Haptic history : heads, hands and hearts

This thesis was prompted by the issue of widespread student disengagement in history classrooms. I argue that a key factor in student disengagement with school history is disciplinary history’s pedagogic legacy as an ocular, text-focused intellectual pursuit. This is part of a broader disjunction between public and academic history. Ordinary people primarily make sense of the past through the materiality of things—through objects, artefacts, landscapes and their bodies—but this is not reflected in the way history is usually taught in schools. My research addresses this problem by developing a materialist model of history pedagogy— ‘haptic history’—that has been derived from a close analysis of two groups who employ materiality in their history praxis: school teachers, who self-identify as employing a materialist approach in their history teaching; and historical re-enactors/living historians. These groups are the focus of this study. They have an avowed educative goal and use the materiality of the past as both source and method, to construct historical knowledge, ‘do’ historical thinking and experience historical consciousness. I explore the materialist praxis of these groups using a qualitative methodology of surveys, in-depth interviews, auto-ethnography, focus groups and case studies. In analysis, I draw on Collingwood’s idea of history, together with interdisciplinary and theoretical insights from the fields of archaeology, social anthropology, museum, performance and material culture studies, to unpick and analyse the way materiality is used in these contexts as forms of historical consciousness and historical thinking. The analysis is then used to construct a model of haptic history pedagogy, with guideposts to support teacher classroom praxis. In the process of building a haptic history model of pedagogy, my research makes broader arguments around materiality and history. I argue that materiality is a significant part of ‘historical consciousness’ and our sense of self as historical beings. I further conclude that the (co)agency of ‘things’ weave webs of entanglement and connection between people in the present and the past that are deeply connective, engaging and serve to foster kinaesthetic empathy. This conclusion warrants an expansion of current models of historical empathy beyond the cognitive and affective, to include the kinaesthetic dimension. My research makes a significant contribution to history pedagogy by demonstrating the importance of touch and embodiment as performative and experiential modes for knowing the past. I demonstrate that when the materiality of history is experienced synergistically through ‘heads, hands and hearts’, the historical sensation of ekstasis is facilitated. This research further contributes to issues of access and equity in history education; haptic history’s materialist approach engages a wide range of learners, especially (but not exclusively) those who struggle to engage with traditional, text-heavy forms of history. Beyond history pedagogy, this study advances the case for disciplinary history to embrace the possibilities and opportunities inherent in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the past. In venturing into the field of materiality, my research also raises significant questions around the co-agency of things in history, and in doing so joins others in prompting a reconsideration of an exclusively anthropocentric view of agency in the past

Normative Influences on Adolescents’ Self-Reported Pro-Environmental Behaviors: The Role of Parents and Friends

Pro-environmental behavioral patterns are influenced by relevant others’ actions and expectations. Studies about the intergenerational transmission of environmentalism have demonstrated that parents play a major role in their children’s pro-environmental actions. However, little is known about how other social agents may shape youth’s environmentalism. This cross-sectional study concentrates on the role that parents and peers have in the regulation of 12- to 19-year-olds’ pro-environmental behaviors. We also consider the common response bias effect by examining the associations between parents, peers, and adolescents’ pro-environmentalism in two independent data sets. Data Set 1 (N = 330) includes adolescents’ perceptions of relevant others’ behaviors. Data Set 2 (N = 152) includes relevant others’ self-reported pro-environmental behavior. Our results show that parents’ and peers’ descriptive and injunctive norms have a direct effect on adolescents’ pro-environmental behavior and an indirect one, through personal norms. Adolescents seem to be accurate in the perception of their close ones’ environmental actions

Does Automated Unit Test Generation Really Help Software Testers? A Controlled Empirical Study

Work on automated test generation has produced several tools capable of generating test data which achieves high structural coverage over a program. In the absence of a specification, developers are expected to manually construct or verify the test oracle for each test input. Nevertheless, it is assumed that these generated tests ease the task of testing for the developer, as testing is reduced to checking the results of tests. While this assumption has persisted for decades, there has been no conclusive evidence to date confirming it. However, the limited adoption in industry indicates this assumption may not be correct, and calls into question the practical value of test generation tools. To investigate this issue, we performed two controlled experiments comparing a total of 97 subjects split between writing tests manually and writing tests with the aid of an automated unit test generation tool, EvoSuite. We found that, on one hand, tool support leads to clear improvements in commonly applied quality metrics such as code coverage (up to 300% increase). However, on the other hand, there was no measurable improvement in the number of bugs actually found by developers. Our results not only cast some doubt on how the research community evaluates test generation tools, but also point to improvements and future work necessary before automated test generation tools will be widely adopted by practitioners

Seat choice in a crowded café: effects of eye contact, distance, and anchoring

According to theories of interpersonal distance people choose to position themselves in relation to nearby others in a way that optimizes intimacy and privacy. In two studies we investigated the influence of intimacy and privacy on seating behavior in a café (coffee house) setting. In Study 1 (N = 71) we manipulated two aspects of intimacy (eye contact and distance to others), and one aspect of privacy (architectural anchoring) in separate scenario’s and registered participants’ seat choice on floor plans of the three hypothetical cafés. We found that more often participants chose a seat that was at a larger distance to other café-goers. Study 2 (N = 121) replicated the design of the first study, but included affective and cognitive appraisal measures concerning both available seats in each scenario. This time we found that participants more often chose low-eye contact and anchored seats. Choices in line with hypotheses as well as those that were against hypotheses co-occurred with strong beliefs about the pleasure and arousal that each choice might provide and related to the expectations of interaction with others present. Results qualify expectations about protection and violation of intimacy and privacy, at least for café settings.Social decision makin

