Asteroseismic Signatures of Stellar Magnetic Activity Cycles

Observations of stellar activity cycles provide an opportunity to study magnetic dynamos under many different physical conditions. Space-based asteroseismology missions will soon yield useful constraints on the interior conditions that nurture such magnetic cycles, and will be sensitive enough to detect shifts in the oscillation frequencies due to the magnetic variations. We derive a method for predicting these shifts from changes in the Mg II activity index by scaling from solar data. We demonstrate this technique on the solar-type subgiant beta Hyi, using archival International Ultraviolet Explorer spectra and two epochs of ground-based asteroseismic observations. We find qualitative evidence of the expected frequency shifts and predict the optimal timing for future asteroseismic observations of this star.Comment: 5 pages including 3 figures and 1 table, MNRAS Letters accepte

The limitations of speech control: perceptions of provision of speech-driven environmental controls

This study set out to collect data from assistive technology professionals about their provision of speech-driven environmental control systems. This study is part of a larger study looking at developing a new speech-driven environmental control system

Design and Monitoring of Earth Embankments over Permafrost

As the northern regions of Canada are developed, there is an increasing need to protect the fragile ecology as well as to maximize usage of local construction materials. The construction of earth dykes to retain liquid wastes is a common requirement in municipal and industrial developments. Frozen core earthfill dykes provide an effective technique to cut off seepage in cold permafrost areas (Sayles, 1984). The seepage of water through an unfrozen overburden or fractured bedrock foundation can occur and accelerate the thermal deterioration of an earth embankment. The development of the active layer during the summer reduces the dam\u27s ability to retain water if the freeboard is inadequate. Several earthfill dams were built at the Lupin mine near Contwoyto Lake in the Canadian Arctic to form a mine tailings pond. Even though design forecasts indicated 9 m high structures would remain frozen after impoundment of the reservoir, very few case histories were found to support the design. Several earth dams have been monitored since 1982. Initially, ground temperature measurements were taken with thermistor strings in short boreholes. More recently, deep boreholes were instrumented with thermistor strings and the ground probing radar has been used to confirm and locate unfrozen zones within the dams. Specifically, the performance of three dams is reviewed here. The first dam, the base case, was built over virgin cold permafrost. The complete dam section froze during the first winter after construction. Part of the second dam was built over a 5 m deep talik associated with a seasonal creek and possibly a fault zone. The talik is apparently mostly refrozen and continuing to cool, however, geophysical surveys indicate a possible unfrozen remnant. The third dam was built across the reservoir after impoundment and during the winter. The internal nature of that dam and its thermal behaviour are quite different from the above two. The thermal regime of the dams and underlying foundation has changed considerably over the five years following construction. The results of the ground temperature and radar profiles are compared for various seasons to reconstruct the transient thermal regime at uninstrumented sections. The findings are significant for the design and monitoring of future water retaining structures in the North

Huge automatically extracted training sets for multilingual Word Sense Disambiguation

We release to the community six large-scale sense-annotated datasets in multiple language to pave the way for supervised multilingual Word Sense Disambiguation. Our datasets cover all the nouns in the English WordNet and their translations in other languages for a total of millions of sense-tagged sentences. Experiments prove that these corpora can be effectively used as training sets for supervised WSD systems, surpassing the state of the art for low- resourced languages and providing competitive results for English, where manually annotated training sets are accessible. The data is available at trainomatic. org

Direct UV observations of the circumstellar envelope of alpha Orionis

Observations were made in the IUE LWP camera, low dispersion mode, with alpha Ori being offset various distances from the center of the Long Wavelength Large Aperture along its major axis. Signal was acquired at all offset positions and is comprised of unequal components of background/dark counts, telescope-scattered light, and scattered light emanating from the extended circumstellar shell. The star is known from optical and infrared observations to possess an extended, arc-minute sized, shell of cool material. Attempts to observe this shell with the IUE are described, although the deconvolution of the stellar signal from the telescope scattered light requires further calibration effort

The development of the passé composé in lower-intermediate learners of French as a second language

