Writing the Island

The historians may call this a failed expedition. For the first time, we didn’t complete a circumnavigation of Isla Espiritu Santo, an accomplishment that usually entails 50 miles of epic paddling in sea kayaks so loaded with food, water, and gear that it takes eight students to lift one. But in March 2010 it was not to be; El Norte, the bully of the Sea of Cortez, had nearly blown us off the beach, and we’d had to remain on the lee side of the island, roaming the canyons and diving the reefs because we couldn’t safely kayak the windward swells. And yet, these students not only managed to learn a thing or two about Baja’s natural history, they managed to go about the business of learning in such a way that they became the tightest community of any class with which I’ve worked. The reflections below, taken from my field notes, are an attempt to figure out what went right, so very right, during an experience that had all the underpinnings of a pedagogical disaster

The Buzz about Sustainability

I wear sweater vests, I never split infinitives, I trim my beard close, and I read a poem at the beginning of every class. More to the point, as a member of the English faculty at a distinguished university, I distrust any word that had not been coined by the time my father—himself formerly a professor at a Jesuit university—completed his undergraduate studies. So what am I doing as the faculty director of a Residential Learning Community (RLC) organized around the theme of “sustainability”? In the past 18 months, the university that employs me hired its first sustainability coordinator, held its first Campus Sustainability Day, inaugurated a sustainability- across-the-curriculum program, has looked at ways in which sustainability might serve as a key theme for upper-division courses in the new Core Curriculum, and approved a Sustainable Living Research Project at the undergraduate level. Even this fine magazine has decided to dedicate this issue to the theme of sustainability

Capturing, classification and concept generation for automated maintenance tasks

Maintenance is an efficient and cost effective way to keep the function of the product available during the product lifecycle. Automating maintenance may drive down costs and improve performance time; however capturing the necessary information required to perform certain maintenance tasks and later building automated platforms to undertake them is very difficult. This paper looks at the creation of a novel methodology tasked with firstly the capture and classification of maintenance tasks and finally conceptual design of platforms for automating maintenance

A new algebraic structure in the standard model of particle physics

We introduce a new formulation of the real-spectral-triple formalism in non-commutative geometry (NCG): we explain its mathematical advantages and its success in capturing the structure of the standard model of particle physics. The idea, in brief, is to represent $A$ (the algebra of differential forms on some possibly-noncommutative space) on $H$ (the Hilbert space of spinors on that space), and to reinterpret this representation as a simple super-algebra $B=A\oplus H$ with even part $A$ and odd part $H$. $B$ is the fundamental object in our approach: we show that (nearly) all of the basic axioms and assumptions of the traditional real-spectral-triple formalism of NCG are elegantly recovered from the simple requirement that $B$ should be a differential graded $\ast$-algebra (or "$\ast$-DGA"). Moreover, this requirement also yields other, new, geometrical constraints. When we apply our formalism to the NCG traditionally used to describe the standard model of particle physics, we find that these new constraints are physically meaningful and phenomenologically correct. In particular, these new constraints provide a novel interpretation of electroweak symmetry breaking that is geometric rather than dynamical. This formalism is more restrictive than effective field theory, and so explains more about the observed structure of the standard model, and offers more guidance about physics beyond the standard model.Comment: 30 pages, no figures, matches JHEP versio

The business-social policy nexus: Corporate power and corporate inputs into social policy

It is increasingly impossible to understand and explain the shape and delivery of contemporary social policy unless we consider the role of business. Several factors have been at work here. First, many of the changes in social policy introduced since the 1970s have been in response either to business demands or more general concerns about national competitiveness and the needs of business. Second, globalisation has increased corporate power within states, leading to transformations in social and fiscal policies. Third, business has been incorporated into the management of many areas of the welfare state by governments keen to control expenditure and introduce private sector values into services. Fourth, welfare services, from hospitals to schools, have been increasingly opened up to private markets. Despite all this, the issues of business influence and involvement in social policy has been neglected in the literature. This article seeks to place corporate power and influence centre-stage by outlining and critically reflecting on the place of business within contemporary welfare states, with a particular focus on the UK. Business, it argues, is increasingly important to welfare outcomes and needs to be taken into account more fully within the social policy literature

A pilot study of problem gambling among student online gamblers: mood states as predictors of problematic behaviour

Within the last decade, interest in online gambling has increased. This pilot study examined online gambling among students to identify the extent to which student Internet gamblers manifest a propensity for problem gambling and to understand if mood states at various times are predictors of problem gambling. A questionnaire was administered to 127 student Internet gamblers. In addition to questions asking for basic demographic data, the questionnaire included the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS). Results showed that approximately one in five online gamblers (19%) was defined as a probable pathological gambler using the SOGS. Among this sample, results also showed that problem gambling was best predicted by negative mood states after gambling online and negative mood states more generally