Updating the art history curriculum: incorporating virtual and augmented reality technologies to improve interactivity and engagement

Master's Project (M.Ed.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017This project investigates how the art history curricula in higher education can borrow from and incorporate emerging technologies currently being used in art museums. Many art museums are using augmented reality and virtual reality technologies to transform their visitors' experiences into experiences that are interactive and engaging. Art museums have historically offered static visitor experiences, which have been mirrored in the study of art. This project explores the current state of the art history classroom in higher education, which is historically a teacher-centered learning environment and the learning effects of that environment. The project then looks at how art museums are creating visitor-centered learning environments; specifically looking at how they are using reality technologies (virtual and augmented) to transition into digitally interactive learning environments that support various learning theories. Lastly, the project examines the learning benefits of such tools to see what could (and should) be implemented into the art history curricula at the higher education level and provides a sample section of a curriculum demonstrating what that implementation could look like. Art and art history are a crucial part of our culture and being able to successfully engage with it and learn from it enables the spread of our culture through digital means and of digital culture

Gases in ice cores

Air trapped in glacial ice offers a means of reconstructing variations in the concentrations of atmospheric gases over time scales ranging from anthropogenic (last 200 yr) to glacial/interglacial (hundreds of thousands of years). In this paper, we review the glaciological processes by which air is trapped in the ice and discuss processes that fractionate gases in ice cores relative to the contemporaneous atmosphere. We then summarize concentration–time records for CO₂ and CH₄ over the last 200 yr. Finally, we summarize concentration–time records for CO₂ and CH₄ during the last two glacial–interglacial cycles, and their relation to records of global climate change.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America and can be found at: http://www.pnas.org

Algorithmic support for commodity-based parallel computing systems.

The Computational Plant or Cplant is a commodity-based distributed-memory supercomputer under development at Sandia National Laboratories. Distributed-memory supercomputers run many parallel programs simultaneously. Users submit their programs to a job queue. When a job is scheduled to run, it is assigned to a set of available processors. Job runtime depends not only on the number of processors but also on the particular set of processors assigned to it. Jobs should be allocated to localized clusters of processors to minimize communication costs and to avoid bandwidth contention caused by overlapping jobs. This report introduces new allocation strategies and performance metrics based on space-filling curves and one dimensional allocation strategies. These algorithms are general and simple. Preliminary simulations and Cplant experiments indicate that both space-filling curves and one-dimensional packing improve processor locality compared to the sorted free list strategy previously used on Cplant. These new allocation strategies are implemented in Release 2.0 of the Cplant System Software that was phased into the Cplant systems at Sandia by May 2002. Experimental results then demonstrated that the average number of communication hops between the processors allocated to a job strongly correlates with the job's completion time. This report also gives processor-allocation algorithms for minimizing the average number of communication hops between the assigned processors for grid architectures. The associated clustering problem is as follows: Given n points in {Re}d, find k points that minimize their average pairwise L{sub 1} distance. Exact and approximate algorithms are given for these optimization problems. One of these algorithms has been implemented on Cplant and will be included in Cplant System Software, Version 2.1, to be released. In more preliminary work, we suggest improvements to the scheduler separate from the allocator

A review of elliptical and disc galaxy structure, and modern scaling laws

A century ago, in 1911 and 1913, Plummer and then Reynolds introduced their models to describe the radial distribution of stars in `nebulae'. This article reviews the progress since then, providing both an historical perspective and a contemporary review of the stellar structure of bulges, discs and elliptical galaxies. The quantification of galaxy nuclei, such as central mass deficits and excess nuclear light, plus the structure of dark matter halos and cD galaxy envelopes, are discussed. Issues pertaining to spiral galaxies including dust, bulge-to-disc ratios, bulgeless galaxies, bars and the identification of pseudobulges are also reviewed. An array of modern scaling relations involving sizes, luminosities, surface brightnesses and stellar concentrations are presented, many of which are shown to be curved. These 'redshift zero' relations not only quantify the behavior and nature of galaxies in the Universe today, but are the modern benchmark for evolutionary studies of galaxies, whether based on observations, N-body-simulations or semi-analytical modelling. For example, it is shown that some of the recently discovered compact elliptical galaxies at 1.5 < z < 2.5 may be the bulges of modern disc galaxies.Comment: Condensed version (due to Contract) of an invited review article to appear in "Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems"(www.springer.com/astronomy/book/978-90-481-8818-5). 500+ references incl. many somewhat forgotten, pioneer papers. Original submission to Springer: 07-June-201

The Lived Experiences of African American Men Receiving Care from Nurse Practitioners in a Nurse-managed Clinic in an Urban Setting

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to discover lived experiences of African American men receiving primary health care from nurse practitioners in an urban nurse-managed clinic. Leininger's culture care theory was used as the organizing framework for this study. Thirteen African American men between the ages of eighteen and sixty-four, who were established patients at an urban nurse-managed clinic, and were covered by a county health plan for the underinsured, were recruited as participants for this study. An adaptation of Leininger's open-ended inquiry guide and the Sunrise Enabler were used along with Coalizzi's phenomenological method to assist with the collection and analysis of data. NVivo 8, a qualitative research software program, aided in data organization and subsequent analysis. The researchers analyzed audio-taped interviews and their own observatons in search of significant statements, meanings, and themes. The findings from this study may lead to a greater understanding of African American men's lived experiences when receiving care from nurse practitioners and may assist nurse practitioners in providing culturally congruent care that is satisfying and beneficial to African American men.Master'sCollege of Arts and Sciences: NursingUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117883/1/BelangerEtal.pd

Chronology reconstruction for the disturbed bottom section of the GISP2 and the GRIP ice cores: Implications for Termination II in Greenland

International audienceWe have reconstructed chronology for the disturbed bottom parts of the GRIP and GISP2 ice cores using the combined paleoatmospheric records of CH 4 concentration and d 18 O atm in the trapped gases. Our reconstructed ages for basal ice samples are based on comparison of published measurements of CH 4 and d 18 O atm from the disturbed section of the GRIP and GISP2 cores with the same properties in the Vostok ice core. NGRIP d 18 O ice values are also used to constrain the chronology during the end of marine isotope stage 5e. For each sample, we assign an age that represents the unique or most probable time of gas trapping, given its gas composition. Of 157 samples with CH 4 and d 18 O atm data, 10 give unique ages. Twenty-five newly measured values of the triple isotope composition of O 2 from the disturbed section of the GISP2 core add a third time-dependent gas property that agrees with our reconstruction. Our reconstruction supports earlier conclusions of Landais et al. (2003) that the disturbed section primarily includes ice from the last interglacial (MIS 5e) and the penultimate glacial period (MIS 6). The oldest ice in the basal layer of GISP2 and GRIP has an age !237 ka. The climate history we derive suggests that the last interglacial at Summit, Greenland, around 127 ka was slightly warmer than the current interglacial period. Reduction of various ion concentrations in ice and thickening of the ice sheet during Termination II was similar to that in Termination I