At present, the strength and extent of the evidence base for the educational effects of portfolios in the undergraduate setting is limited. However, there is evidence of an improving trend in the quality of reported studies. 'Higher quality' papers identify improvements in knowledge and understanding, increased self-awareness and engagement in reflection and improved student-tutor relationships as the main benefits of portfolio use. However, they also suggest that whilst portfolios encourage students to engage in reflection, the quality of those reflections cannot be assumed and that the time commitment required for portfolio completion may detract from other learning or deter students from engaging with the process unless required to do so by the demands of assessment. Further work is needed to strengthen the evidence base for portfolio use, particularly comparative studies which observe changes in student knowledge and abilities directly, rather than reporting on their perceptions once a portfolio has been completed.

The southern Brazilian salt basin, comprising the three sub-basins Santos, Campos and Espirito Santo, was deposited over a pre-existing rifted basin with c. 1–2 km of relief bordered by an outer basin high that separated the basin from the conjugate African margin. The evaporites are interpreted to have been deposited very rapidly (<1 Ma) during the waning of extension. Deposition of salt caused rapid loading of the basin, so that further basin subsidence occurred and mobile salt drained from structurally higher zones into the subsiding basins. Seismic evidence indicates that downslope salt drainage occurred before any sediment overburden accumulated. Withdrawal synclines within salt units developed adjacent to diapirs, which have intruded the evaporite sequence, and salt extrusions are observed which were buried by later salts. The early movement of the salt probably contributed to significant fault reactivation and redistribution of salt load, so that the final half-graben salt fill reached up to 4.5 km thick where only 1–2 km of salt was originally deposited.

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The Recôncavo‐Tucano‐Jatobá (RTJ) Rift and many other smaller sedimentary basins in northeast Brazil formed during South Atlantic rifting and were subsequently uplifted and exhumed so that Albian marine sediments are now located up to 800 m above sea level some 400 km inland from the Atlantic margin. Local erosion caused by footwall uplift and regional erosion, probably resulting from magmatic underplating and uplift, has removed a large part of the thermal sag phase sediments from the RTJ Rift. The flexural cantilever model, incorporating the flexural isostatic response to simple‐shear faulting in the upper crust and pure‐shear necking of the lower crust and upper mantle, can explain the main geometrical features observed in the RTJ Rift without resorting to lithosphere scale detachments. The model has also been used to estimate the amount of uplift and erosion of the faulted rift flanks. Rift flank erosion can produce uplift and erosion across the whole RTJ Rift, thus explaining the postrift unconformity which preceded deposition of the Aptian age Marizal Formation. The largest uplift is predicted to occur at the edges of the basin and may explain the anomalously shallow depth to onset of oil generation at the basin margins deduced from vitrinite reflectance data. The model also predicts that maximum burial of much of the basin fill in the RTJ Rift occurred at the end of rifting and not during the postrift infill, as is usually the case. The amount of observed coarse conglomeratic detritus in the Recôncavo subbasin suggests that about 25% of the eroded footwall detritus was deposited and preserved in the adjacent hanging wall half‐graben, with the rest being transported more distally as finer material.

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