Does educational integrity mean teaching students NOT to 'use their own words'?

The author retains the copyright for this work, while granting the International Journal for Educational Integrity the exclusive right of first publication.In the face of increasing evidence of plagiarism in higher education the maintenance of educational integrity relies on the capacity of universities to strengthen their systems for consistent detection of and penalties for deliberate plagiarism, cheating and other fraudulent practices. However, there is a danger that the resolve to do so may be weakened if these systems become overloaded by the detection of a high incidence of unintentional plagiarism. The focus of this paper is on international students for whom English is an additional language (EAL) and whose plagiarism is most easily recognised, as many set out on their degree courses with no experience in a Western academic environment, an unsteady command of English grammar and a relatively limited range of vocabulary. The advice to 'use their own words' in order to avoid accidental plagiarism may be more confusing than helpful for them. This paper proposes that far from trapping students in their existing repertoire of words, the teaching, assessment and feedback advice provided within university courses should explicitly support their students' development of the formal language that is valued in academic writing. It is suggested that the basis for doing so is an understanding of the essential differences between informal, spoken language and the more formal style required in written assignments. An educational approach that successfully removes innocent plagiarists from the disciplinary system could become a means for assuring a university's educational integrity. Keywords: plagiarism, 'own words', spoken and written language, re-usable language, international students, English as an Additional Language (EAL)

Integrating academic reading and writing skills development with core content in science and engineering

Special Edition: Developing Writing in STEM DisciplinesThis paper presents the application of genre pedagogy as an approach to teaching academic reading and writing skills development to a class of undergraduate engineering students. This approach was designed so that it may be applied by core subject teachers in courses with students who typically do not engage well with these aspects of their studies. Our focus was specifically on the ‘bigger picture’ of writing skills development by encouraging students to learn how to analyse for themselves a particular genre from their own discipline, and how to use this knowledge to develop an appropriately academic style in writing their own essay. Our approach involved combining the expertise of subject teacher and linguist in running four workshops in class time during the first half of a semesterised course. These workshops had associated homework tasks, designed incrementally to contribute to students’ understanding and application of the skills they need for academic writing. These were followed by the submission of a written report on the topics covered during the first six weeks of the semester, and was of direct relevance to their degree major. Assessment criteria focused on both technical content and academic literacy. With this integrated approach to literacy and content development it was intended to engage traditionally resistant students with the development of their academic language skills, and also to model a possible approach for the engagement of STEM academics in fostering this academic literacy development. Student participants in this programme agreed that this strategy improved both their writing skills and their understanding of course content.Kathryn Amos and Ursula McGowa

Helium Nova on a Very Massive White Dwarf -- A Light Curve Model of V445 Puppis (2000) Revised

V445 Pup (2000) is a unique object identified as a helium nova. Color indexes during the outburst are consistent with those of free-free emission. We present a free-free emission dominated light curve model of V445 Pup on the basis of the optically thick wind theory. Our light curve fitting shows that (1) the white dwarf (WD) mass is very massive (M_WD \gtrsim 1.35 M_\sun), and (2) a half of the accreted matter remains on the WD, both of which suggest that the increasing WD mass. Therefore, V445 Pup is a strong candidate of Type Ia supernova progenitor. The estimated distance to V445 Pup is now consistent with the recent observational suggestions, 3.5 < d < 6.5 kpc. A helium star companion is consistent with the brightness of m_v=14.5 mag just before the outburst, if it is a little bit evolved hot (\log T (K) \gtrsim 4.5) star with the mass of M_He \gtrsim 0.8 M_\sun. We then emphasize importance of observations in the near future quiescent phase after the thick circumstellar dust dissipates away, especially its color and magnitude to specify the nature of the companion star. We have also calculated helium ignition masses for helium shell flashes against various helium accretion rates and discussed the recurrence period of helium novae.Comment: 8 pages including 12 figures, to appear in Ap

