4,680 research outputs found
Opening Pandora’s Box
No full textEquality in education is a complex and controversial issue that transcends the field of education and is subject to unique political, economic and cultural factors. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2007) suggests that “a fair and inclusive system that makes the advantages of education available to all is one of the most powerful levers to make society more equitable” (p.10). This belief is generated from its mission, which is to “ promote the policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world ” ( OECD, 2014, par 1 ) . In 2007, the OECD put forward ten practical steps which, it was hoped, would reduce school failure and make society fairer. The report offers an important, comparative perspective on how different countries have handled equity in education. It identified three key areas essential to the delivery of equity in education: the design of education systems, classroom practices, and resourcing. All countries have unique features in their education system. It is important to explore equity issues from a ‘within country’ perspective as well as from a comparative perspective.Hongzhi Zhang, Philip Wing Keung Chan & Christopher Boyl
Cho, Tse, & Chan - Normative Data for Chinese-English Translations
No full textCho, K.W., Tse, C-S., Chan, Y.L. (2019). Normative Data for English-Chinese Translations. Behavioral Research Methods. doi: 10.3758/s13428-019-01240-
Judicial deference at work: Some reflections on Chan Kin Sum and Kong Yun Ming
No full text"Due deference" - the giving of appropriate weight to the government's judgment in the court's reasoning - is a tool that courts use to maintain the separation of powers in constitutional rights review. This note aims to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the issue of deference, and to analyse the Court of First Instance (CFI)'s approach to deference in two recent cases, Chan Kin Sum and Kong Yun Ming. The author argues that the CFI has adopted a spatial approach that failed to specify the contested issues that called for deference, inappropriately considered democratic legitimacy as a factor for deference and made broad presumptions about the democratic character of primary decisions. This approach may lead to an over-deferential attitude that threatens the separation of powers, and the malleability of the approach may be subject to courts' manipulation. The author argues for a more context-sensitive approach based purely on institutional factors.published_or_final_versio
Closing the Gap
No full textThis concluding chapter draws from the 14 chapters that have come before it to discuss their implications and findings towards understanding what we have achieved in gaining equality in education across the world. In doing so, the chapter highlights that there are numerous important projects taking place, with fervour, in different international locations. Many developing countries are recognising that equality and inclusion in education are important for strengthening infrastructure, which is necessary for a developing economy. Whilst barriers to this goal are identified, the positive approach is gaining traction, as seen in the fact that more and more people are gaining access to education. Marginalised groups are still experiencing difficulties but, as is acknowledged in this chapter and throughout the book, the difficulties are becoming fewer and access to education is becoming more recognised as essential for each national government to provide. With the widening of access to and the proliferation of available education, other issues have come to the fore, such as a necessity for ensuring that the quality of teaching and access to appropriate resources are also considered.Christopher Boyle, Hongzhi Zhang, Philip Wing Keung Cha
Differences in Radiative Forcing, Not Sensitivity, Explain Differences in Summertime Land Temperature Variance Change Between CMIP5 and CMIP6
No full text© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Chan, D., Rigden, A., Proctor, J., Chan, P. W., & Huybers, P. Differences in radiative forcing, not sensitivity, explain differences in summertime land temperature variance change between CMIP5 and CMIP6. Earth’s Future, 10(2), (2022): e2021EF002402, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EF002402.How summertime temperature variability will change with warming has important implications for climate adaptation and mitigation. CMIP5 simulations indicate a compound risk of extreme hot temperatures in western Europe from both warming and increasing temperature variance. CMIP6 simulations, however, indicate only a moderate increase in temperature variance that does not covary with warming. To explore this intergenerational discrepancy in CMIP results, we decompose changes in monthly temperature variance into those arising from changes in sensitivity to forcing and changes in forcing variance. Across models, sensitivity increases with local warming in both CMIP5 and CMIP6 at an average rate of 5.7 ([3.7, 7.9]; 95% c.i.) × 10−3°C per W m−2 per °C warming. We use a simple model of moist surface energetics to explain increased sensitivity as a consequence of greater atmospheric demand (∼70%) and drier soil (∼40%) that is partially offset by the Planck feedback (∼−10%). Conversely, forcing variance is stable in CMIP5 but decreases with warming in CMIP6 at an average rate of −21 ([−28, −15]; 95% c.i.) W2 m−4 per °C warming. We examine scaling relationships with mean cloud fraction and find that mean forcing variance decreases with decreasing cloud fraction at twice the rate in CMIP6 than CMIP5. The stability of CMIP6 temperature variance is, thus, a consequence of offsetting changes in sensitivity and forcing variance. Further work to determine which models and generations of CMIP simulations better represent changes in cloud radiative forcing is important for assessing risks associated with increased temperature variance.This study was supported by the Harvard Global Institute and NSF (Award 1903657). D. Chan was also supported by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Weston Howland Jr. Postdoctoral Fellowship
Precarious Solidarities: Artists for Democracy 1974–77
No full textEdited publication with introduction and c.10,000 words essay contribution.
