301 research outputs found
Pathways To Success: Evaluating The Use Of Enabling Pedagogies In A University Transition Course
All universities in the Western world strive to attract and retain students, particularly those students who would not normally engage in tertiary studies. One way to widen access to university courses is to provide an enabling or alternative entry pathway course. The research reported in this paper was undertaken at an Australian university that has a social equity agenda to support students from diverse backgrounds to successfully engage in tertiary study. An evaluation was conducted of a particular pathway course at this university, with a view to contributing to knowledge on teaching and learning strategies in enabling courses. The research outcomes include a model of an enabling pedagogy designed to build a supportive learning community to help studentsâ transition into further studies
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Stratosphere-troposphere transport in a numerical simulation of midlatitude convection
The transport of stratospheric air deep into the troposphere via convection is
investigated numerically using the UK Met Office Unified Model. A convective system
that formed on 27 June 2004 near southeast England, in the vicinity an upper level
potential vorticity anomaly and a lowered tropopause, provides the basis for analysis.
Transport is diagnosed using a stratospheric tracer that can either be passed through or
withheld from the modelâs convective parameterization scheme. Three simulations are
performed at increasingly finer resolutions, with horizontal grid lengths of 12, 4, and 1 km.
In the 12 and 4 km simulations, tracer is transported deeply into the troposphere by the
parameterized convection. In the 1 km simulation, for which the convective
parameterization is disengaged, deep transport is still accomplished but with a much
smaller magnitude. However, the 1 km simulation resolves stirring along the tropopause
that does not exist in the coarser simulations. In all three simulations, the concentration of
the deeply transported tracer is small, three orders of magnitude less than that of the
shallow transport near the tropopause, most likely because of the efficient dilution of
parcels in the lower troposphere
Cohesion, coherence and connectedness: The 3C model for enabling-course design to support student transition to university
Recent Australian government policy has focused on attracting students from under-represented and diverse groups to tertiary education with university enabling courses one pathway for these students. The trend towards broader participation has altered traditional perceptions of a typical university student and raised delivery challenges. The ability to engage these students as learners and improve their academic outcomes and confidence towards successful course completion, is increasingly important to universities because of attrition costs to governments, students and higher education institutions, and is increasingly reflected in academic literature. While strategic student support options have been examined in detail, less focus has been applied to the enabling programs themselves; with little published about what actually happens at the course implementation level, to encourage conditions that support student progression. This paper reports on the re-development of an enabling course at an Australian university committed to breaking down barriers that restrict entry to education. Cohesion, coherence and connectedness emerged as central principles guiding leadership style, course design and development, staff-student communication and collaborative teaching and learning approaches. Student voices describe the lived experience of course development and delivery influenced by these principles. University retention and progression statistics and student unit teaching evaluation data were used to evaluate the impact on student satisfaction and transition. The outcome of the research highlights that building a collaborative course culture based on a 3C model of cohesion, coherence and connectedness when, used interdependently, improves studentsâ confidence, skills and knowledge to successfully transition to undergraduate tertiary study
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Dietary Intake, D3Cr Muscle Mass, and Appendicular Lean Mass in a Cohort of Older Men.
BackgroundWe examined cross-sectional associations between dietary patterns, macronutrient intake, and measures of muscle mass and lean mass in older men.MethodsParticipants in the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men (MrOS) cohort (n = 903; mean ± SD age 84.2 ± 4 years) completed brief Block food frequency questionnaires (May 2014-May 2016); factor analysis was used to derive dietary patterns. The D3-creatine (D3Cr) dilution method was used to measure muscle mass; dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was used to measure appendicular lean mass (ALM). Generalized linear models were used to report adjusted means of outcomes by dietary pattern. Multiple linear regression models were used to determine associations between macronutrients and D3Cr muscle mass and DXA ALM. Multivariable models were adjusted for age, race, clinic site, education, depression, total energy intake, height, and percent body fat.ResultsGreater adherence to a Western dietary pattern (high factor loadings for red meat, fried foods, and high-fat dairy) was associated with higher D3Cr muscle mass (p-trend = .026). Adherence to the Healthy dietary pattern (high factor loadings for fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats) was not associated with D3Cr muscle mass or DXA ALM. Total protein (ÎČ = 0.09, 95% CI = 0.03, 0.14) and nondairy animal protein (ÎČ = 0.16, 95% CI = 0.10, 0.21) were positively associated with D3Cr muscle mass. Nondairy animal protein (ÎČ = 0.06, 95% CI = 0.002, 0.11) was positively associated with DXA ALM. Associations with other macronutrients were inconsistent.ConclusionsNondairy animal protein intake (within a Western dietary pattern and alone) was positively associated with D3Cr muscle mass in older men
Quality control of uroflowmetry and urodynamic data from two large multicenter studies of male lower urinary tract symptoms
Asymmetric triplex metallohelices with high and selective activity against cancer cells
Small cationic amphiphilic α-helical peptides are emerging as agents for the treatment of cancer and infection, but they are costly and display unfavourable pharmacokinetics. Helical coordination complexes may offer a three-dimensional scaffold for the synthesis of mimetic architectures. However, the high symmetry and modest functionality of current systems offer little scope to tailor the structure to interact with specific biomolecular targets, or to create libraries for phenotypic screens. Here, we report the highly stereoselective asymmetric self-assembly of very stable, functionalized metallohelices. Their anti-parallel head-to-head-to-tail âtriplexâ strand arrangement creates an amphipathic functional topology akin to that of the active sub-units of, for example, host-defence peptides and âp53. The metallohelices display high, structure-dependent toxicity to the human colon carcinoma cell-line HCT116 âp53++, causing dramatic changes in the cell cycle without DNA damage. They have lower toxicity to human breast adenocarcinoma cells (MDA-MB-468) and, most remarkably, they show no significant toxicity to the bacteria methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli.
