Education students, employers and employability: a report on a small scale project in 2004

This paper reports on a project which investigated education courses in terms of the employability of graduates at one English post '92 institution. The paper examines the initial findings from the project. These include data from a survey of a hundred and twenty seven undergraduates, focus group interviews with both students and staff and a student workshop. A small number of employers also give their views. Employability isn't an issue for Education graduates. They always get jobs don't they? But what about the increasing number coming through on Education courses that have no vocational element? What do such graduates do? Not all of them want to go into teaching. That's why they chose to do a degree without QTS ( qualified teacher status). How do employers view their qualifications? What do they need to do to secure that perfect job? And what are the prospects for their careers in the long term? This paper reports on a recent project which investigated Education courses in terms of the employability of graduates at one English post '92 institution. The paper examines the initial findings from the project. These include data from a survey of a hundred and twenty seven undergraduates, focus group interviews with both students and staff and a student workshop. A small number of employers also give their views. It is presented as a Word document of some 16 page

The Craft of Incentive Prize Design: Lessons from the Public Sector

In the last five years, incentive prizes have transformed from an exotic open innovation tool to a proven innovation strategy for the public, private and philanthropic sectors. This report offers practical lessons for public sector leaders and their counterparts in the philanthropic and private sectors to help understand what types of outcomes incentive prizes help to achieve, what design elements prize designers use to create these challenges and how to make smart design choices to achieve a particular outcome. It synthesizes insights from expert interviews and analysis of more than 400 prize

Excavations at the Gilligan's Island shelters (5FN1592), Fort Carson Military Reservation (FCMR), Fremont County, Colorado

Department Head: Kathleen A. Galvin.2008 Summer.Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-399).This thesis examines the surface and subsurface archaeological work undertaken in 2002 at the Gilligan's Island site (5FN1592), located at the base of the Rocky Mountains on the Fort Carson Military Reservation, eastern Fremont County, Colorado. Permission was granted by Fort Carson to conduct an excavation at this site in order to determine its potential to produce significant subsurface occupational remains. Excavations focused on two connecting rock shelters at the base of a prominent cliff face. Four interconnecting grid units were positioned in a trench-like fashion through the central midline of each shelter proper. Deposition of excavated units ranges up to 1.3 meters in depth. These trenches exposed deeply stratified prehistoric materials including multiple intact features. The radiocarbon data (based on conventional uncalibrated dates) identified three prehistoric cultural components: Middle Archaic period (ca. 4240-3010 B.P.), Late Archaic period (ca. 2230-1880 B.P.), and Developmental period (ca. 1390- 1070 B.P.). A historic component is also evident and is associated with probable looting activities in the shelters.Volume I. Primary report -- Volume II. Database appendixes (zip file)

