What do students know and understand about the Holocaust? Evidence from English secondary schools

This research report has been written under the auspices of the University College London (UCL) Centre for Holocaust Education. The Centre is part of the UCL Institute of Education – currently the world’s leading university for education – and is comprised of a team of researchers and educators from a variety of different disciplinary fields. The Centre works in partnership with the Pears Foundation who, together with the Department for Education, have co-funded its operation since it was first established in 2008. A centrally important principle of all activity based at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education is that, wherever possible, classroom practice should be informed by academic scholarship and relevant empirical research. In 2009, Centre staff published an extensive national study of secondary school teachers’ experience of and attitudes towards teaching about the Holocaust (Pettigrew et al. 2009). This new report builds on that earlier work by critically examining English school students’ knowledge and understanding of this history. In both cases, research findings have been – and will continue to be – used to develop an innovative and ground-breaking programme of continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers and educational resources that are uniquely responsive to clearly identified classroom needs. The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education is the only institution of its kind, both within the United Kingdom and internationally, where pioneering empirical research is placed at the heart of work to support teachers and their students encountering this profoundly important yet complex and challenging subject in schools. The Centre offers a wide-ranging educational programme appropriate to teachers at all stages of their careers through a carefully constructed ‘pathway of professional development’. This provides opportunities for individuals to progressively deepen their knowledge and improve their practice. It offers a national programme of Initial Teacher Education in Holocaust education and a variety of in-depth and subject-specific CPD. In addition, the Centre also offers online distance learning facilities, including a fully accredited taught Masters-level module The Holocaust in the Curriculum. Through its Beacon School programme, Centre staff work intensively with up to 20 schools across England each year in order to recognise and further develop exemplary whole-school approaches and effective pedagogy. All of the courses and classroom materials developed by the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education are available free of charge to teachers working in England’s statefunded secondary schools. Further information can be found at www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust

Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements

Histological sub‐classification of cirrhosis using collagen proportionate area in patients with chronic hepatitis C

Collagen proportionate area (CPA, %) is used to quantify liver fibrosis. Here we assessed CPA performance to subclassify cirrhosis. CPA was measured in explanted livers from consecutively transplanted patients for hepatitis C virus‐related cirrhosis. MELD, Child‐Pugh score and decompensating events (ascites, variceal bleeding, non‐obstructive jaundice and encephalopathy) were recorded at the time of liver transplant. Of the 154 patients, 24%, 12%, 35%, 24% and 5% had 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 previous decompensating events. Patients with decompensation had significantly higher CPA than those without (25.1±8.4 vs. 15.8±5.5, P<0.001). Decompensation was independently associated with CPA, bilirubin and albumin or with CPA and MELD score. CPA did not differ between patients with 1, 2, 3 or 4 decompensating events (22.2±6.3 vs. 26.6±8.9 vs. 24.5±7.7 vs. 24.4±10.9, P=0.242). Overall, CPA correlates with the clinical severity of cirrhosis until the advent of decompensation but not with subsequent decompensating events

Fractional branes, warped compactifications and backreacted orientifold planes

The standard extremal p-brane solutions in supergravity are known to allow for a generalisation which consists of adding a linear dependence on the world-volume coordinates to the usual harmonic function. In this note we demonstrate that remarkably this generalisation goes through in exactly the same way for p-branes with fluxes added to it that correspond to fractional p-branes. We relate this to warped orientifold compactifications by trading the Dp-branes for Op-planes that solve the RR tadpole condition. This allows us to interpret the worldvolume dependence as due to lower-dimensional scalars that flow along the massless directions in the no-scale potential. Depending on the details of the fluxes these flows can be supersymmetric domain wall flows. Our solutions provide explicit examples of backreacted orientifold planes in compactifications with non-constant moduli.Comment: 20 pages, incl. references. v2: small changes required for JHEP publication. v3: few equation typos correcte

The problematic backreaction of SUSY-breaking branes

In this paper we investigate the localisation of SUSY-breaking branes which, in the smeared approximation, support specific non-BPS vacua. We show, for a wide class of boundary conditions, that there is no flux vacuum when the branes are described by a genuine delta-function. Even more, we find that the smeared solution is the unique solution with a regular brane profile. Our setup consists of a non-BPS AdS_7 solution in massive IIA supergravity with smeared anti-D6-branes and fluxes T-dual to ISD fluxes in IIB supergravity.Comment: 27 pages, Latex2e, 5 figure

