Staff support for inclusion: an international study

The idea for this research emerged following previous experiences in schools in Germany and England, noting their differences and similarities, and their equally persistent problems responding to diversity inclusively. The thesis consists of an in-depth exploration of cultures, policies and practices in schools and their rationales regarding the development of inclusion in education. At the core of the thesis are responses to diversity I perceived in two primary schools, one in London and one in Berlin, focusing in particular on the active participation of staff. My experiences were systematised through an international, ethnographic case study approach, which included six months fieldwork, as a participant observer, conducting semistructured interviews and exploring school documents. I investigated the participation of children, parents and staff – the three main groups of people in the schools – looking at their roles, their interaction and the barriers they experience. I related my findings to current notions of inclusion and responses to diversity in education, both in the respective literature and in policy documents, highlighting local, national and international differences, their mismatch with educational practice and resulting discriminatory effects. I found the active participation of staff to be an essential condition for inclusion in education, which has so far been treated peripherally. The barriers they experience to their own participation limit their capacity to respond inclusively to diversity and to establish communities in which everyone, all children and all adults, are valued equally. Additionally, parents and children were found to be potential contributors to developments towards inclusion, but were often excluded from contributing to developments in educational practice, so their potential strengths as resources for inclusion were lost. Consequently, I argue that any approach to inclusion in education has to increase the participation of staff, as well as being supported through the contributions of children and parents. I suggest a model for inclusive school development: namely, a collaborative process between all concerned, to increasingly mobilise the individual strengths of adults and children to support the participation of all: children, parents and staff

Impact assessment for vulnerabilities in open-source software libraries

Software applications integrate more and more open-source software (OSS) to benefit from code reuse. As a drawback, each vulnerability discovered in bundled OSS potentially affects the application. Upon the disclosure of every new vulnerability, the application vendor has to decide whether it is exploitable in his particular usage context, hence, whether users require an urgent application patch containing a non-vulnerable version of the OSS. Current decision making is mostly based on high-level vulnerability descriptions and expert knowledge, thus, effort intense and error prone. This paper proposes a pragmatic approach to facilitate the impact assessment, describes a proof-of-concept for Java, and examines one example vulnerability as case study. The approach is independent from specific kinds of vulnerabilities or programming languages and can deliver immediate results

Tumor angiogenesis and anti-angiogenic therapy in malignant gliomas revisited

The cellular and molecular mechanisms of tumor angiogenesis and its prospects for anti-angiogenic cancer therapy are major issues in almost all current concepts of both cancer biology and targeted cancer therapy. Currently, (1) sprouting angiogenesis, (2) vascular co-option, (3) vascular intussusception, (4) vasculogenic mimicry, (5) bone marrow-derived vasculogenesis, (6) cancer stem-like cell-derived vasculogenesis and (7) myeloid cell-driven angiogenesis are all considered to contribute to tumor angiogenesis. Many of these processes have been described in developmental angiogenesis; however, the relative contribution and relevance of these in human brain cancer remain unclear. Preclinical tumor models support a role for sprouting angiogenesis, vascular co-option and myeloid cell-derived angiogenesis in glioma vascularization, whereas a role for the other four mechanisms remains controversial and rather enigmatic. The anti-angiogenesis drug Avastin (Bevacizumab), which targets VEGF, has become one of the most popular cancer drugs in the world. Anti-angiogenic therapy may lead to vascular normalization and as such facilitate conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy. However, preclinical and clinical studies suggest that anti-VEGF therapy using bevacizumab may also lead to a pro-migratory phenotype in therapy resistant glioblastomas and thus actively promote tumor invasion and recurrent tumor growth. This review focusses on (1) mechanisms of tumor angiogenesis in human malignant glioma that are of particular relevance for targeted therapy and (2) controversial issues in tumor angiogenesis such as cancer stem-like cell-derived vasculogenesis and bone-marrow-derived vasculogenesis

