A Preliminary Study on Using the “Little Box of Big Questions (2012)” for Children With Social, Emotional, Behavioural and Moderate Learning Needs

Listening to children is comprehensively acclaimed and embedded in Educational Psychology practice and moral, pragmatic and legal perspectives, and professional guidance exist to enforce this practice. Whilst a variety of tools have been explored for listening to children using various techniques, research is yet to focus on using philosophical/spiritual listening approaches with children with special educational needs. This paper targets this specific area by exploring the experiences and impact of using a spiritual listening tool, The Little Box of Big Questions (2012), and follow-up questions to enable reflection opportunities. Data was collected over four sessions with four children aged 13 to 14 with social, emotional, behavioural and moderate learning needs who attended a specialist school for moderate learning needs. Semi-structured interviews, alongside a teacher focus group, informed the thematic analysis, with findings suggesting that relationships, education and feelings about themselves and others not only play a role in students’ lives but are also areas of perceived improvements following the sessions. Implications for educational psychologists were discussed, including a greater understanding of the use and impact of The Little Box of Big Questions with children with special educational needs to elicit aspirations, enable goal setting and motivate change

Designing a Green Roof for Ireland

A model is presented for the gravity-driven flow of rainwater descending through the soil layer of a green roof, treated as a porous medium on a at permeable surface representing an efficient drainage layer. A fully saturated zone is shown to occur. It is typically a thin layer, relative to the total soil thickness, and lies at the bottom of the soil layer. This provides a bottom boundary condition for the partially saturated upper zone. It is shown that after the onset of rainfall, well-defined fronts of water can descend through the soil layer. Also the rainwater flow is relatively quick compared with the moisture uptake by the roots of the plants in the roof. In a separate model the exchanges of water are described between the (smaller-scale) porous granules of soil, the roots and the rainwater in the inter-granule pores

Reconfiguring the Spaces of Urban Politics: Circuits, Territories, and Territorialization

In the wake of both post-colonial critiques of urban studies and the emerging realities of “planetary urbanization,” there is a need to revisit theories of urban politics. As urban forms across the globe are becoming fragmented and often extend across vast areas, earlier theoretical analyses of urban politics that focused closely on the municipal institutions and configurations of actors in a North American idiom have become increasingly redundant. Rapid urban growth and extending urban forms give rise to new territories of urban politics, including city-regions, operational landscapes, and large-scale developments. In reconfiguring the spaces of urban politics, attention needs to be directed to the wide range of transnational actors and practices, circulating policies as well as material and financial flows, which are key drivers of urban development and compose the field of urban politics. This chapter reviews accounts of the spatialities of urban politics. It then draws on empirical research on city strategies and on large-scale urban developments to propose ways in which the circuits, territories, and territorializations of the politics of urban development might be conceptualized. At the same time, emergent territories of urban politics provide the justification and grounds for wider comparative analyses and theory-building across diverse, specific urban contexts

Electrovac pppp-waves

New exact solutions of the Einstein-Maxwell field equations that describe $pp$-waves are presented

Spatial dynamics of airborne infectious diseases

Disease outbreaks, such as those of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 and the 2009 pandemic A(H1N1) influenza, have highlighted the potential for airborne transmission in indoor environments. Respirable pathogen-carrying droplets provide a vector for the spatial spread of infection with droplet transport determined by diffusive and convective processes. An epidemiological model describing the spatial dynamics of disease transmission is presented. The effects of an ambient airflow, as an infection control, are incorporated leading to a delay equation, with droplet density dependent on the infectious density at a previous time. It is found that small droplets ($\sim 0.4\ \mu$m) generate a negligible infectious force due to the small viral load and the associated duration they require to transmit infection. In contrast, larger droplets ($\sim 4\ \mu$m) can lead to an infectious wave propagating through a fully susceptible population or a secondary infection outbreak for a localised susceptible population. Droplet diffusion is found to be an inefficient mode of droplet transport leading to minimal spatial spread of infection. A threshold air velocity is derived, above which disease transmission is impaired even when the basic reproduction number $R_{0}$ exceeds unity.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the Journal of Theoretical Biolog

Warm Needle Acupuncture vs. Needle Acupuncture for Osteoarthritis of the Knee: A Pilot Study Protocol

