2,163 research outputs found
History teaching in Higher Education: breaking down the barriers to progression and dialogue
Paper given at History in British Education (first conference
Growing Pains: Getting past the complexities of scaling social impact
In communities across the UK, organisations develop new ideas to improve the lives of those around them. And yet despite growing demand for charity services, concerted attempts to take proven approaches to scale are few and far between, and successful examples are rarer still. This paper aims to bring about a change in tack by proposing a way of assessing the viability of scaling in different contexts
H.W.H., Cowell, and new music
Wiley Hitchcockâs championing of Charles Ives is internationally
recognized. What is perhaps less well known is that Wiley was
a supporter ofâand in many cases friends withâinnumerable
other American composers, including Virgil Thomson (whose Four
Saints in Three Acts, in an edition by Wiley and Charles Fussell, is
planned for publication by MUSA), John Cage, and Kyle Gann. But
perhaps the American composer on whose behalf Wiley expended
most energyâmuch of it covert, and seldom recognized through
public channelsâwas Henry Cowell (1897â1965). Whether Wiley
actually knew Cowell I am not sure; but he most certainly knew,
corresponded with, supported, and honored Cowellâs widow, Sidney
Robertson Cowell (1903â1995), not least in the edited compilation
of her reminiscences and vignettes, A Chapbook of Cheer, which
he had published privately in the year of her passing
Preventing child pedestrian injuries and deaths arising from vehicle-child accidents in domestic driveways: An action research project
This research was a three-fold investigation into the viability of previous recommendations for vehicle-related child driveway accident safety . Firstly, the groups most at risk of these types of accidents were determined in order that they could be specifically considered when reviewing the practicalities of previous recommendations . Secondly, the feasibility of previous recommendations was systematically examined through both an extensive literature review and key and expert informant interviews . Based on these, the likelihood of implementation of previous safety recommendations for the identified high risk groups was ascertained, providing a basis on which to abandon some previous recommendations, remove obstacles to others which would enhance practicability and generate further recommendations that would be tenable for the at-risk groups in particular.
The key findings of this research were, foremost, that there is a noticeable lack of specific reference to vehicle-related child driveway accidents in any legislation or safety guidelines, as well as a shortage of official data that deal expressly with this type of accident. Further, it was found that the major obstacles to the implementation of previous recommendations - particularly the environmental ones - were cost, autonomy, and spatial constraints. While several recommendations were abandoned due to factors such as unproven or dubious effectiveness and/or prohibitive cost, it was found that the most viable recommendations were characterised by their relatively low cost for the families involved. These recommendations were typically environmental or educational in nature.
Thus, the recommendations in this report include some moderate regulatory changes to facilitate greater uptake of environmental and behaviour-modifying recommendations as well as practical ideas that all need to be part of a cohesive campaign to address the issue of vehicle-related child driveway accidents in New Zealand
Resolving the electron temperature discrepancies in HII Regions and Planetary Nebulae: kappa-distributed electrons
The measurement of electron temperatures and metallicities in H ii regions
and Planetary Nebulae (PNe) has-for several decades-presented a problem:
results obtained using different techniques disagree. What it worse, they
disagree consistently. There have been numerous attempts to explain these
discrepancies, but none has provided a satisfactory solution to the problem. In
this paper, we explore the possibility that electrons in H ii regions and PNe
depart from a Maxwell-Boltzmann equilibrium energy distribution. We adopt a
"kappa-distribution" for the electron energies. Such distributions are widely
found in Solar System plasmas, where they can be directly measured. This simple
assumption is able to explain the temperature and metallicity discrepancies in
H ii regions and PNe arising from the different measurement techniques. We find
that the energy distribution does not need to depart dramatically from an
equilibrium distribution. From an examination of data from Hii regions and PNe
it appears that kappa ~ 10 is sufficient to encompass nearly all objects. We
argue that the kappa-distribution offers an important new insight into the
physics of gaseous nebulae, both in the Milky Way and elsewhere, and one that
promises significantly more accurate estimates of temperature and metallicity
in these regions.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, published in Ap
SEA LEVEL RISE AND EQUITY WEIGHTING
Using the FUND model, an impact assessment is conducted over the 21st century for rises in sea level of up to 2-m/century and a range of national socio-economic scenarios. This model balances the costs of retreat with the costs of protection, including the effects of coastal squeeze. While the costs of sea-level rise increase due to greater damage and protection costs, the model suggests that an optimum response in a benefit-cost sense remains widespread protection of developed coastal areas, as identified in earlier analyses. The socio-economic scenarios are also important in terms of influencing these costs. In terms of the four components of costs considered in FUND, protection seems to dominate, with substantial costs from wetland loss under some scenarios. The regional distribution of costs shows that a few regions experience most of the costs, especially East Asia, North America, Europe and South Asia. Importantly, this analysis suggests that protection is much more likely and rational than is widely assumed, even with a large rise in sea level. However, there are some important limitations to the analysis, which collectively suggest that protection may not be as widespread as suggested in the FUND analysis. Equity weighting allows the damages to be modified to reflect the wealth of those impacted by sea-level rise. Taking these distributional issues into account increases damage estimates by a factor of three, reflecting that the coasts fall disproportionately on poorer developing countries.climate change, sea level rise, equity weighting
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