472 research outputs found
USING PARTICIPATORY VISUAL METHODS TO TEACH CHARACTER EDUCATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD IN KENYA
The rising cases of youth engagement in anti-social behaviour in Kenya present the need for educational stakeholders to invest in the teaching of character education. This paper has explored the use of participatory visual methods (PVM) in the teaching of character education. A multiple case-study design was used where eight grade three teachers were selected purposively. Data were generated through drawings, individual interviews and reflective journals. These were later analysed thematically through systematic open coding. The findings showed that PVM are learner centred and that they advance collaborative learning. This child-centeredness encouraged active learning and excitement among learners. It also boosted learnersâ memories and overcame the language barriers that learners experience during communication in class. This paper concluded that participatory visual methods are new approaches as an alternative for better teaching of character education in early childhood. This conclusion has implications for early childhood teacher education on child-appropriate teaching styles to be used in character education.  Article visualizations
Towards N=1 Super-Yang-Mills on the Lattice
We consider the lattice regularization of N=1 supersymmetric Yang--Mills
theory with Wilson fermions. This formulation breaks supersymmetry at any
finite lattice spacing; we discuss how Ward identities can be used to define a
supersymmetric continuum limit, which coincides with the point where the gluino
becomes massless. As a first step towards the understanding of the zero
gluino-mass limit, we present results on the quenched low-lying spectrum of
SU(2) N=1 Super-Yang--Mills, at on a lattice, in
the OZI approximation. Our results, in spite of the quenched and OZI
approximations, are in remarkable agreement with theoretical predictions in the
supersymmetric theory, for the states with masses which are not expected to get
a large contribution from fermion loops.Comment: 25 Latex pages, 5 figure
Flow and retreat of the Late Quaternary Pine Island-Thwaites palaeo-ice stream, West Antarctica
Multibeam swath bathymetry and sub-bottom profiler data are used to establish constraints on the flow and retreat history of a major palaeo-ice stream that carried the combined discharge from the parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet now occupied by the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier basins. Sets of highly elongated bedforms show that, at the last glacial maximum, the route of the Pine Island-Thwaites palaeo-ice stream arced north-northeast following a prominent cross-shelf trough. In this area, the grounding line advanced to within similar to 68 km of, and probably reached, the shelf edge. Minimum ice thickness is estimated at 715 m on the outer shelf, and we estimate a minimum ice discharge of similar to 108 km(3) yr(-1) assuming velocities similar to today's Pine Island glacier (similar to 2.5 km yr(-1)). Additional bed forms observed in a trough northwest of Pine Island Bay likely formed via diachronous ice flows across the outer shelf and demonstrate switching ice stream behavior. The "style" of ice retreat is also evident in five grounding zone wedges, which suggest episodic deglaciation characterized by halts in grounding line migration up-trough. Stillstands occurred in association with changes in ice bed gradient, and phases of inferred rapid retreat correlate to higher bed slopes, supporting theoretical studies that show bed geometry as a control on ice margin recession. However, estimates that individual wedges could have formed within several centuries still imply a relatively rapid overall retreat. Our findings show that the ice stream channeled a substantial fraction of West Antarctica's discharge in the past, just as the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers do today
Polycontinuous geometries for inverse lipid phases with more than two aqueous network domains
Inverse bicontinuous cubic phases with two aqueous network domains separated by a smooth bilayer are firmly established as equilibrium phases in lipid/water systems. The purpose of this article is to highlight the generalisations of these bicontinuous geometries to polycontinuous geometries, which could be realised as lipid mesophases with three or more network-like aqueous domains separated by a branched bilayer. An analysis of structural homogeneity in terms of bilayer width variations reveals that ordered polycontinuous geometries are likely candidates for lipid mesophase structures, with similar chain packing characteristics to the inverse micellar phases (that once were believed not to exist due to high packing frustration). The average molecular shape required by global geometry to form these multi-network phases is quantified by the surfactant shape parameter, v/(al); we find that it adopts values close to those of the known lipid phases. We specifically analyse the 3etc(187 193) structure of hexagonal symmetry P63 /mcm with three aqueous domains, the 3dia(24 220) structure of cubic symmetry I 3d composed of three distorted diamond networks, the cubic chiral 4srs(24 208) with cubic symmetry P4232 and the achiral 4srs(5 133) structure of symmetry P42/nbc, each consisting of four intergrown undistorted copies of the srs net (the same net as in the QGII gyroid phase). Structural homogeneity is analysed by a medial surface approach assuming that the head-group interfaces are constant mean curvature surfaces. To facilitate future experimental identification, we provide simulated SAXS scattering patterns that, for the 4srs(24 208) and 3dia(24 220) structures, bear remarkable similarity to those of bicontinuous QGII-gyroid and QDII-diamond phases, with comparable lattice parameters and only a single peak that cannot be indexed to the well-established structures. While polycontinuous lipid phases have, to date, not been reported, the likelihood of their formation is further indicated by the reported observation of a solid tricontinuous mesoporous silicate structure, termed IBN-9, which formed in the presence of surfactants [Han et al., Nat. Chem., 2009, 1, 123]
