Digital Commons Network^™

Scientific Case For Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change To Protect Young People And Nature, J Hansen, P Kharecha, M Sato, F Ackerman, Et Al

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Global warming due to human-made gases, mainly CO2, is already 0.8{\deg}C and deleterious climate impacts are growing worldwide. More warming is 'in the pipeline' because Earth is out of energy balance, with absorbed solar energy exceeding planetary heat radiation. Maintaining a climate that resembles the Holocene, the world of stable shorelines in which civilization developed, requires rapidly reducing fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Such a scenario is economically sensible and has multiple benefits for humanity and other species. Yet fossil fuel extraction is expanding, including highly carbon-intensive sources that can push the climate system beyond tipping points such that amplifying feedbacks …

Developing An Online Learning Community For Mental Health Professionals And Service Users: A Discursive Analysis., Janet Smithson, Ray B. Jones, Emily Ashurst

School of Nursing and Midwifery

BACKGROUND: There is increasing interest in online collaborative learning tools in health education, to reduce costs, and to offer alternative communication opportunities. Patients and students often have extensive experience of using the Internet for health information and support, and many health organisations are increasingly trying out online tools, while many healthcare professionals are unused to, and have reservations about, online interaction. METHODS: We ran three week-long collaborative learning courses, in which 19 mental health professionals (MHPs) and 12 mental health service users (MHSUs) participated. Data were analysed using a discursive approach to consider the ways in which participants interacted, and …

Implicit Memory, He Schendan

School of Psychology

The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior, Second Edition is a comprehensive three-volume reference source on human action and reaction, and the thoughts, feelings, and physiological functions behind those actions.

Semantic Memory, He Schendan

School of Psychology

The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior, Second Edition is a comprehensive three-volume reference source on human action and reaction, and the thoughts, feelings, and physiological functions behind those actions.

Assessment Equivalence Frameworks: To Be Or Not To Be?, Pj Magne

Professional Services

No abstract provided.

Creating Pathways For Swimming And Water Safety Within Teacher Education: A University Perspective., Tj Lynch

Plymouth Institute of Education

In Semester One, 2011 at Monash University (Gippsland) as part of the Bachelor of Primary Education course, it was decided a pathway be created through the implementation of swimming and water safety education in Primary schools.

Sowfia Project - Work Package 2 Interim Report, Arjona E Muñoz, Olivares C Huertas, B Holmes, Am O‟Hagan, D Magagna, D Greaves

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Rips, Currents And Snags: Investigating The Complexities Of Teaching Swimming And Water Safety Within Primary Schools., Tj Lynch

Plymouth Institute of Education

It is possible for swimming and water safety to be skilfully connected to any of the eight key learning curriculum areas (discipline subjects) by primary school teachers, and can be argued that teachers will have increased opportunity and autonomy to do this with the development of a National Curriculum Framework. While this proposal seems simple on the surface, there are underlying complexities that may act as possible barriers.

Swimming And Water Safety: A School Teacher's Perspective., Tj Lynch

Plymouth Institute of Education

The number of drowning deaths in Australia is regarded by governing bodies as far too many, hence it is proposed that teachers within primary schools be utilised more efficiently in the education process.

Growth Curve Prediction From Optical Density Data, I Mytilinaios, M Salih, Hk Schofield, Rjw Lambert

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

A fundamental aspect of predictive microbiology is the shape of the microbial growth curve and many models are used to fit microbial count data, the modified Gompertz and Baranyi equation being two of the most widely used. Rapid, automated methods such as turbidimetry have been widely used to obtain growth parameters, but do not directly give the microbial growth curve. Optical density (OD) data can be used to obtain the specific growth rate and if used in conjunction with the known initial inocula, the maximum population data and knowledge of the microbial number at a predefined OD at a known …

Joint Determination Of The Choice Of Growing Season And Economic Efficiency Of Maize In Bangladesh, S Rahman, Ms Rahman, Mh Rahman

