Wider impacts of a 10-week community cooking skills program - Jamie's Ministry of Food, Australia

Jamie's Ministry of Food (JMoF) Australia is a 10-week community-based cooking skills program which is primarily aimed at increasing cooking skills and confidence and the promotion of eating a more nutritious diet. However, it is likely that the program influences many pathways to behaviour change. This paper explores whether JMoF impacted on known precursors to healthy cooking and eating (such as attitudes, knowledge, beliefs, cooking enjoyment and satisfaction and food purchasing behaviour) and whether there are additional social and health benefits which arise from program participation.

Colour, magnets and photosynthesis

THIS STUDY INVESTIGATED THE teaching and learning approaches of three Victorian early childhood kindergarten teachers to science education, and how they used the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) to support them in the development of science in their curriculum. A qualitative, collective case study was designed to investigate how the participants introduced and explored science in their curriculum through two face-to-face individual, semi-structured interviews, separated by a week during which they completed a reflective journal focusing on science in their curriculum. The findings revealed teachers’ own negative school experiences of science education and an overall lack of confidence in their current science knowledge impacts on science in their curriculum. Conversely the findings also revealed instances of science learning anddiscovery, as well as a desire by the early childhood teachers to enhance science education in their curriculum

Introducing linear functions: an alternative statistical approach

The introduction of linear functions is the turning point where many students decide if mathematics is useful or not. This means the role of parameters and variables in linear functions could be considered to be ‘threshold concepts’. There is recognition that linear functions can be taught in context through the exploration of linear modelling examples, but this has its limitations. Currently, statistical data is easily attainable, and graphics or computer algebra system (CAS) calculators are common in many classrooms. The use of this technology provides ease of access to different representations of linear functions as well as the ability to fit a least-squares line for real-life data. This means these calculators could support a possible alternative approach to the introduction of linear functions. This study compares the results of an end-oftopic test for two classes of Australian middle secondary students at a regional school to determine if such an alternative approach is feasible. In this study, test questions were grouped by concept and subjected to concept by concept analysis of the means of test results of the two classes. This analysis revealed that the students following the alternative approach demonstrated greater competence with non-standard questions.

Promoting reasoning through the magic V task

Reasoning in mathematics plays a critical role in developing mathematical understandings. In this article, Bragg, Loong, Widjaja, Vale and Herbert explore an adaptation of the Magic V Task and how was used in several classrooms to promote and develop reasoning skills.

Flight altitude of trans-Sahara migrants in autumn: a comparison of radar observations with predictions from meteorological conditions and water and energy balance models

Radar observations on the altitude of bird migration and altitudinal profiles of meteorological conditions over the Sahara desert are presented for the autumn migratory period. Migratory birds fly at an average altitude of 1016 m (a.s.l.) during the day and 571 m during the night. Weather data served to calculate flight range using two models: an energy model (EM) and an energy-and-water model (EWM). The EM assumes that fuel supply limits flight range whereas the EWM assumes that both fuel and water may limit flight range. Flight ranges estimated with the EM were generally longer than those with the EWM. This indicates that trans-Sahara migrants might have more problems balancing their water than their energy budget. However, if we assume fuel stores to consist of 70% instead of 100% fat (the remainder consisting of 9% protein and 21% water), predicted flight ranges of the EM and EWM largely overlap. Increased oxygen extraction, reduced flight costs, reduced exhaled air temperature, reduced cutaneous water loss and increased tolerance to water loss are potential physiological adaptations that would improve the water budget in migrants. Both the EM and EWM predict optimal flight altitudes in agreement with radar observations in autumn. Optimal flight altitudes are differently predicted by the EM and EWM for nocturnal spring migration. During spring, the EWM predicts moderately higher and the EM substantially higher flight altitudes than during autumn. EWM predictions are therefore in better agreement with radar observations on flight altitude of migrants over the Negev desert in spring than EM predictions.

Moving beyond a ‘bums-on-seats’ analysis of progress towards widening participation: reflections on the context, design and evaluation of an Australian government-funded mentoring programme

In 2010 the Australian Government established the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships programme – a funding agenda to promote programmes that respond to the underrepresentation in higher education of people from what is often denoted low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Many government-funded programmes and projects have since emerged that respond to the problem of low SES underrepresentation, based on partnerships between higher education providers and other organisations. The arguments made in this paper draw on one such project: a mentoring programme implemented from 2011 to 2013 that targeted the aspirations of Year 9 regional secondary students. We discuss data and documentation that provide insights into the conception and design of the mentoring programme, and the strategies used to evaluate it, in order to discuss how funding and policy contexts influences the possible solutions that might be implemented in response to the underrepresentation in higher education of people from low SES backgrounds.

