3,299 research outputs found
Children As Researchers: Exploring Issues And Barriers In English Primary Schools
This thesis identifies and explores the issues and barriers that appear to influence children's and adults' experiences of children's engagement in self-directed empirical research in five English primary schools associated with the Children's Research Centre at The Open University. As far as is known, this is the first in-depth study of children as independent researchers in the context of English primary schools. A flexible, multimethod research design was adopted. Predominantly qualitative data was generated through focus groups held with, and questionnaires distributed to, the young researchers and their peers and through individual unstructured interviews with adults. The qualitative data generated through these methods was analysed in the style of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Quantitative data was subject to exploratory data analysis. This complemented and informed the qualitative analyses. The central categories which emerged from the data and, in particular, the identification of important issues by the children, have together informed the staged construction of a new model. This model illustrates the factors and processes that had an impact on both the children's experiences of research training and the research process and outcomes. The model demonstrates that these are inextricably interrelated. It is hoped that consideration of the issues and barriers identified will provide a basis for the further implementation and evaluation of young researcher initiatives in schools. The findings of the study have been drawn on to make recommendations for policy, practice and future research, particularly in those areas which are identified as significant by, and to, the children involved. It is also hoped that this study will address a gap in our knowledge and understanding of children as researchers and inform critical debate concerning children's voice and participation, adult-child power relationships and children's rights in English primary schools and more widely
Effect of Thermoelectric Cooling in Nanoscale Junctions
We propose a thermoelectric cooling device based on an atomic-sized junction.
Using first-principles approaches, we investigate the working conditions and
the coefficient of performance (COP) of an atomic-scale electronic refrigerator
where the effects of phonon's thermal current and local heating are included.
It is observed that the functioning of the thermoelectric nano-refrigerator is
restricted to a narrow range of driving voltages. Compared with the bulk
thermoelectric system with the overwhelmingly irreversible Joule heating, the
4-Al atomic refrigerator has a higher efficiency than a bulk thermoelectric
refrigerator with the same due to suppressed local heating via the
quasi-ballistic electron transport and small driving voltages. Quantum nature
due to the size minimization offered by atomic-level control of properties
facilitates electron cooling beyond the expectation of the conventional
thermoelectric device theory.Comment: 8 figure
Potentiation of thrombus instability: a contributory mechanism to the effectiveness of antithrombotic medications
© The Author(s) 2018The stability of an arterial thrombus, determined by its structure and ability to resist endogenous fibrinolysis, is a major determinant of the extent of infarction that results from coronary or cerebrovascular thrombosis. There is ample evidence from both laboratory and clinical studies to suggest that in addition to inhibiting platelet aggregation, antithrombotic medications have shear-dependent effects, potentiating thrombus fragility and/or enhancing endogenous fibrinolysis. Such shear-dependent effects, potentiating the fragility of the growing thrombus and/or enhancing endogenous thrombolytic activity, likely contribute to the clinical effectiveness of such medications. It is not clear how much these effects relate to the measured inhibition of platelet aggregation in response to specific agonists. These effects are observable only with techniques that subject the growing thrombus to arterial flow and shear conditions. The effects of antithrombotic medications on thrombus stability and ways of assessing this are reviewed herein, and it is proposed that thrombus stability could become a new target for pharmacological intervention.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio
Propuesta guĂa para una planeaciĂłn y ejecuciĂłn en proyectos de vivienda unifamiliar con enfoque Lean Construction
Trabajo de investigaciĂłnEste trabajo contempla el desarrollo de una matriz enfocada en la metodologĂa Lean Construction para la planeaciĂłn y ejecuciĂłn en proyectos de vivienda unifamiliar. AsĂ mismo se evidencia un anĂĄlisis de manera cuantitativa y cualitativamente en la adopciĂłn de la filosofĂa Lean Construction en procesos de la gestiĂłn de la planeaciĂłn y ejecuciĂłn de proyectos, que permite establecer un orden de actividades y sub actividades que componen las fases de un proyecto de vivienda unifamiliar en la relaciĂłn del alcance exitoso en productividad y rendimiento.INTRODUCCIĂN
1. GENERALIDADES
2. METODOLOGĂAS EN EL MARCO DE LA PLANEACIĂN Y EJECUCIĂN DE PROYECTOS
3. LEAN CONSTRUCTION EN ACTIVIDADES DE CONSTRUCCIĂN
4. IMPLEMENTACIĂN DE LA MATRIZ EN CASO DE ESTUDIO
5. CONCLUSIONES
6. RECOMENDACIONES BIBLIOGRAFĂA
ANEXOSPregradoIngeniero Civi
Active dielectric antenna on chip for spatial light modulation
Integrated photonic resonators are widely used to manipulate light propagation in an evanescently-coupled
waveguide. While the evanescent coupling scheme works well for planar optical systems that are naturally
waveguide based, many optical applications are free-space based, such as imaging, display, holographics,
metrology and remote sensing. Here we demonstrate an active dielectric antenna as the interface device that
allows the large-scale integration capability of silicon photonics to serve the free-space applications. We
