1,003 research outputs found
Changes in tensile strength loss of cotton strips with season and soil depths under 4 tree species
Research Notes : United States : Screening progeny of mutagen-treated soybean seeds for nonfluorescent root mutants
Delannay and Palmer (1982) reported four nonallelic mutants, three re-cessive and one dominant, that controlled root fluorescence in soybean. It was during this investigation that we became interested in looking for mutagen-induced nonfluorescent mutants. In the fall of 1980, we wrote to various soybean researchers who were engaged in mutagenesis programs
Linkage analysis of a derived glucose phenotype in the Genetic Analysis Workshop 13 simulated data using a variety of Haseman-Elston based regression methods
Using art for public engagement: reflections on the Dementia and Imagination project
Creative outputs engage the public and can be used to share research. This paper reports on public engagement activities that were part of the research project Dementia and Imagination (D&I). We found that artwork and creative activities effectively engaged a range of audiences and challenged negative ideas about dementia. For the project team, public engagement developed relationships with collaborators and connected the research to different community settings, influencing future programmes of work. Further work could explore public engagement in diverse settings to assess which approaches are effective in maximising research value and wider community benefit
Social trajectories or disrupted identities? : Changing and competing models of teacher professionalism under New Labour
Since the 1988 Education Reform Act, the teacher’s role in England has changed in many ways, a process which intensified under New Labour after 1997. Conceptions of teacher professionalism have become more structured and formalized, often heavily influenced by government policy objectives. Career paths have become more diverse and specialised. In this article, three post-1997 professional roles are given consideration as examples of these new specialised career paths: Higher Level Teaching Assistants, Teach First trainees and Advanced Skills Teachers. The article goes on to examine such developments within teaching, using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to inform the analysis, as well as Bernstein’s theories of knowledge and identity. The article concludes that there has been considerable specialization and subsequent fragmentation of roles within the teaching profession, as part of workforce remodelling initiatives. However, there is still further scope for developing a greater sense of professional cohesion through social activism initiatives, such as the children's agenda. This may produce more stable professional identities in the future as the role of teachers within the wider children’s workforce is clarified
Bayesian Conditioning, the Reflection Principle, and Quantum Decoherence
The probabilities a Bayesian agent assigns to a set of events typically
change with time, for instance when the agent updates them in the light of new
data. In this paper we address the question of how an agent's probabilities at
different times are constrained by Dutch-book coherence. We review and attempt
to clarify the argument that, although an agent is not forced by coherence to
use the usual Bayesian conditioning rule to update his probabilities, coherence
does require the agent's probabilities to satisfy van Fraassen's [1984]
reflection principle (which entails a related constraint pointed out by
Goldstein [1983]). We then exhibit the specialized assumption needed to recover
Bayesian conditioning from an analogous reflection-style consideration.
Bringing the argument to the context of quantum measurement theory, we show
that "quantum decoherence" can be understood in purely personalist
terms---quantum decoherence (as supposed in a von Neumann chain) is not a
physical process at all, but an application of the reflection principle. From
this point of view, the decoherence theory of Zeh, Zurek, and others as a story
of quantum measurement has the plot turned exactly backward.Comment: 14 pages, written in memory of Itamar Pitowsk
Bayesian Inference in Processing Experimental Data: Principles and Basic Applications
This report introduces general ideas and some basic methods of the Bayesian
probability theory applied to physics measurements. Our aim is to make the
reader familiar, through examples rather than rigorous formalism, with concepts
such as: model comparison (including the automatic Ockham's Razor filter
provided by the Bayesian approach); parametric inference; quantification of the
uncertainty about the value of physical quantities, also taking into account
systematic effects; role of marginalization; posterior characterization;
predictive distributions; hierarchical modelling and hyperparameters; Gaussian
approximation of the posterior and recovery of conventional methods, especially
maximum likelihood and chi-square fits under well defined conditions; conjugate
priors, transformation invariance and maximum entropy motivated priors; Monte
Carlo estimates of expectation, including a short introduction to Markov Chain
Monte Carlo methods.Comment: 40 pages, 2 figures, invited paper for Reports on Progress in Physic
Acute surgical wound-dressing procedure: Description of the steps involved in the development and validation of an observational metric
The aim of this study was to develop an observational metric that could be used to assess the performance of a practitioner in completing an acute surgical wound-dressing procedure using aseptic non-touch technique (ANTT). A team of clinicians, academics, and researchers came together to develop an observational metric using an iterative six-stage process, culminating in a Delphi panel meeting. A scoping review of the literature provided a background empirical perspective relating to wound-dressing procedure performance. Video recordings of acute surgical wound-dressing procedures performed by nurses in clinical (n = 11) and simulated (n = 3) settings were viewed repeatedly and were iteratively deconstructed by the metric development group. This facilitated the identification of the discrete component steps, potential errors, and sentinel (serious) errors, which characterise a wound dressing procedure and formed part of the observational metric. The ANTT wound-dressing observational metric was stress tested for clarity, the ability to be scored, and interrater reliability, calculated during a further phase of video analysis. The metric was then subjected to a process of cyclical evaluation by a Delphi panel (n = 21) to obtain face and content validity of the metric. The Delphi panel deliberation verified the face and content validity of the metric. The final metric has three phases, 31 individual steps, 18 errors, and 27 sentinel errors. The metric is a tool that identifies the standard to be attained in the performance of acute surgical wound dressings. It can be used as both an adjunct to an educational programme and as a tool to assess a practitioner's performance of a wound-dressing procedure in both simulated and clinical practice contexts
- …