551 research outputs found
Assessment for Project-Based Courses
A project-based course is where students engage in a series of projects, which help lead students to a defined level of skill as specified in the course goals. Unlike a traditional lecture course where students are given examinations to assess the level of student knowledge and understanding, a project-based course may not include any formal examination. The assessment of student progress is often based on the quality of course projects. For this research, students in project-based courses were given a formal exam at the end of the course. The objective of the exam was to determine if there was a discrepancy between student performance on the exam and their projects. While the majority of students performed remarkably similarly on their exam and projects, a number of students (25%) did perform quite differently. This study demonstrated that examinations are still a critical tool for assessing student skill level in project-based courses
GOPEX at the Starfire Optical Range
The Starfire Optical Range successfully conducted laser upink experiments to the Galileo spacecraft during the early morning hours of December 9, 10, 11, and 12, 1992, when the spacecraft was at ranges between 700,000 and 3 million km from Earth. Analysts at JPL have reported as many as 79 pulse detections by the spacecraft. The best weather conditions occurred on the second night when 37 pulses were detected with as many as five on one frame. Signal levels at the spacecraft generally agree with predictions
How to Host a Data Competition: Statistical Advice for Design and Analysis of a Data Competition
Data competitions rely on real-time leaderboards to rank competitor entries
and stimulate algorithm improvement. While such competitions have become quite
popular and prevalent, particularly in supervised learning formats, their
implementations by the host are highly variable. Without careful planning, a
supervised learning competition is vulnerable to overfitting, where the winning
solutions are so closely tuned to the particular set of provided data that they
cannot generalize to the underlying problem of interest to the host. This paper
outlines some important considerations for strategically designing relevant and
informative data sets to maximize the learning outcome from hosting a
competition based on our experience. It also describes a post-competition
analysis that enables robust and efficient assessment of the strengths and
weaknesses of solutions from different competitors, as well as greater
understanding of the regions of the input space that are well-solved. The
post-competition analysis, which complements the leaderboard, uses exploratory
data analysis and generalized linear models (GLMs). The GLMs not only expand
the range of results we can explore, they also provide more detailed analysis
of individual sub-questions including similarities and differences between
algorithms across different types of scenarios, universally easy or hard
regions of the input space, and different learning objectives. When coupled
with a strategically planned data generation approach, the methods provide
richer and more informative summaries to enhance the interpretation of results
beyond just the rankings on the leaderboard. The methods are illustrated with a
recently completed competition to evaluate algorithms capable of detecting,
identifying, and locating radioactive materials in an urban environment.Comment: 36 page
Arc-Smooth Continua
Continua admitting arc-structures and arc-smooth continua are introduced as higher dimensional analogues of dendroids and smooth dendroids, respectively. These continua include such spaces as: cones over compacta, convex continua in l2, strongly convex metric continua, injectively metrizable continua, as well as various topological semigroups, partially ordered spaces, and hyperspaces. The arc-smooth continua are shown to coincide with the freely contractible continua and with the metric K-spaces of Stadtlander. Known characterizations of smoothness in dendroids involving closed partial orders, the set function T, radially convex metrics, continuous selections, and order preserving mappings are extended to the setting of continua with arc-structures. Various consequences of the special contractibility properties of arc-smooth continua are also obtained
Sugar Beet Root Storage Properties Are Unaffected by Cercospora Leaf Spot
© 2023 The American Phytopathological Society. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-09-22-2156-RECercospora leaf spot (CLS; causal agent Cercospora beticola Sacc.) is endemic in many sugar beet production regions due to the widespread distribution of C. beticola and the inability of current management practices to provide complete control of the disease. Roots harvested from plants with CLS, therefore, are inevitably incorporated into sugar beet root storage piles, even though the effects of CLS on root storage properties are largely unknown. Research was conducted to determine the effects of CLS on storage properties including root respiration rate, sucrose loss, invert sugar accumulation, loss in recoverable sucrose yield, and changes in sucrose loss to molasses with respect to CLS disease severity and storage duration. Roots were obtained from plants with four levels of CLS severity in each of three production years, stored at 5°C and 95% relative humidity for up to 120 days, and evaluated for storage characteristics after 30, 90 and 120 days storage. No significant or repeatable effects of CLS on root respiration rate, sucrose loss, invert sugar accumulation, loss in recoverable sucrose yield, or change in sucrose loss to molasses were detected after 30, 90 or 120 days storage regardless of the severity of CLS disease symptoms. Therefore, no evidence was found that CLS accelerates sugar beet storage losses, and it is concluded that roots harvested from plants with CLS can be stored without additional or specialized precaution, regardless of CLS symptom severity.Peer reviewe
