Developing maths-identities of overseas trained teachers from developing countries: two voices

This paper reports on teacher-students’ developing mathematics-teacher identities as they participated in a mathematics education module which they took as an option as part of their BEd in-service degree. Multiple qualitative methods have been used to gather data on the 14 teacher-students’ mathematical development, attitudes and reflections on their professional practice over the course of the year. In this paper, in-depth accounts of two of the students’- (one Caribbean and one African) - developing identities as mathematics teachers are presented using socio -cultural, discursive and defended-subject theoretical frameworks for the analysis. The paper exemplifies discourses producing maths teacher identities while simultaneously defending against interrogation of mathematical and pedagogical practices

Invisible and Special: young women’s experiences as undergraduate mathematics students

This paper reports on young women students’ participation in their undergraduate mathematics degree programme: their gendered trajectory is characterised in terms of their being both ‘invisible’ in the dominant university mathematics community and yet ‘special’ in their self-conception. It draws on data collected from a three year longitudinal project investigating students’ experiences of undergraduate mathematics at two comparable traditional universities in England. Specifically, students’ narratives are interpreted as providing insights into their defensive investments in their particular ways of participating. An interpretive feminist perspective is used to claim that these young women are involved in the ongoing redefining of the gendering of participation in mathematics, and conveys how they manage to choose mathematics, and achieve in university mathematics, whilst in many respects adhering to everyday views of femininity

Time-symmetric quantization in spacetimes with event horizons

The standard quantization formalism in spacetimes with event horizons implies a non-unitary evolution of quantum states, as initial pure states may evolve into thermal states. This phenomenon is behind the famous black hole information loss paradox which provoked long-standing debates on the compatibility of quantum mechanics and gravity. In this paper we demonstrate that within an alternative time-symmetric quantization formalism thermal radiation is absent and states evolve unitarily in spacetimes with event horizons. We also discuss the theoretical consistency of the proposed formalism. We explicitly demonstrate that the theory preserves the microcausality condition and suggest a "reinterpretation postulate" to resolve other apparent pathologies associated with negative energy states. Accordingly as there is a consistent alternative, we argue that choosing to use time-asymmetric quantization is a necessary condition for the black hole information loss paradox.Comment: 9 page

CONTROL OF LAND AND LIFE IN BURMA

The most significant land problems in Burma remain those associated with landlessness, rural poverty, inequality of access to resources, and a military regime that denies citizen rights and is determined to rule by force and not by law. A framework to ensure the sustainable development of land is needed to address social, legal, economic and technical dimensions of land management. This framework can only be created and implemented within and by a truly democratic nation.Agriculture and state -- Burma, Land use, rural--Burma, Land use, rural--Government policy--Burma, Agricultural policy -- Burma, Land administration -- Burma, Agricultural and Food Policy, Land Economics/Use,

World Bank lending for education research, 1982-89

As a follow up to the earlier review of research in education projects, this study inventories research in education projects, 1982 to 1989, and traces the completion status of studies that were incomplete before 1982. Data were collected on research volume, cost and the conditions under which research components yield accessible and useful information. This paper describes the strategy employed to identify the research components and studies. It presents findings with respect to: (i) the volume of studies and compares these results with the earlier study; (ii) the type of studies reported; and (iii) the budgeted cost of the studies. It also examines preconditions of study completion, using data from Staff Appraisal Reports (SARs) and interviews with selected Project Officers. The final section discusses the findings and draws conclusions.Teaching and Learning,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,ICT Policy and Strategies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis

Multi-Step Cascade Annihilations of Dark Matter and the Galactic Center Excess

If dark matter is embedded in a non-trivial dark sector, it may annihilate and decay to lighter dark-sector states which subsequently decay to the Standard Model. Such scenarios - with annihilation followed by cascading dark-sector decays - can explain the apparent excess GeV gamma-rays identified in the central Milky Way, while evading bounds from dark matter direct detection experiments. Each 'step' in the cascade will modify the observable signatures of dark matter annihilation and decay, shifting the resulting photons and other final state particles to lower energies and broadening their spectra. We explore, in a model-independent way, the effect of multi-step dark-sector cascades on the preferred regions of parameter space to explain the GeV excess. We find that the broadening effects of multi-step cascades can admit final states dominated by particles that would usually produce too sharply peaked photon spectra; in general, if the cascades are hierarchical (each particle decays to substantially lighter particles), the preferred mass range for the dark matter is in all cases 20-150 GeV. Decay chains that have nearly-degenerate steps, where the products are close to half the mass of the progenitor, can admit much higher DM masses. We map out the region of mass/cross-section parameter space where cascades (degenerate, hierarchical or a combination) can fit the signal, for a range of final states. In the current work, we study multi-step cascades in the context of explaining the GeV excess, but many aspects of our results are general and can be extended to other applications.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables; comments welcome. Updated to published versio

Disentangling Heavy Flavor at Colliders

We propose two new analysis strategies for studying charm and beauty quarks at colliders. The first strategy is aimed at testing the kinematics of heavy-flavor quarks within an identified jet. Here, we use the SoftDrop jet-declustering algorithm to identify two subjets within a large-radius jet, using subjet flavor tagging to test the heavy-quark splitting functions of QCD. For subjets containing a $J / \psi$ or $\Upsilon$, this declustering technique can also help probe the mechanism for quarkonium production. The second strategy is aimed at isolating heavy-flavor production from gluon splitting. Here, we introduce a new FlavorCone algorithm, which smoothly interpolates from well-separated heavy-quark jets to the gluon-splitting regime where jets overlap. Because of its excellent ability to identify charm and beauty hadrons, the LHCb detector is ideally suited to pursue these strategies, though similar measurements should also be possible at ATLAS and CMS. Together, these SoftDrop and FlavorCone studies should clarify a number of aspects of heavy-flavor physics at colliders, and provide crucial information needed to improve heavy-flavor modeling in parton-shower generators.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures; v2: updated figures with new z_tag condition, references and discussion adde

Transitioning from "It Looks Like" to "It Has To Be" in Geometrical Workspaces: affect and near-to-me attention

Within a practitioner researcher framework, this paper draws on a particular mathematics education theory and aspects of neuroscience to show that, from a learner’s perspective, moving to a deductive reasoning style appropriate to basic Euclidean geometry, can be facilitated, or impeded, by emotion and/or directed attention. This shows that the issue of a person’s deductive reasoning is not a merely cognitive one, but can involve affective aspects related to perception – particularly perception of nearby sense data – and emotion. The mathematics education theory that has been used is that of the Espace de Travail Mathématique, the English translation of which is known as Mathematical Working Spaces (MWS). The aspects of neuroscience that have been used pertain to the distinct processing streams known as top-down and bottom-up attention. The practitioner research perspective is aligned with Mason’s teaching-practice-based ‘noticing’; qualitative data analysed in this report include individual interviews with school teachers on in-service courses and reflective notes from teaching. Basic Euclidean geometry is used as the medium for investigating transition from ‘it looks like’ to a reasoned ‘it has to be’