Developing information skills and system thinking: a resource-based approach to electronic control systems

This paper describes a curriculum development project that addresses the following issue: is it possible to engage pupils in procedures for developing an electronic control system which mirror those of professional engineering? In particular, two key aspects of professional practice were felt to be of critical importance. Firstly, engineers spend a great deal of time evaluating the potential of devices using data sheets. A major part of the development was concerned with developing data sheets for the units of a commercially available electronics systems kit. Secondly the development sought to emphasise system thinking by encouraging pupils to systematically plan their overall system, investigate possible sub-systems, conduct practical investigations and, only then, explore the detailed components required. The paper describes the outcome of the extensive school trials and presents the published materials

Design and technology preperation and provision - a pilot survey

The paper describes some findings of the preparations made for design and technology and work during the Autumn term of 1990 in a random sample of 28 primary and 27 secondary schools in England and Wales. A preliminary account of part of this survey was presented as DATER 90. The survey reveals: wide variations in the amount of time spent in preparation by schools; a significant minority of primary schools who reported no joint preparation or planning; wide variations in the amount of time devoted to design and technology in both primary and secondary schools; very few primary schools making use of food within design and technology; an overwhelming preponderance of CDT specialist appointed as design and technology coordinators in secondary schools with very few home economists

Properties of Odd Gap Superconductors

A new class of superconductors with the gap function {\it odd} under time reversal is considered. Some of the physical properties of these superconductors such as the Meissner effect, composite condensate, gapless spectrum and transition from the {\it odd} gap superconductor to the BCS state at lower temperatures are discussed.Comment: 9 pages + 2 fig, LA-UR-93-299

Sine-Gordon Field Theory for the Kosterlitz-Thouless Transitions on Fluctuating Membranes

In the preceding paper, we derived Coulomb-gas and sine-Gordon Hamiltonians to describe the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition on a fluctuating surface. These Hamiltonians contain couplings to Gaussian curvature not found in a rigid flat surface. In this paper, we derive renormalization-group recursion relations for the sine-Gordon model using field-theoretic techniques developed to study flat space problems.Comment: REVTEX, 14 pages with 6 postscript figures compressed using uufiles. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Technology insight: virtual visits to industry using the Web

The paper describes the philosophy and structure of a new Web service for technology education that is being developed by the authors. The fundamental concept is that the site allows pupils and teachers to ‘visit’ industry and to learn how products are designed and made. Each ‘visit’ focuses on a particular product and tells its story through the people involved in its production. The ‘visit’ is complemented by ideas for follow-up activities in schools and hotlinks to other relevant resources on the Web

Restoration of particle number as a good quantum number in BCS theory

As shown in previous work, number projection can be carried out analytically for states defined in a quasi-particle scheme when the states are expressed in a coherent state representation. The wave functions of number-projected states are well-known in the theory of orthogonal polynomials as Schur functions. Moreover, the functions needed in pairing theory are a particularly simple class of Schur functions that are easily constructed by means of recursion relations. It is shown that complete sets of states can be projected from corresponding quasi-particle states and that such states retain many of the properties of the quasi-particle states from which they derive. It is also shown that number projection can be used to construct a complete set of orthogonal states classified by generalized seniority for any nucleus.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures, epsf.def style file for printing figure

Monopoles, noncommutative gauge theories in the BPS limit and some simple gauge groups

For three conspicuous gauge groups, namely, SU(2), SU(3) and SO(5), and at first order in the noncommutative parameter matrix h\theta^{\mu\nu}, we construct smooth monopole --and, some two-monopole-- fields that solve the noncommutative Yang-Mills-Higgs equations in the BPS limit and that are formal power series in h\theta^{\mu\nu}. We show that there exist noncommutative BPS (multi-)monopole field configurations that are formal power series in h\theta^{\mu\nu} if, and only if, two a priori free parameters of the Seiberg-Witten map take very specific values. These parameters, that are not associated to field redefinitions nor to gauge transformations, have thus values that give rise to sharp physical effects.Comment: 30 pages, no figure

