Plan-Draw-Evaluate (PDE) pattern in students' collaborative drawing: Interaction between visual and verbal modes of representation

The use of group drawing to promote student-generated representation is a common instructional strategy as it combines the benefits of using visual representation and collaborative talk. Although the affordances of group drawing have increasingly been emphasized in science education, few studies have investigated how drawing as a visual mode interacts with group discourse as a verbal mode as well as how that interaction facilitates the development of students' collective ideas. Informed by theories in classroom discourse and multimodality, this paper examines the interaction process between a verbal and visual mode of representation as groups of students engaged in collaborative drawing during guided science inquiry lessons. On the basis of the analysis of data from a science class that adopted group drawing, we found and documented a recurring pattern, Plan-Draw-Evaluate or PDE pattern, in how the interaction between the verbal and visual modes occurred during collaborative drawing. This PDE pattern consisted of a triad of moves that alternate between the two modes and fulfilled various discursive purposes, such as suggesting, requesting, recording, visualizing, elaborating, agreeing, and rejecting. The PDE pattern provided a basic social structure that facilitated the collaboration and progression of students' ideas. With illustrations of PDE patterns and its variations, we argue that the PDE pattern provides an insight into the dynamic organization of interactions involved in group drawing that takes into consideration the multimodal affordances of verbal and visual modes of representation and the progression of ideas developed through collaborative discourse

Self-powered mobile sensor for in-pipe potable water quality monitoring

Traditional stationary sensors for potable-water quality monitoring in a wireless sensor network format allow for continuous data collection and transfer. These stationary sensors have played a key role in reporting contamination events in order to secure public health. We are developing a self-powered mobile sensor that can move with the water flow, allowing real-time detection of contamination in water distribution pipes, with a higher temporal resolution. Functionality of the mobile sensor was tested for detecting and monitoring pH, Ca2+, Mg2+, HCO3-/CO32-, NH4+, and Clions. Moreover, energy harvest and wireless data transmission capabilities are being designed for the mobile sensor

Multimodal Genre of Science Classroom Discourse: Mutual Contextualization Between Genre and Representation Construction

This paper argues that meaning-making with multimodal representations in science learning is always contextualized within a genre and, conversely, what constitutes an ongoing genre also depends on a multimodal coordination of speech, gesture, diagrams, symbols, and material objects. In social semiotics, a genre is a culturally evolved way of doing things with language (including non-verbal representations). Genre provides a useful lens to understand how a community’s cultural norms and practices shape the use of language in various human activities. Despite this understanding, researchers have seldom considered the role of scientific genres (e.g., experimental account, information report, explanation) to understand how students in science classrooms make meanings as they use and construct multimodal representations. This study is based on an enactment of a drawing-to-learn approach in a primary school classroom in Australia, with data generated from classroom videos and students’ artifacts. Using multimodal discourse analysis informed by social semiotics, we analyze how the semantic variations in students’ representations correspond to the recurring genres they were enacting. We found a general pattern in the use and creation of representations across different scientific genres that support the theory of a mutual contextualization between genre and representation construction

The features of norms formed in constructing student-generated drawings to explain physics phenomena

Student-generated drawing is a useful strategy to construct students’ scientific ideas. For exploring ways to support student-generated drawing, we focused on the perspective of ‘Norms’–shared behaviour patterns desirable in a community. We investigated what norms were formed and how they emerged when students made drawings to explain phenomena. Data were collected from classroom observations, interviews and students’ artefacts from five physics lessons in a primary school gifted programme. The data were analysed based on three essential features of norms: justifiability, sharing and behaviours. Consequently, two main norms were reported with four sub-norms in terms of two processes of drawing: meaning-making and representing. First, to show invisible mechanism, ‘explaining why’ was emphasised as a main norm of the meaning-making process. This norm was shared in classroom discussions and drawings by interacting with two sub-norms that supported students to interpret phenomena with ‘key concepts’ at a ‘particle level’. Second, ‘telling a story visually’ was another main norm of the representing process. This norm was formed with two sub-norms that encouraged students to visualise ideas with ‘their own symbols’ in ways that were ‘easy to understand’. These results indicate that norms can guide desirable directions for students to construct and visualise ideas

