WorldWideScience

Sample records for geon making sense

  1. Geon deal triggers bloodbath in Goodrich stock

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Plishner, E.S.

    1993-01-01

    The stock market has not taken well to BFGoodrich's plans to sell half of its Geon vinyl business to the public in an initial public offering (IPO). Before the announcement of both the Geon offering and Clinton's economic plan, Goodrich stock was selling at about $54/share; a week later, it closed at $42.875. With 25.6 million shares, $285 million of market value, about one-quarter of the total, evaporated in response. As planned, the Geon offering is expected to raise $400 million-$450 million (net, after-tax). The company will redeploy the capital to grow its aerospace business, which focuses on aircraft maintenance and repair, by strategic acquisition. CEO John Ong says, 'We will use the proceeds to expand our specialty chemicals and aerospace businesses,' and the attractive opportunities are aerospace. 'There aren't any bargains in specialty chemicals now,' says Mark L. Parr, analyst at McDonald ampersand Co. Securities (Cleveland). If Goodrich makes only aerospace purchases, specialty chemicals could end up generating less than half of Goodrich's revenues and earnings, although the company expects strong specialty chemicals growth to 'maintain a balance' between the two business areas over the long term. 'Goodrich was never going to be the low-cost producer in PVC [polyvinyl chloride],' says Leonard Bogner, of Prudential Securities (New York), who thinks the move 'makes sense.' Goodrich, advised by Goldman Sachs (New York), apparently reasons that with the IPO market now strong, Wall Street bullish about PVC, and some strong acquisition candidates available in aerospace, it makes good sense to monetize Geon promptly. Some analysts agree: 'This is the point in the PVC cycle where the values tend to be highest, because the stock valuation runs well in advance of earnings,' says Parr

  2. Massive graviton geons

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aoki, Katsuki; Maeda, Kei-ichi; Misonoh, Yosuke; Okawa, Hirotada

    2018-02-01

    We find vacuum solutions such that massive gravitons are confined in a local spacetime region by their gravitational energy in asymptotically flat spacetimes in the context of the bigravity theory. We call such self-gravitating objects massive graviton geons. The basic equations can be reduced to the Schrödinger-Poisson equations with the tensor "wave function" in the Newtonian limit. We obtain a nonspherically symmetric solution with j =2 , ℓ=0 as well as a spherically symmetric solution with j =0 , ℓ=2 in this system where j is the total angular momentum quantum number and ℓ is the orbital angular momentum quantum number, respectively. The energy eigenvalue of the Schrödinger equation in the nonspherical solution is smaller than that in the spherical solution. We then study the perturbative stability of the spherical solution and find that there is an unstable mode in the quadrupole mode perturbations which may be interpreted as the transition mode to the nonspherical solution. The results suggest that the nonspherically symmetric solution is the ground state of the massive graviton geon. The massive graviton geons may decay in time due to emissions of gravitational waves but this timescale can be quite long when the massive gravitons are nonrelativistic and then the geons can be long-lived. We also argue possible prospects of the massive graviton geons: applications to the ultralight dark matter scenario, nonlinear (in)stability of the Minkowski spacetime, and a quantum transition of the spacetime.

  3. Topological geons with self-gravitating phantom scalar field

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kratovitch, P. V.; Potashov, I. M.; Tchemarina, Ju V.; Tsirulev, A. N.

    2017-12-01

    A topological geon is the quotient manifold M/Z 2 where M is a static spherically symmetric wormhole having the reflection symmetry with respect to its throat. We distinguish such asymptotically at solutions of the Einstein equations according to the form of the time-time metric function by using the quadrature formulas of the so-called inverse problem for self-gravitating spherically symmetric scalar fields. We distinguish three types of geon spacetimes and illustrate them by simple examples. We also study possible observational effects associated with bounded geodesic motion near topological geons.

  4. Building an International Geosciences Network (i-GEON) for cyberinfrastructure-based Research and Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seber, D.; Baru, C.

    2007-05-01

    The Geosciences Network (GEON) project is a collaboration among multiple institutions to develop a cyberinfrastructure (CI) platform in support of integrative geoscience research activities. Taking advantage of the state-of-the-art information technology resources GEON researchers are building a cyberinfrastructure designed to enable data sharing, resource discovery, semantic data integration, high-end computations and 4D visualization in an easy-to-use web-based environment. The cyberinfrastructure in GEON is required to support an inherently distributed system, since the scientists, who are users as well as providers of resources, are themselves distributed. International collaborations are a natural extension of GEON; the geoscience research requires strong international collaborations. The goals of the i-GEON activities are to collaborate with international partners and jointly build a cyberinfrastructure for the geosciences to enable collaborative work environments. International partners can participate in GEON efforts, establish GEON nodes at their universities, institutes, or agencies and also contribute data and tools to the network. Via jointly run cyberinfrastructure workshops, the GEON team also introduces students, scientists, and research professionals to the concepts of IT-based geoscience research and education. Currently, joint activities are underway with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China, the GEO Grid project at AIST in Japan, and the University of Hyderabad in India (where the activity is funded by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum). Several other potential international partnerships are under consideration. iGEON is open to all international partners who are interested in working towards the goal of data sharing, managing and integration via IT-based platforms. Information about GEON and its international activities can be found at http:www.geongrid.org/

  5. Geon-type solutions of the non-linear Heisenberg-Klein-Gordon equation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mielke, E.W.; Scherzer, R.

    1980-10-01

    As a model for a ''unitary'' field theory of extended particles we consider the non-linear Klein-Gordon equation - associated with a ''squared'' Heisenberg-Pauli-Weyl non-linear spinor equation - coupled to strong gravity. Using a stationary spherical ansatz for the complex scalar field as well as for the background metric generated via Einstein's field equation, we are able to study the effects of the scalar self-interaction as well as of the classical tensor forces. By numerical integration we obtain a continuous spectrum of localized, gravitational solitons resembling the geons previously constructed for the Einstein-Maxwell system by Wheeler. A self-generated curvature potential originating from the curved background partially confines the Schroedinger type wave functions within the ''scalar geon''. For zero angular momentum states and normalized scalar charge the spectrum for the total gravitational energy of these solitons exhibits a branching with respect to the number of nodes appearing in the radial part of the scalar field. Preliminary studies for higher values of the corresponding ''principal quantum number'' reveal that a kind of fine splitting of the energy levels occurs, which may indicate a rich, particle-like structure of these ''quantized geons''. (author)

  6. Make Sense?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gyrd-Jones, Richard; Törmälä, Minna

    Purpose: An important part of how we sense a brand is how we make sense of a brand. Sense-making is naturally strongly connected to how we cognize about the brand. But sense-making is concerned with multiple forms of knowledge that arise from our interpretation of the brand-related stimuli......: Declarative, episodic, procedural and sensory. Knowledge is given meaning through mental association (Keller, 1993) and / or symbolic interaction (Blumer, 1969). These meanings are centrally related to individuals’ sense of identity or “identity needs” (Wallpach & Woodside, 2009). The way individuals make...... sense of brands is related to who people think they are in their context and this shapes what they enact and how they interpret the brand (Currie & Brown, 2003; Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005; Weick, 1993). Our subject of interest in this paper is how stakeholders interpret and ascribe meaning...

  7. What sense can the sense-making perspective make for economics?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cortés, Mauricio; Londoño, Sandra

    2009-06-01

    A landscape of interdisciplinary decision theories is sketched with a tentative place for the sense-making approach presented by Salvatore et al (2009). Uncertainty and ambiguity are highlighted as key concepts in both, economics and sense-making perspectives aligning possible and useful conceptual coincidences among post Keynesian economics (Shackle 1974; Davidson 2005) cultural psychology (Salvatore et al. 2009) and organization theory (March 1978, 1994; Weick 1995). Few ideas for the construction of possible research agenda aimed to build a complex model of decision making are suggested. Finally a brief reflection on the study of underground economy is presented. The challenge for the link between psychology and economics is to figure out a descriptive general model of the process of decision making, perhaps by combining weighted elements of the different ways in which human rationality emerges--calculation, rule following, sense-making--for explaining singular and specific decisions.

  8. Making Sense of Natural Selection

    Science.gov (United States)

    Passmore, Cynthia; Coleman, Elizabeth; Horton, Jennifer; Parker, Heather

    2013-01-01

    At its core, science is about making sense of the world around us. Therefore, science education should engage students in that sense-making process. Helping students make sense of disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts by engaging in scientific practices is the key innovation of the "Next Generation Science Standards"…

  9. Making sense with ePortfolios

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Poulsen, Bo Klindt; Dimsits, Miriam

    2017-01-01

    of the statements from the students concerning their understanding of ePortfolio processes are fundamentally questions of how to make sense of the ePortfolio tool, both in their professional and personal lives. This calls for a didactical stance with the teachers who use ePortfolios, based on empowerment through......This article discusses the question of making sense out of working with ePortfolio in adult education. The article presents the results of a small-scale survey among adults in continuing education who have worked with ePortfolio as the central didactic principle. It is argued that many...... meaning-making, in order for ePortfolios to make sense. It is suggested that two relevant didactic perspectives for making sense of the world can be found in theories of biographicity and metaphor work. Moreover, a strong didactic stance that supports sense-making must be based on a strong teacher role...

  10. Quality as Sense-Making

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marshall, Stephen

    2016-01-01

    Sense-making is a process of engaging with complex and dynamic environments that provides organisations and their leaders with a flexible and agile model of the world. The seven key properties of sense-making describe a process that is social and that respects the range of different stakeholders in an organisation. It also addresses the need to…

  11. Sense-making and Impact Assessment

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lyhne, Ivar

    The poster integrates knowledge about how we make sense of situations into SEA methodology to strengthen the staging of impact assessments and the process of scoping impacts.......The poster integrates knowledge about how we make sense of situations into SEA methodology to strengthen the staging of impact assessments and the process of scoping impacts....

  12. Making sense of shared sense-making in an inquiry-based science classroom: Toward a sociocultural theory of mind

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ladewski, Barbara G.

    Despite considerable exploration of inquiry and reflection in the literatures of science education and teacher education/teacher professional development over the past century, few theoretical or analytical tools exist to characterize these processes within a naturalistic classroom context. In addition, little is known regarding possible developmental trajectories for inquiry or reflection---for teachers or students---as these processes develop within a classroom context over time. In the dissertation, I use a sociocultural lens to explore these issues with an eye to the ways in which teachers and students develop shared sense-making, rather than from the more traditional perspective of individual teacher activity or student learning. The study includes both theoretical and empirical components. Theoretically, I explore the elaborations of sociocultural theory needed to characterize teacher-student shared sense-making as it develops within a classroom context, and, in particular, the role of inquiry and reflection in that sense-making. I develop a sociocultural model of shared sense-making that attempts to represent the dialectic between the individual and the social, through an elaboration of existing sociocultural and psychological constructs, including Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and theory of mind. Using this model as an interpretive framework, I develop a case study that explores teacher-student shared sense-making within a middle-school science classroom across a year of scaffolded introduction to inquiry-based science instruction. The empirical study serves not only as a test case for the theoretical model, but also informs our understanding regarding possible developmental trajectories and important mechanisms supporting and constraining shared sense-making within inquiry-based science classrooms. Theoretical and empirical findings provide support for the idea that perspectival shifts---that is, shifts of point-of-view that alter relationships

  13. Assessment Can Support Reasoning and Sense Making

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suurtam, Christine

    2012-01-01

    "Reasoning and sense making should occur in every classroom every day," states "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making" (NCTM 2009, p. 5). As this book suggests, reasoning can take many forms, including explorations and conjectures as well as explanations and justifications of student thinking. Sense making, on the other…

  14. Embodiment and sense-making in autism

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Jaegher, Hanne

    2013-01-01

    In this article, I sketch an enactive account of autism. For the enactive approach to cognition, embodiment, experience, and social interaction are fundamental to understanding mind and subjectivity. Enaction defines cognition as sense-making: the way cognitive agents meaningfully connect with their world, based on their needs and goals as self-organizing, self-maintaining, embodied agents. In the social realm, the interactive coordination of embodied sense-making activities with others lets us participate in each other's sense-making (social understanding = participatory sense-making). The enactive approach provides new concepts to overcome the problems of traditional functionalist accounts of autism, which can only give a piecemeal and disintegrated view because they consider cognition, communication, and perception separately, do not take embodied into account, and are methodologically individualistic. Applying the concepts of enaction to autism, I show: How embodiment and sense-making connect, i.e., how autistic particularities of moving, perceiving, and emoting relate to how people with autism make sense of their world. For instance, restricted interests or preference for detail will have certain sensorimotor correlates, as well as specific meaning for autistic people.That reduced flexibility in interactional coordination correlates with difficulties in participatory sense-making. At the same time, seemingly irrelevant “autistic behaviors” can be quite attuned to the interactive context. I illustrate this complexity in the case of echolalia. An enactive account of autism starts from the embodiment, experience, and social interactions of autistic people. Enaction brings together the sensorimotor, cognitive, social, experiential, and affective aspects of autism in a coherent framework based on a complex non-linear multi-causality. This foundation allows to build new bridges between autistic people and their often non-autistic context, and to improve quality

  15. Embodiment and sense-making in autism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Jaegher, Hanne

    2013-01-01

    In this article, I sketch an enactive account of autism. For the enactive approach to cognition, embodiment, experience, and social interaction are fundamental to understanding mind and subjectivity. Enaction defines cognition as sense-making: the way cognitive agents meaningfully connect with their world, based on their needs and goals as self-organizing, self-maintaining, embodied agents. In the social realm, the interactive coordination of embodied sense-making activities with others lets us participate in each other's sense-making (social understanding = participatory sense-making). The enactive approach provides new concepts to overcome the problems of traditional functionalist accounts of autism, which can only give a piecemeal and disintegrated view because they consider cognition, communication, and perception separately, do not take embodied into account, and are methodologically individualistic. Applying the concepts of enaction to autism, I show: How embodiment and sense-making connect, i.e., how autistic particularities of moving, perceiving, and emoting relate to how people with autism make sense of their world. For instance, restricted interests or preference for detail will have certain sensorimotor correlates, as well as specific meaning for autistic people.That reduced flexibility in interactional coordination correlates with difficulties in participatory sense-making. At the same time, seemingly irrelevant "autistic behaviors" can be quite attuned to the interactive context. I illustrate this complexity in the case of echolalia. An enactive account of autism starts from the embodiment, experience, and social interactions of autistic people. Enaction brings together the sensorimotor, cognitive, social, experiential, and affective aspects of autism in a coherent framework based on a complex non-linear multi-causality. This foundation allows to build new bridges between autistic people and their often non-autistic context, and to improve quality of

  16. Embodiment and sense-making in autism

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hanne eDe Jaegher

    2013-03-01

    Full Text Available Traditional functionalist approaches to autism consider cognition, communication, and perception separately, and can only provide piecemeal accounts of autism. Basing an integrative explanation on a single cause or common factor has proven difficult. Traditional theories are also disembodied and methodologically individualistic. In order to overcome these problems, I propose an enactive account of autism.For the enactive approach to cognition embodiment, interaction, and personal experience are central to understanding mind and subjectivity. Enaction defines cognition as sense-making: the way cognitive agents meaningfully connect with their world, based on their needs and goals as self-organizing, self-maintaining, embodied agents. In the social realm, when we interactively coordinate our embodied sense-making, we participate in each other’s sense-making. Thus, social understanding is defined as participatory sense-making.Applying the concepts of enaction to autism, I propose that1Sensorimotor particularities in autism translate into a different sense-making and vice versa. Autistic behaviors, e.g. restricted interests, will have sensorimotor correlates, as well as specific significance for autistic people in their context. 2Socially, a reduced flexibility in interactional coordination can lead to difficulties in participatory sense-making. At the same time, however, seemingly irrelevant autistic behavior can be quite attuned to the interactive context. I illustrate this complexity in the case of echolalia. An enactive account of autism starts from the embodiment, experience, and social interactions of autistic people. Enaction brings together the cognitive, social, experiential, and affective aspects of autism in a coherent framework based on a complex, non-linear multi-causality. On this foundation, bridges can be built between autistic people and their often non-autistic context, and quality of life prospects can be improved.

  17. Making sense of project management

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kjærgaard, Annemette; Kautz, Karl; Nielsen, Peter Axel

    2007-01-01

    How can a software company make sense of project management when it becomes involved in software process improvement? In software development most research has an instrumental view of knowledge management thus neglecting what is probably the most important part of knowledge management namely making...... sense of practice by developers and project managers. Through an action case, we study the knowledge management processes in a Danish software company. We analyse the case through the lens of a theoretical framework. The theoretical framework focuses in particular on sensemaking, collective construed...... substantial insight which could not have been achieved through an instrumental perspective on knowledge management....

  18. FeltRadio: Sensing and Making Sense of Wireless Traffic

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gronvall, Erik; Fritsch, Jonas; Vallgårda, Anna

    2016-01-01

    Radio waves surround us but still they remain largely undetected by our senses. Unless we use specifically tuned hardware, such as FM radios, cell phones or WiFi modems, human beings cannot perceive wirelessly transmitted data. This paper presents FeltRadio, a portable and wireless technology...... that makes it possible to turn radio signals into visual and tactile stimuli as a form of sensorial augmentation. FeltRadio explores and makes us reflect upon what it would be like if we could sense, and feel, wireless traffic such as WiFi or Bluetooth. We present the technological design behind Felt...

  19. Reasoning and Sense Making Begins with the Teacher

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keazer, Lindsay M.; Menon, Rahul S.

    2015-01-01

    This article argues that the practices of reasoning and sense making are critical for developing students' mathematical literacy. Seven mathematics teachers collaborated throughout a school year to discuss the ideas proposed in Reasoning and Sense Making (NCTM 2009) and put them into practice through action research. Conducting action research,…

  20. Smell, Odor, and Somatic Work: Sense-Making and Sensory Management

    Science.gov (United States)

    Waskul, Dennis D.; Vannini, Phillip

    2008-01-01

    Sensation (noun) is emergent in joint acts of sensing (verb). To sense, in other words, is to make sense, and sense making entails what we call "somatic work." We investigate these dynamics in the context of olfaction, highlighting how olfaction intersects with social, cultural, and moral order--thus compelling reflexive forms of somatic…

  1. Mathematical sense-making in quantum mechanics: An initial peek

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dreyfus, Benjamin W.; Elby, Andrew; Gupta, Ayush; Sohr, Erin Ronayne

    2017-12-01

    Mathematical sense-making—looking for coherence between the structure of the mathematical formalism and causal or functional relations in the world—is a core component of physics expertise. Some physics education research studies have explored what mathematical sense-making looks like at the introductory physics level, while some historians and "science studies" have explored how expert physicists engage in it. What is largely missing, with a few exceptions, is theoretical and empirical work at the intermediate level—upper division physics students—especially when they are learning difficult new mathematical formalism. In this paper, we present analysis of a segment of video-recorded discussion between two students grappling with a quantum mechanics question to illustrate what mathematical sense-making can look like in quantum mechanics. We claim that mathematical sense-making is possible and productive for learning and problem solving in quantum mechanics. Mathematical sense-making in quantum mechanics is continuous in many ways with mathematical sense-making in introductory physics. However, in the context of quantum mechanics, the connections between formalism, intuitive conceptual schema, and the physical world become more compound (nested) and indirect. We illustrate these similarities and differences in part by proposing a new symbolic form, eigenvector eigenvalue, which is composed of multiple primitive symbolic forms.

  2. Making Sense of Financial Crisis and Scandal

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hansen, Per H.

    2012-01-01

    fall from the top of society of these icons and of their role in the collapse of their banks. I view the sense-making process as centered on the construction of narratives that explain the crisis and enable or constrain institutional response to the crisis. To conclude, I argue that the process...... of sense-making in the case of Landmandsbanken can be generalized as the way in which society enforces norms and values in cases of dramatic financial crisis and scandal....

  3. Sense about Science--"Making Sense of Radiation" and Understanding Peer Review

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sierra, Leonor

    2011-01-01

    Sense About Science is a UK-based charitable trust that equips people to make sense of science and of evidence on issues that matter to society. It was set up in 2003 in response to newspaper front pages being full of headlines about mobile phones "frying your brain", genetically modified "Frankenstein foods", the MMR vaccine,…

  4. Displaced Sense: Displacement, Religion and Sense-making

    OpenAIRE

    Naidu, Maheshvari

    2016-01-01

    Whether formally categorized as refugees or not, displaced migrants experience varying degrees of vulnerability in relation to where they find themselves displaced. The internally displaced furthermore squat invisibly and outside the boundaries of the legal framework and incentive structures accorded to those classified as 'refugee'. They are thus arguably, by and large, left to source sustaining solutions for themselves. This article works through the theoretical prism of sense-making theory...

  5. Making sense of food risk information: the case of organic food

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hilverda, Marie-Susanne Dieudonnée

    2017-01-01

    When individuals encounter new information about food issues, such as organic food risks, they have to make sense of this information. Sense-making is the process by which individuals give meaning to the world around them. How the process of sense-making is influenced by the online social

  6. Making sense of polarities in health organizations for policy and leadership.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martin, Carmel M

    2010-10-01

    Making sense of complex adaptive clinical practice and health systems is a pressing challenge as health services continue to struggle to adapt to changing internal and external constraints. In this Forum, we begin with Dervin's Sense-Making theories and research in communications. This provides a conceptual and theoretical context for this editions research on comparative complexity of family medicine consultations in the USA, models for adaptive leadership in clinical care and social networking to make sense of health promotion challenges for young people. Finally, a Sense-Making schema is proposed. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

  7. Making Sense of Austerity

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Seabrooke, Leonard; Riisbjerg Thomsen, Rune

    2016-01-01

    such as ‘scroungers’ and ‘corporate criminals’ are identified, as are scenes such as the decline of the welfare state and the rise of technocracy. We link the storysets, story-lines, and plots together to understand how Brits and Danes are making sense of austerity. Their explanations and frustrations improve our...... understanding of who acts in everyday politics, and how everyday narratives are formed and maintained....

  8. Mathematical Sense-Making in Quantum Mechanics: An Initial Peek

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dreyfus, Benjamin W.; Elby, Andrew; Gupta, Ayush; Sohr, Erin Ronayne

    2017-01-01

    Mathematical sense-making--looking for coherence between the structure of the mathematical formalism and causal or functional relations in the world--is a core component of physics expertise. Some physics education research studies have explored what mathematical sense-making looks like at the introductory physics level, while some historians and…

  9. Making Sense of Extraneous Solutions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zelkowski, Jeremy S.

    2013-01-01

    Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM 2000) states, "Technology is essential in teaching and learning mathematics; it influences the mathematics that is taught and enhances students' learning." The focus on reasoning and sense making with technology in the lesson presented in this article will enable students to do more…

  10. Making sense of employer collectivism

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ibsen, Christian Lyhne

    2016-01-01

    This conceptual article argues that preferences of employers for collective action cannot be reduced to rational actors making decisions based on market structures or institutional logics. Both markets and institutions are inherently ambiguous and employers therefore have to settle for plausible...... – rather than accurate – rational strategies among many alternatives through so-called sensemaking. Sensemaking refers to the process by which employers continuously make sense of their competitive environment by building causal stories of competitive advantages. The article therefore tries to provide......, unlike countries in similar situations, for example Finland and Sweden, Danish employers retained a coordinated industry-level bargaining system, which makes it an interesting paradox to study from the vantage point of sensemaking....

  11. Art, Media, and Sense-making in Responsive Urban Environments

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Allingham, Peter

    2013-01-01

    The aim of the article is to elucidate experience and sense-making in interactive, responsive urban environments through analysis of aesthetic and media aspects of art in such environments. As an analytic example the sculpture D-Tower from the Dutch town of Doetinchem has been chosen. The sculptu...... in order to make hitherto invisible and private emotions and feelings visible and public.......The aim of the article is to elucidate experience and sense-making in interactive, responsive urban environments through analysis of aesthetic and media aspects of art in such environments. As an analytic example the sculpture D-Tower from the Dutch town of Doetinchem has been chosen. The sculpture...... artistic and interactive, responsive media qualities are blended, new forms of experience and sense-making are promoted. It may happen due to emergence and adaptation that may transform both the ‘experiencee’ and also the experiential environment. In this case information technology has been applied...

  12. Making Sense with Manipulatives: Developing Mathematical Experiences for Early Childhood Teachers

    OpenAIRE

    Furman, Cara E.

    2017-01-01

    This paper is premised on the fact that math can be an important tool in helping people make sense of the world. Math offers a unique and particular lens, helping people to focus on a range of characteristics from shape and amount to the relationship between the general and the particular. To promote math as a tool for making sense, early childhood math instruction ought to teach it in a manner that helps children make sense of mathematical concepts. Specifically, I argue here that manipul...

  13. Global work contexts as sites of discursive sense making

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Petersen, Nils Braad

    2014-01-01

    Global work contexts represent highly complex working environments with simultaneous attachment to several projects and teams (Rosen, Furst & Blackburn, 2007). This complexity increases the for the sense-making capabilities of employees (Weick, 1995). MyPhD project examines this sense-making proc...... of knowledge communication networks in a global organisation. Interviews were fully transscribed analysed using a combination of James Gee’s approach to discourse analysis, and a novel adaptation of Auatin’s speech act theory....

  14. Commercial future: making remote sensing a media event

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lurie, Ian

    1999-12-01

    The rapid growth of commercial remote sensing has made high quality digital sensing data widely available -- now, remote sensing must become and remain a strong, commercially viable industry. However, this new industry cannot survive without an educated consumer base. To access markets, remote sensing providers must make their product more accessible, both literally and figuratively: Potential customers must be able to find the data they require, when they require it, and they must understand the utility of the information available to them. The Internet and the World Wide Web offer the perfect medium to educate potential customers and to sell remote sensing data to those customers. A well-designed web presence can provide both an information center and a market place for companies offering their data for sale. A very high potential web-based market for remote sensing lies in media. News agencies, web sites, and a host of other visual media services can use remote sensing data to provide current, relevant information regarding news around the world. This paper will provide a model for promotion and sale of remote sensing data via the Internet.

  15. Older active users of ICTs make sense of their engagement

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Magdalena Kania-Lundholm

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Research on older people’s ICT usage tends to focus on either the ways in which they go about learning to use these technologies or the impact that ICTs have on their lives. This research seems, in other words, to take for granted that older people are ‘digital immigrants’ as the digital divide debate proposed. Research that specifically looks at the ways in which older ICT users make sense of their engagement with these technologies is still limited. This article explores therefore – through focus group interviews – how a group of older people who are active ICT users make sense of their ‘digital nativeness’. The analysis shows that the interviewees are well aware that their ICT proficiency differentiated them from their peers, which is why they make sense of their ICT usage by making reference to the issues that make them ‘exceptional’ older people. These include the fact that they have used computers for many years and therefore made ICT usage an everyday habit early on; the fact that most older people do not have the skills that they themselves have, which is why they feel the need to share them with others; and the fact that their lifelong experience means they can use these technologies in judicious ways. By bringing attention to how older active ICT users make sense of their engagement, this article contributes to the notion of the digital spectrum and the debate on the inequalities that ICT proficiency brings about. 

  16. Making Sense of Shakespeare: a Cultural Icon for Contemporary Audiences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michael Olsson

    2013-11-01

    Full Text Available The works of William Shakespeare are more popular in the 21st century than ever before, Why are theatre and audiences around the globe still drawn to his work? How do they make sense of these texts in ways that resonate with their cosmopolitan, contemporary audiences? This article uses the findings of a study interviewing 35 theatre professionals in Canada, Finland and the United Kingdom to explore these issues. Theoretically and methodologically, it is a bricollage, drawing on a range of approaches including Foucault’s discourse analysis, Hobsbawm’s invented traditions and Dervin’s Sense-Making to understand participants sense-making as an affective, embodied social practice. It argues that attempting to understand the significance of a major cultural icon such as Shakespeare in contemporary cosmopolitan civil society needs to recognise the many meanings, roles and significances that surround him and that this complexity makes it unlikely that any one theoretical lens will prove adequate on its own. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v5i3.3640

  17. Making Sense with Manipulatives: Developing Mathematical Experiences for Early Childhood Teachers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Furman, Cara E.

    2017-01-01

    This paper is premised on the fact that math can be an important tool in helping people make sense of the world. Math offers a unique and particular lens, helping people to focus on a range of characteristics from shape and amount to the relationship between the general and the particular. To promote math as a tool for making sense, early…

  18. Making sense of global warming: Norwegians appropriating knowledge of anthropogenic climate change.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ryghaug, Marianne; Sørensen, Knut Holtan; Naess, Robert

    2011-11-01

    This paper studies how people reason about and make sense of human-made global warming, based on ten focus group interviews with Norwegian citizens. It shows that the domestication of climate science knowledge was shaped through five sense-making devices: news media coverage of changes in nature, particularly the weather, the coverage of presumed experts' disagreement about global warming, critical attitudes towards media, observations of political inaction, and considerations with respect to everyday life. These sense-making devices allowed for ambiguous outcomes, and the paper argues four main outcomes with respect to the domestication processes: the acceptors, the tempered acceptors, the uncertain and the sceptics.

  19. Students’ meaning-making and sense-making of vocational knowledge in Dutch senior secondary vocational education

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Nienke Bijlsma; Harmen Schaap; Prof.Dr. Elly de Bruijn

    2016-01-01

    Meaning-making and sense-making are generally assumed to be part of students’ personal vocational knowledge development, since they contribute to both students’ socialisation in a vocation and students’ personalisation of concepts, values and beliefs regarding that vocation. However, how students in

  20. Storylines of aging with HIV: shifts toward sense making.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beuthin, Rosanne E; Bruce, Anne; Sheilds, Laurene

    2015-05-01

    Aging with HIV is a new phenomenon. It is expected that by 2015, approximately half of adults living with HIV in the United States will be age 50 and older. We used narrative inquiry to explore how older adults with HIV storied their experience and made sense of aging. Over a 3.5-year period, we interviewed 5 older adults living with HIV for 13 to 24 years. In analyzing the coconstructed stories, we identify six storylines that enhance understanding and guide listening: embodiment of the illness, sense making, death and loss, secrets and stigma, identity, and seeking connection. We theorize that the degree to which one reconciles each storyline influences how well one lives with illness. We share a storied exemplar to illustrate these storylines in one participant's experience of aging with HIV. These findings emphasize how vital is telling one's illness story, because sense making happens in the telling. © The Author(s) 2014.

  1. How do we make sense of significance?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lyhne, Ivar; Kørnøv, Lone

    2013-01-01

    Determination of significance is widely recognised as an important step in environmental assessment (EA) processes. The prescriptive literature and guidance on significance determination is comprehensive within the field of EA, whereas descriptive and explorative studies of how we go about making......' sense-making, including important differences in the way individuals screen and scope. These patterns concern what we notice, how fast we frame the choice, and when we are critical about the provided information. The indications provide a basis for reflections on practice and on how to organise EA...

  2. Making Sense of Partnering: Discourses, Governance and Institutional Change

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gottlieb, Stefan Christoffer; Jensen, Jens Stissing

    2012-01-01

    a perspective of institutional theory, however, the development of partnering can also be understood as a strategic intervention that has destabilized the established regulative context in which the traditional contractual mode of project governance takes place. Drawing on a historical document study and data...... from an ethnographic case study of a public partnering project, it is shown that rather than providing a well-defined alternative to the traditional form of project governance, the institutional destabilization has cultivated an organization field offering a legitimate frame for local sense making....... Thus, as a project governance mechanism, partnering emerges as a collective sense-making process directed at (re-)creating a new form of rational behaviour under changing institutional conditions....

  3. Making sense of media synchronicity in humanitarian crises

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Muhren, W.J.; van den Eede, G.G.P.; van de Walle, B.A.

    2009-01-01

    This paper reintroduces concepts from sensemaking in media synchronicity theory (MST). It focuses on how media should support synchronicity to fit communication needs when making sense of a humanitarian crisis situation. Findings from interviews with senior management of humanitarian aid

  4. Students' Meaning-Making and Sense-Making of Vocational Knowledge in Dutch Senior Secondary Vocational Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bijlsma, Nienke; Schaap, Harmen; de Bruijn, Elly

    2016-01-01

    Meaning-making and sense-making are generally assumed to be part of students' personal vocational knowledge development, since they contribute to both students' socialisation in a vocation and students' personalisation of concepts, values and beliefs regarding that vocation. However, how students in vocational education acquire meaning and make…

  5. Making Sense of Low Back Pain and Pain-Related Fear.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bunzli, Samantha; Smith, Anne; Schütze, Robert; Lin, Ivan; O'Sullivan, Peter

    2017-09-01

    Synopsis Pain-related fear is implicated in the transition from acute to chronic low back pain and the persistence of disabling low back pain, making it a key target for physical therapy intervention. The current understanding of pain-related fear is that it is a psychopathological problem, whereby people who catastrophize about the meaning of pain become trapped in a vicious cycle of avoidance behavior, pain, and disability, as recognized in the fear-avoidance model. However, there is evidence that pain-related fear can also be seen as a common-sense response to deal with low back pain, for example, when one is told that one's back is vulnerable, degenerating, or damaged. In this instance, avoidance is a common-sense response to protect a "damaged" back. While the fear-avoidance model proposes that when someone first develops low back pain, the confrontation of normal activity in the absence of catastrophizing leads to recovery, the pathway to recovery for individuals trapped in the fear-avoidance cycle is less clear. Understanding pain-related fear from a common-sense perspective enables physical therapists to offer individuals with low back pain and high fear a pathway to recovery by altering how they make sense of their pain. Drawing on a body of published work exploring the lived experience of pain-related fear in people with low back pain, this clinical commentary illustrates how Leventhal's common-sense model may assist physical therapists to understand the broader sense-making processes involved in the fear-avoidance cycle, and how they can be altered to facilitate fear reduction by applying strategies established in the behavioral medicine literature. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2017;47(9):628-636. Epub 13 Jul 2017. doi:10.2519/jospt.2017.7434.

  6. Making sense of corporate venture capital.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chesbrough, Henry W

    2002-03-01

    Large companies have long sensed the potential value of investing in external start-ups, but more often than not, they fail to get it right. Remember the dash to invest in new ventures in the late 1990s and the hasty retreat when the economy turned? This article presents a framework that will help a company decide whether it should invest in a particular start-up by first understanding what kind of benefit might be realized from the investment. The framework--illustrated with examples from Intel, Lucent, and others--explains why certain types of corporate VC investments proliferate only when financial returns are high, why other types persist in good times and in bad, and why still others make little sense in any phase of the business cycle. The framework describes four types of corporate VC investments, each defined by its primary goal--strategic and financial--and by the degree of operational linkage between the start-up and the investing company. Driving investments are characterized by a strong strategic rationale and tight operational links. Enabling investments are also made primarily for strategic reasons, but the operational links are loose. Emergent investments, which are characterized by tight operational links, have little current--but significant potential--strategic value. Passive investments, offering few potential strategic benefits and only loose operational links, are made primarily for financial reasons. Passive corporate VC investments dry up in a down economy, but enabling and driving investments usually have more staying power. That's because their potential returns are primarily strategic, not financial. In other words, they can foster business growth. Emergent investments may make sense even in a weak market because of their potential strategic value--that is, their ability to help companies identify and spark the growth of future businesses.

  7. Neutron visual sensing techniques making good use of computer science

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kureta, Masatoshi

    2009-01-01

    Neutron visual sensing technique is one of the nondestructive visualization and image-sensing techniques. In this article, some advanced neutron visual sensing techniques are introduced. The most up-to-date high-speed neutron radiography, neutron 3D CT, high-speed scanning neutron 3D/4D CT and multi-beam neutron 4D CT techniques are included with some fundamental application results. Oil flow in a car engine was visualized by high-speed neutron radiography technique to make clear the unknown phenomena. 4D visualization of pained sand in the sand glass was reported as the demonstration of the high-speed scanning neutron 4D CT technique. The purposes of the development of these techniques are to make clear the unknown phenomena and to measure the void fraction, velocity etc. with high-speed or 3D/4D for many industrial applications. (author)

  8. Making Sense of Crisis: Cognitive Barriers of Learning in Critical Situations

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ramona PERGHEL

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available This paper explores the role of cognitive issues in learning from crisis situations, in particular the managers’ mental representations of crisis and the relationship of these “maps” with the learning process through “sense-making”, as well as the possible cognitive barriers that might prevent the process of learning from crisis and thus allow the incubation of crises to develop in the company. Reviewing secondary data from the current literature, the paper focuses on the complexity of human “sense-making” and understanding the phenomena of crisis and the meaning people assign to it. Considerable attention and analysis has been done in order to assess the manner in which organizations can effectively learn to prevent crisis situations, addressing the theoretical frameworks that analyse the barriers that might occur in the learning from crisis process at an individual and group level, pointing out the need of recognition and sense-making that sometimes the current state of knowledge is not well. The paper argues that the effective organizational learning from crises requires changes in the core beliefs, values and assumptions of organizational members, which translate into sustained behavioural changes and that these changes are possible through intense cognitive processes, in particular through the way managers make sense of crisis situations.  Keywords: crisis, learning, cognitive barriers, sense-making, managers, literature review

  9. Why innovation theories make no sense

    OpenAIRE

    Moldaschl, Manfred

    2010-01-01

    In this paper I argue that it makes no sense to have "innovation theories", or the use of the concept in describing the potential of social and economic theories to explain the phenomenon of non-equilibrium. If we wish to explain dynamic, change, evolution, revolution, etc. in socio-economic systems, then theories that are genuinely capable of doing so are indispensable. We don't need static theories of society, economy, organization, the firm, etc. which need an "additional" theory of incong...

  10. Get a grip on sense-making and exploration

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hansen, Poul H. Kyvsgård; Mabogunje, Ade; Møller Haase, Louise

    2009-01-01

    This paper focuses on the relationships between complex problems, sense-making, and exploration. We argue that we increasingly face complex problems for which we do not yet have effective coping methods. We further argue that, given the nature of these problems, it is useful to explore the role o...

  11. SENSE-MAKING TECHNIQUES IN EDUCATIONAL PROCESS AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF STUDENTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Irina V. Abakumova

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available This study looks into psychotechnics used in education and contributing to initiating logic among students, their personal growth and characterizes psychological features of “sense-deducting”. Here you will find a review of the sense-making techniques considering as one of the categories of psychotechnics. The described techniques are based on the human psychology, they improve the quality of instruction, create a favorable and unique system of values, take into account the individual characteristics of all types of education, and influence the sense-making process development among children. Sense-making techniques are stated in the author’s classification and extended by practical methods. The study of psychological features of influence of sense-making techniques on the personality of a student lets us see new patterns in personal, subjective and “meta-subjective” results of acquiring of the school program via transformation and development of value/logic consciousness of a child. The work emphasizes that the use of sense-making techniques is effective in the educational and after-school activities of the educational organization. The achieved results make it possible to understand, to substantiate the naturalness and relevance of the sense-technical approach according to personal and academic indicators of students. In the process of competent and correct use of the semantic techniques, we see the possibility of conveying the best, productive and quality pedagogical experience, as well as the perspective of innovative developments in the psychological and pedagogical sciences. For children and adolescents, information, thanks to sense-techniques, starts to be personal in nature, knowledge is objectified, learning activity becomes an individual need.

  12. Making Sense for Society

    Science.gov (United States)

    van der Heide, J. J.; Grus, M. M.; Nouwens, J. C. A. J.

    2017-09-01

    The Netherlands is a densely populated country. Cities in the metropolitan area (Randstad) will be growing at a fast pace in the coming decades1. Cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are being overrun by tourists. Climate change effects are noticed in cities (heavy rains for instance). Call for circular economy rises. Traffic increases. People are more self-reliant. Public space is shared by many functions. These challenges call for smart answers, more specific and directly than ever before. Sensor data is a cornerstone of these answers. In this paper we'll discuss the approaches of Dutch initiatives using sensor data as the new language to live a happy life in our cities. Those initiatives have been bundled in a knowledge platform called "Making sense for society" 1 https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2016/37/pbl-cbs-prognose-groei-steden-zet-door (in dutch)

  13. Collaborative Educational Leadership: The Emergence of Human Interactional Sense-Making Process as a Complex System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jäppinen, Aini-Kristiina

    2014-01-01

    The article aims at explicating the emergence of human interactional sense-making process within educational leadership as a complex system. The kind of leadership is understood as a holistic entity called collaborative leadership. There, sense-making emerges across interdependent domains, called attributes of collaborative leadership. The…

  14. Making sense of the Web: a metaphorical approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lee Ratzan

    2000-01-01

    Full Text Available The nature of the World Wide Web is unfamiliar to most people. In order to make sense of this foreign environment people describe the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar. Metaphors are often used for this purpose. Since it is important to use the Web effectively it is important to acquire insight on user perceptions. Preliminary results of the Internet Metaphor Project are presented.

  15. Making Sense Bringing Everyday Life at Work

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Egmose, Jonas; Gleerup, Janne; Nielsen, Birger Steen

    Inspired by contemporary work life studies on making sense at work this paper elaborates on using Critical Utopian Action Research as methodology for enabling shared learning spaces in which citizens and professionals can conjoin around discussions of deeper human aspirations enabled through...... synergies between civil engagement and organisational capabilities. The paper reports on experiences with enabling free spaces in the contexts of everyday life, where broader human concerns and aspirations can be addressed, as in the context of work life, where organisational responses on these orientations...

  16. Making Connections among Multiple Visual Representations: How Do Sense-Making Skills and Perceptual Fluency Relate to Learning of Chemistry Knowledge?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rau, Martina A.

    2018-01-01

    To learn content knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and math domains, students need to make connections among visual representations. This article considers two kinds of connection-making skills: (1) "sense-making skills" that allow students to verbally explain mappings among representations and (2) "perceptual…

  17. Making sense of information in noisy networks: human communication, gossip, and distortion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laidre, Mark E; Lamb, Alex; Shultz, Susanne; Olsen, Megan

    2013-01-21

    Information from others can be unreliable. Humans nevertheless act on such information, including gossip, to make various social calculations, thus raising the question of whether individuals can sort through social information to identify what is, in fact, true. Inspired by empirical literature on people's decision-making when considering gossip, we built an agent-based simulation model to examine how well simple decision rules could make sense of information as it propagated through a network. Our simulations revealed that a minimalistic decision-rule 'Bit-wise mode' - which compared information from multiple sources and then sought a consensus majority for each component bit within the message - was consistently the most successful at converging upon the truth. This decision rule attained high relative fitness even in maximally noisy networks, composed entirely of nodes that distorted the message. The rule was also superior to other decision rules regardless of its frequency in the population. Simulations carried out with variable agent memory constraints, different numbers of observers who initiated information propagation, and a variety of network types suggested that the single most important factor in making sense of information was the number of independent sources that agents could consult. Broadly, our model suggests that despite the distortion information is subject to in the real world, it is nevertheless possible to make sense of it based on simple Darwinian computations that integrate multiple sources. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Making sense of human–elephant conflict in Laikipia County, Kenya

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bond, Jennifer Lauren

    2015-01-01

    This article proposes sensemaking theory to understand human–elephant interactions. The article draws on a case study of human–elephant interaction in Laikipia County, Kenya, to understand how farmers make sense of elephants in their crops. Drawing on eight interviews, the analysis showed that re...

  19. Meaning as a Mission: Making sense of war and peacekeeping

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schok, M.L.

    2009-01-01

    The objective of this thesis was to examine the significance of meaning in a sample of veterans who were deployed during various war and peacekeeping operations. A cognitive perspective was chosen to explore how veterans make sense of their war zone experiences and find personal significance in

  20. When paranoia makes sense.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kramer, Roderick M

    2002-07-01

    On September 11, 2001, in the space of a few horrific minutes, Americans realized the fragility of trust. The country's evident vulnerability to deadly terrorism rocked our faith in the systems we rely on for security. Our trust was shaken again only a few months later with the stunning collapse of Enron, forcing us to question many of the methods and assumptions underpinning the way we work. These two crises are obviously very different, yet both serve as reminders of the perils of trusting too much. The abiding belief that trust is a strength now seems dangerously naive. This new doubtfulness runs contrary to most management literature, which has traditionally touted trust as an organizational asset. It's an easy case to make. When there are high levels of trust, employees can fully commit themselves to the organization because they can be confident that their efforts will be recognized and rewarded. Trust also means that leaders don't have to worry so much about putting the right spin on things. They can act and speak forthrightly and focus on essentials. In short, trust is an organizational superglue. Nevertheless, two decades of research on trust and cooperation in organizations have convinced social psychologist Roderick Kramer that--despite its costs--distrust can be beneficial in the workplace. Kramer has observed that a moderate form of suspicion, which he calls prudent paranoia, can in many cases prove highly beneficial to the distrustful individual or organization. In this article, he describes situations in which prudent paranoia makes sense and shows how, when properly deployed, it can serve as a powerful morale booster--even a competitive weapon--for organizations.

  1. Exploring the pedagogic relation - Supporting six-year-olds in making sense of physical motion

    OpenAIRE

    Annika Åkerblom

    2015-01-01

    This article explores how verbal relations between child and researcher may support the child’s reasoning and making sense of physical motion. In an earlier study, 64 children aged 6–14 participated in one-to-one reflective dialogues. Some of them developed their reasoning during the dialogue, and used an exploring approach to make sense of physical motion. For the present study, 6 transcripts were re-analyzed concerning the interplay between the researcher and the 6-year-olds who used this a...

  2. Making sense of knowledge productivity: beta testing the KP-enhancer

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Christiaan Stam

    2007-01-01

    Purpose – purpose of this article is to report about the progress of the development of a method that makes sense of knowledge productivity, in order to be able to give direction to knowledge management initiatives. Methodology/approach – the development and testing of the method is based on the

  3. When Oil and Wind Turbine Companies Make Green Sense Together

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Backer, Lise

    strengthen their relationships with companies such as Vestas - that are born green. This is so, since companies that are born green have strong green ecocentric business beliefs that can function as important engines in shared green sense-making with companies that are not born green and have more hesitant...... green beliefs....

  4. Lateralized Effects of Categorical and Coordinate Spatial Processing of Component Parts on the Recognition of 3D Non-Nameable Objects

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saneyoshi, Ayako; Michimata, Chikashi

    2009-01-01

    Participants performed two object-matching tasks for novel, non-nameable objects consisting of geons. For each original stimulus, two transformations were applied to create comparison stimuli. In the categorical transformation, a geon connected to geon A was moved to geon B. In the coordinate transformation, a geon connected to geon A was moved to…

  5. From resilience to revolt: making sense of the Arab spring

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Aarts, P.; van Dijke, P.; Kolman, I.; Statema, J.; Dahhan, G.

    2012-01-01

    The purpose of this research is to provide a broadly-scoped understanding of the Arab uprisings, aggregating also what research has already been done, in an effort to pinpoint what factors or dynamic can be found to be useful in trying to make sense of the sudden mass mobilization in the Middle East

  6. The National Research Council study: "Making sense of ballistic missile defense"

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilkening, Dean A.

    2014-05-01

    This chapter explains and summarizes the main findings of a recent National Research Council study entitled Making Sense of Ballistic Missile Defense: An Assessment of Concepts and Systems for U.S. Boost-Phase Missile Defense in Comparison to Other Alternatives.

  7. Making Sense of Alternative Assessment in a Qualitative Evaluation System

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rojas Serrano, Javier

    2017-01-01

    In a Colombian private English institution, a qualitative evaluation system has been incorporated. This type of evaluation poses challenges to students who have never been evaluated through a system that eliminates exams or quizzes and, as a consequence, these students have to start making sense of it. This study explores the way students face the…

  8. How Students Make Sense of Criticality Skills in Higher Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brown, Alison

    2015-01-01

    Critical thinking skills in students, employees and citizens are endorsed for a wide range of positive reasons. What seems less well-known and the aim of this research was to investigate how students make sense of these skills. A semi-structured interview was loosely designed, using questions to ascertain criticality skills before, during and at…

  9. Year-round School Makes Good Business Sense, Says This Boardman-Businessman

    Science.gov (United States)

    Howe, Paul H.

    1973-01-01

    Argues that year-round schools make good business sense by providing (1) a more efficient use of capital investments, (2) an alleviation of uneconomical and undesirable peaks in working and recreation, and (3) a more sensible way of looking at teacher salaries. (JF)

  10. DMPD: Innate immunity minireview series: making biochemical sense of nucleic acidsensors that trigger antiviral innate immunity. [Dynamic Macrophage Pathway CSML Database

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available 17395579 Innate immunity minireview series: making biochemical sense of nucleic aci...007 Mar 29. (.png) (.svg) (.html) (.csml) Show Innate immunity minireview series: making biochemical sense o...itle Innate immunity minireview series: making biochemical sense of nucleic acidsensors that trigger antivir

  11. Contesting nonfiction: Fourth graders making sense of words and images in science information book discussions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Belfatti, Monica A.

    Recently developed common core standards echo calls by educators for ensuring that upper elementary students become proficient readers of informational texts. Informational texts have been theorized as causing difficulty for students because they contain linguistic and visual features different from more familiar narrative genres (Lemke, 2004). It has been argued that learning to read informational texts, particularly those with science subject matter, requires making sense of words, images, and the relationships among them (Pappas, 2006). Yet, conspicuously absent in the research are empirical studies documenting ways students make use of textual resources to build textual and conceptual understandings during classroom literacy instruction. This 10-month practitioner research study was designed to investigate the ways a group of ethnically and linguistically diverse fourth graders in one metropolitan school made sense of science information books during dialogically organized literature discussions. In this nontraditional instructional context, I wondered whether and how young students might make use of science informational text features, both words and images, in the midst of collaborative textual and conceptual inquiry. Drawing on methods of constructivist grounded theory and classroom discourse analysis, I analyzed student and teacher talk in 25 discussions of earth and life science books. Digital voice recordings and transcriptions served as the main data sources for this study. I found that, without teacher prompts or mandates to do so, fourth graders raised a wide range of textual and conceptual inquiries about words, images, scientific figures, and phenomena. In addition, my analysis yielded a typology of ways students constructed relationships between words and images within and across page openings of the information books read for their sense-making endeavors. The diversity of constructed word-image relationships aided students in raising, exploring

  12. Making Sense of Open Data : From Raw Data to Actionable Insight

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Davis, C.B.

    2012-01-01

    The Web is radically changing the ways in which we can collectively compile, curate, filter and make sense of information. This holds promise for embracing complexity and truly informed decisions for sustainability in a connected world. In this book, Chris Davis reveals that there exists tremendous

  13. Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making in Geometry

    Science.gov (United States)

    National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2010

    2010-01-01

    Classically, geometry has been the subject in which students encounter mathematical proof based on formal deduction. Attention to proof in the geometry curriculum is strengthened by a focus on reasoning and sense making. This book examines the four key elements (conjecturing about geometric objects, construction and evaluation of geometric…

  14. Making sense. What can we learn from experts of tactile knowledge?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Camilla Groth

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available This article describes an embodied way of making sense through making with the hands. We examine the potential o ftactile experience in the making process and analyse what tactile experiences mean. The study takes place in the context of an era marked by audio-visual dominance.The article presents a case study that observed and interviewed deafblind makers while they worked with clay. The findings reveal that modelling in clay resembles the visualisation process of sketching. As such, it may contribute to thinking through the hands. Language is not a self-evident communication tool for transferring tactile skills. Based on our case study, we propose the use of tactile communication in the process of transferring tactile knowledge through making with another person’s hands.

