Revisiting critical literacy in the digital age

In an age of environmental crisis, financial instability, widespread migration, and political extremism, the case for critical literacy is pressing. Navigating criticality in the digital age, however, is challenging, not least because digital media, digital devices, and digital architectures are implicated in broader social, cultural, commercial, and political activity. Critical literacy in this context needs to do more than focus on the significance of texts within networks of humans. The authors developed a model designed to support a relational approach to critical literacy, drawing on a sociomaterial perspective to consider how broader social‐material networks help generate meanings that may amplify, undermine, or contradict the activities of individuals and groups. The authors end with questions that provide a starting point for broadening the scope of critical literacy in education to reflect on relationships among people, texts, and materials across time and spaces

Recollapse of the closed Tolman spacetimes

The closed-universe recollapse conjecture is studied for the spherically symmetric spacetimes. It is proven that there exists an upper bound to the lengths of timelike curves in any Tolman spacetime that possesses $S^3$ Cauchy surfaces and whose energy density is positive. Furthermore, an explicit bound is constructed from the initial data for such a spacetime.Comment: 25 pages, REVTeX, NCSU-MP-930

In Search of the Solar Wind Nitrogen Isotope Composition: Analysis of a Gold Plate from the Genesis Spacecraft Concentrator

We report N isotope analysis of a gold plate from the Genesis spacecraft concentrator. We did not find evidence for a light N component in the solar wind

Temporal coherence, anomalous moments, and pairing correlations in the classical-field description of a degenerate Bose gas

The coherence properties of degenerate Bose gases have usually been expressed in terms of spatial correlation functions, neglecting the rich information encoded in their temporal behavior. In this paper we show, using a Hamiltonian classical-field formalism, that temporal correlations can be used to characterize familiar properties of a finite-temperature degenerate Bose gas. The temporal coherence of a Bose-Einstein condensate is limited only by the slow diffusion of its phase, and thus the presence of a condensate is indicated by a sharp feature in the temporal power spectrum of the field. We show that the condensate mode can be obtained by averaging the field for a short time in an appropriate phase-rotating frame, and that for a wide range of temperatures, the condensate obtained in this approach agrees well with that defined by the Penrose-Onsager criterion based on one-body (spatial) correlations. For time periods long compared to the phase diffusion time, the field will average to zero, as we would expect from the overall U(1) symmetry of the Hamiltonian. We identify the emergence of the first moment on short time scales with the concept of U(1) symmetry breaking that is central to traditional mean-field theories of Bose condensation. We demonstrate that the short-time averaging procedure constitutes a general analog of the 'anomalous' averaging operation of symmetry-broken theories by calculating the anomalous thermal density of the field, which we find to have form and temperature dependence consistent with the results of mean-field theories.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. v3: Final version. Typos fixed, and other minor change

Case management and Think First completion

“The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Probation Journal, Vol 53 Issue 3, 2006, Copyright The Trade Union and Professional Association for Family Court and Probation Staff, by SAGE Publications Ltd at: http://prb.sagepub.com/ " DOI: 10.1177/0264550506066771This article considers the findings of a small-scale study of the practice of case managers supervising offenders required to attend the Think First Group. It explores the interface between one-to-one and group-based work within multi-modal programmes of supervision and seeks to identify those practices that support individuals in completing a group.Peer reviewe

Initiation and final failure via environmentally assisted cracking in high strength aluminium

Environmentally assisted cracking (EAC) is particularly important to understand and control in high strength aluminium used in engineering applications as moist air provides a suitable environment to assist cracking in these materials. Propagation of EAC has been widely investigated but initiation has been difficult to follow due to it’s stochastic nature. We show that time-lapse 3D imaging using X-ray computed tomography offers a way to survey large surface areas whilst maintaining site specific high resolution information giving new insights into this process. In addition the final failure of these materials occurs when the environmentally assisted cracks of intergranular or transgranular type grow to a critical length from the initiation sites. We show through mechanical testing assessment and high resolution fractography that the rapid fracture that follows is also assisted by the environment leading to reduced ductility during the final failure. Examples from AA5083-H131 and AA7085-T7651 are shown which appear to show the same general behaviour. Round dog bone specimens prepared in the Short Transverse direction were subjected to slow strain rate testing (SSRT) at different strain rates and in different environments. Samples were also pre-exposed to different environments to introduce small corrosion sites to act as ‘realistic’ stress raisers in the specimens