The teacher education evolution : the shift from online to mobile learning in curriculum, assessment and delivery

Most teacher education programs have online applications. Increasingly teacher education programs are expanding their distance education applications with mobile learning, or m-learning. Although related to online learning, m-learning focuses on the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies. Mobile learning is a big step towards providing flexible teacher education; it has brought about a new forum for learning, decreased limitations of learning location, and provided learners with choices about how and when they access learning materials. Universities are finding themselves grappling with how best to utilize mobile technologies for learning, while staying within their educational missions and resources. In this paper the mobile devices used in higher education and the current status of mobile technologies as learning tools at universities are described. The background of approaches and methods which are currently in use are also discussed, plus universities and teacher readiness for this transformation are also reviewed. Affordances and constraints are considered.

Effect of weighted vest suit worn during daily activities on running speed, jumping power, and agility in young men

Effect of weighted vest suit worn during daily activities on running speed, jumping power, and agility in young men. J Strength Cond Res 26(11): 3030-3035, 2012-Previous weighted vest interventions using exercise in addition to hypergravity have been successful in improving postural balance and power production capacity. The purpose of this study was to investigate if hypergravity alone in daily activities excluding sporting activities is effective in improving neuromuscular performance in young adults. Eight male subjects (age = 32 [SD: 6] years, height = 178 [5] cm, and body mass = 81 [8] kg) wore weighted vests 3 d.wk-1 for 3 weeks during waking hours, excluding sporting activities. Control group comprised 9 male subjects (age = 32 [6] years, height = 179 [5] cm, and body mass = 83 [9] kg). Performance was assessed with countermovement jump (body mass normalized peak power), figure-of-8 running test (running time), and running velocity test at baseline and at the end of the intervention. At baseline, the groups did not differ from each other (multivariate analysis of variance [MANOVA] p = 0.828). A significant group × time interaction (MANOVA F = 5.1, p = 0.015) was observed for performance variables. Analysis of covariance indicated that the intervention improved the figureof- 8 running time (p = 0.016) (22.2 vs. 0.5%), whereas normalized peak power (0.0 vs. 1.6%) and running velocity (1.3 vs. 0.1%) were unaffected (p ≥ 0.095). Wearing weighted vests was effective in slightly improving agility-related performance in young men. Because the effect was small, applying hypergravity only during exercise probably suffices. It appears that a proper volume and intensity of hypergravity could be in the order of 5-10% body weight vest worn during up to 50% of the training sessions for a period of 3-4 weeks.

The experience of old age in West Sumatra, Indonesia: Culture shift and cultural consonance in the modern era

The past four decades have seen enormous social change in Indonesia as the nation continues to experience rapid urbanization and social pressures in the globalized economy that have led to tensions between traditional cultures and the modern mainstream around the nation. This cultural shift has been felt strongly in West Sumatra, a region of Indonesia inhabited almost entirely by members of the matrilineal Minangkabau ethnic group. While the traditional social values of the area remain strong, they are eroding, and the Minang are becoming more like other Indonesians in terms of their family structure, occupations, and lifestyle. This has had a significant impact on the experience of old age as social and culture change has affected the traditional matrilineal structures that supported and ensured care for the elderly in past generations. This paper will describe the ways in which traditional institutions accommodated older individuals and describe how these systems have changed in the present day. Case studies across generations will be presented to illustrate the ways in which traditional matrilineal social structures are, and have been, perceived in the context of aging. Further, the paper will describe what this means for the elderly and their families in terms of cultural consonance in today’s society, and discussion will focus on the changing experience of old age in a society in transition against a backdrop of rapid urbanization and modernization.

Rethinking Chinese power : a conceptual corrective to the 'power shift' narrative

A growing body of literature has focused on an alleged “power shift” from the United States to China (and from the West to the East more generally). For all its complexities and nuances, much of this power-shift literature continues to unreflectively hold onto a conventional way of conceptualizing power as a type of quantitatively measurable and zero-sum property possessed by the state.  Without critically engaging with the conceptual question of what power means, however, the power-shift debate is both inadequate and misleading. Drawing on some alternative ways of conceptualizing power, I aim to illustrate the contingent and socially constructed nature of “Chinese” economic power and, in doing so, problematize the widely held view of a US-China power shift. I contend that insofar as power is socially constructed, how it is conceptualized matters for international relations. The need to rethink power is at the core of building a new type of major power relationship.

Paradigm shift to enhanced water supply planning through augmented grids, scarcity pricing and adaptive factory water : a system dynamics approach

This paper details a system dynamics model developed to simulate proposed changes to water governance through the integration of supply, demand and asset management processes. To effectively accomplish this, interconnected feedback loops in tariff structures, demand levels and financing capacity are included in the model design, representing the first comprehensive life-cycle modelling of potable water systems. A number of scenarios were applied to Australia's populated South-east Queensland region, demonstrating that introducing temporary drought pricing (i.e. progressive water prices set inverse with availability), in conjunction with supply augmentation through rain-independent sources, is capable of efficiently providing water security in the future. Modelling demonstrated that this alternative tariff structure reduced demand in scarcity periods thereby preserving supply, whilst revenues are maintained to build new water supply infrastructure. In addition to exploring alternative tariffs, the potential benefits of using adaptive pressure-retarded osmosis desalination plants for both potable water and power generation was explored. This operation of these plants for power production, when they would otherwise be idle, shows promise in reducing their net energy and carbon footprints. Stakeholders in industry, government and academia were engaged in model development and validation. The constructed model displays how water resource systems can be reorganised to cope with systemic change and uncertainty.

