A new implementation of population based incremental learning method for optimizations in electromagnetics

To enhance the global search ability of population based incremental learning (PBIL) methods, it is proposed that multiple probability vectors are to be included on available PBIL algorithms. The strategy for updating those probability vectors and the negative learning and mutation operators are thus re-defined correspondingly. Moreover, to strike the best tradeoff between exploration and exploitation searches, an adaptive updating strategy for the learning rate is designed. Numerical examples are reported to demonstrate the pros and cons of the newly implemented algorithm.

A new implementation of Population Based Incremental Learning method for optimization studies in electromagnetics

To enhance the global search ability of Population Based Incremental Learning (PBIL) methods, It Is proposed that multiple probability vectors are to be Included on available PBIL algorithms. As a result, the strategy for updating those probability vectors and the negative learning and mutation operators are redefined as reported. Numerical examples are reported to demonstrate the pros and cons of the newly Implemented algorithm. ©2006 IEEE.

Labour markets, worker protection and lifelong learning in a global economy: experiences and perspectives of Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

Aprendizagem Baseada em Problemas (PBL – Problem-Based Learning): estratégia para o ensino e aprendizagem de algoritmos e conteúdos computacionais

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Evaluation policy and strategy: Programme Planning and Evaluation Unit (PPEU) Programme Planning and Operations Division (PPOD) April 2014

Includes bibliography

Blended Online POPBL: uma Abordagem Blended Learning para uma Aprendizagem Baseada em Problemas e Organizada em Projetos

Pós-graduação em Educação - FCT

NAMA National Conference a Learning Experience for Nebraska Students

Change was in the air at the 2010 National Agri- Marketing Association (NAMA) Annual Conference held April 20-23 in Kansas City, Missouri. Students and professionals alike were given the opportunity to rub shoulders with, and hear nationally known speakers engaging audiences on topics such as the new rules of marketing and publication relations, measuring the effectiveness of social media and strategy, and brand communication.

A TRAINING COURSE ON BIOETHICS FOR FAMILY HEALTH STRATEGY PROFESSIONALS IN SANTO ANDRE, SP

This case report presents the experience of a training course on bioethics for nurses and physicians of the Family Health Strategy in Santo Andre, SP. This study is based on problem-based learning and deliberative bioethics, and aimed at presenting the deliberation procedure as a means of handling ethical issues. Contents were addressed in a cross-section manner through five sequential activity sessions at two different moments of concentration with one dispersion interval. In the first moment of concentration, key concepts and deliberative bioethics contents were developed. The second involved deliberation sessions on moral conflicts, which were selected and prepared during the dispersion interval. Participants evaluated the deliberation as an appropriate instrument to deal with the ethical issues they are faced with. Problem-based learning was an effective educational strategy for continuing education in deliberative bioethics.

Educational intervention regarding hypothermia: a teaching strategy for education in the Surgery Department

This is a quasi-experimental study performed using a short-term educational intervention involving nursing aides working in a Surgery Department, with the objective to identify the social and professional characteristics of the nursing aides, identify the differences in their knowledge regarding hypothermia following the educational intervention, and relate the nursing actions to the studied variables. It was found that the educational intervention was effective, considering that the difference in the mean nursing actions was 5.35 following the intervention. However, no significant difference was found regarding the nursing actions related to the studied variables. Further studies should be performed to investigate the education of nursing professionals considering their significant learning requirements in different units.

PBL and B-Learning for Civil Engineering Students in a Transportation Course

The results of a pedagogical strategy implemented at the University of Sao Paulo at Sao Carlos are presented and discussed. The initiative was conducted in a transportation course offered to Civil Engineering students. The approach is a combination of problem-based learning and project-based learning (PBL) and blended-learning (B-learning). Starting in 2006, a different problem was introduced every year. From 2009 on, however, the problem-based learning concept was expanded to project-based learning. The performance of the students was analyzed using the following elements: (1) grades in course activities; (2) answers from a questionnaire designed for course evaluation; and (3) cognitive maps made to assess the effects of PBL through the comparison of the responses provided by the students involved and those not involved in the experiment. The results showed positive aspects of the method, such as a strong involvement of several students with the subject. A gradual increase in the average scores obtained by the students in the project activities (from 6.77 in 2006 to 8.24 in 2009) was concomitant with a better evaluation of these activities and of the course as a whole (90 and 97% of options "Good" or "Very good" in 2009, respectively). A growing interest in the field of transportation engineering as an alternative for further studies was also noticed. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000115. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Computer game-based and traditional learning method: a comparison regarding students’ knowledge retention

Abstract Background Educational computer games are examples of computer-assisted learning objects, representing an educational strategy of growing interest. Given the changes in the digital world over the last decades, students of the current generation expect technology to be used in advancing their learning requiring a need to change traditional passive learning methodologies to an active multisensory experimental learning methodology. The objective of this study was to compare a computer game-based learning method with a traditional learning method, regarding learning gains and knowledge retention, as means of teaching head and neck Anatomy and Physiology to Speech-Language and Hearing pathology undergraduate students. Methods Students were randomized to participate to one of the learning methods and the data analyst was blinded to which method of learning the students had received. Students’ prior knowledge (i.e. before undergoing the learning method), short-term knowledge retention and long-term knowledge retention (i.e. six months after undergoing the learning method) were assessed with a multiple choice questionnaire. Students’ performance was compared considering the three moments of assessment for both for the mean total score and for separated mean scores for Anatomy questions and for Physiology questions. Results Students that received the game-based method performed better in the pos-test assessment only when considering the Anatomy questions section. Students that received the traditional lecture performed better in both post-test and long-term post-test when considering the Anatomy and Physiology questions. Conclusions The game-based learning method is comparable to the traditional learning method in general and in short-term gains, while the traditional lecture still seems to be more effective to improve students’ short and long-term knowledge retention.

