A collaborative action research project to support Mathematics and Science PGCE students with Masters level writing

Since 2005, Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses in England and Wales have been awarded at Masters level which requires students to be able to write reflectively in an academic style in the discipline of Social Science. We have found that the majority of Mathematics and Science PGCE students rarely experience this style of academic writing in their undergraduate studies. This can put them at a disadvantage compared to other students. The project reported in this paper set out to develop the skill of academic writing of Mathematics and Science PGCE students. The first part of this collaborative study focused on peer-assessment of a synopsis for the second assignment with an emphasis on learning conversations. The effectiveness of this teaching strategy and other forms of support such as formative feedback of the first assignment and discussing exemplar assignments were analysed. The survey responses and questionnaires revealed that the students valued the forms of support offered. A small percentage of students, however, reported that they found the peer assessments less helpful and preferred more tutor feedback. This appears to indicate that students would benefit from developing better skills for self-assessment and peer-assessment to make learning conversations more productive

Limited Visibility and Uncertainty Aware Motion Planning for Automated Driving

Adverse weather conditions and occlusions in urban environments result in impaired perception. The uncertainties are handled in different modules of an automated vehicle, ranging from sensor level over situation prediction until motion planning. This paper focuses on motion planning given an uncertain environment model with occlusions. We present a method to remain collision free for the worst-case evolution of the given scene. We define criteria that measure the available margins to a collision while considering visibility and interactions, and consequently integrate conditions that apply these criteria into an optimization-based motion planner. We show the generality of our method by validating it in several distinct urban scenarios

Asymmetric Information, Stock Returns and Monetary Policy: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

It is known that stock returns are affected by monetary policy. This paper theoretically and empirically investigates whether asymmetric information between the Federal Reserve and the public causes the relation between stock returns and monetary policy actions. The paper concludes that asymmetric information between the Federal Reserve and the public is one of the reasons of effects of monetary policy actions on stock returns. A Kalman filter algorithm is constructed to analyze the information and learning dynamics between the Federal Reserve and a representative investor. Stock prices react to monetary policy actions because monetary policy actions reveal the private information that the Fed has about future inflation and output. Investors update their expectations after observing the Fed's actions and that produces a change in stock returns. The findings of the model are empirically investigated using VAR and impulse responses verify the theoretical findingsAsymmetric Information, Monetary Policy, Stock Returns, Kalman Filter, Learning

Gender Equality in the US Labor Markets in the "Great Recession" of 2007-2010

The "Great Recession" of 2007-2009, the worst economic downturn faced by the U.S. economy since the Great Depression, has also come to be known as the "Great Man-cession" in that job loss hit males harder than females. By contrast, this paper argues that the "man-cession" story is far too simple. Using a broad range of indicators from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and taking a historical perspective, we show that several demographic groups have been especially hard hit by the recession, including African American males and females, Hispanic males and females, young females, and families maintained by single women. In addition, the gender gap in unemployment is much smaller once underemployed and marginally attached workers are counted. Data from the Current Employment Statistics cast further doubt on the man-cession story, indicating that women lost over 10 times more jobs in the current recession than in the previous two recessions compared to men, who lost 2.3 times more jobs. Following this review of the trends, the paper surveys federal and state government responses to the needs of workers hardest hit by the recession and concludes that "man-cession" label has led to misidentification of the most vulnerable groups who should be the explicit beneficiaries of economic recovery policies.Great Recession, men-cession, unemployment, gender, US labor market JEL Codes: J11, J16, J21

Three dimensional adhesion model for arbitrary rough surfaces

We present a 3D adhesion model based on the JKR theory applied locally for all contacting asperity couple and the calculations account the van der Waals interaction beside the externally applied force. Thus, equilibrium of the system is determined by an extremum in the free total energy and subsequently the contact and the adhesion parameters are computed for that particular position. The model estimates the adhesion of contacting arbitrary rough surfaces taking into account that asperities deform according to one of the three deformation regimes (elastic, elasto-plastic and plastic). The deformation of the contacting asperities is determined by the material properties, the asperity characteristics as well as the surface topography. Results show that even outside the bonding regime the specific bonding energy is still high enough to cause adhesive problems for microstructures

Viscosity of Water in Nano-Confinement

Since the early 1970s there is a notion that water near polar or charged surfaces is somehow ordered or structured, leading to a so called structural component of the disjoining pressure