Linking Work Practice and Higher Education in Accounting: Two Papers and a Commentary

The purpose of this submission is to link and position two published refereed journal articles for the award of MA by Research. The aim of the commentary is to outline and reflect on some of the links between work practice and higher education, drawing on the candidate's experience as a professional auditor, university lecturer and designer of higher education courses. The two papers demonstrate how reflection on work practice has been used to create a single instructional case and later to devise a contemporary case study – a type now known as a 'living case' – in order to improve students' educational experience in the accountancy sub-field of auditing. The publications take professional practice experienced in the auditing professional workplace and, through the process of reflection and action learning, create new teaching strategies to make students' academic experience professionally meaningful and relevant. The two papers and commentary demonstrate the value of bringing together work practice and pedagogy, i.e. higher education practice. The value, hence contribution, of the submission is the provision of an original example and an understanding of bringing practice from the work place into education to make it professionally meaningful for students thus linking higher education and work practice

Getting Ready for New Governance Freedoms: A Survey of Further Education College Governance 2012

Further education corporations were formed by the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 and came into being as exempt charities on 1 April 1993. From 1 April 2012 the enactment of the Education Act 2011 provided the governing bodies of further education corporations with a range of structural and procedural choices beyond the prescribed rules and regulations that have been in force for the period 1993-2012. The purpose of this study was to gain an appreciation of the views of clerks to the corporation in anticipation of these new freedoms and to gauge very early responses to them. It aimed to identify potential areas where additional support in terms of training, development and consultancy may be required, for example to make sense of the new freedoms and in understanding the possible implications of any changes made. To this end an e-questionnaire was sent for completion by clerks to the corporation of 332 colleges in England and Wales. The survey was undertaken shortly before the changes came into force and at a time when some important governance material (such as the Financial Memorandum and Audit Code of Practice) had yet to be revised for the new governance operating context. 119 responses were received. This report presents a descriptive overview of those responses. It does not seek to make interpretive judgements, although inferences will be drawn where the data strongly supports it. There are contradictions and inconsistencies in some of the responses which may reflect the fact that only 8 Colleges consider themselves (as perceived by their clerk) ‘well prepared’ for the new governance freedoms. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that assistance in preparation for governance in the context of the new freedoms may be required. Responses indicate most governing bodies will not rush into making changes, although 44 colleges stated that they would wish to take advantage of the new freedoms to make changes to the Instrument and Articles of Government in the next 12 months

Proton radii of 4,6,8He isotopes from high-precision nucleon-nucleon interactions

Recently, precision laser spectroscopy on 6He atoms determined accurately the isotope shift between 4He and 6He and, consequently, the charge radius of 6He. A similar experiment for 8He is under way. We have performed large-scale ab initio calculations for 4,6,8He isotopes using high-precision nucleon-nucleon (NN) interactions within the no-core shell model (NCSM) approach. With the CD-Bonn 2000 NN potential we found point-proton root-mean-square (rms) radii of 4He and 6He 1.45(1) fm and 1.89(4), respectively, in agreement with experiment and predict the 8He point proton rms radius to be 1.88(6) fm. At the same time, our calculations show that the recently developed nonlocal INOY NN potential gives binding energies closer to experiment, but underestimates the charge radii.Comment: 5 pages, 9 figure

What is Causing This Man\u27s Rectal Pain and Urinary Retention?

Case: A 23-year-old man presented to an urgent care office with a 2-week history of rectal pain and scant rectal bleeding. In the few days leading up to his presentation, he also had a fever of 101° F (38.3° C), inguinal lymphadenopathy, and urinary retention

An explanation of the Newman-Janis Algorithm

After the original discovery of the Kerr metric, Newman and Janis showed that this solution could be ``derived'' by making an elementary complex transformation to the Schwarzschild solution. The same method was then used to obtain a new stationary axisymmetric solution to Einstein's field equations now known as the Kerr-newman metric, representing a rotating massive charged black hole. However no clear reason has ever been given as to why the Newman-Janis algorithm works, many physicist considering it to be an ad hoc procedure or ``fluke'' and not worthy of further investigation. Contrary to this belief this paper shows why the Newman-Janis algorithm is successful in obtaining the Kerr-Newman metric by removing some of the ambiguities present in the original derivation. Finally we show that the only perfect fluid generated by the Newman-Janis algorithm is the (vacuum) Kerr metric and that the only Petrov typed D solution to the Einstein-Maxwell equations is the Kerr-Newman metric.Comment: 14 pages, no figures, submitted to Class. Quantum Gra

IMPACTS OF MAPLE SYRUP GRADING LAWS ON THE MAPLE PRODUCING REGIONS OF UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Agricultural and Food Policy,

The Stellar Activity - Rotation Relationship

Using a new catalog of 824 solar and late-type stars with X-ray luminosities and rotation periods we have studied the relationship between rotation and stellar activity. From an unbiased subset of this sample the power law slope of the unsaturated regime, $L_X/L_{bol}\propto Ro^\beta$, is fit as $\beta=-2.70\pm0.13$. This is inconsistent with the canonical $\beta=-2$ slope to a confidence of 5$\sigma$ and argues for an interface-type dynamo. Super-saturation is observed for the fastest rotators in our sample and its parametric dependencies are explored. Significant correlations are found with both the corotation radius and the excess polar updraft, the latter theory being supported by other observations. We also present a new X-ray population synthesis model of the mature stellar component of our Galaxy and use it to reproduce deep observations of a high Galactic latitude field. The model, XStar, can be used to test models of stellar spin-down and dynamo decay, as well as for estimating stellar X-ray contamination rates for non-stellar studies.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. To appear in the proceedings of Cool Stars 17: 17th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun, AN 334, 1-2, Eds Klaus Strassmeier and Mercedes Lopez-Morale

Verification of universal relations in a strongly interacting Fermi gas

Many-body fermion systems are important in many branches of physics, including condensed matter, nuclear, and now cold atom physics. In many cases, the interactions between fermions can be approximated by a contact interaction. A recent theoretical advance in the study of these systems is the derivation of a number of exact universal relations that are predicted to be valid for all interaction strengths, temperatures, and spin compositions. These equations, referred to as the Tan relations, relate a microscopic quantity, namely, the amplitude of the high-momentum tail of the fermion momentum distribution, to the thermodynamics of the many-body system. In this work, we provide experimental verification of the Tan relations in a strongly interacting gas of fermionic atoms. Specifically, we measure the fermion momentum distribution using two different techniques, as well as the rf excitation spectrum and determine the effect of interactions on these microscopic probes. We then measure the potential energy and release energy of the trapped gas and test the predicted universal relations.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure