Reference models: how can we leverage them?

We can train them, but how can we retain them?

To the Editor: The Department of Surgery at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine is proud of its 100% pass rate in the October 2008 Colleges of Medicine of South Africa examinations held in Durban. Most candidates attended the graduation and joined the 3 who passed in May as registered specialists in general surgery. This represents a stalwart effort on the part of the candidates and their t...

Burst Remnants : How can we find them ?

By now there is substantial evidence that Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) originate at cosmological distances from very powerful explosions. The interaction between a GRB and its surrounding environment has dramatic consequences on the environment itself. At early times, the strong X-ray UV afterglow flux photoionizes the medium on distance scales on the order of 100 pc [7], destroys dust [10], creates...

How can we make them work ?

Threshold Concepts : how can we recognise them ?

A threshold concept is defined by Meyer and Land (2003) as possessing the following qualities: transformative, integrative, bounded, and probably irreversible. This concept provides a promising way of interpreting the learning demand presented by subjects and Meyer and Land have begun to apply the idea in analysing learning economics. It redefines the familiar idea of a ‘powerful concept’ in a ...

Bubbles , Can We Spot Them ? Crashes , Can We Predict Them ?

Johansen and Sornette proposes that the crash has fundamentally an endogenous origin and exogenous shocks only serve as triggering factors. This endogenous force is shown in price as power law log-periodicity (PLLP) signature prior to a crash. We estimate the highly nonlinear model developed by them using a hybrid approach which combines scatter search, genetic adaptor and tabu search. The mode...