Helping first year engineering students Get Set for success in their studies

The increasing diversity of the student population in higher education gives rise to issues relating to the ability to engage all students in productive and fulfilling learning experiences. With diversity comes an acknowledgement of the variety of learning spaces occupied by incoming students, and the need to ensure that those spaces become places of learning. The strategy proposed in this study to transform space into place is an online pre-test of first year engineering students, the Get Set quiz. This quiz enables commencing engineering students to self-test their readiness to study their chosen courses by measuring and providing individualised feedback on a number of cognitive and non-cognitive factors shown to be significant predictors of academic success. The best time for such self-assessment is prior to the commencement of their studies. Get Set helps set the scene for establishing place, by giving students the confidence that they have made an informed career choice, and/or by linking them with appropriate support mechanisms if necessary. Students are directed to support both on campus and online to help develop an individual study plan to address any knowledge and skills gaps. This proactive approach to independent learning improves students' self-awareness and helps them self-reflect on their approaches to learning, better preparing them for their studies

The costs of illiteracy in South Africa

In South Africa there has been a surge in publicly funded adult literacy education in recent years. There is a recognition that for the effective monitoring of adult literacy, direct measures of literacy are required. Grade attainment, self-reported ability to read and behavioural variables relating to, for instance, reading habits produce vastly different measures of adult literacy in South Africa. It is noteworthy that self-reported values change over time as people’s perceptions of what consitutes literacy shifts. A 75% literacy rate is arguably a plausible figure, though the absence of a direct measure is problematic. An education production function suggests that literacy-related parent behaviour, independently of parent years of education, influences performance of learners in school. In a multivariate employment model, self-reported literacy is a statistically significant predictor of being employed. In a cross-country growth model, poor quality schooling emerges as the variable requiring the most urgent policy attention to sustain and improve South Africa’s economic development. Both microeconomic and macroeconomic estimates suggest that with a more typical level of school performance South Africa’s GDP would be 23% to 30% higher than it currently is.Literacy, Illiteracy, South Africa, Education production function, Economic growth

VIDA: a virus database system for the organization of animal virus genome open reading frames

VIDA is a new virus database that organizes open reading frames (ORFs) from partial and complete genomic sequences from animal viruses. Currently VIDA includes all sequences from GenBank for Herpesviridae, Coronaviridae and Arteriviridae. The ORFs are organized into homologous protein families, which are identified on the basis of sequence similarity relationships, Conserved sequence regions of potential functional importance are identified and can be retrieved as sequence alignments. We use a controlled taxonomical and functional classification for all the proteins and protein families in the database. When available, protein structures that are related to the families have also been included. The database is available for online search and sequence information retrieval at http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/virus-database/ VIDA.html

Leighton's Theorem: extensions, limitations, and quasitrees

Leighton's Theorem states that if there is a tree $T$ that covers two finite graphs $G_1$ and $G_2$, then there is a finite graph $\hat G$ that is covered by $T$ and covers both $G_1$ and $G_2$. We prove that this result does not extend to regular covers by graphs other than trees. Nor does it extend to non-regular covers by a quasitree, even if the automorphism group of the quasitree contains a uniform lattice. But it does extend to regular coverings by quasitrees.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figures; v2: minor changes made following referee's comments; v3: minor edits to proof of Theorem 1.1 and correction of Example 2.2; to appear in Algebraic & Geometric Topolog

Convergence of many-body wavefunction expansions using a plane wave basis: from the homogeneous electron gas to the solid state

Using the finite simulation-cell homogeneous electron gas (HEG) as a model, we investigate the convergence of the correlation energy to the complete basis set (CBS) limit in methods utilising plane-wave wavefunction expansions. Simple analytic and numerical results from second-order M{\o}ller-Plesset theory (MP2) suggest a 1/M decay of the basis-set incompleteness error where M is the number of plane waves used in the calculation, allowing for straightforward extrapolation to the CBS limit. As we shall show, the choice of basis set truncation when constructing many-electron wavefunctions is far from obvious, and here we propose several alternatives based on the momentum transfer vector, which greatly improve the rate of convergence. This is demonstrated for a variety of wavefunction methods, from MP2 to coupled-cluster doubles theory (CCD) and the random-phase approximation plus second-order screened exchange (RPA+SOSEX). Finite basis-set energies are presented for these methods and compared with exact benchmarks. A transformation can map the orbitals of a general solid state system onto the HEG plane wave basis and thereby allow application of these methods to more realistic physical problems.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

The ISCIP Analyst, Volume IV, Issue 10

This repository item contains a single issue of The ISCIP Analyst, an analytical review journal published from 1996 to 2010 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy

The ISCIP Analyst, Volume II, Issue 13

This repository item contains a single issue of The ISCIP Analyst, an analytical review journal published from 1996 to 2010 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy

The ISCIP Analyst, Volume IV, Issue 3

This repository item contains a single issue of The ISCIP Analyst, an analytical review journal published from 1996 to 2010 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy