Equipping young people to engage with media driven science experiences: beyond science knowledge to science literacy and discerning consumers of news.

This paper reports on a study of a curricular intervention for pupils (age 10-13 years) in the UK aimed at supporting critical engagement with science based media reports. In particular the study focused on core elements of knowledge, skills and attitudes identified in previous studies that characterize critical consumers of science presented as news. This was an empirical study based on classroom observation. Data included responses from individual pupils, in addition video recording of group activity and intentional conversations between pupils and teachers were scrutinised. Analysis focused on core tasks relating to different elements of critical reading. Pupils demonstrated a grasp of questioning and evaluating text, however the capacity to translate this experience in support of a critical response to a media report with a science component is limited in assessing the credibility of text and as an element in critical reading.

Finding a Scientific Voice: Performing Science, Space and Speech in the Nineteenth Century

Taking as a point of departure recent scholarly interest in the geographies of spoken communication, this paper situates the cultivation of a scientific voice in a range of nineteenth-century contexts and locations. An examination of two of the century’s most celebrated science lecturers, Michael Faraday and Thomas Henry Huxley, offers a basis for more general claims about historical relations between science, speech and space. The paper begins with a survey of the ‘ecologies’ of public speaking in which advocates of science sought to carve out an effective niche. It then turns to a reconstruction of the varying and variously interpreted assumptions about authoritative and authentic speech that shaped how the platform performances of Faraday and Huxley were constructed, contested and remediated in print. Particular attention is paid to sometimes clashing ideals of vocal performance and paralinguistic communication. This signals an interest in the performative 2 dimensions of science lectures rather more than their specific cognitive content. In exploring these concerns, the paper argues that ‘finding a scientific voice’ was a fundamentally geographical enterprise driven by attempts to make science resonate with a wider oratorical culture without losing distinctive appeal and special authority

High-Performance WSe2 CMOS Technology and Integrated Circuits.

Because of their extraordinary structural and electrical properties, two dimensional materials are currently being pursued for applications such as thin-film transistors and integrated circuit. One of the main challenges that still needs to be overcome for these applications is the fabrication of air-stable transistors with industry-compatible complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a novel high performance air-stable WSe2 CMOS technology with almost ideal voltage transfer characteristic, full logic swing and high noise margin with different supply voltages. More importantly, the inverter shows large voltage gain (~38) and small static power (Pico-Watts), paving the way for low power electronic system in 2D materials.

Scaling up online learning technology and tools for online learning checklist

This checklist highlights key questions for institutions that are considering their online learning provision and relates to the Jisc Scaling up online learning technology and tools for online learning guide.

Art and the Body Image: about Self and Stereotypes

Today's man is socially absorbed by problematic body issues and everything that this means and involves. Literature, publicity, science, technology and medicine compound these issues in a form of this theme that has never been seen before. In the artistic framework, body image is constantly suffering modifications. Body image in sculpture unfolds itself, assuming different messages and different forms. The body is a synonym of subject, an infinite metaphorical history of our looks, desires, that leads one to interrogate his/her image and social and sexual relations. These are understood as a manifestation of individual desires freed from a moral and social imposition. It attempts a return to profound human nature before we are turned into a cloning industry. In thisstudy it isimportant for usto understand in which form doessculpture reflect body image as a sociocultural and psychological phenomenon within the coordinates of our time. To understand how they represent and what artists represent in sculpture as a multiple and complex structure of human sexuality. Today, the sculptural body, expanding its representation, no longer as a reproduction of the corporal characteristics, presents the body in what it possesses of most intimate, unique, human and real, that moves, reacts, feels, suffers and pulsates, a mirror of us all.

Science parks and university-industry links: a case-study of the surrey research park.

Doutoramento em Economia.

Removal of BrO3 − from drinking water samples using newly developed agricultural waste-based activated carbon and its determination by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry

Activated carbon was prepared from date pits via chemical activation with H3PO4. The effects of activating agent concentration and activation temperature on the yield and surface area were studied. The optimal activated carbon was prepared at 450 °C using 55 % H3PO4. The prepared activated carbon was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetric-differential thermal analysis, and Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller (BET) surface area. The prepared date pit-based activated carbon (DAC) was used for the removal of bromate (BrO3 −). The concentration of BrO3 − was determined by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-mass tandem spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). The experimental equilibrium data for BrO3 − adsorption onto DAC was well fitted to the Langmuir isotherm model and showed maximum monolayer adsorption capacity of 25.64 mg g−1. The adsorption kinetics of BrO3 − adsorption was very well represented by the pseudo-first-order equation. The analytical application of DAC for the analysis of real water samples was studied with very promising results.

Transdiscipline and research in health: Science, society and decision making

Significant advances in science should be given to addressing the needs of society and the historical context of the territories. Although technological developments that began with modernity and the industrial revolution allowed human beings to control the resources of nature to put to your service without limits, it is clear that the crisis of the prevailing development models manifest themselves in many ways but with three common denominators: environmental degradation, social injustice and extreme poverty. Consequently, today should not be possible to think a breakthrough in the development of science without addressing global environmental problems and the deep social injustices that increase at all scales under the gaze, impassively in many occasions, of formal science.

