800 research outputs found
Valued Information Resources when making Diagnoses: The experiences of Medical Students in a Clinical Reasoning Course
OBJECTIVES: The clinical reasoning process, aimed at making an accurate diagnosis, represents a complex activity. No studies to date have reported on how medical students harness existing information resources in their clinical reasoning courses to arrive at correct diagnoses. This study fills that gap. METHODS: Cross Sectional Study. An anonymous survey asked students to recall their most useful information resources halfway through their three clinical reasoning courses. Students then were asked to evaluate the comparative usefulness of these selected resources. Finally, students reported on those resources that they no longer found useful. This survey sought to learn what information resources medical students value so that librarians can provide the best possible instructional and collection resources. RESULTS: 69 of the 107 students enrolled in the Clinical Reasoning 2 course completed the three-part survey (64.5% response rate). Students frequently mentioned finding point-of-care tools, general web browsers, journal articles, course materials, and textbooks to be useful. When forced to rank their preferences students added medical society websites and the diagnostic tool Diagnosaurus in AccessMedicine. Students halfway through their three courses no longer found medical licensure exam review guides, patient-oriented sources, or course lecture notes to be helpful. CONCLUSIONS: Medical students halfway their three clinical reasoning courses provided surprising results as well as some expected results in this cross sectional study
Integrated assurance assessment of a reconfigurable digital flight control system
The integrated application of reliability, failure effects and system simulator methods in establishing the airworthiness of a flight critical digital flight control system (DFCS) is demonstrated. The emphasis was on the mutual reinforcement of the methods in demonstrating the system safety
Effect of Pivot Point on Aerodynamic Force and Vortical Structure of Pitching Flat Plate Wings
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106512/1/AIAA2013-792.pd
Hierarchy Theory of Evolution and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Some Epistemic Bridges, Some Conceptual Rifts
Contemporary evolutionary biology comprises a plural landscape of multiple co-existent conceptual frameworks and strenuous voices that disagree on the nature and scope of evolutionary theory. Since the mid-eighties, some of these conceptual frameworks have denounced the ontologies of the Modern Synthesis and of the updated Standard Theory of Evolution as unfinished or even flawed. In this paper, we analyze and compare two of those conceptual frameworks, namely Niles Eldredge’s Hierarchy Theory of Evolution (with its extended ontology of evolutionary entities) and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (with its proposal of an extended ontology of evolutionary processes), in an attempt to map some epistemic bridges (e.g. compatible views of causation; niche construction) and some conceptual rifts (e.g. extra-genetic inheritance; different perspectives on macroevolution; contrasting standpoints held in the “externalism–internalism” debate) that exist between them. This paper seeks to encourage theoretical, philosophical and historiographical discussions about pluralism or the possible unification of contemporary evolutionary biology
Self-Organized Criticality Driven by Deterministic Rules
We have investigated the essential ingredients allowing a system to show Self
Organized Criticality (SOC) in its collective behavior. Using the Bak-Sneppen
model of biological evolution as our paradigm, we show that the random
microscopic rules of update can be effectively substituted with a chaotic map
without changing the universality class. Using periodic maps SOC is preserved,
but in a different universality class, as long as the spectrum of frequencies
is broad enough.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex (tar.gz), 4 eps-figures include
Isolated Gust Generation for the Investigation of Airfoil-Gust Interaction
As part of an effort to examine the impact of vortical gusts on airfoils, a simple gust
generator has been built and investigated. This consists of a heaving
at plate capable of
following a specifed transverse trajectory across a water tunnel. The relationship between
the trajectory and the properties of the gusts that are shed downstream is characterized
for non-periodic heaving motion described by Eldredge's smooth motion equation. PIV
experiments show that the circulation of the vortical gust is proportional to the heaving
speed of the plate. Tests with a downstream NACA 0018 airfoil demonstrate repeatable
forces in response to the produced gusts
Tangled Nature: A model of emergent structure and temporal mode among co-evolving agents
Understanding systems level behaviour of many interacting agents is
challenging in various ways, here we'll focus on the how the interaction
between components can lead to hierarchical structures with different types of
dynamics, or causations, at different levels. We use the Tangled Nature model
to discuss the co-evolutionary aspects connecting the microscopic level of the
individual to the macroscopic systems level. At the microscopic level the
individual agent may undergo evolutionary changes due to mutations of
strategies. The micro-dynamics always run at a constant rate. Nevertheless, the
system's level dynamics exhibit a completely different type of intermittent
abrupt dynamics where major upheavals keep throwing the system between
meta-stable configurations. These dramatic transitions are described by a
log-Poisson time statistics. The long time effect is a collectively adapted of
the ecological network. We discuss the ecological and macroevolutionary
consequences of the adaptive dynamics and briefly describe work using the
Tangled Nature framework to analyse problems in economics, sociology,
innovation and sustainabilityComment: Invited contribution to Focus on Complexity in European Journal of
Physics. 25 page, 1 figur
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