Commentary on Alcorn & Massé: troubling pedagogy

Responding to papers by Michelle Massé and Marshall Alcorn, I begin with an argument for the need to recognize ignorance as performative rather than merely as illustrative of student resistance in some pathological sense. I then explore the Lacanian notion that teachers develop imaginary suppositions about the lack in their students, and that these suppositions support rescue fantasies among teachers that are related to bolstering their own unconscious need for narcissistic gratification and love. I conclude by showing how these ideas resonate with my own autobiographical history as a teacher, as well as with key ideas in the two papers under discussion, and I commend both authors for opening up a valuable discussion of teaching as an “impossible profession”.Respondendo aos artigos de Michelle Massé and Marshall Alcorn, começo por argumentar pela necessidade de se reconhecer a ignorância como performativa, ao invés de meramente ilustrativa da resistência do aluno em algum sentido patológico. Eu, então, exploro a noção Lacaniana de que os professores desenvolvem suposições imaginárias sobre a falta em seus alunos e que essas suposições dão suporte para que sejam resgatadas, entre os professores, fantasias que são relacionadas a sustentar suas próprias demandas inconscientes por gratificações narcísicas e por amor. Eu concluo mostrando como essas ideias ressoam na minha autobiografia, como professor, bem como nas ideias-chave dos dois artigos em discussão; e saúdo ambos os autores por propiciarem uma valiosa discussão sobre o ensino como uma “profissão impossível”

The validity of the MacNew Quality of Life in heart disease questionnaire

BACKGROUND: A previous review suggested that the MacNew Quality of Life Questionnaire was the most appropriate disease-specific measure of health-related quality of life among people with ischaemic heart disease. However, there is ambiguity about the allocation of items to the three factors underlying the MacNew and the factor structure has not been confirmed previously among the people in the UK. METHODS: The MacNew Questionnaire and the SF-36 were administered to 117 newly admitted patients to a tertiary referral centre in Northern Ireland. All patients had been diagnosed with ischaemic heart disease. RESULTS: A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the factor structure of the MacNew and the model was found to be an inadequate fit of the data. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the items suggested that a five factor solution was more appropriate and this was validated by confirmatory factor analysis. This new structure also displayed strong evidence of concurrent validity when compared to the SF-36. CONCLUSION: We recommend that researchers should submit scores obtained from items on the MacNew to secondary analyses after being grouped according to the factor structure proposed in this paper, in order to explore further the most appropriate grouping of items

The Determination of Atom-Molecule Interaction Potentials from Total Differential Cross Sections

A newly constructed crossed molecular beams apparatus has been used to measure total (elastic plus inelastic) differential cross sections for collisions between rare gas atoms and methane and chlorine molecules. The total differential cross sections were then used in an iterative trial and error potential fitting program to determine the interaction potentials between these species. In the rare gas-methane study (Chapter 2), the methane molecule has been approximated as being a spherical entity, and the standard equations and techniques have been applied to simulate the laboratory scattering distributions from an assumed isotropic potential. The isotropic potentials determined in this manner are compared with some recently proposed anisotropic potentials for these systems. In the rare gas-chlorine study (Chapter 3), anisotropic potentials have been determined using the infinite order sudden approximation and a Legendre parameter expansion of a central field potential. The resulting potentials compare rather favorably with what is known about these potential surfaces from photodissociation experiments.</p

The importance of Travelling Stock Reserves for maintaining high-quality threatened temperate woodlands

Travelling Stock Reserves are thought to represent some of the highest-quality and least degraded remnants of threatened temperate woodland in south-eastern Australia. These public reserves have not had the same high levels of grazing pressure and other disturbances as woodland remnants on private land. Thus, Travelling Stock Reserves are expected to be important for the protection of biodiversity in heavily cleared and modified landscapes. We tested the hypothesis that land tenure had significant effects on the quality of woodlands by comparing vegetation structural attributes between Travelling Stock Reserves and remnant vegetation used for primary production purposes. Vegetation attributes were monitored in 155 permanent plots over five years in remnant temperate woodland sites in the Riverina bioregion of New South Wales. Overall, Travelling Stock Reserves supported higher native plant species richness and were characterized by higher ground cover of native shrubs and less cover of exotic plant species when compared to agricultural production areas. We found land tenure had significant effects on some vegetation attributes demonstrated to be important for threatened fauna. We attribute these results to Travelling Stock Reserves having a history of lower grazing pressure compared to remnants managed for agricultural production. Our study provides empirical evidence to support the high conservation value of Travelling Stock Reserves in formerly woodland-dominated, but now extensively cleared, agricultural landscapes

A multi-sensor approach towards a global vegetation corrected SRTM DEM product

AbstractWe develop the first global ‘Bare-Earth’ Digital Elevation Model (DEM) based on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) for all landmasses between 60N and 54S. Our new ‘Bare-Earth’ SRTM DEM combines multiple remote sensing datasets, including point-ground elevations from NASA's laser altimeter ICESat, a database of percentage of tree cover from the MODIS satellite as a proxy for penetration depth of SRTM and a global vegetation height map in order to remove the vegetation artefacts present in the original SRTM DEM. We test multiple methods of removing vegetation artefacts and investigate the use of regionalization. Our final ‘Bare-Earth’ SRTM product shows global improvements greater than 10m in the bias over the original SRTM DEM in vegetated areas compared with ground elevations determined from ICESat data with a significant reduction in the root mean square error from over 14m to 6m globally. Therefore, our DEM will be valuable for any global applications, such as large scale flood modelling requiring a ‘Bare-Earth’ DEM

Peatland dynamics: A review of process-based models and approaches

Despite peatlands' important feedbacks on the climate and global biogeochemical cycles, predicting their dynamics involves many uncertainties and an overwhelming variety of available models. This paper reviews the most widely used process-based models for simulating peatlands' dynamics, i.e., the exchanges of energy and mass (water, carbon, and nitrogen). ‘Peatlands’ here refers to mires, fens, bogs, and peat swamps both intact and degraded. Using a systematic search (involving 4900 articles), 45 models were selected that appeared at least twice in the literature. The models were classified into four categories: terrestrial ecosystem models (biogeochemical and global dynamic vegetation models, n = 21), hydrological models (n = 14), land surface models (n = 7), and eco-hydrological models (n = 3), 18 of which featured “peatland-specific” modules. By analysing their corresponding publications (n = 231), we identified their proven applicability domains (hydrology and carbon cycles dominated) for different peatland types and climate zones (northern bogs and fens dominated). The studies range in scale from small plots to global, and from single events to millennia. Following a FOSS (Free Open-Source Software) and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) assessment, the number of models was reduced to 12. Then, we conducted a technical review of the approaches and associated challenges, as well as the basic aspects of each model, e.g., spatiotemporal resolution, input/output data format and modularity. Our review streamlines the process of model selection and highlights: (i) standardization and coordination are required for both data exchange and model calibration/validation to facilitate intercomparison studies; and (ii) there are overlaps in the models' scopes and approaches, making it imperative to fully optimize the strengths of existing models rather than creating redundant ones. In this regard, we provide a futuristic outlook for a ‘peatland community modelling platform’ and suggest an international peatland modelling intercomparison project.Environmental Protection Agenc