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This Working Document summarises the results of applications of the Annual Egg Production Method (Armstrong et al. 2001, Armstrong and Witthames 2012) to estimate spawning stock biomass of cod and plaice in the Irish Sea in 1995, 2000, 2006, 2008 and 2010, and haddock in 2006, 2008 and 2010. This work is conducted jointly between Cefas and AFBI (Belfast). The Marine Institute (Galway) assisted with fecundity estimates in surveys up to 2008.

A scoping review protocol with the objective of assessing the range and types of evidence related to virtual simulated placements (VSPs) across the healthcare professions.

The dimerisation of photosynthetic reaction centres enhanced their efficiency by improving exciton transfer from an antenna., All photosynthetic organisms convert solar energy into chemical energy through charge separation in dimeric reaction centres. It is unknown why early reaction centres dimerised and completely displaced their monomeric ancestors. Here, we discuss several proposed explanations for reaction-centre dimerism and conclude—with only weak assumptions about the primordial dimerisation event—that the most probable explanation for the dimerism is that it arose because it enhanced light-harvesting efficiency by deepening the excitonic trap, i.e., by enhancing the rate of exciton transfer from an antenna complex and decreasing the rate of back transfer. This effect would have outweighed the negative effect dimerisation would have had on charge transfer within the reaction centre. Our argument implies that dimerisation likely occurred after the evolution of the first antennas, and it explains why the lower-energy state of the special pair is bright.

This article focuses on an explorative and experimental project seeking to implement Chaordic Learning Systems (CLS) as a pedagogic approach in Higher Education. We outline a project that embraced technologies of Web 2.0 to show how both physical and virtual spaces can be used to support and develop a strong and dynamic learning community in which staff and students work alongside each other to co-produce learning resources. Drawing on theories of Communities of Practice and Situated Learning a new teaching framework was introduced to a Level 5 undergraduate module (7.5 ECTS credits) that had not, until this project, used both face-to-face and online learning tools to engage students in the critical and discursive debates pertaining to sport and physical culture. We undertook this project with the belief that Higher Education should be concerned with answering the calls of an increasingly digital society for whom learning is not restricted by the physical boundaries of the university or the political landscape within which learning finds itself.

Simulation or scenario learning is an integral part of student paramedic development and, despite the increasing amount of paramedic research, very little is known about how students and tutors experience it. Current literature regards simulation as invaluable without exploring why this may be the case and this study aims to address this. This is a compressed time mode ethnographic approach study that incorporates data from student paramedics during and immediately after simulation learning events and tutor views of facilitating the simulation experience. This, along with a comprehensive literature review, provides an overview of simulation in the student paramedic development pathway. This thesis exposes how student paramedics find the simulation process anxiety provoking and explores the many reasons for this. The performance aspect of scenarios is echoed in the dramaturgical language used when talking about simulation learning events and the similarities between simulation learning events and simulation assessment events merely adds to this stress. Using the lens of critical pedagogy, issues of power (control and hierarchy) within the educational and organisational structures are examined and offered as another possible explanation for the high levels of anxiety in simulation learning. The thesis ends with the question of whether simulation learning can be changed for the better and if so, how.

This paper details an explorative and experimental project based in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. It is an example of how a virtual space can be used to support and develop a strong and dynamic learning community in which staff and students work\ud alongside to co-produce learning resources to enhance campus-based learning activities. It is likely\ud to be of interest to colleagues who have experienced difficulties with student engagement in virtual\ud learning environments, and those who are interested in developing more dynamic lecture programmes.