What’s next, as Facebook use in UK universities continues to grow?

How widely is Facebook used within higher education? And does ‘liking’ a university’s Facebook page really signify engagement between the student and the institution? Brian Kelly looks at whether the social networking service should be viewed as a digital mailing list, or if it has a role to play as a platform for the development of new services

Holistic approaches to e‐learning accessibility

The importance of accessibility to digital e‐learning resources is widely acknowledged. The World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative has played a leading role in promoting the importance of accessibility and developing guidelines that can help when developing accessible web resources. The accessibility of e‐learning resources provides additional challenges. While it is important to consider the technical and resource related aspects of e‐learning when designing and developing resources for students with disabilities, there is a need to consider pedagogic and contextual issues as well. A holistic framework is therefore proposed and described, which in addition to accessibility issues takes into account learner needs, learning outcomes, local factors, infrastructure, usability and quality assurance. The practical application and implementation of this framework is discussed and illustrated through the use of examples and case studies

Deployment of quality assurance procedures for digital library programmes

Many digital library programmes have a development philosophy based on use of open standards. In practice, however, projects may not have procedures in place to ensure that project deliverables make use of appropriate open standards. In addition there will be occasions when open standards are not sufficiently mature for deployment in a service environment or use of open standards will require expertise or resources which are not readily available

Arthroscopic management of an intraarticular osteochondroma of the hip.

The role of hip arthroscopy in the management of femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) has been advancing rapidly. In this case report, we describe the use of hip arthroscopy to successfully treat a femoral neck osteochondroma that caused a symptomatic labral tear in a 37 year old woman. Hip arthroscopy offers several advantages to surgical dislocation of the hip in the management of intraarticular pathology and FAI. Hip arthroscopy is minimally invasive without the significant trauma to hip musculature, is useful in treatment of labral tears generated by FAI, and can be used to resect small lesions on the femoral head

Archiving Web Site Resources: A Records Management View

In this paper, we propose the use of records management principles to identify and manage Web site resources with enduring value as records. Current Web archiving activities, collaborative or organisational, whilst extremely valuable in their own right, often do not and cannot incorporate requirements for proper records management. Material collected under such initiatives therefore may not be reliable or authentic from a legal or archival perspective, with insufficient metadata collected about the object during its active life, and valuable materials destroyed whilst ephemeral items are maintained. Education, training, and collaboration between stakeholders are integral to avoiding these risks and successfully preserving valuable Web-based materials.

Online Thermal Analysis of Batch Roasted Coffee Beans

We constructed and instrumented a fluidised-bed coffee roaster. This work has been carried out as part of a search for the “ideal point”, which is the point in time when an expert roaster would terminate the roast in order to yield beans that produce the optimal brew. We roasted Costa Rican Arabica beans whilst controlling the roasting temperature to follow a linear ramp. We measured and recorded the input, output, and coffee bean surface temperatures. We introduce the idea of “bean load”, an uncalibrated measure of the heat load presented by the material being roasted. The bean load under constantly-ramping bean surface temperature shows the roast is increasingly endothermic. Toward the end of the roast the endothermic phenomena decrease, or are assisted by exothermic activity. The bean load also has a repeatable dip around first crack. Due to limitations with the roaster we were not able to make reliable measurements at and beyond second crack. We observed no waypoints or events that might be used to pinpoint the “ideal point” to end the roast

A six-coordinate aryl-germanium complex formed by the Kläui ligand

PhGeCl₃ reacts with Na{[OP(OEt)₂]₃CoCp} to give the six-coordinate complex PhCl₂Ge{[OP(OEt)₂]₃CoCp}, characterised spectroscopically and by an X-ray crystal structure determination which showed a firmly-attached tridentate ligand [Ge–O 1.973(2) Å]

Cycloauration of pyridyl sulphonamides

The pyridyl-2-alkylsulfonamides C₅H₄N(CH₂)nNHSO₂R (n = 1,2; R = Me, Ph or p-C₆H₄Me) and 8-(p-tosylamino)quinoline undergo facile cycloauration reactions with H[AuCl₄] in water, giving metallacyclic complexes coordinated through the pyridyl (or quinolyl) nitrogen atom and the deprotonated nitrogen of the sulfonamide group. The complexes have been fully characterised by NMR spectroscopy, ESI mass spectrometry and elemental analysis. The X-ray crystal structures of two derivatives reveal the presence of non-planar sulfonamide nitrogen atoms. The complexes show low activity against P388 murine leukaemia cells, possibly as a result of their ease of reduction with mild reducing agents

The cycloauration of pyridine-2-thiocarboxamide ligands

Reactions of H[AuCl₄] with N-substituted 2-pyridine thiocarboxamide ligands 2-(C₅H₄N)C(S)NHR (R= p-C₆H₄Me, CH₂Ph, Me, p-C₆H₄OMe) gave cycloaurated derivatives {(C₅H₄N)C(S)NR}AuCl₂, with the ligand bonded as the thiol tautomer through the deprotonated SH group and the pyridine N atom to give a five-membered metallacyclic ring. The X-ray structure determination of the R = CH₂Ph derivative shows a square-planar gold(III) complex that dimerises in the solid state by weak Au...S intermolecular interactions. In contrast, in the reaction of H[AuCl₄] with 2-(C₅H₄N)C(S)NHR where R = 2-pyridyl, the ligand was oxidised to give a 1,2,4-thiadiazolo[2,3-a]pyridinium heterocyclic ring that was crystallographically characterised

Cycloaurated triphenylphosphine-sulfide and –selenide

The first examples of cycloaurated phosphine sulfides and triphenylphosphine selenide have been synthesised; these complexes are fairly rare examples of gold(III) complexes with potentially reducing sulfur- and selenium-donor ligands. The cycloaurated complex (AuCl₂ (2-C₆H₄P(S)Ph₂) was synthesised in good yield by transmetallation of the organomercury precursor Hg(2-C₆H₄P(S)Ph₂)₂ with Me₄N[AuCl₄]. A route to the chloro-mercury analogue ClHg(2-C₆H₄P(S)Ph₂) was developed by reaction of the cyclomanganated triphenylphosphine sulfide (CO)₄Mn(2-C₆H₄P(S)Ph₂) with HgCl₂; this mercury substrate was also used in the synthesis of AuCl₂(2-C₆H₄P(S)Ph₂). The cycloaurated triphenylphosphine selenide complex AuCl₂(2-C₆H₄P(Se)Ph₂) was synthesised by an analogous methodology using the new phosphine selenide Hg(2-C₆H₄P(Se)Ph₂)₂ [prepared from Hg(2-C₆H₄PPh₂)₂ and elemental Se under sonication]. The phosphonamidic analogue AuCl₂(2-C₆H₄P(S)(Net₂)₂) has also been synthesised from PhP(S)(Net₂)₂via lithiation and mercuration. X-Ray crystal structures of several compounds are reported, and show the presence of puckered ring systems