Keele University

About: Keele University is a education organization based out in Newcastle-under-Lyme, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Stars. The organization has 11318 authors who have published 26323 publications receiving 894671 citations. The organization is also known as: Keele University.

The role of practice in the development of performing musicians

Abstract: A sample of 257 young people aged between eight and 18 who had undertaken individual instrumental tuition were interviewed in depth about their performing history from the start of playing. A subset of 94 of these individuals also kept a practice diary for a 42-week period. The data collected allowed estimates to be calculated of the amount of time devoted to various types of practice and other activities. The sample was selected in order to encompass a wide range of levels of musical achievement, from pupils at a highly selective specialist music school through to individuals who had abandoned instrumental study after less than a year of formal instruction. Data about formal examination successes confirmed the very wide range of achievement in the sample. It was discovered that there was a strong relationship between musical achievement and the amount of formal practice undertaken. Weaker relationships were discovered between achievement and amount of informal playing. There was no evidence that high achievers were able to gain a given level of examination success on less practice than low achievers. High achievers tended to be more consistent in their pattern of practice from week to week, and tended to concentrate technical practice in the mornings. These data lend strong support to the theory that formal effortful practice is a principal determinant of musical achievement. © The British Pschological Society.

Cross versus Within-Company Cost Estimation Studies: A Systematic Review

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to determine under what circumstances individual organizations would be able to rely on cross-company-based estimation models. We performed a systematic review of studies that compared predictions from cross-company models with predictions from within-company models based on analysis of project data. Ten papers compared cross-company and within-company estimation models; however, only seven presented independent results. Of those seven, three found that cross-company models were not significantly different from within-company models, and four found that cross-company models were significantly worse than within-company models. Experimental procedures used by the studies differed making it impossible to undertake formal meta-analysis of the results. The main trend distinguishing study results was that studies with small within-company data sets (i.e., $20 projects) that used leave-one-out cross validation all found that the within-company model was significantly different (better) from the cross-company model. The results of this review are inconclusive. It is clear that some organizations would be ill-served by cross-company models whereas others would benefit. Further studies are needed, but they must be independent (i.e., based on different data bases or at least different single company data sets) and should address specific hypotheses concerning the conditions that would favor cross-company or within-company models. In addition, experimenters need to standardize their experimental procedures to enable formal meta-analysis, and recommendations are made in Section 3.

Pollinator diversity and crop pollination services are at risk.

Abstract: In a recent opinion article in TREE, Ghazoul [1] questionsthe existence of a global pollinator crisis and, in doing so,raises some important points about the uncertainty ofhuman dependence upon pollination services. We agreewith Ghazoul [1] that much uncertainty remains regard-ing pollinator–pollination declines. However, we thinkthat his assessment draws biased conclusions for polli-nator declines from existing studies, misrepresents theextent of agricultural reliance on animal pollination, andunderestimates the extent of pollination reduction inintensive monocultures.In his article [1], Ghazoul suggests that a pollinatorcrisisisdrivenmainlybyreporteddeclinesofhoneybeesinNorth America, and bumblebees and butterflies inEurope. However, local and regional declines of solitarywild bees, bumblebees and honeybees owing to habitatloss, agricultural intensification and pesticide use havebeen reported in both Europe and America [2–5], and theimpact of habitat loss, measured by species–area relation-ships, is much stronger for native bees than for otherinsect groups [6]. For genetic reasons alone, bees are moreextinction prone than are other taxa, because single-locussex determination makes them particularly sensitive tothe effects of small population size through the productionof sterile diploid males [7].Pollinators,otherthanhoneybees and bumblebees, have many Red Data Bookentries (e.g. for 11 European countries, an average of27.4% of the national bee fauna is listed