Mastering Academic Reading

Tracing the Evolution of Educational Development Through the POD Network's Institute for New Faculty Developers

Educational development is a unique professional field in that it is not defined by content taught in a single degree that qualifies individuals to be in it. The resulting heterogeneity in newcomers’ knowledge and skills is addressed in different ways by different national networks. Since 1997, the POD Network has held a biennial Institute for New Faculty Developers, geared toward socializing new professionals into the field. An analysis of the evolution of the Institute, therefore, focused on understanding how educational development has represented itself to newcomers, can chronicle the trajectory of the field and generate conversations about its future.

Partnerships With Families from Low‐Income Communities: Family Book Club

View From the Chalkboard essays share readers' reflections on teaching experiences, advice for new teachers, and perspectives on current issues.

Climate change impacts and adaptation in South Africa

In this paper we review current approaches and recent advances in research on climate impacts and adaptation in South Africa. South Africa has a well‐developed earth system science research program that underpins the climate change scenarios developed for the southern African region. Established research on the biophysical impacts of climate change on key sectors (water, agriculture, and biodiversity) integrates the climate change scenarios but further research is needed in a number of areas, such as the climate impacts on cities and the built environment. National government has developed a National Climate Change Response White Paper, but this has yet to translate into policy that mainstreams adaptation in everyday practice and longer‐term planning in all spheres and levels of government. A national process to scope long‐term adaptation scenarios is underway, focusing on cross‐sectoral linkages in adaptation responses at a national level. Adaptation responses are emerging in certain sectors. Some notable city‐scale and project‐based adaptation responses have been implemented, but institutional challenges persist. In addition, a number of knowledge gaps remain in relation to the biophysical and socio‐economic impacts of climate change. A particular need is to develop South Africa's capacity to undertake integrated assessments of climate change that can support climate‐resilient development planning. WIREs Clim Change 2014, 5:605–620. doi: 10.1002/wcc.295 This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change Trans‐Disciplinary Perspectives > National Reviews

Follow Title IX Guidelines When Addressing Sexual Violence Complaints

Bayesian models for functional magnetic resonance imaging data analysis

Functional magnetic resonance imaging ( fMRI ), a noninvasive neuroimaging method that provides an indirect measure of neuronal activity by detecting blood flow changes, has experienced an explosive growth in the past years. Statistical methods play a crucial role in understanding and analyzing fMRI data. Bayesian approaches, in particular, have shown great promise in applications. A remarkable feature of fully Bayesian approaches is that they allow a flexible modeling of spatial and temporal correlations in the data. This article provides a review of the most relevant models developed in recent years. We divide methods according to the objective of the analysis. We start from spatiotemporal models for fMRI data that detect task‐related activation patterns. We then address the very important problem of estimating brain connectivity. We also touch upon methods that focus on making predictions of an individual's brain activity or a clinical or behavioral response. We conclude with a discussion of recent integrative models that aim at combining fMRI data with other imaging modalities, such as electroencephalography/magnetoencephalography ( EEG / MEG ) and diffusion tensor imaging ( DTI ) data, measured on the same subjects. We also briefly discuss the emerging field of imaging genetics. WIREs Comput Stat 2015, 7:21–41. doi: 10.1002/wics.1339 This article is categorized under: Statistical and Graphical Methods of Data Analysis > Bayesian Methods and Theory

Externalization of Consciousness. Scientific Possibilities and Clinical Implications

The paper starts by analyzing recent advancements in neurotechnological assessment of residual consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness and in neurotechnology-mediated communication with them. Ethical issues arising from these developments are described, with particular focus on informed consent. Against this background, we argue for the necessity of further scientific efforts and ethical reflection in neurotechnological assessment of consciousness and 'cerebral communication' with verbally non-communicative patients.

Long-Term Functional Outcomes of Children with Hurler Syndrome Treated with Unrelated Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation

Hurler syndrome is characterized by progressive multisystem deterioration leading to early death in childhood. This prospective study evaluated the long-term outcomes of patients with Hurler syndrome who underwent umbilical cord blood transplantation from unrelated donors.

When and How to Support Renewables?—Letting the Data Speak

Low-carbon energy technologies are pivotal for decarbonising our economies up to 2050 while ensuring secure and affordable energy. Consequently, innovation that reduces the cost of low-carbon energy would play an important role in reducing transition costs. We assess the two most prominent innovation policy instruments (i) public research, development and demonstration (RD&D) subsidies and (ii) public deployment policies. Our results indicate that both deployment and RD&D coincide with increasing knowledge generation and the improved competitiveness of renewable energy technologies. We find that both support schemes together have a greater effect that they would individually, that RD&D support is unsurprisingly more effective in driving patents and that timing matters. Current wind deployment based on past wind RD&D spending coincides best with wind patenting. If we look into competitiveness we find a similar picture, with the greatest effect coming from deployment. Finally, we find significant cross-border effects, especially for winddeployment. Increased deployment in one country coincides with increased patenting in nearby countries. Based on our findings we argue that both deployment and RD&D support are needed to create innovation in renewable energy technologies. However, we worry that current support is unbalanced. Public spending on deployment has been two orders of magnitude larger (in 2010 about €48 billion in the five largest EU countries in 2010) than spending on RD&D support (about €315 million). Consequently, basing the policy mix more on empirical evidence could increase the efficiency of innovation policy targeted towards renewable energy technologies.

A Multi Harvester with Hydrogen Fuel Cell for Outdoor Applications

Energy availability and long term operation are key challenges for wireless sensor networks and for all the applications where the devices are battery operated. For this reason energy harvesting is becoming very important for powering ubiquitously deployed sensor networks and mobile electronics. One of most important goal for the next generation of power supply units for standalone embedded systems is to power nearly perpetually the devices when the scavenger is exposed to reasonable environmental energy conditions. However, due to the unpredictable nature of the environmental sources, prolonged lacks of energy intake usually happen. The last frontiers of perpetual operating systems is combining different energy harvesters in a single unit and using green energy supply with high energy density as micro hydrogen fuel cells. In this paper we introduce a Smart Power Unit (SPU) for embedded system which incorporates energy harvesters from sun and wind and uses hydrogen fuel cell as alternative energy storage. The power unit can work as a long-term battery or providing serial communication to exchange power information and to perform power management. In fact the core of the SPU is an ultra low power micro controller which is in charge to do the power activities such as Maximum Power Point Tracking for the harvesters, fuel cell activation, energy prediction, adaptive power management on board, battery monitoring and communications with powered systems. Experimental results and simulations shows the high efficiency (up to 90 %) of the power conversion subsystem. Finally a real deployment in a structural health monitoring site in Switzerland shows as the energy neutral condition is achieved on field.