Designing programming courses for ET students

Rochester Institute of Technology offers a three-course technical programming sequence for Engineering Technology students. All three courses are required for Computer Engineering Technology students. The first two courses are required for Telecommunications ET students. Electrical and Civil ET students are required to take only the first course of the sequence. This paper reviews and discusses the events and experiences associated with the development and initial conduct of this sequence of C++ programming courses. It details how the courses were designed to assist ET students to better succeed in higher level courses taken later in their program sequence. Foundation elements of these courses include C++ procedural and object oriented grammar and syntax, programming structures and data structures. The paper illustrates how secondary elements of a technical programming course can be selected so as to additionally promote and encourage student learning of techniques for applied technical problem solving, technical writing, software engineering, project management, team dynamics and ethics

A methodology for planning distance learning courses

This article is based on personal experience gained as a result of facilitating over sixty asynchronous classes over the last four years. The article is organized into five areas of review and consideration which can assist the faculty member to plan and develop a learning-centered course intended for distance delivery. Whether in the classroom or on the Internet, critical scrutiny and analysis of the elements of a course is essential for development of a high quality course. The review points presented in this article specifically address key considerations for development for a course delivered in a virtual environment

Loving your students - A faculty model for today\u27s classroom

This paper reviews research related to four recent business management models of charismatic and inspirational leadership. It goes on to select the key traits and behaviors of these leadership models for the workplace environment and use them as the foundation of a model for a loving faculty member. Like the business leader, the devoted, caring professor leads his engineering students in their quest for knowledge, growth and learning. Based upon peer-reviewed leadership research which reports the value and benefits of a caring, mentoring and loving leader in the business world, the loving professor will also be successful in meeting the learning needs of students in the 21st century classroom. As faculty transition from the ways of old - the authoritarian, dictator, Machiavellian ways of teaching - they must search within themselves and ask, ?How should I act so as to achieve the rank of loving professor? Which behaviors, activities and actions will allow me to successfully lead my students and best promote their learning?

Lessons Learned During an Experimental Blended Course

During the Fall 2003 quarter, Rochester Institute of Technology offered a graduate course titled “Operating Systems for Telecommunications.” This author facilitated the course which was conducted in two sections. The first section was conducted in an fully asynchronous distance learning environment. The second section met face-to-face (F2F) once a week while conducting the remainder of its activities at a distance over the Internet. This paper compares the two environments and discusses the lessons learned about faculty and student satisfaction and student performance

A Blended Learning Course in Operating Systems for Telecommunications

Student learning and faculty productivity were both increased during the delivery of a course which integrated working adult students in a distance learning section with traditional students in a blended learning section. Small group assignments combined with graded discussions and traditional testing were used to promote and assess student learning using teaching tools available in the Desire2Learn course management system. The success of the pilot course was demonstrated by high levels of both student and faculty satisfaction

Developing an example-based faculty training course

The course detailed in this presentation is based upon the principle of placing the new faculty member in the role of a student. Typical students are motivated and they are adults. We tell students, up-front, the course is completely asynchronous and that they must be prepared to logon and participate in course activities five out of seven days every week (this simulates how they should manage their own future classrooms). Active participation counts for 30 to 40% of the credit earned for successful course completion

Galactic Winds across the Gas-rich Merger Sequence. I. Highly Ionized N v and O vi Outflows in the QUEST Quasars*

Abstract This program is part of QUEST (Quasar/ULIRG Evolutionary Study) and seeks to examine the gaseous environments of z ≲ 0.3 quasars and ULIRGs as a function of host galaxy properties and age across the merger sequence from ULIRGs to quasars. This first paper in the series focuses on 33 quasars from the QUEST sample and on the kinematics of the highly ionized gas phase traced by the N v λ λ 1238,1243 and O vi λ λ 1032,1038 absorption lines in high-quality Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) data. N v and O vi outflows are present in about 60% of the QUEST quasars and span a broad range of properties, both in terms of equivalent widths (from 20 mÅ to 25 Å) and kinematics (outflow velocities from a few×100 km s−1 up to ∼10,000 km s−1). The rate of incidence and equivalent widths of the highly ionized outflows are higher among X-ray weak or absorbed sources. The weighted outflow velocity dispersions are highest among the X-ray weakest sources. No significant trends are found between the weighted outflow velocities and the properties of the quasars and host galaxies, although this may be due to the limited dynamic range of properties of the current sample. These results will be re-examined in an upcoming paper where the sample is expanded to include the QUEST ULIRGs. Finally, a lower limit of ∼0.1% on the ratio of time-averaged kinetic power to bolometric luminosity is estimated in the 2–4 objects with blueshifted P v λ λ 1117,1128 absorption features.</jats:p

