Teaching Uncertainty: The Case of Climate Change

The concept of uncertainty plays a significant role in higher education in the 21st century. However; the pedagogy of uncertainty tends to focus on ontology and the feelings of uncertainty experienced by teachers and students, as opposed to treating it as an epistemological concept. This research considers the epistemology of uncertainty in the context of climate change and investigates how it is conceptualised and taught by academics working in the subject area. The theoretical frameworks of troublesome knowledge and threshold concepts are employed to aid the characterisation of uncertainty as a concept in higher education. Following a methodology based on grounded theory, interviews were undertaken with 10 academics involved in teaching climate change. The interview data was analysed and categorised according to the interview participants' conceptions of uncertainty and the implications for teaching uncertainty. The research found that uncertainty in the context of climate change is a complex and multivariate concept and this was reflected in the interview data, with many of the participants holding several different conceptions of uncertainty simultaneously. In terms of teaching uncertainty, the concept also aligns with the theoretical frameworks, in that it is troublesome knowledge and a threshold concept in the context of climate change, with broader implications as an interdisciplinary threshold concept arising from the difficulty encountered when attempting to integrate diverse conceptions of uncertainty. Maturity and personal development were also found to play a role in teaching uncertainty. Several strategies and approaches to teaching uncertainty are discussed, and a critical reflection on the pedagogy of uncertainty is offered. The critical reflection proposes a pedagogy for teaching uncertainty whereby the concept is situated centrally in the higher education curriculum and taught explicitly through student-centred approaches that take into account issues of personal development and variation

Responses of salmonids to habitat changes

Streams in western North America provide spawning and rearing habitats for several species of salmon and trout that are of substantial economic importance in the region. Timber that grows on lands through which these streams flow is also economically important, and its harvest can substantially change habitat conditions and aquatic production in salmonid streams. Undisturbed forests, the streams that flow through them, and the salmonid communities in these streams have intrinsic scientific, genetic, and cultural values in addition to their economic importance. The complex relations between salmonids and their physical environment, and the changes in these relations brought about by timber harvest, have been investigated extensively (see the bibliography by Macdonald et al. 1988). However, in spite of considerable evidence of profound changes in channel morphology and in light, temperature, and flow regimes associated with timber harvests, much uncertainty exists about the responses of salmonids to these changes

Manipulating Self-Assembly in Silver(I) Complexes of 1,3-Di-\u3cem\u3eN\u3c/em\u3e-pyrazolylorganyls

Three di-N-pyrazolylorganyls with different conformational flexibilities in the three-atom organyl spacers have been prepared, and the self-assembly properties with AgBF4 have been studied both in solution and in the solid state. All ligands give low-coordinate silver(I) centers that are capable of participating in multiple noncovalent interactions, but only the rigid 1,8-dipyrazolylnaphthalene ligand promotes very short Ag−Ag contacts

Hardware efficient monitoring of input/output signals

A communication device comprises first and second circuits to implement a plurality of ports via which the communicative device is operable to communicate over a plurality of communication channels. For each of the plurality of ports, the communication device comprises: command hardware that includes a first transmitter to transmit data over a respective one of the plurality of channels and a first receiver to receive data from the respective one of the plurality of channels; and monitor hardware that includes a second receiver coupled to the first transmitter and a third receiver coupled to the respective one of the plurality of channels. The first circuit comprises the command hardware for a first subset of the plurality of ports. The second circuit comprises the monitor hardware for the first subset of the plurality of ports and the command hardware for a second subset of the plurality of ports

Hardware-Efficient Monitoring of I/O Signals

In this invention, command and monitor functionality is moved between the two independent pieces of hardware, in which one had been dedicated to command and the other had been dedicated to monitor, such that some command and some monitor functionality appears in each. The only constraint is that the monitor for signal cannot be in the same hardware as the command I/O it is monitoring. The splitting of the command outputs between independent pieces of hardware may require some communication between them, i.e. an intra-switch trunk line. This innovation reduces the amount of wasted hardware and allows the two independent pieces of hardware to be designed identically in order to save development costs

