1,384 research outputs found
The Legacy of ERA, Privatization and the Policy Ratchet
This article explores the ways in which the neo-liberal impetus toward the privatization of state schooling signalled in the Education Reform Act 1988 (ERA) has become embedded in the English school system. Four main points are made. First, that ERA itself was of huge strategic rather than substantive importance as far as privatization is concerned. Second, by tracing the lineage of privatization from ERA onwards a 'ratchet' effect of small and incremental policy moves can be identified, which have disseminated, embedded and naturalized privatization within public sector provision. Third, that while privatization has been taken up and taken much further by New Labour than it had been by the Conservatives there are differences between the two sets of governments in the role of privatization in education policy and the role of the state. Fourth, the participation of private providers in the planning and delivery of state services has put the private sector at the very heart of policy. At points the article draws upon interviews conducted with private sector providers. © 2008 Sage Publications
NewsPad: Designing for Collaborative Storytelling in Neighborhoods
This paper introduces design explorations in neighborhood collaborative
storytelling. We focus on blogs and citizen journalism, which have been
celebrated as a means to meet the reporting needs of small local communities.
These bloggers have limited capacity and social media feeds seldom have the
context or readability of news stories. We present NewsPad, a content editor
that helps communities create structured stories, collaborate in real time,
recruit contributors, and syndicate the editing process. We evaluate NewsPad in
four pilot deployments and find that the design elicits collaborative story
creation.Comment: NewsPad: designing for collaborative storytelling in neighborhoods.
In Proceedings of the extended abstracts of the 32nd annual ACM conference on
Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA 2014
Models for Light-Cone Meson Distribution Amplitudes
Leading-twist distribution amplitudes (DAs) of light mesons like pi,rho etc.
describe the leading nonperturbative hadronic contributions to exclusive QCD
reactions at large energy transfer, for instance electromagnetic form factors.
They also enter B decay amplitudes described in QCD factorisation, in
particular nonleptonic two-body decays. Being nonperturbative quantities, DAs
cannot be calculated from first principles, but have to be described by models.
Most models for DAs rely on a fixed order conformal expansion, which is
strictly valid for large factorisation scales, but not always sufficient in
phenomenological applications. We derive models for DAs that are valid to all
orders in the conformal expansion and characterised by a small number of
parameters which are related to experimental observables.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure
Psychological stress reactivity and future health and disease outcomes: A systematic review of prospective evidence
Background
Acute psychological stress activates the sympatho-adrenal medullary (SAM) system and hypothalamo-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis. The relevance of this stress reactivity to long-term health and disease outcomes is of great importance. We examined prospective studies in apparently healthy adults to test the hypothesis that the magnitude of the response to acute psychological stress in healthy adults is related to future health and disease outcomes.
Methods
We searched Medline Complete, PsycINFO, CINAHL Complete and Embase up to 15 Aug 2019. Included studies were peer-reviewed, English-language, prospective studies in apparently healthy adults. The exposure was acute psychological stress reactivity (SAM system or HPA axis) at baseline. The outcome was any health or disease outcome at follow-up after â„ 1 year.
Results
We identified 1,719 papers through database searching and 1 additional paper through other sources. Forty-seven papers met our criteria including 32,866 participants (range 30 â 4100) with 1- 23 years of follow-up. Overall, one third (32%; 83/263) of all reported findings were significant and two thirds (68%; 180/263) were null. With regard to the significant findings, both exaggerated (i.e. high) and blunted (i.e. low) stress reactivity of both the SAM system and the HPA axis at baseline were related to health and disease outcomes at follow-up. Exaggerated stress reactivity at baseline predicted an increase in risk factors for cardiovascular disease and decreased telomere length at follow-up. In contrast, blunted stress reactivity predicted future increased adiposity and obesity, more depression, anxiety and PTSD symptoms, greater illness frequency, musculoskeletal pain and regulatory T-Cell percentage, poorer cognitive ability, poorer self-reported health and physical disability and lower bone mass.
Conclusion
Exaggerated and blunted SAM system and HPA axis stress reactivity predicted distinct physical and mental health and disease outcomes over time. Results from prospective studies consistently indicate stress reactivity as a predictor for future health and disease outcomes. Dysregulation of stress reactivity may represent a mechanism by which psychological stress contributes to the development of future health and disease outcomes
The incidence and make up of ability grouped sets in the UK primary school
The adoption of setting in the primary school (pupils ability grouped across classes for particular subjects) emerged during the 1990s as a means to raise standards. Recent research based on 8875 children in the Millennium Cohort Study showed that 25.8% of children in Year 2 were set for literacy and mathematics and a further 11.2% of children were set for mathematics or literacy alone. Logistic regression analysis showed that the best predictors of being in the top set for literacy or mathematics were whether the child was born in the Autumn or Winter and cognitive ability scores. Boys were significantly more likely than girls to be in the bottom literacy set. Family circumstances held less importance for setting placement compared with the childâs own characteristics, although they were more important in relation to bottom set placement. Children in bottom sets were significantly more likely to be part of a long-term single parent household, have experienced poverty, and not to have a mother with qualifications at NVQ3 or higher levels. The findings are discussed in relation to earlier research and the implications for schools are set out
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Future prospects of baryon istability search in p-decay and n n(bar) oscillation experiments
These proceedings contain thirty-one papers which review both the theoretical and the experimental status and near future of baryon instability research. Baryon instability is investigated from the vantage point of supersymmetric and unified theories. The interplay between baryogenesis and antimatter is examined. Double beta decay experiments are discussed. The huge Icarus experiment is described with its proton decay capabilities. Neutron-antineutron oscillations investigations are presented, especially efforts with ultra-cold neutrons. Individual papers are indexed separately on the Energy Data Base
Evolution of Gluon Spin in the Nucleon
We examine the evolution of gluon polarization in polarized nucleons.
As is well known, the evolution of is negligible for
typical momentum transfer variations found in experimental deep inelastic
scattering. As increases, however, the leading nonzero term in the
evolution equation for the singlet first moment reduces the magnitude of the
gluon spin. At low the term can vanish, and
ultimately become negative. Thus, low energy model calculations yielding
negative are not necessarily in conflict with experimental evidence
for positive gluon polarization at high .Comment: ReVTeX + psfig, 7 pages, 3 figures (postscript), accepted in Physics
Letters B, ([email protected]
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