Higher attaining but emotionally brittle: why we need to assess how school marketing policies affect students

The entrenching of competitive values within the public-market field of secondary education has led to the formation of academically focused institutions whose budgets and reputations are based on gaining large numbers of students who have the best chance of attaining highly in public examinations. Although parents have become savvier about their consumer rights, and as regards the use of advertisements that schools produce, the medium and long term impact of the deployment of the majority of marketisation tools on students has yet to be assessed. A consequence of this over-marketing process may be that some students prove to be less successful academically after transfer. If the government continues with a policy based on the market model, the impact of marketing tools that schools implement needs to be assessed so that parents can be secure in the knowledge that first and foremost their child is happy and safe at school

A Parallel Navier Stokes Solver for Natural Convection and Free Surface Flow

A parallel numerical method has been implemented for solving the Navier Stokes equations on Cartesian and non-orthogonal meshes. To ensure the accuracy of the code first, second and third order differencing schemes, with and without flux-limiters, have been implemented and tested. The most computationally expensive task in the code is the solution of linear equations, and a number of linear solvers have been tested to determine the most efficient. Krylov space, incomplete factorisation, and other iterative and direct solvers from the literature have been implemented, and have been compared with a novel black-box multigrid linear solver that has been developed both as a solver and as a preconditioner for the Krylov space methods. To further reduce execution time the code was parallelised, after a series of experiments comparing the suitability of different parallelisation techniques and computer architectures for the Navier Stokes solver. The code has been applied to the solution of two classes of problem. Two natural convection flows were studied, with an initial study of two dimensional Rayleigh Benard convection being followed by a study of a transient three dimensional flow, in both cases the results being compared with experiment. The second class of problems modelled were free surface flows. A two dimensional free surface driven cavity, and a two dimensional flume flow were modelled, the latter being compared with analytic theory. Finally a three dimensional ship flow was modelled, with the flow about a Wigley hull being simulated for a range of Reynolds and Froude numbers

The effect of the Open Event on students’ attitudes towards science in school across the transfer from primary to secondary education

Although the importance of students having a ‘good transition’ and the dangers of students’ having a ‘bad transition’ in the transfer of schooling are well known within England there has been a lack of research on the effect that specific events have on students within that transition period. Therefore this study looks at a specific transition event, termed the Open Event, and how attending such an event might impact on students attitudes to science in school across the transfer from primary to secondary education. The study is based on cross sectional data collected from 23 English schools covering students aged between 9 years old (Year 5) to 14 years old(Year 8) which were deemed the ‘transition years’ as these two years cross the primary/secondary school divide. It involved using questionnaires as well as student and interviews with science staff in the secondary schools as well as focus groups. Field notes and audio-recordings were made throughout these visits to aid in analysis. The findings suggest that in trying to market itself and generate short term student interest at the Open Event, the science departments in these secondary schools inadvertently promoted a misconstrued image of secondary school science that can adversely affect not only students’ attitudes towards science in primary school but also change some students’ perception of the nature of school science. For some students attending an Open Event results in a decline in their attitude toward primary school science due to perceiving their primary school lessons, in contrast to what they have seen in the secondary school, as not being ‘proper science’. Although, for the majority of students, this effect seems to last for only one academic term there is an embedded misconception, due to the misconstrued image of science observed at the Open Event, that secondary school science will be mainly practical in nature. The implication of this study is that the discordance between the realities of science in school and students’ misconstrued expectations of science in school, developed from attending the Open Event, may play a role within the dip that has been reported in students’ attitudes towards science following their transition from primary to secondary education. As such giving a more realistic image of what actually occurs in secondary school science during Open Events may be more advantageous in the long term than focusing on developing a short term, unsustainable, image of science

