6,964 research outputs found
Learning physics in context: a study of student learning about electricity and magnetism
This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus
on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of
context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel
university class in electricity and magnetism are analyzed to demonstrate the
central and inextricable role of context in student learning. This work sits
within a broader effort to create and analyze environments which support
student learning in the sciencesComment: 36 pages, 4 Figure
Reinventing College Physics for Biologists: Explicating an epistemological curriculum
The University of Maryland Physics Education Research Group (UMd-PERG)
carried out a five-year research project to rethink, observe, and reform
introductory algebra-based (college) physics. This class is one of the Maryland
Physics Department's large service courses, serving primarily life-science
majors. After consultation with biologists, we re-focused the class on helping
the students learn to think scientifically -- to build coherence, think in
terms of mechanism, and to follow the implications of assumptions. We designed
the course to tap into students' productive conceptual and epistemological
resources, based on a theoretical framework from research on learning. The
reformed class retains its traditional structure in terms of time and
instructional personnel, but we modified existing best-practices curricular
materials, including Peer Instruction, Interactive Lecture Demonstrations, and
Tutorials. We provided class-controlled spaces for student collaboration, which
allowed us to observe and record students learning directly. We also scanned
all written homework and examinations, and we administered pre-post conceptual
and epistemological surveys. The reformed class enhanced the strong gains on
pre-post conceptual tests produced by the best-practices materials while
obtaining unprecedented pre-post gains on epistemological surveys instead of
the traditional losses.Comment: 35 pages including a 15 page appendix of supplementary material
Understanding and Affecting Student Reasoning About Sound Waves
Student learning of sound waves can be helped through the creation of
group-learning classroom materials whose development and design rely on
explicit investigations into student understanding. We describe reasoning in
terms of sets of resources, i.e. grouped building blocks of thinking that are
commonly used in many different settings. Students in our university physics
classes often used sets of resources that were different from the ones we wish
them to use. By designing curriculum materials that ask students to think about
the physics from a different view, we bring about improvement in student
understanding of sound waves. Our curriculum modifications are specific to our
own classes, but our description of student learning is more generally useful
for teachers. We describe how students can use multiple sets of resources in
their thinking, and raise questions that should be considered by both
instructors and researchers.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, 28 references, 7 notes. Accepted for
publication in the International Journal of Science Educatio
Deep Karaoke: Extracting Vocals from Musical Mixtures Using a Convolutional Deep Neural Network
Identification and extraction of singing voice from within musical mixtures
is a key challenge in source separation and machine audition. Recently, deep
neural networks (DNN) have been used to estimate 'ideal' binary masks for
carefully controlled cocktail party speech separation problems. However, it is
not yet known whether these methods are capable of generalizing to the
discrimination of voice and non-voice in the context of musical mixtures. Here,
we trained a convolutional DNN (of around a billion parameters) to provide
probabilistic estimates of the ideal binary mask for separation of vocal sounds
from real-world musical mixtures. We contrast our DNN results with more
traditional linear methods. Our approach may be useful for automatic removal of
vocal sounds from musical mixtures for 'karaoke' type applications
Qualitative protocol for understanding the contribution of Australian policy in the urban planning, justice, energy and environment sectors to promoting health and health equity
Introduction: A well-established body of literature demonstrates that health and equity are strongly influenced by the consequences of governmentsâ policy and resultant actions (or inactions) outside the health sector. Consequently, the United Nations, and its agency the WHO, have called for national leadership and whole-of-government action to understand and address the health impacts of policies in all sectors. This research responds to that call by investigating how policymaking in four sectorsâurban planning, justice, energy and environmentâmay influence the social determinants of health and health equity (SDH/HE). Methods and analysis: The research design is informed by a critical qualitative approach. Three successive stages are included in the design. The first involves analysing all strategic policy documents and selected legislative documents from the four sectors (n=583). The document analysis is based on a coding framework developed to identify alignment between the documents and the SDH/HE. Two policies that demonstrate good practice in regard to SDH/HE will be selected from each sector during the second stage for embedded case study analysis (total n=8). This is intended to illuminate which factors have supported recognition and action on SDH/HE in the selected policies. The third stage involves progressive theoretical integration and development to understand political and institutional facilitators and barriers to action on SDH/HE, both within and between sectors. Ethics and dissemination: The research will provide much needed evidence about how coherent whole-of-government action on SDH/HE can be advanced and contribute knowledge about how health-enhancing policy activity in the four sectors may be optimised. Learnings from the research will be shared via a project advisory group, policy briefings, academic papers, conference presentations and research symposia. Ethics approval has been secured for the embedded case studies, which involve research participants
Investing in animal health research to alleviate poverty
This presentation starts with a discussion on the need of this study and outlines its framework. It then assesses in detail how to attack poverty, and tries to answer the question where do livestock and their diseases fit in? Then it presents the study design and how it is achieved. It then presents a quantitative assessment of poverty, and looks into qualitative approach, poverty indicators, livestock production systems, priority species for the poor along with their objectives and step to achieving them. It then presents an assessment of disease impact with examples. It then examines the distribution of poverty, the association of livestock species with the poor, animal diseases and their impact on the poor, and zoonotic diseases and their impact on the poor. It also presents in detail disease impact ranking. The role of research in alleviating poverty through animal health; research opportunities for the development and adaptation of disease control technologies targeted at the poor and for their delivery adoption and impact; the balance between diseases with the highest impact and the opportunities for research on their better control (a synthesis of research priorities) are other topics of discussion. The paper concludes its discussion with examining issues like generic areas from the field, generic delivery and adoption issues, synthesis of opportunities derived from all sources, and the balance between diseases with the highest impact and the opportunities for research on their better control. The presentation ends with a summary of funding requirements and sources
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