Education

The chiroptera are among the most successful order of mammals, accounting for approximately one fifth of all known mammal species. Being highly adapted for true-sustained flight, the majority of the microchiroptera have evolved the ability of advanced echolocation. Though most bats dominate a nocturnal insectivorous niche, the group has a wide variety of diets, from fruits and nectar, blood to vertebrates. The morphology of the wing, seen as the aspect ratio and loading of the wing, gives an indication of foraging strategy. For example, broader wings suggest a slower, more manoeuvrable form of flight. By comparing the biology and mechanics of extant chiroptera, the life habits of fossil bats can be interpreted. The morphology of the basicranium and auditory regions of Archaeonycteis, Hassianycteris, Icaronycteris and Palaeochiropteryx confirm they were all capable of echolocation as well as having highly developed flight biomechanisms. Onychonycteris finneyi, considered the oldest known microchiropteran fossil, provides evidence for the flight-first evolutionary hypothesis of the group. With a developed flight anatomy, but lack of enlarged cochlea and larynx, it has been concluded that this animal could not fly as fast or as far as other bats, alternating between flapping and gliding from tree to tree, being incapable of echolocation.

The Pachycephalosaurid dinosaurs, known for their bizarre domed heads and array of boss and spikes, have created speculation about their purpose since the first discovery. The unusual cranial features seem to favour agonistic behaviour in these animals. However, whether the domes were used for head butting, alike to extant Bighorn sheep, or flank butting as seen in the African antelope, has seen much debate. Teeth wear patterns suggest that these animals had preferences in diets as well as being selective feeders.

Very little is known of the phylogentic relationships that could provide the evolutionary links between the heteromorph ammonites together with their planispiral ancestors.  The condition of the fossil record and lack of complete evolutionary lineages leaves much to debate over their cladisitics.  The life styles, diets and behaviour of this group is very speculative, their wide ranging shell morphology (fig 1) the cause of much study and discussion, being portrayed from benthic, nektonic to planktic.

‘‘Making Man’, the story of how we became human’, seeks to be one of the more complete visions on hominid evolution, focusing upon the question, ‘what makes us human?’

The exhibit hopes to bring the public closer to our history by continuingly asking its visitors to constantly compare themselves with our ancestors, being faced with some of the challenges that they may have dealt with, including coming face to face with sabre toothed cats and fully articulated cave bears.
‘Making Man’ allows its visitors to follow the journey our ancestors may have taken from Africa by following the clues and fossil evidence that anthropologists have discovered, piecing together the vast migration.

The exhibition will focus upon displaying casts, fossils and skeletons rather than reconstructions and models to be able to allow visitors to compare their own anatomies with the casts of the hominids around them. This should help visitors gain a knowledge and understanding of how our bodies are so magnificently adapted as well as being able to spot the difference between our skeleton and those of the great apes and chimpanzees, our closet living relatives.

The origin of an archetypal lung is heavily debated with fully developed air-breathing apparatus seen to be present within the Silurian. Both the gas bladder of the actinopterygii and the tetrapod lung are argued to be derived features of such a primitive lung. Embryonic development of the modern lung and gas bladder show them both as modifications of the posterior pharynx, suggesting a shared origin. The evolution of both organs is placed at around 420 million years ago when the chondrichthyes first spilt from other major fish groups, resulting in the lack of both lungs and gas bladders observed in these cartilaginous fishes.

The evolution of the tetrapod lung is hypothesised to have gained its principle function of air-breathing as an adaption to acquiring oxygen in stagnant waters. The gas bladder then is seen as an exapted anomaly of this event. The circulation of air through this primitive lung could have lead to the gas-filled sac aiding lift and neutral buoyancy of heavily armoured fishes.

The development of the air-breathing via the lung in the early tetrapods allowed for their emergence on to land during the Devonian. These tetrapods were able to exploit new terrestrial niches and rich, untapped food sources. This resulted in the successive vertebrate colonisation of the land and continued terrestrial adaption throughout the Devonian and into the Early Carboniferous.

