Teacher induction: personal intelligence and the mentoring relationship

This article is aimed at probationer teachers in Scotland, their induction supporters, and all those with a responsibility for their support and professional development. It argues that the induction process is not merely a mechanistic one, supported only by systems in schools, local authorities and the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), but a more complex process where the relationship between the new teacher and the supporter is central to its success. In particular, the characteristics and skills of the induction supporter in relation to giving feedback are influential. This applies to feedback in all its forms – formative and summative, formal and informal. The ability of the probationer to handle that feedback and to be proactive in the process is also important

Toward interprofessional learning and education:Mapping common outcomes for prequalifying healthcare professional programs in the United Kingdom

Introduction: Interprofessional education (IPE) continues to be a key component in prequalifying health professional education, with calls for regulators to publish a joint statement regarding IPE outcomes. To date, the regulatory documents for healthcare education in the United Kingdom have not been examined for common learning outcomes; information that could be used to inform such a statement and to identify opportunities for interprofessional learning. Methods: A mapping of the outcomes/standards required by five, UK, health profession regulatory bodies was undertaken. This involved the identification of common outcomes, a keyword search and classification of common outcomes/standards; presented as themes and subthemes. Results: Seven themes were identified: knowledge for practice, skills for practice, ethical approach, professionalism, continuing professional development (CPD), patient-centered approach and teamworking skills, representing 22 subthemes. Each subtheme links back to the outcomes/standards in the regulatory documents. Conclusions: This study identifies the key areas of overlap in outcomes/standards expected of selected healthcare graduates in the United Kingdom. The mapping provides a framework for informing prequalifying IPE curricula, for example, identifying possible foci for interprofessional education outcomes and associated learning opportunities. It allows reference back to the standards set by regulatory bodies, a requirement for all institutions involved in health profession education

Cultivating compliance: governance of North Indian organic basmati smallholders in a global value chain

Focusing on a global value chain (GVC) for organic basmati rice, we study how farmers’ practices are governed through product and process standards, organic certification protocols, and contracts with buyer firms. We analyze how farmers’ entry into the GVC reconfigures their agencements (defined as heterogeneous arrangements of human and nonhuman agencies which are associated with each other). These reconfigurations entail the severance of some associations among procedural and material elements of the agencements and the formation of new associations, in order to produce cultivation practices that are accurately described by the GVC’s standards and protocols. Based on ethnography of two farmers in Uttarakhand, North India, we find that the same standards were enacted differently on the two farmers’ fields, producing variable degrees of (selective) compliance with the ‘official’ GVC standards. We argue that the disjuncture between the ‘official’ scripts of the standards and actual cultivation practices must be nurtured to allow farmers’ agencements to align their practices with local sociotechnical relations and farm ecology. Furthermore, we find that compliance and disjuncture were facilitated by many practices and associations that were officially ungoverned by the GVC

Disruptive approaches for subtitling in immersive environments

The Immersive Accessibility Project (ImAc) explores how accessibility services can be integrated with 360o video as well as new methods for enabling universal access to immersive content. ImAc is focused on inclusivity and addresses the needs of all users, including those with sensory or learning disabilities, of all ages and considers language and user preferences. The project focuses on moving away from the constraints of existing technologies and explores new methods for creating a personal experience for each consumer. It is not good enough to simply retrofit subtitles into immersive content: this paper attempts to disrupt the industry with new and often controversial methods. This paper provides an overview of the ImAc project and proposes guiding methods for subtitling in immersive environments. We discuss the current state-of-the-art for subtitling in immersive environments and the rendering of subtitles in the user interface within the ImAc project. We then discuss new experimental rendering modes that have been implemented including a responsive subtitle approach, which dynamically re-blocks subtitles to fit the available space and explore alternative rendering techniques where the subtitles are attached to the scene

