10,266 research outputs found
Editorial: Starting a journal, starting a conversation
First paragraph: Starting up a new academic journal in the information age, an age characterised by an ongoing explosion of academic publishing around the globe, may seem like joining a bandwagon of the hopeful and reckless. It is an idea that many pursue and many such journals die quietly. But then, without a certain hope, without a certain degree of blind enthusiasm and unquestioning optimism many things would never happen, and many good outcomes would never occur or even be given energy and time. Starting up Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives, is a risk worth taking for the sake of our remit and the conversations to be explored. What has made this sure for us is that wherever we have turned with this venture so far we have found help, support, interest and life
Editorial: The Academic Study of Educational Alternatives
First paragraph: Having just read some reflections on the first issue of Other Education (http://www.libed.org.uk/jan13/other-education.html), we consider it is a fitting place to springboard into this editorial. The review, speaking from a place of practical educational matters, voices concerns about the philosophical nature of some of the contributions in the inaugural issue of Other Education. As readers of this journal will see from the articles in this issue -- our first to include peer reviewed submissions -- Other Education is extremely concerned with practical educational matters. As stated and shown, with regard to the inaugural issue of invited position papers from the OE editorial board, our remit is broad. What we have done so far is to highlight perhaps that educational alternatives are a wide territory, requiring a theoretical basis and philosophical and theoretical debates, positions and challenges included in its conversations, in order to flourish. The mostly academic based editorial board that we work with are always theoreticians, even if not explicitly so, because academic work without some kind or some content of theory is missing a vital component of its presentation. As the stated aim of Other Education is "to promote and represent the academic study of educational alternatives" rather than to represent those practices and processes themselves (see http://www.othereducation.stir.ac.uk/index.php/OE/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope) our first priority is towards the publication of academic work. Such work inevitably needs to include a theoretical dimension-albeit that this does not necessarily mean that such a dimension has to be philosophical
Observation of magnetic fragmentation in spin ice
Fractionalised excitations that emerge from a many body system have revealed
rich physics and concepts, from composite fermions in two-dimensional electron
systems, revealed through the fractional quantum Hall effect, to spinons in
antiferromagnetic chains and, more recently, fractionalisation of Dirac
electrons in graphene and magnetic monopoles in spin ice. Even more surprising
is the fragmentation of the degrees of freedom themselves, leading to
coexisting and a priori independent ground states. This puzzling phenomenon was
recently put forward in the context of spin ice, in which the magnetic moment
field can fragment, resulting in a dual ground state consisting of a
fluctuating spin liquid, a so-called Coulomb phase, on top of a magnetic
monopole crystal. Here we show, by means of neutron scattering measurements,
that such fragmentation occurs in the spin ice candidate NdZrO. We
observe the spectacular coexistence of an antiferromagnetic order induced by
the monopole crystallisation and a fluctuating state with ferromagnetic
correlations. Experimentally, this fragmentation manifests itself via the
superposition of magnetic Bragg peaks, characteristic of the ordered phase, and
a pinch point pattern, characteristic of the Coulomb phase. These results
highlight the relevance of the fragmentation concept to describe the physics of
systems that are simultaneously ordered and fluctuating.Comment: accepted in Nature Physic
Deforming the Maxwell-Sim Algebra
The Maxwell alegbra is a non-central extension of the Poincar\'e algebra, in
which the momentum generators no longer commute, but satisfy
. The charges commute with the momenta,
and transform tensorially under the action of the angular momentum generators.
If one constructs an action for a massive particle, invariant under these
symmetries, one finds that it satisfies the equations of motion of a charged
particle interacting with a constant electromagnetic field via the Lorentz
force. In this paper, we explore the analogous constructions where one starts
instead with the ISim subalgebra of Poincar\'e, this being the symmetry algebra
of Very Special Relativity. It admits an analogous non-central extension, and
we find that a particle action invariant under this Maxwell-Sim algebra again
describes a particle subject to the ordinary Lorentz force. One can also deform
the ISim algebra to DISim, where is a non-trivial dimensionless
parameter. We find that the motion described by an action invariant under the
corresponding Maxwell-DISim algebra is that of a particle interacting via a
Finslerian modification of the Lorentz force.Comment: Appendix on Lifshitz and Schrodinger algebras adde
A Coupled Map Lattice Model for Rheological Chaos in Sheared Nematic Liquid Crystals
A variety of complex fluids under shear exhibit complex spatio-temporal
behaviour, including what is now termed rheological chaos, at moderate values
of the shear rate. Such chaos associated with rheological response occurs in
regimes where the Reynolds number is very small. It must thus arise as a
