How Are We Doing? A Corporate Strategy For Finding Out

How many times have you watched struggling students leave your writing center and wondered how much they got out of the conference you just had with them? It is hard to know. Even if they listened and paid attention, even if they made all of the changes you suggested and successfully revised their papers, did they really learn anything? Will their next papers be better for the time you just spent with them? Does the training you receive translate into better consultations for writers? These are evaluation questions. Evaluation is perhaps the most elusive aspect of writing center work, and there are many theories about how to do it, some too complicated and too abstract to be easily implemented. Corporate America may have a simpler way to do evaluation. Donald L. Kirkpatrick’s book, Evaluating Corporate Training Programs: The Four Levels, provides us with a simple and straightforward model to evaluate the work we do.University Writing Cente

Design and production of a comprehensive graininess scale for use in electrophotography

Methods were investigated and modeled to produce a graininess by density sample matrix. The graininess values were based on a model derived for certain imaging processes that has a high correlation to the subjective impression of graininess for nominally uniform image areas. After modeling several processes, a photographic technique was chosen and a matrix manufactured

Is Cystic Fibrosis Genetic Medicine\u27s Canary?

In 1989 the gene that causes cystic fibrosis (CF) was identified in a search accompanied by intense anticipation that the gene, once discovered, would lead rapidly to gene therapy. Many hoped that the disease would effectively disappear. Those affected were going to inhale vectors packed with functioning genes, which would go immediately to work in the lungs. It was a bewitching image, repeatedly invoked in both scientific and popular texts. Gene therapy clinical trials were carried out with a range of strategies and occasionally success seemed close, but by 1996 the idea that gene therapy for CF would quickly provide a cure was being abandoned by the communities engaged with treatment and research. While conventional wisdom holds that the death of Jesse Gelsinger in an unrelated gene therapy trial in 1999 produced new skepticism about gene therapy for CF and suggests that CF may provide a particularly compelling case study of a failed genomic technology, perhaps even of a medical canary. The story of CF might be a find of warning to us that genetic medicine may create as many problems as it solves, and that moving forward constructively with these techniques and practices requires many kinds of right information, not just about biology, but also about values, priorities, market forces, uncertainty, and consumer choice

The role of the vestibular system in manual target localization

Astronauts experience perceptual and sensory-motor disturbances during spaceflight and immediately after return to the 1-g environment of Earth. During spaceflight, sensory information from the eyes, limbs and vestibular organs is reinterpreted by the central nervous system so that astronauts can produce appropriate body movements in microgravity. Alterations in sensory-motor function may affect eye-head-hand coordination and, thus, the crewmember's ability to manually locate objects in extrapersonal space. Previous reports have demonstrated that crewmembers have difficulty in estimating joint and limb position and in pointing to memorized target positions on orbit and immediately postflight. One set of internal cues that may assist in the manual localization of objects is information from the vestibular system. This system contributes to our sense of the body's position in space by providing information on head position and movement and the orientation of the body with respect to gravity. Research on the vestibular system has concentrated on its role in oculo-motor control. Little is known about the role that vestibular information plays in manual motor control, such as reaching and pointing movements. Since central interpretation of vestibular information is altered in microgravity, it is important to determine its role in this process. This summer, we determined the importance of vestibular information in a subject's ability to point accurately toward a target in extrapersonal space. Subjects were passively rotated across the earth-vertical axis and then asked to point back to a previously-seen target. In the first paradigm, the subjects used both visual and vestibular cues for the pointing response, while, in the second paradigm, subjects used only vestibular information. Subjects were able to point with 85 percent accuracy to a target using vestibular information alone. We infer from this result that vestibular input plays a role in the spatial programming of manual responses

Analysis and Design of a Feedback Controlled Adaptive Pneumatic Cast

A pneumatic system with PID control for an actively controlled cast is designed. The cast is intended to aid healing of diabetic foot ulcers by relieving pressure from the sole of a patient\u27s foot and distributing it to the calf. This is accomplished by a pneumatic system which maintains set pressure in multiple air bladders. The research began by defining an electrical circuit analogous to a single supply subsystem. Tests are performed to determine the coefficients for each component. These coefficients are used in a mathematical model to better understand the response of the system to pressure input. A controller is designed for a single subsystem using Ziegler-Nichols first method as a starting point. PID control is extended to each configuration option. Control theory is used to determine an optimal configuration of the bladder subsystems. Series, parallel, and a hybrid configuration are considered. The cost, complexity, and performance of each configuration is used in a weighted decision matrix to choose the best configuration. The parallel configuration is chosen as the optimal solution. Because the pump used in the design is capable of supplying all air bladders simultaneously, the parallel configuration can be simplified to a single subsystem. The model of the subsystem is validated against physical tests. The controller driving the single supply subsystem is used as a guideline for designing a modified duty cycle controller. This controller is implemented using simple pneumatic and electrical components