Patient stories in life science and society courses : a versatile teaching tool

Narratives are widely used instructional tools, and a growing body of evidence supports their positive impact on learning. In the training of health professionals, the inclusion of narratives has been recognized as a powerful approach, known as narrative medicine, to foster empathy, memory, and reasoning skills. While there is substantial research on narrative-based teaching practice in medical education, little is known about how college instructors use narratives to teach undergraduate life science courses. Is it feasible to use narratives to teach science in college classroom? In which contexts do narratives become a useful teaching approach? How instructors adapt narrative approach for effective teaching? What factors influence the implementations of narrative approach? These are the guiding questions for this study. We use a qualitative methodology that combines observation of classroom activities and interviews with instructors to address research questions. Particularly, this research focused on narratives that incorporate experience from patients who are affected by genetic conditions. College-level courses that are at the intersection between life sciences and society are crucial in teaching science literacy and critical thinking to both majors and nonmajors. This study explored the practice of narratives in two college courses, Genetics and Society (BIOSC 3050) and Biotechnology in Society (BIOCHM 2112), each of which combines science with social context. The two courses differed in student population and course design. Most students in BIOSC 3050 were life-science majors in junior and senior classes, while those in BIOCHM 2112 were non-majors of multiple class standings. BIOSC 3050 is a writingintensive course, whereas BIOCHM 2112 is a moderately-paced course in which the majority of class time was devoted to student discussions. The differences in student populations and course design between the two courses provided an opportunity for a comparative study on teaching and learning with narratives. Our findings indicate that patient narratives are used as an effective and versatile teaching tool in the two surveyed courses. Notably, both instructors incorporated stories in their classroom to teach decisionmaking and to illuminate real-world connections. As a teaching tool, stories make science real, relevant, and relatable to students. Teaching students to make connections between what they learn and their own experiences is crucial to improve science literacy and social responsibility. By using stories, the instructors were able to introduce new perspectives that are different from those of students, yet allow them to use their own values to make decisions. Stories, when used in combination with thinking prompts, provide a frame to teach decision making without requiring the instructors to assume an authoritative role. Though the two courses are markedly different in student backgrounds and instructional models, there are strong parallels in their objectives. Both courses aim at helping students be able to make informed decisions based on knowledge and evidence. Stories are used to achieve this goal in several way. They provide background knowledge that are necessary to explore the topics. They supply facts and evidence that are used to support decisions. They provide realistic contexts when there is no absolute answer, and thus push students to come up with creative solutions. They help students realize and overcome their misconceptions that could lead to ill-informed decisions. These characteristics of stories, as observed in the practice of the two instructors, demonstrate that they are an effective teaching tool.Dr. Miriam Golomb, Thesis Advisor.Includes bibliographical references (pages 35-36)

Shibboleth as a Tool for Authorized Access Control to the Subversion Repository System

Shibboleth is an architecture and protocol for allowing users to authenticate and be authorized to use a remote resource by logging into the identity management system that is maintained at their home institution. With Shibboleth, a federation of institutions can share resources among users and yet allow the administration of both the user access control to resources and the user identity and attribute information to be performed at the hosting or home institution. Subversion is a version control repository system that allows the creation of fine-grained permissions to files and directories. In this project an infrastructure, Shibbolized Subversion, has been created that consists of a Subversion repository with an Apache web interface that is protected by a Shibboleth authentication system. The infrastructure can allow authorized and authenticated data sharing between institutions yet retains simplicity and protects privacy for users. In addition, it also relieves local administrators from the task of having to perform extra account management for users from other institutions. This paper describes the Shibboleth and Subversion systems, the implementation of the file sharing infrastructure, and issues of attribute maintenance, privacy and security

Shibboleth as a Tool for Authorized Access Control to the Subversion Repository System

