879 research outputs found
Reducing Hardships: Student Motivations, Educational Workflows, and Technology Choices in Academic Settings
Objective – This study examines The University of Manitoba student attitudes toward technology’s role in University study spaces and in their own educational workflows.
Methods - A series of semi-structured group interviews were conducted with current undergraduate and graduate students at The University of Manitoba. Three group interviews were conducted with questions about individual technology and space use while studying in the library, and three group interviews were conducted with questions about group collaboration using technologies and tools in group study spaces. Transcripts were coded iteratively and separately by the researchers, analyzed for interrater reliability, categorized, and reviewed using axial coding to identify major themes. Through continued examination of these themes, a single theory emerged.
Results - The participants expressed a strong need for independence and feelings of control over their workflows, technological tools, and environments. They discussed how interpersonal concerns and anxieties motivated their workflow choices and acknowledged the (often conflicting) motivational forces of personal necessity and personal preference. When examining the motivations behind the selection of technologies and work practices, it became clear that the respondents make technology and workflow decisions in an attempt to minimize their experience of perceived hardships. These perceived hardships could be social, emotional, educational, environmental, or temporal in nature, and the weight of any one hardship on decision making varied according to the individual.
Conclusions - Libraries should be aware of this foundational user motivation and make choices accordingly - identifying and minimizing hardships whenever possible, unless they are necessary to achieve learning or service-specific goals. Additional research is required to help articulate the nuances experienced by particular student demographics. Librarians and future researchers should also consider investigating the potential disconnect between librarian and user attitudes toward technology, the prioritization of user-centered decision-making, and whether or not systematically disadvantaged social groups have different attitudes toward technology and its place in library spaces and academic work.https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/view/545
Fast Variations of Gamma-Ray Emission in Blazars
The largest group of sources identified by EGRET are Blazars. This sub-class
of AGN is well known to vary in flux in all energy bands on time-scales ranging
from a few minutes (in the optical and X-ray bands) up to decades (radio and
optical regimes). In addition to variations of the gamma-ray flux between
different viewing periods, the brightest of these sources showed a few
remarkable gamma-ray flares on time-scales of about one day, confirming the
extension of the ``Intraday-Variability (IDV)'' phenomenon into the GeV range.
We present first results of a systematic approach to study fast variability
with EGRET data. This statistical approach confirms the existence of IDV even
during epochs when no strong flares are detected. This provides additional
constraints on the site of the gamma-ray emission and allows cross-correlation
analyses with light curves obtained at other frequencies even during periods of
low flux. We also find that some stronger sources have fluxes systematically
above threshold even during quiescent states. Despite the low count rates this
allows explicit comparisons of flare amplitudes with other energy bands.Comment: 5 pages including figures, LaTex, uses aipproc.sty, to appear in the
proceedings of the 4th Compton Symposium at Williamsburg, V
We're the problem; mapping our way out of printing purgatory
This is the tale of a behavioural mapping exercise that revealed some uncomfortable truths
about our library’s role in the student experience, and the journey that got us there; how
we followed the data to discover the many ways our service design exacerbated student
printing troubles, and how divergent UX helped us chart a course out of this mess.https://uxlib.org/uxlibs-the-books
An Infrared Study of the Circumstellar Material Associated with the Carbon Star R Sculptoris
The asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star R Sculptoris (R Scl) is one of the
most extensively studied stars on the AGB. R Scl is a carbon star with a
massive circumstellar shell () which
is thought to have been produced during a thermal pulse event years
ago. To study the thermal dust emission associated with its circumstellar
material, observations were taken with the Faint Object InfraRed CAMera for the
SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST) at 19.7, 25.2, 31.5, 34.8, and 37.1 m. Maps of
the infrared emission at these wavelengths were used to study the morphology
and temperature structure of the spatially extended dust emission. Using the
radiative transfer code DUSTY and fitting the spatial profile of the emission,
we find that a geometrically thin dust shell cannot reproduce the observed
spatially resolved emission. Instead, a second dust component in addition to
the shell is needed to reproduce the observed emission. This component, which
lies interior to the dust shell, traces the circumstellar envelope of R Scl. It
is best fit by a density profile with where
and dust mass of
. The strong departure from an
law indicates that the mass-loss rate of R Scl has not been constant.
This result is consistent with a slow decline in the post-pulse mass-loss which
has been inferred from observations of the molecular gas.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, accepted to Ap
Externally Dispersed Interferometry for Precision Radial Velocimetry
Externally Dispersed Interferometry (EDI) is the series combination of a
fixed-delay field-widened Michelson interferometer with a dispersive
spectrograph. This combination boosts the spectrograph performance for both
Doppler velocimetry and high resolution spectroscopy. The interferometer
creates a periodic spectral comb that multiplies against the input spectrum to
create moire fringes, which are recorded in combination with the regular
spectrum. The moire pattern shifts in phase in response to a Doppler shift.
Moire patterns are broader than the underlying spectral features and more
easily survive spectrograph blurring and common distortions. Thus, the EDI
technique allows lower resolution spectrographs having relaxed optical
tolerances (and therefore higher throughput) to return high precision velocity
measurements, which otherwise would be imprecise for the spectrograph alone.Comment: 7 Pages, White paper submitted to the AAAC Exoplanet Task Forc
Detection of sulphur in the galactic center
A strong detection at the (SIII) 18.71 micron line is reported for the Galactic Center region, Sgr A West. A line flux of 1.7 + or - 0.2x10 to the -17th power W cm(-2) is found for a 20-arc second beam-size measurement centered on IRS 1. A preliminary analysis indicates that the SIII abundance relative to hydrogen is consistent with the cosmic abundance of sulfur, 1.6x10 to the -5th power, if a filling factor of unity within the known clumps is assumed. However, the sulfur abundance in the Galactic Center may be as much as a factor of 3 overabundant if a filling factor of 0.03 is adopted, a value found to hold for some galactic HII regions
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