Numerical analysis of suction embedded plate anchors in structured clay

As offshore energy developments move towards deeper water, moored floating production facilities are increasingly preferred to fixed structures. Anchoring systems are therefore of great interest to engineers working on deep water developments. Suction embedded plate anchors (SEPLAs) are rapidly becoming a popular solution, possessing a more accurate and predictable installation process compared to traditional alternatives. In this paper, finite element analysis has been conducted to evaluate the ultimate pullout capacity of SEPLAs in a range of post-keying configurations. Previous numerical studies of anchor pullout capacity have generally treated the soil as an elastic-perfectly plastic medium. However, the mechanical behaviour of natural clays is affected by inter-particle bonding, or structure, which cannot be accounted for using simple elasto-plastic models. Here, an advanced constitutive model formulated within the kinematic hardening framework is used to accurately predict the degradation of structure as an anchor embedded in a natural soft clay deposit is loaded to its pullout capacity. In comparison with an idealised, non-softening clay, the degradation of clay structure due to plastic strains in the soil mass results in a lower pullout capacity factor, a quantity commonly used in design, and a more complex load–displacement relationship. It can be concluded that clay structure has an important effect on the pullout behaviour of plate anchors.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Essence and Ontology

This dissertation provides an account of essentiality that satisfies two main desiderata: (1) The account should offer an explanation as to why the following two intuitions are true: (i) It is essential to the set {Socrates} to have Socrates as a member. (ii) It is not essential to Socrates to be a member of that set. (2) The account should do justice to the sense of philosophical significance that has traditionally been attached to the notion of essence. The two intuitions mentioned in: 1) together form what I call `Fine\u27s asymmetry\u27, after Kit Fine, whose paper `Essence and Modality\u27 has persuasively undermined the traditional modal account of essentiality by pointing out: among other worries) that this account cannot plausibly accommodate both of those intuitions. The account of essentiality proposed in this dissertation offers an alternative to the modal account. It is reductive, in the sense that it provides truth-conditions for essentialist claims without in turn relying on any fundamental notions of an entity\u27s `nature\u27 or `identity\u27; nor does it rely on any concepts of metaphysical modality. Instead, it is based on a framework of sets, attributes, and states of affairs, which is introduced in chapters 2 and 3. The account itself is then developed in chapters 4 to 7. The first major step in this direction is the introduction, in chapter 4, of the concept of an individuational ontology, which results from a generalization and modification of Peter Aczel\u27s approach to the theory of non-well-founded sets. On this basis, chapter 5 introduces relativized concepts of essence and essentiality, where the relativization in question is to individuational ontologies. The question of what conditions an individuational ontology O has to satisfy in order for essences-relative-to-O to count as essences simpliciter is the topic of chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 6 sets out to develop a fairly straightforward approach, but this is quickly seen to face apparently insuperable difficulties. Chapter 7 develops a fundamentally different approach, which turns out to be more successful. In chapter 8, it is shown how the resulting account of essentiality manages to accommodate Fine\u27s asymmetry, and in the final chapter, the account is applied to an elucidation of de re modal discourse

Automatic thermal switch

An automatic thermal switch to control heat flow includes a first thermally conductive plate, a second thermally conductive plate and a thermal transfer plate pivotally mounted between the first and second plates. A phase change power unit, including a plunger connected to the transfer plate, is in thermal contact with the first thermally conductive plate. A biasing element, connected to the transfer plate, biases the transfer plate in a predetermined position with respect to the first and second plates. When the phase change power unit is actuated by an increase in heat transmitted through the first plate, the plunger extends and pivots the transfer plate to vary the thermal conduction between the first and second plates through the transfer plate. The biasing element, transfer plate and piston can be arranged to provide either a normally closed or normally open thermally conductive path between the first and second plates

Apparatus and method for explosive bonding to edge of flyer plate

The invention is an apparatus and a process for the explosive joining of a flyer plate and a base plate. The apparatus consists of a flyer plate positioned over a base plate. The flyer plate has a notch containing a filler material in intimate contact with the flyer plate. An adhesive means holds a ribbon explosive partially overlapping the notch in the flyer plate. A detonating means initiates the ribbon explosive that drives the flyer plate to accomplish a high velocity, angular collision between the mating surfaces. This collision creates surface melts and effacing bonding, resulting in electron sharing linkups between the plates. An unbonded tab fractures at a base of the notch leaving a bond to an edge of the attached flyer plate

License plate localization based on statistical measures of license plate features

— License plate localization is considered as the most important part of license plate recognition system. The high accuracy rate of license plate recognition is depended on the ability of license plate detection. This paper presents a novel method for license plate localization bases on license plate features. This proposed method consists of two main processes. First, candidate regions extraction step, Sobel operator is applied to obtain vertical edges and then potential candidate regions are extracted by deploying mathematical morphology operations [5]. Last, license plate verification step, this step employs the standard deviation of license plate features to confirm license plate position. The experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve high quality license plate localization results with high accuracy rate of 98.26 %