Making Tutoring Strange: The Pedagogical Aims of Tutor Training

"I don’t think that we even need this class. Tutoring is really intuitive and the class is pointless.” These were the words of a student whose poor performance in our tutor training course meant that she was not invited to serve as a Writing Fellow after the course. As the three-credit course over our 15week semester was coming to a close and I made my way through annotated bibliographies and research proposals from the other students in the course, I wondered if she was right. Had the course been pointless? As I walked into the Writing Center during a particularly busy time of day and witnessed a dozen small gestures and phrases that made me proud, I thought again of the student’s assessment. Was she right?University Writing Cente

Tales of the unexpected: Perceptions of excellence in Facilities Services

ISS UK Ltd commissioned the Centre for FM Development [CFMD] at Sheffield Business School to investigate clients' perceptions of service excellence in FM. We could not locate previous studies of service excellence, as opposed to service quality in Business to Business as opposed to Business to Consumer literature. In the latter excellence is variously regarded as synonymous with expense and as being easy to do business with, even in budget environments. Our interviews confirmed those two views. Some clients perceive excellence as too high a standard to aim for - or to be seen by senior management to aim for, - except on particular customer or business critical journeys. Internal users of FM services tended to view excellence as having their problems solved within a known timescale. Other organisations have embraced pursuit of facilities excellence as part of an organisation wide strategy. They describe having been on or being on a journey beyond the limitations of SLA driven contracts. Financial evaluation of the two models was beyond the scope of the project but there is some evidence that the overall excellence model is actually more cost effective

In the Vernacular: Photography of the Everyday

This is the catalogue of the exhibition "In the Vernacular" at Boston University Art Gallery

The best memories: Identity, narrative, and objects

Memory is everywhere in Blade Runner 2049. From the dead tree that serves as a memorial and a site of remembrance (“Who keeps a dead tree?”), to the ‘flashbulb’ memories individuals hold about the moment of the ‘blackout’, when all the electronic stores of data were irretrievably erased (“everyone remembers where they were at the blackout”). Indeed, the data wiped out in the blackout itself involves a loss of memory (“all our memory bearings from the time, they were all damaged in the blackout”). Memory, and lack of it, permeates place, where from the post-blackout Las Vegas Deckard remembers it as somewhere you could “forget your troubles.” Memory is a commodity, called upon and consumed by the Wallace Corporation, purchased from the memory-maker, Dr Ana Stelline, who constructs and implants “the best memories” in replicants so as to instil in them real human responses. Memory is ubiquitous in Blade Runner 2049, involving humans, replicants, objects, and machines. Even “God,” we are told, “remembered Rachael.” Nowhere, though, is the depiction of memory more important than in the attempt to solve a question of identity. Officer K has a memory of his past. Even though he knows it is an implant, it is a memory he is emotionally attached to, frequently narrating it to Joi, his digital girlfriend. But it is a memory that starts to puzzle and trouble him. When K discovers the remains of a dead replicant, a female NEXUS-7, he uncovers a secret—this replicant was pregnant and died during childbirth, a discovery that could “break the world.” K is charged with hunting down the child and making the problem disappear. Yet as K starts seeking answers to the question of the child’s identity he gets inextricably caught up in the mystery. Is he merely Officer K, or is he Joe, the miracle child of Rachael and Deckard? The answer to this question hinges on K’s memory. But is the memory genuine? Is the memory his? Blade Runner 2049 encourages us to think deeply about the nature of memory, identity, and the relation between them. Indeed, the film does not just serve as a starting point for thinking about philosophical issues related to memory and identity. Rather, as we show in this chapter, the film seems to offer a view on these philosophical issues. Blade Runner 2049 offers us a view of memory as spread out over people, objects, and the environment, and it shows us that memory’s role in questions of identity goes beyond merely accurately recalling one’s past. Identity depends not on memory per se, but partly on what we use memory for

