Predictors of Substance Use, Relationship Arrangements and Intimacy Expectancies among Gay Couples and Associations to Erikson Intimacy Development

This study explored relationship arrangements, intimacy expectancies of substance use and the potential role of Eriksonian intimacy development on drug use among gay and bisexual men. Data were collected from 339 partnered gay/bisexual men across the United States. Measures addressed arrangement type, intimacy expectancies, Eriksonian intimacy and drug use

Moodlegate: securing computer driven exam environments

Moodle installations that are used to make assessments inevitably run the risk of being used to obtain fraudulent results by the students. Such fraud can be mitigated through the use of auditing tools that detect abnormal behaviour, but students continue to attempt to cheat the system despite theknowledge that these tools are active. This article presents a tool that blocks a range of behaviours which could be used by students fraudulently. This result is achieved by implementing access control to any Moodle deployment. The access control is based on the identity of the Moodle user, time and date, computer (or range of computers), and the Moodle resources that are being accessed. Byintegrating with Moodle, the tool is able to provide a finer level of access control than would be provided by traditional network access control devices such as firewalls. This increases the assurance that the results of Moodle driven exam assessments are accurate

Ground-based optical transmission spectrum of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-1b

Time-series spectrophotometric studies of exoplanets during transit using ground-based facilities are a promising approach to characterize their atmospheric compositions. We aim to investigate the transit spectrum of the hot Jupiter HAT-P-1b. We compare our results to those obtained at similar wavelengths by previous space-based observations. We observed two transits of HAT-P-1b with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) instrument on the Gemini North telescope using two instrument modes covering the 320 - 800 nm and 520 - 950 nm wavelength ranges. We used time-series spectrophotometry to construct transit light curves in individual wavelength bins and measure the transit depths in each bin. We accounted for systematic effects. We addressed potential photometric variability due to magnetic spots in the planet's host star with long-term photometric monitoring. We find that the resulting transit spectrum is consistent with previous Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations. We compare our observations to transit spectroscopy models that marginally favor a clear atmosphere. However, the observations are also consistent with a flat spectrum, indicating high-altitude clouds. We do not detect the Na resonance absorption line (589 nm), and our observations do not have sufficient precision to study the resonance line of K at 770 nm. We show that even a single Gemini/GMOS transit can provide constraining power on the properties of the atmosphere of HAT-P-1b to a level comparable to that of HST transit studies in the optical when the observing conditions and target and reference star combination are suitable. Our 520 - 950 nm observations reach a precision comparable to that of HST transit spectra in a similar wavelength range of the same hot Jupiter, HAT-P-1b. However, our GMOS transit between 320 - 800 nm suffers from strong systematic effects and yields larger uncertainties.Comment: A&A, accepted, 16 pages, 8 figures, 5 table

Reações Químicas no Ensino de Química: Compreensões por meio da Experimentação

Esse estudo tem como objetivo refletir a partir da realização de uma proposta didática para o ensino de química, por meio da experimentação, realizada no 2º ano do Ensino Médio, que possibilitou o desenvolvimento e construções acerca do conteúdo de Cinética Química. Tal atividade foi realizada com a regência de classe, em uma escola da rede pública do Rio Grande do Sul. Diante da proposta se percebeu um amplo interesse dos estudantes em aprender por meio da experimentação, tendo em vista que essa propicia uma relação entre teoria e prática, estimulando a compreensão do conhecimento científico e desenvolvendo a criticidade e o protagonismo do sujeito no processo de ensino e aprendizagem. Além disso, destacamos o papel do professor como mediador do processo de desenvolvimento do conhecimento, orientando e estimulando os estudantes na busca por construções significativas da aprendizagem. Nesse sentido, compreendemos que a prática da experimentação aliada a teoria, além de estimular o interesse do sujeito, auxilia no processo de aprendizagem, contribuindo para o conhecimento científico e formação do sujeito com autonomia

Engineering superpositions of displaced number states of a trapped ion

We present a protocol that permits the generation of a subtle with superposition with 2^(l+1) displaced number states on a circle in phase space as target state for the center-of-mass motion of a trapped ion. Through a sequence of 'l' cycles involving the application of laser pulses and no-fluorescence measurements, explicit expressions for the total duration of laser pulses employed in the sequence and probability of getting the ion in the upper electronic state during the 'l' cycles are obtained and analyzed in detail. Furthermore, assuming that the effective relaxation process of a trapped ion can be described in the framework of the standard master equation for the damped harmonic oscillator, we investigate the degradation of the quantum interference effects inherent to superpositions via Wigner function.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure