base of the
crust through the process I have described, called mantle decompression
thermal-tsunami; and, (c)Uranium accumulations at the planetary centers capable
of self-sustained nuclear fission chain reactions.Comment: Invited paper for the Special Issue of Earth, Moon and Planets
entitled Neutrino Geophysics Added final corrections for publicatio
âVideo Replay: Families, films and fantasyâ as a transformational text: Commentary on Valerie Walkerdine's âVideo Replayâ.
In this commentary I explore the significance of Valerie Walkerdine's paper âVideo Replay: Families, Films and Fantasyâ. I review its impact in 1986 and then discuss how some of its ideas about subjectivity and popular culture â specifically film - can be developed in the contemporary context. A recurring fantasy of Rocky II and its reception is that of social and psychological transformation. I address this theme by drawing on the work of Christopher Bollas to argue that Walkerdine's psychosocial analysis continues to facilitate, across a range of contexts, some of the transformational processes described in her article
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