A Freshman Takes Charge: Judge John J. Parker of the United States Court of Appeals, 1925-1930

Syftet med denna studie har varit tvådelat. För det första var syftet att beskriva och förstå sex gymnasielärares uppfattningar om störande beteende hos elever i den gymnasiala klassrumsmiljön. För det andra handlade det om att beskriva och förstå gymnasielärarnas åtgärder och korrigeringar gentemot störande beteende. Studien har genomförts med en kvalitativ ansats där semistrukturerade intervjuer har tillämpats som metod för inhämtande av data. Resultatet visar att gymnasielärarna som deltog i studien uppfattar störande elevbeteenden som något som förskjuter fokus från det som är avsett att göras. Elevbeteenden uppfattas störande först när de påverkar andra elever alternativt läraren själv. Då beteendet påverkar andra elever uppfattas det störande från en lärare med elevperspektiv. När beteendet påverkar läraren uppfattas det störande ur ett lärarperspektiv. Resultatet visar även att det finns ett samband mellan mest störande och mest förekommande störande beteenden. I denna studie uppfattar de deltagande lärarna Otillåtet prat samt Otillåten mobiltelefon-/datoranvändning som mest störande och mest förekommande störande elevbeteenden. Åtgärder och korrigeringar av störande elevbeteenden förekommer på tre olika nivåer: Organisations-, Grupp- och Individnivå. Exempel på åtgärder och korrigeringar som gymnasielärarna använder sig av är Ordningsregler, Elevavtal, Relationer, Tillsägelser, Samtal samt Avvisning. En slutsats som kan dras är att Relationer är en faktor som flera av lärarna betonar som den viktigaste delen för att förebygga störande elevbeteenden. Lärarna menar att goda Relationer på lång sikt ger en bättre effekt vid korrigeringar av störande elevbeteende. En annan slutsats är att Otillåten mobiltelefon-/datoranvändning är ett störande elevbeteende som i tidigare forskning inte har uppmärksammats, en ny kunskap inom området

Luminosities of High-Redshift Objects in an Accelerating Universe

The results from the Supernova Cosmology Project indicate a relation between cosmic distance and redshift that corresponds to an accelerating Universe, and, as a consequence, the presence of an energy component with negative pressure. This necessitates a re-evaluation of such astrophysical luminosities that have been derived through conventional redshift analyses of, e.g., gamma-ray bursts and quasars. We have calculated corrected luminosity distances within two scenarios; the standard one with a non-zero cosmological constant, and the more recently proposed ``quintessence'', with a slowly evolving energy-density component. We find luminosity corrections from +30 to -40 per cent for redshifts with $z=0 - 10$. This finding implicates that the SCP data do not, by themselves, require a revision of the current, rather qualitative modeling of gamma-ray bursts and quasar properties.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 2 postscript figures, submitted to PR

Investigations of the microbial diversity and dynamics in activated sludge using molecular methods

<p>Wastewater treatment is necessary to reduce the health risks and environmental impacts associated with discharge of untreated wastewater. The most common way to treat wastewater in wastewater treatment plants is through the activated sludge process. Although the main principle of the process has been the same since its usage began 100 years ago, there has been a continuous development and modern wastewater treatment plants can be designed to remove not only organic material but also nitrogen and phosphorus by exploiting the properties of different microorganisms. However, as the demands on the wastewater treatment plants are increasing, either by lowered accepted effluent concentrations of nutrients or by increased volumes of wastewater, there is a need for further development of the processes. For this development to be possible, an increased understanding of the factors governing the composition and dynamics of the microbial communities in the wastewater treatment plants, is regarded as fundamental.</p> <p>The research presented in this thesis focused on the investigation of the diversity and dynamics of the microbial community in the activated sludge of a large wastewater treatment plant. Novel tools and methods for the analysis of data from a DNA-fingerprinting method, terminal restriction fragment polymorphism analysis, were developed and used for longitudinal studies of Bacteria and Archaea in the activated sludge. The archaeal community was determined to be less diverse, present in lower numbers and more static than the bacterial community. Methanogens, likely entering the sludge with the recycled water from an anaerobic bioreactor, dominated the archaeal community. The most abundant bacterial classes were the Alphaproteobacteria and Betaproteobacteria, which are both commonly found in varying proportions in wastewater treatment plants. However, which of these two phyla that was the most abundant, was found to be highly dependent on the method used to describe the diversity. Seasonal variations in the bacterial community composition were observed and could be explained by the seasonal variations in temperature. A major operational change, by-passing of the primary settlers due to maintenance work, also coincided with changes in community composition. Thus, both operational parameters, such as treatment plant design, and environmental parameters which cannot be controlled, such as temperature, appear to be shaping the bacterial community in the activated sludge. Changes in both the archaeal and bacterial community composition coincided with observed changes in activated sludge floc properties. However, further studies are required to determine if these observations were due to causal relationships.</p

What active labor market policy works in a recession?

This paper discusses the case for expanding active labor market policy in recession. We find that there is reasonable case for relying more heavily on certain kinds of programs. The argument is tied to the varying size of the lock-in effect in boom and recession. If programs with relatively large lock-in effects should ever be used, they should be used in a downturn. The reason is simply that the cost of forgoing search time is lower in recession. We also provide new evidence on the relative effectiveness of different kinds of programs over the business cycle. In particular we compare an on-the-job training scheme with (traditional) labor market training. We find that labor market training is relatively more effective in recession. This result is consistent with our priors since labor market training features relative large lock-in effects.Active labor market policy; business cycle; unemployment

What active labor market policy works in a recession?

