Can nuclear power plants be built in Britain without public subsidies and guarantees?

This report examines the credibility of the claim by the UK government that nuclear power plants can be built in the UK without public subsidies and guarantees

Deforestation and the spatio-temporal distribution of savannah and forest members of the Simulium damnosum complex in southern Ghana and south-western Togo

Spatio-temporal data on cytotaxonomic identifications of larvae of different members of the Simulium damnosum complex collected from rivers in southern Ghana and south-western Togo from 1975 until 1997 were analysed. When the data were combined, the percentages of savannah blackflies (S. damnosum sensu stricto and S. sirbanum) in the samples were shown to have been progressively increasing since 1975. The increases were statistically significant (P < 0·001), but the rates of increase were not linear. Further analyses were conducted according to the collection seasons and locations of the samples, to account for possible biases such as savannah flies occurring further south in the dry season or a preponderance of later samples from northern rivers having more savannah flies. These analyses showed that the increasing trend was statistically significant (P< 0·0001) only during the periods April to June and October to December. The presence of adult savannah flies carrying infective larvae (L3) indistinguishable from those of Onchocerca volvulus in the study zone was confirmed by examinations of captured flies. The percentages of savannah flies amongst the human-biting populations and the percentages with L3s in the head were higher during dry seasons than wet seasons and the savannah species were found furthest south (5 °25′N) in the dry season. Comparisons of satellite images taken in 1973 and 1990 over a study area in south-western Ghana encompassing stretches of the Tano and Bia rivers demonstrated that there have been substantial increases in urban and savannah areas, at the expense of forest. This was so not only for the whole images but also for subsamples of the images taken at 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 km distant from sites alongside the River Tano. At every distance from the river, the percentages of pixels classified as urban or savannah have increased in 1990 compared with 1973, while those classified as degraded or dense forest have decreased. The possibility that the proportionate increases in savannah forms of the vectors of onchocerciasis, and hence in the likelihood of the transmission of savannah strains of the disease in formerly forested areas, were related to the decreases in forest cover is discussed.

Personalised e-learning, semantic web and learning ontologies

Kurzel(2004) points out that researchers in e-learning and educational technologists, in a quest to provide improved Learning Environments (LE) for students are focusing on personalising the experience through a Learning Management System (LMS) that attempts to tailor the LE to the individual (see amongst others Eklund & Brusilovsky, 1998; Kurzel, Slay, & Hagenus, 2003; Martinez,2000; Sampson, Karagiannidis, & Kinshuk, 2002; Voigt & Swatman; 2003). According to Kurzel (2004) this tailoring can have an impact on content and how it’s accessed; the media forms used; method of instruction employed and the learning styles supported. This project is aiming to move personalisation forward to the next generation, by tackling the issue of Personalised e-Learning platforms as pre-requisites for building and generating individualised learning solutions. The proposed development is to create an e-learning platform with personalisation built-in. This personalisation is proposed to be set from different levels of within the system starting from being guided by the information that the user inputs into the system down to the lower level of being set using information inferred by the system’s processing engine. This paper will discuss some of our early work and ideas.

Semantic web and e-learning

With emergence of "Semantic Web" there has been much discussion about the impact of technologies such as XML and RDF on the way we use the Web for developing e-learning applications and perhaps more importantly on how we can personalise these applications. Personalisation of e-learning is viewed by many authors (see amongst others Eklund & Brusilovsky, 1998; Kurzel, Slay, & Hagenus, 2003; Martinez, 2000; Sampson, Karagiannidis, & Kinshuk, 2002; Voigt & Swatman, 2003) as the key challenge for the learning technologists. According to Kurzel (2004) the tailoring of e-learning applications can have an impact on content and how it's accesses; the media forms used; method of instruction employed and the learning styles supported. This paper will report on a research project currently underway at the eCentre in University of Greenwich which is exploring different approaches and methodologies to create an e-learning platform with personalisation built-in. This personalisation is proposed to be set from different levels of within the system starting from being guided by the information that the user inputs into the system down to the lower level of being set using information inferred by the system's processing engine.

Learning and practising supply chain management strategies from a business simulation game: a comprehensive supply chain simulation

An Internet based supply chain simulation game (ISCS) is introduced and demonstrated in this paper. Different from other games and extended from the Beer Game, a comprehensive set of supply chain (SC) management strategies can be tested in the game, and these strategies can be evaluated and appraised based on the built-in Management Information System (MIS). The key functionalities of ISCS are designed to increase players SC awareness, facilitate understanding on various SC strategies and challenges, foster collaboration between partners, and improve problem solving skills. It is concluded that an ISCS can be used as an efficient and effective teaching tool as well as a research tool in operations research and management science. Problems and obstacles have been observed while engaging in the SC business scenario game. The actions proposed and implemented to solve these problems have resulted in improved SC performance.