Black and minority ethnic trainees’ experiences of physical education initial teacher training

The official published version can be accessed at the link below.This report draws together the findings of research that aimed to explore black and minority ethnic (BME) trainees’ experiences of Physical Education (PE) initial teacher training (ITT). Although the numbers of BME trainees opting to enter teaching have improved considerably over the last few years, PE remains one of three specific subject areas where they remain significantly under-represented. Current figures suggest that PE attracts approximately 3% of trainees from BME backgrounds, compared with 11% for new entrants into teaching overall. The relative lack of success in attracting BME trainees into PE teaching compared to other subject areas suggests that the subculture of the subject may be a compounding factor. Over the last decade or so, a number of studies have explored the impact of ethnicity on teachers’ professional socialisation and their experiences as teachers in school, but none have focused on experiences within specific subject cultures. The centrality of the body in PE, and the link between this and the perceived low status of the subject, are influencing factors highlighted in the broader literature, including sports studies. For example, research exploring racism and the under-representation of BME participants in sport has highlighted the prevalence of stereotypical attitudes about their physicality and abilities held by coaches, administrators and spectators. Other research has suggested that some minority ethnic groups favour higher status, better paid, careers in areas such as law or medicine rather than teaching. As yet, there has been little attention to ‘race’ and ethnicity within PEITT, although studies have shown the impact of gender on trainees’ developing professional identities, and how teachers’ gendered bodies are important ‘tools’ of their work. In addition, there has been little research that has acknowledged trainees’ multiple identities, or the complex ways in which ‘race’, ethnicity, class and gender and other identity markers intersect to impact on the professional socialisation process. The research on which this report is based sought to fill some of these gaps in our understandings of BME trainees’ experiences of PEITT, and to identify strategies that might help in their recruitment and retention in the longer term. The research was funded through a small Recruitment and Retention Challenge Grant from the Teacher Development Agency (TDA). These grants form part of the TDA’s wider policy agenda to widen the diversity of new intakes opting into teaching. Higher education institutions have been encouraged, through targets and financial support and incentives, to develop specific strategies aimed at widening the diversity of their cohorts. Examples of such strategies include the provision of specialist admission help for BME prospective trainees; opportunities to gain experience in schools; open days and ‘taster’ events; advertising in the ethnic minority media, and the development of good practice guides and staff training to help ITT providers address issues of ‘race’ and ethnicity. 5 The impetus for this research resulted, in part, from presentations and discussions at a one day PEITT Network1 staff seminar on diversity held in October, 2007. The quantitative research conducted by the Association for Physical Education (AfPE) and the Ethnic Minority Foundation (EMF) presented here, showed the extent of the national under-representation of BME students in PEITT. Although the day focused on addressing reasons for BME under representation and strategies that might be used for improving recruitment, we felt it was also important to learn about the qualitative experiences of trainees that have been attracted into PEITT. Understanding the experiences of our current BME trainees might offer useful insights into how we might recruit and retain future such trainees. Our choice of qualitative research was supported by a national study published shortly after the network day, investigating the links between gender, ethnicity and degree attainment (Higher Education Academy, HEA, 2008), which specifically calls for further qualitative studies of students’ experiences of different subject areas.Funding from the Training and Development Agency (TDA

Development of novel multiplex microsatellite polymerase chain reactions to enable high-throughput population genetic studies of Schistosoma haematobium

© 2015 Webster et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The attached file is the published version of the article

Integral Human Pose Regression

State-of-the-art human pose estimation methods are based on heat map representation. In spite of the good performance, the representation has a few issues in nature, such as not differentiable and quantization error. This work shows that a simple integral operation relates and unifies the heat map representation and joint regression, thus avoiding the above issues. It is differentiable, efficient, and compatible with any heat map based methods. Its effectiveness is convincingly validated via comprehensive ablation experiments under various settings, specifically on 3D pose estimation, for the first time

Influence of fluoride on the mineralization of collagen via the polymer-induced liquid-precursor (PILP) process.

