Religious delusion or religious belief?

How shall we distinguish religious delusion from sane religious belief? Making this determination is not usually found to be difficult in clinical practice – but what shall be our theoretical rationale? Attempts to answer this question often try to provide differentiating principles by which the religious “sheep” may be separated from the delusional “goats.” As we shall see, none of these attempts work. We may, however, ask whether the assumption underlying the search for a differentiating principle – that religious beliefs and religious delusions can usefully be considered species of a common genus – is a good one. In this paper, we outline an alternative, “disjunctive,” understanding of religious belief and religious delusion. By reminding ourselves both of what is central to any delusion and of what distinguishes bona fide religious claims from their pretenders, we show how to resolve our reflective puzzlement about religious delusion without recourse to differentiating principles

Effect of cooperative merging on the synchronous flow phase of traffic

Cooperation in merging is introduced by adding interactions between pairs of vehicles in opposite lanes. Simulations with an improved version of the modified optimal velocity model are done for two lanes merging into a single lane. For ~30 seconds prior to reaching the merge region, vehicles in both lanes adjust their headways to create safe distances in front of and behind the merging vehicle. Cooperation prevents the transition from free flow to synchronous flow that occurs for normal merging, provided the merge region is sufficiently large and the total incoming flow does not exceed the maximum possible single-lane flow. No long-range vehicle-to-vehicle communication is required for the type of cooperation considered.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, accepted by Physica

Correlating peer and tutor assessment on a low-stakes engineering assignment

Peer assessment has been a subject of great debate in recent years. The way students perceive assessment and what motivates them when assessing may differ significantly from the tutor. This paper discusses a study designed to correlate students marking with the marks awarded by their tutors when peer assessing one another from in-class oral presentations. A new and alternative approach to correlate results is presented, which is based on the normalisation of the quantitative judgements based on determined criteria. The methodology was blind and holistic, as described in previous works: some guidelines were provided to the students on what is considered acceptable without getting into detail (holistic marking), and peer-assessment marks were made confidential (blind approach). It was observed that students have a tendency to overrate fellow students - especially where lower marks might be awarded. There is, however, direct agreement with the tutors marking in terms of qualitative judgements, which is highlighted by the presented correlation method used to adjust students marks. The presented methodology to correlate marks between the students and tutor showed to be a promising one. After processing the data with this simple and straightforward algorithm, peer and tutor assessment practically showed a perfect match

Changing assessment practice in engineering: how can understanding lecturer perspectives help?

Assessment in engineering disciplines is typically oriented to demonstrating competence in specific tasks. Even where assessments are intended to have a formative component, little priority may be given to feedback. Engineering departments are often criticized, by their students and by external quality reviewers, for paying insufficient attention to formative assessment. The e3an project set out to build a question bank of peer-reviewed questions for use within electrical and electronic engineering. As a part of this process, a number of engineers from disparate institutions were required to work together in teams, designing a range of assessments for their subject specialisms. The project team observed that lecturers were especially keen to develop formative assessment but that their understanding of what might be required varied considerably. This paper describes the various ways in which the processes of the project have engaged lecturers in actively identifying and developing their conceptions of teaching, learning and assessment in their subject. It reports on an interview study that was conducted with a selection of participants. It is concluded that lecturers' reflections on and understanding of assessment are closely related to the nature of the subject domain and that it is essential when attempting to improve assessment practice to start from the perspective of lecturers in the discipline

Subsurface Drip Nitrogen Fertigation of Corn

The efficient management of nitrogen (N) fertilizer and irrigation is of utmost importance because they are two of the greatest expenses for corn production. This project was conducted to determine if yield and efficiency of fertilizer N in corn could be improved by applying N at later developmental stages through a subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) system. Experiments in 2014 and 2015 compared a Preplant Surface application that injected fertilizer in bands below the residue at planting, to four versions of SDI fertigation that differed in timing and total amount of N applied. The SDI Sidedress treatment concluded at corn tassel stage (VT). The SDI Maximum treatment supplied an additional 40 lb N/a through corn blister stage (R2). The SDI Sensor treatment received N fertigations after corn V10 stage only if the ratio of the SPAD readings from SDI Sensor plots to Reference plots was less than 95%. The Reference treatment received both the surface band injections and all SDI fertigations for total seasonal N application that far exceeded crop N requirements. The Reference treatment produced up to 32 bu/a more grain than the Preplant Surface treatment, but produced an average of 0.7 bushels of grain per pound of N fertilizer. The SDI Maximum treatment averaged only slightly less grain yield than the reference treatment but produced 1.15 bushels of grain per pound of N fertilizer on average. The SDI Sidedress and SDI Sensor treatments resulted in similar yields that averaged 16 bu/a more than the Preplant Surface treatment. The SDI Sidedress treatment used fertilizer N the most efficiently, producing 1.3 bushels of grain per pound of N fertilizer. Applying N into the reproductive stages of corn increased yield, but N fertilizer was used most efficiently when N applications were completed by VT. Although using the sensor to determine later N applications reduced fertilizer input slightly compared to a maximum fertilizer approach, yields were reduced enough to result in similar efficiency of fertilizer use

