23,341 research outputs found
Value added or misattributed? A multi-institution study on the educational benefit of labs for reinforcing physics content
Instructional labs are widely seen as a unique, albeit expensive, way to
teach scientific content. We measured the effectiveness of introductory lab
courses at achieving this educational goal across nine different lab courses at
three very different institutions. These institutions and courses encompassed a
broad range of student populations and instructional styles. The nine courses
studied had two key things in common: the labs aimed to reinforce the content
presented in lectures, and the labs were optional. By comparing the performance
of students who did and did not take the labs (with careful normalization for
selection effects), we found universally and precisely no added value to
learning from taking the labs as measured by course exam performance. This work
should motivate institutions and departments to reexamine the goals and conduct
of their lab courses, given their resource-intensive nature. We show why these
results make sense when looking at the comparative mental processes of students
involved in research and instructional labs, and offer alternative goals and
instructional approaches that would make lab courses more educationally
valuable.Comment: Accepted to Phys Rev PE
Indian nurses in Italy: a qualitative study of their professional and social integration
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:
To investigate the lived subjective experiences of immigrant Indian nurses in Italy and specifically their professional and social integration.
BACKGROUND:
To study the worldwide, nursing flux is a health priority in the globalised world. The growth in migration trends among nurses, not only from Philippines or India, has proliferated in recent years. The research on nurses' mobility for Southern European countries is underexplored, and in Italy, the out-migration flows of Indian nurses were never analysed.
DESIGN:
Qualitative methodological approach.
METHODS:
Semi-structured interviews (n = 20) were completed with Indian clinical nurses working in Italy for more than one year mainly in private organisations. A purposive sampling technique was used for recruitment. The data were then content-analysed using an inductive method.
RESULTS:
The findings were categorised into four themes: (1) aspects of professional integration and working experience, (2) intra- and interprofessional relationships and perceptions of the IPASVI Regulatory Nursing Board, (3) initial nursing education and continuous professional development and (4) perceptions of social integration.
CONCLUSION:
The results show that for Indian nurses in Italy emigration is important to gain opportunities to expand economic and social privileges as well as escape from historical assumptions of stigma associated with nursing work, especially for women. However, these conclusions have to be seen in wider socio-cultural complexities that are at the basis of transnational fluxes (Prescott & Nichter ).
RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE:
The research offers an insight into the complicated reasons for Indian nurses out-migration to Italy. Without comprehending the interwoven textures of the political and social relations that are continually constructed and re-constructed among different nations, it is difficult to understand nurses out-migration and consequently have a better and safer collaborative teamwork in the host countries
The Mass of the Convective Zone in FGK Main Sequence Stars and the Effect of Accreted Planetary Material on Apparent Metallicity Determinations
The mass of the outer convective zone in FGK main sequence stars decreases
dramatically with stellar mass. Therefore, any contamination of a star's
atmosphere by accreted planetary material should affect hotter stars much more
than cool stars. If recent suggestions that high metal abundances in stars with
planets are caused by planetesimal accretion are correct, then metallicity
enhancements in earlier-type stars with planets should be very pronounced. No
such trend is seen, however.Comment: Submitted ApJ Letters March 26th; accepted April 30th. 12 pages, 2
figure
Frequency Dependent Specific Heat from Thermal Effusion in Spherical Geometry
We present a novel method of measuring the frequency dependent specific heat
at the glass transition applied to 5-polyphenyl-4-ether. The method employs
thermal waves effusing radially out from the surface of a spherical thermistor
that acts as both a heat generator and thermometer. It is a merit of the method
compared to planar effusion methods that the influence of the mechanical
boundary conditions are analytically known. This implies that it is the
longitudinal rather than the isobaric specific heat that is measured. As
another merit the thermal conductivity and specific heat can be found
independently. The method has highest sensitivity at a frequency where the
thermal diffusion length is comparable to the radius of the heat generator.