Density functional theory studies of MTSL nitroxide side chain conformations attached to an activation loop

A quantum-mechanical (QM) method rooted on density functional theory (DFT) linked to the Stochastic Liouville equation (SLE) in the Fokker Planck (FP) form has been employed for the first time to sample the methane-thiosulfonate spin label (MTSL) conformational space attached to the Aurora-A kinase activation loop and to calculate the EPR spectrum. The features of the calculated energy surface allowed us to describe the system in a limited number of rotamers stabilized by interactions of the MTSL side chain and neighbouring residues. The relevant magnetic parameters and the electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrum were subsequently calculated from the trajectories of the spin probe in the protein environment. The comparison between theoretical and experimental continuous wave (CW) EPR spectra revealed some small differences in the EPR line shape which arises from the combinations of g- and A-values obtained from the conformations selected. The theoretical approach adopted in this work can be used to recognise the contribution of MTSL rotamers to the EPR spectrum in order to help extract structural/dynamics properties of protein from the experimental data

The mu problem and sneutrino inflation

We consider sneutrino inflation and post-inflation cosmology in the singlet extension of the MSSM with approximate Peccei-Quinn(PQ) symmetry, assuming that supersymmetry breaking is mediated by gauge interaction. The PQ symmetry is broken by the intermediate-scale VEVs of two flaton fields, which are determined by the interplay between radiative flaton soft masses and higher order terms. Then, from the flaton VEVs, we obtain the correct mu term and the right-handed(RH) neutrino masses for see-saw mechanism. We show that the RH sneutrino with non-minimal gravity coupling drives inflation, thanks to the same flaton coupling giving rise to the RH neutrino mass. After inflation, extra vector-like states, that are responsible for the radiative breaking of the PQ symmetry, results in thermal inflation with the flaton field, solving the gravitino problem caused by high reheating temperature. Our model predicts the spectral index to be n_s\simeq 0.96 due to the additional efoldings from thermal inflation. We show that a right dark matter abundance comes from the gravitino of 100 keV mass and a successful baryogenesis is possible via Affleck-Dine leptogenesis.Comment: 27 pages, no figures, To appear in JHE

Soft branes in supersymmetry-breaking backgrounds

We revisit the analysis of effective field theories resulting from non-supersymmetric perturbations to supersymmetric flux compactifications of the type-IIB superstring with an eye towards those resulting from the backreaction of a small number of anti-D3-branes. Independently of the background, we show that the low-energy Lagrangian describing the fluctuations of a stack of probe D3-branes exhibits soft supersymmetry breaking, despite perturbations to marginal operators that were not fully considered in some previous treatments. We take this as an indication that the breaking of supersymmetry by anti-D3-branes or other sources may be spontaneous rather than explicit. In support of this, we consider the action of an anti-D3-brane probing an otherwise supersymmetric configuration and identify a candidate for the corresponding goldstino.Comment: 36+5 pages. References added, minor typos correcte

Monitoring Cognitive and Emotional Processes Through Pupil and Cardiac Response During Dynamic Versus Logical Task

The paper deals with the links between physiological measurements and cognitive and emotional functioning. As long as the operator is a key agent in charge of complex systems, the definition of metrics able to predict his performance is a great challenge. The measurement of the physiological state is a very promising way but a very acute comprehension is required; in particular few studies compare autonomous nervous system reactivity according to specific cognitive processes during task performance and task related psychological stress is often ignored. We compared physiological parameters recorded on 24 healthy subjects facing two neuropsychological tasks: a dynamic task that require problem solving in a world that continually evolves over time and a logical task representative of cognitive processes performed by operators facing everyday problem solving. Results showed that the mean pupil diameter change was higher during the dynamic task; conversely, the heart rate was more elevated during the logical task. Finally, the systolic blood pressure seemed to be strongly sensitive to psychological stress. A better taking into account of the precise influence of a given cognitive activity and both workload and related task-induced psychological stress during task performance is a promising way to better monitor operators in complex working situations to detect mental overload or pejorative stress factor of error