3,039 research outputs found
Beyond Heroes & Role Models: Using Biographies to Develop Young Change Agents
Reading, writing, and discussing biographies provide unique opportunities for teachers and students. Critical thinking can be developed through questioning, predicting, and analyzing various biographical mediums--texts, photographs and illustrations, book reviews, websites, films, news articles, etc.--to learn more about an individual\u27s life experiences and choices. Decision making skills can be enhanced when students juxtapose their perceptions of heroes and role models to that of a change agent, even considering how their own life experiences and choices may be contributing to larger actions of change. In this article, the authors discuss six biographies that could be used with young people in the elementary classroom to study change agents. The authors carefully selected and organized their literary choices into four categories: (1) familiar historical figures, (2) familiar living persons, (3) less familiar figures, and finally (4) students and teachers themselves--because they can act as change agents today on a local and personal level
Quantum Error Correction of Observables
A formalism for quantum error correction based on operator algebras was
introduced in [1] via consideration of the Heisenberg picture for quantum
dynamics. The resulting theory allows for the correction of hybrid
quantum-classical information and does not require an encoded state to be
entirely in one of the corresponding subspaces or subsystems. Here, we provide
detailed proofs for the results of [1], derive a number of new results, and we
elucidate key points with expanded discussions. We also present several
examples and indicate how the theory can be extended to operator spaces and
general positive operator-valued measures.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure, preprint versio
Scalable Bayesian inference for self-excitatory stochastic processes applied to big American gunfire data
The Hawkes process and its extensions effectively model self-excitatory
phenomena including earthquakes, viral pandemics, financial transactions,
neural spike trains and the spread of memes through social networks. The
usefulness of these stochastic process models within a host of economic sectors
and scientific disciplines is undercut by the processes' computational burden:
complexity of likelihood evaluations grows quadratically in the number of
observations for both the temporal and spatiotemporal Hawkes processes. We show
that, with care, one may parallelize these calculations using both central and
graphics processing unit implementations to achieve over 100-fold speedups over
single-core processing. Using a simple adaptive Metropolis-Hastings scheme, we
apply our high-performance computing framework to a Bayesian analysis of big
gunshot data generated in Washington D.C. between the years of 2006 and 2019,
thereby extending a past analysis of the same data from under 10,000 to over
85,000 observations. To encourage wide-spread use, we provide hpHawkes, an
open-source R package, and discuss high-level implementation and program design
for leveraging aspects of computational hardware that become necessary in a big
data setting.Comment: Submitted to Statistics and Computin
Scaffolding Classroom Discourse in an Election Year: Keeping a Cool Mood in a Heated Season
Certainly, teaching about politics can be daunting, especially as the political climate in the United States becomes increasingly partisan as a result of heated political rhetoric amplified through a variety of media outlets. However, elementary teachers can help students develop the respectful dispositions they will need as young adults living in an increasingly pluralistic society. These dispositions can be fostered only if teachers are willing to engage their young learners in discussions of politics as part of the curriculum. In this article, the authors discuss ways in which teachers can promote political tolerance and respect during coverage of a presidential election, a high-profile event that social studies educators Mary Haas and Margaret Laughlin describe as the quintessential example of teaching social studies. Here, the authors also describe instructional strategies designed specifically for the upper elementary grades, although they note ways in which teachers can adapt these strategies for younger learners as well
On the surprising effectiveness of a simple matrix exponential derivative approximation, with application to global SARS-CoV-2
The continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) is the mathematical workhorse of
evolutionary biology. Learning CTMC model parameters using modern,
gradient-based methods requires the derivative of the matrix exponential
evaluated at the CTMC's infinitesimal generator (rate) matrix. Motivated by the
derivative's extreme computational complexity as a function of state space
cardinality, recent work demonstrates the surprising effectiveness of a naive,
first-order approximation for a host of problems in computational biology. In
response to this empirical success, we obtain rigorous deterministic and
probabilistic bounds for the error accrued by the naive approximation and
establish a "blessing of dimensionality" result that is universal for a large
