A surface-groundwater flow model is developed for the swash flow on a barrier beach. The non-linear shallow water equations are used to simulate the surface flow. Laplace's equation is used to describe the groundwater flow and is solved using the Boundary Integral Equation Method to provide potential heads and normal potential derivatives at and within the boundaries of the barrier. An exfiltration incorporated bottom boundary layer sub-model is used to obtain bed shear stress. The groundwater model is verified against the numerical test results in Kazemzadeh-Parsi and Daneshmand (2012) for the groundwater flow through a rectangular dam. The coupled surface-groundwater model is validated against the prototype-scale BARDEX II experimental results (Turner et al., 2016). The steady-state groundwater flow comparisons show excellent agreement in phreatic surfaces. The comparisons of groundwater flow under the action of waves show reasonably good agreement with experimental results in phreatic surfaces. The simulated time averaged pore velocities for the runs with and without waves are in satisfactory agreement with experimental results in general, and certain discrepancies are observed near the beach side. The bed shear stress variation due to exfiltration is investigated by incorporating the modified Highlights • A coupled surface-groundwater flow numerical model is developed and validated against the BARDEX II experimental results.• Seepage under a moving bore shows alternate exfiltration and infiltration before and after the bore front respectively.• The effects of exfiltration on the bottom boundary layer evolution and bed shear stress are investigated.

The global higher education sector has been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the mode of delivery has transformed into a blended learning mode of delivery or fully remote mode. Online delivery significantly demands reliable and stable internet access and technology, at both the lecturer’s and students’ ends. This paper investigates the challenges and barriers to accessibility of technologies used for remote delivery of learning and teaching. The paper also investigates key digital skills students need to help them develop and enhance their technology literacy. A survey was also conducted among 555 university undergraduate students to identify their choice of device to connect to remote learning during the transition to online learning. It was revealed that students used laptops and smartphones considerably and least relied on desktop computers. The results indicate the significance of a device’s portability, built-in network hardware and cost. Further, it identifies the impacts of accessibility of educational technologies on students’ learning experience.

Many higher educational institutes are forced to the online mode of lecture delivery without fully understanding students’ perspectives of remote study during COVID-19, and the resource limitations of students to engage successfully in remote learning. The present study aimed to understand this gap and the students’ perspective. We collected and analysed the devices, which used by the students to connect to remote learning in a developing country. It was found that the majority of students are dependent on the laptop-smartphone combination to engage in remote learning, particularly the students in rural areas. The results highlighted the importance of smartphones in the online learning experience, considering their affordability, relatively long battery life, inbuilt internet capabilities, and portability. Although students indicated their willingness for remote learning, they clearly recognised the need for face-to-face teaching return to avoid some of the challenges and disadvantages they face as a part of remote learning.

Infant vocalization is a well-studied area of development, however, there is a noticeable gap in the literature regarding adult identification of infant vocalization. Authors of the present study collected data from 626 undergraduate students who listened to 100-500 ms audio clips of infant vocalization. Researchers asked participants to identify infants in the audio clips as male/female, English/non-English, and 0-7 months/8-18 months/19-36 months of age. Participants were unable to determine the sex of the infant better than chance but were able to determine the infant’s language and age significantly better than chance, t (463)= 4.4618, p < .001, and t (463) = 17.714, p < .001, respectively. Exploratory follow-up analyses did not reveal an effect of caregiving experience, childcare experience, or participant gender on a participants’ ability to correctly identify the infant’s age or language. This research has implications for determining what is and is not perceivable in infant vocalizations. This is an underrepresented topic in infant research as most work has demonstrated what infants can perceive; not what caregivers can. This is an important contribution because infant language development has been demonstrated to include a complex social dynamic between adults and infants.

Fine-grain beaches are relatively common where the beach forms part of a larger coastal barrier system. In such a coastal system, different water levels could be present in the seaward side and back-barrier lagoon. The water level changes in the steady-state lagoon may potentially induce groundwater dynamics near the beach which would subsequently affect seepage flow into (or out of) the beach. The exchange of water could generate varying hydrodynamical and morphodynamical behaviour at the seaward boundary. Hence, it is important to gain insight into groundwater flow dynamics which results in exchange of water between sea, barrier and lagoon; especially for coastal engineers responsible for planning and managing such a coastal environment. In present work, a numerical model is developed to simulate flows through a coastal barrier and it is validated against prototype-scale experimental results, which can then be extended to model small time-scale groundwater flows that may be too expensive or impractical to set up in a lab.