Reviews

John Stephenson (ed.), Teaching and Learning Online: Pedagogies for New Technologies, Kogan Page, London, 2001. ISBN: 0–7494–3511–9. Softback, xi + 228 pages. £19.99

Applying What You Have Learned

Last April, a group of over 110 students presented their Capstone projects in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University. The Capstone program serves students in engineering and technology and is a required component of all ABE undergraduates. Capstone programs in engineering and technology are divided into two phases: a first-semester focus on defining the scope of the problem, and an emphasis on solution development and evaluation in the second semester. At the end of the first semester, the teams present their accomplishments at a poster session, where they receive feedback from ABE faculty and industry clients. They return to the second component of their projects with new ideas and a sharper focus on potential solutions

Evaluation of the South Australian default 50 km/h speed limit

On 1 March 2003 the default urban speed limit in South Australia was reduced from 60 km/h to 50 km/h. On-road speeds just before the default limit was introduced were compared with speeds a year later. The numbers of casualty crashes and casualties in the year before the default limit was introduced were compared with the corresponding numbers in the first year that the default limit was in effect. On roads where the speed limit was reduced from 60 km/h to 50 km/h, average vehicle speeds decreased by 2.3 km/h and casualties by 24 per cent. On roads where the speed limit remained at 60 km/h, average vehicle speeds decreased by 0.9 km/h and casualties by 7 per cent.C.N. Kloeden, J.E. Woolley and A.J. McLea

Further evaluation of the South Australian default 50 km/h speed limit

On 1 March 2003 the default urban speed limit in South Australia was reduced from 60 km/h to 50 km/h. On-road speeds just before the default limit was introduced were compared with speeds one and three years later. The number of casualty crashes and casualties in the three years before the default limit was introduced were compared with corresponding numbers in the three years after the default limit came into effect. On roads where the speed limit was reduced from 60 km/h to 50km/h, average speeds decreased by 3.8km/h after three years and casualty crashes fell by 23 per cent. On roads where the speed limit remained at 60 km/h, average vehicle speeds decreased by 2.1 km/h after three years and casualty crashes fell by 16 per cent.C.N. Kloeden, J.E. Woolley and A.J. McLea

Biopsy and selective recall compared with immediate large loop excision in management of women with low grade abnormal cervical cytology referred for colposcopy : multicentre randomised controlled trial

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Remnant Fermi surface in the presence of an underlying instability in layered 1T-TaS_2

We report high resolution angle-scanned photoemission and Fermi surface (FS) mapping experiments on the layered transition-metal dichalcogenide 1T-TaS_2 in the quasi commensurate (QC) and the commensurate (C) charge-density-wave (CDW) phase. Instead of a nesting induced partially removed FS in the CDW phase we find a pseudogap over large portions of the FS. This remnant FS exhibits the symmetry of the one-particle normal state FS even when passing from the QC-phase to the C-phase. Possibly, this Mott localization induced transition represents the underlying instability responsible for the pseudogapped FS

Neural dysfunction during temporal discounting in paediatric Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Both Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are associated with choice impulsivity, i.e. the tendency to prefer smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards. However, the extent to which this impulsivity is mediated by shared or distinct underlying neural mechanisms is unclear. Twenty-six boys with ADHD, 20 boys with OCD and 20 matched controls (aged 12–18) completed an fMRI version of an individually adjusted temporal discounting (TD) task which requires choosing between a variable amount of money now or £100 in one week, one month or one year. Activations to immediate and delayed reward choices were compared between groups using a three-way ANCOVA. ADHD patients had steeper discounting rates on the task relative to controls. OCD patients did not differ from controls or patients with ADHD. Patients with ADHD and OCD showed predominantly shared activation deficits during TD in fronto-striato-insular-cerebellar regions responsible for self-control and temporal foresight, suggesting that choice impulsivity is mediated by overlapping neural dysfunctions in both disorders. OCD patients alone showed dysfunction relative to controls in right orbitofrontal and rostrolateral prefrontal cortex, extending previous findings of abnormalities in these regions in OCD to the domain of choice impulsiveness

Marking Stress ExPLICitly in Written English Fosters Rhythm in the Reader’s Inner Voice

Spoken English has a stress-alternating rhythm that is not marked in its orthography. In two experiments, the authors evaluated whether stylistic alterations to print that marked stress pulses fostered the rendering of rhythm (experiment 1) and stress (experiment 2) during silent reading. In experiment 1, silent readers rated the helpfulness of the stylistic alterations appearing in the last line of poems. In experiment 2, silent readers rated the helpfulness of the stylistic alterations appearing in heteronyms embedded in prose. As predicted by linguistic theories, when the stylistic alterations mapped onto the rhythmic pulses of the poems, and the lexically stressed syllables of the heteronyms, silent readers rated these alterations as more helpful compared with the incongruous conditions. In experiment 2, readers’ inner voices were more tuned to the prosodic nuances of the first syllable than the second in the bisyllabic heteronyms. This prosodic tuning for the first syllable in a word was likely afforded by the strong tendency for stress to appear word-initially. In addition, the stylistically marked stress was viewed as more helpful in the early half of the sentence, when readers likely recruited more bottom-up processes. In both experiments, prior exposure to poetry was related to a refined prosodic awareness. In experiment 2, exposure to poetry predicted participants’ prosody sensitivity, after controlling for the other predictors of academic achievement. The authors’ ongoing studies are evaluating whether marking stress explicitly in written English might aid struggling readers and late speakers of English

Shared and disorder-specific task-positive and default mode network dysfunctions during sustained attention in paediatric Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and obsessive/compulsive disorder

Patients with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and obsessive/compulsive disorder (OCD) share problems with sustained attention, and are proposed to share deficits in switching between default mode and task positive networks. The aim of this study was to investigate shared and disorder-specific brain activation abnormalities during sustained attention in the two disorders. Twenty boys with ADHD, 20 boys with OCD and 20 age-matched healthy controls aged between 12 and 18 years completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) version of a parametrically modulated sustained attention task with a progressively increasing sustained attention load. Performance and brain activation were compared between groups. Only ADHD patients were impaired in performance. Group by sustained attention load interaction effects showed that OCD patients had disorder-specific middle anterior cingulate underactivation relative to controls and ADHD patients, while ADHD patients showed disorder-specific underactivation in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex/dorsal inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). ADHD and OCD patients shared left insula/ventral IFG underactivation and increased activation in posterior default mode network relative to controls, but had disorder-specific overactivation in anterior default mode regions, in dorsal anterior cingulate for ADHD and in anterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex for OCD. In sum, ADHD and OCD patients showed mostly disorder-specific patterns of brain abnormalities in both task positive salience/ventral attention networks with lateral frontal deficits in ADHD and middle ACC deficits in OCD, as well as in their deactivation patterns in medial frontal DMN regions. The findings suggest that attention performance in the two disorders is underpinned by disorder-specific activation patterns