8383 research outputs found
Sort by
Chapter 14: Conclusions arising from the Star Carr project
No full textThe final full text is available open access at https://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/site/chapters/10.22599/book1.n/Conclusions arising from the Star Carr projec
Fieldwork@40: fieldwork in geography higher education
Get PDFThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Geography in Higher Education on 9th September 2018, available online: 10.1080/03098265.2018.1515187Fieldwork is the most powerful learning invitation in the toolkit of Geographical Education. This review of papers in The Journal of Geography in Higher Education (JGHE) suggests seven modes in the development of fieldwork. These are arrayed as a kind of historical, perhaps evolutionary, sequence but most remain current in Geography fieldwork practice. At the far end (1960s) of the sequence are didactic modes that are teacher centred and use the field as an adjunct to the classroom, in the middle (1990s) are modes that involve active learning and focus on the development of students as investigators and at the near end (2010s) are those that centred on the field study area and its qualities, that involve concern about the ethics of student engagement and that employ blended learning technologies. The review charts the JGHE’s gradual shift away from its original, almost exclusively, UK-focus toward something rather more international and inclusive. Fieldwork is where Geographers learn “from doing” Geography to “do” Geography. Its special attributes include providing experiential, sometimes transformative, learning through the immersion of the learner in the field experience. In 40 years, JGHE has helped Geography Fieldwork move from the margins of the curriculum to its current place at its core
Accelerated Times: British Literature in Transition, 1980-2000
No full textThe central premise underpinning our volume is simple: the final two decades of the twentieth century no longer constitute an integral part of what we call the contemporary. We now view the late twentieth century through a complex historicising lens darkened by the events of 9/11, the ensuing ‘clash of civilisations’ and ‘war on terror’, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, ongoing austerity and – most recently – the rise of populist politics. An additional impediment to immediate access and perfect recall is the impact effected by technological advances on everyday life in the twenty-first century: how reliably can we ‘supermoderns’ (to adopt Marc Augé’s term ) be expected to recollect and relate to a now bygone world that did not have the internet, email, social networking, wifi or the mobile phone? Even those of us who lived through the 1980s and 1990s will be finding this increasingly difficult. Superseded and defamiliarised by previously unimaginable technologically-modified ways of everyday living, the late twentieth century is beginning to look more and more like history. One prominent theme informing the tone of this introduction is how the final two decades of the twentieth century were marked by the speed of accelerated change in society’s attitudes to class, subnational devolution, religion, sexuality and the Black and Asian Minority Ethnic experience, as well as how these complex and mutually imbricated discourses helped produce a notable sense of motion sickness in the literature of the period
Space-Time Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for the '\eps'-dependent Stochastic Allen-Cahn Equation with mild noise
Get PDFThis is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in IMA Journal of Numerical Analysis following peer review. The version of record Antonopoulou, D. (2019-forthcoming). Space-Time Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for the '\eps'-dependent Stochastic Allen-Cahn Equation with mild noise. IMA Journal of Numerical Analysis is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/imanum/drz019We consider the \eps-dependent stochastic Allen-Cahn equation with mild space-
time noise posed on a bounded domain of R^2. The positive parameter \eps is a measure for
the inner layers width that are generated during evolution. This equation, when the noise
depends only on time, has been proposed by Funaki in [15]. The noise although smooth
becomes white on the sharp interface limit as \eps tends to zero. We construct a nonlinear dG scheme
with space-time finite elements of general type which are discontinuous in time. Existence
of a unique discrete solution is proven by application of Brouwer's Theorem. We first derive
abstract error estimates and then for the case of piece-wise polynomial finite elements we
prove an error in expectation of optimal order. All the appearing constants are estimated in
terms of the parameter \eps. Finally, we present a linear approximation of the nonlinear scheme
for which we prove existence of solution and optimal error in expectation in piece-wise linear
finite element spaces.
