Cosmology with massive neutrinos coupled to dark energy

Cosmological consequences of a coupling between massive neutrinos and dark energy are investigated. In such models, the neutrino mass is a function of a scalar field, which plays the role of dark energy. The evolution of the background and cosmological perturbations are discussed. We find that mass-varying neutrinos can leave a significant imprint on the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and even lead to a reduction of power on large angular scales

Transforming practice, transforming practitioners:reflections on the TQFE in Scotland

This study offers reflections on the TQFE in Scotland as an example of the transformative professional learning model as identified by various authors. The focus of this study is the professional learning of lecturers in Scotland’s colleges. Informed by wider considerations of teacher education more broadly, it will be of particular interest to those supporting a transformative model of professional learning in a variety of educational contexts. The research was undertaken as a collaborative initiative between each of the three universities which offer the TQFE in Scotland. Qualitative data are drawn from former TQFE participants and college mentors, and thematic analysis used to gain further insight from participant interviews. Findings highlight the transformative nature of the TQFE with an impact that is beyond the currency of the TQFE programme duration. The provision of transformative professional learning opportunities is now imperative given various pressures and tensions around the development of educators more generally and within contemporary Scottish Further Education in particular. Such pressures and tensions include: the varied demands within the Professional Standards for Lecturers in Scotland’s Colleges, and the need for professional learning for college lecturers to go beyond a competency or tool-kit based approach and to be sustainable

Re-Focusing - Building a Future for Entrepreneurial Education & Learning

The field of entrepreneurship has struggled with fundamental questions concerning the subject’s nature and purpose. To whom and to what means are educational and training agendas ultimately directed? Such questions have become of central importance to policy makers, practitioners and academics alike. There are suggestions that university business schools should engage more critically with the lived experiences of practising entrepreneurs through alternative pedagogical approaches and methods, seeking to account for and highlighting the social, political and moral aspects of entrepreneurial practice. In the UK, where funding in higher education has become increasingly dependent on student fees, there are renewed pressures to educate students for entrepreneurial practice as opposed to educating them about the nature and effects of entrepreneurship. Government and EU policies are calling on business schools to develop and enhance entrepreneurial growth and skill sets, to make their education and training programmes more proactive in providing innovative educational practices which help and facilitate life experiences and experiential learning. This paper makes the case for critical frameworks to be applied so that complex social processes become a source of learning for educators and entrepreneurs and so that innovative pedagogical approaches can be developed in terms both of context (curriculum design) and process (delivery methods)

Supervision and Scholarly Writing: Writing to Learn - Learning to Write

This paper describes an action research project on postgraduate students’ scholarly writing in which I employed reflective approaches to examine and enhance my postgraduate supervisory practice. My reflections on three distinct cycles of supervision illustrate a shift in thinking about scholarly writing and an evolving understanding of how to support postgraduate students’ writing. These understandings provide the foundation for a future-oriented fourth cycle of supervisory practice, which is characterised by three principles, namely the empowerment of students as writers, the technological context of contemporary writing, and ethical issues in writing

Modelling Conformational Flexibility in a Spectrally Addressable Molecular Multi-Qubit Model System

Dipolar coupled multi-spin systems have the potential to be used as molecular qubits. Herein we report the synthesis of a molecular multi-qubit model system with three individually addressable, weakly interacting, spin (Formula presented.) centres of differing g-values. We use pulsed Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) techniques to characterise and separately address the individual electron spin qubits; CuII, Cr7Ni ring and a nitroxide, to determine the strength of the inter-qubit dipolar interaction. Orientation selective Relaxation-Induced Dipolar Modulation Enhancement (os-RIDME) detecting across the CuII spectrum revealed a strongly correlated CuII-Cr7Ni ring relationship; detecting on the nitroxide resonance measured both the nitroxide and CuII or nitroxide and Cr7Ni ring correlations, with switchability of the interaction based on differing relaxation dynamics, indicating a handle for implementing EPR-based quantum information processing (QIP) algorithms

