Teaching Students with Special Needs in School-Based, Agricultural Education: A Historical Inquiry

The purpose of this historical study was to investigate the inclusion of students with special needs in school-based, agricultural education as reported by The Agricultural Education Magazine and the Journal of Agricultural Education over a time period of six decades. The impact of landmark legislation, such as the Vocational Education Act of 1963, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, and the Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1990, were examined. This legislation motivated and supported agricultural education’s efforts to meet the learning needs of special education students by providing modified lessons and learning environments, inclusive SAEs and FFA activities, and focused teacher preparation. Challenges and concerns regarding the placement of special needs students in school-based, agricultural education are also discussed, as well as opportunities for related research in the future, especially about their participation in the FFA

On the functional renormalization group for the scalar field on curved background with non-minimal interaction

The running of the non-minimal parameter (\xi) of the interaction of the real scalar field and scalar curvature is explored within the non-perturbative setting of the functional renormalization group (RG). We establish the RG flow in curved space-time in the scalar field sector, in particular derive an equation for the non-minimal parameter. The RG trajectory is numerically explored for different sets of initial data.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, 4 Figure

On semidirectly closed pseudovarieties of aperiodic semigroups

The aim of this work is to study the unknown intervals of the lattice of aperiodic pseu\-do\-va\-rie\-ties which are semidirectly closed and answer questions proposed by J.~Almeida in his book ``Finite Semigroups and Universal Algebra". The main results state that the intervals $[\mathbf{V}^*(B_2),\mathbf{ER}\cap\mathbf{LR}]$ and $[\mathbf{V}^*(B^1_2),\mathbf{ER}\cap\mathbf{A}]$ are not trivial, and that both contain a chain isomorphic to the chain of real numbers. These results are a consequence of the study of the semidirectly closed pseudovariety generated by the aperiodic Brandt semigroup $B_2$.Centro de Matemática da Universidade do Minho (CMAT). Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Praxis/2/2.1/MAT/63/94

The semidirectly closed pseudovariety generated by aperiodic Brandt semigroups

This paper presents a study of the semidirectly closed pseudovariety generated by the aperiodic Brandt semigroup $B_2$, denoted $\mathbf V^*(B_2)$. We construct a basis of pseudoidentities for the semidirect powers of the pseudovariety generated by $B_2$ which leads to the main result, which states that $\mathbf V^*(B_2)$ is decidable. Independently, using some suggestions given by J.~Almeida in his book ``Finite Semigroups and Universal Algebra", we constructed an algorithm to solve the membership problem in $\mathbf V^*(B_2)$.Centro de Matemática da Universidade do Minho (CMAT). Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Praxis/2/2.1/MAT/63/94

Performance of dynamical decoupling in bosonic environments and under pulse-timing fluctuations

We study the suppression of qubit dephasing through Uhrig dynamical decoupling (UDD) in nontrivial environments modeled within the spin-boson formalism. In particular, we address the case of (i) a qubit coupled to a bosonic bath with power-law spectral density, and (ii) a qubit coupled to a single harmonic oscillator that dissipates energy into a bosonic bath, which embodies an example of a structured bath for the qubit. We then model the influence of random time jitter in the UDD protocol by sorting pulse-application times from Gaussian distributions centered at appropriate values dictated by the optimal protocol. In case (i) we find that, when few pulses are applied and a sharp cutoff is considered, longer coherence times and robust UDD performances (against random timing errors) are achieved for a super-Ohmic bath. On the other hand, when an exponential cutoff is considered a super-Ohmic bath is undesirable. In case (ii) the best scenario is obtained for an overdamped harmonic motion. Our study provides relevant information for the implementation of optimized schemes for the protection of quantum states from decoherence.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Scalar and Spinor Particles in the Spacetime of a Domain Wall in String Theory

We consider scalar and spinor particles in the spacetime of a domain wall in the context of low energy effective string theories, such as the generalized scalar-tensor gravity theories. This class of theories allows for an arbitrary coupling of the wall and the (gravitational) scalar field. First, we derive the metric of a wall in the weak-field approximation and we show that it depends on the wall's surface energy density and on two post-Newtonian parameters. Then, we solve the Klein-Gordon and the Dirac equations in this spacetime. We obtain the spectrum of energy eigenvalues and the current density in the scalar and spinor cases, respectively. We show that these quantities, except in the case of the energy spectrum for a massless spinor particle, depend on the parameters that characterize the scalar-tensor domain wall.Comment: LATEX file, 21 pages, revised version to appear in Phys. Rev.