East Frederick Monocacy Boulevard City-owned Property Development

Joint final project for ARCH407: Graduate Architecture Design Studio and RDEV6881: Real Estate Development Capstone (Spring 2015). School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, University of Maryland, College Park.This course is part of the PALS program at UMD. PALS (Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability) is a campus-wide action learning initiative that blends customized coursework, faculty expertise and student ingenuity to tackle challenges facing Maryland communities. ARCH 407 is a collaboration studio – that is, a studio that joins graduate students from Architecture with graduate students from Real Estate Development to work collaboratively on a design project. The project for the Spring 2015 semester worked with community stakeholders and practitioners to come up with a plan for development of the Monocacy Boulevard site in Frederick, Maryland. This studio concentrated on the problems and theories of urbanism and urban design techniques in the context of The City of Frederick and the State of Maryland. Applied theories ranged from Landscape Urbanism, Neo-Traditional Design, Transit- Oriented Development, ecological systems and infrastructure, building typology, and street design. Through early semester research exercises and community workshops, ARCH 407 explored the relationships between cultural, social, and ecological systems in the built environment. The course introduced issues of field (architecture that reaches past its building envelope to shape landscape, ecology, culture, economy, and social behavior), environment, theory, tectonics, and assemblage. By applying fundamental urban design theories and sustainability principles, students proposed three schematic designs illustrated with graphic data conveying the variety of possible development opportunities.The City of Frederic

Fine mapping of regulatory loci for mammalian gene expression using radiation hybrids

We mapped regulatory loci for nearly all protein-coding genes in mammals using comparative genomic hybridization and expression array measurements from a panel of mouse–hamster radiation hybrid cell lines. The large number of breaks in the mouse chromosomes and the dense genotyping of the panel allowed extremely sharp mapping of loci. As the regulatory loci result from extra gene dosage, we call them copy number expression quantitative trait loci, or ceQTLs. The −2log(10)P support interval for the ceQTLs was <150 kb, containing an average of <2–3 genes. We identified 29,769 trans ceQTLs with −log(10)P > 4, including 13 hotspots each regulating >100 genes in trans. Further, this work identifies 2,761 trans ceQTLs harboring no known genes, and provides evidence for a mode of gene expression autoregulation specific to the X chromosome

Cognitive load theory and instructional design : an outline of the theory and reflections on a need for new directions to cater for individual differences and motivation

Cognitive load theory (hereafter CLT; see Sweller, 2006; Sweller, van Merrienboer & Paas, 1998; Sweller, 1994; 1988) has been used for nearly two decades to develop innovative learning formats in instructional design. It essentially draws upon some aspects of the information processing/schema theory approach to learning. The theory maintains that it is critical to take into account the limitations of our working memory if learning is to be efficient. Using hundreds of controlled empirical studies comparing conventional instructional formats to formats guided by CLT has generated positive results. These have been critically reviewed and generally accepted in the field of educational psychology. The use of CLT designed formats suggest there is less mental effort for the learner, a reduced training time, higher performance on test scores and transfer to similar problems, and longer duration for retention of information. The theory presents one perspective of our cognitive architecture. Among the many CLT instructional designs used, two concern individual differences and motivation. These are: 1. The prior knowledge of the learner (termed the expertise reversal effect - see Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler & Sweller, 2003) and 2. Mental rehearsal (termed the imagination effect - see Ginns, 2005; Leahy & Sweller, 2007; 2005; 2004). The expertise reversal effect is an interesting and counter intuitive effect explored by CLT where learners who have some prior knowledge of the instructional material may do worse, under certain conditions, rather than better than those learners with no prior knowledge. The second condition, mental rehearsal, is a learning strategy that has been used for many years (e.g. Sackett, 1934; 1935). It has been known variously by other terminology including "anticipative reasoning" (Dunbar, 2000) and "self-explanation" (Renkl, 1997). Since 1998, CLT has researched this approach in a series of experiments and termed it the "imagination effect". A number of motivational and cognitive issues have emerged that illustrate the conditions that make the strategy either viable or unproductive. One of the relevant limitations of CLT is that the experiments do not cater enough for individual differences of the learner. Important factors within the field of individual differences such as motivation, learning styles or gender for example are not adequately taken into account. This chapter will outline CLT, and then provide a summary of various experiments conducted within its theoretical framework. The experiments include exploration of the expertise reversal effect, the use of an imagination strategy (imagination effect) and unique work on CLT and motivation conducted by Paas, Tuovinen, van Merrienboer and Darabi (2005) and Paas and van Merrienboer (1993). From all of these studies, the chapter will identify some issues and limitations emerging concerning motivation and individual differences. New directions that may address these will be suggested.16 page(s

Cognitive load theory, modality of presentation and the transient information effect

The modality effect occurs when audio/visual instructions are superior to visual only instructions. The effect was explored in two experiments conducted within a cognitive load theory framework. In Experiment 1, two groups of primary school students (N?=?24) were presented with either audio/visual or visual only instructions on how to read a temperature graph. The group presented with visual text and a diagram rather than audio text and a diagram was superior, reversing most previous data on the modality effect. It was hypothesized that the reason for the reversal was that the transitory auditory text component was too long to be processed easily in working memory compared to more permanent written information. Experiment 2 (N?=?64) replicated the experiment with the variation of a reduced length of both auditory and visual text instructions. Results indicated a reinstatement of the modality effect with audio/visual instructions proving superior to visual only instructions.9 page(s

Cognitive load theory and the effects of transient information on the modality effect

Based on cognitive load theory and the transient information effect, this paper investigated the modality effect while interpreting a contour map. The length and complexity of auditory and visual text instructions were manipulated. Experiment 1 indicated that longer audio text information within a presentation was inferior to the equivalent longer visual text information demonstrating a reversal of the modality effect due to transient information imposing a heavy working memory load. However, the expected modality effect was not obtained from the equivalent shorter auditory text presentation compared to shorter visual text information. It was hypothesised that the shorter text still contained too much auditory information for working memory to readily process. Experiment 2 further decreased the shorter auditory text information which then resulted in a traditional modality effect including a modality by text length interaction in which shorter, audio-visual information was better than visual only information but longer, audio-visual information was worse than visual only information.17 page(s

Cognitive load and the imagination effect

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Interactions Among the Imagination, Expertise Reversal, and Element Interactivity Effects

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The imagination effect increases with an increased intrinsic cognitive load

11 page(s