A framework for primary teachers’ perceptions of mathematical reasoning

Mathematical reasoning has been emphasised as one of the key proficiencies for mathematics in the Australian curriculum since 2011 and in the Canadian curriculum since 2007. This study explores primary teachers’ perceptions of mathematical reasoning at a time of further curriculum change. Twenty-four primary teachers from Canada and Australia were interviewed after engagement in the first stage of the Mathematical Reasoning Professional Learning Program incorporating demonstration lessons focused on reasoning conducted in their schools. Phenomenographic analysis of interview transcripts exploring variation in the perceptions of mathematical reasoning held by these teachers revealed seven categories of description based on four dimensions of variation. The categories delineate the different perceptions of mathematical reasoning expressed by the participants of this study. The resulting outcome space establishes a framework that facilitates tracking of growth in primary teachers’ awareness of aspects of mathematical reasoning.

Attitudes towards and beliefs about genetic testing in the haemophilia community: a qualitative study

Widespread genetic testing for haemophilia has recently been introduced in Victoria, Australia. While attitudes towards predictive testing have been studied in other conditions, such as cancer, there is limited knowledge about the attitudes of members of the haemophilia community towards predictive testing. This study aimed at exploring attitudes towards, and beliefs about, genetic testing amongst members of the haemophilia community in Victoria prior to the widespread introduction of testing. The study was qualitative and descriptive. In-depth face to face interviews were held with a sample of 39 individuals, including men with haemophilia, female carriers and family members. Data were analysed thematically using cross-case analysis techniques. There was considerable knowledge about the proposed introduction of widespread genetic testing. However, not everyone thought that testing was accessible or user friendly, and there was confusion about who needed to be tested. Most thought that testing was necessary for adolescent girls to determine carrier status to help prepare families for a child with haemophilia, rather than leading them to choose to terminate a pregnancy or not to have children. A minority of women stated that if there was a history of inhibitors in a family then a termination might be considered. The study revealed strong religious beliefs among those studied, which may have influenced attitudes and approaches towards testing. Further investigation is needed into how people with a possible haemophilia genotype negotiate decisions about their further identification, and how this knowledge is placed within cultural, religious and family contexts.

Factors influencing students' choice of mathematics at university

 This study investigated what motivated current undergraduate mathematics students to choose to study mathematics at university. It found a diverse array of factors perceived by students as having informed their decisions. These included background factors, situational factors, self-perception, and perceptions of mathematics as a discipline

Enhancing predictive accuracy of cardiac autonomic neuropathy using blood biochemistry features and iterative multitier ensembles

Blood biochemistry attributes form an important class of tests, routinely collected several times per year for many patients with diabetes. The objective of this study is to investigate the role of blood biochemistry for improving the predictive accuracy of the diagnosis of cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN) progression. Blood biochemistry contributes to CAN, and so it is a causative factor that can provide additional power for the diagnosis of CAN especially in the absence of a complete set of Ewing tests. We introduce automated iterative multitier ensembles (AIME) and investigate their performance in comparison to base classifiers and standard ensemble classifiers for blood biochemistry attributes. AIME incorporate diverse ensembles into several tiers simultaneously and combine them into one automatically generated integrated system so that one ensemble acts as an integral part of another ensemble. We carried out extensive experimental analysis using large datasets from the diabetes screening research initiative (DiScRi) project. The results of our experiments show that several blood biochemistry attributes can be used to supplement the Ewing battery for the detection of CAN in situations where one or more of the Ewing tests cannot be completed because of the individual difficulties faced by each patient in performing the tests. The results show that AIME provide higher accuracy as a multitier CAN classification paradigm. The best predictive accuracy of 99.57% has been obtained by the AIME combining decorate on top tier with bagging on middle tier based on random forest. Practitioners can use these findings to increase the accuracy of CAN diagnosis.

A clustering-based multi-layer distributed ensemble for neurological diagnostics in cloud services

This paper investigates the problem of minimizing data transfer between different data centers of the cloud during the neurological diagnostics of cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN). This problem has never been considered in the literature before. All classifiers considered for the diagnostics of CAN previously assume complete access to all data, which would lead to enormous burden of data transfer during training if such classifiers were deployed in the cloud. We introduce a new model of clustering-based multi-layer distributed ensembles (CBMLDE). It is designed to eliminate the need to transfer data between different data centers for training of the classifiers. We conducted experiments utilizing a dataset derived from an extensive DiScRi database. Our comprehensive tests have determined the best combinations of options for setting up CBMLDE classifiers. The results demonstrate that CBMLDE classifiers not only completely eliminate the need in patient data transfer, but also have significantly outperformed all base classifiers and simpler counterpart models in all cloud frameworks.

Group photo at New York Trade School Commencement Ceremony, 1959

A group of administrators from the New York Trade School pose at the 1959 commencement ceremony held May 19, 1959. Original caption: "Front: (left to right) Wm. F. Vanderbeek - Kenneth Schweiger - Bernard Rosenstadt - Ralph D. Cole - George E. McLaughlin - Herbert Brod - Edward Hansen. Back: (left to right) James Wright - Lawrence Levenstein - Ronald B. Smith - Roy Wall."