Supervised Versus Independent Student Laboratories

The purpose of this study was to determine if classroom laboratory time could be reduced in a basic physical agents course. Fifty-seven junior physical therapy students were randomly assigned to three laboratory sections. All students received identical lectures, demonstrations, course materials, and laboratory manuals. The control group, Section 1, received supervision and assistance during laboratory practice. Students in Section 2 and Section 3 worked independent of instructor supervision but could receive assistance from the instructor in an adjacent room. Students in Section 2 were provided with feedback following periodic assessment by the instructor. Attitudinal questionnaire responses indicated that the students preferred the supervised laboratory section. The presence of the instructor during classroom laboratory practice of basic physical agents did not affect student performance. Comparison of written and practical examination results indicated no significant differences in student performance. Classroom laboratory time for faculty and students was reduced when students worked independently

"Nothing has convinced me to stop" Young people's perceptions and experiences of persistant offending

Nothing Has Convinced Me To Stop results from the former Scottish Executive tasking the project with consulting young people about persistent offending. The report explores the views and experiences of those living in residential care about how and why they persistently offend, what contributes to their offending behaviour escalating and what helps them to reduce it or indeed stop offending. The consultation focused on areas with high concentrations of 'persistent offenders' in residential care, consulting young people living in various settings - residential units, residential schools, secure units and young offender institutions

"This isn't the road I want to go down" Young people's perceptions and experiences of secure care

The consultation sought to map young people's secure journey ie. their experiences and views of secure care from admission through to final discharge, including the transition from secure care and the services they received to assist them in that transition. It centred on four broad themes intended to elicit young people's individual experiences and perceptions regarding: admission to secure care, time in secure care, exit from secure care, and reflections once left secure care

Shifting discourses : the work and friendship experiences of women chartered accountants

The number of women in the Chartered Accounting (CA) profession has continued to rise since the 1970s; women now make up one-third of working CAs in Canada (Tabone, 2007). Yet, the number of women in the upper levels of the profession remains very low. The main purpose of this dissertation is to understand how women CAs experience and talk about the CA profession and to explore the implications of the CA context for the development and maintenance of friendship among women CAs. The ways in which power and agency are exercised in the micro-politics of the everyday lives of women CAs and the nexus of relations through which individuals develop and enact their identities is explored through open-ended interviews and discussion groups with Western Canadian women CAs. The dominant ideology of professionalism constructs both individual and collective identities while structuring workplace relations. The findings of this study demonstrate that female CAs believe strongly in elements of professionalism such as meritocracy, excellence, client service, and commitment but that their understanding is gender-neutral and differs from the dominant masculinist interpretations and practices. The participants’ narratives reveal a particular pattern of engagement with the profession characterized by stages of early optimism, disillusionment and the glass ceiling, negotiation and the glass box, resignation, and justification. All participants encountered a glass ceiling, or invisible barriers to advancement, as a result of the conflicting meanings of the ideals of professionalism. As the women attempted to negotiate solutions to the constraints imposed by the profession’s elite, masculinist discourses were mobilized by those in power in new ways resulting in further constraints upon the women, containing them within a “glass box” that limited their career mobility in all directions and may contribute to gender segmentation in the profession.Masculinist discursive practices have a significant impact not only on the participants’ career aspirations, but also on their friendship relationships, which are, in part, constituted by their relationship to the profession, their need for support against masculinist strategies, and their choice of gender identity strategy. Friendships do not increase activism as the participants’ feel powerless to create change and fear reprisals

Asymptotics of higher-order Painlevé equations

We undertake an asymptotic study of a second Painlevé hierarchy based on the Jimbo-Miwa Lax pair in the limit as the independent variable approaches infinity. The hierarchy is defined by an infinite sequence of non-linear ordinary differential equations, indexed by order, with the classical second Painlevé equation as the first member. We investigate general and special asymptotic behaviours admitted by each equation in the hierarchy. We show that the general asymptotic behaviour is described by two related hyperelliptic functions, where the genus of the functions increases with each member of the hierarchy, and we prove that there exist special families of solutions which are represented by algebraic formal power series. For specific values of the constants which appear in the higher-order second Painlevé equations, exact solutions are also constructed. Particular attention is given to the fourth-order analogue of the classical second Painlevé equation. In this case, the general asymptotic behaviour is given to leading-order by two related genus-2 hyperelliptic functions. These functions are characterised by four complex parameters which depend on the independent variable through the perturbation terms of the leading-order equations, and we investigate how these parameters change with respect to this variable. We also show that the fourth-order equation admits two classes of algebraic formal power series and that there exist families of true solutions with these behaviours in specified sectors of the complex plane, as well as unique solutions in extended sectors. To complement our asymptotic study of higher-order Painlevé equations, we consider a new setting in which classical Painlevé equations arise. We study reaction-diffusion equations with quadratic and cubic source terms, with a spatio-temporal dependence included in those terms, and show that solutions of these equations are given by first and second Painlevé transcendents

