Learning space evaluation

The subject of physical learning space has in recent years become increasingly complex This reflection examines what evidence exists in this are

The reasons for attrition: we (still) haven't got a clue

This paper describes a small survey (attrition survey) undertaken to ascertain reasons of attrition and non-response in questionnaire responses from student participants as part of a larger longitudinal survey (longitudinal study). Due to difficulties in retaining participants within the longitudinal study, determining reasons for attrition and non-response became important; mainly. The questionnaire employed in the longitudinal study was developed by the Cambridge Management Institute (CMI) and is widely known as the HEGI instrument or the SPEED network questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed to be completed three times by the participants; one pre-test and two post-tests. Following 18 months of problems of attrition, questions were raised about its value and whether it was suitable to be administered in the environment and setting within which we were using it, in traditional semesters in higher education. Therefore, the subsequent attrition survey was undertaken to look at a number of factors that the authors believed were significant in causing the high rates of attrition and non-response. This data was obtained using a very short questionnaire sent to a proportion of the sample originally part of the longitudinal study. The factors deemed to be of potential significance were plenty and are discussed at detail throughout the paper. Predominantly, issues concerning web-based and paper-based survey methods were also of significance as the former becomes more prevalent but raises the question, how do response rates compare with traditional methods? This was a further area of concern for the authors because a change to the survey mode i.e. distribution and completion method from paper to online was reluctantly introduced as a cost-saving measure. This paper will report the results of the attrition survey in relation to the participants’ responses about reasons for attrition and non-response

An evaluation of Simventure

This paper discusses the value of providing a simulated experience of how organisations work enabling skills and knowledge from disparate subject areas to be synthesised and assimilated in solving complex business proble

Gravitational physics with antimatter

The production of low-energy antimatter provides unique opportunities to search for new physics in an unexplored regime. Testing gravitational interactions with antimatter is one such opportunity. Here a scenario based on Lorentz and CPT violation in the Standard- Model Extension is considered in which anomalous gravitational effects in antimatter could arise.Comment: 5 pages, presented at the International Conference on Exotic Atoms (EXA 2008) and the 9th International Conference on Low Energy Antiproton Physics (LEAP 2008), Vienna, Austria, September 200

Preparation of pure boehmite, alpha-Al2O3 and their mixtures by hydrothermal oxidation of aluminium metal

A hydrothermal oxidation process for preparing pure boehmite, alpha-Al2O3, and their mixtures by oxidation of pure aluminum metal is described, and the reaction mechanisms involved are identified. SEM images are presented which show distinct morphologies of boehmite, alpha-Al2O3, and boehmite + alpha-Al2O3 phases. Near sperical shapes of alpha-Al2O3 powder phases are obtained at 550 C with 30 percent volume of fill

CPT Violation, Strings, and Neutral-Meson Systems

This talk provides a short overview of recent results on possible CPT violation and some associated experimental signatures.Comment: Presented at Orbis Scientiae, January 199

On vertex adjacencies in the polytope of pyramidal tours with step-backs

We consider the traveling salesperson problem in a directed graph. The pyramidal tours with step-backs are a special class of Hamiltonian cycles for which the traveling salesperson problem is solved by dynamic programming in polynomial time. The polytope of pyramidal tours with step-backs $PSB (n)$ is defined as the convex hull of the characteristic vectors of all possible pyramidal tours with step-backs in a complete directed graph. The skeleton of $PSB (n)$ is the graph whose vertex set is the vertex set of $PSB (n)$ and the edge set is the set of geometric edges or one-dimensional faces of $PSB (n)$. The main result of the paper is a necessary and sufficient condition for vertex adjacencies in the skeleton of the polytope $PSB (n)$ that can be verified in polynomial time.Comment: in Englis