Secondary analysis of qualitative data: Hungarian minority kindergarten pedagogues’ perspectives of the new curriculum framework in Serbia

Secondary analysis is employed to address new research questions by analysing previously collected data. This paper reports on the secondary analysis of qualitative data where the original research investigated the preschool education reform in Serbia from the perspective of Hungarian ethnic minority kindergarten pedagogues. The choice to apply a secondary analysis fulfilled the aims of (i) investigating traces of socialism in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) provision in Vojvodina, a northern region of Serbia; and (ii) exploring the complexity of Christmas celebrations in nurseries. In order to address the aims, a secondary analysis of 12 semi-structured transcripts was carried out. This analysis revealed important additional findings for the original study. In light of the education reforms in Serbia we found that, first, there are strong connections between the ‘socialist past’ ECEC practices and what these practices may look like in the future; and, second, the traditional celebration of religious holidays outside of church organizations, such as Christmas, may change in the nurseries. This paper also offers insight regarding the importance of secondary analysis which provides an opportunity to making use of existing resources

színképzés módszerei a festészetben

Dolgozatomban a festészeti színképzéstechnika problémakörével foglalkozom. A képalkotás és a festészeti nyelv komplexitásában a színképzéstechnika helye ott van, ahol a „Hogyan festette/festenéd meg?” kérdése megválaszolható. A színek színképzéstechnikai megközelítése a festői alkotófolyamat gyakorlati szempontjait érinti: miként lehet megfesteni egy-egy színállapotot és mik azok a tényezők, amelyek ezt meghatározhatják. A kérdésre adott válasz nem a tárgyak megnevezéséhez, vagy a hozzájuk kötődő fogalmakhoz, hanem a vizuálisan isható élmények képi megfogalmazásához vezet. Kandinszkij felhívja a figyelmet az érzékszerveink által befogható és befogadható jelenségek egymásra hatására – úgy gondolom –, nemcsak a festők nem mondhatnak le a látható és a nem látható valóság megtapasztalásáról, élményeink sokrétűségének felismeréséről. A festő a színek által láthatóvá tesz; festőként tehát kiváltképp nélkülözhetetlen és elengedhetetlen a festői aktus, az alkotófolyamat beteljesítéséhez egyrészt a természetben látható színek és formák tanulmányozása, másrészt a vizuális nyelv használatának elsajátítása, és nem utolsó sorban pedig a festészeti anyagok és technikák ismerete. Amennyiben festészeti tanulmányaink során a Mesterségbeli Tudás vérünkké válik, úgy akkor is magától értetődően használjuk majd a vizuális nyelvet és a festészeti anyagokat, amikor festés közben az alkotófolyamat mechanizmusai esetleg másra irányítják a figyelmünket, és a megvalósítás gyakorlati és technikai kérdései legfeljebb csak a képre-figyelés perifériáján kaphatnak helyet

Computing behind the iron curtain and beyond hungarian national perspective

At the beginning of the computing era it was a great challenge to write a running program in order to solve different mathematical, statistical tasks, and to get the appropriate results by using a computer. At the university where I had began my studies we started to get acquainted with computers using a Russian made machine, named URAL 2. Looking back to the roots and thinking of the Hungarian born pioneer of computer science: the polymath John von Neumann, I had intended to deal with the history of computing at the very beginning of the eighties. Although there is a wide range of computing history literature worldwide (most of them in English), there are not any publications dealing with the Hungarian results. As I was one of the first graduates on computing taught by the Pioneers, I am forced to perform research on all materials dealing with the Hungarian achievements in computing, to protect the values of the past as long as it is not too late and also to make the results known!2nd IFIP Conference on the History of Computing and EducationRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Bayesian Reconstruction of Gravitational-wave Signals from Binary Black Holes with Nonzero Eccentricities

We present a comprehensive study on how well gravitational-wave signals of binary black holes with nonzero eccentricities can be recovered with state of the art model-independent waveform reconstruction and parameter estimation techniques. For this we use BayesWave, a Bayesian algorithm used by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration for unmodeled reconstructions of signal waveforms and parameters. We used two different waveform models to produce simulated signals of binary black holes with eccentric orbits and embed them in samples of simulated noise of design-sensitivity Advanced LIGO detectors. We studied the network overlaps and point estimates of central moments of signal waveforms recovered by BayesWave as a function of $e$, the eccentricity of the binary at 8 Hz orbital frequency. BayesWave recovers signals of near-circular ($e\lesssim0.2$) and highly eccentric ($e\gtrsim0.7$) binaries with network overlaps similar to that of circular ($e=0$) ones, however it produces lower network overlaps for binaries with $e\in[0.2,0.7]$. Estimation errors on central frequencies and bandwidths (measured relative to bandwidths) are nearly independent from $e$, while estimation errors on central times and durations (measured relative to durations) increase and decrease with $e$ above $e\gtrsim0.5$, respectively. We also tested how BayesWave performs when reconstructions are carried out using generalized wavelets with linear frequency evolution (chirplets) instead of sine-Gaussian wavelets. We have found that network overlaps improve by $\sim 10-20$ percent when chirplets are used, and the improvement is the highest at low ($e<0.5$) eccentricities. There is however no significant change in the estimation errors of central moments when the chirplet base is used.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in CQ