Time Triggered Ethernet System Testing Means and Method

Methods and apparatus are provided for evaluating the performance of a Time Triggered Ethernet (TTE) system employing Time Triggered (TT) communication. A real TTE system under test (SUT) having real input elements communicating using TT messages with output elements via one or more first TTE switches during a first time interval schedule established for the SUT. A simulation system is also provided having input simulators that communicate using TT messages via one or more second TTE switches with the same output elements during a second time interval schedule established for the simulation system. The first and second time interval schedules are off-set slightly so that messages from the input simulators, when present, arrive at the output elements prior to messages from the analogous real inputs, thereby having priority over messages from the real inputs and causing the system to operate based on the simulated inputs when present

Modeling and Analysis of Mixed Synchronous/Asynchronous Systems

Practical safety-critical distributed systems must integrate safety critical and non-critical data in a common platform. Safety critical systems almost always consist of isochronous components that have synchronous or asynchronous interface with other components. Many of these systems also support a mix of synchronous and asynchronous interfaces. This report presents a study on the modeling and analysis of asynchronous, synchronous, and mixed synchronous/asynchronous systems. We build on the SAE Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) to capture architectures for analysis. We present preliminary work targeted to capture mixed low- and high-criticality data, as well as real-time properties in a common Model of Computation (MoC). An abstract, but representative, test specimen system was created as the system to be modeled

Application Agreement and Integration Services

Application agreement and integration services are required by distributed, fault-tolerant, safety critical systems to assure required performance. An analysis of distributed and hierarchical agreement strategies are developed against the backdrop of observed agreement failures in fielded systems. The documented work was performed under NASA Task Order NNL10AB32T, Validation And Verification of Safety-Critical Integrated Distributed Systems Area 2. This document is intended to satisfy the requirements for deliverable 5.2.11 under Task 4.2.2.3. This report discusses the challenges of maintaining application agreement and integration services. A literature search is presented that documents previous work in the area of replica determinism. Sources of non-deterministic behavior are identified and examples are presented where system level agreement failed to be achieved. We then explore how TTEthernet services can be extended to supply some interesting application agreement frameworks. This document assumes that the reader is familiar with the TTEthernet protocol. The reader is advised to read the TTEthernet protocol standard [1] before reading this document. This document does not re-iterate the content of the standard

Continuous flow optimisation of nanoparticle catalysts

Continuous flow reactors offer a host of advantages over their more traditional batch counterparts. These include more controlled mixing, enhanced heat transfer and increased safety when handling hazardous reagents as only a small volume of material is present within the reactor at any one time. For these reasons, flow reactors are becoming increasingly popular for the synthesis of nanoparticle catalysts. Recent advances in reactor technology and automation have transformed how chemical products are developed and tested. Automated continuous flow reactors have been coupled with machine learning algorithms in closed feedback loops, allowing vast areas of multi-dimensional experimental space to be explored quickly and efficiently, significantly accelerating the identification of optimum synthesis conditions. While both reducing costs and improving the sustainability of process development. This work describes the development of a novel two-stage autonomous reactor for the optimisation of nanoparticle catalysts by direct observation of their performance in a catalysed chemical reaction. The key advantage of this performance directed system is that no offline processing or analysis of the nanoparticles is required. Allowing both the nanoparticle properties and the nanoparticle catalysed reaction conditions to be optimised in tandem by an automated system with zero human intervention. Chapter 1 introduces the principles and methods underlying this work with a focus on nanoparticle catalysts, flow reactor technologies and optimisation algorithms. Chapter 2 describes a self-optimising reactor capable of nanoparticle catalysed reaction optimisation. Chapter 3 shows the development of a reactor which was able to produce alloyed nanoparticle catalysts with tuneable composition. Chapter 4 describes a body of work surrounding the computational modelling of nanoparticle catalysed reactions for the evaluation of different optimisation algorithms. Chapter 5 concludes this project by presenting a two-stage reactor which was able to optimise both the physical properties of the nanoparticles as well as the conditions under which they were used to catalyse a reaction