ObjectiveThe polymer-induced liquid-precursor (PILP) mineralization process has been shown to remineralize artificial dentin lesions to levels consistent with those of native dentin. However, nanoindentation revealed that the moduli of those remineralized lesions were only ∼50% that of native dentin. We hypothesize that this may be due to the PILP process having been previously optimized to obtain high amounts (∼70wt%) of intrafibrillar crystals, but without sufficient interfibrillar mineral, another significant component of dentin.MethodsFluoride was added to the PILP-mineralization of collagen from rat tail tendon at varying concentrations to determine if a better balance of intra- versus inter-fibrillar mineralization could be obtained, as determined by electron microscopy. Nanoindentation was used to determine if fluoridated apatite could improve the mechanical properties of the composites.ResultsFluoride was successfully incorporated into the PILP-mineralization of rat tail tendon and resulted in collagen-mineral composite systems with the mineral phase of hydroxyapatite containing various levels of fluoridation. As the fluoride concentration increased, the crystals became larger and more rod-like, with an increasing tendency to form on the fibril surfaces rather than the interior. Nanomechanical testing of the mineralized tendons revealed that fluoride addition did not increase modulus over PILP mineralization alone. This likely resulted from the separated nature of collagen fibrils that comprise tendon, which does not provide lateral reinforcement and therefore may not be suited for the compressive loads of nanoindentation.SignificanceThis work contributes to the development of minimally invasive approaches to caries treatment by determining if collagen can be functionally mineralized

The spatial distribution of substellar objects in IC348 and the Orion Trapezium Cluster

Aims: Some theoretical scenarios suggest the formation of brown dwarfs as ejected stellar embryos in star-forming clusters. Such a formation mechanism can result in different spatial distributions of stars and substellar objects. We aim to investigate the spatial structure of stellar and substellar objects in two well sampled and nearby embedded clusters, namely IC348 and the Orion Trapezium Cluster (OTC) to test this hypothesis. Methods:Deep near-infrared K-band data complete enough to sample the substellar population in IC348 and OTC are obtained from the literature. The spatial distribution of the K-band point sources is analysed using the Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) method. The Q parameter and the spanning trees are evaluated for stellar and substellar objects as a function of cluster core radius R$_c$. Results: The stellar population in both IC348 and OTC display a clustered distribution whereas the substellar population is distributed homogeneously in space within twice the cluster core radius. Although the substellar objects do not appear to be bound by the cluster potential well, they are still within the limits of the cluster and not significantly displaced from their birth sites. Conclusions: The spatially homogeneous distribution of substellar objects is best explained by assuming higher initial velocities, distributed in a random manner and going through multiple interactions. The overall spatial coincidence of these objects with the cluster locations can be understood if these objects are nevertheless travelling slowly enough so as to feel the gravitational effect of the cluster. The observations support the formation of substellar objects as ``ejected stellar embryos''. Higher ejection velocities are necessary but net spatial displacements may not be necessary to explain the observational data.Comment: 4 pages. Accepted by A&A Letter

On the Schoenberg Transformations in Data Analysis: Theory and Illustrations

The class of Schoenberg transformations, embedding Euclidean distances into higher dimensional Euclidean spaces, is presented, and derived from theorems on positive definite and conditionally negative definite matrices. Original results on the arc lengths, angles and curvature of the transformations are proposed, and visualized on artificial data sets by classical multidimensional scaling. A simple distance-based discriminant algorithm illustrates the theory, intimately connected to the Gaussian kernels of Machine Learning

The taxonomy and anatomy of rauisuchian archosaurs from the Late Triassic of Germany and Poland

The German Late Triassic archosaur Teratosaurus suevicus is a historically important taxon, being the first described rauisuchian. Unfortunately the holotype is a single element, a maxilla, which is poorly preserved and incomplete. We redescribe this maxilla and identify a single potential autapomorphy. The fragmentary type specimen complicates attempts to refer additional material to this taxon, and other unassociated archosaur and rauisuchian specimens from the Mittlerer Stubensandstein of Germany cannot be referred to T. suevicus with any degree of confidence. The stratigraphically older T. silesiacus, from the upper Carnian of Poland, is represented by a much more complete and better preserved specimen. Comparison of the maxillae of T. suevicus and T. silesiacus reveals that the two are distinct taxa, contra recent suggestions, but also that they do not share any synapomorphies or a unique combination of characters relative to Postosuchus kirkpatricki and other rauisuchians. Thus, the Polish material must be transferred to a new genus, Polonosuchus gen. nov. Both Polonosuchus and Teratosaurus are very similar to Postosuchus kirkpatricki, and the three taxa are likely closely related

Train Positioning Using Video Odometry

Reliable Data Systems have developed a video-based odometry system that enables trains to measure velocities and distances travelled without the need for trackside infrastructure. The Study Group was asked to investigate ways of improving the accuracy of such a system, and to suggest any improvements that might be made. The work performed in the week followed along these strands: (a). Elimination of errors in video odometery induced by pitch and height; (b) Robust calculation of (i) the train velocity and (ii) the track curvature; (c). Accurate determination of the position of a train on a track by assimilating Curvature information; (d). Determining where on UK’s railway map a train journey takes place, based purely on video odometry and (e). Drawing a track map