consequence of the coupling of the flow to internal structural variables
describing the local state of the fluid. We propose a coupled map lattice (CML)
model for such complex spatio-temporal behaviour in a passively sheared nematic
liquid crystal, using local maps constructed so as to accurately describe the
spatially homogeneous case. Such local maps are coupled diffusively to nearest
and next nearest neighbours to mimic the effects of spatial gradients in the
underlying equations of motion. We investigate the dynamical steady states
obtained as parameters in the map and the strength of the spatial coupling are
varied, studying local temporal properties at a single site as well as
spatio-temporal features of the extended system. Our methods reproduce the full
range of spatio-temporal behaviour seen in earlier one-dimensional studies
based on partial differential equations. We report results for both the one and
two-dimensional cases, showing that spatial coupling favours uniform or
periodically time-varying states, as intuitively expected. We demonstrate and
characterize regimes of spatio-temporal intermittency out of which chaos
develops. Our work suggests that such simplified lattice representations of the
spatio-temporal dynamics of complex fluids under shear may provide useful
insights as well as fast and numerically tractable alternatives to continuum
representations.Comment: 32 pages, single column, 20 figure
Tolerability of the Low-Affinity, Use-Dependent NMDA Antagonist AR-R15896AR in Stroke Patients
Background and Purpose—AR-R15896AR is a use-dependent, low-affinity blocker of the NMDA ion channel with neuroprotective effects in animal models of focal cerebral ischemia. This study aimed to establish the highest safe and tolerated loading and maintenance dosing regimen of AR-R15896AR in acute ischemic stroke patients and to determine the associated plasma concentrations of AR-R15896AR.Methods—This was a 4-part, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in 175 patients (mean age, 69 years) within 24 hours of acute stroke symptom recognition. Ascending 60-minute intravenous infusion loading doses of AR-R15896AR were initially examined (100, 150, 200, 250, or 300 mg or placebo in 3:1 randomization, n=36 treated); in part 2, 250, 275, or 300 mg was compared with placebo (n=33). In part 3, a 250-mg loading dose was followed by 9 maintenance doses of 60, 75, 90, 105, or 120 mg every 8 hours versus placebo in 3:1 randomization (n=59); subsequently, in part 4, maintenance doses of 90, 105, and 120 mg after the 250-mg loading dose were directly randomized against placebo (n=42). Safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics were the primary end points; NIHSS at 1 week and Barthel and modified Rankin scores at 1 month were also recorded, but the study was neither designed nor powered to assess efficacy.Results—Rates for mortality and serious adverse events (SAE) were similar in active and placebo groups (9% mortality and 23% SAE for all active combined versus 11% mortality and 33% SAE for placebo). Adverse events associated with AR-R15896AR were dizziness, vomiting, nausea, stupor, and some agitation/hallucination. Withdrawal from treatment occurred only in response to loading doses with AR-R15896AR: placebo, 3 of 46 (7%); 250 mg, 11 of 89 (12%); 275 mg, 1 of 8 (12.5%); and 300 mg, 3 of 15 (20%). No significant difference in outcome was observed between groups. Plasma concentrations of AR-R15896AR were 1524±536 ng/mL at the end of the 250-mg loading infusion and were 1847±478 ng/mL at steady state after the 9 maintenance doses of 120 mg.Conclusions—The maximum tolerated loading infusion of AR-R15896AR in this study was 250 mg over a period of 1 hour. Subsequent maintenance infusions of 120 mg every 8 hours were well tolerated. With these doses, putative neuroprotective concentrations of 1240 ng/mL are attained by the loading dose and are satisfactorily maintained thereafter. The loading dose may be improved further by adjustment on an individual patient basis, but tolerability issues remain
Low-temperature magnetic fluctuations in the Kondo insulator SmB6
We present the results of a systematic investigation of the magnetic
properties of the three-dimensional Kondo topological insulator SmB6 using
magnetization and muon-spin relaxation/rotation (muSR) measurements. The muSR
measurements exhibit magnetic field fluctuations in SmB6 below 15 K due to
electronic moments present in the system. However, no evidence for magnetic
ordering is found down to 19 mK. The observed magnetism in SmB6 is homogeneous
in nature throughout the full volume of the sample. Bulk magnetization
measurements on the same sample show consistent behavior. The agreement between
muSR, magnetization, and NMR results strongly indicate the appearance of
intrinsic bulk magnetic in-gap states associated with fluctuating magnetic
fields in SmB6 at low temperature.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Observation of the Decay B^-→D_s^((*)+)K^-ℓ^-ν̅ _ℓ
We report the observation of the decay B^- → D_s^((*)+)K^-ℓ^-ν̅ _ℓ based on 342  fb^(-1) of data collected at the Υ(4S) resonance with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II e^+e^- storage rings at SLAC. A simultaneous fit to three D_s^+ decay chains is performed to extract the signal yield from measurements of the squared missing mass in the B meson decay. We observe the decay B^- → D_s^((*)+)K^-ℓ^-ν̅ _ℓ with a significance greater than 5 standard deviations (including systematic uncertainties) and measure its branching fraction to be B(B^- → D_s^((*)+)K^-ℓ^-ν̅ _ℓ)=[6.13_(-1.03)^(+1.04)(stat)±0.43(syst)±0.51(B(D_s))]×10^(-4), where the last error reflects the limited knowledge of the D_s branching fractions
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