Fast aquatic escape with a jet thruster

The ability to collect water samples rapidly with aerial–aquatic robots would increase the safety and efficiency of water health monitoring and allow water sample collection from dangerous or inaccessible areas. An aquatic micro air vehicle (AquaMAV) able to dive into the water offers a low cost and robust means of collecting samples. However, small-scale flying vehicles generally do not have sufficient power for transition to flight from water. In this paper, we present a novel jet propelled AquaMAV able to perform jumpgliding leaps from water and a planar trajectory model that is able to accurately predict aquatic escape trajectories. Using this model, we are able to offer insights into the stability of aquatic takeoff to perturbations from surface waves and demonstrate that an impulsive leap is a robust method of flight transition. The AquaMAV uses a CO 2 powered water jet to escape the water, actuated by a custom shape memory alloy gas release. The 100 g robot leaps from beneath the surface, where it can deploy wings and glide over the water, achieving speeds above 11 m/s

University academics’ perceptions of reading list labels

Purpose: The purpose of the article is to reflect on the results of a continuing professional development sessions delivered to academics on the importance of a properly annotated reading list to the student experience. Approach: As part of the session the academics were asked to take part in a ‘pop quiz’ providing their interpretation of commonly used reading list labels. Findings: There was quite a broad interpretation of the labels, with several eliciting strongly positive or negative reactions. The similarity of meanings between some reading list labels made them redundant for helping students to prioritise their reading. Value: This case study could be used to provide sessions on reading lists at other institutions and the results from the quiz can be used to simplify reading list labels

Common Core Canon vs Literary Canon: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What Teachers Can Do About It

The Common Core Canon is both a blessing and a curse to teachers across the nation, who are adapting to the new curriculum that the Common Core has brought to the forefront. These teachers are dealing with multiple moving pieces that are not easy to cope with, including novels that do not fit the classes to which they are assigned, skills that are challenging to teach without student engagement, and new standards to keep track of. As such, teachers have formed strong opinions about these new challenges and successes, but there are not many venues for teachers to get to express their opinions. For this thesis, I took the opportunity to go to these teachers and ask for their opinions. These teachers chose to remain anonymous to avoid any issues that may arise from their opinions, but they gave unguarded answers which helps the reader to understand how teachers truly feel about the Common Core. I chose to connect my opinions and experiences to their quotes, so that I could further understand the challenges that teachers faced. It allowed me to see how teachers look at these challenges, and how I will be able to rise to meet them in my future as a teacher. Creating the unit plan also allowed me to take these opinions and create an example that proves that teacher choice can work

Phylogenetic covariance probability: Confidence and historical associations

The correlation that exists among multiple cladograms is often taken as evidence of some underlying macroevolutionary phenomenon common to the histories of those clades and, thus, as an explanation of the patterns of association of the constituent taxa. Such studies have various forms, the most common of which are cladistic biogeography and host-parasite coevolution. The issue of confidence has periodically been a theoretical consideration of vicariance biogeographers but in practice has been largely ignored by others. Previous approaches to assessing confidence in historical associations are examined here in relation to the difference between simple-event and cumulative probabilities and in relation to the restrictiveness of joint hypothesis testing. The phylogenetic covariance probability (PCP) test, a novel approach to assessing confidence in hypotheses of historical association, employs the empirical protocol of Brooks parsimony analysis (BPA) in an iterative, computer-intensive randomization routine. The PCP value consists of the frequency with which a solution as efficient or more efficient than the observed hypothesis of correlated phylogeny is achieved with random associations (e.g., of parasites and hosts or of taxa and areas). Because only the associations, and not the contributing phylogenies, are subjected to randomization, the test is not prone to certain criticisms leveled at other cladistic randomization routines. The behavior of the PCP test is examined in relation to eight published studies of historical association. This test is appropriately sensitive to the degrees of freedom allowed by the number of contributing clades and the number of taxa in those clades, to the extent of noncorrelated associations in the observed hypothesis, and to the relative information content contributing to that hypothesis

Thermotectonic Evolution of the Continental Margins of the Bay of Biscay: Application of Apatite Fission Track Analysis

The sensitivity of apatite fission tracks to cooling and unroofing episodes in Earth history is particularly suited to the tectonic processes of rifting and the long-term evolution of continental margins. Apatite fission track analyses have been made on ~70 samples of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks from coastal outcrops of Western France (the Armorican Massif) and north-western Spain (the Hesperian Massif) the aim being to unravel the potential thermal overprint associated with the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean, specifically in the Bay of Biscay. This thesis reviews the geological evolution of the continental margins of the Bay of Biscay region and presents the fission track sampling strategies and analytical results. The fission track ages range from ~70 to 270 Ma, with the youngest ages towards the Atlantic coasts, and become progressively older eastwards. The data are interpreted in terms of the thermal histories resulting from the Mesozoic postbreakup exhumation of the rift flanks in the westernmost regions of Spain and France, whilst eastwards the earliest detectable cooling episode is Early Permian, reflecting the exhumation of the Variscan mountain chain. The data from the Armorican Massif are consistent with 2 previously unrecognised periods of burial and subsequent exhumation during the Mesozoic. The most recent (Campanian) burial episode is inferred to represent the deposition of chalk. The data from north-western Spain do not appear to reflect this second burial, probably because at this time this region was outside the chalk depocentre. A second major aspect of the research is an assessment of the role of chemical composition as a control on variation in single grain ages within a sample. In particular, annealing of fission tracks in apatites rich in chlorine is expected to be retarded relative to a more fluorine-rich crystal, resulting in an older fission track age. A new application of infrared microspectroscopy has been developed to determine the chemical compositions of apatites in situ on the grain mount, enabling thesignificance of the relationship of fission track age to apatite chemistry to be assessed directly. This method relies on the progressive shift of infrared spectral peaks towards lower wavenumbers with the increasing chlorine. This phenomenon indicates that it is the structural rather than chemical adjustment of the crystal to the substitution of a large ion such as Cl that is important to the annealing of fission tracks in apatite. The methodology is an important advancement to the technique of fission track analysis being rapid and non-destructive

