University students are buying assignments – what could, or should, be done about it?

‘Contract cheating’, whereby students pay companies to complete assignments on their behalf, threatens to seriously undermine higher education standards. Philip M. Newton and Michael J. Draper consider what might be done to tackle this issue, including the Quality Assurance Agency’s suggestion of deploying the UK Fraud Act (2006). While questions remains as to whether the Fraud Act is likely to prove effective in prosecuting companies that offer contract cheating services, it may be that other legal approaches can be adopted. Additionally, more robust assessment designs and university regulations, together with renewed programmes of stakeholder education, can mitigate the threats posed by contract cheating

The student experience of applied equivalence-based instruction for neuroanatomy teaching

Purpose Esoteric jargon and technical language are potential barriers to the teaching of science and medicine. Effective teaching strategies which address these barriers are desirable. Here, we created and evaluated the effectiveness of stand-alone ‘equivalence-based instruction’ (EBI) learning resources wherein the teaching of a small number of direct relationships between stimuli (e.g., anatomical regions, their function, and pathology) results in the learning of higher numbers of untaught relationships. Methods We used a pre and post test design to assess students’ learning of the relations. Resources were evaluated by students for perceived usefulness and confidence in the topic. Three versions of the resources were designed, to explore learning parameters such as the number of stimulus classes and the number of relationships within these classes. Results We show that use of EBI resulted in demonstrable learning of material that had not been directly taught. The resources were well received by students, even when the quantity of material to be learned was high. There was a strong desire for more EBI-based teaching. The findings are discussed in the context of an ongoing debate surrounding ‘rote’ vs. ‘deep’ learning, and the need to balance this debate with considerations of cognitive load and esoteric jargon routinely encountered during the study of medicine. Conclusion These standalone EBI resources were an effective, efficient and well-received method for teaching neuroanatomy to medical students. The approach may be of benefit to other subjects with abundant technical jargon, science and other areas of medicine

Carbon pools recover more quickly than plant biodiversity in tropical secondary forests.

Although increasing efforts are being made to restore tropical forests, little information is available regarding the time scales required for carbon and plant biodiversity to recover to the values associated with undisturbed forests. To address this knowledge gap, we carried out a meta-analysis comparing data from more than 600 secondary tropical forest sites with nearby undisturbed reference forests. Above-ground biomass approached equivalence to reference values within 80 years since last disturbance, whereas below-ground biomass took longer to recover. Soil carbon content showed little relationship with time since disturbance. Tree species richness recovered after about 50 years. By contrast, epiphyte richness did not reach equivalence to undisturbed forests. The proportion of undisturbed forest trees and epiphyte species found in secondary forests was low and changed little over time. Our results indicate that carbon pools and biodiversity show different recovery rates under passive, secondary succession and that colonization by undisturbed forest plant species is slow. Initiatives such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and REDD+ should therefore encourage active management to help to achieve their aims of restoring both carbon and biodiversity in tropical forests

Exploring content and psychometric validity of newly developed assessment tools for itch and skin pain in atopic dermatitis.