  15. Making Sense of Organisational Change Through Vicarious Narratives

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lønsmann, Dorte

    ? In this familyowned company, stories about the four generations of the founding family play an important role in making sense of changes and changing values in the organisation. When employees tell stories about the founders and about other employees, and especially when these are told again and again, the telling...... as part of a larger project on multilingual workplaces in Denmark. The fieldwork took place over a period of two years in one Danish SME and consists of ethnographic interviews with employees and management, observations from four different departments and written material e.g. in the form of emails...

  16. Making sense of fishermen's risk perception

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Knudsen, Fabienne; Grøn, Sisse

    2010-01-01

    , trips and falls. The fieldwork offered an in situ insight into the way fishermen perceive their work and the risks they face, as well as their views of an outsider. Through empirical examples derived from our research and other studies, we show that fishermen’s risk perception can be explained...... by the need to adopt coping strategies, ie compromises and resilience in an environment marked by uncertainty and unpredictability. The difference between lay and expert knowledge is particularly salient in the case of safety researchers and fishermen. In order to make sense of the fishermen’s risk perception......In this paper we reflect on the possible reasons for the acceptability of risk in sea fishing and the implications they may have for safety actions and interventions. The data presented in the paper were collected during three trips at sea on fishing vessels in connection with a study of slips...

  17. Support by Participatory Sense-Making in Robot Therapy for Children with Autism

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Weda, J.J.; Schadenberg, Bob Rinse; van Dijk, Jelle

    2017-01-01

    People with Autism Spectrum Condition have issues navigating social situations. Typically, in therapy, robots teach people with ASC desirable social interaction according to traditional models which focus on the cognitive, rather than emotions or intuitions. Participatory sense- making could provide

  18. Making Sense of the ECG - Cases for Self-Assessment Houghton Andrew R Gray David Making Sense of the ECG - Cases for Self-Assessment 290pp Hodder Education 9780340946893 034094689X [Formula: see text].

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-10-27

    This practical, pocket-book approach to ECG interpretation accompanies the well-known text Making Sense of the ECG, by the same authors. It is also designed to be used alone to test knowledge of ECG interpretation and to make clinical decisions based on presented scenarios.

  19. Organizational Transparency & Sense Making: The case of Northern Rock

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Albu, Oana Brindusa; Wehmeier, Stefan

    2014-01-01

    Organizational transparency is associated with mutual understanding and consensus between the organization and its constituents, but is typically defined as information disclosure. Such definitions pose the risk of simplification and provide incomplete understandings of the transparency phenomenon....... Additionally, research rarely focuses on how transparency is translated within crisis situations. This article presents a sense-making and discourse analysis perspective of transparency. We use the case of the British bank Northern Rock to show how this bank and its stakeholders enacted transparency...

  20. Fitness Testing: How Do Students Make Sense of the Gender Disparities?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Domangue, Elizabeth A.; Solmon, Melinda A.

    2012-01-01

    The ways in which students make sense of the gendered fitness expectations found in a norm-referenced fitness testing program (i.e. President's challenge physical fitness test) were the focus of this study. Participants were 18 fifth grade students who completed fitness tests in their physical education classes. They were interviewed using a…

  1. Making sense of business reference a guide for librarians and research professionals

    CERN Document Server

    Ross, Celia

    2013-01-01

    A detailed bibliography functions as both a standing reference for desk use as well as a collection development aid for building a core business collection. Including numerous illustrative case studies, Making Sense of Business Reference takes the guesswork out of doing business.

  2. Making Sense of Math: How to Help Every Student become a Mathematical Thinker and Problem Solver (ASCD Arias)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seeley, Cathy L.

    2016-01-01

    In "Making Sense of Math," Cathy L. Seeley, former president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, shares her insight into how to turn your students into flexible mathematical thinkers and problem solvers. This practical volume concentrates on the following areas: (1) Making sense of math by fostering habits of mind that…

  3. Using cognitive referents in making sense of teaching: A chemistry teacher's struggle to change assessment practices

    Science.gov (United States)

    Briscoe, Carol

    This qualitative case study focused on the role of cognitive referents in the sense-making process of one teacher as he attempted to change his classroom science assessment. The interpretations identify cultural myths, conceptual metonymys, as well as personally constructed beliefs as referents that constrained change. The teacher's cognitive struggle to make sense of assessment and his role as assessor are linked to conflicting referents he used in varying contexts including day-to-day assessment and summative assessment settings. The results of the study suggest that cognitive referents are important influences in driving how a teacher thinks about assessment and may constrain an individual teacher's implementation of innovative practices. Accordingly, identification of referents such as myths, their associated beliefs, and metonymic conceptual models that teachers use to make sense of their actions is an important first step in developing an understanding of constraints to educational change.

  4. Changing policy and practice: making sense of national guidelines for osteoarthritis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ong, Bie Nio; Morden, Andrew; Brooks, Lauren; Porcheret, Mark; Edwards, John J; Sanders, Tom; Jinks, Clare; Dziedzic, Krysia

    2014-04-01

    Understanding uptake of complex interventions is an increasingly prominent area of research. The interplay of macro (such as changing health policy), meso (re-organisation of professional work) and micro (rationalisation of clinical care) factors upon uptake of complex interventions has rarely been explored. This study focuses on how English General Practitioners and practice nurses make sense of a complex intervention for the management of osteoarthritis, using the macro-meso-micro contextual approach and Normalisation Process Theory (NPT), specifically the construct of coherence. It is embedded in a cluster RCT comprising four control practices and four intervention practices. In order to study sense-making by professionals introduction and planning meetings (N = 14) between researchers and the practices were observed. Three group interviews were carried out with 10 GPs and 5 practice nurses after they had received training in the intervention. Transcripts were thematically analysed before comparison with NPT constructs. We found that: first, most GPs and all nurses distinguished the intervention from current ways of working. Second, from the introduction meeting to the completion of the training the purpose of the intervention increased in clarity. Third, GPs varied in their understanding of their remit, while the practice nurses felt that the intervention builds on their holistic care approach. Fourth, the intervention was valued by practice nurses as it strengthened their expert status. GPs saw its value as work substitution, but felt that a positive conceptualisation of OA enhanced the consultation. When introducing new interventions in healthcare settings the interaction between macro, meso and micro factors, as well as the means of engaging new clinical practices and their sense-making by clinicians needs to be considered. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  5. The role of sports in making sense of the process of growing old.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eman, Josefin

    2012-12-01

    Drawing on interviews with 22 athletically active old men and women, the study explores whether and how the practice of sports can affect old adults' processes of sense-making about old age and the process of growing old in ways that challenge dominant constructions about old age. Thereto, the study will explore the possible impact of gender in this process. The results show that men and women who continue to practice competitive sports into old age make sense of the process of growing old by focusing primarily on their physical abilities, at least in the context of sports. This focus on capability age allows them partly, although not completely, to challenge the usual thinking about old age and the process of growing old. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Holistic aspects of children's ways of understanding in making sense of genetics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Hui-Ju

    The study examined the nature of how children make sense of phenomena in the area of genetics and inheritance. I proposed the phrase, way of understanding to capture a unified entity which children use to make sense of phenomena. The methodology was semi-structured probing interviews with six sixth grade students. Seven specific ways of understanding were discussed in the results section. Overall, the study described and discovered children's ways of understanding in terms of five aspects: cognitive aspects, affective aspects, social aspects, playfulness, and mode of awareness. Students' propositional knowledge, a holistic view of looking at how people resemble each other, syntactic knowledge, and an extension of rational explanations belonged to the cognitive aspects. Four categories of affective expressions were: an enjoyment of thinking and learning, a special feeling about the instructional activity, a deep personal involvement, and an anxiety in finding correct answers. Two types of social context were identified, one had somewhat of a connection to the science world, and the other did not have much of an scientific tie. The playfulness and the mode of awareness were two emerging aspects through the study. The playfulness represented the spontaneity, freedom, and sense of fun associated with the social interaction activity, such as the playfulness in expressing ideas to others. The modes of awareness included two types of metacognition, one was a conscious reflection on one's cognitive abilities, and the other was a continuous process of monitoring knowledge. In addition, the importance of considering language aspect in science learning was an emerging issue. Students' talking about genetics was embedded in the larger framework of social relationships and social institutions. Their social identify might influence the development of concepts, ways of talking and science learning. The study reflects the richness of children's sense-making processes

  7. The metaphors we stream by: Making sense of music streaming

    OpenAIRE

    Hagen, Anja Nylund

    2016-01-01

    In Norway music-streaming services have become mainstream in everyday music listening. This paper examines how 12 heavy streaming users make sense of their experiences with Spotify and WiMP Music (now Tidal). The analysis relies on a mixed-method qualitative study, combining music-diary self-reports, online observation of streaming accounts, Facebook and last.fm scrobble-logs, and in-depth interviews. By drawing on existing metaphors of Internet experiences we demonstrate that music-streaming...

  8. Does Visualization Matter? The Role of Interactive Data Visualization to Make Sense of Information

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Arif Perdana

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available As part of business analytics (BA technologies, reporting and visualization play essential roles in mitigating users’ limitations (i.e., being inexperienced, having limited knowledge, and relying on simplified information. Reporting and visualization can potentially enhance users’ sense-making, thus permitting them to focus more on the information’s message rather than numerical analysis. To better understand the role of reporting and visualization in a contextualized environment, we investigate using interactive data visualization (IDV within accounting. We aim to understand whether IDV can help enhance non-professional investors’ ability to make sense of foundational financial statement analyses. This study conducted an experiment using a sample of 324 nonprofessional investors. Our findings indicate that nonprofessional investors who use IDV are more heuristically adept than non-professional investors who use non-IDV. These findings enrich the theoretical understanding of business analytics’ use in accounting decision making. The results of this study also suggest several practical courses of action, such as promoting wider use of IDV and making affordable IDV more broadly available, particularly for non-professional investors.

  9. Music and Semiotics: An Experiential Approach to Musical Sense-making

    OpenAIRE

    Reybrouck, Mark

    2017-01-01

    This chapter sketches recent evolutions of semiotics as applied to music. Rather than providing merely a historical overview, it focusses mainly on the pragmatic turn in semiotics and the role of sensory experience in the process of musical sense-making. In order to elaborate on this experience, it delves into theoretical groundings of second-order cybernetics, biosemiotics and ecological psychology, which are then applied to the field of music. Much effort is made to provide a broader framew...

  10. Making sense of the German Wikipedia community

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rikke Frank Jørgensen

    2012-08-01

    Full Text Available This article presents the findings from a qualitative study of the German Wikipedia community, focusing on how people engaged with Wikipedia make sense of norms, collaborative practices and means of regulation within the community. The study highlights the strong focus on the quality of the end-product (the encyclopedia in the German community, stressing that article quality is seen as more important than the wiki-process as such. As the community has grown, an increasing number of rules and mechanisms have been deployed to resolve various issues and conflicts, however the interviewees do not perceive Wikipedia as being bureaucratic, but rather describe it as a “rule-governed anarchy”. The findings suggest that people contribute for a variety of reasons, yet point to reactions from and interactions with fellow Wikipedians as one of the strongest motivational drivers for participation.

  11. Uncertainties and insufficiencies: making sense of climate adaption

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Toesse, Sunniva Eikeland

    2012-11-01

    The scientist papers show, first, that climate scientists are concerned about the relevance of their research and engage in practices, even though they may, in a sense, be criticized for taking the relevance for granted. They work hard to communicate their research, even this proves uncomfortable for them personally. Secondly, these first two papers have displayed a potential challenge for climate science communication and translation: climate skeptics. The scientists' fear is that people will be confused by the climate skeptics' misleading messages about the state of climate research. A related concern may be whether the way climate scientists shape their communication efforts to avoid 'sceptic attacks', in some way inhibit translation of climate knowledge? The user papers, on the other hand, show that to potential users of climate science knowledge, the knowledge is not obviously relevant. Furthermore, there are many factors - existing institutional context, professional identities and ideas about science and climate science, and aspects of the available science information - that shape the way in which evaluate relevance. Furthermore, scientists are not particularly central in these evaluations. There is, thus, an asymmetry between the scientist's engagement with relevance and the way users evaluate the relevance of climate science knowledge. How can we make sense of this? (Author)

  12. Making sense of the ECG: cases for self-assessment Making Sense of the ECG: Cases for Self-Assessment Houghton Andrew and Gray David Hodder Education £18.99 290pp 9780340946893 034094689X [Formula: see text].

    Science.gov (United States)

    2011-02-10

    This practical pocket-book approach to electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation accompanies Making sense of the eCg by the same authors. it is also designed to be used alone to test knowledge of ECG interpretation and to make clinical decisions based on presented scenarios.

  13. Reel Socialism: Making sense of history in Czech and German cinema since 1989

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bechmann Pedersen, Sune

    has been a vehicle of similar sense-making processes in the two history cultures. Much of the research on cinema in Germany has treated the subject in isolation, blind to the commonalities it shares with other post-communist countries, while Czech post-communist history culture and cinema has been...

  14. Start making sense: Art informing health psychology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kaptein, Ad A; Hughes, Brian M; Murray, Michael; Smyth, Joshua M

    2018-01-01

    Growing evidence suggests that the arts may be useful in health care and in the training of health care professionals. Four art genres - novels, films, paintings and music - are examined for their potential contribution to enhancing patient health and/or making better health care providers. Based on a narrative literature review, we examine the effects of passive (e.g. reading, watching, viewing and listening) and active (e.g. writing, producing, painting and performing) exposure to the four art genres, by both patients and health care providers. Overall, an emerging body of empirical evidence indicates positive effects on psychological and physiological outcome measures in patients and some benefits to medical training. Expressive writing/emotional disclosure, psychoneuroimmunology, Theory of Mind and the Common Sense Model of Self-Regulation are considered as possible theoretical frameworks to help incorporate art genres as sources of inspiration for the further development of health psychology research and clinical applications.

  15. Start making sense: Art informing health psychology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hughes, Brian M; Murray, Michael; Smyth, Joshua M

    2018-01-01

    Growing evidence suggests that the arts may be useful in health care and in the training of health care professionals. Four art genres – novels, films, paintings and music – are examined for their potential contribution to enhancing patient health and/or making better health care providers. Based on a narrative literature review, we examine the effects of passive (e.g. reading, watching, viewing and listening) and active (e.g. writing, producing, painting and performing) exposure to the four art genres, by both patients and health care providers. Overall, an emerging body of empirical evidence indicates positive effects on psychological and physiological outcome measures in patients and some benefits to medical training. Expressive writing/emotional disclosure, psychoneuroimmunology, Theory of Mind and the Common Sense Model of Self-Regulation are considered as possible theoretical frameworks to help incorporate art genres as sources of inspiration for the further development of health psychology research and clinical applications. PMID:29552350

  16. Making Sense of Learning at Secondary School: Involving Students to Improve Teaching Practice

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kane, Ruth G.; Maw, Nicola

    2005-01-01

    Consulting students on their experiences of learning and teaching in schools, while signalled as a potentially valuable research practice fifteen years ago by Michael Fullan, is now gaining prominence in educational research within New Zealand. The "Making Sense of Learning at Secondary Schools" research began with the premise that to…

  17. Exploring potentials of sense-making theory for understanding social processes in public hearing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lyhne, Ivar

    authorities and the public in such planning often characterised by conflict. A sense-making framework is developed based on Karl Weick's theory to investigate how participants at the meeting change their understanding aspects like other actors' opinions and the infrastructure project. Through interviews...... and observations it is shown that participants' senses do not change except from a few aspects. The participants at the meeting thus seem stuck in their positions without interest in being open for other interpretations or arguments. The investigation leads to considerations about the benefit and role...... of such a public meeting and the importance of trust and openness in the social processes in a public hearing....

  18. The Integration of Remote-Sensing Detection Techniques into the Operational Decision-Making of Marine Oil Spills

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garron, J.; Trainor, S.

    2017-12-01

    Remotely-sensed data collected from satellites, airplanes and unmanned aerial systems can be used in marine oil spills to identify the overall footprint, estimate fate and transport, and to identify resources at risk. Mandates for the use of best available technology exists for addressing marine oil spills under the jurisdiction of the USCG (33 CFR 155.1050), though clear pathways to familiarization of these technologies during a marine oil spill, or more importantly, between marine oil spills, does not. Similarly, remote-sensing scientists continue to experiment with highly tuned oil detection, fate and transport techniques that can benefit decision-making during a marine oil spill response, but the process of translating these prototypical tools to operational information remains undefined, leading most researchers to describe the "potential" of these new tools in an operational setting rather than their actual use, and decision-makers relying on traditional field observational methods. Arctic marine oil spills are no different in their mandates and the remote-sensing research undertaken, but are unique via the dark, cold, remote, infrastructure-free environment in which they can occur. These conditions increase the reliance of decision-makers in an Arctic oil spill on remotely-sensed data and tools for their manipulation. In the absence of another large-scale oil spill in the US, and limited literature on the subject, this study was undertaken to understand how remotely-sensed data and tools are being used in the Incident Command System of a marine oil spill now, with an emphasis on Arctic implementation. Interviews, oil spill scenario/drill observations and marine oil spill after action reports were collected and analyzed to determine the current state of remote-sensing data use for decision-making during a marine oil spill, and to define a set of recommendations for the process of integrating new remote-sensing tools and information in future oil spill

  19. Human-machine analytics for closed-loop sense-making in time-dominant cyber defense problems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Henry, Matthew H.

    2017-05-01

    Many defense problems are time-dominant: attacks progress at speeds that outpace human-centric systems designed for monitoring and response. Despite this shortcoming, these well-honed and ostensibly reliable systems pervade most domains, including cyberspace. The argument that often prevails when considering the automation of defense is that while technological systems are suitable for simple, well-defined tasks, only humans possess sufficiently nuanced understanding of problems to act appropriately under complicated circumstances. While this perspective is founded in verifiable truths, it does not account for a middle ground in which human-managed technological capabilities extend well into the territory of complex reasoning, thereby automating more nuanced sense-making and dramatically increasing the speed at which it can be applied. Snort1 and platforms like it enable humans to build, refine, and deploy sense-making tools for network defense. Shortcomings of these platforms include a reliance on rule-based logic, which confounds analyst knowledge of how bad actors behave with the means by which bad behaviors can be detected, and a lack of feedback-informed automation of sensor deployment. We propose an approach in which human-specified computational models hypothesize bad behaviors independent of indicators and then allocate sensors to estimate and forecast the state of an intrusion. State estimates and forecasts inform the proactive deployment of additional sensors and detection logic, thereby closing the sense-making loop. All the while, humans are on the loop, rather than in it, permitting nuanced management of fast-acting automated measurement, detection, and inference engines. This paper motivates and conceptualizes analytics to facilitate this human-machine partnership.

  20. Making sense of (exceptional) causal relations. A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Le Guen, Olivier; Samland, Jana; Friedrich, Thomas; Hanus, Daniel; Brown, Penelope

    2015-01-01

    In order to make sense of the world, humans tend to see causation almost everywhere. Although most causal relations may seem straightforward, they are not always construed in the same way cross-culturally. In this study, we investigate concepts of "chance," "coincidence," or "randomness" that refer to assumed relations between intention, action, and outcome in situations, and we ask how people from different cultures make sense of such non-law-like connections. Based on a framework proposed by Alicke (2000), we administered a task that aims to be a neutral tool for investigating causal construals cross-culturally and cross-linguistically. Members of four different cultural groups, rural Mayan Yucatec and Tseltal speakers from Mexico and urban students from Mexico and Germany, were presented with a set of scenarios involving various types of causal and non-causal relations and were asked to explain the described events. Three links varied as to whether they were present or not in the scenarios: Intention-to-Action, Action-to-Outcome, and Intention-to-Outcome. Our results show that causality is recognized in all four cultural groups. However, how causality and especially non-law-like relations are interpreted depends on the type of links, the cultural background and the language used. In all three groups, Action-to-Outcome is the decisive link for recognizing causality. Despite the fact that the two Mayan groups share similar cultural backgrounds, they display different ideologies regarding concepts of non-law-like relations. The data suggests that the concept of "chance" is not universal, but seems to be an explanation that only some cultural groups draw on to make sense of specific situations. Of particular importance is the existence of linguistic concepts in each language that trigger ideas of causality in the responses from each cultural group.

  1. Making sense of (exceptional) causal relations. A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Le Guen, Olivier; Samland, Jana; Friedrich, Thomas; Hanus, Daniel; Brown, Penelope

    2015-01-01

    In order to make sense of the world, humans tend to see causation almost everywhere. Although most causal relations may seem straightforward, they are not always construed in the same way cross-culturally. In this study, we investigate concepts of “chance,” “coincidence,” or “randomness” that refer to assumed relations between intention, action, and outcome in situations, and we ask how people from different cultures make sense of such non-law-like connections. Based on a framework proposed by Alicke (2000), we administered a task that aims to be a neutral tool for investigating causal construals cross-culturally and cross-linguistically. Members of four different cultural groups, rural Mayan Yucatec and Tseltal speakers from Mexico and urban students from Mexico and Germany, were presented with a set of scenarios involving various types of causal and non-causal relations and were asked to explain the described events. Three links varied as to whether they were present or not in the scenarios: Intention-to-Action, Action-to-Outcome, and Intention-to-Outcome. Our results show that causality is recognized in all four cultural groups. However, how causality and especially non-law-like relations are interpreted depends on the type of links, the cultural background and the language used. In all three groups, Action-to-Outcome is the decisive link for recognizing causality. Despite the fact that the two Mayan groups share similar cultural backgrounds, they display different ideologies regarding concepts of non-law-like relations. The data suggests that the concept of “chance” is not universal, but seems to be an explanation that only some cultural groups draw on to make sense of specific situations. Of particular importance is the existence of linguistic concepts in each language that trigger ideas of causality in the responses from each cultural group. PMID:26579028

  2. Making sense of the Sense Model: translation priming with Japanese-English bilinguals

    OpenAIRE

    Allen, David; Conklin, Kathy; Van Heuven, Walter J.B.

    2015-01-01

    Many studies have reported that first language (L1) translation primes speed responses to second language (L2) targets, whereas L2 translation primes generally do not speed up responses to L1 targets in lexical decision. According to the Sense Model (Finkbeiner, Forster, Nicol & Nakamura, 2004) this asymmetry is due to the proportion of senses activated by the prime. Because L2 primes activate only a subset of the L1 translations senses, priming is not observed. In this study we test the pred...

  3. Autophagy and its effects: making sense of double-edged swords.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thorburn, Andrew

    2014-10-01

    Autophagy is the mechanism by which cellular material is delivered to lysosomes and degraded. This process has become a major focus of biological and biomedical research with thousands of papers published each year and rapidly growing appreciation that autophagy affects many normal and pathological processes. However, as we learn more about this evolutionarily ancient process, we are discovering that autophagy's effects may work for both the good and the bad of an organism. Here, I discuss some of these context-dependent findings and how, as we make sense of them, we can try to apply our knowledge for practical purposes.

  4. Autophagy and its effects: making sense of double-edged swords.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrew Thorburn

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Autophagy is the mechanism by which cellular material is delivered to lysosomes and degraded. This process has become a major focus of biological and biomedical research with thousands of papers published each year and rapidly growing appreciation that autophagy affects many normal and pathological processes. However, as we learn more about this evolutionarily ancient process, we are discovering that autophagy's effects may work for both the good and the bad of an organism. Here, I discuss some of these context-dependent findings and how, as we make sense of them, we can try to apply our knowledge for practical purposes.

  5. Existentialism and organization behaviour : How existentialism can have a contribution to complexity theory and sense-making

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Blomme, R.J.; Bornebroek te Lintelo, K.

    2012-01-01

    This article aims to develop a conception consisting of insights from complexity theory and additional notions from Weick’s sense-making theory and existentialism for examining organization behaviour.

  6. ‘Everything revolves around gymnastics’: athletes and parents make sense of elite youth sport.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Smits, Froukje; Jacobs, F.M.; Knoppers, A.E.

    2017-01-01

    The continuation of emotional abuse as a normalized practice in elite youth sport has received scholarly attention, often with the use of a Foucauldian framework. The use of sense-making, a theoretical framework that focuses on how meaning is created in ambiguous situations, may give additional

  7. ‘Everything revolves around gymnastics’: athletes and parents make sense of elite youth sport

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Froukje Smits; Frank Jacobs; Annelies Knoppers

    2017-01-01

    The continuation of emotional abuse as a normalized practice in elite youth sport has received scholarly attention, often with the use of a Foucauldian framework. The use of sense-making, a theoretical framework that focuses on how meaning is created in ambiguous situations, may give additional

  8. Using Existing Response Repertoires to Make Sense of Information System Implementation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Tina Blegind; Kjærgaard, Annemette Leonhardt

    2010-01-01

    The implementation of information systems (IS) in organizations often triggers new situations in which users experience a disruption of existing work patterns and routines. Sensemaking becomes central in making users’ meanings explicit, serving as a foundation for further actions and interactions...... with the new technology. The purpose of this paper is to study how users make sense of new technologies by building on existing response repertoires. Empirically, we present findings from a study of an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system implementation in two Danish hospital wards. Our findings illustrate...... to existing literature by providing a detailed account of how users’ early sensemaking of a technology influences their subsequent actions and reactions towards it. Our findings support managers in understanding users’ perceptions of a new technology, helping them in planning and executing the implementation...

  9. Making sense of war : Using the interpretation comparison model to understand the Iraq conflict

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Stapel, Diederik A.; Marx, David M.

    2007-01-01

    The current research addressed the issue of how people use the past to compare and interpret the present. Using the logic of the Interpretation Comparison Model (ICM) we examined two factors (distinctness of past events and ambiguity of target event) that may influence how people make sense of a

  10. Is there pain in champagne? Semantic involvement of words within words during sense-making

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Alphen, P.M.; van Berkum, J.J.A.

    2010-01-01

    In an ERP experiment, we examined whether listeners, when making sense of spoken utterances, take into account the meaning of spurious words that are embedded in longer words, either at their onsets (e.g., pie in pirate) or at their offsets (e.g., pain in champagne). In the experiment, Dutch

  11. Making Sense of Conceptual Tools in Student-Generated Cases: Student Teachers' Problem-Solving Processes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jahreie, Cecilie Flo

    2010-01-01

    This article examines the way student teachers make sense of conceptual tools when writing cases. In order to understand the problem-solving process, an analysis of the interactions is conducted. The findings show that transforming practical experiences into theoretical reflection is not a straightforward matter. To be able to elaborate on the…

  12. Making Sense of Place Attachment : Towards a Holistic Understanding of People-Place Relationships and Experiences

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Counted, Agina Victor

    2016-01-01

    The article is an attempt to make sense of the different interdisciplinary perspectives associated with people’s attachment to places with a view to construct a holistic template for understanding people-place relationships and experiences. The author took note of the theoretical contributions of

  13. Learning Control: Sense-Making, CNC Machines, and Changes in Vocational Training for Industrial Work

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berner, Boel

    2009-01-01

    The paper explores how novices in school-based vocational training make sense of computerized numerical control (CNC) machines. Based on two ethnographic studies in Swedish schools, one from the early 1980s and one from 2006, it analyses change and continuity in the cognitive, social, and emotional processes of learning how to become a machine…

  14. Beyond Epistemological Deficits: Dynamic explanations of engineering students' difficulties with mathematical sense-making

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gupta, Ayush; Elby, Andrew

    2011-12-01

    Researchers have argued against deficit-based explanations of students' difficulties with mathematical sense-making, pointing instead to factors such as epistemology. Students' beliefs about knowledge and learning can hinder the activation and integration of productive knowledge they have. Such explanations, however, risk falling into a 'deficit trap'-substituting a concepts/skills deficit with an epistemological one. Our interview-based case study of a freshman engineering major, 'Jim,' explains his difficulty solving a physics problem (on hydrostatic pressure) in terms of his epistemology, but avoids a deficit trap by modeling the dynamics of his epistemological stabilities and shifts in terms of fine-grained cognitive elements that include the seeds of epistemological expertise. Specifically, during a problem-solving episode in the interview, Jim reaches and sticks with an incorrect answer that violates common sense. We show that Jim has all the mathematical skills and physics knowledge he would need to resolve the contradiction. We argue that his difficulty doing so stems in part from his epistemological views that (i) physics equations are much more trustworthy than everyday reasoning, and (ii) physics equations do not express meaning that tractably connects to common sense. For these reasons, he does not view reconciling between common sense and formalism as either necessary or plausible to accomplish. But Jim's in-the-moment shift to a more sophisticated epistemological stance highlights the seeds of epistemological expertise that were present all along: he does see common sense as connected to formalism (though not always tractably so), and in some circumstances, this connection is both salient and valued.

  15. Making Sense of Gov 2.0 Strategies: “No Citizens, No Party”

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Enrico Ferro

    2010-04-01

    Full Text Available One of the main factors contributing to the limited impact of eParticipation projects is the presence of a high level of social complexity that has been identified by Macintosh as one of the five challenges in the implementation of eParticipation practices. How to make sense of social complexity is still an open issue as well as the way governments can take benefit from the wealth of information that is already available on their constituencies’ collective behaviour. In this paper, we contend that the presence of a considerable variance in terms of political interests, educational level and technological skills makes it very difficult to design workable and effective systems to support participation. A modular strategy is then recommended requiring policy designers to make a step towards citizens rather than expecting the citizenry to move their content production activity onto the “official” spaces created for ad hoc participation.

  16. Hypothalamic glucose sensing: making ends meet

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vanessa eRouth

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The neuroendocrine system governs essential survival and homeostatic functions. For example, growth is needed for development. Thermoregulation maintains optimal core temperature in a changing environment. Reproduction ensures species survival. Stress and immune responses enable an organism to overcome external and internal threats. The circadian system regulates arousal and sleep such that vegetative and active functions do not overlap. All of these functions require a significant portion of the body’s energy. As the integrator of the neuroendocrine system, the hypothalamus carefully assesses the energy status of the body in order to appropriately partition resources to provide for each system without compromising the others. While doing so the hypothalamus must ensure that adequate glucose levels are preserved for brain function since glucose is the primary fuel of the brain. To this end, the hypothalamus contains specialized glucose sensing neurons which are scattered throughout the nuclei controlling distinct neuroendocrine functions. We hypothesize that these neurons play a key role in enabling the hypothalamus to partition energy to meet these peripheral survival needs without endangering the brain’s glucose supply. The goal of this review is to describe the varied mechanisms underlying glucose sensing in neurons within discrete hypothalamic nuclei. We will then evaluate the way in which peripheral energy status regulates glucose sensitivity. For example, during energy deficit such as fasting specific hypothalamic glucose sensing neurons become sensitized to decreased glucose. This increases the gain of the information relay when glucose availability is a greater concern for the brain. Finally, changes in glucose sensitivity under pathological conditions (e.g., recurrent insulin-hypoglycemia, diabetes will be addressed. The overall goal of this review is to place glucose sensing neurons within the context of hypothalamic control of

  17. The crisis of fair value accounting: Making sense of the recent debate

    OpenAIRE

    Laux, Christian; Leuz, Christian

    2009-01-01

    The recent financial crisis has led to a vigorous debate about the pros and cons of fair-value accounting (FVA). This debate presents a major challenge for FVA going forward and standard setters’ push to extend FVA into other areas. In this article, we highlight four important issues as an attempt to make sense of the debate. First, much of the controversy results from confusion about what is new and different about FVA. Second, while there are legitimate concerns about marking to market (or ...

  18. Using Prosopagnosia to Test and Modify Visual Recognition Theory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Brien, Alexander M

    2018-02-01

    Biederman's contemporary theory of basic visual object recognition (Recognition-by-Components) is based on structural descriptions of objects and presumes 36 visual primitives (geons) people can discriminate, but there has been no empirical test of the actual use of these 36 geons to visually distinguish objects. In this study, we tested for the actual use of these geons in basic visual discrimination by comparing object discrimination performance patterns (when distinguishing varied stimuli) of an acquired prosopagnosia patient (LB) and healthy control participants. LB's prosopagnosia left her heavily reliant on structural descriptions or categorical object differences in visual discrimination tasks versus the control participants' additional ability to use face recognition or coordinate systems (Coordinate Relations Hypothesis). Thus, when LB performed comparably to control participants with a given stimulus, her restricted reliance on basic or categorical discriminations meant that the stimuli must be distinguishable on the basis of a geon feature. By varying stimuli in eight separate experiments and presenting all 36 geons, we discerned that LB coded only 12 (vs. 36) distinct visual primitives (geons), apparently reflective of human visual systems generally.

  19. Making Sense of Iconic Symbols: A Study of Preschool Children Conducting a Refuse-Sorting Task

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ljung-Djärf, Agneta; Åberg-Bengtsson, Lisbeth; Ottosson, Torgny; Beach, Dennis

    2015-01-01

    This article is part of a larger project focusing upon explanatory illustrations that children encounter in pre- and primary school education. The research questions concerned (a) how preschool children make sense of iconic symbols when placing items of refuse on illustrations of refuse bins in a sorting task and (b) what stumbling blocks they…

  20. Making Sense of Principal Leadership in Content Areas: The Case of Secondary Math and Science Instruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lochmiller, Chad R.; Acker-Hocevar, Michele

    2016-01-01

    We drew upon sense making and leadership content knowledge to explore how high school administrators' understanding of content areas informed their leadership. We used math and science to illustrate our interpretations, noting that other content areas may pose different challenges. We found that principals' limited understanding of these content…

  1. Making sense of root cause analysis investigations of surgery-related adverse events.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cassin, Bryce R; Barach, Paul R

    2012-02-01

    This article discusses the limitations of root cause analysis (RCA) for surgical adverse events. Making sense of adverse events involves an appreciation of the unique features in a problematic situation, which resist generalization to other contexts. The top priority of adverse event investigations must be to inform the design of systems that help clinicians to adapt and respond effectively in real time to undesirable combinations of design, performance, and circumstance. RCAs can create opportunities in the clinical workplace for clinicians to reflect on local barriers and identify enablers of safe and reliable outcomes. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Using Cognitive Referents in Making Sense of Teaching: A Chemistry Teacher's Struggle to Change Assessment Practices.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Briscoe, Carol

    1993-01-01

    Study suggests that cognitive referents are important influences in how a teacher thinks about assessment and may constrain a teacher's implementation of innovative practices. Identification of referents such as myths, their associated beliefs, and metonymic conceptual models that teachers use to make sense of their actions is an important step in…

  3. Preservice Teacher Sense-Making as They Learn to Teach Reading as Seen through Computer-Mediated Discourse

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stefanski, Angela J.; Leitze, Amy; Fife-Demski, Veronica M.

    2018-01-01

    This collective case study used methods of discourse analysis to consider what computer-mediated collaboration might reveal about preservice teachers' sense-making in a field-based practicum as they learn to teach reading to children identified as struggling readers. Researchers agree that field-based experiences coupled with time for reflection…

  4. School Leaders' Problem Framing: A Sense-Making Approach to Problem-Solving Processes of Beginning School Leaders

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sleegers, Peter; Wassink, Hartger; van Veen, Klaas; Imants, Jeroen

    2009-01-01

    In addition to cognitive research on school leaders' problem solving, this study focuses on the situated and personal nature of problem framing by combining insights from cognitive research on problem solving and sense-making theory. The study reports the results of a case study of two school leaders solving problems in their daily context by…

  5. Making sense of others: The use of biographical statements in Rosaura a las Diez

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Teófilo Espada-Brignoni

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Marco Denevi’s Rosaura a las Diez is a novel that explores the complex relationships between law, science, and everyday life. These fields of human experience play a fundamental role in the construction of the social categories and biographical statements individuals use to understand their world. This article draws from the works of Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman to analyse the way in which Denevi explores individuals making sense of themselves and others.

  6. 3rd grade English language learners making sense of sound

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suarez, Enrique; Otero, Valerie

    2013-01-01

    Despite the extensive body of research that supports scientific inquiry and argumentation as cornerstones of physics learning, these strategies continue to be virtually absent in most classrooms, especially those that involve students who are learning English as a second language. This study presents results from an investigation of 3rd grade students' discourse about how length and tension affect the sound produced by a string. These students came from a variety of language backgrounds, and all were learning English as a second language. Our results demonstrate varying levels, and uses, of experiential, imaginative, and mechanistic reasoning strategies. Using specific examples from students' discourse, we will demonstrate some of the productive aspects of working within multiple language frameworks for making sense of physics. Conjectures will be made about how to utilize physics as a context for English Language Learners to further conceptual understanding, while developing their competence in the English language.

  7. A Critical Analysis of Preservice Teachers' Efforts to Make Sense of Young Children's Sexual Acts towards Adults

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alat, Zeynep

    2015-01-01

    This study explored Turkish early childhood education teacher candidates' efforts to make sense of sexual behaviors of both young girls and boys towards them or their colleagues during their field experience or in their daily experiences with young children. Semi-structured interviews with 13 female teacher candidates revealed that their…

  8. Beyond public acceptance of energy infrastructure: How citizens make sense and form reactions by enacting networks of entities in infrastructure development

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Aaen, Sara Bjørn; Kerndrup, Søren; Lyhne, Ivar

    2016-01-01

    This article adds to the growing insight into public acceptance by presenting a novel approach to how citizens make sense of new energy infrastructure. We claim that to understand public acceptance, we need to go beyond the current thinking of citizens framed as passive respondents to proposed projects, and instead view infrastructure projects as enacted by citizens in their local settings. We propose a combination of sensemaking theory and actor–network theory that allows insight into how citizens enact entities from experiences and surroundings in order to create meaning and form a reaction to new infrastructure projects. Empirically, we analyze how four citizens make sense of an electricity cable project through a conversation process with a representative from the infrastructure developer. Interestingly, the formal participation process and the materiality of the cable play minor roles in citizens' sensemaking process. We conclude that insight into the way citizens are making sense of energy infrastructure processes can improve and help to overcome shortcomings in the current thinking about public acceptance and public participation. - Highlights: •Attention to citizens' sensemaking enables greater insight into the decision-making process. •A combination of sensemaking and actor-network theory (ANT) is relevant for studies of public acceptance. •Sensemaking explains why citizens facing similar situations act differently. •Complexity of citizens' sensemaking challenges the predictability of processes.

  9. Making Sense and Nonsense: Comparing Mediated Discourse and Agential Realist Approaches to Materiality in a Preschool Makerspace

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wohlwend, Karen E.; Peppler, Kylie A.; Keune, Anna; Thompson, Naomi

    2017-01-01

    Two approaches to materiality (i.e. mediated discourse and agential realism) are compared to explore their usefulness in tracking literacies in action and artefacts produced during a play and design activity in a preschool makerspace. Mediated discourse analysis has relied on linguistic framing and social semiotics to make sense of multimodality.…

  10. Kids Making Sense of Air Quality Around Them Through a Hands-On, STEM-Based Program

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dye, T.

    2015-12-01

    Air pollution in many parts of the world is harming millions of people, shortening lives, and taking a toll on our ecosystem. Cities in India, China, and even the United States frequently exceed air quality standards. The use of localized data is a powerful enhancement to regulatory monitoring site data. Learning about air quality at a local level is a powerful driver for change. The Kids Making Sense program unites Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education with a complete measurement and environmental education system that teaches youth about air pollution and empowers them to drive positive change in their communities. With this program, youth learn about particle pollution, its sources, and health effects. A half-day lecture is followed by hands-on activity using handheld air sensors paired with an app on smartphones. Students make measurements around schools to discover pollution sources and cleaner areas. Next, the data they collect are crowdsourced on a website for guided discussion and data interpretation. This program meets Next Generation Science Standards, encourages project-based learning and deep understanding of applied science, and allows students to practice science like real scientists. The program has been successfully implemented in several schools in the United States and Asia, including New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento in the United States, and Taipei and Taichung in Taiwan. During this talk, we'll provide an overview of the program, discuss some of the challenges, and lay out the next steps for Kids Making Sense.

  11. Making sense of climate change risks and responses at the community level: A cultural-political lens

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ainka A. Granderson

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available How to better assess, communicate and respond to risks from climate change at the community level have emerged as key questions within climate risk management. Recent research to address these questions centres largely on psychological factors, exploring how cognition and emotion lead to biases in risk assessment. Yet, making sense of climate change and its responses at the community level demands attention to the cultural and political processes that shape how risk is conceived, prioritized and managed. I review the emergent literature on risk perceptions and responses to climate change using a cultural-political lens. This lens highlights how knowledge, meaning and power are produced and negotiated across multiple stakeholders at the community level. It draws attention to the different ways of constructing climate change risks and suggests an array of responses at the community level. It further illustrates how different constructions of risk intersect with agency and power to shape the capacity for response and collective action. What matters are whose constructions of risk, and whose responses, count in decision-making. I argue for greater engagement with the interpretive social sciences in research, practice and policy. The interpretive social sciences offer theories and tools for capturing and problematising the ways of knowing, sense-making and mobilising around risks from climate change. I also highlight the importance of participatory approaches in incorporating the multiplicity of interests at the community level into climate risk management in fair, transparent and culturally appropriate ways.

  12. Using "Making Sense of Climate Science Denial" MOOC videos in a college course

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schuenemann, K. C.; Cook, J.

    2015-12-01

    The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) "Denial101x: Making Sense of Climate Science Denial" teaches students to make sense of the science and respond to climate change denial. The course is made up of a series of short, myth-debunking lecture videos that can be strategically used in college courses. The videos and the visuals within have proven a great resource for an introductory college level climate change course. Methods for using the videos in both online and in-classroom courses will be presented, as well as student reactions and learning from the videos. The videos introduce and explain a climate science topic, then paraphrase a common climate change myth, explain why the myth is wrong by identifying the characteristic of climate denial used, and concludes by reinforcing the correct science. By focusing on common myths, the MOOC has made an archive of videos that can be used by anyone in need of a 5-minute response to debunk a myth. By also highlighting five characteristics of climate denial: fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry picking, and conspiracy theories (FLICC), the videos also teach the viewer the skills they need to critically examine myths they may encounter in the real world on a variety of topics. The videos also include a series of expert scientist interviews that can be used to drive home points, as well as put some faces to the science. These videos are freely available outside of the MOOC and can be found under the relevant "Most used climate myths" section on the skepticalscience.com webpage, as well as directly on YouTube. Discover ideas for using videos in future courses, regardless of discipline.

  13. Making sense of adolescent decision-making: challenge and reality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Unguru, Yoram

    2011-08-01

    Few topics in pediatric bioethics are as vexing as decision-making. Decision-making in pediatrics presents challenges for children, parents, and physicians alike. The related, yet distinct, concepts of assent and consent are central to pediatric decision-making. Although informed consent is largely regarded as a worthwhile adult principle, assent has been, and continues to be, mired in debate. Controversial subjects include a meaningful definition of assent; how old children should be to assent; who should be included in the assent process; parental permission; how to resolve disputes between children and their parents; the relationship between assent and consent; the quantity and quality of information to disclose to children and their families; how much and what information children desire and need; the necessity and methods for assessing both children's understanding of disclosed information and of the assent process itself; reconciling ethical and legal attitudes toward assent; and finally, an effective, practical, and realistically applicable decision-making model.

  14. The Problem of Ideology in Making Sense of Physical Education and Sport: Reflections on the Colwell--Mansfield Debate

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liston, Katie

    2008-01-01

    Two papers in the "European Physical Education Review" by Colwell (1999) and Mansfield (this issue) have argued respectively against, and in favour of, a potential synthesis between feminism and figurational sociology as a vehicle for making more adequate sense of physical education and sport. This paper offers both selective summaries and…

  15. Focused Science Delivery makes science make sense.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rachel W. Scheuering; Jamie. Barbour

    2004-01-01

    Science does not exist in a vacuum, but reading scientific publications might make you think it does. Although the policy and management implications of their findings could often touch a much wider audience, many scientists write only for the few people in the world who share their area of expertise. In addition, most scientific publications provide information that...

  16. Data Access Services that Make Remote Sensing Data Easier to Use

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lynnes, Christopher

    2010-01-01

    This slide presentation reviews some of the processes that NASA uses to make the remote sensing data easy to use over the World Wide Web. This work involves much research into data formats, geolocation structures and quality indicators, often to be followed by coding a preprocessing program. Only then are the data usable within the analysis tool of choice. The Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center is deploying a variety of data access services that are designed to dramatically shorten the time consumed in the data preparation step. On-the-fly conversion to the standard network Common Data Form (netCDF) format with Climate-Forecast (CF) conventions imposes a standard coordinate system framework that makes data instantly readable through several tools, such as the Integrated Data Viewer, Gridded Analysis and Display System, Panoply and Ferret. A similar benefit is achieved by serving data through the Open Source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP), which also provides subsetting. The Data Quality Screening Service goes a step further in filtering out data points based on quality control flags, based on science team recommendations or user-specified criteria. Further still is the Giovanni online analysis system which goes beyond handling formatting and quality to provide visualization and basic statistics of the data. This general approach of automating the preparation steps has the important added benefit of enabling use of the data by non-human users (i.e., computer programs), which often make sub-optimal use of the available data due to the need to hard-code data preparation on the client side.

  17. Method of Making an Electroactive Sensing/Actuating Material for Carbon Nanotube Polymer Composite

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ounaies, Zoubeida (Inventor); Park, Cheol (Inventor); Harrison, Joycelyn S. (Inventor); Holloway, Nancy M. (Inventor); Draughon, Gregory K. (Inventor)

    2009-01-01

    An electroactive sensing or actuating material comprises a composite made from a polymer with polarizable moieties and an effective amount of carbon nanotubes incorporated in the polymer for a predetermined electromechanical operation of the composite when such composite is affected by an external stimulus. In another embodiment, the composite comprises a, third component of micro -sized to nano-sized particles of an electroactive ceramic that is also incorporated in the polymer matrix. The method for making the three-phase composite comprises either incorporating the carbon nanotubes in the polymer matrix before incorporation of the particles of ceramic or mixing the carbon nanotubes and particles of ceramic together in a solution before incorporation in the polymer matrix.

  18. Teachers' sense-making of curriculum structures and its impact on the implementation of an innovative reform-based science curriculum

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beckford-Smart, Meredith

    This study discusses the social interactions involved in teachers' enactment and use of new science curricula. The teachers studied participated in the LiFE program, a university-school partnership, which is an inquiry based science and nutrition education program. In this program fifth and sixth grade students learned science through the study of food. The program used the study of food and food systems to teach life sciences and nutrition through inquiry based studies. Through the partnership teachers received professional development which aimed to deepen their conceptual understandings of life science and develop skills in implementing inquiry-base teaching. Using qualitative research methods of ethnography and narrative inquiry to study teachers' sense-making of messages from curriculum structures, the intention was to explore how teachers' sense-making of these structures guided their classroom practices. Two research questions were addressed: (a) How do teachers make sense of curriculum given their perceptions, their school context and their curricular context; (b) What influence do their identities as science teachers/learners have on their enactment of an innovative science curriculum. I used comparative analysis to examine teacher's beliefs and identities as teachers/learners. In the process of studying these teachers an understanding of how teachers' stories and identities shape their use and enactment of science curriculum came to light. The initial analysis revealed four distinct teacher identities: (a) social responsibility teacher/learner; (b) experiential teacher/learner; (c) supportive institution teacher/learner; and (d) turning point teacher. Besides these distinct teacher identities three cross cutting themes emerged: (a) creating environments conducive to their teaching visions; (b) empowering student through science teaching; and (c) dealing with the uncertainty of teaching. The information gathered from this study will illuminate how these

  19. Making sense of gender from digital game play in three-year-old children’s everyday lives: An ethnographic case study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Youn Jung Huh

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available This study explores very young children performing and talking about game characters in their everyday life. In this study, young children’s digital game play is considered as a hybrid and complex site for the children to meet popular culture and their everyday family experiences. This article represents a case study of six three-year-old children and their families, which combines ethnographic methods (spending time with the families, being a participant observer and critical perspectives analysis with Bakhtinian perspectives to construct analyses that have the potential to understand how young children make sense of their everyday roles as a boy or a girl through their game play. This study shows that young children do not directly receive ideological messages from the game media, but they make sense of the messages by decoding and interpreting the game media based on their own theories of everyday life.

  20. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

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    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About HealthSense Diabetes HealthSense Title/Keywords: Go Diabetes HealthSense ...

  1. Recommendation Systems for Geoscience Data Portals Built by Analyzing Usage Patterns

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crosby, C.; Nandigam, V.; Baru, C.

    2009-04-01

    Since its launch five years ago, the National Science Foundation-funded GEON Project (www.geongrid.org) has been providing access to a variety of geoscience data sets such as geologic maps and other geographic information system (GIS)-oriented data, paleontologic databases, gravity and magnetics data and LiDAR topography via its online portal interface. In addition to data, the GEON Portal also provides web-based tools and other resources that enable users to process and interact with data. Examples of these tools include functions to dynamically map and integrate GIS data, compute synthetic seismograms, and to produce custom digital elevation models (DEMs) with user defined parameters such as resolution. The GEON portal built on the Gridsphere-portal framework allows us to capture user interaction with the system. In addition to the site access statistics captured by tools like Google Analystics which capture hits per unit time, search key words, operating systems, browsers, and referring sites, we also record additional statistics such as which data sets are being downloaded and in what formats, processing parameters, and navigation pathways through the portal. With over four years of data now available from the GEON Portal, this record of usage is a rich resource for exploring how earth scientists discover and utilize online data sets. Furthermore, we propose that this data could ultimately be harnessed to optimize the way users interact with the data portal, design intelligent processing and data management systems, and to make recommendations on algorithm settings and other available relevant data. The paradigm of integrating popular and commonly used patterns to make recommendations to a user is well established in the world of e-commerce where users receive suggestions on books, music and other products that they may find interesting based on their website browsing and purchasing history, as well as the patterns of fellow users who have made similar

  2. Making sense of traumatic memories: memory qualities and psychological symptoms in emerging adults with and without abuse histories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Follmer Greenhoot, Andrea; Sun, Shengkai; Bunnell, Sarah L; Lindboe, Katherine

    2013-01-01

    This study explored the connections between multiple measures of meaning making and psychological adjustment in people with and without histories of abuse. Young adults (n =177), recollected their three most stressful memories and rated them on importance and emotional and sensory qualities. We analysed the narratives for lexical markers of meaning making and explicit references to meaning or meaning-making attempts. There was little overlap between self-reported qualities and narrative content, and they were differentially predictive of psychological symptoms and transient emotional reactions. Consistent with the PTSD literature, more salient self-report memory characteristics (e.g., visceral emotions), and negative emotion and sensation terms predicted more symptoms. The narrative indices provided the best prediction to psychological adjustment, with several meaning indices (e.g., references to positive impact) predicting reduced symptoms, particularly for the Abuse group. Contrary to meaning-making models, resolutions predicted more symptoms, suggesting that aversive feelings during memory telling may trigger on-the-spot sense making to cope with distress.

