Scaffolding laboratory skills for first-year physics majors

One of the core utilities of a physics laboratory program is the acquisition and application of several core ‘laboratory skills’, such as accurate data logging, comparisons of theoretical and experimental data, and handling experimental uncertainties. Physics laboratory programs do not adequately reinforce content (Holmes et al., 2017), therefore, explicitly teaching laboratory skills is as vital as ever. At the University of New South Wales, we have a laboratory program for a small subset of physics students who intend to complete a physics major (approximately 60 of our yearly 1400). This small cohort offers a unique opportunity to efficiently implement adaptable interventions. In this presentation, we outline the implementation and immediate effects of an explicit scaffolding intervention designed to improve students’ uptake of laboratory skills. Laboratory skills are de-embedded from the laboratory manual and presented as separate learning modules that the students must progress through alongside their labs. The experiments themselves reference the learning modules but the teaching of the skills is now no longer done within the laboratory. Student laboratory submissions are also restructured to require explicit use of the relevant laboratory skills learned thus far. By presenting the lab skills week-by-week (e.g., proper data taking one week, followed by graphing/curve fitting the following, then uncertainties, etc.), we intend to reduce the cognitive load on the students (Plass et al., 2010); before this intervention, students were confused and overwhelmed when asked to incorporate all the term’s lab skills into each submission. We expect that explicit scaffolding of the laboratory skills as separate modules will improve students’ focus on the weekly relevant laboratory skill and the transferability of their newly gained knowledge.  REFERENCES Holmes, N. G., Olsen, J., Thomas, J. L., & Wieman, C. E. (2017). Value added or misattributed? A multi-institution study on the educational benefit of labs for reinforcing physics content. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 13(1), 010129. Plass, J. L., Moreno, R., & Brünken, R. (Eds.). (2010). Cognitive Load Theory. Cambridge University Press

Consolidating CCDs from multiple data sources: A modular approach

Background Healthcare providers sometimes receive multiple continuity of care documents (CCDs) for a single patient encompassing the patient’s various encounters and medical history recorded in different information systems. It is cumbersome for providers to explore different pages of CCDs to find specific data which can be duplicated or even conflicted. This study describes initial steps toward a modular system that integrates and de-duplicates multiple CCDs into one consolidated document for viewing or processing patient-level data. Materials and Methods The authors developed a prototype system to consolidate and de-duplicate CCDs. The system is engineered to be scalable, extensible, and open source. Using a corpus of 150 de-identified CCDs synthetically generated from a single data source with a common vocabulary to represent 50 unique patients, the authors tested the system’s performance and output. Performance was measured based on document throughput and reduction in file size and volume of data. The authors further compared the output of the system with manual consolidation and de-duplication. Testing across multiple vendor systems or implementations was not performed. Results All of the input CCDs was successfully consolidated, and no data were lost. De-duplication significantly reduced the number of entries in different sections (49% in Problems, 60.6% in Medications, and 79% in Allergies) and reduced the size of the documents (57.5%) as well as the number of lines in each document (58%). The system executed at a rate of approximately 0.009–0.03 s per rule depending on the complexity of the rule. Discussion and Conclusion Given increasing adoption and use of health information exchange (HIE) to share data and information across the care continuum, duplication of information is inevitable. A novel system designed to support automated consolidation and de-duplication of information across clinical documents as they are exchanged shows promise. Future work is needed to expand the capabilities of the system and further test it using heterogeneous vocabularies across multiple HIE scenarios

No Hope for Conciliationism

Conciliationism is the family of views that rationality requires agents to reduce confidence or suspend belief in p when acknowledged epistemic peers (i.e. agents who are (approximately) equally well-informed and intellectually capable) disagree about p. While Conciliationism is prima facie plausible, some have argued that Conciliationism is not an adequate theory of peer disagreement because it is self-undermining. Responses to this challenge can be put into two mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups: the Solution Responses which deny Conciliationism is self-undermining and attempt to provide arguments which demonstrate this; and the Skeptical Responses which accept that Conciliationism is self-undermining but attempt to mitigate this result by arguing this is either impermanent and/or not very worrisome. I argue that, by Conciliationism’s own lights, both kinds of responses (almost certainly) fail to save Conciliationism from being self-undermining. Thus, Conciliationism is (almost certainly) permanently self-undermining. This result is significant because it demonstrates that Conciliationism is likely hopeless: there is likely nothing that can save Conciliationism from this challenge. I further argue that Conciliationism, like any view, should be abandoned if it is (almost certainly) hopeless

