Regeneration of the native sand dune plant Pimelea arenaria in the lower North Island, New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Ecology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

New Zealand has 300,000 ha of coastal sand dunes in which many native species and introduced plant and animal species are established. One native plant inhabiting dune ecosystems is Pimelea arenaria (Thymeleaceae), the native sand daphne, which is gynodioecious with female and hermaphrodite flower types and listed as nationally declining. The cause of the decline is unknown, but anecdotal evidence suggests recruitment failure is occurring. This thesis looked at four P. arenaria populations in the lower North Island of New Zealand The aims were (1) examine the population structure and establish whether recruitment failure was evident, (2) whether any failure was due to problems with pollination, and (3) whether house mice (Mus musculus) or birds had any impact on P. arenaria by removing fruit. The P. arenaria populations ranged from 0.53-4.05 plants/ha, with female plants comprising the smaller portion of each population, the exact sex ratios varying between the sites. The standing crop of nectar of hermaphrodite flowers is modest and varies from 24 to 56 µg/flower. The pollen:ovule ratio (1987:1), as well as casual observations, suggest that insects are the main pollen vectors. Recruitment failure in P. arenaria occurred with few or no seedlings found at any site, the maximum height above substrate and the surface area of substrate covered suggesting an adult biased population. Profuse flowering occurred (360-510 flowers/m²), leading to viable seed from both female and hermaphrodite plants. Less than 50% of seed germinated from either flower type, regardless of pollination method (natural, hand out-crossed, or autonomously selfed). Female plants observed higher germination success in seeds in both hand out-crossed and natural pollination P. arenaria seed weight remained constant between sexes and treatments, however the pulp weight was variable, with hermaphrodite autonomously selfed fruit having the smallest amount of pulp, but this was not significant (p=0.37). Graded exclosures showed that fruit was removed but this was preventable by bagging the fruit (p<0.001). However, the results from the exclosures were unable to distinguish between mice and birds suggesting that both have similar, possibly cumulative, effects on fruit loss. Within the bagged fruit there were peaks of fruit loss at the start and end of the fruiting season suggesting that selective abortion of ovules is occurring, possibly because of low abundance of pollen sources or pollen vectors Fruit loss occurred, but there was no direct field evidence of predation by mice and birds A feeding trial with mice established that both female and male mice eat and destroy P. arenaria fruit and seed, and at a low dose rate (3 fruit/mouse) the fruit of P. arenaria was not poisonous. Areas for future work are discussed for each section

A mineral reconnaissance survey of the Abington-Biggar-Moffat-area, south-central Scotland

Panned heavy mineral concentrates, mostly obtained from stream sediments, were collected from 195 sites in the Abington-Biggar-Moffat area. The project area, which lies immediately east of the formerly important mining district of Wanlockhead-Leadhills, covers approximately 500 km2 of the north-central sector of the Southern Uplands. It incorporates the Hart Fell range of hills, the headwaters catchment for the River Tweed and River Annan, some tributaries of the River Clyde, and, to the east, the Culter Water, Talla Reservoir, Megget Water and the head of the Ettrick valley. Numerous new occurrences of lead, zinc, copper and barium minerals were found and nine areas are recommended for further investigation. Minor amounts of baryte and traces of cupriferous pyrite were identified in the basal breccia of the-New Red Sandstone deposits in Annandale. The mercury mineral, cinnabar, was identified for the first time in Scotland, occurring in trace amounts in stream sediment concentrates in the Coulter area close to the Southern Upland Fault. Chromiferous spine1 was recognised as a major constituent in the majority of panned samples. It is present as a detrital mineral in greywackes but must have been originally derived from ultrabasic rocks. An unusual mineral widely dispersed in trace amounts is corundum (including some gem-quality sapphire). Historical references (Lauder Lindsay, 1868-9, 1871) to a wide distribution for particle gold were confirmed and many new occurrences found. A local provenance for the element is now considered certain. Some placer concentration of gold and chromiferous spine1 is likely in the alluvium of the valleys of the River Tweed and the Megget Water. Six greywacke formations, previously defined in other parts of the Southern Uplands, were mapped in the project area, each distinguished by a characteristic lithology and heavy mineral content

Networked interactive whiteboards : rationale, affordances and new pedagogies for regional Australian higher education

This article presents an argument for the use of networked interactive whiteboards (NIWBs) in regional Australian higher education and identifies new pedagogies for this context. Most Australian universities operate multiple campuses, and many use video conference facilities to deliver courses across these sites. For students at remote video conference sites, their classroom experience is often one of isolation and limited student to student contact. In this article, NIWBs are proposed as a tool to enhance this mode of delivery and exploratory research into the additional affordances they provide is presented. By using networking with IWBs, annotation and gesture can be shared across distances. Emerging possibilities from the integration of NIWBs with video conference, web conference and lecture capture systems are also explored. Three new pedagogies for regional Australian higher education are proposed based on these new capabilities. <br /

Evaluation of the economic simplified boiling water reactor human reliability analysis using the SHARP framework

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 35).General Electric plans to complete a design certification document for the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor to have the new reactor design certified by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As part of the design process, the design control document was produced in 2006, and it includes a description of the human reliability analysis performed as part of the reactor's probabilistic risk analysis. The problem is to verify the claim that the human reliability analysis was performed according to the Systematic Human Action Reliability Procedure (SHARP). The seven step method was compared directly to the actions documented by General Electric. Each step was identified and the actions within the steps were identified and evaluated to verify that no rules of SHARP were in contention with the analysis. The reason for using the SHARP method instead of revisions and improvements of the SHARP method was determined and more detailed analysis will be performed in later phases of the reactor design, but the human reliability analysis quantified with general human error probabilities was still a conservative estimate of the human reliability.(cont.) The results showed that General Electric performed a human reliability analysis in agreement with the SHARP method. The Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor human reliability analysis is ready for more detailed analysis and quantification of human interactions in the next phase of development.by Phillip Eng Dawson.S.B

