Global Change and Educational Reform in Ontario and Canada

Canadian education has been responding to global change for many decades. Over the last 30 years, two global paradigms have dominated debates about education in Ontario and in Canada. The first paradigm, global economic competitiveness, maintains that knowl- edge has become the competitive advantage of industrial nations in the global economy and that utilitarian principles should guide our educational reforms. The second paradigm, global interdependence, holds that we should acknowledge our interdependent global needs and responsibilities and that this should guide our educational reforms. I argue that to prepare students for the global challenges of the new century, excellence in education should be defined as meeting the requirements of both paradigms and as including the study of all major global change — economic and technological — as well as the study of world cultures, politics, ecology, and humanitarian issues. Depuis les 30 dernières années, deux paradigmes dominent les débats sur l’éducation en Ontario et dans l’ensemble du Canada. Le premier paradigme, la mondialisation de la compétitivité économique, maintient que la connaissance est devenue l’avantage concur- rentiel des pays industrialisés dans l’économie mondiale et que des principes utilitaires devraient guider les réformes en éducation. Le second paradigme, l’interdépendance à l’échelle mondiale, soutient que nous devrions reconnaître l’interdépendance de nos besoins et de nos responsabilités à l’échelle mondiale et que c’est ce principe qui devrait guider les réformes en éducation. L’auteur avance pour sa part que pour préparer les élèves aux défis mondiaux du nouveau siècle, l’excellence en éducation devrait être définie en fonction des exigences des deux paradigmes, ce qui suppose l’étude des changements économiques et technologiques à l’échelle mondiale ainsi que l’étude des diverses cultures, de la politique, de l’écologie et des questions humanitaires.

Spontaneous Emission in ultra-cold spin-polarised anisotropic Fermi Seas

We examine and explain the spatial emission patterns of ultracold excited fermions in anisotropic trapping potentials in the presence of a spin polarised Fermi sea of ground state atoms. Due to the Pauli principle, the Fermi sea modifies the available phase space for the recoiling atom and thereby modifies its decay rate and the probability of the emitted photon's direction. We show that the spatial anisotropies are due to an intricate interplay between Fermi energies and degeneracy values of specific energy levels and identify a regime in which the emission will become completely directional. Our results are relevant for recent advances in trapping and manipulating cold fermionic samples experimentally and give an example of a conceptually new idea for a directional photon source.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Analysis of margin classification systems for assessing the risk of local recurrence after soft tissue sarcoma resection

Purpose: To compare the ability of margin classification systems to determine local recurrence (LR) risk after soft tissue sarcoma (STS) resection. Methods: Two thousand two hundred seventeen patients with nonmetastatic extremity and truncal STS treated with surgical resection and multidisciplinary consideration of perioperative radiotherapy were retrospectively reviewed. Margins were coded by residual tumor (R) classification (in which microscopic tumor at inked margin defines R1), the R+1mm classification (in which microscopic tumor within 1 mm of ink defines R1), and the Toronto Margin Context Classification (TMCC; in which positive margins are separated into planned close but positive at critical structures, positive after whoops re-excision, and inadvertent positive margins). Multivariate competing risk regression models were created. Results: By R classification, LR rates at 10-year follow-up were 8%, 21%, and 44% in R0, R1, and R2, respectively. R+1mm classification resulted in increased R1 margins (726 v 278, P < .001), but led to decreased LR for R1 margins without changing R0 LR; for R0, the 10-year LR rate was 8% (range, 7% to 10%); for R1, the 10-year LR rate was 12% (10% to 15%) . The TMCC also showed various LR rates among its tiers (P < .001). LR rates for positive margins on critical structures were not different from R0 at 10 years (11% v 8%, P = .18), whereas inadvertent positive margins had high LR (5-year, 28% [95% CI, 19% to 37%]; 10-year, 35% [95% CI, 25% to 46%]; P < .001). Conclusion: The R classification identified three distinct risk levels for LR in STS. An R+1mm classification reduced LR differences between R1 and R0, suggesting that a negative but < 1-mm margin may be adequate with multidisciplinary treatment. The TMCC provides additional stratification of positive margins that may aid in surgical planning and patient education

