Making education markets through global trade agreements

This paper uses the global trade negotiations and agreements, which include education sectors as potentially tradable services, to show the complex processes at work in making global education markets. Drawing on the work of Jens Beckert and others, I focus on the micro-processes of making capitalist orders and the challenges at hand in bringing decommodified sectors, like education, with distinctly different narratives to sustain their purpose. These processes include reimagining and offering alternative narratives to the idea of education as a public service; the reformatting of the education into the language of trade and legal documents; the use of devices, such as forecasting to represent the gains to be had into the future of trade agreements, or dispute settlement mechanisms to manage claims; and the strategic use of space and time as political resources to minimise frictions and lock in a preferred future for investors. I conclude by arguing that the ongoing circulation of alternative narratives about education makes instituting education particularly challenging, so that the future for investors is in no more way certain, despite efforts to reorient expectations

The role of the right temporoparietal junction in perceptual conflict: detection or resolution?

The right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) is a polysensory cortical area that plays a key role in perception and awareness. Neuroimaging evidence shows activation of rTPJ in intersensory and sensorimotor conflict situations, but it remains unclear whether this activity reflects detection or resolution of such conflicts. To address this question, we manipulated the relationship between touch and vision using the so-called mirror-box illusion. Participants' hands lay on either side of a mirror, which occluded their left hand and reflected their right hand, but created the illusion that they were looking directly at their left hand. The experimenter simultaneously touched either the middle (D3) or the ring finger (D4) of each hand. Participants judged, which finger was touched on their occluded left hand. The visual stimulus corresponding to the touch on the right hand was therefore either congruent (same finger as touch) or incongruent (different finger from touch) with the task-relevant touch on the left hand. Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was delivered to the rTPJ immediately after touch. Accuracy in localizing the left touch was worse for D4 than for D3, particularly when visual stimulation was incongruent. However, following TMS, accuracy improved selectively for D4 in incongruent trials, suggesting that the effects of the conflicting visual information were reduced. These findings suggest a role of rTPJ in detecting, rather than resolving, intersensory conflict

Early star-forming galaxies and the reionization of the Universe

Star forming galaxies represent a valuable tracer of cosmic history. Recent observational progress with Hubble Space Telescope has led to the discovery and study of the earliest-known galaxies corresponding to a period when the Universe was only ~800 million years old. Intense ultraviolet radiation from these early galaxies probably induced a major event in cosmic history: the reionization of intergalactic hydrogen. New techniques are being developed to understand the properties of these most distant galaxies and determine their influence on the evolution of the universe.Comment: Review article appearing in Nature. This posting reflects a submitted version of the review formatted by the authors, in accordance with Nature publication policies. For the official, published version of the review, please see http://www.nature.com/nature/archive/index.htm

Colonising the future: Mega-trade deals, education services and global higher education markets

This paper explores a less well-examined aspect of time in relation to higher education and the academy; that of ‘time-future’. The paper takes the case of education trade strategies being pursued by governments and allied agencies, and explores the multiple ways in which time-future is mobilised. Drawing on trade documents, government statistics, and related reports, the paper points to two time-future dynamics at work. The first dynamic focuses on the ways in which the future is imagined by strategic actors, and legitimated through creating equivalences between education trade, economic growth and prosperity. The second dynamic explores the ways in which the current round of global and regional trade negotiations colonise the future as a political resource. I reflect on how time-future is a key resource and modality of power to be claimed and cognitively shaped so as to reorient actor’s expectations towards the rhythms and demands of capitalism, and away from the temporal orders of the academy. However, efforts to commodify higher education, on the one hand, and colonise higher education futures exclusively to serve the interests of economic investors, on the other, continues to be contested. As a result, a new temporal order is yet to become common-sense, and an existing order is yet to die

Feasibility of a cognitive behavioural group intervention to reduce fear of falling and associated avoidance of activity in community-living older people: a process evaluation