High Rate Fracture Toughness Measurement of Laminated Composites

The aim of this research is to understand and analyse the behaviour of specimens used to measure fracture toughness in laminated composites when loaded at high displacement rates. Finite element (FE) analysis is used as a tool to investigate dynamic behaviour of rapidly loaded mode I intralaminar specimens and to investigate of the data reduction strategy. Finally, using knowledge from current literature and experience gathered from the FE analysis, an experimental test procedure for the measurement of intra-laminar fracture toughness at high loading rates is designed and evaluated. To gain confidence in the dynamic FE modelling the behaviour of a mode I interlaminar double-cantilever beam specimen loaded at high rates was analysed. The findings were compared to experimental observations and a data reduction strategy from the published literature was assessed. FE modelling was then used to investigate the behaviour of an intralaminar compact tension (CT) test performed at high rates and a data reduction strategy was developed which does not require the measurement of the applied load. A CT specimen for measurement of interlaminar fracture toughness at high loading rates was also developed which can be analysed using the same data reduction strategy. Experiments were carried out at displacement rates between 0.2 mm/min and 15 m/s to determine the effects of test velocity and crack growth velocity on inter- and intralaminar fracture toughness. Results from the dynamic experimental tests were filtered to remove the noise in the data. Critical energy release rates were calculated using the filtered and unfiltered data and the results were used to assess the accuracy of the filtering procedure. Results are then presented in terms of the trend of critical energy release rate, GIc, with test velocity and average crack speed. The findings are discussed with reference to micrographs of the fracture surfaces of specimens at each test speed. The intralaminar specimens showed a possible decrease in GIc with test speed and average crack speed, but the range of values fell within the scatter in the results. The interlaminar test results suggest interlaminar GIc is constant with test. The increase in interlaminar GIc with crack speed was also within the range of the scatter in the results

Revised Born-Oppenheimer approach and a multielectron reprojection method for inelastic collisions

The quantum reprojection method within the standard adiabatic Born-Oppenheimer approach is derived for multielectron collision systems. The method takes nonvanishing asymptotic nonadiabatic couplings into account and distinguishes asymptotic currents in molecular state and in atomic state channels, leading to physically consistent and reliable results. The method is demonstrated for the example of low-energy inelastic Li+Na collisions, for which the conventional application of the standard adiabatic Born-Oppenheimer approach fails and leads to paradoxes such as infinite inelastic cross sections

Service delivery in FM : Enhancement or Enchantment?

Purpose: Relationship management in FM is arguably essential in terms of service delivery (Coenen & Nwanna 2014). With the growth of knowledge workers, increasing socio-economic demand on space and wider political demands, the purpose of this paper is to position FM firmly as a service (as opposed to building maintenance) based industry. It uses the concepts of Disneyization to explore the elements existing within this subjective area, and then plot the contractual relationship accordingly. Approach: This stance is novel, borrowing the concept from marketing and tying it with storytelling research to understand the different mechanisms and evolving trends of service delivery within the UK FM industry. The paper therefore seeks to utilise the role of corporate storytelling (Gabriel 2004) within FM, investigating if it is an unspoken core and unique disciplinal competence (enhancement) (Solnet et al 2008), or just smoke and mirrors, illustrative of an increasingly commoditised service in the face of wider economic pressures (enchantment). Scenario based interviews were held to investigate personal tales of service delivery and applied across to FM practice. This allowed the basic delivery mechanisms to be identified and mapped. Concepts of disneyization were then identified, which occurred naturally within the rhetoric as opposed to being specifically asked for within the interview setting. All participants are current, UK-based FM practitioners. Findings: The findings indicated that the use of disneyization is not only useful for understanding the current nature of FM, but also for plotting what expectations are within a practical service delivery environment. Keywords: Service delivery, Disneyization, organisational storytellin

EQUIPMENT TO ADDRESS INFRASTRUCTURE AND HUMAN RESOURCE CHALLENGES FOR RADIOTHERAPY IN LOW-RESOURCE SETTINGS

Millions of people in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) are without access to radiation therapy and as rate of population growth in these regions increase and lifestyle factors which are indicative of cancer increase; the cancer burden will only rise. There are a multitude of reasons for lack of access but two themes among them are the lack of access to affordable and reliable teletherapy units and insufficient properly trained staff to deliver high quality care. The purpose of this work was to investigate to two proposed efforts to improve access to radiotherapy in low-resource areas; an upright radiotherapy chair (to facilitate low-cost treatment devices) and a fully automated treatment planning strategy. A fixed-beam patient treatment device would allow for reduced upfront and ongoing cost of teletherapy machines. The enabling technology for such a device is the immobilization chair. A rotating seated patient not only allows for a low-cost fixed treatment machine but also has dosimetric and comfort advantages. We examined the inter- and intra- fraction setup reproducibility, and showed they are less than 3mm, similar to reports for the supine position. The head-and-neck treatment site, one of the most challenging treatment planning, greatly benefits from the use of advanced treatment planning strategies. These strategies, however, require time consuming normal tissue and target contouring and complex plan optimization strategies. An automated treatment planning approach could reduce the additional number of medical physicists (the primary treatment planners) in LMICs by up to half. We used in-house algorithms including mutli-atlas contouring and quality assurance checks, combined with tools in the Eclipse Treatment Planning System®, to automate every step of the treatment planning process for head-and-neck cancers. Requiring only the patient CT scan, patient details including dose and fractionation, and contours of the gross tumor volume, high quality treatment plans can be created in less than 40 minutes