The education revolution or devolution: the consequences of an iPad for every child

Schools in Australia and overseas are rapidly introducing and then replacing new forms of information technology as learning aids. There is a growing trend for this to include individual personalised devices which provide ‘24/7 access’ to the internet and effectively endless information, apps and virtual gadgetry. The drivers of these programs reflect the way we have come to think about our relationship with technology, nature and the purpose of education, generating a range of consequences that are incompatible with sustainable development. This paper aims to illustrate how we can reveal this largely unrecognised way of thinking that underpins how we relate with the world, and thereby harness opportunities for change

Exact Optics: A unification of optical telescope design

A perfect focus telescope is one in which all rays parallel to the axis meet at a point and give equal magnification there. It is shown that these two conditions define the shapes of both primary and secondary mirrors. Apart from scale, the solution depends upon two parameters, $s$, which gives the mirror separation in terms of the effective focal length, and $K$, which gives the relative position of the final focus in that unit. The two conditions ensure that the optical systems have neither spherical aberration nor coma, no matter how fast the $f$ ratio. All known coma--free systems emerge as approximate special cases. In his classical paper, K. Schwarzschild studied all two mirror systems whose profiles were conic sections. We make no such a priori shape conditions but demand a perfect focus and solve for the mirrors' shapes.Comment: 11 pages, LaTex ([alleqno,epsfig]{mn}), 7 Figures (eps), accepted by MNRA

Activation Analysis for Trace Elements in Biological Material

Abstract Not Provided

War on drugs is unwinnable, but locking up Mr Bigs is still worth it

First paragraph: Nine serious criminals weresentencedat the High Court in Glasgow, Scotland on January 22 for offences relating to the wholesale supply of cocaine. David Sell and the rest of the gang were reportedly handling up to a ton of the drug every year, with a final street value in the region of £150m to £160m. They received a total of 87 years in prison for their trouble. Yet years of academic evidencesuggestthat convicting such serious offenders will make no difference to the drugs market in the medium or long term. Those living in the most affected communities don’t need experts to tell them that: after 40 years of the “war on drugs”, the impact of such enforcement on supply has been negligible

A general model of the public goods dilemma

An individually costly act that benefits all group members is a public good. Natural selection favors individual contribution to public goods only when some benefit to the individual offsets the cost of contribution. Problems of sex ratio, parasite virulence, microbial metabolism, punishment of noncooperators, and nearly all aspects of sociality have been analyzed as public goods shaped by kin and group selection. Here, I develop two general aspects of the public goods problem that have received relatively little attention. First, variation in individual resources favors selfish individuals to vary their allocation to public goods. Those individuals better endowed contribute their excess resources to public benefit, whereas those individuals with fewer resources contribute less to the public good. Thus, purely selfish behavior causes individuals to stratify into upper classes that contribute greatly to public benefit and social cohesion and to lower classes that contribute little to the public good. Second, if group success absolutely requires production of the public good, then the pressure favoring production is relatively high. By contrast, if group success depends weakly on the public good, then the pressure favoring production is relatively weak. Stated in this way, it is obvious that the role of baseline success is important. However, discussions of public goods problems sometimes fail to emphasize this point sufficiently. The models here suggest simple tests for the roles of resource variation and baseline success. Given the widespread importance of public goods, better models and tests would greatly deepen our understanding of many processes in biology and sociality

The Blurry Line Between Mad and Bad : Is Lack-of-Control a Workable Standard for Sexually Violent Predators?

In January 1993, thirty-one-year-old Michael Crane entered a tanning salon in Johnson County, Kansas and exposed himself to the nineteen-year-old female attendant. Thirty minutes later, he entered a nearby video store and waited for all of the customers to leave. Once the store was empty, Crane exposed himself to the twenty-year-old female clerk, threatened to rape her, grabbed her by the back of the neck, and demanded that she perform oral sex on him. He then suddenly and abruptly stopped the attack and ran out ofthe store

How organised crime affects the most vulnerable communities

First paragraph: Despite the lurid coverage of organised crime in the UK, the public often appears relatively sanguine about it in studies, preferring police to focus on more everyday crime such as antisocial behaviour, burglary and property damage. Other surveys such as the Police Foundation’s recent study of the impact of organised crime on communities in England have attempted through creative (but speculative) analysis of local crime figures, to determine what proportion is down to organised crime. Our own study of communities in Scotland focuses more on the stories and experiences of local people in trying to understand how organised crime not only affects community life, but how it has come to “sell” and sustain itself in particular areas.https://theconversation.com/how-organised-crime-affects-the-most-vulnerable-communities-9826

Karst and World Heritage Status

Approximately 50 karst sites are now inscribed on the World Heritage Register, but many of these are inscribed on the basis of their non-karst values. Karst systems, of course, have a very wide range of values in themselves, including their remarkable biodiversity and their cultural significance, sometimes spanning many thousands of years. Today, the World Heritage Committee and UNESCO have asked that consideration be given to determining both a strategy for the nomination of new sites and a basis for priority setting in the selection of potential sites. This paper reviews current trends and emerging new patterns in World Heritage selection, assessment and management, then summarises the values of current karst WHAs in the European region