BACKGROUND: Fear of falling and associated avoidance of activity are common among older people and may have negative consequences in terms of functional decline, quality of life and institutionalisation. We evaluated the effects of a cognitive behavioural group intervention to reduce fear of falling and associated avoidance of activity among older persons. This intervention showed favourable effects on fear of falling, avoidance of activity, daily activity, and several secondary outcomes. The aim of the present study is to assess the feasibility of this cognitive behavioural group intervention for participants and facilitators. METHODS: The intervention consisted of eight weekly group sessions lasting two hours each and a booster session after six months. Self-administered questionnaires, registration forms and interviews were used to collect data from participants (n = 168) and facilitators (n = 6) on the extent to which the intervention was performed according to protocol, participant attendance, participant adherence, and participants' and facilitators' opinion of the intervention. Quantitative data from the questionnaires and registration forms were analysed by means of descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were categorised based on matching contents of the answers. RESULTS: Facilitators reported no major protocol deviations. Twenty-six percent of the participants withdrew before the start of the programme. Of the persons who started the programme, 84% actually completed it. The participants reported their adherence as good, but facilitators had a less favourable opinion of this. The majority of participants still reported substantial benefits from the programme after six and twelve months of follow-up (71% and 61% respectively). Both participants and facilitators provided suggestions for improvement of the intervention. CONCLUSION: Results of this study show that the current cognitive behavioural group intervention is feasible for both participants and facilitators and fits in well with regular care. Minor refinement of the intervention, however, is warranted to further improve intervention effectiveness and efficiency. Based on these positive findings, we recommend implementing a refined version of this effective and feasible intervention in regular care. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN43792817

A Measurement of Rb using a Double Tagging Method

The fraction of Z to bbbar events in hadronic Z decays has been measured by the OPAL experiment using the data collected at LEP between 1992 and 1995. The Z to bbbar decays were tagged using displaced secondary vertices, and high momentum electrons and muons. Systematic uncertainties were reduced by measuring the b-tagging efficiency using a double tagging technique. Efficiency correlations between opposite hemispheres of an event are small, and are well understood through comparisons between real and simulated data samples. A value of Rb = 0.2178 +- 0.0011 +- 0.0013 was obtained, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic. The uncertainty on Rc, the fraction of Z to ccbar events in hadronic Z decays, is not included in the errors. The dependence on Rc is Delta(Rb)/Rb = -0.056*Delta(Rc)/Rc where Delta(Rc) is the deviation of Rc from the value 0.172 predicted by the Standard Model. The result for Rb agrees with the value of 0.2155 +- 0.0003 predicted by the Standard Model.Comment: 42 pages, LaTeX, 14 eps figures included, submitted to European Physical Journal

A search for the decay modes B+/- to h+/- tau l

We present a search for the lepton flavor violating decay modes B+/- to h+/- tau l (h= K,pi; l= e,mu) using the BaBar data sample, which corresponds to 472 million BBbar pairs. The search uses events where one B meson is fully reconstructed in one of several hadronic final states. Using the momenta of the reconstructed B, h, and l candidates, we are able to fully determine the tau four-momentum. The resulting tau candidate mass is our main discriminant against combinatorial background. We see no evidence for B+/- to h+/- tau l decays and set a 90% confidence level upper limit on each branching fraction at the level of a few times 10^-5.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Evidence for an excess of B -> D(*) Tau Nu decays

Based on the full BaBar data sample, we report improved measurements of the ratios R(D(*)) = B(B -> D(*) Tau Nu)/B(B -> D(*) l Nu), where l is either e or mu. These ratios are sensitive to new physics contributions in the form of a charged Higgs boson. We measure R(D) = 0.440 +- 0.058 +- 0.042 and R(D*) = 0.332 +- 0.024 +- 0.018, which exceed the Standard Model expectations by 2.0 sigma and 2.7 sigma, respectively. Taken together, our results disagree with these expectations at the 3.4 sigma level. This excess cannot be explained by a charged Higgs boson in the type II two-Higgs-doublet model. We also report the observation of the decay B -> D Tau Nu, with a significance of 6.8 sigma.Comment: Expanded section on systematics, text corrections, improved the format of Figure 2 and included the effect of the change of the Tau polarization due to the charged Higg