Risk that Lasts: Prioritizing Propositional Risk in Honors Education

The fear of missing the mark often shapes how honors students approach risk in the classroom and, consequently, how instructors build risk-taking exercises into their curriculums. This paper explores the concept of propositional risk in the context of honors pedagogy, wherein students are challenged to interrogate deeply held beliefs and tasked with exercises designed to call forth the full complexity of attendant issues surrounding any individual viewpoint. As distinct from strategic risk, which can be characterized as performative and externally motivated, propositional risk requires students to critically evaluate a spectrum of thought, value, and ideology in the context of singular, independent vantages. The author uses examples from a study abroad program and provides tips for fostering propositional tension in the classroom, suggesting that this type of risk, latent with the potential for change, is of greater benefit to the student long-term

A Study of the use of SIMD instructions for two image processing algorithms

Many media processing algorithms suffer from long execution times, which are most often not acceptable from an end user point of view. Recently, this problem has been exacerbated because media has higher resolution. One possible solution is through the use of Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) architectures, such as ARM\u27s NEON. These architectures take advantage of the parallelism in media processing algorithms by operating on multiple pieces of data with just one instruction. SIMD instructions can significantly decrease the execution time of the algorithm, but require more time to implement. This thesis studies the use of SIMD instructions on a Cortex-A8 processor with NEON SIMD coprocessor. Both image processing algorithms, bilinear interpolation and distortion, are altered to process multiple pixels or colors simultaneously using the NEON coprocessor\u27s instruction set. The distortion algorithm is also altered at the assembly level through the removal of memory accesses and branches, adding data prefetch instructions, and interlacing ARM and NEON instructions. Altering the assembly code requires a deeper understanding of the code and more time, but allows for more control and higher speedups. The theoretical speedup for the bilinear interpolation and distortion algorithms is three and four times respectively. The actual measured speedup for the bilinear interpolation algorithm is more than two times, and for the distortion algorithm is more than three times. The results show that SIMD instructions can provide a speedup to image processing algorithms following a correct sequence of modifications of the code

Health Inequalities and People with Learning Disabilities in the UK

This briefing paper will assist Primary, Acute and Specialist NHS Trusts in fulfilling their responsibilities. In this report we summarise the most recent evidence from the UK on the health status of people with learning disabilities and the determinants of the health inequalities they face. Later in the autumn, IHaL will be producing a briefing for GP Commissioning Consortia and PCTs on practical commissioning actions to help address the issues identified in this report

Risk that Lasts: Prioritizing Propositional Risk in Honors Education

The fear of missing the mark often shapes how honors students approach risk in the classroom and, consequently, how instructors build risk-taking exercises into their curriculums. This paper explores the concept of propositional risk in the context of honors pedagogy, wherein students are challenged to interrogate deeply held beliefs and tasked with exercises designed to call forth the full complexity of attendant issues surrounding any individual viewpoint. As distinct from strategic risk, which can be characterized as performative and externally motivated, propositional risk requires students to critically evaluate a spectrum of thought, value, and ideology in the context of singular, independent vantages. The author uses examples from a study abroad program and provides tips for fostering propositional tension in the classroom, suggesting that this type of risk, latent with the potential for change, is of greater benefit to the student long-term

The Relationship between Multiplexity and Academic Productivity in Six Fields of Science and Engineering

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009This presentation was part of the session : Science and Innovation WorkforceNS

The Impact of Short Breaks on Families with a Disabled Child: Report One of the Quantitative Phase

This document reports on a cross-sectional sample of families with a disabled child using short breaks in England; it describes the characteristics of children and families using short breaks, the nature and quantity of the short breaks they are using, their experiences of and satisfaction with short breaks and which factors are associated with a range of outcomes for family carers, disabled children and their siblings. This report uses both quantitative data derived from standardised questions and qualitative data from family members’ written responses to open-ended questions in the survey instruments