Metaphors in the Educational Narratives Since 1945 With Particular Reference to the Conservative Party

The study seeks to provide both a methodology and an application of that methodology in its account, partly historical, partly philosophical, of the metaphors in the educational narratives since 1945. It considers, in particular, selected texts of the Conservative Party and focusses on the paradigm shifts m the educational narratives in 1945 and again in 1979. The study deconstructs these narratives, teasing out their constitutive metaphors: their characteristic representations of educational identities, realities and relationships. The ideological subtexts of these representations are described, as is the process by which they came to represent the "common sense' of education as the metaphors which constituted them became literalised. The thesis, as a consequence, is intimately concerned with the politics of education and, in particular, the rhetoric used to 'spin' the desired educational story. The first chapter contains much of the justification of the methodology followed in the study. In effect what this thesis does is to offer a narrative itself, or rather a meta-narrative. It does not offer, however, the kind of narrative that the Conservative Party, or indeed the Labour Party, has offered. They, the study will argue, offered dramas of self realisation, of life as a trial, leading to a final resolution in which the hero finds either salvation or some compromise in which there is contentment; a kind of hermeneutic epiphany in which the hero finds a way of interpreting the dominant, cultural narratives in order to find identity and some sense to life. As a consequence, the recurrent motif in the Conservative narratives described is the distinction between appearance and reality linked to an epic theme of personal salvation which is essentially individual, imperialist and moralistic. Dickens's Great Expectations is, in many ways, their paradigm text. There are, however, other kinds of narrative, particularly in the continental tradition of Foucault and Baudrillard, and the American pragmatist tradition of Rorty. Though these philosophers would disagree on just about everything, yet they share something of a common narrative approach. The purpose of their narratives is their analysis of the conflicts and tensions between the reader and the text, a dramatic interplay not seeking resolution in self realisation but rather a kind of reflexive, consciously ironic re-description of the self as the object, not the subject, of the text. The texts considered in this thesis, are what Jean-Francois Lyotard calls the 'legitimation narratives' of education: the masked ideologies and the 'common sense' literalised metaphors which have fixed educational identities and relationships and formed educational desires in accordance with particular hegemonic cultural configurations. It is this kind of narrative the present study offers, not the closed position of what Henri Bergson called 'the illusions of retrospective determinism' but rather the open, essentially tentative, ironic and inconclusive narrative of philosophy. It is a narrative which offers a different and, it is hoped, valuable perception, analysis and critique of recent educational history and educational theory rather than having, in itself, a closed theoretical position. The thesis considers the Butler consensus on education in some detail, deconstructing from it its ideological subtexts and the way these subtexts were masked. It describes how in his narrative, metaphors of nature, ability and types of child became the common sense of education and educationalists, fixing educational identities and relations into a particular overall cultural hegemony. The iconography of the grammar school and its status as the 'preferred' education in the Butler narrative is discussed and the subsequent tensions in the Conservative narrative analysed as the incipient egalitarianism of the 1960s began to create a desire for greater democratisation. The paternalistic Conservative ideologies, and in particular the Butler educational narrative which was an important reason for their continuing hegemony, was eventually to succumb to this desire and a period of narrative chaos was to occur. The traditional aspiration of the Conservative Party to act as the keepers of British Culture, as representing the 'host' narratives, came under great stress. The Butler consensus was eventually broken and the thesis describes the dynamics of the paradigm shift The narrative breakdown, what Jurgen Habermas called a 'legitimation crisis is described, beginning with the effect of the metaphorical redescription of education by the egalitarian counter-narrative of the Labour Party, though, it is argued. Labour's commitment to comprehensivisation was always ambiguous at best. However, the egalitarian narrative's threat to their continued hegemony was to create in the rhetoric of the Conservatives the virulent propagation of a sense of crisis in education. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)

Topological and simplicial features in reservoir computing networks

Reservoir computing is a framework which uses the nonlinearinternal dynamics of a recurrent neural network to perform complexnon-linear transformations of the input. This enables reservoirs tocarry out a variety of tasks involving the processing of time-dependent orsequential-based signals. Reservoirs are particularly suited for tasks thatrequire memory or the handling of temporal sequences, common in areassuch as speech recognition, time series prediction, and signal processing.Learning is restricted to the output layer and can be thought of as“reading out” or “selecting from” the states of the reservoir. With all butthe output weights fixed they do not have the costly and difficult trainingassociated with deep neural networks. However, while the reservoircomputing framework shows a lot of promise in terms of efficiency andcapability, it can be unreliable. Existing studies show that small changesin hyperparameters can markedly affect the network’s performance. Herewe studied the role of network topologies in reservoir computing in thecarrying out of three conceptually different tasks: working memory, perceptualdecision making, and chaotic time-series prediction. We implementedthree different network topologies (ring, lattice, and random)and tested reservoir network performances on the tasks. We then usedalgebraic topological tools of directed simplicial cliques to study deeperconnections between network topology and function, making comparisonsacross performance and linking with existing reservoir research

Random and biological network connectivity for reservoir computing:Random Reservoirs Rule! (at Remembering)

Reservoir computing is a framework where a fixed recurrent neural network (RNN) is used to process input signals and perform computations. Reservoirs are typically randomly initialised, but it is not fully known how connectivity affects performance, and whether particular structures might yield advantages on specific or generic tasks. Simpler topologies often perform equally well as more complex networks on prediction tasks. We check performance differences of reservoirs on four task types using the connectomes of C. elegans and drosophila larval mushroom body in comparison with varying degrees of randomisation

