US Centre 2018 Student Essay competition runner up: 'what does 2018 mean for John Golomb in America?'

Christopher Dann discusses the compelling case of John Golomb, a sixty-seven year old ex-steel worker from the steel town of Monessen, Pennsylvania. As a representative case of many working-class, disenfranchised voters in the Rust Belt, he highlights how Trump's current policies on protectionism, healthcare and tax cuts have affected 'Golombish' voters - life-long working-class Democrats turned one-off Republicans. He examines whether Trump can maintain his policy promises to these voters in 2018 in reviving their industries, and how this may impact their future voting proclivities in the next presidential election

Enhancing learning and assessment of pre-service teachers on practicum placements using mobile technologies with video capture

Across all educational jurisdictions, each year, large numbers of pre-service teachers are assessed for their suitability for teaching during their teacher education courses, in schools and institutions through practicum placements or workplace learning. Despite their widespread use, practicums can be notoriously variable and unreliable in terms of assessment (Rorrison, 2008) and in promoting professional learning (Grudnoff, 2011). The study reported through the publications explicit or referred to in this exegesis focused on the development of a mobile application (‘app’) to address the problems of assessment and professional growth. It was a specific response to the emerging use of mobile devices that utilise video capture, and their impact on assessing students in the practicum component of their training. It drew on existing knowledge of higher education assessments and teacher training assessments, including formative assessments and feedback, linked to the introduction of mobile devices with video capture capabilities. This study examined how mobile technologies, such as smartphones and tablet devices with multimedia capabilities, could address some of the problems faced by pre-service teacher students, their school-based supervisors and the university academics who manage the practicum assessment. The overarching research question of the study was: To what extent can disciplined and structured use of mobile technologies for practicums impact on pedagogy and assessment of professional experiences of pre-service teachers? The study employed a Participatory Action Learning Action Research (PALAR) methodology to address the extent to which disciplined and structured use of mobile technologies impacted on practicum feedback of professional learning experiences of pre-service teachers. The study entailed six participatory research cycles over a four-year period, each consisting of four main phases: planning, acting and observing, reflecting and replanning. A mixed methods approach was used within the observation phases of each cycle. Because of the cyclical features of action research, the study lent itself to publishing findings throughout the project, rather than a single thesis at conclusion. Thus, reports of the research following one or more cycles were published, and this document therefore, is an exegesis of the major papers that were published over the timeframe of the study. The exegesis seeks to unify the publications and provide common themes emerging from the research project. The findings from the several cycles showed that the introduction of mobile technologies had a major impact on the practices and outcomes of pre-service teachers’ practicum experiences. The inclusion of mobile devices with video capture positively impacted on the reflective practices of pre-service teachers as well as formative assessment and feedback for pre-service teachers by providing the opportunity for more detailed, ongoing analysis of pre-service teachers’ performances while on practicum. Findings from the school-based supervising teachers also confirmed the suitability of the ‘app’ for enhancing the practicum experience and its assessment. Further research is required to demonstrate the impact of the application on enhancing learning through the medium of curriculum standards in the school environment. In addition, there is a need to explore more broadly applied mobile feedback systems in the context of practicum assessments

Penal populism and Duterte's war on drugs

The project aims to look at President Duterte’s "war on drugs" in the Philippines to see if drugs, as a voter issue, has impacted his approval and trust ratings. We further visually map the "war on drugs" to see where drug-related homicides have increased and clustered since Duterte’s inauguration

The accountability gap: deliberation on monetary policy in Britain and America during the financial crisis

We employ multiple methods to gauge empirically the quality of the deliberative process whereby central bankers are held to account for their policy decisions. We use quantitative text analysis on the monetary policy legislative oversight hearing transcripts in the UK and US during the financial crisis. We find that the UK performs significantly better than the US in holding the central bank head to account on monetary policy, namely by engaging in a reciprocal dialogue between the legislative committee and the central banker. We then manually code selected exchanges from these transcripts, according to four criteria of deliberation: partisanship, accountability, narrative and response quality. We find that British MPs invoke almost no partisan rhetoric and target their questions more to relevant aspects of monetary policy; by comparison, their American counterparts seek to appeal more to their constituents and tend to veer away from discussing the details of monetary policy