Shibboleth is an architecture and protocol for allowing users to authenticate and be authorized to use a remote resource by logging into the identity management system that is maintained at their home institution. With Shibboleth, a federation of institutions can share resources among users and yet allow the administration of both the user access control to resources and the user identity and attribute information to be performed at the hosting or home institution. Subversion is a version control repository system that allows the creation of fine-grained permissions to files and directories. In this project an infrastructure, Shibbolized Subversion, has been created that consists of a Subversion repository with an Apache web interface that is protected by a Shibboleth authentication system. The infrastructure can allow authorized and authenticated data sharing between institutions yet retains simplicity and protects privacy for users. In addition, it also relieves local administrators from the task of having to perform extra account management for users from other institutions. This paper describes the Shibboleth and Subversion systems, the implementation of the file sharing infrastructure, and issues of attribute maintenance, privacy and security

Phénomène d'instabilité paramétrique dans la réponse RF d'une antenne immergée dans un plasma

Plasma -- Gaine ionique -- Ondes de gaine -- Instabilités paramétriques -- Hypothèses de travail -- Expérimentation -- Système antenne-plasma -- Montage de mesure RF -- Résultats expérimentaux -- Résonances des ondes de gaine -- Instabilités paramétriques -- Étude de simulation -- Modélisation du système antenne-gaine-plasma -- Simulation analogique -- Simulation numérique -- Discussion -- Sur les résonances de gaine -- Sur l'instabilité paramétrique -- Sur la modélisation

Application of the Empirical Mode Decomposition On the Characterization and Forecasting of the Arrival Data of an Enterprise Cluster

Characterization and forecasting are two important processes in capacity planning. While they are closely related, their approaches have been different. In this research, a decomposition method called Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) has been applied as a preprocessing tool in order to bridge the input of both characterization and forecasting processes of the job arrivals of an enterprise cluster. Based on the facts that an enterprise cluster follows a standard preset working schedule and that EMD has the capability to extract hidden patterns within a data stream, we have developed a set of procedures that can preprocess the data for characterization as well as for forecasting. This comprehensive empirical study demonstrates that the addition of the preprocessing step is an improvement over the standard approaches in both characterization and forecasting. In addition, it is also shown that EMD is better than the popular wavelet-based decomposition in term of extracting different patterns from within a data stream

Analysis and Monitoring of the SME Instrument in the Moravian-Silesian Region

Cílem bakalářské práce je zjistit, zda malé a střední podniky v Moravskoslezském kraji mají povědomí o SME Instrumentu, popřípadě jaké jsou důvody jejich nevědomosti, a navrhnout případná doporučení a návrhy, jak zlepšit povědomí o tomto schématu. První část bakalářské práce je zaměřena na teoretická východiska podpory podnikání malého a středního podniku s využitím odborné literatury. Druhá část bakalářské práce je zaměřena na analýzu a monitoring SME Instrumentu. Z analýzy a pozorování vyplynuly dvě hypotézy, které obecně tvrdí, že povědomí o SME Instrumentu v Moravskoslezském kraji je nedostatečné. Na základě dvou stanovených hypotéz o SME Instrumentu byl proveden výzkum formou dotazníkového šetření, který jednu z těchto hypotéz potvrdil. V závěrečné části bakalářské práce jsou navržena doporučení pro zlepšení povědomí o SME Instrumentu mezi malými a středními podniky v Moravskoslezském kraji.The aim of the bachelor thesis is to determine whether small and medium sized enterprises in the Moravian-Silesian Region have awareness of the SME Instrument, or what are the reasons for their ignorance, and to propose recommendations and suggestions on how to improve the awareness of this grant scheme. The first part of the bachelor thesis is focused on the theoretical basis of support of entrepreneurship small and medium-sized enterprises using professional literature. The second part of the bachelor thesis is focused on the analysis and monitoring of SME Instrument. The analysis and observation resulted in two hypotheses, which generally claim that the awareness of the SME Instrument in the Moravian-Silesian region is insufficient. On the basis of the two hypotheses set out in the SME Instrument, research was carried out in the form of a questionnaire survey, which confirmed one of these hypotheses. In the final part of the bachelor thesis, some recommendations are proposed to improve the awareness of SME Instrument among small and medium-sized enterprises in the Moravian-Silesian Region.152 - Katedra podnikohospodářskávýborn