Being a PE Major

I gave my students a presentation on what it is like being a physical education major and what to expect out of the program.https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/corslides/1044/thumbnail.jp

Is Private Equity Investor Good or Evil?

The paper investigates the motives of Private Equity (PE) investors to engage in European companies. Investment of a PE firm is not viewed unambiguously. First, it is claimed that PE investing is made for the sake of poor redistribution of wealth. Second, PE firm invests because of prior identification of chances to add value to the company. We attempt to resolve these two conflicting conjectures. We use the Bureau van Dijk's Amadeus database of very large, large and medium sized European companies. Our major results can be summarized as follows. A financially constraint or risky company has lower chances to lure a PE firm to invest. On the one hand, the larger the equity of the company the larger the likelihood of receiving investment from a PE firm. On the other hand, larger cash flow is likely to repel PE investor.Private equity financing, leverage, corporate finance

Bifunctional earth-abundant phosphate/phosphide catalysts prepared via atomic layer deposition for electrocatalytic water splitting

The development of active and stable earth-abundant catalysts for hydrogen and oxygen evolution is one of the requirements for successful production of solar fuels. Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is a proven technique for conformal coating of structured (photo)electrode surfaces with such electrocatalyst materials. Here, we show that ALD can be used for the deposition of iron and cobalt phosphate electrocatalysts. A PE-ALD process was developed to obtain cobalt phosphate films without the need for a phosphidation step. The cobalt phosphate material acts as a bifunctional catalyst, able to also perform hydrogen evolution after either a thermal or electrochemical reduction step

Note on Bessaga-Klee classification

We collect several variants of the proof of the third case of the Bessaga-Klee relative classification of closed convex bodies in topological vector spaces. We were motivated by the fact that we have not found anywhere in the literature a complete correct proof. In particular, we point out an error in the proof given in the book of C.~Bessaga and A.~Pe\l czy\'nski (1975). We further provide a simplified version of T.~Dobrowolski's proof of the smooth classification of smooth convex bodies in Banach spaces which works simultaneously in the topological case.Comment: 14 pages; we made few corrections, added one reference and precised the abstrac

Induced Crystallization of Polyelectrolyte-Surfactant Complexes at the Gas-Water Interface

Synchrotron-X-ray and surface tension studies of a strong polyelectrolyte (PE) in the semi-dilute regime (~ 0.1M monomer-charges) with varying surfactant concentrations show that minute surfactant concentrations induce the formation of a PE-surfactant complex at the gas/solution interface. X-ray reflectivity and grazing angle X-ray diffraction (GIXD) provide detailed information of the top most layer, where it is found that the surfactant forms a two-dimensional liquid-like monolayer, with a noticeable disruption of the structure of water at the interface. With the addition of salt (NaCl) columnar-crystals with distorted-hexagonal symmetry are formed.Comment: 4 pages, 5 eps figure

A model of inversion of DNA charge by a positive polymer: fractionization of the polymer charge

Charge inversion of a DNA double helix by an oppositely charged flexible polyelectrolyte (PE) is considered. We assume that, in the neutral state of the DNA-PE complex, each of the DNA charges is locally compensated by a PE charge. When an additional PE molecule is adsorbed by DNA, its charge gets fractionized into monomer charges of defects (tails and arches) on the background of the perfectly neutralized DNA. These charges spread all over the DNA eliminating the self-energy of PE. This fractionization mechanism leads to a substantial inversion of the DNA charge, a phenomenon which is widely used for gene delivery.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Improved figures and various corrections to tex

'Really on the ball': exploring the implications of teachers' PE-CPD experience

Continuing professional development (CPD) is currently high on the Scottish Education agenda. Recent curriculum reform in Scotland, with the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence, places physical education (PE) at the forefront for its role in directly supporting learners' mental, emotional, social and physical well-being. This emphasis on PE, along with concerns about the health of the nation, has resulted in a nationwide initiative providing non-specialist teachers of primary PE with the opportunity to develop a specialism in the subject through government-funded CPD programmes at postgraduate level. Using Knowles' andragogical model as a framework, this paper reports data from a larger research study that evaluated a Scottish PE-CPD initiative. This paper comprises a single case holistic study investigating the impact and implications of a PE-CPD programme through the professional learning journeys, from the outset until completion, of four teachers: a nursery teacher, a class teacher, a cluster cover teacher and a PE specialist who participated in the programme. Data were collected over one academic year using two-stage questionnaire interviews and were analysed thematically with special attention given to the emerging general themes to achieve a holistic understanding of the case. Study findings endorse the positive impact of using the andragogical model of adult learning combined with the literature-supported characteristics of effective PE-CPD programmes. Teachers' perspectives on their CPD experiences, integration of acquired learning into working contexts and teaching post-PE-CPD were then examined to determine the next steps. This led to critical reflection on the implications of the findings for the teachers' ongoing professional development. We then challenged the role that university providers play in supporting teachers' lifelong learning. Instead, we suggest new school-university partnerships and alternative ways to support capacity building and lifelong learning towards a sustainable transformational change in Scotland's primary PE