9,445 research outputs found
Dance Students at a Two Year College: Making Sense of their Academic, Cultural, and Social World
The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the lived experiences of community college dance students. Previous research was examined to provide a more holistic picture of dancers during their college years and while in the workforce. The literature reviewed indicated that the emergence of dance as a field of study was controversial. Its beginnings were marked by debates concerning (a) the very definition of dance as a body of motion and a body of knowledge that includes a history and a philosophy as asserted by Dimondstein (1985), (b) its legitimate place within the academy (the perception that university dance programs were vocational in nature with little academic value) as noted by Stinson (1990); and, more recently (c) the possibility of some resolution to make dance not only a performing art but an academic discipline in its own right (Savrami, 2012). The theoretical framework of social cognitive career theory was used but was modified to include only the tenets most frequently cited in the literature that directly influenced the career identity of dancers particularly in relation to their motivation to academically persist and graduate. The phenomenological analysis, in the tradition of Moustakas (1994) and Wertz (2005), produced an early thematic matrix of 18 codes that were reduced to six major themes: aspirations, academic commitment, emotional identification, anticipated outcome or career expectation, vicarious learning, and challenges. One of the major recommendations included conducting a longitudinal study focusing on how students navigate an unpredictable job market, including the discussion of issues of workforce preparation in the academic curriculum and major
Comparative study of analog and digital hearing aids
The purpose of the present study was to determine if objective and/or subjective differences between analog and digital hearing aids exist when blinding is utilized in the protocol and circuitry is controlled. Ten normal hearing and seven hearing impaired subjects were monaurally fitted with analog and digital hearing aids. Probe microphone measures were obtained at the plane of the tympanic membrane at two output levels (40 dB SPL and 70 dB SPL). Listener performance in quiet was evaluated via word recognition testing, listener performance in noise was evaluated via the Hearing in Noise Test, and listener preference was evaluated via a questionnaire. Results indicated similar performance for all objective and subjective tasks for both hearing aids with the exception of better performance in quiet at the 40 dB SPL presentation level with the analog hearing aid for the hearing impaired group. These results indicate that listeners performed as well or significantly better with the analog hearing aid than with the digital hearing aid. Furthermore, future investigation is recommended to evaluate the effectiveness of some features available on digital hearing aids that are not available on analog hearing aids, such as expansion and noise reduction
A Bayes Linear Approach to Making Inferences from X-rays
X-ray images are often used to make inferences about physical phenomena and the entities about which inferences are made are complex. The Bayes linear approach is a generalisation of subjective Bayesian analysis suited to uncertainty quantification for complex systems. Therefore, Bayes linear is an appropriate tool for making inferences from X-ray images.
In this thesis, I will propose methodology for making inferences about quantities, which may be organised as multivariate random fields. A number of problems will be addressed: anomaly detection, emulation, inverse problem solving and transferable databases. Anomaly detection is deciding whether a new observation belongs to the same population as a reference population, emulation is the task of building a statistical model of a complex computer model, inverse problem solving is the task of making inferences about system values, given an observation of system behaviour and transferable databases is the task of using a data-set created using a simulator to make inferences about physical phenomena.
The methods we use to address these problems will be exemplified using applications from the X-ray industry. Anomaly detection will be used to identify plastic contaminants in chocolate bars, emulation will be used to efficiently predict the scatter present in an X-ray image, inverse problem solving will be used to infer an entity's composition from an X-ray image and transferable databases will be used to improve image quality and return diagnostic measures from clinical X-ray images. The Bayes linear approach to making inferences from an X-ray image enables improvements over the state-of-the-art approaches to high impact problems
Laser induced modulation of the Landau level structure in single-layer graphene
We present perturbative analytical results of the Landau level quasienergy
spectrum, autocorrelation function and out of plane pseudospin polarization for
a single graphene sheet subject to intense circularly polarized terahertz
radiation. For the quasienergy spectrum, we find a striking non trivial
level-dependent dynamically induced gap structure. This photoinduced modulation
of the energy band structure gives rise to shifts of the revival times in the
autocorrelation function and it also leads to modulation of the oscillations in
the dynamical evolution of the out of plane pseudospin polarization, which
measures the angular momentum transfer between light and graphene electrons.
For a coherent state, chosen as an initial pseudospin configuration, the
dynamics induces additional quantum revivals of the wave function that manifest
as shifts of the maxima and minima of the autocorrelation function, with
additional partial revivals and beating patterns. These additional maxima and
beating patterns stem from the effective dynamical coupling of the static
eigenstates. We discuss the possible experimental detection schemes of our
theoretical results and their relevance in new practical implementation of
radiation fields in graphene physics.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Accepted version for publication in Physical
Review
Realization of a feedback controlled flashing ratchet
A flashing ratchet transports diffusive particles using a time-dependent,
asymmetric potential. Particle speed is predicted to increase when a feedback
algorithm based on particle positions is used. We have experimentally realized
such a feedback ratchet using an optical line trap, and observed that use of
feedback increases velocity by up to an order of magnitude. We compare two
different feedback algorithms for small particle numbers, and find good
agreement with simulations. We also find that existing algorithms can be
improved to be more tolerant to feedback delay times
Four decades of transmission of a multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis outbreak strain
The rise of drug-resistant strains is a major challenge to containing the tuberculosis (TB) pandemic. Yet, little is known about the extent of resistance in early years of chemotherapy and when transmission of resistant strains on a larger scale became a major public health issue. Here we reconstruct the timeline of the acquisition of antimicrobial resistance during a major ongoing outbreak of multidrug-resistant TB in Argentina. We estimate that the progenitor of the outbreak strain acquired resistance to isoniazid, streptomycin and rifampicin by around 1973, indicating continuous circulation of a multidrug-resistant TB strain for four decades. By around 1979 the strain had acquired additional resistance to three more drugs. Our results indicate that Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) with extensive resistance profiles circulated 15 years before the outbreak was detected, and about one decade before the earliest documented transmission of Mtb strains with such extensive resistance profiles globally.Fil: Eldholm, Vegard. Norwegian Institute of Public Health; NoruegaFil: Monteserin, Johana. Dirección Nacional de Institutos de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de Salud. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Infecciosas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Rieux, Adrien. Colegio Universitario de Londres; Reino UnidoFil: Lopez, Beatriz. Dirección Nacional de Institutos de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de Salud. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Infecciosas; ArgentinaFil: Sobkowiak, Benjamin. Colegio Universitario de Londres; Reino UnidoFil: Ritacco, Gloria Viviana. Dirección Nacional de Institutos de Investigación. Administración Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de Salud. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Infecciosas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Balloux, Francois. Colegio Universitario de Londres; Reino Unid
Top-philic Vector-Like Portal to Scalar Dark Matter
We investigate the phenomenology of scalar singlet dark matter candidates
that couple dominantly to the Standard Model via a Yukawa interaction with the
top quark and a colored vector-like fermion. We estimate the viability of this
vector-like portal scenario with respect to the most recent bounds from dark
matter direct and indirect detection, as well as to dark matter and vector-like
mediator searches at colliders. Moreover, we take QCD radiative corrections
into account in all our theoretical calculations. This work complements
analyses related both to models featuring a scalar singlet coupled through a
vector-like portal to light quarks, and to scenarios in which the dark matter
is a Majorana singlet coupled to the Standard Model through scalar colored
particles (akin to simplified models inspired by supersymmetry). Our study puts
especially forward the complementarity of different search strategies from
different contexts, and we show that current experiments allow for testing dark
matter masses ranging up to 700 GeV and mediator masses ranging up to 6 TeV.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures; version accepted by PR
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