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Facebook & BlackBoard: comparative view of learning environments
For several years, online educational tools such as Blackboard have been used by Universities to foster collaborative learning in an online setting. Such tools tend to be implemented in a top-down fashion, with the institution providing the tool to the students and instructing them to use it. Recently, however, a more informal, bottom up approach is increasingly being employed by the students themselves in the form of social networks such as Facebook. With over 9,000 registered Facebook users at the beginning of this study, rising to over 12,000 at the University of Reading alone, Facebook is becoming the de facto social network of choice for higher education students in the UK, and there was increasing anecdotal evidence that students were actively learning via Facebook rather than through BlackBoard. To test the validity of these anecdotes, a questionnaire was sent to students, asking them about their learning experiences via BlackBoard and Facebook. The results show that students are making use of the tools available to them even when there is no formal academic content, and that increased use of a social networking tool is correlated with a reported increase in learning as a result of that use
Global public policy, transnational policy communities, and their networks
Public policy has been a prisoner of the word "state." Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through "global publicâprivate partnerships" and "transnational executive networks," new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes that coexist alongside nation-state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is "global public policy"? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the "global agora." The second section adapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple-authority structures than is the case at national levels. The third section asks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration
Theta dependence of SU(N) gauge theories in the presence of a topological term
We review results concerning the theta dependence of 4D SU(N) gauge theories
and QCD, where theta is the coefficient of the CP-violating topological term in
the Lagrangian. In particular, we discuss theta dependence in the large-N
limit.
Most results have been obtained within the lattice formulation of the theory
via numerical simulations, which allow to investigate the theta dependence of
the ground-state energy and the spectrum around theta=0 by determining the
moments of the topological charge distribution, and their correlations with
other observables. We discuss the various methods which have been employed to
determine the topological susceptibility, and higher-order terms of the theta
expansion. We review results at zero and finite temperature. We show that the
results support the scenario obtained by general large-N scaling arguments, and
in particular the Witten-Veneziano mechanism to explain the U(1)_A problem. We
also compare with results obtained by other approaches, especially in the
large-N limit, where the issue has been also addressed using, for example, the
AdS/CFT correspondence.
We discuss issues related to theta dependence in full QCD: the neutron
electric dipole moment, the dependence of the topological susceptibility on the
quark masses, the U(1)_A symmetry breaking at finite temperature.
We also consider the 2D CP(N) model, which is an interesting theoretical
laboratory to study issues related to topology. We review analytical results in
the large-N limit, and numerical results within its lattice formulation.
Finally, we discuss the main features of the two-point correlation function
of the topological charge density.Comment: A typo in Eq. (3.9) has been corrected. An additional subsection
(5.2) has been inserted to demonstrate the nonrenormalizability of the
relevant theta parameter in the presence of massive fermions, which implies
that the continuum (a -> 0) limit must be taken keeping theta fixe
Upper limits on the strength of periodic gravitational waves from PSR J1939+2134
The first science run of the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors
presented the opportunity to test methods of searching for gravitational waves
from known pulsars. Here we present new direct upper limits on the strength of
waves from the pulsar PSR J1939+2134 using two independent analysis methods,
one in the frequency domain using frequentist statistics and one in the time
domain using Bayesian inference. Both methods show that the strain amplitude at
Earth from this pulsar is less than a few times .Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of the 5th Edoardo
Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, Tirrenia, Pisa, Italy, 6-11 July
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