The role of PTEN in cardioprotection against ischaemia-reperfusion injury

Activation of the PI3K/AKT pathway protects the heart from ischaemia-reperfusion injury. Phosphatase and Tensin Homolog deleted on Chromosome10 (PTEN) is a negative regulator of this pathway. The hypothesis on which this thesis was based stated that inhibition of PTEN would confer protection against ischaemia-reperfusion injury. PTEN was reduced using: 1) a PTEN inhibitor, bpV(HOpic), 2) a mouse model of PTEN haploinsufficiency and 3) PTEN siRNA. The effects of PTEN reduction on ischaemia-reperfusion injury were investigated by using: 1) an isolated perfused heart model of ischaemia-reperfusion injury, 2) an isolated cardiomyocyte model of ROS induced mitochondria damage and 3) a cellular model of hypoxia-reoxygenation injury. No protection against ischaemia-reperfusion was observed in isolated perfused myocardium from C57BL/J6 mice, which were perfused with bpV(HOpic), or from PTEN+/-mice. Likewise, no protection against ROS induced mitochondrial damage was observed in isolated cardiomyocytes from the PTEN+/- mice. In these models an increase in AKT activity was recorded, however, this was not sufficient to confer cardioprotection. Similarly, H9c2 rat myoblast cells, silenced for PTEN expression using siRNA, were not protected against hypoxia-reoxygenation injury. Nevertheless, in isolated C57BL/J6 hearts perfused with bpV(HOpic) and in myocardium from PTEN+/- mice, when the PI3K/AKT pathway was stimulated by the cardioprotective intervention of ischaemic preconditioning a reduced threshold for protection was achieved. To conclude, the level of PTEN inhibition achieved in this study was not sufficient to bestow protection against simulated ischaemiareperfusion injury. However, it appears that reductions in PTEN can increase the sensitivity towards cardioprotection

How Technology Supported Teacher Behaviors Impact Student Outcomes: Results from a 1:1 Computing Initiative

As computing technology has advanced over the last several decades, many schools and school districts have embraced the use of this technology in education. One way in which schools and school districts have adopted computing technology is through adopting 1:1 computer initiatives where each student is provided with a computing device. However, despite the widespread and continuously expanding use of 1:1 computer initiatives within the educational setting, surprisingly little is known about the classroom-level factors that may impact student educational outcomes. Only one study to date (Shapley et al., 2010) has attempted to investigate specific classroom-level factors that may impact student outcomes within a 1:1 initiative. Therefore, the current study examined the impact of specific, technology-supported teaching strategies (personalized learning, authentic learning, and computer-supported collaborative learning) on students’ school satisfaction, academic outcomes, and 21st century skills. The study was conducted on a dataset consisting of approximately 8, 047 students and 517 teachers in grades 3-8 from a Southeastern school district that implemented a 1:1 technology initiative. The students surveyed provided information about their overall school satisfaction as well as their perceptions of their teachers’ use of the personalized, authentic, and computer-supported collaborative teaching strategies and overall levels of computer use in the classroom. The teachers also supplied their perceptions of their own use of these strategies. A subsample of students also participated in an assessment of their 21st century learning skills. In order to examine the potential for school-wide impacts on student outcomes, models were run with school-level variables that included school-wide levels of students’ perceptions of teachers’ use of technology-supported teaching strategies, school-wide levels of teachers’ perceptions of their own use of these strategies, as well as school-wide measures of 1:1 implementation quality. Study 1 examined the impact of the technology-supported teaching strategies mentioned above on students’ school engagement and academic outcomes. Multi-level analyses revealed that students’ perceptions of their teachers’ use of personalized and authentic learning strategies had a significant, positive relationship with students’ school engagement. Results also indicated that students’ perceptions of their teachers’ use of authentic learning strategies was significantly positively related to greater gains in English/Language Arts as well as Mathematics achievement scores. In addition to students’ perceptions of their own teachers’ use of authentic learning strategies in the classroom, it was also found that schools with higher overall levels of this perception also had greater gains in Mathematics achievement scores. Higher levels of computer use in the classroom were also found to be positively related to gains in students Mathematics achievement scores. In addition, it was found that school-wide levels of quality professional development were also associated with greater gains in students’ Mathematics achievement scores. However, results also revealed that greater use of computer-supported collaborative learning strategies was associated with lower levels of school satisfaction and weaker gains in Mathematics achievement scores. Study 2 examined the relationship of students’ perceptions of their teachers’ use of technology-supported teaching strategies on students’ 21st century learning skills. Results revealed that students’ reports of their teachers’ use of computer-supported collaborative learning strategies was consistently related to lower scores on this measure in the elementary sample (5th grade), but not in the middle school sample (8th grade). Taken together, these findings support several positive impacts of the technology-supported teaching strategies examined, but also highlight the need to investigate technology-related teaching strategies in a more nuanced manner as not all technology-supported teaching strategies necessarily have the positive impacts that have been theorized