622 research outputs found
A Lightweight Co-Construction Activity for Teaching 21st Century Skills at Primary Schools
Employing learning processes that promote 21st Century skills is now a requirement in Finnish schools and elsewhere. Participatory design/co-design activities have shown to foster design thinking and computational thinking skills in primary school level participants, but a lightweight applicable model of such an activity is yet to be presented. We develop a lightweight hybrid co-construction method based on software development via two exploratory case studies in a Finnish primary school. For the purpose of evaluating objectively the motivating effects of our activity, we elaborate upon four concerning dimensions that arise from previous studies. In our resulting activity, an adult programmer is partnered with a group of children to, in this case, construct math games together. The children felt empowered and motivated by working with us in this way, however, further study is required on the effects this kind of an activity has in comparison to alternative teaching methods
The 3D structure of the Lagrangian acceleration in turbulent flows
We report experimental results on the three dimensional Lagrangian
acceleration in highly turbulent flows. Tracer particles are tracked optically
using four silicon strip detectors from high energy physics that provide high
temporal and spatial resolution. The components of the acceleration are shown
to be statistically dependent. The probability density function (PDF) of the
acceleration magnitude is comparable to a log-normal distribution. Assuming
isotropy, a log-normal distribution of the magnitude can account for the
observed dependency of the components. The time dynamics of the acceleration
components is found to be typical of the dissipation scales whereas the
magnitude evolves over longer times, possibly close to the integral time scale.Comment: accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter
Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Employing learning processes that promote 21st Century skills is now a
requirement in Finnish schools and elsewhere. Participatory
design/co-design activities have shown to foster design thinking and
computational thinking skills in primary school level participants, but a
lightweight applicable model of such an activity is yet to be
presented. We develop a lightweight hybrid co-construction method based
on software development via two exploratory case studies in a Finnish
primary school. For the purpose of evaluating objectively the motivating
effects of our activity, we elaborate upon four concerning dimensions
that arise from previous studies. In our resulting activity, an adult
programmer is partnered with a group of children to, in this case,
construct math games together. The children felt empowered and motivated
by working with us in this way, however, further study is required on
the effects this kind of an activity has in comparison to alternative
teaching methods.</p
Stratigraphic record reveals contrasting roles of overflows and underflows over glacial cycles in a hypersaline lake (Dead Sea)
In lakes and oceans, links between modern sediment density flow processes and deposits preserved in long-term geological records are poorly understood. Consequently, it is unclear whether, and if so how, long-term climate changes affect the magnitude/frequency of sediment density flows. One approach to answering this question is to analyze a comprehensive geological record that comprises deposits that can be reliably linked to modern sediment flow processes. To address this question, we investigated the unique ICDP Core 5017-1 from the Dead Sea (the largest and deepest hypersaline lake on the Earth) depocenter covering MIS 7-1. Based on an understanding of modern sediment density flow processes in the lake, we link homogeneous muds in the core to overflows (surface flood plumes, ρflowρwater). Our dataset reveals (1) overflows are more prominent during interglacials, while underflows are more prominent during glacials; (2) orbital-scale climate changes affected the flow magnitude/frequency via changing salinity and density profile of lake brine, lake-level, and source materials
Separation between coherent and turbulent fluctuations. What can we learn from the Empirical Mode Decomposition?
The performances of a new data processing technique, namely the Empirical
Mode Decomposition, are evaluated on a fully developed turbulent velocity
signal perturbed by a numerical forcing which mimics a long-period flapping.