At a glanc
The Monitor project: JW 380 -- a 0.26, 0.15 Msol pre main sequence eclipsing binary in the Orion Nebula Cluster
We report the discovery of a low-mass (0.26 +/- 0.02, 0.15 +/- 0.01 Msol)
pre-main-sequence eclipsing binary with a 5.3 day orbital period. JW 380 was
detected as part of a high-cadence time-resolved photometric survey (the
Monitor project) using the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope and Wide Field Camera
for a survey of a single field in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) region in V
and i bands. The star is assigned a 99 per cent membership probability from
proper motion measurements, and radial velocity observations indicate a
systemic velocity within 1 sigma of that of the ONC. Modelling of the combined
light and radial velocity curves of the system gave stellar radii of 1.19 +0.04
-0.18 Rsol and 0.90 +0.17 -0.03 Rsol for the primary and secondary, with a
significant third light contribution which is also visible as a third peak in
the cross-correlation functions used to derive radial velocities. The masses
and radii appear to be consistent with stellar models for 2-3 Myr age from
several authors, within the present observational errors. These observations
probe an important region of mass-radius parameter space, where there are
currently only a handful of known pre-main-sequence eclipsing binary systems
with precise measurements available in the literature.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Training of Instrumentalists and Development of New Technologies on SOFIA
This white paper is submitted to the Astronomy and Astrophysics 2010 Decadal
Survey (Astro2010)1 Committee on the State of the Profession to emphasize the
potential of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to
contribute to the training of instrumentalists and observers, and to related
technology developments. This potential goes beyond the primary mission of
SOFIA, which is to carry out unique, high priority astronomical research.
SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP aircraft with a 2.5 meter telescope. It will enable
astronomical observations anywhere, any time, and at most wavelengths between
0.3 microns and 1.6 mm not accessible from ground-based observatories. These
attributes, accruing from the mobility and flight altitude of SOFIA, guarantee
a wealth of scientific return. Its instrument teams (nine in the first
generation) and guest investigators will do suborbital astronomy in a
shirt-sleeve environment. The project will invest $10M per year in science
instrument development over a lifetime of 20 years. This, frequent flight
opportunities, and operation that enables rapid changes of science instruments
and hands-on in-flight access to the instruments, assure a unique and extensive
potential - both for training young instrumentalists and for encouraging and
deploying nascent technologies. Novel instruments covering optical, infrared,
and submillimeter bands can be developed for and tested on SOFIA by their
developers (including apprentices) for their own observations and for those of
guest observers, to validate technologies and maximize observational
effectiveness.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, White Paper for Astro 2010 Survey Committee on
State of the Professio
The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment
The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in
operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from
this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release
Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first
two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14
is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all
data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14
is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation
Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the
Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2),
including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine
learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes
from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous
release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of
the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the
important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both
targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS
website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to
data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is
planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be
followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14
happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov
2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections
only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected
Skin Lesions on Common Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) from Three Sites in the Northwest Atlantic, USA
Skin disease occurs frequently in many cetacean species across the globe; methods to categorize lesions have relied on photo-identification (photo-id), stranding, and by-catch data. The current study used photo-id data from four sampling months during 2009 to estimate skin lesion prevalence and type occurring on bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) from three sites along the southeast United States coast [Sarasota Bay, FL (SSB); near Brunswick and Sapelo Island, GA (BSG); and near Charleston, SC (CHS)]. The prevalence of lesions was highest among BSG dolphins (Pâ=â0.587) and lowest in SSB (Pâ=â0.380), and the overall prevalence was significantly different among all sites (p<0.0167). Logistic regression modeling revealed a significant reduction in the odds of lesion occurrence for increasing water temperatures (ORâ=â0.92; 95%CI:0.906â0.938) and a significantly increased odds of lesion occurrence for BSG dolphins (ORâ=â1.39; 95%CI:1.203â1.614). Approximately one-third of the lesioned dolphins from each site presented with multiple types, and population differences in lesion type occurrence were observed (p<0.05). Lesions on stranded dolphins were sampled to determine the etiology of different lesion types, which included three visually distinct samples positive for herpesvirus. Although generally considered non-fatal, skin disease may be indicative of animal health or exposure to anthropogenic or environmental threats, and photo-id data provide an efficient and cost-effective approach to document the occurrence of skin lesions in free-ranging populations
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