Abstract: The Inferior Oolite Formation consists of a relatively thin, highly condensed, fossiliferous limestone succession. The formation is highly condensed at Burton Bradstock, similar to the Junction Bed at Eypesmouth and the Osmington Mill Oolite Formation (Osmington Mills) along the Dorset coast. The Inferior Oolite Formation shows many non-sequences or disconformities, leading to local variation in thicknesses, found between 19.3m thick at Lyme Bay and up to 110m thick in the Cotswolds.

The Inferior Oolite Formation is seen to be typical of condensed limestone series, relating well to other condensed successions upon the Dorset coast. It is also comparable with other condescended successions such as the Palaeozoic “Griotte” and the Mesozoic “Ammonitico Rosso” facies.

It is suggested the beds were deposited within the median, offshore transition zone of a normal, open marine carbonate ramp. This would have been deposited during periods of ‘swell’ conditions, thus were situated upon topographic highs where influence from currents further reduce sediment thickness as a result of reworking. The replacement of fibrous aragonitic crystals by clear syntaxial calcite overgrowth and the absence of burial or compaction fabrics, infers that diagenesis occurred within the fully marine, shallow burial realm. There is no evidence of subaerial exposure or meteoric influences throughout the focus beds. Hard grounds are common throughout, implying that high energies and high amounts of organic matter were present, especially during the Aalenian. Reduced sedimentation rates are responsible for the high degree of condensation of the succession as well as the precipitation of iron-rich cements.

University student movements are diverse socio-cultural entities. Depending on the cultural and economic moment, university student movements have beenintensely political entities that participate in steering the aims of government and nation. However at other moments, student movements have been less concerned with wider socio-political issues, and have worked mainly within the realm of student issues and university administration. This paper applies a matrix to analyze the commonalities and differences between various student movements and to understand more about their relationships to their immediate and broader environments. This article examines three student movements, and some of the factors leading to their evolution in India, Argentina and the United States by building on concepts first introduced by Philip Altbach in 1968.

Making College-University Cooperation Work: Ontario in a National and International Context seeks to answer three primary questions:
• Under what conditions does institutional cooperation blossom?
• How successful have college-university partnerships in Ontario been to date?
• How do the results of Ontario’s approach to college-university relationships differ from those of jurisdictions with a system-wide approach to promoting student transfer?

The authors find that there are many examples of successful and innovative institutional collaborations in Ontario. There are some trends that can be discerned from existing arrangements. Much of the success of these partnerships has depended on the partners’ ability to overcome significant hurdles and to develop and execute an agreed plan. Government capital funding has provided an essential incentive in some cases.

Collaborations have several purposes: some are primarily intended to offer opportunities for college students to complete a university degree, while the primary purpose of others is to offer innovative programming or to improve geographic access to university degrees.

Student evaluation of courses and teaching at universities remains a highly contentious and divisive topic. Emotions and anecdotal evidence can overrule conclusions drawn from research on the validity and design of course evaluations. However, even amongst researchers, there is significant disagreement on the efficacy of course and teaching evaluations. This paper explores this ongoing dialogue through the medium of a parliamentary debate drawing from the breadth of current research on course evaluations.

Policy-makers and institutional administrators have long struggled with the question of college and university student tuition fees. In many ways this struggle may be characterized as a negotiation between two distinct policy goals: providing revenue to adequately finance higher education and ensuring student accessibility to higher education. The Government of Ontario has wrestled with these competing questions, resulting in major changes to tuition policy over the last 10 years. This article discusses the history of tuition policy in Ontario, recent developments, and outstanding policy challenges relating to institutional behaviour toward the current policy, set to expire in 2009-10.

As the academic marketplace is increasingly saturated with PhD graduates, universities need to consider new ways of exposing doctoral candidates to the world outside academe. But this is not as simple as offering resume-writing classes. A meaningful shift in attitude needs to take place within universities, or else doctoral programs, which public policy now suggests are the key to a nation's economic future, will do a great disservice to their students http://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/think-again/

The evaluation of teaching in higher education institutions is an emotionally charged subject. Some academic staff believe that it is not possible to properly evaluate teaching, arguing that attempts to measure teaching quality and effectiveness stifle creativity on the part of the teacher. However, the preponderance of research on teaching evaluation suggests that evaluation of teaching, particularly evaluation by students, is an especially helpful tool to encourage good teaching practice. Furthermore, evaluation of innovative teaching is in keeping with the culture of scholarly inquiry on which higher education is based.