What is the "Q" for?

This paper is based on the Law Teacher of the Year keynote speech delivered at the Association of Law Teachers’ Annual Conference in April 2011 in Cardiff, Wales. Some refinement of the ideas expressed then took place and a further presentation formed my inaugural Readership seminar at Nottingham Law School in June 2011. The essence of the speeches was to seek to address the fitness for purpose of the Qualifying Law Degree (QLD) in the context of contemporary legal education, but more recently has focused the need for the requirements of the QLD better to reflect and promote what is best about law and legal education. Thus, rather than skills being incidental to academic legal study, I suggest that certain discipline-specific cognitive professional skills should replace the foundation subjects in the QLD. This paper concludes with some sample programmes designed to meet legal intellectual professional skills that meet the needs of the law student in the early 21st century whilst respecting institutional autonomy in legal curriculum design

Putting theory into practice: designing a curriculum according to self-determination theory

Building on existing research into the affective domain in legal education, volition and self-determination theory (SDT), we explain how to categorise student motivation types and design a curriculum which meets and supports, or at least does not undermine or damage, students' intrinsic or extrinsic motivations. This categorisation process allows the curriculum designer to obtain a fresh insight into student engagement, particularly by appreciating how to enhance the active forms of extrinsic student motivation, which leads students to internalize their goals, take over the responsibility for their learning and develop a strong sense of value for their choices. That insight, coupled with an appreciation of SDT's identification of the three human motivational needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness), allows the curriculum designer consciously to address learning, teaching and assessment at a macro- and micro-design level. As one method of approaching curriculum design, we show how to change the learning culture; the environment enables a stronger understanding of students’ behaviours, volition and motivation, creating new ways for the students to internalise their extrinsic motivation (own their learning), leading to fully self-determined actions

Theoretical Study on Coexistence of Ferromagnetism and Superconductivity

On the basis of a two-dimensional t-t' Hubbard model in ferromagnetic and paramagnetic states, the triplet superconducting mechanism is investigated by the third-order perturbation theory with respect to the on-site Coulomb interaction U. In general, the superconducting state is more stable in the paramagnetic state than in the ferromagnetic state. As a special case, the dominant ferromagnetic superconductivity is obtained by the electron-electron correlation between the electronlike majority and holelike minority bands. Furthermore, it is pointed out that in some cases the two bands play an essential role for the coexistence of superconductivity and ferromagnetism.Comment: 5 pages, 10 figure

Force Dependence of the Michaelis Constant in a Two-State Ratchet Model for Molecular Motors

We present a quantitative analysis of recent data on the kinetics of ATP hydrolysis, which has presented a puzzle regarding the load dependence of the Michaelis constant. Within the framework of coarse grained two-state ratchet models, our analysis not only explains the puzzling data, but provides a modified Michaelis law, which could be useful as a guide for future experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figures, accepted for publication on Physical Review Letter

Lameness in UK dairy cows: a review of the current status

Lameness in dairy cattle has been reported as a concern for welfare and economic reasons for over 20 years. This concern has been expressed from across the industry and has prompted the launch of a number of initiatives to address the problem. This article reviews the current status of lameness in dairy cows in the UK, outlines the current understanding of the condition and its impacts on welfare and productivity, and highlights areas where evidence is still lacking

Solvable Examples of Drift and Diffusion of Ions in Non-uniform Electric Fields

The drift and diffusion of a cloud of ions in a fluid are distorted by an inhomogeneous electric field. If the electric field carries the center of the distribution in a straight line and the field configuration is suitably symmetric, the distortion can be calculated analytically. We examine the specific examples of fields with cylindrical and spherical symmetry in detail assuming the ion distributions to be of a generally Gaussian form. The effects of differing diffusion coefficients in the transverse and longitudinal directions are included

Structural characteristics of positionally-disordered lattices: relation to the first sharp diffraction peak in glasses

Positional disorder has been introduced into the atomic structure of certain crystalline lattices, and the orientationally-averaged structure factor S(k) and pair-correlation function g(r) of these disordered lattices have been studied. Analytical expressions for S(k) and g(r) for Gaussian positional disorder in 2D and 3D are confirmed with precise numerical simulations. These analytic results also have a bearing on the unsolved Gauss circle problem in mathematics. As the positional disorder increases, high-k peaks in S(k) are destroyed first, eventually leaving a single peak, that with the lowest-k value. The pair-correlation function for lattices with such high levels of positional disorder exhibits damped oscillations, with a period equal to the separation between the furthest-separated (lowest-k) lattice planes. The last surviving peak in S(k) is, for example for silicon and silica, at a wavevector nearly identical to that of the experimentally-observed first sharp diffraction peak (FSDP) in the amorphous phases of those materials. Thus, for these amorphous materials at least, the FSDP can be regarded as arising from scattering from atomic configurations equivalent to the single family of positionally-disordered local Bragg planes having the furthest separation.Comment: v2: changes in response to referees' comments: Figure 2 made more readable, improved discussion of height of peaks in S(k), other minor changes 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Physical Review