From individualism to co-construction and back again:Rethinking research methodology for children with profound and multiple learning disabilities

Children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) are said to experience severe congenital impairments to consciousness and cognition stemming from neurological damage. Such children are understood as operating at the pre-verbal stages of development, and research in the field typically draws conceptual resources from psychology to devise educational interventions and assessment tools. Criticism has been levelled at studies that treat children with PMLD as objects of research rather than subjects to be consulted. Proponents of the latter view have attempted to redress the situation by exploring how personal experiences can be gleaned through adapted qualitative methods. Debate about methodology in the PMLD field tends to coalesce around these individualist polemics: either children with PMLD are positioned as incompetent and lacking voice; or researchers are positioned as lacking the appropriate tools to gain access to such voice. This paper offers an alternative position to the individualism of post-positivist/constructivist approaches, identifying the need for a critical and participatory approach that sees knowledge about children with PMLD as situated and co-constructed through regular and longitudinal interaction between the researcher, children with PMLD, and significant others. Context to this argument is provided by exploring the application of this approach to an inclusive education research project for a child with PMLD

Mission oriented study of advanced nuclear system parameters, phase IV, volume I Final report, May 1965 - Dec. 1966

Guidelines and assumptions for manned Mars stopover mission planning analyses - nuclear system parameter

The abortion-crime link: evidence from England and Wales

We use panel data from 1983 to 1997 for the 42 police force areas in England and Wales to test the hypothesis that legalizing abortion contributes to lower crime rates. We provide an advance on previous work by focusing on the impact of possible endogeneity of effective abortion rates with respect to crime. Our use of U.K. data allows us to exploit regional differences in the provision of free abortions to identify abortion rates. When we use a similar model and estimation methodology, we are able to replicate the negative association between abortion rates and reported crime found by Donohue and Levitt for the U.S. However, when we allow for the potential endogeneity of effective abortion rates with respect to crime, we find no clear connection between the two.

Oscillatory Magneto-Thermopower and Resonant Phonon Drag in a High-Mobility 2D Electron Gas

Experimental and theoretical evidence is presented for new low-magnetic-field ($B<5$ kG) 1/B-oscillations in the thermoelectric power of a high-mobility GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional (2D) electron gas. The oscillations result from inter-Landau-Level resonances of acoustic phonons carrying a momentum equal to twice the Fermi wavenumber at $B = 0$. Numerical calculations show that both 3D and 2D phonons can contribute to this effect.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

What does it mean to find the Face of the Franchise? Physical Attractiveness and the Evaluation of Athletic Performance

Previous research has shown how more attractive people reap more rewards in a variety of settings. We show that attractiveness as measured by facial symmetry leads to greater rewards in professional sports. National Football League quarterbacks who are more attractive are paid greater salaries and this premium persists after controlling for player performance.

Probing the Atmospheres of Planets Orbiting Microlensed Stars via Polarization Variability

We present a new method to identify and probe planetary companions of stars in the Galactic Bulge and Magellanic Clouds using gravitational microlensing. While spectroscopic studies of these planets is well beyond current observational techniques, monitoring polarization fluctuations during high magnification events induced by binary microlensing events will probe the composition of the planetary atmospheres, an observation which otherwise is currently unattainable even for nearby planetary systems.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Astrophysical Journal Letter

First-principles thermoelasticity of bcc iron under pressure

We investigate the elastic and isotropic aggregate properties of ferromagnetic bcc iron as a function of temperature and pressure by computing the Helmholtz free energies for the volume-conserving strained structures using the first-principles linear response linear-muffin-tin-orbital method and the generalized-gradient approximation. We include the electronic excitation contributions to the free energy from the band structures, and phonon contributions from quasi-harmonic lattice dynamics. We make detailed comparisons between our calculated elastic moduli and their temperature and pressure dependences with available experimental and theoretical data.Comment: 5 figures, 2 table

Elevated psychological stress predicts reduced estradiol concentrations in young women

There has long been much interest in whether psychological stress may have inhibitory effects on ovarian hormone production and associated fecundity in women, but previous research has been inconclusive. The present study assessed whether hormone concentrations were lower on days with higher self-perceived stress than on days with lower stress within the same menstrual cycles. Results demonstrated a clear negative relationship between current day stress ratings and salivary estradiol concentrations (but not concentrations of testosterone or progesterone). This effect survived controls for potential confounding variables related to food intake, cold symptoms, exercise duration, and hours of sleep. Likewise, the effect was still present when controlling for day of the menstrual cycle, and elevated stress was associated with suppressed estradiol across broad regions of the cycle. These findings provide direct evidence for an inhibitory effect of psychological stress on ovarian hormone production, and thus recommend future research designed to further elucidate the relevant physiological mechanisms