Embedded Sensors and Controls to Improve Component Performance and Reliability Conceptual Design Report
The objective of this project is to demonstrate improved reliability and increased performance made possible by deeply embedding instrumentation and controls (I&C) in nuclear power plant (NPP) components and systems. The project is employing a highly instrumented canned rotor, magnetic bearing, fluoride salt pump as its I&C technology demonstration platform. I&C is intimately part of the basic millisecond-by-millisecond functioning of the system; treating I&C as an integral part of the system design is innovative and will allow significant improvement in capabilities and performance. As systems become more complex and greater performance is required, traditional I&C design techniques become inadequate and more advanced I&C needs to be applied. New I&C techniques enable optimal and reliable performance and tolerance of noise and uncertainties in the system rather than merely monitoring quasistable performance. Traditionally, I&C has been incorporated in NPP components after the design is nearly complete; adequate performance was obtained through over-design. By incorporating I&C at the beginning of the design phase, the control system can provide superior performance and reliability and enable designs that are otherwise impossible. This report describes the progress and status of the project and provides a conceptual design overview for the platform to demonstrate the performance and reliability improvements enabled by advanced embedded I&C
Solid-state laser system for laser cooling of Sodium
We demonstrate a frequency-stabilized, all-solid laser source at 589 nm with
up to 800 mW output power. The laser relies on sum-frequency generation from
two laser sources at 1064 nm and 1319 nm through a PPKTP crystal in a
doubly-resonant cavity. We obtain conversion efficiency as high as 2 W/W^2
after optimization of the cavity parameters. The output wavelength is tunable
over 60 GHz, which is sufficient to lock on the Sodium D2 line. The robustness,
beam quality, spectral narrowness and tunability of our source make it an
alternative to dye lasers for atomic physics experiments with Sodium atoms
Should Failure to Protect Laws Include Physical and Emotional Sibling Violence?
Physical and emotional sibling violence is a problematic occurrence for many children, adults, and families, yet this form of violence rarely falls within the purview of state laws and policies. Failure to protect laws offer one avenue through which sibling violence can be addressed by holding parents and caregivers accountable for harm that occurs to a child in their custody. This article provides background information on physical and emotional sibling violence as well as a general overview of failure to protect laws in the context of intimate partner violence with particular consideration of these laws in addressing sibling violence. In addition, the role social work practitioners can play in intervening and addressing sibling violence through psychoeducation leading to policy (i.e., failure to act laws) is presented
MsFLASH Participants’ Priorities for Alleviating Menopausal Symptoms
Objective To describe self-reported menopausal symptom priorities and their association with demographics and other symptoms among participants in an intervention trial for vasomotor symptoms (VMS).
Methods Cross-sectional study embedded in the MsFLASH 02 trial, a three-by-two factorial design of yoga vs. exercise vs. usual activity and omega-3-fatty acid vs. placebo. At baseline, women (n = 354) completed hot flush diaries, a card sort task to prioritize symptoms they would most like to alleviate, and standardized questionnaires.
Results The most common symptom priorities were: VMS (n = 322), sleep (n = 191), concentration (n = 140), and fatigue (n = 116). In multivariate models, women who chose VMS as their top priority symptom (n = 210) reported significantly greater VMS severity (p = 0.004) and never smoking (p = 0.012), and women who chose sleep as their top priority symptom (n = 100) were more educated (p ≤ 0.001) and had worse sleep quality (p < 0.001). ROC curves identified sleep scale scores that were highly predictive of ranking sleep as a top priority symptom.
Conclusions Among women entering an intervention trial for VMS and with relatively low prevalence of depression and anxiety, VMS was the priority symptom for treatment. A card sort may be a valid tool for quickly assessing symptom priorities in clinical practice and research
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