Observations on chronic peptic ulcer and its medical treatment

The end and purpose of iedicine is to alleviate pain, prolong life, restore to health, and promote good health in the individual and the community. The science of medicine is being rapidly advanced by those who work in the laboratories of physiology and patho gy, and its art yearly becomes more intricate, as the advance of knowledge adds to the burden of physicians who practise it. Medical research, the instrument of progressive medicine has made great advances in the present century. But whilst realising that the practice of medicine is changing, we must also take into account the change which the human race is under- going. In the evolution of species, especially in human beings, the reactions to environment undergo constant modifications, and certain diseases disappear in whole or in part, and other new diseases just as certainly make their appearance. No other facts in the history of medicine are more soundly established than the results of the laws of evolution of the diseases which inflict mankind. This has been accepted with respect to the plagues of the human race, and the cyclic character of epidemics, but the same study has not been given to the systemic diseases of the body. We rather fail to realise that any particular organ and its environment is constantly and permanently changing, and the disease which today follows a definite course may in the passage of future generations become hardly comparable with the disease which takes its place. A pathologist, reincarnated a hundred years from now would probably find many pathological conditions which he had never seen before, and the microscopic appearances of the various organs under varying pathological reactions would be largely new ground for his once experienced eyes. It is not only new knowledge attained by new methods which changes our conceptions of disease processes; the diseases themselves are changing, and in the course of time it becomes necessary to correlate the facts concerning them in order to establish and to be able to appreciate the extent of this change. There can be little doubt but that the incidence of peptic ulcer of the stomach and duodenum, in the present harassed state of the world and mankind shows a distinct rise in the last quarter of a century and the factors which tend to this and the treatment of the disease as advocated by various authorities I shall endeavour to bring forward clearly in this Thesis.Since graduating, and for the purpose of this Thesis, I have endeavoured to specially interest myself in this disease - chronic peptic ulcer.As Resident Medical Officer, for a year, at St. Andrew's Hospital, Dollis Hill, London, - a general Hospital of fifty -five beds, specially for the professional and middle classes who could not afford high Nursing Home fees, I had ample opportunity to observe a number of these cases, and at the Marylebone Infirmary, London, where I was House Physician, I had similar opportunities. Thereafter, in my own practice and in the Outpatient Department of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, I have tried to further my knowledge. In one section, to follow, will be found an analysis of 293 cases of peptic ulcer admitted to the wards of the Royal Sussex County Hospital during the years 1930 and 1931. I have no solution to put forward for this great medical problem of Peptic ulcer, but have endeavoured to express my ideas, especially as regards treatment, from the point of view of the general practitioner.The aetiology of this disease is a subject of mystery and immense interest, for, in the light of our present knowledge, we can really point to no specific factor and can only surmise. But great strides are being made of late years by physicians, though it is rather sad to relate, as Hurst states, that -4- that we owe the enormous progress in our knowledge of gastric and duodenal ulcer during the first twenty years of the present century almost entirely to surgeons; during the last ten years the bio- chemist and radiologist have added their quota. If the general practitioner and physician are prepared to seize the opportunity, the prevention, early recogni- tion and successful treatment of peptic ulcer should in the future be in their hands. Hurst, rather cynically states, when considering operations in general, in this disease, and gastro-enterostomy in particular, that in his experience gastro -enterostomy is the commonest gastric disorder to -day, and undoing open ,,t i oN gastro -enterostomy is the gastricAwe now frequently recommend. Medicine, however, cannot be an exact science because of the ever present and variable factor in our problems, of the human or temperamental element.No amount of chemical, X -ray, or other investi- gations can compensate for the absence of a clinical insight, which is at first innate in varying degree, and later developed by careful observation, clear thinking, and the use of experience

Steal This Tutorial!

Is your information literacy tutorial outdated? Do you wish it were easier to track learning results from your tutorial? Does the idea of fighting with HTML and computer code make you queasy? Come try out PILOT, an information literacy tutorial running on freely available software. It makes creating/editing content, including interactive assessments, easy for even non-techie librarians. Be ready to roll your sleeves up and try it out

First-passage theory of exciton population loss in single-walled carbon nanotubes reveals micron-scale intrinsic diffusion lengths

One-dimensional crystals have long range translational invariance which manifests as long exciton diffusion lengths, but such intrinsic properties are often obscured by environmental perturbations. We use a first-passage approach to model single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) exciton dynamics (including exciton-exciton annihilation and end effects) and compare it to results from both continuous-wave and multi-pulse ultrafast excitation experiments to extract intrinsic SWCNT properties. Excitons in suspended SWCNTs experience macroscopic diffusion lengths, on the order of the SWCNT length, (1.3-4.7 um) in sharp contrast to encapsulated samples. For these pristine samples, our model reveals intrinsic lifetimes (350-750 ps), diffusion constants (130-350 cm^2/s), and absorption cross-sections (2.1-3.6 X 10^-17 cm^2/atom) among the highest previously reported.and diffusion lengths for SWCNTs.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Individual differences in zoo-housed squirrel monkeys’ (<i>Saimiri sciureus</i>) reactions to visitors, research participation, and personality ratings

