Why Earth Science?

This is a web version of a brochure produced by the American Geological Institute to inform people about the importance of Earth science education in K-12 schooling. Educational levels: General public, High school, Intermediate elementary, Middle school, Primary elementary

"The Limits of Leadership: Germany and the EMS/Yugoslavian Crises"

Since its 1990 reunification, Germany now more than ever dominated the European Union in terms of population and economic power, making it a prime candidate for leading the European integration project. Yet these resources do not convert directly into political influence. Germany's leadership in the EU is conditioned by political forces at the domestic and the EU level, and the institutional setting of the policy area in question. The exercise of German influence depends on which actors are empowered at different times. This empowerment both enabled and constrained German leadership during two recent episodes, both of which have been cited as reasons to be concerned with the future of Germany's participation in the EU. In both cases Germany was unable to engineer a more effective resolution of a serious difficulty than its power might otherwise indicate. The first incident involves the shift from cooperation to acrimony in the European Monetary System between the compromises of the 1991 Treaty on European Union and the crisis in the EMS from September 1992 to August 1993. Germany asserted effective leadership in bringing about the successful negotiation of the monetary provision of the Treaty, but during the ratification stage the country was unable to avert the EMS crisis by instituting a realignment of exchange rates or a reduction in interest rates. The second case involves the EU's response to the break-up of Yugoslavia. Germany was able to bring about the EU's reluctant recognition of the independent Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia in 1991, but after violence escalated in the region the Germans have been unable to intervene in a more substantial way to help resolve the conflict despite the efforts of Kohl and his cabinet. In both of these cases German leadership was transformed depending on the phase of the policy in question, institutional constraints at the domestic and EU levels, and most importantly, on who was acting on the part of Germany. During these events Germany's executive was empowered in the initial phases of policy (primarily Kohl during Maastricht negotiations; Genscher during the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia), but during the crisis phases the country was prevented from acting more decisively thanks to Germany's constitutional provisions, decentralization of power, and the specific EU arrangements for cooperation in monetary and political affairs. The analysis thus highlights the extent to which European integration can proceed only as institutional norms, rules and procedures at the domestic and the EU levels develop in harmony with each other, particularly in policy areas (such as monetary and political cooperation), where mechanisms at the EU level are inadequate or ineffective

Teaching UbiComp with Sense

Modern computer science education has to take account of the recent changes towards smart ubiquitous computing devices. In addition, existing programming languages are needlessly difficult for novice programmers to learn concepts. We have developed Sense, an extension to the graphical programming language Scratch, and an associated sensor/actuator board. Together, these will allow novice undergraduate students to quickly develop their own smart devices while learning the fundamentals of programming. Students will first study with Sense in 2011 but developmental feedback has been positive

Total Quality Facilities Management and Innovation: A Synergistic Approach

The ideas of quality and performance management and innovation in facilities management service provision are not new. Total Quality Management (TQM) is widely recognised throughout the world as a concept capable of providing competitive advantage. Innovation has also received considerable attention as having a crucial role in securing sustainable competitive advantage. However, there has been little consideration of the potential for integration of TQM practices with innovation principles in determining facilities management performance. TQM and innovation appear to corroborate each other and are becoming increasingly important in facilities management. This study takes a theoretical approach to critically review the relationship between TQM and innovation and to determine the relationship between TQM and Innovation in regard to facilities service provision. The theoretical implication is that FM service providers may adopt a synergistic approach to TQM and innovation, leading to sustained competitive advantage in terms of better positioning themselves within the saturated FM marketplace

Glucoregulatory and order effects on verbal episodic memory in healthy adolescents after oral glucose administration

The ingestion of oral glucose has been observed to facilitate memory performance in both elderly individuals and in young adults. However, fewer studies have investigated the effect of glucose on memory in children or adolescents. In the present study, the ingestion of a glucose laden drink was observed to enhance verbal episodic memory performance in healthy adolescents under conditions of divided attention, relative to a placebo drink. Further analyses found that this glucose memory facilitation effect was observed only in adolescents exhibiting better glucoregulatory efficiency. These findings demonstrate that the glucose memory facilitation effect can be generalised to younger individuals. The importance of controlling for treatment order in within-subjects designs investigating the glucose memory enhancement effect is also discussed

Convergent Puiseux Series and Tropical Geometry of Higher Rank

We propose to study the tropical geometry specifically arising from convergent Puiseux series in multiple indeterminates. One application is a new view on stable intersections of tropical hypersurfaces. Another one is the study of families of ordinary convex polytopes depending on more than one parameter through tropical geometry. This includes cubes constructed by Goldfarb and Sit (1979) as special cases.Comment: 32 pages, 3 figure