Costabile,Angela & Spears,Barbara A ed (2012) The impact of technology on relationships in educational settings David Fulton (Routledge,Abingdon UK & New York) isbn 978‐0‐415‐61008‐7 217 pp £29.99 http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415610087/

Teachers interested in harnessing the internet for positive purposes will enjoy this book—it lays bare some myths, challenges perceptions, and provides evidence of interventions which hold great promise for ameliorating negative misuse, such as cyber‐bullying. Case studies from European, American and Australian practitioners highlight the work being done to harness the positive power of social networking and connectedness. If the content of this book is likely to be relevant to you, I recommend that you arrange to borrow a copy for a while. Robyn Smyth     

Crabs in the grey cup: Baltimore's Canadian football Sojourn, 1994–95

During the early 1990s, Baltimore had a problem: replacing its professional football team, which moved to Indiana in 1984. Fans, politicians, and entrepreneurs plotted, begged, and spent millions trying to gain a replacement. But the National Football League was diffident. With scads of ardent civic suitors, the NFL played hard-to-get. By 1994, Baltimore remained on the outside, feeling desperate. At the same time, North America's “other” professional football operation, the Canadian Football League, faced troubles, too. Older than the more high-profile NFL, the CFL lagged behind its media-savvy American counterpart. Across Canada, the CFL discerned disturbing signs of ennui in its fan base. The solution came suddenly: expand the CFL into the United States, injecting elements of nationalistic competition into the staid league, and granting pigskin-hungry American cities teams to call their own. What followed was a brief, bizarre, and culturally significant episode pin North American sport history. The CFL added five American franchises, while fretting that its distinctively Canadian identity might dilute or evaporate. Most American franchises met scant fan approval. Only in Baltimore did the experiment succeed, because there singular conditions brewed a blend of civic parochialism matching Canadian nationalism.     

Numerical investigation of the power generation of a ducted composite material marine current turbine

In the hostile and highly corrosive marine environment,advanced composite materials can be used in marine current turbines due to their high strength-to-weight ratios and excellent resistance to corrosion.A composite material marine current turbine(CMMCT),which has significant advantages over traditional designs,has been developed and investigated numerically.A substantial improvement in turbine performance is achieved by placement of a duct to concentrate the energy.Computational fluid dynamics(CFD) results show that the extracted power of a ducted CMMCT can be three to four times the power extracted by a bare turbine of the same turbine area.The results provide an insight into the hydrodynamic design and operation of a CMMCT used to shorten the design period and improve technical performance.     

Perceiving the Problem of Poverty and Schooling: Deconstructing the Class Stereotypes that Mis-Shape Education Practice and Policy

A rich history of scholarship has demonstrated the ways in which popular stereotypes of disenfranchised communities, including people living in poverty, affect individual biases and preconceptions. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which such stereotypes help frame policy and practice responses regarding social problems, such as the economic “achievement gap.” The purpose of this essay is to examine the nature of poverty-based stereotyping in the context of popular discourses regarding the education of poor and low-income students. In doing so, I analyze stereotypes commonly used to locate the problem of the economic “achievement gap” as existing within, rather than as pressing upon, poor and low-income families. I then discuss how these stereotypes have fed deficit ideology and, as a result, misdirected policy and practice responses to gross class inequities in U.S. schools.