  3. Making sense of mobile health data: an open architecture to improve individual- and population-level health.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Connie; Haddad, David; Selsky, Joshua; Hoffman, Julia E; Kravitz, Richard L; Estrin, Deborah E; Sim, Ida

    2012-08-09

    Mobile phones and devices, with their constant presence, data connectivity, and multiple intrinsic sensors, can support around-the-clock chronic disease prevention and management that is integrated with daily life. These mobile health (mHealth) devices can produce tremendous amounts of location-rich, real-time, high-frequency data. Unfortunately, these data are often full of bias, noise, variability, and gaps. Robust tools and techniques have not yet been developed to make mHealth data more meaningful to patients and clinicians. To be most useful, health data should be sharable across multiple mHealth applications and connected to electronic health records. The lack of data sharing and dearth of tools and techniques for making sense of health data are critical bottlenecks limiting the impact of mHealth to improve health outcomes. We describe Open mHealth, a nonprofit organization that is building an open software architecture to address these data sharing and "sense-making" bottlenecks. Our architecture consists of open source software modules with well-defined interfaces using a minimal set of common metadata. An initial set of modules, called InfoVis, has been developed for data analysis and visualization. A second set of modules, our Personal Evidence Architecture, will support scientific inferences from mHealth data. These Personal Evidence Architecture modules will include standardized, validated clinical measures to support novel evaluation methods, such as n-of-1 studies. All of Open mHealth's modules are designed to be reusable across multiple applications, disease conditions, and user populations to maximize impact and flexibility. We are also building an open community of developers and health innovators, modeled after the open approach taken in the initial growth of the Internet, to foster meaningful cross-disciplinary collaboration around new tools and techniques. An open mHealth community and architecture will catalyze increased mHealth efficiency

  4. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

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    Full Text Available ... Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About HealthSense Diabetes HealthSense Title/Keywords: Go Diabetes ... Use NDEP’s promotional kit , including a presentation, newsletter article, and flyer to promote Diabetes HealthSense in your ...

  5. Mobile Autonomous Sensing Unit (MASU: A Framework That Supports Distributed Pervasive Data Sensing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Esunly Medina

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available Pervasive data sensing is a major issue that transverses various research areas and application domains. It allows identifying people’s behaviour and patterns without overwhelming the monitored persons. Although there are many pervasive data sensing applications, they are typically focused on addressing specific problems in a single application domain, making them difficult to generalize or reuse. On the other hand, the platforms for supporting pervasive data sensing impose restrictions to the devices and operational environments that make them unsuitable for monitoring loosely-coupled or fully distributed work. In order to help address this challenge this paper present a framework that supports distributed pervasive data sensing in a generic way. Developers can use this framework to facilitate the implementations of their applications, thus reducing complexity and effort in such an activity. The framework was evaluated using simulations and also through an empirical test, and the obtained results indicate that it is useful to support such a sensing activity in loosely-coupled or fully distributed work scenarios.

  6. Why a regional approach to postgraduate water education makes sense - the WaterNet experience in Southern Africa

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jonker, L.; van der Zaag, P.; Gumbo, B.; Rockström, J.; Love, D.; Savenije, H. H. G.

    2012-03-01

    This paper reports the experience of a regional network of academic departments involved in water education that started as a project and evolved, over a period of 12 yr, into an independent network organisation. The paper pursues three objectives. First, it argues that it makes good sense to organise postgraduate education and research on water resources on a regional scale. This is because water has a transboundary dimension that poses delicate sharing questions, an approach that promotes a common understanding of what the real water-related issues are, results in future water specialists speaking a common (water) language, enhances mutual respect, and can thus be considered an investment in future peace. Second, it presents the WaterNet experience as an example that a regional approach can work and has an impact. Third, it draws three generalised lessons from the WaterNet experience. Lesson 1: For a regional capacity building network to be effective, it must have a legitimate ownership structure and a clear mandate. Lesson 2: Organising water-related training opportunities at a regional and transboundary scale makes sense - not only because knowledge resources are scattered, but also because the topic - water - has a regional and transboundary scope. Lesson 3: Jointly developing educational programmes by sharing expertise and resources requires intense intellectual management and sufficient financial means.

  7. Online catalog access and distribution of remotely sensed information

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lutton, Stephen M.

    1997-09-01

    Remote sensing is providing voluminous data and value added information products. Electronic sensors, communication electronics, computer software, hardware, and network communications technology have matured to the point where a distributed infrastructure for remotely sensed information is a reality. The amount of remotely sensed data and information is making distributed infrastructure almost a necessity. This infrastructure provides data collection, archiving, cataloging, browsing, processing, and viewing for applications from scientific research to economic, legal, and national security decision making. The remote sensing field is entering a new exciting stage of commercial growth and expansion into the mainstream of government and business decision making. This paper overviews this new distributed infrastructure and then focuses on describing a software system for on-line catalog access and distribution of remotely sensed information.

  8. Hyperspectral sensing of forests

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goodenough, David G.; Dyk, Andrew; Chen, Hao; Hobart, Geordie; Niemann, K. Olaf; Richardson, Ash

    2007-11-01

    Canada contains 10% of the world's forests covering an area of 418 million hectares. The sustainable management of these forest resources has become increasingly complex. Hyperspectral remote sensing can provide a wealth of new and improved information products to resource managers to make more informed decisions. Research in this area has demonstrated that hyperspectral remote sensing can be used to create more accurate products for forest inventory, forest health, foliar biochemistry, biomass, and aboveground carbon than are currently available. This paper surveys recent methods and results in hyperspectral sensing of forests and describes space initiatives for hyperspectral sensing.

  9. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

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    Full Text Available ... National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About HealthSense Diabetes HealthSense Title/Keywords: Go ... Your Weight Small Steps. Big Rewards. Your GAME PLAN to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes: Information for Patients ...

  10. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... smaller. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services HOME | CONTACT US | JOBS AT NIDDK | RSS FEEDS | GET ... External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About HealthSense Diabetes HealthSense ...

  11. The spin-statistics connection in quantum gravity

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Balachandran, A.P.; Batista, E.; Costa e Silva, I.P.; Teotonio-Sobrinho, P.

    2000-01-01

    It is well known that in spite of sharing some properties with conventional particles, topological geons in general violate the spin-statistics theorem. On the other hand, it is generally believed that in quantum gravity theories allowing for topology change, using pair creation and annihilation of geons, one should be able to recover this theorem. In this paper, we take an alternative route, and use an algebraic formalism developed in previous work. We give a description of topological geons where an algebra of 'observables' is identified and quantized. Different irreducible representations of this algebra correspond to different kinds of geons, and are labeled by a non-abelian 'charge' and 'magnetic flux'. We then find that the usual spin-statistics theorem is indeed violated, but a new spin-statistics relation arises, when we assume that the fluxes are superselected. This assumption can be proved if all observables are local, as is generally the case in physical theories. Finally, we also discuss how our approach fits into conventional formulations of quantum gravity

  12. A computational account of the development of the generalization of shape information.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Doumas, Leonidas A A; Hummel, John E

    2010-05-01

    Abecassis, Sera, Yonas, and Schwade (2001) showed that young children represent shapes more metrically, and perhaps more holistically, than do older children and adults. How does a child transition from representing objects and events as undifferentiated wholes to representing them explicitly in terms of their attributes? According to RBC (Recognition-by-Components theory; Biederman, 1987), objects are represented as collections of categorical geometric parts ("geons") in particular categorical spatial relations. We propose that the transition from holistic to more categorical visual shape processing is a function of the development of geon-like representations via a process of progressive intersection discovery. We present an account of this transition in terms of DORA (Doumas, Hummel, & Sandhofer, 2008), a model of the discovery of relational concepts. We demonstrate that DORA can learn representations of single geons by comparing objects composed of multiple geons. In addition, as DORA is learning it follows the same performance trajectory as children, originally generalizing shape more metrically/holistically and eventually generalizing categorically. Copyright © 2010 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

  13. Time and constitution of sense

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pedro Gerardo Acosta

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available This article proposes a reflection over our time-consciousness under the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. The idea is make a release the key role of the sense constitution like the fundament and development of the ongoing intentionality, a shape that make the possibility to catch sight of the sense of every life situation like conscience experience that displays itself over the time, and open the world of the Phenomenon World, constituted in the flux and flow of our live experience. The immanent time in which the things served in a lived-present inevitably displays to its own immediate-past of retentions, then of commemorations, constituting and enabling, not just the sense of ever present, but the sense of our own past like memory and our future like expectative. This reflection is based and supporter over the text “Phenomenology Lesson of the Internal Time-Consiusness” (Husserl, 2002.

  14. Making (mis) sense of asymptomatic marked hypercalcemia in pregnancy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maltese, Giuseppe; Izatt, Louise; McGowan, Barbara M; Hafeez, Kashif; Hubbard, Johnathan G; Carroll, Paul V

    2017-10-01

    We describe a rare case of homozygous inactivating calcium-sensing receptor mutation detected during pregnancy and mimicking primary hyperparathyroidism. In pregnancy, the differential diagnosis of hypercalcaemia requires a cautious approach as physiological changes in calcium homeostasis may mask rare genetic conditions.

  15. The dark patterns of proxemic sensing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Boring, Sebastian; Greenberg, Saul; Vermeulen, Jo

    2014-01-01

    To be accepted and trusted by the public, proxemic sensing systems must respect people's conception of physical space, make it easy to opt in or out, and benefit users as well as advertisers and other vendors.......To be accepted and trusted by the public, proxemic sensing systems must respect people's conception of physical space, make it easy to opt in or out, and benefit users as well as advertisers and other vendors....

  16. Use of Remote Sensing for Decision Support in Africa

    Science.gov (United States)

    Policelli, Frederick S.

    2007-01-01

    Over the past 30 years, the scientific community has learned a great deal about the Earth as an integrated system. Much of this research has been enabled by the development of remote sensing technologies and their operation from space. Decision makers in many nations have begun to make use of remote sensing data for resource management, policy making, and sustainable development planning. This paper makes an attempt to provide a survey of the current state of the requirements and use of remote sensing for sustainable development in Africa. This activity has shown that there are not many climate data ready decision support tools already functioning in Africa. There are, however, endusers with known requirements who could benefit from remote sensing data.

  17. Application of the remote-sensing communication model to a time-sensitive wildfire remote-sensing system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Christopher D. Lippitt; Douglas A. Stow; Philip J. Riggan

    2016-01-01

    Remote sensing for hazard response requires a priori identification of sensor, transmission, processing, and distribution methods to permit the extraction of relevant information in timescales sufficient to allow managers to make a given time-sensitive decision. This study applies and demonstrates the utility of the Remote Sensing Communication...

  18. Radar Remote Sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosen, Paul A.

    2012-01-01

    This lecture was just a taste of radar remote sensing techniques and applications. Other important areas include Stereo radar grammetry. PolInSAR for volumetric structure mapping. Agricultural monitoring, soil moisture, ice-mapping, etc. The broad range of sensor types, frequencies of observation and availability of sensors have enabled radar sensors to make significant contributions in a wide area of earth and planetary remote sensing sciences. The range of applications, both qualitative and quantitative, continue to expand with each new generation of sensors.

  19. Sensors for the Senses: Meaning-making via self-active entertainment experiences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anthony Brooks

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available In his ACM Computers in Entertainment article, titled "Artist and Audience: Emerging the Nano-entertainment experience", the author posited on how Inhabited Information Spaces, created as core catalyst of research, may be questioned as a multisensory future virtual work of art. This themed Human-Computer Interaction for Entertainment contribution for the EAI INTETAIN 2015 conference builds upon the earlier work by questioning meaning making from such self-active entertainment experiences. Contextually, self-active relates to actor empowerment via ICT, whilst entertainment refers to HCI paradigms that are fun, engaging, and enjoyable. Conceptualizing, designing and realizing alternative digital media entertainment situations in stage performance, interactive installations and exhibitions at leading Museums for Modern Art, National and International major events, contributed to development of a sensor-based system conceived as a platform to investigate meaning making having societal impact beyond art. The system involves arrays of selectable sensor profiles mixed and matched according to requirements. Sensing of human input can be through worn (biosignal e.g. EEG, ECG, EMG, GSR, held, and/or non-worn sensors (volumetric, linear and planar interface profiles. Mapping of sourced human data is to a variety of digital content including art-based (music making, digital painting, lighting effects, video games, Virtual Reality and robotic devices. System adaptability promotes participant profile matching e.g. according to desired outcome. All ages and abilities are potential users. Preceding the commonly known camera-based game controllers such as EyeToy, Wii, and Kinect; the SoundScapes Virtual Interactive Space system has been used in institutes, hospitals and clinics to empower people with impairment to unconsciously push their limits of functionality via creative and playful expression. Rehabilitation is less mundane and boring, where variety of ICT

  20. Making big sense from big data in toxicology by read-across.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hartung, Thomas

    2016-01-01

    Modern information technologies have made big data available in safety sciences, i.e., extremely large data sets that may be analyzed only computationally to reveal patterns, trends and associations. This happens by (1) compilation of large sets of existing data, e.g., as a result of the European REACH regulation, (2) the use of omics technologies and (3) systematic robotized testing in a high-throughput manner. All three approaches and some other high-content technologies leave us with big data--the challenge is now to make big sense of these data. Read-across, i.e., the local similarity-based intrapolation of properties, is gaining momentum with increasing data availability and consensus on how to process and report it. It is predominantly applied to in vivo test data as a gap-filling approach, but can similarly complement other incomplete datasets. Big data are first of all repositories for finding similar substances and ensure that the available data is fully exploited. High-content and high-throughput approaches similarly require focusing on clusters, in this case formed by underlying mechanisms such as pathways of toxicity. The closely connected properties, i.e., structural and biological similarity, create the confidence needed for predictions of toxic properties. Here, a new web-based tool under development called REACH-across, which aims to support and automate structure-based read-across, is presented among others.

  1. Predicting word sense annotation agreement

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Martinez Alonso, Hector; Johannsen, Anders Trærup; Lopez de Lacalle, Oier

    2015-01-01

    High agreement is a common objective when annotating data for word senses. However, a number of factors make perfect agreement impossible, e.g. the limitations of the sense inventories, the difficulty of the examples or the interpretation preferences of the annotations. Estimating potential...... agreement is thus a relevant task to supplement the evaluation of sense annotations. In this article we propose two methods to predict agreement on word-annotation instances. We experiment with a continuous representation and a three-way discretization of observed agreement. In spite of the difficulty...

  2. 'The Problem with Men': Working-class Men Making Sense of Men's Health on Television.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hodgetts, Darrin; Chamberlain, Kerry

    2002-05-01

    Men have higher rates of premature death than women, and may arguably have higher rates of serious illness. One explanation often suggested to account for this is that men are considered to be stoical about illness and reluctant to seek help for it. This article explores the role of media representations in the construction of men's views about health. We investigate how a small group of lower socio-economic status men make sense of the reluctance to seek help notion through an analysis of texts from three sources: a television health documentary, individual interviews with the men and a focus group discussion in which the men discuss the documentary. The television documentary frames its presentation to promote early detection and help-seeking. We conclude that televised coverage of men's health is an important site of social discourse through which men's health is rendered meaningful. However, it is not accepted passively, but negotiated, resisted and interpreted into men's lives.

  3. Social media mediated interaction with peers, experts and anonymous authors: Conversation partner and message framing effects on risk perception and sense-making of organic food

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hilverda, Marie-Susanne Dieudonnée; Kuttschreuter, Margôt; Giebels, Ellen

    2016-01-01

    With the increased popularity of organic food production, new information about the risks attached to food products has become available. Consumers need to make sense of this information, interpret the information in terms of risks and benefits, and consequently choose whether to buy these products

  4. Social media mediated interaction with peers, experts and anonymous authors : Conversation partner and message framing effects on risk perception and sense-making of organic food

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hilverda, Femke; Kuttschreuter, Margôt; Giebels, Ellen

    2017-01-01

    With the increased popularity of organic food production, new information about the risks attached to food products has become available. Consumers need to make sense of this information, interpret the information in terms of risks and benefits, and consequently choose whether to buy these products

  5. Cognitive object recognition system (CORS)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Raju, Chaitanya; Varadarajan, Karthik Mahesh; Krishnamurthi, Niyant; Xu, Shuli; Biederman, Irving; Kelley, Troy

    2010-04-01

    We have developed a framework, Cognitive Object Recognition System (CORS), inspired by current neurocomputational models and psychophysical research in which multiple recognition algorithms (shape based geometric primitives, 'geons,' and non-geometric feature-based algorithms) are integrated to provide a comprehensive solution to object recognition and landmarking. Objects are defined as a combination of geons, corresponding to their simple parts, and the relations among the parts. However, those objects that are not easily decomposable into geons, such as bushes and trees, are recognized by CORS using "feature-based" algorithms. The unique interaction between these algorithms is a novel approach that combines the effectiveness of both algorithms and takes us closer to a generalized approach to object recognition. CORS allows recognition of objects through a larger range of poses using geometric primitives and performs well under heavy occlusion - about 35% of object surface is sufficient. Furthermore, geon composition of an object allows image understanding and reasoning even with novel objects. With reliable landmarking capability, the system improves vision-based robot navigation in GPS-denied environments. Feasibility of the CORS system was demonstrated with real stereo images captured from a Pioneer robot. The system can currently identify doors, door handles, staircases, trashcans and other relevant landmarks in the indoor environment.

  6. Commentary: so the pendulum swings--making sense of the duty to protect.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fox, Patrick K

    2010-01-01

    Psychiatry has been struggling for nearly 40 years to make sense of the duty to protect. The great jurisdictional disparity as to what constitutes the duty has been a significant contributing factor. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) released the Model Statute in 1987 to establish a framework to guide legislators and courts toward consensus, to some effect. In response to case law and statutory requirements in most states, psychiatric practice has incorporated the assessment of risk to third parties by patients as an essential element of psychiatric assessment and care. Although court cases shortly after the Tarasoff decision expanded the scope and breadth of the duty to protect, in recent years there appears to have been a shift toward a more narrow interpretation as to what conditions must exist to find a defendant psychiatrist guilty of failing to exercise the duty properly. The threshold for the duty to warn or protect often rests precariously beside the criteria permitting an exception to confidentiality, placing the psychiatrist in a tenuous position. If appellate verdicts continue to find for the defendant psychiatrist in cases claiming a breach of the duty to protect, it could have an impact on how psychiatrists assess and manage threats made by patients toward third parties.

  7. Conversational sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Preece, Alun; Gwilliams, Chris; Parizas, Christos; Pizzocaro, Diego; Bakdash, Jonathan Z.; Braines, Dave

    2014-05-01

    Recent developments in sensing technologies, mobile devices and context-aware user interfaces have made it pos- sible to represent information fusion and situational awareness for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) activities as a conversational process among actors at or near the tactical edges of a network. Motivated by use cases in the domain of Company Intelligence Support Team (CoIST) tasks, this paper presents an approach to information collection, fusion and sense-making based on the use of natural language (NL) and controlled nat- ural language (CNL) to support richer forms of human-machine interaction. The approach uses a conversational protocol to facilitate a ow of collaborative messages from NL to CNL and back again in support of interactions such as: turning eyewitness reports from human observers into actionable information (from both soldier and civilian sources); fusing information from humans and physical sensors (with associated quality metadata); and assisting human analysts to make the best use of available sensing assets in an area of interest (governed by man- agement and security policies). CNL is used as a common formal knowledge representation for both machine and human agents to support reasoning, semantic information fusion and generation of rationale for inferences, in ways that remain transparent to human users. Examples are provided of various alternative styles for user feedback, including NL, CNL and graphical feedback. A pilot experiment with human subjects shows that a prototype conversational agent is able to gather usable CNL information from untrained human subjects.

  8. Making sense of quantum mechanics

    CERN Document Server

    Bricmont, Jean

    2016-01-01

    This book explains, in simple terms, with a minimum of mathematics, why things can appear to be in two places at the same time, why  correlations between simultaneous events occurring far apart cannot be explained by local mechanisms, and why, nevertheless, the quantum theory can be understood in terms of matter in motion. No need to worry, as some people do, whether a cat can be both dead and alive, whether the moon is there when nobody looks at it, or whether quantum systems need an observer to acquire definite properties. The author’s inimitable and even humorous style makes the book a pleasure to read while bringing a new clarity to many of the longstanding puzzles of quantum physics.

  9. Pervasive sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nagel, David J.

    2000-11-01

    The coordinated exploitation of modern communication, micro- sensor and computer technologies makes it possible to give global reach to our senses. Web-cameras for vision, web- microphones for hearing and web-'noses' for smelling, plus the abilities to sense many factors we cannot ordinarily perceive, are either available or will be soon. Applications include (1) determination of weather and environmental conditions on dense grids or over large areas, (2) monitoring of energy usage in buildings, (3) sensing the condition of hardware in electrical power distribution and information systems, (4) improving process control and other manufacturing, (5) development of intelligent terrestrial, marine, aeronautical and space transportation systems, (6) managing the continuum of routine security monitoring, diverse crises and military actions, and (7) medicine, notably the monitoring of the physiology and living conditions of individuals. Some of the emerging capabilities, such as the ability to measure remotely the conditions inside of people in real time, raise interesting social concerns centered on privacy issues. Methods for sensor data fusion and designs for human-computer interfaces are both crucial for the full realization of the potential of pervasive sensing. Computer-generated virtual reality, augmented with real-time sensor data, should be an effective means for presenting information from distributed sensors.

  10. Making sense of climate risk information: The case of future indoor climate risks in Swedish churches

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gustaf Leijonhufvud

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Organizations and institutions managing built heritage have to make use of increasingly detailed, elaborate and complex climate change impact assessments. It is a challenge to determine how, when and by whom climate predictions should be translated into risk estimates usable for decision-making. In this paper results from the Climate for Culture project are used to study how heritage decision-makers interpret future indoor climate-related risks to Swedish churches. Different sets of risk maps were presented to ten engineers, ten building conservators and five experts on indoor climate related risks. Interviews were used to understand how the interviewees made sense of the presented information and if they associated it with a perceived need for adaptation. The results show that the risks were interpreted and assessed largely dependent on their pre-understanding and familiarity with the individual risks. The magnitude of change and the lack of uncertainty estimates were subordinate to the overall impression of the information as being credible and salient. The major conclusion is that the dissemination of risk information, also from projects which at the outset have aimed at producing knowledge relevant for end-users, should be both customized and tested in collaborative efforts by stakeholders and scientists.

  11. Exploring the Interconnected Trauma of Personal, Social, and Structural Stressors: Making "Sense" of Senseless Violence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abo-Zena, Mona M

    2017-01-02

    Although violence is a timeless characteristic of human behavior and history, its prevalence and many forms are proliferated repeatedly through the media. In particular, "senseless" violence against both random and targeted victims puzzles and petrifies onlookers and survivors. Integrating developmental psychology with critical theory, this manuscript begins with a conceptual definition of senseless violence that is coupled with a mapping of the personal, social, and structural etiologies of such violence. This inquiry explores the origins, contexts, and varied manifestations of violence, helps redirect sense-making around such violence, and informs how to cope with and possibly reduce or mitigate it. Utilizing a person-centered perspective from multiple points of view, the analysis focuses primarily on the everyday or chronic experiences of stressors and their relation to internalized and externalized types of violence (i.e., mass shootings, interpersonal violence, self-injury). The manuscript concludes with ways to reduce violence and promote justice on personal, social, and structural levels.

  12. Making Sense of Participant Experiences: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis in Midwifery Research

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Samantha J Charlick

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Selecting the most appropriate methodology for research as a doctoral student is one of the most important yet difficult decisions. Not only should the methodology suit the research question, it is important that it resonates with the philosophy of one’s discipline and produces needed results that will contribute to knowledge. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA is an approach to qualitative enquiry. IPA seeks to explore how individuals make sense of their major life experiences and is committed to the detailed study of each particular case before moving to broader claims. In the field of midwifery, midwives work with women throughout pregnancy, childbirth and the early postnatal period, offering individualized care based on the unique needs of each woman. IPA aligns with this women-centered philosophy as it offers a methodological approach that considers the individual in a local context. By capturing context specific situations, IPA allows broad-based knowledge to be contextualized within a social and cultural context, producing relevant findings. Thus the access to IPA studies will enable midwives to better care for women and their families through understanding the experiences and perceptions of those in their scope of practice. This paper presents the theoretical framework leading to practical guidelines on how to con-duct a doctoral-level IPA study, as experienced by the first author. It also addresses the advantages and challenges around utilizing IPA, illustrated through examples from the doc-toral student’s study on the journey of exclusive breastfeeding in Australia.

  13. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... to make the text smaller. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services HOME | CONTACT US | JOBS AT NIDDK | RSS FEEDS | GET E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ...

  14. Making Sense of Trajectory Data in Indoor Spaces

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Prentow, Thor Siiger; Thom, Andreas; Blunck, Henrik

    2015-01-01

    The increasing prevalence of positioning and tracking systems has helped simplify tracking large amounts of, e.g., people moving through buildings or cars traveling on roads, over long periods of time. However, technical limitations of positioning algorithms and traditional sensing infrastructures......-specific analysis tools. Additionally, it allows to predict the locally occurring expected positioning error biases. This in turn allows improved positioning, e.g., for real-time navigation assistance scenarios. We evaluate the proposed methods using trajectory data from employees at a large hospital complex...... which route was taken in a particular travel instance or whether two travel instances followed the same route. In this paper, we present a bootstrapping approach and several algorithms to mitigate error biases and related phenomena, focusing on indoor scenarios. In particular, we are able to estimate...

  15. The Importance of Sensing Own's Movements in the World for the Sense of Personal Identity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mariana Broens

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Within philosophy and cognitive science, the focus in relation to the problem of personal identity has been almost exclusively on the brain. We submit that the resulting neglect of the body and of bodily movements in the world has been detrimental in understanding how organisms develop a sense of identity. We examine the importance of sensing one’s own movements for the development of a basic, nonconceptual sense of self. More specifically, we argue that the origin of the sense of self stems from the sensitivity to spontaneous movements. Based on this, the organism develops a sense of “I move” and, finally, a sense of “I can move”. Proprioception and kinesthesis are essential in this development. At the same time, we argue against the traditional dichotomy between so-called external and internal senses, agreeing with Gibson that perception of the self and of the environment invariably go together. We discuss a traditional distinction between two aspects of bodily self: the body sense and the body image. We suggest that they capture different aspects of the sense of self. We argue that especially the body sense is of great importance to our nonconceptual sense of self. Finally, we attempt to draw some consequences for research in cognitive science, specifically in the area of robotics, by examining a case of missing proprioception. We make a plea for robots to be equipped not just with external perceptual and motor abilities but also with a sense of proprioception. This, we submit, would constitute one further step towards understanding creatures acting in the world with a sense of themselves.

  16. In the making

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    2005-01-01

    disciplines and includes other research areas with common interest in how people shape and make sense of things in an increasingly man-made world. The conference directs its interest towards the diversity, challenges, emerging practices and understanding of design. Rather than searching for common definitions...

  17. Girls make sense: girls, celebrities and identities

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Duits, L.; van Romondt Vis, P.

    2009-01-01

    Combining intertextual, audience and feminist perspectives, this article investigates how young girls make meaning from celebrities. Based on focus group interviews with Dutch girls aged 12—13, it argues that girls' talk about celebrities functions as an identity tool in the reflexive project of the

  18. Using sense-making theory to aid understanding of the recognition, assessment and management of pain in patients with dementia in acute hospital settings.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dowding, Dawn; Lichtner, Valentina; Allcock, Nick; Briggs, Michelle; James, Kirstin; Keady, John; Lasrado, Reena; Sampson, Elizabeth L; Swarbrick, Caroline; José Closs, S

    2016-01-01

    The recognition, assessment and management of pain in hospital settings is suboptimal, and is a particular challenge in patients with dementia. The existing process guiding pain assessment and management in clinical settings is based on the assumption that nurses follow a sequential linear approach to decision making. In this paper we re-evaluate this theoretical assumption drawing on findings from a study of pain recognition, assessment and management in patients with dementia. To provide a revised conceptual model of pain recognition, assessment and management based on sense-making theories of decision making. The research we refer to is an exploratory ethnographic study using nested case sites. Patients with dementia (n=31) were the unit of data collection, nested in 11 wards (vascular, continuing care, stroke rehabilitation, orthopaedic, acute medicine, care of the elderly, elective and emergency surgery), located in four NHS hospital organizations in the UK. Data consisted of observations of patients at bedside (170h in total); observations of the context of care; audits of patient hospital records; documentary analysis of artefacts; semi-structured interviews (n=56) and informal open conversations with staff and carers (family members). Existing conceptualizations of pain recognition, assessment and management do not fully explain how the decision process occurs in clinical practice. Our research indicates that pain recognition, assessment and management is not an individual cognitive activity; rather it is carried out by groups of individuals over time and within a specific organizational culture or climate, which influences both health care professional and patient behaviour. We propose a revised theoretical model of decision making related to pain assessment and management for patients with dementia based on theories of sense-making, which is reflective of the reality of clinical decision making in acute hospital wards. The revised model recognizes the

  19. Remote Sensing Image in the Application of Agricultural Tourism Planning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guojing Fan

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper introduces the processing technology of high resolution remote sensing image, the specific making process of tourism map and different remote sensing data in the key application of tourism planning and so on. Remote sensing extracts agricultural tourism planning information, improving the scientificalness and operability of agricultural tourism planning. Therefore remote sensing image in the application of agricultural tourism planning will be the inevitable trend of tourism development.

  20. Logical Normativity and Common Sense Reasoning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Evandro Agazzi

    2011-04-01

    Full Text Available Logic, considered as a technical discipline inaugurated by Aristotle and typically represented by the variety of the modern logical calculi, constitutes a clarification and refinement of a conviction and practice present in common sense, that is, the fact that humans believe that truth can be acquired not only by immediate evidence, but also by means of arguments. As a first step logic can be seen as a “descriptive” record of the main forms of the arguments present in common sense, but the fact that some of these patterns can actually allow for the derivation of false consequences from true premises imposes the task of making explicit what patterns correspond to a “correct reasoning” and what not. At this point logic (that contains the presentation of such patterns appears endowed with a “normative” characteristic. This amounts to saying that logical calculi are intended to adequately mirror the intuitive notion of “logical consequence” and in this sense they cannot be totally arbitrary or conventional, but must satisfy certain basic requirements such as the conditions of soundness and (as far as possible of semantic completeness. In such a way they are “judged” according to the fundamental requirements present at the level of common sense and appear as “idealizations” of the kinds of reasoning practiced in common sense. For this reason also several kinds of logical calculi are fully justified since they make explicit in an idealized form the concrete ways of reasoning that are imposed by the particular domain of reference of the discipline in which they are used and which are basically recognized in common sense.

  1. Best practices in Remote Sensing for REDD+

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dons, Klaus; Grogan, Kenneth

    2012-01-01

    due to steep terrain, • phenological gradients across natural, agricultural and forestry ecosystems including plantations and • the need to serve the REDD-specific context of deforestation and forest degradation across spatial and temporal scales make remote sensing based approaches particularly...... be expected from remote sensing imagery and the provided information shall help to better anticipate problems that will be encountered when acquiring, analyzing and interpreting remote sensing data. Beyond remote sensing, it may be a good point of departure for a large group of scientists with a diverse...... and governance, and deforestation and forest degradation processes. The second part summarizes the available literature on remote sensing based good practices for REDD. It largely draws from the documents of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate...

  2. How to make sense of the past – salient issues of Metahistory

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jorn Rusen

    2007-04-01

    Full Text Available This aerticle provides an overview of current issues in metahistoty. Basic categories of historical thinking, such as memory and historical culture, or historical consciousness, are outlined and contextualised in the field of historical studies. The leading question adresses the process of historical sense generation and its fundamental principles and criteria. In respnse to the traumatic historical experiences of crimes against humanitiy in the 20th century two culturally established procedures of sense generation are applied to historical thinking: mourning and forgiving. The author tries to widen the horizon of historical thinking into the dimension of intercultural communication. In the process he responds to the challenge of globilization. There is an accent on the need to pursue new approaches in history.

  3. Making an Informed Decision on Freshwater Management by Integrating Remote Sensing Data with Traditional Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hyon, Jason J.

    2012-01-01

    The US National Research Council (NRC) recommended that: "The U.S. government, working in concert with the private sector, academe, the public, and its international partners, should renew its investment in Earth-observing systems and restore its leadership in Earth science and applications." in response to the NASA Earth Science Division's request to prioritize research areas, observations, and notional missions to make those objectives. In this presentation, we will discuss our approach to connect remote sensing science to decision support applications by establishing a framework to integrate direct measurements, earth system models, inventories, and other information to accurately estimate fresh water resources in global, regional, and local scales. We will discuss our demonstration projects and lessons learned from the experience. Deploying a monitoring system that offers sustained, accurate, transparent and relevant information represents a challenge and opportunity to a broad community spanning earth science, water resource accounting and public policy. An introduction to some of the scientific and technical infrastructure issues associated with monitoring systems is offered here to encourage future treatment of these topics by other contributors as a concluding remark.

  4. Making Sense of HIV in Southeastern Nigeria Fictional Narratives, Cultural Meanings, and Methodologies in Medical Anthropology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Winskell, Kate; Brown, Peter J.; Patterson, Amy E.; Burkot, Camilla; Mbakwem, Benjamin C.

    2018-01-01

    Fictional narratives have rarely been used in medical anthropological research. This article illustrates the value of such narratives by examining how young people in southeastern Nigeria navigate the cultural resources available to them to make sense of HIV in their creative writing. Using thematic data analysis and narrative-based methodologies, it analyzes a sample (N = 120) from 1,849 narratives submitted by Nigerian youth to the 2005 Scenarios from Africa scriptwriting contest on the theme of HIV. The narratives are characterized by five salient themes: tragedy arising from the incompatibility of sex outside marriage and kinship obligations; female vulnerability and blame; peer pressure and moral ambivalence; conservative Christian sexual morality; and the social and family consequences of HIV. We consider the strengths and limitations of this narrative approach from a theoretical perspective and by juxtaposing our findings with those generated by Daniel Jordan Smith using standard ethnographic research methods with a similar Igbo youth population. [HIV, Igbo, youth, narrative, methodology] PMID:23804317

  5. Engaging All the Senses

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Schleicher, Marianne

    2017-01-01

    Based on an analysis of the process of making and inaugurating a Torah scroll, this article describes what is likely to trigger sensory responses in the participants in each phase of the process and the function of activating the five senses of touch, hearing, vision, smell, and taste. By disting...

  6. [Factors influencing the sense of unintegration of thoughts in maintaining anger].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Endo, Hiroko; Yukawa, Shintaro

    2013-12-01

    Endo and Yukawa (2012) investigated the process of maintaining anger and demonstrated that a sense of unintegration of thoughts maintained anger by promoting recurrent thinking and avoidance behavior. Our present study examined how personality characteristics and situational factors affected the process of maintaining anger. Undergraduates (N=713) wrote about an anger episode, and completed questionnaires assessing their sense of unintegration of thoughts, recurrent thinking, avoidance behaviors, and maintaining anger. The questionnaires also assessed personality characteristics such as difficulty in identifying feelings, and situational factors such as the need for maintaining relationships, anger arousability, and meaning-making for the anger episode. The results of covariance structure analysis indicated that difficulties in identifying feelings and anger arousability contributed to maintaining anger by increasing the sense of unintegration of thoughts just after the episode. However, the need for maintaining relationships directly reduced the sense of unintegration of thoughts just after the episode, and indirectly decreased the present sense of unintegration of thoughts by meaning-making. Moreover, although recurrent thinking promoted the current sense of unintegration of thoughts, it also provided meaning.

  7. Making sense of diversity in the workplace: organizational justice and language abstraction in employees' accounts of diversity-related incidents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roberson, Quinetta M; Stevens, Cynthia Kay

    2006-03-01

    To discern patterns of employee sense-making about workplace diversity, the authors analyzed 751 natural language accounts of diversity incidents from 712 workers in one department of a large organization. Six generic incident types emerged: discrimination, representation, treatment by management, work relationships, respect between groups, and diversity climates. Consistent with hypotheses, incidents that respondents viewed as negative, accounts from women, and those involving members of respondents' in-groups were more likely to cite justice issues. Partially consistent with research on the linguistic intergroup bias, both negative and positive accounts involving out-group members and accounts from men were more likely to be expressed using abstract verb forms. The authors discuss future opportunities to integrate research on diversity, justice, and the linguistic category model.

  8. MAKING SENSE OF AUTONOMY IN INFORMATION ONLINE JOURNALISM IN CHIAPAS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luis Fernando Bolaños Gordillo

    2011-09-01

    Full Text Available Censorship prevalent historically in the practice of journalism in Chiapas, several organizations have taken over the use of new information technologies to inform and comment on the events in Chiapas, including his own, thus creating an autonomous way of exercising this important activity.This article is the product of research done in 2010, which analyzed the influence of the EZLN in the development of a regional sense in the online journalism in Chiapas as well as the presence that gradually increases in several pages, blogs and social networks.

  9. Electroactive polymers for sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-01-01

    Electromechanical coupling in electroactive polymers (EAPs) has been widely applied for actuation and is also being increasingly investigated for sensing chemical and mechanical stimuli. EAPs are a unique class of materials, with low-moduli high-strain capabilities and the ability to conform to surfaces of different shapes. These features make them attractive for applications such as wearable sensors and interfacing with soft tissues. Here, we review the major types of EAPs and their sensing mechanisms. These are divided into two classes depending on the main type of charge carrier: ionic EAPs (such as conducting polymers and ionic polymer–metal composites) and electronic EAPs (such as dielectric elastomers, liquid-crystal polymers and piezoelectric polymers). This review is intended to serve as an introduction to the mechanisms of these materials and as a first step in material selection for both researchers and designers of flexible/bendable devices, biocompatible sensors or even robotic tactile sensing units. PMID:27499846

  10. Remote Sensing of Aerosols from Satellites: Why Has It Been Do Difficult to Quantify Aerosol-Cloud Interactions for Climate Assessment, and How Can We Make Progress?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kahn, Ralph A.

    2015-01-01

    The organizers of the National Academy of Sciences Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia Series on Improving Our Fundamental Understanding of the Role of Aerosol-Cloud Interactions in the Climate System would like to post Ralph Kahn's presentation entitled Remote Sensing of Aerosols from Satellites: Why has it been so difficult to quantify aerosol-cloud interactions for climate assessment, and how can we make progress? to their public website.

  11. Remote Sensing Applications to Water Quality Management in Florida

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lehrter, J. C.; Schaeffer, B. A.; Hagy, J.; Spiering, B.; Barnes, B.; Hu, C.; Le, C.; McEachron, L.; Underwood, L. W.; Ellis, C.; Fisher, B.

    2013-12-01

    Optical datasets from estuarine and coastal systems are increasingly available for remote sensing algorithm development, validation, and application. With validated algorithms, the data streams from satellite sensors can provide unprecedented spatial and temporal data for local and regional coastal water quality management. Our presentation will highlight two recent applications of optical data and remote sensing to water quality decision-making in coastal regions of the state of Florida; (1) informing the development of estuarine and coastal nutrient criteria for the state of Florida and (2) informing the rezoning of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. These efforts involved building up the underlying science to demonstrate the applicability of satellite data as well as an outreach component to educate decision-makers about the use, utility, and uncertainties of remote sensing data products. Scientific developments included testing existing algorithms and generating new algorithms for water clarity and chlorophylla in case II (CDOM or turbidity dominated) estuarine and coastal waters and demonstrating the accuracy of remote sensing data products in comparison to traditional field based measurements. Including members from decision-making organizations on the research team and interacting with decision-makers early and often in the process were key factors for the success of the outreach efforts and the eventual adoption of satellite data into the data records and analyses used in decision-making. Florida coastal water bodies (black boxes) for which remote sensing imagery were applied to derive numeric nutrient criteria and in situ observations (black dots) used to validate imagery. Florida ocean color applied to development of numeric nutrient criteria

  12. Making Sense of Chernobyl Nine Years After: TV News Reception Study of the Environmental Disaster

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Vettenranta, Soilikki

    1998-12-31

    This thesis begins by describing how high-technology risks like nuclear power plant explosions intrude into people`s everyday consciousness through television news. It problematises the failure of the traditional concepts in the social sciences to measure the consequences of sense making of nuclear risks and examines the distinction between the concepts of risk communication and crisis information. The Chernobyl disaster is presented and its consequences for media research discussed. Media coverage of disasters is examined in detail. The research paradigm is considered from the epistemological and ontological distinctions and qualitative methods versus quantitative ones are discussed. The interview methodology is discussed and profile descriptions given of the fifteen respondents. These includes lay people, authorities and experts, and representatives of the media. The data are examined from an ontological approach, using constructivism as the research framework. The ontological analysis is based on the application of Heidegger`s existentiales as a scientific instrument. The epistemological approach is discussed by proceeding from Heidegger to Habermas` theory of the communicative action. Finally, the thesis concludes with a discussion of the theoretical basis and methods used. 264 refs., 1 fig., 4 tabs.

  13. Making Sense of Chernobyl Nine Years After: TV News Reception Study of the Environmental Disaster

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Vettenranta, Soilikki

    1999-12-31

    This thesis begins by describing how high-technology risks like nuclear power plant explosions intrude into people`s everyday consciousness through television news. It problematises the failure of the traditional concepts in the social sciences to measure the consequences of sense making of nuclear risks and examines the distinction between the concepts of risk communication and crisis information. The Chernobyl disaster is presented and its consequences for media research discussed. Media coverage of disasters is examined in detail. The research paradigm is considered from the epistemological and ontological distinctions and qualitative methods versus quantitative ones are discussed. The interview methodology is discussed and profile descriptions given of the fifteen respondents. These includes lay people, authorities and experts, and representatives of the media. The data are examined from an ontological approach, using constructivism as the research framework. The ontological analysis is based on the application of Heidegger`s existentiales as a scientific instrument. The epistemological approach is discussed by proceeding from Heidegger to Habermas` theory of the communicative action. Finally, the thesis concludes with a discussion of the theoretical basis and methods used. 264 refs., 1 fig., 4 tabs.

  14. Satellite Remote Sensing: Aerosol Measurements

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kahn, Ralph A.

    2013-01-01

    Aerosols are solid or liquid particles suspended in the air, and those observed by satellite remote sensing are typically between about 0.05 and 10 microns in size. (Note that in traditional aerosol science, the term "aerosol" refers to both the particles and the medium in which they reside, whereas for remote sensing, the term commonly refers to the particles only. In this article, we adopt the remote-sensing definition.) They originate from a great diversity of sources, such as wildfires, volcanoes, soils and desert sands, breaking waves, natural biological activity, agricultural burning, cement production, and fossil fuel combustion. They typically remain in the atmosphere from several days to a week or more, and some travel great distances before returning to Earth's surface via gravitational settling or washout by precipitation. Many aerosol sources exhibit strong seasonal variability, and most experience inter-annual fluctuations. As such, the frequent, global coverage that space-based aerosol remote-sensing instruments can provide is making increasingly important contributions to regional and larger-scale aerosol studies.

  15. Analyzing and sense making of human factors in the Malaysian radiation and nuclear emergency planning framework

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hamid, A. H. A.; Rozan, M. Z. A.; Deris, S.; Ibrahim, R.; Abdullah, W. S. W.; Rahman, A. A.; Yunus, M. N. M.

    2016-01-01

    The evolution of current Radiation and Nuclear Emergency Planning Framework (RANEPF) simulator emphasizes on the human factors to be analyzed and interpreted according to the stakeholder's tacit and explicit knowledge. These human factor criteria are analyzed and interpreted according to the "sense making theory" and Disaster Emergency Response Management Information System (DERMIS) design premises. These criteria are corroborated by the statistical criteria. In recent findings, there were no differences of distributions among the stakeholders according to gender and organizational expertise. These criteria are incrementally accepted and agreed the research elements indicated in the respective emergency planning frameworks and simulator (i.e. 78.18 to 84.32, p-value <0.05). This paper suggested these human factors criteria in the associated analyses and theoretical perspectives to be further acomodated in the future simulator development. This development is in conjunction with the proposed hypothesis building of the process factors and responses diagram. We proposed that future work which implies the additional functionality of the simulator, as strategized, condensed and concise, comprehensive public disaster preparedness and intervention guidelines, to be a useful and efficient computer simulation.

  16. Making Sense of War and Peace

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mogensen, Kirsten

    2016-01-01

    When people tell stories about their past experiences, they often include descriptions that infer changes in trust repertoires over time, especially when the stories relate to serious life dramas like war and peace. A happy ending can make a past war appear meaningful. In this case study......, retrospective narratives summarizing fifty years of history in Aceh, Indonesia, were analyzed using Fuglsang’s & Jagd’s framework (2013). The concept spiritual trust is introduced, and the case study indicates that when neither institutions nor powers are strong enough to support trusting, trust in a divine...... power can provide an alternative framework for sensemaking and trusting. In Aceh, three decades of civil war ended with a peace process in 2005, and extreme distrust was then replaced by institutional trust. Insights from that process are of relevance for the study of trust-repair....

  17. Making students' frames explicit

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Louise Møller; Hansen, Poul Henrik Kyvsgaard

    2016-01-01

    Framing is a vital part of the design and innovation process. Frames are cognitive shortcuts (i.e. metaphors) that enable designers to connect insights about i.e. market opportunities and users needs with a set of solution principles and to test if this connection makes sense. Until now, framing...

  18. Communicated Sense-making After Miscarriage: A Dyadic Analysis of Spousal Communicated Perspective-Taking, Well-being, and Parenting Role Salience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Horstman, Haley Kranstuber; Holman, Amanda

    2017-08-28

    Grounded in communicated sense-making (CSM) theorizing, we investigated communicated perspective-taking (CPT; i.e., conversational partners' attendance to and confirmation of each other's views) in association with individual and relational well-being in married couples who had miscarried (n = 183; N = 366). Actor-partner interdependence modeling revealed husbands' perceptions of wives' CPT were positively related to husbands' positive affect about the miscarriage and both spouses' relational satisfaction, as well as negatively associated with wives' positive affect. Wives' perceptions of husbands' CPT related positively to their own relational satisfaction and negatively to husbands' negative affect. Analyses revealed identification as a parent to the miscarried child (i.e., "parenting role salience") positively moderated the relationship between CPT and relational satisfaction. Implications for advancing CSM theorizing in health contexts and practical applications are explored.

  19. Piezoelectric self sensing actuators for high voltage excitation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Grasso, E; Totaro, N; Janocha, H; Naso, D

    2013-01-01

    Self sensing techniques allow the use of a piezoelectric transducer simultaneously as an actuator and as a sensor. Such techniques are based on knowledge of the transducer behaviour and on measurements of electrical quantities, in particular voltage and charge. Past research work has mainly considered the linear behaviour of piezoelectric transducers, consequently restricting the operating driving voltages to low values. In this work a new self sensing technique is proposed which is able to perform self sensing reconstruction both at low and at high driving voltages. This technique, in fact, makes use of a hysteretic model to describe the nonlinear piezoelectric capacitance necessary for self sensing reconstruction. The capacitance can be measured and identified at the antiresonances of a vibrating structure with a good approximation. After providing a mathematical background to deal with the main aspects of self sensing, this technique is compared theoretically and experimentally to a typical linear one by using an aluminum plate with one bonded self sensing transducer and a positive position feedback (PPF) controller to verify the performance in self sensing based vibration control. (paper)

  20. National Satellite Land Remote Sensing Data Archive

    Science.gov (United States)

    Faundeen, John L.; Kelly, Francis P.; Holm, Thomas M.; Nolt, Jenna E.

    2013-01-01

    The National Satellite Land Remote Sensing Data Archive (NSLRSDA) resides at the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. Through the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992, the U.S. Congress directed the Department of the Interior (DOI) to establish a permanent Government archive containing satellite remote sensing data of the Earth's land surface and to make this data easily accessible and readily available. This unique DOI/USGS archive provides a comprehensive, permanent, and impartial observational record of the planet's land surface obtained throughout more than five decades of satellite remote sensing. Satellite-derived data and information products are primary sources used to detect and understand changes such as deforestation, desertification, agricultural crop vigor, water quality, invasive plant species, and certain natural hazards such as flood extent and wildfire scars.

  1. The Impact of Game Sense Pedagogy on Australian Rugby Coaches' Practice: A Question of Pedagogy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Light, Richard Lawrence; Robert, John Evans

    2010-01-01

    Background: Recent developments in games and sport teaching such as that of Teaching Games for Understanding, Play Practice and Game Sense suggest that they can make a significant contribution toward the development of tactical understanding, ability to read the game, decision-making and a general "sense of the game", yet empirical…

  2. Remote Sensing of Environmental Pollution

    Science.gov (United States)

    North, G. W.

    1971-01-01

    Environmental pollution is a problem of international scope and concern. It can be subdivided into problems relating to water, air, or land pollution. Many of the problems in these three categories lend themselves to study and possible solution by remote sensing. Through the use of remote sensing systems and techniques, it is possible to detect and monitor, and in some cases, identify, measure, and study the effects of various environmental pollutants. As a guide for making decisions regarding the use of remote sensors for pollution studies, a special five-dimensional sensor/applications matrix has been designed. The matrix defines an environmental goal, ranks the various remote sensing objectives in terms of their ability to assist in solving environmental problems, lists the environmental problems, ranks the sensors that can be used for collecting data on each problem, and finally ranks the sensor platform options that are currently available.

  3. Comparison of environmental and socio-economic domains of vulnerability to flood hazards

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leidel, M.; Kienberger, S.; Lang, S.; Zeil, P.