Editorial

Welcome to Volume Five of the Journal of Peer Learning. The journal has now published 24 articles, which have been downloaded more than 14,000 times. This volume marks a significant period for the journal with planning by the Editorial team to ensure sustainability of the journal and ongoing quality in the sharing of research in peer learning. Since publication of Volume 4 we have appointed an Editorial Board to provide oversight and guidance to the editorial team in the strategic direction of the journal. The Editorial Board members are: Associate Professor David Arendale, University of Minnesota Professor Jennifer Keup, University of South Carolina Professor Sally Kift, James Cook University Professor Rod O\u27Donnell, University of Technology, Sydney Professor Keith Topping, Dundee University Further, the Journal’s Editor and co-founder, Dr Phillip Dawson and Associate Editor, Ms Sanchia Draper will be moving out of their day to day roles into positions on the Editorial Board, As the incoming Editor, Dr Jane Skalicky would particularly like to thank them for their commitment to the reputation of the Journal of Peer Learning and their underlying passion for ensuring that the work of peer learning practitioners and researchers has a scholarly place for sharing of this work. In this volume we have three articles that share the outcomes of the integration of technologies with peer learning environments: the use of Table PCs in Devey, Hicks, Gunaratnam and Pan; asynchronous peer assistance in a nursing program, in Melrose and Swettenham; and the piloting of an online PASS program in Beaumont, Mannion and Shen. The article by Melrose and Swettenham also sees the introduction of our Notes section, which publishes brief high-quality non-peer-reviewed articles. Also in this volume are two applications of the Supplemental Instruction/PASS model to the disciplines of Engineering (Malm, Bryngfors and Mörner) and Physiotherapy (Sole, Bennett, Jaques, Rippon, Rose and van der Meer). The final two articles apply qualitative methods: to the study of self efficacy (McPhail, Despotovic and Fisher) and to students’ experience of collaboration in a Master of Science research project (Hebron and Morris). The publication of this volume sees the journal with a healthy pipeline of articles to come in the future and we invite authors to submit articles at any time for consideration for future volumes, EDITORIAL TEAM Dr Jane Skalicky, University of Tasmania Dr Phillip Dawson, Monash University Associate Editors Dr. Elizabeth Beckmann, Australian National University Sanchia Draper, The University of Melbourne Janine Chipperfield, Griffith University Dr. Chad Habel, University of Adelaide Dr. Henk Huijser, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education Sally Rogan (Editorial Advisor), University of Wollongon

Improving assessment tasks through addressing our unconscious limits to change

Despite widespread recognition of the need to improve assessment in higher education, assessment tasks in individual courses are too often dominated by conventional methods. While changing assessment depends on many factors, improvements to assessment ultimately depend on the decisions and actions of individual educators. This paper considers research within the ‘heuristics and biases’ tradition in the field of decision-making and judgement which has identified unconscious factors with the potential to limit capacity for such change. The paper focuses on issues that may compromise the process of improving assessment by supporting a reluctance to change existing tasks, by limiting the time allocated to develop alternative assessment tasks, by underestimating the degree of change needed or by an unwarranted overconfidence in assessment design decisions. The paper proposes countering these unconscious limitations to change by requiring justification for changing, or not changing, assessment tasks, and by informal and formal peer review of assessment task design. Finally, an agenda for research on heuristics and biases in assessment design is suggested in order to establish their presence and help counter their influence

Supporting first year student supporters : an online mentoring model for supplemental instruction leaders

Supplemental Instruction (SI), or Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) as it is commonly known in Australia, involves experienced senior student Peer Leaders who provide regularly scheduled peer learning sessions with students enrolled in university courses. Commonly implemented on first year subjects, the sessions integrate &ldquo;how to learn&rdquo; with &ldquo;what to learn&rdquo;, helping students achieve better grades and helping raise student retention rates. This paper discusses the challenges of supporting SI Leaders who are geographically dispersed across multiple campuses and considers the theoretical and empirical literature that informs the development of an online mentoring model.<br /

Supporting first year student supporters: an online mentoring model for supplemental instruction leaders

Supplemental Instruction (SI), or Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) as it is commonly known in Australia, involves experienced senior student Peer Leaders who provide regularly scheduled peer learning sessions with students enrolled in university courses. Commonly implemented on first year subjects, the sessions integrate how to learn with what to learn, helping students achieve better grades and helping raise student retention rates. This paper discusses the challenges of supporting SI Leaders who are geographically dispersed across multiple campuses and considers the theoretical and empirical informs the development of an online mentoring model

Threats to student evaluative judgement and their management

Students’ capacity for making evaluative judgements of their own work is widely acknowledged as central to their learning within programmes as well as being vital to their subsequent professional practice. In higher education literature, the act of evaluative judgement is usually portrayed as a process of deliberative, analytical reasoning requiring student agency and objectivity, typically scaffolded by points of reference such as explicit criteria, rubrics or exemplars. This article challenges this common portrayal of judgement by drawing attention to research from outside higher education on the role of unconscious factors in judgement and decision-making. Drawing from the field of heuristics and bias studies, the article outlines six unconscious factors that have the potential to distort students’ analytical judgement of their work. A recent challenge to the heuristics and bias approach that radically repositions the place of reasoning in judgement is also considered. Since these unconscious factors have received scant attention in higher education literature, the purpose of this article is to draw attention to them, to identify the challenges they pose to current understandings of evaluative judgement, and to outline their implications for enhancing assessment practic