3,084 research outputs found
Harnessing technology: the learner and their context: choosing to use technology: how learners construct their learning lives in their own contexts: key findings from the first year of research
This report covers the findings from the first year of the learners and their context research and highlights emerging findings including; choosing to use technology and how learners construct their learning lives in their own contexts
Harnessing Technology: the learner and their context: increasingly autonomous: learners using technology in the context of their family lives and beyond: analysis of a series of case studies conducted with learners in their homes
Harnessing technology: The learner and their context Increasingly autonomous: learners using technology in the context of their family lives and beyond - 14 individual case studies
On the omega-limit sets of tent maps
For a continuous map f on a compact metric space (X,d), a subset D of X is
internally chain transitive if for every x and y in D and every delta > 0 there
is a sequence of points {x=x_0,x_1, ...,x_n=y} such that d(f(x_i),x_{i+1}) <
delta for i=0,1, ...,n-1. It is known that every omega-limit set is internally
chain transitive; in earlier work it was shown that for X a shift of finite
type, a closed subset D of X is internally chain transitive if and only if D is
an omega-limit set for some point in X, and that the same is also true for the
tent map with slope equal to 2. In this paper, we prove that for tent maps
whose critical point c=1/2 is periodic, every closed, internally chain
transitive set is necessarily an omega-limit set. Furthermore, we show that
there are at least countably many tent maps with non-recurrent critical point
for which there is a closed, internally chain transitive set which is not an
omega-limit set. Together, these results lead us to conjecture that for those
tent maps with shadowing (or pseudo-orbit tracing), the omega-limit sets are
precisely those sets having internal chain transitivity.Comment: 17 page
Scalable Bayesian nonparametric regression via a Plackett-Luce model for conditional ranks
We present a novel Bayesian nonparametric regression model for covariates X
and continuous, real response variable Y. The model is parametrized in terms of
marginal distributions for Y and X and a regression function which tunes the
stochastic ordering of the conditional distributions F(y|x). By adopting an
approximate composite likelihood approach, we show that the resulting posterior
inference can be decoupled for the separate components of the model. This
procedure can scale to very large datasets and allows for the use of standard,
existing, software from Bayesian nonparametric density estimation and
Plackett-Luce ranking estimation to be applied. As an illustration, we show an
application of our approach to a US Census dataset, with over 1,300,000 data
points and more than 100 covariates
How Far Does Economic Theory Explain Competitive Nonlinear Pricing in Practice?
Liberalisation of the British electricity market, in which previously monopolised regional markets were exposed to large-scale entry, is used to test the propositions of several recent theoretical papers on oligopolistic nonlinear pricing. Consistent with those theories, each oligopolist offered a single two-part electricity tariff, and a lump sum discount to consumers who purchased both electricity and gas. However, inconsistent with those theories, firms’ two-part tariffs are heterogeneous in ways that cannot be attributed to cost. We establish a series of stylised facts about the nature of these asymmetries between firms and use them to confront established theory
Social Change and the Family
This paper explores the social change of the past 40 years through reporting the results of a restudy. It argues that social change can be understood, culturally, as involving a process of de-institutionalisation and, structurally, as involving differentiation within elementary family groups as well as within extended family networks. Family change is set in the context of changes in the housing and labour markets and the demographic, industrial and occupational changes of the past 40 years. These changes are associated with increases in women\'s economic activity rates and a decrease in their \'degree of domesticity\'. They are also associated with increasing differentiation within families such that occupational heterogeneity is now found at the heart of the elementary family as well as within kinship groupings as was the case 40 years ago. Thus the trend towards increased differentiation identified in the original study (Rosser and Harris: The Family and Social Change) has continued into the 21st century. This is associated with a de-institutionalisation of family life and an increasing need for partners to negotiate participation in both productive and reproductive work.De-Institutionalisation, Social Change, Restudy, Occupational Differentiation, Extended Family
Marking boundaries between legal and moral issues: the competition for human rights
During the nineteenth century the Tasmanian Aborigines were considered little more than biological curiosities with it being considered 'fashionable' to possess their remains. Many of these then ended up in Museums, with the Natural History Museum in London, until recently, possesing the remains of seventeen unidentified Tasmanian Aborigines. This possession saw a legal battle between the Museum and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) for the right to determine what should be done with these remains. The TAC sought a court order for letters of administration, that is, an authority from the court that gives powers of administration where a valid will has not been made. While the letters of administration were not granted, the TAC was appointed administrator of the estate, though this was limited to commencing legal action seeking the return of the remains, then taking possession of the remains in order to provide a proper burial. The TAC also sought to prevent the Natural History Museum from carrying out tests on the remains before their return, with the present situation being that the remains have now been returned, but the Natural History Museum has retained the samples while further negotiations continue with the TAC in respect to being allowed to carry out these tests. What this case has illustrated is that indigenous groups have little or no legal rights in regard to determining what happens to indigenous remains that are in the possession of museums. The reason for this is that while legislation allows museums to repatriate remains, it rarely requires that they do so. The determination of what should be done in regard to the return of human remains to indigenous groups is therefore, at present, more of a moral question than a legal one
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