    2009-04-01

    Socio-economic and environmental based vulnerability models have been developed within the research context of the FP6 project BRAHMATWINN. The conceptualisation of vulnerability has been defined in the project and is characterised as a function of sensitivity and adaptive capacity, where sensitivity is used to refer to systems that are susceptible to the impacts of environmental stress. Adaptive capacity is used to refer to systems or resources available to communities that could help them adapt or cope with the adverse consequences of environmental stresses in the recovery phase. In a wider context the approach reflects the wider objective and conceptualizations of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) framework, where vulnerability is characterized as a component of overall risk. A methodology has been developed which delineates spatial units of vulnerability (VULNUS). These units share a specific common characteristic and allow the independent spatial modelling of a complex phenomena independent from administrative units and raster based approaches. An increasing detail of spatial data and complex decision problems require flexible means for scaled spatial representations, for mapping the dynamics and constant changes, and delivering the crucial information. Automated techniques of object-based image analysis (OBIA, Lang & Blaschke, 2006), capable of integrating a virtually unlimited set of spatial data sets, try to match the information extraction with our world view. To account for that, a flexible concept of manageable units is required. The term geon was proposed by Lang (2008) to describe generic spatial objects that are homogenous in terms of a varying spatial phenomena under the influence of, and partly controlled by, policy actions. The geon concept acts as a framework for the regionalization of continuous spatial information according to defined parameters of homogeneity. It is flexible in terms of a certain perception of a problem

  4. Securing Collaborative Spectrum Sensing against Untrustworthy Secondary Users in Cognitive Radio Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Wenkai; Li, Husheng; Sun, Yan(Lindsay); Han, Zhu

    2009-12-01

    Cognitive radio is a revolutionary paradigm to migrate the spectrum scarcity problem in wireless networks. In cognitive radio networks, collaborative spectrum sensing is considered as an effective method to improve the performance of primary user detection. For current collaborative spectrum sensing schemes, secondary users are usually assumed to report their sensing information honestly. However, compromised nodes can send false sensing information to mislead the system. In this paper, we study the detection of untrustworthy secondary users in cognitive radio networks. We first analyze the case when there is only one compromised node in collaborative spectrum sensing schemes. Then we investigate the scenario that there are multiple compromised nodes. Defense schemes are proposed to detect malicious nodes according to their reporting histories. We calculate the suspicious level of all nodes based on their reports. The reports from nodes with high suspicious levels will be excluded in decision-making. Compared with existing defense methods, the proposed scheme can effectively differentiate malicious nodes and honest nodes. As a result, it can significantly improve the performance of collaborative sensing. For example, when there are 10 secondary users, with the primary user detection rate being equal to 0.99, one malicious user can make the false alarm rate [InlineEquation not available: see fulltext.] increase to 72%. The proposed scheme can reduce it to 5%. Two malicious users can make [InlineEquation not available: see fulltext.] increase to 85% and the proposed scheme reduces it to 8%.

  5. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... GET E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles ... about NDEP videos on Youtube here Hyperglycemia and Diabetes 2 Hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar, can occur ...

  6. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... of Health and Human Services HOME | CONTACT US | JOBS AT NIDDK | RSS FEEDS | GET E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ...

  7. Fremmedlegemeinfektioner--nyt om biofilm og quorum sensing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Høiby, Niels; Johansen, Helle Krogh; Ciofu, Oana

    2007-01-01

    Biofilms are structured consortia of bacteria embedded in self-produced polymer matrix. Biofilms are resistant to antibiotics, disinfectives and phagocytosis. The persistence of foreign body infections is due to biofilms. Chronic P. aeruginosa lung infection in cystic fibrosis patients is a biofilm....... Bacteria in biofilms communicate by means of quorum sensing which activates genes for virulence factors. Biofilms can be prevented by antibiotic prophylaxis or early therapy or by quorum sensing inhibitors which make them susceptible to antibiotics and phagocytosis....

  8. Remote RemoteRemoteRemote sensing potential for sensing ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Remote RemoteRemoteRemote sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing potential for sensing p. A Ngie, F Ahmed, K Abutaleb ...

  9. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... Department of Health and Human Services HOME | CONTACT US | JOBS AT NIDDK | RSS FEEDS | GET E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ...

  10. Removing roadblocks for mobile phone sensing

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Brouwers, N.

    2014-01-01

    The increasing ubiquity of the modern smartphone, coupled with its technical capabilities in terms of processing power, internet connectivity, and sensor richness, make it an ideal platformfor sensing all kinds of information about ourselves and the world around us. The emerging field of Mobile

  11. Becoming a normal guy: Men making sense of long-term bodily changes following bariatric surgery.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Groven, Karen Synne; Galdas, Paul; Solbrække, Kari Nyheim

    2015-01-01

    To date, research on bodily changes following bariatric surgery has focused predominantly on women, leaving the long-term experience of men relatively unexplored. In this paper, we draw on interviews with men who have undergone an irreversible gastric bypass procedure to explore their bodily changes more than 4 years post-surgery. We apply a phenomenological framework that draws on Leder's perspectives on the "disappearing" and "dys-appearing" body, combined with a gender-sensitive lens that draws on Connell's theory of hegemonic masculinity and Robertson's conceptions of embodied masculinity. Our principal finding was that the men negotiated their bodily changes following bariatric surgery in profoundly ambivalent ways. Although they enthusiastically praised the surgery for improving their health, self-esteem, and social functioning, they also emphasized their efforts to cope with post-surgical side effects and life-threatening complications. Our analysis elaborates on their efforts to adjust to and come to terms with these changes, focusing on episodes of hypoglycemia, severe pain and internal herniation, and the significance of physical activity and exercise. Our findings point to the need to acknowledge men's ways of making sense of profound and ongoing bodily changes following bariatric surgery and how these negotiations are closely intertwined with masculine ideals of embodiment and social value.

  12. Fremmedlegemeinfektioner--nyt om biofilm og quorum sensing

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Høiby, Niels; Johansen, Helle Krogh; Ciofu, Oana

    2007-01-01

    Biofilms are structured consortia of bacteria embedded in self-produced polymer matrix. Biofilms are resistant to antibiotics, disinfectives and phagocytosis. The persistence of foreign body infections is due to biofilms. Chronic P. aeruginosa lung infection in cystic fibrosis patients is a biofilm....... Bacteria in biofilms communicate by means of quorum sensing which activates genes for virulence factors. Biofilms can be prevented by antibiotic prophylaxis or early therapy or by quorum sensing inhibitors which make them susceptible to antibiotics and phagocytosis. Udgivelsesdato: 2007-Nov-26...

  13. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... GET E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles ... about NDEP videos on Youtube here Hyperglycemia and Diabetes 2 Hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar, can occur ...

  14. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... Learn more about the symptoms, triggers, and treatment methods from others living with diabetes. Heart Disease and ...

  15. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... Manage Your Weight Small Steps. Big Rewards. Your GAME PLAN to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes: Information for ...

  16. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... Active at Any Size This booklet addresses the special challenges for very large people who are physically ...

  17. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... onset of the disease. MOVE! This national weight management program is designed to help veterans lose weight, ...

  18. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... of Information Act | Accessibility | Disclaimers | Copyright | Sitemap | For Staff Only | Jobs at NIDDK | Contact Us The National ...

  19. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... 65+) Type of Resource Select one: Printable documents Online programs In-person programs Videos and podcasts Presentations ...

  20. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... Person with prediabetes Person at risk for diabetes Family member, friend, or caregiver Health care professional Teacher ...

  1. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... Community health worker Community organization Age Select one: Child Teen and young adult Adult Older adult (65+) ...

  2. Modeling Common-Sense Decisions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zak, Michail

    This paper presents a methodology for efficient synthesis of dynamical model simulating a common-sense decision making process. The approach is based upon the extension of the physics' First Principles that includes behavior of living systems. The new architecture consists of motor dynamics simulating actual behavior of the object, and mental dynamics representing evolution of the corresponding knowledge-base and incorporating it in the form of information flows into the motor dynamics. The autonomy of the decision making process is achieved by a feedback from mental to motor dynamics. This feedback replaces unavailable external information by an internal knowledgebase stored in the mental model in the form of probability distributions.

  3. Does the Common Agricultural Policy still make sense in the twenty-first century? CAP after 2013 from the perspective of Poland and Hungary

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elżbieta Daszkowska

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available The EU CAP has developed immensely since the 1960’s. However, its current determinants are completely different from those which formed the CAP foundations. This results mainly from the fact that the UE CAP must meet present-day challenges and threats. Moreover, further EU enlargements also significantly influenced performance of this sector of economy. It is important to determine whether the existence of the CAP in the twenty-first century still makes sense and to specify in more detail the CAP reform directions after 2013 from the perspective of Poland and Hungary.

  4. Arational heuristic model of economic decision making

    OpenAIRE

    Grandori, Anna

    2010-01-01

    The article discuss the limits of both the rational actor and the behavioral paradigms in explaining and guiding innovative decision making and outlines a model of economic decision making that in the course of being 'heuristic' (research and discovery oriented) is also 'rational' (in the broad sense of following correct reasoning and scientific methods, non 'biasing'). The model specifies a set of 'rational heuristics' for innovative decision making, for the various sub-processes of problem ...

  5. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... professional K-8th grade Community health worker Community organization Age Select one: Child Teen and young adult ...

  6. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... diabetes Family member, friend, or caregiver Health care professional Teacher or school health professional K-8th grade ...

  7. Remote Sensing of Water Pollution

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, P. G.

    1971-01-01

    Remote sensing, as a tool to aid in the control of water pollution, offers a means of making rapid, economical surveys of areas that are relatively inaccessible on the ground. At the same time, it offers the only practical means of mapping pollution patterns that cover large areas. Detection of oil slicks, thermal pollution, sewage, and algae are discussed.

  8. Analyzing and sense making of human factors in the Malaysian radiation and nuclear emergency planning framework

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hamid, A. H. A.; Rozan, M. Z. A.; Ibrahim, R.; Deris, S.; Abdullah, W. S. W.; Yunus, M. N. M.; Rahman, A. A.

    2016-01-01

    The evolution of current Radiation and Nuclear Emergency Planning Framework (RANEPF) simulator emphasizes on the human factors to be analyzed and interpreted according to the stakeholder’s tacit and explicit knowledge. These human factor criteria are analyzed and interpreted according to the “sense making theory” and Disaster Emergency Response Management Information System (DERMIS) design premises. These criteria are corroborated by the statistical criteria. In recent findings, there were no differences of distributions among the stakeholders according to gender and organizational expertise. These criteria are incrementally accepted and agreed the research elements indicated in the respective emergency planning frameworks and simulator (i.e. 78.18 to 84.32, p-value <0.05). This paper suggested these human factors criteria in the associated analyses and theoretical perspectives to be further acomodated in the future simulator development. This development is in conjunction with the proposed hypothesis building of the process factors and responses diagram. We proposed that future work which implies the additional functionality of the simulator, as strategized, condensed and concise, comprehensive public disaster preparedness and intervention guidelines, to be a useful and efficient computer simulation

  9. Analyzing and sense making of human factors in the Malaysian radiation and nuclear emergency planning framework

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hamid, A. H. A., E-mail: amyhamijah@gmail.com, E-mail: amyhamijah@nm.gov.my [Faculty of Computing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Skudai, 81310 Johor Bahru, Johor (Malaysia); Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK), Pengkalan Chepa, 16100 Kota Bharu, Kelantan (Malaysia); Rozan, M. Z. A., E-mail: drmohdzaidi@gmail.com; Ibrahim, R. [Faculty of Computing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Skudai, 81310 Johor Bahru, Johor (Malaysia); Deris, S. [Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK), Pengkalan Chepa, 16100 Kota Bharu, Kelantan (Malaysia); Abdullah, W. S. W.; Yunus, M. N. M. [Malaysian Nuclear Agency (NM), Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor (Malaysia); Rahman, A. A. [Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), 43400 Serdang, Selangor (Malaysia)

    2016-01-22

    The evolution of current Radiation and Nuclear Emergency Planning Framework (RANEPF) simulator emphasizes on the human factors to be analyzed and interpreted according to the stakeholder’s tacit and explicit knowledge. These human factor criteria are analyzed and interpreted according to the “sense making theory” and Disaster Emergency Response Management Information System (DERMIS) design premises. These criteria are corroborated by the statistical criteria. In recent findings, there were no differences of distributions among the stakeholders according to gender and organizational expertise. These criteria are incrementally accepted and agreed the research elements indicated in the respective emergency planning frameworks and simulator (i.e. 78.18 to 84.32, p-value <0.05). This paper suggested these human factors criteria in the associated analyses and theoretical perspectives to be further acomodated in the future simulator development. This development is in conjunction with the proposed hypothesis building of the process factors and responses diagram. We proposed that future work which implies the additional functionality of the simulator, as strategized, condensed and concise, comprehensive public disaster preparedness and intervention guidelines, to be a useful and efficient computer simulation.

  10. Semantic Involvement of Initial and Final Lexical Embeddings during Sense-Making: The Advantage of Starting Late.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Alphen, Petra M; van Berkum, Jos J A

    2012-01-01

    During spoken language interpretation, listeners rapidly relate the meaning of each individual word to what has been said before. However, spoken words often contain spurious other words, like day in daisy, or dean in sardine. Do listeners also relate the meaning of such unintended, spurious words to the prior context? We used ERPs to look for transient meaning-based N400 effects in sentences that were completely plausible at the level of words intended by the speaker, but contained an embedded word whose meaning clashed with the context. Although carrier words with an initial embedding (day in daisy) did not elicit an embedding-related N400 effect relative to matched control words without embedding, carrier words with a final embedding (dean in sardine) did elicit such an effect. Together with prior work from our lab and the results of a Shortlist B simulation, our findings suggest that listeners do semantically interpret embedded words, albeit not under all conditions. We explain the latter by assuming that the sense-making system adjusts its hypothesis for how to interpret the external input at every new syllable, in line with recent ideas of active sampling in perception.

  11. Semantic involvement of initial and final lexical embeddings during sense-making: The advantage of starting late

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Petra M. Van Alphen

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available During spoken language interpretation, listeners rapidly relate the meaning of each individual word to what has been said before. However, spoken words often contain spurious other words, like day in daisy, or dean in sardine. Do listeners also relate the meaning of such unintended, spurious words to the prior context? We used ERPs to look for transient meaning-based N400 effects in sentences that were completely plausible at the level of words intended by the speaker, but contained an embedded word whose meaning clashed with the context. Although carrier words with an initial embedding (day in daisy did not elicit an embedding-related N400 effect relative to matched control words without embedding, carrier words with a final embedding (dean in sardine did elicit such an effect. Together with prior work from our lab and the results of a Shortlist B simulation, our findings suggest that listeners do semantically interpret embedded words, albeit not under all conditions. We explain the latter by assuming that the sense-making system adjusts its hypothesis for how to interpret the external input at every new syllable, in line with recent ideas of active sampling in perception.

  12. A shared experience of fragmentation: making sense of foster placement breakdown.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rostill-Brookes, Helen; Larkin, Michael; Toms, Amy; Churchman, Clare

    2011-01-01

    Multiple placement transitions have been associated with poorer psychosocial outcomes for children growing up in local authority care. However, although there is an expanding literature examining the risk and protective factors connected with placement breakdown, very few studies have explored the quality of the move experience for those most closely involved with it. Our study considered how young people, foster carers and social workers made sense of unplanned placements' endings. Bringing together the lived experiences of these key stakeholders in the placement system added a novel dimension to existing research knowledge. What emerged from our analysis was evidence of a pervasive and shared emotional experience; all of the participants were affected by the breakdown irrespective of age, experience, or professional role. However, despite many commonalities, there was also a strong sense of fragmentation between the groups, which was characterised by discourses of mistrust and miscommunication. This meant that emotional reactions to the breakdown were often suppressed or dismissed, resentments built-up and attempts to find a solution were thwarted by silence or angry recrimination. These findings raise real challenges for practice and policy development. In particular, they stress the importance of shared and meaningful dialogue between all key stakeholders within the social care system, the need for more effective and timely support when placements are in crisis and opportunities for those most closely involved with the placement breakdown to process the emotional experience.

  13. Enabling Virtual Sensing as a Service

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yang Li

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available In many situations, placing a physical sensor in the ideal position in or on the human body to acquire sensing data is incredibly difficult. Virtual sensors, in contrast to physical sensors, can provide indirect measurements by making use of other available sensor data. In this paper, we demonstrate a virtual sensing application developed as a service on top of a cloud-based health sensor data management platform called Wiki-Health. The proposed application “implants” virtual sensors in the human body by integrating environmental, geographic and personal sensor data with physiological models to compute temperature estimations of various parts of the body. The feasibility of the proposed virtual sensing service is supported by a case study. The ability to share computational models relevant to do calculations on measured data on the go is also discussed.

  14. The Potential of AI Techniques for Remote Sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Estes, J. E.; Sailer, C. T. (Principal Investigator); Tinney, L. R.

    1984-01-01

    The current status of artificial intelligence AI technology is discussed along with imagery data management, database interrogation, and decision making. Techniques adapted from the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have significant, wide ranging impacts upon computer-assisted remote sensing analysis. AI based techniques offer a powerful and fundamentally different approach to many remote sensing tasks. In addition to computer assisted analysis, AI techniques can also aid onboard spacecraft data processing and analysis and database access and query.

  15. Common-sense ethics in administrative decision making. Part I, Preparatory steps.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sullivan, P A; Brown, T

    1991-10-01

    This is Part 1 of two articles demonstrating the relevance of business ethics to nurse administrators as they confront value-laden issues such as the advantages and disadvantages of 10-12-hour scheduling patterns, understaffing, emerging registered nurse partnerships, and other administrative problems. Common-sense ethics can serve as the basis of just administrative decisions. The authors present a model of preparatory attitudes and behaviors. The steps that they propose do not guarantee success, but if implemented, they may facilitate the nurse administrator's management of diverse ethical issues.

  16. Intelligent sensing and control of gas metal arc welding

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Smartt, H.B.; Johnson, J.A.

    1993-01-01

    Intelligent sensing and control is a multidisciplinary approach that attempts to build adequate sensing capability, knowledge of process physics, control capability, and welding engineering into the welding system such that the welding machine is aware of the state of the weld and knows how to make a good weld. The sensing and control technology should reduce the burden on the welder and welding engineer while providing the great adaptability needed to accommodate the variability found in the production world. This approach, accomplished with application of AI techniques, breaks the tradition of separate development of procedure and control technology

  17. Advances in Physarum machines sensing and computing with Slime mould

    CERN Document Server

    2016-01-01

    This book is devoted to Slime mould Physarum polycephalum, which is a large single cell capable for distributed sensing, concurrent information processing, parallel computation and decentralized actuation. The ease of culturing and experimenting with Physarum makes this slime mould an ideal substrate for real-world implementations of unconventional sensing and computing devices The book is a treatise of theoretical and experimental laboratory studies on sensing and computing properties of slime mould, and on the development of mathematical and logical theories of Physarum behavior. It is shown how to make logical gates and circuits, electronic devices (memristors, diodes, transistors, wires, chemical and tactile sensors) with the slime mould. The book demonstrates how to modify properties of Physarum computing circuits with functional nano-particles and polymers, to interface the slime mould with field-programmable arrays, and to use Physarum as a controller of microbial fuel cells. A unique multi-agent model...

  18. Compressed Sensing Methods in Radio Receivers Exposed to Noise and Interference

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pierzchlewski, Jacek

    , there is a problem of interference, which makes digitization of radio receivers even more dicult. High-order low-pass lters are needed to remove interfering signals and secure a high-quality reception. In the mid-2000s a new method of signal acquisition, called compressed sensing, emerged. Compressed sensing...... the downconverted baseband signal and interference, may be replaced by low-order lters. Additional digital signal processing is a price to pay for this feature. Hence, the signal processing is moved from the analog to the digital domain. Filtering compressed sensing, which is a new application of compressed sensing...

  19. Diabetes HealthSense: Resources for Living Well

    Medline Plus

    Full Text Available ... GET E-MAIL UPDATES External Link Disclaimer National Diabetes Education Program HealthSense Home Make a Plan Articles About ... Rewards. Your GAME PLAN to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes: Information for Patients These three booklets help with diabetes risk assesment, ...

  20. Social Sensor Analytics: Making Sense of Network Models in Social Media

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Dowling, Chase P.; Harrison, Joshua J.; Sathanur, Arun V.; Sego, Landon H.; Corley, Courtney D.

    2015-07-27

    Social networks can be thought of as noisy sensor networks mapping real world information to the web. Owing to the extensive body of literature in sensor network analysis, this work sought to apply several novel and traditional methods in sensor network analysis for the purposes of efficiently interrogating social media data streams from raw data. We carefully revisit our definition of a social media signal from previous work both in terms of time-varying features within the data and the networked nature of the medium. Further, we detail our analysis of global patterns in Twitter over the months of November 2013 and June 2014, detect and categorize events, and illustrate how these analyses can be used to inform graph-based models of Twitter, namely using a recent network influence model called PhySense: similar to PageRank but tuned to behavioral analysis by leveraging a sociologically inspired probabilistic model. We ultimately identify forms of information dissemination via analysis of time series and dynamic graph spectra and corroborate these findings through manual investigation of the data as a requisite step in modeling the diffusion process with PhySense. We hope to sufficiently characterize global behavior in a medium such as Twitter as a means of learning global model parameters one may use to predict or simulate behavior on a large scale. We have made our time series and dynamic graph analytical code available via a GitHub repository https://github.com/cpatdowling/salsa and our data are available upon request.

  1. When Oil and Wind Turbine Companies Make Green Sense Together

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Backer, Lise

    2009-01-01

    strengthen their relationships with companies such as Vestas – that are born green. This is so since companies that are born green have strong green ecocentric business beliefs that can function as important engines in shared green sense‐making with companies that are not born green and have more hesitant......In this article I contribute to descriptive green business research on how processes of eco‐effective greening business unfold in practical reality. I look into the case of the increasing interaction between the multinational oil company Shell and the world's largest wind turbine company Vestas. I...... draw on descriptive organizational sense‐making theory and analyse to this end the shared green sense‐making of Shell and Vestas on off‐shore wind energy business. The article concludes that greening companies such as Shell – that are not born green – might be considerably advanced if these companies...

  2. Cognitive Radio Transceivers: RF, Spectrum Sensing, and Learning Algorithms Review

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lise Safatly

    2014-01-01

    reconfigurable radio frequency (RF parts, enhanced spectrum sensing algorithms, and sophisticated machine learning techniques. In this paper, we present a review of the recent advances in CR transceivers hardware design and algorithms. For the RF part, three types of antennas are presented: UWB antennas, frequency-reconfigurable/tunable antennas, and UWB antennas with reconfigurable band notches. The main challenges faced by the design of the other RF blocks are also discussed. Sophisticated spectrum sensing algorithms that overcome main sensing challenges such as model uncertainty, hardware impairments, and wideband sensing are highlighted. The cognitive engine features are discussed. Moreover, we study unsupervised classification algorithms and a reinforcement learning (RL algorithm that has been proposed to perform decision-making in CR networks.

  3. Concept of subsurface micro-sensing; Chika joho no micro sensing

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Niitsuma, H [Tohoku University, Sendai (Japan). Faculty of Engineering

    1997-05-27

    This paper describes concept of subsurface micro-sensing. It is intended to achieve an epoch-making development of subsurface engineerings by developing such technologies as micro measurement of well interior, micro measurement while drilling (MWD), and micro intelligent logging. These technologies are supported by development of micro sensors and micro drilling techniques using micro machine technologies. Micronizing the subsurface sensors makes mass production of sensors with equivalent performance possible, and the production cost can be reduced largely. The sensors can be embedded or used disposably, resulting in increased mobility in measurement and higher performance. Installing multiple number of sensors makes high-accuracy measurement possible, such as array measurement. The sensors can be linked easily with photo-electronics components, realizing remote measurement at low price and high accuracy. Control in micro-drilling and MWD also become possible. Such advantages may also be expected as installing the sensors on the outer side of wells in use and monitoring subsurface information during production. Expectation on them is large as a new paradigm of underground exploration and measurement. 1 fig.

  4. The role of advanced sensing in smart cities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hancke, Gerhard P; Silva, Bruno de Carvalho E; Hancke, Gerhard P

    2012-12-27

    In a world where resources are scarce and urban areas consume the vast majority of these resources, it is vital to make cities greener and more sustainable. Advanced systems to improve and automate processes within a city will play a leading role in smart cities. From smart design of buildings, which capture rain water for later use, to intelligent control systems, which can monitor infrastructures autonomously, the possible improvements enabled by sensing technologies are immense. Ubiquitous sensing poses numerous challenges, which are of a technological or social nature. This paper presents an overview of the state of the art with regards to sensing in smart cities. Topics include sensing applications in smart cities, sensing platforms and technical challenges associated with these technologies. In an effort to provide a holistic view of how sensing technologies play a role in smart cities, a range of applications and technical challenges associated with these applications are discussed. As some of these applications and technologies belong to different disciplines, the material presented in this paper attempts to bridge these to provide a broad overview, which can be of help to researchers and developers in understanding how advanced sensing can play a role in smart cities.

  5. Becoming a normal guy: Men making sense of long-term bodily changes following bariatric surgery

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Karen Synne Groven

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Background: To date, research on bodily changes following bariatric surgery has focused predominantly on women, leaving the long-term experience of men relatively unexplored. In this paper, we draw on interviews with men who have undergone an irreversible gastric bypass procedure to explore their bodily changes more than 4 years post-surgery. We apply a phenomenological framework that draws on Leder's perspectives on the “disappearing” and “dys-appearing” body, combined with a gender-sensitive lens that draws on Connell's theory of hegemonic masculinity and Robertson's conceptions of embodied masculinity. Findings: Our principal finding was that the men negotiated their bodily changes following bariatric surgery in profoundly ambivalent ways. Although they enthusiastically praised the surgery for improving their health, self-esteem, and social functioning, they also emphasized their efforts to cope with post-surgical side effects and life-threatening complications. Our analysis elaborates on their efforts to adjust to and come to terms with these changes, focusing on episodes of hypoglycemia, severe pain and internal herniation, and the significance of physical activity and exercise. Conclusions: Our findings point to the need to acknowledge men's ways of making sense of profound and ongoing bodily changes following bariatric surgery and how these negotiations are closely intertwined with masculine ideals of embodiment and social value.

  6. Scalar geons in Born-Infeld gravity

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Afonso, V.I. [Unidade Acadêmica de Física, Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, 58109-970 Campina Grande, PB (Brazil); Olmo, Gonzalo J. [Departamento de Física Teórica and IFIC, Centro Mixto Universidad de Valencia—CSIC, Universidad de Valencia, Burjassot-46100, Valencia (Spain); Rubiera-Garcia, D., E-mail: viafonso@df.ufcg.edu.br, E-mail: gonzalo.olmo@uv.es, E-mail: drgarcia@fc.ul.pt [Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Edifício C8, Campo Grande, P-1749-016 Lisbon (Portugal)

    2017-08-01

    The existence of static, spherically symmetric, self-gravitating scalar field solutions in the context of Born-Infeld gravity is explored. Upon a combination of analytical approximations and numerical methods, the equations for a free scalar field (without a potential term) are solved, verifying that the solutions recover the predictions of General Relativity far from the center but finding important new effects in the central regions. We find two classes of objects depending on the ratio between the Schwarzschild radius and a length scale associated to the Born-Infeld theory: massive solutions have a wormhole structure, with their throat at r ≈ 2 M , while for the lighter configurations the topology is Euclidean. The total energy density of these solutions exhibits a solitonic profile with a maximum peaked away from the center, and located at the throat whenever a wormhole exists. The geodesic structure and curvature invariants are analyzed for the various configurations considered.

  7. Making sense of intercultural interaction processes in international joint venture settings

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dao, Li

    , i.e. competence building interaction, decision making interaction, and socializing interaction, which is consistent with the three major processes of learning, power bargaining, and relationship building as suggested by IJV literature. Second, interaction processes appear to be shaped by individual...... approach toward decision making, a mutual learning attitude, the appreciation and strategic utilization of emergent ties between individual members put together in work settings, the proper implementation of consensus-facilitating mechanisms like ISO standards, and a holistic view of knowledge transfer...... in terms of core skills as well as non-core yet critically supporting skills like decision making and project/ time management....

  8. A flexible capacitive tactile sensing array with floating electrodes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Cheng, M-Y; Huang, X-H; Ma, C-W; Yang, Y-J

    2009-01-01

    In this work, we present the development of a capacitive tactile sensing array realized by using MEMS fabrication techniques and flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) technologies. The sensing array, which consists of two micromachined polydimethlysiloxane (PDMS) structures and a FPCB, will be used as the artificial skin for robot applications. Each capacitive sensing element comprises two sensing electrodes and a common floating electrode. The sensing electrodes and the metal interconnect for signal scanning are implemented on the FPCB, while the floating electrode is patterned on one of the PDMS structures. This special design can effectively reduce the complexity of the device structure and thus makes the device highly manufacturable. The characteristics of the devices with different dimensions are measured and discussed. The corresponding scanning circuits are also designed and implemented. The tactile images induced by the PMMA stamps of different shapes are also successfully captured by a fabricated 8 × 8 array

  9. Enhancing Sensing and Channel Access in Cognitive Radio Networks

    KAUST Repository

    Hamza, Doha R.

    2014-06-18

    Cognitive radio technology is a promising technology to solve the wireless spectrum scarcity problem by intelligently allowing secondary, or unlicensed, users access to the primary, licensed, users\\' frequency bands. Cognitive technology involves two main tasks: 1) sensing the wireless medium to assess the presence of the primary users and 2) designing secondary spectrum access techniques that maximize the secondary users\\' benefits while maintaining the primary users\\' privileged status. On the spectrum sensing side, we make two contributions. First, we maximize a utility function representing the secondary throughput while constraining the collision probability with the primary below a certain value. We optimize therein the channel sensing time, the sensing decision threshold, the channel probing time, together with the channel sensing order for wideband primary channels. Second, we design a cooperative spectrum sensing technique termed sensing with equal gain combining whereby cognitive radios simultaneously transmit their sensing results to the fusion center over multipath fading reporting channels. The proposed scheme is shown to outperform orthogonal reporting systems in terms of achievable secondary throughput and to be robust against phase and synchronization errors. On the spectrum access side, we make four contributions. First, we design a secondary scheduling scheme with the goal of minimizing the secondary queueing delay under constraints on the average secondary transmit power and the maximum tolerable primary outage probability. Second, we design another secondary scheduling scheme based on the spectrum sensing results and the primary automatic repeat request feedback. The optimal medium access probabilities are obtained via maximizing the secondary throughput subject to constraints that guarantee quality of service parameters for the primary. Third, we propose a three-message superposition coding scheme to maximize the secondary throughput without

  10. The Strategies of Mathematics Teachers When Solving Number Sense Problems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sare Şengül

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Number sense involves efficient strategies and the ability to think flexibly with numbers and number operations and flexible thinking ability and the inclination getting for making sound mathematical judgements. The aim of this study was to investigate the strategies used by mathematics teachers while solving number sense problems. Eleven mathematics teachers from a graduate program in education were the participants. A number sense test which has a total of 12 problems is used as the data gathering tool. Teachers’ responses and strategies were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively.First, participants’ responses were evaluated for correctness. Then the strategies teachers used were analyzed. The strategies were categorized as based on the use of number sense or rule based strategies. When the correct and incorrect responses were considered together, in the 46% of the responses number sense strategies were used and in 54% the rule-based strategies were used. The results of this study showed that even though teachers can use number sense strategies at some level, there is still room for development in teachers’ number sense.

  11. Democracy and Sense

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sørensen, Bent Erik

    Democracy and sense questions practically all that happens in society today. Its aim is to raise a debate on the most urgent problems of economy, democracy, sustainable conduct and the framework for industry and business. A number of untraditional solutions are suggested, but without support...... to either rightwing or leftwing politics. In fact, one of the key points is that political parties have reduced democracy to one day of voting followed by four years of oligarchy. To regain a functioning democracy we must strengthen direct democracy and make the distance between population and government...

  12. Robotic Tactile Sensing Technologies and System

    CERN Document Server

    Dahiya, Ravinder S

    2013-01-01

    Future robots are expected to work closely and interact safely with real-world objects and humans alike. Sense of touch is important in this context, as it helps estimate properties such as shape, texture, hardness, material type and many more; provides action related information, such as slip detection; and helps carrying out actions such as rolling an object between fingers without dropping it. This book presents an in-depth description of the solutions available for gathering tactile data, obtaining aforementioned tactile information from the data and effectively using the same in various robotic tasks. Better integration of tactile sensors on a robot’s body is prerequisite for the effective utilization of tactile data. For this reason, the hardware, software and application related issues (and resulting trade-offs) that must be considered to make tactile sensing an effective component of robotic platforms are discussed in-depth.To this end, human touch sensing has also been explored. The design hints co...

  13. and remote sensing for multi-temporal analysis of sand ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    dalel

    remote sensing techniques particularly those referring to change detection. This kind of ... Technol. depending on many factors in relation to climate conditions, nature .... geomorphologic position make it a perfect wind corridor. (Chahbani ...

  14. Fred Applegate's Money-Making Scheme

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leitze, Annette Ricks; Soots, Kristen L.

    2015-01-01

    Teachers across all grade levels agree that problem solving and reasoning are areas of weakness in students. Assessments among U.S. students indicate that these weaknesses persist (NCTM 2014) in spite of repeated calls that date back more than thirty years for increased problem solving, reasoning, and sense making in our schools. The NCTM is…

  15. Which goals are driving the Energiewende? Making sense of the German Energy Transformation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Joas, Fabian; Pahle, Michael; Flachsland, Christian; Joas, Amani

    2016-01-01

    In 2010, Germany agreed a plan to increase the share of renewables in power consumption to 80% by 2050, and in 2011 the decision was taken to phase-out nuclear power by 2022. This policy is now widely known as the “Energiewende”. While many global observers consider this program to be primarily driven by the need to tackle climate change, the precise political goals of the Energiewende are, by and large, unclear. In our study we compiled a list of 14 goals put forward in political debates and conducted a “mapping” survey among more than 50 policy experts. We asked them to prioritize the goals based on their personal views and provide arguments for their rankings in ensuing interviews. Our main findings are as follows: (i) a large majority named climate protection among the top-level goals of the Energiewende; at the same time, around 80% of all participants also identified additional goals; (ii) when asked if the Energiewende would make sense even if climate change did not exist, two thirds of the participants agreed, which, when taken with the first finding, demonstrates that the goals and motivations driving the Energiewende are more complex than often assumed. We conclude that for the sake of effective and efficient policies and ever rising climate policy ambition, a public debate and clear specification of the top-level goals are indispensable. - Highlights: •We examine the goals of German energy policy called the “Energiewende”. •We show that policy experts relate up to 14 goals with the Energiewende. •So far the political goals of the Energiewende, and especially their ranking is unclear. •We call for a public debate and a clear specification of the top-level goals of the Energiewende.

  16. Science informed water resources decision-making: Examples using remote sensing observations in East Africa, the Lower Mekong Basin and the western United States

    Science.gov (United States)

    Granger, S. L.; Andreadis, K.; Das, N.; Farr, T. G.; Ines, A. V. M.; Jayasinghe, S.; Jones, C. E.; Melton, F. S.; Ndungu, L. W.; Lai-Norling, J.; Painter, T. H.

    2017-12-01

    Across the globe, planners and decision makers are often hampered by organizational and data silos and/or a lack of historic data or scant in situ observations on which to base policy and action plans. The end result is a complex interaction of responsibilities, legal frameworks, and stakeholder needs guided by uncertain information that is essentially bounded by how climate extremes are defined and characterized. Because of the importance of water, considerable resources in the developing and developed world are invested in data and tools for managing water. However, the existing paradigm of water management around the world faces significant challenges including inadequate funding to install, maintain or upgrade monitoring networks, lack of resources to integrate new science and data sources into existing tools, and demands for improved spatial coverage of observations. Add to this, a changing hydrology that is so complex it requires measurements and analyses that have never been done before. Interest in applying remote sensing science and observations into the decision making process is growing the world over, but in order to succeed, it is essential to form partnerships with stakeholder organizations and decision makers at the outset. In this talk, we describe examples of succesful decision-maker and science partnering based on projects that apply remote sensing science and observations in East Africa and the Lower Mekong Basin supported by the SERVIR Initiative, a joint United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) program, and projects in the western United States supported by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Western Water Applications Office (WWAO). All of these examples have benefitted from strong, committed partnerships with end user agencies. Best practices and lessons learned in connecting science to decision making amongst these examples are explored.

  17. Formal and informal environmental sensing data and integration potential: Perceptions of citizens and experts

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Jiang, Qijun; Bregt, Arnold K.; Kooistra, Lammert

    2018-01-01

    Environmental sensing data provide crucial information for environment-related decision-making. Formal data are provided by official environmental institutes. Beyond those, however, there is a growing body of so-called informal sensing data, which are contributed by citizens using low-cost sensors.

  18. Managing, making sense of and finding meaning in advanced illness: a qualitative exploration of the coping and wellbeing experiences of patients with lung cancer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harrop, Emily; Noble, Simon; Edwards, Michelle; Sivell, Stephanie; Moore, Barbara; Nelson, Annmarie

    2017-11-01

    Coping plays an essential role in maintaining the wellbeing of patients with cancer. A number of different coping responses and strategies have been identified in the literature. The value and relevance of meaning based coping theory has also been emphasised, including Antonovosky's Sense of Coherence (SoC) theory. Ten patients with advanced lung cancer were interviewed up to three times. A total of twenty in depth interviews were carried out, fully transcribed and data were analysed following a methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Three broad domains were identified to categorise the core life concerns of participants; making sense of and managing one's illness; maintaining daily life and relationships and confronting the future. Within these domains multiple coping themes are identified, which to varying degrees help to maintain patient wellbeing and quality of life. This article considers the relevance of SoC theory for understanding the coping experiences of patients with advanced cancer, and identifies resources and factors likely to support patient coping, with implications for health and social care services. © 2017 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL.

  19. 348 A GIS AND REMOTE SENSING APPROACH TO ASSESSMENT ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Osondu

    remote sensing data for Uyo for the periods 1969, 1978, 1988, 2001 and 2004; evaluate the ... geographical information system (GIS) technology was applied to carry out this research. Field ..... preventing erosion, landslides, and making the.

  20. Correlation of neural activity with behavioral kinematics reveals distinct sensory encoding and evidence accumulation processes during active tactile sensing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Delis, Ioannis; Dmochowski, Jacek P; Sajda, Paul; Wang, Qi

    2018-03-23

    Many real-world decisions rely on active sensing, a dynamic process for directing our sensors (e.g. eyes or fingers) across a stimulus to maximize information gain. Though ecologically pervasive, limited work has focused on identifying neural correlates of the active sensing process. In tactile perception, we often make decisions about an object/surface by actively exploring its shape/texture. Here we investigate the neural correlates of active tactile decision-making by simultaneously measuring electroencephalography (EEG) and finger kinematics while subjects interrogated a haptic surface to make perceptual judgments. Since sensorimotor behavior underlies decision formation in active sensing tasks, we hypothesized that the neural correlates of decision-related processes would be detectable by relating active sensing to neural activity. Novel brain-behavior correlation analysis revealed that three distinct EEG components, localizing to right-lateralized occipital cortex (LOC), middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and supplementary motor area (SMA), respectively, were coupled with active sensing as their activity significantly correlated with finger kinematics. To probe the functional role of these components, we fit their single-trial-couplings to decision-making performance using a hierarchical-drift-diffusion-model (HDDM), revealing that the LOC modulated the encoding of the tactile stimulus whereas the MFG predicted the rate of information integration towards a choice. Interestingly, the MFG disappeared from components uncovered from control subjects performing active sensing but not required to make perceptual decisions. By uncovering the neural correlates of distinct stimulus encoding and evidence accumulation processes, this study delineated, for the first time, the functional role of cortical areas in active tactile decision-making. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. What Does Average Really Mean? Making Sense of Statistics

    Science.gov (United States)

    DeAngelis, Karen J.; Ayers, Steven

    2009-01-01

    The recent shift toward greater accountability has put many educational leaders in a position where they are expected to collect and use increasing amounts of data to inform their decision making. Yet, because many programs that prepare administrators, including school business officials, do not require a statistics course or a course that is more…

  2. Unpacking Ideologies of Linguistic Purism: How Dual Language Teachers Make Sense of Everyday Translanguaging

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martínez, Ramón Antonio; Hikida, Michiko; Durán, Leah

    2015-01-01

    This article draws on qualitative data from two Spanish-English dual language elementary classrooms to explore how teachers in these classrooms made sense of the everyday practice of bilingualism. Methodologically, this study relied on participant observation, video recording, and semi-structured interviews. Conceptually, this article draws on the…

  3. A Case for Coach Garfinkel: Decision Making and What We Already Know

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jones, Robyn L.; Corsby, Charles

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this article is to deconstruct the decision-making processes of sports coaches through the writings of the sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Specifically, the authors draw upon Garfinkel's (1967) writings on jurors' decision making to challenge current cognitivist bound conceptualization to better interpret coaches' sense-making--why…

  4. SenseCam reminiscence and action recall in memory-unimpaired people.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seamon, John G; Moskowitz, Tacie N; Swan, Ashley E; Zhong, Boyuan; Golembeski, Amy; Liong, Christopher; Narzikul, Alexa C; Sosan, Olumide A

    2014-01-01

    Case studies of memory-impaired individuals consistently show that reminiscing with SenseCam images enhances event recall. This exploratory study examined whether a similar benefit would occur for the consolidation of memories in memory-unimpaired people. We tested delayed recall for atypical actions observed on a lengthy walk. Participants used SenseCam, a diary, or no external memory aid while walking, followed by reminiscence with SenseCam images, diary entries, or no aid, either alone (self-reminiscence) or with the experimenter (social reminiscence). One week later, when tested without SenseCam images or diary entries, prior social reminiscence produced greater recall than self-reminiscence, but there were no differences between memory aid conditions for action free recall or action order recall. When methodological variables were controlled, there was no recall advantage for SenseCam reminiscence with memory-unimpaired participants. The case studies and present study differ in multiple ways, making direct comparisons problematic. SenseCam is a valuable aid to the memory impaired, but its mnemonic value for non-clinical populations remains to be determined.

  5. Self-Evaluation of PANDA-FBG Based Sensing System for Dynamic Distributed Strain and Temperature Measurement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhu, Mengshi; Murayama, Hideaki; Wada, Daichi

    2017-10-12

    A novel method is introduced in this work for effectively evaluating the performance of the PANDA type polarization-maintaining fiber Bragg grating (PANDA-FBG) distributed dynamic strain and temperature sensing system. Conventionally, the errors during the measurement are unknown or evaluated by using other sensors such as strain gauge and thermocouples. This will make the sensing system complicated and decrease the efficiency since more than one kind of sensor is applied for the same measurand. In this study, we used the approximately constant ratio of primary errors in strain and temperature measurement and realized the self-evaluation of the sensing system, which can significantly enhance the applicability, as well as the reliability in strategy making.

  6. VAiRoma: A Visual Analytics System for Making Sense of Places, Times, and Events in Roman History.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cho, Isaac; Dou, Wewnen; Wang, Derek Xiaoyu; Sauda, Eric; Ribarsky, William

    2016-01-01

    Learning and gaining knowledge of Roman history is an area of interest for students and citizens at large. This is an example of a subject with great sweep (with many interrelated sub-topics over, in this case, a 3,000 year history) that is hard to grasp by any individual and, in its full detail, is not available as a coherent story. In this paper, we propose a visual analytics approach to construct a data driven view of Roman history based on a large collection of Wikipedia articles. Extracting and enabling the discovery of useful knowledge on events, places, times, and their connections from large amounts of textual data has always been a challenging task. To this aim, we introduce VAiRoma, a visual analytics system that couples state-of-the-art text analysis methods with an intuitive visual interface to help users make sense of events, places, times, and more importantly, the relationships between them. VAiRoma goes beyond textual content exploration, as it permits users to compare, make connections, and externalize the findings all within the visual interface. As a result, VAiRoma allows users to learn and create new knowledge regarding Roman history in an informed way. We evaluated VAiRoma with 16 participants through a user study, with the task being to learn about roman piazzas through finding relevant articles and new relationships. Our study results showed that the VAiRoma system enables the participants to find more relevant articles and connections compared to Web searches and literature search conducted in a roman library. Subjective feedback on VAiRoma was also very positive. In addition, we ran two case studies that demonstrate how VAiRoma can be used for deeper analysis, permitting the rapid discovery and analysis of a small number of key documents even when the original collection contains hundreds of thousands of documents.

  7. "I have a connection!": The situated sense-making of an elementary student about the role of water in modeled vs. experienced ecosystems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roberts, Lisa Elisabeth N.

    Current policy and research have led the field of science education towards a model of "science as practice." In the past decade, several research programs on model-based reasoning practices in education have articulated key dimensions of practice, including constructing and defending models, comparing models to empirical data, using representations to identify patterns in data and use those as inscriptions to buttress arguments. This study presents a detailed case of how the use of a physical microcosm and children's self-directed representations of an ecosystem constrained and afforded student sense-making in an urban elementary classroom. The case analyzed the experiences of a 10-year old fifth grade student, Jorge, and the variation in his expressed understanding of ecosystems as he interacted with academic tasks, along with models and representations, to design, observe and explain an ecological microcosm. The study used a conceptual framework that brings together theories of situated cognition and Doyle's work on academic task to explain how and why Jorge's perception and communication of dimensions of ecosystem structure, function, and behavior appear to "come in and out of focus," influenced by the affordances of the tools and resources available, the academic task as given by the teacher, and Jorge's own experiences and knowledge of phenomena related to ecosystems. Findings from this study suggest that elementary students' ability or inability to address particular ecological concepts in a given task relate less to gaps in their understanding and more to the structure of academic tasks and learning contexts. The process of a student interacting with curriculum follows a dynamic trajectory and leads to emergent outcomes. As a result of the complex interactions of task, tools, and his own interests and agency, Jorge's attunement to the role of water in ecosystems comes in and out of focus throughout the unit. The instructional constraint of needing to

  8. Needs Assessment for the Use of NASA Remote Sensing Data for Regulatory Water Quality

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spiering, Bruce; Underwood, Lauren

    2010-01-01

    This slide presentation reviews the assessment of the needs that NASA can use for the remote sensing of water quality. The goal of this project is to provide information for decision-making activities (water quality standards) using remotely sensed/satellite based water quality data from MODIS and Landsat data.

  9. 'It brought joy in my home as in the area of my wife.' How recently circumcised adult men ascribe value to and make sense of male circumcision

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lundsby, Katrine; Dræbel, Tania; Wolf Meyrowitsch, Dan

    2012-01-01

    The present study used a phenomenological approach to explore the everyday-life experiences of male circumcision (MC) and to learn how recently circumcised men ascribe value to and make sense of MC. Thirteen recently circumcised Zambian men were identified through the snowball technique...... that in addition to emphasising the HIV protective effect of MC, MC promotion should also highlight the social, sexual and romantic values perceived and experienced by the interviewees of this study; (3) the analysis reveals potentially harmful misconceptions about the health benefits of MC, demonstrating...

  10. Re-imagining decision making: addressing a discrete social driver of ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The proposed methods have the potential to exploit the phenomenon of leadership emergence as a product of decision making at critical moments. This has the potential to promote the growth of home-grown leadership skill sets that make sense to young people and to enable them better manage their own health, thus ...

  11. Remote-sensing image encryption in hybrid domains

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xiaoqiang; Zhu, Guiliang; Ma, Shilong

    2012-04-01

    Remote-sensing technology plays an important role in military and industrial fields. Remote-sensing image is the main means of acquiring information from satellites, which always contain some confidential information. To securely transmit and store remote-sensing images, we propose a new image encryption algorithm in hybrid domains. This algorithm makes full use of the advantages of image encryption in both spatial domain and transform domain. First, the low-pass subband coefficients of image DWT (discrete wavelet transform) decomposition are sorted by a PWLCM system in transform domain. Second, the image after IDWT (inverse discrete wavelet transform) reconstruction is diffused with 2D (two-dimensional) Logistic map and XOR operation in spatial domain. The experiment results and algorithm analyses show that the new algorithm possesses a large key space and can resist brute-force, statistical and differential attacks. Meanwhile, the proposed algorithm has the desirable encryption efficiency to satisfy requirements in practice.

  12. Remote sensing in uranium exploration. Basic guidance

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1981-01-01

    The purpose of this publication is to provide the reader with a basis for making an intelligent approach to the use of remote sensing in uranium exploration. It includes: A description of the various techniques; specific applications in view of exploration strategy and selection of appropriate techniques, and some examples of applications; availability and costs; a bibliography

  13. Remote sensing in uranium exploration. Basic guidance

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    1981-01-01

    The purpose of this publication is to provide the reader with a basis for making an intelligent approach to the use of remote sensing in uranium exploration. It includes: A description of the various techniques; specific applications in view of exploration strategy and selection of appropriate techniques, and some examples of applications; availability and costs; a bibliography.

  14. Managerial Decision Making in Traffic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Teodor Perić

    2003-11-01

    Full Text Available Decision-making is defined as a selection of a certain actionamong several alternatives. It is the essence of planning, asin the managerial sense there is no plan until a decision of engagementof resources, reputation and direction of activities ismade. Decision-making is, in fact, only a step in planning, evenwhen it is performed quickly and without special consideration.It is what we all experience every day. It is one of the most fascinatingbiological activities and the subject of frightening implicationsfor the whole human race. Since various techniques improvethe system and the quality of managerial decision-making,they are classified into three assumptions: risk analysis, decision-making trees, and the theory of revealed preference. Allof these are based on the interaction of a certain number of importantvariables out of which many contain the elements ofuncertainty, but maybe also high level of probability.

  15. Planning and decision making for aerial robots

    CERN Document Server

    Bestaoui Sebbane, Yasmina

    2014-01-01

    This book provides an introduction to the emerging field of planning and decision making for aerial robots. An aerial robot is the ultimate form of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, an aircraft endowed with built-in intelligence, requiring no direct human control and able to perform a specific task. It must be able to fly within a partially structured environment, to react and adapt to changing environmental conditions and to accommodate for the uncertainty that exists in the physical world. An aerial robot can be termed as a physical agent that exists and flies in the real 3D world, can sense its environment and act on it to achieve specific goals. So throughout this book, an aerial robot will also be termed as an agent.   Fundamental problems in aerial robotics include the tasks of spatial motion, spatial sensing and spatial reasoning. Reasoning in complex environments represents a difficult problem. The issues specific to spatial reasoning are planning and decision making. Planning deals with the trajectory algori...

  16. Improving "At-Action" Decision-Making in Team Sports through a Holistic Coaching Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Light, Richard L.; Harvey, Stephen; Mouchet, Alain

    2014-01-01

    This article draws on Game Sense pedagogy and complex learning theory (CLT) to make suggestions for improving decision-making ability in team sports by adopting a holistic approach to coaching with a focus on decision-making "at-action". It emphasizes the complexity of decision-making and the need to focus on the game as a whole entity,…

  17. Mapping quorum sensing onto neural networks to understand collective decision making in heterogeneous microbial communities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yusufaly, Tahir I.; Boedicker, James Q.