The novelty of this work is based on the use of a finite element formulation in space and
in time in 2+1-dimensional subdomains for a nonlinear parabolic problem. In addition, this
problem involves noise. These type of schemes avoid any Runge-Kutta type discretization
for the evolutionary variable and seem to be very effective when applied to equations of such
a difficulty
Miliwn o Ddawnswyr Cymraeg: A Million Welsh Dancers
No full textUsing the work of BLAS, the community strand of Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre, Bangor, this article discusses how dance is able to help achieve the aims of the Welsh Government to have a million Welsh Speakers by 2050
Place, Space and Identity: The Manifold Experience of Transition In and After the Military
Get PDFAlbertson, K., Taylor, P., & Murray, E., Place, Space and Identity: The Manifold Experience of Transition In and After the Military, Illness, Crisis & Loss (27(4)). Copyright © 2019 SAGE. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.This special edition of Illness, Crisis and Loss brings together established authors in the field of military and post-military life. It is an invitation to readers to critically consider the experience of those serving in the military, and what post-military life ca look like. Each article encourages readers to develop an intellectual awareness of significant issues facing those who serve in the military, and their careers and identity afterwards. Each taking particular themes as their focus, they provide a rigorously informed critical investigation of military and post-military life. Readers of these articles will be provided with a rich, social theory-informed, approach to military and veteran studies. Transition within and out of the military institution is a substantive focus. In the reader’s engagement with each article, we encourage them to think about how and where transition occurs. What places does it take place in? What spaces does it change or create, and how are identities formed, reimagined, or recrafted by the self or others
A Certain Romance: Style shifting in the language of Alex Turner in Arctic Monkeys songs 2006-2018
Get PDFThis paper reports on a diachronic study of the language employed by Arctic Monkeys frontman
Alex Turner in his songs over a 13-year period. The analysis adapts Simpson’s (1999) USA-
5 model for studying accent in vocal performance, and focuses on the realisation of three
phonological variables and two dialect variables in a 16,000-word corpus of 69 songs across
all six albums released by the band. Hailing from High Green, Sheffield, Turner speaks with
a vernacular Yorkshire accent, and the band’s early appeal (particularly in northern England)
is often accredited partially to their authentic down-to-earth image, content and performance.
Throughout their career, the band have evolved in terms of their musical genre and style, and,
having recorded their first two albums in England, later albums were recorded and produced
mostly in Los Angeles. Simpson’s model is modified in order to analyse trends in usage of five
linguistic variables with non-standard variants iconic of northern British identity, with a view to
analysing how Turner’s changing linguistic practice relates to his affiliation with vernacular and
institutional norms, and thus his performance of different identities within songs.
Keywords:
Accent, Arctic Monkeys, dialect, identity, northern English, non-standard, vernacula
Exercise, or exercise and diet for the management of polycystic ovary syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Get PDFBackground: Typically, management of PCOS focuses on lifestyle changes (exercise and diet), aiming to alleviate
symptoms, and lower the associated risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Our objective was to
analyse evidence on the effectiveness of exercise in the management of PCOS, when compared to (i) usual care, (ii)
diet alone, and (iii) exercise combined with diet, and also exercise combined with diet, compared to (i) control or
usual care and (ii) diet alone.
Methods: Relevant databases were searched (June 2017) with no time limit for trial inclusion. Eligible trials
employed a randomised or quasi-randomised design to measure the chronic effects of exercise, or exercise and
diet in women with PCOS.
Results: Searches returned 2390 articles; of those, 27 papers from 18 trials were included. Results are presented as mean
difference (MD) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Compared with control, exercise had a statistical effect on change
from baseline fasting insulin (MD − 2.44 μIU/mL, 95% CIs − 4.24 to − 0.64; very low-quality evidence), HOMA-IR (− 0.57, − 0.99
to − 0.14; very low-quality evidence), total cholesterol (− 5.88 mg/dL, − 9.92 to − 1.83; low-quality evidence), LDL cholesterol
(− 7.39 mg/dL, − 9.83 to − 4.95; low-quality evidence), and triglycerides (− 4.78 mg/dL, − 7.52 to − 2.05; low-quality evidence).
Exercise also improved VO2 max (3.84 ml/kg/min, 2.87 to 4.81), waist circumference (− 2.62 cm, − 4.13 to − 1.11), and body
fat percentage (− 1.39%, − 2.61 to − 0.18) when compared with usual care. No effect was found for change value systolic/
diastolic blood pressure, fasting glucose, HDL cholesterol (all low-quality evidence), or waist-to-hip ratio. Many favourable
change score findings were supported by post-intervention value analyses: fasting insulin (− 2.11 μIU/mL, − 3.49 to − 0.73),
total cholesterol (− 6.66 mg/dL, − 11.14 to − 2.17), LDL cholesterol (− 6.91 mg/dL, − 12.02 to − 1.80), and VO2
max (5.01 ml/kg/min, 3.48 to 6.54). Statistically lower BMI (− 1.02 kg/m2, − 1.81 to − 0.23) and resting heart rate
(− 3.26 beats/min − 4.93 to − 1.59) were also revealed in post-intervention analysis. Subgroup analyses revealed the
greatest improvements in overweight/obese participants, and more outcomes improved when interventions were
supervised, aerobic in nature, or of a shorter duration. Based on limited data, we found no differences for any outcome
between the effects of exercise and diet combined, and diet alone. It was not possible to compare exercise vs diet or
exercise and diet combined vs diet.
