Stellar Polarimetry: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

On the final day of the Stellar Polarimetry conference, participants split up into three "breakout sessions" to discuss the future of the field in the areas of instrumentation, upcoming opportunities, and community priorities. This contribution compiles the major recommendations arising from each breakout session. We hope that the polarimetric community will find these ideas useful as we consider how to maintain the vitality of polarimetry in the coming years.Comment: 7 pages, published in proceedings of "Stellar Polarimetry: From Birth to Death" (Madison, WI, June 2011

Where clouds are made...

Where clouds are made... explored Didcot A Power station in the last few months of its active life as it approached it’s closure in 2013. This was a commissioned project, jointly funded by Npower and South Oxfordshire Council. Through the project and exhibition we explored different types of physical and social relationships that people had with the power station over it’s working life. For our exhibition at Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot, we made a wooden scaffolding structure referencing part of the pre-fab construction process. It was made to the same scale as one of the cooling towers, but represented a fragment of the whole. The almost imperceptible arc across the gallery floor drew attention to the enormity of the whole and the difficulty of comprehending the scale. Seen through the construction, we made a series of laser-cut wall drawings playing with the 70’s language of dials and switches within the control room

Gauguin's questions in particle physics: Where are we coming from? What are we? Where are we going?

Within particle physics itself, Gauguin's questions may be interpreted as: P1 - What is the status of the Standard Model? P2 - What physics may lie beyond the Standard Model? P3 - What is the `Theory of Everything'? Gauguin's questions may also asked within a cosmological context: C1 - What were the early stages of the Big Bang? C2 - What is the material content of the Universe today? C3 - What is the future of the Universe? In this talk I preview many of the topics to be discussed in the plenary sessions of this conference, highlighting how they bear on these fundamental questions.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, plenary talk at the International Europhysics Conference on High-Energy Physics (EPS-HEP2007), Manchester, England, July 200

Current training: Where are we?

Petroleum Helicopters, Inc. maintains a staff of 750 helicopter pilots. The initial, transition, upgrade, and recurrent training for these pilots requires a significant financial outlay. Since a major portion of that training is done to satisfy the requirements of FAR 61.57, 'Recent Flight Experience, Pilot in Command' and 135.297, 'Pilot in Command: Instrument Proficiency Check Requirements', much could be accomplished using an approved simulator. However, it is imperative that credit be given for training time spent in the simulators and that the device be realistic, practical, and affordable

Governance indicators : where are we, where should we be going ?

Scholars, policymakers, aid donors, and aid recipients acknowledge the importance of good governance for development. This understanding has spurred an intense interest in more refined, nuanced, and policy-relevant indicators of governance. In this paper we review progress to date in the area of measuring governance, using a simple framework of analysis focusing on two key questions: (i) what do we measure? and, (ii) whose views do we rely on? For the former question, we distinguish between indicators measuring formal laws or rules'on the books', and indicators that measure the practical application or outcomes of these rules'on the ground', calling attention to the strengths and weaknesses of both types of indicators as well as the complementarities between them. For the latter question, we distinguish between experts and survey respondents on whose views governance assessments are based, again highlighting their advantages, disadvantages, and complementarities. We also review the merits of aggregate as opposed to individual governance indicators. We conclude with some simple principles to guide the refinement of existing governance indicators and the development of future indicators. We emphasize the need to: transparently disclose and account for the margins of error in all indicators; draw from a diversity of indicators and exploit complementarities among them; submit all indicators to rigorous public and academic scrutiny; and, in light of the lessons of over a decade of existing indicators, to be realistic in the expectations of future indicators.Governance Indicators,National Governance,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Economic Policy, Institutions and Governance,Banks&Banking Reform

Training effectiveness assessment: Where are we?

Over 9,000 pilot training courses have been conducted at FSI using the Bell 222 and Sikorsky S-76 simulators. Through the use of FAA exemptions, these simulators can be used for certain training and checking credit. The history of the development and use of commercial helicopter simulators and the opportunities for their increased utilization and use were explored

Where Are They Now? Where Are We Now?

In this paper we, a research team comprising one professor of education and four graduate students document our reflections on questions we have about the challenges of documenting the impact of teacher education coursework and on our collective research. This paper is organized into three, separate sections. In the first section we present data that Patricia collected while observing Renee teach the same group of prospective English students over two semesters. These courses, C&I 301 (Introduction to Teaching in a Diverse Society) and C&I 302 (Teaching Diverse Middle Grades Students), are the first two courses in a four course sequence that integrate methods of teaching English with critical analysis of schooling and with reflection on one’s own transition from student to teacher. For the two subsequent courses (C&I 303, Teaching Diverse High School Students; C&I 304, Assessing Secondary School Students) the students were taught by different instructors and, during C&I 304, were student teaching. The term, “diversity” is included in the course titles because the teacher education program emphasizes that multicultural education is not a separate course, but that celebrating and working productively with a diverse student population is embedded in everything we do as teachers of adolescents (and adults). In this paper we respond to two recommendations Renee and Patricia have raised in previous works (Clift & Brady, 2003; Clift, 2004) in that we are exploring the ways in which longitudinal study can be incorporated into self-study; we are also using friendly critics (Patricia, Raul, Jason, and Soo Joung) as we analyze Renée’s teaching and the potential impact of her courses (as well as that of the larger teacher education program) on thirteen teacher education graduates’ developing practice. (These graduates have all been out of the teacher education program for two years now.) As our work proceeded we realized that as a team we were grappling with issues of power, authority, and voice in both the selfstudy and larger study. We have shaped this paper to allow others to glimpse our process and the questions it continues to raise for our work

RLUIPA: Where Are We Now? Where Are We Heading?

Over the past three years, hardly a week has gone by without at least one news-story announcing that a church, synagogue, or religious school-I\u27ll use the term “church” from here on as a shorthand for all houses of worship or other religious institutions—is claiming that its right to religious freedom is being infringed by local government land use regulations in violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. RLUIPA, a federal statute signed into law in September 2000, was enacted to restore to full vigor legal protection for religious freedoms that the Act\u27s proponents argue had been seriously diminished by prior rulings of the U.S