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

The paper jointly evaluates the determinants of the choice of maize growing season (winter vs. summer maize) and economic efficiency of individual producers in Bangladesh using a sample selection framework applied to stochastic frontier models. Model diagnostics reveal that sample selection bias is significant, thereby justifying the use of this approach. Probit results reveal that the probability to choose winter maize are influenced positively by gross return, subsistence pressure and soil suitability, whereas extension contact influences choice negatively. Stochastic cost frontier results reveal that a rise in input prices and output level increases production cost as expected. Among the variables …

Evidence Of Microbial Activity From A Shallow Water Whale Fall (Voghera, Northern Italy), S Danise, B Cavalazzi, S Dominici, Et Al

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

The fossil bones, associated carbonate cements and enclosing concretion of a Miocene mysticete from inner shelf deposits (Monte Vallassa Formation, northern Italy) were analyzed for evidence of microbial activity. Optical and scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and stable C and O isotope geochemistry were used for high spatial resolution microfacies and biosedimentological analyses. Whale cancellous bones were filled by different carbonate cements including microcrystalline dolomite, rhombohedral dolomite and sparry calcite. Biofabric and biominerals such as microbial peloids, clotted textures and pyrite framboids were associated with the dolomite cements. Dolomite inside cancellous bones and in the enclosing concretion showed similar isotopic …

Modelling The Delivery Of Supraglacial Meltwater To The Ice/Bed Interface: Application To Southwest Devon Ice Cap, Nunavut, Canada, C Clason, Dwf Mair, Do Burgess, Pw Nienow

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

The transfer of surface-generated meltwater to the subglacial drainage system through full ice thickness crevassing may lead to accelerated glacier velocities, with implications for ice motion under future climatic scenarios. Accurate predictions of where surface meltwater accesses the ice/bed interface are therefore needed in fully coupled hydrodynamic ice-sheet models. We present a spatially distributed modelling routine for predicting the location and timing of delivery of surface-derived meltwater to the ice/bed interface through moulins and supraglacial lake drainage. The model is explained as it is applied to the Croker Bay glacial catchment of Devon Ice Cap, Canada. The formation of moulins, …

Research Notes: Journal Of Tourism Consumption And Practice Volume 4 No.2 2012, Teun Den Dekker, Marcel Tabbers

Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice

From Creative Crowds to Creative Tourism: A search for creative tourism in small and medium sized cities. Teun den Dekker and Marcel Tabbers Barcelona Creative Tourism. Caroline Couret COLIN’s creative tourism experiences: The opportunities for the province of Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands. Kristel Zegers

The Impact Of Language On The Expression And Assessment Of Pain In Children Aged 4-7 Years: A Mixed Methods Study, Pary Mohammad Azize

School of Nursing and Midwifery Theses

The assessment of pain in children has been an enduring theme in the research literature over many decades, with particular focus on how pain can be adequately measured and the extent of under-measurement of pain (American Academy of Pediatrics 2001; Coyne, 2006; McCaffery & Beebe 1989; Subhashini et al., 2009). Definitions of pain, and hence development of pain measurement tools, are often criticised for not addressing the influence of culture and ethnicity on pain (Bates et al., 1993; McCaffery & Beebe 1989; Zinke, 2007), in children, the perception and expression of pain is also affected by cognitive development (Hallström and …

Editorial Of E-Book On Action And Language Integration, A Cangelosi

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Increasing theoretical and experimental research on action and language processing in humans and animals clearly demonstrates the strict interaction and co-dependence between language and action. This has been extensively demonstrated in neuroscientific investigations (e.g., Rizzolatti and Arbib, 1998; Cappa and Perani, 2003; Pulvermuller, 2003), psychology experiments (e.g., Glenberg and Kaschak, 2002; Pecher and Zwaan, 2005; Barsalou, 2008), evolutionary psychology (e.g., Corballis, 2002), and computational modeling (e.g., Cangelosi and Parisi, 2004; Massera et al., 2007; Cangelosi, 2010). All these studies have important implication both for the understanding of the action basis of cognition in natural and artificial cognitive systems, as well …

Emergent Auditory Feature Tuning In A Real-Time Neuromorphic Vlsi System., Sadique Sheik, Martin Coath, Giacomo Indiveri, Susan L. Denham, Thomas Wennekers, Elisabetta Chicca