    2017-08-01

    Microbial communities frequently communicate via quorum sensing (QS), where cells produce, secrete, and respond to a threshold level of an autoinducer (AI) molecule, thereby modulating gene expression. However, the biology of QS remains incompletely understood in heterogeneous communities, where variant bacterial strains possess distinct QS systems that produce chemically unique AIs. AI molecules bind to ‘cognate’ receptors, but also to ‘non-cognate’ receptors found in other strains, resulting in inter-strain crosstalk. Understanding these interactions is a prerequisite for deciphering the consequences of crosstalk in real ecosystems, where multiple AIs are regularly present in the same environment. As a step towards this goal, we map crosstalk in a heterogeneous community of variant QS strains onto an artificial neural network model. This formulation allows us to systematically analyze how crosstalk regulates the community’s capacity for flexible decision making, as quantified by the Boltzmann entropy of all QS gene expression states of the system. In a mean-field limit of complete cross-inhibition between variant strains, the model is exactly solvable, allowing for an analytical formula for the number of variants that maximize capacity as a function of signal kinetics and activation parameters. An analysis of previous experimental results on the Staphylococcus aureus two-component Agr system indicates that the observed combination of variant numbers, gene expression rates and threshold concentrations lies near this critical regime of parameter space where capacity peaks. The results are suggestive of a potential evolutionary driving force for diversification in certain QS systems.

  18. Ignorance is bliss. How parents of preschool children make sense of front-of-package visuals and claims on food.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abrams, Katie M; Evans, Caitlin; Duff, Brittany R L

    2015-04-01

    With growing scrutiny over how the food industry advertises products aimed toward children and fewer consumers using nutrition facts panels and ingredient lists, the fronts of food packages have become an increasingly important marketing tool to understand. Front-of-package (FOP) visual and verbal claims play a critical role in capturing consumers' attention and helping them choose foods that fit their goals. Due to only possessing emergent literacy skills, preschool children are attuned to FOP visuals while parents are able to use the visuals in combination with verbal claims to make food choices for their children. The purpose of this focus group study was to explore how parents of preschool children make sense of FOP visual and verbal claims on packaged food products that are intended for their children. Thematic analysis revealed that parents associated aspects that most appeal to their preschool children - the characters and other playful visuals - with higher sugar content and artificial ingredients. However, parents were also easily led to believe the product was healthier based on visuals of fruit, more realistic pictures, health claims, cross-branding with healthier foods, and visuals suggesting the product is more natural. While parents recognized that the health claims and some visuals may not truly mean the food is healthier, they agreed that they rarely think beyond their initial impression. The food industry needs better regulatory guidance on how to communicate flavors and ingredients on package fronts in a way that helps consumers - particularly parents wanting to encourage healthy eating habits for their young children - better match their nutrition goals. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  19. Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW for Chemical Sensing Applications of Recognition Layers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adnan Mujahid

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Surface acoustic wave (SAW resonators represent some of the most prominent acoustic devices for chemical sensing applications. As their frequency ranges from several hundred MHz to GHz, therefore they can record remarkably diminutive frequency shifts resulting from exceptionally small mass loadings. Their miniaturized design, high thermal stability and possibility of wireless integration make these devices highly competitive. Owing to these special characteristics, they are widely accepted as smart transducers that can be combined with a variety of recognition layers based on host-guest interactions, metal oxide coatings, carbon nanotubes, graphene sheets, functional polymers and biological receptors. As a result of this, there is a broad spectrum of SAW sensors, i.e., having sensing applications ranging from small gas molecules to large bio-analytes or even whole cell structures. This review shall cover from the fundamentals to modern design developments in SAW devices with respect to interfacial receptor coatings for exemplary sensor applications. The related problems and their possible solutions shall also be covered, with a focus on emerging trends and future opportunities for making SAW as established sensing technology.

  20. Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) for Chemical Sensing Applications of Recognition Layers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mujahid, Adnan; Dickert, Franz L

    2017-11-24

    Surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators represent some of the most prominent acoustic devices for chemical sensing applications. As their frequency ranges from several hundred MHz to GHz, therefore they can record remarkably diminutive frequency shifts resulting from exceptionally small mass loadings. Their miniaturized design, high thermal stability and possibility of wireless integration make these devices highly competitive. Owing to these special characteristics, they are widely accepted as smart transducers that can be combined with a variety of recognition layers based on host-guest interactions, metal oxide coatings, carbon nanotubes, graphene sheets, functional polymers and biological receptors. As a result of this, there is a broad spectrum of SAW sensors, i.e., having sensing applications ranging from small gas molecules to large bio-analytes or even whole cell structures. This review shall cover from the fundamentals to modern design developments in SAW devices with respect to interfacial receptor coatings for exemplary sensor applications. The related problems and their possible solutions shall also be covered, with a focus on emerging trends and future opportunities for making SAW as established sensing technology.

  1. Semantic interoperability in sensor applications - making sense of sensor data

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Brandt, Paul; Basten, Twan; Stuijk, Sander; Bui, Vinh; de Clercq, Paul; Ferreira Pires, Luis; van Sinderen, Marten J.

    Much effort has been spent on the optimization of sensor networks, mainly concerning their performance and power efficiency. Furthermore, open communication protocols for the exchange of sensor data have been developed and widely adopted, making sensor data widely available for software

  2. Geological remote sensing signatures of terrestrial impact craters

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Garvin, J.B.; Schnetzler, C.; Grieve, R.A.F.

    1988-01-01

    Geological remote sensing techniques can be used to investigate structural, depositional, and shock metamorphic effects associated with hypervelocity impact structures, some of which may be linked to global Earth system catastrophies. Although detailed laboratory and field investigations are necessary to establish conclusive evidence of an impact origin for suspected crater landforms, the synoptic perspective provided by various remote sensing systems can often serve as a pathfinder to key deposits which can then be targetted for intensive field study. In addition, remote sensing imagery can be used as a tool in the search for impact and other catastrophic explosion landforms on the basis of localized disruption and anomaly patterns. In order to reconstruct original dimensions of large, complex impact features in isolated, inaccessible regions, remote sensing imagery can be used to make preliminary estimates in the absence of field geophysical surveys. The experienced gained from two decades of planetary remote sensing of impact craters on the terrestrial planets, as well as the techniques developed for recognizing stages of degradation and initial crater morphology, can now be applied to the problem of discovering and studying eroded impact landforms on Earth. Preliminary results of remote sensing analyses of a set of terrestrial impact features in various states of degradation, geologic settings, and for a broad range of diameters and hence energies of formation are summarized. The intention is to develop a database of remote sensing signatures for catastrophic impact landforms which can then be used in EOS-era global surveys as the basis for locating the possibly hundreds of missing impact structures

  3. Energy-efficient sensing in wireless sensor networks using compressed sensing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Razzaque, Mohammad Abdur; Dobson, Simon

    2014-02-12

    Sensing of the application environment is the main purpose of a wireless sensor network. Most existing energy management strategies and compression techniques assume that the sensing operation consumes significantly less energy than radio transmission and reception. This assumption does not hold in a number of practical applications. Sensing energy consumption in these applications may be comparable to, or even greater than, that of the radio. In this work, we support this claim by a quantitative analysis of the main operational energy costs of popular sensors, radios and sensor motes. In light of the importance of sensing level energy costs, especially for power hungry sensors, we consider compressed sensing and distributed compressed sensing as potential approaches to provide energy efficient sensing in wireless sensor networks. Numerical experiments investigating the effectiveness of compressed sensing and distributed compressed sensing using real datasets show their potential for efficient utilization of sensing and overall energy costs in wireless sensor networks. It is shown that, for some applications, compressed sensing and distributed compressed sensing can provide greater energy efficiency than transform coding and model-based adaptive sensing in wireless sensor networks.

  4. Make a Difference: Talk to Your Child about Alcohol

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... the parent–child relationship and a child’s drinking habits makes a lot of sense when you think ... help for your child. Believe in your own power to help your child avoid alcohol use. RESOURCES ...

  5. Does future-oriented thinking predict adolescent decision making?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eskritt, Michelle; Doucette, Jesslyn; Robitaille, Lori

    2014-01-01

    A number of theorists, as well as plain common sense, suggest that future-oriented thinking (FOT) should be involved in decision making; therefore, the development of FOT should be related to better quality decision making. FOT and quality of the decision making were measured in adolescents as well as adults in 2 different experiments. Though the results of the first experiment revealed an increase in quality of decision making across adolescence into adulthood, there was no relationship between FOT and decision making. In the second experiment, FOT predicted performance on a more deliberative decision-making task independent of age, but not performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Performance on the IGT was instead related to emotion regulation. The study's findings suggest that FOT can be related to reflective decision making but not necessarily decision making that is more intuitive.

  6. Making Sense of Your Genes: A Guide to Genetic Counseling

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... become ill. • The genetic counselor may also discuss environmental risk factors in and outside of the home, what ... make decisions about cancer screening and cancer prevention methods. It could also ... about their cancer risks. A genetic counselor can also refer you to ...

  7. Right word making sense of the words that confuse

    CERN Document Server

    Morrison, Elizabeth

    2012-01-01

    'Affect' or 'effect'? 'Right', 'write' or 'rite'? English can certainly be a confusing language, whether you're a native speaker or learning it as a second language. 'The Right Word' is the essential reference to help people master its subtleties and avoid making mistakes. Divided into three sections, it first examines homophones - those tricky words that sound the same but are spelled differently - then looks at words that often confuse before providing a list of commonly misspelled words.

  8. Social class, sense of control, and social explanation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kraus, Michael W; Piff, Paul K; Keltner, Dacher

    2009-12-01

    Lower social class is associated with diminished resources and perceived subordinate rank. On the basis of this analysis, the authors predicted that social class would be closely associated with a reduced sense of personal control and that this association would explain why lower class individuals favor contextual over dispositional explanations of social events. Across 4 studies, lower social class individuals, as measured by subjective socioeconomic status (SES), endorsed contextual explanations of economic trends, broad social outcomes, and emotion. Across studies, the sense of control mediated the relation between subjective SES and contextual explanations, and this association was independent of objective SES, ethnicity, political ideology, and self-serving biases. Finally, experimentally inducing a higher sense of control attenuated the tendency for lower subjective SES individuals to make more contextual explanations (Study 4). Implications for future research on social class as well as theoretical distinctions between objective SES and subjective SES are discussed.

  9. Visual histories of decision processes for collaborative decision making

    OpenAIRE

    Kozlova, Karine

    2016-01-01

    Remembering, understanding and reconstructing past activities is a necessary part of any learning, sense-making or decision making process. It is also essential for any collaborative activity. This dissertation investigates the design and evaluation of systems to support decision remembering, understanding and reconstruction by groups and individuals. By conducting three qualitative case studies of small professional groups, we identify the critical activities where history functionality is n...

  10. Sensing And Force-Reflecting Exoskeleton

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eberman, Brian; Fontana, Richard; Marcus, Beth

    1993-01-01

    Sensing and force-reflecting exoskeleton (SAFiRE) provides control signals to robot hand and force feedback from robot hand to human operator. Operator makes robot hand touch objects gently and manipulates them finely without exerting excessive forces. Device attaches to operator's hand; comfortable and lightweight. Includes finger exoskeleton, cable mechanical transmission, two dc servomotors, partial thumb exoskeleton, harness, amplifier box, two computer circuit boards, and software. Transduces motion of index finger and thumb. Video monitor of associated computer displays image corresponding to motion.

  11. Big Sensed Data Meets Deep Learning for Smarter Health Care in Smart Cities

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alex Adim Obinikpo

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT concept and its integration with the smart city sensing, smart connected health systems have appeared as integral components of the smart city services. Hard sensing-based data acquisition through wearables or invasive probes, coupled with soft sensing-based acquisition such as crowd-sensing results in hidden patterns in the aggregated sensor data. Recent research aims to address this challenge through many hidden perceptron layers in the conventional artificial neural networks, namely by deep learning. In this article, we review deep learning techniques that can be applied to sensed data to improve prediction and decision making in smart health services. Furthermore, we present a comparison and taxonomy of these methodologies based on types of sensors and sensed data. We further provide thorough discussions on the open issues and research challenges in each category.

  12. Alphabet soup: making sense of genetic testing in CMT.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lawson, Victoria; Gharibshahi, Shahram

    2010-09-01

    The diagnosis of inherited neuropathies can be challenging in several ways. First, a hereditary neuropathy must be suspected. Although some family histories are clear with multiple members affected, other families require directed inquiry. Second, even when a hereditary neuropathy is clear, it can be difficult to make a genetic characterization. The field of genotyping is expanding so rapidly, it is difficult to know what tests to order. The authors share their guidelines for the diagnosis of inherited neuropathies. © Thieme Medical Publishers.

  13. Deep ultraviolet semiconductor light sources for sensing and security

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shatalov, Max; Bilenko, Yuri; Yang, Jinwei; Gaska, Remis

    2009-09-01

    III-Nitride based deep ultraviolet (DUV) light emitting diodes (LEDs) rapidly penetrate into sensing market owing to several advantages over traditional UV sources (i.e. mercury, xenon and deuterium lamps). Small size, a wide choice of peak emission wavelengths, lower power consumption and reduced cost offer flexibility to system integrators. Short emission wavelength offer advantages for gas detection and optical sensing systems based on UV induced fluorescence. Large modulation bandwidth for these devices makes them attractive for frequency-domain spectroscopy. We will review present status of DUV LED technology and discuss recent advances in short wavelength emitters and high power LED lamps.

  14. DFB laser diodes for sensing applications using photoacoustic spectroscopy

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Koeth, J; Fischer, M; Legge, M; Seufert, J; Roessner, K; Groninga, H

    2010-01-01

    We present typical device characteristics of novel DFB laser diodes which are employed in various sensing applications including high resolution photoacoustic spectroscopy. The laser diodes discussed are based on a genuine fabrication technology which allows for the production of ultra stable devices within a broad spectral range from 760 nm up to 3000 nm wavelength. The devices exhibit narrow linewidths down to <1 MHz which makes them ideally suited for all photoacoustic sensing applications where a high spectral purity is required. As an example we will focus on a typical medical application where these diodes are used for breath analysis using photoacoustic spectroscopy.

  15. What We Call Misconceptions May Be Necessary Stepping-Stones toward Making Sense of the World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Campbell, Todd; Schwarz, Christina; Windschitl, Mark

    2016-01-01

    The vision of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) "requires a dramatic departure from approaches to teaching and learning science occurring today in most science classrooms K-12" (Reiser 2013, p. 2). In this article the authors emphasize the importance of examining student misconceptions and correcting them with sense-making…

  16. Chemical and biological sensing using tuning forks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tao, Nongjian; Boussaad, Salah

    2012-07-10

    A device for sensing a chemical analyte is disclosed. The device is comprised of a vibrating structure having first and second surfaces and having an associated resonant frequency and a wire coupled between the first and second surfaces of the vibrating structure, wherein the analyte interacts with the wire and causes a change in the resonant frequency of the vibrating structure. The vibrating structure can include a tuning fork. The vibrating structure can be comprised of quartz. The wire can be comprised of polymer. A plurality of vibrating structures are arranged in an array to increase confidence by promoting a redundancy of measurement or to detect a plurality of chemical analytes. A method of making a device for sensing a chemical analyte is also disclosed.

  17. Multiplexed Force and Deflection Sensing Shell Membranes for Robotic Manipulators

    Science.gov (United States)

    Park, Yong-Lae; Black, Richard; Moslehi, Behzad; Cutkosky, Mark; Chau, Kelvin

    2012-01-01

    Force sensing is an essential requirement for dexterous robot manipulation, e.g., for extravehicular robots making vehicle repairs. Although strain gauges have been widely used, a new sensing approach is desirable for applications that require greater robustness, design flexibility including a high degree of multiplexibility, and immunity to electromagnetic noise. This invention is a force and deflection sensor a flexible shell formed with an elastomer having passageways formed by apertures in the shell, with an optical fiber having one or more Bragg gratings positioned in the passageways for the measurement of force and deflection.

  18. Mesoporous Silicate Materials in Sensing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paul T. Charles

    2008-08-01

    Full Text Available Mesoporous silicas, especially those exhibiting ordered pore systems and uniform pore diameters, have shown great potential for sensing applications in recent years. Morphological control grants them versatility in the method of deployment whether as bulk powders, monoliths, thin films, or embedded in coatings. High surface areas and pore sizes greater than 2 nm make them effective as adsorbent coatings for humidity sensors. The pore networks also provide the potential for immobilization of enzymes within the materials. Functionalization of materials by silane grafting or through cocondensation of silicate precursors can be used to provide mesoporous materials with a variety of fluorescent probes as well as surface properties that aid in selective detection of specific analytes. This review will illustrate how mesoporous silicas have been applied to sensing changes in relative humidity, changes in pH, metal cations, toxic industrial compounds, volatile organic compounds, small molecules and ions, nitroenergetic compounds, and biologically relevant molecules.

  19. Recent advances in the use of ionic liquids for electrochemical sensing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Silvester, Debbie S

    2011-12-07

    Ionic Liquids are salts that are liquid at (or just above) room temperature. They possess several advantageous properties (e.g. high intrinsic conductivity, wide electrochemical windows, low volatility, high thermal stability and good solvating ability), which make them ideal as non-volatile electrolytes in electrochemical sensors. This mini-review article describes the recent uses of ionic liquids in electrochemical sensing applications (covering the last 3 years) in the context of voltammetric sensing at solid/liquid, liquid/liquid interfaces and carbon paste electrodes, as well as their use in gas sensing, ion-selective electrodes, and for detecting biological molecules, explosives and chemical warfare agents. A comment on the future direction and challenges in this field is also presented.

  20. Making Sense of Data from Complex Assessments. CSE Technical Report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mislevy, Robert J.; Steinberg, Linda S.; Almond, Russell G.; Breyer, F. Jay; Johnson, Lynn

    Advances in cognitive psychology deepen the understanding of how students gain and use knowledge and broaden the range of performances and situations researchers want to see to acquire evidence about students' developing knowledge. Advances in technology make it possible to capture more complex performances in assessment settings by including, as…

  1. Discrete gravity

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Noyes, H.P.

    1990-07-01

    This paper discusses the following: constructing a bit-string universe; quantized space-time; combinatorial hierarchy labels; gravitational stabilization of the proton; quantum geons; cosmological consequences; the proton-electron mass ratio, weak- electromagnetic unification; and sewgut

  2. A Review of Ocean/Sea Subsurface Water Temperature Studies from Remote Sensing and Non-Remote Sensing Methods

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elahe Akbari

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Oceans/Seas are important components of Earth that are affected by global warming and climate change. Recent studies have indicated that the deeper oceans are responsible for climate variability by changing the Earth’s ecosystem; therefore, assessing them has become more important. Remote sensing can provide sea surface data at high spatial/temporal resolution and with large spatial coverage, which allows for remarkable discoveries in the ocean sciences. The deep layers of the ocean/sea, however, cannot be directly detected by satellite remote sensors. Therefore, researchers have examined the relationships between salinity, height, and temperature of the oceans/Seas to estimate their subsurface water temperature using dynamical models and model-based data assimilation (numerical based and statistical approaches, which simulate these parameters by employing remotely sensed data and in situ measurements. Due to the requirements of comprehensive perception and the importance of global warming in decision making and scientific studies, this review provides comprehensive information on the methods that are used to estimate ocean/sea subsurface water temperature from remotely and non-remotely sensed data. To clarify the subsurface processes, the challenges, limitations, and perspectives of the existing methods are also investigated.

  3. Intelligent Vision System for Door Sensing Mobile Robot

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jharna Majumdar

    2012-08-01

    Full Text Available Wheeled Mobile Robots find numerous applications in the Indoor man made structured environments. In order to operate effectively, the robots must be capable of sensing its surroundings. Computer Vision is one of the prime research areas directed towards achieving these sensing capabilities. In this paper, we present a Door Sensing Mobile Robot capable of navigating in the indoor environment. A robust and inexpensive approach for recognition and classification of the door, based on monocular vision system helps the mobile robot in decision making. To prove the efficacy of the algorithm we have designed and developed a ‘Differentially’ Driven Mobile Robot. A wall following behavior using Ultra Sonic range sensors is employed by the mobile robot for navigation in the corridors.  Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA have been used for the implementation of PD Controller for wall following and PID Controller to control the speed of the Geared DC Motor.

  4. A twin-case study of developmental number sense impairment

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Davidse, Neeltje J.; de Jong, Maria T.; Shaul, Shelley; Bus, Adriana G

    2014-01-01

    The current study reports on 9-year-old monozygotic twin girls who fail to make any progress in learning basic mathematics in primary education. We tested the hypothesis that the twins' core maths problems were deficits in number sense that manifested as impairments in approximate and small number

  5. Remote Sensing

    CERN Document Server

    Khorram, Siamak; Koch, Frank H; van der Wiele, Cynthia F

    2012-01-01

    Remote Sensing provides information on how remote sensing relates to the natural resources inventory, management, and monitoring, as well as environmental concerns. It explains the role of this new technology in current global challenges. "Remote Sensing" will discuss remotely sensed data application payloads and platforms, along with the methodologies involving image processing techniques as applied to remotely sensed data. This title provides information on image classification techniques and image registration, data integration, and data fusion techniques. How this technology applies to natural resources and environmental concerns will also be discussed.

  6. Striatal activation reflects urgency in perceptual decision making

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Maanen, L.; Fontanesi, L.; Hawkins, G.E.; Forstmann, B.U.

    2016-01-01

    Deciding between multiple courses of action often entails an increasing need to do something as time passes - a sense of urgency. This notion of urgency is not incorporated in standard theories of speeded decision making that assume information is accumulated until a critical fixed threshold is

  7. Design de sistemas de informação centrado no usuário e a abordagem do sense-making

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Edmeire Cristina Pereira

    Full Text Available Esta pesquisa analisa alguns aspectos da interação ser humano-computador e da abordagem do Sense-Making (Dervin e outros, também reconhecida na literatura como "abordagem centrada no usuário" ou, ainda, "abordagem da percepção do usuário". Examina um site de uma empresa carioca (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil do setor de farmácia, cosméticos e perfumaria, levando-se em consideração o lay-out das sucessivas telas com janelas, menus, botões, ícones e todos os componentes do sistema visíveis para o usuário. Como resultado das análises do conteúdo das páginas, da comunicação visual e de sua interatividade com os usuários potenciais, evidencia-se que o site não atende a todos os critérios de qualidade sugeridos pela literatura e, nem tampouco, a todas as diretrizes básicas para o design de sistemas de informação centrado no usuário, por Schneiderman e Bastien & Scapin.

  8. What is a picture worth? A history of remote sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moore, Gerald K.

    1979-01-01

    Remote sensing is the use of electromagnetic energy to measure the physical properties of distant objects. It includes photography and geophysical surveying as well as newer techniques that use other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. The history of remote sensing begins with photography. The origin of other types of remote sensing can be traced to World War II, with the development of radar, sonar, and thermal infrared detection systems. Since the 1960s, sensors have been designed to operate in virtually all of the electromagnetic spectrum. Today a wide variety of remote sensing instruments are available for use in hydrological studies; satellite data, such as Skylab photographs and Landsat images are particularly suitable for regional problems and studies. Planned future satellites will provide a ground resolution of 10–80 m. Remote sensing is currently used for hydrological applications in most countries of the world. The range of applications includes groundwater exploration determination of physical water quality, snowfield mapping, flood-inundation delineation, and making inventories of irrigated land. The use of remote sensing commonly results in considerable hydrological information at minimal cost. This information can be used to speed-up the development of water resources, to improve management practices, and to monitor environmental problems.

  9. Study on Method of Geohazard Change Detection Based on Integrating Remote Sensing and GIS

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zhao, Zhenzhen; Yan, Qin; Liu, Zhengjun; Luo, Chengfeng

    2014-01-01

    Following a comprehensive literature review, this paper looks at analysis of geohazard using remote sensing information. This paper compares the basic types and methods of change detection, explores the basic principle of common methods and makes an respective analysis of the characteristics and shortcomings of the commonly used methods in the application of geohazard. Using the earthquake in JieGu as a case study, this paper proposes a geohazard change detection method integrating RS and GIS. When detecting the pre-earthquake and post-earthquake remote sensing images at different phases, it is crucial to set an appropriate threshold. The method adopts a self-adapting determination algorithm for threshold. We select a training region which is obtained after pixel information comparison and set a threshold value. The threshold value separates the changed pixel maximum. Then we apply the threshold value to the entire image, which could also make change detection accuracy maximum. Finally, we output the result to the GIS system to make change analysis. The experimental results show that this method of geohazard change detection based on integrating remote sensing and GIS information has higher accuracy with obvious advantages compared with the traditional methods

  10. Mobile Sensing Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Macias, Elsa; Suarez, Alvaro; Lloret, Jaime

    2013-01-01

    Rich-sensor smart phones have made possible the recent birth of the mobile sensing research area as part of ubiquitous sensing which integrates other areas such as wireless sensor networks and web sensing. There are several types of mobile sensing: individual, participatory, opportunistic, crowd, social, etc. The object of sensing can be people-centered or environment-centered. The sensing domain can be home, urban, vehicular… Currently there are barriers that limit the social acceptance of mobile sensing systems. Examples of social barriers are privacy concerns, restrictive laws in some countries and the absence of economic incentives that might encourage people to participate in a sensing campaign. Several technical barriers are phone energy savings and the variety of sensors and software for their management. Some existing surveys partially tackle the topic of mobile sensing systems. Published papers theoretically or partially solve the above barriers. We complete the above surveys with new works, review the barriers of mobile sensing systems and propose some ideas for efficiently implementing sensing, fusion, learning, security, privacy and energy saving for any type of mobile sensing system, and propose several realistic research challenges. The main objective is to reduce the learning curve in mobile sensing systems where the complexity is very high. PMID:24351637

  11. Mobile sensing systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Macias, Elsa; Suarez, Alvaro; Lloret, Jaime

    2013-12-16

    Rich-sensor smart phones have made possible the recent birth of the mobile sensing research area as part of ubiquitous sensing which integrates other areas such as wireless sensor networks and web sensing. There are several types of mobile sensing: individual, participatory, opportunistic, crowd, social, etc. The object of sensing can be people-centered or environment-centered. The sensing domain can be home, urban, vehicular… Currently there are barriers that limit the social acceptance of mobile sensing systems. Examples of social barriers are privacy concerns, restrictive laws in some countries and the absence of economic incentives that might encourage people to participate in a sensing campaign. Several technical barriers are phone energy savings and the variety of sensors and software for their management. Some existing surveys partially tackle the topic of mobile sensing systems. Published papers theoretically or partially solve the above barriers. We complete the above surveys with new works, review the barriers of mobile sensing systems and propose some ideas for efficiently implementing sensing, fusion, learning, security, privacy and energy saving for any type of mobile sensing system, and propose several realistic research challenges. The main objective is to reduce the learning curve in mobile sensing systems where the complexity is very high.

  12. Mobile Sensing Systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elsa Macias

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Rich-sensor smart phones have made possible the recent birth of the mobile sensing research area as part of ubiquitous sensing which integrates other areas such as wireless sensor networks and web sensing. There are several types of mobile sensing: individual, participatory, opportunistic, crowd, social, etc. The object of sensing can be people-centered or environment-centered. The sensing domain can be home, urban, vehicular… Currently there are barriers that limit the social acceptance of mobile sensing systems. Examples of social barriers are privacy concerns, restrictive laws in some countries and the absence of economic incentives that might encourage people to participate in a sensing campaign. Several technical barriers are phone energy savings and the variety of sensors and software for their management. Some existing surveys partially tackle the topic of mobile sensing systems. Published papers theoretically or partially solve the above barriers. We complete the above surveys with new works, review the barriers of mobile sensing systems and propose some ideas for efficiently implementing sensing, fusion, learning, security, privacy and energy saving for any type of mobile sensing system, and propose several realistic research challenges. The main objective is to reduce the learning curve in mobile sensing systems where the complexity is very high.

  13. Making Sense of How Students Make Sense of Mechanical Waves

    OpenAIRE

    Wittmann, Michael C.; Steinberg, Richard N.; Redish, Edward F.

    2002-01-01

    We report on our study of student understanding of the physics of mechanical waves, specifically the propagation and superposition of simple wavepulses traveling on long, taut strings. We introduce the terms "particle pulses mental model" to describe the reasoning approach that students use to guide their thinking in wave propagation and superposition. Student responses on free response and multiple-choice, multiple response questions dealing with the same physics show inconsistent student th...

  14. Onboard Optical Navigation Measurement Processing in GEONS

    Data.gov (United States)

    National Aeronautics and Space Administration — Optical Navigation (OpNav) measurements derived from spacecraft-based images are a powerful data type in the precision orbit determination process.  OpNav...

  15. Scintigraphic imaging of oncogenes with antisense probes: does it make sense?

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Urbain, J.L.C.; Shore, S.K.; Vekemans, M.C.; Cosenza, S.C.; DeRiel, K.; Patel, G.V.; Charkes, N.D.; Malmud, L.S.; Reddy, E.P.

    1995-01-01

    The aim of this study was to demonstrate that cells which are expressing a particular mRNA transcript do preferentially and specifically retain the antisense probe targeting that mRNA. Using a mouse plasmacytoma cell line (MOPC315) which produces high levels of IgA heavy chain mRNA, a control mouse pre B cell line (7OZ/3B), a human mammary cell line (MCF7) which expresses the erbB2 or neu oncogene, MOPC315 cells as neu-negative controls, and antisense DNA oligonucleotides complementary to the 5' region of the mRNAs and the sense sequence, we have shown that there is a preferential, specific retention of the IgA and neu antisense sequence in MOPC315 and MCF7 cells, respectively. We have further demonstrated that this retention is time and concentration dependent with a maximum at 24 h. We conclude that cancer cells which express a particular oncogene are suitable targets for radiolabeled antisense deoxyoligonucleotides directed toward the oncogene transcript. (orig.)

  16. PERFORMANCE OF OPPORTUNISTIC SPECTRUM ACCESS WITH SENSING ERROR IN COGNITIVE RADIO AD HOC NETWORKS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    N. ARMI

    2012-04-01

    Full Text Available Sensing in opportunistic spectrum access (OSA has a responsibility to detect the available channel by performing binary hypothesis as busy or idle states. If channel is busy, secondary user (SU cannot access and refrain from data transmission. SU is allowed to access when primary user (PU does not use it (idle states. However, channel is sensed on imperfect communication link. Fading, noise and any obstacles existed can cause sensing errors in PU signal detection. False alarm detects idle states as a busy channel while miss-identification detects busy states as an idle channel. False detection makes SU refrain from transmission and reduces number of bits transmitted. On the other hand, miss-identification causes SU collide to PU transmission. This paper study the performance of OSA based on the greedy approach with sensing errors by the restriction of maximum collision probability allowed (collision threshold by PU network. The throughput of SU and spectrum capacity metric is used to evaluate OSA performance and make comparisons to those ones without sensing error as function of number of slot based on the greedy approach. The relations between throughput and signal to noise ratio (SNR with different collision probability as well as false detection with different SNR are presented. According to the obtained results show that CR users can gain the reward from the previous slot for both of with and without sensing errors. It is indicated by the throughput improvement as slot number increases. However, sensing on imperfect channel with sensing errors can degrade the throughput performance. Subsequently, the throughput of SU and spectrum capacity improves by increasing maximum collision probability allowed by PU network as well. Due to frequent collision with PU, the throughput of SU and spectrum capacity decreases at certain value of collision threshold. Computer simulation is used to evaluate and validate these works.

  17. A ground temperature map of the North Atlantic permafrost region based on remote sensing and reanalysis data

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Westermann, S.; Østby, T. I.; Gisnås, K.

    2015-01-01

    Permafrost is a key element of the terrestrial cryosphere which makes mapping and monitoring of its state variables an imperative task. We present a modeling scheme based on remotely sensed land surface temperatures and reanalysis products from which mean annual ground temperatures (MAGT) can be ...... with gradually decreasing permafrost probabilities. The study exemplifies the unexploited potential of remotely sensed data sets in permafrost mapping if they are employed in multi-sensor multi-source data fusion approaches.......Permafrost is a key element of the terrestrial cryosphere which makes mapping and monitoring of its state variables an imperative task. We present a modeling scheme based on remotely sensed land surface temperatures and reanalysis products from which mean annual ground temperatures (MAGT) can...

  18. Assessing Translator Education in the Light of Competency-Based Approaches: Dashboard Indicators and Stakeholders’ Sense-Making

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sakwe George Mbotake

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available The effect of globalization and the increasing demands on the job market have induced many countries in the world to introduce reforms aimed at streamlining their higher education curricula. The demand for a more flexible workforce with high skills (competencies in problem solving, team work and project management has been on the rise in recent years and the incorporation of competency-based curriculum has emerged as a necessity in the higher education sector. However, in spite of the growing popularity for the need to prepare graduates for the workplace, the actual academic culture and formative processes are yet to be tailored to address these new exigencies. The aim of this paper is to analyze in what manner competence and competence-based learning are being currently implemented in the Advanced School of Translators and Interpreters (ASTI of the University of Buea in Cameroon. Competency dashboard indicators from best practice frameworks are used to assess stakeholders’ sense-making as levers for quality assessment in translation learning. An opinion survey of 60 trainee translators and 12 instructors helped to identify factors, instructional and otherwise which promote or inhibit the success of competence-based education. The study posits that systemic and environmental issues, as well as organizational, teaching and learning, assessment, and quality assurance issues are germane to the effective implementation of generic and specific competencies. The ensuing proposals advocate for a responsive translator training and education that is more personalized and adaptive to address higher education’s challenges of access, quality, and affordability for a diverse set of students.

  19. Precision force sensing with optically-levitated nanospheres

    Science.gov (United States)

    Geraci, Andrew

    2017-04-01

    In high vacuum, optically-trapped dielectric nanospheres achieve excellent decoupling from their environment and experience minimal friction, making them ideal for precision force sensing. We have shown that 300 nm silica spheres can be used for calibrated zeptonewton force measurements in a standing-wave optical trap. In this optical potential, the known spacing of the standing wave anti-nodes can serve as an independent calibration tool for the displacement spectrum of the trapped particle. I will describe our progress towards using these sensors for tests of the Newtonian gravitational inverse square law at micron length scales. Optically levitated dielectric objects also show promise for a variety of other precision sensing applications, including searches for gravitational waves and other experiments in quantum optomechanics. National Science Foundation PHY-1205994, PHY-1506431, PHY-1509176.

  20. Affordable dual-sensing proximity sensor for touchless interactive systems

    KAUST Repository

    Nassar, Joanna M.

    2016-09-13

    We report an ultra-low cost flexible proximity sensor using only off-the-shelf recyclable materials such as aluminum foil, napkin and double-sided tape. Unlike previous reports, our device structure exhibits two sensing capabilities in one platform, with outstanding long detection range of 20 cm and pressure sensitivity of 0.05 kPa. This is the first ever demonstration of a low-cost, accessible, and batch manufacturing process for pressure and proximity sensing on a singular platform. The mechanical flexibility of the sensor makes it possible to mount on various irregular platforms, which is vital in many areas, such as robotics, machine automation, vehicular technology and inspection tools.

  1. Distributed Long-Gauge Optical Fiber Sensors Based Self-Sensing FRP Bar for Concrete Structure.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tang, Yongsheng; Wu, Zhishen

    2016-02-25

    Brillouin scattering-based distributed optical fiber (OF) sensing technique presents advantages for concrete structure monitoring. However, the existence of spatial resolution greatly decreases strain measurement accuracy especially around cracks. Meanwhile, the brittle feature of OF also hinders its further application. In this paper, the distributed OF sensor was firstly proposed as long-gauge sensor to improve strain measurement accuracy. Then, a new type of self-sensing fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) bar was developed by embedding the packaged long-gauge OF sensors into FRP bar, followed by experimental studies on strain sensing, temperature sensing and basic mechanical properties. The results confirmed the superior strain sensing properties, namely satisfied accuracy, repeatability and linearity, as well as excellent mechanical performance. At the same time, the temperature sensing property was not influenced by the long-gauge package, making temperature compensation easy. Furthermore, the bonding performance between self-sensing FRP bar and concrete was investigated to study its influence on the sensing. Lastly, the sensing performance was further verified with static experiments of concrete beam reinforced with the proposed self-sensing FRP bar. Therefore, the self-sensing FRP bar has potential applications for long-term structural health monitoring (SHM) as embedded sensors as well as reinforcing materials for concrete structures.

  2. Prospective elementary school teachers’ ways of making sense of mathematical problem posing (Modos en que futuros profesores de primaria dan sentido a la invención de problemas matemáticos

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Olive Chapman

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available The study tackled prospective teachers’ sense-making of mathematical problem posing and the impact of posing different contextual problems on their learning. Focus was on the generation of new problems and reformulation of given problems. Participants were 40 prospective elementary teachers. The findings provide insights into possible ways these teachers could make sense of problem posing of contextual mathematical problems and the learning afforded by posing diverse problems. Highlighted are five perspectives and nine categories of problem posing tasks to support development of proficiency in problem-posing knowledge for teaching. El estudio indagó sobre los modos en que futuros profesores de primaria dan sentido a la invención de problemas matemáticos y el impacto de plantear diferentes problemas contextualizados en su aprendizaje. El foco fue la invención de nuevos problemas y la reformulación de otros dados. Los participantes fueron 40 futuros maestros de primaria. Los resultados proporcionan elementos sobre posibles modos en que estos maestros dan sentido a la invención de problemas matemáticos y el aprendizaje que ofrece plantear diversos problemas. Se destacan cinco perspectivas y nueve categorías de tareas en la invención de problemas para apoyar el desarrollo de la competencia de plantear problemas en la enseñanza.

  3. Making sense of biologists' teaching: Two case studies of beliefs and discourse practices

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fifield, Steven James

    1999-09-01

    Undergraduate science courses are often criticized for their overemphasis of content coverage, neglect of inquiry approaches, and misrepresentation of the nature of science. Because conventional courses are influential models for future science teachers, they are often viewed as impediments to K--12 science education reform. To effectively modify how professors teach, we first need to better understand their beliefs and practices as teachers. This is an interpretive study of how two biology professors (Jim and Sue) make sense of their classroom practices in an introductory undergraduate course. Interviews are used to analyze their beliefs about teaching, learning, and science. Discourse analysis of lectures on classical genetics is used to examine their classroom practices as situated constructions of scientific knowledge. The two professors' held distinct beliefs about teaching and learning that were intricately interwoven with their beliefs about science. Jim's beliefs were largely consistent with conventional approaches to introductory science courses. He thought that introductory courses support the development of knowledge and skills that students need before they can engage in scientific inquiry. Sarah was critical of these conventional approaches. She valued courses that foster active learning and focus on applications of biology that are relevant to students' lives. But she could not enact many of her beliefs due to situational constraints associated with the course. Instead she viewed her efforts to help students succeed in a conventional course as a way to resist her colleagues' expectations that most students cannot do well in science. Discourse analysis of the professors' lectures revealed that they both relied on narratives to represent concepts in classical genetics. These narratives of concepts were distinct from other narrative forms in technical and popular presentations of biology. The relationship among these professors' beliefs and classroom

  4. Glucose Sensing

    CERN Document Server

    Geddes, Chris D

    2006-01-01

    Topics in Fluorescence Spectroscopy, Glucose Sensing is the eleventh volume in the popular series Topics in Fluorescence Spectroscopy, edited by Drs. Chris D. Geddes and Joseph R. Lakowicz. This volume incorporates authoritative analytical fluorescence-based glucose sensing reviews specialized enough to be attractive to professional researchers, yet also appealing to the wider audience of scientists in related disciplines of fluorescence. Glucose Sensing is an essential reference for any lab working in the analytical fluorescence glucose sensing field. All academics, bench scientists, and industry professionals wishing to take advantage of the latest and greatest in the continuously emerging field of glucose sensing, and diabetes care & management, will find this volume an invaluable resource. Topics in Fluorescence Spectroscopy Volume 11, Glucose Sensing Chapters include: Implantable Sensors for Interstitial Fluid Smart Tattoo Glucose Sensors Optical Enzyme-based Glucose Biosensors Plasmonic Glucose Sens...

  5. ‘Killing Me Softly With His/Her Song’: How Leaders Dismantle Followers’ Sense of Work Meaningfulness

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Petra Kipfelsberger

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available Leaders influence followers’ meaning and play a key role in shaping their employees’ experience of work meaningfulness. While the dominant perspective in theory and in empirical work focuses on the positive influence of leaders on followers’ work meaningfulness, our conceptual model explores conditions in which leaders may harm followers’ sense of meaning. We introduce six types of conditions: leaders’ personality traits, leaders’ behaviors, the relationship between leader and follower, followers’ attributions, followers’ characteristics, and job design under which leaders’ meaning making efforts might harm or ‘kill’ followers’ sense of work meaningfulness. Accordingly, we explore how these conditions may interact with leaders’ meaning making efforts to lower levels of followers’ sense of meaning, and in turn, lead to negative personal outcomes (cynicism, lower well-being, and disengagement, as well as negative organizational outcomes (corrosive organizational energy, higher turnover rates, and lower organizational productivity. By doing so, our research extends the current literature, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of leaders’ influence on followers’ work meaningfulness, while considering the dark side of meaning making.

  6. Invisible excess of sense in social interaction

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Koubová, Alice

    Roč. 5, September /article 1081 (2014), s. 1-11 ISSN 1664-1078 R&D Projects: GA ČR GAP401/10/1164 Institutional support: RVO:67985955 Keywords : participatory sense-making * enactive theory * Merleau-Ponty * invisibility * opacity * (Inter)acting with the inner partner * performativity * dramaturgical analysis Subject RIV: AA - Philosophy ; Religion Impact factor: 2.560, year: 2014 http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01081/abstract

  7. CERN Library | Pauline Gagnon presents the book "Who cares about particle physics? : making sense of the Higgs boson, the Large Hadron Collider and CERN" | 15 September

    CERN Multimedia

    CERN Library

    2016-01-01

    "Who cares about particle physics? : making sense of the Higgs boson, the Large Hadron Collider and CERN ", by Pauline Gagnon. Thursday 15 September 2016, 16:00 - 17:30 in the CERN Library (Bldg 52 1-052) *Coffee will be served at 15:30* CERN, the European Laboratory for particle physics, regularly makes the news. What kind of research happens at this international laboratory and how does it impact people's daily lives? Why is the discovery of the Higgs boson so important? Particle physics describes all matter found on Earth, in stars and all galaxies but it also tries to go beyond what is known to describe dark matter, a form of matter five times more prevalent than the known, regular matter. How do we know this mysterious dark matter exists and is there a chance it will be discovered soon? About sixty countries contributed to the construction of the gigantic Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and its immense detectors. Dive in to discover how international teams of researchers...

  8. Sense of fairness: not by itself a moral sense and not a foundation of a lot of morality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramlakhan, Nalini; Brook, Andrew

    2013-02-01

    Baumard et al. make a good case that a sense of fairness evolved and that showing this requires reciprocity games with choice of partner. However, they oversimplify both morality and the evolution of morality. Where fairness is involved in morality, other things are, too, and fairness is often not involved. In the evolution of morality, other things played a role. Plus, the motive for being fair originally was self-interest, not anything moral.

  9. Electro-Optical Sensing Apparatus and Method for Characterizing Free-Space Electromagnetic Radiation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xi-Cheng; Libelo, Louis Francis; Wu, Qi

    1999-09-14

    Apparatus and methods for characterizing free-space electromagnetic energy, and in particular, apparatus/method suitable for real-time two-dimensional far-infrared imaging applications are presented. The sensing technique is based on a non-linear coupling between a low-frequency electric field and a laser beam in an electro-optic crystal. In addition to a practical counter-propagating sensing technique, a co-linear approach is described which provides longer radiated field--optical beam interaction length, thereby making imaging applications practical.

  10. The SENSE-Isomorphism Theoretical Image Voxel Estimation (SENSE-ITIVE) Model for Reconstruction and Observing Statistical Properties of Reconstruction Operators

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bruce, Iain P.; Karaman, M. Muge; Rowe, Daniel B.

    2012-01-01

    The acquisition of sub-sampled data from an array of receiver coils has become a common means of reducing data acquisition time in MRI. Of the various techniques used in parallel MRI, SENSitivity Encoding (SENSE) is one of the most common, making use of a complex-valued weighted least squares estimation to unfold the aliased images. It was recently shown in Bruce et al. [Magn. Reson. Imag. 29(2011):1267–1287] that when the SENSE model is represented in terms of a real-valued isomorphism, it assumes a skew-symmetric covariance between receiver coils, as well as an identity covariance structure between voxels. In this manuscript, we show that not only is the skew-symmetric coil covariance unlike that of real data, but the estimated covariance structure between voxels over a time series of experimental data is not an identity matrix. As such, a new model, entitled SENSE-ITIVE, is described with both revised coil and voxel covariance structures. Both the SENSE and SENSE-ITIVE models are represented in terms of real-valued isomorphisms, allowing for a statistical analysis of reconstructed voxel means, variances, and correlations resulting from the use of different coil and voxel covariance structures used in the reconstruction processes to be conducted. It is shown through both theoretical and experimental illustrations that the miss-specification of the coil and voxel covariance structures in the SENSE model results in a lower standard deviation in each voxel of the reconstructed images, and thus an artificial increase in SNR, compared to the standard deviation and SNR of the SENSE-ITIVE model where both the coil and voxel covariances are appropriately accounted for. It is also shown that there are differences in the correlations induced by the reconstruction operations of both models, and consequently there are differences in the correlations estimated throughout the course of reconstructed time series. These differences in correlations could result in meaningful

  11. Forest biodiversity and its assessment by remote sensing

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Innes, J.L.; Koch, B.

    1998-01-01

    Several international conventions and agreements have stressed the importance of the assessment of forest biodiversity. However, the methods by which such assessments can be made remain unclear. Remote sensing represents an important tool for looking at ecosystem diversity and various structural aspects of individual ecosystems. It provides a means to make assessments across several different spatial scales, and is also critical for assessments of changes in ecosystem pattern over time. Many different forms of remote sensing are available. While lately the emphasis on laser scanner and synthetic aperture radar data has increased, most work to date has used photographs and digital optical imagery, primarily from airborne and spaceborne platforms. These provide the opportunity to assess different phenomena from the landscape to the stand scale. Remote sensing provides the most efficient tool available for determining landscape-scale elements of forest biodiversity, such as the relative proportion of matrix and patches and their physical arrangement. At intermediate scales, remote sensing provides an ideal tool for evaluating the presence of corridors and the nature of edges. At the stand scale, remote sensing technologies are likely to deliver an increasing amount of information about the structural attributes of forest stands, such as the nature of the canopy surface, the presence of layering within the canopy and presence of (very) coarse woody debris on the forest floor. Given the rate of development in the technology, even greater usage is likely in the future. (author)

  12. Remote sensing of ecosystem health: opportunities, challenges, and future perspectives.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Zhaoqin; Xu, Dandan; Guo, Xulin

    2014-11-07

    Maintaining a healthy ecosystem is essential for maximizing sustainable ecological services of the best quality to human beings. Ecological and conservation research has provided a strong scientific background on identifying ecological health indicators and correspondingly making effective conservation plans. At the same time, ecologists have asserted a strong need for spatially explicit and temporally effective ecosystem health assessments based on remote sensing data. Currently, remote sensing of ecosystem health is only based on one ecosystem attribute: vigor, organization, or resilience. However, an effective ecosystem health assessment should be a comprehensive and dynamic measurement of the three attributes. This paper reviews opportunities of remote sensing, including optical, radar, and LiDAR, for directly estimating indicators of the three ecosystem attributes, discusses the main challenges to develop a remote sensing-based spatially-explicit comprehensive ecosystem health system, and provides some future perspectives. The main challenges to develop a remote sensing-based spatially-explicit comprehensive ecosystem health system are: (1) scale issue; (2) transportability issue; (3) data availability; and (4) uncertainties in health indicators estimated from remote sensing data. However, the Radarsat-2 constellation, upcoming new optical sensors on Worldview-3 and Sentinel-2 satellites, and improved technologies for the acquisition and processing of hyperspectral, multi-angle optical, radar, and LiDAR data and multi-sensoral data fusion may partly address the current challenges.

  13. Remote Sensing of Ecosystem Health: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhaoqin Li

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available Maintaining a healthy ecosystem is essential for maximizing sustainable ecological services of the best quality to human beings. Ecological and conservation research has provided a strong scientific background on identifying ecological health indicators and correspondingly making effective conservation plans. At the same time, ecologists have asserted a strong need for spatially explicit and temporally effective ecosystem health assessments based on remote sensing data. Currently, remote sensing of ecosystem health is only based on one ecosystem attribute: vigor, organization, or resilience. However, an effective ecosystem health assessment should be a comprehensive and dynamic measurement of the three attributes. This paper reviews opportunities of remote sensing, including optical, radar, and LiDAR, for directly estimating indicators of the three ecosystem attributes, discusses the main challenges to develop a remote sensing-based spatially-explicit comprehensive ecosystem health system, and provides some future perspectives. The main challenges to develop a remote sensing-based spatially-explicit comprehensive ecosystem health system are: (1 scale issue; (2 transportability issue; (3 data availability; and (4 uncertainties in health indicators estimated from remote sensing data. However, the Radarsat-2 constellation, upcoming new optical sensors on Worldview-3 and Sentinel-2 satellites, and improved technologies for the acquisition and processing of hyperspectral, multi-angle optical, radar, and LiDAR data and multi-sensoral data fusion may partly address the current challenges.

