Thriving not just surviving: A review of research on teacher resilience

Retaining teachers in the early stages of the profession is a major issue of concern in many countries. Teacher resilience is a relatively recent area of investigation which provides a way of understanding what enables teachers to persist in the face of challenges and offers a complementary perspective to studies of stress, burnout and attrition. We have known for many years that teaching can be stressful, particularly for new teachers, but little appears to have changed. This paper reviews recent empirical studies related to the resilience of early career teachers. Resilience is shown to be the outcome of a dynamic relationship between individual risk and protective factors. Individual attributes such as altruistic motives and high self-efficacy are key individual protective factors. Contextual challenges or risk factors and contextual supports or protective factors can come from sources such as school administration, colleagues, and pupils. Challenges for the future are to refine conceptualisations of teacher resilience and to develop and examine interventions in multiple contexts. There are many opportunities for those who prepare, employ and work with prospective and new teachers to reduce risk factors and enhance protective factors and so enable new teachers to thrive, not just survive

On including quality in applied automatic gait recognition

Many gait recognition approaches use silhouette data. Imperfections in silhouette extraction have a negative effect on the performance of a gait recognition system. In this paper we extend quality metrics for gait recognition and evaluate new ways of using quality to improve a recognition system. We demonstrate use of quality to improve silhouette data and select gait cycles of best quality. The potential of the new approaches has been demonstrated experimentally on a challenging dataset, showing how recognition capability can be dramatically improved. Our practical study also shows that acquiring samples of adequate quality in arbitrary environments is difficult and that including quality analysis can improve performance markedly

The vacuum state functional of interacting string field theory

We show that the vacuum state functional for both open and closed string field theories can be constructed from the vacuum expectation values it must generate. The method also applies to quantum field theory and as an application we give a diagrammatic description of the equivalance between Schrodinger and covariant repreresentations of field theory.Comment: 15 pages, 35 .eps figure

A simplicial gauge theory

We provide an action for gauge theories discretized on simplicial meshes, inspired by finite element methods. The action is discretely gauge invariant and we give a proof of consistency. A discrete Noether's theorem that can be applied to our setting, is also proved.Comment: 24 pages. v2: New version includes a longer introduction and a discrete Noether's theorem. v3: Section 4 on Noether's theorem has been expanded with Proposition 8, section 2 has been expanded with a paragraph on standard LGT. v4: Thorough revision with new introduction and more background materia

An approach to vehicle design: in-depth audit to understand the needs of older drivers

The population of older people continues to increase around the world, and this trend is expected to continue; the population of older drivers is increasing accordingly. January 2012 figures from the DVLA in the UK stated that there were more than 15 million drivers aged over 60; more than 1 million drivers were aged over 80. There is a need for specific research tools to understand and capture how all users interact with features in the vehicle cabin e.g. controls and tasks, including the specific needs of the increasingly older driving population. This paper describes an in-depth audit that was conducted to understand how design of the vehicle cabin impacts on comfort, posture, usability, health and wellbeing in older drivers. The sample involved 47 drivers (38% female, 62% male). The age distribution was: 50–64 (n = 12), 65–79 (n = 20), and those 80 and over (n = 15). The methodology included tools to capture user experience in the vehicle cabin and functional performance tests relevant to specific driving tasks. It is shown that drivers' physical capabilities reduce with age and that there are associated difficulties in setting up an optimal driving position such that some controls cannot be operated as intended, and many adapt their driving cabins. The cabin set-up process consistently began with setting up the seat and finished with operation of the seat belt

Receipt, 16 July 1866

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aldrichcorr_d/1102/thumbnail.jp

Receipt, 29 June 1866

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aldrichcorr_d/1106/thumbnail.jp

SP-100 reactor with Brayton conversion for lunar surface applications

Examined here is the potential for integrating Brayton-cycle power conversion with the SP-100 reactor for lunar surface power system applications. Two designs were characterized and modeled. The first design integrates a 100-kWe SP-100 Brayton power system with a lunar lander. This system is intended to meet early lunar mission power needs while minimizing on-site installation requirements. Man-rated radiation protection is provided by an integral multilayer, cylindrical lithium hydride/tungsten (LiH/W) shield encircling the reactor vessel. Design emphasis is on ease of deployment, safety, and reliability, while utilizing relatively near-term technology. The second design combines Brayton conversion with the SP-100 reactor in a erectable 550-kWe powerplant concept intended to satisfy later-phase lunar base power requirements. This system capitalizes on experience gained from operating the initial 100-kWe module and incorporates some technology improvements. For this system, the reactor is emplaced in a lunar regolith excavation to provide man-rated shielding, and the Brayton engines and radiators are mounted on the lunar surface and extend radially from the central reactor. Design emphasis is on performance, safety, long life, and operational flexibility