X-Phi within its Proper Bounds

Using two decades worth of experimental philosophy (aka x-phi), Edouard Machery argues in Philosophy within its Proper Bounds (OUP, 2017) that philosophers’ use of the “method of cases” is unreliable because it has a strong tendency to elicit different intuitive responses from non-philosophers. And because, as Machery argues, appealing to such cases is usually the only way for philosophers to acquire the kind of knowledge they seek, an extensive philosophical skepticism follows. I argue that Machery’s “Unreliability” argument fails because, once its premises are percisified, they are either self-defeating or without justification. This is a significant result because Machery’s arguments are the most widely cited and discussed x-phi arguments for philosophical skepticism and many hold that Machery provides the most empirically informed, convincing, and thus best case for this kind of skepticism. So, if my arguments are sound, then the best x-phi argument for philosophical skepticism fails. I further argue that this result provides strong reason to believe the more general conclusion that “negative” x-phi is likely doomed: x-phi likely can never support a substantive philosophical skepticism. Ultimately, I argue for the broad conclusion that all empirically minded arguments for philosophical skepticism are likely to fail for the same reasons that Machery’s does, i.e. they are (likely) self-defeating

Temperature and atmosphere composition influence on colour change of apples : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Masterate of Horticultural Science, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

In apples colour is a major quality parameter used by consumers to determine apple maturity. A full understanding of the nature of the relationship between storage conditions and apple fruit colour change would be of advantage in formulating models to predict how changes to handling systems would affect fruit colour. While much is known in a general way about how environmental conditions affect colour change, little information is available to characterise the nature of the relationships between temperature, oxygen and carbon dioxide. The postharvest change in colour was measured for two export apple cultivars; Cox's Orange Pippin and Granny Smith. Previous research on these and other apple cultivars has determined that colour change is from green to yellow. The colour of Cox's Orange Pippin and Granny Smith apples were measured by subjective and objective methods during experiments to investigate the effect of temperature and atmosphere composition on colour change. The objective methods used were: chlorophyll extraction and colour using a Minolta chromameter. The subjective method was colour matching for Granny Smith using the NZAPMB maturity colour charts. When related to changes in chlorophyll, the principal skin pigment, the colour parameters used had non-linear relationships. Lightness, hue angle and colour chart score all reflect pigment changes occurring as apples change colour from green to yellow. Lightness values were the least variable followed by hue angle then colour chart score. All methods used showed more sensitivity to changes in chlorophyll content when chlorophyll content was low compared to when chlorophyll content was high. The objective measurements were highly correlated with the subjective measurements and the conclusion was that the use of hue angle or lightness to follow colour change in the skin of Granny Smith and Cox's Orange Pippin apples is an accurate indirect measure of chlorophyll and other pigments. The rate constant of colour change (k), measured using a declining exponential function, from green to yellow, at eleven temperatures over two seasons, two harvests per season and several growers was investigated in order to characterise the relationship between yellowing and temperature. All the methods of colour measurement used had the same relationship with temperature which was described by a modified form of the Arrenhius equation. Re-worked published data also fitted the modified Arrenhius equation. The modified Arrenhius equation was used to generate k for the various colour parameters measured (chlorophyll, hue angle, lightness and colour charts score). The value of k, as a function of temperature, increases slowly between 0°C and 6°C (the lag phase), increases exponentially between 6°C and 20°c and reaches a maximum at 25.3°C for Cox's Orange Pippin and 23.5°C for Granny Smith before declining. Pattern of response to temperature was the same for each cultivar although Granny Smith yellowed more slowly than Cox's Orange Pippin. For Cox's Orange Pippin apples more variation was accounted for by differences between growers than years or harvests within a year. For Granny Smith fruit most variation was accounted for by differences between years. Sixteen atmospheres were used each year for Cox's Orange Pippin and Granny Smith apples from one harvest in order to characterise the relationship between yellowing and oxygen or carbon dioxide. Cox's Orange Pippin and Granny Smith apples differ in their response to oxygen. For Cox's Orange Pippin the value of k as a function of oxygen level increased slowly from 0% to 6% and thereafter increased exponentially from 6% to 19%. This function may be sigmoidal as the k values increase slows above 17% oxygen. The relationship for Granny Smith was poorly defined by this function, k values increased slowly as the oxygen level rose. This could be due to a fundamental physiological or biochemical difference between these two cultivars. Each cultivar had a similar response to carbon dioxide, described by a declining exponential function, with the relationship for Granny Smith being better defined than for Cox's Orange Pippin. The relationship of carbon dioxide with colour change was poorly defined as the effects of oxygen on colour change were not removed from the analysis. Oxygen appears to have a greater influence on colour change than carbon dioxide. Atmospheres for Cox's Orange Pippin apples were not scrubbed for carbon dioxide in 1989 but were in 1990. The pattern of response to oxygen in the absence of levels of carbon dioxide above 1% in the atmosphere did not alter the sigmoidal relationship found. This may be evidence that the effect on yellowing by oxygen and carbon dioxide is by separate processes. Ethylene levels in the atmosphere appeared to have little effect on the rate of yellowing in all the atmospheres studied. The carbon dioxide and oxygen functions were combined into a single equation for use as a predictive model. The temperature function, the modified Arrenhius equation, and the atmosphere functions were combined into one equation to which different environmental values were added. The use of such a model and other practical applications for the information gathered for this thesis are discussed and a chart drawn comparing the hue angle, lightness and colour chart score to chlorophyll level