  14. Remote Sensing of Ecosystem Health: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Zhaoqin; Xu, Dandan; Guo, Xulin

    2014-01-01

    Maintaining a healthy ecosystem is essential for maximizing sustainable ecological services of the best quality to human beings. Ecological and conservation research has provided a strong scientific background on identifying ecological health indicators and correspondingly making effective conservation plans. At the same time, ecologists have asserted a strong need for spatially explicit and temporally effective ecosystem health assessments based on remote sensing data. Currently, remote sensing of ecosystem health is only based on one ecosystem attribute: vigor, organization, or resilience. However, an effective ecosystem health assessment should be a comprehensive and dynamic measurement of the three attributes. This paper reviews opportunities of remote sensing, including optical, radar, and LiDAR, for directly estimating indicators of the three ecosystem attributes, discusses the main challenges to develop a remote sensing-based spatially-explicit comprehensive ecosystem health system, and provides some future perspectives. The main challenges to develop a remote sensing-based spatially-explicit comprehensive ecosystem health system are: (1) scale issue; (2) transportability issue; (3) data availability; and (4) uncertainties in health indicators estimated from remote sensing data. However, the Radarsat-2 constellation, upcoming new optical sensors on Worldview-3 and Sentinel-2 satellites, and improved technologies for the acquisition and processing of hyperspectral, multi-angle optical, radar, and LiDAR data and multi-sensoral data fusion may partly address the current challenges. PMID:25386759

  15. Modeling Common-Sense Decisions in Artificial Intelligence

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zak, Michail

    2010-01-01

    A methodology has been conceived for efficient synthesis of dynamical models that simulate common-sense decision- making processes. This methodology is intended to contribute to the design of artificial-intelligence systems that could imitate human common-sense decision making or assist humans in making correct decisions in unanticipated circumstances. This methodology is a product of continuing research on mathematical models of the behaviors of single- and multi-agent systems known in biology, economics, and sociology, ranging from a single-cell organism at one extreme to the whole of human society at the other extreme. Earlier results of this research were reported in several prior NASA Tech Briefs articles, the three most recent and relevant being Characteristics of Dynamics of Intelligent Systems (NPO -21037), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 26, No. 12 (December 2002), page 48; Self-Supervised Dynamical Systems (NPO-30634), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 27, No. 3 (March 2003), page 72; and Complexity for Survival of Living Systems (NPO- 43302), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 33, No. 7 (July 2009), page 62. The methodology involves the concepts reported previously, albeit viewed from a different perspective. One of the main underlying ideas is to extend the application of physical first principles to the behaviors of living systems. Models of motor dynamics are used to simulate the observable behaviors of systems or objects of interest, and models of mental dynamics are used to represent the evolution of the corresponding knowledge bases. For a given system, the knowledge base is modeled in the form of probability distributions and the mental dynamics is represented by models of the evolution of the probability densities or, equivalently, models of flows of information. Autonomy is imparted to the decisionmaking process by feedback from mental to motor dynamics. This feedback replaces unavailable external information by information stored in the internal knowledge base. Representation

  16. Symbiotic Sensing for Energy-Intensive Tasks in Large-Scale Mobile Sensing Applications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Le, Duc V; Nguyen, Thuong; Scholten, Hans; Havinga, Paul J M

    2017-11-29

    Energy consumption is a critical performance and user experience metric when developing mobile sensing applications, especially with the significantly growing number of sensing applications in recent years. As proposed a decade ago when mobile applications were still not popular and most mobile operating systems were single-tasking, conventional sensing paradigms such as opportunistic sensing and participatory sensing do not explore the relationship among concurrent applications for energy-intensive tasks. In this paper, inspired by social relationships among living creatures in nature, we propose a symbiotic sensing paradigm that can conserve energy, while maintaining equivalent performance to existing paradigms. The key idea is that sensing applications should cooperatively perform common tasks to avoid acquiring the same resources multiple times. By doing so, this sensing paradigm executes sensing tasks with very little extra resource consumption and, consequently, extends battery life. To evaluate and compare the symbiotic sensing paradigm with the existing ones, we develop mathematical models in terms of the completion probability and estimated energy consumption. The quantitative evaluation results using various parameters obtained from real datasets indicate that symbiotic sensing performs better than opportunistic sensing and participatory sensing in large-scale sensing applications, such as road condition monitoring, air pollution monitoring, and city noise monitoring.

  17. Symbiotic Sensing for Energy-Intensive Tasks in Large-Scale Mobile Sensing Applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scholten, Hans; Havinga, Paul J. M.

    2017-01-01

    Energy consumption is a critical performance and user experience metric when developing mobile sensing applications, especially with the significantly growing number of sensing applications in recent years. As proposed a decade ago when mobile applications were still not popular and most mobile operating systems were single-tasking, conventional sensing paradigms such as opportunistic sensing and participatory sensing do not explore the relationship among concurrent applications for energy-intensive tasks. In this paper, inspired by social relationships among living creatures in nature, we propose a symbiotic sensing paradigm that can conserve energy, while maintaining equivalent performance to existing paradigms. The key idea is that sensing applications should cooperatively perform common tasks to avoid acquiring the same resources multiple times. By doing so, this sensing paradigm executes sensing tasks with very little extra resource consumption and, consequently, extends battery life. To evaluate and compare the symbiotic sensing paradigm with the existing ones, we develop mathematical models in terms of the completion probability and estimated energy consumption. The quantitative evaluation results using various parameters obtained from real datasets indicate that symbiotic sensing performs better than opportunistic sensing and participatory sensing in large-scale sensing applications, such as road condition monitoring, air pollution monitoring, and city noise monitoring. PMID:29186037

  18. Symbiotic Sensing for Energy-Intensive Tasks in Large-Scale Mobile Sensing Applications

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Duc V. Le

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Energy consumption is a critical performance and user experience metric when developing mobile sensing applications, especially with the significantly growing number of sensing applications in recent years. As proposed a decade ago when mobile applications were still not popular and most mobile operating systems were single-tasking, conventional sensing paradigms such as opportunistic sensing and participatory sensing do not explore the relationship among concurrent applications for energy-intensive tasks. In this paper, inspired by social relationships among living creatures in nature, we propose a symbiotic sensing paradigm that can conserve energy, while maintaining equivalent performance to existing paradigms. The key idea is that sensing applications should cooperatively perform common tasks to avoid acquiring the same resources multiple times. By doing so, this sensing paradigm executes sensing tasks with very little extra resource consumption and, consequently, extends battery life. To evaluate and compare the symbiotic sensing paradigm with the existing ones, we develop mathematical models in terms of the completion probability and estimated energy consumption. The quantitative evaluation results using various parameters obtained from real datasets indicate that symbiotic sensing performs better than opportunistic sensing and participatory sensing in large-scale sensing applications, such as road condition monitoring, air pollution monitoring, and city noise monitoring.

  19. Fake It Until You Make It

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mattsson, Jan; Standing, Craig

    2016-01-01

    have difficulty explaining their business model components we identified that critical features in our simplicity framework include three main modules, transaction/matching, marketing and back-office components, and simplicity in terms of value proposition, conceptualization approach and usability....... This research proposes that a parsimonious view of digital business models, aligned with the lean start-up idea, makes sense for theory development and in terms of usefulness for entrepreneurs....

  20. Remote sensing image segmentation based on Hadoop cloud platform

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Jie; Zhu, Lingling; Cao, Fubin

    2018-01-01

    To solve the problem that the remote sensing image segmentation speed is slow and the real-time performance is poor, this paper studies the method of remote sensing image segmentation based on Hadoop platform. On the basis of analyzing the structural characteristics of Hadoop cloud platform and its component MapReduce programming, this paper proposes a method of image segmentation based on the combination of OpenCV and Hadoop cloud platform. Firstly, the MapReduce image processing model of Hadoop cloud platform is designed, the input and output of image are customized and the segmentation method of the data file is rewritten. Then the Mean Shift image segmentation algorithm is implemented. Finally, this paper makes a segmentation experiment on remote sensing image, and uses MATLAB to realize the Mean Shift image segmentation algorithm to compare the same image segmentation experiment. The experimental results show that under the premise of ensuring good effect, the segmentation rate of remote sensing image segmentation based on Hadoop cloud Platform has been greatly improved compared with the single MATLAB image segmentation, and there is a great improvement in the effectiveness of image segmentation.

  1. Advances on application of remote sensing technology to uranium prospecting in northwest of China

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ye Fawang; Liu Dechang; Zhao Yingjun; Zhang Jielin; Fang Maolong

    2012-01-01

    Some advances on application of remote sensing technology to uranium prospecting in northwest of China since 21st century are presented in this paper. They included: (1) application of ETM multi-spectral remote sensing technology to identify the sandstone-type uranium ore-controlling structure in north of Ordos Basin and investigate the uranium metallogenetic geological conditions in Qiangtang Basin, Tibet, (2) application of ASTER multi-spectral and QuickBird high spatial resolution remote sensing technology to extract and analyze the oil-gas reduced alteration in Bashibulake uranium ore district, Xinjiang, (3) discovery of Salamubulake uranium metallogenetic belt in Keping, Xinjiang, using ASTER multi-spectral, QuickBird high spatial resolution, and CASI/SASI airborne hyper-spectral remote sensing comprehensively, and (4) application of CASI/SASI airborne hyper-spectral remote sensing technology to extract volcanicrock type uranium mineralization alteration in Baiyanghe area, Xinjiang. These application advances show the good application effects of remote sensing technology to uranium exploration in northwest of China, which provides important references for making further uranium prospecting using remote sensing technology. (authors)

  2. Making sense of loss: Situating the Mumbai attacks of 26/11 in the context of altruistic suicide homicide

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tanni Chaudhuri

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available A peculiar irony characterizes the perception of global terrorism—in the strong penchant to flavor it with ethno or religious centric biases or in the disavowal of any auxiliary circumstance leading up to the sporadic incidence of violence. This paper analyzes the Mumbai attacks of November 26th, 2009 from the context of altruistic suicide/homicide. The waging of war against anonymous targets in Mumbai was by all means impersonal. It could be connected to an aftermath of several factors: Kashmir, homegrown terrorism, backlash of sectarian groups or yet another manifestation of already hostile Indo-Pak relationships. The spectacle of terror that was life telecast by national and global media led to a sequel of reactions including a follow-up of Indo-Pak mutual accusations, evoking of national sentiments and analytical ruptures in south Asian intelligentsia in making sense of the loss. This paper situates the Mumbai attacks of 26/11 in the theoretical discourse on sociology of terrorism by (i providing a scholastic definition of terrorism and its corresponding attributes that distinguishes terrorism from other sporadic acts of violence, (ii reflects on the context of terrorism with reference to altruism as in the classical Durkhiemian tradition and (iii analytically moves beyond the classical paradigm to redefine the terror trails of 26/11 within the emerging definitions of altruistic-suicide-homicide.

  3. Philosophy vs the common sense

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    V. V. Chernyshov

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper deals with the antinomy of philosophy and the common sense. Philosophy emerges as a way of specifically human knowledge, which purposes analytics of the reality of subjective experience. The study reveals that in order to alienate philosophy from the common sense it was essential to revise the understanding of wisdom. The new, philosophical interpretation of wisdom – offered by Pythagoras – has laid the foundation of any future philosophy. Thus, philosophy emerges, alienating itself from the common sense, which refers to the common or collective experience. Moreover, the study examines the role of emotions, conformity and conventionality which they play with respect to the common sense. Next the author focuses on the role of philosophical intuition, guided with principles of rationality, nonconformity and scepticism, which the author professes the foundation stones of any sound philosophy. The common sense, described as deeply routed in the world of human emotions, aims at empathy, as the purpose of philosophy is to provide the rational means of knowledge. Therefore, philosophy uses thinking, keeping the permanent efforts to check and recheck data of its own experience. Thus, the first task of philosophical thinking appears to overcome the suggestion of the common sense, which purposes the social empathy, as philosophical intuition aims at independent thinking, the analytics of subjective experience. The study describes the fundamental principles of the common sense, on the one hand, and those of philosophy, on the other. The author arrives to conclusion that the common sense is unable to exceed the limits of sensual experience. Even there, where it apparently rises to a form of any «spiritual unity», even there it cannot avoid referring to the data of commonly shared sensual experience; though, philosophy, meanwhile, goes beyond sensuality, creating a discourse that would be able to alienate from it, and to make its rational

  4. Colorimetric and Fluorescent Bimodal Ratiometric Probes for pH Sensing of Living Cells.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Yuan-Yuan; Wu, Ming; Zhu, Li-Na; Feng, Xi-Zeng; Kong, De-Ming

    2015-06-01

    pH measurement is widely used in many fields. Ratiometric pH sensing is an important way to improve the detection accuracy. Herein, five water-soluble cationic porphyrin derivatives were synthesized and their optical property changes with pH value were investigated. Their pH-dependent assembly/disassembly behaviors caused significant changes in both absorption and fluorescence spectra, thus making them promising bimodal ratiometric probes for both colorimetric and fluorescent pH sensing. Different substituent identity and position confer these probes with different sensitive pH-sensing ranges, and the substituent position gives a larger effect. By selecting different porphyrins, different signal intensity ratios and different fluorescence excitation wavelengths, sensitive pH sensing can be achieved in the range of 2.1-8.0. Having demonstrated the excellent reversibility, good accuracy and low cytotoxicity of the probes, they were successfully applied in pH sensing inside living cells. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  5. The benefits of remote sensing for energy policy

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sen, A.

    2004-01-01

    A strong remote sensing regime is a necessary component of any contemporary national or international energy policy. Energy is essential to the functioning of modem industrial society, and as such it is the responsibility of governments to produce sound national energy policies in order to ensure stable economic growth, ecologically responsible use of energy resources and the health and safety of citizens. Comprehensive, accurate and timely remote sensing data can aid decision making on energy matters in several areas. This paper looks at the benefits that can be realized in resource exploration, weather forecasting and environmental monitoring. Improvements in the technology of remote sensing platforms would be of great value to buyers of energy, sellers of energy and the environment. Furthermore, the utility of such information could be enhanced by efforts of government agencies to communicate it more effectively to the end-user. National energy policies should thus include investments not only in satellite system hardware to collect data, but also in the services required to interpret and distribute the data. (author)

  6. Realism and Impartiality: Making Sustainability Effective in Decision-Making.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bastons, Miquel; Armengou, Jaume

    2017-08-01

    There is both individual and collective widespread concern in society about the impact of human activity and the effects of our decisions on the physical and social environment. This concern is included within the idea of sustainability. The meaning of the concept is still ambiguous and its practical effectiveness disputed. Like many other authors, this article uses as a starting point the definition proposed by the World Commission on Environment and Development (Our common future, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987), considering it to be a proposal for changing the assessment of the effects of decisions, from at least two perspectives: (1) what effects we should consider and (2) how we should assess them. Based on this double perspective, sustainability is explored as a method for decision-making which both expands the assessment of the consequences, and also provides an objective criterion for such assessment. It will be argued that the idea of sustainability, seen from this perspective, brings to decision-making two qualities which had been partially lost: realism and impartiality. In turn, the criteria for realism and impartiality in decision-making can be used to identify the limitations of some partial approaches to sustainability, which suffer from insufficient realism (emotional altruism), insufficient impartiality (tactical altruism) or both phenomena at once (egoism). The article concludes by demonstrating how realism and impartiality provide the basis for a new form of sustainable decision-making (ethical sustainability), which is dependent on the development of two moral virtues, prudence and benevolence, and which brings practical effectiveness and ethical sense to the concept of sustainability.

  7. A mobile-agent-based wireless sensing network for structural monitoring applications

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Taylor, Stuart G; Farinholt, Kevin M; Figueiredo, Eloi; Moro, Erik A; Park, Gyuhae; Farrar, Charles R; Flynn, Eric B; Mascarenas, David L; Todd, Michael D

    2009-01-01

    A new wireless sensing network paradigm is presented for structural monitoring applications. In this approach, both power and data interrogation commands are conveyed via a mobile agent that is sent to sensor nodes to perform intended interrogations, which can alleviate several limitations of the traditional sensing networks. Furthermore, the mobile agent provides computational power to make near real-time assessments on the structural conditions. This paper will discuss such prototype systems, which are used to interrogate impedance-based sensors for structural health monitoring applications. Our wireless sensor node is specifically designed to accept various energy sources, including wireless energy transmission, and to be wirelessly triggered on an as-needed basis by the mobile agent or other sensor nodes. The capabilities of this proposed sensing network paradigm are demonstrated in the laboratory and the field

  8. A new type of intelligent wireless sensing network for health monitoring of large-size structures

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lei, Ying; Liu, Ch.; Wu, D. T.; Tang, Y. L.; Wang, J. X.; Wu, L. J.; Jiang, X. D.

    2009-07-01

    In recent years, some innovative wireless sensing systems have been proposed. However, more exploration and research on wireless sensing systems are required before wireless systems can substitute for the traditional wire-based systems. In this paper, a new type of intelligent wireless sensing network is proposed for the heath monitoring of large-size structures. Hardware design of the new wireless sensing units is first studied. The wireless sensing unit mainly consists of functional modules of: sensing interface, signal conditioning, signal digitization, computational core, wireless communication and battery management. Then, software architecture of the unit is introduced. The sensing network has a two-level cluster-tree architecture with Zigbee communication protocol. Important issues such as power saving and fault tolerance are considered in the designs of the new wireless sensing units and sensing network. Each cluster head in the network is characterized by its computational capabilities that can be used to implement the computational methodologies of structural health monitoring; making the wireless sensing units and sensing network have "intelligent" characteristics. Primary tests on the measurement data collected by the wireless system are performed. The distributed computational capacity of the intelligent sensing network is also demonstrated. It is shown that the new type of intelligent wireless sensing network provides an efficient tool for structural health monitoring of large-size structures.

  9. Remote Sensing Open Access Journal: Increasing Impact through Quality Publications

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Prasad S. Thenkabail

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available Remote Sensing, an open access journal (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing has grown at rapid pace since its first publication five years ago, and has acquired a strong reputation. It is a “pathfinder” being the first open access journal in remote sensing. For those academics who were used to waiting a year or two for their peer-reviewed scientific work to be reviewed, revised, edited, and published, Remote Sensing offers a publication time frame that is unheard of (in most cases, less than four months. However, we do this after multiple peer-reviews, multiple revisions, much editorial scrutiny and decision-making, and professional editing by an editorial office before a paper is published online in our tight time frame, bringing a paradigm shift in scientific publication. As a result, there has been a swift increase in submissions of higher and higher quality manuscripts from the best authors and institutes working on Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS, GIScience, and all related geospatial science and technologies from around the world. The purpose of this editorial is to update everyone interested in Remote Sensing on the progress made over the last year, and provide an outline of our vision for the immediate future. [...

  10. Six-Port Based Interferometry for Precise Radar and Sensing Applications

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alexander Koelpin

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Microwave technology plays a more important role in modern industrial sensing applications. Pushed by the significant progress in monolithic microwave integrated circuit technology over the past decades, complex sensing systems operating in the microwave and even millimeter-wave range are available for reasonable costs combined with exquisite performance. In the context of industrial sensing, this stimulates new approaches for metrology based on microwave technology. An old measurement principle nearly forgotten over the years has recently gained more and more attention in both academia and industry: the six-port interferometer. This paper reviews the basic concept, investigates promising applications in remote, as well as contact-based sensing and compares the system with state-of-the-art metrology. The significant advantages will be discussed just as the limitations of the six-port architecture. Particular attention will be paid to impairment effects and non-ideal behavior, as well as compensation and linearization concepts. It will be shown that in application fields, like remote distance sensing, precise alignment measurements, as well as interferometrically-evaluated mechanical strain analysis, the six-port architecture delivers extraordinary measurement results combined with high measurement data update rates for reasonable system costs. This makes the six-port architecture a promising candidate for industrial metrology.

  11. Quantum Organizational World-Making through Material Emobided Storytelling Practices

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Svane, Marita

    2014-01-01

    -making phenomena. In this article, organizational development and change are viewed as world-making phenomena that emerge from material, embodied, storytelling practices and are dissipated in the organization through the living story web in fractal, rhizomatic organizing processes. Diffractively reading pri......-marily Boje, Barad, Ingold, Heidegger, Bakhtin, and Deleuze and Guattari through each other, a quantum storytelling framework is proposed for better understanding organizing processes towards the future. Special attention is paid to the prospective, sense-shaping role of agential rhizomatic antenarratives...

  12. Remote Sensing by Satellite for Environmental Education: A Survey and a Proposal for Teaching at Upper Secondary and University Level.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bosler, Ulrich

    Knowledge of the environment has grown to such an extent that information technology (IT) is essential to make sense of the available data. An example of this is remote sensing by satellite. In recent years this field has grown in importance and remote sensing is used for a range of uses including the automatic survey of wheat yields in North…

  13. Make-or-buy decisions and the manipulability of performance measures

    OpenAIRE

    Andersson, Fredrik

    2009-01-01

    Abstract in Undetermined The make-or-buy decision is analyzed in a simple framework combining contractual incompleteness with the existence of an imperfect but contractible performance measure. Contractual incompleteness gives rise to two regimes, identified with make and buy. The performance measure on which comprehensive contracts can be written is imperfect in the sense of being subject to manipulation. The performance incentives faced by the agent are stronger in the “buy” regime. A posit...

  14. Intuition in decision making and learning: Individual and organisational perspectives.

    OpenAIRE

    Akinci, Cinla.

    2011-01-01

    Although much has been written about the role of rational/analytical ways of knowing in decision making and problem solving in management, comparatively little is known about the way intuitive cognition manifests itself in organisations in general and in relation to organisational learning in particular. Several conceptualisations have been offered in respect to the ways in which managers perceive, make sense and act in the social settings of business organisations. Intuition and organisation...

  15. Making Sense Together

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tylén, Kristian; Fusaroli, Riccardo; Bundgaard, Peer

    2013-01-01

    linguistic relations (Saussure 1959), and yet another basic embodied structures as the ground for invariant aspects of meaning (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Here we propose an alternative account in which the possibility for sharing meaning is motivated by four sources of structural stability: 1) the physical...

  16. Bullying Victimization Prevalence and Its Effects on Psychosomatic Complaints: Can Sense of Coherence Make a Difference?

    Science.gov (United States)

    García-Moya, Irene; Suominen, Sakari; Moreno, Carmen

    2014-01-01

    Background: The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of bullying victimization and its impact on physical and psychological complaints in a representative sample of adolescents and to explore the role of sense of coherence (SOC) in victimization prevalence and consequences. Methods: A representative sample of Spanish adolescents (N =…

  17. Geospatial Analysis and Remote Sensing from Airplanes and Satellites for Cultural Resources Management

    Science.gov (United States)

    Giardino, Marco J.; Haley, Bryan S.

    2005-01-01

    Cultural resource management consists of research to identify, evaluate, document and assess cultural resources, planning to assist in decision-making, and stewardship to implement the preservation, protection and interpretation of these decisions and plans. One technique that may be useful in cultural resource management archaeology is remote sensing. It is the acquisition of data and derivative information about objects or materials (targets) located on the Earth's surface or in its atmosphere by using sensor mounted on platforms located at a distance from the targets to make measurements on interactions between the targets and electromagnetic radiation. Included in this definition are systems that acquire imagery by photographic methods and digital multispectral sensors. Data collected by digital multispectral sensors on aircraft and satellite platforms play a prominent role in many earth science applications, including land cover mapping, geology, soil science, agriculture, forestry, water resource management, urban and regional planning, and environmental assessments. Inherent in the analysis of remotely sensed data is the use of computer-based image processing techniques. Geographical information systems (GIS), designed for collecting, managing, and analyzing spatial information, are also useful in the analysis of remotely sensed data. A GIS can be used to integrate diverse types of spatially referenced digital data, including remotely sensed and map data. In archaeology, these tools have been used in various ways to aid in cultural resource projects. For example, they have been used to predict the presence of archaeological resources using modern environmental indicators. Remote sensing techniques have also been used to directly detect the presence of unknown sites based on the impact of past occupation on the Earth's surface. Additionally, remote sensing has been used as a mapping tool aimed at delineating the boundaries of a site or mapping previously

  18. IRIS - A concept for microwave sensing of soil moisture and ocean salinity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moghaddam, M.; Njoku, E.

    1997-01-01

    A concept is described for passive microwave sensing of soil moisture and ocean salinity from space. The Inflatable Radiometric Imaging System (IRIS) makes use of a large-diameter, offset-fed, parabolic-torus antenna with multiple feeds, in a conical pushbroom configuration.

  19. Google Advertising Tools Cashing in with AdSense and AdWords

    CERN Document Server

    Davis, Harold

    2010-01-01

    With this book, you'll learn how to take full advantage of Google AdWords and AdSense, the sophisticated online advertising tools used by thousands of large and small businesses. This new edition provides a substantially updated guide to advertising on the Web, including how it works in general, and how Google's advertising programs in particular help you make money. You'll find everything you need to work with AdWords, which lets you generate text ads to accompany specific search term results, and AdSense, which automatically delivers precisely targeted text and image ads to your website.

  20. Wavefront sensing with all-digital Stokes measurements

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Dudley, Angela L

    2014-09-25

    Full Text Available to wavefront sensing [8] based on Stokes polarimetry which makes use of the amplitude and phase relationship between orthogonal states of polarization. With our approach a field of interest is generated by encoding an appropriate hologram on a spatial light... modulator (SLM). Since SLMs are diffraction-inefficient, we can exploit the amplitude relationship between the orthogonal polarization states allowing the execution of Stokes polarimetry of the co-linear superposition of the reference beam and the beam...

  1. Ultrasensitive mass sensing with nonlinear optics in a doubly clamped suspended carbon nanotube resonator

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Chen, Hua-Jun; Zhu, Ka-Di [Key Laboratory of Artificial Structures and Quantum Control (Ministry of Education), Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 DongChuan Road, Shanghai 2 00240 (China)

    2013-12-07

    Nanomechanical resonator makes itself as an ideal system for ultrasensitive mass sensing due to its ultralow mass and high vibrational frequency. The mass sensing principle is due to the linear relationship of the frequency-shift and mass-variation. In this work, we will propose a nonlinear optical mass sensor based on a doubly clamped suspended carbon nanotube resonator in all-optical domain. The masses of external particles (such as nitric oxide molecules) landing onto the surface of carbon nanotube can be determined directly and accurately via using the nonlinear optical spectroscopy. This mass sensing proposed here may provide a nonlinear optical measurement technique in quantum measurements and environmental science.

  2. International Commercial Remote Sensing Practices and Policies: A Comparative Analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stryker, Timothy

    In recent years, there has been much discussion about U.S. commercial remoteUnder the Act, the Secretary of Commerce sensing policies and how effectively theylicenses the operations of private U.S. address U.S. national security, foreignremote sensing satellite systems, in policy, commercial, and public interests.consultation with the Secretaries of Defense, This paper will provide an overview of U.S.State, and Interior. PDD-23 provided further commercial remote sensing laws,details concerning the operation of advanced regulations, and policies, and describe recentsystems, as well as criteria for the export of NOAA initiatives. It will also addressturnkey systems and/or components. In July related foreign practices, and the overall2000, pursuant to the authority delegated to legal context for trade and investment in thisit by the Secretary of Commerce, NOAA critical industry.iss ued new regulations for the industry. Licensing and Regulationsatellite systems. NOAA's program is The 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act ("the Act"), and the 1994 policy on Foreign Access to Remote Sensing Space Capabilities (known as Presidential Decision Directive-23, or PDD-23) put into place an ambitious legal and policy framework for the U.S. Government's licensing of privately-owned, high-resolution satellite systems. Previously, capabilities afforded national security and observes the international obligations of the United States; maintain positive control of spacecraft operations; maintain a tasking record in conjunction with other record-keeping requirements; provide U.S. Government access to and use of data when required for national security or foreign policy purposes; provide for U.S. Government review of all significant foreign agreements; obtain U.S. Government approval for any encryption devices used; make available unenhanced data to a "sensed state" as soon as such data are available and on reasonable cost terms and conditions; make available unenhanced data as requested

  3. Fast, Highly-Sensitive, and Wide-Dynamic-Range Interdigitated Capacitor Glucose Biosensor Using Solvatochromic Dye-Containing Sensing Membrane.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Khan, Md Rajibur Rahaman; Khalilian, Alireza; Kang, Shin-Won

    2016-02-20

    In this paper, we proposed an interdigitated capacitor (IDC)-based glucose biosensor to measure different concentrations of glucose from 1 μM to 1 M. We studied four different types of solvatochromic dyes: Auramine O, Nile red, Rhodamine B, and Reichardt's dye (R-dye). These dyes were individually incorporated into a polymer [polyvinyl chloride (PVC)] and N,N-Dimethylacetamide (DMAC) solution to make the respective dielectric/sensing materials. To the best of our knowledge, we report for the first time an IDC glucose biosensing system utilizing a solvatochromic-dye-containing sensing membrane. These four dielectric or sensing materials were individually placed into the interdigitated electrode (IDE) by spin coating to make four IDC glucose biosensing elements. The proposed IDC glucose biosensor has a high sensing ability over a wide dynamic range and its sensitivity was about 23.32 mV/decade. It also has fast response and recovery times of approximately 7 s and 5 s, respectively, excellent reproducibility with a standard deviation of approximately 0.023, highly stable sensing performance, and real-time monitoring capabilities. The proposed IDC glucose biosensor was compared with an IDC, potentiometric, FET, and fiber-optic glucose sensor with respect to response time, dynamic range width, sensitivity, and linearity. We observed that the designed IDC glucose biosensor offered excellent performance.

  4. Energy-Efficient Integration of Continuous Context Sensing and Prediction into Smartwatches

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Reza Rawassizadeh

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available As the availability and use of wearables increases, they are becoming a promising platform for context sensing and context analysis. Smartwatches are a particularly interesting platform for this purpose, as they offer salient advantages, such as their proximity to the human body. However, they also have limitations associated with their small form factor, such as processing power and battery life, which makes it difficult to simply transfer smartphone-based context sensing and prediction models to smartwatches. In this paper, we introduce an energy-efficient, generic, integrated framework for continuous context sensing and prediction on smartwatches. Our work extends previous approaches for context sensing and prediction on wrist-mounted wearables that perform predictive analytics outside the device. We offer a generic sensing module and a novel energy-efficient, on-device prediction module that is based on a semantic abstraction approach to convert sensor data into meaningful information objects, similar to human perception of a behavior. Through six evaluations, we analyze the energy efficiency of our framework modules, identify the optimal file structure for data access and demonstrate an increase in accuracy of prediction through our semantic abstraction method. The proposed framework is hardware independent and can serve as a reference model for implementing context sensing and prediction on small wearable devices beyond smartwatches, such as body-mounted cameras.

  5. Energy-Efficient Integration of Continuous Context Sensing and Prediction into Smartwatches.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rawassizadeh, Reza; Tomitsch, Martin; Nourizadeh, Manouchehr; Momeni, Elaheh; Peery, Aaron; Ulanova, Liudmila; Pazzani, Michael

    2015-09-08

    As the availability and use of wearables increases, they are becoming a promising platform for context sensing and context analysis. Smartwatches are a particularly interesting platform for this purpose, as they offer salient advantages, such as their proximity to the human body. However, they also have limitations associated with their small form factor, such as processing power and battery life, which makes it difficult to simply transfer smartphone-based context sensing and prediction models to smartwatches. In this paper, we introduce an energy-efficient, generic, integrated framework for continuous context sensing and prediction on smartwatches. Our work extends previous approaches for context sensing and prediction on wrist-mounted wearables that perform predictive analytics outside the device. We offer a generic sensing module and a novel energy-efficient, on-device prediction module that is based on a semantic abstraction approach to convert sensor data into meaningful information objects, similar to human perception of a behavior. Through six evaluations, we analyze the energy efficiency of our framework modules, identify the optimal file structure for data access and demonstrate an increase in accuracy of prediction through our semantic abstraction method. The proposed framework is hardware independent and can serve as a reference model for implementing context sensing and prediction on small wearable devices beyond smartwatches, such as body-mounted cameras.

  6. Pipeline Structural Damage Detection Using Self-Sensing Technology and PNN-Based Pattern Recognition

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lee, Chang Gil; Park, Woong Ki; Park, Seung Hee

    2011-01-01

    In a structure, damage can occur at several scales from micro-cracking to corrosion or loose bolts. This makes the identification of damage difficult with one mode of sensing. Hence, a multi-mode actuated sensing system is proposed based on a self-sensing circuit using a piezoelectric sensor. In the self sensing-based multi-mode actuated sensing, one mode provides a wide frequency-band structural response from the self-sensed impedance measurement and the other mode provides a specific frequency-induced structural wavelet response from the self-sensed guided wave measurement. In this study, an experimental study on the pipeline system is carried out to verify the effectiveness and the robustness of the proposed structural health monitoring approach. Different types of structural damage are artificially inflicted on the pipeline system. To classify the multiple types of structural damage, a supervised learning-based statistical pattern recognition is implemented by composing a two-dimensional space using the damage indices extracted from the impedance and guided wave features. For more systematic damage classification, several control parameters to determine an optimal decision boundary for the supervised learning-based pattern recognition are optimized. Finally, further research issues will be discussed for real-world implementation of the proposed approach

  7. Secure Cooperative Spectrum Sensing for the Cognitive Radio Network Using Nonuniform Reliability

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Muhammad Usman

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Both reliable detection of the primary signal in a noisy and fading environment and nullifying the effect of unauthorized users are important tasks in cognitive radio networks. To address these issues, we consider a cooperative spectrum sensing approach where each user is assigned nonuniform reliability based on the sensing performance. Users with poor channel or faulty sensor are assigned low reliability. The nonuniform reliabilities serve as identification tags and are used to isolate users with malicious behavior. We consider a link layer attack similar to the Byzantine attack, which falsifies the spectrum sensing data. Three different strategies are presented in this paper to ignore unreliable and malicious users in the network. Considering only reliable users for global decision improves sensing time and decreases collisions in the control channel. The fusion center uses the degree of reliability as a weighting factor to determine the global decision in scheme I. Schemes II and III consider the unreliability of users, which makes the computations even simpler. The proposed schemes reduce the number of sensing reports and increase the inference accuracy. The advantages of our proposed schemes over conventional cooperative spectrum sensing and the Chair-Varshney optimum rule are demonstrated through simulations.

  8. Satellite Remote Sensing for Coastal Management: A Review of Successful Applications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McCarthy, Matthew J; Colna, Kaitlyn E; El-Mezayen, Mahmoud M; Laureano-Rosario, Abdiel E; Méndez-Lázaro, Pablo; Otis, Daniel B; Toro-Farmer, Gerardo; Vega-Rodriguez, Maria; Muller-Karger, Frank E

    2017-08-01

    Management of coastal and marine natural resources presents a number of challenges as a growing global population and a changing climate require us to find better strategies to conserve the resources on which our health, economy, and overall well-being depend. To evaluate the status and trends in changing coastal resources over larger areas, managers in government agencies and private stakeholders around the world have increasingly turned to remote sensing technologies. A surge in collaborative and innovative efforts between resource managers, academic researchers, and industry partners is becoming increasingly vital to keep pace with evolving changes of our natural resources. Synoptic capabilities of remote sensing techniques allow assessments that are impossible to do with traditional methods. Sixty years of remote sensing research have paved the way for resource management applications, but uncertainties regarding the use of this technology have hampered its use in management fields. Here we review examples of remote sensing applications in the sectors of coral reefs, wetlands, water quality, public health, and fisheries and aquaculture that have successfully contributed to management and decision-making goals.

  9. Satellite Remote Sensing for Coastal Management: A Review of Successful Applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    McCarthy, Matthew J.; Colna, Kaitlyn E.; El-Mezayen, Mahmoud M.; Laureano-Rosario, Abdiel E.; Méndez-Lázaro, Pablo; Otis, Daniel B.; Toro-Farmer, Gerardo; Vega-Rodriguez, Maria; Muller-Karger, Frank E.

    2017-08-01

    Management of coastal and marine natural resources presents a number of challenges as a growing global population and a changing climate require us to find better strategies to conserve the resources on which our health, economy, and overall well-being depend. To evaluate the status and trends in changing coastal resources over larger areas, managers in government agencies and private stakeholders around the world have increasingly turned to remote sensing technologies. A surge in collaborative and innovative efforts between resource managers, academic researchers, and industry partners is becoming increasingly vital to keep pace with evolving changes of our natural resources. Synoptic capabilities of remote sensing techniques allow assessments that are impossible to do with traditional methods. Sixty years of remote sensing research have paved the way for resource management applications, but uncertainties regarding the use of this technology have hampered its use in management fields. Here we review examples of remote sensing applications in the sectors of coral reefs, wetlands, water quality, public health, and fisheries and aquaculture that have successfully contributed to management and decision-making goals.

  10. High-Resolution Remote Sensing Image Building Extraction Based on Markov Model

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, W.; Yan, L.; Chang, Y.; Gong, L.

    2018-04-01

    With the increase of resolution, remote sensing images have the characteristics of increased information load, increased noise, more complex feature geometry and texture information, which makes the extraction of building information more difficult. To solve this problem, this paper designs a high resolution remote sensing image building extraction method based on Markov model. This method introduces Contourlet domain map clustering and Markov model, captures and enhances the contour and texture information of high-resolution remote sensing image features in multiple directions, and further designs the spectral feature index that can characterize "pseudo-buildings" in the building area. Through the multi-scale segmentation and extraction of image features, the fine extraction from the building area to the building is realized. Experiments show that this method can restrain the noise of high-resolution remote sensing images, reduce the interference of non-target ground texture information, and remove the shadow, vegetation and other pseudo-building information, compared with the traditional pixel-level image information extraction, better performance in building extraction precision, accuracy and completeness.

  11. Identity Formation: Professional Development in Practice Strengthens a Sense of Self

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mackay, Margaret

    2017-01-01

    This paper explores how practitioners in a hostile context make sense of continuing professional development (CPD). Critics worldwide question the professional status of human resources seeing the function as an underdog to well-established professions. The study uses an interpretivist approach to examine the conceptual interweaving of learning…

  12. Database Objects vs Files: Evaluation of alternative strategies for managing large remote sensing data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baru, Chaitan; Nandigam, Viswanath; Krishnan, Sriram

    2010-05-01

    Increasingly, the geoscience user community expects modern IT capabilities to be available in service of their research and education activities, including the ability to easily access and process large remote sensing datasets via online portals such as GEON (www.geongrid.org) and OpenTopography (opentopography.org). However, serving such datasets via online data portals presents a number of challenges. In this talk, we will evaluate the pros and cons of alternative storage strategies for management and processing of such datasets using binary large object implementations (BLOBs) in database systems versus implementation in Hadoop files using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). The storage and I/O requirements for providing online access to large datasets dictate the need for declustering data across multiple disks, for capacity as well as bandwidth and response time performance. This requires partitioning larger files into a set of smaller files, and is accompanied by the concomitant requirement for managing large numbers of file. Storing these sub-files as blobs in a shared-nothing database implemented across a cluster provides the advantage that all the distributed storage management is done by the DBMS. Furthermore, subsetting and processing routines can be implemented as user-defined functions (UDFs) on these blobs and would run in parallel across the set of nodes in the cluster. On the other hand, there are both storage overheads and constraints, and software licensing dependencies created by such an implementation. Another approach is to store the files in an external filesystem with pointers to them from within database tables. The filesystem may be a regular UNIX filesystem, a parallel filesystem, or HDFS. In the HDFS case, HDFS would provide the file management capability, while the subsetting and processing routines would be implemented as Hadoop programs using the MapReduce model. Hadoop and its related software libraries are freely available

  13. Remote Sensing Training for Middle School through the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hayden, L. B.; Johnson, D.; Baltrop, J.

    2012-12-01

    Remote sensing has steadily become an integral part of multiple disciplines, research, and education. Remote sensing can be defined as the process of acquiring information about an object or area of interest without physical contact. As remote sensing becomes a necessity in solving real world problems and scientific questions an important question to consider is why remote sensing training is significant to education and is it relevant to training students in this discipline. What has been discovered is the interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, specifically remote sensing, has declined in our youth. The Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) continuously strives to provide education and research opportunities on ice sheet, coastal, ocean, and marine science. One of those continued outreach efforts are Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) Middle School Program. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation CReSIS Middle School Program offers hands on experience for middle school students. CERSER and NSF offer students the opportunity to study and learn about remote sensing and its vital role in today's society as it relate to climate change and real world problems. The CReSIS Middle School Program is an annual two-week effort that offers middle school students experience with remote sensing and its applications. Specifically, participants received training with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) where the students learned the tools, mechanisms, and applications of a Garmin 60 GPS. As a part of the program the students were required to complete a fieldwork assignment where several longitude and latitude points were given throughout campus. The students had to then enter the longitude and latitude points into the Garmin 60 GPS, navigate their way to each location while also accurately reading the GPS to make sure travel was in the right direction. Upon completion of GPS training the

  14. Making Instructional Decisions Based on Data: What, How, and Why

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mokhtari, Kouider; Rosemary, Catherine A.; Edwards, Patricia A.

    2007-01-01

    A carefully coordinated literacy assessment and instruction framework implemented school-wide can support school teams in making sense of various types of data for instructional planning. Instruction that is data based and goal driven sets the stage for continuous reading and writing improvement. (Contains 2 figures.)

  15. Emotion, decision making, and the amygdala.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Seymour, Ben; Dolan, Ray

    2008-06-12

    Emotion plays a critical role in many contemporary accounts of decision making, but exactly what underlies its influence and how this is mediated in the brain remain far from clear. Here, we review behavioral studies that suggest that Pavlovian processes can exert an important influence over choice and may account for many effects that have traditionally been attributed to emotion. We illustrate how recent experiments cast light on the underlying structure of Pavlovian control and argue that generally this influence makes good computational sense. Corresponding neuroscientific data from both animals and humans implicate a central role for the amygdala through interactions with other brain areas. This yields a neurobiological account of emotion in which it may operate, often covertly, to optimize rather than corrupt economic choice.

  16. Phase sensitive distributed vibration sensing based on ultraweak fiber Bragg grating array using double-pulse

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Tao; Wang, Feng; Zhang, Xuping; Zhang, Lin; Yuan, Quan; Liu, Yu; Yan, Zhijun

    2017-08-01

    A distributed vibration sensing technique using double-optical-pulse based on phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (ϕ-OTDR) and an ultraweak fiber Bragg grating (UWFBG) array is proposed for the first time. The single-mode sensing fiber is integrated with the UWFBG array that has uniform spatial interval and ultraweak reflectivity. The relatively high reflectivity of the UWFBG, compared with the Rayleigh scattering, gains a high signal-to-noise ratio for the signal, which can make the system achieve the maximum detectable frequency limited by the round-trip time of the probe pulse in fiber. A corresponding experimental ϕ-OTDR system with a 4.5 km sensing fiber integrated with the UWFBG array was setup for the evaluation of the system performance. Distributed vibration sensing is successfully realized with spatial resolution of 50 m. The sensing range of the vibration frequency can cover from 3 Hz to 9 kHz.

  17. Remote Sensing Terminology in a Global and Knowledge-Based World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kancheva, Rumiana

    , GIS, etc. Our belief is that the elaboration of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries and glossaries in this spreading, most technically advanced and promising field of human expertise is of great practical importance. The work on an English-Bulgarian Dictionary of Remote Sensing Terms is described including considerations on its scope, structure, information content, sellection of terms, and etc. The vision builds upon previous national and international experience and makes use of ongoing activities on the subject. Any interest in cooperation and initiating suchlike collaborative projects is welcome and highly appreciated.

  18. Efficient Wideband Spectrum Sensing with Maximal Spectral Efficiency for LEO Mobile Satellite Systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Feilong Li

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The usable satellite spectrum is becoming scarce due to static spectrum allocation policies. Cognitive radio approaches have already demonstrated their potential towards spectral efficiency for providing more spectrum access opportunities to secondary user (SU with sufficient protection to licensed primary user (PU. Hence, recent scientific literature has been focused on the tradeoff between spectrum reuse and PU protection within narrowband spectrum sensing (SS in terrestrial wireless sensing networks. However, those narrowband SS techniques investigated in the context of terrestrial CR may not be applicable for detecting wideband satellite signals. In this paper, we mainly investigate the problem of joint designing sensing time and hard fusion scheme to maximize SU spectral efficiency in the scenario of low earth orbit (LEO mobile satellite services based on wideband spectrum sensing. Compressed detection model is established to prove that there indeed exists one optimal sensing time achieving maximal spectral efficiency. Moreover, we propose novel wideband cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS framework where each SU reporting duration can be utilized for its following SU sensing. The sensing performance benefits from the novel CSS framework because the equivalent sensing time is extended by making full use of reporting slot. Furthermore, in respect of time-varying channel, the spatiotemporal CSS (ST-CSS is presented to attain space and time diversity gain simultaneously under hard decision fusion rule. Computer simulations show that the optimal sensing settings algorithm of joint optimization of sensing time, hard fusion rule and scheduling strategy achieves significant improvement in spectral efficiency. Additionally, the novel ST-CSS scheme performs much higher spectral efficiency than that of general CSS framework.

  19. Making Common Sense of Vaccines: An Example of Discussing the Recombinant Attenuated Salmonella Vaccine with the Public.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dankel, Dorothy J; Roland, Kenneth L; Fisher, Michael; Brenneman, Karen; Delgado, Ana; Santander, Javier; Baek, Chang-Ho; Clark-Curtiss, Josephine; Strand, Roger; Curtiss, Roy

    2014-01-01

    Researchers have iterated that the future of synthetic biology and biotechnology lies in novel consumer applications of crossing biology with engineering. However, if the new biology's future is to be sustainable, early and serious efforts must be made towards social sustainability. Therefore, the crux of new applications of synthetic biology and biotechnology is public understanding and acceptance. The RASVaccine is a novel recombinant design not found in nature that re-engineers a common bacteria ( Salmonella ) to produce a strong immune response in humans. Synthesis of the RASVaccine has the potential to improve public health as an inexpensive, non-injectable product. But how can scientists move forward to create a dialogue of creating a 'common sense' of this new technology in order to promote social sustainability? This paper delves into public issues raised around these novel technologies and uses the RASVaccine as an example of meeting the public with a common sense of its possibilities and limitations.

  20. Testing the accuracy of remote sensing land use maps

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vangenderen, J. L.; Lock, B. F.; Vass, P. A.

    1977-01-01

    Some of the main aspects that need to be considered in a remote sensing sampling design are: (1) the frequency that any one land use type (on the ground) is erroneously attributed to another class by the interpreter; (2) the frequency that the wrong land use (as observed on the ground) is erroneously included in any one class by the remote sensing interpreter; (3) the proportion of all land (as determined in the field) that is mistakenly attributed by the interpreter; and (4) the determination of whether the mistakes are random (so that the overall proportions are approximately correct) or subject to a persistent bias. A sampling and statistical testing procedure is presented which allows an approximate answer to each of these aspects. The concept developed and described incorporates the probability of making incorrect interpretations at particular prescribed accuracy levels, for a certain number of errors, for a particular sample size. It is considered that this approach offers a meaningful explanation of the interpretation accuracy level of an entire remote sensing land use survey.

  1. Narrative Inquiry for Science Education: Teachers' repertoire-making in the case of environmental curriculum

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hwang, Seyoung

    2011-04-01

    This paper considers how the school science curriculum can be conceptualised in order to address the contingent and complex nature of environmental and sustainability-related knowledge and understanding. A special concern lies in the development of research perspectives and tools for investigating ways, in which teachers are faced with complex and various situations in the sense-making of science-related issues, and subsequent pedagogic issues. Based on an empirical examination of Korean teachers' sense-making of their curricular practice, the paper develops a narrative approach to teachers' perspectives and knowledge by considering the value of stories as sense-making tools for reflective questioning of what is worth teaching, how and why. By employing the idea of 'repertoire', the study regards teachers' stories about their environment-related personal and teaching experiences as offering angles with which to understand teachers' motivation and reflection in curricular development and implementation. Furthermore, three empirical cases present ways in which the nature of knowledge and understanding is recognised and potentially integrated into pedagogies through teachers' narratives. Finally, the paper argues for the need to reconsider the role of the science teacher in addressing environmental and sustainability-related issues, in ways that facilitate teachers' reflexive interpretation of meanings in cultural texts and the construction of pedagogic text.

  2. Microelectromechanical acceleration-sensing apparatus

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Robb M [Albuquerque, NM; Shul, Randy J [Albuquerque, NM; Polosky, Marc A [Albuquerque, NM; Hoke, Darren A [Albuquerque, NM; Vernon, George E [Rio Rancho, NM

    2006-12-12

    An acceleration-sensing apparatus is disclosed which includes a moveable shuttle (i.e. a suspended mass) and a latch for capturing and holding the shuttle when an acceleration event is sensed above a predetermined threshold level. The acceleration-sensing apparatus provides a switch closure upon sensing the acceleration event and remains latched in place thereafter. Examples of the acceleration-sensing apparatus are provided which are responsive to an acceleration component in a single direction (i.e. a single-sided device) or to two oppositely-directed acceleration components (i.e. a dual-sided device). A two-stage acceleration-sensing apparatus is also disclosed which can sense two acceleration events separated in time. The acceleration-sensing apparatus of the present invention has applications, for example, in an automotive airbag deployment system.

  3. How Does One Manage ’Information? Making Sense of the Information Being Received

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-12-01

    to make a one-size- fits-all program, but that does not stop us from wanting them. Theater battle management core systems ( TBMCS ) is such a system...used to prosecute the air war and facilitate the creation of the ATO. Prior to the launch of TBMCS , there were three applications required to do...perform its part of the mission. The IMO must be aware of how to configure and make TBMCS available to the user audience. He must do this with other

  4. Don't make me think: a common sense approach to Web usability

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Krug, Steve

    2006-01-01

    .... The second edition of this classic adds three new chapters that explain why people really leave Web sites, how to make sites usable and accessible, and the art of surviving executive design whims...

  5. High efficient optical remote sensing images acquisition for nano-satellite: reconstruction algorithms

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Yang; Li, Feng; Xin, Lei; Fu, Jie; Huang, Puming

    2017-10-01

    Large amount of data is one of the most obvious features in satellite based remote sensing systems, which is also a burden for data processing and transmission. The theory of compressive sensing(CS) has been proposed for almost a decade, and massive experiments show that CS has favorable performance in data compression and recovery, so we apply CS theory to remote sensing images acquisition. In CS, the construction of classical sensing matrix for all sparse signals has to satisfy the Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) strictly, which limits applying CS in practical in image compression. While for remote sensing images, we know some inherent characteristics such as non-negative, smoothness and etc.. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to present a novel measurement matrix that breaks RIP. The new sensing matrix consists of two parts: the standard Nyquist sampling matrix for thumbnails and the conventional CS sampling matrix. Since most of sun-synchronous based satellites fly around the earth 90 minutes and the revisit cycle is also short, lots of previously captured remote sensing images of the same place are available in advance. This drives us to reconstruct remote sensing images through a deep learning approach with those measurements from the new framework. Therefore, we propose a novel deep convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture which takes in undersampsing measurements as input and outputs an intermediate reconstruction image. It is well known that the training procedure to the network costs long time, luckily, the training step can be done only once, which makes the approach attractive for a host of sparse recovery problems.

  6. Making Sense of Experienced Teachers’ Interactive Decisions: Implications for Expertise in Teaching

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bahar Gün

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Teachers’ decision making has always been an area of curiosity in many studies related to teachers and teaching. One approach to understanding teachers’ decisions is through the analysis of their reflection-in-action behaviours. This study, based on the premise that one can gain understanding from examining experienced teachers’ classroom performances, focuses on the interactive decisions made by ten experienced language teachers. The study presents the findings of an analysis of similarities in the motivations behind teachers’ interactive decisions, as demonstrated in their verbal reports following the video recorded lesson observations. These findings show that there are both shared pedagogical and affective attributes among participant teachers. These results, and the insight they give into experienced teachers’ decision making are potentially beneficial for all pre-service and practising teachers.

