Secondary school teachers' perspectives on teaching about topics that bridge science and religion

The question of where to locate teaching about the relationships between science and religion has produced a long-running debate. Currently, Science and Religious Education (RE) are statutory subjects in England and are taught in secondary schools by different teachers. This paper reports on an interview study in which 16 teachers gave their perceptions of their roles and responsibilities when teaching topics that bridge science and religion and the extent to which they collaborated with teachers in the other subject area. We found that in this sample, teachers reported very little collaboration between the curriculum areas. Although the science curriculum makes no mention of religion, all the science teachers said that their approaches to such topics were affected by their recognition that some pupils hold religious beliefs. All the RE teachers reported struggling to ensure students know of a range of views about how science and religion relate. The paper concludes with a discussion about implications for curriculum design and teacher training.

Assorted topics in monetary economics

Esta tese é uma coleção de quatro artigos em economia monetária escritos sob a supervisão do Professor Rubens Penha Cysne. O primeiro desses artigos calcula o viés presente em medidas do custo de bem-estar da inflação devido a não se levar em conta o potencial substitutivo de moedas que rendem juros, como depósitos bancários.[1] O segundo se concentra na questão teórica de se comparar os escopos dos tradicionais modelos money-in-the-utility-function e shopping-time através do estudo das propriedades das curvas de demanda que eles geram.[2] O terceiro desses trabalhos revisita um artigo clássico de Stanley Fischer sobre a correlação entre a taxa de crescimento da oferta monetária e a taxa de acumulação de capital no caminho de transição.[3] Finalmente, o quarto diz respeito à posição relativa de cada uma de seis medidas do custo de bem-estar da inflação (uma das quais é nova) em relação às outras cinco, e uma estimativa do erro relativo máximo em que o pesquisador pode incorrer devido a sua escolha de empregar uma dessas medidas qualquer vis-à-vis as outras.[4] This thesis collects four papers on monetary economics written under the supervision of Professor Rubens Penha Cysne. The first of these papers assesses the bias occuring in welfare-cost-of-inflation measures due to failing to take into consideration the substitution potential of interest-bearing monies such as bank deposits.[1] The second one tackles the theoretical issue of comparing the generality of the money-in-the-utility-function- and the shopping-time models by studying the properties of the demand curves they generate.[2] The third of these works revisits a classic paper by Stanley Fischer on the correlation between the growth rate of money supply and the rate of capital accumulation on the transition path.[3] Finally, the fourth one concerns the relative standing of each one of six measures of the welfare cost of inflation (one of which is new) with respect to the other five, and an estimate of the maximum relative error one can incur by choosing to employ a particular welfare measure in place of the others.[4] [1] Cysne, R.P., Turchick, D., 2010. Welfare costs of inflation when interest-bearing deposits are disregarded: A calculation of the bias. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 34, 1015-1030. [2] Cysne, R.P., Turchick, D., 2009. On the integrability of money-demand functions by the Sidrauski and the shopping-time models. Journal of Banking & Finance 33, 1555-1562. [3] Cysne, R.P., Turchick, D., 2010. Money supply and capital accumulation on the transition path revisited. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 42, 1173-1184. [4] Cysne, R.P., Turchick, D., 2011. An ordering of measures of the welfare cost of inflation in economies with interest-bearing deposits. Macroeconomic Dynamics, forthcoming.

Selected topics in teleparallel gravity

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Factors affecting the strength of denture repairs: Topics of interest

Fracture of dentures is a common clinical finding in daily prosthodontic practice, resulting in great inconvenience to both patient and dentist. A satisfactory repair should be cost-effective, simple to perform, and quick; it should also match the original color and not cause distortion to the existing denture. Different repair materials, surface designs, and mechanical and chemical surface treatments have been recommended in order to obtain stronger repairs. This article reviews some of the available literature with regard to the most important factors that may influence the strength of denture repairs. © 2007 by The American College of Prosthodontists.

Topics in the Routine Assessment of Newborn Puppy Viability

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Preface to Lesser Known Large dsDNA Viruses. Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology 328

Several large dsDNA-containing viruses such as poxviruses (smallpox) and herpes viruses are well known among the scientific community, as well as the general populace, because they cause human diseases. The large dsDNA insect-infecting baculoviruses are also well known in the scientific community because they are used both as biological control agents and as protein expression systems. However, there are other large dsDNA-containing viruses, including the giant 1.2-Mb mimivirus, which are less well known even though all of them play important roles in everyday life. Seven of these virus families are reviewed in this book.

Topics in geometry, analysis and inverse problems

The thesis consists of three independent parts. Part I: Polynomial amoebas We study the amoeba of a polynomial, as de ned by Gelfand, Kapranov and Zelevinsky. A central role in the treatment is played by a certain convex function which is linear in each complement component of the amoeba, which we call the Ronkin function. This function is used in two di erent ways. First, we use it to construct a polyhedral complex, which we call a spine, approximating the amoeba. Second, the Monge-Ampere measure of the Ronkin function has interesting properties which we explore. This measure can be used to derive an upper bound on the area of an amoeba in two dimensions. We also obtain results on the number of complement components of an amoeba, and consider possible extensions of the theory to varieties of codimension higher than 1. Part II: Differential equations in the complex plane We consider polynomials in one complex variable arising as eigenfunctions of certain differential operators, and obtain results on the distribution of their zeros. We show that in the limit when the degree of the polynomial approaches innity, its zeros are distributed according to a certain probability measure. This measure has its support on the union of nitely many curve segments, and can be characterized by a simple condition on its Cauchy transform. Part III: Radon transforms and tomography This part is concerned with different weighted Radon transforms in two dimensions, in particular the problem of inverting such transforms. We obtain stability results of this inverse problem for rather general classes of weights, including weights of attenuation type with data acquisition limited to a 180 degrees range of angles. We also derive an inversion formula for the exponential Radon transform, with the same restriction on the angle.

Topics in financial econometrics

In the first chapter, we consider the joint estimation of objective and risk-neutral parameters for SV option pricing models. We propose a strategy which exploits the information contained in large heterogeneous panels of options, and we apply it to S&P 500 index and index call options data. Our approach breaks the stochastic singularity between contemporaneous option prices by assuming that every observation is affected by measurement error. We evaluate the likelihood function by using a MC-IS strategy combined with a Particle Filter algorithm. The second chapter examines the impact of different categories of traders on market transactions. We estimate a model which takes into account traders’ identities at the transaction level, and we find that the stock prices follow the direction of institutional trading. These results are carried out with data from an anonymous market. To explain our estimates, we examine the informativeness of a wide set of market variables and we find that most of them are unambiguously significant to infer the identity of traders. The third chapter investigates the relationship between the categories of market traders and three definitions of financial durations. We consider trade, price and volume durations, and we adopt a Log-ACD model where we include information on traders at the transaction level. As to trade durations, we observe an increase of the trading frequency when informed traders and the liquidity provider intensify their presence in the market. For price and volume durations, we find the same effect to depend on the state of the market activity. The fourth chapter proposes a strategy to express order aggressiveness in quantitative terms. We consider a simultaneous equation model to examine price and volume aggressiveness at Euronext Paris, and we analyse the impact of a wide set of order book variables on the price-quantity decision.