1,992 research outputs found
Web-scale discovery in the arts: Royal Hollowayâs first year undergraduates and academics feed back
Get PDFThis poster will highlight the key findings of my MSc Dissertation, submitted in May 2014 to Robert Gordon University, which was awarded the Dorothy Williams award at graduation. It will introduce the aims of the research; to collect data on previous information-seeking experience and current information-seeking skills using the Primo Central discovery system from first-year arts undergraduates at Royal Holloway University of London. The quantitative results of a survey and test were compared against qualitative statements from academic staff in the applicable departments, and recommendations made about the suitability of Primo Central for these students.
It was found, after weighing the merits of Primo Central against a traditional WebOPAC, that Primo Central was preferable, although serious concerns were raised about its usability and information retrieval relevant to the subject disciplines. Arts subjects at Royal Holloway heavily favour monograph literature, and the Primo Central interface defaults to a general Index search which pushes monographs down the list of results. Academics were already concerned at studentsâ ability to interpret and interrogate a Library catalogue, and this is backed up in the literature; suggesting that the Primo Central default search may not be intuitive enough for students of this level.
A list of desired features was developed, and discussed in relation to the Primo Central and WebOPAC services. The poster will demonstrate graphically student and academic responses, results collected on student use of Primo Central and a list of key search features which this user group would benefit from. Recommendations and changes to practices at Royal Holloway as a result of this reseach may be of use to librarians working with new undergraduates in order to adapt instruction and improve training materials
The effects of prenatal drug exposure, term status, and caregiving on arousal and arousal modulation in 8-week-old infants
Get PDFPhysics of non-Gaussian fields and the cosmological genus statistic
Full text linkWe report a technique to calculate the impact of distinct physical processes
inducing non-Gaussianity on the cosmological density field. A natural
decomposition of the cosmic genus statistic into an orthogonal polynomial
sequence allows complete expression of the scale-dependent evolution of the
morphology of large-scale structure, in which effects including galaxy bias,
nonlinear gravitational evolution and primordial non-Gaussianity may be
delineated. The relationship of this decomposition to previous methods for
analysing the genus statistic is briefly considered and the following
applications are made: i) the expression of certain systematics affecting
topological measurements; ii) the quantification of broad deformations from
Gaussianity that appear in the genus statistic as measured in the Horizon Run
simulation; iii) the study of the evolution of the genus curve for simulations
with primordial non-Gaussianity. These advances improve the treatment of
flux-limited galaxy catalogues for use with this measurement and further the
use of the genus statistic as a tool for exploring non-Gaussianity.Comment: AASTeX preprint, 24 pages, 8 figures, includes several improvements
suggested by anonymous reviewe
Implementing a CRIS alongside an Intitutional Repository and Capitalising on Academic Engagement
Get PDFRoyal Holloway, University of London has been running an Institutional Repository for a number of years now and had enjoyed some small successes, but overall take-up of Open Access has been low across the College until fairly recently.
In 2010, the College implemented a new Current Research Information System (CRIS), which is being used to manage information about the institution's research outputs as well as a range of information about its research activities.
This presentation will tell the story of the implementation and roll-out of this system alongside the existing institutional repository. It will explore the successes and challenges experienced during the project, paying special attention to the way that research publications have been managed within the system.
This talk will look at how the introduction of the CRIS has increased overall engagement with Open Access from academics across the institution, and had boosted the number of full text items available in the Institutional Repository. There will be plenty of opportunity for delegates to ask questions.
Key learning points:
1 - How to increase engagement with Open Access
2 - Successes and challenges in implenting at Current Research Information System (CRIS)
3 - Opportunity to ask questions and share experience
Zonal Modes of Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature Maps
Full text linkAll-sky maps of the cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations are
usually represented by a spherical harmonic decomposition involving modes
labelled by their degree l and order m (where -l < m < +l). The zonal modes
(i.e those with m = 0) are of particular interest because they vary only with
galactic latitude; any anomalous behaviour in them might therefore be an
indication of erroneous foreground substraction. We perform a simple
statistical analysis of the modes with low l for sky maps derived via different
cleaning procedures from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and
show that the zonal modes provide a useful diagnostic of possible systematics.Comment: 5 pages, 4 tables, 2 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Creative IL embedding at Royal Holloway, University of London 2013
Get PDFn 2013, Helen Westwood and Russell Burke presented at LILAC about how information literacy was embedded in Geography courses at Royal Holloway. One of our plans for the future was to embed IL across the college. In May 2014, a paper was accepted at the Collegeâs Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee making IL training and assessment a requirement for all first year undergraduate courses from 2014/15. This poster will show the steps involved in achieving this outcome, the challenges we have faced, and how we have used a variety of ways to engage staff and students with information literacy.
