14,024 research outputs found
Social media for student learning: enhancing the student experience and promoting deep learning
Traditional Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) was introduced as a retention-motivated initiative in the College of Science and Engineering 5 years ago. Despite a high level of interest from students, there were several practical barriers that prevented many students from attending these sessions. As an alternative, an online space for Virtual Peer Assisted Learning (VPAL) was trialled. VPAL was found to have not only all the benefits of traditional PAL but also more that had not been anticipated. In this paper we will discuss the practicalities involved and the design choices that had to be made. We will also showcase some anonymised examples of academic and social dialogue between peers and outline some of the unexpected advantages of using VPAL over traditional PAL
A concept for reducing oceanic separation minima through the use of a TCAS-derived CDTI
A concept for using a cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI), as derived from a modified version of the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System 2 (TCAS 2), to support reductions in air traffic separation minima for an oceanic track system is presented. The concept, and the TCAS modifications required to support it, are described. The feasibility of the concept is examined from a number of standpoints, including expected benefits, maximum alert rates, and possible transition strategies. Various implementation issues are analyzed. Pilot procedures are suggested for dealing with alert situations. Possible variations of the concept are also examined. Finally, recommendations are presented for other studies and simulation experiments which can be used to further verify the feasibility of the concept
Soft modes near the buckling transition of icosahedral shells
Icosahedral shells undergo a buckling transition as the ratio of Young's
modulus to bending stiffness increases. Strong bending stiffness favors smooth,
nearly spherical shapes, while weak bending stiffness leads to a sharply
faceted icosahedral shape. Based on the phonon spectrum of a simplified
mass-and-spring model of the shell, we interpret the transition from smooth to
faceted as a soft-mode transition. In contrast to the case of a disclinated
planar network where the transition is sharply defined, the mean curvature of
the sphere smooths the transitition. We define elastic susceptibilities as the
response to forces applied at vertices, edges and faces of an icosahedron. At
the soft-mode transition the vertex susceptibility is the largest, but as the
shell becomes more faceted the edge and face susceptibilities greatly exceed
the vertex susceptibility. Limiting behaviors of the susceptibilities are
analyzed and related to the ridge-scaling behavior of elastic sheets. Our
results apply to virus capsids, liposomes with crystalline order and other
shell-like structures with icosahedral symmetry.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figure
Self-similar impulsive capillary waves on a ligament
We study the short-time dynamics of a liquid ligament, held between two solid
cylinders, when one is impulsively accelerated along its axis. A set of
one-dimensional equations in the slender-slope approximation is used to
describe the dynamics, including surface tension and viscous effects. An exact
self-similar solution to the linearized equations is successfully compared to
experiments made with millimetric ligaments. Another non-linear self-similar
solution of the full set of equations is found numerically. Both the linear and
non-linear solutions show that the axial depth at which the liquid is affected
by the motion of the cylinder scales like . The non-linear solution
presents the peculiar feature that there exists a maximum driving velocity
above which the solution disappears, a phenomenon probably related to
the de-pinning of the contact line observed in experiments for large pulling
velocities
Development of a novel clinical scoring system for on-farm diagnosis of bovine respiratory disease in pre-weaned dairy calves.
Several clinical scoring systems for diagnosis of bovine respiratory disease (BRD) in calves have been proposed. However, such systems were based on subjective judgment, rather than statistical methods, to weight scores. Data from a pair-matched case-control study on a California calf raising facility was used to develop three novel scoring systems to diagnose BRD in preweaned dairy calves. Disease status was assigned using both clinical signs and diagnostic test results for BRD-associated pathogens. Regression coefficients were used to weight score values. The systems presented use nasal and ocular discharge, rectal temperature, ear and head carriage, coughing, and respiratory quality as predictors. The systems developed in this research utilize fewer severity categories of clinical signs, require less calf handling, and had excellent agreement (Kappa > 0.8) when compared to an earlier scoring system. The first scoring system dichotomized all clinical predictors but required inducing a cough. The second scoring system removed induced cough as a clinical abnormality but required distinguishing between three levels of nasal discharge severity. The third system removed induced cough and forced a dichotomized variable for nasal discharge. The first system presented in this study used the following predictors and assigned values: coughing (induced or spontaneous coughing, 2 points), nasal discharge (any discharge, 3 points), ocular discharge (any discharge, 2 points), ear and head carriage (ear droop or head tilt, 5 points), fever (≥39.2°C or 102.5°F, 2 points), and respiratory quality (abnormal respiration, 2 points). Calves were categorized "BRD positive" if their total score was ≥4. This system correctly classified 95.4% cases and 88.6% controls. The second presented system categorized the predictors and assigned weights as follows: coughing (spontaneous only, 2 points), mild nasal discharge (unilateral, serous, or watery discharge, 3 points), moderate to severe nasal discharge (bilateral, cloudy, mucoid, mucopurlent, or copious discharge, 5 points), ocular discharge (any discharge, 1 point), ear and head carriage (ear droop or head tilt, 5 points), fever (≥39.2°C, 2 points), and respiratory quality (abnormal respiration, 2 points). Calves were categorized "BRD positive" if their total score was ≥4. This system correctly classified 89.3% cases and 92.8% controls. The third presented system used the following predictors and scores: coughing (spontaneous only, 2 points), nasal discharge (any, 4 points), ocular discharge (any, 2 points), ear and head carriage (ear droop or head tilt, 5 points), fever (≥39.2°C, 2 points), and respiratory quality (abnormal respiration, 2 points). Calves were categorized "BRD positive" if their total score was ≥5. This system correctly classified 89.4% cases and 90.8% controls. Each of the proposed systems offer few levels of clinical signs and data-based weights for on-farm diagnosis of BRD in dairy calves
The experiences of women with polycystic ovary syndrome on a very low-calorie diet
The research was funded by an educational grant from LighterLife. Broom was the Medical Director for LighterLife at the time of the research. Johnson is the Head of Nutrition and Research at LighterLife. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Thermally assisted adiabatic quantum computation
We study the effect of a thermal environment on adiabatic quantum computation
using the Bloch-Redfield formalism. We show that in certain cases the
environment can enhance the performance in two different ways: (i) by
introducing a time scale for thermal mixing near the anticrossing that is
smaller than the adiabatic time scale, and (ii) by relaxation after the
anticrossing. The former can enhance the scaling of computation when the
environment is superohmic, while the latter can only provide a prefactor
enhancement. We apply our method to the case of adiabatic Grover search and
show that performance better than classical is possible with a superohmic
environment, with no a priori knowledge of the energy spectrum.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Final version to appear in PR
Stretching Instability of Helical Spring
We show that when a gradually increasing tensile force is applied to the ends
of a helical spring with sufficiently large ratios of radius to pitch and twist
to bending rigidity, the end-to-end distance undergoes a sequence of
discontinuous stretching transitions. Subsequent decrease of the force leads to
step-like contraction and hysteresis is observed. For finite helices, the
number of these transitions increases with the number of helical turns but only
one stretching and one contraction instability survive in the limit of an
infinite helix. We calculate the critical line that separates the region of
parameters in which the deformation is continuous from that in which stretching
instabilities occur, and propose experimental tests of our predictions.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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