Road Network Simulation Using FLAME GPU

Demand for high performance road network simulation is increasing due to the need for improved traffic management to cope with the globally increasing number of road vehicles and the poor capacity utilisation of existing infrastructure. This paper demonstrates FLAME GPU as a suitable Agent Based Simulation environment for road network simulations, capable of coping with the increasing demands on road network simulation. Gipps’ car following model is implemented and used to demonstrate the performance of simulation as the problem size is scaled. The performance of message communication techniques has been evaluated to give insight into the impact of runtime generated data structures to improve agent communication performance. A custom visualisation is demonstrated for FLAME GPU simulations and the techniques used are described

The relationship between population variables and male aggressive behaviour in communities of bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus) in large field enclosures

The relationship between male aggressive behaviour and population variables in the bank vole (Clethrionomys glareolus (Schreber, 1730)) was studied using two large (550m2) field enclosures. Known populations were established in each of the enclosures, and followed by live trapping. In an attempt to manipulate the level of aggressive behaviour in one (the experimental) enclosure with respect to the other (the control) a majority of the founding males in the experimental enclosure were castrated. Laboratory arena testing was used to study the behaviour of adult, castrated and immature male voles. It was demonstrated that both castrated and immature male voles were significantly less aggressive than adult males. Adult males were found to fight less with castrated and immature males than with other adults. Castrated males sometimes exhibited retaliatory behaviour when approached by either an adult or immature male, but overt aggressive behaviour rarely resulted. Immature males were very rarely aggressive. Observation of behavioural interactions in the field (at a bait point) showed them to be qualitatively different to those observed in the laboratory arena; voles appeared very wary of each other, and many interactions observed were characterised by mutual avoidance or flight. Oveitaggressive behaviour was rarely seen. It can be inferred that voles do fight in the field, because they commonly exhibit small wounds on rump, tail, and face; these could however, be sustained in the confinement of burrows, where escape and mutual avoidance are less possible than at a bait point, and which may be more closely paralleled by the laboratory arena. Significantly more adult males in the enclosures showed fresh wounds than did castrated or immature males, or adult or immature females. The number of voles in the experimental enclosure increased significantly faster than did the number in the control enclosure; the density in both enclosures was also significantly higher than commonly encountered in the wild. The difference in numbers between the two enclosures was due to a difference in the number of immature animals entering the trappable population; mortality of marked animals in both enclosures was very slight but mortality of infants was significantly higher in the control enclosure than in the experimental. Reproductive inhibition of adult and immature animals of both sexes was observed in both enclosures. At the same time, extremely young animals trapped in the wild populations were found to be sexually mature. The differences in the use of space by different age and sex classes between the two enclosures were also investigated. The study demonstrated that male aggressive behaviour had a significant effect on the population variables of bank voles at the high densities and at the high rates of population growth observed in large enclosures. The findings are discussed in the light of several hypotheses put forward to explain population regulation and cyclic changes in numbers of Microtine rodents.<p

Modelling Widely Scattered States in `Synchronized' Traffic Flow and Possible Relevance for Stock Market Dynamics

Traffic flow at low densities (free traffic) is characterized by a quasi-one-dimensional relation between traffic flow and vehicle density, while no such fundamental diagram exists for `synchronized' congested traffic flow. Instead, a two-dimensional area of widely scattered flow-density data is observed as a consequence of a complex traffic dynamics. For an explanation of this phenomenon and transitions between the different traffic phases, we propose a new class of molecular-dynamics-like, microscopic traffic models based on times to collisions and discuss the properties by means of analytical arguments. Similar models may help to understand the laminar and turbulent phases in the dynamics of stock markets as well as the transitions among them.Comment: Comments are welcome. For related work see http://www.helbing.or

e-Assessment for learning? The potential of short-answer free-text questions with tailored feedback

A natural language based system has been used to author and mark short-answer free-text assessment tasks. Students attempt the questions online and are given tailored and relatively detailed feedback on incorrect and incomplete responses, and have the opportunity to repeat the task immediately so as to learn from the feedback provided. The answer matching has been developed in the light of student responses to the questions. A small number of the questions are now in low-stakes summative use, alongside other e-assessment tasks and tutor-marked assignments, to give students instantaneous feedback on constructed response items, to help them to monitor their progress and to encourage dialogue with their tutor. The answer matching has been demonstrated to be of similar or greater accuracy than specialist human markers. Students have been observed attempting the questions and have been seen to respond in differing ways to both the questions themselves and the feedback provided. We discuss features of appropriate items for assessment of this type