Our Academic Liaison team is formed of six Information Consultants. We are keen to be creative in the way we deliver IL training and we have used a range of methods in order to make the most of the time we are given for the content. An âInformation Literacy for staffâ libguide has been developed, which includes an information literacy menu so academics can see what we we offer and choose what they would like us to deliver for their students âa la carteâ. We are also using libguides to support our sessions. For example, one has been developed especially for a Geography 1st year core module. This includes a pre-lecture quiz, as well as tabs for the components of IL. In workshops for a range of subjects, we have asked students to suggest keywords on a given topic using padlet.com. In other lectures, we are using the student response system Socrative for instant question and answer segments. We will use screenshots of these on the poster.
We are keen to share and discuss our approach to embedding IL with LILAC delegates and hope this poster will provide inspiration for other institutions
Gravitational Lensing as Signal and Noise in Lyman-alpha Forest Measurements
Full text linkIn Lyman-alpha forest measurements it is generally assumed that quasars are
mere background light sources which are uncorrelated with the forest.
Gravitational lensing of the quasars violates this assumption. This effect
leads to a measurement bias, but more interestingly it provides a valuable
signal. The lensing signal can be extracted by correlating quasar magnitudes
with the flux power spectrum and with the flux decrement. These correlations
will be challenging to measure but their detection provides a direct measure of
how features in the Lyman-alpha forest trace the underlying mass density field.
Observing them will test the fundamental hypothesis that fluctuations in the
forest are predominantly driven by fluctuations in mass, rather than in the
ionizing background, helium reionization or winds. We discuss ways to
disentangle the lensing signal from other sources of such correlations,
including dust, continuum and background residuals. The lensing-induced
measurement bias arises from sample selection: one preferentially collects
spectra of magnified quasars which are behind overdense regions. This
measurement bias is ~0.1-1% for the flux power spectrum, optical depth and the
flux probability distribution. Since the effect is systematic, quantities such
as the amplitude of the flux power spectrum averaged across scales should be
interpreted with care.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures; v2: references added, discussion expanded,
matches PRD accepted versio
Higher order moments of the density field in a parameterized sequence of non-gaussian theories
Get PDFWe calculate the higher order moments in a sequence of models where the
initial density fluctuations are drawn from a chi^2_nu distribution with a
power-law power spectrum. For large values of nu the distribution is
approximately gaussian, and we reproduce the values known from perturbation
theory. As \nu is lowered the distribution becomes progressively more
non-gaussian, approximating models with rare, high-amplitude peaks. The limit
nu=1 is a realization of recently proposed isocurvature models for producing
early galaxy formation where the density perturbations are quadratic in a
gaussian field.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, to appear in MNRA
Direct Numerical Simulation of turbulent Taylor-Couette flow
Full text linkThe direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the Taylor--Couette flow in the
fully turbulent regime is described. The numerical method extends the work by
Quadrio & Luchini (Eur. J. Mech. B / Fluids, v.21, pp.413--427, 2002), and is
based on a parallel computer code which uses mixed spatial discretization
(spectral schemes in the homogeneous directions, and fourth-order, compact
explicit finite-difference schemes in the radial direction). A DNS is carried
out to simulate for the first time the turbulent Taylor--Couette flow in the
turbulent regime. Statistical quantities are computed to complement the
existing experimental information, with a view to compare it to planar,
pressure-driven turbulent flow at the same value of the Reynolds number. The
main source for differences in flow statistics between plane and curved-wall
flows is attributed to the presence of large-scale rotating structures
generated by curvature effects.Comment: To appear in European Journal of Mechanics B / Fluid
Properties of Interstellar Turbulence from Gradients of Linear Radio Polarization Maps
Full text linkFaraday rotation of linearly polarized radio signals provides a very
sensitive probe of fluctuations in the interstellar magnetic field and ionized
gas density resulting from magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. We used a set
of statistical tools to analyze images of the spatial gradient of linearly
polarized radio emission () from the ISM for both
observational data from a test image of the Southern Galactic Plane Survey
(SGPS) and isothermal simulations of MHD turbulence. We compared the
observational data with results of synthetic observations obtained with the
simulations of 3D turbulence. Visually, in both data sets, a complex network of
filamentary structures is seen. Our analysis shows that the filaments in the
gradient can be produced by shocks as well as random fluctuations
characterizing the non-differentiable field of MHD turbulence. The latter
dominates for subsonic turbulence, while the former dominates for supersonic
turbulence. In order to quantitatively characterize these differences we use
the topology tool known as a genus curve as well as the moments of the image
distribution. We find that higher values for the moments correspond to cases of
with larger Mach numbers, but the strength of the
dependency is connected to the telescope angular resolution. In regards to the
topology, the supersonic filaments observed in have a
positive genus shift, which indicates a "swisscheese" like topology, while the
subsonic cases show a negative genus, indicating a "clump" like topology. In
the case of the genus, the dependency on the telescope resolution is not as
strong. The SGPS test region data has a distribution and morphology that
matches subsonic to transsonic type turbulence, which independently confirms
what is now expected for the WIM.Comment: Submitted to Ap
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