MEMS sensors for wall shear stress and flow vector measurement

The accurate measurement of airflows is an important area of experimental aerodynamics. MEMS technology has been applied to the measurement of wall shear stress and freestream velocity vectors. Existing methods of measuring wall shear stress vary greatly and have different strengths and weaknesses, making them each applicable to specific situations. Probes designed for measuring 3D velocity components are relatively large in diameter, introducing significant disturbances into the airflow. The tip diameters of such probes are typically of the order of several millimetres and the minimum diameter is around 1 mm. A sensor for measuring wall shear stress, consisting of a surface fence structure 5 mm long, 750 μm high and 20 μm thick was developed. The fence, and main body on which it was mounted, were fabricated from the photo-definable polymer SU8 with an integrated gold resistive strain gauge to measure the pressure-induced deflection. Wind tunnel testing gave a voltage output of 0.18 mV for a shear stress of approximately 0.35 Pa. This concept was then adapted and an in-plane cantilever sensor was developed. The cantilever sensor was manufactured from SU-8 with an integrated resistive strain gauge of NiCr. The pressure-induced deflection of the cantilever, calibrated by the integrated strain gauge, could be related to the wall shear stress on the surface. The sensor gave a response of 9.6x10(^-4) (mV/V) μm under mechanical deflection. For a 2 mm long, 400 μm wide cantilever when tested on a flat plate in a wind tunnel, a response of 1 mV for a shear stress of 0.35 Pa was seen. Four cantilever sensors were arranged orthogonally to create a new type of probe for measuring flow direction and velocity, which could also measure total pressure. The probe was shown to be able to measure these variables and with further development had the potential to allow the fabrication of a smaller probe tip than that possible by conventional methods

A Study of Metacognitive Skill as Influenced by Expressive Writing in College Introductory Algebra Classes.

The quality of mathematics education has become a major concern to mathematics educators. As a result, increased attention is being given to identifying the abilities that underlie competent performance. An outcome of this effort is an increasing belief that the development of metacognitive skills is an essential component of proficient mathematics performance. Writing, because it promotes reflective thinking, is believed to be the vehicle for this development. Writing in the mathematics classroom has previously received anecdotal support for its benefits to the learner and to the instructor, and limited quantitative benefits in problem-solving ability toward mathematics. This study examined the effect of expressive writing on self-awareness and would suggest quantitative support that writing is beneficial in promoting student ability to assess the correctness of work. If metacognitive skills are a necessary condition for successful mathematics performance, the use of writing may provide the process for attaining these essential skills. Further research in the benefits of writing is warranted by this study

Alpha defensin expression in white blood cells

Copy number variation (CNV) accounts for a large proportion of genetic variation. The DEFA1A3 CNV has variable numbers of copies of the DEFA1 and DEFA3 genes that encode alpha defensins 1-3, antimicrobial peptides abundant in human neutrophils. Association studies have found associations between this locus and autoimmune diseases such as IgA nephropathy and periodontitis, though the disease mechanisms by which this association occurs are not yet fully understood. Previous investigations into the locus have found inconsistent results for expression of alpha defensin in subsets of white blood cells other than neutrophils. The objective of this project was to investigate the expression of alpha defensins in white blood cells and to determine if expression was variable based on genotype. This project shows that expression of alpha defensin RNA is present in mononuclear cells as well as granulocytes but is variable independent of copy number or flanking SNP genotypes. No detectable expression of alpha defensin protein was found by immunocytochemistry in cells other than neutrophils. This project shows evidence of alpha defensin in mononuclear cells, highlighting new avenues in which to investigate when researching disease mechanisms of IgAN and periodontitis

Tell me about yourself: migrant children's experiences of moving to and living in Ireland

During the past ten years, much attention has been directed to immigration and integration issues in Ireland, but, with some notable exceptions to date, very little focusing on children or young people. In this context, the need for research and initiatives which allow migrant children’s own voices to be heard is extremely important. Our research project, Migrant Children, aimed to address these gaps and to provide children’s and young people’s perspectives on issues relating to recent immigration to Ireland. The project was centred on an investigation of children’s and young people’s experiences of immigration and integration in Irish society. The aim was to explore the social worlds of migrant children and youth in Ireland from their own perspectives.Final Report of the Marie Curie Excellence Team project. Migrant Children: Children’s and young people’s experiences of immigration and integration in Irish societ

Developing a cultural competence assessment tool for people in recovery from racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds: the journey, challenges and lessons learned.

