77 research outputs found
Lessons from the carnival: the implications for Australian teacher education of a distance education program designed for the children of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia.
This paper examines implications for teacher education derived from the evaluation of a distance education program for the Showmen's Guild of Australasia. The program was established in 1989 to meet the educational needs of Guild members who travel from town to town providing agricultural and equestrian shows. A review of the literature reveals that there are numerous difficulties faced by highly mobile students and by rural students and teachers. Interviews conducted with children, parents, home tutors, and itinerant teachers focused on their perceptions of their lives and their general views on education. Data from the interviews revealed the existence of extended and intensive social networks that sustain the itinerant lifestyle. Respondents evaluated the distance education program positively as meeting the educational needs of show children. Work and the work ethic played an important role in the development of children's distinctive identity, while sport and play were associated with local schools and socializing with local children. This study points out the importance of teacher graduates being acquainted with the increasing variety of educational experiences, implications of distance education for children, and benefits and limitations of distance education programs. (LP
Magnetism in the Brown Dwarf Regime
A suite of discoveries in the last two decades demonstrate that we are now at
a point where incorporating magnetic behavior is key for advancing our ability
to characterize substellar and planetary systems. The next decade heralds the
exciting maturation of the now-burgeoning field of brown dwarf magnetism, and
investing now in brown dwarf magnetism will provide a key platform for
exploring exoplanetary magnetism and habitability beyond the solar system. We
anticipate significant discoveries including: the nature of substellar and
planetary magnetic dynamos, the characterization of exo-aurora physics and
brown dwarf magnetospheric environments, and the role of satellites in
manifestations of substellar magnetic activity. These efforts will require
significant new observational capabilities at radio and near infrared
wavelengths, dedicated long-term monitoring programs, and committed support for
the theoretical modeling efforts underpinning the physical processes of the
magnetic phenomenaComment: Decadal 2020 science white pape
Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback
Like people, LLMs do not always generate the best text for a given generation
problem on their first try (e.g., summaries, answers, explanations). Just as
people then refine their text, we introduce SELF-REFINE, a framework for
similarly improving initial outputs from LLMs through iterative feedback and
refinement. The main idea is to generate an output using an LLM, then allow the
same model to provide multi-aspect feedback for its own output; finally, the
same model refines its previously generated output given its own feedback.
Unlike earlier work, our iterative refinement framework does not require
supervised training data or reinforcement learning, and works with a single
LLM. We experiment with 7 diverse tasks, ranging from review rewriting to math
reasoning, demonstrating that our approach outperforms direct generation. In
all tasks, outputs generated with SELF-REFINE are preferred by humans and by
automated metrics over those generated directly with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4,
improving on average by absolute 20% across tasks.Comment: Code, data, and demo at https://selfrefine.info
The Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey - A 690-Square-Degree, 12-Epoch Radio Dataset - I: Catalog and Long-Duration Transient Statistics
We present the Allen Telescope Array Twenty-centimeter Survey (ATATS), a
multi-epoch (12 visits), 690 square degree radio image and catalog at 1.4GHz.
The survey is designed to detect rare, very bright transients as well as to
verify the capabilities of the ATA to form large mosaics. The combined image
using data from all 12 ATATS epochs has RMS noise sigma = 3.94mJy / beam and
dynamic range 180, with a circular beam of 150 arcsec FWHM. It contains 4408
sources to a limiting sensitivity of S = 20 mJy / beam. We compare the catalog
generated from this 12-epoch combined image to the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS),
a legacy survey at the same frequency, and find that we can measure source
positions to better than ~20 arcsec. For sources above the ATATS completeness
limit, the median flux density is 97% of the median value for matched NVSS
sources, indicative of an accurate overall flux calibration. We examine the
effects of source confusion due to the effects of differing resolution between
ATATS and NVSS on our ability to compare flux densities. We detect no
transients at flux densities greater than 40 mJy in comparison with NVSS, and
place a 2-sigma upper limit on the transient rate for such sources of 0.004 per
square degree. These results suggest that the > 1 Jy transients reported by
Matsumura et al. (2009) may not be true transients, but rather variable sources
at their flux density threshold.Comment: 41 pages, 19 figures, ApJ accepted; corrected minor typo in Table
Magnetism in the Brown Dwarf Regime
A suite of discoveries in the last two decades demonstrate that we are now at a point where incorporating magnetic behavior is key for advancing our ability to characterize substellar and planetary systems. The next decade heralds the exciting maturation of the now-burgeoning field of brown dwarf magnetism, and investing now in brown dwarf magnetism will provide a key platform for exploring exoplanetary magnetism and habitability beyond the solar system. We anticipate significant discoveries including: the nature of substellar and planetary magnetic dynamos, the characterization of exo-aurora physics and brown dwarf magnetospheric environments, and the role of satellites in manifestations of substellar magnetic activity. These efforts will require significant new observational capabilities at radio and near infrared wavelengths, dedicated long-term monitoring programs, and committed support for the theoretical modeling efforts underpinning the physical processes of the magnetic phenomena
Multi-Messenger Astronomy with Extremely Large Telescopes
The field of time-domain astrophysics has entered the era of Multi-messenger
Astronomy (MMA). One key science goal for the next decade (and beyond) will be
to characterize gravitational wave (GW) and neutrino sources using the next
generation of Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs). These studies will have a
broad impact across astrophysics, informing our knowledge of the production and
enrichment history of the heaviest chemical elements, constrain the dense
matter equation of state, provide independent constraints on cosmology,
increase our understanding of particle acceleration in shocks and jets, and
study the lives of black holes in the universe. Future GW detectors will
greatly improve their sensitivity during the coming decade, as will
near-infrared telescopes capable of independently finding kilonovae from
neutron star mergers. However, the electromagnetic counterparts to
high-frequency (LIGO/Virgo band) GW sources will be distant and faint and thus
demand ELT capabilities for characterization. ELTs will be important and
necessary contributors to an advanced and complete multi-messenger network.Comment: White paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Surve
Keratinocyte Apoptosis in Epidermal Remodeling and Clearance of Psoriasis Induced by UV Radiation
Psoriasis is a common chronic skin disorder, but the mechanisms involved in the resolution and clearance of plaques remain poorly defined. We investigated the mechanism of action of UVB, which is highly effective in clearing psoriasis and inducing remission, and tested the hypothesis that apoptosis is a key mechanism. To distinguish bystander effects, equal erythemal doses of two UVB wavelengths were compared following in vivo irradiation of psoriatic plaques; one is clinically effective (311βnm) and one has no therapeutic effect on psoriasis (290βnm). Only 311βnm UVB induced significant apoptosis in lesional epidermis, and most apoptotic cells were keratinocytes. To determine clinical relevance, we created a computational model of psoriatic epidermis. Modeling predicted apoptosis would occur in both stem and transit-amplifying cells to account for plaque clearance; this was confirmed and quantified experimentally. The median rate of keratinocyte apoptosis from onset to cell death was 20βminutes. These data were fed back into the model and demonstrated that the observed level of keratinocyte apoptosis was sufficient to explain UVB-induced plaque resolution. Our human studies combined with a systems biology approach demonstrate that keratinocyte apoptosis is a key mechanism in psoriatic plaques clearance, providing the basis for future molecular investigation and therapeutic development
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