Higher Education and Public Good

Policy debate about whether to maintain public subsidies for higher education has stimulated reconsideration of the public mission of higher education institutions, especially those that provide student places conferring private benefits. If the work of higher education institutions is defined simply as the aggregation of private interests, this evaporates the rationale for higher education institutions as distinctive social foundations with multiple public and private roles. The private benefits could be produced elsewhere. If that is all there is to higher education institutions, they could follow the Tudor monasteries into oblivion. But what is ‘public’ in higher education institutions? What could be ‘public’? What should be ‘public’? The paper reviews the main notions of ‘public’ (public goods in economics, public understood as collective good and Habermas' public sphere) noting the contested and politicised environment in which notions of ‘public’ must find purchase. A turn to global public goods offers the most promising strategy for re‐grounding the ‘public’ character of higher education.     

A review of tennis racket performance parameters

The application of advanced engineering to tennis racket design has influenced the nature of the sport. As a result, the International Tennis Federation has established rules to limit performance, with the aim of protecting the nature of the game. This paper illustrates how changes to the racket affect the player-racket system. The review integrates engineering and biomechanical issues related to tennis racket performance, covering the biomechanical characteristics of tennis strokes, tennis racket performance, the effect of racket parameters on ball rebound and biomechanical interactions. Racket properties influence the rebound of the ball. Ball rebound speed increases with frame stiffness and as string tension decreases. Reducing inter-string contacting forces increases rebound topspin. Historical trends and predictive modelling indicate swingweights of around 0.030–0.035 kg/m² are best for high ball speed and accuracy. To fully understand the effect of their design changes, engineers should use impact conditions in their experiments, or models, which reflect those of actual tennis strokes. Sports engineers, therefore, benefit from working closely with biomechanists to ensure realistic impact conditions.     

Determining optimal cadence for an individual road cyclist from field data

The cadence that maximises power output developed at the crank by an individual cyclist is conventionally determined using a laboratory test. The purpose of this study was two-fold: (i) to show that such a cadence, which we call the optimal cadence, can be determined using power output, heart-rate, and cadence measured in the field and (ii) to describe methodology to do so. For an individual cyclist's sessions, power output is related to cadence and the elicited heart-rate using a non-linear regression model. Optimal cadences are found for two riders (83 and 70 revolutions per minute, respectively); these cadences are similar to the riders’ preferred cadences (82–92?rpm and 65–75?rpm). Power output reduces by approximately 6% for cadences 20?rpm above or below optimum. Our methodology can be used by a rider to determine an optimal cadence without laboratory testing intervention: the rider will need to collect power output, heart-rate, and cadence measurements from training and racing sessions over an extended period (>6 months); ride at a range of cadences within those sessions; and calculate his/her optimal cadence using the methodology described or a software tool that implements it.     

Perianal findings in prepubertal children selected for nonabuse: a descriptive study

The results of the perianal portion of a project designed to collect normative data of the anogenital anatomy from a representative sample of prepubertal children is presented. A total of 318 children were examined by three physicians from a child sexual abuse evaluation program. After screening for the onset of puberty and the possibility of undetected abuse, 267 subjects remained. The sample included 161 girls and 106 boys ranging in age from 2 months to 11 years. The perianal findings that were encountered with the greatest frequency included erythema (41%), increased pigmentation (30%), and venous engorgement (52%) after two minutes in the knee-chest position. Wedge-shaped smooth areas in the midline, with or without depressions, were found both anterior and posterior to the anus in 26% of the children. Anal skin tags/folds were discovered anterior to the anus in 11%. In 49% of the children there was some dilatation of the anus which opened and closed intermittently in 62%. Flattening of the anal verge and rugae occurred during dilatation by the midpoint of the examination in 44% and 34%, respectively. Perianal findings that were found infrequently in all subgroups included skin tags/folds (0%) and scars (1%) outside the midline, anal dilatation greater than 20 mm without the presence of stool in the rectal ampulla (1.2%), irregularity of the anal orifice after complete dilatation (3%), and prominence of the anal verge (3%). No abrasions, hematomas, fissures, or hemorrhoids were encountered. Less commonly detected findings within specific subgroups included perianal erythema in girls (32%) as compared to boys (57%), pigmentation in the lighter skinned white children (22%) when compared to black (53%) and Hispanic (58%) children, and venous congestion at the beginning of the examination (7%) when compared to the same findings after four minutes in the knee-chest position (73%). There were no perianal skin tags/folds found in the boys. The relatively high incidence of perianal soft tissue changes that were found in this study, when compared to the frequency of similar observations in children suspected of having been sexually abused, reemphasizes the caution medical examiners must exercise in rendering an opinion as to the significance of medical findings.     