On some properties of weighted averaging with variable weights

Density-based means have been recently proposed as a method for dealing with outliers in the stream processing of data. Derived from a weighted arithmetic mean with variable weights that depend on the location of all data samples, these functions are not monotonic and hence cannot be classified as aggregation functions. In this article we establish the weak monotonicity of this class of averaging functions and use this to establish robust generalisations of these means. Specifically, we find that as proposed, the density based means are only robust to isolated outliers. However, by using penalty based formalisms of averaging functions and applying more sophisticated and robust density estimators, we are able to define a broader family of density based means that are more effective at filtering both isolated and clustered outliers. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A hybrid weighted aggregation method based on consistency and consensus in group decision making

A recent study in Science indicated that the confidence of a decision maker played an essential role in group decision making problems. In order to make use of the information of each individual's confidence of the current decision problem, a new hybrid weighted aggregation method to solve a group decision making peoblem is proposed in this paper. Specifically, the hybrid weight of each expert is generated by a convex combination of his/her subjective experience-based weight and objective problem-domain-based weight. The experience-based weight is derived from the expert's historical experiences and the problem-domain-based weight is characterized by the confidence degree and consensus degree of each expert's opinions in the current decision making process. Based on the hybrid weighted aggregation method, all the experts' opinions which are expressed in the form of fuzzy preference relations are consequently aggregated to obtain a collective group opinion. Some valuable properities of the proposed method are discussed. A nurse manager hiring problem in a hospital is employed to illustrate that the proposed method provides a rational and valid solution for the group decision making problem when the experts are not willing to change their initial preferences, or the cost of change is high due to time limitation.

Classification of neural action potentials using mean shift clustering

 Understanding neural functions requires the observation of the activities of single neurons that are represented via electrophysiological data. Processing and understanding these data are challenging problems in biomedical engineering. A microelectrode commonly records the activity of multiple neurons. Spike sorting is a process of classifying every single action potential (spike) to a particular neuron. This paper proposes a combination between diffusion maps (DM) and mean shift clustering method for spike sorting. DM is utilized to extract spike features, which are highly capable of discriminating different spike shapes. Mean shift clustering provides an automatic unsupervised clustering, which takes extracted features from DM as inputs. Experimental results show a noticeable dominance of the features extracted by DM compared to those selected by wavelet transformation (WT). Accordingly, the proposed integrated method is significantly superior to the popular existing combination of WT and superparamagnetic clustering regarding spike sorting accuracy.

Mining allocating patterns in one-sum weighted items

An Association Rule (AR) is a common knowledge model in data mining that describes an implicative cooccurring relationship between two disjoint sets of binary-valued transaction database attributes (items), expressed in the form of an "antecedent⇒ consequent" rule. A variant of the AR is the Weighted Association Rule (WAR). With regard to a marketing context, this paper introduces a new knowledge model in data mining -ALlocating Pattern (ALP). An ALP is a special form of WAR, where each rule item is associated with a weighting score between 0 and 1, and the sum of all rule item scores is 1. It can not only indicate the implicative co-occurring relationship between two (disjoint) sets of items in a weighted setting, but also inform the "allocating" relationship among rule items. ALPs can be demonstrated to be applicable in marketing and possibly a surprising variety of other areas. We further propose an Apriori based algorithm to extract hidden and interesting ALPs from a "one-sum" weighted transaction database. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. © 2008 IEEE.

How social work can contribute in the shift to personalised, recovery-oriented psycho-social disability support services

This paper presents the findings from an Australian study in which forty-one people, who self-identified as having a psycho-social disability as a result of mental health problems, spoke about their priorities for treatment, care and support within a personalised funding context. The research enabled an improved understanding of the choices about support that people with psycho-social disabilities would make if offered individualised funding packages. Participants prioritised specific supports to improve their health, financial situation, social connection, housing and personal relationships. A relationship with a support worker with a range of skills was identified as a key facilitator of these life goals, but people with psycho-social disabilities also valued opportunities to have discretionary funds to directly address the major problems they face, including stigma, discrimination and poverty. The paper argues that social workers can potentially fill a range of roles and are well placed to work in partnership with people with psycho-social disabilities. Particularly, they have skills in co-production of services, negotiation and advocacy that are required if individual funding is to be maximised for user control, social justice and personal recovery outcomes.

Extension of bivariate means to weighted means of several arguments by using binary trees

ABSTRACTAveraging aggregation functions are valuable in building decision making and fuzzy logic systems and in handling uncertainty. Some interesting classes of averages are bivariate and not easily extended to the multivariate case. We propose a generic method for extending bivariate symmetric means to n-variate weighted means by recursively applying the specified bivariate mean in a binary tree construction. We prove that the resulting extension inherits many desirable properties of the base mean and design an efficient numerical algorithm by pruning the binary tree. We show that the proposed method is numerically competitive to the explicit analytical formulas and hence can be used in various computational intelligence systems which rely on aggregation functions.