Conclusion: Statistically beneficial effects of exercise were found for a range of metabolic, anthropometric, and
cardiorespiratory fitness-related outcomes. However, caution should be adopted when interpreting these findings since
many outcomes present modest effects and wide CIs, and statistical effects in many analyses are sensitive to the
addition/removal of individual trials. Future work should focus on rigorously designed, well-reported trials that make
comparisons involving both exercise and diet.
Systematic review registration: This systematic review was prospectively registered on the Prospero International
Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (CRD42017062576
An ethnographic study that explores the policy and cultural influences on the continuing professional development of nurses and their utilisation of computer technology in a community hospital in Uganda
Get PDFThrough ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a hospital in rural Uganda, the study explores how continuing professional development (CPD) of nurses is supported through utilisation of information and communications technology (ICT), and how policy and culture can influence this process.
The existing research literature raised three questions: what facilitates and restricts learning and using computer technology? What are the nurses’ views and experiences of using ICT? Is nurses’ professional development and how they utilise ICT influenced by policy and culture?
The literature, drawn from international sources, is reviewed in chronological order to reflect the development of ICT and its use in health services and CPD. Policies and theories are analysed to gauge their relevance to the research aims and questions. These include Walt’s policy analysis theory; Hofstede et al.’s dimensions of national culture; Rogers’ diffusion of technology theory; Davies’ technology acceptance model; and theories of culture. These theories are synthesised into a model of influence.
Early in the research, a macro study of Uganda was undertaken covering the political, economic, sociocultural, technological, legal and environmental (PESTLE) impacts on the ICT infrastructure, health and nursing. Spradley’s (1979, 1980) developmental research sequence (DRS) formed the methodological framework, providing a systematic and comprehensive approach to data collection and analysis. Its twelve steps were applied to participant observation and ethnographic interviews, offering a progressive approach to data analysis through domain, taxonomic and componential analysis. Spradley’s DRS enabled dimensions of contrast to be identified and the discovery of unique cultural themes. Four field visits took place between 2009 and 2012, each lasting two weeks. Participant observation was undertaken on each visit, and interviews and focus groups on the third and fourth visits, facilitating exploration of ICT developments, computer skills training, education and CPD. Informants expressed their views about cultural influences on technology development, and their knowledge of policies and how they impacted on ICT adoption and nurses’ computer skills development.
The study makes a unique contribution to knowledge by analysing the influences of culture and policy on nurses’ CPD and utilisation of computer skills. Major findings include the significance of cultural themes amongst factors influencing ICT adoption, CPD and development of nurses’ computer skills. Knowledge of the local culture, as well as the underpinning theories, contributes to the successful construction of teaching strategies for this professional group. The impact of policies has been influential in building the national and local ICT infrastructure, but CPD and nurses’ computer skills have developed in the research location due to local capacity building rather than the direct impact of policies
Development of an Automated Pain Facial Expression Detection System for Sheep (Ovis Aries).
Get PDFDetecting signs of pain in sheep is a challenging problem, as they are a prey species and would usually try to hide any signs that they are unwell or injured. This means that treating ill or injured sheep and preventing any further spread of contagious diseases such as footrot can be slow. The recent development and publication of a Sheep Pain Facial Expression Scale (SPFES) has provided a tool to reliably detect pain in this species. However, due to the increase in intensification in farming and larger flock sizes being cared for by individual farmers, there is less time to spend monitoring sheep for changes in behaviour that may indicate illness or injury. Having an automated system that could detect changes in the facial expression of individual sheep would mean that farmers could receive information directly about particular individuals that need assessment. This would allow treatment to be provided in a timely and direct manner, reducing suffering. We have been developing the SPFES further in order for it to become an automated system. In this paper, we present our novel framework that integrates SPFES concepts with automatic facial expression analysis technologies
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage ChesterRep? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!