A tale of Wootz steel

The extraordinary romance and thrilling adventure associated with the tale of wootz steel shows how Indian metallurgists were the world leaders in antiquity in the manufacture of this legendary high-grade steel. In many ways this material was brought to global attention by the writings of Cyril Stanley Smith. Modern metallurgy and materials science rest on the foundation built by the study of this steel during the past three centuries.     

Meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge

The moulding of the future of a nation depends on the teachers and the education they provide in schools. Research evidence from the US. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) confirms this to be the case. Quantitative analysis of data indicates that measures associated with pre-service teacher preparation are by far the strongest correlates of student achievement (Darling-Hammond 2000). The research report of Wilson, Floden, and Ferrini-Mundy (2001) also suggests a strong relationship between teacher preparation and teacher effectiveness. Other research studies similarly indicate that differences in teacher quality are the most crucial for student achievement when compared with variables such as class size, streaming, or the amount of homework (Anderson & Helms 2001; Mendro 1998; Powell & Anderson 2002; Rivkin, Hanushek & Kain 2001; Saunders & Horn 1994; Strong & Tucker 2000) as possible contributory factors. In the pursuit of improved student achievement, we therefore need to examine seriously the role of teacher variables, ranging from teacher qualifications and their subject matter knowledge, to what motivates them to take up teaching as a career and as a consequence, how they teach in classrooms.     

Assessing students' ability to trace matter in dynamic systems in cell biology

College-level biology courses contain many complex processes that are often taught and learned as detailed narratives. These processes can be better understood by perceiving them as dynamic systems that are governed by common fundamental principles. Conservation of matter is such a principle, and thus tracing matter is an essential step in learning to reason about biological processes. We present here multiple-choice questions that measure students' ability and inclination to trace matter through photosynthesis and cellular respiration. Data associated with each question come from students in a large undergraduate biology course that was undergoing a shift in instructional strategy toward making fundamental principles (such as tracing matter) a central theme. We also present findings from interviews with students in the course. Our data indicate that 1) many students are not using tracing matter as a tool to reason about biological processes, 2) students have particular difficulties tracing matter between systems and have a persistent tendency to interconvert matter and energy, and 3) instructional changes seem to be effective in promoting application of the tracing matter principle. Using these items as diagnostic tools allows instructors to be proactive in addressing students' misconceptions and ineffective reasoning.     

Fifteen hundred guidelines and growing: the UK database of clinical guidelines

BACKGROUND: The National Library for Health offers a comprehensive searchable database of nationally approved clinical guidelines, called the Guidelines Finder. This resource, commissioned in 2002, is managed and developed by the University of Sheffield Health Sciences Library. METHODS: The authors introduce the historical and political dimension of guidelines and the nature of guidelines as a mechanism to ensure clinical effectiveness in practice. The article then outlines the maintenance and organisation of the Guidelines Finder database itself, the criteria for selection, who publishes guidelines and guideline formats, usage of the Guidelines Finder service and finally looks at some lessons learnt from a local library offering a national service. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical guidelines are central to effective clinical practice at the national, organisational and individual level. The Guidelines Finder is one of the most visited resources within the National Library for Health and is successful in answering information needs related to specific patient care, clinical research, guideline development and education.     

Finding related sentence pairs in MEDLINE

We explore the feasibility of automatically identifying sentences in different MEDLINE abstracts that are related in meaning. We compared traditional vector space models with machine learning methods for detecting relatedness, and found that machine learning was superior. The Huber method, a variant of Support Vector Machines which minimizes the modified Huber loss function, achieves 73% precision when the score cutoff is set high enough to identify about one related sentence per abstract on average. We illustrate how an abstract viewed in PubMed might be modified to present the related sentences found in other abstracts by this automatic procedure.     

British Colonial Administrations’ registry systems: a comparative study of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland

Recordkeeping in twentieth century colonial states has been ignored by scholars, or at best regarded as the result of a monolithic process of migration of metropolitan practices. Registries provided the principal organ of recordkeeping in British government systems of administration. This comparative study of the registries in the neighbouring territories of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi) reveals the true extent of metropolitan British influence, exposing an absence of centralised advice, and a consequent dependence upon individual innovation. This engendered divergent and sometimes weak recordkeeping regimes. The effects of this included the diminution of fiduciary responsibility and administrative accountability.