Population ageing and immigration policy

In its simplest interpretation, population ageing is the increase in the average or median age of a population. It is the process by which there is a redistribution of relative population shares away from the younger to the older age groups

Preparing Preservice Teachers for the Experimental Design and Data Analysis SOL\u27s

Many elementary teachers find teaching the science Standards of Learning (SOL) difficult [1, 2]. Some are even threatened by them. Of particular concern are the SOLs related to experimental design, handling data, and the scientific method. A possible reason for this discomfort is because many of these elementary teachers have had limited-to-no exposure to experimentation. As one of the activities included under a recent National Science Foundation Science Teachers Enhancement Project (STEP) grant awarded to Hampton University in conjunction with Virginia Union University and St. Paul\u27s College, we included a teacher science fair competition. A special workbook/text was developed for this project and used to guide teachers through the research process; from observation, and hypothesis formation and testing through the evaluation of data and drawing conclusions from the experiment. Twenty-two teachers from the Richmond metropolitan area and King and Queen County developed individual projects (laboratory research), and prepared written reports and display boards to present their results. Projects were adjudicated by staff at the Science Museum of Virginia in a formal competition for teachers. Several teachers admitted that this was the first time that they had actually performed a full experiment. All participants agreed, at. the end, that they had a much better understanding of the process, and would be better able to teach it to their students. This successful activity is being submitted to the review panel as a reproducible model which affords preservice teachers an opportunity to strengthen their research skills. It can also make teachers feel more confident, and equip them to do a better job of teaching this block of SOLs

Starting life in Scotland in the new millennium : population replacement and the reproduction of disadvantage

Scotland, in line with the rest of Europe, is experiencing low rates of child-bearing and its population is ageing. This does not necessarily mean that people in Scotland are going grey at a faster rate than they used to. Rather, it means that there is an increasing proportion of elderly people in its population, with more people who are growing old than are growing up. The "birth dearth" and "population greying" are not unconnected: low fertility is the key influence on the age structure of a population as well as the rate of population growth

DIRBE Minus 2MASS: Confirming the CIRB in 40 New Regions at 2.2 and 3.5 Microns

With the release of the 2MASS All-Sky Point Source Catalog, stellar fluxes from 2MASS are used to remove the contribution due to Galactic stars from the intensity measured by DIRBE in 40 new regions in the North and South Galactic polar caps. After subtracting the interplanetary and Galactic foregrounds, a consistent residual intensity of 14.69 +/- 4.49 kJy/sr at 2.2 microns is found. Allowing for a constant calibration factor between the DIRBE 3.5 microns and the 2MASS 2.2 microns fluxes, a similar analysis leaves a residual intensity of 15.62 +/- 3.34 kJy/sr at 3.5 microns. The intercepts of the DIRBE minus 2MASS correlation at 1.25 microns show more scatter and are a smaller fraction of the foreground, leading to a still weak limit on the CIRB of 8.88 +/- 6.26 kJy/sr (1 sigma).Comment: 25 pages LaTeX, 10 figures, 5 tables; Version accepted by the ApJ. Includes minor changes to the text including further discussion of zodiacal light issues and the allowance for variable stars in computing uncertainties in the stellar contribution to the DIRBE intensitie

Connecting communities - Contextualising literacies

Over time, the Meanjin local council of ALEA, has been running a series of Key Teacher inservice days for teachers in the Brisbane and Ipswich area, and more recently further north in Yandina for Sunshine Coast teachers. Teachers who are ALEA members or whose schools are institutional members are able to attend up to three of these inservice days each year for a nominal cost. In the first part of this article Beryl Exley reviews the sessions presented on Friday 17 October, 2003 at Ipswich, a region mentored by ALEA Queensland State President, Nikki King. The sessions all dealt with the theme of connecting communities and contextualising literacies. In the second part Sandra Wright, a key teacher at Hatton Vale State School, details the experiences of her school’s attempt to connect with its community and to contextualise children’s multiple literacies