Pupil participation in Scottish schools: how far have we come?

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989), which applies to all children under the age of 18, established the overarching principles guiding pupil participation. In most European states, signatories to the Convention have enacted policies to promote the voice of the child or young person in decisions that affect them. In education systems strategies to enhance the pupil participation are an increasing feature of deliberation on education for citizenship, curriculum flexibility, pedagogical approaches and assessment for learning. Despite the positive policy context and professional commitment to principles of inclusion, translating policy intentions so that the spirit of the legislation is played out in the day-to-day experiences of pupils is a constant challenge. This article reports on research that examines how pupil participation is understood and enacted in Scottish schools. It considers how the over-laying of diverse policies presents mixed messages to practitioners

Letter from S. M. McKinney to Perry M. Colson

Letter from S. M. McKinney to Perry M. Colson. The one-page handwritten letter is dated 22 May 1907

Magnetic field effects on microwave absorbing materials

The objective of this program was to gather information to formulate a microwave absorber that can work in the presence of strong constant direct current (DC) magnetic fields. The program was conducted in four steps. The first step was to investigate the electrical and magnetic properties of magnetic and ferrite microwave absorbers in the presence of strong magnetic fields. This included both experimental measurements and a literature survey of properties that may be applicable to finding an appropriate absorbing material. The second step was to identify those material properties that will produce desirable absorptive properties in the presence of intense magnetic fields and determine the range of magnetic field in which the absorbers remain effective. The third step was to establish ferrite absorber designs that will produce low reflection and adequate absorption in the presence of intense inhomogeneous static magnetic fields. The fourth and final step was to prepare and test samples of such magnetic microwave absorbers if such designs seem practical

The School Improvement Partnership Programme: Using Collaboration and Enquiry to tackle Educational Inequity

No abstract available

Pupil participation in Scottish schools: final report

This research was commissioned by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) to evaluate the nature of pupil participation in primary and secondary schools across Scotland. The specific objectives of the research were: <p>· To describe what school staff and pupils understand by the term ‘pupil participation’.</p> <p>· To describe the range and usage of pupil participation mechanisms employed in schools.</p> <p>· To describe how school staff respect and respond to pupils’ views and ideas, and those of the wider community.</p> <p>· To identify the characteristics of schools and classrooms that facilitate effective pupil participation.</p> <p>· To identify possible barriers to the development of pupil participation in schools and to make suggestions about how these can be overcome.</p> <p>· To capture examples of effective practice of pupil participation.</p> <p>· To make suggestions about how pupil participation can help support the implementation of the Curriculum for Excellence.</p&gt

Hematopoietic stem cells under pressure.

"This is a non-final version of an article published in final form in Current Opinion in Hematology "PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and progenitors are tasked with maintaining hematopoietic homeostasis in the face of numerous insults and challenges, including infection, inflammation, and exsanguination. HSCs possess the remarkable ability to reconstitute the entire hematopoietic system of an organism whose own hematopoietic system has been ablated. This ability is exploited routinely in the clinic via HSC transplantation (HSCT). Here, we focus on the physiological and molecular bottlenecks overcome by HSCs during transplantation. RECENT FINDINGS: During transplantation, HSCs encounter a damaged bone marrow niche, characterized molecularly by increases in oxygen concentrations and an altered cytokine milieu. New mechanisms and pathways have been recently implicated during HSCT, including transplanted HSC-dependent secretion of conditioning molecules that facilitate engraftment and pathways that protect HSCs from perturbed organelle homeostasis. SUMMARY: Better understanding the molecular processes HSCs employ to withstand the stress of transplant will illuminate novel targets for further improving conditioning regimens and engraftment during HSCT

Avionics architecture studies for the entry research vehicle

This report is the culmination of a year-long investigation of the avionics architecture for NASA's Entry Research Vehicle (ERV). The Entry Research Vehicle is conceived to be an unmanned, autonomous spacecraft to be deployed from the Shuttle. It will perform various aerodynamic and propulsive maneuvers in orbit and land at Edwards AFB after a 5 to 10 hour mission. The design and analysis of the vehicle's avionics architecture are detailed here. The architecture consists of a central triply redundant ultra-reliable fault tolerant processor attached to three replicated and distributed MIL-STD-1553 buses for input and output. The reliability analysis is detailed here. The architecture was found to be sufficiently reliable for the ERV mission plan

Neutral Gas Properties and Lyα\alpha Escape in Extreme Green Pea Galaxies

Mechanisms regulating the escape of Ly$\alpha$ photons and ionizing radiation remain poorly understood. To study these processes we analyze VLA 21cm observations of one Green Pea (GP), J160810+352809 (hereafter J1608), and HST COS spectra of 17 GP galaxies at $z<0.2$. All are highly ionized: J1608 has the highest [O III] $\lambda5007$/[O II] $\lambda3727$ for star-forming galaxies in SDSS, and the 17 GPs have [O III]/[O II] $\geq6.6$. We set an upper limit on J1608's HI mass of $\log M_{HI}/M_\odot=8.4$, near or below average compared to similar mass dwarf galaxies. In the COS sample, eight GPs show Ly$\alpha$ absorption components, six of which also have Ly$\alpha$ emission. The HI column densities derived from Ly$\alpha$ absorption are high, $\log N_{HI}/$cm$^{-2}=19-21$, well above the LyC optically thick limit. Using low-ionization absorption lines, we measure covering fractions (f_{\mbox{cov}}) of $0.1-1$, and find that f_{\mbox{cov}} strongly anti-correlates with Ly$\alpha$ escape fraction. Low covering fractions may facilitate Ly$\alpha$ and LyC escape through dense neutral regions. GPs with f_{\mbox{cov}}\sim1 all have low neutral gas velocities, while GPs with lower f_{\mbox{cov}}=0.2-0.6 have a larger range of velocities. Conventional mechanical feedback may help establish low f_{\mbox{cov}} in some cases, whereas other processes may be important for GPs with low velocities. Finally, we compare f_{\mbox{cov}} with proposed indicators of LyC escape. Ionizing photon escape likely depends on a combination of neutral gas geometry and kinematics, complicating the use of emission-line diagnostics for identifying LyC emitters.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Stem cells and fluid flow drive cyst formation in an invertebrate excretory organ.

Cystic kidney diseases (CKDs) affect millions of people worldwide. The defining pathological features are fluid-filled cysts developing from nephric tubules due to defective flow sensing, cell proliferation and differentiation. The underlying molecular mechanisms, however, remain poorly understood, and the derived excretory systems of established invertebrate models (Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster) are unsuitable to model CKDs. Systematic structure/function comparisons revealed that the combination of ultrafiltration and flow-associated filtrate modification that is central to CKD etiology is remarkably conserved between the planarian excretory system and the vertebrate nephron. Consistently, both RNA-mediated genetic interference (RNAi) of planarian orthologues of human CKD genes and inhibition of tubule flow led to tubular cystogenesis that share many features with vertebrate CKDs, suggesting deep mechanistic conservation. Our results demonstrate a common evolutionary origin of animal excretory systems and establish planarians as a novel and experimentally accessible invertebrate model for the study of human kidney pathologies

Study of cold-formed steel structural members made of thick sheets and plates

INTRODUCTION In steel design, the Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members l issued by the American Iron and Steel Institute has long been used for structural members cold-formed to shape from steel sheet or strip used for load-carrying purposes in buildings and other thin walled steel structures. Even though no thickness limitation was included in previous editions of the Specification, 2,3, the thickness of material used in the cold-formed steel construction was often limited to about 1/4 inch because the maximum thickness of steels used under all ASTM Specifications listed in Section 1.2 of the AISI Specification 2,3 is 0.2449 inch. During recent years, carbon steel sheets and plates in coils up to 1/2 inch thick have been successfully used for cold-formed steel structural members in building construction (schools, shopping centers, and apartments), industrial plants, farm equipment, railway cars, ship and barge construction, truck trailers, earthmoving equipment, highway median barriers, bridge construc-tion, conveyors, machinery frames, and others. 4,5 Cold-formed steel plate sections up to about 3/4 inch in thickness have been used for steel plate structures and transmission poles. Consequently, the scope of the AISI Specification was extended in 1968 to include the use of steel sheets, strip, and plates up to 1/2 inch in thickness provided that such steel conforms to the chemical and mechanical requirements of one of the listed material specifications. 1 In view of the fact that the AISI design provisions have been mainly based upon the research work conducted on specimens made from relatively thin steel sheets and strip in the thicknesses ranging from 0.03 to 0.19 inch,6 some building code organizations have limited the application of the AISI Specification only to steels under 1/4 inch thick, due to the fact that the validity of some design provisions presently included in the AISI Specification has not been demonstrated fully for cold-formed steel sections thicker than 1/4 inch in thickness. In order to study the structural behavior of steel members cold-formed from thick steel plates (up to about 1 inch in thickness) for the purpose of verification of some AISI design provisions, a research project entitled Study of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members Made of Thick Sheets and Plates was initiated in September, 1971, at the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) under the sponsorship of the American Iron and Steel Institute. The research work reported herein was directed by Dr. Wei-Wen Yu, Professor of Civil Engineering, under the supervision of Dr. J. H. Senne, Chairman and Professor of the University of Missouri-Rolla Department of Civil Engineering. Research Assistants for the project were Victor A. S. Liu and William M. McKinney, graduate students of the Department of Civil Engineering. This report summarizes the research work on the study of thick, coldformed, steel sections conducted at the University of Missouri-Rolla during the academic year 1971-72 (September 1971 to December 1972). The objectives of the project and the planned program are described in Section 2. The findings obtained from a preliminary investigation are discussed in Section 3. Section 4 contains a discussion of the buckling strength and the effective design width of stiffened compression elements; emphasis is placed on the use of thick sheets and plates. The buckling strength of an initially curved unstiffened plate is discussed in Section S. Section 6 describes the effect of cold-work on mechanical properties of thick sheets and plates. Finally, a summary is presented in Section 7. Future work on the project for the academic year 1972-73 is outlined in Section 8. It should be noted that some of the findings reported herein have been discussed in the First and Second Progress Reports 7,8 and in a paper orally presented at the Research Session of the 1972 ASCE National Structural Engineering Meeting held in Cleveland, Ohio.9 This investigation was sponsored by American Iron and Steel Institute. The financial assistance given by the Institute and the technical guidance provided by the AISI Staff and the Institute\u27s Task Group on Thicker Sheets and Plates are gratefully acknowledged. The AISI Staff responsible for this project included Dr. A.L. Johnson and Mr. D.J. Clark. The Task Group was constituted as follows: Mr. A.J. Oudheusden, Chairman, Messrs. H.R. Fink, T.J. Jones, R.W. Haussler, and D.S. Wolford, members