GPS Based Design of the Local Clock Control System based on the Optimally Unbiased Moving Average Filter

In this paper we made the simulation steering of the local clock t'ime errors with simple moving average (MA), optimally unbiased moving average (OMA), the two and three-state Kalman filters. The references signal (precise time) was suministred by GPS. In this task we have two important activities, estimating and the error control, so the,principal parameter in this study is the root mean square error (RMSE) of steering. When steering the GPS-based time error in the local clock with four filters, we found out that, of the filter with the same time constant, the optimally unbiased MA filter desmostred the steering error between the two and three state Kalman filter.Universidad de Guanajuat

Angra Neutrino Project: status and plans

We present the status and plans of the Angra Project, a new nuclear reactor neutrino oscillation experiment, proposed to be built in Brazil at the Angra dos Reis nuclear reactor complex. This experiment is aimed to measure theta_13, the last unknown of the three neutrino mixing angles. Combining a high luminosity design, very low background from cosmic rays and careful control of systematic errors at the 1% level, we propose a high sensitivity multi-detector experiment, able to reach a sensitivity to antineutrino disappearance down to sin^2(2*theta_13) = 0.006 in a three years running period, improving present limits constrained by the CHOOZ experiment by more than an order of magnitude.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, talk presented by J.C. Anjos ([email protected]) at NuFact05, 21-26 June 2005, Frascati, Ital

Acceptability and Feasibility of Web-based Diabetes Instruction for Latinos with Limited Education and Computer Experience

Introduction: The internet offers an important avenue for developing diabetes self-management skills, but many Latinos have limited experience with computer-based instruction. Objective: To evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of delivering a web-based diabetes education program in a computer classroom for Spanish-speaking Latinos. Methods: Spanish-speaking Latinos (n=26) attended two classroom sessions to learn computer skills while navigating a web-based diabetes education platform. Diabetes knowledge was assessed before and after the intervention; structured interviews were completed to assess program acceptability. Results: Half of participants (50%) had not previously used a computer. Post-intervention, diabetes knowledge improved significantly (p=.001). The majority of participants (86%) indicated a preference for web-based instruction as a stand-alone program or as an adjunct to traditional classroom training, particularly citing the advantage of being able to engage the material at their own pace. Conclusion: With limited support, Latinos with minimal computer experience can effectively engage in web-based diabetes education

Improving the undergraduate science experience through an evidence-based framework for design, implementation and evaluation of flipped learning

© ASCILITE 2017 - Conference Proceedings - 34th International Conference of Innovation, Practice and Research in the Use of Educational Technologies in Tertiary Education.All right reserved. Flipped Learning (FL) is a student-centred pedagogical approach where new content is introduced prior to class which permits more time during class for active learning. Despite the growing body of evidence of the effectiveness of FL, many educators are reluctant to adopt this approach to teaching or are unsure of how to implement FL in their classes. Many students are uncertain of how to adapt their approaches to learning to a FL curriculum. In response to these challenges and calls for a robust framework to guide the design and implementation of FL, we developed the Flipped Teacher and Flipped Learner (FTFL) Framework based on the pedagogical literature. This paper reports on the use of our FTFL framework in the redesign of a large first year science subject from a traditional delivery to a FL delivery. We evaluated the efficacy of the redesign using a mixed methods approach with data on students' interactions with FL activities, and student and educator experiences. Findings from two iterations of the redesign indicate successful implementation of FL through high student engagement with online and class materials, and positive feedback from students and academics. Using the FTFL framework to guide the design and integration of FL, with an emphasis on clear communication, is key to our successful FL intervention and support of student learning

Enhancing engagement in flipped learning across undergraduate Science using the Flipped Teacher and Flipped Learner Framework