Canagliflozin and renal outcomes in type 2 diabetes and nephropathy

BACKGROUND Type 2 diabetes mellitus is the leading cause of kidney failure worldwide, but few effective long-term treatments are available. In cardiovascular trials of inhibitors of sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2), exploratory results have suggested that such drugs may improve renal outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes. METHODS In this double-blind, randomized trial, we assigned patients with type 2 diabetes and albuminuric chronic kidney disease to receive canagliflozin, an oral SGLT2 inhibitor, at a dose of 100 mg daily or placebo. All the patients had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of 30 to &lt;90 ml per minute per 1.73 m2 of body-surface area and albuminuria (ratio of albumin [mg] to creatinine [g], &gt;300 to 5000) and were treated with renin–angiotensin system blockade. The primary outcome was a composite of end-stage kidney disease (dialysis, transplantation, or a sustained estimated GFR of &lt;15 ml per minute per 1.73 m2), a doubling of the serum creatinine level, or death from renal or cardiovascular causes. Prespecified secondary outcomes were tested hierarchically. RESULTS The trial was stopped early after a planned interim analysis on the recommendation of the data and safety monitoring committee. At that time, 4401 patients had undergone randomization, with a median follow-up of 2.62 years. The relative risk of the primary outcome was 30% lower in the canagliflozin group than in the placebo group, with event rates of 43.2 and 61.2 per 1000 patient-years, respectively (hazard ratio, 0.70; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.59 to 0.82; P=0.00001). The relative risk of the renal-specific composite of end-stage kidney disease, a doubling of the creatinine level, or death from renal causes was lower by 34% (hazard ratio, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.53 to 0.81; P&lt;0.001), and the relative risk of end-stage kidney disease was lower by 32% (hazard ratio, 0.68; 95% CI, 0.54 to 0.86; P=0.002). The canagliflozin group also had a lower risk of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke (hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.67 to 0.95; P=0.01) and hospitalization for heart failure (hazard ratio, 0.61; 95% CI, 0.47 to 0.80; P&lt;0.001). There were no significant differences in rates of amputation or fracture. CONCLUSIONS In patients with type 2 diabetes and kidney disease, the risk of kidney failure and cardiovascular events was lower in the canagliflozin group than in the placebo group at a median follow-up of 2.62 years

The persistent shadow of the supermassive black hole of M 87

In April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration reported the first-ever event-horizon-scale images of a black hole, resolving the central compact radio source in the giant elliptical galaxy M 87. These images reveal a ring with a southerly brightness distribution and a diameter of ∼42 μas, consistent with the predicted size and shape of a shadow produced by the gravitationally lensed emission around a supermassive black hole. These results were obtained as part of the April 2017 EHT observation campaign, using a global very long baseline interferometric radio array operating at a wavelength of 1.3 mm. Here, we present results based on the second EHT observing campaign, taking place in April 2018 with an improved array, wider frequency coverage, and increased bandwidth. In particular, the additional baselines provided by the Greenland telescope improved the coverage of the array. Multiyear EHT observations provide independent snapshots of the horizon-scale emission, allowing us to confirm the persistence, size, and shape of the black hole shadow, and constrain the intrinsic structural variability of the accretion flow. We have confirmed the presence of an asymmetric ring structure, brighter in the southwest, with a median diameter of 43.3−3.1+1.5 μas. The diameter of the 2018 ring is remarkably consistent with the diameter obtained from the previous 2017 observations. On the other hand, the position angle of the brightness asymmetry in 2018 is shifted by about 30° relative to 2017. The perennial persistence of the ring and its diameter robustly support the interpretation that the ring is formed by lensed emission surrounding a Kerr black hole with a mass ∼6.5 × 109 M⊙. The significant change in the ring brightness asymmetry implies a spin axis that is more consistent with the position angle of the large-scale jet

Patinformatics: Tasks to tools

This article starts with an overview of the field of patinformatics--the science of analyzing patent information to discover relationships and trends. This is followed by a survey of many common analysis tasks in this field, and many of the software tools available to tackle these tasks. The survey is set out under the tasks of list cleanup and grouping of concepts; list generation; co-occurrency matrices and circle graphs; clustering of structured data; clustering of unstructured data; mapping document clusters; adding temporal component to cluster map; citation analysis; subject/action/object functions. The author concludes that patinformatics has developed very rapidly over the last few years, and provides continuing challenges and opportunities in making optimal use of the resources available to achieve reliable and meaningful results. Useful tables summarizing aspects of this survey are included.Patinformatics Patent information analysis Software analysis tools Patent intelligence List cleanup Concept grouping List generation Co-occurrency matrices Circle graphs Data clustering Mapping document clusters Citation analysis