Plasma Physics

Contains research objectives and reports on two research projects.United States Atomic Energy Commission under Contract AT(30-1)-184

Political opportunism and countercyclical fiscal policy in election-year recessions

Political budget cycles (PBCs) have been well documented in the literature, albeit not for all circumstances. Similarly, there is clear evidence on the positive effect of economic growth on electoral success. However, no work has been done on the impact of economic growth on the magnitude of PBCs. The theoretical model argues that a government has an incentive to increase fiscal manipulations when a recession is expected to hit and curtail reelection chances; this amounts to countercyclical policy for opportunistic rather than Keynesian motives. Very robust evidence for this behavior is found in Portuguese municipalities; in election years, budget deficits go up even more and significantly so, when a recession is expected.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT

Plasma Physics

Contains reports on three research projects.U. S. Atomic Energy Commission (Contract AT(30-1)-1842

Plasma Physics

Contains research objectives and reports on three research projects.United States Atomic Energy Commission (Contract AT(30-1)-1842

Plasma Physics

Contains reports on four research projects.U. S. Atomic Energy Commission (Contract AT(30-1)-1842

Plasma Physics

Contains reports on five research projects.United States Atomic Energy Commission (Contract AT(30-1)-1842)Project MACAdvanced Research Agency, Department of Defense, under Office of Naval Research Contract Nonr-4102(01

Young peoples’ reflections on what teachers think about family obligations that conflict with school: A focus on the non-normative roles of young caring and language brokering

In “Western” contexts school attendance is central for an ‘ideal’ childhood. However, many young people engage with home roles that conflict with school expectations. This paper explores perceptions of that process in relation two home activities - language brokering and young caring. We interviewed 46 young people and asked them to reflect on what the teacher would think when a child had to miss school to help a family member. This paper discusses the young people’s overall need to keep their out-of-school lives private from their teachers

Learning physics in context: a study of student learning about electricity and magnetism

This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel university class in electricity and magnetism are analyzed to demonstrate the central and inextricable role of context in student learning. This work sits within a broader effort to create and analyze environments which support student learning in the sciencesComment: 36 pages, 4 Figure

The big picture? Video and the representation of interaction

Researchers who use video to record interactions usually need to translate the video data into another medium at some stage in order to facilitate its analysis and dissemination. This article considers some methodological issues that arise in this process by examining transcripts, diagrams and pictures as examples of different techniques for representing interaction. These examples are used to identify some general principles for the representation of data where video is the source material. The article presents an outline of guided interaction and this is used as a case for illustrating these principles in the context of young children, technology and adults in pre-school settings. Although the article focuses on a specific study and solution, the principles are applicable in all cases where video is used as a source of data for the representation of interaction, whether or not it is technologically mediated

Creative and Stylistic Devices Employed by Children During a Storybook Narrative Task: A Cross-Cultural Study

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of culture on the creative and stylistic features children employ when producing narratives based on wordless picture books. Method: Participants included 60 first- and second-grade African American, Latino American, and Caucasian children. A subset of narratives based on wordless picture books collected as part of a larger study was coded and analyzed for the following creative and stylistic conventions: organizational style (topic centered, linear, cyclical), dialogue (direct, indirect), reference to character relationships (nature, naming, conduct), embellishment (fantasy, suspense, conflict), and paralinguistic devices (expressive sounds, exclamatory utterances). Results: Many similarities and differences between ethnic groups were found. No significant differences were found between ethnic groups in organizational style or use of paralinguistic devices. African American children included more fantasy in their stories, Latino children named their characters more often, and Caucasian children made more references to the nature of character relationships. Conclusion: Even within the context of a highly structured narrative task based on wordless picture books, culture influences children’s production of narratives. Enhanced understanding of narrative structure, creativity, and style is necessary to provide ecologically valid narrative assessment and intervention for children from diverse cultural backgrounds