This paper discusses the case for expanding active labor market policy in recession. We find that there is reasonable case for relying more heavily on certain kinds of programs. The argument is tied to the varying size of the lock-in effect in boom and recession. If programs with relatively large lock-in effects should ever be used, they should be used in a downturn. The reason is simply that the cost of forgoing search time is lower in recession. We also provide new evidence on the relative effectiveness of different kinds of programs over the business cycle. In particular we compare an on-the-job training scheme with (traditional) labor market training. We find that labor market training is relatively more effective in recession. This result is consistent with our priors since labor market training features relative large lock-in effects.Active labor market policy; business cycle; unemployment

Preon Trinity - a new model of leptons and quarks

A new model for the substructure of quarks, leptons and weak gauge bosons is discussed. It is based on three fundamental and absolutely stable spin-1/2 preons. Its preon flavour SU(3) symmetry leads to a prediction of nine quarks, nine leptons and nine heavy vector bosons. One of the quarks has charge $-4e/3$, and is speculated to be the top quark (whose charge has not been measured). The flavour symmetry leads to three conserved lepton numbers in all known weak processes, except for some neutrinos, which might either oscillate or decay. There is also a (Cabibbo) mixing of the $d$ and $s$ quarks due to an internal preon-antipreon annihilation channel. An identical channel exists inside the composite $Z^0$, leading to a relation between the Cabibbo and Weinberg mixing angles.Comment: 12 pages Latex, no figures; to be published in the Proceedings of Beyond 99, Tegernsee, Germany, June 199

Діалектичні суперечності як рушійні сили процесу навчання правознавства в школі

(uk) У статті проведено аналіз діалектичних суперечностей, які виникають у процесі навчання праву, здійснено їхню класифікацію, визначено методично-дидактичні умови перетворення суперечностей на рушійні сили даного процесу.(ru) В статье проведен анализ диалектических противоречий, которые возникают в процесу обучения праву, разработана их классификация, определены методическо-дидактические условия, при соблюдении которых противоречия можуть стать двигателем даного процеса

Practical Robust Two-View Translation Estimation

Outliers pose a problem in all real structure from motion systems. Due to the use of automatic matching methods one has to expect that a (sometimes very large) portion of the detected correspondences can be incorrect. In this paper we propose a method that estimates the relative translation between two cameras and simultaneously maximizes the number of inlier correspondences. Traditionally, outlier removal tasks have been addressed using RANSAC approaches. However, these are random in nature and offer no guarantees of finding a good solution. If the amount of mismatches is large, the approach becomes costly because of the need to evaluate a large number of random samples. In contrast, our approach is based on the branch and bound methodology which guarantees that an optimal solution will be found. While most optimal methods trade speed for optimality, the proposed algorithm has competitive running times on problem sizes well beyond what is common in practice. Experiments on both real and synthetic data show that the method outperforms state-of-the-art alternatives, including RANSAC, in terms of solution quality. In addition, the approach is shown to be faster than RANSAC in settings with a large amount of outliers

Discontinuities handled with events in Assimulo

Often integrating ordinary differential equations or differential algebraic equations (DAE) do not constitute the problem alone. A common complement is finding the root of an algebraic function (an event function) that depends on the states of the problem. This formulation of a model enables the possibility of including discontinuities, an important part of the Functional Mock-up Interface standard which allows hybrid models of differential algebraic equations. The problem of root-finding during integration is however difficult. Both in a theoretical aspect and as a software problem. An implementation of software for root-finding is done in Assimulo, a Python/Cython wrapper for integrators. The implementation takes the Functional Mock-up Interface standard into consideration. The implementation is made usable for a wide variety of integration algorithms and is also verified and benchmarked with advanced industrial models, showing good indications of being robust and scaling well for large systems

The Choice of PCR Primers Has Great Impact on Assessments of Bacterial Community Diversity and Dynamics in a Wastewater Treatment Plant

Assessments of bacterial community diversity and dynamics are fundamental for the understanding of microbial ecology as well as biotechnological applications. We show that the choice of PCR primers has great impact on the results of analyses of diversity and dynamics using gene libraries and DNA fingerprinting. Two universal primer pairs targeting the 16S rRNA gene, 27F&1492R and 63F&M1387R, were compared and evaluated by analyzing the bacterial community in the activated sludge of a large-scale wastewater treatment plant. The two primer pairs targeted distinct parts of the bacterial community, none encompassing the other, both with similar richness. Had only one primer pair been used, very different conclusions had been drawn regarding dominant phylogenetic and putative functional groups. With 27F&1492R, Betaproteobacteria would have been determined to be the dominating taxa while 63F&M1387R would have described Alphaproteobacteria as the most common taxa. Microscopy and fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis showed that both Alphaproteobacteria and Betaproteobacteria were abundant in the activated sludge, confirming that the two primer pairs target two different fractions of the bacterial community. Furthermore, terminal restriction fragment polymorphism analyses of a series of four activated sludge samples showed that the two primer pairs would have resulted in different conclusions about community stability and the factors contributing to changes in community composition. In conclusion, different PCR primer pairs, although considered universal, target different ranges of bacteria and will thus show the diversity and dynamics of different fractions of the bacterial community in the analyzed sample. We also show that while a database search can serve as an indicator of how universal a primer pair is, an experimental assessment is necessary to evaluate the suitability for a specific environmental sample