The Uncharted, Uncertain Future of HOPE VI Redevelopments: The Case for Assessing Project Sustainability

Discusses the need for a third-party assessment of the management and financial stability issues posed by the publicly and privately funded redevelopment of housing projects into mixed-income, mixed-tenure properties. Explores feasibility at two sites

Implications of the Babinet Principle for Casimir Interactions

We formulate the Babinet Principle (BP) as a relation between the scattering amplitudes for electromagnetic waves, and combine it with multiple scattering techniques to derive new properties of Casimir forces. We show that the Casimir force exerted by a planar conductor or dielectric on a self- complementary perforated planar mirror is approximately half that on a uniform mirror independent of the distance between them. The BP suggests that Casimir edge effects are anomalously small, supporting results obtained earlier in special cases. Finally, we illustrate how the BP can be used to estimate Casimir forces between perforated planar mirrors

Las representaciones sociales de los estudiantes de Ingeniería acerca del conocimiento matemático. Relaciones con el aprendizaje de la disciplina. 16H219

Este proyecto de investigación sostiene la práctica docente desde un modelo psicosocial, reemplazando la relación diádica sujeto-objeto por la tríada sujeto-contexto-objeto. Desde allí, las marcas que derivan del contexto social y las prácticas sociales, transforman y estructuran las situaciones en las que los objetos de conocimiento se presentan; ubicándolos en sistemas de representación social que no sólo se producen, sino también se recrean y modifican en dichas situaciones, y que otorgan sentido a los conocimientos de los alumnos. Entonces, aprender requiere otorgar sentido a un sector de lo real a partir de los conocimientos previos, de las características de las estructuras cognoscitivas que sirven de anclaje a la nueva información y de las representaciones sociales del sujeto. En conformidad con este modelo, y focalizando nuestro interés en las prácticas de la enseñanza de la Matemática en las carreras de Ingeniería, nos proponemos caracterizar las representaciones sociales acerca del conocimiento matemático de sus estudiantes y el modo en que dichas representaciones se relacionan con el aprendizaje de la disciplina. El paradigma de investigación será predominantemente cualitativo, aunque se prevé la posibilidad de triangulación con algunos abordajes cuantitativos

Building Community Through Service-Learning: The Role of the Community Partner

The students in Mike Walsh\u27s Natural Resources class at Nestucca Valley Middle School in Beaver, Oregon, are learning in the woods. Twice a month, teams are managing their own experimental forest, a quarter-mile strip of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property in Pacific City divided into 100-by-100 foot sections. Their curriculum begins with measuring and marking out the plots, removing invasive scotch broom plants, and marking and taking inventory of the lodgepole pine trees planted in rows 30 years earlier to hold back the shifting dunes. These 7th- and 8th-grader students will develop comprehensive management plans, outlining in detail which trees they will remove from their plots, and the number, variety and location of native trees and shrubs they will select to plant in their place. As they learn, the students are providing the BLM with a healthier forest, and a group of young citizens is beginning to understand what is involved in adaptive forest management

Genetic variability and the classification of hepatitis E virus

The classification of hepatitis E virus (HEV) variants is currently in transition without agreed definitions for genotypes and subtypes or for deeper taxonomic groupings into species and genera that could incorporate more recently characterized viruses assigned to the Hepeviridae family that infect birds, bats, rodents, and fish. These conflicts arise because of differences in the viruses and genomic regions compared and in the methodology used. We have reexamined published sequences and found that synonymous substitutions were saturated in comparisons between and within virus genotypes. Analysis of complete genome sequences or concatenated ORF1/ORF2 amino acid sequences indicated that HEV variants most closely related to those infecting humans can be consistently divided into six genotypes (types 1 to 4 and two additional genotypes from wild boar). Variants isolated from rabbits, closely related to genotype 3, occupy an intermediate position. No consistent criteria could be defined for the assignment of virus subtypes. Analysis of amino acid sequences from these viruses with the more divergent variants from chickens, bats, and rodents in three conserved subgenomic regions (residues 1 to 452 or 974 to 1534 of ORF1 or residues 105 to 458 of ORF2) provided consistent support for a division into 4 groups, corresponding to HEV variants infecting humans and pigs, those infecting rats and ferrets, those from bats, and those from chickens. This approach may form the basis for a future genetic classification of HEV into four species, with the more divergent HEV-like virus from fish (cutthroat trout virus) representing a second genus

Political Competence, Political Trust, and Action Orientations of University Students

Compared to mass publics in other nations, a relatively large number of Americans believe that they are politically competent—that they are able to influence political affairs. And yet, over the past several years we have witnessed the estrangement of substantial portions of the American citizenry from the political system—an estrangement accompanied by an increase in popular distrust of government

A set of reference sequences for the hepatitis C genotypes 4d, 4f, and 4k covering the full open reading frame

Infection with genotype 4 of the Hepatitis C virus is common in Africa and the Mediterranean area, but has also been found at increasing frequencies in injection drug users in Europe and North America. Full length viral sequences to characterize viral diversity and structure have recently become available mostly for subtype 4a, and studies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where high proportions of subtype 4a infected patients exist, have begun to establish optimized treatment regimens. However knowledge about other subtype variants of genotype 4 present in less developed African states is lacking. In this study the full coding region from so far poorly characterized variants of HCV genotype 4 was amplified and sequenced using a long range PCR technique. Sequences were analyzed with respect to phylogenetic relationship, possible recombination and prominent sequence characteristics compared to other known HCV strains. We present for the first time two full-length sequences from the HCV genotype 4k, in addition to five strains from HCV genotypes 4d and 4f. Reference sequences for accurate HCV genotyping are required for optimized treatment, and a better knowledge of the global viral sequence diversity is needed to guide vaccines or new drugs effective in the world wide epidemic

Les mondes séfarades : savoirs cognitifs et pouvoir de l’espace

Nicole Abravanel, professeur agrégée à l’Université d’Amiens Les conférences ont été conduites en continuité du séminaire « les mondes séfarades et converso : l’épreuve de l’espace » (assuré en co-responsabilité avec Natalia Muchnik et Enric Porqueres en 2008-2009). L’enjeu était de penser les relations entre espace et culture en se centrant cette fois-ci sur l’époque médiévale, période fondatrice pour le monde sépharade. L’hypothèse de départ a initialement privilégié une approche structural..