Cooperative research centres: The concept and its implementation

The Cooperative Research Centres Program aims to enhance the effectiveness of the overall Australian R&D effort by drawing together researchers from several institutions to create the concentrations of resources which are needed, in many research fields, to keep pace with the rapid scientific and technological progress which is occurring internationally. The Centres link together outstanding groups of researchers, from both the public and private sectors, with the users of research from appropriate industry sectors and other sectors of the economy and provide opportunities for research users to participate actively in the planning and operation of the research activities. The Program was started in 1990. Fifty-two Centres have now been approved across six major R&D and industry sectors representing, when these Centres are fully established, a commitment by the government of some $100 million per year and, from the participants, of some $200 million per year. This constitutes some six percent of the national R&D effort.     

Child abuse: adolescent records vs. adult recall

In a follow-up study of incarcerated Connecticut youth, 69 subjects were interviewed during young adulthood. On follow-up, 26 gave histories of abuse discrepant with histories obtained from records and interviews conducted in adolescence. Eleven subjects agreed to an additional clarification interview, at which time they were apprised of the discrepancies. Of these, eight had adolescent records indicating that abuse had occurred but denied abuse during the adult follow-up interview. The remaining three had adolescent records indicating no abuse had ever occurred, but, on follow-up, reported having been abused. The additional clarification interviews revealed that all 11 subjects with discrepant histories had, in fact, been abused. Reasons for these discrepant data and strategies to enhance the investigator's ability to obtain accurate data regarding abuse are discussed.     

On tonal pattern perception in monkeys (Cebus apella)

The monkey’s capacity to extract tonal pattern from a sequence of tones was assessed in four subjects that had the benefit of substantial past experience in discriminating, matching, and remembering acoustic stimuli. In Experiment 1, the monkeys failed to transfer their well-established matching behavior to the matching of two structured sequences of tones that differed primarily in tonal pattern, indicating that for them tonal pattern was not a salient feature of the acoustic stimuli. Experiment 2 was an attempt to encourage tonal pattern perception by employing, within a discrimination paradigm, very simple tonal patterns and multiple exemplars of the positive and negative patterns; the transfer design, borrowed from Hulse and Cynx (1985), was a powerful one for revealing tonal pattern perception. Verifying earlier results from our laboratory, there was little in the monkeys’ transfer performance to indicate that they had extracted tonal pattern from the acoustic stimuli. Major discriminative control seemed to be vested in the first tone of each exemplar. This apparent cognitive limitation may be rather general among animals, perhaps reflecting an intimate connection between the capacity for tonal pattern perception and that for acoustically based language.     

The effect of concept mapping on students' anxiety and achievement in biology

The results of recent studies into the use of the concept mapping heuristic seem to demonstrate that meaningful learning results through its use in science classrooms. While this underscores the need to use more effective instructional strategies in science teaching, the issue of the intervening variable of anxiety in learning and science achievement, and the possible use of a metacognitive strategy in anxiety reduction have not been addressed. This study, therefore, sought to find out if the metacognitive strategy of concept mapping reduces anxiety and thereby enhances achievement in biology. A total of 51 (30 boys, 21 girls) senior secondary one (grade 10) students participated in this experiment. Two instruments—the Zuckerman Affect Adjective Checklist and the Biology Achievement Test—were used in pre- and posttest administrations to measure the treatment effect on anxiety and achievement, respectively. Findings support the stand that concept mapping is significantly more effective than the traditional/expository teaching strategy in enhancing learning in biology. In addition, it apparently reduces students' anxiety towards the learning of biology. A significant reduction of anxiety was noticed for male subjects.     

Curriculum Design of a Flipped Classroom to Enhance Haematology Learning

A common trend in higher education is the “flipped” classroom, which facilitates active learning during class. The flipped approach to teaching was instituted in a haematology ‘major’ class and the students’ attitudes and preferences for the teaching materials were surveyed. The curriculum design was explicit and involved four major components (1) the preparation of the students; (2) the weekly pre-class work; (3) the in-class active learning strategies and (4) closing the learning loop using formative quizzes. Each of these components is discussed in detail and was informed by sound pedagogical strategies. Several different sources of information and several freely available software tools to engage the students are discussed. Two iterations are reported here, with improved pass rate for the final examination from 47 to 48 % in the traditional class to 56–65 % in the flipped classroom approach. The majority of students (93 and 89 %) came to the class prepared, after viewing the screencasts and engaged fully with the activities within the face-to-face time. The students perceived that solving case studies (93 %) was the most beneficial activity for their learning and this was closely followed by the production of essay plans (71 %). The majority of students recommended that this approach be repeated the following year (69 and 75 %).     

pre-operative serum potassium levels and peri-operative outcomes in patients undergoing cardiac surgery

Although potassium is critical for normal electro physiology, the associations between pre-operative serum potassium level and peri-operative adverse events such as arrhythmias in cardiac surgery have not been examined in detail. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of abnormal pre-operative serum potassium levels and whether such levels were associated with adverse peri-operative events in 50 patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting. Intra-operative and post-operative arrhythmias, the need for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, cardiac death and death due to any cause prior to discharge from the post-operative intensive care unit were studied. The incidence for adverse outcome was 0.5% for death, 0.5% for cardiac death and 2% for cardio pulmonary resuscitation in patients with hypokalemia (serum potassium level <3.5 meq. L⁻¹). Hypokalemia was found to be a predictor of serious peri-operative (OR:2.2; 95% Cl: 1.2–4.1) and post-operative arrhythmias (OR: 1.7;95%Cl: 1.0–2.7). Pre-operative potassium repletion is low cost and low risk treatment measure and the data from this study suggests that screening and repletion be considered in patients scheduled for cardiac surgery.