'Home is where the heart is': everyday geographies of young heterosexual couples' love in and of homes

This thesis focuses on the relationships between heterosexuality, love, and home. It examines the homemaking practices and relationship activities of 14 heterosexual couples, and in particular the experiences of women in these relationships, who are aged between 20-40 years, have no children, and live in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand. It is argued that heterosexual bodies that ‘love’, and the domestic spaces they occupy, are mutually constituted and continually reproduced through the everyday practices of homemaking. ‘Couple’ interviews, solicited diaries and self-directed photography, follow-up individual interviews and evaluation questionnaires are used to access couples’, and in particular women’s, everyday geographies of heterosexuality, love and home. A combination of qualitative research methods and feminist poststructuralist theory is used to give rise to an embodied, emotionally situated and partial geography. My findings are organised around three spatial scales: body, dwelling, and household and beyond. Focusing on the first scale – body – provides an opportunity for foregrounding gendered and sexed bodies as important sites of homemaking. A multiplicity of homemaking practices occur at the site of the body, including: the feelings, emotions, sensations, and language of love; the expressions and spaces of physical affection and intimacy; and the presence of corporeal and domestic dirt. Focusing on the second scale – dwelling – allows for an understanding of the ways in which discourses of love are mapped on to specific materialities of home. Issues of privacy and the negotiated use of shared domestic spaces, the creation and enactment of domestic activities and routines, and the accumulation and arrangement of material domestic objects all come to the fore when considering dwellings. The third scale – household and beyond – is used to examine some of the ways in which households and homemakers are connected to broader social, cultural, political and economic relations of power beyond the physical dwelling. Paying attention to the household and beyond prompts a consideration of the ways in which housing tenure and the practices of household consumption can dissolve the public and private boundaries that surround home. The heteronormativity of geographical discourse means that the relationship between heterosexuality, love and home is often taken-for-granted as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ and as such is left ‘invisible’ and unremarked upon. Making the relationship between heterosexuality, love and home explicit in the production of geographical knowledge displaces ontological and epistemological assumptions about the naturalness and normality of heterosexuality. This study responds to the lack of critical attention paid to the relationship between love, heterosexuality and home in geography. Considering the homemaking practices and relationship activities of heterosexual couples encourages a more critical understanding of the normative and powerful ways in which heterosexual bodies and domestic spaces are mutually constituted

Galaxy Luminosity Functions from Deep Spectroscopic Samples of Rich Clusters

Using a new spectroscopic sample and methods accounting for spectroscopic sampling fractions that vary in magnitude and surface brightness, we present R-band galaxy luminosity functions (GLFs) for six nearby galaxy clusters with redshifts 4000 < cz < 20000 km/s and velocity dispersions 700 < sigma < 1250 km/s. In the case of the nearest cluster, Abell 1060, our sample extends to M_R=-14 (7 magnitudes below M*), making this the deepest spectroscopic determination of the cluster GLF to date. Our methods also yield composite GLFs for cluster and field galaxies to M_R=-17 (M*+4), including the GLFs of subsamples of star forming and quiescent galaxies. The composite GLFs are consistent with Schechter functions (M*_R=-21.14^{+0.17}_{-0.17}, alpha=-1.21^{+0.08}_{-0.07} for the clusters, M*_R=-21.15^{+0.16}_{-0.16}, alpha=-1.28^{+0.12}_{-0.11} for the field). All six cluster samples are individually consistent with the composite GLF down to their respective absolute magnitude limits, but the GLF of the quiescent population in clusters is not universal. There are also significant variations in the GLF of quiescent galaxies between the field and clusters that can be described as a steepening of the faint end slope. The overall GLF in clusters is consistent with that of field galaxies, except for the most luminous tip, which is enhanced in clusters versus the field. The star formation properties of giant galaxies are more strongly correlated with the environment than those of fainter galaxies.Comment: 53 pages, 8 figures, 1 ASCII table; accepted for publication in Ap