David Douglas School District Enrollment Forecasts 2014-15 to 2033-34

This report presents the results of a demographic study conducted by the Portland State University Population Research Center (PRC) for the David Douglas School District (DDSD). The study includes analysis of population, housing and enrollment trends affecting the District in recent years, estimates of the impacts of housing development on DDSD enrollment, and forecasts of district‐wide and individual school enrollments for the 2014‐15 to 2033‐34 school years

The Human Kernel

Bayesian nonparametric models, such as Gaussian processes, provide a compelling framework for automatic statistical modelling: these models have a high degree of flexibility, and automatically calibrated complexity. However, automating human expertise remains elusive; for example, Gaussian processes with standard kernels struggle on function extrapolation problems that are trivial for human learners. In this paper, we create function extrapolation problems and acquire human responses, and then design a kernel learning framework to reverse engineer the inductive biases of human learners across a set of behavioral experiments. We use the learned kernels to gain psychological insights and to extrapolate in human-like ways that go beyond traditional stationary and polynomial kernels. Finally, we investigate Occam's razor in human and Gaussian process based function learning.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) 2015. Version 2: Figure 2 (i)-(n) now displays the second set of progressive function learning experiment

Arbeitsmarktpolitik: Vermittlungsgutscheine auf dem Prüfstand

Der Vermittlungsgutschein (VGS) sollte den Wettbewerb zwischen privaten und öffentlichen Arbeitsvermittlern fördern. Bis Dezember 2004 wurden 1,403 Mio VGS ausgegeben und 102.580 Beschäftigungsverhältnisse damit begründet. Die VGS-Vermittelten unterscheiden sich in ihrer Struktur nicht wesentlich von arbeitslosen Personen, die selbst eine Beschäftigung gefunden haben. Etwa 11.500 private Vermittler haben bis Mitte 2004 VGS eingelöst. Über zwei Drittel gehören zu den 'Gelegenheitsvermittlern', die bislang den Gutschein für maximal drei Vermittlungen genutzt haben. Auf 190 'Großvermittler' entfiel fast jede vierte Vermittlung. Die Mehrheit der VGS-Vermittelten würde die privaten Arbeitsvermittler auch bei erneuter Arbeitslosigkeit wieder einschalten. Die VGS-Bezieher erreichen eine höhere Beschäftigungsquote als die Kontrollgruppe. Der geschätzte positive Effekt des VGS auf der Individualebene reduziert sich aber durch Substitutionseffekte auf gesamtwirtschaftlicher Ebene. Nach Kosten/Nutzen-Kriterien ist zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt noch offen, ob sich der Einsatz der VGS auf Dauer rechnet. Darauf werden die weiteren Untersuchungen Antwort geben

Au - Ge Alloys for Wide-Range Low-Temperature On-Chip Thermometry

We present results for a Au - Ge alloy that is useful as a resistance-based thermometer from room temperature down to at least 0.2 K. Over a wide range, the electrical resistivity of the alloy shows a logarithmic temperature dependence, which simultaneously retains the sensitivity required for practical thermometry while also maintaining a relatively modest and easily measurable value of resistivity. We characterize the sensitivity of the alloy as a possible thermometer and show that it compares favorably with commercially available temperature sensors. We experimentally identify that the characteristic logarithmic temperature dependence of the alloy stems from Kondo-like behavior induced by the specific heat treatment it undergoes.J.R.A.D., P.C.V., G.J.C., and V.N. acknowledge funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, United Kingdom. G.J.C. and S.E.R. acknowledge funding from the Royal Society, United Kingdom. J.F.O. thanks the Brazilian Agency CNPq. A.D. and S.K-N. acknowledge financial support through a European Research Council Starting Grant (Grant No. ERC-2014- STG-639526, NANOGEN)

Heatwave attribution based on reliable operational weather forecasts

The 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave was so extreme as to challenge conventional statistical and climate-model-based approaches to extreme weather attribution. However, state-of-the-art operational weather prediction systems are demonstrably able to simulate the detailed physics of the heatwave. Here, we leverage these systems to show that human influence on the climate made this event at least 8 [2–50] times more likely. At the current rate of global warming, the likelihood of such an event is doubling every 20 [10–50] years. Given the multi-decade lower-bound return-time implied by the length of the historical record, this rate of change in likelihood is highly relevant for decision makers. Further, forecast-based attribution can synthesise the conditional event-specific storyline and unconditional event-class probabilistic approaches to attribution. If developed as a routine service in forecasting centres, it could provide reliable estimates of human influence on extreme weather risk, which is critical to supporting effective adaptation planning