show a novel perturbation-base diffractive coupling scheme that allows a high-Q planer resonator to directly
interact with and manipulate free-space waves. Using a silicon-based photonic crystal cavity whose
resonance can be rapidly tuned with a p-i-n junction, a compact spatial light modulator with an extinction
ratio of 9.5 dB and a modulation speed of 150 MHz is demonstrated. Method to improve the modulation
speed is discussed.Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR grant FA9550-12-1-0261
Competing orders and quantum criticality in doped antiferromagnets
We use a number of large-N limits to explore the competition between ground
states of square lattice doped antiferromagnets which break electromagnetic
U(1), time-reversal, or square lattice space group symmetries. Among the states
we find are d-, (s+id)-, and (d+id)-wave superconductors, Wigner crystals,
Wigner crystals of hole pairs, orbital antiferromagnets (or staggered-flux
states), and states with spin-Peierls and bond-centered charge stripe order. In
the vicinity of second-order quantum phase transitions between the states, we
go beyond the large-N limit by identifying the universal quantum field theories
for the critical points, and computing the finite temperature, quantum-critical
damping of fermion spectral functions. We identify candidate critical points
for the recently observed quantum-critical behavior in photoemission
experiments on BSCCO by Valla et al. (Science 285, 2110 (1999)). These involve
onset of a charge density wave, or of broken time-reversal symmetry with (d+id)
or (s+id) pairing, in a d-wave superconductor. It is not required (although it
is allowed) that the stable state in the doped cuprates to be anything other
than the d-wave superconductor--the other states need only be stable nearby in
parameter space. At finite temperatures, fluctuations associated with these
nearby states lead to the observed fermion damping in the vicinity of the nodal
points in the Brillouin zone. The cases with broken time-reversal symmetry are
appealing because the order parameter is not required to satisfy any special
commensurability conditions. The observed absence of inelastic damping of
quasiparticles with momenta (pi,k), (k,pi) (with 0 < k < pi) also appears very
naturally for the case of a transition to (d+id) order.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figures; added references, clarifications, and a new
figur
Robust structure-based resonance assignment for functional protein studies by NMR
High-throughput functional protein NMR studies, like protein interactions or dynamics, require an automated approach for the assignment of the protein backbone. With the availability of a growing number of protein 3D structures, a new class of automated approaches, called structure-based assignment, has been developed quite recently. Structure-based approaches use primarily NMR input data that are not based on J-coupling and for which connections between residues are not limited by through bonds magnetization transfer efficiency. We present here a robust structure-based assignment approach using mainly HNâHN NOEs networks, as well as 1Hâ15N residual dipolar couplings and chemical shifts. The NOEnet complete search algorithm is robust against assignment errors, even for sparse input data. Instead of a unique and partly erroneous assignment solution, an optimal assignment ensemble with an accuracy equal or near to 100% is given by NOEnet. We show that even low precision assignment ensembles give enough information for functional studies, like modeling of protein-complexes. Finally, the combination of NOEnet with a low number of ambiguous J-coupling sequential connectivities yields a high precision assignment ensemble. NOEnet will be available under: http://www.icsn.cnrs-gif.fr/download/nmr
Inclusive jet cross section in collisions at TeV
The inclusive jet differential cross section has been measured for jet
transverse energies, , from 15 to 440 GeV, in the pseudorapidity region
0.10.7. The results are based on 19.5 pb of data
collected by the CDF collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The data
are compared with QCD predictions for various sets of parton distribution
functions. The cross section for jets with GeV is significantly
higher than current predictions based on O() perturbative QCD
calculations. Various possible explanations for the high- excess are
discussed.Comment: 8 pages with 2 eps uu-encoded figures Submitted to Physical Review
Letter
Search for charged Higgs decays of the top quark using hadronic tau decays
We present the result of a search for charged Higgs decays of the top quark,
produced in collisions at 1.8 TeV. When the charged
Higgs is heavy and decays to a tau lepton, which subsequently decays
hadronically, the resulting events have a unique signature: large missing
transverse energy and the low-charged-multiplicity tau. Data collected in the
period 1992-1993 at the Collider Detector at Fermilab, corresponding to
18.70.7~pb, exclude new regions of combined top quark and charged
Higgs mass, in extensions to the standard model with two Higgs doublets.Comment: uuencoded, gzipped tar file of LaTeX and 6 Postscript figures; 11 pp;
submitted to Phys. Rev.
Search for New Particles Decaying to Dijets at CDF
We have used 106 pb^-1 of data collected with the Collider Detector at
Fermilab to search for new particles decaying to dijets. We exclude at the 95%
confidence level models containing the following new particles: axigluons and
flavor universal colorons with mass between 200 and 980 GeV/c, excited quarks
with mass between 80 and 570 GeV/c^2 and between 580 and 760 GeV/c^2, color
octet technirhos with mass between 260 and 480 GeV/c^2, W' bosons with mass
between 300 and 420 GeV/c^2, and E_6 diquarks with mass between 290 and 420
GeV/c^2.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Submitted to Physical Review D Rapid
Communications. Postscript file of paper is also available at
http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/physics/pub97/cdf3276_dijet_search_prd_rc.p
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