Embedding student feedback in deep pedagogic reflection: the potentials of drawing and Deleuzian analysis

Student evaluation practices often fall into repetitive patterns of ‘rate the teacher’ and ‘blame the student’. In this paper, we think with the Deleuzian conceptualisations of becoming and affect in order to move beyond these limitations. We experiment with drawing as a way to gather student feedback that opens up dialogue, applying rhizomatic mapping to prompt deeper pedagogic reflection. We explored 31 drawings created by 3rd year undergraduate students of education. In this paper, we present three worked examples of visual and verbal rhizomatic mapping, along with written pedagogic reflections. We suggest that this process enabled us to enter into deeper pedagogic reflections via a generative questioning space in which the whole beings of the students were brought to the fore, including the embodied student experience

The Genesis of Animal Play

In The Genesis of Animal Play, Gordon Burghardt examines the origins and evolution of play in humans and animals. He asks what play might mean in our understanding of evolution, the brain, behavioral organization, and psychology. Is play essential to development? Is it the driving force behind human and animal behavior? What is the proper place for the study of play in the cognitive, behavioral, and biological sciences? The engaging nature of play—who does not enjoy watching a kitten attack a ball of yarn?—has made it difficult to study. Some scholars have called play undefinable, nonexistent, or a mystery outside the realm of scientific analysis. Using the comparative perspectives of ethology and psychology, The Genesis of Animal Play goes further than other studies in reviewing the evidence of play throughout the animal kingdom, from human babies to animals not usually considered playful. Burghardt finds that although playfulness may have been essential to the origin of much that we consider distinctive in human (and mammalian) behavior, it only develops through a specific set of interactions among developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and physiological processes. Furthermore, play is not always beneficial or adaptive. Part I offers a detailed discussion of play in placental mammals (including children) and develops an integrative framework called surplus resource theory. The most fascinating and most controversial sections of the book, perhaps, are in the seven chapters in part II in which Burghardt presents evidence of playfulness in such unexpected groups of animals as kangaroos, birds, lizards, and "Fish That Leap, Juggle, and Tease." Burghardt concludes by considering the implications of the diversity of play for future research, and suggests that understanding the origin and development of play can shape our view of society and its accomplishments through history

Single Molecule Fluorescence Image Patterns Linked to Dipole Orientation and Axial Position: Application to Myosin Cross-Bridges in Muscle Fibers

Photoactivatable fluorescent probes developed specifically for single molecule detection extend advantages of single molecule imaging to high probe density regions of cells and tissues. They perform in the native biomolecule environment and have been used to detect both probe position and orientation.Fluorescence emission from a single photoactivated probe captured in an oil immersion, high numerical aperture objective, produces a spatial pattern on the detector that is a linear combination of 6 independent and distinct spatial basis patterns with weighting coefficients specifying emission dipole orientation. Basis patterns are tabulated for single photoactivated probes labeling myosin cross-bridges in a permeabilized muscle fiber undergoing total internal reflection illumination. Emitter proximity to the glass/aqueous interface at the coverslip implies the dipole near-field and dipole power normalization are significant affecters of the basis patterns. Other characteristics of the basis patterns are contributed by field polarization rotation with transmission through the microscope optics and refraction by the filter set. Pattern recognition utilized the generalized linear model, maximum likelihood fitting, for Poisson distributed uncertainties. This fitting method is more appropriate for treating low signal level photon counting data than χ(2) minimization.Results indicate that emission dipole orientation is measurable from the intensity image except for the ambiguity under dipole inversion. The advantage over an alternative method comparing two measured polarized emission intensities using an analyzing polarizer is that information in the intensity spatial distribution provides more constraints on fitted parameters and a single image provides all the information needed. Axial distance dependence in the emission pattern is also exploited to measure relative probe position near focus. Single molecule images from axial scanning fitted simultaneously boost orientation and axial resolution in simulation

RNA secondary structure design

We consider the inverse-folding problem for RNA secondary structures: for a given (pseudo-knot-free) secondary structure find a sequence that has that structure as its ground state. If such a sequence exists, the structure is called designable. We implemented a branch-and-bound algorithm that is able to do an exhaustive search within the sequence space, i.e., gives an exact answer whether such a sequence exists. The bound required by the branch-and-bound algorithm are calculated by a dynamic programming algorithm. We consider different alphabet sizes and an ensemble of random structures, which we want to design. We find that for two letters almost none of these structures are designable. The designability improves for the three-letter case, but still a significant fraction of structures is undesignable. This changes when we look at the natural four-letter case with two pairs of complementary bases: undesignable structures are the exception, although they still exist. Finally, we also study the relation between designability and the algorithmic complexity of the branch-and-bound algorithm. Within the ensemble of structures, a high average degree of undesignability is correlated to a long time to prove that a given structure is (un-)designable. In the four-letter case, where the designability is high everywhere, the algorithmic complexity is highest in the region of naturally occurring RNA.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Behavioral Changes in Diet and Physical Activities of Engaged U.S. Women Preparing for Their Wedding Day