Sequential patterns of students’ drawing in constructing scientific explanations: focusing on the interplay among three levels of pictorial representation

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The purpose of this study is to investigate the process of students’ construction of scientific explanations through drawing explanatory diagrams. For this, we observed fifth and sixth graders’ drawing processes in a gifted science class involving learning physics concepts in mechanics. The analysis was carried out on three pictorial representational levels: sensory (e.g. observed materials), unseen substance (e.g. molecules) and unseen non-substance (e.g. forces). We found that there were five patterns of interplay depending on the sequential path through the pictorial representational levels. All students began drawing explanatory diagrams from the sensory level as the first step and then constructed explanations using the unseen levels based on the interplay among different levels. In the process of forming meaningful relationships among the three levels of representation, students focused on a specific phenomenon through drawing at a sensory level and extended their making sense of the phenomenon from what happened to why it happened. Based on these findings, we suggest how teachers can use the interplay among the different pictorial representational levels to guide students in generating scientific explanations through drawing

Enhancing water distribution system security through water quality mobile sensor operation

Recent developments in wireless/wired sensor networks allowed the application of stationary sensors capable of continuously collecting and transmitting hydraulic and water quality measurements at fine temporal resolution. The constantly updating data allows achieving an improved representation of the system state, modeling, and control. The deployment of fixed water quality sensors in water distribution systems has been recognized to be the key component of contamination warning systems for securing public health. This study proposes to explore how the inclusion of mobile sensors monitoring for various water quality parameters (i.e., pH, water hardness, and disinfectant) can enhance water distribution systems security. Mobile sensors equipped with sampling, sensing, data acquisition, wireless transmission, and power generation systems are being designed, fabricated, and tested with prototypes expected to be released in the very near future. Ideally, these mobile sensors will act as mobile agents capable of continuously conducting multivariate measurements and reporting them as they are distributed with water pipe flow. This work initiates the development of a theoretical mathematical framework for modeling mobile sensor movement in the water distribution system, processing and integrating the sensory data collected from stationary and nonstationary sensor nodes to increase system reliability and security through increasing coverage and reducing fault detection time

A Survey on Computational Methods for Investigation on ncRNA-Disease Association through the Mode of Action Perspective

Molecular and sequencing technologies have been successfully used in decoding biological mechanisms of various diseases. As revealed by many novel discoveries, the role of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in understanding disease mechanisms is becoming increasingly important. Since ncRNAs primarily act as regulators of transcription, associating ncRNAs with diseases involves multiple inference steps. Leveraging the fast-accumulating high-throughput screening results, a number of computational models predicting ncRNA-disease associations have been developed. These tools suggest novel disease-related biomarkers or therapeutic targetable ncRNAs, contributing to the realization of precision medicine. In this survey, we first introduce the biological roles of different ncRNAs and summarize the databases containing ncRNA-disease associations. Then, we suggest a new trend in recent computational prediction of ncRNA-disease association, which is the mode of action (MoA) network perspective. This perspective includes integrating ncRNAs with mRNA, pathway and phenotype information. In the next section, we describe computational methodologies widely used in this research domain. Existing computational studies are then summarized in terms of their coverage of the MoA network. Lastly, we discuss the potential applications and future roles of the MoA network in terms of integrating biological mechanisms for ncRNA-disease associations

A Modeling the Supplier Relationship Management in Agribusiness Supply Chain

El texto completo de este trabajo no está disponible en el Repositorio Académico UPC por restricciones de la casa editorial.This research analyzes the current studies of supplier relationship management (SRM), based on a literature review to contrast and compare the evolution of SRM in agribusiness-oriented supply chain management (SCM). The result obtained in this research shows the agribusiness and its relationship with its suppliers. It also strives to identify potential models for a strong SRM. An SRM model is proposed to visualize the components that make up the management of suppliers in the agribusiness supply chain (SC)