Análise da aplicabilidade da Infraestrutura Nacional de Dados Espaciais (INDE) para dados vetoriais em escalas grandes

Este trabalho é parte de uma pesquisa sobre Infraestrutura de Dados Espaciais (IDE). Com o objetivo de evitar a duplicidade de ações e o desperdício de recursos na obtenção de dados geoespaciais, o Governo Brasileiro iniciou, em 2003, estudos sistemáticos com o objetivo de integrar e padronizar os dados espaciais produzidos por diferentes instituições federais. O Decreto 6.666, aprovado em 27 de novembro de 2008, estabeleceu a Infraestrutura Nacional de Dados Espaciais (INDE). A padronização da estrutura de dados espaciais e de metadados proposta pela INDE atende as escalas padrão de 1:25.000, 1:50.000, 1:100.000, 1:250.000 e 1:100.0000 da Cartografia Sistemática Brasileira. O mapeamento topográfico em escalas maiores que 1:25.000, no entanto, ainda carece de uma legislação em âmbito federal para sua normatização. A adoção das normas e padrões propostos pela INDE para projetos cartográficos em escalas grandes significa um avanço nesse sentido e atende à recomendação do Plano de Ação da INDE. Ao considerar a importância dos dados espaciais em escalas grandes para os diferentes setores da sociedade brasileira que utilizam informação espacial, o principal objetivo dessa pesquisa é analisar a aplicabilidade das normas e padrões de dados e de metadados propostos pela INDE, para o mapeamento topográfico em escalas grandes. A metodologia de trabalho adotada compreende o levantamento e a análise das feições mapeadas, a definição da relação destas feições com as categorias, classes, subclasses e atributos de objetos, de acordo com os padrões da INDE, a implementação da base de dados espaciais e a associação dos metadados, para uma área piloto na escala 1:2.000. Os dados utilizados no desenvolvimento deste trabalho referem-se a 123 cartas topográficas na escala 1:2.000. Com os resultados obtidos, verifica-se que as feições representadas em cartas de escalas grandes, como no caso desta pesquisa, podem ser estruturadas de acordo com o modelo de dados e o padrão de metadados propostos na INDE, o que confirma sua aplicabilidade para escalas grandes. Pelo maior grau de detalhamento, inerente à representação de feições na escala 1:2.000, novas classes, novos atributos e novos domínios de atributo foram criados

Spectral properties of the one-dimensional two-channel Kondo lattice model

We have studied the energy spectrum of a one-dimensional Kondo lattice, where the localized magnetic moments have SU(N) symmetry and two channels of conduction electrons are present. At half filling, the system is shown to exist in two phases: one dominated by RKKY-exchange interaction effects, and the other by Kondo screening. A quantum phase transition point separates these two regimes at temperature $T = 0$. The Kondo-dominated phase is shown to possess soft modes, with spectral gaps much smaller than the Kondo temperature.Comment: 4 pages + 2 figures. Submitted for publicatio

Coarse-Graining and Renormalization Group in the Einstein Universe

The Kadanoff-Wilson renormalization group approach for a scalar self-interacting field theor generally coupled with gravity is presented. An average potential that monitors the fluctuations of the blocked field in different scaling regimes is constructed in a nonflat background and explicitly computed within the loop-expansion approximation for an Einstein universe. The curvature turns out to be dominant in setting the crossover scale from a double-peak and a symmetric distribution of the block variables. The evolution of all the coupling constants generated by the blocking procedure is examined: the renormalized trajectories agree with the standard perturbative results for the relevant vertices near the ultraviolet fixed point, but new effective interactions between gravity and matter are present. The flow of the conformal coupling constant is therefore analyzed in the improved scheme and the infrared fixed point is reached for arbitrary values of the renormalized parameters.Comment: 18 pages, REVTex, two uuencoded figures. (to appear in Phys. Rev. D15, July) Transmission errors have been correcte