30 research outputs found
Beyond redemption? Locating the experience of adult learners and educators
O'Sullivan's critique of what he terms 'redemptive' approaches to adult education is based on its 'vanguardism, imited reflexivity and circumscribed student agency' (2008, p.21). Such ideas and discourses are at work in adult education influenced by the pervasive influence of Catholic social teaching in Ireland that O'Sullivan describes. Just how deeply rooted this redemptive phenomenon is amongst religious and secular Irish educators has been critically explored by Hussey (1999, p.44) based on his experience in community theatre
The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
This paper describes the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
(SDSS), marking the completion of the original goals of the SDSS and the end of
the phase known as SDSS-II. It includes 11663 deg^2 of imaging data, with most
of the roughly 2000 deg^2 increment over the previous data release lying in
regions of low Galactic latitude. The catalog contains five-band photometry for
357 million distinct objects. The survey also includes repeat photometry over
250 deg^2 along the Celestial Equator in the Southern Galactic Cap. A
coaddition of these data goes roughly two magnitudes fainter than the main
survey. The spectroscopy is now complete over a contiguous area of 7500 deg^2
in the Northern Galactic Cap, closing the gap that was present in previous data
releases. There are over 1.6 million spectra in total, including 930,000
galaxies, 120,000 quasars, and 460,000 stars. The data release includes
improved stellar photometry at low Galactic latitude. The astrometry has all
been recalibrated with the second version of the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog
(UCAC-2), reducing the rms statistical errors at the bright end to 45
milli-arcseconds per coordinate. A systematic error in bright galaxy photometr
is less severe than previously reported for the majority of galaxies. Finally,
we describe a series of improvements to the spectroscopic reductions, including
better flat-fielding and improved wavelength calibration at the blue end,
better processing of objects with extremely strong narrow emission lines, and
an improved determination of stellar metallicities. (Abridged)Comment: 20 pages, 10 embedded figures. Accepted to ApJS after minor
correction
SDSS-III: Massive Spectroscopic Surveys of the Distant Universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and Extra-Solar Planetary Systems
Building on the legacy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-I and II),
SDSS-III is a program of four spectroscopic surveys on three scientific themes:
dark energy and cosmological parameters, the history and structure of the Milky
Way, and the population of giant planets around other stars. In keeping with
SDSS tradition, SDSS-III will provide regular public releases of all its data,
beginning with SDSS DR8 (which occurred in Jan 2011). This paper presents an
overview of the four SDSS-III surveys. BOSS will measure redshifts of 1.5
million massive galaxies and Lya forest spectra of 150,000 quasars, using the
BAO feature of large scale structure to obtain percent-level determinations of
the distance scale and Hubble expansion rate at z<0.7 and at z~2.5. SEGUE-2,
which is now completed, measured medium-resolution (R=1800) optical spectra of
118,000 stars in a variety of target categories, probing chemical evolution,
stellar kinematics and substructure, and the mass profile of the dark matter
halo from the solar neighborhood to distances of 100 kpc. APOGEE will obtain
high-resolution (R~30,000), high signal-to-noise (S/N>100 per resolution
element), H-band (1.51-1.70 micron) spectra of 10^5 evolved, late-type stars,
measuring separate abundances for ~15 elements per star and creating the first
high-precision spectroscopic survey of all Galactic stellar populations (bulge,
bar, disks, halo) with a uniform set of stellar tracers and spectral
diagnostics. MARVELS will monitor radial velocities of more than 8000 FGK stars
with the sensitivity and cadence (10-40 m/s, ~24 visits per star) needed to
detect giant planets with periods up to two years, providing an unprecedented
data set for understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of giant
planet systems. (Abridged)Comment: Revised to version published in The Astronomical Journa
Automating expert-defined tests: a suitable approach for the Medical Device Industry?
Testing is frequently reported as a crucial stage in the software development process. With traditional approaches acceptance testing is the last stage of the process before release to customer. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) promotes the role of an expert customer in defining tests and uses tool support to automate and execute these tests. Here the challenge is to support such an expert in the reuse of existing documentation. This paper details an experiment in a generic domain while outlining plans for development of an automated testing
model that could assist medical device companies to adhere to regulatory guidelines by providing them with a fully traceable testing artifacts
AnnoTestWeb/Run: Annotations based Acceptance Testing
Testing is frequently reported as a crucial stage in the software development process. With traditional approaches acceptance testing is the last stage of the process before release. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) promotes the role of an expert customer in defining tests and uses tool support to automate and execute these tests. This abstract outlines a tool, AnnoTestWeb/Run aimed at expert customers specifying acceptance tests with reuse of existing documentatio
Developing acceptance tests from existing documentation using annotations: An experiment
The importance of good software testing is often reported. Traditionally, acceptance testing is the last stage of the testing process before release to the customer. Unfortunately, it is not always appropriate to wait so long for customer feedback. Emerging agile methods recognise this and promote close interaction between the customer and developers for early acceptance testing, often before implementation commences. Indeed, Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) is a process that uses customer interaction to define tests and tool support to automate and execute these. However, with existing tools, tests are usually written from new descriptions or rewritten from existing documentation. Here, the challenge is to allow developers and customers to annotate existing documentation and automatically generate acceptance tests without rewrites or new descriptions. This paper introduces the related ideas and describes a particular experiment that assesses the value of using annotated text to create acceptance tests
Acceptance Test-Driven Development by annotation of existing documentation
Testing is frequently reported as a crucial stage in the software development process. With traditional approaches acceptance testing is the last stage of the process before release. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) promotes the role of an expert customer in defining tests and uses tool support to automate and execute these tests. This paper outlines a tool, AnnoTestWeb/Run aimed at expert customers specifying acceptance tests through reuse of existing documentation. Also outlined is a planned evaluation that includes industrial collaboration aimed at considering the impact of this tool on reuse of existing documentatio
Making Hope and History Rhyme: Reflections on Popular Education and Leadership following a Visit to Highlander
This article draws on our backgrounds as
adult educators in Ireland and our experience at
Highlander in 2014. We review our development as
critical educators, exposed to deep inequalities in
Irish society. We explore role of popular education
in fostering social change, beginning with the
commitment to equality and freedom, whereby, we
produce emancipatory knowledge with students
and participants. This learning process is more
explicitly political and collective
than individual psychological
concepts of learning. The
Highlander experience
provided the opportunity to
interrogate related assumptions
that underpin the concept of
leadership, pointing toward a
more collective and political
framework. The article uses
feminist critical theories as
lenses for this interrogation,
holding that equality and
freedom are mutually constitutive principles of
critical practice. Popular educators foster critical
thinking and reflection. The Other’s Tools, drawing
on the precept that traditional thinking reinforces
the status quo. These critical thinking tools are vital
to question the assumptions that power and control
in society as individualized or de-politicized. We
take this learning into our practice in Ireland
Developing acceptance tests from existing docum. using annot.: An Experiment, ICSE Works
Abstrac