A Study of Integration: The Role of Sensus Communis in Integrating Disciplinary Knowledge

Integration is an important notion for interdisciplinary studies. Achieving this shows that the interdisciplinary learner has successfully understood the commonalities among disciplines, as well as exercised crucial cognitive skills. This chapter attempts to elucidate how students integrated various disciplinary perspectives in the interdisciplinary course, Weird Science: Interpreting and Redefining Humanity. The study uses Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of the sensus communis to clarify how it was that students were processing and accomplishing the goal of integrating different disciplinary perspectives as evidenced in class observation, discussion, and especially student papers. The study demonstrates the ways in which common sense knowledge conditions and enables the integration process

INTERFACES, CONFINEMENT, AND RESONANT RAMAN-SCATTERING IN GE/SI QUANTUM-WELLS

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Program trace optimization with constructive heuristics for combinatorial problems

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via the DOI in this record.EvoCOP: 19th European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimisation, 24-26 April 2019, Leipzig, GermanyProgram Trace Optimisation (PTO), a highly general optimisation framework, is applied to a range of combinatorial optimisation (COP) problems. It effectively combines \smart" problem-specifi c constructive heuristics and problem-agnostic metaheuristic search, automatically and implicitly designing problem-appropriate search operators. A weakness is identifi ed in PTO's operators when applied in conjunction with smart heuristics on COP problems, and an improved method is introduced to address this. To facilitate the comparison of this new method with the original, across problems, a common format for PTO heuristics (known as generators) is demonstrated, mimicking GRASP. This also facilitates comparison of the degree of greediness (the GRASP alpha parameter) in the heuristics. Experiments across problems show that the novel operators consistently outperform the original without any loss of generality or cost in CPU time; hill-climbing is a sufficient metaheuristic; and intermediate levels of greediness are usually best

Cross-sectional and longitudinal construct validity of two rotator cuff disease-specific outcome measures

BACKGROUND: Disease-specific Quality Of Life (QOL) measures are devised to assess the impact of a specific disease across a spectrum of important domains of life. The purpose of this study was to examine the cross-sectional and longitudinal construct validity (sensitivity to change) of two rotator cuff disease-specific measures, the Rotator Cuff-Quality Of Life (RC-QOL) and the Western Ontario Rotator Cuff (WORC) index, in relation to one another and to other joint and limb specific measures in the same population of the patients suffering from rotator cuff pathology. METHODS: Participants enrolled were consecutive patients who received physical therapy for management of impingement syndrome or received treatment following rotator cuff repair, acromioplasty or decompression surgeries. All subjects received physical therapy treatment and completed four outcome measures at 3 single points (initial, interim, and final). Cross-sectional convergent validity was assessed at each of the 3 time-points by correlating the WORC and RC-QOL's scores to each other and to two alternative scales; a joint-specific scale, the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) standardized shoulder assessment form and a limb-specific measure, the Upper Extremity Functional Index (UEFI). Non-parametric statistics (Spearman's rho and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney tests) examined the construct validity. The standardized response mean (SRM) was used to examine sensitivity to change. RESULTS: Forty-one participants entered the study and their scores were compared at 3 cross sectional single points. The correlation coefficients among the 4 measures varied from 0.60 to 0.91. Correlation between corresponding domains of the WORC and RC-QOL varied from 0.45 to 0.85. The known group validity was not significantly different among individual sub-scores and total scores. The final SRMs were (1.42), (1.43), (1.44), and (1.54) for the ASES, RCQOL, WORC, and UEFI respectively. CONCLUSION: The WORC and RC-QOL exhibit similar cross-sectional convergent validity in patients suffering from rotator cuff pathology. The sensitivity to change was very close among all scores, with the UEFI having the highest sensitivity. Further research is needed to examine the extent to which each physical or emotional domain contributes to prognostic or therapeutic decision-making

Exoplanet Atmosphere Measurements from Transmission Spectroscopy and other Planet-Star Combined Light Observations

It is possible to learn a great deal about exoplanet atmospheres even when we cannot spatially resolve the planets from their host stars. In this chapter, we overview the basic techniques used to characterize transiting exoplanets - transmission spectroscopy, emission and reflection spectroscopy, and full-orbit phase curve observations. We discuss practical considerations, including current and future observing facilities and best practices for measuring precise spectra. We also highlight major observational results on the chemistry, climate, and cloud properties of exoplanets.Comment: Accepted review chapter; Handbook of Exoplanets, eds. Hans J. Deeg and Juan Antonio Belmonte (Springer-Verlag). 22 pages, 6 figure