Science, research and social change in Indigenous health – evolving ways of knowing

History tells us of the overwhelming destructive influence of exotic culture, politics and knowledge forms upon the worldview and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians. The power of dominant culture to oppress, control and dominate traditional Indigenous ways of knowing and being has been identified as a being a crucial influence on the health status, future hopes and aspirations of Indigenous Australians. Fundamental to this assertion is that the alienating effect of the belief in and application of the scientific method in relation to learning and knowing is a phenomenon that is incompatible with the law and cultural ways of traditional Indigenous people. The establishment of the Centre of Clinical Research Excellence (CCRE) is predicated upon and responds to a deep need in our community today to synthesise the ideological and epistemological premises of an increasing range of cultures and world views. It recognises that clinical research, for example, is important to the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but also that the way such research is designed and carried out is also crucial to its potential to effect change in and improve the state of Indigenous health in Australia. This paper examines knowledge principles and processes associated with research in Indigenous communities, explores emerging research trends in science and proposes an epistemological framework for synthesis of traditional approaches with those of the scientific paradigm.

The role of endowments, technology and size in international trade: new evidence from product-level data

Using product-level trade data, we empirically investigate the export patterns of more than 150 countries in their exports to the USA, Brazil, India, and Japan. We document strong evidence that exporters specialize according to their relative factor endowments, technology, and economic size. More developed, capital abundant countries are found to export products of higher unit values and a wider range of products to developed, emerging and developing markets. More developed, economically larger, and technologically advanced countries are also the major exporters of new products, spanninga wide range of product categories with high unit values. Our findings provide important insights into the macro phenomenon that a large proportion of the global trade takes place among developed economies, and that the latter are also major exporters to developing markets.

Mol, science, religion and narrative identity

Significantly influencing the sociological study of religion, Hans Mol developed ideas of identity which remain thought-provoking for analyses of how religion operates within contemporary societies. Sacred Selves, Sacred Settings brings current social-religious topics into sharp focus: international scholars analyse, challenge, and apply Mol’s theoretical assertions. This book introduces the unique story of Hans Mol, who survived Nazi imprisonment and proceeded to brush shoulders with formidable intellectuals of the twentieth century, such as Robert Merton, Talcott Parsons, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Offering a fresh perspective on popular subjects such as secularization, pluralism, and the place of religion in the public sphere, this book sets case studies within an intellectual biography which describes Mol’s key influences and reveals the continuing import of Hans Mol’s work applied to recent data and within a contemporary context.

Atlantic Threads: Singer in Spain and Mexico, 1860-1940

This dissertation examines the role of Singer in the modernization of sewing practices in Spain and Mexico from 1860 to 1940. Singer marketing was founded on gendered views of women’s work and gendered perceptions of the home. These connected with sewing practices in Spain and Mexico, where home sewing remained economically and culturally important throughout the 1940s. "Atlantic Threads" is the first study of the US-owned multinational in the Hispanic World. I demonstrate that sewing practices, and especially practices related to home sewing that have been considered part of the private sphere and therefore not an important historical matter, contributed to the building of one the first global corporation. I examine Singer corporate records and business strategies that have not been considered by other scholars such as the creation of the Embroidery Department in the late nineteen-century. Likewise, this dissertation challenges traditional narratives that have assumed that Spain and Mexico were peripheral to modernity. I look at Singer corporate records in Spain and Mexico and at regional government and cultural sources to demonstrate how Singer integrated Spain and Mexico within its business organization. Singer's marketing was focused on the consumer, which contributed to make the company part of local sewing businesses and cultures.

Making the Men of Tomorrow: American Science Fiction and the Politics of Masculinity, 1965 – 1974

Suggesting that the political diversity of American science fiction during the 1960s and early 1970s constitutes a response to the dominance of social liberalism throughout the 1940s and 1950s, I argue in Making the Men of Tomorrow that the development of new hegemonic masculinities in science fiction is a consequence of political speculation. Focusing on four representative and influential texts from the 1960s and early 1970s, Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Ubik, Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, this thesis explores the relationship between different conceptions of hegemonic masculinity and three separate but related political ideologies: the social ethic, market libertarianism, and socialist libertarianism. In the first two chapters in which I discuss Dick’s novels, I argue that Dick interrogates organizational masculinity as part of a larger project that suggests the inevitable infeasibility of both the social ethic and its predecessor, social liberalism. In the next chapter, I shift my attention to Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress as a way of showing how, unlike Dick, other authors of the 1960s and early 1970s sought to move beyond social liberalism by imagining how new political ideologies, in this case market libertarianism, might change the way men see themselves. Having demonstrated how the libertarian potential of Heinlein’s novel is ultimately undermined by its insistent and uncompromising biological determinism, I then discuss how Le Guin’s The Dispossessed uses the socialist libertarianism of the moon Anarres to suggest a more egalitarian form of masculinity, one that makes possible, to some extent at least, a future in which men might embrace not only the mutual aid of socialism, but also the primacy of individual rights that is at the heart of all forms of libertarianism and liberalism.

Managing pressure: patterns of appraisals and coping strategies of non-elite and elite athletes during competition

The purpose of this study was to compare moment-to-moment appraisals and coping strategies of 4 non-elite and 2 elite male trap shooters during competitions and in particular during periods of competition perceived as critical to performance. Appraisals and coping patterns of trap shooters were captured via verbal reports of thinking provided between sets of shots during major competitions. Verbal reports were coded according to an appraisal and coping typology. Coded data as well as shooting performance data were subjected to a sequential analysis of probabilities of pairs of events. Fewer reports of negative appraisals (NEGAs) and more frequent reports of problem-focused coping (PFC) were observed among both elite athletes compared to non-elite athletes. After making a NEGA, non-elite shooters often progressed to the next target without attempting to cope, whereas elite shooters used both PFC and emotion-focused coping (EFC) before proceeding to the next target. After missing a target, the non-elite athletes used more EFC than expected. These results indicate that elite athletes are more likely to cope with NEGAs than non-elite athletes using a wider variety of coping strategies. Athletes might benefit from increased awareness of the potentially detrimental impact of NEGAs on performance and by integrating coping strategies within preparatory routines.