More Discriminants with the Brezing-Weng Method

The Brezing-Weng method is a general framework to generate families of pairing-friendly elliptic curves. Here, we introduce an improvement which can be used to generate more curves with larger discriminants. Apart from the number of curves this yields, it provides an easy way to avoid endomorphism rings with small class number

Ethics education in initial teacher education: pre-service provision in England

Ethics education exists in most professions internationally, yet is less prevalent in teacher education. This article reports on research exploring how ethics education is provided in university courses of initial teacher education (ITE) in England that was conducted as the second phase of an international survey study which considered the prevalence of ethics education in teacher education in five countries. Participants from the initial survey, all involved in the delivery of ITE programmes in English universities, were interviewed for this second phase of the research. Our key findings are that ethics is not offered as a stand-alone course in any institution, but is embedded in various ways within the curriculum. Ethics education is diffused among different areas of the curriculum and the activities used to develop ethical understanding are diverse. Barriers to providing ethical education include student resistance, lack of time, the complex nature of the provision and external demands

Wigs, disguises and child's play : solidarity in teacher education

It is generally acknowledged that much contemporary education takes place within a dominant audit culture, in which accountability becomes a powerful driver of educational practices. In this culture both pupils and teachers risk being configured as a means to an assessment and target-driven end: pupils are schooled within a particular paradigm of education. The article discusses some ethical issues raised by such schooling, particularly the tensions arising for teachers, and by implication, teacher educators who prepare and support teachers for work in situations where vocational aims and beliefs may be in in conflict with instrumentalist aims. The article offers De Certeau’s concept of ‘la perruque’ to suggest an opening to playful engagement for human ends in education, as a way of contending with and managing the tensions generated. I use the concept to recover a concept of solidarity for teacher educators and teachers to enable ethical teaching in difficult times

Cross Section Measurements Using the Zero Degree Detector

The Zero Degree Detector (ZDD) is an instrument that has been used in accelerator exposures to measure the angular dependence of particles produced in heavy ion fragmentation experiments. The ZDD uses two identical layers of pixelated silicon detectors that make coincident measurements over the active area of the instrument. The angular distribution of secondary particle produced in nuclear interactions for several heavy ions: and target materials will be presented along with performance characteristic of the instrument

Raised circulating fetuin-a after 28-day overfeeding in healthy humans

Abstract not availableDorit Samocha-Bonet, Charmaine S. Tam, Lesley V. Campbell and Leonie Kaye Heilbron

Fragmentation of 14-N, 16-O, 20-Ne, and 24-Mg Nuclei at 290 to 1000 MeV/nucleon

We report fragmentation cross sections measured at 0 deg for beams of 14-N, 16-O, 20-Ne, and 24-Mg ions, at energies ranging from 290 MeV/nucleon to 1000 MeV/nucleon. Beams were incident on targets of C, CH2, Al, Cu, Sn, and Pb, with the C and CH2 target data used to obtain hydrogen-target cross sections. Using methods established in earlier work, cross sections obtained with both large-acceptance and small-acceptance detectors are extracted from the data and when necessary corrected for acceptance effects. The large-acceptance data yield cross sections for fragments with charges approximately half of the beam charge and above, with minimal corrections. Cross sections for lighter fragments are obtained from small-acceptance spectra, with more significant, model-dependent corrections that account for the fragment angular distributions. Results for both charge-changing and fragment production cross sections are compared to the predictions of the Los Alamos version of the Quark Gluon String Model (LAQGSM) as well as the NUCFRG2 and PHITS models. For all beams and targets, cross sections for fragments as light as He are compared to the models. Estimates of multiplicity-weighted helium production cross sections are obtained from the data and compared to PHITS and LAQGSM predictions. Summary statistics show that the level of agreement between data and predictions is slightly better for PHITS than for either NUCFRG2 or LAQGSM.Comment: 26 pages, 15 figures, 13 tables, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Evidence of a metabolic memory to early-life dietary restriction in male C57BL/6 mice

<p>Background: Dietary restriction (DR) extends lifespan and induces beneficial metabolic effects in many animals. What is far less clear is whether animals retain a metabolic memory to previous DR exposure, that is, can early-life DR preserve beneficial metabolic effects later in life even after the resumption of ad libitum (AL) feeding. We examined a range of metabolic parameters (body mass, body composition (lean and fat mass), glucose tolerance, fed blood glucose, fasting plasma insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), insulin sensitivity) in male C57BL/6 mice dietary switched from DR to AL (DR-AL) at 11 months of age (mid life). The converse switch (AL-DR) was also undertaken at this time. We then compared metabolic parameters of the switched mice to one another and to age-matched mice maintained exclusively on an AL or DR diet from early life (3 months of age) at 1 month, 6 months or 10 months post switch.</p> <p>Results: Male mice dietary switched from AL-DR in mid life adopted the metabolic phenotype of mice exposed to DR from early life, so by the 10-month timepoint the AL-DR mice overlapped significantly with the DR mice in terms of their metabolic phenotype. Those animals switched from DR-AL in mid life showed clear evidence of a glycemic memory, with significantly improved glucose tolerance relative to mice maintained exclusively on AL feeding from early life. This difference in glucose tolerance was still apparent 10 months after the dietary switch, despite body mass, fasting insulin levels and insulin sensitivity all being similar to AL mice at this time.</p> <p>Conclusions: Male C57BL/6 mice retain a long-term glycemic memory of early-life DR, in that glucose tolerance is enhanced in mice switched from DR-AL in mid life, relative to AL mice, even 10 months following the dietary switch. These data therefore indicate that the phenotypic benefits of DR are not completely dissipated following a return to AL feeding. The challenge now is to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying these effects, the time course of these effects and whether similar interventions can confer comparable benefits in humans.</p&gt