In 1997, Maryland implemented a new managed care mental health system. Consumer satisfaction, evaluation and cultural competency were considered high priorities for the new system. While standardized tools for measuring consumer satisfaction were readily available, no validated, reliable and standardized tool existed to measure the perception of people from minority groups receiving mental health services. The MHA*/MHP* Cultural Competency Advisory Group (CCAG) accepted the challenge of developing a consumer assessment tool for cultural competency. The CCAG, composed of people in recovery, clinicians and administrators used their collective knowledge and experiences to develop a 52-item tool that met standards for validity and reliability. Consultation from a researcher helped to further develop the tool into one possessing tremendous potential for statewide implementation within Maryland's Public Mental Health System. Recognizing the limitations of the study and the need for further research, this instrument is a work in progress. Strategies to improve the instrument are currently underway with the Mental Hygiene Administration's Systems Evaluation Center of the University of Maryland and several national researchers

Neural correlates of cognitive ability and visuo-motor speed: validation of IDoCT on UK Biobank Data

Automated online and App-based cognitive assessment tasks are becoming increasingly popular in large-scale cohorts and biobanks due to advantages in affordability, scalability and repeatability. However, the summary scores that such tasks generate typically conflate the cognitive processes that are the intended focus of assessment with basic visuomotor speeds, testing device latencies and speed-accuracy tradeoffs. This lack of precision presents a fundamental limitation when studying brain-behaviour associations. Previously, we developed a novel modelling approach that leverages continuous performance recordings from large-cohort studies to achieve an iterative decomposition of cognitive tasks (IDoCT), which outputs data-driven estimates of cognitive abilities, and device and visuomotor latencies, whilst recalibrating trial-difficulty scales. Here, we further validate the IDoCT approach with UK BioBank imaging data. First, we examine whether IDoCT can improve ability distributions and trial-difficulty scales from an adaptive picture-vocabulary task (PVT). Then, we confirm that the resultant visuomotor and cognitive estimates associate more robustly with age and education than the original PVT scores. Finally, we conduct a multimodal brain-wide association study with free-text analysis to test whether the brain regions that predict the IDoCT estimates have the expected differential relationships with visuomotor vs. language and memory labels within the broader imaging literature. Our results support the view that the rich performance timecourses recorded during computerised cognitive assessments can be leveraged with modelling frameworks like IDoCT to provide estimates of human cognitive abilities that have superior distributions, re-test reliabilities and brain-wide associations

Learning Interpretable Dynamics from Images of a Freely Rotating 3D Rigid Body

In many real-world settings, image observations of freely rotating 3D rigid bodies, such as satellites, may be available when low-dimensional measurements are not. However, the high-dimensionality of image data precludes the use of classical estimation techniques to learn the dynamics and a lack of interpretability reduces the usefulness of standard deep learning methods. In this work, we present a physics-informed neural network model to estimate and predict 3D rotational dynamics from image sequences. We achieve this using a multi-stage prediction pipeline that maps individual images to a latent representation homeomorphic to $\mathbf{SO}(3)$, computes angular velocities from latent pairs, and predicts future latent states using the Hamiltonian equations of motion with a learned representation of the Hamiltonian. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach on a new rotating rigid-body dataset with sequences of rotating cubes and rectangular prisms with uniform and non-uniform density.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Lifestyle factors and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing in UK Biobank: Implications for epidemiological research

AbstractBackgroundThe central role of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing in the diagnosis of prostate cancer leads to the possibility that observational studies that report associations between risk factors and prostate cancer could be affected by detection bias. This study aims to investigate whether reported risk factors for prostate cancer are associated with PSA testing in a large middle-aged population-based cohort in the UK.MethodsThe cross-sectional association between a wide range of sociodemographic, lifestyle, dietary and health characteristics with PSA testing was examined in 212,039 men aged 40–69 years in UK Biobank.ResultsA total of 62,022 (29%) men reported they had ever had a PSA test. A wide range of factors was associated with a higher likelihood of PSA testing including age, height, education level, family history of prostate cancer, black ethnic origin, not being in paid/self-employment, living with a wife or partner, having had a vasectomy, being diagnosed with cancer or hypertension and having a high dietary intake of cereal, cooked and salad/raw vegetables, fresh fruit and tea. Conversely, socioeconomic deprivation, Asian ethnic origin, current smoking, low alcohol intake, high body-mass index, high coffee consumption and being diagnosed with diabetes, heart disease or stroke were associated with a lower likelihood of PSA testing.ConclusionsA variety of sociodemographic, lifestyle and health-related characteristics are associated with PSA testing, suggesting that observed associations of some of these traits with risk for prostate cancer in epidemiological studies may be, at least partially, due to detection bias