First, we introduce a "resemblance" criterion to discriminate between the
polluted and the unpolluted modes extracted from the perturbed velocity signal
by means of the Empirical Mode Decomposition algorithm. A rejection procedure,
playing, somehow, the role of a high-pass filter, is then designed in order to
infer the original velocity signal from the perturbed one. The quality of this
recovering procedure is extensively evaluated in the case of a "mono-component"
perturbation (sine wave) by varying both the amplitude and the frequency of the
perturbation. An excellent agreement between the recovered and the reference
velocity signals is found, even though some discrepancies are observed when the
perturbation frequency overlaps the frequency range corresponding to the
energy-containing eddies as emphasized by both the energy spectrum and the
structure functions. Finally, our recovering procedure is successfully
performed on a time-dependent perturbation (linear chirp) covering a broad
range of frequencies.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Experiments in Fluid
The reconfiguration of social, digital and physical presence: from online church to church online
Digital presence refers to technologies that provide communities a shared experience and a sense of togetherness, despite geographical distance. Emerging technologies for digital presence provide the church with both theological questions (e.g. related to the validity of sacraments when administered online) and practical opportunities. Think of the pros and cons for online communion in some churches: is digital presence real presence? The digital realm as a thread of the universe leads to rethinking of the church as a social, digital and physical unity. What kind of new possibilities could digital presence in digital realities provide to spiritual experience, individually and within the worship?Contribution: Rather than a plain application of the existing technologies to digitise the current functions and events of congregations for online services, technology should expand and reform the church online. This study aims to discuss the transformation from online church to church online. The technical solution for digital presence was inspired by the demands of a Finnish plug-in campus in an African setting, which draws inspiration from African concepts of community and place.</div
Microbiota-directed fibre activates both targeted and secondary metabolic shifts in the distal gut
Beneficial modulation of the gut microbiome has high-impact implications not only in humans, but also in livestock that sustain our current societal needs. In this context, we have tailored an acetylated galactoglucomannan (AcGGM) fibre to match unique enzymatic capabilities of Roseburia and Faecalibacterium species, both renowned butyrate-producing gut commensals. Here, we test the accuracy of AcGGM within the complex endogenous gut microbiome of pigs, wherein we resolve 355 metagenome-assembled genomes together with quantitative metaproteomes. In AcGGM-fed pigs, both target populations differentially express AcGGM-specific polysaccharide utilization loci, including novel, mannan-specific esterases that are critical to its deconstruction. However, AcGGM-inclusion also manifests a “butterfly effect”, whereby numerous metabolic changes and interdependent cross-feeding pathways occur in neighboring non-mannanolytic populations that produce short-chain fatty acids. Our findings show how intricate structural features and acetylation patterns of dietary fibre can be customized to specific bacterial populations, with potential to create greater modulatory effects at large
Crossover between Rayleigh-Taylor Instability and turbulent cascading atomization mechanism in the bag-breakup regime
The question whether liquid atomization (or pulverization) resorts to
instability dynamics (through refinements of Rayleigh-Plateau, Rayleigh-Taylor
or Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism) or to turbulent cascades similar to Richardson
and Kolmogorov first ideas seems to be still open. In this paper, we report
experimental evidences that both mechanisms are needed to explain the spray
drop PDF obtained from an industrial nozzle. Instability of Rayleigh-Taylor
kind governs the size of the largest droplets while the smallest ones obey a
PDF given by a turbulent cascading mechanism resulting in a log-L\'evy stable
law of stability parameter close to 1.68. This value, very close to the inverse
of the Flory exponent, can be related to a recent model for intermittency
modeling stemming from self-avoiding random vortex stretching.Comment: new alpha version (precedent was a draft
Immunochip analysis identifies multiple susceptibility loci for systemic sclerosis
In this study, 1,833 systemic sclerosis (SSc) cases and 3,466 controls were genotyped with the Immunochip array. Classical alleles, amino acid residues, and SNPs across the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region were imputed and tested. These analyses resulted in a model composed of six polymorphic amino acid positions and seven SNPs that explained the observed significant associations in the region. In addition, a replication step comprising 4,017 SSc cases and 5,935 controls was carried out for several selected non-HLA variants, reaching a total of 5,850 cases and 9,401 controls of European ancestry. Following this strategy, we identified and validated three SSc risk loci, including DNASE1L3 at 3p14, the SCHIP1-IL12A locus at 3q25, and ATG5 at 6q21, as well as a suggested association of the TREH-DDX6 locus at 11q23. The associations of several previously reported SSc risk loci were validated and further refined, and the observed peak of association in PXK was related to DNASE1L3. Our study has increased the number of known genetic associations with SSc, provided further insight into the pleiotropic effects of shared autoimmune risk factors, and highlighted the power of dense mapping for detecting previously overlooked susceptibility loci
Evidence for the exclusive decay Bc+- to J/psi pi+- and measurement of the mass of the Bc meson
We report first evidence for a fully reconstructed decay mode of the
B_c^{\pm} meson in the channel B_c^{\pm} \to J/psi \pi^{\pm}, with J/psi \to
mu^+mu^-. The analysis is based on an integrated luminosity of 360 pb$^{-1} in
p\bar{p} collisions at 1.96 TeV center of mass energy collected by the Collider
Detector at Fermilab. We observe 14.6 \pm 4.6 signal events with a background
of 7.1 \pm 0.9 events, and a fit to the J/psi pi^{\pm} mass spectrum yields a
B_c^{\pm} mass of 6285.7 \pm 5.3(stat) \pm 1.2(syst) MeV/c^2. The probability
of a peak of this magnitude occurring by random fluctuation in the search
region is estimated as 0.012%.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Version 3, accepted by PR
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