Global education attitudes and practices in Iowa high schools

Global education is a curriculum which is creating considerable debate among educators and lay people. The Iowa Department of Education has mandated that all schools develop a global education program. Clough (1994) reports that the globalization of American society has greatly increased the incentives for individuals in all parts of the country to become more involved in world affairs (p. 4) . Therefore, it is important that the attitudes of educators toward global education and the implementation of global education be studied. The purposes of this study were to identify the attitudes of public high school principals and social studies teachers in Iowa related to global education, the extent to which public high schools have implemented global education, the relationship of personal and social variables, and the relationship of community variables implementation. A quantitative research approach was utilized. The questionnaire was mailed to 442 public high school principals and social studies teachers within Iowa. The sample was stratified into three categories which included metropolitan, urban, and rural high schools. The final sample included 242 responses which represented a return rate of 55%. Six research questions were explored to identify the degree of global education acceptance and implementation and the relationship of these with various personal and social traits of educators. Several statistical tests were conducted to analyze the data. All of the statistical tests were conducted at the .05 level of significance. The statistical tests conducted included: t-test, chi square, lambda, gamma, one way ANOVA, Tukey HSD, and Scheffe procedure. There was a high level of acceptance of global education conceptually, but a generally low level of implementation. Few personal or social characteristics were related to global education. However, the results indicated a positive correlation existed between school size and global education implementation, hence, an exploratory study was launched to identify other variables which may have a correlation with global education implementation. Thirty-six variables from the 1990 Census were selected to represent community social variables. Four variables which had the highest relationship to the implementation of global education were: median housing value, percentage of people below poverty level, percentage of population born in state (inverse relationship), and foreign born population. The conclusions indicated that there was considerable agreement between high school principals and social studies teachers about global education attitudes. However, the implementation level of global education was much lower than expected considering the higher level of attitudinal support for global education. Community variables show promise as significant predictors of global education implementation

Correlated random fields in dielectric and spin glasses

Both orientational glasses and dipolar glasses possess an intrinsic random field, coming from the volume difference between impurity and host ions. We show this suppresses the glass transition, causing instead a crossover to the low $T$ phase. Moreover the random field is correlated with the inter-impurity interactions, and has a broad distribution. This leads to a peculiar variant of the Imry-Ma mechanism, with 'domains' of impurities oriented by a few frozen pairs. These domains are small: predictions of domain size are given for specific systems, and their possible experimental verification is outlined. In magnetic glasses in zero field the glass transition survives, because the random fields are disallowed by time-reversal symmetry; applying a magnetic field then generates random fields, and suppresses the spin glass transition.Comment: minor modifications, final versio

Theory of single-particle properties of the Hubbard model

It is shown that it is possible to quantitatively explain quantum Monte Carlo results for the Green's function of the two-dimensional Hubbard model in the weak to intermediate coupling regime. The analytic approach includes vertex corrections in a paramagnon-like self-energy. All parameters are determined self-consistently. This approach clearly shows that in two dimensions Fermi-liquid quasiparticles disappear in the paramagnetic state when the antiferromagnetic correlation length becomes larger than the electronic thermal de Broglie wavelength.Comment: 5 pages, latex, uuencoded figures, REVTEX Also available by direct request to [email protected]

Development of food photographs for use with children aged 18 months to 16 years:comparison against weighed food diaries – The Young Person’s Food Atlas (UK)

Traditional dietary assessment methods, used in the UK, such as weighed food diaries impose a large participant burden, often resulting in difficulty recruiting representative samples and underreporting of energy intakes. One approach to reducing the burden placed on the participant is to use portion size assessment tools to obtain an estimate of the amount of food consumed, removing the need to weigh all foods. An age range specific food atlas was developed for use in assessing children’s dietary intakes. The foods selected and portion sizes depicted were derived from intakes recorded during the UK National Diet and Nutrition Surveys of children aged 1.5 to 16 years. Estimates of food portion sizes using the food atlas were compared against 4-day weighed intakes along with in-school / nursery observations, by the research team. Interviews were conducted with parents the day after completion of the diary, and for children aged 4 to 16 years, also with the child. Mean estimates of portion size consumed were within 7% of the weight of food recorded in the weighed food diary. The limits of agreement were wide indicating high variability of estimates at the individual level but the precision increased with increasing age. For children 11 years and over, agreement with weighed food diaries, was as good as that of their parents in terms of total weight of food consumed and of intake of energy and key nutrients. The age appropriate food photographs offer an alternative to weighed intakes for dietary assessment with children

Decoherence and Quantum Walks: anomalous diffusion and ballistic tails

The common perception is that strong coupling to the environment will always render the evolution of the system density matrix quasi-classical (in fact, diffusive) in the long time limit. We present here a counter-example, in which a particle makes quantum transitions between the sites of a d-dimensional hypercubic lattice whilst strongly coupled to a bath of two-level systems which 'record' the transitions. The long-time evolution of an initial wave packet is found to be most unusual: the mean square displacement of the particle density matrix shows long-range ballitic behaviour, but simultaneously a kind of weakly-localised behaviour near the origin. This result may have important implications for the design of quantum computing algorithms, since it describes a class of quantum walks.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

'Hole-digging' in ensembles of tunneling Molecular Magnets

The nuclear spin-mediated quantum relaxation of ensembles of tunneling magnetic molecules causes a 'hole' to appear in the distribution of internal fields in the system. The form of this hole, and its time evolution, are studied using Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that the line-shape of the tunneling hole in a weakly polarised sample must have a Lorentzian lineshape- the short-time half-width $\xi_o$ in all experiments done so far should be $\sim E_0$, the half-width of the nuclear spin multiplet. After a time $\tau_o$, the single molecule tunneling relaxation time, the hole width begins to increase rapidly. In initially polarised samples the disintegration of resonant tunneling surfaces is found to be very fast.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

What are the interactions in quantum glasses?

The form of the low-temperature interactions between defects in neutral glasses is reconsidered. We analyse the case where the defects can be modelled either as simple 2-level tunneling systems, or tunneling rotational impurities. The coupling to strain fields is determined up to 2nd order in the displacement field. It is shown that the linear coupling generates not only the usual $1/r^3$ Ising-like interaction between the rotational tunneling defect modes, which cause them to freeze around a temperature $T_G$, but also a random field term. At lower temperatures the inversion symmetric tunneling modes are still active - however the coupling of these to the frozen rotational modes, now via the 2nd-order coupling to phonons, generates another random field term acting on the inversion symmetric modes (as well as shorter-range $1/r^5$ interactions between them). Detailed expressions for all these couplings are given.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures. Minor modifications, published versio

Stability of Bose Einstein condensates of hot magnons in YIG

We investigate the stability of the recently discovered room temperature Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of magnons in Ytrrium Iron Garnet (YIG) films. We show that magnon-magnon interactions depend strongly on the external field orientation, and that the BEC in current experiments is actually metastable - it only survives because of finite size effects, and because the BEC density is very low. On the other hand a strong field applied perpendicular to the sample plane leads to a repulsive magnon-magnon interaction; we predict that a high-density magnon BEC can then be formed in this perpendicular field geometry.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review Letter