Teaching conceptual issues through historical understanding

In this paper we argue that the topic area of Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology is a well crafted one, in that historical analysis is an invaluable tool in teaching the conceptual issues that must be appreciated to gain a full understanding of psychology. Using selected teaching examples we discuss how the history of psychology can illuminate and inform an understanding of not only specific issues and debates in psychology, but also the nature of psychology as a reflexive, socially embedded discipline. We then go on to present a case study of a recent curriculum re-design at the University of Gloucestershire that put Conceptual and Historical Issues at the core of first-year teaching, with the intention that the insights gained will provide a firm foundation for understanding the remainder of the syllabus. Early indications are that introducing students to this perspective while they are new to university study encourages them to see it as a form of thinking differently that is inherent to Higher, versus Further, Education; whereas previous practice of covering it in a final-year capstone module resulted in some students treating it as a marginal topic

Teaching conceptual issues through historical understanding

In this paper we argue that the topic area of Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology is a well crafted one, in that historical analysis is an invaluable tool in teaching the conceptual issues that must be appreciated to gain a full understanding of psychology. Using selected teaching examples we discuss how the history of psychology can illuminate and inform an understanding of not only specific issues and debates in psychology, but also the nature of psychology as a reflexive, socially embedded discipline. We then go on to present a case study of a recent curriculum re-design at the University of Gloucestershire that put Conceptual and Historical Issues at the core of first-year teaching, with the intention that the insights gained will provide a firm foundation for understanding the remainder of the syllabus. Early indications are that introducing students to this perspective while they are new to university study encourages them to see it as a form of thinking differently that is inherent to Higher, versus Further, Education; whereas previous practice of covering it in a final-year capstone module resulted in some students treating it as a marginal topic

Band Narrowing and Mott Localization in Iron Oxychalcogenides La2O2Fe2O(Se,S)2

Bad metal properties have motivated a description of the parent iron pnictides as correlated metals on the verge of Mott localization. What has been unclear is whether interactions can push these and related compounds to the Mott insulating side of the phase diagram. Here we consider the iron oxychalcogenides La2O2Fe2O(Se,S)2, which contain an Fe square lattice with an expanded unit cell. We show theoretically that they contain enhanced correlation effects through band narrowing compared to LaOFeAs, and we provide experimental evidence that they are Mott insulators with moderate charge gaps. We also discuss the magnetic properties in terms of a Heisenberg model with frustrating J1-J2-J2' exchange interactions on a "doubled" checkerboard lattice.Comment: 4 pages, 5 eps figures. Version to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Cascading on extragalactic background light

High-energy gamma-rays propagating in the intergalactic medium can interact with background infrared photons to produce e+e- pairs, resulting in the absorption of the intrinsic gamma-ray spectrum. TeV observations of the distant blazar 1ES 1101-232 were thus recently used to put an upper limit on the infrared extragalactic background light density. The created pairs can upscatter background photons to high energies, which in turn may pair produce, thereby initiating a cascade. The pairs diffuse on the extragalactic magnetic field (EMF) and cascade emission has been suggested as a means for measuring its intensity. Limits on the IR background and EMF are reconsidered taking into account cascade emissions. The cascade equations are solved numerically. Assuming a power-law intrinsic spectrum, the observed 100 MeV - 100 TeV spectrum is found as a function of the intrinsic spectral index and the intensity of the EMF. Cascades emit mainly at or below 100 GeV. The observed TeV spectrum appears softer than for pure absorption when cascade emission is taken into account. The upper limit on the IR photon background is found to be robust. Inversely, the intrinsic spectra needed to fit the TeV data are uncomfortably hard when cascade emission makes a significant contribution to the observed spectrum. An EMF intensity around 1e-8 nG leads to a characteristic spectral hump in the GLAST band. Higher EMF intensities divert the pairs away from the line-of-sight and the cascade contribution to the spectrum becomes negligible.Comment: 5 pages, to be published as a research note in A&

A New Solution of the Yang-Baxter Equation Related to the Adjoint Representation of UqB2U_{q}B_{2}

A new solution of the Yang-Baxter equation, that is related to the adjoint representation of the quantum enveloping algebra $U_{q}B_{2}$, is obtained by fusion formulas from a non-standard solution.Comment: 16 pages (Latex), Preprint BIHEP-TH-93-3

Effect of H-NS on the elongation and compaction of single DNA molecules in a nanospace

10.1039/c3sm51214bSoft Matter9409593-960

Chiral extrapolation of lattice data for the hyperfine splittings of heavy mesons

