Problem-based learning and education reform in Taiwan an exploration in one medical school

Medical schools in Taiwan accelerated their reform after the year 2000. This thesis focuses on the origin and process of medical education reform in Taiwan and probe the development of medical students. One new medical school that adopted PBL (Problem-based Learning) was chosen as the research target. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted on five students from the target school and twelve educators/teachers from nine medical schools/organizations. The target school adopted PBL and the data showed that under the new teaching format and more humanistic approach to the course arrangement, the students did exhibit some different characteristics. Whether or not these would persist remains questionable under the current healthcare environment and in the light of the influence that cultural capital exerts on students and educators alike. Moreover, because of the nature of a hegemonic medical society, not only does a free communication environment between doctors and patients that the reform aims to reach seems impossible, but also a patient-centred healthcare system looks unattainable. However, the dialogue inherent in PBL offers a possibility for both teachers and learners to be inspired and liberated. What emerges from this research is that PBL has influenced students’ communication skill, willingness to cooperate, and habits of active learning. It is hoped that medical education will take a less utilitarian view and focus on the education itself. Only after more medical students benefit from the process and become critical thinkers will a fundamental healthcare reform be possible

Radial excitations of mesons and nucleons from QCD sum rules

Within the framework QCD sum rules, we use the least square fitting method to investigate the first radial excitations of the nucleon and light mesons such as $\rho$, $K^{*}$, $\pi$ , $\varphi$. The extracted masses of these radial excitations are consistent with the experimental data. Especially we find that the decay constant of $\pi(1300)$, which is the the first radial excitation of $\pi$, is tiny and strongly suppressed as a consequence of chiral symmetry.Comment: 19 page

Nonlinear Electromagnetic Quasinormal Modes and Hawking Radiation of A Regular Black Hole with Magnetic Charge

Based on a regular exact black hole (BH) from nonlinear electrodynamics (NED) coupled to General Relativity, we investigate its stability of such BH through the Quasinormal Modes (QNMs) of electromagnetic (EM) field perturbation and its thermodynamics through Hawking radiation. In perturbation theory, we can deduce the effective potential from nonlinear EM field. The comparison of potential function between regular and RN BHs could predict their similar QNMs. The QNMs frequencies tell us the effect of magnetic charge $q$, overtone $n$, angular momentum number $l$ on the dynamic evolution of NLED EM field. Furthermore we also discuss the cases near extreme condition of such magnetically charged regular BH. The corresponding QNMs spectrum illuminates some special properties in the near-extreme cases. For the thermodynamics, we employ Hamilton-Jacobi method to calculate the near-horizon Hawking temperature of the regular BH and reveal the relationship between classical parameters of black hole and its quantum effect

Forecasting unstable processes

Previous analysis on forecasting theory either assume knowing the true parameters or assume the stationarity of the series. Not much are known on the forecasting theory for nonstationary process with estimated parameters. This paper investigates the recursive least square forecast for stationary and nonstationary processes with unit roots. We first prove that the accumulated forecast mean square error can be decomposed into two components, one of which arises from estimation uncertainty and the other from the disturbance term. The former, of the order of $\log(T)$, is of second order importance to the latter term, of the order T. However, since the latter is common for all predictors, it is the former that determines the property of each predictor. Our theorem implies that the improvement of forecasting precision is of the order of $\log(T)$ when existence of unit root is properly detected and taken into account. Also, our theorem leads to a new proof of strong consistency of predictive least squares in model selection and a new test of unit root where no regression is needed. The simulation results confirm our theoretical findings. In addition, we find that while mis-specification of AR order and under-specification of the number of unit root have marginal impact on forecasting precision, over-specification of the number of unit root strongly deteriorates the quality of long term forecast. As for the empirical study using Taiwanese data, the results are mixed. Adaptive forecast and imposing unit root improve forecast precision for some cases but deteriorate forecasting precision for other cases.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/074921706000000969 in the IMS Lecture Notes Monograph Series (http://www.imstat.org/publications/lecnotes.htm) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org