1,458 research outputs found
Children As Researchers: Exploring Issues And Barriers In English Primary Schools
This thesis identifies and explores the issues and barriers that appear to influence children's and adults' experiences of children's engagement in self-directed empirical research in five English primary schools associated with the Children's Research Centre at The Open University. As far as is known, this is the first in-depth study of children as independent researchers in the context of English primary schools. A flexible, multimethod research design was adopted. Predominantly qualitative data was generated through focus groups held with, and questionnaires distributed to, the young researchers and their peers and through individual unstructured interviews with adults. The qualitative data generated through these methods was analysed in the style of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Quantitative data was subject to exploratory data analysis. This complemented and informed the qualitative analyses. The central categories which emerged from the data and, in particular, the identification of important issues by the children, have together informed the staged construction of a new model. This model illustrates the factors and processes that had an impact on both the children's experiences of research training and the research process and outcomes. The model demonstrates that these are inextricably interrelated. It is hoped that consideration of the issues and barriers identified will provide a basis for the further implementation and evaluation of young researcher initiatives in schools. The findings of the study have been drawn on to make recommendations for policy, practice and future research, particularly in those areas which are identified as significant by, and to, the children involved. It is also hoped that this study will address a gap in our knowledge and understanding of children as researchers and inform critical debate concerning children's voice and participation, adult-child power relationships and children's rights in English primary schools and more widely
BES3 time of flight monitoring system
A Time of Flight monitoring system has been developed for BES3.
The light source is a 442-443 nm laser diode, which is stable and provides a
pulse width as narrow as 50 ps and a peak power as large as 2.6 W. Two
optical-fiber bundles with a total of 512 optical fibers, including spares, are
used to distribute the light pulses to the Time of Flight counters. The design,
operation, and performance of the system are described.Comment: 8 pages 16 figures, submitted to NI
The infection of primary avian tracheal epithelial cells with infectious bronchitis virus
Here we introduce a culture system for the isolation, passaging and amplification of avian tracheal epithelial (ATE) cells. The ATE medium, which contains chicken embryo extract and fetal bovine serum, supports the growth of ciliated cells, goblet cells and basal cells from chicken tracheas on fibronectin- or matrigel-coated dishes. Non-epithelial cells make up less than 10% of the total population. We further show that ATE cells support the replication and spread of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV). Interestingly, immunocytostaining revealed that basal cells are resistant to IBV infection. We also demonstrate that glycosaminoglycan had no effect on infection of the cells by IBV. Taken together, these findings suggest that primary ATE cells provide a novel cell culture system for the amplification of IBV and the in vitro characterization of viral cytopathogenesis
Screening Effects on Pairing in Neutron Matter
The superfluidity of neutron matter is studied in the framework of
the generalized Gorkov equation. The vertex corrections to the pairing
interaction and the self-energy corrections are introduced and approximated on
the same footing in the gap equation. A suppression of the pairing gap by more
than 50% with respect to the BCS prediction is found, which deeply changes the
scenario for the dynamical and thermal evolution of neutron stars.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figres, RevTeX4 styl
Explosive events - swirling transition region jets
In this paper, we extend our earlier work to provide additional evidence for
an alternative scenario to explain the nature of so-called `explosive events'.
The bi-directed, fast Doppler motion of explosive events observed
spectroscopically in the transition region emission is classically interpreted
as a pair of bidirectional jets moving upward and downward from a reconnection
site. We discuss the problems of such a model. In our previous work, we focused
basically on the discrepancy of fast Doppler motion without detectable motion
in the image plane. We now suggest an alternative scenario for the explosive
events, based on our observations of spectral line tilts and bifurcated
structure in some events. Both features are indicative of rotational motion in
narrow structures. We explain the bifurcation as the result of rotation of
hollow cylindrical structures and demonstrate that such a sheath model can also
be applied to explain the nature of the puzzling `explosive events'. We find
that the spectral tilt, the lack of apparent motion, the bifurcation, and a
rapidly growing number of direct observations support an alternative scenario
of linear, spicular-sized jets with a strong spinning motion.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Solar Physic
Search for More Declarativity
Good tree search algorithms are a key requirement for inference
engines of rule languages. As Prolog exemplifies, inference engines
based on traditional uninformed search methods with their well-known
deficiencies are prone to compromise declarativity, the primary concern
of rule languages. The paper presents a new family of uninformed search
algorithms that combine the advantages of the traditional ones while
avoiding their shortcomings. Moreover, the paper introduces a formal
framework based on partial orderings, which allows precise and elegant
analysis of such algorithms
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