Public spending on education in the UK: prepared for the Education and Skills Select Committee

This note is based on analysis prepared by Alissa Goodman and Luke Sibieta of the Institute for Fiscal Studies at the request of the House of Commons Education and Skills Select Committee, for their inquiry into Public Expenditure on Education and Skills being carried out during June and July 2006. The note discusses some key issues that have arisen in education spending in the last year. We begin by examining the significance of the Chancellor's statements in Budget 2006 - both regarding school capital expenditure and the pledge to increase funding per pupil in the state sector to that currently seen in the private sector. We then move on to what the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2007 is likely to mean for education, given commitments in other areas of government spending. An Appendix contains some information about overall trends in public spending on education in the UK, and the international context

States of fermionic atoms in an optical superlattice across a Feshbach resonance

We investigate states of fermionic atoms across a broad Feshbach resonance in an optical superlattice which allows interaction only among a small number of lattice sites. The states are in general described by superpositions of atomic resonating valence bonds and dressed molecules. As one scans the magnetic field, level crossing is found between states with different symmetry properties, which may correspond to a quantum phase transition in the many-body case.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Test of Particle-Assisted Tunneling for Strongly Interacting Fermions in an Optical Superlattice

Fermions in an optical lattice near a wide Feshbach resonance are expected to be described by an effective Hamiltonian of the general Hubbard model with particle-assisted tunneling rates resulting from the strong atomic interaction [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 243202 (2005)]. Here, we propose a scheme to unambiguously test the predictions of this effective Hamiltonian through manipulation of ultracold atoms in an inhomogeneous optical superlattice. The structure of the low-energy Hilbert space as well as the particle assisted tunneling rates can be inferred from measurements of the time-of-flight images.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Digital filter suppresses effects of nonstatistical noise bursts on multichannel scaler digital averaging systems

Digital filter suppresses the effects of nonstatistical noise bursts on data averaged over multichannel scaler. Interposed between the sampled channels and the digital averaging system, it uses binary logic circuitry to compare the number of counts per channel with the average number of counts per channel

Scintillation Caustics in Planetary Occultation Light Curves

We revisit the GSC5249-01240 light curve obtained during its occultation by Saturn's North polar region. In addition to refractive scintillations, the power spectrum of intensity fluctuations shows an enhancement of power between refractive and diffractive regimes. We identify this excess power as due to high amplitude spikes in the light curve and suggest that these spikes are due to caustics associated with ray crossing situations. The flux variation in individual spikes follows the expected caustic behavior, including diffraction fringes which we have observed for the first time in a planetary occultation light curve. The presence of caustics in scintillation light curves require an inner scale cut off to the power spectrum of underlying density fluctuations associated with turbulence. Another possibility is the presence of gravity waves in the atmosphere. While occultation light curves previously showed the existence of refractive scintillations, a combination of small projected stellar size and a low relative velocity during the event have allowed us to identify caustics in this occultation. This has led us to re-examine previous data sets, in which we have also found likely examples of caustics.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; ApJL submitte

E-Choice option for Elsevier's Science/Direct

If there's one thing that seems to be as reliable as the rising sun, it's that each year brings a new ScienceDirect pricing scheme from Elsevier. This might be seen in the positive context of flexibility and a willingness to adapt and/or learn. With E-Choice Elsevier has formally adopted the perspective of those institutions for which quality trumps quantity