Periodicity in wide-band time series

Summary: To test the hypotheses that (i) electroencephalograms (EEGs) are largely made up of oscillations at many frequencies and (ii) that the peaks in the power spectra represent oscillations, we applied a new method, called the Period Specific Average (PSA) to a wide sample of EEGs. Both hypotheses can be rejected

Critical reading of science-based news reports: establishing a knowledge, skills and attitudes framework

A recognised aim of science education is to promote critical engagement with science in the media. Evidence would suggest that this is challenging for both teachers and pupils and that at science education does not yet adequately prepare young people for this task. Furthermore, in the absence of clear guidance as to what this means and how this may be achieved it is difficult for teachers to develop approaches and resources that address the matter and that systematically promote such critical engagement within their teaching programmes. Twenty-six individuals with recognised expertise or interest in science in the media, drawn from a range of disciplines and areas of practice, constituted a specialist panel in this study. The question this research sought to answer was 'what are the elements of knowledge, skill and attitude which underpin critical reading of science based news reports'? During in-depth individual interviews the panel were asked to explore what they considered to be essential elements of knowledge, skills and attitude which people need to enable them to respond critically to news reports with a science component. Analysis of the data revealed fourteen fundamental elements which together contribute to an individual's capacity to engage critically with science-based news. These are classified in five categories 'knowledge of science', 'knowledge of writing and language', 'knowledge about news, newspapers and journalism', 'skills' and 'attitudes'. Illustrative profiles of each category along with indicators of critical engagement are presented. The implications for curriculum planning and pedagogy are considered

Insightful Insiders? Insider Trading and Stock Return Around Debt Covenant Violation Disclosures

This paper documents significant trading by insiders around a first-time debt covenant violation disclosure in an SEC filing and is interesting from a research and regulatory standpoint because of three considerations - delay and relative infrequency of new covenant violation disclosures lack of attention to disclosure issues by regulators and dearth of research. Importantly we find a lead relation between net insider selling in the 12 months before a debt covenant violation disclosure and investors' negative returns and net insider buying up to 12 months after disclosure and investors' positive returns. This relation is robust to the presence of other information. These results support our contention that insiders' trades around a covenant violation disclosure may benefit from an information advantage unavailable to other market participants. The aggregate return to insiders - the sum of the losses avoided from selling and the gains from buying - approaches almost two billion dollars over an eight-year study period

Investigating Views of Science and Humanities: Tertiary Educated Adults on Complementary and Alternative Medicines

This qualitative study explored the understandings of people with a university education in science and those without a university science background about the evidence base relating to Complementary and Alternative Medicine- a controversial multibillion-dollar industry on a global scale. The findings indicated that science- trained and nonscience- trained respondents alike valued scientific rigor and testing in relation to health care but also used subjective kinds of evidence in justifying their views and decisions about CAMS. In addition, both science and humanities graduates engaged with evidence in similar ways as defined by "habits of mind." These findings are discussed in relation to their implications for science education and engagement with scientific ideas, including scientific literacy and the belief systems that people bring to their understanding of science

On a class of rotating gravitational waves

doi: 10.1088/0264-9381/17/3/302A class of solutions of the gravitational field equations describing vacuum spacetimes outside rotating cylindrical sources is presented. The spacetime metric for this class is given by equation (35); to render this metric explicit, one must solve the nonlinear differential equation (31). A subclass of these solutions could correspond to the exterior gravitational fields of rotating cylindrical systems that emit gravitational radiation. This class has a special solution - corresponding to the exact solution (32) of equation (31) - in common with the Robinson-Trautman gravitational wave spacetimes, namely, the Siklos solution. The properties of rotating gravitational waves are briefly investigated. In particular, we discuss the energy density of these waves using the gravitational stress-energy tensor.This work has been supported by CONACYT, Mexico, grant no 3567-E and DGAPA-UNAM, grant no 121298