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Many sounds of ecological importance, such as communication calls, are characterized by time-varying spectra. However, most neuromorphic auditory models to date have focused on distinguishing mainly static patterns, under the assumption that dynamic patterns can be learned as sequences of static ones. In contrast, the emergence of dynamic feature sensitivity through exposure to formative stimuli has been recently modeled in a network of spiking neurons based on the thalamo-cortical architecture. The proposed network models the effect of lateral and recurrent connections between cortical layers, distance-dependent axonal transmission delays, and learning in the form of Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP), which …

Risk Management In Research-Informed Teaching, Karen Gresty, Troy Heffernan, Wei Pan, Andrew Edwards-Jones

More Faculty of Science and Engineering Research

The nature of the relationship between teaching and research is of crucial importance and it continues to be a source of controversy and concern in current literature. Interestingly, associated risks of the relationship have been largely overlooked by researchers. This project contributes a novel, epistemological approach to investigate Research-informed Teaching (RiT) by adopting the philosophy of risk management. This approach allows an exploration of both real and perceived risks of RiT from students’ and tutors’ perspectives, reflecting the analytical process of risk identification, assessment and management.1. What are the risks of incorporating Research-informed Teaching into distinct disciplines? Previous HEA-funded research …

Food Cultures: Growing Cooking Eating - An Exploration Of Improving Food Practices In Young Men And Older Adults In Plymouth, C Pettinger, E Whitelaw

School of Health Professions

No abstract provided.

Segmentation Cues In Spontaneous Speech: Robust Semantics And Fragile Phonotactics., L White, Sl Mattys, L Wiget

School of Psychology

Multiple cues influence listeners’ segmentation of connected speech into words, but most previous studies have used stimuli elicited in careful readings rather than natural conversation. Discerning word boundaries in conversational speech may differ from the laboratory setting. In particular, a speaker’s articulatory effort – hyperarticulation vs. hypoarticulation (H&H) – may vary according to communicative demands, suggesting a compensatory relationship whereby acoustic-phonetic cues are attenuated when other information sources strongly guide segmentation.We examined how listeners’ interpretation of segmentation cues is affected by speech style (spontaneous conversation vs. read), using cross-modal identity priming. To elicit spontaneous stimuli, we used a map task …

Statins In Unconventional Secretion Of Insulin-Degrading Enzyme And Degradation Of The Amyloid-Β Peptide, K Glebov, J Walter

Peninsula Medical School

Population-based studies demonstrated that statins might decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Statins inhibit the 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl-coenzyme-A reductase and thereby de novo synthesis of cholesterol. Cell culture and animal studies indicated that cholesterol affects the proteolytic processing of the amyloid precursor protein and the generation of amyloid-β (Aβ). Recently, we have demonstrated that statins can also stimulate the degradation of Aβ. The statin-induced clearance of Aβ could be attributed to increased release of the insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) via an exosome-related unconventional secretory pathway. Interestingly, this statin-induced secretion of exosome-associated IDE was independent of cellular cholesterol concentrations, but rather caused …

Development Of Mineral Particle Surfaces For The Adsorption Of Pitch From Wood Processing And Recycling Of Paper, Daniel Gantenbein

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences Theses

During the production of paper in paper mills, detrimental wood resin is released into the water circuit of the mill during the pulping process of the wood into fibres. This wood resin, termed pitch, can detrimentally deposit on the paper and on the paper machine equipment. The deposits mark the paper or can lead to a tear of the paper web involving a loss of output and a reduction in paper quality. Furthermore, the wood resinous compounds in paper mill effluents need to be reduced in order to minimise their toxic effects on water organisms. Talc has been the benchmark …

Extinction And Recovery Dynamics Of Triassic-Jurassic Macro-Invertebrate Communities, Luis Felipe Opazo Mella

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences Theses

This work is focused on characterising and evaluating the intensity and selectivity of the marine fauna during the Tr/J mass extinction and recovery of the ecosystem in different localities throughout Pangaea. To address this, four localities were studied: St. Audrie’s Bay, Larne and Pinhay Bay in the UK, and Portezuelo Providencia in Chile. From each locality, samples were taken at approximately 1m intervals throughout the Tr/J sections. Species abundance per sample was estimated and each species was classified according to autoecological information derived from the literature. In order to assess changes in the structure and composition of the assemblages, NMDS …

Carbon Management And Scenario Planning At The Landscape Scale With Gis, Shabnam Delfan Azari

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences Theses

Carbon Management and Scenario Planning at the Landscape Scale with GIS By: Shabnam Delfan Azari It is now widely believed that globally averaged temperatures will rise significantly over the next 100 years as a result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide. Responses to the threat of future climate change are both adaptations to new climate conditions, and mitigation of the magnitude of change. Mitigation can be achieved both through reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and by increasing storage of carbon in the earth system. In particular it is thought that there is potential for …

Undergraduate Background As A Critical Factor In The Learning Capacity And Skills Of Chinese Master's Degree Students, J. Xu, P. Megicks, D. Mckeith

Plymouth Business School

The project, a pilot study, was based on Chinese MSc students in the Plymouth Business School (PBS), with the aim of identifying learning differences and support needs between groups of Chinese master’s students with different learning backgrounds in terms of where and how they completed their undergraduate studies.

The project focused on identification of disparities between different categories of students in terms of academic performance, learning, research and communication skills and the resulting data, although based on a small sample, identified specific academic support requirements for Chinese students.

The internationalisation of higher education has resulted in increasing numbers of overseas …

Improving Fairness And Utilisation In Ad Hoc Networks, Mohamed Arabi

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Ad hoc networks represent the current de-facto alternative for infrastructure-less environments, due to their self-configuring and resilience characteristics. Ad hoc networks flexibility benefits, such as unrestrained computing, lack of centralisation, and ease of deployment at low costs, are tightly bound with relevant deficiencies such as limited resources and management difficulty. Ad hoc networks witnessed high attention from the research community due to the numerous challenges faced when deploying such a technology in real scenarios. Starting with the nature of the wireless environment, which raises significant transmission issues when compared with the wired counterpart, ad hoc networks require a different approach …

Counter-Surveillance, Protest And Policing, Dean Wilson

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

This paper, based upon 17 semi-structured interviews with individuals involved in video activism, examines the growing importance of visually documenting protest events for both activists and police organizations. It is argued that while visual recordings of protest events by activists may be useful in terms of securing safety, dissuading instances of police violence and in providing evidence against police misconduct, there are also unintended negative consequences of video-activism. These negative consequences include selfincrimination, the promotion of spirals of surveillance whereby the police video protestors, and the removal (at times with disproportionate force) of activists with recording devices from protest events …

Is The Common Law Defence Of Insanity Ineffective And In Need Of Reform?, Samprada Mukhia

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

This article will consider whether the current common law defence of insanity is ineffective and in need of reform. It will do so by contemplating several criticisms of the insanity defence arising from the M'Naghten Rules and examine some recommended changes to the law this area.

Trying To Get A Good One' Bigamy Offences In England And Wales, 1850-1950, David Cox

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

Bigamy has attracted little attention from both criminologists and historians in the past few decades. This is perhaps understandable, as bigamy is an uncommon crime, no longer regarded as a major threat to the institution of marriage or familial stability, as divorce laws have made it much easier for couples to legally separate, and co-habitation outside marriage is much more common than in pre-World War II England and Wales. 2 However, this has not always been the case; before men and women could divorce on equal terms and without blame being apportioned, bigamy was seen as one way in which …

New Trends In Religious Freedom: The Battle Of The Headscarf, Natalie Melmore

The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

Freedom of religion has been described as the paradigm freedom of conscience and of the essence in a free society, but the re-emergence of religion in the public sphere has elicited great publicity. The wearing of the female Islamic dress, commonly the headscarf (hijab), is a complex and multi-faceted issue that is often raised in legal and political debates, particularly in the education and employment areas across Europe. This work examines the role of the European Union in the regulation of Member States‟ approaches to individuals wearing the Islamic headscarf. The European Convention of Human Rights and decisions of the …