4,529 research outputs found
Intrinsic fantasy: motivation and affect in educational games made by children
The concept of intrinsic fantasy has been considered central to the aim of usefully applying the positive affect of computer games to learning. Games with intrinsic fantasy are defined as having “an integral and continuing relationship with the instructional content being presented”, and are claimed as “more interesting and more educational” than extrinsic fantasy games [1]. Studies of children making educational games have shown they usually create extrinsic games for curriculum learning content. In this study, children were encouraged to create non-curriculum games, more easily distanced from the extrinsic preconceptions of formal schooling. Forty, 7-11 year olds took part in this study (17 boys and 23 girls), designing and making their own games at an after-school club. Despite non-curriculum learning content, no more intrinsic games were created than in previous studies. The children failed to create their own pedagogical models for non-curriculum content and did not see the educational value of intrinsic fantasy games. The implications for transfer and learning in intrinsic games are discussed whilst the definition of intrinsic fantasy itself is questioned. It is argued that the integral relationship of fantasy is unlikely to be the most critical means of improving the educational effectiveness of digital games
Sub-arcsecond high sensitivity measurements of the DG~Tau jet with e-MERLIN
We present very high spatial resolution deep radio continuum observations at
5 GHz (6 cm) made with e-MERLIN of the young stars DG Tau A and B. Assuming it
is launched very close (~=1 au) from the star, our results suggest that the DG
Tau A outflow initially starts as a poorly focused wind and undergoes
significant collimation further along the jet (~=50 au). We derive jet
parameters for DG Tau A and find an initial jet opening angle of 86 degrees
within 2 au of the source, a mass-loss rate of 1.5x10^-8 solar masses/yr for
the ionised component of the jet, and the total ejection/accretion ratio to
range from 0.06-0.3. These results are in line with predictions from MHD
jet-launching theories.Comment: Accepted MNRAS Letter
Tentative Evidence for Relativistic Electrons Generated by the Jet of the Young Sun-like Star DG Tau
Synchrotron emission has recently been detected in the jet of a massive
protostar, providing further evidence that certain jet formation
characteristics for young stars are similar to those found for highly
relativistic jets from AGN. We present data at 325 and 610 MHz taken with the
GMRT of the young, low-mass star DG Tau, an analog of the Sun soon after its
birth. This is the first investigation of a low-mass YSO at at such low
frequencies. We detect emission with a synchrotron spectral index in the
proximity of the DG Tau jet and interpret this emission as a prominent bow
shock associated with this outflow. This result provides tentative evidence for
the acceleration of particles to relativistic energies due to the shock impact
of this otherwise very low-power jet against the ambient medium. We calculate
the equipartition magnetic field strength (0.11 mG) and particle energy
(4x10^40 erg), which are the minimum requirements to account for the
synchrotron emission of the DG Tau bow shock. These results suggest the
possibility of low energy cosmic rays being generated by young Sun-like stars.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
On the Change in Archivability of Websites Over Time
As web technologies evolve, web archivists work to keep up so that our
digital history is preserved. Recent advances in web technologies have
introduced client-side executed scripts that load data without a referential
identifier or that require user interaction (e.g., content loading when the
page has scrolled). These advances have made automating methods for capturing
web pages more difficult. Because of the evolving schemes of publishing web
pages along with the progressive capability of web preservation tools, the
archivability of pages on the web has varied over time. In this paper we show
that the archivability of a web page can be deduced from the type of page being
archived, which aligns with that page's accessibility in respect to dynamic
content. We show concrete examples of when these technologies were introduced
by referencing mementos of pages that have persisted through a long evolution
of available technologies. Identifying these reasons for the inability of these
web pages to be archived in the past in respect to accessibility serves as a
guide for ensuring that content that has longevity is published using good
practice methods that make it available for preservation.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL)
2013, Valletta, Malt
Topological Qubit Design and Leakage
We examine how best to design qubits for use in topological quantum
computation. These qubits are topological Hilbert spaces associated with small
groups of anyons. Op- erations are performed on these by exchanging the anyons.
One might argue that, in order to have as many simple single qubit operations
as possible, the number of anyons per group should be maximized. However, we
show that there is a maximal number of particles per qubit, namely 4, and more
generally a maximal number of particles for qudits of dimension d. We also look
at the possibility of having topological qubits for which one can perform
two-qubit gates without leakage into non-computational states. It turns out
that the requirement that all two-qubit gates are leakage free is very
restrictive and this property can only be realized for two-qubit systems
related to Ising-like anyon models, which do not allow for universal quantum
computation by braiding. Our results follow directly from the representation
theory of braid groups which means they are valid for all anyon models. We also
make some remarks on generalizations to other exchange groups.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure
Soothe ourselves in times of need:A qualitative exploration of how the feeling of "soothe" is understood and experienced in everyday life
On stability of discretizations of the Helmholtz equation (extended version)
We review the stability properties of several discretizations of the
Helmholtz equation at large wavenumbers. For a model problem in a polygon, a
complete -explicit stability (including -explicit stability of the
continuous problem) and convergence theory for high order finite element
methods is developed. In particular, quasi-optimality is shown for a fixed
number of degrees of freedom per wavelength if the mesh size and the
approximation order are selected such that is sufficiently small and
, and, additionally, appropriate mesh refinement is used near
the vertices. We also review the stability properties of two classes of
numerical schemes that use piecewise solutions of the homogeneous Helmholtz
equation, namely, Least Squares methods and Discontinuous Galerkin (DG)
methods. The latter includes the Ultra Weak Variational Formulation
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