BackgroundAtopic dermatitis (AD) is a common skin disorder characterized by chronic inflammation, altered skin barrier function, and inflammatory cell skin infiltration that decreases health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The study objective was to understand the patient perspective of AD burden and determine suitable patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures.MethodsThis mixed methods study involved the collection of qualitative and quantitative information from adults (≥ 18 years old) and adolescents (12 - 17 years old) with clinician-confirmed AD regarding their experiences of AD symptoms and its impact on HRQoL. The first part of the study included three stages: in-person concept elicitation (CE) interviews, a 2-week daily electronic diary (eDiary) study, and in-person cognitive debriefing (CD) interviews. An Itch numeric rating scale (NRS) (v1.0) and a Skin Pain NRS (v1.0) evaluation during CD interviews required participants to think about their 'worst' itch and 'worst' skin pain in the past 24 h. Other PRO measures allowed for psychometric testing. The second part of the study involved telephone-depth interviews (TDIs) and qualitative feedback from participants who had not participated in the CD interviews. Qualitative data were thematically analyzed. Psychometric evaluation of NRS measures was performed using eDiary data.ResultsIn the CE interviews, itch and/or itching and skin pain were the most prevalent symptoms consistently discussed by participants. Both NRS measures demonstrated strong psychometric reliability and were applicable across ages with suitable concurrent validity. During the CD interviews, some participants focused their answers on their 'average' itch/itching in the past 24 h, rather than their 'worst' itch. Some participants answered the Skin Pain NRS thinking about general pain or other types of pain, rather than skin pain specifically. Consequently, modifications to both measures addressed these issues and re-tested as paper-and-pen versions in subsequent TDIs. Itch NRS (v2.0) modifications helped participants focus on their worst itching. Most participants preferred Skin Pain NRS v2.0b, which included skin pain descriptors.ConclusionsItching and skin pain are the most important and relevant AD symptoms. The Itch NRS (v2.0) and Skin Pain NRS (v2.0b) appear to be appropriate endpoints for the assessment of itching and skin pain severity for clinical trials with adults and adolescents with AD

Magnetic inflation and Stellar Mass. II. On the radii of wingle, rapidly rotating, fully convective M-dwarf stars

Main-sequence, fully convective M dwarfs in eclipsing binaries are observed to be larger than stellar evolutionary models predict by as much as 10%–15%. A proposed explanation for this discrepancy involves effects from strong magnetic fields, induced by rapid rotation via the dynamo process. Although, a handful of single, slowly rotating M dwarfs with radius measurements from interferometry also appear to be larger than models predict, suggesting that rotation or binarity specifically may not be the sole cause of the discrepancy. We test whether single, rapidly rotating, fully convective stars are also larger than expected by measuring their $R\sin i$ distribution. We combine photometric rotation periods from the literature with rotational broadening ($v\sin i$) measurements reported in this work for a sample of 88 rapidly rotating M dwarf stars. Using a Bayesian framework, we find that stellar evolutionary models underestimate the radii by 10 \% \mbox{--}15{ \% }_{-2.5}^{+3}, but that at higher masses (0.18 < M < 0.4 M Sun), the discrepancy is only about 6% and comparable to results from interferometry and eclipsing binaries. At the lowest masses (0.08 < M < 0.18 M Sun), we find that the discrepancy between observations and theory is 13%–18%, and we argue that the discrepancy is unlikely to be due to effects from age. Furthermore, we find no statistically significant radius discrepancy between our sample and the handful of M dwarfs with interferometric radii. We conclude that neither rotation nor binarity are responsible for the inflated radii of fully convective M dwarfs, and that all fully convective M dwarfs are larger than models predict.The authors would like to thank the referee for the thoughtful report, which greatly improved the manuscript. The authors would also like to thank Lisa Prato and Larissa Nofi for IGRINS training, and Heidi Larson, Jason Sanborn, and Andrew Hayslip for operating the DCT during our observations. We would also like to thank Jen Winters, Jonathan Irwin, Paul Dalba, Mark Veyette, Eunkyu Han, and Andrew Vanderburg for useful discussions and helpful comments on this work. Some of this work was supported by the NASA Exoplanet Research Program (XRP) under grant No. NNX15AG08G issued through the Science Mission Directorate.These results made use of the Lowell Observatory's Discovery Channel Telescope, supported by Discovery Communications, Inc., Boston University, the University of Maryland, the University of Toledo and Northern Arizona University; the Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrograph (IGRINS) that was developed under a collaboration between the University of Texas at Austin and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) with the financial support of the US National Science Foundation under grant AST-1229522, of the University of Texas at Austin, and of the Korean GMT Project of KASI; data taken at The McDonald Observatory of The University of Texas at Austin; and data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by NASA and the NSF. (NNX15AG08G - NASA Exoplanet Research Program (XRP); Discovery Communications, Inc.; Boston University; University of Maryland; University of Toledo; Northern Arizona University; AST-1229522 - US National Science Foundation; University of Texas at Austin; Korean GMT Project of KASI; NASA; NSF