Online communities

“Our online community provides a dynamic forum for you to discuss current topics and concerns with the wider education community.“ This quote is taken from the Teachernet website [ ], but could be claimed to apply to any number of education sites. Increasingly, online content is being complemented by with opportunities for readers to interact with each other or participate in debate. This article will look at the proliferation of such ‘online communities’. It will consider how they might be used to support teachers and school managers, how they might be most effectively used and how ‘virtual’ communication complements and overlaps with the ‘real world’. Finally it challenges the very notion of this dichotomy. What then is an online community? Simply it is community, a collection of people, who are communicating or working together online. Often the term is used to describe the software or online space – “Click here to enter our community” – but if it is a true “community” then it must involve a defined membership, however loose that definition

The Divine Liturgy as Mystical Experience

Most characterizations of mystical experience emphasize its private, esoteric, and non-sensory nature. Such an understanding is far removed from the original meaning of the term mystikos. For the ancient Greeks, the ”mystical’ was that which led participants into the awareness of a higher reality, as in the initiatory rites of the ancient mystery cults. This usage was taken over by the early Church, which similarly designated the Christian sacraments and their rites as ”mystical’ because they draw participants into a higher level of reality. I argue that the Divine Liturgy is a form of ”mystical experience’ in this sense, and that philosophers have missed a great deal by excluding such communal acts from the scope of mystical experience

Participatory Art Methods in Practice: An Artist’s Tentative Steps into Field Research

This project aimed to examine if community projects can have a positive impact on art jewellery practice. This was done through the development of a community project with a group of Irish Traveller women, in collaboration with Brent Irish Advisory Services (B.I.A.S.) and a number of volunteers. This was then treated as a case study and analysed. A qualitative research approach was taken, within a naturalistic context and the project was further contextualized by investigating a selection of other jewellers' practices. The objects made during the project were not treated as data, though professional reviews were carried out on completion. The project led to the development of a new collection of jewellery and a book inspired by my experiences

Sharing the Love, Feeding the Hungry

The biblical injunction to share one’s bread with the poor is for Christians intimately linked with the Eucharist and the Eucharist with the upbuilding of the Church. We will explore New Testament and other early Christian insights into these fundamental theological connections, and examine the consequences for eucharistic celebrations today

Chiral separation and twin-beam photonics

It is well-known that, in a homogeneous fluid medium, most optical means that afford discrimination between molecules of opposite handedness are intrinsically weak effects. The reason is simple: the wide variety of origins for differential response commonly feature real or virtual electronic transitions that break a parity condition. Despite being electric dipole allowed, they manifest the chirality of the material in which they occur by breaking a selection rule that would otherwise preclude the simultaneous involvement of magnetic dipole or electric quadrupole forms of coupling. Although the latter are typically weaker than electric dipole effects by several orders of magnitude, it is the involvement of these weak forms of interaction that are responsible for chiral sensitivity. There have been a number of attempts to cleverly exploit novel optical configurations to enhance the relative magnitude – and hence potentially the efficiency – of chiral discrimination. The prospect of success in any such venture is enticing, because of the huge impact that such an advance might be expected to have in the health, food and medical sectors. Some of these proposals have utilized mirror reflection, and others surface plasmon coupling, or optical binding methods. Several recent works in the literature have drawn attention to a further possibility: the deployment of optical beam interference as a means to achieve chiral separations of sizeable extent. In this paper the underlying theory is fully developed to identify the true scope and limitations of such an approach

Catalytic Community Development

Community development and economic development in rural areas increasingly go hand in hand. Today, counterpoint to purely free market approaches to economic development -- in which large multinationals are the primary engines of change -- calls for more local decision-making and more locally based economic ventures. At the center of this new approach is strong community commitment to provide resources and information, overcome collective action problems, and improve the functioning of local labor markets. Enhancing community agency, or the capacity for collective action, therefore plays a significant role in effective community and economic development. Communities must focus on development both in communities (job creation, infrastructure improvement) and of communities (enhancing local problem-solving capacities). Kenneth Pigg and Ted Bradshaw, in their chapter in "Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century", outline a new model of community development, assembled from a collection of approaches. In this new "catalytic development" model, the emphasis is on mobilizing local talent and leveraging local resources and networks to find local solutions, and ultimately foster development in and of communities. This issue brief is a joint product of the Rural Sociological Society and the National Coalition for Rural Entrepreneurship, a collaboration of four Regional Rural Development Centers: The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, the Southern Rural Development Center, the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, and the Western Rural Development Center. Funding was also made available from the Ford Foundation. This brief is part of a policy brief series by the Rural Sociological Society and the Regional Rural Development Centers that stresses the importance of community collective action and developing the capacity of people and organizations to meet the community's needs The Rural Sociological Society and the Regional Rural Development Centers creates new Public Policy Issue Brief series based on its recent book, "Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century". The briefs synthesize the context and substance of important issues raised in the book and address alternative policy options, with the goal of bringing important research to the policy community

Optical forces between dielectric nanoparticles in an optical vortex

We report a study on the optical forces between a pair of dielectric particles, based on quantum electrodynamics. At a fundamental level these forces result from a stimulated scattering process which entails a virtual photon relay between the two particles. Results for a variety of systems are secured from a completely general analysis that accommodates a system with arbitrary dielectric properties (with regard to shape, frequency response etc.) in an optical field of arbitrary complexity. Specific results are obtained and exhibited for: (a) optical forces between nanoparticles, and specifically between carbon nanotubes; (b) the effects of optical ordering, clustering and trapping associated with twisted (Laguerre-Gaussian) laser beams

Vortex boundary-layer interactions

The interaction of a turbulent boundary layer (on a flat plate) with a strong artificially-generated longitudinal vortex, which may or may not actually enter the boundary layer, was studied. Experiments, including extensive hot-wire measurements, were completed for the case in which the vortex does enter the boundary layer, and measurements for the somewhat simpler cases in which the boundary layer and vortex remain distinct are now in progress. Contours of total pressure (recently acquired) and of turbulent kinetic energy at various downstream positions are presented to show the overall development of the vortex imbedded in the boundary layer