Mass-Varying Neutrinos from a Variable Cosmological Constant

We consider, in a completely model-independent way, the transfer of energy between the components of the dark energy sector consisting of the cosmological constant (CC) and that of relic neutrinos. We show that such a cosmological setup may promote neutrinos to mass-varying particles, thus resembling a recently proposed scenario of Fardon, Nelson, and Weiner (FNW), but now without introducing any acceleronlike scalar fields. Although a formal similarity of the FNW scenario with the variable CC one can be easily established, one nevertheless finds different laws for neutrino mass variation in each scenario. We show that as long as the neutrino number density dilutes canonically, only a very slow variation of the neutrino mass is possible. For neutrino masses to vary significantly (as in the FNW scenario), a considerable deviation from the canonical dilution of the neutrino number density is also needed. We note that the present `coincidence' between the dark energy density and the neutrino energy density can be obtained in our scenario even for static neutrino masses.Comment: 8 pages, minor corrections, two references added, to apear in JCA

The vulnerability of public spaces: challenges for UK hospitals under the 'new' terrorist threat

This article considers the challenges for hospitals in the United Kingdom that arise from the threats of mass-casualty terrorism. Whilst much has been written about the role of health care as a rescuer in terrorist attacks and other mass-casualty crises, little has been written about health care as a victim within a mass-emergency setting. Yet, health care is a key component of any nation's contingency planning and an erosion of its capabilities would have a significant impact on the generation of a wider crisis following a mass-casualty event. This article seeks to highlight the nature of the challenges facing elements of UK health care, with a focus on hospitals both as essential contingency responders under the United Kingdom's civil contingencies legislation and as potential victims of terrorism. It seeks to explore the potential gaps that exist between the task demands facing hospitals and the vulnerabilities that exist within them

Learning is Like a Lava Lamp: The Student Journey to Critical Thinking

This paper explores the ways in which a university Foundation Degree programme supports undergraduate early years students to develop critical thinking, mindfulness and self-actualisation through their lived personal and professional experiences. It considers the impact of this on graduates employed within the Early Years sector. Findings inform future design of a University Foundation Degree programme situated within Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). As undergraduates, students engage in higher-level learning aligned to their practice within the workplace. An interpretive Participatory Qualitative Research methodology is used to gather the views of 6 alumni who completed their studies in 2014. They participated in the research freely within ethical parameters approved by a university ethics committee. Findings revealed that the development of critical thinking is empowered by having a personal or professional impetus, which in the case of Early Years is the child as being at the heart of values based practice. This, with the inclusion of mindfulness, drives students to a sustainable deeper layer of thinking to achieve self-actualisation. Through the acquisition of critical thinking students have been subsequently able to take up positions of authority within the early years workforce

The Adiabatic Instability on Cosmology's Dark Side

We consider theories with a nontrivial coupling between the matter and dark energy sectors. We describe a small scale instability that can occur in such models when the coupling is strong compared to gravity, generalizing and correcting earlier treatments. The instability is characterized by a negative sound speed squared of an effective coupled dark matter/dark energy fluid. Our results are general, and applicable to a wide class of coupled models and provide a powerful, redshift-dependent tool, complementary to other constraints, with which to rule many of them out. A detailed analysis and applications to a range of models are presented in a longer companion paper.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Cosmological models with interacting components and mass-varying neutrinos

A model for a homogeneous and isotropic spatially flat Universe, composed of baryons, radiation, neutrinos, dark matter and dark energy is analyzed. We infer that dark energy (considered to behave as a scalar field) interacts with dark matter (either by the Wetterich model, or by the Anderson and Carroll model) and with neutrinos by a model proposed by Brookfield et al.. The latter is understood to have a mass-varying behavior. We show that for a very-softly varying field, both interacting models for dark matter give the same results. The models reproduce the expected red-shift performances of the present behavior of the Universe.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Gravitation and Cosmolog