11,594 research outputs found
School violence, school differences and school discourses
This article highlights one strand of a study which investigated the concept of the violenceresilient school. In six inner-city secondary schools, data on violent incidents in school and violent crime in the neighbourhood were gathered, and compared with school practices to minimise violence, accessed through interviews. Some degree of association between the patterns of behaviour and school practices was found: schools with a wider range of wellconnected practices seemed to have less difficult behaviour. Interviews also showed that the different schools had different organisational discourses for construing school violence, its possible causes and the possible solutions. Differences in practices are best understood in connection with differences in these discourses. Some of the features of school discourses are outlined, including their range, their core metaphor and their silences. We suggest that organisational discourse is an important concept in explaining school effects and school differences, and that improvement attempts could have clearer regard to this concept
Energy Density-Flux Correlations in an Unusual Quantum State and in the Vacuum
In this paper we consider the question of the degree to which negative and
positive energy are intertwined. We examine in more detail a previously studied
quantum state of the massless minimally coupled scalar field, which we call a
``Helfer state''. This is a state in which the energy density can be made
arbitrarily negative over an arbitrarily large region of space, but only at one
instant in time. In the Helfer state, the negative energy density is
accompanied by rapidly time-varying energy fluxes. It is the latter feature
which allows the quantum inequalities, bounds which restrict the magnitude and
duration of negative energy, to hold for this class of states. An observer who
initially passes through the negative energy region will quickly encounter
fluxes of positive energy which subsequently enter the region. We examine in
detail the correlation between the energy density and flux in the Helfer state
in terms of their expectation values. We then study the correlation function
between energy density and flux in the Minkowski vacuum state, for a massless
minimally coupled scalar field in both two and four dimensions. In this latter
analysis we examine correlation functions rather than expectation values.
Remarkably, we see qualitatively similar behavior to that in the Helfer state.
More specifically, an initial negative energy vacuum fluctuation in some region
of space is correlated with a subsequent flux fluctuation of positive energy
into the region. We speculate that the mechanism which ensures that the quantum
inequalities hold in the Helfer state, as well as in other quantum states
associated with negative energy, is, at least in some sense, already
``encoded'' in the fluctuations of the vacuum.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures; published version with typos corrected and one
added referenc
Renormalization : A number theoretical model
We analyse the Dirichlet convolution ring of arithmetic number theoretic
functions. It turns out to fail to be a Hopf algebra on the diagonal, due to
the lack of complete multiplicativity of the product and coproduct. A related
Hopf algebra can be established, which however overcounts the diagonal. We
argue that the mechanism of renormalization in quantum field theory is modelled
after the same principle. Singularities hence arise as a (now continuously
indexed) overcounting on the diagonals. Renormalization is given by the map
from the auxiliary Hopf algebra to the weaker multiplicative structure, called
Hopf gebra, rescaling the diagonals.Comment: 15 pages, extended version of talks delivered at SLC55 Bertinoro,Sep
2005, and the Bob Delbourgo QFT Fest in Hobart, Dec 200
Ac transport studies in polymers by a resistor network and transfer matrix approaches: application to polyaniline
A statistical model of resistor network is proposed to describe a polymer
structure and to simulate the real and imaginary components of its ac
resistivity. It takes into account the polydispersiveness of the material as
well as intrachain and interchain charge transport processes. By the
application of a transfer matrix technique, it reproduces ac resistivity
measurements carried out with polyaniline films in different doping degrees and
at different temperatures. Our results indicate that interchain processes
govern the resistivity behavior in the low frequency region while, for higher
frequencies, intrachain mechanisms are dominant.Comment: LaTeX file, 15 pages, 5 ps figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Giant magnetoresistance in ferromagnet/organic semiconductor/ferromagnet heterojunctions
We report the spin injection and transport in ferromagnet/organic semiconductor/ferromagnet (FM/OSC/FM) heterojunctions using rubrene (C(42)H(28)) as an organic semiconductor spacer. For completeness of our study, both tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) and giant magnetoresistance (GMR) were studied by varying the thickness of the rubrene layer (5-30 nm). A thorough study of the device characteristics reveals spin-polarized carrier injection into and subsequent transport through the OSC layer. When the thickness of the rubrene layers are beyond the tunneling limit, the device currents are limited by carrier injection and bulk transport. The carrier injection is well described with phonon-assisted field emission. The behavior of GMR in response to bias field and temperature shows significant differences from that of TMR.open623
Homotopy types of stabilizers and orbits of Morse functions on surfaces
Let be a smooth compact surface, orientable or not, with boundary or
without it, either the real line or the circle , and
the group of diffeomorphisms of acting on by the rule
, where and .
Let be a Morse function and be the orbit of under this
action. We prove that for , and
except for few cases. In particular, is aspherical, provided so is .
Moreover, is an extension of a finitely generated free abelian
group with a (finite) subgroup of the group of automorphisms of the Reeb graph
of .
We also give a complete proof of the fact that the orbit is tame
Frechet submanifold of of finite codimension, and that the
projection is a principal locally trivial -fibration.Comment: 49 pages, 8 figures. This version includes the proof of the fact that
the orbits of a finite codimension of tame action of tame Lie group on tame
Frechet manifold is a tame Frechet manifold itsel
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