University of Bedfordshire

About: University of Bedfordshire is a education organization based out in Luton, Bedford, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Social work. The organization has 3860 authors who have published 6079 publications receiving 143448 citations. The organization is also known as: University of Luton.

Calcium Carbonate Crystallization in the Presence of Biopolymers

Abstract: The influence on calcium carbonate crystallization of a series of biopolymers that contain carboxylic acid or sulfate functional groups was studied using pH and turbidity measurements, optical microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. Without biopolymer, single calcite (104) rhombohedra were formed. In the presence of nongelling biopolymers (xanthan and gellan) in the conditions used, (104) rhombohedra formed aggregates that were “stack-like”, but in the presence of gelling biopolymers (pectin, κ-carrageenan, and sodium alginate) the aggregates were “rosette-like”. The “rosettes” were proposed to form by the nucleation of calcite on a gelled microparticle template to form a hollow shell. Low methoxy (LM) pectin was particularly effective at directing the growth of calcite rosettes and led to aggregates of radially aligned crystals. The influence of biopolymer concentration on calcite crystallization was studied for LM pectin and κ-carrageenan. In the former case, an increasingly favorable influence of...

OFDMA femtocells: A self-organizing approach for frequency assignment

Abstract: This work presents 2 novel approaches for the self-organization of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) femtocells, in which the femtocell is able to dynamically sense the air interface and tune its sub-channel allocation in order to reduce inter-cell interference and enhance system capacity. In the sensing phase, these techniques make use of either messages broadcast by the femtocells or measurements reported by the users, while in the tuning phase, they provide a good solution for the frequency assignment problem. Results shows that it is recommend to use information collected at the user position (measurement reports), when devising self-organization algorithms for tuning the parameters of femtocells.

Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice

Abstract: While e-support has been positioned as a means, to overcome some of the time and financial constraints to professional learning, it has largely failed to act as a medium for professional learning in physical education. Consequently, this paper positions teachers prior interest with social media acts as a type of ‘leverage’ for using sites such as Facebook and Twitter for professional learning purposes. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore how social media operates as a communicative space, external to the physical site of an emerging community of practice (CoP) that supported teachers' professional learning and their subsequent longer term changing practice. This study is nested within a wider longitudinal project that explores how teachers learnt and refined their use of a pedagogical innovation (Cooperative Learning) through the overarching methodology, participatory action research. Social media emerged as a form of communication that was not in the study's original design. The paper expl...