Detection statistics in the micromaser

We present a general method for the derivation of various statistical quantities describing the detection of a beam of atoms emerging from a micromaser. The user of non-normalized conditioned density operators and a linear master equation for the dynamics between detection events is discussed as are the counting statistics, sequence statistics, and waiting time statistics. In particular, we derive expressions for the mean number of successive detections of atoms in one of any two orthogonal states of the two-level atom. We also derive expressions for the mean waiting times between detections. We show that the mean waiting times between de- tections of atoms in like states are equivalent to the mean waiting times calculated from the uncorrelated steady state detection rates, though like atoms are indeed correlated. The mean waiting times between detections of atoms in unlike states exhibit correlations. We evaluate the expressions for various detector efficiencies using numerical integration, reporting re- sults for the standard micromaser arrangement in which the cavity is pumped by excited atoms and the excitation levels of the emerging atoms are measured. In addition, the atomic inversion and the Fano-Mandel function for the detection of de-excited atoms is calculated for compari- son to the recent experimental results of Weidinger et al. [1], which reports the first observation of trapping states.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figure

Good images, effective messages? Working with students and educators on academic practice understanding

Work at Northumbria University has focussed on activity that extends opportunities for students to engage directly with the skills development necessary for sound academic practice. This has included highly visual campaigns on the "Plagiarism trap", providing access to Turnitin plagiarism detection software, guides and sessions to highlight use of associated referencing tools. Sessions on a variety of topics, such as supporting study skills and reading originality reports, have been provided for students on taught, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. This provision has included students working on collaborative partners' sites and also those on research programmes. Alongside the activities with students, "designing out" approaches have been embedded in staff development within the educator community at Northumbria. Formative use of Turnitin is integrated throughout programmes and academic practice development is formally recognised within the University Learning and Teaching Strategy's focus on information literacy. This article outlines and reviews these activities in a critical institutional context and evaluates responses from a variety of students and educators to determine how effective these measures have been

High resolution amplitude and phase gratings in atom optics

An atom-field geometry is chosen in which an atomic beam traverses a field interaction zone consisting of three fields, one having frequency $\Omega =c/\lambda$ propagating in the $\hat{z}$ direction and the other two having frequencies $\Omega +\delta_{1}$ and $\Omega +\delta_{2}$ propagating in the -$\hat{z}$ direction. For $n_{1}\delta_{1}+n_{2}\delta_{2}=0$ and $|\delta_{1}| T,|\delta_{2}| T\gg 1$, where $n_{1}$ and $n_{2}$ are positive integers and $T$ is the pulse duration in the atomic rest frame, the atom-field interaction results in the creation of atom amplitude and phase gratings having period $\lambda /[2(n_{1}+n_{2})]$. In this manner, one can use optical fields having wavelength $\lambda$ to produce atom gratings having periodicity much less than $\lambda$.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figure

Sequencing of human genomes extracted from single cancer cells isolated in a valveless microfluidic device

Sequencing the genomes of individual cells enables the direct determination of genetic heterogeneity amongst cells within a population. We have developed an injection-moulded valveless microfluidic device in which single cells from colorectal cancer derived cell lines (LS174T, LS180 and RKO) and fresh colorectal tumors have been individually trapped, their genomes extracted and prepared for sequencing using multiple displacement amplification (MDA). Ninety nine percent of the DNA sequences obtained mapped to a reference human genome, indicating that there was effectively no contamination of these samples from non-human sources. In addition, most of the reads are correctly paired, with a low percentage of singletons (0.17 ± 0.06%) and we obtain genome coverages approaching 90%. To achieve this high quality, our device design and process shows that amplification can be conducted in microliter volumes as long as the lysis is in sub-nanoliter volumes. Our data thus demonstrates that high quality whole genome sequencing of single cells can be achieved using a relatively simple, inexpensive and scalable device. Detection of genetic heterogeneity at the single cell level, as we have demonstrated for freshly obtained single cancer cells, could soon become available as a clinical tool to precisely match treatment with the properties of a patient's own tumor

