Control of potato late blight by caraway oil in organic farming

Caraway (Carum carvi) seeds contain biologically active essential oils, which have shown potential in controlling Phytophthora infestans (P.i.). An attempt is being made to develop a P.i. control strategy for organic farming based on caraway oil

LET’S GO OUT! A GROUP-BASED INTERVENTION IN OUTDOOR ADVENTURE EDUCATION AS A SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT

This article deals with the group-based behavioral, cognitive, and skill-training intervention program Maltti as a special educational support action applied with outdoor adventure education at the primary school level. The need to apply the group-based intervention arose from the special education teachers’ (N=2) desire to reinforce and expand their pedagogical methods in order to improve the students' development in special education. The special education teachers had a group of pupils with special educational needs, aged from 10 to 11 (5th graders in Finland). These pupils faced challenges in social and emotional development, for example, in the areas of psychological regulation, self-regulation, and emotional regulation. This article is a case study which presents how outdoor adventure education can be implemented in special education. It also describes how special education teachers experienced the group-based intervention intersecting with outdoor adventure education. The research findings indicate that together, the intervention and the outdoor adventure education encouraged pupils’ emotional and social development, well-being, relaxation, a sense of belonging, successful experiences, positive group experiences, and strengthened executive functions. The findings promote the use of outdoor adventure education methods in the group-based intervention Maltti with children with special needs.  Article visualizations

Isocurvature fluctuations in Affleck-Dine mechanism and constraints on inflation models

We reconsider the Affleck-Dine mechanism for baryogenesis and show that the baryonic isocurvature fluctuations are generated in many inflation models in supergravity. The inflationary scale and the reheating temperature must satisfy certain constraints to avoid too large baryonic isocurvature fluctuations.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur

Education Provision for Indigenous and Minority Heritage Languages Revitalisation: A Study Focusing on Saami and Scottish Gaelic

This chapter provides a comparative study of education provision for the Indigenous language of Saami and the minority heritage of Scottish Gaelic. Due to historical factors, both languages are considered endangered according to UNESCO listings. Whilst North Saami and Scottish Gaelic receive government support, which would appear to be providing a reasonably stable position at least within their geographically core areas, assimilation continues resulting in the overall numbers of speakers remaining small. As education is viewed as key to the promotion of both languages, following an introduction to the background historical and societal context of both language contexts, the chapter presents educational practices and challenges in education for comparison over the past forty years. The comparative study highlights that similarities between these two languages exist in language revitalisation efforts to reverse language shift but the forms vary. The chapter concludes with some emerging recommendations for the successful maintenance and revitalisation of minority heritage and Indigenous languages in the twenty-first century despite the continued dominance of surrounding majority languages

Planck 2013 results. VI. High Frequency Instrument data processing

Peer reviewe

Hints of Isocurvature Perturbations in the Cosmic Microwave Background?

The improved data on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy allow a better determination of the adiabaticity of the primordial perturbation. Interestingly, we find that recent CMB data seem to favor a contribution of a primordial isocurvature mode where the entropy perturbation is positively correlated with the primordial curvature perturbation and has a large spectral index (niso ~ 3). With 4 additional parameters we obtain a better fit to the CMB data by Delta chi^2 = 9.7 compared to an adiabatic model. For this best-fit model the nonadiabatic contribution to the CMB temperature variance is 4%. According to a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis the nonadiabatic contribution is positive at more than 95% C.L. The exact C.L. depends somewhat on the choice of priors, and we discuss the effect of different priors as well as additional cosmological data.Comment: v1&2: 4 pages, 2 figures. v4: 16 pages, 7 figures, iopart style. Revised the 'Other cosmological data' section, added a detailed discussion on the effect of priors, and added many figures. Published versio

Non-Gaussianity from isocurvature perturbations

We develop a formalism to study non-Gaussianity in both curvature and isocurvature perturbations. It is shown that non-Gaussianity in the isocurvature perturbation between dark matter and photons leaves distinct signatures in the CMB temperature fluctuations, which may be confirmed in future experiments, or possibly, even in the currently available observational data. As an explicit example, we consider the QCD axion and show that it can actually induce sizable non-Gaussianity for the inflationary scale, H_{inf} = O(10^9 - 10^{11})GeV.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures; references added; version to appear in JCA