Comparison of batch and continuous ultrasonic emulsification processes

AbstractBatch and continuous ultrasonic emulsification processes on both lab and pilot scales were investigated using Tween 80 or milk protein isolate (MPI) as emulsifiers. The process parameters of processing volume, residence time and ultrasonic amplitude, as well as emulsion formulations, emulsifier type and concentration, were studied for the effect on emulsion droplet size. Emulsions prepared with ultrasound yielded submicron droplets, ∼200nm, with Tween 80 and MPI, utilising all processing methodologies. Inverse power laws were obtained correlating emulsion droplet size with respect to energy density, highlighting the efficiency of the continuous over batch processing. This efficiency is ascribed to the smaller processing volumes, associated with continuous ultrasonic emulsification. Longer processing times were required for MPI to achieve submicron droplets (<200nm) in comparison to Tween 80 as greater times are necessary for interfacial adsorption and surface stabilisation, shown by interfacial tension measurements

Maternal presence or absence alters nociceptive responding and cortical anandamide levels in juvenile female rats

The influence of parental support on child pain experiences is well recognised. Accordingly, animal studies have revealed both short- and long-term effects of early life stress on nociceptive responding and neural substrates such as endocannabinoids. The endocannabinoid system plays an important role in mediating and modulating stress, social interaction, and nociception. This study examined the effects of maternal support or acute isolation on nociceptive responding of female rats to a range of stimuli during the juvenile pre-adolescent period and accompanying changes in the endocannabinoid system. The data revealed that juvenile female Sprague Dawley rats (PND21-24) isolated from the dam for 1 hr prior to nociceptive testing exhibited increased latency to withdraw in the hot plate test and increased mechanical withdrawal threshold in the Von Frey test, compared to rats tested in the presence of the dam. Furthermore, isolated rats exhibited reduced latency to respond in the acetone drop test and enhanced nociceptive responding in the formalin test when compared to dam-paired counterparts. Anandamide, but not 2-AG, levels were reduced in the prefrontal cortex of dam-paired, but not isolated, juvenile rats following nociceptive testing. There was no change in the expression of CB1, FAAH or MAGL; however, CB2 receptor expression was reduced in both dam-paired and isolated rats following nociceptive testing. Taken together the data demonstrate that brief social isolation or the presence of the dam modulates nociceptive responding of juvenile rat pups in a modality specific manner, and suggest a possible role for the endocannabinoid system in the prefrontal cortex in sociobehavioural pain responses during early life

Really Trying or Merely Trying

We enjoy first-person authority with respect to a certain class of actions: for these actions, we know what we are doing just because we are doing it. This paper first formulates an epistemological principle that captures this authority in terms of trying to act in a way that one has the capacity to act. It then considers a case of effortful action – running a middle distance race – that threatens this principle. And proposes the solution of changing the metaphysics of action: one can keep hold of the idea that we have first-person authority over what we are doing by adopting a disjunctive account of action

Tissue phantoms in multicenter clinical trials for diffuse optical technologies

Tissue simulating phantoms are an important part of instrumentation validation, standardization/training and clinical translation. Properly used, phantoms form the backbone of sound quality control procedures. We describe the development and testing of a series of optically turbid phantoms used in a multi-center American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) clinical trial of Diffuse Optical Spectroscopic Imaging (DOSI). The ACRIN trial is designed to measure the response of breast tumors to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Phantom measurements are used to determine absolute instrument response functions during each measurement session and assess both long and short-term operator and instrument reliability

Spectroscopic confirmation of a Coma Cluster progenitor at z~2.2

We report the spectroscopic confirmation of a new protocluster in the COSMOS field at z ∼ 2.2, originally identified as an overdensity of narrow-band selected Hα emitting candidates. With only two masks of Keck/MOSFIRE near-IR spectroscopy in both H (∼ 1.47-1.81 μm) and K (∼ 1.92- 2.40 μm) bands (∼ 1.5 hour each), we confirm 35 unique protocluster members with at least two emission lines detected with S/N > 3. Combined with 12 extra members from the zCOSMOS-deep spectroscopic survey (47 in total), we estimate a mean redshift, line-of-sight velocity dispersion, and total mass of zmean=2.23224 ± 0.00101, σlos=645 ± 69 km s−1, and Mvir ∼ (1 − 2)×10^14 M⊙ for this protocluster, respectively. We estimate a number density enhancement of δg ∼ 7 for this system and we argue that the structure is likely not virialized at z ∼ 2.2. However, in a spherical collapse model, δg is expected to grow to a linear matter enhancement of ∼ 1.9 by z=0, exceeding the collapse threshold of 1.69, and leading to a fully collapsed and virialized Coma-type structure with a total mass of Mdyn(z=0) ∼ 9.2×10^14 M⊙ by now. This observationally efficient confirmation suggests that large narrow-band emission-line galaxy surveys, when combined with ancillary photometric data, can be used to effectively trace the large-scale structure and protoclusters at a time when they are mostly dominated by star-forming galaxies