Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche and the founding of the British Geological Survey

The founding of the Geological Survey by Henry De la Beche in 1835 is a key event in the history of British geology. Yet the Survey’s initiation actually began three years earlier when De la Beche secured financial assistance from the Board of Ordnance to map the geology of Devon at a scale of one inch to the mile. The British Geological Survey has thus been in existence for at least 175 years and can justly claim to be the world’s oldest continuously functioning geological survey organisation. There were early government-funded geological surveys also in France, the United States, Ireland and Scotland. De la Beche’s notable success both in launching and sustaining the Geological Survey demanded a good deal of diplomacy, determination and deviousness! Even so, the Survey was nearly brought to an untimely end in 1837 when De la Beche was publicly criticised for his interpretation, based on lithology and field relations, of the difficult Culm strata of north Devon. The resolution of the ‘Devonian Controversy’ led to a fundamental change in geological practice, in which the value of fossils as stratigraphic markers, founded on an acceptance of organic change over time, was established beyond question. Fortunately the Survey survived its early trauma and De la Beche went on to extend his influence with the expansion of the Museum of Economic Geology (also formed in 1835), and the establishment of the Mining Record Office and the School of Mines

Knowledge management and communities of practice in the private sector: lessons for modernising the National Health Service in England and Wales

The National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales has embarked upon a radical and farreaching programme of change and reform. However, to date the results of organizational quality and service improvement initiatives in the public sector have been mixed, if not to say disappointing, with anticipated gains often failing to materialize or to be sustained in the longer term. This paper draws on the authors' recent extensive research into one of the principal methodologies for bringing about the sought after step change in the quality of health care in England and Wales. It explores how private sector knowledge management (KM) concepts and practices might contribute to the further development of public sector quality improvement initiatives in general and to the reform of the NHS in particular. Our analysis suggests there have been a number of problems and challenges in practice, not least a considerable naïvety around the issue of knowledge transfer and 'knowledge into practice' within health care organizations. We suggest four broad areas for possible development which also have important implications for other public sector organizations

On Tits' Centre Conjecture for Fixed Point Subcomplexes

We give a short and uniform proof of a special case of Tits' Centre Conjecture using a theorem of J-P. Serre and a result from our earlier work. We consider fixed point subcomplexes $X^H$ of the building $X = X(G)$ of a connected reductive algebraic group $G$, where $H$ is a subgroup of $G$.Comment: 4 pages; minor changes, to appear in C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris Ser. I Mat

Towards a million change agents. A review of the social movements literature: implications for large scale change in the NHS.

This review explores 'social movements' as a new way of thinking about large-scale systems change and assesses the potential contribution of applying this new perspective to NHS improvement

The next phase of healthcare improvement: what can we learn from social movements?

To date, improvement in health care has relied mainly on a "top down" programme by programme approach to service change and development. This has spawned a multitude of different and often impressive improvement schemes and activities. We question whether what has been happening will be sufficient to achieve the desired scale of change within the time scales set. Is it a case of "more of the same" or are there new and different approaches that might now be usefully implemented? Evidence from the social sciences suggests that other perspectives may help to recast large scale organisational change efforts in a new light and offer a different, though complementary, approach to improvement thinking and practice. Particularly prominent is the recognition that such large scale change in organisations relies not only on the "external drivers" but on the ability to connect with and mobilise people?s own "internal" energies and drivers for change, thus creating a "bottom up" locally led "grass roots" movement for improvement and change

The hierarchical formation of a stellar cluster

Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual stars has remained elusive. Here, we use a numerical simulation to follow the fragmentation of a turbulent molecular cloud and the subsequent formation and early evolution of a stellar cluster containing more than 400 stars. We show that the stellar cluster forms through the hierarchical fragmentation of a turbulent molecular cloud. This leads to the formation of many small subclusters which interact and merge to form the final stellar cluster. The hierarchical nature of the cluster formation has serious implications in terms of the properties of the new-born stars. The higher number-density of stars in subclusters, compared to a more uniform distribution arising from a monolithic formation, results in closer and more frequent dynamical interactions. Such close interactions can truncate circumstellar discs, harden existing binaries, and potentially liberate a population of planets. We estimate that at least one-third of all stars, and most massive stars, suffer such disruptive interactions.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version including hi-res colour postscript figure available at http://star-www.st-and.ac.uk/~sgv/ps/clufhier.ps.g

Class Sizes: The Elephant under the Carpet of ICT Integration

This paper discusses findings from a recent longitudinal study that examined how 35 beginning teachers used information and communications technologies (ICT) in the first 3 years of their teaching. The research, set in Western Australia, adopted a mixed method approach to help understand the role that ICT played in the evolving pedagogical identities of the teachers involved. The study found that beginning teachers articulated pedagogical beliefs that aimed to engage their students in active meaning making. It also found that these teachers were competent in the use of a basic suite of ICT software. However, pedagogical beliefs that resonated with contemporary learning theory and demonstrated ICT competence did not result in practices that synergized technological and pedagogical knowledge. It is proposed that embedded systemic processes, beyond the control of teachers and schools, have a role in creating this state of affairs. This paper draws upon the experiences of three beginning teachers, from early childhood, primary and secondary education, exploring how large class sizes can often be antagonistic to the creative use of ICT

Complete Reducibility and Commuting Subgroups

Let G be a reductive linear algebraic group over an algebraically closed field of characteristic p. We study J.-P. Serre's notion of G-complete reducibility for subgroups of G. In particular, for a subgroup H and a normal subgroup N of H, we look at the relationship between G-complete reducibility of N and of H, and show that these properties are equivalent if H/N is linearly reductive, generalizing a result of Serre. We also study the case when H = MN with M a G-completely reducible subgroup of G which normalizes N. We show that if G is connected, N and M are connected commuting G-completely reducible subgroups of G, and p is good for G, then H = MN is also G-completely reducible.Comment: 21 pages; to appear in J. Reine Angew. Math. final for

The Role of ICT in the Pedagogical Transformation of Primary Teachers: Dream, Aspiration, Reality

This paper discusses findings from a recent longitudinal study that examined how 35 beginning teachers used information and communications technologies (ICT) in the first 3 years of their teaching. The research, set in Australia, adopted a mixed method approach to help understand the role that ICT played in the evolving pedagogical identities of the teachers involved. The study found that beginning teachers articulated pedagogical beliefs that aimed to engage their students in active meaning making. It also found that these teachers were competent in the use of a basic suite of ICT software. However, pedagogical beliefs that resonate with contemporary learning theory and demonstrated ICT competence did not necessarily guarantee practices that synergize technological and pedagogical knowledge. The relationships between teachers’ beliefs and their technological and pedagogical knowledge are discussed within the context of three different school settings. Bate, F. G. (2010). The role of ICT in the pedagogical transformation of primary teachers: Dream, aspiration, reality. In Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2010 (pp. 2301-2306). Chesapeake, VA: AACE