Palliative care in the home: perceptions of nurses in the Family Health Strategy

OBJECTIVE: To understand the perception of nurses from the Family Health Strategy in relation to palliative care in the home. METHODS: A descriptive, exploratory study with a qualitative approach conducted with nine nurses from the Family Health Strategy of the municipality of Lavras - MG. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and data were subjected to content analysis. RESULTS: The various dimensions of care in the home context were identified, along with the performance and limitations of nurses in the care of the patient and his family at end of life. The capacity to establish a bond, by the proximity to people who receive their care, is a remarkable point of the action of these nurses with patients and families in end of life situations. CONCLUSION: The nurses consider the patient and his family as the unit of care, they have the opportunity to share solidarity, experiences and learning, not only from a professional standpoint, but above all, from a human one.

Technology acquisition through licensing. Implications for firm strategy

Nowadays licensing practices have increased in importance and relevance driving the widespread diffusion of markets for technologies. Firms are shifting from a tactical to a strategic attitude towards licensing, addressing both business and corporate level objectives. The Open Innovation Paradigm has been embraced. Firms rely more and more on collaboration and external sourcing of knowledge. This new model of innovation requires firms to leverage on external technologies to unlock the potential of firms’ internal innovative efforts. In this context, firms’ competitive advantage depends both on their ability to recognize available opportunities inside and outside their boundaries and on their readiness to exploit them in order to fuel their innovation process dynamically. Licensing is one of the ways available to firm to ripe the advantages associated to an open attitude in technology strategy. From the licensee’s point view this implies challenging the so-called not-invented-here syndrome, affecting the more traditional firms that emphasize the myth of internal research and development supremacy. This also entails understanding the so-called cognitive constraints affecting the perfect functioning of markets for technologies that are associated to the costs for the assimilation, integration and exploitation of external knowledge by recipient firms. My thesis aimed at shedding light on new interesting issues associated to in-licensing activities that have been neglected by the literature on licensing and markets for technologies. The reason for this gap is associated to the “perspective bias” affecting the works within this stream of research. With very few notable exceptions, they have been generally concerned with the investigation of the so-called licensing dilemma of the licensor – whether to license out or to internally exploit the in-house developed technologies, while neglecting the licensee’s perspective. In my opinion, this has left rooms for improving the understanding of the determinants and conditions affecting licensing-in practices. From the licensee’s viewpoint, the licensing strategy deals with the search, integration, assimilation, exploitation of external technologies. As such it lies at the very hearth of firm’s technology strategy. Improving our understanding of this strategy is thus required to assess the full implications of in-licensing decisions as they shape firms’ innovation patterns and technological capabilities evolution. It also allow for understanding the so-called cognitive constraints associated to the not-invented-here syndrome. In recognition of that, the aim of my work is to contribute to the theoretical and empirical literature explaining the determinants of the licensee’s behavior, by providing a comprehensive theoretical framework as well as ad-hoc conceptual tools to understand and overcome frictions and to ease the achievement of satisfactory technology transfer agreements in the marketplace. Aiming at this, I investigate licensing-in in three different fashions developed in three research papers. In the first work, I investigate the links between licensing and the patterns of firms’ technological search diversification according to the framework of references of the Search literature, Resource-based Theory and the theory of general purpose technologies. In the second paper - that continues where the first one left off – I analyze the new concept of learning-bylicensing, in terms of development of new knowledge inside the licensee firms (e.g. new patents) some years after the acquisition of the license, according to the Dynamic Capabilities perspective. Finally, in the third study, Ideal with the determinants of the remuneration structure of patent licenses (form and amount), and in particular on the role of the upfront fee from the licensee’s perspective. Aiming at this, I combine the insights of two theoretical approaches: agency and real options theory.

The shaping of foreign policy: Vietnamese grand strategy after the Cold War

This study examines the case of Vietnam and uses the method of process tracing to explore the sources of foreign policy choice and change. Foreign policy is derived from grand strategy, which refers to the full package of a state’s domestic and foreign policies. I argue that a state’s grand strategy results from the interaction of four factors—its society’s historical experience, social motivation, international power, and political contest among domestic groups. Grand strategies emerge as a response to perceived shifts in the balance of international economic, political, and military power. However, this is not to say that international pressures and incentives are translated into foreign policy. Rather, pressures and incentives are given meaning by worldviews, which reflect a society’s historical experiences of its place in the international system at traumatic junctures of its encounter with the outside world. Strategic changes in foreign policy follow what I call the “strategic algorithm,” which incorporates four major mechanisms—balancing against threat, bandwagoning with power, learning, and survival by transformation. This case study generates hypotheses for a theory of strategic choice, a theory of foreign policy transformation, and a theory of grand strategy emergence.

Spike-based decision learning of nash equilibria in two-player games

Humans and animals face decision tasks in an uncertain multi-agent environment where an agent's strategy may change in time due to the co-adaptation of others strategies. The neuronal substrate and the computational algorithms underlying such adaptive decision making, however, is largely unknown. We propose a population coding model of spiking neurons with a policy gradient procedure that successfully acquires optimal strategies for classical game-theoretical tasks. The suggested population reinforcement learning reproduces data from human behavioral experiments for the blackjack and the inspector game. It performs optimally according to a pure (deterministic) and mixed (stochastic) Nash equilibrium, respectively. In contrast, temporal-difference(TD)-learning, covariance-learning, and basic reinforcement learning fail to perform optimally for the stochastic strategy. Spike-based population reinforcement learning, shown to follow the stochastic reward gradient, is therefore a viable candidate to explain automated decision learning of a Nash equilibrium in two-player games.