Detecting Long-Duration Narrow-Band Gravitational Wave Transients Associated with Soft Gamma Repeater Quasi-Periodic Oscillations

We have performed an in-depth concept study of a gravitational wave data analysis method which targets repeated long quasi-monochromatic transients (triggers) from cosmic sources. The algorithm concept can be applied to multi-trigger data sets in which the detector-source orientation and the statistical properties of the data stream change with time, and does not require the assumption that the data is Gaussian. Reconstructing or limiting the energetics of potential gravitational wave emissions associated with quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) observed in the X-ray lightcurve tails of soft gamma repeater flares might be an interesting endeavour of the future. Therefore we chose this in a simplified form to illustrate the flow, capabilities, and performance of the method. We investigate performance aspects of a multi-trigger based data analysis approach by using O(100 s) long stretches of mock data in coincidence with the times of observed QPOs, and by using the known sky location of the source. We analytically derive the PDF of the background distribution and compare to the results obtained by applying the concept to simulated Gaussian noise, as well as off-source playground data collected by the 4-km Hanford detector (H1) during LIGO's fifth science run (S5). We show that the transient glitch rejection and adaptive differential energy comparison methods we apply succeed in rejecting outliers in the S5 background data. Finally, we discuss how to extend the method to a network containing multiple detectors, and as an example, tune the method to maximize sensitivity to SGR 1806-20 flare times.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Global Optimization for Future Gravitational Wave Detectors' Sites

We consider the optimal site selection of future generations of gravitational wave detectors. Previously, Raffai et al. optimized a 2-detector network with a combined figure of merit. This optimization was extended to networks with more than two detectors in a limited way by first fixing the parameters of all other component detectors. In this work we now present a more general optimization that allows the locations of all detectors to be simultaneously chosen. We follow the definition of Raffai et al. on the metric that defines the suitability of a certain detector network. Given the locations of the component detectors in the network, we compute a measure of the network's ability to distinguish the polarization, constrain the sky localization and reconstruct the parameters of a gravitational wave source. We further define the `flexibility index' for a possible site location, by counting the number of multi-detector networks with a sufficiently high Figure of Merit that include that site location. We confirm the conclusion of Raffai et al., that in terms of flexibility index as defined in this work, Australia hosts the best candidate site to build a future generation gravitational wave detector. This conclusion is valid for either a 3-detector network or a 5-detector network. For a 3-detector network site locations in Northern Europe display a comparable flexibility index to sites in Australia. However for a 5-detector network, Australia is found to be a clearly better candidate than any other location.Comment: 30 pages, 23 figures, 2 table

Recovering a spinning inspiralling compact binary waveform immersed in LIGO-like noise with spinning templates

We investigate the recovery chances of highly spinning waveforms immersed in LIGO S5-like noise by performing a matched filtering with 10^6 randomly chosen spinning waveforms generated with the LAL package. While the masses of the compact binary are reasonably well recovered (slightly overestimated), the same does not hold true for the spins. We show the best fit matches both in the time-domain and the frequency-domain. These encompass some of the spinning characteristics of the signal, but far less than what would be required to identify the astrophysical parameters of the system. An improvement of the matching method is necessary, though may be difficult due to the noisy signal.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure + 4 figure panels; Proceedings of the Eight Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves (Amaldi8), New York, 2009; to be published in J. Phys.: Conf. Series (JPCS

A statistical method to search for recoiling supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei

We propose an observational test for gravitationally recoiling supermassive black holes (BHs) in active galactic nuclei, based on a correlation between the velocities of BHs relative to their host galaxies, |Δv|, and their obscuring dust column densities, Σdust (both measured along the line of sight). We use toy models for the distribution of recoil velocities, BH trajectories, and the geometry of obscuring dust tori in galactic centres, to simulate 2.5 × 105 random observations of recoiling quasars. BHs with recoil velocities comparable to the escape velocity from the galactic centre remain bound to the nucleus, and do not fully settle back to the centre of the torus due to dynamical friction in a typical quasar lifetime. We find that |Δv| and Σdust for these BHs are positively correlated. For obscured (Σdust > 0) and for partially obscured (0 < Σdust ≲ 2.3 g m−2) quasars with |Δv| ≥ 45 km s−1, the sample correlation coefficient between log10(|Δv|) and Σdust is r45 = 0.28 ± 0.02 and r45 = 0.13 ± 0.02, respectively. Allowing for random ± 100 km s− 1 errors in |Δv| unrelated to the recoil dilutes the correlation for the partially obscured quasars to r45 = 0.026 ± 0.004 measured between |Δv| and Σdust. A random sample of ≳ 3500 obscured quasars with |Δv| ≥ 45 km s−1 would allow rejection of the no-correlation hypothesis with 3σ significance 95 per cent of the time. Finally, we find that the fraction of obscured quasars, obs (|Δv|), decreases with |Δv| from obs (103 km s−1) ≲ 0.4. This predicted trend can be compared to the observed fraction of type II quasars, and can further test combinations of recoil, trajectory, and dust torus models