Heterogeneous Capital, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Organization

We outline an Austrian approach to economic organization based on the entrepreneur and the Austrian idea of capital as heterogeneous and time-dimensioned, tow themes associated with Israel Kirzner's contributions. We provide a novel interpretation of capital heterogeneity based on the notion of attributes, argue that attributes are costly to measure and that this links directly to the theory of economic organization. In particular, we develop insights in economic organization based on the notion that entrepreneurs will often have to experiment with capital assets to gauge the value of these assets when deployed in production.Austrian Economics, capital, knowledge

Transforming a linear module into an adaptive one : tackling the challenge

Every learner is fundamentally different. However, few courses are delivered in a way that is tailored to the specific needs of each student. Delivery systems for adaptive educational hypermedia have been extensively researched and found promising. Still, authoring of adaptive courses remains a challenge. In prior research, we have built an adaptive hypermedia authoring system, MOT3.0. The main focus was on enhancing the type of functionality that allows the non-technical author, to efficiently and effectively use such a tool. Here we show how teachers can start from existing course material and transform it into an adaptive course, catering for various learners. We also show how this apparent simplicity still allows for building of flexible and complex adaptation, and describe an evaluation with course authors

Continuous use of authoring for adaptive educational hypermedia : a long-term case study

Adaptive educational hypermedia allows lessons to be personalized according to the needs of the learner. However, to achieve this, content must be split into stand-alone fragments that can be processed by a course personalization engine. Authoring content for this process is still a difficult activity, and it is essential for the popularization of adaptive educational hypermedia that authoring is simplified, so that the various stakeholders in the educational process, students, teachers, administrators, etc. can easily work with such systems. Thus, real-world testing with these stakeholders is essential. In this paper we describe recent extensions and improvements we have implemented in the My Online Teacher MOT3.0 adaptation authoring tool set, based on an initial set of short-term evaluations, and then focus on describing a long-term usage and assessment of the system

The Company of Animals: a Nontoxic Approach.

This document investigates the concept of why man creates animal images and introduces the influences and focus of the artwork contained in the public exhibition. These original images focus on the similarities between animal and human personalities. Also included is a brief history of each ink on paper printmaking process used and a comparison of the results. All of the techniques discussed generally have a photographic process as their basis and use personal photographs and drawings for the foundation of each original print. In conclusion, areas for growth, enhancement, and future work are discussed, including a summary of the personal insights gained through the body of work. This thesis also supports the visual exhibition in the B. Carroll Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, in fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree

Manual and automatic authoring for adaptive hypermedia

Adaptive Hypermedia allows online content to be tailored specifically to the needs of the user. This is particularly valuable in educational systems, where a student might benefit from a learning experience which only displays (or recommends) content that they need to know. Authoring for adaptive systems requires content to be divided into stand-alone fragments which must then be labelled with sufficient pedagogical metadata. Authors must also create a pedagogical strategy that selects the appropriate content depending on (amongst other things) the learner's profile. This authoring process is time-consuming and unfamiliar to most non-technical authors. Therefore, to ensure that students (of all ages, ability level and interests) can benefit from Adaptive Educational Hypermedia, authoring tools need to be usable by a range of educators. The overall aim of this thesis is therefore to identify the ways that this authoring process can be simplified. The research in this thesis describes the changes that were made to the My Online Teacher (MOT) tool in order to address issues such as functionality and usability. The thesis also describes usability and functionality changes that were made to the GRAPPLE Authoring Tool (GAT), which was developed as part of a European FP7 project. These two tools (which utilise different authoring paradigms) were then used within a usability evaluation, allowing the research to draw a comparison between the two toolsets. The thesis also describes how educators can reuse their existing non-adaptive (linear) material (such as presentations and Wiki articles) by importing content into an adaptive authoring system

New Limits on Local Lorentz Invariance in Mercury and Cesium

We report new bounds on Local Lorentz Invariance (LLI) violation in Cs and Hg. The limits are obtained through the observation of the the spin- precession frequencies of 199Hg and 133Cs atoms in their ground states as a function of the orientation of an applied magnetic field with respect to the fixed stars. We measure the amplitudes of the dipole couplings to a preferred direction in the equatorial plane to be 19(11) nHz for Hg and 9(5) microHz for Cs. The upper bounds established here improve upon previous bounds by about a factor of four. The improvement is primarily due to mounting the apparatus on a rotating table. New bounds are established on several terms in the standard model extension including the first bounds on the spin-couplings of the neutron and proton to the z direction, <7e-30 GeV and <7e-29 GeV, respectively.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Effect of a delta tab on fine scale mixing in a turbulent two-stream shear layer

The fine scale mixing produced by a delta tab in a shear layer has been studied experimentally. The tab was placed at the trailing edge of a splitter plate which produced a turbulent two-stream mixing layer. The tab apex tilted downstream and into the high speed stream. Hot-wire measurements in the 3-D space behind the tab detailed the three velocity components as well as the small scale population distributions. These small scale eddies, which represent the peak in the dissipation spectrum, were identified and counted using the Peak-Valley-Counting technique. It was found that the small scale populations were greater in the shear region behind the tab, with the greatest increase occurring where the shear layer underwent a sharp turn. This location was near, but not coincident, with the core of the streamwise vortex, and away from the region exhibiting maximum turbulence intensity. Moreover, the tab increased the most probably frequency and strain rate of the small scales. It made the small scales smaller and more energetic