The response of teacher education to the Syrian Conflict: teacher education from conflict to peacebuilding and positive peace culture?

Premised on Galtung’s (1969) theory of ‘positive’ peace, this thesis provides an analysis of the Syrian government’s post-war peacebuilding initiatives to promote a culture of positive peace, and what role, if any, is attributed to education and teacher education in this process. This examination is underpinned by a theoretical framework that considers forms of indirect violence, drawing on Bridge’s (1999) theory of truth, and the concepts of silence and securitisation (Waever, 1995). The thesis draws on critical theory to offer a meta-analysis in order to link constructed themes to wider societal and hegemonic issues. Data is obtained from semi-structured interviews with twelve participants consisting of senior government officials and teacher educators from a public university and the equivalent of pre-service and in-service training centres within a government held area in Syria. The study demonstrates that the current educational response to the conflict is dominated by fragmented, individual initiatives that are not linked to wider strategies aimed at promoting a culture of ‘positive peace’. Research findings reveal that the government’s current approach to reconstruction is based on a negative concept of peace as an absence of violence (Galtung, 1969), as reflected in focusing the reconstruction of the education sector on rebuilding its physical aspects and on bringing it back to ‘normal’ as it was before the conflict. This study also reveals that the role of education and teacher education in ‘post-conflict’ peacebuilding is jeopardised by current structural efforts to impose polices of silence and securitisation that are implicated in issues of hegemonic reconstruction and future representations of the conflict. The study concludes that it would be naïve to approach the current state of relative peace achieved across major cities as an indication of the conflict moving into a ‘post’ conflict stage, as it is developing from militarised and direct forms of violence to less visible forms as demonstrated through the application of silence and securitisation

Event-by-event study of prompt neutrons from 239Pu(n,f)

Employing a recently developed Monte Carlo model, we study the fission of 240Pu induced by neutrons with energies from thermal to just below the threshold for second chance fission. Current measurements of the mean number of prompt neutrons emitted in fission, together with less accurate measurements of the neutron energy spectra, place remarkably fine constraints on predictions of microscopic calculations. In particular, the total excitation energy of the nascent fragments must be specified to within 1 MeV to avoid disagreement with measurements of the mean neutron multiplicity. The combination of the Monte Carlo fission model with a statistical likelihood analysis also presents a powerful tool for the evaluation of fission neutron data. Of particular importance is the fission spectrum, which plays a key role in determining reactor criticality. We show that our approach can be used to develop an estimate of the fission spectrum with uncertainties several times smaller than current experimental uncertainties for outgoing neutron energies up to 2 MeV.Comment: 17 pages, 20 figure

The New Certificates of Financial Responsibility: Environmental Progress or National Economic Disaster?

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) is the first comprehensive oil spill legislation passed in the United States. Included in the law were new provisions governing the liability and financial responsibility of both the company responsible for the spill and the insurer. These provisions, while well-intentioned, have created a dangerous situation for both the environment and the economy of the United States. This paper will examine the financial responsibility and liability regime that was in place prior to the passage of OPA 90, and the provisions of OPA 90 that establish new requirements shipowners must meet to qualify for a Certificate of Financial Responsibility. In addition, the consequent rejection of these requirements by traditional maritime insurance markets, and the new financial instruments developed to meet the specific needs of vessels trading in the United States, will be explored

Reduction of Current Migraine Headache Pain Following Neck Massage and Spinal Manipulation

impacts the health of individuals and of society. The application of simple physical nonpharmacological techniques could greatly reduce the therapeutic costs and side effects in acute onset of such headaches. Methods: Ten male patients (mean age was 32.0 ± 10.59 years) with acute onset of a migraine headache according to IHS-2004 diagnostic criteria were enrolled in the study. Neck and upper thoracic spine massage and manipulation technique was performed. Headache pain intensity was assessed before and after the intervention by means of a verbal analog scale. Results: Following treatment, headache pain intensity was significantly reduced compared to the pretreatment values (1.85 ± 1.11 vs. 5.80 ± 2.25, p =.005). As a percentage, this represents a mean pain reduction of 68.77 % ± 18.56. No side effects were observed, and all of the patients reported satisfaction with the intervention. Conclusion: Our results show that the applied cervical and upper thoracic massage and manipulation technique could reduce the headache attack pain intensity in patients with migraine headaches, though further testing, including study designs that make use of control groups, is needed

Structure modifications of hydrolytically degradable polymer flocculant for improved water recovery from mature fine tailings

Oil sands mining operations in Canada produce large volumes of waste tailings that are difficult to dewater using commercial polyacrylamide-based flocculants. Recently, we have developed a novel hydrolytically-degradable polymer synthesized through micellar radical polymerization of short-chain polyester cationic macromonomers. Poly(PCL2ChMA), made of polycaprolactone choline iodide ester methacrylate with two polyester units, effectively treated mature fine tailings (MFT) solutions as evaluated by measuring initial settling rate, supernatant turbidity, and capillary suction time (CST) of the sediments[1]. Please download the file below for full content

Microscopic and non-adiabatic Schr\"odinger equation derived from the Generator Coordinate Method based on 0 and 2 quasiparticle HFB states

A new approach called the Schr\"odinger Collective Intrinsic Model (SCIM) has been developed to achieve a microscopic description of the coupling between collective and intrinsic excitations. The derivation of the SCIM proceeds in two steps. The first step is based on a generalization of the symmetric moment expansion of the equations derived in the framework of the Generator Coordinate Method (GCM), when both Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) states and two-quasi-particle excitations are taken into account as basis states. The second step consists in reducing the generalized Hill and Wheeler equation to a simpler form to extract a Schr\"odinger-like equation. The validity of the approach is discussed by means of results obtained for the overlap kernel between HFB states and two-quasi-particle excitations at different deformations.Comment: 27 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Elastic shape matching of parameterized surfaces using square root normal fields.

In this paper we define a new methodology for shape analysis of parameterized surfaces, where the main issues are: (1) choice of metric for shape comparisons and (2) invariance to reparameterization. We begin by defining a general elastic metric on the space of parameterized surfaces. The main advantages of this metric are twofold. First, it provides a natural interpretation of elastic shape deformations that are being quantified. Second, this metric is invariant under the action of the reparameterization group. We also introduce a novel representation of surfaces termed square root normal fields or SRNFs. This representation is convenient for shape analysis because, under this representation, a reduced version of the general elastic metric becomes the simple \ensuremathL2\ensuremathL2 metric. Thus, this transformation greatly simplifies the implementation of our framework. We validate our approach using multiple shape analysis examples for quadrilateral and spherical surfaces. We also compare the current results with those of Kurtek et al. [1]. We show that the proposed method results in more natural shape matchings, and furthermore, has some theoretical advantages over previous methods

Health Related Quality of Life in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Iran : A National Survey

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank kindly all participants in the study.Peer reviewedPublisher PD