  7. A Robust FLOM Based Spectrum Sensing Scheme under Middleton Class A Noise in IoT

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Enwei Xu

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Accessibility to remote users in dynamic environment, high spectrum utilization, and no spectrum purchase make Cognitive Radio (CR a feasible solution of wireless communications in the Internet of Things (IoT. Reliable spectrum sensing becomes the prerequisite for the establishment of communication between IoT-capable objects. Considering the application environment, spectrum sensing not only has to cope with man-made impulsive noises but also needs to overcome noise fluctuations. In this paper, we study the Fractional Lower Order Moments (FLOM based spectrum sensing method under Middleton Class A noise and incorporate a Noise Power Estimation (NPE module into the sensing system to deal with the issue of noise uncertainty. Moreover, the NPE process does not need noise-only samples. The analytical expressions of the probabilities of detection and the probability of false alarm are derived. The impact on sensing performance of the parameters of the NPE module is also analyzed. The theoretical analysis and simulation results show that our proposed sensing method achieves a satisfactory performance at low SNR.

  8. SYMBIOTIC SENSING: Exploring and Exploiting Cooperative Sensing in Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Le Viet Duc, L Duc

    2016-01-01

    During the last several years we have witnessed the emergence of smartphone-based sensing applications that include activity recognition, urban sensing, social sensing, and health monitoring. In fact, most smartphones have various sensors, wireless communication interfaces, a large memory capacity,

  9. Remote sensing of natural phenomena

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Miodrag D. Regodić

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available There has always been a need to directly perceive and study the events whose extent is beyond people's possibilities. In order to get new data and to make observations and studying much more objective in comparison with past syntheses - a new method of examination called remote sensing has been adopted. The paper deals with the principles and elements of remote sensing, as well as with the basic aspects of using remote research in examining meteorological (weather parameters and the conditions of the atmosphere. The usage of satellite images is possible in all phases of the global and systematic research of different natural phenomena when airplane and satellite images of different characteristics are used and their analysis and interpretation is carried out by viewing and computer added procedures. Introduction Remote sensing of the Earth enables observing and studying global and local events that occur on it. Satellite images are nowadays used in geology, agriculture, forestry, geodesy, meteorology, spatial and urbanism planning, designing of infrastructure and other objects, protection from natural and technological catastrophes, etc. It it possible to use satellite images in all phases of global and systematic research of different natural phenomena. Basics of remote sensing Remote sensing is a method of the acquisition and interpretation of information about remote objects without making a physical contact with them. The term Daljinska detekcija is a literal translation of the English term Remote Sensing. In French it isTeledetection, in German - Fernerkundung, in Russian - дистанционие иследования. We also use terms such as: remote survailance, remote research, teledetection, remote methods, and distance research. The basic elements included in Remote Sensing are: object, electromagnetic energy, sensor, platform, image, analysis, interpretation and the information (data, fact. Usage of satellite remote research in

  10. Search and Classification Using Multiple Autonomous Vehicles Decision-Making and Sensor Management

    CERN Document Server

    Wang, Yue

    2012-01-01

    Search and Classification Using Multiple Autonomous Vehicles provides a comprehensive study of decision-making strategies for domain search and object classification using multiple autonomous vehicles (MAV) under both deterministic and probabilistic frameworks. It serves as a first discussion of the problem of effective resource allocation using MAV with sensing limitations, i.e., for search and classification missions over large-scale domains, or when there are far more objects to be found and classified than there are autonomous vehicles available. Under such scenarios, search and classification compete for limited sensing resources. This is because search requires vehicle mobility while classification restricts the vehicles to the vicinity of any objects found. The authors develop decision-making strategies to choose between these competing tasks and vehicle-motion-control laws to achieve the proposed management scheme. Deterministic Lyapunov-based, probabilistic Bayesian-based, and risk-based decision-mak...

  11. Damage classification of pipelines under water flow operation using multi-mode actuated sensing technology

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lee, Changgil; Park, Seunghee

    2011-01-01

    In a structure, several types of damage can occur, ranging from micro-cracking to corrosion or loose bolts. This makes identifying the damage difficult with a single mode of sensing. Therefore, a multi-mode actuated sensing system is proposed based on a self-sensing circuit using a piezoelectric sensor. In self-sensing-based multi-mode actuated sensing, one mode provides a wide frequency-band structural response from the self-sensed impedance measurement and the other mode provides a specific frequency-induced structural wavelet response from the self-sensed guided wave measurement. In this experimental study, a pipeline system under water flow operation was examined to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed structural health monitoring approach. Different types of structural damage were inflicted artificially on the pipeline system. To classify the multiple types of structural damage, supervised learning-based statistical pattern recognition was implemented by composing a three-dimensional space using the damage indices extracted from the impedance and guided wave features as well as temperature variations. For a more systematic damage classification, several control parameters were optimized to determine an optimal decision boundary for the supervised learning-based pattern recognition. Further research issues are also discussed for real-world implementations of the proposed approach

  12. The Development of Social Perspective Taking and Leadership Decision-Making in City Government Managers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Rossum, Zachary Johannes

    2013-01-01

    I examined the role of social perspective taking in leadership decision-making by investigating how a group of 70 leaders made sense of a hypothetical workplace dilemma in order to understand how they used their capacity for social perspective taking as part of their decision-making process. The majority of these leaders work in North America, are…

  13. Fast, Highly-Sensitive, and Wide-Dynamic-Range Interdigitated Capacitor Glucose Biosensor Using Solvatochromic Dye-Containing Sensing Membrane

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Md. Rajibur Rahaman Khan

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we proposed an interdigitated capacitor (IDC-based glucose biosensor to measure different concentrations of glucose from 1 μM to 1 M. We studied four different types of solvatochromic dyes: Auramine O, Nile red, Rhodamine B, and Reichardt’s dye (R-dye. These dyes were individually incorporated into a polymer [polyvinyl chloride (PVC] and N,N-Dimethylacetamide (DMAC solution to make the respective dielectric/sensing materials. To the best of our knowledge, we report for the first time an IDC glucose biosensing system utilizing a solvatochromic-dye-containing sensing membrane. These four dielectric or sensing materials were individually placed into the interdigitated electrode (IDE by spin coating to make four IDC glucose biosensing elements. The proposed IDC glucose biosensor has a high sensing ability over a wide dynamic range and its sensitivity was about 23.32 mV/decade. It also has fast response and recovery times of approximately 7 s and 5 s, respectively, excellent reproducibility with a standard deviation of approximately 0.023, highly stable sensing performance, and real-time monitoring capabilities. The proposed IDC glucose biosensor was compared with an IDC, potentiometric, FET, and fiber-optic glucose sensor with respect to response time, dynamic range width, sensitivity, and linearity. We observed that the designed IDC glucose biosensor offered excellent performance.

  14. Solid State Laser Technology Development for Atmospheric Sensing Applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barnes, James C.

    1998-01-01

    NASA atmospheric scientists are currently planning active remote sensing missions that will enable global monitoring of atmospheric ozone, water vapor, aerosols and clouds as well as global wind velocity. The measurements of these elements and parameters are important because of the effects they have on climate change, atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, atmospheric transport and, in general, the health of the planet. NASA will make use of Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) and backscatter lidar techniques for active remote sensing of molecular constituents and atmospheric phenomena from advanced high-altitude aircraft and space platforms. This paper provides an overview of NASA Langley Research Center's (LaRC's) development of advanced solid state lasers, harmonic generators, and wave mixing techniques aimed at providing the broad range of wavelengths necessary to meet measurement goals of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise.

  15. In the webs of discourse: senses on scholar library, reading and research

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ludmila Ferrarezi

    2012-04-01

    Full Text Available From the theoretical framework of french Discourse Analysis, we observed how the social, historical and ideological conditions affect the construction / formulation / circulation of the senses which can be naturalized, outlining a particular image on scholar library, reading and research. For this, we did a brief historical account on the development of the brazilian school libraries that was marked by senses of lack and restriction which are updated by the operation of discursive memory when they are reproduced in the contemporary discourse about this institution and the activities that are realized in its space. These senses show the importance of teachers and librarians change of attitude, make possible discoursive practices of reading and research that are more critical, creative and inquisitive, in the classroom and in the library, which is much more than a deposit or a collection of books.

  16. Primates´ socio-cognitive abilities: What kind of comparisons makes sense?

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Byrnit, Jill

    2015-01-01

    Referential gestures are of pivotal importance to the human species. We effortlessly make use of each others´ referential gestures to attend to the same things, and our ability to use these gestures show themselves from very early in life. Almost 20 years ago, James Anderson and colleagues...... are testing animals on experimental paradigms that do not take into account what are the challenges of their natural habitat....

  17. Restoration of color in a remote sensing image and its quality evaluation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Zuxun; Li, Zhijiang; Zhang, Jianqing; Wang, Zhihe

    2003-09-01

    This paper is focused on the restoration of color remote sensing (including airborne photo). A complete approach is recommended. It propose that two main aspects should be concerned in restoring a remote sensing image, that are restoration of space information, restoration of photometric information. In this proposal, the restoration of space information can be performed by making the modulation transfer function (MTF) as degradation function, in which the MTF is obtained by measuring the edge curve of origin image. The restoration of photometric information can be performed by improved local maximum entropy algorithm. What's more, a valid approach in processing color remote sensing image is recommended. That is splits the color remote sensing image into three monochromatic images which corresponding three visible light bands and synthesizes the three images after being processed separately with psychological color vision restriction. Finally, three novel evaluation variables are obtained based on image restoration to evaluate the image restoration quality in space restoration quality and photometric restoration quality. An evaluation is provided at last.

  18. Study on algorithm of process neural network for soft sensing in sewage disposal system

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Zaiwen; Xue, Hong; Wang, Xiaoyi; Yang, Bin; Lu, Siying

    2006-11-01

    A new method of soft sensing based on process neural network (PNN) for sewage disposal system is represented in the paper. PNN is an extension of traditional neural network, in which the inputs and outputs are time-variation. An aggregation operator is introduced to process neuron, and it makes the neuron network has the ability to deal with the information of space-time two dimensions at the same time, so the data processing enginery of biological neuron is imitated better than traditional neuron. Process neural network with the structure of three layers in which hidden layer is process neuron and input and output are common neurons for soft sensing is discussed. The intelligent soft sensing based on PNN may be used to fulfill measurement of the effluent BOD (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) from sewage disposal system, and a good training result of soft sensing was obtained by the method.

  19. Time-sensitive remote sensing

    CERN Document Server

    Lippitt, Christopher; Coulter, Lloyd

    2015-01-01

    This book documents the state of the art in the use of remote sensing to address time-sensitive information requirements. Specifically, it brings together a group of authors who are both researchers and practitioners, who work toward or are currently using remote sensing to address time-sensitive information requirements with the goal of advancing the effective use of remote sensing to supply time-sensitive information. The book addresses the theoretical implications of time-sensitivity on the remote sensing process, assessments or descriptions of methods for expediting the delivery and improving the quality of information derived from remote sensing, and describes and analyzes time-sensitive remote sensing applications, with an emphasis on lessons learned. This book is intended for remote sensing scientists, practitioners (e.g., emergency responders or administrators of emergency response agencies), and students, but will also be of use to those seeking to understand the potential of remote sensing to addres...

  20. SoK: Making Sense of Censorship Resistance Systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Khattak Sheharbano

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available An increasing number of countries implement Internet censorship at different scales and for a variety of reasons. Several censorship resistance systems (CRSs have emerged to help bypass such blocks. The diversity of the censor’s attack landscape has led to an arms race, leading to a dramatic speed of evolution of CRSs. The inherent complexity of CRSs and the breadth of work in this area makes it hard to contextualize the censor’s capabilities and censorship resistance strategies. To address these challenges, we conducted a comprehensive survey of CRSs-deployed tools as well as those discussed in academic literature-to systematize censorship resistance systems by their threat model and corresponding defenses. To this end, we first sketch a comprehensive attack model to set out the censor’s capabilities, coupled with discussion on the scope of censorship, and the dynamics that influence the censor’s decision. Next, we present an evaluation framework to systematize censorship resistance systems by their security, privacy, performance and deployability properties, and show how these systems map to the attack model. We do this for each of the functional phases that we identify for censorship resistance systems: communication establishment, which involves distribution and retrieval of information necessary for a client to join the censorship resistance system; and conversation, where actual exchange of information takes place. Our evaluation leads us to identify gaps in the literature, question the assumptions at play, and explore possible mitigations.

  1. Sensing our Environment: Remote sensing in a physics classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Isaacson, Sivan; Schüttler, Tobias; Cohen-Zada, Aviv L.; Blumberg, Dan G.; Girwidz, Raimund; Maman, Shimrit

    2017-04-01

    Remote sensing is defined as data acquisition of an object, deprived physical contact. Fundamentally, most remote sensing applications are referred to as the use of satellite- or aircraft-based sensor technologies to detect and classify objects mainly on Earth or other planets. In the last years there have been efforts to bring the important subject of remote sensing into schools, however, most of these attempts focused on geography disciplines - restricting to the applications of remote sensing and to a less extent the technique itself and the physics behind it. Optical remote sensing is based on physical principles and technical devices, which are very meaningful from a theoretical point of view as well as for "hands-on" teaching. Some main subjects are radiation, atom and molecular physics, spectroscopy, as well as optics and the semiconductor technology used in modern digital cameras. Thus two objectives were outlined for this project: 1) to investigate the possibilities of using remote sensing techniques in physics teaching, and 2) to identify its impact on pupil's interest in the field of natural sciences. This joint project of the DLR_School_Lab, Oberpfaffenhofen of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Earth and Planetary Image Facility (EPIF) at BGU, was conducted in 2016. Thirty teenagers (ages 16-18) participated in the project and were exposed to the cutting edge methods of earth observation. The pupils on both sides participated in the project voluntarily, knowing that at least some of the project's work had to be done in their leisure time. The pupil's project started with a day at EPIF and DLR respectively, where the project task was explained to the participants and an introduction to remote sensing of vegetation was given. This was realized in lectures and in experimental workshops. During the following two months both groups took several measurements with modern optical remote sensing systems in their home region with a special focus on flora

  2. APPLICATION OF CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORK IN CLASSIFICATION OF HIGH RESOLUTION AGRICULTURAL REMOTE SENSING IMAGES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    C. Yao

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available With the rapid development of Precision Agriculture (PA promoted by high-resolution remote sensing, it makes significant sense in management and estimation of agriculture through crop classification of high-resolution remote sensing image. Due to the complex and fragmentation of the features and the surroundings in the circumstance of high-resolution, the accuracy of the traditional classification methods has not been able to meet the standard of agricultural problems. In this case, this paper proposed a classification method for high-resolution agricultural remote sensing images based on convolution neural networks(CNN. For training, a large number of training samples were produced by panchromatic images of GF-1 high-resolution satellite of China. In the experiment, through training and testing on the CNN under the toolbox of deep learning by MATLAB, the crop classification finally got the correct rate of 99.66 % after the gradual optimization of adjusting parameter during training. Through improving the accuracy of image classification and image recognition, the applications of CNN provide a reference value for the field of remote sensing in PA.

  3. Acceptability, acceptance and decision making

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ackerschott, H.

    2002-01-01

    There is a fundamental difference between the acceptability of a civilizatory or societal risk and the acceptability of the decision-making process that leads to a civilizatory or societal risk. The analysis of individual risk decisions - regarding who, executes when which indisputably hazardous, unhealthy or dangerous behaviour under which circumstances - is not helpful in finding solutions for the political decisions at hand in Germany concerning nuclear energy in particular or energy in general. The debt for implementation of any technology, in the sense of making the technology a success in terms of broad acceptance and general utilisation, lies with the particular industry involved. Regardless of the technology, innovation research identifies the implementation phase as most critical to the success of any innovation. In this sense, nuclear technology is at best still an innovation, because the implementation has not yet been completed. Fear and opposition to innovation are ubiquitous. Even the economy - which is often described as 'rational' - is full of this resistance. Innovation has an impact on the pivotal point between stability, the presupposition for the successful execution of decisions already taken and instability, which includes insecurity, but is also necessary for the success of further development. By definition, innovations are beyond our sphere of experience; not at the level of reliability and trust yet to come. Yet they are evaluated via the simplifying heuristics for making decisions proven not only to be necessary and useful, but also accurate in the familiar. The 'settlement of the debt of implementation', the accompanying communication, the decision-making procedures concerning the regulation of averse effects of the technology, but also the tailoring of the new technology or service itself must be directed to appropriate target groups. But the group often aimed at in the nuclear debate, the group, which largely determines political

  4. Sense of moving

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Christensen, Mark Schram; Grünbaum, Thor

    2017-01-01

    In this chapter, we assume the existence of a sense of “movement activity” that arises when a person actively moves a body part. This sense is usually supposed to be part of sense of agency (SoA). The purpose of the chapter is to determine whether the already existing experimental paradigms can...

  5. Infrared Laser Heating Applied to Nanopore Sensing for DNA Duplex Analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Angevine, Christopher E; Seashols-Williams, Sarah J; Reiner, Joseph E

    2016-03-01

    Temperature studies coupled with resistive-pulse nanopore sensing enable the quantification of a variety of important thermodynamic properties at the single-molecule limit. Previous demonstrations of nanopore sensing with temperature control have utilized bulk chamber heating methodologies. This approach makes it difficult to rapidly change temperatures and enable optical access for other analytical techniques (i.e., single-molecule fluorescence). To address these issues, researchers have explored laser-based methodologies through either direct infrared (IR) absorption or plasmonic assisted heating. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of IR-based direct absorption heating with the DNA sensing capabilities of a biological nanopore. The IR heating enables rapid changes of the temperature in and around an α-hemolysin pore, and we use this to explore melting properties for short (≤50 bp) double-stranded DNA homopolymers. We also demonstrate that the IR heating enables one to measure the percentage of different-sized DNA molecules in a binary mixture.

  6. Temperature sensing of micron scale polymer fibers using fiber Bragg gratings

    KAUST Repository

    Zhou, Jian

    2015-07-02

    Highly conductive polymer fibers are key components in the design of multifunctional textiles. Measuring the voltage/temperature relationships of these fibers is very challenging due to their very small diameters, making it impossible to rely on classical temperature sensing techniques. These fibers are also so fragile that they cannot withstand any perturbation from external measurement systems. We propose here, a non-contact temperature measurement technique based on fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). The heat exchange is carefully controlled between the probed fibers and the sensing FBG by promoting radiation and convective heat transfer rather than conduction, which is known to be poorly controlled. We demonstrate our technique on a highly conductive Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT/PSS)-based fiber. A non-phenomenological model of the sensing system based on meaningful physical parameters is validated towards experimental observations. The technique reliably measures the temperature of the polymer fibers when subjected to electrical loading. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.

  7. Intraperitoneal Glucose Sensing is Sometimes Surprisingly Rapid

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anders Lyngvi Fougner

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Rapid, accurate and robust glucose measurements are needed to make a safe artificial pancreas for the treatment of diabetes mellitus type 1 and 2. The present gold standard of continuous glucose sensing, subcutaneous (SC glucose sensing, has been claimed to have slow response and poor robustness towards local tissue changes such as mechanical pressure, temperature changes, etc. The present study aimed at quantifying glucose dynamics from central circulation to intraperitoneal (IP sensor sites, as an alternative to the SC location. Intraarterial (IA and IP sensors were tested in three anaesthetized non-diabetic pigs during experiments with intravenous infusion of glucose boluses, enforcing rapid glucose level excursions in the range 70--360 mg/dL (approximately 3.8--20 mmol/L. Optical interferometric sensors were used for IA and IP measurements. A first-order dynamic model with time delay was fitted to the data after compensating for sensor dynamics. Additionally, off-the-shelf Medtronic Enlite sensors were used for illustration of SC glucose sensing. The time delay in glucose excursions from central circulation (IA to IP sensor location was found to be in the range 0--26 s (median: 8.5 s, mean: 9.7 s, SD 9.5 s, and the time constant was found to be 0.5--10.2 min (median: 4.8 min, mean: 4.7 min, SD 2.9 min. IP glucose sensing sites have a substantially faster and more distinctive response than SC sites when sensor dynamics is ignored, and the peritoneal fluid reacts even faster to changes in intravascular glucose levels than reported in previous animal studies. This study may provide a benchmark for future, rapid IP glucose sensors.

  8. Fluorescent nanoparticles for intracellular sensing: A review

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ruedas-Rama, Maria J.; Walters, Jamie D.; Orte, Angel; Hall, Elizabeth A.H.

    2012-01-01

    Highlights: ► Analytical applications of fluorescent nanoparticles (NPs) in intracellular sensing. ► Critical review on performance of QDots, metal NPs, silica NPs, and polymer NPs. ► Highlighted potential of fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). - Abstract: Fluorescent nanoparticles (NPs), including semiconductor NPs (Quantum Dots), metal NPs, silica NPs, polymer NPs, etc., have been a major focus of research and development during the past decade. The fluorescent nanoparticles show unique chemical and optical properties, such as brighter fluorescence, higher photostability and higher biocompatibility, compared to classical fluorescent organic dyes. Moreover, the nanoparticles can also act as multivalent scaffolds for the realization of supramolecular assemblies, since their high surface to volume ratio allow distinct spatial domains to be functionalized, which can provide a versatile synthetic platform for the implementation of different sensing schemes. Their excellent properties make them one of the most useful tools that chemistry has supplied to biomedical research, enabling the intracellular monitoring of many different species for medical and biological purposes. In this review, we focus on the developments and analytical applications of fluorescent nanoparticles in chemical and biological sensing within the intracellular environment. The review also points out the great potential of fluorescent NPs for fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). Finally, we also give an overview of the current methods for delivering of fluorescent NPs into cells, where critically examine the benefits and liabilities of each strategy.

  9. Ambiguity of Quality in Remote Sensing Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lynnes, Christopher; Leptoukh, Greg

    2010-01-01

    This slide presentation reviews some of the issues in quality of remote sensing data. Data "quality" is used in several different contexts in remote sensing data, with quite different meanings. At the pixel level, quality typically refers to a quality control process exercised by the processing algorithm, not an explicit declaration of accuracy or precision. File level quality is usually a statistical summary of the pixel-level quality but is of doubtful use for scenes covering large areal extents. Quality at the dataset or product level, on the other hand, usually refers to how accurately the dataset is believed to represent the physical quantities it purports to measure. This assessment often bears but an indirect relationship at best to pixel level quality. In addition to ambiguity at different levels of granularity, ambiguity is endemic within levels. Pixel-level quality terms vary widely, as do recommendations for use of these flags. At the dataset/product level, quality for low-resolution gridded products is often extrapolated from validation campaigns using high spatial resolution swath data, a suspect practice at best. Making use of quality at all levels is complicated by the dependence on application needs. We will present examples of the various meanings of quality in remote sensing data and possible ways forward toward a more unified and usable quality framework.

  10. Occupant traffic estimation through structural vibration sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pan, Shijia; Mirshekari, Mostafa; Zhang, Pei; Noh, Hae Young

    2016-04-01

    The number of people passing through different indoor areas is useful in various smart structure applications, including occupancy-based building energy/space management, marketing research, security, etc. Existing approaches to estimate occupant traffic include vision-, sound-, and radio-based (mobile) sensing methods, which have placement limitations (e.g., requirement of line-of-sight, quiet environment, carrying a device all the time). Such limitations make these direct sensing approaches difficult to deploy and maintain. An indirect approach using geophones to measure floor vibration induced by footsteps can be utilized. However, the main challenge lies in distinguishing multiple simultaneous walkers by developing features that can effectively represent the number of mixed signals and characterize the selected features under different traffic conditions. This paper presents a method to monitor multiple persons. Once the vibration signals are obtained, features are extracted to describe the overlapping vibration signals induced by multiple footsteps, which are used for occupancy traffic estimation. In particular, we focus on analysis of the efficiency and limitations of the four selected key features when used for estimating various traffic conditions. We characterize these features with signals collected from controlled impulse load tests as well as from multiple people walking through a real-world sensing area. In our experiments, the system achieves the mean estimation error of +/-0.2 people for different occupant traffic conditions (from one to four) using k-nearest neighbor classifier.

  11. The agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction: my two sense(s) | Lerm ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Careful analysis of various metaethics supports that there are these two senses – analysis, in particular, of a neo-Kantian metaethic, according to which reasons are agent-relative in the dependence sense but agent-neutral in the homogeneous sense, and – perhaps surprisingly – of Utilitarianism, according to which ...

  12. Smartphones for distributed multimode sensing: biological and environmental sensing and analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feitshans, Tyler; Williams, Robert

    2013-05-01

    Active and Agile Environmental and Biological sensing are becoming obligatory to generate prompt warnings for the troops and law enforcements conducting missions in hostile environments. The traditional static sensing mesh networks which provide a coarse-grained (far-field) measurement of the environmental conditions like air quality, radiation , CO2, etc … would not serve the dynamic and localized changes in the environment, which requires a fine-grained (near-field) sensing solutions. Further, sensing the biological conditions of (healthy and injured) personnel in a contaminated environment and providing a personalized analysis of the life-threatening conditions in real-time would greatly aid the success of the mission. In this vein, under SATE and YATE programs, the research team at AFRL Tec^Edge Discovery labs had demonstrated the feasibility of developing Smartphone applications , that employ a suite of external environmental and biological sensors, which provide fine-grained and customized sensing in real-time fashion. In its current state, these smartphone applications leverage a custom designed modular standalone embedded platform (with external sensors) that can be integrated seamlessly with Smartphones for sensing and further provides connectivity to a back-end data architecture for archiving, analysis and dissemination of real-time alerts. Additionally, the developed smartphone applications have been successfully tested in the field with varied environmental sensors to sense humidity, CO2/CO, wind, etc…, ; and with varied biological sensors to sense body temperature and pulse with apt real-time analysis

  13. Health Care Decisions at the End of Life: Theological and Ethical Foundations for Decision Making.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Allegretti, Joseph G.

    This paper provides a framework for making sense of perplexing problems surrounding issues of death and dying by exploring the theological and ethical background to health care decision making at the end of life. The paper first examines several of the basic principles that theologians and secular ethicists employ when analyzing such questions.…

  14. Striatal activation reflects urgency in perceptual decision making.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Maanen, Leendert; Fontanesi, Laura; Hawkins, Guy E; Forstmann, Birte U

    2016-10-01

    Deciding between multiple courses of action often entails an increasing need to do something as time passes - a sense of urgency. This notion of urgency is not incorporated in standard theories of speeded decision making that assume information is accumulated until a critical fixed threshold is reached. Yet, it is hypothesized in novel theoretical models of decision making. In two experiments, we investigated the behavioral and neural evidence for an "urgency signal" in human perceptual decision making. Experiment 1 found that as the duration of the decision making process increased, participants made a choice based on less evidence for the selected option. Experiment 2 replicated this finding, and additionally found that variability in this effect across participants covaried with activation in the striatum. We conclude that individual differences in susceptibility to urgency are reflected by striatal activation. By dynamically updating a response threshold, the striatum is involved in signaling urgency in humans. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  15. Ethical decision-making, passivity and pharmacy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cooper, R J; Bissell, P; Wingfield, J

    2008-06-01

    Increasing interest in empirical ethics has enhanced understanding of healthcare professionals' ethical problems and attendant decision-making. A four-stage decision-making model involving ethical attention, reasoning, intention and action offers further insights into how more than reasoning alone may contribute to decision-making. To explore how the four-stage model can increase understanding of decision-making in healthcare and describe the decision-making of an under-researched professional group. 23 purposively sampled UK community pharmacists were asked, in semi-structured interviews, to describe ethical problems in their work and how they were resolved. Framework analysis of transcribed interviews utilised the four decision-making stages, together with constant comparative methods and deviant-case analysis. Pharmacists were often inattentive and constructed problems in legal terms. Ethical reasoning was limited, but examples of appeals to consequences, the golden rule, religious faith and common-sense experience emerged. Ethical intention was compromised by frequent concern about legal prosecution. Ethical inaction was common, typified by pharmacists' failure to report healthcare professionals' bad practices, and ethical passivity emerged to describe these negative examples of the four decision-making stages. Pharmacists occasionally described more ethically active decision-making, but this often involved ethical uncertainty. The four decision-making stages are a useful tool in considering how healthcare professionals try to resolve ethical problems in practice. They reveal processes often ignored in normative theories, and their recognition and the emergence of ethical passivity indicates the complexity of decision-making in practice. Ethical passivity may be deleterious to patients' welfare, and concerns emerge about improving pharmacists' ethical training and promoting ethical awareness and responsibility.

  16. Making sense of self-care practices at the intersection of severe mental illness and physical health-An Australian study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ehrlich, Carolyn; Chester, Polly; Kisely, Steve; Crompton, David; Kendall, Elizabeth

    2018-01-01

    The poor physical health of people who experience severe mental illness (SMI) is an important public health issue that has been acknowledged, yet not properly addressed. People who live with SMI perform a myriad of complex tasks in order to take care of their physical health, while receiving unpredictable levels of support and assistance from health professionals. In this qualitative study, we aimed to uncover the kinds of work people with SMI do in order to look after their physical health. In a metropolitan area in Queensland, Australia, 32 people with lived experience of SMI participated in semi-structured, face-to-face interviews. Data were digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim and open coded. They were then themed using a constant comparative process. We found that people with SMI were engaged in a "rhythm of life with illness" that consisted of relatively short, acute and chaotic cycles of mental and physical illness, accompanied by much longer mental and physical illness recovery cycles. Participants engaged in three specific types of health-related work to manage these cycles: discovery work (and the associated role of the health professional); sense-making work to meaningfully interpret health and illness; and embedding work to become engaged self-managers of illness and producers of health. We discuss how varying levels of support from health professionals impact consumers' self-management of their physical and mental health; how health professionals influence consumers' experience of treatment burden; and implications for practice. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  17. Crowdsourcing earthquake damage assessment using remote sensing imagery

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stuart Gill

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper describes the evolution of recent work on using crowdsourced analysis of remote sensing imagery, particularly high-resolution aerial imagery, to provide rapid, reliable assessments of damage caused by earthquakes and potentially other disasters. The initial effort examined online imagery taken after the 2008 Wenchuan, China, earthquake. A more recent response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake led to the formation of an international consortium: the Global Earth Observation Catastrophe Assessment Network (GEO-CAN. The success of GEO-CAN in contributing to the official damage assessments made by the Government of Haiti, the United Nations, and the World Bank led to further development of a web-based interface. A current initiative in Christchurch, New Zealand, is underway where remote sensing experts are analyzing satellite imagery, geotechnical engineers are marking liquefaction areas, and structural engineers are identifying building damage. The current site includes online training to improve the accuracy of the assessments and make it possible for even novice users to contribute to the crowdsourced solution. The paper discusses lessons learned from these initiatives and presents a way forward for using crowdsourced remote sensing as a tool for rapid assessment of damage caused by natural disasters around the world.

  18. An in-depth exploration of the experience and sense-making of transactional analyst psychotherapists working with clients who present with Internet addiction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthew Shorrock

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Four internationally-accredited transactional analysis psychotherapists completed semi—structured one-to-one interviews that explored their experiences and sense-making of Internet addiction (IA.  Interpretive phenomenological analysis yielded four higher-order concepts: the complexity of IA; aetiological and predisposing factors; functions and features of IA; and treatment factors. Practical and theoretical implications for future research, clinical supervision, treatment, psycho-educational and political programmes are presented. Of the key emergent findings the Internet was understood by participants as a conduit or medium for addiction given a high prevalence of an underlying ‘disorder’.   It was also found that participants believed in the existence of childhood aetiological roots underpinning comorbidity with IA; that attachment difficulties in childhood often predispose individuals to develop issues around loneliness, low self-esteem, control, loss, instability and cognitive dissonance later in life; and that a relationship exists between depression, low self-esteem and escapism as contributing factors.   It is concluded that professionals would benefit from specific trainings concerning childhood attachment difficulties, whilst integrating a psychodynamic approach, or being aware of transference processes, could enhance treatment effectiveness and help safeguard both clients and therapists from counter-therapeutic interventions.

  19. Benefits to world agriculture through remote sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buffalano, A. C.; Kochanowski, P.

    1976-01-01

    Remote sensing of agricultural land permits crop classification and mensuration which can lead to improved forecasts of production. This technique is particularly important for nations which do not already have an accurate agricultural reporting system. Better forecasts have important economic effects. International grain traders can make better decisions about when to store, buy, and sell. Farmers can make better planting decisions by taking advantage of production estimates for areas out of phase with their own agricultural calendar. World economic benefits will accrue to both buyers and sellers because of increased food supply and price stabilization. This paper reviews the econometric models used to establish this scenario and estimates the dollar value of benefits for world wheat as 200 million dollars annually for the United States and 300 to 400 million dollars annually for the rest of the world.

  20. State-Of in Uav Remote Sensing Survey - First Insights Into Applications of Uav Sensing Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aasen, H.

    2017-08-01

    UAVs are increasingly adapted as remote sensing platforms. Together with specialized sensors, they become powerful sensing systems for environmental monitoring and surveying. Spectral data has great capabilities to the gather information about biophysical and biochemical properties. Still, capturing meaningful spectral data in a reproducible way is not trivial. Since a couple of years small and lightweight spectral sensors, which can be carried on small flexible platforms, have become available. With their adaption in the community, the responsibility to ensure the quality of the data is increasingly shifted from specialized companies and agencies to individual researchers or research teams. Due to the complexity of the data acquisition of spectral data, this poses a challenge for the community and standardized protocols, metadata and best practice procedures are needed to make data intercomparable. In November 2016, the ESSEM COST action Innovative optical Tools for proximal sensing of ecophysiological processes (OPTIMISE; http://optimise.dcs.aber.ac.uk/) held a workshop on best practices for UAV spectral sampling. The objective of this meeting was to trace the way from particle to pixel and identify influences on the data quality / reliability, to figure out how well we are currently doing with spectral sampling from UAVs and how we can improve. Additionally, a survey was designed to be distributed within the community to get an overview over the current practices and raise awareness for the topic. This talk will introduce the approach of the OPTIMISE community towards best practises in UAV spectral sampling and present first results of the survey (http://optimise.dcs.aber.ac.uk/uav-survey/). This contribution briefly introduces the survey and gives some insights into the first results given by the interviewees.

  1. Remote sensing of forest insect disturbances: Current state and future directions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Senf, Cornelius; Seidl, Rupert; Hostert, Patrick

    2017-08-01

    Insect disturbance are important agents of change in forest ecosystems around the globe, yet their spatial and temporal distribution and dynamics are not well understood. Remote sensing has gained much attention in mapping and understanding insect outbreak dynamics. Consequently, we here review the current literature on the remote sensing of insect disturbances. We suggest to group studies into three insect types: bark beetles, broadleaved defoliators, and coniferous defoliators. By so doing, we systematically compare the sensors and methods used for mapping insect disturbances within and across insect types. Results suggest that there are substantial differences between methods used for mapping bark beetles and defoliators, and between methods used for mapping broadleaved and coniferous defoliators. Following from this, we highlight approaches that are particularly suited for each insect type. Finally, we conclude by highlighting future research directions for remote sensing of insect disturbances. In particular, we suggest to: 1) Separate insect disturbances from other agents; 2) Extend the spatial and temporal domain of analysis; 3) Make use of dense time series; 4) Operationalize near-real time monitoring of insect disturbances; 5) Identify insect disturbances in the context of coupled human-natural systems; and 6) Improve reference data for assessing insect disturbances. Since the remote sensing of insect disturbances has gained much interest beyond the remote sensing community recently, the future developments identified here will help integrating remote sensing products into operational forest management. Furthermore, an improved spatiotemporal quantification of insect disturbances will support an inclusion of these processes into regional to global ecosystem models.

  2. Sustaining the Army Training Mission by Re-Thinking Decision Support Systems: Shifting from Decision-Making Individuals to Sense-Making Agents

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Ekbia, Hamid R

    2004-01-01

    .... However, this evolution has been dominantly bottom-up and technology-driven, with new emerging technologies supporting the traditional concept of decision making as a basically rational process...

  3. Achieving Efficient Spectrum Usage in Passive and Active Sensing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Huaiyi

    Increasing demand for supporting more wireless services with higher performance and reliability within the frequency bands that are most conducive to operating cost-effective cellular and mobile broadband is aggravating current electromagnetic spectrum congestion. This situation motivates technology and management innovation to increase the efficiency of spectral use. If primary-secondary spectrum sharing can be shown possible without compromising (or while even improving) performance in an existing application, opportunities for efficiency may be realizable by making the freed spectrum available for commercial use. While both active and passive sensing systems are vitally important for many public good applications, opportunities for increasing the efficiency of spectrum use can be shown to exist for both systems. This dissertation explores methods and technologies for remote sensing systems that enhance spectral efficiency and enable dynamic spectrum access both within and outside traditionally allocated bands.

  4. Multi-site testing and evaluation of remote sensing instruments for wind energy applications

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Sanz Rodrigo, J.; Borbon Guillen, F.; Gomez Arranz, P.

    2013-01-01

    A procedure for testing and evaluation of remote sensing instruments that makes use of two test sites in flat and complex terrain is presented. To illustrate the method, a system intercomparison experiment is presented involving one sodar and two lidars (pulsed and continuous-wave). The wind...

  5. Metric invariance in object recognition: a review and further evidence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cooper, E E; Biederman, I; Hummel, J E

    1992-06-01

    Phenomenologically, human shape recognition appears to be invariant with changes of orientation in depth (up to parts occlusion), position in the visual field, and size. Recent versions of template theories (e.g., Ullman, 1989; Lowe, 1987) assume that these invariances are achieved through the application of transformations such as rotation, translation, and scaling of the image so that it can be matched metrically to a stored template. Presumably, such transformations would require time for their execution. We describe recent priming experiments in which the effects of a prior brief presentation of an image on its subsequent recognition are assessed. The results of these experiments indicate that the invariance is complete: The magnitude of visual priming (as distinct from name or basic level concept priming) is not affected by a change in position, size, orientation in depth, or the particular lines and vertices present in the image, as long as representations of the same components can be activated. An implemented seven layer neural network model (Hummel & Biederman, 1992) that captures these fundamental properties of human object recognition is described. Given a line drawing of an object, the model activates a viewpoint-invariant structural description of the object, specifying its parts and their interrelations. Visual priming is interpreted as a change in the connection weights for the activation of: a) cells, termed geon feature assemblies (GFAs), that conjoin the output of units that represent invariant, independent properties of a single geon and its relations (such as its type, aspect ratio, relations to other geons), or b) a change in the connection weights by which several GFAs activate a cell representing an object.

  6. Transmigration Experiences of Newcomers in the Context of an English-Only Education: Sense-Making by Former Newcomer ELLs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tonogbanua, Elizabeth Paulsen

    2016-01-01

    This qualitative interpretive study explored how former newcomer English Language Learners (ELLs) in Boston Public Schools (BPS) made sense of their transmigration experiences through a digital storytelling project. The study fills a gap on transmigration experiences in the context of English-only learning environments, with a particular…

  7. Secondary Science Teachers Making Sense of Model-Based Classroom Instruction: Understanding the Learning and Learning Pathways Teachers Describe as Supporting Changes in Teaching Practice

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hvidsten, Connie J.

    Connie J. Hvidsten September 2016 Education Secondary Science Teachers Making Sense of Model-Based Classroom Instruction: Understanding the Learning and Learning Pathways Teachers Describe as Supporting Changes in Teaching Practice This dissertation consists of three papers analyzing writings and interviews of experienced secondary science teachers during and after a two-year professional development (PD) program focused on model-based reasoning (MBR). MBR is an approach to science instruction that provides opportunities for students to use conceptual models to make sense of natural phenomena in ways that are similar to the use of models within the scientific community. The aim of this research is to better understand the learning and learning pathways teachers identified as valuable in supporting changes in their teaching practice. To accomplish this aim, the papers analyze the ways teachers 1) ascribe their learning to various aspects of the program, 2) describe what they learned, and 3) reflect on the impact the PD had on their teaching practice. Twenty-one secondary science teachers completed the Innovations in Science Instruction through Modeling (ISIM) program from 2007 through 2009. Commonalities in the written reflections and interview responses led to a set of generalizable findings related to the impacts and outcomes of the PD. The first of the three papers describes elements of the ISIM program that teachers associated with their own learning. One of the most frequently mentioned PD feature was being in the position of an adult learner. Embedding learning in instructional practice by collaboratively developing and revising lessons, and observing the lessons in one-another's classrooms provided a sense of professional community, accountability, and support teachers reported were necessary to overcome the challenges of implementing new pedagogical practices. Additionally, teachers described that opportunities to reflect on their learning and connect their

  8. Intelligent environmental sensing

    CERN Document Server

    Mukhopadhyay, Subhas

    2015-01-01

    Developing environmental sensing and monitoring technologies become essential especially for industries that may cause severe contamination. Intelligent environmental sensing uses novel sensor techniques, intelligent signal and data processing algorithms, and wireless sensor networks to enhance environmental sensing and monitoring. It finds applications in many environmental problems such as oil and gas, water quality, and agriculture. This book addresses issues related to three main approaches to intelligent environmental sensing and discusses their latest technological developments. Key contents of the book include:   Agricultural monitoring Classification, detection, and estimation Data fusion Geological monitoring Motor monitoring Multi-sensor systems Oil reservoirs monitoring Sensor motes Water quality monitoring Wireless sensor network protocol  

  9. Sustaining the Army Training Mission by Re-Thinking Decision Support Systems: Shifting from Decision-Making Individuals to Sense-Making Agents

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Ekbia, Hamid R

    2004-01-01

    .... In an effort to reconceptualize decision making, this paper follows a top-down approach, starting with a new conceptual framework and then exploring the technologies and tools that can support...

  10. Remote sensing change detection tools for natural resource managers: Understanding concepts and tradeoffs in the design of landscape monitoring projects

    Science.gov (United States)

    Robert E. Kennedy; Philip A. Townsend; John E. Gross; Warren B. Cohen; Paul Bolstad; Wang Y. Q.; Phyllis Adams

    2009-01-01

    Remote sensing provides a broad view of landscapes and can be consistent through time, making it an important tool for monitoring and managing protected areas. An impediment to broader use of remote sensing science for monitoring has been the need for resource managers to understand the specialized capabilities of an ever-expanding array of image sources and analysis...

  11. Combining Human Computing and Machine Learning to Make Sense of Big (Aerial) Data for Disaster Response.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ofli, Ferda; Meier, Patrick; Imran, Muhammad; Castillo, Carlos; Tuia, Devis; Rey, Nicolas; Briant, Julien; Millet, Pauline; Reinhard, Friedrich; Parkan, Matthew; Joost, Stéphane

    2016-03-01

    results suggest that the platform we have developed to combine crowdsourcing and machine learning to make sense of large volumes of aerial images can be used for disaster response.

  12. Making Class: Children's Perceptions of Social Class through Illustrations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Howard, Adam; Swalwell, Katy; Adler, Karlyn

    2018-01-01

    Background/Context: Though there has been attention to how class differences impact children's experiences in schools and how young people perceive racial and gender differences, very little research to date has examined how young people make sense of social class differences. Purpose: In this article, the authors examine young children's…

  13. Whose Sense of Place? Re-thinking Place Concept and Urban Heritage Conservation in Social Media Era

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dameria, Christin; Akbar, Roos; Natalivan Indradjati, Petrus

    2018-05-01

    A change in a conservation approach that is now more focused on the conservation of a place than on a single object has placed an understanding of a place as an important concept that must be understood in urban heritage planning. However, the urban place perspective has been shifted, as a result of the change of attitude of people living in the urban area due to the rising of social media. This paper argues the concept of place in the heritage conservation planning, especially in the area designed to be tourism objects, which needs to be revisited. The very dynamic urban people as a result of technology and information must be considered. In order to understand the man-place relationship, the sense of place concept is the most common concept used and in the current context of heritage conservation, the review of place concept could be traced by understanding who is the owner of a sense of place in the social media era. In the current academic literature, the common discourse says the local community as the owner of the sense of place because visitors have limited chance to own the sense of place. This paper also argues that the shift of place perspective due to social media could be the catalyst in creating a strong sense of place for visitors. To support the argument, this paper uses the study of Concept of Mediatization and Concept of Parochial that have successfully explained how social media provides indirect experience based on people-place interaction and a sense of familiarity of an unknown or strange place. Therefore, this paper states that in the sense of place context: (1) the experience factor, as one of the factors in the creation of a sense of place, does not need to be physically experienced but it can be built based on other person’s personal reflection. It also gives an opportunity to make a self-interpretation about the value of the heritage place; (2) sense of familiarity, which is believed to be owned by the locals only due to the period of

  14. Behavioral Economics and Marketing in Aid of Decision Making Among the Poor

    OpenAIRE

    Bertrand, Marianne; Shafir, Eldar; Mullainathan, Sendhil

    2006-01-01

    This article considers several aspects of the economic decision making of the poor from the perspective of behavioral economics, and it focuses on potential contributions from marketing. Among other things, the authors consider some relevant facets of the social and institutional environments in which the poor interact, and they review some behavioral patterns that are likely to arise in these contexts. A behaviorally more informed perspective can help make sense of what might otherwise be co...

  15. Remote Sensing:From Trained Professionals to General Public

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    SHAN Jie

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Influenced by the growing popularity of smart phones and the rapid development of open science, remote sensing is being developed and applied more by general public than by trained professionals. This trend is mainly embodied in the democratized data collection, democratized data processing and democratized data usage. This paper discusses and analyzes the three aforementioned characteristics, introduces some recent representative work and progress. It also lists numerous international open data processing tools, including photogrammetry processing, laser scanning processing, machine learning, and spatial information management. In addition, the article makes a detailed description of the benefits of open data, and lists a number of global data programs and experimental data sets for scientific research. At the end of this paper, it is pointed out that the democratization of remote sensing will not only produce great economic benefits, but also bring about great social benefits, and finally change the landscape of industry and the life style of people.

  16. Statistical mechanics approach to 1-bit compressed sensing

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Xu, Yingying; Kabashima, Yoshiyuki

    2013-01-01

    Compressed sensing is a framework that makes it possible to recover an N-dimensional sparse vector x∈R N from its linear transformation y∈R M of lower dimensionality M 1 -norm-based signal recovery scheme for 1-bit compressed sensing using statistical mechanics methods. We show that the signal recovery performance predicted by the replica method under the replica symmetric ansatz, which turns out to be locally unstable for modes breaking the replica symmetry, is in good consistency with experimental results of an approximate recovery algorithm developed earlier. This suggests that the l 1 -based recovery problem typically has many local optima of a similar recovery accuracy, which can be achieved by the approximate algorithm. We also develop another approximate recovery algorithm inspired by the cavity method. Numerical experiments show that when the density of nonzero entries in the original signal is relatively large the new algorithm offers better performance than the abovementioned scheme and does so with a lower computational cost. (paper)

  17. Electro-optical and Magneto-optical Sensing Apparatus and Method for Characterizing Free-space Electromagnetic Radiation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xi-Cheng; Riordan, Jenifer Ann; Sun, Feng-Guo

    2000-08-29

    Apparatus and methods for characterizing free-space electromagnetic energy, and in particular, apparatus/method suitable for real-time two-dimensional far-infrared imaging applications are presented. The sensing technique is based on a non-linear coupling between a low-frequency electric (or magnetic) field and a laser beam in an electro-optic (or magnetic-optic) crystal. In addition to a practical counter-propagating sensing technique, a co-linear approach is described which provides longer radiated field-optical beam interaction length, thereby making imaging applications practical.

  18. Combining Hydrological Modeling and Remote Sensing Observations to Enable Data-Driven Decision Making for Devils Lake Flood Mitigation in a Changing Climate

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Xiaodong; Kirilenko, Andrei; Lim, Howe; Teng, Williams

    2010-01-01

    This slide presentation reviews work to combine the hydrological models and remote sensing observations to monitor Devils Lake in North Dakota, to assist in flood damage mitigation. This reports on the use of a distributed rainfall-runoff model, HEC-HMS, to simulate the hydro-dynamics of the lake watershed, and used NASA's remote sensing data, including the TRMM Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) and AIRS surface air temperature, to drive the model.

  19. Wuzzit Trouble: The Influence of a Digital Math Game on Student Number Sense

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Holly Pope

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available This study sought to determine if playing a digital math game could increase student number sense (mathematical proficiency in numeracy. We used a pre- and post-assessment to measure the number sense of two groups of third grade students with the same mathematics teacher. One group played the game Wuzzit Trouble and the other did not. Overall, the group who played Wuzzit Trouble showed a significant increase in number sense between the pre- and post-assessment, compared to the other group who did not. A qualitative analysis of a novel problem revealed differences between the treatment and comparison groups from pre- to post-. A discussion of these findings and features of the game are addressed. Namely, two features inherent in Wuzzit Trouble are associated with the learners’ increased number sense. First, Wuzzit Trouble promoted mathematical proficiency by requiring learners to attend to several mathematical constraints at once. Second, the game engaged learners in an iterative process of decision-making by calling for students to try, check, and revise their strategy as they played.

  20. Materials science. Materials that couple sensing, actuation, computation, and communication.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McEvoy, M A; Correll, N

    2015-03-20

    Tightly integrating sensing, actuation, and computation into composites could enable a new generation of truly smart material systems that can change their appearance and shape autonomously. Applications for such materials include airfoils that change their aerodynamic profile, vehicles with camouflage abilities, bridges that detect and repair damage, or robotic skins and prosthetics with a realistic sense of touch. Although integrating sensors and actuators into composites is becoming increasingly common, the opportunities afforded by embedded computation have only been marginally explored. Here, the key challenge is the gap between the continuous physics of materials and the discrete mathematics of computation. Bridging this gap requires a fundamental understanding of the constituents of such robotic materials and the distributed algorithms and controls that make these structures smart. Copyright © 2015, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  1. The Impact of Control of Diarrhoeal Diseases at Kamuzu Central ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    had diarrhoea alone, 16% had diarrhoea asso- ciated with malaria, 5% with acute otitis media,. 3% with vomiting and 1 % with measles. Children with measles are usually admitted directly to the paediatric ward to avoid conta- geon in the ORT centre. This explains why measles associated diarrhoea was rarely seen at.

  2. Remote sensing in the coming decade: the vision and the reality

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gail, William B.

    2006-08-01

    Investment in understanding the Earth pays off twice. It enables pursuit of scientific questions that rank among the most interesting and profound of our time. It also serves society's practical need for increased prosperity and security. Over the last half-century, we have built a sophisticated network of satellites, aircraft, and ground-based remote sensing systems to provide the raw information from which we derive Earth knowledge. This network has served us well in the development of science and the provision of operational services. In the next decade, the demand for such information will grow dramatically. New remote sensing capabilities will emerge. Rapid evolution of Internet geospatial and location-based services will make communication and sharing of Earth knowledge much easier. Governments, businesses, and consumers will all benefit. But this exciting future is threatened from many directions. Risks range from technology and market uncertainties in the private sector to budget cuts and project setbacks in the public sector. The coming decade will see a dramatic confrontation between the vision of what needs to be accomplished in Earth remote sensing and the reality of our resources and commitment. The outcome will have long-term implications for both the remote sensing community and society as a whole.

