545 research outputs found
Does the Supreme Court Follow the Economic Returns? A Response to A Macrotheory of the Court
Today, there is a widespread idea that parents need to learn how to carry out their roles as parents. Practices of parental learning operate throughout society. This article deals with one particular practice of parental learning, namely nanny TV, and the way in which ideal parents are constructed through such programmes. The point of departure is SOS family, a series broadcast on Swedish television in 2008. Proceeding from the theorising of governmentality developed in the wake of the work of Michel Foucault, we analyse the parental ideals conveyed in the series, as an example of the way parents are constituted as subjects in the ‘advanced liberal society’ of today. The ideal parent is a subject who, guided by the coach, is constantly endeavouring to achieve a makeover. The objective of this endeavour, however, is self-control, whereby the parents will in the end become their own coaches.
The galactic magnetic field in the quasar 3C216
Multifrequency polarimetric observations made with the Very Long Baseline
Array of the quasar 3C216 reveal the presence of Faraday rotation measures
(RMs) in excess of 2000 rad/m**2 in the source rest frame, in the arc of
emission located at ~ 140 mas from the core. Rotation measures in the range
-300 - +300 rad/m**2 are detected in the inner 5 mas (~30 parsecs). while the
rotation measures near the core can be explained as due to a magnetic field in
the narrow line region, we favor the interpretation for the high RM in the arc
as due to a ``local'' Faraday screen, produced in a shock where the jet is
deflected by the interstellar medium of the host galaxy. Our results indicate
that a galacit magnetic field of the order of 50 microGauss on a scale greater
than 100 pc must be present in the galactic medium.Comment: 23 pages, 3 tables, 11 figures. To appear on The Astronomical
Journal, November 1999 Issu
A Generalization of the Convex Kakeya Problem
Given a set of line segments in the plane, not necessarily finite, what is a
convex region of smallest area that contains a translate of each input segment?
This question can be seen as a generalization of Kakeya's problem of finding a
convex region of smallest area such that a needle can be rotated through 360
degrees within this region. We show that there is always an optimal region that
is a triangle, and we give an optimal \Theta(n log n)-time algorithm to compute
such a triangle for a given set of n segments. We also show that, if the goal
is to minimize the perimeter of the region instead of its area, then placing
the segments with their midpoint at the origin and taking their convex hull
results in an optimal solution. Finally, we show that for any compact convex
figure G, the smallest enclosing disk of G is a smallest-perimeter region
containing a translate of every rotated copy of G.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure
Achieving Good Angular Resolution in 3D Arc Diagrams
We study a three-dimensional analogue to the well-known graph visualization
approach known as arc diagrams. We provide several algorithms that achieve good
angular resolution for 3D arc diagrams, even for cases when the arcs must
project to a given 2D straight-line drawing of the input graph. Our methods
make use of various graph coloring algorithms, including an algorithm for a new
coloring problem, which we call localized edge coloring.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; to appear at the 21st International Symposium on
Graph Drawing (GD 2013
The use of citations in educational research: the instance of the concept of 'situated learning'
The paper provides a citation analysis of Lave and Wenger's work on communities of practice' and 'situated learning' over the period 1991-2001. The data relates to educational research in the UK, although comparisons are made with the USA. The findings indicate that although the text was incorporated and heavily used within educational research over the priod of the study there were very few citations that could be identified as cumulative. The discussion looks at whether this could be another instance of the failure of educational research and explores the role of theory in professional educatio
Optimal Packings of Superballs
Dense hard-particle packings are intimately related to the structure of
low-temperature phases of matter and are useful models of heterogeneous
materials and granular media. Most studies of the densest packings in three
dimensions have considered spherical shapes, and it is only more recently that
nonspherical shapes (e.g., ellipsoids) have been investigated. Superballs
(whose shapes are defined by |x1|^2p + |x2|^2p + |x3|^2p <= 1) provide a
versatile family of convex particles (p >= 0.5) with both cubic- and
octahedral-like shapes as well as concave particles (0 < p < 0.5) with
octahedral-like shapes. In this paper, we provide analytical constructions for
the densest known superball packings for all convex and concave cases. The
candidate maximally dense packings are certain families of Bravais lattice
packings. The maximal packing density as a function of p is nonanalytic at the
sphere-point (p = 1) and increases dramatically as p moves away from unity. The
packing characteristics determined by the broken rotational symmetry of
superballs are similar to but richer than their two-dimensional "superdisk"
counterparts, and are distinctly different from that of ellipsoid packings. Our
candidate optimal superball packings provide a starting point to quantify the
equilibrium phase behavior of superball systems, which should deepen our
understanding of the statistical thermodynamics of nonspherical-particle
systems.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figure
Clinical importance of circulating immune complexes in human acute lymphoblastic leukemia
A total of 122 sera from acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) patients were analyzed for circulating immune complexes (CIC) by two methods: the 125I-C1q binding assay and the polyethylene glycol precipitation test (PEG). The results were correlated with induction, remission and relapse stages of the disease. Using the first method the levels of CIC in induction were 15.18±9.15, with 19/29 positive cases (65.50%), P<0.001 compared with controls. In the remission phase the levels were 9.02±5.62, 11/45 (24.49%) nonsignificant P value, and in relapse they were 16.14±11.17 28/48 (58.33%) P<0.001. The PEG precipitation test results were: 0.33±0.10, 8/22 (36.36%); 0.24±0.11, 10/48 (20.83%) and 0.28±0.10, 6/28 (21.42%), respectively. Thus the values of CIC as measured by PEG in the three clinical of phases ALL did not differ significantly from controls. This contrasts with results obtained by the radioiodinated C1q binding assay, where the incidence of positive values was significantly higher in induction and in relapse and lower in the remission phase. These observations were extended in sequential vertical studies performed in a group of patients. These results suggest that raised CIC detected by the 125I-C1q method may reflect a progressive state in ALL and that quantitation of these immune complexes may provide an adequate biochemical marker for prognosis.Facultad de Ciencias Médica
Basic Understanding of Condensed Phases of Matter via Packing Models
Packing problems have been a source of fascination for millenia and their
study has produced a rich literature that spans numerous disciplines.
Investigations of hard-particle packing models have provided basic insights
into the structure and bulk properties of condensed phases of matter, including
low-temperature states (e.g., molecular and colloidal liquids, crystals and
glasses), multiphase heterogeneous media, granular media, and biological
systems. The densest packings are of great interest in pure mathematics,
including discrete geometry and number theory. This perspective reviews
pertinent theoretical and computational literature concerning the equilibrium,
metastable and nonequilibrium packings of hard-particle packings in various
Euclidean space dimensions. In the case of jammed packings, emphasis will be
placed on the "geometric-structure" approach, which provides a powerful and
unified means to quantitatively characterize individual packings via jamming
categories and "order" maps. It incorporates extremal jammed states, including
the densest packings, maximally random jammed states, and lowest-density jammed
structures. Packings of identical spheres, spheres with a size distribution,
and nonspherical particles are also surveyed. We close this review by
identifying challenges and open questions for future research.Comment: 33 pages, 20 figures, Invited "Perspective" submitted to the Journal
of Chemical Physics. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1008.298
- …