The impact of MK-467 on plasma drug concentrations, sedation and cardiopulmonary changes in sheep treated with intramuscular medetomidine and atipamezole for reversal

The effect of MK‐467, a peripheral α2‐adrenoceptor antagonist, on plasma drug concentrations, sedation and cardiopulmonary changes induced by intramuscular (IM) medetomidine was investigated in eight sheep. Additionally, the interactions with atipamezole (ATI) used for reversal were also evaluated. Each animal was treated four times in a randomized prospective crossover design with 2‐week washout periods. Medetomidine (MED) 30 μg/kg alone or combined in the same syringe with MK‐467 300 μg/kg (MMK) was injected intramuscular, followed by ATI 150 μg/kg (MED + ATI and MMK + ATI) or saline intramuscular 30 min later. Plasma was analysed for drug concentrations, and sedation was subjectively assessed with a visual analogue scale. Systemic haemodynamics and blood gases were measured before treatments and at intervals thereafter. With MK‐467, medetomidine plasma concentrations were threefold higher prior to ATI, which was associated with more profound sedation and shorter onset. No significant differences were observed in early cardiopulmonary changes between treatments. Atipamezole reversed the medetomidine‐related cardiopulmonary changes after both treatments. Sedation scores decreased more rapidly when MK‐467 was included. In this study, MK‐467 appeared to have a pronounced effect on the plasma concentration and central effects of medetomidine, with minor cardiopulmonary improvement. </p

Professional educators in the Circumpolar North: A model for the digital competence of future teachers

This article is based on a study that considers future teachers’ digital competencies in the Arctic education context with special attention to the necessary cultural and contextual dimensions of teachers’ work. This study explored the professional competencies teachers require when teaching diverse and multicultural pupils in the Circumpolar North drawing on the multiple affordances offered by the digital world. Previous research draws attention to specific teaching and teacher competencies required for rural schools in the Circumpolar North considering the unique assets and characteristics of rural places in this region. This study presents a model of Digital Competence for Future Teachers (DCFT) that illustrates the competencies required by teachers in rural schools in the Arctic. Within the proposed model, four types of digital knowledge-based competencies necessary for holistic education were identified: techno-cultural, intercultural, self-cultural, and micro-cultural. The model was created through a process of analysis of existing models of teachers’ digital competencies: MAP-, TPACK- and PEAT-models which are then reflected on the findings of an earlier international comparative multiple-case study by the same authors examining the sudden change to remote online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Cultural Competence for Equity and Inclusion (CCEI) framework. Although the presented study focused on the Circumpolar North, the findings have implications for teacher education and policy production more widely in national and international educational environments

Development and characterization of the readout system for POLARBEAR-2

POLARBEAR-2 is a next-generation receiver for precision measurements of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)). Scheduled to deploy in early 2015, it will observe alongside the existing POLARBEAR-1 receiver, on a new telescope in the Simons Array on Cerro Toco in the Atacama desert of Chile. For increased sensitivity, it will feature a larger area focal plane, with a total of 7,588 polarization sensitive antenna-coupled Transition Edge Sensor (TES) bolometers, with a design sensitivity of 4.1 uKrt(s). The focal plane will be cooled to 250 milliKelvin, and the bolometers will be read-out with 40x frequency domain multiplexing, with 36 optical bolometers on a single SQUID amplifier, along with 2 dark bolometers and 2 calibration resistors. To increase the multiplexing factor from 8x for POLARBEAR-1 to 40x for POLARBEAR-2 requires additional bandwidth for SQUID readout and well-defined frequency channel spacing. Extending to these higher frequencies requires new components and design for the LC filters which define channel spacing. The LC filters are cold resonant circuits with an inductor and capacitor in series with each bolometer, and stray inductance in the wiring and equivalent series resistance from the capacitors can affect bolometer operation. We present results from characterizing these new readout components. Integration of the readout system is being done first on a small scale, to ensure that the readout system does not affect bolometer sensitivity or stability, and to validate the overall system before expansion into the full receiver. We present the status of readout integration, and the initial results and status of components for the full array.Comment: Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2014: Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy VII. Published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 915