1,112 research outputs found
Targeting Mr Average: Participation, gender equity and school sport partnerships
The School Sport Partnership Programme (SSPP) is one strand of the national strategy for physical education and school sport in England, the physical education and school sport Club Links Strategy (PESSCL). The SSPP aims to make links between school physical education (PE) and out of school sports participation, and has a particular remit to raise the participation levels of several identified under-represented groups, of which girls and young women are one. National evaluations of the SSPP show that it is beginning to have positive impacts on young people's activity levels by increasing the range and provision of extra curricular activities (Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), 2003, 2004, 2005; Loughborough Partnership, 2005, 2006). This paper contributes to the developing picture of the phased implementation of the programme by providing qualitative insights into the work of one school sport partnership with a particular focus on gender equity. The paper explores the ways in which gender equity issues have been explicitly addressed within the 'official texts' of the SSPP; how these have shifted over time and how teachers are responding to and making sense of these in their daily practice. Using participation observation, interview and questionnaire data, the paper explores how the coordinators are addressing the challenge of increasing the participation of girls and young women. The paper draws on Walby's (2000) conceptualisation of different kinds of feminist praxis to highlight the limitations of the coordinators' work. Two key themes from the data and their implications are addressed: the dominance of competitive sport practices and the PE professionals' views of targeting as a strategy for increasing the participation of under-represented groups. The paper concludes that coordinators work within an equality or difference discourse with little evidence of the transformative praxis needed for the programme to be truly inclusive. © 2008 Taylor & Francis
A recurrent neural network with ever changing synapses
A recurrent neural network with noisy input is studied analytically, on the
basis of a Discrete Time Master Equation. The latter is derived from a
biologically realizable learning rule for the weights of the connections. In a
numerical study it is found that the fixed points of the dynamics of the net
are time dependent, implying that the representation in the brain of a fixed
piece of information (e.g., a word to be recognized) is not fixed in time.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, 4 figure
Three Able Addresses Delivered Before the State Board of Trade at Bangor, Maine, March 25, 1902
The text of three addresses: Maine canning industry / B.M. Fernald -- Maine as a vacation state / Leroy T. Carleton -- Maine primitive and modern industry / J.W. Penney
Stochastic learning in a neural network with adapting synapses
We consider a neural network with adapting synapses whose dynamics can be
analitically computed. The model is made of neurons and each of them is
connected to input neurons chosen at random in the network. The synapses
are -states variables which evolve in time according to Stochastic Learning
rules; a parallel stochastic dynamics is assumed for neurons. Since the network
maintains the same dynamics whether it is engaged in computation or in learning
new memories, a very low probability of synaptic transitions is assumed. In the
limit with large and finite, the correlations of neurons and
synapses can be neglected and the dynamics can be analitically calculated by
flow equations for the macroscopic parameters of the system.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX fil
The challenges of intersectionality: Researching difference in physical education
Researching the intersection of class, race, gender, sexuality and disability raises many issues for educational research. Indeed, Maynard (2002, 33) has recently argued that ‘difference is one of the most significant, yet unresolved, issues for feminist and social thinking at the beginning of the twentieth century’. This paper reviews some of the key imperatives of working with ‘intersectional theory’ and explores the extent to these debates are informing research around difference in education and Physical Education (PE). The first part of the paper highlights some key issues in theorising and researching intersectionality before moving on to consider how difference has been addressed within PE. The paper then considers three ongoing challenges of intersectionality – bodies and embodiment, politics and practice and empirical research. The paper argues for a continued focus on the specific context of PE within education for its contribution to these questions
Targeting Policy for Obesity Prevention: Identifying the Critical Age for Weight Gain in Women
The obesity epidemic requires the development of prevention policy targeting individuals most likely to benefit. We used self-reported prepregnancy body weight of all women giving birth in Nova Scotia between 1988 and 2006 to define obesity and evaluated socioeconomic, demographic, and temporal trends in obesity using linear regression. There were 172,373 deliveries in this cohort of 110,743 women. Maternal body weight increased significantly by 0.5 kg per year from 1988, and lower income and rural residence were both associated significantly with increasing obesity. We estimated an additional 82,000 overweight or obese women in Nova Scotia in 2010, compared to the number that would be expected from obesity rates of just two decades ago. The critical age for weight gain was identified as being between 20 and 24 years. This age group is an important transition age between adolescence and adulthood when individuals first begin to accept responsibility for food planning, purchasing, and preparation. Policy and public health interventions must target those most at risk, namely, younger women and the socially deprived, whilst tackling the marketing of low-cost energy-dense foods at the expense of healthier options
Quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet on low-dimensional frustrated lattices
Using a lattice-gas description of the low-energy degrees of freedom of the
quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the frustrated two-leg ladder and bilayer
lattices we examine the magnetization process at low temperatures for these
spin models. In both cases the emergent discrete degrees of freedom implicate a
close relation of the frustrated quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet to the
classical lattice gas with finite nearest-neighbor repulsion or, equivalently,
to the Ising antiferromagnet in a uniform magnetic field. Using this relation
we obtain analytical results for thermodynamically large systems in the
one-dimensional case. In the two-dimensional case we perform classical Monte
Carlo simulations for systems of up to sites.Comment: Submitted to Teoreticheskaya i Matematicheskaya Fizika (special issue
dedicated to the 90th anniversary of Professor Sergei Vladimirovich
Tyablikov
No Scalar Hair Theorem for a Charged Spherical Black Hole
This paper consolidates noscalar hair theorem for a charged spherically
symmetric black hole in four dimension in general relativity as well as in all
scalar tensor theories, both minimally and nonminimally coupled, when the
effective Newtonian constant of gravity is positive. However, there is an
exception when the matter field itself is coupled to the scalar field, such as
in dilaton gravity.Comment: 13 pages, Latex format, some minor corrections are made, accepted for
publication in Physical Review
New Singular and Nonsingular Colliding Wave Solutions in Einstein - Maxwell - Scalar Theory
A technique is given to generate coupled scalar field solutions in colliding
Einstein - Maxwell (EM) waves. By employing the Bell - Szekeres solution as
seed and depending on the chosen scalar field it is possible to construct
nonsingular solutions. If the original EM solution is already singular addition
of scalar fields does not make the physics any better. In particular, scalar
field solution that is transformable to spherical symmetry is plagued with
singularities.Comment: 15 pages, To be published in GR
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