The flipped classroom describes one approach to blended learning in which new instructional content is delivered online prior to class, making time for more student-centred active learning during the face-to-face class. Despite the advantages of a flipped classroom approach, such as flexibility, more time for students to consolidate ideas, and more opportunities for collaborative learning and reflection (Kim, Kim, Khera & Getman, 2014), flipped classrooms are still under-researched and under-evaluated (Abeysekera & Dawson, 2015). Many academics are unsure of how to implement flipped classrooms and students often have difficulty adopting this approach to learning because they are used to traditional transmission approaches (Chen, Wang & Chen, 2014). To facilitate more student-centred blended learning in our faculty, we aimed to: 1. Use the “Flipped Teacher and Flipped Learner Framework” (Reyna, Huber & Davila, 2015) to design, implement, communicate and evaluate flipped learning activities in undergraduate Science subjects; and 2. Build students’ understanding of the advantages of the flipped classroom model in order to improve their overall engagement and approach to learning. The Flipped Teacher and Flipped Learner Framework (Reyna et al., 2015) identifies seven elements that are influential to implementing a flipped learning activity. Using this framework, flipped learning activities have been integrated into the Science curricula. In 2016, the Framework was applied in a first year and a second year subject. A mixed methods approach (Creswell & Plano-Clark, 2011) was used to evaluate the efficacy of the Framework, particularly the role of communication (element 6) of the benefits of flipped learning to students and academics. Student completion of pre-class online tasks was tracked through the learning management system. Within each subject, questionnaires were used to evaluate student experiences of flipped learning. Where applicable, student academic performance relating to flipped activities was evaluated. Preliminary data analyses indicate that the majority of students completed their online pre-class activities (e.g. >90% in the first year subject, n = 751 students). In the questionnaires, the majority of students in both subjects reported that they understood the benefits for their learning of completing online pre-work prior to face-to-face classes. Furthermore, the majority of students in the second year subject reported that the flipped classroom approach enhanced their learning. Our early results indicate that communicating to students and academics the rationale for using a flipped classroom approach is key to successful implementation of the flipped classroom model. Further testing of the framework in other subjects across the science degree will advance our understanding of the impacts of and best practice for flipped classrooms in Science higher education. References Abeysekera, L., & Dawson, P. (2015). Motivation and cognitive load in the flipped classroom: definition, rationale and a call for research. Higher Education Research & Development, 34(1), 1-14. Chen, Y., Wang, Y., & Chen, N.S. (2014). Is FLIP enough? Or should we use the FLIPPED model instead?. Computers & Education, 79, 16-27. Creswell, J. W., & Plano-Clark, V. L. (2011). Designing and conducting Mixed Methods Research. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Kim, M.K., Kim, S.M., Khera, O., & Getman, J. (2014). The experience of three flipped classrooms in an urban university: an exploration of design principles. The Internet and Higher Education, 22, 37-50. Reyna J, Huber E, Davila YC (2015) Designing your Flipped Classroom: an evidence-based framework to guide the Flipped Teacher and the Flipped Learner. The 12th Annual Conference of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, RMIT Melbourne, 27th to 30th October, 2015, pages 91-92

