A Study to Determine the Level of Job Satisfaction among Virginia Technology Education Association Members Teaching Middle School Technology Courses

The goals of this study were to answer the following questions: 1. What factors affect job satisfaction levels among middle school technology teachers? 2. What steps should be taken to enhance job satisfaction for middle school technology teachers

Individual Rights, Economic Transactions, and Recognition: A Legal Approach to Social Economics

Modernity brought the idea of individual property rights as a com- plex phenomenon. However, economics adopted a simplistic view of property as a fundamental institution, understating the complex interaction of different rights and obligations that frame the legal environment of economic processes with an insufficiently elaborated tool. Here, a more elaborate view of legal elements will be propose

20 Years and 50 Issues

Comments of members/readers on what the Society and Mythlore have meant to them

Revisiting a fundamental test of the disc instability model for X-ray binaries

We revisit a core prediction of the disc instability model (DIM) applied to X-ray binaries. The model predicts the existence of a critical mass transfer rate, which depends on disc size, separating transient and persistent systems. We therefore selected a sample of 52 persistent and transient neutron star and black hole X-ray binaries and verified if observed persistent (transient) systems do lie in the appropriate stable (unstable) region of parameter space predicted by the model. We find that, despite the significant uncertainties inherent to these kinds of studies, the data are in very good agreement with the theoretical expectations. We then discuss some individual cases that do not clearly fit into this main conclusion. Finally, we introduce the transientness parameter as a measure of the activity of a source and show a clear trend of the average outburst recurrence time to decrease with transientness in agreement with the DIM predictions. We therefore conclude that, despite difficulties in reproducing the complex details of the lightcurves, the DIM succeeds to explain the global behaviour of X-ray binaries averaged over a long enough period of time.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version 2: some typos corrected and references adde

The ‘spirit of sport’, WADAs code review, and the search for an overlapping consensus

In this paper, we argue for the recognition that anti-doping is in itself first and foremost an ethical position. The current World Anti-doping Code formulation of ‘the spirit of sport’ is an acknowledgement of this point and a counterweight against scientific and technicist understandings of the nature of anti-doping itself. We critically review the Code formulations on ‘the spirit of sport’. Based on a theoretical background of various approaches to normative agreement and consensus in a setting of diversity of ‘comprehensive views’, we argue for revision of the Code. Specifically, we argue for a re-formulation of ‘the spirit of sport’ in terms of athlete protection and the preservation of the integrity of sporting competition that could meet requirements on an overlapping consensus among all WADA stakeholders. This is not just a matter of formality and Code acceptance. An overlapping consensus is not a mere modus vivendi but a normative consensus based on fair, honest, and transparent discourse in which participants deliberate in a setting of mutual respect and trust, and of ‘decency’, which is a basis for a consensus that cultivates authentic stakeholder commitment

Animals in a Bacterial World, A New Imperative for the Life Sciences

In the last two decades, the widespread application of genetic and genomic approaches has revealed a bacterial world astonishing in its ubiquity and diversity. This review examines how a growing knowledge of the vast range of animal–bacterial interactions, whether in shared ecosystems or intimate symbioses, is fundamentally altering our understanding of animal biology. Specifically, we highlight recent technological and intellectual advances that have changed our thinking about five questions: how have bacteria facilitated the origin and evolution of animals; how do animals and bacteria affect each other’s genomes; how does normal animal development depend on bacterial partners; how is homeostasis maintained between animals and their symbionts; and how can ecological approaches deepen our understanding of the multiple levels of animal–bacterial interaction. As answers to these fundamental questions emerge, all biologists will be challenged to broaden their appreciation of these interactions and to include investigations of the relationships between and among bacteria and their animal partners as we seek a better understanding of the natural world.Earth and Planetary SciencesOrganismic and Evolutionary Biolog

The contested place of religion in the Australian Civics and Citizenship curriculum: exploring the secular in a multi-faith society

In the absence of a dedicated subject for teaching general religious education, the inclusion of Civics and Citizenship education as a new subject within the first Federal Australian Curriculum provides an important opportunity for teaching the religious within Australian schools. The curriculum for Civics and Citizenship requires students to learn that Australia is both a secular nation and a multi-faith society, and to understand religions practiced in contemporary Australia. The term "secular" and the need for students to learn about Australia’s contemporary multi-faith society raise some significant issues for schools and teachers looking to implement Civics and Citizenship. Focusing on public (state-controlled) schools, the argument here draws on recent analysis within the Australian context (Byrne, 2014; Maddox, 2014) to suggest that religion remains an important factor in understanding and shaping democratic citizenship in Australia, that this should be acknowledged within public schools, and that a constructivist, dialogical-based pedagogy provides possibilities for recognising the religious within Civics and Citizenship education

Justice Through a Multispecies Lens

The bushfires in Australia during the Summer of 2019–2020, in the midst of which we were writing this exchange, violently heightened the urgency of the task of rethinking justice through a multispecies lens for all of the authors in this exchange, and no doubt many of its readers. As I finish this introduction, still in the middle of the Australian summer, more than 10 million hectares (100,000 km2 or 24.7 million acres) of bushland have been burned and over a billion individual animals killed. This says nothing of the others who will die because their habitat and the relationships on which they depend no longer exist. People all around the world are mourning these deaths and the destruction of unique ecosystems. As humans on this planet, and specifically as political theorists facing the prospect that such devastating events will only become more frequent, the question before us is whether we can rethink what it means to be in ethical relationships with beings other than humans and what justice requires, in ways that mark these deaths as absolute wrongs that obligate us to act, and not simply as unfortunate tragedies that leave us bereft

Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation research

The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) highlighted the importance of cities to climate action, as well as the unjust burdens borne by the world's most disadvantaged peoples in addressing climate impacts. Few studies have documented the barriers to redressing the drivers of social vulnerability as part of urban local climate change adaptation efforts, or evaluated how emerging adaptation plans impact marginalized groups. Here, we present a roadmap to reorient research on the social dimensions of urban climate adaptation around four issues of equity and justice: (1) broadening participation in adaptation planning; (2) expanding adaptation to rapidly growing cities and those with low financial or institutional capacity; (3) adopting a multilevel and multi-scalar approach to adaptation planning; and (4) integrating justice into infrastructure and urban design processes. Responding to these empirical and theoretical research needs is the first step towards identifying pathways to more transformative adaptation policies