21,682 research outputs found
Community development, higher education institutions and the Big Society: opportunities or opportunism?
In his Prison Notebooks, written between 1929-35, Gramsci claimed that 'all men are intellectuals: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.'
He used this term 'organic intellectuals' to illustrate that those working at grassroots level who have significant knowledge(s) about the way communities of all types work, are as important to the development of society as academic intellectuals. This article explores the current idea of a 'Big Society' as a hegemonic idea. This exploration is undertaken in relation to the current economic, social and political situation and with reference to the practice of community development, lifelong learning and the role of the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in supporting this field of activity. In this article we use the term 'community development' as Tett defines in Morgan-Klein and Osborne (2007:104). She claims it means to 'increase the capacity of particular communities through targeted resources for particular areas'.
We specifically explore the following areas:
<p>
• challenging the hegemonic ideas and policies
• practising within the restrictions of cuts and limited resources
• setting up supportive networks which will sustain workers
• making meaningful international links abroad and using international examples of good practice
• turning the ideology of the Big Society into an opportunity</p>
We will pose the critical questions that we think need to be addressed and which we hope will help us to find direction and an understanding of the way forward at a deeper level. We hope to create both useful and innovative knowledge which will be a valid contribution to the field of community development
Phase-resolved far-ultraviolet HST spectroscopy of the peculiar magnetic white dwarf RE J0317-853
We present phase resolved FUV HST FOS spectra of the rapidly rotating, highly
magnetic white dwarf RE J0317-853. Using these data, we construct a new model
for the magnetic field morphology across the stellar surface. From an expansion
into spherical harmonics, we find the range of magnetic field strengths present
is 180-800MG. For the first time we could identify an absorption feature
present at certain phases at 1160A as a ``forbidden'' 1s_0 -> 2s_0 component,
due to the combined presence of an electric and magnetic field.Comment: 15 pages including 4 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
Mass of highly magnetized white dwarfs exceeding the Chandrasekhar limit: An analytical view
In recent years a number of white dwarfs has been observed with very high
surface magnetic fields. We can expect that the magnetic field in the core of
these stars would be much higher (~ 10^{14} G). In this paper, we analytically
study the effect of high magnetic field on relativistic cold electron, and
hence its effect on the stability and the mass-radius relation of a magnetic
white dwarf. In strong magnetic fields, the equation of state of the Fermi gas
is modified and Landau quantization comes into play. For relatively very high
magnetic fields (with respect to the energy density of matter) the number of
Landau levels is restricted to one or two. We analyse the equation of states
for magnetized electron degenerate gas analytically and attempt to understand
the conditions in which transitions from the zero-th Landau level to first
Landau level occur. We also find the effect of the strong magnetic field on the
star collapsing to a white dwarf, and the mass-radius relation of the resulting
star. We obtain an interesting theoretical result that it is possible to have
white dwarfs with mass more than the mass set by Chandrasekhar limit.Comment: 18 pages including 3 figures; to appear in Modern Physics Letters
Boundary and impurity effects on entanglement of Heisenberg chains
We study entanglement of a pair of qubits and the bipartite entanglement
between the pair and the rest within open-ended Heisenberg and XY models.
The open boundary condition leads to strong oscillations of entanglements with
a two-site period, and the two kinds of entanglements are 180 degree out of
phase with each other. The mean pairwise entanglement and ground-state energy
per site in the model are found to be proportional to each other. We
study the effects of a single bulk impurity on entanglement, and find that
there exists threshold values of the relative coupling strength between the
impurity and its nearest neighbours, after which the impurity becomes pairwise
entangled with its nearest neighbours.Comment: 6 pages and 6 figure
The magnetic fields of hot subdwarf stars
Detection of magnetic fields has been reported in several sdO and sdB stars.
Recent literature has cast doubts on the reliability of most of these
detections. We revisit data previously published in the literature, and we
present new observations to clarify the question of how common magnetic fields
are in subdwarf stars. We consider a sample of about 40 hot subdwarf stars.
About 30 of them have been observed with the FORS1 and FORS2 instruments of the
ESO VLT. Here we present new FORS1 field measurements for 17 stars, 14 of which
have never been observed for magnetic fields before. We also critically review
the measurements already published in the literature, and in particular we try
to explain why previous papers based on the same FORS1 data have reported
contradictory results. All new and re-reduced measurements obtained with FORS1
are shown to be consistent with non-detection of magnetic fields. We explain
previous spurious field detections from data obtained with FORS1 as due to a
non-optimal method of wavelength calibration. Field detections in other surveys
are found to be uncertain or doubtful, and certainly in need of confirmation.
There is presently no strong evidence for the occurrence of a magnetic field in
any sdB or sdO star, with typical longitudinal field uncertainties of the order
of 2-400 G. It appears that globally simple fields of more than about 1 or 2 kG
in strength occur in at most a few percent of hot subdwarfs, and may be
completely absent at this strength. Further high-precision surveys, both with
high-resolution spectropolarimeters and with instruments similar to FORS1 on
large telescopes, would be very valuable
QUASAT: An orbiting very long baseline interferometer program using large space antenna systems
QUASAT, which stands for QUASAR SATELLITE, is the name given to a new mission being studied by NASA. The QUASAT mission concept involves a free flying Earth orbiting large radio telescope, which will observe astronomical radio sources simultaneously with ground radio telescopes. The primary goal of QUASAT is to provide a system capable of collecting radio frequency data which will lead to a better understanding of extremely high energy events taking place in a variety of celestial objects including quasars, galactic nuclei, interstellar masers, radio stars and pulsars. QUASAT's unique scientific contribution will be the increased resolution in the emission brightness profile maps of the celestial objects
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