Modernising the nursing curriculum: older people and nursing students

This article discusses the need for educationalists, students and qualified nursing staff to view working with older people as a positive and rewarding career move

A new way of linking information theory with cognitive science

The relationship between the notion of *information* in information theory, and the notion of *information processing* in cognitive science, has long been controversial. But as the present paper shows, part of the disagreement arises from conflating different formulations of measurement. Clarifying distinctions reveals it is the context-free nature of Shannon's information average that is particular problematic from the cognitive point of view. Context-sensitive evaluation is then shown to be a way of addressing the problems that arise

A low sidelobe asymmetric beam antenna for high altitude platform communications

In a communications network served by a high altitude platform, the antenna beams illuminating each cell require minimized sidelobe powers. Asymmetric beams are advantageous so that cell footprints remain circular. At millimeter wavelengths a lens antenna can have the desired properties. We have chosen a 6 km diameter cell at 32 degrees elevation angle and shown how the required beam asymmetry can be implemented using an optimized polynomial for describing the lens profile. The measured average sidelobe level is below -42 dB

Values based practice and authoritarianism

Values based practice (VBP) is a radical view of the place of values in medicine which develops from a philosophical analysis of values, illness and the role of ethical principles. It denies two attractive and traditional but misguided views of medicine: that diagnosis is a merely factual matter and that the values that should guide treatment and management can be codified in principles. But, in the work of KWM (Bill) Fulford, it goes further in the form of a radical liberal view: that the idea of an antecedently good outcome should be replaced by that of a right process. That however leads to a dilemma as to whether it can account for its own normative status. Given that difficulty, why might one adopt the radical version? I sketch a possible motive drawing on Rorty’s rejection of authoritarianism which replaces objectivity with solidarity as the aim of judgement. But I argue that, nevertheless, this does not justify the rejection of the more modest particularist version of VBP

Recent developments for naturalizing the mind.

The connection between having a mind and fitting a rational pattern remains an important insight

How do Students Choose and use Technology for Collaborative Learning?

In this case study, 86 physiotherapy undergraduate students studying a third year module, chose a blend for a collaborative task. Data was focused in capturing the students’ experience, and included interviews, questionnaires, and observation of both face-to-face and online activity. The students held strong views on collaborative learning that included inclusivity, valuing difference, democracy and the importance of all group members participating fully in decision making. All groups used a similar range of technology. They highly valued the classroom technologies provided in a specialised collaborative classroom that included computers and data projectors that enabled a group to visualise their output and connect to their online group sites. They used the online environment (the University’s managed learning environment) largely as a repository, ‘offloading’ some of the organisational components of collaboration and for knowledge acquisition that enabled them to use the face-to-face meetings for interaction and co-construction of knowledge. They did not use the asynchronous facilities for discussion, more for basic information giving, in common with other studies on undergraduate students. Students also wanted their education and social sites e.g. Facebook kept separate. The process undertaken in completing the weekly tasks had clear stages which included individual and group components. The students’ experience reflected aspects of both of the two major metaphors of learning ‘acquisition’ and ‘participation’. Students organised their use of technology to enable them to maximise interaction when they met faceto- face. The implications for practice include, creating more dedicated high technology classrooms, introducing technologies in a structured way earlier in the course and tutors modelling their use