class of rate matrices with random entries. Finally, we apply the first-order
approximation within surrogate-trajectory Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for the
analysis of the early spread of SARS-CoV-2 across 44 geographic regions that
comprise a state space of unprecedented dimensionality for unstructured
(flexible) CTMC models within evolutionary biology
Science lives: School choices and ânatural tendenciesâ
An analysis of 12 semi-structured interviews with university-based scientists and non-scientists illustrates their life journeys towards, or away from, science and the strengths and impact of life occurrences leading them to choose science or non-science professions. We have adopted narrative approaches and used Mezirow's transformative learning theory framework. The areas of discussion from the result have stressed on three main categories that include âsmooth transitionâ, âincremental wavering transition' and âtransformative transitionâ. The article concludes by discussing the key influences that shaped initial attitudes and direction in these people through natural inclination, environmental inspirations and perceptions of science
Modelled hydraulic redistribution by sunflower (Helianthus annuusâ L.) matches observed data only after including night-time transpiration
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of John Wiley & Sons for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Plant, Cell & Environment 37 (2014): 899-910, doi:10.1111/pce.12206.The movement of water from moist to dry soil layers through the root systems of plants, referred
to as hydraulic redistribution (HR), occurs throughout the world and is thought to influence
carbon and water budgets and ecosystem functioning. The realized hydrologic, biogeochemical,
and ecological consequences of HR depend on the amount of redistributed water, while the
ability to assess these impacts requires models that correctly capture HR magnitude and timing.
Using several soil types and two eco-types of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) in split-pot
experiments, we examined how well the widely used HR modeling formulation developed by
Ryel et al. (2002) matched experimental determination of HR across a range of water potential
driving gradients. H. annuus carries out extensive nighttime transpiration, and though over the
last decade it has become more widely recognized that nighttime transpiration occurs in multiple
species and many ecosystems, the original Ryel et al. (2002) formulation does not include the
effect of nighttime transpiration on HR. We developed and added a representation of nighttime
transpiration into the formulation, and only then was the model able to capture the dynamics and
magnitude of HR we observed as soils dried and nighttime stomatal behavior changed, both
influencing HR.This work was supported by a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral
Fellowship to RBN, administered by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, by a
grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to NMH, and by DOE Terrestrial Ecosystem
Science grant ER65389 to ZGC and RBN.2014-10-2
Development of Readout Interconnections for the Si-W Calorimeter of SiD
The SiD collaboration is developing a Si-W sampling electromagnetic
calorimeter, with anticipated application for the International Linear
Collider. Assembling the modules for such a detector will involve special
bonding technologies for the interconnections, especially for attaching a
silicon detector wafer to a flex cable readout bus. We review the interconnect
technologies involved, including oxidation removal processes, pad surface
preparation, solder ball selection and placement, and bond quality assurance.
Our results show that solder ball bonding is a promising technique for the Si-W
ECAL, and unresolved issues are being addressed.Comment: 8 pages + title, 6 figure
Defining forgiveness: Christian clergy and general population perspectives.
The lack of any consensual definition of forgiveness is a serious weakness in the research literature (McCullough, Pargament & Thoresen, 2000). As forgiveness is at the core of Christianity, this study returns to the Christian source of the concept to explore the meaning of forgiveness for practicing Christian clergy. Comparisons are made with a general population sample and social science definitions of forgiveness to ensure that a shared meaning of forgiveness is articulated. Anglican and Roman Catholic clergy (N = 209) and a general population sample (N = 159) completed a postal questionnaire about forgiveness. There is agreement on the existence of individual differences in forgiveness. Clergy and the general population perceive reconciliation as necessary for forgiveness while there is no consensus within psychology. The clergy suggests that forgiveness is limitless and that repentance is unnecessary while the general population suggests that there are limits and that repentance is necessary. Psychological definitions do not conceptualize repentance as necessary for forgiveness and the question of limits has not been addressed although within therapy the implicit assumption is that forgiveness is limitless.</p
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