Understanding individual differences in captive squirrel monkeys is a topic of importance both for improving welfare by catering to individual needs, and for better understanding the results and implications of behavioral research. In this study, 23 squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus), housed in an environment that is both a zoo enclosure and research facility, were assessed for (i) the time they spent by an observation window under three visitor conditions: no visitors, small groups, and large groups, and (ii) their likelihood of participating in voluntary research, and (iii) zookeepers ratings of personality. A Friedman’s ANOVA and Wilcoxon post-hoc tests comparing mean times found that the monkeys spent more time by the window when there were large groups present than when there were small groups or no visitors. Thus, visitors do not seem to have a negative effect and may be enriching for certain individuals. Through GLMM and correlational analyses, it was found that high scores on the personality trait of playfulness and low scores on cautiousness, depression, and solitude were significant predictors of increased window approach behavior when visitors were present. The GLMM and correlational analyses assessing the links between personality traits and research participation found that low scores of cautiousness and high scores of playfulness, gentleness, affection, and friendliness, were significant predictors. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to selection bias and its potential confounding effect on cognitive studies with voluntary participation

Preparation and decay of a single quantum of vibration at ambient conditions

A single quantum of excitation of a mechanical oscillator is a textbook example of the principles of quantum physics. Mechanical oscillators, despite their pervasive presence in nature and modern technology, do not generically exist in an excited Fock state. In the past few years, careful isolation of GHz-frequency nano-scale oscillators has allowed experimenters to prepare such states at milli-Kelvin temperatures. These developments illustrate the tension between the basic predictions of quantum mechanics that should apply to all mechanical oscillators existing even at ambient conditions, and the complex experiments in extreme conditions required to observe those predictions. We resolve the tension by creating a single Fock state of a vibration mode of a crystal at room temperature using a technique that can be applied to any Raman-active system. After exciting a bulk diamond with a femtosecond laser pulse and detecting a Stokes-shifted photon, the 40~THz Raman-active internal vibrational mode is prepared in the Fock state $|1>$ with $98.5\%$ probability. The vibrational state is read out by a subsequent pulse, which when subjected to a Hanbury-Brown-Twiss intensity correlation measurement reveals the sub-Poisson number statistics of the vibrational mode. By controlling the delay between the two pulses we are able to witness the decay of the vibrational Fock state over its $3.9$ ps lifetime at room temperature. Our technique is agnostic to specific selection rules, and should thus be applicable to any Raman-active medium, opening a new generic approach to the experimental study of quantum effects related to vibrational degrees of freedom in molecules and solid-state systems

Primate theory of mind is a Turing test

Heyes’s literature review of deception, imitation, and selfrecognition is inadequate, misleading, and erroneous. The anaesthetic artifact hypothesis of self-recognition is unsupported by the data she herself examines. Her proposed experiment is tantalizing, indicating that theory of mind is simply a Turing test

Structure/activity relationships applied to the hydrogenation of α,β-unsaturated carbonyls: The hydrogenation of 3-butyne-2-one over alumina-supported palladium catalysts

The gas phase hydrogenation of 3-butyne-2-one, an alkynic ketone, over two alumina-supported palladium catalysts is investigated using infrared spectroscopy in a batch reactor at 373 K. The mean particle size of the palladium crystallites of the two catalysts are comparable (2.4 ± 0.1 nm). One catalyst (Pd(NO3)2/Al2O3) is prepared from a palladium(II) nitrate precursor, whereas the other catalyst (PdCl2/Al2O3) is prepared using palladium(II) chloride as the Pd precursor compound. A three-stage sequential process is observed with the Pd(NO3)2/Al2O3 catalyst facilitating complete reduction all the way through to 2-butanol. However, hydrogenation stops at 2-butanone with the PdCl2/Al2O3 catalyst. The inability of the PdCl2/Al2O3 catalyst to reduce 2-butanone is attributed to the inaccessibility of edge sites on this catalyst, which are blocked by chlorine retention originating from the catalyst’s preparative process. The reaction profiles observed for the hydrogenation of this alkynic ketone are consistent with the site-selective chemistry recently reported for the hydrogenation of crotonaldehyde, an alkenic aldehyde, over the same two catalysts. Thus, it is suggested that a previously postulated structure/activity relationship may be generic for the hydrogenation of α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds over supported Pd catalysts