Issues Confronting Technology Education: An International Perspective

As technology education progresses, professionals encounter problems that are unique to this school subject and their localized educational and cultural environments. This paper will review issues related to implementing technology education identified through contacts with international professional leaders over a three year period. The research will cite issues affecting the progression of technology education in different countries as identified by professional educators who work in these countries. The researcher will attempt to categorize these issues to provide perspective to the profession

A Focus on Technological Literacy in Higher Education

[First Paragraph] Technological literacy continues to be an important construct for learners in all societies.Quite often it is a knowledge area not required of university students unless they are engineering or technology majors. If the mission of design and technology education is literacy for all, this same mission should apply at the university level. An analysis was made of 256 students to determine their attitudes of knowledge gained from a general studies technological literacy course. The course was offered at the 100 level and was designed to expose students to various technologies so they would have a better foundation for selecting a major. It was found that this was the first time that 64% of the students studied technology. It also was noted that students gained improved understandings of the effects of technology, a working knowledge of technology, and technology and careers

A New Generation of Goals for Technology Education

[Introduction, First paragraph] To develop meaningful instructional programs for technology education, goals need to be in place to direct the outcomes of curriculum development and teaching. Goals are program terminal outcomes that focus curriculum writers or teachers who structure content for learners. Goals provide direction so content can be delivered for long-term impact to students who study the subject. They go beyond everyday teaching objectives; they are directed at long-term learning and programmatic outcomes

Magic from Human Regenerative Technologies -- Stem Cells

The article discusses the developments in stem cell research and development. It mentions that through tissue engineering or regenerative medicine, many diseases are finding techniques for improvement and cure. It discusses the role of stem cells in mending the human body and the ethics associated with this technology . It is mentioned that stem cells are divided in 2 types: embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. It includes the process of cell differentiation which determines the properties and characteristics of cells. It mentions several diseases related to sports injury, spinal cord injuries, blood and heart disorders to be to be improved by the introduction of stem cells. It mentions that the research with blood stem cells to treat leukemia, thalassemia and other diseases

Resonant scattering and recombination of pseudo-degenerate WIMPs

We consider the direct and indirect detection signatures of WIMPs \chi^0 in kinematic regimes with a heavier, but nearly degenerate, charged state \chi^{+-}. For small splittings of O(10) MeV, the scattering of WIMPs off nuclei may be dominated by inelastic recombination processes mediated by the formation of (\chi^- N) bound states, leading to a distinct signature for direct detection. These cross-sections are bound primarily by limits on the abundance of heavy isotopes, and may be considerably larger than the elastic scattering cross section in more conventional models. If the mass splitting is too large for recombination to occur, there may still be a significant resonant enhancement of loop-induced electromagnetic form-factors of the WIMP, which can enhance the elastic scattering cross-section. We also discuss how this regime affects the annihilation cross-section and indirect detection signatures, and note the possibility of a significant mono-energetic \gamma-signal, mediated by resonant processes near the (\chi^+\chi^-) bound state threshold.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures; v2: typos corrected, to appear in Phys. Rev.