This limits in practise the frequency range to 2-3 decades. An account of the
3omega-technique used including higher order terms in the temperature
dependency of the thermistor and in the power generated is furthermore given.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures, Substantially revised versio
Gamma-Ray Burst Sequences in Hardness Ratio-Peak Energy Plane
The narrowness of the distribution of the peak energy of
spectrum of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and the unification of GRB population are
great puzzles yet to be solved. We investigate the two puzzles based on the
global spectral behaviors of different GRB population in the
plane (HR the spectral hardness ratio) with BATSE and HETE-2 observations. It
is found that long GRBs and XRFs observed by HETE-2 seem to follow the same
sequence in the plane, with the XRFs at the low end of this
sequence. The long and short GRBs observed by BATSE follow significantly
different sequences in the plane, with most of the short GRBs
having a larger hardness ratio than the long GRBs at a given .
These results indicate that the global spectral behaviors of the long GRB
sample and the XRF sample are similar, while that of short GRBs is different.
The short GRBs seem to be a unique subclass of GRBs, and they are not the
higher energy extension of the long GRBs (abridged).Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure
Open charm scenarios
We discuss possibilities of identifying open charm effects in direct
production processes, and propose that direct evidence for the open charm
effects can be found in . A unique feature with this
process is that the open channel is located in a relatively
isolated energy, i.e. GeV, which is sufficiently far away from the
known charmonia and . Due to the dominance of the
isospin-0 component at the charmonium energy region, an enhanced
model-independent cusp effect between the thresholds of
and can be highlighted. An energy scan over this energy
region in the annihilation reaction can help us to understand the
nature of X(3900) recently observed by Belle Collaboration in , and establish the open charm effects as an important
non-perturbative mechanism in the charmonium energy region.Comment: 6 pages, Proceeding contribution to the Rutherford Centennial
Conference, Aug. 8-12, 2011, Manchester, U.
Identification of a Class of Low-Mass Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars Struggling to Become Carbon Stars in the Magellanic Clouds
We have identified a new class of Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars in the
Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (SMC/LMC) using optical to infrared
photometry, light curves, and optical spectroscopy. The strong dust production
and long-period pulsations of these stars indicate that they are at the very
end of their AGB evolution. Period-mass-radius relations for the
fundamental-mode pulsators give median current stellar masses of 1.14 M_sun in
the LMC and 0.94 M_sun in the SMC (with dispersions of 0.21 and 0.18 M_sun,
respectively), and models suggest initial masses of <1.5 M_sun and <1.25 M_sun,
respectively. This new class of stars includes both O-rich and C-rich
chemistries, placing the limit where dredge-up allows carbon star production
below these masses. A high fraction of the brightest among them should show S
star characteristics indicative of atmospheric C/O ~ 1, and many will form
O-rich dust prior to their C-rich phase. These stars can be separated from
their less-evolved counterparts by their characteristically red J-[8] colors.Comment: 16 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
The Discovery of a Twelfth Wolf-Rayet Star in the Small Magellanic Cloud
We report the discovery of a relatively faint (V=15.5) early-type WN star in
the SMC. The line strength and width of He II lambda 4686 emission is similar
to that of the other SMC WNs, and the presense of N V lambda 4603,19 emission
(coupled with the lack of N III) suggests this star is of spectral type
WN3-4.5, and thus is similar in type to the other SMC WRs. Also like the other
SMC WN stars, an early-type absorption spectrum is weakly present. The absolute
magnitude is comparable to that of other (single) Galactic early-type WNs. The
star is located in the Hodge 53 OB association, which is also the home of two
other SMC WNs. This star, which we designate SMC-WR12, was actually detected at
a high significance level in an earlier interference-filter survey, but the
wrong star was observed as part of a spectroscopic followup, and this case of
mistaken identity resulted in its Wolf-Rayet nature not being recognized until
now.Comment: Accepted by PASP (November 2003 issue
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