It's complicated: apprentice leaders on the edge of chaos

A view from the dance floor of ALICSE participants showed that the integrated children's services remain under pressure to become multi-dimensional with the rhetorical push to a joint working becoming increasingly complex and difficult to navigate. This was the view of a 360 degree questionnaire to a number of ALICSE participants and reflections from an in-depth dialogue. The main findings suggested collective professionalism requires collaborative relationships between organisations and individuals, and this collaboration poses the most significant challenge for educational leadership and management. The participants on the dance floor often reciting phrases like: letting go of control, no hierarchy, self-organising. The main conclusion being an individual needs to be self-organised and it takes a leader to be confident to manage ambiguity and complexity. Using complex adaptive systems theory and blended leadership styles theories, we will assert that distributional leadership is required to navigate the complex environment. Futures thinking suggests that we could use complex adaptive systems theory to help build an effective communication strategy for individuals, teams and services allowing them to self-organise

Why are there still so few men within Early Years in primary schools: views from male trainee teachers and male leaders?

One of the challenges facing the Early Years (EY) sector is how to encourage more male practitioners to counterbalance a largely feminised workforce. Using case studies of male trainees at different stages of their primary undergraduate Initial Teacher Training course at one university, we attempt to consider data why there is underrepresentation of men within the leadership strata in EY settings. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted with the male sample groups and male leaders in primary schools to gain an overview regarding gender stereotyping. Our findings suggest that male trainees enjoy working in the EY sector, but they need mentoring by strong leaders to help them overcome the perceived contextual barriers of male stereotypes in that setting. In conclusion, we consider some of these barriers of stereotypes, attitudes, values, beliefs existing and the actions needed in addressing such stereotypes if a long-lasting change is to happen

A mosaic infrared sensor for space astronomy, phase 3

Short wavelength (1 to 3 micron) HgCdTe mosaic detector arrays for space astronomy purposes were fabricated and studied. Honeywell will test and analyze these arrays at moderate temperatures (300-130K). Low temperature testing will be performed at the University of Hawaii. Short wavelength mosaic arrays were fabricated on three wafers and one array from each wafer was tested and analyzed. The p-type base carrier concentration on these wafers was an order of magnitude lower than typically used so far on this program (10 to the 14/cc as compared to 10 to the 15/cc). Tunneling currents are expected to decrease with this decrease in carrier concentration, resulting in improved performance at very low temperatures. The risk with such a low carrier concentration is that fixed charge in the surface passivating layer must be carefully controlled to prevent surface inversion layers

Nuclear Dynamics at the Balance Energy

We study the mass dependence of various quantities (like the average and maximum density, collision rate, participant-spectator matter, temperature as well as time zones for higher density) by simulating the reactions at the energy of vanishing flow. This study is carried out within the framework of Quantum Molecular Dynamics model. Our findings clearly indicate an existence of a power law in all the above quantities calculated at the balance energy. The only significant mass dependence was obtained for the temperature reached in the central sphere. All other quantities are rather either insensitive or depend weakly on the system size at balance energy. The time zone for higher density as well as the time of maximal density and collision rate follow a power law inverse to the energy of vanishing flow.Comment: 9 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Effect of silica colloids on the rheology of viscoelastic gels formed by the surfactant cetyl trimethylammonium tosylate

The effects of the addition of sub-micrometer sized colloidal silica spheres on the linear and nonlinear rheology of semi-dilute solutions of a viscoelastic gel are studied. For a 1.4 wt.% solution of the surfactant CTAT, a peak in the zero shear rate viscosity $\eta_{\circ}$ is observed at approximately equal weight percents of silica and CTAT. This peak shifts to lower silica concentrations on increasing either the CTAT concentration or the surface charge on silica and disappears when the CTAT concentration is increased to 2.6wt%. The increases in $\eta_{\circ}$ and the high frequency plateau modulus G$_{\circ}$ on the introduction of SiO$_{2}$ are explained by considering the increasingly entangled wormlike micelles that are formed due to the enhanced screening of the electrostatic interactions. The observed decrease in the values of G$_{\circ}$ and $\eta_{\circ}$ at higher concentrations of silica particles is explained in terms of the formation of surfactant bilayers due to the adsorption of the positively charged cetyl trimethylammonium to the negatively charged silica.Comment: 28 pages, includes 8 eps and 2 png figures; accepted for publication in Jl. Colloid Interface Sc

Nonequilibrium Fluctuation Relation for Sheared Micellar Gel in a Jammed State

We show that the shear rate at a fixed shear stress in a micellar gel in a jammed state exhibits large fluctuations, showing positive and negative values, with the mean shear rate being positive. The resulting probability distribution functions (PDF's) of the global power flux to the system vary from Gaussian to non-Gaussian, depending on the driving stress and in all cases show similar symmetry properties as predicted by Gallavotti-Cohen steady state fluctuation relation. The fluctuation relation allows us to determine an effective temperature related to the structural constraints of the jammed state. We have measured the stress dependence of the effective temperature. Further, experiments reveal that the effective temperature and the standard deviation of the shear rate fluctuations increase with the decrease of the system size.Comment: 5 pages 3 figure

Dynamical Behaviour in the Nonlinear Rheology of Surfactant Solutions

Several surfactant molecules self-assemble in solution to form long, flexible wormlike micelles which get entangled with each other, leading to viscoelastic gel phases. We discuss our recent work on the rheology of such a gel formed in the dilute aqueous solutions of a surfactant CTAT. In the linear rheology regime, the storage modulus $G^{\prime}(\omega)$ and loss modulus $G^{\prime\prime}(\omega)$ have been measured over a wide frequency range. In the nonlinear regime, the shear stress $\sigma$ shows a plateau as a function of the shear rate $\dot\gamma$ above a certain cutoff shear rate $\dot\gamma_c$. Under controlled shear rate conditions in the plateau regime, the shear stress and the first normal stress difference show oscillatory time-dependence. The analysis of the measured time series of shear stress and normal stress has been done using several methods incorporating state space reconstruction by embedding of time delay vectors.The analysis shows the existence of a finite correlation dimension and a positive Lyapunov exponent, unambiguously implying that the dynamics of the observed mechanical instability can be described by that of a dynamical system with a strange attractor of dimension varying from 2.4 to 2.9.Comment: 12 pages, includes 7 eps figure