  3. Depression and a sense of coherence in case of people with anxiety disorders

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Krystyna Kurowska

    2013-03-01

    Full Text Available Introduction: Anxiety and depressive disorders belong to the most prevalent mental diseases. Concomitance of anx‑ iety and depression is very strongly correlated with increased sense of guilt, low self-esteem and hopelessness, which significantly contributes to worse social functioning. The sense of coherence (SOC is a factor which influences the ability to cope with stress and is inseparably related with health. A high level of SOC makes people more self-confi‑ dent and gives them strength to fight with the disease. Aim: Defining the correlation between the level of the sense of coherence and the level of depression in people treated for anxiety disorders, as a determinant having an influence on maintaining the optimal health. Material and methods: The research was carried out among 96 patients treated in the Anxiety and Affective Disorders Ward in Bydgoszcz. The sense of coherence was assessed using Antonovsky’s Orientation to Life Questionnaire (SOC-29 and the level of depression was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory. Results: People suffering from anxiety disorders have a low level of the sense of coherence and a high level of depression. A strong negative correlation was found between the level of the sense of coherence and the level of depression: with a lower level of the sense of coherence the level of depression grows and vice versa. Conclusions: The obtained results may significantly affect the level of understanding and accepting the people with anxiety disor‑ ders. Determining the level of the sense of coherence and the level of depression may have a significant impact on therapy and may be used as a determinant in prediction and planning of the care for the patient.

  4. Subsurface remote sensing

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schweitzer, Jeffrey S.; Groves, Joel L.

    2002-01-01

    Subsurface remote sensing measurements are widely used for oil and gas exploration, for oil and gas production monitoring, and for basic studies in the earth sciences. Radiation sensors, often including small accelerator sources, are used to obtain bulk properties of the surrounding strata as well as to provide detailed elemental analyses of the rocks and fluids in rock pores. Typically, instrument packages are lowered into a borehole at the end of a long cable, that may be as long as 10 km, and two-way data and instruction telemetry allows a single radiation instrument to operate in different modes and to send the data to a surface computer. Because these boreholes are often in remote locations throughout the world, the data are frequently transmitted by satellite to various locations around the world for almost real-time analysis and incorporation with other data. The complete system approach that permits rapid and reliable data acquisition, remote analysis and transmission to those making decisions is described

  5. Development of an electronic nose sensing platform for undergraduate education in nanotechnology

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Russo, Daniel V; Burek, Michael J; Iutzi, Ryan M; Mracek, James A; Hesjedal, Thorsten, E-mail: thesjeda@uwaterloo.ca [Nanotechnology Engineering Program and Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1 (Canada)

    2011-05-15

    The teaching of the different aspects of a sensor system, with a focus on the involved nanotechnology, is a challenging, yet important task. We present the development of an electronic nose system that utilizes a nanoscale amperometric sensing mechanism for gas mixtures. The fabrication of the system makes use of a basic microfabrication facility, as well as an undergraduate chemistry laboratory for material synthesis and preparation. The sensing device consists of an array of cross-reactive sensors composed of metal-oxide semiconducting nanoparticles. Each sensor in the array produces a unique response in the presence of a target gas, allowing the sensor to determine the identity and concentration of multiple gases in a mixture. The educational aspects include microheater simulation and fabrication, design and fabrication of interdigitated electrodes, development of interfacing circuitry and software, development and calibration of a sensory array, sol-gel processing of nanoparticle films and their characterization, and details of the fundamental chemical sensing mechanism.

  6. AN INTERACTIVE WEB-BASED ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK FOR REMOTE SENSING CLOUD COMPUTING

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    X. Z. Wang

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Spatiotemporal data, especially remote sensing data, are widely used in ecological, geographical, agriculture, and military research and applications. With the development of remote sensing technology, more and more remote sensing data are accumulated and stored in the cloud. An effective way for cloud users to access and analyse these massive spatiotemporal data in the web clients becomes an urgent issue. In this paper, we proposed a new scalable, interactive and web-based cloud computing solution for massive remote sensing data analysis. We build a spatiotemporal analysis platform to provide the end-user with a safe and convenient way to access massive remote sensing data stored in the cloud. The lightweight cloud storage system used to store public data and users’ private data is constructed based on open source distributed file system. In it, massive remote sensing data are stored as public data, while the intermediate and input data are stored as private data. The elastic, scalable, and flexible cloud computing environment is built using Docker, which is a technology of open-source lightweight cloud computing container in the Linux operating system. In the Docker container, open-source software such as IPython, NumPy, GDAL, and Grass GIS etc., are deployed. Users can write scripts in the IPython Notebook web page through the web browser to process data, and the scripts will be submitted to IPython kernel to be executed. By comparing the performance of remote sensing data analysis tasks executed in Docker container, KVM virtual machines and physical machines respectively, we can conclude that the cloud computing environment built by Docker makes the greatest use of the host system resources, and can handle more concurrent spatial-temporal computing tasks. Docker technology provides resource isolation mechanism in aspects of IO, CPU, and memory etc., which offers security guarantee when processing remote sensing data in the IPython Notebook

  7. An Interactive Web-Based Analysis Framework for Remote Sensing Cloud Computing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, X. Z.; Zhang, H. M.; Zhao, J. H.; Lin, Q. H.; Zhou, Y. C.; Li, J. H.

    2015-07-01

    Spatiotemporal data, especially remote sensing data, are widely used in ecological, geographical, agriculture, and military research and applications. With the development of remote sensing technology, more and more remote sensing data are accumulated and stored in the cloud. An effective way for cloud users to access and analyse these massive spatiotemporal data in the web clients becomes an urgent issue. In this paper, we proposed a new scalable, interactive and web-based cloud computing solution for massive remote sensing data analysis. We build a spatiotemporal analysis platform to provide the end-user with a safe and convenient way to access massive remote sensing data stored in the cloud. The lightweight cloud storage system used to store public data and users' private data is constructed based on open source distributed file system. In it, massive remote sensing data are stored as public data, while the intermediate and input data are stored as private data. The elastic, scalable, and flexible cloud computing environment is built using Docker, which is a technology of open-source lightweight cloud computing container in the Linux operating system. In the Docker container, open-source software such as IPython, NumPy, GDAL, and Grass GIS etc., are deployed. Users can write scripts in the IPython Notebook web page through the web browser to process data, and the scripts will be submitted to IPython kernel to be executed. By comparing the performance of remote sensing data analysis tasks executed in Docker container, KVM virtual machines and physical machines respectively, we can conclude that the cloud computing environment built by Docker makes the greatest use of the host system resources, and can handle more concurrent spatial-temporal computing tasks. Docker technology provides resource isolation mechanism in aspects of IO, CPU, and memory etc., which offers security guarantee when processing remote sensing data in the IPython Notebook. Users can write

  8. Fluorescent nanoparticles for intracellular sensing: A review

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ruedas-Rama, Maria J., E-mail: mjruedas@ugr.esmailto [Department of Physical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Granada, Campus Cartuja, 18071, Granada (Spain); Walters, Jamie D. [Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, UK CB2 1QT (United Kingdom); Orte, Angel [Department of Physical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Granada, Campus Cartuja, 18071, Granada (Spain); Hall, Elizabeth A.H., E-mail: lisa.hall@biotech.cam.ac.uk [Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, CB2 1QT (United Kingdom)

    2012-11-02

    Highlights: Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Analytical applications of fluorescent nanoparticles (NPs) in intracellular sensing. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Critical review on performance of QDots, metal NPs, silica NPs, and polymer NPs. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Highlighted potential of fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). - Abstract: Fluorescent nanoparticles (NPs), including semiconductor NPs (Quantum Dots), metal NPs, silica NPs, polymer NPs, etc., have been a major focus of research and development during the past decade. The fluorescent nanoparticles show unique chemical and optical properties, such as brighter fluorescence, higher photostability and higher biocompatibility, compared to classical fluorescent organic dyes. Moreover, the nanoparticles can also act as multivalent scaffolds for the realization of supramolecular assemblies, since their high surface to volume ratio allow distinct spatial domains to be functionalized, which can provide a versatile synthetic platform for the implementation of different sensing schemes. Their excellent properties make them one of the most useful tools that chemistry has supplied to biomedical research, enabling the intracellular monitoring of many different species for medical and biological purposes. In this review, we focus on the developments and analytical applications of fluorescent nanoparticles in chemical and biological sensing within the intracellular environment. The review also points out the great potential of fluorescent NPs for fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). Finally, we also give an overview of the current methods for delivering of fluorescent NPs into cells, where critically examine the benefits and liabilities of each strategy.

  9. A Hybrid of Optical Remote Sensing and Hydrological Modeling Improves Water Balance Estimation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gleason, Colin J.; Wada, Yoshihide; Wang, Jida

    2018-01-01

    Declining gauging infrastructure and fractious water politics have decreased available information about river flows globally. Remote sensing and water balance modeling are frequently cited as potential solutions, but these techniques largely rely on these same in-decline gauge data to make accurate discharge estimates. A different approach is therefore needed, and we here combine remotely sensed discharge estimates made via at-many-stations hydraulic geometry (AMHG) and the PCR-GLOBWB hydrological model to estimate discharge over the Lower Nile. Specifically, we first estimate initial discharges from 87 Landsat images and AMHG (1984-2015), and then use these flow estimates to tune the model, all without using gauge data. The resulting tuned modeled hydrograph shows a large improvement in flow magnitude: validation of the tuned monthly hydrograph against a historical gauge (1978-1984) yields an RMSE of 439 m3/s (40.8%). By contrast, the original simulation had an order-of-magnitude flow error. This improvement is substantial but not perfect: tuned flows have a 1-2 month wet season lag and a negative base flow bias. Accounting for this 2 month lag yields a hydrograph RMSE of 270 m3/s (25.7%). Thus, our results coupling physical models and remote sensing is a promising first step and proof of concept toward future modeling of ungauged flows, especially as developments in cloud computing for remote sensing make our method easily applicable to any basin. Finally, we purposefully do not offer prescriptive solutions for Nile management, and rather hope that the methods demonstrated herein can prove useful to river stakeholders in managing their own water.

  10. Mathematics of Sensing, Exploitation, and Execution (MSEE) Hierarchical Representations for the Evaluation of Sensed Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-06-01

    AFRL-RY-WP-TR-2016-0123 MATHEMATICS OF SENSING, EXPLOITATION, AND EXECUTION (MSEE) Hierarchical Representations for the Evaluation of Sensed...December 2015 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE MATHEMATICS OF SENSING, EXPLOITATION, AND EXECUTION (MSEE) Hierarchical Representations for the Evaluation of...8-98) Prescribed by ANSI Std. Z39-18 Hierarchical Representations for the Evaluation of Sensed Data Final Report Mathematics of Sensing

  11. Serving Satellite Remote Sensing Data to User Community through the OGC Interoperability Protocols

    Science.gov (United States)

    di, L.; Yang, W.; Bai, Y.

    2005-12-01

    Remote sensing is one of the major methods for collecting geospatial data. Hugh amount of remote sensing data has been collected by space agencies and private companies around the world. For example, NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) is generating more than 3 Tb of remote sensing data per day. The data collected by EOS are processed, distributed, archived, and managed by the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS). Currently, EOSDIS is managing several petabytes of data. All of those data are not only valuable for global change research, but also useful for local and regional application and decision makings. How to make the data easily accessible to and usable by the user community is one of key issues for realizing the full potential of these valuable datasets. In the past several years, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has developed several interoperability protocols aiming at making geospatial data easily accessible to and usable by the user community through Internet. The protocols particularly relevant to the discovery, access, and integration of multi-source satellite remote sensing data are the Catalog Service for Web (CS/W) and Web Coverage Services (WCS) Specifications. The OGC CS/W specifies the interfaces, HTTP protocol bindings, and a framework for defining application profiles required to publish and access digital catalogues of metadata for geographic data, services, and related resource information. The OGC WCS specification defines the interfaces between web-based clients and servers for accessing on-line multi-dimensional, multi-temporal geospatial coverage in an interoperable way. Based on definitions by OGC and ISO 19123, coverage data include all remote sensing images as well as gridded model outputs. The Laboratory for Advanced Information Technology and Standards (LAITS), George Mason University, has been working on developing and implementing OGC specifications for better serving NASA Earth science data to the user community for many

  12. PREFACE: 1st International Conference on Sensing for Industry, Control, Communication & Security Technologies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shuja Syed, Ahmed

    2013-12-01

    The 1st International Conference on Sensing for Industry, Control, Communication & Security Technologies (ICSICCST-2013), took place in Karachi, Pakistan, from 24-26 June 2013. It was organized by Indus University, Karachi, in collaboration with HEJ Research Institute of Chemistry, University of Karachi, Karachi. More than 80 abstracts were submitted to the conference and were double blind-reviewed by an international scientific committee. The topics of the Conference were: Video, Image & Voice Sensing Sensing for Industry, Environment, and Health Automation and Controls Laser Sensors and Systems Displays for Innovative Applications Emerging Technologies Unmanned, Robotic, and Layered Systems Sensing for Defense, Homeland Security, and Law Enforcement The title of the conference, 'Sensing for Industry, Control, Communication & Security Technologies' is very apt in capturing the main issues facing the industry of Pakistan and the world. We believe the sensing industry, particularly in Pakistan, is currently at a critical juncture of its development. The future of the industry will depend on how the industry players choose to respond to the challenge of global competition and opportunities arising from strong growth in the Asian region for which we are pleased to note that the conference covered a comprehensive spectrum of issues with an international perspective. This will certainly assist industry players to make informed decisions in shaping the future of the industry. The conference gathered qualified researchers from developed countries like USA, UK, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, China, South Korea and Malaysia etc whose expertise resulting from the research can be drawn upon to build an exploitable area of new technology that has potential Defense, Homeland Security, and Military applicability. More than 250 researchers/students attended the event and made the event great success as the turnout was 100%. An exceptional line-up of speakers spoke at the occasion. We want

  13. TYCTWD Programs Strive to Make Science Educational and Fun | Poster

    Science.gov (United States)

    By Carolynne Keenan, Contributing Writer Joseph Barchi, Jr, Ph.D., calls teaching “the noblest and most important profession.” So it makes sense that Barchi, senior scientist and head of the Glycoconjugate and NMR Section, Chemical Biology Laboratory, Center for Cancer Research, NCI at Frederick, would encourage his lab to offer a fun, educational program at Take Your Child to

  14. The Voces Project: Investigating How Latino/a Immigrant Children Make Sense of Engaging in School and School Mathematics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Knudson-Martin, John C.

    2013-01-01

    This study investigates how a group of Mexican immigrant children in the United States made sense of engaging in school and school mathematics. The research focused on a population of Latino/a middle school students who were a distinct minority, building a model that shows how a complex set of cognitive, sociocultural, and institutional factors…

  15. Discussion on the application potential of thermal infrared remote sensing technology in uranium deposits exploration

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Junhu; Zhang Jielin; Liu Dechang

    2011-01-01

    With the continual development of new thermal infrared sensors and thermal radiation theory, the technology of thermal infrared remote sensing has shown great potential for applications in resources exploration, especially in the field of uranium exploration. The paper makes a systemic summary of the theoretical basis and research status of the thermal infrared remote sensing applications in resources exploration from the surface temperature, thermal inertia and thermal infrared spectrum. What's more, the research objective and the research content of thermal infrared remote sensing in the uranium deposits exploration applications are discussed in detail. Besides, based on the thermal infrared ASTER data, the paper applies this technology to the granite-type uranium deposits in South China and achieves good result. Above all, the practice proves that the thermal infrared remote sensing technology has a good application prospects and particular value in the field of uranium prospecting and will play an important role in the prospecting target of the uranium deposits. (authors)

  16. A Novel Sensing Circuit with Large Sensing Margin for Embedded Spin-Transfer Torque MRAMs

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bagheriye, Leila; Toofan, Siroos; Saeidi, Roghayeh

    -disturbance and high yield. In this paper, to deal with the read reliability challenge, a high sensing margin sensing circuit with strong positive feedback is proposed. It improves the sensing margin (SM) by 10.42X/3.3X and a with 1.24X/1.59X lower read energy at iso-sensing time (2ns) in comparison...

  17. Stretchable touch-sensing skin over padding for co-robots

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chen, Ying; Yu, Miao; Bruck, Hugh A; Smela, Elisabeth

    2016-01-01

    For robots that work collaboratively with people, often referred to as ‘co-robots’, it would be beneficial for them to be soft or padded and to have a touch-sensing ‘skin’ to enable tactile environmental awareness. However, a sensing skin over a padding material that undergoes large deformations requires ‘stretchable’ materials, which may possess time-dependent or viscoelastic mechanical responses. In this work the roles that a padding layer plays when placed under a stretchable sensing layer was investigated. A strain-sensing skin was formed by coating a thin film of compliant piezoresistive sensing paint, consisting of exfoliated graphite in latex, onto a rubber membrane, and the response of the skin was characterized. The change in resistance was linear with tensile strain. The role of the padding material was then investigated under indentation by examining three foams and two elastomers. As expected, the padding enhanced energy dissipation as shown by hysteresis in the sensor response, which is linked to its protective function; the hysteresis was comparable for the five padding materials. The padding also provided an unexpected advantage: it magnified the change in resistance compared to that obtained under free displacement in air. While hysteresis in viscoelastic materials can largely be handled with an appropriate model, inconsistency cannot be, and the two elastomers were found to have unacceptably high variability because of micro-cracks and other defects in these materials. On the other hand, foams that had few defects and regular cell sizes gave good consistency across trials and different sensor positions over the padding. Combined with their lighter weight and availability in a wide range of stiffness, we conclude that foams make a better choice for padding of co-robots. (paper)

  18. Introduction to remote sensing

    CERN Document Server

    Cracknell, Arthur P

    2007-01-01

    Addressing the need for updated information in remote sensing, Introduction to Remote Sensing, Second Edition provides a full and authoritative introduction for scientists who need to know the scope, potential, and limitations in the field. The authors discuss the physical principles of common remote sensing systems and examine the processing, interpretation, and applications of data. This new edition features updated and expanded material, including greater coverage of applications from across earth, environmental, atmospheric, and oceanographic sciences. Illustrated with remotely sensed colo

  19. The Public and Nanotechnology: How Citizens Make Sense of Emerging Technologies

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Scheufele, Dietram A.; Lewenstein, Bruce V.

    2005-01-01

    We report findings from a national telephone survey on levels of knowledge about and attitudes toward nanotechnology that demonstrate how people make decisions about emerging technologies. Our findings confirm previous research that suggests that people form opinions and attitudes even in the absence of relevant scientific or policy-related information. In fact, our data show that cognitive shortcuts or heuristics - often provided by mass media - are currently a key factor in influencing how the public thinks about nanotechnology and about its risks and benefits, and in determining the level of support among the public for further funding for research in this area

  20. The Public and Nanotechnology: How Citizens Make Sense of Emerging Technologies

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Scheufele, Dietram A. [University of Wisconsin, Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication (United States)], E-mail: scheufele@wisc.edu; Lewenstein, Bruce V. [Cornell University, Department of Communication and Department of Science and Technology Studies (United States)

    2005-12-15

    We report findings from a national telephone survey on levels of knowledge about and attitudes toward nanotechnology that demonstrate how people make decisions about emerging technologies. Our findings confirm previous research that suggests that people form opinions and attitudes even in the absence of relevant scientific or policy-related information. In fact, our data show that cognitive shortcuts or heuristics - often provided by mass media - are currently a key factor in influencing how the public thinks about nanotechnology and about its risks and benefits, and in determining the level of support among the public for further funding for research in this area.

  1. Nano-bio-sensing

    CERN Document Server

    Carrara, Sandro

    2011-01-01

    This book examines state-of-the-art applications of nano-bio-sensing. It brings together researchers from nano-electronics and bio-technology, providing multidisciplinary content from nano-structures fabrication to bio-sensing applications.

  2. Deep Rationality: The Evolutionary Economics of Decision Making.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kenrick, Douglas T; Griskevicius, Vladas; Sundie, Jill M; Li, Norman P; Li, Yexin Jessica; Neuberg, Steven L

    2009-10-01

    What is a "rational" decision? Economists traditionally viewed rationality as maximizing expected satisfaction. This view has been useful in modeling basic microeconomic concepts, but falls short in accounting for many everyday human decisions. It leaves unanswered why some things reliably make people more satisfied than others, and why people frequently act to make others happy at a cost to themselves. Drawing on an evolutionary perspective, we propose that people make decisions according to a set of principles that may not appear to make sense at the superficial level, but that demonstrate rationality at a deeper evolutionary level. By this, we mean that people use adaptive domain-specific decision-rules that, on average, would have resulted in fitness benefits. Using this framework, we re-examine several economic principles. We suggest that traditional psychological functions governing risk aversion, discounting of future benefits, and budget allocations to multiple goods, for example, vary in predictable ways as a function of the underlying motive of the decision-maker and individual differences linked to evolved life-history strategies. A deep rationality framework not only helps explain why people make the decisions they do, but also inspires multiple directions for future research.

  3. Optical remote sensing

    CERN Document Server

    Prasad, Saurabh; Chanussot, Jocelyn

    2011-01-01

    Optical remote sensing relies on exploiting multispectral and hyper spectral imagery possessing high spatial and spectral resolutions respectively. These modalities, although useful for most remote sensing tasks, often present challenges that must be addressed for their effective exploitation. This book presents current state-of-the-art algorithms that address the following key challenges encountered in representation and analysis of such optical remotely sensed data: challenges in pre-processing images, storing and representing high dimensional data, fusing different sensor modalities, patter

  4. Studying the making of geographical knowledge

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Adriansen, Hanne Kirstine; Madsen, Lene Møller

    2009-01-01

    The article addresses the issue of being a ‘double' insider when conducting interviews. Double insider means being an insider both in relation to one's research matter - in the authors' case the making of geographical knowledge - and in relation to one's interviewees - our colleagues. The article...... is a reflection paper in the sense that we reflect upon experiences drawn from a previous research project carried out in Danish academia. It is important that the project was situated in a Scandinavian workplace culture because this has bearings for the social, cultural, and economic situation in which knowledge...

  5. Designing sparse sensing matrix for compressive sensing to reconstruct high resolution medical images

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vibha Tiwari

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Compressive sensing theory enables faithful reconstruction of signals, sparse in domain $ \\Psi $, at sampling rate lesser than Nyquist criterion, while using sampling or sensing matrix $ \\Phi $ which satisfies restricted isometric property. The role played by sensing matrix $ \\Phi $ and sparsity matrix $ \\Psi $ is vital in faithful reconstruction. If the sensing matrix is dense then it takes large storage space and leads to high computational cost. In this paper, effort is made to design sparse sensing matrix with least incurred computational cost while maintaining quality of reconstructed image. The design approach followed is based on sparse block circulant matrix (SBCM with few modifications. The other used sparse sensing matrix consists of 15 ones in each column. The medical images used are acquired from US, MRI and CT modalities. The image quality measurement parameters are used to compare the performance of reconstructed medical images using various sensing matrices. It is observed that, since Gram matrix of dictionary matrix ($ \\Phi \\Psi \\mathrm{} $ is closed to identity matrix in case of proposed modified SBCM, therefore, it helps to reconstruct the medical images of very good quality.

  6. Archaeological, art-historical, and artistic approaches to classical antiquity. Viccy Coltman (ed., Making Sense of Greek Art, University of Exeter Press, 2012

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Carol C. Mattusch

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available Making sense of Greek Art is a Festschrift in memory of John Betts containing papers by ten of his students and colleagues. Their papers on Greek, Etruscan, Roman, and nineteenth-century topics reveal a wide range of methodologies. Two papers focus on subjects that might be covered in a course on Greek art and archaeology: one evaluates votive offerings in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta (Nicki Waugh; and the other compares archaeological and art-historical approaches to the study of Greek vases (Zosia Archibald. Three are concerned with Etruscan and Roman works: an Etruscan reinterpretation of a Greek myth (Vedia Izzet; Hellenistic and Roman versions of Aphrodite holding a mirror (Shelley Hales; and early Augustan uses of Archaistic art (Christopher H. Hallett. The other five papers illustrate the uses of classical artefacts during the nineteenth century: classical elements in Jacques-Louis David’s paintings (Ed Lilley; display of antiquities in the library of an English country house (Viccy Coltman; Tanagra figurines in paintings by Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Jean-Léon Gérôme (Genevieve Liveley; Alma-Tadema’s drawings for a theatrical production of Hypatia (Michael Liversidge; and plaster casts of the Elgin marbles exhibited in the Greek court of the Crystal Palace (Kate Nichols.

  7. Privacy Protection in Participatory Sensing Applications Requiring Fine-Grained Locations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dong, Kai; Gu, Tao; Tao, Xianping

    2010-01-01

    The emerging participatory sensing applications have brought a privacy risk where users expose their location information. Most of the existing solutions preserve location privacy by generalizing a precise user location to a coarse-grained location, and hence they cannot be applied in those appli...... provider is an trustworthy entity, making our solution more feasible to practical applications. We present and analyze our security model, and evaluate the performance and scalability of our system....

  8. The role of social cognition in decision making

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Frith, Christopher; Singer, Tania

    2008-01-01

    Successful decision making in a social setting depends on our ability to understand the intentions, emotions and beliefs of others. The mirror system allows us to understand other people's motor actions and action intentions. 'Empathy' allows us to understand and share emotions and sensations......, the magnitude of the brain activity in these shared networks is modulated by contextual appraisal of the situation or the other person. An important feature of decision making in a social setting concerns the interaction of reason and emotion. We consider four domains where such interactions occur: our sense...... of fairness, altruistic punishment, trust and framing effects. In these cases, social motivations and emotions compete with each other, while higher-level control processes modulate the interactions of these low-level biases....

  9. Food Security, Decision Making and the Use of Remote Sensing in Famine Early Warning Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brown, Molly E.

    2008-01-01

    Famine early warning systems use remote sensing in combination with socio-economic and household food economy analysis to provide timely and rigorous information on emerging food security crises. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) is the US Agency for International Development's decision support system in 20 African countries, as well as in Guatemala, Haiti and Afghanistan. FEWS NET provides early and actionable policy guidance for the US Government and its humanitarian aid partners. As we move into an era of climate change where weather hazards will become more frequent and severe, understanding how to provide quantitative and actionable scientific information for policy makers using biophysical data is critical for an appropriate and effective response.

  10. Information Extraction of Tourist Geological Resources Based on 3d Visualization Remote Sensing Image

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, X.

    2018-04-01

    Tourism geological resources are of high value in admiration, scientific research and universal education, which need to be protected and rationally utilized. In the past, most of the remote sensing investigations of tourism geological resources used two-dimensional remote sensing interpretation method, which made it difficult for some geological heritages to be interpreted and led to the omission of some information. This aim of this paper is to assess the value of a method using the three-dimensional visual remote sensing image to extract information of geological heritages. skyline software system is applied to fuse the 0.36 m aerial images and 5m interval DEM to establish the digital earth model. Based on the three-dimensional shape, color tone, shadow, texture and other image features, the distribution of tourism geological resources in Shandong Province and the location of geological heritage sites were obtained, such as geological structure, DaiGu landform, granite landform, Volcanic landform, sandy landform, Waterscapes, etc. The results show that using this method for remote sensing interpretation is highly recognizable, making the interpretation more accurate and comprehensive.

  11. Digital methods and remote sensing in archaeology archaeology in the age of sensing

    CERN Document Server

    Campana, Stefano

    2016-01-01

    This volume debuts the new scope of Remote Sensing, which was first defined as the analysis of data collected by sensors that were not in physical contact with the objects under investigation (using cameras, scanners, and radar systems operating from spaceborne or airborne platforms). A wider characterization is now possible: Remote Sensing can be any non-destructive approach to viewing the buried and nominally invisible evidence of past activity. Spaceborne and airborne sensors, now supplemented by laser scanning, are united using ground-based geophysical instruments and undersea remote sensing, as well as other non-invasive techniques such as surface collection or field-walking survey. Now, any method that enables observation of evidence on or beneath the surface of the earth, without impact on the surviving stratigraphy, is legitimately within the realm of Remote Sensing. The new interfaces and senses engaged in Remote Sensing appear throughout the book. On a philosophical level, this is about the landscap...

  12. The Formative Elements of the Sense of Presence and Its Impact on the Identity of the Users of Video Games

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Behroz Minaei

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available Nowadays video games have provided an enriched environment for their users to make a sense of presence in interactive media. A sense of presence in the virtual space of video games leads to some sort of twin-concept or even further the unity of the user with the character within the game. This unification brings virtual identity for the user. As time goes by, through the presence in the virtual space of video games, real identity is complicated with virtual identity and it has to be influenced by the virtual elements. The way of making a sense of presence for the users of video games in which leads them to a virtual identity in the new-born medium, and the consequence of the sense of presence above in the real identity of users is the problem this paper is going to seek. Hence, the paper, according to the views of interactive media theorist and data collection of using library research method through descriptive–analytical explanation, suggests the assumption that cinematic aesthetic form, interactive narratives, and the use of the unique capabilities of the media in which video games take the advantages of them and suggest them as well, provides an enriched environment that brings a sense of presence for the user and will alter his real identity.

  13. Pointwise Multipliers on Spaces of Homogeneous Type in the Sense of Coifman and Weiss

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yanchang Han

    2014-01-01

    homogeneous type in the sense of Coifman and Weiss, pointwise multipliers of inhomogeneous Besov and Triebel-Lizorkin spaces are obtained. We make no additional assumptions on the quasi-metric or the doubling measure. Hence, the results of this paper extend earlier related results to a more general setting.

  14. Making Sense of Sound

    Science.gov (United States)

    Menon, Deepika; Lankford, Deanna

    2016-01-01

    From the earliest days of their lives, children are exposed to all kinds of sound, from soft, comforting voices to the frightening rumble of thunder. Consequently, children develop their own naïve explanations largely based upon their experiences with phenomena encountered every day. When new information does not support existing conceptions,…

  15. Making Sense of Mathematics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Umphrey, Jan

    2011-01-01

    The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) is a voice and advocate for mathematics educators, working to ensure that all students receive equitable mathematics learning of the highest quality. To help teachers and school leaders understand the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) and to point out how the CCSSM can be…

  16. Making Sense of Facebook

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Aaen, Janus Holst

    2015-01-01

    of the design as well as how the approach can be further developed, and suggests 1) broadening the scope of the study from the Facebook group as a singular medium to include other media used by the students and 2) extending the study to include the voice of students by engaging them as co-researchers.......The objective of this paper is to discuss a methodological design developed to analyse self-governed student Facebook groups as a part of a larger study of the use of ICT in Danish secondary schools (Mathiasen. Aaen, Dalsgaard, Degn & Thomsen, 2014). The paper will discuss how this methodological...... setup can help the researcher gain in-depth knowledge of the students’ use of Facebook groups, looking past the traditional dichotomy between online and offline as well as the distinction between school-related and non-school-related communication. The paper will address the potential shortcomings...

  17. Making Sense of Dress

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Skjold, Else

    2015-01-01

    research. As I go into my case study, I show examples of how I experienced the dress-body connection of my informants in their wardrobes, and in my final discussion, I suggest how my analysis might cast back potential new endeavours for the scholarly fields with which I engage. Keywords: wardrobe, sensory......; after a positioning of the dress-body connection within fashion and dress research I place my own research within the so-called 'wardrobe method'. Next I elaborate on the way I have tried to bridge my methodology with my epistemological departure, through applying methods from user-oriented design......In this paper, I wish to exemplify how research on bodily experiences of dressing within research on fashion and dress research might be combined with user-oriented approaches from design research. By doing so, I wish to point my finger at the unfortunate wall between these two scholarly areas...

  18. Making Sense of Data

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bjørnsten, Thomas

    2014-01-01

    Short description of current postdoc project that operates with a twofold perspective on sonification and visualization strategies related to the use of data. Here with a focus on Big Data and how it is being addressed by various artists working within the realm – or on the fringes...... – of experimental sound based practices....

  19. Making Senses of Nordvest

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lapina, Linda

    , hope, beauty, gratitude, love and care. Chapter 2 develops an embodied, affective methodology. This methodology underlines the interconnectedness and mutual dependence of data production, analytical pathways and knowledge generation. Building on feminist scholarship, I underline partiality...

  20. Making Sense of Diversity

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wilken, Lisanne

    they categorize differences and perhaps produce or reproduce inequalities of various kinds is becoming equally important. References Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. Distinction, Critique sociale du jugement. Editions de Minuit, Paris [1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Harvard University Press......, Cambridge, Mass Bourdieu, Pierre. 1988. Homo Academicus. Standford University Press. Douglas, M 1966 Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Elias, N and J. L. Scotson. 1965. The Established and the Outsiders: A Sociological Enquiry into Community...

  1. LIGO sensing system performance

    CERN Document Server

    Landry, M

    2002-01-01

    The optical sensing subsystem of a LIGO interferometer is described. The system includes two complex interferometric sensing schemes to control test masses in length and alignment. The length sensing system is currently employed on all LIGO interferometers to lock coupled cavities on resonance. Auto-alignment is to be accomplished by a wavefront-sensing scheme which automatically corrects for angular fluctuations of the test masses. Improvements in lock stability and duration are noted when the wavefront auto-alignment system is employed. Preliminary results from the commissioning of the 2 km detector in Washington are shown.

  2. Classroom Activities to Engage Students and Promote Critical Thinking about Genetic Regulation of Bacterial Quorum Sensing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kimberly Aebli

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available We developed an interactive activity to mimic bacterial quorum sensing, and a classroom worksheet to promote critical thinking about genetic regulation of the lux operon. The interactive quorum sensing activity engages students and provides a direct visualization of how population density functions to influence light production in bacteria. The worksheet activity consists of practice problems that require students to apply basic knowledge of the lux operon in order to make predictions about genetic complementation experiments, and students must evaluate how genetic mutations in the lux operon affect gene expression and overall phenotype. The worksheet promotes critical thinking and problem solving skills, and emphasizes the roles of diffusible signaling molecules, regulatory proteins, and structural proteins in quorum sensing.

  3. High resolution remote sensing for reducing uncertainties in urban forest carbon offset life cycle assessments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tigges, Jan; Lakes, Tobia

    2017-10-04

    Urban forests reduce greenhouse gas emissions by storing and sequestering considerable amounts of carbon. However, few studies have considered the local scale of urban forests to effectively evaluate their potential long-term carbon offset. The lack of precise, consistent and up-to-date forest details is challenging for long-term prognoses. Therefore, this review aims to identify uncertainties in urban forest carbon offset assessment and discuss the extent to which such uncertainties can be reduced by recent progress in high resolution remote sensing. We do this by performing an extensive literature review and a case study combining remote sensing and life cycle assessment of urban forest carbon offset in Berlin, Germany. Recent progress in high resolution remote sensing and methods is adequate for delivering more precise details on the urban tree canopy, individual tree metrics, species, and age structures compared to conventional land use/cover class approaches. These area-wide consistent details can update life cycle inventories for more precise future prognoses. Additional improvements in classification accuracy can be achieved by a higher number of features derived from remote sensing data of increasing resolution, but first studies on this subject indicated that a smart selection of features already provides sufficient data that avoids redundancies and enables more efficient data processing. Our case study from Berlin could use remotely sensed individual tree species as consistent inventory of a life cycle assessment. However, a lack of growth, mortality and planting data forced us to make assumptions, therefore creating uncertainty in the long-term prognoses. Regarding temporal changes and reliable long-term estimates, more attention is required to detect changes of gradual growth, pruning and abrupt changes in tree planting and mortality. As such, precise long-term urban ecological monitoring using high resolution remote sensing should be intensified

  4. Improved performance of a shielded torch using ethanol in inductively coupled plasma–sector field mass spectrometry

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Chen, Tao [State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, Faculty of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074 (China); Hu, Zhaochu, E-mail: zchu@vip.sina.com [State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, Faculty of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074 (China); Liu, Shenghua [Institute of Hydrogeology and Environmental Geology, CAGS, Shijiazhuang 050061 (China); Liu, Yongsheng; Gao, Shan; Li, Ming; Zong, Keqing; Chen, Haihong; Hu, Shenghong [State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, Faculty of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074 (China)

    2015-04-01

    To improve the accuracy and precision of trace element analysis, higher analytical sensitivity and lower interference are required. In this study, we investigated the effects of the addition of ethanol in combination with a shielded torch on the signal intensities of elements from {sup 7}Li to {sup 238}U, oxide yields, doubly charged ion yields, isobaric interferences and ion distributions in inductively coupled plasma–sector field mass spectrometry (ICP–SFMS). For the 39 investigated elements in this study, using the shielded torch increases the sensitivity by a factor of 17–58. The well-known drawback of using a shielded torch is that it will increase the oxide yield. In this study, the CeO{sup +}/Ce{sup +} ratio is increased by a factor of 3.3 in the GE-on mode compared to that in the GE-off mode at normal conditions (without ethanol). In the GE-on mode, the addition of 4% ethanol in ICP–SFMS is found not only to decrease the CeO{sup +}/Ce{sup +} ratio by a factor of 4 but also to suppress the Ce{sup 2+}/Ce{sup +} ratio by a factor of 4.2. In large contrast, the effect of 2–6% ethanol on the oxide yield and doubly charged ratio is minimal in the GE-off mode. Except for As, Se, Sb, Te and Au, for which the signal intensities are increased by a factor of 1.4–3.7 in the presence of 2–6% ethanol, an increased concentration of ethanol suppresses intensities of other elements. In the GE-off mode, the suppression of the analyte signal due to increased ethanol concentration is more significant than that in the GE-on mode. Compared to the spatial profiles of the ion distributions in the normal mode (without ethanol), the addition of 2–4% ethanol leads to significantly wider axial and radial profiles. The significantly wider axial and radial ion distribution had a dilution effect on the ion densities, which subsequently reduced the ion signal intensities. The addition of 4% ethanol was also found to suppress the interferences of Xe by a factor of 2.8 and

  5. Hydroball string sensing system

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hurwitz, M.J.; Ekeroth, D.E.; Squarer, D.

    1991-01-01

    This patent describes a hydroball string sensing system for a nuclear reactor having a core containing a fluid at a fluid pressure. It comprises a tube connectable to the nuclear reactor so that the fluid can flow within the tube at a fluid pressure that is substantially the same as the fluid pressure of the nuclear reactor core; a hydroball string including - a string member having objects positioned therealong with a specified spacing, the object including a plurality of hydroballs, and bullet members positioned at opposing ends of the string member; first sensor means, positioned outside a first segment of the tube, for sensing one of the objects being positioned within the first segment, and for providing a sensing signal responsive to the sensing of the first sensing means

  6. History Making: The Historian as Consultant

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jorma Kalela

    2013-11-01

    Full Text Available History is not just a genre of knowledge but also a basic feature of human life. Accounting for the past, or creating histories, to quote David Thelen, is ‘as natural a part of life as eating or breathing’. Casual references to what has taken place make up the vast majority of these accounts. But there are also a great number of deliberately created expositions of the past. They are produced in every field of society and by a wide variety of actors, from private persons to, for example, politicians and various media. The totality of them can be called everyday history. These accounts of the past serve present purposes – histories have innumerable functions and are of countless types. Divergent accounts also influence each other, and my suggestion is that their interaction be called the never-ending social process of history-making. History making, in other words, is not the preserve of academically-trained historians. They are experts but not outside observers. Scholarly historians are inescapably involved in the social process of history making. Their work goes beyond prevailing histories: they seek interpretations that make better sense of the past than the existing ones. Embedded in this effort is another constructivist function: they demonstrate ways to think about the past and how to use it. When demonstrating ‘that’s not how it was’, historians at the same display ‘how the presentation should have been constructed’. Even if they don’t think of themselves as consultants on history making they act in this capacity.

  7. Career Development Strivings: Assessing Goals and Motivation in Career Decision-Making and Planning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dik, Bryan J.; Sargent, Adam M.; Steger, Michael F.

    2008-01-01

    This article describes and demonstrates a novel approach to assessing goals and motives among individuals engaged in the career decision-making and planning process. Participants generated five career development strivings, rated each striving along several dimensions (self-efficacy, outcome expectations, sense of calling, spiritual significance,…

  8. Making sense of perceptions of risk of diseases and vaccinations: a qualitative study combining models of health beliefs, decision-making and risk perception

    OpenAIRE

    Bond Lyndal; Nolan Terry

    2011-01-01

    Abstract Background Maintaining high levels of childhood vaccinations is important for public health. Success requires better understanding of parents' perceptions of diseases and consequent decisions about vaccinations, however few studies have considered this from the theoretical perspectives of risk perception and decision-making under uncertainty. The aim of this study was to examine the utility of subjective risk perception and decision-making theories to provide a better understanding o...

  9. Gesture, Meaning-Making, and Embodiment: Second Language Learning in an Elementary Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosborough, Alessandro

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of the present study was to investigate the mediational role of gesture and body movement/positioning between a teacher and an English language learner in a second-grade classroom. Responding to Thibault's (2011) call for understanding language through whole-body sense making, aspects of gesture and body positioning were analyzed for…

  10. Wideband spectrum sensing order for cognitive radios with sensing errors and channel SNR probing uncertainty

    KAUST Repository

    Hamza, Doha R.

    2013-04-01

    A secondary user (SU) seeks to transmit by sequentially sensing statistically independent primary user (PU) channels. If a channel is sensed free, it is probed to estimate the signal-to-noise ratio between the SU transmitter-receiver pair over the channel. We jointly optimize the channel sensing time, the sensing decision threshold, the channel probing time, together with the channel sensing order under imperfect synchronization between the PU and the SU. The sensing and probing times and the decision threshold are assumed to be the same for all channels. We maximize a utility function related to the SU throughput under the constraint that the collision probability with the PU is kept below a certain value and taking sensing errors into account. We illustrate the optimal policy and the variation of SU throughput with various system parameters. © 2012 IEEE.

  11. Wideband spectrum sensing order for cognitive radios with sensing errors and channel SNR probing uncertainty

    KAUST Repository

    Hamza, Doha R.; Aï ssa, Sonia

    2013-01-01

    A secondary user (SU) seeks to transmit by sequentially sensing statistically independent primary user (PU) channels. If a channel is sensed free, it is probed to estimate the signal-to-noise ratio between the SU transmitter-receiver pair over the channel. We jointly optimize the channel sensing time, the sensing decision threshold, the channel probing time, together with the channel sensing order under imperfect synchronization between the PU and the SU. The sensing and probing times and the decision threshold are assumed to be the same for all channels. We maximize a utility function related to the SU throughput under the constraint that the collision probability with the PU is kept below a certain value and taking sensing errors into account. We illustrate the optimal policy and the variation of SU throughput with various system parameters. © 2012 IEEE.

  12. Sensing charges of the Ciona intestinalis voltage-sensing phosphatase.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Villalba-Galea, Carlos A; Frezza, Ludivine; Sandtner, Walter; Bezanilla, Francisco

    2013-11-01

    Voltage control over enzymatic activity in voltage-sensitive phosphatases (VSPs) is conferred by a voltage-sensing domain (VSD) located in the N terminus. These VSDs are constituted by four putative transmembrane segments (S1 to S4) resembling those found in voltage-gated ion channels. The putative fourth segment (S4) of the VSD contains positive residues that likely function as voltage-sensing elements. To study in detail how these residues sense the plasma membrane potential, we have focused on five arginines in the S4 segment of the Ciona intestinalis VSP (Ci-VSP). After implementing a histidine scan, here we show that four arginine-to-histidine mutants, namely R223H to R232H, mediate voltage-dependent proton translocation across the membrane, indicating that these residues transit through the hydrophobic core of Ci-VSP as a function of the membrane potential. These observations indicate that the charges carried by these residues are sensing charges. Furthermore, our results also show that the electrical field in VSPs is focused in a narrow hydrophobic region that separates the extracellular and intracellular space and constitutes the energy barrier for charge crossing.

  13. Structural sensing of interior sound for active control of noise in structural-acoustic cavities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bagha, Ashok K; Modak, S V

    2015-07-01

    This paper proposes a method for structural sensing of acoustic potential energy for active control of noise in a structural-acoustic cavity. The sensing strategy aims at global control and works with a fewer number of sensors. It is based on the established concept of radiation modes and hence does not add too many states to the order of the system. Acoustic potential energy is sensed using a combination of a Kalman filter and a frequency weighting filter with the structural response measurements as the inputs. The use of Kalman filter also makes the system robust against measurement noise. The formulation of the strategy is presented using finite element models of the system including that of sensors and actuators so that it can be easily applied to practical systems. The sensing strategy is numerically evaluated in the framework of Linear Quadratic Gaussian based feedback control of interior noise in a rectangular box cavity with a flexible plate with single and multiple pairs of piezoelectric sensor-actuator patches when broadband disturbances act on the plate. The performance is compared with an "acoustic filter" that models the complete transfer function from the structure to the acoustic domain. The sensing performance is also compared with a direct estimation strategy.

  14. Eyes that bind us: Gaze leading induces an implicit sense of agency.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stephenson, Lisa J; Edwards, S Gareth; Howard, Emma E; Bayliss, Andrew P

    2018-03-01

    Humans feel a sense of agency over the effects their motor system causes. This is the case for manual actions such as pushing buttons, kicking footballs, and all acts that affect the physical environment. We ask whether initiating joint attention - causing another person to follow our eye movement - can elicit an implicit sense of agency over this congruent gaze response. Eye movements themselves cannot directly affect the physical environment, but joint attention is an example of how eye movements can indirectly cause social outcomes. Here we show that leading the gaze of an on-screen face induces an underestimation of the temporal gap between action and consequence (Experiments 1 and 2). This underestimation effect, named 'temporal binding,' is thought to be a measure of an implicit sense of agency. Experiment 3 asked whether merely making an eye movement in a non-agentic, non-social context might also affect temporal estimation, and no reliable effects were detected, implying that inconsequential oculomotor acts do not reliably affect temporal estimations under these conditions. Together, these findings suggest that an implicit sense of agency is generated when initiating joint attention interactions. This is important for understanding how humans can efficiently detect and understand the social consequences of their actions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Design of a bio-inspired pneumatic artificial muscle with self-contained sensing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Erin, Onder; Pol, Nishant; Valle, Luis; Yong-Lae Park

    2016-08-01

    Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) are one of the most famous linear actuators in bio-inspired robotics. They can generate relatively high linear force considering their form factors and weights. Furthermore, PAMs are inexpensive compared with traditional electromagnetic actuators (e.g. DC motors) and also inherently light and compliant. In robotics applications, however, they typically require external sensing mechanisms due to their nonlinear behaviors, which may make the entire mechanical system bulky and complicated, limiting their use in simple systems. This study presents the design and fabrication of a low-cost McKibben-type PAM with a self-contained displacement and force sensing capability that does not require any external sensing elements. The proposed PAM can detect axial contraction force and displacement at the same time. In this study, the design of a traditional McKibben muscle was modified to include an inductive coil surrounding the muscle fibers. Then, a thin, soft silicone layer was coated outside of the muscle to protect and hold the sensing coil on the actuator. This novel design measures coil inductance change to determine the contraction force and the displacement. The process can be applied to a variety of existing McKibben actuator designs without significantly changing the rigidity of the actuator while minimizing the device's footprint.

  16. How Black women make sense of 'White' and 'Black' fashion magazines: a qualitative think aloud study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ogden, Jane; Russell, Sheriden

    2013-12-01

    This qualitative think aloud study explored how Black women (n = 32) processed information from a White or Black fashion magazine. Comments to the 'White' magazine were characterised by rejection, being critical of the media and ambivalence, whereas they responded to the 'Black' magazine with celebration, identification and a search for depth. Transcending these themes was their self-identity of being a Black woman that was brought to the fore either by a sense of exclusion (White magazine) or engagement (Black magazine). Such an identity provides resilience against the media's thin ideals by minimising the processes of social comparison and internalisation.

  17. High-Resolution Remotely Sensed Small Target Detection by Imitating Fly Visual Perception Mechanism

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fengchen Huang

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available The difficulty and limitation of small target detection methods for high-resolution remote sensing data have been a recent research hot spot. Inspired by the information capture and processing theory of fly visual system, this paper endeavors to construct a characterized model of information perception and make use of the advantages of fast and accurate small target detection under complex varied nature environment. The proposed model forms a theoretical basis of small target detection for high-resolution remote sensing data. After the comparison of prevailing simulation mechanism behind fly visual systems, we propose a fly-imitated visual system method of information processing for high-resolution remote sensing data. A small target detector and corresponding detection algorithm are designed by simulating the mechanism of information acquisition, compression, and fusion of fly visual system and the function of pool cell and the character of nonlinear self-adaption. Experiments verify the feasibility and rationality of the proposed small target detection model and fly-imitated visual perception method.

  18. High-resolution remotely sensed small target detection by imitating fly visual perception mechanism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Fengchen; Xu, Lizhong; Li, Min; Tang, Min

    2012-01-01

    The difficulty and limitation of small target detection methods for high-resolution remote sensing data have been a recent research hot spot. Inspired by the information capture and processing theory of fly visual system, this paper endeavors to construct a characterized model of information perception and make use of the advantages of fast and accurate small target detection under complex varied nature environment. The proposed model forms a theoretical basis of small target detection for high-resolution remote sensing data. After the comparison of prevailing simulation mechanism behind fly visual systems, we propose a fly-imitated visual system method of information processing for high-resolution remote sensing data. A small target detector and corresponding detection algorithm are designed by simulating the mechanism of information acquisition, compression, and fusion of fly visual system and the function of pool cell and the character of nonlinear self-adaption. Experiments verify the feasibility and rationality of the proposed small target detection model and fly-imitated visual perception method.

  19. Decision making model and behavior of Iranian top managers

    OpenAIRE

    Aliakbar Farhangi; Seyed Reza Seyed Javadin; Majid balali; Seyed Badredin Ahmadi

    2010-01-01

    Aesthetics relates to felt meaning generated from sensory perceptions, and involves subjective,tacit knowledge rooted in feeling and emotion. We believe the aesthetics of management isimportant, but little understood, aspect of organizational life. We propose that followers use theiraesthetic senses in making these assessments.In this article we try to discover the role of aesthetic in management and then try to find out thestyle of about 130 industrial and governmental top managers in Iran u...

  20. Feasibility of Using Remotely Sensed Data to Aid in Long-Term Monitoring of Biodiversity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carroll, Mark L.; Brown, Molly E.; Elders, Akiko; Johnson, Kiersten

    2014-01-01

    Remote sensing is defined as making observations of an event or phenomena without physically sampling it. Typically this is done with instruments and sensors mounted on anything from poles extended over a cornfield,to airplanes,to satellites orbiting the Earth The sensors have characteristics that allow them to detect and record information regarding the emission and reflectance of electromagnetic energy from a surface or object. That information can then be represented visually on a screen or paper map or used in data analysis to inform decision-making.