An investigation into the effects of gender, prior academic achievement, place of residence, age and attendance on first year undergraduate attainment

The number of people engaging in higher education (HE) has increased considerably over the past decade. However, there is a need to achieve a balance between increasing access and bearing down on rates of non-completion. It has been argued that poor attainment and failure within the first year are significant contributors to the overall statistics for non-progression and that, although research has concentrated on factors causative of student withdrawal, less attention has focused on students who fail academically. This study investigated the effects of a number of a number of factors on the academic attainment of first-year undergraduates within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Glamorgan. Results showed that gender and age had only minor impacts upon educational achievement, while place of residence, prior educational attainment and attendance emerged as significant predictors of attainment. Further analysis showed these three factors to be interrelated , with attendance correlating strongly with both entry points and place or residence. In turn, prior attainment was strongly linked to place of residence. Findings may be used to identify and proactively target students at risk of poor academic performance and dropout in order in order to improve rates of performance and progression

Upward synaptic scaling is dependent on neurotransmission rather than spiking

Homeostatic plasticity encompasses a set of mechanisms that are thought to stabilize firing rates in neural circuits. The most widely studied form of homeostatic plasticity is upward synaptic scaling (upscaling), characterized by a multiplicative increase in the strength of excitatory synaptic inputs to a neuron as a compensatory response to chronic reductions in firing rate. While reduced spiking is thought to trigger upscaling, an alternative possibility is that reduced glutamatergic transmission generates this plasticity directly. However, spiking and neurotransmission are tightly coupled, so it has been difficult to determine their independent roles in the scaling process. Here we combined chronic multielectrode recording, closed-loop optogenetic stimulation, and pharmacology to show that reduced glutamatergic transmission directly triggers cell-wide synaptic upscaling. This work highlights the importance of synaptic activity in initiating signalling cascades that mediate upscaling. Moreover, our findings challenge the prevailing view that upscaling functions to homeostatically stabilize firing rates.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship (09-603)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship (08-593)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (Fellowship DGE-0333411)Emory University (NI SPINR Fellowship

Stabilized Finite Elements in FUN3D

A Streamlined Upwind Petrov-Galerkin (SUPG) stabilized finite-element discretization has been implemented as a library into the FUN3D unstructured-grid flow solver. Motivation for the selection of this methodology is given, details of the implementation are provided, and the discretization for the interior scheme is verified for linear and quadratic elements by using the method of manufactured solutions. A methodology is also described for capturing shocks, and simulation results are compared to the finite-volume formulation that is currently the primary method employed for routine engineering applications. The finite-element methodology is demonstrated to be more accurate than the finite-volume technology, particularly on tetrahedral meshes where the solutions obtained using the finite-volume scheme can suffer from adverse effects caused by bias in the grid. Although no effort has been made to date to optimize computational efficiency, the finite-element scheme is competitive with the finite-volume scheme in terms of computer time to reach convergence

Managing scientific data with named data networking

Many scientific domains, such as climate science and High Energy Physics (HEP), have data management requirements that are not well supported by the IP network architecture. Named Data Networking (NDN) is a new network architecture whose service model is better aligned with the needs of data-oriented applications. NDN provides features such as best-location retrieval, caching, load sharing, and transparent failover that would otherwise be painstakingly (re-)implemented by each application using point-to-point semantics in an IP network. We present the first scientific data management application designed and implemented on top of NDN. We use this application to manage climate and HEP data over a dedicated, high-performance, testbed. Our application has two main components: a UI for dataset discovery queries and a federation of synchronized name catalogs. We show how NDN primitives can be used to implement common data management operations such as publishing, search, efficient retrieval, and publication access control

A Basic Robotic Excavator (the Glenn Digger): Description, Design, and Initial Operation

This paper describes the design, commercial part selections, fabrication, assembly, installation, and initial operation of a two degree of freedom robotic excavator. Colloquially referred to as "the NASA Glenn Digger," it was designed specifically to be mounted onto, and to operate with, the then newly developed Centaur 2 robotic mobility base. The excavator, when mounted to Centaur 2, is designed to scoop loose regolith from the terrain, raise its loaded bucket up and dump the load into a hopper of at least a 1-m-height. The hopper represents the input to a machine that would process the raw material, such as to produce oxygen from lunar regolith as would be required for long-term lunar habitation. This equipment debuted at the annual Research and Technology Studies ("Desert RATS", Ref. 1) event held north of Flagstaff, Arizona, in September of 2010, when the Digger was successfully joined to Centaur 2 and the shoveling articulation was demonstrated. During 2011, the hardware was modified for added strength, strain gauges were added to measure loads, and the controls were improved in preparation for the 2011 Desert RATS event, where additional "field operations" experience was gained