An investigation into the effects of gender, prior academic achievement, place of residence, age and attendance on first year undergraduate attainment

The number of people engaging in higher education (HE) has increased considerably over the past decade. However, there is a need to achieve a balance between increasing access and bearing down on rates of non-completion. It has been argued that poor attainment and failure within the first year are significant contributors to the overall statistics for non-progression and that, although research has concentrated on factors causative of student withdrawal, less attention has focused on students who fail academically. This study investigated the effects of a number of a number of factors on the academic attainment of first-year undergraduates within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Glamorgan. Results showed that gender and age had only minor impacts upon educational achievement, while place of residence, prior educational attainment and attendance emerged as significant predictors of attainment. Further analysis showed these three factors to be interrelated , with attendance correlating strongly with both entry points and place or residence. In turn, prior attainment was strongly linked to place of residence. Findings may be used to identify and proactively target students at risk of poor academic performance and dropout in order in order to improve rates of performance and progression

M.Arch

thesisFrom the Project summary: "Architecture has historically been an art form that seeks meaning throughout the universe. From the Primitive Hut, throughout the myriad of styles and movements leading to contemporary architecture, and ultimately the path for the future, architectural design looks for inspiration in the human relationship to the environment, to the universe, and to culture. The human element defines the essence of realism in architecture. This project explores a design approach to architectural realism, inspired by Dogme 95, a process oriented approach to film making. Filmic realism is chosen as a source for architectural inspiration because of its inherent notion of "truth" within the projection of experiential sequences of the human relationship to space. Programmatically, this project is an interactive film archive for the preservation of films related to Dogme 95. This interaction incorporates a myriad of users in the spectrum of general public to professional filmmaker. This project embodies Dogme as program, while projecting a design process inspired by the movement.

My Life

A personal story by Thomas Newman, a resident of Fifty Washington Square, Newport, Rhode Island. His work has appeared in In the Heart of the City, a literary magazine produced by the residents of Fifty Washington Square. He hopes to be a photographer

Single proton transfer on 55Mn

Includes bibliographical references.Differential cross sections for the ⁵⁵Mn(d,³He)⁵⁴Cr and ⁵⁵Mn(d,d)⁵⁵Mn(g.s.) reactions at Ed = 45.6 MeV were measured in the 6°-48° angular region (laboratory frame) using a k = 600 MeV magnetic spectrometer with a resolution of ~40 keV (full-width at half maximum). Spectroscopic factors associated with the observed transitions to twenty-four ⁵⁴Cr final states up to 6.107 MeV excitation were determined from local, zero-range distorted-wave Born approximation (DWBA) analyses of the measured angular distributions, allowing for l = 0, 1, 2 and 3 transfers. An optical-model analysis of the (d,d) data has been performed in order to yield optimum values of the potential parameters required for calculating the distorted wave-functions associated with the entrance channel

Bedside differentiation of vestibular neuritis from central "vestibular pseudoneuritis".

Acute unilateral peripheral and central vestibular lesions can cause similar signs and symptoms, but they require different diagnostics and management. We therefore correlated clinical signs to differentiate vestibular neuritis (40 patients) from central ‘‘vestibular pseudoneuritis’’ (43 patients) in the acute situation with the final diagnosis assessed by neuroimaging. Skew deviation was the only specific but non-sensitive (40%) sign for pseudoneuritis. None of the other isolated signs (head thrust test, saccadic pursuit, gaze evoked nystagmus, subjective visual vertical) were reliable; however, multivariate logistic regression increased their sensitivity and specificity to 92%

Embedding Population Dynamics Models in Inference

Increasing pressures on the environment are generating an ever-increasing need to manage animal and plant populations sustainably, and to protect and rebuild endangered populations. Effective management requires reliable mathematical models, so that the effects of management action can be predicted, and the uncertainty in these predictions quantified. These models must be able to predict the response of populations to anthropogenic change, while handling the major sources of uncertainty. We describe a simple ``building block'' approach to formulating discrete-time models. We show how to estimate the parameters of such models from time series of data, and how to quantify uncertainty in those estimates and in numbers of individuals of different types in populations, using computer-intensive Bayesian methods. We also discuss advantages and pitfalls of the approach, and give an example using the British grey seal population.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000673 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org