The Matter of Law: Reconsidering the Natural Law Tradition

This dissertation recovers several stories from earlier times about law’s relationship to embodiment, materiality, and nature. These stories range chronologically from Sophocles’ Antigone in the fifth-century BCE to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs in the second half of the nineteenth-century, to contemporary inquiries into legal materialisms. Included are texts in the Western tradition of jurisprudence that deal with sometimes wide-ranging and diverse topics from modern social contract theory and the concept of political obligation to the phenomenon of animal trials, the classical Greek nomos—phusis debate, the medieval Scholastic concept of analogia entis, and contemporary discussions about law’s spatial dimension. An effort to illuminate how these stories collectively compose an important—if today often overlooked—strand of the natural law tradition connects all the chapters. This strand of natural law thinking engaged law as a material embodied practice. It offers another way of doing and thinking about law that emphasizes material bodies and their interests rather than some abstract subject of law and right. The dissertation argues that these stories from the natural law tradition—from regions and thinkers intimate with and integral to the West’s contemporary constellation—can still critically illuminate the matter of law in our world. Chapters One, Two, and Three recover and disclose an understanding of law and nature that I show is obscured today and yet has been effectively articulated in the past in a tradition of natural law. My interest in these “story” chapters is with what possibilities for law and nature we obscure when we tell ourselves stories about the loss of the natural law or the disintegration of natural law theory. Each of these chapters turns to a specific historical moment and text in the Western natural law tradition to reconsider its possibilities and ultimately pursue a “path not taken,” or a “minor literature” of natural law thought so to speak. The first chapter reveals three visions of law circulating in Sophocles’ Antigone: legal positivist, conventional natural law, and one that focuses on the rapport between Polynices’ corpse and the other characters of the play. This third vision of law offers an alternative reading of natural law as a material call rather than the unwritten imperatives or higher laws of the gods. The second chapter argues that for Saint Thomas Aquinas, natural law theory was never a moral theory, but a task of boundary drawing, care, and multiplication. Aquinas’s interest was with the historical and ongoing production of boundaries and limits between the natural and its others. Aquinas did not reduce nature and its other to a stable binary, but constantly explored its limits along a proliferating spectrum of natural, supernatural, artificial, and preternatural. The third chapter shows how Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s famous sex and bondage novella Venus in Furs rethinks the concepts of contract and bond(age) at the very heart of legal positivism’s attempt to define itself in the terms of social contract theory. The novella tells an alternative story of what it means to contract, one that is not oriented toward securing the future and establishing “islands of predictability,” but towards being mindful—sometimes painfully mindful—of the present, of flesh contracting in the cold and under the whip, of hands literally con-tracted (or, drawn tight) to the bedpost with rope. The final chapter examines historical cases of nonhuman animal legal trials to show that they reveal a model of law that places human communities within nature rather than apart or outside it. I conclude by bringing the themes of law, nature, and materiality these stories from the natural law tradition disclose into conversation with contemporary new materialist discussions of nature

Food Challenge: Serving Up 4-H to Non-Traditional Audiences

This article describes a novel approach for introducing 4-H to non-traditional/diverse audiences using 4-H Food Challenge. Set in a low SES and minority-serving rural school, Food Challenge was presented during the school day to all 7th grade students, with almost half voluntarily participating in an after-school club component. Program design supported school-level STEM enrichment and career development priorities. Topics addressed ranged from food handling/safety to nutrition and cost analysis. Conclusions include a summary of student outcomes and recommendations for school and adult partnerships. Implications for reaching non-traditional 4-H audiences through non-competition formats are discussed

Low-intensity resistance exercise training increases lower limb force in healthy retirees

INTRODUCTION: Aging is associated with decreasing muscle strength. Older people who have never done resistance work in a gym require gradual training programs to help them increasing confidence on this type of training. The use of low intensity resistance exercise with slow movements and tonic force improvement has been proposed as an effective method to increase muscular strength. There is little literature on the effect of intensity training on 30% of one repetition maximum (RM). PURPOSE: To establish the changes in the strength of upper and lower limb force after participating in a 10 week low-intensity resistance exercise for a group of healthy retirees aged between 50 and 70 years. METHODS: Quasi-experimental design, with two measurements. Fifty-eight participants were separated into two groups according to their available schedule. The experimental group received low-intensity resistance training for ten weeks, three times a week, with an intensity of 30 to 60% RM. The control group received no training. Physical tests applied to both groups were: handgrip strength with digital dynamometer, Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) and 8-Foot up and go test (FUGT).RESULTS: Forty nine participants completed the study (total dropout rate was 16%) from which 57% were women. Participants in the experimental group (n = 31) had improvements in SPPB and FUGT tests (p \u3c.05). Without changes in handgrip strength. On the other hand, any changes were observed in the control group. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that a low-intensity resistance training (30% 1RM) is a useful method to increase muscle strength of lower limbs in healthy older adults. Due to the interference effect of training, more time is required to observe changes in the dynamic strength of the upper limbs. This type of training program is useful for promoting functionality in older adults reluctant to resistance training