Comparing Learning Platform Impact on Low Vision Education for Occupational Therapists

This pilot study examines the impact of face-to-face, remote, and hybrid learning platforms on satisfaction, confidence, and knowledge-application of occupational therapy practitioners during a synchronous low vision continuing education program. Fifteen participants were divided into three groups, each corresponding to one learning platform. They engaged in two 45-min learning sessions and completed pre, post, and follow-up surveys to measure the impact of the learning platform on the dependent variables of satisfaction, confidence, and knowledge application. No significant differences were found between learning platforms for the three variables, but improvements from pre to follow-up survey were found to be significant for confidence and knowledge application for all groups. These findings indicate that similar education provided to occupational therapy practitioners may result in improved confidence and knowledge application to clinical practice from the beginning to the end of the educational program, despite the learning platform. Flexibility with online learning options increased participation and adherence rates. Synchronous remote and hybrid learning platforms may be as effective as traditional face-to-face methods, specifically with increasing practitioner confidence and knowledge application. Remote options may reduce peer interactions but increase flexibility and convenience with scheduling for program scalability and accessibility

Characterizing Evaporation Ducts Within the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer Using Artificial Neural Networks

We apply a multilayer perceptron machine learning (ML) regression approach to infer electromagnetic (EM) duct heights within the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) using sparsely sampled EM propagation data obtained within a bistatic context. This paper explains the rationale behind the selection of the ML network architecture, along with other model hyperparameters, in an effort to demystify the process of arriving at a useful ML model. The resulting speed of our ML predictions of EM duct heights, using sparse data measurements within MABL, indicates the suitability of the proposed method for real-time applications.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

Understanding consumer responses to special event entertainment (SEE) in shopping centres

This paper reviews the literature on the use of entertainment in shopping centres and outlines the constructs believed to impact upon consumer’s responses to special event entertainment. Special event entertainment (SEE) refers to entertainment events or activities that are offered on an occasional, temporary or discontinued basis in shopping centres. Examples of SEE include school holiday entertainment and fashion shows (Parsons, 2003; Sit, Merrilees, & Birch, 2003). Using SEE, shopping centre management seeks to entice consumer patronage, increase patron traffic or promote the shopping centre brand. Despite the popularity of SEE in shopping centres, very little academic research (e.g. Parsons, 2003; Sit, Merrilees, & Birch, 2003) has either conceptually or empirically examined how consumers perceive or respond to SEE. This research presents a conceptual model that examines the determinants and outcomes of consumer responses to SEE, In particular, consumer responses to SEE are represented by SEE proneness and overall appreciation of SEE. These SEE responses are proposed to be determined by sensation-seeking tendencies and perceived value of SEE. Eight propositions are presented to explain the relationships of SEE responses with their determinants and outcomes. These relationships will be empirically tested in future research. Research implications of the conceptual model are also presented

Structure and energetics of solvated ferrous and ferric ions: Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics in the DFT+U formalism

We implemented a rotationally-invariant Hubbard U extension to density-functional theory in the Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics framework, with the goal of bringing the accuracy of the DFT+U approach to finite-temperature simulations, especially for liquids or solids containing transition-metal ions. First, we studied the effects on the Hubbard U on the static equilibrium structure of the hexa-aqua ferrous and ferric ions, and the inner-sphere reorganization energy for the electron-transfer reaction between aqueous ferrous and ferric ions. It is found that the reorganization energy is increased, mostly as a result of the Fe-O distance elongation in the hexa-aqua ferrous ion. Second, we performed a first-principles molecular dynamics study of the solvation structure of the two aqueous ferrous and ferric ions. The Hubbard term is found to change the Fe-O radial distribution function for the ferrous ion, while having a negligible effect on the aqueous ferric ion. Moreover, the frequencies of vibrations between Fe and oxygen atoms in the first-solvation shell are shown to be unaffected by the Hubbard corrections for both ferrous and ferric ions.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Submitted to Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistr

Event History Analysis of Dynamic Communication Networks

Statistical analysis on networks has received growing attention due to demand from various emerging applications. In dynamic networks, one of the key interests is to model the event history of time-stamped interactions amongst nodes. We propose to model dynamic directed communication networks via multivariate counting processes. A pseudo partial likelihood approach is exploited to capture the network dependence structure. Asymptotic results of the resulting estimation are established. Numerical results are performed to demonstrate effectiveness of our proposal

Simulation of Heme using DFT+U: a step toward accurate spin-state energetics

We investigate the DFT+U approach as a viable solution to describe the low-lying states of ligated and unligated iron heme complexes. Besides their central role in organometallic chemistry, these compounds represent a paradigmatic case where LDA, GGA, and common hybrid functionals fail to reproduce the experimental magnetic splittings. In particular, the imidazole pentacoordinated heme is incorrectly described as a triplet by all usual DFT flavors. In this study we show that a U parameter close to 4 eV leads to spin transitions and molecular geometries in quantitative agreement with experiments, and that DFT+U represents an appealing tool in the description of iron porphyrin complexes, at a much reduced cost compared to correlated quantum-chemistry methods. The possibility of obtaining the U parameter from first-principles is explored through a self-consistent linear-response formulation. We find that this approach, which proved to be successful in other iron systems, produces in this case some overestimation with respect to the optimal values of U.Comment: To be published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry B 30 pages, 15 figure