An experimental evaluation of software redundancy as a strategy for improving reliability

The strategy of using multiple versions of independently developed software as a means to tolerate residual software design faults is suggested by the success of hardware redundancy for tolerating hardware failures. Although, as generally accepted, the independence of hardware failures resulting from physical wearout can lead to substantial increases in reliability for redundant hardware structures, a similar conclusion is not immediate for software. The degree to which design faults are manifested as independent failures determines the effectiveness of redundancy as a method for improving software reliability. Interest in multi-version software centers on whether it provides an adequate measure of increased reliability to warrant its use in critical applications. The effectiveness of multi-version software is studied by comparing estimates of the failure probabilities of these systems with the failure probabilities of single versions. The estimates are obtained under a model of dependent failures and compared with estimates obtained when failures are assumed to be independent. The experimental results are based on twenty versions of an aerospace application developed and certified by sixty programmers from four universities. Descriptions of the application, development and certification processes, and operational evaluation are given together with an analysis of the twenty versions

Uptake of hepatitis C specialist services and treatment following diagnosis by dried blood spot in Scotland

Background: Dried blood spot (DBS) testing for hepatitis C (HCV) was introduced to Scotland in 2009. This minimally invasive specimen provides an alternative to venipuncture and can overcome barriers to testing in people who inject drugs (PWID). Objectives: The objective of this study was to determine rates and predictors of: exposure to HCV, attendance at specialist clinics and anti-viral treatment initiation among the DBS tested population in Scotland. Study design: DBS testing records were deterministically linked to the Scottish HCV Clinical database prior to logistic regression analysis. Results: In the first two years of usage in Scotland, 1322 individuals were tested by DBS of which 476 were found to have an active HCV infection. Linkage analysis showed that 32% had attended a specialist clinic within 12 months of their specimen collection date and 18% had begun anti-viral therapy within 18 months of their specimen collection date. A significantly reduced likelihood of attendance at a specialist clinic was evident amongst younger individuals (<35 years), those of unknown ethnic origin and those not reporting injecting drug use as a risk factor. Conclusion: We conclude that DBS testing in non-clinical settings has the potential to increase diagnosis and, with sufficient support, treatment of HCV infection among PWID

Parasites (Trematoda, Nematoda, Phthiraptera) of Two Arkansas Raptors (Accipitriformes: Accipitridae; Strigiformes: Strigidae)

Very little is known about the helminth parasites of hawks and owls of Arkansas. We had the opportunity to salvage 2 road-killed raptors, a red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) and a great horned owl (Bubo virginianus) from the state and examine them for ecto- and endoparasites. Found were chewing lice (Degeeriella fulva) and a nematode (Porrocaecum angusticolle) on/in B. lineatus, and 3 digenean trematodes (Echinoparyphium sp., Strigea elegans, Neodiplostomum americanum), and nematode eggs (Capillaria sp.) in B. virginianus. We document 6 new distributional records for these parasites

Relationship Between Foveal Cone Specialization and Pit Morphology in Albinism

Purpose.Albinism is associated with disrupted foveal development, though intersubject variability is becoming appreciated. We sought to quantify this variability, and examine the relationship between foveal cone specialization and pit morphology in patients with a clinical diagnosis of albinism. Methods. We recruited 32 subjects with a clinical diagnosis of albinism. DNA was obtained from 25 subjects, and known albinism genes were analyzed for mutations. Relative inner and outer segment (IS and OS) lengthening (fovea-to-perifovea ratio) was determined from manually segmented spectral domain-optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) B-scans. Foveal pit morphology was quantified for eight subjects from macular SD-OCT volumes. Ten subjects underwent imaging with adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscopy (AOSLO), and cone density was measured. Results. We found mutations in 22 of 25 subjects, including five novel mutations. All subjects lacked complete excavation of inner retinal layers at the fovea, though four subjects had foveal pits with normal diameter and/or volume. Peak cone density and OS lengthening were variable and overlapped with that observed in normal controls. A fifth hyper-reflective band was observed in the outer retina on SD-OCT in the majority of the subjects with albinism. Conclusions. Foveal cone specialization and pit morphology vary greatly in albinism. Normal cone packing was observed in the absence of a foveal pit, suggesting a pit is not required for packing to occur. The degree to which retinal anatomy correlates with genotype or visual function remains unclear, and future examination of larger patient groups will provide important insight on this issue

SIMPLE TRANSIENT CALCULATIONS OF CELL FLAMMABLE GAS CONCENTRATIONS

The Saltstone Facility at Savannah River Site (SRS) mixes low-level radiological liquid waste with grout for permanent disposal as cement in vault cells. The grout mixture is poured into each cell in approximately 17 batches (8 to 10 hours duration). The grout mixture contains ten flammable gases of concern that are released from the mixture into the cell. Prior to operations, simple parametric transient calculations were performed to develop batch parameters (including schedule of batch pours) to support operational efficiency while ensuring that a flammable gas mixture does not develop in the cell vapor space. The analysis demonstrated that a nonflammable vapor space environment can be achieved, with workable operational constraints, without crediting the ventilation flow as a safety system control. Isopar L was identified as the primary flammable gas of concern. The transient calculations balanced inflows of the flammable gases into the vapor space with credited outflows of diurnal breathing through vent holes and displacement from new grout pours and gases generated. Other important features of the analyses included identifying conditions that inhibited a well-mixed vapor space, the expected frequency and duration of such conditions, and the estimated level of stratification that could develop