Life events and hemodynamic stress reactivity in the middle-aged and elderly

Recent versions of the reactivity hypothesis, which consider it to be the product of stress exposure and exaggerated haemodynamic reactions to stress that confers cardiovascular disease risk, assume that reactivity is independent of the experience of stressful life events. This assumption was tested in two substantial cohorts, one middle-aged and one elderly. Participants had to indicate from a list of major stressful life events up to six they had experienced in the previous two years. They were also asked to rate how disruptive and stressful they were, at the time of occurrence and now. Blood pressure and pulse rate were measured at rest and in response to acute mental stress. Those who rated the events as highly disruptive at the time of exposure and currently exhibited blunted systolic blood pressure reactions to acute stress. The present results suggest that acute stress reactivity may not be independent of stressful life events experience

IODP expedition 347: Baltic Sea basin paleoenvironment and biosphere

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) expedition 347 cored sediments from different settings of the Baltic Sea covering the last glacial–interglacial cycle. The main aim was to study the geological development of the Baltic Sea in relation to the extreme climate variability of the region with changing ice cover and major shifts in temperature, salinity, and biological communities. Using the Greatship Manisha as a European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) mission-specific platform, we recovered 1.6 km of core from nine sites of which four were additionally cored for microbiology. The sites covered the gateway to the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean, several sub-basins in the southern Baltic Sea, a deep basin in the central Baltic Sea, and a river estuary in the north. The waxing and waning of the Scandinavian ice sheet has profoundly affected the Baltic Sea sediments. During the Weichselian, progressing glaciers reshaped the submarine landscape and displaced sedimentary deposits from earlier Quaternary time. As the glaciers retreated they left a complex pattern of till, sand, and lacustrine clay, which in the basins has since been covered by a thick deposit of Holocene, organic-rich clay. Due to the stratified water column of the brackish Baltic Sea and the recurrent and widespread anoxia, the deeper basins harbor laminated sediments that provide a unique opportunity for high-resolution chronological studies. The Baltic Sea is a eutrophic intra-continental sea that is strongly impacted by terrestrial runoff and nutrient fluxes. The Holocene deposits are recorded today to be up to 50 m deep and geochemically affected by diagenetic alterations driven by organic matter degradation. Many of the cored sequences were highly supersaturated with respect to methane, which caused strong degassing upon core recovery. The depth distributions of conservative sea water ions still reflected the transition at the end of the last glaciation from fresh-water clays to Holocene brackish mud. High-resolution sampling and analyses of interstitial water chemistry revealed the intensive mineralization and zonation of the predominant biogeochemical processes. Quantification of microbial cells in the sediments yielded some of the highest cell densities yet recorded by scientific drilling

Fracture driven by a Thermal Gradient

Motivated by recent experiments by Yuse and Sano (Nature, 362, 329 (1993)), we propose a discrete model of linear springs for studying fracture in thin and elastically isotropic brittle films. The method enables us to draw a map of the stresses in the material. Cracks generated by the model, imposing a moving thermal gradient in the material, can branch or wiggle depending on the driving parameters. The results may be used to compare with other recent theoretical work, or to design future experiments.Comment: RevTeX file (9 pages) and 5 postscript figure

Semiclassical collapse of a sphere of dust

The semiclassical collapse of a homogeneous sphere of dust is studied. After identifying the independent dynamical variables, the system is canonically quantised and coupled equations describing matter (dust) and gravitation are obtained. The conditions for the validity of the adiabatic (Born--Oppenheimer) and semiclassical approximations are derived. Further on neglecting back--reaction effects, it is shown that in the vicinity of the horizon and inside the dust the Wightman function for a conformal scalar field coupled to a monopole emitter is thermal at the characteristic Hawking temperature.Comment: LaTeX, 25 pages, no figures, final version accepted for publication in Class. and Quantum Gra

Conductance Fluctuations of Generic Billiards: Fractal or Isolated?

We study the signatures of a classical mixed phase space for open quantum systems. We find the scaling of the break time up to which quantum mechanics mimics the classical staying probability and derive the distribution of resonance widths. Based on these results we explain why for mixed systems two types of conductance fluctuat ions were found: quantum mechanics divides the hierarchically structured chaotic component of phase space into two parts - one yields fractal conductance fluctuations while the other causes isolated resonances. In general, both types appear together, but on different energy scales.Comment: restructured and new figure