Hyperfine splittings between the heavy vector (D*, B*) and pseudoscalar (D, B) mesons have been calculated numerically in lattice QCD, where the pion mass (which is related to the light quark mass) is much larger than its physical value. Naive linear chiral extrapolations of the lattice data to the physical mass of the pion lead to hyperfine splittings which are smaller than experimental data. In order to extrapolate these lattice data to the physical mass of the pion more reasonably, we apply the effective chiral perturbation theory for heavy mesons, which is invariant under chiral symmetry when the light quark masses go to zero and heavy quark symmetry when the heavy quark masses go to infinity. This leads to a phenomenological functional form with three parameters to extrapolate the lattice data. It is found that the extrapolated hyperfine splittings are even smaller than those obtained using linear extrapolation. We conclude that the source of the discrepancy between lattice data for hyperfine splittings and experiment must lie in non-chiral physics.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure

NoSOCS in SDSS. I. Sample Definition and Comparison of Mass Estimates

We use Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data to investigate galaxy cluster properties of systems first detected within DPOSS. With the high quality photometry of SDSS we derived new photometric redshifts and estimated richness and optical luminosity. For a subset of low redshift ($z \le 0.1$) clusters, we have used SDSS spectroscopic data to identify groups in redshift space in the region of each cluster, complemented with massive systems from the literature to assure the continuous mass sampling. A method to remove interlopers is applied, and a virial analysis is performed resulting in estimates of velocity dispersion, mass, and a physical radius for each low-$z$ system. We discuss the choice of maximum radius and luminosity range in the dynamical analysis, showing that a spectroscopic survey must be complete to at least M$^*+1$ if one wishes to obtain accurate and unbiased estimates of velocity dispersion and mass. We have measured X-ray luminosity for all clusters using archival data from RASS. For a smaller subset (twenty-one clusters) we selected temperature measures from the literature and estimated mass from the M-T$_X$ relation, finding that they show good agreement with the virial estimate. However, these two mass estimates tend to disagree with the caustic results. We measured the presence of substructure in all clusters of the sample and found that clusters with substructure have virial masses higher than those derived from T$_X$. This trend is not seen when comparing the caustic and X-ray masses. That happens because the caustic mass is estimated directly from the mass profile, so it is less affected by substructure.Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures, 5 tables, Accepted to MNRA

Heavy Higgs production and decay via e+e−→Z0H0→bbˉZ0Z0e^+e^-\to Z^0 H^0 \to b\bar bZ^0Z^0 and irreducible backgrounds at Next Linear Colliders

The complete matrix element for e^+e^-\ar b\bar bZ^0Z^0 has been computed at tree--level and applied to $Z^0H^0$--production followed by Z^0\ar b\bar b and H^0\ar Z^0Z^0, including all the irreducible background, at Next Linear Colliders. We find that, assuming flavour identification of the $Z^0$--decay products, this channel, together with e^+e^-\ar b\bar bW^+W^- in which Z^0H^0\ar (b\bar b)(W^+W^-), can be important for the study of the parameters of the Standard Model Higgs boson over the heavy mass range 2M_{Z^0}\Ord M_{H^0}\Ord 2{m_t}.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX (uses Feynman), 7 figures (.ps files or hardcopies of figs.2-7 available upon request

Evolving gene/transcript definitions significantly alter the interpretation of GeneChip data

Genome-wide expression profiling is a powerful tool for implicating novel gene ensembles in cellular mechanisms of health and disease. The most popular platform for genome-wide expression profiling is the Affymetrix GeneChip. However, its selection of probes relied on earlier genome and transcriptome annotation which is significantly different from current knowledge. The resultant informatics problems have a profound impact on analysis and interpretation the data. Here, we address these critical issues and offer a solution. We identified several classes of problems at the individual probe level in the existing annotation, under the assumption that current genome and transcriptome databases are more accurate than those used for GeneChip design. We then reorganized probes on more than a dozen popular GeneChips into gene-, transcript- and exon-specific probe sets in light of up-to-date genome, cDNA/EST clustering and single nucleotide polymorphism information. Comparing analysis results between the original and the redefined probe sets reveals ∼30–50% discrepancy in the genes previously identified as differentially expressed, regardless of analysis method. Our results demonstrate that the original Affymetrix probe set definitions are inaccurate, and many conclusions derived from past GeneChip analyses may be significantly flawed. It will be beneficial to re-analyze existing GeneChip data with updated probe set definitions