Reinforcement Learning Control for Vapor Compression Refrigeration Cycle

Vapor compression refrigeration cycles (VCRC) control optimization is an effective method to increase its\u27 reliability and energy efficiency. In modern VCRC systems, the introduction of inverter compressors, electronic expansion valves, fan speed, and pump speed control has significantly increased their controllability. These improvements led to the development of many multivariable and predictive control strategies that improved the system\u27s temperature tracking performance and increased the coefficient of performance (COP) by up to 30% compared to conventional on/off and PID controls. However, a VCRC also has high nonlinearities and parameter couplings, making it difficult to apply these modern control laws. This problem incentivizes the application of reinforcement learning (RL) to optimize VCRC control as RL demonstrated an unprecedented ability to optimize complex control problems. This study explores this idea by using RL to train a direct optimal controller for a VCRC. To test the concept, a VCRC simulation model was developed in the MATLAB Simulink environment to train an RL VCRC controller using the MATLAB reinforcement learning toolbox. The controller\u27s goal is to track the desired internal air temperature and a 10˚C superheat setting. The controller used 17 observations containing the VCRC states, tracking errors, operating conditions, and previous actions to determine the optimal compressor speed and expansion valve opening percentage. The VCRC operating conditions were limited to ambient and internal air temperature ranges of 28-32˚C and 16-20˚C, respectively. This study used the twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) RL algorithm to train the controller. The TD3 training hyperparameters such as the noise model and deep neural network parameters were tuned to balance the exploration and exploitation of the solution space. The training converged to a suboptimal solution after completing 6500 episodes in 5 days using an Intel Core i7-8700 CPU 3.2GHz with 32 GB RAM. The developed RL controller was tested using custom ambient and internal air temperature profiles. The controller tracked both the internal air and superheat temperature settings well with low error and fast response time. However, when the ambient temperature fell below 29˚C, the actuators began to fluctuate, indicating that it did not learn a good policy for this region. This study showed that RL could optimize VCRC control, but more research is necessary to improve it

Posaconazole therapeutic drug monitoring in a regional hospital setting

BACKGROUND: Posaconazole therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is recommended to promote effective antifungal prophylaxis, but its utility has yet to be optimized. Breakthrough invasive fungal infections have been reported with serum concentrations/L, but there is little evidence to determine the optimal serum concentration for efficacy or concentrations associated with toxicity. Challenges for effective monitoring are greater in settings without posaconazole TDM facilities because of the long turnaround time before receipt of results. METHODS: Thirty-eight TDM episodes were performed on 18 patients in a regional center in Australia during a 30-month period. Australian guidelines recommend a trough serum concentration of ≥700 mcg/L. The response to concentrations below the recommendation threshold (700 mcg/L), the final serum plasma concentration for each patient, and the appropriateness of TDM were evaluated. RESULTS: A total of 19 (50%) concentrations were recorded to be \u3c 700 mcg/L. Of these 19 concentrations, the drug dose was increased on only 4 occasions. Eleven of 18 patients (61%) had initial concentrations CONCLUSIONS: The results demonstrate a lack of confidence and consistency in ordering, interpreting, and following up posaconazole concentrations. Therefore, the use of TDM should be carefully considered, especially in regional centers. Such settings should consider the practicalities of posaconazole TDM and try to improve the process to ensure consistency and optimization of patient care

Literature review to inform the future digitisation of Jobcentre Plus service delivery

One of the stated priorities for Jobcentre Plus in 2011/12 is to work towards delivering more of its services online and in formats that enable customers to access them by a range of means (Jobcentre Plus, 2010). This review was commissioned to provide Jobcentre Plus with an evidence-based foundation to help it meet this aim. In particular, it aimed to provide help to Jobcentre Plus in its thinking about how it might: • understand and respond to the current and projected levels and means of access to the internet in the UK (see Chapter 2); • improve the ‘customer appetite’ and willingness to use the internet, particularly among its customers who are potentially digitally excluded (see Chapter 3); and • learn lessons from the way in which online services have been provided by ‘leading edge’ organisations and the way in which e-Government has developed internationally and is developing in the UK (see Chapter 4). This summary highlights the key issues emerging from the review and concludes with an indication of some of the possible implications for Jobcentre Plus to consider as it develops its strategy for digitisation over the next few years. The summary is structured thematically in line with the main body of the report

Parametric search and optimisation of fast displacement hull forms using rans simulations of full-scale flow

Abstract. A methodology to derive parametric hull design candidates with a specified displacement and initial stability is introduced. A gradient-free search and optimisation algorithm coupled to a RANS CFD solver is then used to identify efficient pure-displacement hull shapes with minimal hydrodynamic resistance operating in the transition speed region without relying on dynamic lift