Supertwistor space for 6D maximal super Yang-Mills

6D maximal super Yang-Mills on-shell amplitudes are formulated in superspace using 6 dimensional twistors. The 3,4,5-point tree amplitudes are obtained by supersymmetrizing their bosonic counterparts and confirmed through the BCFW construction. In contrast to 4D this superspace is non-chiral, reflecting the fact that one cannot differentiate MHV from $\bar{{\rm MHV}}$ in 6D. Combined with unitarity methods, this superspace should be useful for the study of multi-loop D dimensional maximal super Yang-Mills and gravity amplitudes. Furthermore, the non-chiral nature gives a natural framework for an off-shell construction. We show this by matching our result with off-shell D=4 N=4 super Yang-Mills amplitudes, expressed in projective superspace.Comment: 6 figures 28 pages. with better sign

Unfitting, uncomfortable, unacademic: a sociological reading of an interactive mobile phone app in university lectures

Abstract Scholarly literature on education technology uptake has been dominated by technological determinist readings of students’ technology use. However, in recent years there has been a move by sociologists of education to highlight how the contexts in which educational technologies are introduced are not tabula rasa but socially and culturally complex. This study approaches technology as a social construct, arguing that students construct discursive meaning of, rather than simply respond to, technologies for learning. The study explores students’ constructions of a mobile learning app that was introduced into lectures during a year-long university course. Students largely rejected the app, constructing it as unfitting for the context, a socially uncomfortable experience and an unacademic way of learning. The paper highlights the limitations of technological determinism and closes by arguing for readings of educational technologies that pay close attention to students’ voices

Design of an Algebraic Concept Operator for Adaptive Feedback in Physics

International audienceIn an adaptive learning environment, the feedback provided during problem-solving requires a means, target, goal, and strategy. One of the challenges of representing feedback to meet these criteria, is the representation of the effect of multiple concepts on a single concept. Currently, most of the methods (linguistic knowledge base, expert knowledge base, and ontology) used in representing knowledge in an adaptive learning environment only provide relationships between a pair of concept. However, a cognitive knowledge base which represents a concept as an object, attribute, and relations (OAR) model, provides a means to determine the effect of multiple concepts on a single concept. Using the OAR model, the relationships between multiple pedagogical, domain, and student attributes are represented for providing adaptive feedback. Most researchers have proposed adaptive feedback methods that are not fully grounded in pedagogical principles. In addition, the three knowledge components of the learning environment (pedagogical, domain and student models) are mostly treated in isolation. A reason for this could be the complex nature of representing multiple adaptive feedback characteristics across the main components of a learning environment. Thus, there is a need to design a concept operator that can relate the three facets of knowledge in an adaptive learning environment. Using the algebraic concept operator $$R_{i}^{in}$$, the effect of multiple attributes of the three knowledge components on the student’s performance is represented. The algebraic concept operator introduced in this article will allow teachers and pedagogy experts to understand and utilize a variety of effective feedback approaches