The Screen of (Post)Modern Society: American Sociology and Its Discontents

This thesis is structured around a single observation: Jean Baudrillard is very marginal in American sociology and has become increasingly marginal since his death in 2007. We are living in a social world where the tenets of postmodernism seem more actualized now than they were when first introduced in the 1970s and 1980s. In light of this backdrop, the marginality of Baudrillard is intriguing because he was the only formally trained sociologist associated with French postmodernism. If the postmodernism assessment of the social world is becoming increasingly accurate, should American sociologists not be interested in what the only sociologist associated with this intellectual movement had to say? Exploring the possibilities surrounding Baudrillard’s marginality, I argue that it corresponds with and is symptomatic of the decline of the role of theory in sociology. From the vantage point of American sociology, Baudrillard appears to be irrelevant, and his work has to be marginalized, in order to distract from the fact that he and his work ought to be relevant and should be central, given that he illuminates troubling realties that American sociology deems import. I illustrate this by drawing a distinction between what sociology ought to do, as characterized by the goals, purposes, and methods that structured the initial formation of sociology as a discipline, and how American sociology appears, as defined by a trajectory of practicing sociology that gained increasing prominence and value (in terms of institutional prestige and research dollars) in the 1960s and 1970s. I then partially explicate Baudrillard’s theoretical position by focusing on two relatively neglected aspects of his theory, his concepts of symbolic exchange and reversibility. By explicating these concepts, I endeavor to demonstrate how they challenge the practices of contemporary American sociology which largely focuses on reproducing the social system we exist in rather than trying to illuminate the underlying tensions that are driving (post)modern society. I end by explaining how, against most other assessments, Baudrillard qualifies as meeting the tenets for what sociology ought to do. In the face of the impending challenges of critiquing Surveillance Capitalism, Baudrillard provides inspiration for productively facing the future

Symbol synchronization in convolutionally coded systems

Alternate symbol inversion is sometimes applied to the output of convolutional encoders to guarantee sufficient richness of symbol transition for the receiver symbol synchronizer. A bound is given for the length of the transition-free symbol stream in such systems, and those convolutional codes are characterized in which arbitrarily long transition free runs occur

Designing Effective Questions for Classroom Response System Teaching

Classroom response systems (CRSs) can be potent tools for teaching physics. Their efficacy, however, depends strongly on the quality of the questions used. Creating effective questions is difficult, and differs from creating exam and homework problems. Every CRS question should have an explicit pedagogic purpose consisting of a content goal, a process goal, and a metacognitive goal. Questions can be engineered to fulfil their purpose through four complementary mechanisms: directing students' attention, stimulating specific cognitive processes, communicating information to instructor and students via CRS-tabulated answer counts, and facilitating the articulation and confrontation of ideas. We identify several tactics that help in the design of potent questions, and present four "makeovers" showing how these tactics can be used to convert traditional physics questions into more powerful CRS questions.Comment: 11 pages, including 6 figures and 2 tables. Submitted (and mostly approved) to the American Journal of Physics. Based on invited talk BL05 at the 2005 Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers (Albuquerque, NM

Experiences of Burnout Among Adolescent Female Gymnasts: Three Case Studies

Within the current study, the process of adolescent burnout is considered in relation to perceived contributors, symptoms, consequences, and subsequently, effective and ineffective coping strategies. Through case studies, the researchers sought the burnout experiences of three competitive female gymnasts. Participants were selected based on scores obtained from Raedeke and Smith’s (2001) Athlete Burnout Questionnaire. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the process, athlete data were considered in tandem with interviews from at least one parent and one coach. Transcribed data were segmented into meaning units, coded into a hierarchy of themes and verified by each respondent. Despite common trends among the participants, differences were also found in relation to symptoms, contributors, and the progression of the condition. Implications are provided for the athlete/parent/coach triad and also for sport psychologists

Special Topic: Chesapeake Bay Management -- Welfare Implications of Restricted Triazine Herbicide Use in the Chesapeake Bay Region

The United States Environmental Protection Agency has responsibility under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIERA) to formulate pesticide policies on the basis of risk-benefit analyses. To measure the benefits of pesticide use, one must look at the losses in consumer and producer surpluses that would accompany the banning of a particular pesticide. A typical scenario is one in which the banned pesticide is replaced by another that is more costly and/or less effective. The resulting decrease in supply raises the price of the crop on which the banned pesticide is used, and may alter the prices of substitute and complementary crops as well. This article presents a simulation model of com and soybean production in the Chesapeake Bay drainage area to investigate the economic implications of a local ban on triazine herbicides. It reports estimates of lost producer and consumer surplus and the effect that the ban would have on the profitability of agricultural production in the region.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Test results of a Stirling engine utilizing heat exchanger modules with an integral heat pipe

The Heat Pipe Stirling Engine (HP-1000), a free-piston Stirling engine incorporating three heat exchanger modules, each having a sodium filled heat pipe, has been tested at the NASA-Lewis Research Center as part of the Civil Space Technology Initiative (CSTI). The heat exchanger modules were designed to reduce the number of potential flow leak paths in the heat exchanger assembly and incorporate a heat pipe as the link between the heat source and the engine. An existing RE-1000 free-piston Stirling engine was modified to operate using the heat exchanger modules. This paper describes heat exchanger module and engine performance during baseline testing. Condenser temperature profiles, brake power, and efficiency are presented and discussed

Resolución de problemas basada en el análisis : hacer del análisis y del razonamiento el foco de la enseñanza de la física

Usando los resultados provenientes de la investigación educativa en áreas tales como concepciones alternativas, diferencias entre expertos y novatos, adquisición de esquemas, sobrecarga cognitiva y análisis jerárquico, hemos desarrollado un marco para pensar sobre la organización del conocimiento y su uso para la comunicación, y sobre el razonamiento y la resolución de problemas. Basados en este marco y en nuestras reflexiones sobre el aprendizaje y la enseñanza, hemos creado una metodología didáctica llamada resolución de problemas basada en el análisis, diseñada para promover tanto la comprensión conceptual profunda como la capacidad de resolver problemas eficientemente a través de enfocarse en el análisis y el razonamiento como un puente entre las dos. Presentamos aquí una progresión de objetivos de enseñanza que lleva a los estudiantes de ser aprendices novatos a ser «resolvedores» de problemas más eficientes y más reflexivos. Para cada objetivo, resumimos los resultados relevantes de la investigación cognitiva y describimos las recomendaciones didácticas que se pueden derivar de ella. Luego hicimos la lista de algunas estrategias didácticas útiles para promover ese objetivo en particular y, finalmente, indicamos algunas prácticas de aula que deberían ayudar a que los estudiantes progresen desde esta perspectiva.Summary. Using the results of educational research coming from such areas as alternative conceptions, expert-novice differences, schema acquisition, cognitive overload, and hierarchical analysis, we have developed a framework for thinking about knowledge organization and its use for communication, reasoning, and problem solving. Based on this framework, as well as on our own reflections on learning and teaching, we have created an instructional approach called analysis-based problem solving that is designed to promote both deep, conceptual understanding and proficient problem-solving ability, by focusing on analysis and reasoning as a bridge between them both. We report here on a progression of instructional goals that takes students from novice learners to more proficient, more thoughtful problem solvers. For each goal, we summarize the relevant cognitive research results, and describe the pedagogy that can be derived from it. Then, we list some modes of instruction useful for promoting that particular goal, and finally, indicate some classroom practices that should help students make progress within the approach