The Power Laws of Violence against Women: Rescaling Research and Policies

BACKGROUND: Violence against Women -despite its perpetuation over centuries and its omnipresence at all social levels- entered into social consciousness and the general agenda of Social Sciences only recently, mainly thanks to feminist research, campaigns, and general social awareness. The present article analyzes in a secondary analysis of German prevalence data on Violence against Women, whether the frequency and severity of Violence against Women can be described with power laws. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Although the investigated distributions all resemble power-law distributions, a rigorous statistical analysis accepts this hypothesis at a significance level of 0.1 only for 1 of 5 cases of the tested frequency distributions and with some restrictions for the severity of physical violence. Lowering the significance level to 0.01 leads to the acceptance of the power-law hypothesis in 2 of the 5 tested frequency distributions and as well for the severity of domestic violence. The rejections might be mainly due to the noise in the data, with biases caused by self-reporting, errors through rounding, desirability response bias, and selection bias. CONCLUSION: Future victimological surveys should be designed explicitly to avoid these deficiencies in the data to be able to clearly answer the question whether Violence against Women follows a power-law pattern. This finding would not only have statistical implications for the processing and presentation of the data, but also groundbreaking consequences on the general understanding of Violence against Women and policy modeling, as the skewed nature of the underlying distributions makes evident that Violence against Women is a highly disparate and unequal social problem. This opens new questions for interdisciplinary research, regarding the interplay between environmental, experimental, and social factors on victimization

ERCC1-deficient cells and mice are hypersensitive to lipid peroxidation

Lipid peroxidation (LPO) products are relatively stable and abundant metabolites, which accumulate in tissues of mammals with aging, being able to modify all cellular nucleophiles, creating protein and DNA adducts including crosslinks. Here, we used cells and mice deficient in the ERCC1-XPF endonuclease required for nucleotide excision repair and the repair of DNA interstrand crosslinks to ask if specifically LPO-induced DNA damage contributes to loss of cell and tissue homeostasis. Ercc1-/- mouse embryonic fibroblasts were more sensitive than wild-type (WT) cells to the LPO products: 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (HNE), crotonaldehyde and malondialdehyde. ERCC1-XPF hypomorphic mice were hypersensitive to CCl4 and a diet rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids, two potent inducers of endogenous LPO. To gain insight into the mechanism of how LPO influences DNA repair-deficient cells, we measured the impact of the major endogenous LPO product, HNE, on WT and Ercc1-/- cells. HNE inhibited proliferation, stimulated ROS and LPO formation, induced DNA base damage, strand breaks, error-prone translesion DNA synthesis and cellular senescence much more potently in Ercc1-/- cells than in DNA repair-competent control cells. HNE also deregulated base excision repair and energy production pathways. Our observations that ERCC1-deficient cells and mice are hypersensitive to LPO implicates LPO-induced DNA damage in contributing to cellular demise and tissue degeneration, notably even when the source of LPO is dietary polyunsaturated fats

The antibacterial properties of Malaysian tualang honey against wound and enteric microorganisms in comparison to manuka honey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Antibiotic resistance of bacteria is on the rise, thus the discovery of alternative therapeutic agents is urgently needed. Honey possesses therapeutic potential, including wound healing properties and antimicrobial activity. Although the antimicrobial activity of honey has been effectively established against an extensive spectrum of microorganisms, it differs depending on the type of honey. To date, no extensive studies of the antibacterial properties of tualang (<it>Koompassia excelsa</it>) honey on wound and enteric microorganisms have been conducted. The objectives of this study were to conduct such studies and to compare the antibacterial activity of tualang honey with that of manuka honey.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using a broth dilution method, the antibacterial activity of tualang honey against 13 wound and enteric microorganisms was determined; manuka honey was used as the control. Different concentrations of honey [6.25-25% (w/v)] were tested against each type of microorganism. Briefly, two-fold dilutions of honey solutions were tested to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) against each type of microorganism, followed by more assays within a narrower dilution range to obtain more precise MIC values. MICs were determined by both visual inspection and spectrophotometric assay at 620 nm. Minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) also was determined by culturing on blood agar plates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>By visual inspection, the MICs of tualang honey ranged from 8.75% to 25% compared to manuka honey (8.75-20%). Spectrophotometric readings of at least 95% inhibition yielded MIC values ranging between 10% and 25% for both types of honey. The lowest MBC for tualang honey was 20%, whereas that for manuka honey was 11.25% for the microorganisms tested. The lowest MIC value (8.75%) for both types of honey was against <it>Stenotrophomonas maltophilia</it>. Tualang honey had a lower MIC (11.25%) against <it>Acinetobacter baumannii </it>compared to manuka honey (12.5%).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Tualang honey exhibited variable activities against different microorganisms, but they were within the same range as those for manuka honey. This result suggests that tualang honey could potentially be used as an alternative therapeutic agent against certain microorganisms, particularly <it>A. baumannii </it>and <it>S. maltophilia</it>.</p