904 research outputs found
How embodied interactions manifest themselves during collaborative learning in classroom settings
New physical computing toolkits offer much promise for promoting collaborative
learning by engendering embodied interactions that can support collaborative discovery. To
examine how these can unfold during a learning activity, we conducted a classroom study
where pairs of children explored mappings between various sensors and actuators embedded
in a physical-digital artifact. We found how a number of embodied interactions emerged that
were effectively used to progress learning through the processes of showing, sharing and
contestin
Democratizing children's engagement with the internet of things through connectus
The emerging Internet of Things (IoT), through which billions of everyday objects are becoming embedded with the abilities to sense their environment, compute data, and wirelessly connect to other devices, has been widely recognized as the new disruptive technology of our time. The predicted ubiquity of connected devices indicates that IoT technologies are quickly becoming an important part of the digital fluency curriculum, however, no research yet exists on suitable pedagogical approaches for teaching children about the IoT. The current research explores the design and deployment of a pedagogical approach and associated tangible toolkit, ConnectUs, that will enable 10-13 year old children to explore and design for the Internet of Things
MakeMe, codeme, connectus: Learning digital fluency through tangible magic cubes
Recent years have seen an increased empirical interest
in designing new approaches to teaching digital fluency
to wide audiences. Tangible physical computing
interfaces provide much scope for teaching abstract
digital fluency concepts in an engaging and playful way.
However, questions remain as to how both the form
factor and the corresponding task types of such
interfaces can be best designed to support learning. In
this hands-on workshop, participants will explore how
digital fluency topics might be taught through making,
discovery learning and coding by interacting with the
tangible Magic Cubes toolkit (Figure 1). The workshop
will culminate in a discussion of how tangible toolkits
for learning can be better designed to encourage
collaborative and engaging learning experiences
Explaining Sad People's Memory Advantage for Faces.
Sad people recognize faces more accurately than happy people (Hills et al., 2011). We devised four hypotheses for this finding that are tested between in the current study. The four hypotheses are: (1) sad people engage in more expert processing associated with face processing; (2) sad people are motivated to be more accurate than happy people in an attempt to repair their mood; (3) sad people have a defocused attentional strategy that allows more information about a face to be encoded; and (4) sad people scan more of the face than happy people leading to more facial features to be encoded. In Experiment 1, we found that dysphoria (sad mood often associated with depression) was not correlated with the face-inversion effect (a measure of expert processing) nor with response times but was correlated with defocused attention and recognition accuracy. Experiment 2 established that dysphoric participants detected changes made to more facial features than happy participants. In Experiment 3, using eye-tracking we found that sad-induced participants sampled more of the face whilst avoiding the eyes. Experiment 4 showed that sad-induced people demonstrated a smaller own-ethnicity bias. These results indicate that sad people show different attentional allocation to faces than happy and neutral people
Designing for Ballet Classes: Identifying and Mitigating Communication Challenges Between Dancers and Teachers
Dancer-teacher communication in a ballet class can be challenging: ballet is one of the most complex forms of movements, and learning happens through multi-faceted interactions with studio tools (mirror, barre, and floor) and the teacher. We conducted an interview-based qualitative study with seven ballet teachers and six dancers followed by an open-coded analysis to explore the communication challenges that arise while teaching and learning in the ballet studio. We identified key communication issues, including adapting to multi-level dancer expertise, transmitting and realigning development goals, providing personalized corrections and feedback, maintaining the state of flow, and communicating how to properly use tools in the environment. We discuss design implications for crafting technological interventions aimed at mitigating these communication challenges
Generalized nonreciprocity in an optomechanical circuit via synthetic magnetism and reservoir engineering
Synthetic magnetism has been used to control charge neutral excitations for
applications ranging from classical beam steering to quantum simulation. In
optomechanics, radiation-pressure-induced parametric coupling between optical
(photon) and mechanical (phonon) excitations may be used to break time-reversal
symmetry, providing the prerequisite for synthetic magnetism. Here we design
and fabricate a silicon optomechanical circuit with both optical and mechanical
connectivity between two optomechanical cavities. Driving the two cavities with
phase-correlated laser light results in a synthetic magnetic flux, which in
combination with dissipative coupling to the mechanical bath, leads to
nonreciprocal transport of photons with 35dB of isolation. Additionally,
optical pumping with blue-detuned light manifests as a particle non-conserving
interaction between photons and phonons, resulting in directional optical
amplification of 12dB in the isolator through direction. These results indicate
the feasibility of utilizing optomechanical circuits to create a more general
class of nonreciprocal optical devices, and further, to enable novel
topological phases for both light and sound on a microchip.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, 4 appendice
Quantum polarization tomography of bright squeezed light
We reconstruct the polarization sector of a bright polarization squeezed beam
starting from a complete set of Stokes measurements. Given the symmetry that
underlies the polarization structure of quantum fields, we use the unique SU(2)
Wigner distribution to represent states. In the limit of localized and bright
states, the Wigner function can be approximated by an inverse three-dimensional
Radon transform. We compare this direct reconstruction with the results of a
maximum likelihood estimation, finding an excellent agreement.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. Contribution to New Journal of Physics, Focus
Issue on Quantum Tomography. Comments welcom
Resonant magnetotunneling spectroscopy of p-type-well interband tunneling diodes
We report experimental results of quantum transport through InAs/AlSb/GaSb/AlSb/InAs heterostructures having well widths of 7.0, 8.0, and 11.9 nm, respectively, in magnetic fields of up to 8.0 T aligned parallel to the epitaxial growth planes. Application of this resonant magnetotunneling spectroscopy technique allows the well subband dispersions to be probed along the wave vector perpendicular to both the growth direction and the applied magnetic field. In all three samples we observe little change in the current-voltage characteristics below a sample-dependent critical magnetic field B_(crit). Above this critical field, both the main I-V peak and a subsequent shoulder that forms at high fields shift in bias in a manner we attribute to be related to the HH2 and LH1 subbands (where HH and LH denote heavy and light holes), respectively
Redox-freezing and nucleation of diamond via magnetite formation in the Earth’s mantle
Diamonds and their inclusions are unique probes into the deep Earth, tracking the deep carbon cycle to >800 km. Understanding the mechanisms of carbon mobilization and freezing is a prerequisite for quantifying the fluxes of carbon in the deep Earth. Here we show direct evidence for the formation of diamond by redox reactions involving FeNi sulfides. Transmission Kikuchi Diffraction identifies an arrested redox reaction from pyrrhotite to magnetite included in diamond. The magnetite corona shows coherent epitaxy with relict pyrrhotite and diamond, indicating that diamond nucleated on magnetite. Furthermore, structures inherited from h-Fe3O4 define a phase transformation at depths of 320–330 km, the base of the Kaapvaal lithosphere. The oxidation of pyrrhotite to magnetite is an important trigger of diamond precipitation in the upper mantle, explaining the presence of these phases in diamonds
Quantum information processing with superconducting qubits in a microwave field
We investigate the quantum dynamics of a Cooper-pair box with a
superconducting loop in the presence of a nonclassical microwave field. We
demonstrate the existence of Rabi oscillations for both single- and
multi-photon processes and, moreover, we propose a new quantum computing scheme
(including one-bit and conditional two-bit gates) based on Josephson qubits
coupled through microwaves.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
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