Crafting a rich and personal blending learning environment: an institutional case study from a STEM perspective

Institutional pressures to make optimal use of lecture halls and classrooms can be powerful motivators to identify resources to develop technology enhanced learning approaches to traditional curricula. From the academic’s perspective, engaging students in active learning and reducing the academic workload are important and complementary drivers. This paper presents a case study of a curriculum development exercise undertaken in a STEM subject area at a research-intensive UK university. A multi-skilled team of academics and learning designers have worked collaboratively to build this module which will be realised as a mix of online and face to face activities. Since the module addresses professional issues, a strong emphasis is being placed on establishing authentic learning activities and realistic use of prominent social tools.The learning designers are working for a cross-institutional initiative to support educational innovations; therefore it is important to carefully document the development process and to identify reusable design patterns which can be easily explained to other academics.<br/

Prevalence and causes of prescribing errors: the prescribing outcomes for trainee doctors engaged in clinical training (PROTECT) study

Objectives Study objectives were to investigate the prevalence and causes of prescribing errors amongst foundation doctors (i.e. junior doctors in their first (F1) or second (F2) year of post-graduate training), describe their knowledge and experience of prescribing errors, and explore their self-efficacy (i.e. confidence) in prescribing. Method A three-part mixed-methods design was used, comprising: prospective observational study; semi-structured interviews and cross-sectional survey. All doctors prescribing in eight purposively selected hospitals in Scotland participated. All foundation doctors throughout Scotland participated in the survey. The number of prescribing errors per patient, doctor, ward and hospital, perceived causes of errors and a measure of doctors' self-efficacy were established. Results 4710 patient charts and 44,726 prescribed medicines were reviewed. There were 3364 errors, affecting 1700 (36.1%) charts (overall error rate: 7.5%; F1:7.4%; F2:8.6%; consultants:6.3%). Higher error rates were associated with : teaching hospitals (p&#60;0.001), surgical (p = &#60;0.001) or mixed wards (0.008) rather thanmedical ward, higher patient turnover wards (p&#60;0.001), a greater number of prescribed medicines (p&#60;0.001) and the months December and June (p&#60;0.001). One hundred errors were discussed in 40 interviews. Error causation was multi-factorial; work environment and team factors were particularly noted. Of 548 completed questionnaires (national response rate of 35.4%), 508 (92.7% of respondents) reported errors, most of which (328 (64.6%) did not reach the patient. Pressure from other staff, workload and interruptions were cited as the main causes of errors. Foundation year 2 doctors reported greater confidence than year 1 doctors in deciding the most appropriate medication regimen. Conclusions Prescribing errors are frequent and of complex causation. Foundation doctors made more errors than other doctors, but undertook the majority of prescribing, making them a key target for intervention. Contributing causes included work environment, team, task, individual and patient factors. Further work is needed to develop and assess interventions that address these.</p

The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last

The Adventures of David Simple (1744), Sarah Fielding\u27s first and most celebrated novel, went through several editions, the second of which was heavily revised by her brother Henry. This edition includes Henry\u27s corrections in an appendix. In recounting the guileless hero\u27s search for a true friend, the novel depicts the derision with which almost everyone treats his sentimental attitudes to human nature. Acclaimed as an accurate portrait of mid-eighteenth-century London, The Adventures of David Simple sets forth some provocative feminist ideas. Also included is Fielding\u27s much darker sequel, Volume the Last (1753). David Simple is the most-read work of Sarah Fielding, best known as the sister of novelist Henry Fielding. This attractive new edition by Sabor is the fourth in Kentucky\u27s series of 18th-century women\u27s novels. -- Choice Sabor restores the novel Sarah Fielding really wrote. -- East-Central Intelligencer A welcome addition to eighteenth-century studies. . . . Readers of eighteenth-century fiction will be delighted that Sarah Fielding’s edition has been restored in a volume that is accessible, responsibly edited, and handsomely produced. -- Eighteenth-Century Fiction The revival of interest in Sarah Fielding’s writings over the last decade should be quickened by the publication of this important edition. -- Letters in Canada Sabor\u27s introduction lays out the family tragedies and financial difficulties that perplexed Fielding\u27s career and provides a detailed revisionist account of her impressive literary accomplishments. -- Publishers Weekly This important edition reproduces for the first time since its original publication the first edition of 1744. -- Virginia Quarterly Review Will undoubtedly spur even more work by scholars and students of the early novel. -- Year’s Work in English Studieshttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/1009/thumbnail.jp

