Raising motivation in secondary school students: can contextualising mathematical concepts in real world situations improve learning? A preliminary study

This study is a preliminary investigation into whether secondary school students can be motivated by the introduction of material into their maths curriculum which contains skills which are specifically needed for future life and work. The research takes place in a secondary school where motivation is very mixed. The students are divided into a target and a control group, giving one an adapted curriculum where skills for future life and work are specifically included while the other studies a more traditional academic curriculum. The groups study for three weeks and are then reversed so that the target becomes the control for the next topic. Both groups are given a common assessment task and an open-ended task for homework for each topic. The class is evaluated on: attendance, completion of the open-ended tasks, attitude to learning (questionnaires about the learning in the specific topics) and their topic assessment. Each student also completes an attitude questionnaire and is interviewed at the end of each topic. The teachers are also interviewed and the classes observed by an impartial observer on two occasions. The results indicate some evidence of improved performance in the class with the adapted curriculum in: attendance, assessment (number of questions attempted and number of correct answers), attitude to learning (only slight evidence), quality and independence of classwork and quality and quantity of homework. There was, however, no long-term benefit across the subject as a whole in terms of academic achievement. The students were able to identify the value of some of the maths skills for future life and work but the identifying of such skills did necessarily lead to better performance in these topics. There were no student groups which were specifically identified as being influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the change in curriculum

Pasts and pagan practices: moving beyond Stonehenge

Theorizing the past is not restricted to archaeology and interpretations of 'past' both influence and are themselves constituted within politicized understandings of self, community and in certain instances, spirituality. 'The past in the imagination of the present' is appropriated, variously, to give meaning to the present or to justify actions and interpret experiences. Summer solstice at Stonehenge, with an estimated 21,000 celebrants in 2005, is only the most publicized appropriation (by pagans and other adherents of alternative spirituality and partying) of a 'sacred site'; and conflicts and negotiations occurring throughout Britain are represented in popular and academic presentations of this 'icon of Britishness'. This paper presents work from the Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights Project (http://www.sacredsites.org.uk) project, a collaboration of archaeology and anthropology informed by pagan and alternative approaches and standpoints investigating and theorizing discourse and practice of heritage management and pagan site users. Whether in negotiations around the Stonehenge solstice access or in dealing with numerous other sites, boundaries between groups or discourses are not clearly drawn - discursive communities merge and re-emerge. But clearly 'past' and 'site' are increasingly important within today's Britain, even as television archaeology increases its following, and pagan numbers continue to grow.</p

The far-infrared/submillimeter properties of galaxies located behind the Bullet cluster

The Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) takes advantage of gravitational lensing by massive galaxy clusters to sample a population of high-redshift galaxies which are too faint to be detected above the confusion limit of current far-infrared/submillimeter telescopes. Measurements from 100–500 μm bracket the peaks of the far-infrared spectral energy distributions of these galaxies, characterizing their infrared luminosities and star formation rates. We introduce initial results from our science demonstration phase observations, directed toward the Bullet cluster (1E0657-56). By combining our observations with LABOCA 870 μm and AzTEC 1.1 mm data we fully constrain the spectral energy distributions of 19 MIPS 24 μm-selected galaxies which are located behind the cluster. We find that their colors are best fit using templates based on local galaxies with systematically lower infrared luminosities. This suggests that our sources are not like local ultra-luminous infrared galaxies in which vigorous star formation is contained in a compact highly dust-obscured region. Instead, they appear to be scaled up versions of lower luminosity local galaxies with star formation occurring on larger physical scales

Submillimeter galaxies behind the Bullet Cluster (1E 0657-56)

Clusters of galaxies are effective gravitational lenses able to magnify background galaxies and making it possible to probe the fainter part of the galaxy population. Submillimeter galaxies, which are believed to be star-forming galaxies at typical redshifts of 2 to 3, are a major contaminant to the extended Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) signal of galaxy clusters. For a proper quantification of the SZ signal the contribution of submillimeter galaxies needs to be quantified. The aims of this study are to identify submillimeter sources in the field of the Bullet Cluster (1E 0657-56), a massive cluster of galaxies at z~0.3, measure their flux densities at 870 micron, and search for counterparts at other wavelengths to constrain their properties. We carried out deep observations of the submillimeter continuum emission at 870 micron using the Large APEX BOlometer CAmera (LABOCA) on the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope. Several numerical techniques were used to quantify the noise properties of the data and extract sources. In total, seventeen sources were found. Thirteen of them lie in the central 10 arcminutes of the map, which has a pixel sensitivity of 1.2 mJy per 22 arcsec beam. After correction for flux boosting and gravitational lensing, the number counts are consistent with published submm measurements. Nine of the sources have infrared counterparts in Spitzer maps. The strongest submm detection coincides with a source previously reported at other wavelengths, at an estimated redshift z~2.7. If the submm flux arises from two images of a galaxy magnified by a total factor of 75, as models have suggested, its intrinsic flux would be around 0.6 mJy, consistent with an intrinsic luminosity below 10^12 L_sun.Comment: Accepted by A&A, 15 pages, 11 figure

δ-Sarcoglycan-deficient muscular dystrophy: from discovery to therapeutic approaches

Mutations in the δ-sarcoglycan gene cause limb-girdle muscular dystrophy 2F (LGMD2F), an autosomal recessive disease that causes progressive weakness and wasting of the proximal limb muscles and often has cardiac involvement. Here we review the clinical implications of LGMD2F and discuss the current understanding of the putative mechanisms underlying its pathogenesis. Preclinical research has benefited enormously from various animal models of δ-sarcoglycan deficiency, which have helped researchers to explore therapeutic approaches for both muscular dystrophy and cardiomyopathy

The Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS): Overview

The Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) will conduct deep PACS and SPIRE imaging of ∼40 massive clusters of galaxies. The strong gravitational lensing power of these clusters will enable us to penetrate through the confusion noise, which sets the ultimate limit on our ability to probe the Universe with Herschel. Here we present an overview of our survey and a summary of the major results from our science demonstration phase (SDP) observations of the Bullet cluster (z = 0.297). The SDP data are rich and allow us to study not only the background high-redshift galaxies (e.g., strongly lensed and distorted galaxies at z = 2.8 and 3.2) but also the properties of cluster-member galaxies. Our preliminary analysis shows a great diversity of far-infrared/submillimeter spectral energy distributions (SEDs), indicating that we have much to learn with Herschel about the properties of galaxy SEDs. We have also detected the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect increment with the SPIRE data. The success of this SDP program demonstrates the great potential of the Herschel Lensing Survey to produce exciting results in a variety of science areas