Are pre-service Primary School teachers prepared to teach science by inquiry?

[EN] Inquiry-based science education (IBSE) focuses on the development of science process skills. This teaching methodology has been shown to be especially effective during Primary School as it allows children to explore and confront their own ideas about Nature. Also, a methodology based on process skills is coherent with the main purpose of this educational stage where children need to learn to do things. In order to implement a methodology based on science process skills Primary teachers need to know to use science process skills, and how to teach them. In this paper we address if Spanish pre-service teachers are able to implement IBSE. We focus on pre-service Primary School teachers and compare our results with in-service teachers and a random sample of non-teachers. We explore their level of knowledge about science process skills and if pre-service teachers know how to develop an inquiry-based learning sequence. An overview of the situation of science education and teaching of scientific skills among the degrees on Primary Education in Spain is also presented. Our results show that pre-service teachers have a lack of knowledge on science process skills and fail when they attempting to build a learning sequence based on inquiry.Montero-Pau, J.; Tierno, SP.; Tuzon, P. (2017). Are pre-service Primary School teachers prepared to teach science by inquiry?. En Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1294-1301. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD17.2017.55861294130

Two-Higgs Leptonic Minimal Flavour Violation

We construct extensions of the Standard Model with two Higgs doublets, where there are flavour changing neutral currents both in the quark and leptonic sectors, with their strength fixed by the fermion mixing matrices $V_{CKM}$ and $V_{PMNS}$. These models are an extension to the leptonic sector of the class of models previously considered by Branco, Grimus and Lavoura, for the quark sector. We consider both the cases of Dirac and Majorana neutrinos and identify the minimal discrete symmetry required in order to implement the models in a natural way.Comment: 25 pages. No figure

Transformation to Eco-Agri Tourism: The Case of Casile, Cabuyao City, Laguna, Philippines

The study was conducted to determine the acceptability of the residents of Barangay Casile, Cabuyao, Laguna, Philippines in transforming their locality into an eco-agri tourism site. A total of 241 residents participated in the data collection using a survey questionnaire and interviews. Barangay Casile is an agricultural area and is also noted for its natural heritage such as the Matang Tubig River and Falls and the Marcos Twin Tower. Because of this, the local government unit of Cabuyao City plans to develop the area as a nature- based tourism destination specifically as an eco-agri tourism site. The survey revealed that the respondents agreed on the proposition of transforming their area into agri-tourism site. Cultural acceptability ranks the highest which means that the locals are open on the possible effects on their culture that the development could bring them. Economic and social acceptability were also ranked high because of the income they could get from the influx of tourists. Environmental acceptability is the least agreeable because most of the respondents were environment sensitive and are concerned with the changes to the natural façade of their area. It can be concluded that agri-tourism development involving local residents provides control over the development and management of the project

Transformation to Eco-Agri Tourism: The Case of Casile, Cabuyao City, Laguna, Philippines

The study was conducted to determine the acceptability of the residents of Barangay Casile, Cabuyao, Laguna, Philippines in transforming their locality into an eco-agri tourism site. A total of 241 residents participated in the data collection using a survey questionnaire and interviews. Barangay Casile is an agricultural area and is also noted for its natural heritage such as the Matang Tubig River and Falls and the Marcos Twin Tower. Because of this, the local government unit of Cabuyao City plans to develop the area as a nature- based tourism destination specifically as an eco-agri tourism site. The survey revealed that the respondents agreed on the proposition of transforming their area into agri-tourism site. Cultural acceptability ranks the highest which means that the locals are open on the possible effects on their culture that the development could bring them. Economic and social acceptability were also ranked high because of the income they could get from the influx of tourists. Environmental acceptability is the least agreeable because most of the respondents were environment sensitive and are concerned with the changes to the natural façade of their area. It can be concluded that agri-tourism development involving local residents provides control over the development and management of the project

Prospects for charged Higgs searches at the LHC

The goal of this report is to summarize the current situation and discuss possible search strategies for charged scalars, in non-supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model at the LHC. Such scalars appear in Multi-HiggsDoublet models, in particular in the popular Two-HiggsDoublet model, allowing for charged and additional neutral Higgs bosons. These models have the attractive property that electroweak precision observables are automatically in agreement with the Standard Model at the tree level. For the most popular version of this framework, Model II, a discovery of a charged Higgs boson remains challenging, since the parameter space is becoming very constrained, and the QCD background is very high. We also briefly comment on models with dark matter which constrain the corresponding charged scalars that occur in these models. The stakes of a possible discovery of an extended scalar sector are very high, and these searches should be pursued in all conceivable channels, at the LHC and at future colliders.Peer reviewe