Automatic extraction of a navigation graph intended for indoorgml from an indoor point cloud

Indoor environments tend to be more complex and more populated when buildings are accessible to the public. The need for knowing where people are, how they can get somewhere or how to reach them in these buildings is thus equally increasing. In this research point clouds are used, obtained by dynamic laser scanning of a building, since we cannot rely on architectural drawings for maps and paths, which can be outdated. The presented method focuses on the creation of an indoor navigation graph, based on IndoorGML structure, in a fast and automated way, while retaining the type of walkable surface. In this paper the focus has been on door detection, because doors are essential elements in an indoor environment, seeing that they connect spaces and are a logical step in a route. This paper describes a way to detect doors using 3D Medial Axis Transform (MAT) combined with the intelligence stored in the path of a mobile laser scanner, showing good first results. Additionally different spaces (e.g. rooms and corridors) in the building are identified and slopes and stairs in walkable spaces are detected. This results in a navigation graph which can be stored in an IndoorGML structure

Coverage Metrics for Requirements-Based Testing: Evaluation of Effectiveness

In black-box testing, the tester creates a set of tests to exercise a system under test without regard to the internal structure of the system. Generally, no objective metric is used to measure the adequacy of black-box tests. In recent work, we have proposed three requirements coverage metrics, allowing testers to objectively measure the adequacy of a black-box test suite with respect to a set of requirements formalized as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) properties. In this report, we evaluate the effectiveness of these coverage metrics with respect to fault finding. Specifically, we conduct an empirical study to investigate two questions: (1) do test suites satisfying a requirements coverage metric provide better fault finding than randomly generated test suites of approximately the same size?, and (2) do test suites satisfying a more rigorous requirements coverage metric provide better fault finding than test suites satisfying a less rigorous requirements coverage metric? Our results indicate (1) only one coverage metric proposed -- Unique First Cause (UFC) coverage -- is sufficiently rigorous to ensure test suites satisfying the metric outperform randomly generated test suites of similar size and (2) that test suites satisfying more rigorous coverage metrics provide better fault finding than test suites satisfying less rigorous coverage metrics

Dark Current in Superconducting RF Photoinjectors Measurements and Mitigation

Unwanted beam can cause beam losses and may produce acute or chronic damages of the accelerator. Furthermore it can considerably disturb experiments or increase its back ground. The operation of the superconducting RF photo gun at the ELBE accelerator has delivered the first experimental information on that topic. It was found, that dark current is an important issue, similar to that normal conducting RF photo injectors. In the presentation the measurement of dark current, its properties and analysis will be shown and we will discuss ways for mitigation, especially the construction of a dark current kicke

Equilibrium random-field Ising critical scattering in the antiferromagnet Fe(0.93)Zn(0.07)F2

It has long been believed that equilibrium random-field Ising model (RFIM) critical scattering studies are not feasible in dilute antiferromagnets close to and below Tc(H) because of severe non-equilibrium effects. The high magnetic concentration Ising antiferromagnet Fe(0.93)Zn(0.07)F2, however, does provide equilibrium behavior. We have employed scaling techniques to extract the universal equilibrium scattering line shape, critical exponents nu = 0.87 +- 0.07 and eta = 0.20 +- 0.05, and amplitude ratios of this RFIM system.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, minor revision

Method for Determining Air Side Convective Heat Transfer Coefficient Using Infrared Thermography

Air side convective heat transfer coefficients are among the most important parameters to know when modeling thermal systems due to their dominant impact on the overall heat transfer coefficient. Local air side convective heat transfer coefficients can often prove challenging to measure experimentally due to limitations with sensor accuracy, complexity of surface geometries, and changes to the heat transfer due to the sensor itself. Infrared thermography allows local heat transfer coefficients to be accurately determined for many different surface geometries in a manner which does not impact the results. Moreover, when determining convective heat transfer coefficients for a large number of samples, it is less costly in terms of both time and materials than other experimental methods. The method determines the heat transfer coefficient for an arbitrary region by determining the rate at which the surface temperature changes due to a step change in air temperature. To utilize the method a simple calibration is first done to determine the local thermal time constant under natural convection. Alternatively, if the thermal properties of the object are well known, a model may be used. In subsequent tests, the ratio of thermal time constant to that from the calibration test can be determined. As the material properties of the solid object are unchanged, the convective heat transfer coefficient scales inversely with the thermal time constant. A computer script has been created which automates the entire analysis process with the exception of determining the region of interest. The experimental method has been validated by comparison to other experimental methods, values from literature, and numerical simulations

Evaluation of a high power submillimeter pulsed laser system

This report describes the selection, development, and testing of the system components and presents the power and frequency profiles achieved in tests made on the assembled system. These results, and knowledge gained through design and development work, have suggested improvements in design characteristics to be applied to future research on this diagnostic method. (MOW