Quantum lithography: A?non-computing application of quantum information

Quantum information theory holds the promise of revolutionizing technologies other than computing and communications. In this article we show how quantum entanglement can be harnessed to beat the Rayleigh diffraction limit of conventional optical lithography, and to permit nano-devices to be fabricated at a scale arbitrarily shorter than the wavelength used. Given the relative ease of performing optical lithography compared with other schemes, and the relative costs associated in migrating the lithography industry to each new fabrication technology, exploiting quantum entanglement to extend the useful life of optical lithography could be economically attractive.     

Social and Evolutionary Explanations for Face-ism: Facial Prominence in Female Academic Profile Pictures

Face-ism describes a phenomenon in which men are presented with more facial prominence in images than are women. Previous theorists have ascribed this phenomenon to social causes. However, occurrence of face-ism across historical and cultural contexts suggests the possibility of biological influence. The current study aimed to explore face-ism through the intersection of social influence and biological factors via the investigation of photographs of women of different ages and social standing within the context of academia. Results show that graduate students displayed the face less prominently than both tenured and nontenured faculty. Additionally, younger women displayed the face less prominently than older women.     

Emergence and constructvalidation of the big five factors in early childhood: a longitudinal analysis of their ontogeny in Sweden

Researchers have shown that the five major dimensions of personality (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience) and two additional factors (irritability and positive activity) are evident from adolescence. This study attempted to replicate and extend these results in a longitudinal study of 102 Swedish children, followed from 2.3 to 15.2 years of age. Item analyses revealed consistently reliable irritability, conscientiousness, and positive activity factors, whereas the internal reliability of the extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience factors increased over time. Irritability and positive activity were not independent of the other factors. Scores on most of the personality factors were fairly stable over time. Over time, children became less extraverted, more agreeable, and more conscientious. Neuroticism and openness to experience increased in Phase III, although openness then decreased in Phase V. Validity of the original factors was demonstrated by correlations with independent assessments of the children's cognitive performance and adjustment to school.     

Content analysis of online discussion on a senior-high-school discussion forum of a virtual physics laboratory

In this study we content analyzed the online discussion of several senior-high-school groups on a forum of a virtual physics laboratory in Taiwan. The goal of our research was to investigate the nature of non-course-based online discussion and to find out some useful guidelines in developing such discussion forums for learning purposes. We adapted Henri’s framework and models (1992) for our analysis. The content analysis was conducted in terms of participation rate, social cues, interaction types, and cognitive and metacognitive skills. In this study, we compared the result patterns of two discussion conditions (‘required’ (R-) condition versus ‘non-required’ (NR-) condition) of a non-course-based discussion forum and investigated how the quality of message content changed in the processes of discussion. In the R-condition, participants were required to reply to the thread before they were allowed to read other messages on the forum, whereas participants in the NR-condition were not restricted to this demand. The results showed that for both conditions, the most frequently involved interaction type was ‘direct response’, and the most frequently used cognitive skill was ‘elementary clarification’. Fewer participants of the R-condition strayed from the subject under discussion in comparison to the NR-condition. However, larger percentage of message content containing metacognitive components was found in the NR-condition. When taking the sequences of postings into account, we found that for the R-condition, the percentage of metacognitive component in the message content tended to increase in the up-third postings, whereas for the up-third postings of the NR-condition the percentage of non-cognitive components substantially increased. Overall, the results of our study indicated that the way in which participants used cognitive and metacognitive skills during the discussions was related to the discussion conditions. The initial requirement of reply fostered the use of cognitive skills, but it did not necessarily induce the use of high-level cognitive or metacognitive skills. We concluded that beside the discussion conditions the moderators’ guidance would be influential in determining the quality of online discussion on a non-course-based discussion forum. in final form: 19 August 2005     

Automatic index construction for multimedia digital libraries

Indexing remains one of the most popular tools provided by digital libraries to help users identify and understand the characteristics of the information they need. Despite extensive studies of the problem of automatic index construction for text-based digital libraries, the construction of multimedia digital libraries continues to represent a challenge, because multimedia objects usually lack sufficient text information to ensure reliable index learning. This research attempts to tackle the problem of automatic index construction for multimedia objects by employing Web usage logs and limited keywords pertaining to multimedia objects. The tests of two proposed algorithms use two different data sets with different amounts of textual information. Web usage logs offer precious information for building indexes of multimedia digital libraries with limited textual information. The proposed methods generally yield better indexes, especially for the artwork data set.     

A Novice-Expert Study of Modeling Skills and Knowledge Structures about Air Quality

This study compared modeling skills and knowledge structures of four groups as seen in their understanding of air quality. The four groups were: experts (atmospheric scientists), intermediates (upper-level graduate students in a different field), advanced novices (talented 11th and 12th graders), and novices (10th graders). It was found that when the levels of modeling skills were measured, for most skills there was a gradual increase across the spectrum from the novices to the advanced novices to the intermediates to the experts. The study found the experts used model-based reasoning, the intermediates and advanced novices used relation-based reasoning, and the novices used phenomena-based reasoning to anticipate conclusions. The experts and intermediates used more bi-variable relationships in experimental design and anticipated conclusions, but used more multiple-variable relationships in identifying relationships. By contrast, the advanced novices and novices mostly used bi-variable relationships in all modeling skills. Based on these findings, we suggest design principles for model-based teaching and learning such as designing learning activities to encourage model-based reasoning, scaffolding one??s modeling with multiple representations, testing models in authentic situations, and nurturing domain-specific knowledge during modeling.     

A study of the cognitive diffusion model: facilitating students’ high level cognitive processes with authentic support

For this study the researchers designed learning activities to enhance students’ high level cognitive processes. Students learned new information in a classroom setting and then applied and analyzed their new knowledge in familiar authentic contexts by taking pictures of objects found there, describing them, and sharing their homework with peers. An experiment was carried out in which 58 junior high school students were divided into a control (n = 30) and an experimental (n = 28) group. The control group studied and completed learning activities with traditional textbooks while the experimental group used electronic textbooks and a learning system, Virtual Pen for Tablet PC (VPenTPC), in order to gauge the feasibility of the proposed approach. The post-test results show a significant difference between the control and experimental groups. In our analysis of the various approaches students took to complete the task, we were able to identify thirty cognitive and metacognitive strategies for using mobile technology, from which we selected the ten most frequently used ones. The results show that low ability students make better use of strategies than their high ability peers, resulting in significant learning gains. The results also show that most students perceive VPenTPC positively. Based on these results, we suggest some implications along with conclusions and directions for future research.     

The (Embodied) Performance of Physics Concepts in Lectures

Lectures are often thought of in terms of information transfer: students (do not) “get” or “construct meaning of” what physics professors (lecturers) say and the notes they put on the chalkboard (overhead). But this information transfer view does not explain, for example, why students have a clear sense of understanding while they sit in a lecture and their subsequent experiences of failure to understand their own lecture notes or textbooks while preparing for an exam. Based on a decade of studies on the embodied nature of science lectures, the purpose of this article is to articulate and exemplify a different way of understanding physics lectures. We exhibit how there is more to lectures than the talk plus notes. This informational “more” may explain (part of) the gap between students’ participative understanding that exists in the situation where they sit in the lecture on the one hand and the one where they study for an exam from their lecture notes on the other. Our results suggest that in lectures, concepts are heterogeneous performances in which meaning is synonymous with the synergistic and irreducible transactions of many different communicative modes, including gestures, body movements, body positions, prosody, and so forth.