Adjusting claims as new evidence emerges: Do students incorporate new evidence into their scientific explanations?

Constructing explanations of complex phenomena is an important part of doing science and it is also an important component of learning science. Students need opportunities to make claims based on available evidence and then use science concepts to justify why evidence supports the claim. But what happens when new evidence emerges for the same phenomenon? The “claim” portion of the claim, evidence, and reasoning explanation framework is viewed as the most accessible to students. When new evidence suggests that students adjust their current thinking however, do students incorporate this new information and modify their claims? This research utilized a time series research design to explore how students modify their claim over four iterations of one explanation, termed an evolving explanation. As new data were collected and analyzed to provide additional evidence, students needed to evaluate their current claim to see if it took into account all available evidence. This research explores that process including the supports that the teacher provided and the challenges that students faced in developing one claim, over time. The findings indicate that many students face challenges adjusting their claims when new, conflicting evidence emerges, even with class discussion, teacher feedback, and written scaffolds. Several possible reasons exist to account for this challenge. Students may (1) ignore new evidence, (2) find “undoing” their initial idea too cognitively demanding, or (3) simply not have any similar experience from which to build. Providing students with experiences of writing evolving explanations reflects what scientists do, while simultaneously preparing students to become more scientifically proficient.     

Fifteen years of building performance in Central Europe

The past 15 years have been quite a tumultuous ride for those involved in performance improvement in former communist Europe. This article traces the case of a boutique performance consultancy, KNO, whose American principals landed in the former Czechoslovakia at the onset of the “velvet revolution” in 1991. We analyze progress through the lens of three 5‐year cycles against dimensions of investor focus, infrastructure, employee mindset, business relationships, and performance services treated in the context of the changing political and economic times.     

Freedom Through Flight: Performing a Counter-Narrative of Disability

This project explores how discourses of difference sustain the separation of people with disabilities from community life and highlights the efforts of one organization, Passion Works, as members perform a counter-narrative of disability. Passion Works is a non-profit organization housed within a sheltered workshop sponsored by its local county board of mental retardation and developmental disabilities, and provides innovative employment opportunities by supporting artistic collaborations between individuals with and without disabilities. Our ethnographic portrayal is based on our experiences as participant observers, narratives performed in daily routines and collected through in-depth interviews with staff artists, and document analysis. We unpack how artists perform a counter-narrative of freedom through flight that fosters both autonomy and connection, allows artists to accomplish mind and body, and provides opportunities for artists to perform the personal in the public sphere.     

Der Vorschlag zur Rektorswahl und seine (Un-)Anfechtbarkeit

In der bisherigen praktischen Umsetzung der Regelungen des UnivG 2002 zur Rektorswahl sind mehrfach Probleme aufgetreten, die vor allem vom suboptimalen Zusammenspiel zwischen vorschlagendem Senat und auswählendem Universitätsrat herrühren. Angesichts der für 2009 in Aussicht genommenen umfangreicheren Novellierung des UnivG 2002, sollen hier einige diesbezüglich zentrale Problemlagen behandelt werden.     

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Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Splitting and projection: drawing on psychodynamics in educational psychology practice

This paper reflects the author’s journey into an area of psychology which is not dominant in Educational Psychology discourse, namely psychodynamic psychology. Two psychodynamic mechanisms, namely splitting and projection are explained, and then the author describes and critiques how these mechanisms have proved useful in his practice. Two case studies are presented to illustrate how a reflective stance guided by psychodynamic concepts was fruitful in analysing and, sometimes, removing emotional obstacles in the author’s practice. Finally a hypothesis is formulated to explain the apparent lack of educational psychologists’ interest in psychodynamic psychology.     

Integrating best evidence into patient care: a process facilitated by a seamless integration with informatics tools

The Vanderbilt University paper discusses how the Eskind Biomedical Library at Vanderbilt University Medical Center transitioned from a simplistic approach that linked resources to the institutional electronic medical record system, StarPanel, to a value-added service that is designed to deliver highly relevant information. Clinical teams formulate complex patient-specific questions via an evidence-based medicine literature request basket linked to individual patient records. The paper transitions into discussing how the StarPanel approach acted as a springboard for two additional projects that use highly trained knowledge management librarians with informatics expertise to integrate evidence into both order sets and a patient portal, tlibrednaV@htlaeHyM.The Vanderbilt University Eskind Biomedical Library (EBL) has a long history of integrating evidence into clinical teams. More recently it has adapted this expertise into a more scalable approach that allows the integration of evidence into existing medical informatics tools. This paper discusses the institution''s experiences in integrating librarian-filtered evidence into informatics tools and processes, using several examples to illustrate how its knowledge management (KM) team has proactively embedded evidence provision services into the clinical care environment.     

Keine Mehrfachverwertbarkeit von Dissertationen

Die soziale Bedürftigkeit im Sinne des StudFG ist nicht am gesetzlichen Unterhalt zu messen. Die Selbsterhaltungsf?higkeit des Studierenden ist dabei nur insofern relevant, als dieser als Selbsterhalter iSd StudFG zu werten ist.     

Microfluidic carbon-blackened polydimethylsiloxane device with reduced ultra violet background fluorescence for simultaneous two-color ultra violet/visible-laser induced fluorescence detection in single cell analysis

In single cell analysis (SCA), individual cell-specific properties and inhomogeneous cellular responses are being investigated that is not subjected to ensemble-averaging or heterogeneous cell population effects. For proteomic single cell analysis, ultra-sensitive and reproducible separation and detection techniques are essential. Microfluidic devices combined with UV laser induced fluorescence (UV-LIF) detection have been proposed to fulfill these requirements. Here, we report on a novel microfluidic chip fabrication procedure that combines straightforward production of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chips with a reduced UV fluorescence background (83%-reduction) by using PDMS droplets with carbon black pigments (CBP) as additives. The CBP-droplet is placed at the point of detection, whereas the rest of the chip remains transparent, ensuring full optical control of the chip. We systematically studied the relation of the UV background fluorescence at CBP to PDMS ratios (varying from 1:10 to 1:1000) for different UV laser powers. Using a CBP/PDMS ratio of 1:20, detection of a 100 nM tryptophan solution (S/N = 3.5) was possible, providing a theoretical limit of detection of 86 nM (with S/N = 3). Via simultaneous two color UV/VIS-LIF detection, we were able to demonstrate the electrophoretic separation of an analyte mixture of 500 nM tryptophan (UV) and 5 nM fluorescein (VIS) within 30 s. As an application, two color LIF detection was also used for the electrophoretic separation of the protein content from a GFP-labeled single Spodoptera frugiperda (Sf9) insect cell. Thereby just one single peak could be measured in the visible spectral range that could be correlated with one single peak among others in the ultraviolet spectra. This indicates an identification of the labeled protein γ-PKC and envisions a further feasible identification of more than one single protein in the future.     

Large-scale similarity data management with distributed Metric Index

Metric space is a universal and versatile model of similarity that can be applied in various areas of non-text information retrieval. However, a general, efficient and scalable solution for metric data management is still a resisting research challenge. In this work, we try to make an important step towards such management system that would be able to scale to data collections of billions of objects. We propose a distributed index structure for similarity data management called the Metric Index (M-Index) which can answer queries in precise and approximate manner. This technique can take advantage of any distributed hash table that supports interval queries and utilize it as an underlying index. We have performed numerous experiments to test various settings of the M-Index structure and we have proved its usability by developing a full-featured publicly-available Web application.