Early Mississippian sandy siltstones preserve rare vertebrate fossils in seasonal flooding episodes

Flood-generated sandy siltstones are under-recognised deposits that preserve key vertebrate (actinopterygians, rhizodonts, and rarer lungfish, chondrichthyans and tetrapods), invertebrate and plant fossils. Recorded for the first time from the lower Mississippian Ballagan Formation of Scotland, more than 140 beds occur throughout a 490 m thick core succession charac-terised by fluvial sandstones, palaeosols, siltstones, dolostone ‘cementstones’ and gypsum from a coastal–alluvial plain setting. Sandy siltstones are described as a unique taphofacies of the Ballagan Formation (Scotland, UK);they are matrix-supported siltstones with millimetre-sized siltstone and very fine sandstone lithic clasts. Common bioclasts include plants and mega-spores, fish, ostracods, eurypterids and bivalves. Fossils have a high degree of articulation compared with those found in other fossil-bearing deposits, such as conglomerate lags at the base of fluvial channel sandstones. Bed thickness and distribution varies throughout the formation, with no stratigraphic trend. The matrix sediment and clasts are sourced from the reworking of floodplain sediments including desiccated surfaces and palaeosols. Secondary pedogenic modification affects 30% of the sandy siltstone beds and most (71%) overlie palaeosols or desiccation cracks. Sandy siltstones are interpreted as cohesive debris flow deposits that originated by the over-bank flooding of rivers and due to localised floodplain sediment transport at times of high rainfall; their association with palaeosols and desiccation cracks indicates seasonally wet to dry cycles throughout the Tournaisian. Tetrapod and fish fossils derived from floodplain lakes and land surfaces are concentrated by local erosion and reworking, and are preserved by deposition into temporary lakes on the floodplain; their distribution indicates a local origin, with sediment transported across the floodplain in seasonal rainfall episodes. These deposits are significant new sites that can be explored for the preservation of rare non-marine fossil material and provide unique insights into the evolution of early terrestrial ecosystems

Symposium abstracts: Thresholds and permeability in performance

Publisher PD

Nonprofit disease foundation investments in biotechnology companies : an evaluation of venture philanthropy

Thesis (S.M.)--Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 50-52).In the past decade, the practice of venture philanthropy, defined in this research as the provision of capital by a nonprofit entity to a for-profit company, has become an increasingly common asset allocation strategy for nonprofit disease-focused foundations.' Both nonprofit organizations and biotechnology firms alike have praised these funding relationships as instruments that help enable, de-risk, and ultimately accelerate the development of new therapies. However, data on the composition and performance of these venture philanthropy investment portfolios remains scarce. While the field of venture philanthropy is too young to have robust outcome data as of yet, we attempted to understand the methodologies for venture philanthropy portfolio construction, the historical mix of projects funded, and the performance of these portfolios thus far. We hypothesized that our independent assessment of grant portfolio composition would be congruent with stated portfolio policy. Instead, we found that organizations did not have a predetermined asset allocation framework against which to compare their investments. We collected data on industry-funding portfolios from three major participants in venture philanthropy in three different disease areas: the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF), the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF). Data was gathered from organization websites, annual reports, and financial filings. Interviews were conducted with grant program executives at each of the three organizations. While it was not possible to confirm or reject our hypothesis on the basis of portfolio congruence, we were able to show that in the absence of articulated portfolio policy, investment choices may not be aligning with stated program aims to fund earlier-stage, risky projects.by Sarah Fielding.S.M

The relationship between country and individual household wealth and climate change concern: The mediating role of control

Although past findings are inconclusive, there is evidence of a negative relationship between wealth—at the household and country level—and climate change concern. One explanation for this relationship is that wealth provides a buffer against the risks of climate change, leading people in wealthy countries or wealthy households to perceive a greater sense of control over climate change impacts which in turn results in lower levels of concern. We tested this hypothesis with data sourced from the OECD Environment Directorate which conducted a detailed household survey in 2011 of 11 OECD countries (N=10,162). Our results accord with past studies showing a significant negative relationship between country and household wealth and individuals’ perceptions of the seriousness of climate change. Moreover, our findings suggest that this relationship is mediated through sense of control, measured at the country level by the readiness index and at the household level by the extent of adoption of energy efficiency improvements. These findings raise the question of how best to incentivise action on climate change amongst those with the ability - but not necessarily the motivation - to respond