Toward an Agenda for Teacher Education in Christian Colleges and Universities

The first (United States of America) national symposium by major teacher educator organizations took place in December 1995. The Association of Teacher Educators, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, and the US Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement sponsored and conducted a National Congress on Teacher Education. Leading national figures in teacher education presented their views to the almost 500 delegates. Focus groups examined the views and reported to a conference coordinator. The coordinator, in turn, synthesized the concerns, ideas and recommendations into a daily log of issues. I list some of the salient points below. They do not reflect a consensus but, rather, a starting point for forging a national consensus on key issues

Theory of ferromagnetism and the ordering of electronic energy levels

Journal ArticleConsider a system of N electrons in one dimension subject to an arbitrary symmetric potential, V(xi,…,xN), and let E(S) be the lowest energy belonging to the total spin value S. We have proved the following theorem: E(S) <E(S') if S<S'. Hence, the ground state is unmagnetized

Ordering energy levels of interacting spin systems

Journal ArticleThe total spin S is a good quantum number in problems of interacting spins. We have shown that for rather general antiferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic Hamiltonians, which need not exhibit translational invariance, the lowest energy eigenvalue for each value of S [denoted E(S) ] is ordered in a natural way

Exact wave functions in superconductivity

Journal ArticleThe ground-state wave function and some of the excited states of the BCS reduced Hamiltonian are found. In the limit of large volume, the boundary and continuity conditions on the exact wave function lead directly to the equations which Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer found by a variational technique. It is also shown in what sense the BCS trial wave function may be considered asymptotically exact in this limit. Finite-volume corrections are included in an appendix, and explicit calculations are carried out for a one-step model of the kinetic energy which has possible applications to the problem of the finite nucleus

Theory of paramagnetic impurities in semiconductors

Journal ArticleIn this paper, a model of a paramagnetic impurity in a semiconductor (or of an F' center in an alkali halide) is proposed. It is an exactly soluble form of the quantum-mechanical 3-body problem. Specifically, we deal with 2 interacting particles in any number of dimensions in an attractive external potential, and present the qualitative features of the resulting eigenvalues and eigenfunctions

Moral Molecules and Love Drugs: Objectivity, Understanding, and Backtracking

A case study of the ways that research on genetic and neurochemical changes that affect the social and sexual behavior of voles gets framed in the media illustrates the tensions science communicators often face between the dual goals of promoting public understanding while maintaining their objectivity. As a response to this ethical challenge, we argue that communicators could improve existing practices by striving to enable “backtracking.

Exact solution of a many-fermion system and its associated boson field

Journal ArticleLuttinger's exactly soluble model of a one-dimensional many-fermion system is discussed. We show that he did not solve his model properly because of the paradoxical fact that the density operator commutators [p(p), p(-p')], which always vanish for any finite number of particles, no longer vanish in the field-theoretic limit of a filled Dirac sea. In fact the operators p(p) define a boson field which is ipso facto associated with the Fermi-Dirac field

Environmental Law for the 21st Century

In this issue, Professors Elliott and Esty expand on their original proposal and respond to critics.2 They apply their perspectives as practitioners, as well as academics, to develop their vision for environmental law in the 21st century. They establish three legal duties that should apply to entities that release potentially harmful materials into the environment. Professors Elliott and Esty contend that such entities have a duty (1) of research and disclosure to assure the public that any environmental releases are not harmful, (2) to minimize harm if they fail to demonstrate the releases are harmless, and (3) to compensate those at risk of environmental harm financially. They point out that employees have all three of these elements in the workplace, and argue that the public should be no less protected

Global Finance Meets Neorealism: Concepts and a Dataset (SWP 59)

How might one conceptualize the international political dimensions of money and finance? As the world moves from a post-Cold War “unipolar moment” toward the greater uncertainty associated with multipolarity – or bipolarity/multipolarity – the zero-sum aspects of economic resources may take on heightened significance in national calculations. The paper proposes five national financial characteristics that sovereign governments sometimes wield as power capabilities: the country’s (1) position as an international creditor, (2) home financial market attractiveness, (3) currency strength, (4) international debtor presence, and (5) leverage in global financial governance. A new dataset on the global monetary and financial powers of states (GMFPS), covering 180 countries and 27 indicators from 1995 to 2013, constructs indices for four state financial power concepts, and also provides an updated overall material capabilities index. After profiling the US, Britain, Germany, Japan, and China, we suggest a recurring, although not inevitable, financial life cycle of major powers. &nbsp

Distinct replay signatures for prospective decision-making and memory preservation

Theories of neural replay propose that it supports a range of functions, most prominently planning and memory consolidation. Here, we test the hypothesis that distinct signatures of replay in the same task are related to model-based decision-making (“planning”) and memory preservation. We designed a reward learning task wherein participants utilized structure knowledge for model-based evaluation, while at the same time had to maintain knowledge of two independent and randomly alternating task environments. Using magnetoencephalography and multivariate analysis, we first identified temporally compressed sequential reactivation, or replay, both prior to choice and following reward feedback. Before choice, prospective replay strength was enhanced for the current task-relevant environment when a model-based planning strategy was beneficial. Following reward receipt, and consistent with a memory preservation role, replay for the alternative distal task environment was enhanced as a function of decreasing recency of experience with that environment. Critically, these planning and memory preservation relationships were selective to pre-choice and post-feedback periods, respectively. Our results provide support for key theoretical proposals regarding the functional role of replay and demonstrate that the relative strength of planning and memory-related signals are modulated by ongoing computational and task demands