Acupuncture has been shown to have clinically relevant benefits for chronic pain. However, interpretation of the results and whether they are due to the placebo effect remains contested. As a complex physical intervention acupuncture presents particular problems in clinical research that seeks to identify a specific effect. The existing evidence mosaic can be enhanced by randomised controlled trials that investigate the specific efficacy of different components of acupuncture. This study investigates the specific efficacy of the conducted heat in warm needle acupuncture. Methods: The study is a randomised, controlled, parallel-group 2-armed clinicaltrial. Itis designed so that the outcome administrator, participants and primary acupuncturist will be blinded to group allocation. Analysis: The primary outcome measures WOMACJ NRS 3.1 score and SF 36 are both considered interval variables and provided the distribution of changes is normally distributed the change in score will be analysed using t-test. The information obtained from interviews with participants will be thematically analysed. Discussion: Compromises from acupuncture in practice have been made in order to devise procedures that can investigate the specific efficacy of the conducted heat of warm needle acupuncture. The way in which these compromises may impact on interpretation of the results is discusse

Effect of photoions on the line shapes of the F\"orster resonance and microwave transitions in cold rubidium Rydberg atoms

Experiments on the spectroscopy of the F\"orster resonance Rb(37P)+Rb(37P) -> Rb(37S)+Rb(38S) and microwave transitions nP -> n'S, n'D between Rydberg states of cold Rb atoms in a magneto-optical trap have been performed. Under ordinary conditions, all spectra exhibited a 2-3 MHz line width independently of the interaction time of atoms with each other or with microwave radiation, although the ultimate resonance width should be defined by the inverse interaction time. Analysis of the experimental conditions has shown that the main source of the line broadening was the inhomogeneous electric field of cold photoions appeared at the excitation of initial Rydberg nP states by broadband pulsed laser radiation. Using an additional pulse of the electric field, which rapidly removed the photoions after the laser pulse, lead to a substantial narrowing of the microwave and F\"orster resonances. An analysis of various sources of the line broadening in cold Rydberg atoms has been conducted.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

General Practitioners’ use of and attitudes to acupuncture in relation to the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) clinical guidelines—A pilot study

Abstract Introduction Until April 2016, acupuncture in the UK was recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a potential treatment modality for three conditions, but use of this guidance in primary care is unknown. The aim of this study was to update the mapping of acupuncture on NICE clinical guidelines and to explore general practitioners’ (GPs’) awareness of those guidelines, as well as their views on and referral to acupuncture. It also examined the feasibility of research through electronic questionnaires administered to GPs. Methods Initially, a literature search was conducted of NICE guidelines mentioning acupuncture (up to July 2015). Subsequently, a random sample of 57 GPs in North London was asked to complete an electronic survey. Results Literature search identified one new “do not offer” recommendation (CG171: Urinary Incontinence). Four guidelines discussed acupuncture, concluding evidence was insufficient. The survey yielded 19 responses from 34 potential respondents. Patient demand appeared widespread but small; several GPs received enquiries but provided no access. The most common reason for enquiry was pain management. Importance assigned to guidance and awareness of guidance other than for pain varied significantly: GPs’ decision to offer access did not correlate with guideline awareness. GPs often expected recommendations where there were none. GPs professing least trust in guidance appeared more likely to offer acupuncture access. Conclusion NICE guidelines appeared not to reflect acupuncture provision in primary care. Electronic questionnaires are a feasible research method in primary care, although obtaining up-to-date contact details poses a challenge

The heating mechanism for the warm/cool dust in powerful, radio-loud AGN

The uncertainty surrounding the nature of the heating mechanism for the dust that emits at mid- to far-IR (MFIR) wavelengths in active galaxies limits our understanding of the links between active galactic nuclei (AGN) and galaxy evolution, as well as our ability to interpret the prodigious infrared and sub-mm emission of some of the most distant galaxies in the Universe. Here we report deep Spitzer observations of a complete sample of powerful, intermediate redshift (0.05 < z < 0.7) radio galaxies and quasars. We show that AGN power, as traced by [OIII]5007 emission, is strongly correlated with both the mid-IR (24 micron) and the far-IR (70 micron) luminosities, however, with increased scatter in the 70 micron correlation. A major cause of this increased scatter is a group of objects that falls above the main correlation and displays evidence for prodigious recent star formation activity at optical wavelengths, along with relatively cool MFIR colours. These results provide evidence that illumination by the AGN is the primary heating mechanism for the dust emitting at both 24 and 70 microns, with starbursts dominating the heating of the cool dust in only 20 -- 30% of objects. This implies that powerful AGN are not always accompanied by the type of luminous starbursts that are characteristic of the peak of activity in major gas-rich mergers.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in astrophysical journal letter