Citizens of Character - The Values and Character Dispositions of 14-16 Year Olds in the Hodge Hill Constituency

Citizens of Character explores the attitudes, dispositions, and values of 14-16 year old students in a particular urban environment - the six schools of the Hodge Hill constituency in Birmingham - and the extent to which the education system and the local environment advance or inhibit their sense of self, their values and their character development. These students constituted a heterogeneous group of religious and non-religious individuals. This project goes beyond the normal exploration and measurement of strengths of character in individuals and looks at the factors that build character in families and schools. This research has wider implications for the relationship between character and aspirations, social change, school cultures, citizenship, identity and religion. The study discusses what students understand by character. It set out to ascertain the moral values held by a group of students living in an inner-city area. The study sought to question who or what has influenced their moral values and examined which individuals, institutions and situations might have hindered or promoted their development. Some of the issues and concerns which arose - for example, relations with neighbours, the matter of local and national pride and questions of trust - may seem not to impinge upon character education as such but are relevant in a wider context

Graduates of Character - Values and Character: Higher Education and Graduate Employment

Graduates of Character is the product of an empirical enquiry into the values, virtues, dispositions and attitudes of a sample of students and employees who volunteered to be involved. The research team sought host sites which would offer a diverse set of interviewees in gender, ethnicity, religion and aspiration. In this study we discuss what character is taken to mean by students and employees in their years of higher education and employment. We examine what their values are, what they gain from the university, what they believe employers look for when recruiting, what they hope to give to an employer, and what they expect from their employer. We then explore who or what influenced their values and moral development. We also examined the role of the personal tutor or mentor, and the persons or services to which they might go for personal and/or professional support

Three-Dimensional Quantum Gravity Coupled to Gauge Fields

We show how to simulate U(1) gauge fields coupled to three-dimensional quantum gravity and then examine the phase diagram of this system. Quenched mean field theory suggests that a transition separates confined and deconfined phases (for the gauge matter) in both the negative curvature phase and the positive curvature phase of the quantum gravity, but numerical simulations find no evidence for such transitions.Comment: 16 page

Three Dimensional Quantum Gravity Coupled to Ising Matter

We establish the phase diagram of three--dimensional quantum gravity coupled to Ising matter. We find that in the negative curvature phase of the quantum gravity there is no disordered phase for ferromagnetic Ising matter because the coordination number of the sites diverges. In the positive curvature phase of the quantum gravity there is evidence for two spin phases with a first order transition between them.Comment: 12 page

A Diverse Mammal-Dominated, Footprint Assemblage from Wetland Deposits in the Lower Cretaceous of Maryland

A newly discovered assemblage of predominantly small tracks from the Cretaceous Patuxent Formation at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland, reveals one of the highest track densities and diversities ever reported (~70 tracks, representing at least eight morphotypes from an area of only ~2m(exp 2)). The assemblage is dominated by small mammal tracks including the new ichnotxon Sederipes goddardensis, indicating sitting postures. Small crow-sized theropod trackways, the first from this unit, indicate social trackmakers and suggest slow-paced foraging behavior. Tracks of pterosaurs, and other small vertebrates suggest activity on an organic-rich substrate. Large well-preserved sauropod and nodosaurs tracks indicate the presence of large dinosaurs. The Patuxent Formation together with the recently reported Angolan assemblage comprise the worlds two largest Mesozoic mammal footprint assemblages. The high density of footprint registration at the NASA site indicates special preservational and taphonomic conditions. These include early, penecontemporaneous deposition of siderite in organic rich, reducing wetland settings where even the flesh of body fossils can be mummified. Thus, the track-rich ironstone substrates of the Patuxent Formation, appear to preserve a unique vertebrate ichnofacies, with associated, exceptionally-preserved body fossil remains for which there are currently no other similar examples preserved in the fossil record

Phase Structure of Dynamical Triangulation Models in Three Dimensions

The dynamical triangulation model of three-dimensional quantum gravity is shown to have a line of transitions in an expanded phase diagram which includes a coupling mu to the order of the vertices. Monte Carlo renormalization group and finite size scaling techniques are used to locate and characterize this line. Our results indicate that for mu < mu1 ~ -1.0 the model is always in a crumpled phase independent of the value of the curvature coupling. For mu < 0 the results are in agreement with an approximate mean field treatment. We find evidence that this line corresponds to first order transitions extending to positive mu. However, the behavior appears to change for mu > mu2 ~ 2-4. The simplest scenario that is consistent with the data is the existence of a critical end point