In this study we tracked the development of the passe compose in second-language learners of French whose first language is English. Although the passe compose is a highly used tense among native speakers of French and it appears to present particular difficulty for first-language English speakers, its second-language development has been surprisingly under-researched. In order to trace developmental patterns of the passe compose we obtained a corpus of obligatory context use of this tense by 30 Year-12 (lower-intermediate) students at two time points six months apart and analysed the data both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our findings suggest that these students used remarkably few memorized formulas, that they passed through five distinct stages in their acquisition of the passe compose, that those early stages were characterized by transfer errors, and that the presence of the auxiliary, whether correct or incorrect, formed a crucial stage in the development of the tense. Theoretical explanations for the findings are presented together with some tentative pedagogical implications

'This is what democracy looks like' : New Labour's blind spot and peripheral vision

New Labour in government since 1997 has been roundly criticized for not possessing a clear, coherent and consistent democratic vision. The absence of such a grand vision has resulted, from this critical perspective, in an absence of 'joined-up' thinking about democracy in an evolving multi-level state. Tensions have been all too apparent between the government's desire to exert central direction - manifested in its most pathological form as 'control freakery' - and its democratising initiatives derived from 'third-way' obsessions with 'decentralising', 'empowering' and 'enabling'. The purpose of this article is to examine why New Labour displayed such apparently impaired democratic vision and why it appeared incapable of conceiving of democratic reform 'in the round'. This article seeks to explain these apparent paradoxes, however, through utilising the notion of 'macular degeneration'. In this analysis, the perceived democratic blind spot of New Labour at Westminster is connected to a democratic peripheral vision, which has envisaged innovative participatory and decentred initiatives in governance beyond Westminster

Error patterns in Portuguese students' addition and subtraction calculation tasks: Implications for teaching

Purpose The purpose of this descriptive study is to investigate why some elementary children have difficulties mastering addition and subtraction calculation tasks. Design/methodology/approach The researchers have examined error types in addition and subtraction calculation made by 697 Portuguese students in elementary grades. Each student completed a written assessment of mathematical knowledge. A system code (e.g. FR = failure to regroup) has been used to grade the tests. A reliability check has been performed on 65 per cent randomly selected exams. Findings Data frequency analyses reveal that the most common type of error was miscalculation for both addition (n = 164; 38.6 per cent) and subtraction (n = 180; 21.7 per cent). The second most common error type was related to failure to regroup in addition (n = 74; 17.5 per cent) and subtraction (n = 139; 16.3 per cent). Frequency of error types by grade level has been provided. Findings from the hierarchical regression analyses indicate that students’ performance differences emerged as a function of error types which indicated students’ types of difficulties. Research limitations/implications There are several limitations of this study: the use of a convenient sample; all schools were located in the northern region of Portugal; the limited number of problems; and the time of the year of assessment. Practical implications Students’ errors suggested that their performance in calculation tasks is related to conceptual and procedural knowledge and skills. Error analysis allows teachers to better understand the individual performance of a diverse group and to tailor instruction to ensure that all students have an opportunity to succeed in mathematics. Social implications Error analysis helps teachers uncover individual students’ difficulties and deliver meaningful instruction to all students. Originality/value This paper adds to the international literature on error analysis and reinforces its value in diagnosing students’ type and severity of math difficultiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A more representative chamber: representation and the House of Lords

Since 1997 there has been substantive reform of the House of Lords in an effort to make the chamber ‘more democratic and more representative’. Whilst the Labour government failed to press ahead with any of the proposed plans for further reform following the removal of the bulk of the hereditary peers in 1999, it remained committed to the notion that such reform must make the second chamber ‘more representative’. The coalition government's programme advocates a long-term aspiration for a House wholly or mainly elected on the basis of proportional representation, and a short-term approach based on additional appointments to ensure a balance of the parties. What is clear in all of these proposals for reform is a desire for the House of Lords to become more representative than it is at present. However, what is less clear is what is meant by ‘representative’ – who the House of Lords is supposed to represent, and what form representation will take. Moreover, in proposing to make the chamber more representative, either through appointment or election, little attention has been paid to how the current House of Lords provides representation. This article examines these questions in the context of Pitkin's classic conceptions of representation and peers' attitudes towards their own representative rol