Mobilising teacher education: a study of a professional learning community

This paper reports on a study of a community of university educators that investigated the introduction of mobile technologies into their learning and teaching. The study was conducted by a subgroup of that community. Given the ubiquity of mobile devices, members of the community felt they needed to develop expertise in mobile learning so that they could incorporate it into their teaching. They studied their own learning, supported by a critical friend who evaluated the community's functioning and activities, providing valuable feedback. Activities of this group were informed by and focused on: development of awareness of the potential of mobile devices for learning; construction of action plans within the community; and implementation of these plans. They also included investigating best-practice approaches by interviewing experts in the field, exploring the literature on mobile learning and then initiating and testing some mobile learning pedagogies in the context of their own teacher education subjects. The community met regularly to discuss emerging issues and applications. The paper shares some of the findings gained from studying the community, and discusses the challenges and constraints that were experienced. The authors conclude with recommendations for professional learning communities aiming to learn about technology-mediated teaching practices

Intravascular ultrasound: a technique in evolution: methodological considerations

As the title of the thesis suggests, intravascular ultrasound has been, and continues to be, an imaging technique that is in active evolution. Image quality has improved dramatically from the crude, low resolution 'black and white' images of the first generation of intravascular ultrasound scanners and transducers are now small enough to image most arteries before intervention. Although intravascular ultrasound is increasingly seen as the most informative method of assessing the coronary arteries, there are outstanding problems that must be addressed and overcome before its full potential can be achieved.The aim of this thesis is to examine a number of these methodological shortcomings of intravascular ultrasound so that appropriate solutions can be found.After a general overview, provided in Chapter 1, the reproducibility of intravascular ultrasound quantitation is assessed in Chapter 2. For reasons elaborated above, ultrasound is seen as the best technique to study the acute and long term outcome of coronary interventions and the effect of plaque modifying agents. Without detailed data concerning its reproducibility, such studies are uninterpretable.Chapter 3 deals with the impact of catheter malfunction on the geometric integrity of intravascular ultrasound images. At present, the mechanical ultrasound devices are the most widely used systems. All mechanical systems are potentially subject to the problem of non -uniform rotation of the transducer, and to date its impact has been poorly characterised.The difficulty encountered in discriminating unstable coronary lesions is examined in Chapter 4. There is a widely held view that acute coronary lesions cannot be discriminated using intravascular ultrasound. Specific echographic markers are described that are found in the majority of unstable lesions. Close scrutiny of grey scale images allows identification of acute lesions and may allow discrimination of thrombus from underlying atheromatous plaque.In the last two chapters, methodological issues relating to the clinical application of intravascular ultrasound in guiding coronary stenting are explored. In chapter 5, the findings of an observational study confirm the potential of intravascular ultrasound to provide additional information in cases in which favourable angiographic appearances have been achieved. However, the choice of one particular 'expansion index' over another is seen to impact significantly on the proportion of lesions that are judged to be successful. Before ultrasound guidance based on the attainment of specific quantitative expansion criteria be advocated as a widely applied technique, the reproducibility of reference segment measurements must be known. This issue is studied in chapter 6.Separate studies are described in each of the data chapters. A similar layout is employed in each, consisting of the study aims, methods, findings, discussion and conclusion. At the risk of introducing a degree of repetition in the methods sections of each chapter, the ultrasound examination and image interpretation protocol are elaborated in each case, as important differences exist between the studies

Multiple remote tower for Single European Sky: The evolution from initial operational concept to regulatory approved implementation

The European Union project of Single European Sky initiated a reorganization of European airspace and proposed additional measures for air traffic management to achieve the key objectives of improving efficiency and capacity while at the same time enhancing safety. The concept of multiple remote tower operation is that air traffic controllers (ATCOs) can control several airfields from a distant virtual control centre. The control of multiple airfields can be centralised to a virtual centre permitting the more efficient use of ATCO resources. This research was sponsored by the Single European Sky ATM Research Program and the ATM Operations Division of the Irish Aviation Authority. A safety case was developed for migration of multiple remote tower services to live operations. This research conducted 50 large scale demonstration trials of remote tower operations from single tower operations to multiple tower operations for safety assessment by air navigation safety regulators in 2016. A dedicated team of air traffic controllers and technology experts successfully completed the safety assessment of multiple remote tower operations in real time. The implementation of this innovative technology requires a careful balance between cost-efficiency and the safety of the air traffic control in terms of capacity and human performance. The live trial exercises demonstrated that the air traffic services provided by the remote tower for a single airport and two medium airports by a single ATCO with ‘in sequence’ and ‘simultaneous’ aircraft operation was at least as safe as provided by the local towers at Cork and Shannon aerodromes. No safety occurrence was reported nor did any operational safety issue arise during the conduct of the fifty live trial exercises

Efficient packing of unit squares in a square

Efficient packing of unit squares in a squar

Mathematical determinacy and internal categoricity

The issue of arithmetical determinacy may be stated as follows: does our concept of natural number define a unique mathematical structure (the natural numbers) and, if so, how? The issue of set-theoretic determinacy may likewise be stated as: does our concept of set define a unique mathematical structure (the universe of sets) and, if so, how? In recent work, Tim Button and Sean Walsh have argued that arithmetical and set-theoretic determinacy follow from certain internal categoricity results proved in second-order logic. In this paper I critically evaluate this claim and argue that such internal categoricity results fail to entail determinacy as claimed. In order to concentrate on the key issues in some depth, I focus on arithmetical determinacy

