952 research outputs found
The role of avatars in e-government interfaces
This paper investigates the use of avatars to communicate live message in e-government interfaces. A comparative study is presented that evaluates the contribution of multimodal metaphors (including avatars) to the usability of interfaces for e-government and user trust. The communication metaphors evaluated included text, earcons, recorded speech and avatars. The experimental platform used for the experiment involved two interface versions with a sample of 30 users. The results demonstrated that the use of multimodal metaphors in an e-government interface can significantly contribute to enhancing the usability and increase trust of users to the e-government interface. A set of design guidelines, for the use of multimodal metaphors in e-government interfaces, was also produced
Scheme and Scale Dependence of Charm Production in Neutrino Scattering
We discuss some theoretical uncertainties in the calculation of the cross
section for charm production in charged current deep inelastic neutrino
scattering related to ambiguities in the treatment of terms which are singular
in the limit of a vanishing charm mass. In particular we compare the so-called
variable flavour scheme where these terms are absorbed in the parton
distribution functions containing the charm as an active flavour, with the
so-called fixed flavour scheme with no charm mass subtraction where the charm
appears only in the final state of fixed-order scattering matrix elements.
Using available parametrizations of parton distribution functions we find that
the two schemes lead to largely differing results for separate structure
functions whereas the differences cancel to a large extent in the total cross
section in that kinematical region which has been measured so far.Comment: 20pages, uuencoded postscript, figures include
The Zero-Removing Property and Lagrange-Type Interpolation Series
The classical Kramer sampling theorem, which provides a method for obtaining orthogonal sampling formulas, can be formulated in a more general nonorthogonal setting. In this setting, a challenging problem is to characterize the situations when the obtained nonorthogonal sampling formulas can be expressed as Lagrange-type interpolation series. In this article a necessary and sufficient condition is given in terms of the zero removing property. Roughly speaking, this property concerns the stability of the sampled functions on removing a finite number of their zeros
Trust and control interrelations: New perspectives on the trust control nexus
This article is the post-print version of the published article that may be accessed at the link below. Copyright @ 2007 Sage Publications.This article introduces the special issue on New Perspectives on the Trust-Control Nexus in Organizational Relations. Trust and control are interlinked processes commonly seen as key to reach effectiveness in inter- and intraorganizational relations. The relation between trust and control is, however, a complex one, and research into this relation has given rise to various and contradictory interpretations of how trust and control relate. A well-known discussion is directed at whether trust and control are better conceived as substitutes, or as complementary mechanisms of governance. The articles in this special issue bring the discussion on the relationship between both concepts a step further by identifying common factors, distinctive mechanisms, and key implications relevant for theory building and empirical research. By studying trust and control through different perspectives and at different levels of analysis, the articles provide new theoretical insights and empirical evidence on the foundations of the trust-control interrelations
Social determinants of content selection in the age of (mis)information
Despite the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called \emph{collective
intelligence}, conspiracy theories -- e.g. global warming induced by chemtrails
or the link between vaccines and autism -- find on the Web a natural medium for
their dissemination. Users preferentially consume information according to
their system of beliefs and the strife within users of opposite narratives may
result in heated debates. In this work we provide a genuine example of
information consumption from a sample of 1.2 million of Facebook Italian users.
We show by means of a thorough quantitative analysis that information
supporting different worldviews -- i.e. scientific and conspiracist news -- are
consumed in a comparable way by their respective users. Moreover, we measure
the effect of the exposure to 4709 evidently false information (satirical
version of conspiracy theses) and to 4502 debunking memes (information aiming
at contrasting unsubstantiated rumors) of the most polarized users of
conspiracy claims. We find that either contrasting or teasing consumers of
conspiracy narratives increases their probability to interact again with
unsubstantiated rumors.Comment: misinformation, collective narratives, crowd dynamics, information
spreadin
Experimental Tests of Factorization in Charmless Non-Leptonic Two-Body B Decays
Using a theoretical framework based on the next-to-leading order QCD-improved
effective Hamiltonian and a factorization Ansatz for the hadronic matrix
elements of the four-quark operators, we reassess branching fractions in
two-body non-leptonic decays , involving the lowest lying
light pseudoscalar and vector mesons in the standard model. Using
the sensitivity of the decay rates on the effective number of colors, , as
a criterion of theoretical predictivity, we classify all the current-current
(tree) and penguin transitions in five different classes. The recently measured
charmless two-body decays and charge conjugates) are
dominated by the -stable QCD penguins (class-IV transitions) and their
estimates are consistent with data. The measured charmless and transition ,
on the other hand, belong to the penguin (class-V) and tree (class-III)
transitions. The class-V penguin transitions are in general more difficult to
predict. We propose a number of tests of the factorization framework in terms
of the ratios of branching ratios for some selected decays
involving light hadrons and , which depend only moderately on the
form factors. We also propose a set of measurements to determine the effective
coefficients of the current-current and QCD penguin operators. The potential
impact of decays on the CKM phenomenology is emphasized by
analyzing a number of decay rates in the factorization framework.Comment: 64 pages (LaTex) including 13 figures, requires epsfig.sty; submitted
to Phys. Rev.
