Inclusion of Pupils with SENs into Mainstream Physical Education – Potential Research Ideas to Explore Issues of Engagement

One consequence of the 1981 Education Act (DES, 1981) was that there began a transference of pupils from special educational schools to mainstream schools over the coming years. Thus, for the first time in many cases, mainstream schools were expected, through policy developments, to provide an inclusive education culture for pupils with SEN (Special Educational Needs). The aim of this paper is to analyse some of the consequences, intended or otherwise, of including pupils with SEN in mainstream school National Curriculum Physical Education (NCPE) lessons and extra-curricular physical activity. In this regard, it is argued that team games and competitive sports are activities which teachers find particularly difficult to plan for and deliver in an inclusive way, whereas more individual activities such as dance, gymnastics, tennis, badminton and athletics are identified as activities that may be easier to plan and deliver inclusively. The paper is punctuated with potential field research ideas; being possible investigations prompted by this critique of literature. These ideas typically involve suggestions for primary data gathering in the school setting with either pupils or staff, exploring issues for engagement (and non-engagement) with PE and physical activity. The paper concludes that an over emphasis upon competitive team sports and performance in PE may be eroding the quality of learning experience for all pupils, not least those with SEN

Resin transfer molding for advanced composite primary aircraft structures

Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) has been identified by Douglas Aircraft Company (DAC) and industry to be one of the promising processes being developed today which can break the cost barrier of implementing composite primary structures into a commercial aircraft production environment. The RTM process developments and scale-up plans Douglas Aircrart will be conducting under the NASA ACT contract are discussed

"Second-Best" Adjustments to Externality Estimates in Electricity Planning with Competition

A number of state public utility commissions are using "social costing" methods to consider externalities in electricity resource planning. The most comprehensive and formal method is the use of monetary place-holders in the financial evaluation of new investments and potentially in system dispatch to reflect quantitative estimates of externality values. This approach necessarily must take existing environmental and social regulation as given. Furthermore, regulated utilities face increasing competition from electricity generators outside their service territory who may not be affected by social costing. The lack of universal and uniform social costing places PUC actions soundly in the realm of "second-best policy" and they may have unintended consequences that should be anticipated by regulators. This paper addresses two prominent possibilities: the potential substitution of unregulated supplies of energy services in place of electricity generated by the regulated utility, and the effect social costing may have on the relationship between the regulated price and marginal cost. These issues are considered within a normative model of social welfare maximization, which is applied to three representative hypothetical utility case studies to calibrate a second-best optimal adder to correct for externalities in electricity planning.

Post-mortem toxicology: A pilot study to evaluate the use of a Bayesian network to assess the likelihood of fatality

The challenge of interpreting post-mortem drug concentrations is well documented and relies on appropriate sample collection, knowledge of case circumstances as well as reference to published tables of data, whilst taking into account the known issues of post-mortem drug redistribution and tolerance. Existing published data has evolved from simple data tables to those now including sample origin and single to poly drug use, but additional information tends to be specific to those reported in individual case studies. We have developed a Bayesian network framework to assign a likelihood of fatality based on the contribution of drug concentrations whilst taking into account the pathological findings. This expert system has been tested against casework within the coronial jurisdiction of Sunderland, UK. We demonstrate in this pilot study that the Bayesian network can be used to proffer a degree of confidence in how deaths may be reported in cases when drugs are implicated. It has also highlighted the potential for deaths to be reported according to the pathological states at post-mortem when drugs have a significant contribution that may have an impact on mortality statistics. The Bayesian network could be used as complementary approach to assist in the interpretation of post-mortem drug concentrations

Periodic Solutions and Positive Solutions of First and Second Order Logistic Type ODEs with Harvesting

It was recently shown that the nonlinear logistic type ODE with periodic harvesting has a bifurcation on the periodic solutions with respect to the parameter ε: u\u27 = f (u) - ε h (t). Namely, there exists an ε0 such that for 0 \u3c ε \u3c ε0 there are two periodic solutions, for ε = ε0 there is one periodic solution, and for ε \u3eε0 there are no periodic solutions, provided that.... In this paper we look at some numerical evidence regarding the behavior of this threshold for various types of harvesting terms, in particular we find evidence in the negative or a conjecture regarding the behavior of this threshold value. Additionally, we look at analagous steady states for the reaction-diusion IBVP with logistic growth and positive harvesting: Using phase plane arguments we show that there is a threshold value of such that this BVP has no positive solutions

Boots-and-me: an ethno-sensual account of love, dedication and smelly old boots

Boots-and-me is an ethno-sensual narrative of my life with some rock-climbing boots and more specifically, my feet within them. It explores my physical, sensual engagement with these items of sports equipment, spanning a period of twenty-eight years. The story is a stylised form of writing with frequent, colourful use of analogies for a more vivid interpretation. From this sense-laden and textured narrative, a deeper story is revealed about aspects of my personality and character. Establishing that my feet are connected to my head(!) leads to critical consideration of some ideas emerging from the tale; shared experiences in research. A short prologue introduces the main story; Boots-and-me, followed by an epilogue of theoretical analysis and discussion from respondents to the story. It is concluded that physically and emotionally rich auto-accounts about how people come to rely on items of equipment may be a window to some of their life-management strategies

An assessment of riparian land-use and channel condition impacts on streambank eroding lengths and recession rates in two third order rural watersheds in Central Iowa

Over the 150 year history of major agricultural activity in Iowa nearly all the native prairie (99.9%) and wetlands (95%) were lost as native plant communities were converted to row-crop agriculture. This major change from perennial to annual upland vegetation was accompanied by broad scale installation of tile drainage intended to remove moisture from saturated wetland soils, increasing available crop land. The increased removal of water by tile drainage accompanied by the increase in surface runoff caused by the loss of permanent soil cover and compaction resulted in an increase in the rate and amount of water entering stream systems. The increase in discharge overtime resulted in a series of channel adjustments (deepening & widening) to accommodate the increase in flow. Sediment contributed due to these channel adjustments, specifically from streambank erosion has been shown to be a major source of sediment in many Midwestern stream systems. The main objective of this study was to determine what impact the major past and present land use practices in the Walnut and Squaw Creek Watersheds were having on the location and rate of severe streambank erosion within the two channel systems. The location and length of severe streambank erosion was mapped along the main channels of each watershed. Eroding lengths were broke down into riparian land use categories: Coolseason grass, warmseason grass, row-crop agriculture, grazed pasture, riparian forest, and grassland-forest mix. Total stream length, sinuosity, and eroding streambank lengths were compared among all land use categories. To estimate streambank recession rates, erosion pins were installed along streambanks in four major riparian land use types identified along the main stem of Walnut Creek. Outcomes of this investigation indicate that areas with high sinuosity located directly downstream of channelized portions of the stream network were subject to longer eroding lengths with higher recession rates than locations higher in the watershed. The two current major riparian land uses most frequently associated with meandered sections of the steam system were riparian forest land and grazed pasture land. Information from this study indicates that areas of stream segmented by alternating patches of channelized and meandered segments likely represent major source areas for streambank derived sediment