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to develop and administer a survey in order to characterize the weight status and dietary and physical activity behaviors of engaged women as they prepare for their wedding day. Methods: A total of 363 engaged females were recruited using snowball sampling through Facebook survey links, University of Kansas Medical Center broadcast email, and word of mouth. An online REDCap survey was created to assess the demographics, body image perceptions, anthropometrics, wedding/ relationship, dietary behaviors, physical activity behaviors, and health status. To keep the survey anonymous, a second online REDCap survey requesting an email address for future studies was linked to the first survey so the responses would be stored in separate databases. Women were eligible if they were a U.S. citizen, 18-40 years old, female, not pregnant or breastfeeding, and engaged to be married. The consent form and an eligibility questionnaire were built into the beginning of the first REDCap survey. Results: After exclusions (n=6), 357 engaged females were included in the study. The mean age was 24.8 ± 2.9, and the mean BMI was 24.9 ± 5.6. Over one-third (36.1%) of the engaged females were overweight or obese and yet, 62% of the women indicated they were currently trying to lose weight. Over half (51.2%) of the women had an ideal wedding weight that was an average of 18 pounds less than their current weight. Women who had a desired wedding weight were statistically heavier than those who did not (M=156.7 ± 5.9 vs. 145.6 ± 32.7, respectively, p<0.001). Significant differences were also found between cohabiting and non-cohabiting women. The mean age of cohabiting women was 25.2 ± 2.9 years old compared to 24.0 ± 2.9 years for non-cohabiting women (p<0.001). The mean BMI of cohabiting women was significantly higher than the non-cohabiting women’s BMI (25.7 ± 6.0 vs. 23.3 ± 4.4; p<0.001). Cohabiting women also had significantly higher income levels (p<0.001), job status (p<0.001), longer relationships (p=0.024), and more usual weekday screen time (p=0.042). Conclusion: More than one-third of engaged females in our study were overweight or obese. Over half of these women have a desired wedding weight lower than their current weight, and the majority of them indicated that they were currently trying to lose weight. Previous studies have found similar results and introduced the idea that there are differences between cohabiting and non-cohabiting women. Our study found that cohabiting U.S. engaged females were significantly older, heavier, employed full-time with higher income levels, and had been dating their significant other longer. Future studies should focus on the long-term effects that cohabitation has on weight-related behaviors of women and develop interventions for couples who are beginning to live together

Automated Quality Assessment of Space-Continuous Models for Pedestrian Dynamics

In this work we propose a methodology for assessment of pedestrian models continuous in space. With respect to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov distance between two data clouds, representing for instance simulated and the corresponding empirical data, we calculate an evaluation factor between zero and one. Based on the value of the herein developed factor, we make a statement about the goodness of the model under evaluation. Moreover this process can be repeated in an automatic way in order to maximize the above mentioned factor and hence determine the optimal set of model parameters.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted at the Proceedings of Traffic and Granular Flow '1

Multi-configurational Ehrenfest simulations of ultrafast nonadiabatic dynamics in a charge-transfer complex

Multi-configurational Ehrenfest (MCE) approaches, which are intended to remedy the lack of correlations in the standard mean-field Ehrenfest method, have been proposed as coherent-state based ansatze for quantum propagation [D. V. Shalashilin, J. Chem. Phys. 130, 244101 (2009)] and also as the classical limit of the variational Gaussian-based multiconfiguration time dependent Hartree (G-MCTDH) method [S. Romer and I. Burghardt, Mol. Phys. 111, 3618 (2013)]. In the present paper, we establish the formal connection between these schemes and assess the performance of MCE for a coherent-state representation of the classical-limit subsystem. As a representative model system, we address the ultrafast, coherent charge transfer dynamics in an oligothiophene-fullerene donor acceptor complex described by a two-state linear vibronic coupling model. MCE calculations are compared with reference calculations performed with the MC IDH method, for 10-40 vibrational modes. Beyond a dimensionality of 10 modes, it is shown that the correct representation of electronic coherence depends crucially on the sampling of initially unoccupied Gaussians