Picking Pedagogical Practices Students Prefer: An Analysis of the Effectiveness of Teaching Tools in Face-to-Face Versus Online Delivery

This study explores graduate student perceptions of fourteen commonly used teaching methods. Convenience samples were drawn from a university exclusively delivering its MBA program via the Internet and a university providing traditional face-to-face classroom instruction. Overall, no significant preference differences were found for nine of the fourteen pedagogical methods. Students enrolled in online classes perceive textbooks, tutorials, and Internet activities as significantly more effective in helping them achieve their educational goals than students enrolled in face-to-face classes. Students enrolled in face-to-face classes rated guest speakers and team presentations as more effective learning tools than their online counterparts. The perceived comparative effectiveness rankings of the alternative teaching tools in assisting higher learning is discussed

Human Robot Interface for Assistive Grasping

This work describes a new human-in-the-loop (HitL) assistive grasping system for individuals with varying levels of physical capabilities. We investigated the feasibility of using four potential input devices with our assistive grasping system interface, using able-bodied individuals to define a set of quantitative metrics that could be used to assess an assistive grasping system. We then took these measurements and created a generalized benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of any arbitrary input device into a HitL grasping system. The four input devices were a mouse, a speech recognition device, an assistive switch, and a novel sEMG device developed by our group that was connected either to the forearm or behind the ear of the subject. These preliminary results provide insight into how different interface devices perform for generalized assistive grasping tasks and also highlight the potential of sEMG based control for severely disabled individuals.Comment: 8 pages, 21 figure

Isolator:state of print

Isolator is a papercraft head, 45 x 45 x 45 cm. Isolator was created for State Of Print. It was designed and produced by David Lyons, Ken Fee and Cat Forsyth from Abertay University and Paul Harrison from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. It is based on Hugo Gernsback’s Isolator Helmet designed in 1925 and represents an ‘alternate history’ strand in the State of Print.State Of Print is an artist collective and an artistic investigation. State Of Print asks the question ‘What is essential to making a state?’ Much in the spirit of Plato’s assertion that a philosopher should be king, our answer is ‘art (with an emphasis on printmaking)’ is essential to the identify of a state.  <br/

Causal Effects of Prenatal Drug Exposure on Birth Defects with Missing by Terathanasia

We investigate the causal effects of drug exposure on birth defects, motivated by a recent cohort study of birth outcomes in pregnancies of women treated with a given medication, that revealed a higher rate of major structural birth defects in infants born to exposed versus unexposed women. An outstanding problem in this study was the missing birth defect outcomes among pregnancy losses resulting from spontaneous abortion. This led to missing not at random because, according to the theory of "terathanasia", a defected fetus is more likely to be spontaneously aborted. In addition, the previous analysis stratified on live birth against spontaneous abortion, which was itself a post-exposure variable and hence did not lead to causal interpretation of the stratified results. In this paper we aimed to estimate and provide inference for the causal parameters of scientific interest, including the principal effects, making use of the missing data mechanism informed by terathanasia. During this process we also dealt with complications in the data including left truncation, observational nature, and rare events. We report our findings which shed light on how studies on causal effects of medication or other exposures during pregnancy may be analyzed

Academic Scholars, Practicing Professionals, and Engaged Scholarship: A Content Analysis of Collaborative and Informed Research in Tourism Journals

This study examines the existence of engaged scholarship through a content analysis of 442 articles published in tourism journals. The importance of the analysis is based on arguments from the literature that research quality improves when academic scholars and practicing professionals collaborate. However, confirmation that engaged scholarship is taking place is a necessary first step before one can evaluate and compare the quality of the research. The results of the analysis reveal that engaged scholarship is modestly practiced. Collaborative research represents approximately 10 percent of the total while informed research represents about 22 percent (for external funding) and 9 percent (for access to data and other support). Now that the presence of engaged scholarship has been confirmed, future investigations should examine whether or not such engagement results in higher quality research. If so, it will have potentially important implications for both scholarship and practice

Scaled Quail Reproduction in the Trans-Pecos Region of Texas

Scaled quail (Callipepla squamata) populations have declined markedly throughout their range. We monitored hatch rates and nest placement of radio-marked female scaled quail (n 1⁄4 210) in Pecos County, Texas relative to the availability and location of ‘spreader dams’ (i.e., shallow water catchments) through the nesting seasons of 1999 and 2000. Hatch rates were high both years (i.e., 67 and 84% for 1999 and 2000, respectively). The predominant nesting microhabitat was tobosa (Pleuraphis mutica), which accounted for 85% of the nests located. We failed to document any direct impacts of spreader dams on nesting ecology of scaled quail

The Contribution of Transcriptomics to Biomarker Development in Systemic Vasculitis and SLE.

A small but increasing number of gene expression based biomarkers are becoming available for routine clinical use, principally in oncology and transplantation. These underscore the potential of gene expression arrays and RNA sequencing for biomarker development, but this potential has not yet been fully realized and most candidates do not progress beyond the initial report. The first part of this review examines the process of gene expression- based biomarker development, highlighting how systematic biases and confounding can significantly skew study outcomes. Adequate validation in an independent cohort remains the single best means of protecting against these concerns. The second part considers gene-expression based biomarkers in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and systemic vasculitis. The type 1 interferon inducible gene signature remains by far the most studied in autoimmune rheumatic disease. While initially presented as an objective, blood-based biomarker of active SLE, subsequent research has shown that it is not specific to SLE and that its association with disease activity is considerably more nuanced than first thought. Nonetheless, it is currently under evaluation in ongoing trials of anti-interferon therapy. Other candidate markers of note include a prognostic CD8+ T-cell gene signature validated in SLE and ANCA-associated vasculitis, and a disease activity biomarker for SLE derived from modules of tightly correlated genes.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Bentham Science via http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/138161282166615031313025