Ising-link Quantum Gravity

We define a simplified version of Regge quantum gravity where the link lengths can take on only two possible values, both always compatible with the triangle inequalities. This is therefore equivalent to a model of Ising spins living on the links of a regular lattice with somewhat complicated, yet local interactions. The measure corresponds to the natural sum over all 2^links configurations, and numerical simulations can be efficiently implemented by means of look-up tables. In three dimensions we find a peak in the ``curvature susceptibility'' which grows with increasing system size. However, the value of the corresponding critical exponent as well as the behavior of the curvature at the transition differ from that found by Hamber and Williams for the Regge theory with continuously varying link lengths.Comment: 11 page

Measuring Unemployment and the Informal Sector: Some Conceptual and Statistical Problems

SUMMARY The problem of unutilized labour power has attracted the attention of economists because of its possible effects on (i) growth (ii) welfare and (iii) political stability. Statisticians, in their turn, have reflected each of these concerns in their attempts at measurement. Measurement of rural labour surplus, rural?urban income differentials, unemployment and underemployment and, more recently, surveys of the ‘informal sector’ have reflected concern with growth as an objective. The shift from the sterile debate about the size of the surplus to discussions about the rôle played by petty producers in the process of accumulation is welcome, but the object of statistical investigation in this case must be productive activities rather than people. Only if one is interested in welfare should the investigation centre initially on the household. In either case continuous and permanent monitoring by specialist groups is to be preferred to the usual mailed questionnaires. RESUME La mesure du chômage et du secteur traditionnel—Quelques problèmes conceptuels et statistiques L'attention des économistes a été attirée vers le problème de la sous?utilisation de la main?d'oeuvre en vue des répercussions que ce problème est susceptible d'avoir sur (i) la croissance, (ii) le bien?être, (iii) la stabilité politique. Que ces trois considérations ont également préoccupé à leur tour les statisticiens se manifeste dans la façon dont ils s'appliquent à mesurer ces répercussions. Bien qu'on puisse accueillir . avec joi l'abandon du débat stérile concernant les mesures de l'excédant, en faveur de l'examen du rôle des petits producteurs dans le processus d'accumulation il ne faut pas perdre de vue que cette réorientation exige que toute statistique vise sur des activités productives plutôt que sur les individus. L'adoption d'un système d'observation et surveillance, permanent et régulier, pris en charge par des groupes d'experts est préférable à la méthode habituelle de questionnaires envoyés par voies postales. RESUMEN La medición de la desocupación en el sector informal— Algunos problemas conceptuales y estadísticos El problema de la fuerza de trabajo no utilizada ha atraído la atención de los economistas por sus posibles efectos sobre (i) el crecimiento (ii) el bienestar y (iii) la estabilidad política. Los estadísticos, a su vez, han reflejado estas preocupaciones en sus intentos de medición. La medición del excedente de fuerza de trabajo rural, de las diferencias de ingreso rural?urbanas, de la ocupación y la desocupación, y más recientemente, los estudios sobre el 'sector informal' han reflejado la preocupación con el objetivo del crecimiento. El remplazo del estéril debate sobre el tamaño del excedente por las discusiones sobre el papel que juegan los pequeños productores en el proceso de acumulación debe ser aplaudido, pero el objeto de la investigación estadística en este caso deben ser las actividades productivas más que las personas. La investigación debe centrarse al comienzo en núcleos familiares sólo si uno está interesado en problemas de bienestar. En cualquier caso, debe preferirse la observación continua y permanente por medio de grupos especializados a los habituales cuestionarios por correo

Using Sequence Diagrams to Detect Communication Problems Between Systems

Many software systems are evolving complex system of systems (SoS) for which inter-system communication is both mission-critical and error-prone. Such communication problems ideally would be detected before deployment. In a NASA-supported Software Assurance Research Program (SARP) project, we are researching a new approach addressing such problems. In this paper, we show that problems in the communication between two systems can be detected by using sequence diagrams to model the planned communication and by comparing the planned sequence to the actual sequence. We identify different kinds of problems that can be addressed by modeling the planned sequence using different level of abstractions