This publication takes Artists for Democracy as a starting point to explore the entanglement of artistic practices with transnational solidarities shaped by migration and political mobilisation.
Artists for Democracy formed in London in 1974 to give ‘material and cultural support to liberation movements worldwide’. Precarious Solidarities addresses the far-reaching actions of this group of cultural workers – whose personal/artistic trajectories span Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas – and the entanglement of artistic practice with transnational solidarities shaped by migration and political mobilisation. Through a range of new commissions, contributions from AFD members, and extensive archival documentation, Precarious Solidarities highlights the group’s multiple agencies and conditions of possibility – artistic, social, political, historical and geographic – and the potentials of these histories today. Contributors include: Rasheed Araeen, Guy Brett, Virgil Calaguian, Wing Chan, Cường Minh Bá Phạm and George Clark, Charles Esche, Hannah Healey, Susan Hiller, Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, María José Lemaitre Mujica and Caroll Yasky, David Medalla and Brandon Taylor, David Morris, Annabel Nicolson, Nii Kwate Owoo, Vijay Prashad and Cecilia Vicuña
A systems biology approach to multi-scale modelling and analysis of planar cell polarity in drosophila melanogaster wing
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Systems biology aims to describe and understand biology at a global scale where biological systems function as a result of complex mechanisms that happen at several scales. Modelling and simulation are computational tools that are invaluable for description, understanding and prediction these mechanisms in a quantitative and integrative way. Thus multi-scale methods that couple the design, simulation and analysis of models spanning several spatial and temporal scales is becoming a new emerging focus of systems biology. This thesis uses an exemplar – Planar cell polarity (PCP) signalling – to illustrate a generic approach to model biological systems at different spatial scales, using the new concept of Hierarchically Coloured Petri Nets (HCPN). PCP signalling refers to the coordinated polarisation of cells within the plane of various epithelial tissues to generate sub-cellular asymmetry along an axis orthogonal to their apical-basal axes. This polarisation is required for many developmental events in both vertebrates and non-vertebrates. Defects in PCP in vertebrates are responsible for developmental abnormalities in multiple tissues including the neural tube, the kidney and the inner ear. In Drosophila wing, PCP is seen in the parallel orientation of hairs that protrude from each of the approximately 30,000 epithelial cells to robustly point toward the wing tip. This work applies HCPN to model a tissue comprising multiple cells hexagonally packed in a honeycomb formation in order to describe the phenomenon of Planar Cell Polarity (PCP) in Drosophila wing. HCPN facilitate the construction of mathematically tractable, compact and parameterised large-scale models. Different levels of abstraction that can be used in order to simplify such a complex system are first illustrated. The PCP system is first represented at an abstract level without modelling details of the cell. Each cell is then sub-divided into seven virtual compartments with adjacent cells being coupled via the formation of intercellular complexes. A more detailed model is later developed, describing the intra- and inter-cellular signalling mechanisms involved in PCP signalling. The initial model is for a wild-type organism, and then a family of related models, permitting different hypotheses to be explored regarding the mechanisms underlying PCP, are constructed. Among them, the largest model consists of 800 cells which when unfolded yields 164,000 places (each of which is described by an ordinary differential equation). This thesis illustrates the power and validity of the approach by showing how the models can be easily adapted to describe well-documented genetic mutations in the Drosophila wing using the proposed approach including clustering and model checking over time series of primary and secondary data, which can be employed to analyse and check such multi-scale models similar to the case of PCP. The HCPN models support the interpretation of biological observations reported in literature and are able to make sensible predictions. As HCPN model multi-scale systems in a compact, parameterised and scalable way, this modelling approach can be applied to other large-scale or multi-scale systems.This study was funded by Brunel University
Supporting Asian-American Civic Engagement: Theory and Practice
No full text· This paper is a review of relevant research related to the civic engagement of Asian-American youth.
· Little work has been done to understand the civic engagement activities of Asian-American youth. However, unique promoters and barriers to Asian- American youth civic engagement exist, given this group’s distinct historical, cultural, and sociopolitical experiences.
· Asian-American youth may have two different ethnic and racial identities, and these identities may be related to different kinds of civic engagement. Asian-American students who have a stronger pan-Asian identity are more aware that their fate is linked with other Asian-Americans and therefore are more likely to engage in activities that aim to unite different Asian ethnic groups to promote the rights of Asian-Americans as a whole. Ethnic identification with a particular group (e.g., Vietnamese or Chinese) may encourage more social activism related to the specific social justice issues of that group.
· Foundation theories of change and program design should take into account whether the types of proposed civic engagement outcomes are appropriate to the participants’ racial and ethnic identities
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