Diet and risk of diverticular disease in Oxford cohort of European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC): prospective study of British vegetarians and non-vegetarians

Objective To examine the associations of a vegetarian diet and dietary fibre intake with risk of diverticular disease

Understanding teachers’ noticing of children’s mathematical thinking in written work from different sources

Expertise in teacher noticing of children's thinking is central to a vision of responsive teaching in which teachers regularly elicit and build on children’s thinking during instruction (Richards & Robertson, 2016). In mathematics classrooms, this core instructional practice of noticing children’s mathematical thinking repeatedly occurs during instruction and involves attending to and making sense of children's mathematical thinking (Sherin, Jacobs, & Philipp, 2011). Teachers daily have opportunities to notice children’s mathematical thinking during their conversations with students and in students’ written work. However, expertise in noticing children’s mathematical thinking does not develop automatically or through years of teaching, and teachers need support developing noticing expertise. To help teachers develop noticing expertise, professional developers often employ artifacts of practice (e.g., video clips and student written work) from teachers’ own classrooms as well as strategically selected artifacts from classrooms taught by teachers unfamiliar to the PD participants. This study explored the potential differences in teachers’ noticing with written work from these two sources—teachers’ own classrooms and classrooms unfamiliar to the teachers. Drawing on the construct of framing (Goffman, 1974), particular attention was paid to the various frames (or lenses) teachers used during noticing. Using a context of professional development focused on children's mathematical thinking in the domain of fractions, this three-phase study explored teachers’ noticing and their use of frames by investigating the relationship between teachers' noticing of children's mathematical thinking in written work from their own classrooms versus unfamiliar classrooms. In the first phase, this study identified the frames individual teachers used when noticing children’s thinking in written work from their own classrooms. The second phase explored the frames that small groups of teachers used when collectively noticing children’s thinking in written work from unfamiliar classrooms during professional development. The third phase used in-depth interviews to investigate the relationship between the quality of teacher noticing and the use of frames of six teachers who were asked to notice children’s thinking in written work on the same problem from their own classrooms and from unfamiliar classrooms. Findings identified six frames teachers used while noticing children's mathematical thinking in written work from the two sources, and they fell into three broad categories: (a) noticing focused on the child’s current mathematical performance, (b) noticing focused on the child’s non-mathematical performance, and (c) noticing that compared the child’s performance to the expected performance based on the child’s past performance, the performance of the rest of the class, or curricular or testing guidelines. Confirmation of these frames in three data sets highlighted the variety of ways teachers reason during noticing, suggesting that frames are a useful construct for understanding the complexity of teachers’ noticing because frames capture the multiple and sometimes competing ideas that teachers need to coordinate. When comparing teachers’ noticing of children’s thinking in written work from their own classrooms versus unfamiliar classrooms, a lack of substantial evidence was found to distinguish the sources in terms of the use of particular frames, the prevalence of particular frames, or the quality of teachers’ noticing of children’s thinking. Further, there was evidence that teachers “imagined” insider knowledge of children from unfamiliar classrooms to assist with their noticing, which might explain why engaging with written work from either source did not seem to change the quality of teachers’ noticing. On the other hand, comparative analyses identified a distinction between teachers’ use of frames when they were considering one child’s strategy versus several children’s strategies regardless of whether the written work came from the teachers’ classrooms or unfamiliar classrooms. Specifically, when teachers’ noticing focused on more than one child, more frames and a greater variety of frames were invoked. Implications for professional development focus on the need to appreciate and address teachers’ coordination of multiple frames and the idea that the use of these frames depends less on the source of the written work and more on the number of children involved in the task