Helping students connect: architecting learning spaces for experiential and transactional reflection

Given the complex and varied contexts that inform students’ consciousness and occasion their learning, learning spaces are more than physical and virtual spaces. Learning spaces are also a range of situations sedimented in our continuum of experiences that shape our philosophical orientations. As such, this article, written from the perspectives of two faculty members in an English department at a four-year public university, describes our efforts to do the following. First, to draw upon models of instructional design we have experienced in our own educational backgrounds; and equally importantly, to develop learning spaces that support learning that is continuous, situated, and personal. Specifically, we critique the ways in which learning has been segregated from the rest of our life contexts for us throughout our educational histories. The irony is that this de-segregation has motivated us to create diverse learning spaces that provide our students with a more realistic set of tools and techniques for integrative life-long learning

Polymer System and Molding Techniques for Surgical Training Models

Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogels are used to produce high fidelity models for surgical training applications. PVA hydrogel mechanical properties are developed through the use of a freeze-thaw cycling, physical crosslinking process. The resulting gels exhibit a non-linear elastic modulus which can be tailored to match many tissues of the human body. Methods for joining PVA hydrogels were investigated to aid in the production of complicated structures that would be difficult to produce in a single step. Bond strength of PVA gels was characterized using a modified peel test. The porosity and degree of crosslinking of the PVA substrate were investigated as the factors affecting adhesion. Rotational molding was investigated to produce hollow structures unattainable by injection molding. Fumed silica was used as a rheology modifier to maintain a molded shape before freeze-thaw cycling at room temperature. A prototype stomach and embedded vessel model were produced using the rotational molding and joining methods respectively

On the Defect Group of a 6D SCFT

We use the F-theory realization of 6D superconformal field theories (SCFTs) to study the corresponding spectrum of stringlike, i.e. surface defects. On the tensor branch, all of the stringlike excitations pick up a finite tension, and there is a corresponding lattice of string charges, as well as a dual lattice of charges for the surface defects. The defect group is data intrinsic to the SCFT and measures the surface defect charges which are not screened by dynamical strings. When non-trivial, it indicates that the associated theory has a partition vector rather than a partition function. We compute the defect group for all known 6D SCFTs, and find that it is just the abelianization of the discrete subgroup of U(2) which appears in the classification of 6D SCFTs realized in F-theory. We also explain how the defect group specifies defining data in the compactification of a (1,0) SCFT.Comment: 24 page

Nonlinear Mapping of Gaussian Statistics: Theory and Applications to Spacecraft Trajectory Design

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76930/1/AIAA-20177-363.pd

Nonlinear Semi-Analytic Method for Spacecraft Navigation

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77318/1/AIAA-2006-6399-190.pd

Optimal Control of Spacecraft Orbital Maneuvers by the Hamilton-Jacobi Theory

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76084/1/AIAA-2006-6234-808.pd