Medical educatorsâ beliefs about teaching, learning, and knowledge: development of a new framework
Background: The educational beliefs of medical educators influence their teaching practices. Insight into these beliefs is important for medical schools to improve the quality of education they provide students and to guide faculty development. Several studies in the field of higher education have explored the educational beliefs of educators, resulting in classifications that provide a structural basis for diverse beliefs. However, few classification studies have been conducted in the field of medical education. We propose a framework that describes faculty beliefs about teaching, learning, and knowledge which is specifically adapted to the medical education context. The proposed framework describes a matrix in which educational beliefs are organised two dimensionally into belief orientations and belief dimensions. The belief orientations range from teaching-centred to learning-centred; the belief dimensions represent qualitatively distinct aspects of beliefs, such as âdesired learning outcomesâ and âstudentsâ motivationâ.Methods: We conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 26 faculty members, all of whom were deeply involved in teaching, from two prominent medical schools. We used the original framework of Samuelowicz and Bain as a starting point for context-specific adaptation. The qualitative analysis consisted of relating relevant interview fragments to the Samuelowicz and Bain framework, while remaining open to potentially new beliefs identified during the interviews. A range of strategies were employed to ensure the quality of the results.Results: We identified a new belief dimension and adapted or refined other dimensions to apply in the context of medical education. The belief orientations that have counterparts in the original Samuelowicz and Bain framework are described more precisely in the new framework. The new framework sharpens the boundary between teaching-centred and learning-centred belief orientations.Conclusions: Our findings confirm the relevance of the structure of the original Samuelowicz and Bain beliefs framework. However, multiple adaptations and refinements were necessary to align the framework to the context of medical education. The refined belief dimensions and belief orientations enable a comprehensive description of the educational beliefs of medical educators. With these adaptations, the new framework provides a contemporary instrument to improve medical education and potentially assist in faculty development of medical educators.Teaching and Teacher Learning (ICLON
Gauge fixing and the Hamiltonian for cylindrical spacetimes
We introduce a complete gauge fixing for cylindrical spacetimes in vacuo
that, in principle, do not contain the axis of symmetry. By cylindrically
symmetric we understand spacetimes that possess two commuting spacelike Killing
vectors, one of them rotational and the other one translational. The result of
our gauge fixing is a constraint-free model whose phase space has four
field-like degrees of freedom and that depends on three constant parameters.
Two of these constants determine the global angular momentum and the linear
momentum in the axis direction, while the third parameter is related with the
behavior of the metric around the axis. We derive the explicit expression of
the metric in terms of the physical degrees of freedom, calculate the reduced
equations of motion and obtain the Hamiltonian that generates the reduced
dynamics. We also find upper and lower bounds for this reduced Hamiltonian that
provides the energy per unit length contained in the system. In addition, we
show that the reduced formalism constructed is well defined and consistent at
least when the linear momentum in the axis direction vanishes. Furthermore, in
that case we prove that there exists an infinite number of solutions in which
all physical fields are constant both in the surroundings of the axis and at
sufficiently large distances from it. If the global angular momentum is
different from zero, the isometry group of these solutions is generally not
orthogonally transitive. Such solutions generalize the metric of a spinning
cosmic string in the region where no closed timelike curves are present.Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in Physical Review
A Method for Compiling and Executing Expressive Assertions
Programming with assertions constitutes an effective tool
to detect and correct programming errors. The ability of executing formal
specifications is essential in order to test automatically a program
with respect to its assertions. However, formal specifications may describe
recursive models which are difficult to identify so current assertion
checkers limit, in a considerable way, the expressivity of the assertion
language. In this paper, we are interested in showing how transformational
synthesis can help to execute âexpressiveâ assertions of the form
âx(r(x) â QyR(x, y)) where x is a set of variables to be instantiated
at execution time, Q is an existential or universal quantifier and R a
quantifier free formula in the language of a particular first-order theory
A we call assertion context. The class of assertion contexts is interesting
because it presents a balance between expressiveness for writing assertions
and existence of effective methods for executing them by means of
synthesized (definite) logic programs
- âŠ