Conservation evo-devo: preserving biodiversity by understanding its origins

Unprecedented rates of species extinction increase the urgency for effective conservation biology management practices. Thus, any improvements in practice are vital and we suggest that conservation can be enhanced through recent advances in evolutionary biology, specifically advances put forward by evolutionary developmental biology (i.e., evo-devo). There are strong overlapping conceptual links between conservation and evo-devo whereby both fields focus on evolutionary potential. In particular, benefits to conservation can be derived from some of the main areas of evo-devo research, namely phenotypic plasticity, modularity and integration, and mechanistic investigations of the precise developmental and genetic processes that determine phenotypes. Using examples we outline how evo-devo can expand into conservation biology, an opportunity which holds great promise for advancing both fields

FlowUnlocked in East London

Who we are: We are a collaborative group of three; Georgia Pavlopoulou, Doctor in Psychology and Mental health, UCL autism researcher & neurodiversity advocate; Jon Adams, neurodivergent polymath, Synaesthete, MHChampion & artist, Briony Campbell, east London photographer, filmmaker & creative facilitator. We are funded by UCL Culture. About our funder We are being funded by UCL Culture (University College London), within the Trellis project. The intentions of Trellis are to connect UCL researchers with local artists and engage the east London communities that surround the new UCL East campus, currently under construction on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. At this stage we have been funded a small amount in order to refine our methodologies and ideas and develop our proposal for a larger project. Your participation in our consultancy group would be helping us to do this. What we’re doing We aim to codesign and codeliver a creative participatory research project, which will seek to illuminate the relationships that matter to autistic people during and after lockdown in east London. We are interested in environmental and sensory relationships as well as interpersonal and human/object/animal relationships. The project will focus on east Londoners. Our intention is to create a space for autistic east Londoners to share their perspectives and ideas on relationships, as part of a knowledge exchange with artists and researchers. This project aims to engage autistic people in collaborative and creative practice. We want to enhance awareness and acceptance of autistic people, by creating honest and compelling public art inspired by how Autisic people relate to the communities and environments around them

The memory space: Exploring future uses of Web 2.0 and mobile internet through design interventions.

The QuVis Quantum Mechanics Visualization project aims to address challenges of quantum mechanics instruction through the development of interactive simulations for the learning and teaching of quantum mechanics. In this article, we describe evaluation of simulations focusing on two-level systems developed as part of the Institute of Physics Quantum Physics resources. Simulations are research-based and have been iteratively refined using student feedback in individual observation sessions and in-class trials. We give evidence that these simulations are helping students learn quantum mechanics concepts at both the introductory and advanced undergraduate level, and that students perceive simulations to be beneficial to their learning.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in the American Journal of Physic

Cognitive demands and second-language learners: A framework for analyzing mathematical instructional contexts

The issues involved in teaching English language learners mathematics while they are learning English pose many challenges for mathematics teachers and highlight the need to focus on language-processing issues related to teaching mathematical content. Two realistic-type problems from high-stakes tests are used to illustrate the complex interactions between culture, language, and mathematical learning. The analyses focus on aspects of the problems that potentially increase cognitive demands for second-language learners. An analytical framework is presented that is designed to enable mathematics teachers to identify critical elements in problems and the learning environment that contribute to increased cognitive demands for students of English as a second language. The framework is proposed as a cycle of teacher reflection that would extend a constructivist model of teaching to include broader linguistic, cultural, and cognitive processing issues of mathematics teaching, as well as enable teachers to develop more accurate mental models of student learning

Property A and CAT(0) cube complexes

Property A is a non-equivariant analogue of amenability defined for metric spaces. Euclidean spaces and trees are examples of spaces with Property A. Simultaneously generalising these facts, we show that finite-dimensional CAT(0) cube complexes have Property A. We do not assume that the complex is locally finite. We also prove that given a discrete group acting properly on a finite-dimensional CAT(0) cube complex the stabilisers of vertices at infinity are amenable

The Graceful Exit Problem in String Cosmology

Isotropic string cosmology solutions can be classified into two duality related branches: one can be connected smoothly to an expanding Friedman-Robertson-Walker Universe, the other describes accelerated inflation or contraction. We show that, if the dilaton potential has certain generic properties, the two branches can evolve smoothly into each other. We find, however, that just the effects of a potential do not allow for a graceful exit from accelerated inflation in the weak curvature regime. We explain how conformal field theory techniques could be used to give a decisive answer on whether graceful exit from accelerated inflation is possible at all.Comment: 13 pages,uuencoded post-script, preprint CERN-TH.7179/9

The Impact of the Role of an Instructional Technology Facilitator on Teacher Efficacy in Classroom Technology Integration in Two Rural Public Schools in Northwestern North Carolina

The purpose of this study was to contribute to a limited body of research on the impact of the role of the school-level instructional technology facilitator on teacher technology efficacy. This mixed-methods study involved the administration of a survey instrument designed to measure teacher technology efficacy, the Computer Technology Integration (CTI) survey developed by Wang, Ertmer, and Newby (2004) as well as an ITF survey measuring the direct impact of the role of the school-level instructional technology facilitator on those efficacy levels. Interviews were conducted by proxy interviewers to further clarify the ways that the instructional technology facilitator impacted teacher technology efficacy at two schools in rural, northwestern North Carolina. The Review of the Literature for this study explored theoretical frameworks in self-efficacy and technology integration. Four constructs were examined during the treatment period of this case study: Skills, Strategies, Standards, and Other Abilities. Those constructs were used to code qualitative interview data for further evidence regarding the role of the instructional technology facilitator’s impact on teacher technology efficacy at the study sites

Good faith and the ubiquity of the “relational” contract

The judgment of Leggatt J in Yam Seng Pte Ltd v International Trade Corporation Ltd shows the common belief that the English law of contract does not have a doctrine of good faith to be mistaken. That law does not have a general principle of good faith, but its doctrine of good faith, articulated through numerous specific duties, is more suitable for the interpretation of contracts according to the intentions of the parties than a general principle which invites the imposition of exogenous standards. That Yam Seng involved a relational contract does not mean that paternalistic exogenous standards should be imposed. It means that the good faith obligations essential even to a commercial contract of this sort must be implied in order to give efficacy to the fundamentally co-operative contractual relationship