Making sense of learner and learning Big Data: reviewing five years of Data Wrangling at the Open University UK

Most distance learning institutions collect vast amounts of learning data. Making sense of this ‘Big Data’ can be a challenge, in particular when data are stored at different data warehouses and require advanced statistical skills to interpret complex patterns of data. As a leading institute on learning analytics, the Open University UK instigated in 2012 a Data Wrangling initiative. This provided every Faculty with a dedicated academic with expertise data analysis and whose task is to provide strategic, pedagogical and sense-making advice to staff and senior management. Given substantial changes within the OU (e.g. new Faculty structure, real-time dashboards, two large-scale adoptions of predictive analytics approaches, increased reliance on analytics), this embedded case study provides an in-depth review of lessons learned of five years of data wrangling. We will elaborate on the design of the new structure, its strengths and potential weaknesses, and affordances to be adopted by other institutions.     

Why some teachers easily learn to use a new virtual learning environment: a technology acceptance perspective

After a decade of virtual learning environments (VLEs) in higher education, many teachers still use only a minimum of its affordances. This study looked at how academic staff interacted with a new and unknown VLE in order to understand how technology acceptance and support materials influence (perceived and actual) task performance. In an experimental design, 36 participants were split into a control (online help) and experimental (instructor video) condition and completed five common teaching tasks in a new VLE. In contrast to most technology acceptance model research, this study found that perceived usefulness of the VLE was not related to (perceived) task performance. Perceived ease of use was related to intentions and actual behaviour in the VLE. Furthermore, no significant difference was found between the two conditions, although the experimental condition led to a (marginal) increase in time to complete the tasks.     

Infant search and object permanence: a meta-analysis of the A-not-B error

Research on Piaget's stage 4 object concept has failed to reveal a clear or consistent pattern of results. Piaget found that 8-12-month-old infants would make perserverative errors; his explanation for this phenomenon was that the infant's concept of the object was contextually dependent on his or her actions. Some studies designed to test Piaget's explanation have replicated Piaget's basic finding, yet many have found no preference for the A location or the B location or an actual preference for the B location. More recently, researchers have attempted to uncover the causes for these results concerning the A-not-B error. Again, however, different studies have yielded different results, and qualitative reviews have failed to yield a consistent explanation for the results of the individual studies. This state of affairs suggests that the phenomenon may simply be too complex to be captured by individual studies varying 1 factor at a time and by reviews based on similar qualitative considerations. Therefore, the current investigation undertook a meta-analysis, a synthesis capturing the quantitative information across the now sizable number of studies. We entered several important factors into the meta-analysis, including the effects of age, the number of A trials, the length of delay between hiding and search, the number of locations, the distances between locations, and the distinctive visual properties of the hiding arrays. Of these, the analysis consistently indicated that age, delay, and number of hiding locations strongly influence infants' search. The pattern of specific findings also yielded new information about infant search. A general characterization of the results is that, at every age, both above-chance and below-chance performance was observed. That is, at each age at least 1 combination of delay and number of locations yielded above-chance A-not-B errors or significant perseverative search. At the same time, at each age at least 1 alternative combination of delay and number of locations yielded below-chance errors and significant above-chance correct performance, that is, significantly accurate search. These 2 findings, appropriately elaborated, allow us to evaluate all extant theories of stage 4 infant search. When this is done, all these extant accounts prove to be incorrect. That is, they are incommensurate with one aspect or another of the pooled findings in the meta-analysis. Therefore, we end by proposing a new account that is consistent with the entire data set.     

K S Krishnan’s 1948 perception of the sampling theorem

K S Krishnan discovered in 1948 that the sum over samples of a band-limited function gives the value of the integral of the function exactly, provided the sampling interval does not exceed a threshold value. This result of Krishnan is shown to be equivalent to the Shannon sampling theorem.