Viewing mobile learning from a pedagogical perspective

Mobile learning is a relatively new phenomenon and the theoretical basis is currently under development. The paper presents a pedagogical perspective of mobile learning which highlights three central features of mobile learning: authenticity, collaboration and personalisation, embedded in the unique timespace contexts of mobile learning. A pedagogical framework was developed and tested through activities in two mobile learning projects located in teacher education communities: Mobagogy, a project in which faculty staff in an Australian university developed understanding of mobile learning; and The Bird in the Hand Project, which explored the use of smartphones by student teachers and their mentors in the United Kingdom. The framework is used to critique the pedagogy in a selection of reported mobile learning scenarios, enabling an assessment of mobile activities and pedagogical approaches, and consideration of their contributions to learning from a socio-cultural perspective

Human-centred design for next generation of air traffic management systems.

Designing and deploying air traffic management systems requires an understanding of cognitive ergonomics, system integration, and human-computer interactions. The aim of this research is to develop an effective Human-centred design for Air Navigation Services Providers to permit more effective air traffic controller training and regulations. Therefore, this research consists of both evaluating human-computer interactions on COOPANS Air Traffic Management system and multiple remote tower operations. The COOPANS Alliance is an international cooperation among the air navigation service providers of Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and Sweden with Thales as the industry supplier. The findings of this project indicate that the context-specified design of semantic alerts could improve ATCO’s situational awareness and significantly reduce response time when responding to aircraft conflict resolution alerts. Civil Aviation Authorities, Air Navigation Service Providers and Air Traffic Management System Providers could all benefit from the findings of this research with a view to ensuring that Air Traffic Controllers are provided with the optimal context-specified alerting schemes to increase their situational awareness during both training and operations. The EU Single European Sky initiative was introduced to restructure European airspace and propose innovative measures for air traffic management to achieve the objectives of enhanced cost-efficiency and improved airspace design and airport capacity whilst simultaneously improving safety performance. There is potential to save approximately €2.21 million Euro per annum per installation of remote tower versus traditional control towers. However, ATCO’s visual attention and monitoring performance can be affected by how information is presented, the complexity of the information presented, and the operating environment in the remote tower centre. To achieve resource-efficient and sustainable air navigation services, there is a need to improve the design of human-computer interactions in multiple remote tower technology deployment. These must align with high technology-readiness levels, operators’ practices, industrial developments, and the certification processes of regulators. From a regulatory perspective the results of this project may contribute to European Aviation Safety Agency rulemaking activity for future Air Traffic Management Systems. Overall, the results of this research are in line with the requirements of Single European Sky and facilitate the harmonisation of European ATM systems.PhD in Transport System

The impact of alerting design on air traffic controllers' response to conflict detection and resolution

Purposes: The research aim is to develop a better design of auditory alerts that can improve air traffic controllers’ situation awareness. Method: Participants are seventy-seven qualified Air Traffic Controllers. The experiment was conducted in the Air Traffic Control operational rooms of the Irish Aviation Authority at Shannon and Dublin. Participants were advised that the trials were in relation to the COOPANS Air Traffic Control. ANOVA with two between-subject factors (alerting designs and experience levels) were conducted to analyze the ATCO’s response time for three critical events. Bonferroni test was performed for post-hoc analysis on mean differences of response time. Results: There is a significant difference in ATCO’s response time between acoustic alert and semantic alert across STCA, APW and MSAW. No significant main effect of controllers’ experience on ATCO’s response time for STCA and APW. Also, there is no significant interaction between alerting design and experience level on ATCO’s response time across STCA, APW and MSAW. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that the acoustic alert deployed within the COOPANS ATM system provides level-1 Situational Awareness to ATCO’s compared with an semantic alert which provides not only level-1 of situational awareness for perceived alerts, but also level-2 and level-3 of situational awareness to assist ATCO understanding of critical events and therefore develop more suitable solutions. Consequently, human-centered design of a semantic alert can significantly speed up ATCO’s response to STCA, and APW. Furthermore, the sematic alert could alleviate expertise differences by promoting quicker response times for both novice and experienced air traffic controllers

Curating and annotating a collection of traditional Irish flute recordings to facilitate stylistic analysis

This paper presents the curation and annotation of a collection of traditional Irish flute recordings to facilitate the analysis of stylistic characteristics. We introduce the structure of Irish tunes, types of tunes and the ornamentation, which is a decisive stylistic determinant in Irish traditional music. We identify seminal recordings of prominent flute players and provide information related to players and their style and geographical context. We describe the process of manual annotation of the audio data. The annotations consist of the onsets of notes, note frequency and identity of notes and ornaments. We also present initial stylistic analysis of individual players in terms of ornamentation and phrasing and provide a variety of statistics for the data. The ability to accurately represent and analyse stylistic features such as ornaments allow for the development of discourse related to several key ethnomusicological questions surrounding music making, musical heritage and cultural change