Things Work Research Articles

What would happen to education if we take education evidence seriously?

Educational practice and educational research are not aligned with each other. Current educational practice heavily relies on information transmission or content delivery to learners. Yet evidence shows that delivery is only a minor part of learning. To illustrate the directions we might take to find better educational strategies, six areas of educational evidence are briefly reviewed. The flipped classroom idea is proposed to shift our expenditure and focus in education. All information delivery could be web distributed, thus creating more time for other more expensive educational strategies to support the learner. In research our focus should shift from comparing one curriculum to the other, to research that explains why things work in education and under which conditions. This may generate ideas for creative designers to develop new educational strategies. These best practices should be shared and further researched. At the same time attention should be paid to implementation and the realization that teachers learn in a way very similar to the people they teach. If we take the evidence seriously, our educational practice will look quite different to the way it does now.

The Crystal Set

In past issues of this journal, the late H. R. Crane wrote a long series of articles under the running title of “How Things Work.” In them, Dick dealt with many questions that physics teachers asked themselves, but did not have the time to answer. This article is my attempt to work through the physics of the crystal set, which I thought I knew, but actually did not.

The Power of Storytelling

In the last several decades, we have become much better at doing things right. Well-understood project management tools help companies manage schedule, cost, and require- ments; program management tools help companies leverage value across projects; and portfolio management techniques help spread risk across projects and across time.But innovators face a conundrum: we're doing things right, but are we doing the right things? That's a harder ques- tion to answer, because it requires seeing into the future, and our tools for peering into the future are far less developed than our tools for managing the present. For example, we can use mathematical technology-forecasting techniques to estimate the likely growth of an industry or market or the adoption rates of technologies, or to compare the anticipated performance of a new technology with an existing one. We can also develop scenarios of alternative future states by ex- trapolating from a few key forces or trends. Yet these tech- niques really don't paint a complete picture of the future-they don't help us understand the challenges that the customer of the future will face. For that, we need a different tool, one not usually associated with technological innovation: storytelling. Storytelling links potential future states to the actors within them. Once this link is made, problems that will exist, and potential solutions, become much clearer.One of the main reasons companies fail to see the future coming is i nnovation blindness-the inability to see how the future might unfold in a manner different from the way the past has evolved. The more successful an established com- pany is, the more likely it is to suffer from innovation blind- ness. Established business computer companies nodded as personal computers displaced mainframes for business use, and many of these same companies later failed to recognize that tablet usage would outpace PC use, not over decades but in just a couple of years. Large steel companies never thought that mini-mills would successfully compete with them, let alone disrupt the entire industry. And who would have pre- dicted that Chrysler's minivan would displace the station wagon and revolutionize the auto industry-or that this rev- olution would blend into the political landscape with the rise of the "soccer mom" a decade later?While Stage-Gate and lean manufacturing techniques have helped many companies better manage resources and reduce waste, their focus on efficient linear handoffs within the innovation cycle or the reduction of variation with the production environment has contributed to innovation blindness by reinforcing existing beliefs about how things work. This seriously constricts innovation-not the incre- mental innovation that expands novel ideas into powerful brands or product families, but the breakthrough innova- tions that seed new industries or disrupt established products or services. Applying existing beliefs to future states rarely leads to nonobvious conclusions.We can escape the trap of innovation blindness, but that requires looking past what we know to what we can imag- ine. Storytelling is a powerful imaginative tool. Stories can allow us to see the world through the eyes of characters very different from ourselves. They free us from the constraints of our own experience and help us to envision other lives. In doing so, stories weave together alternative cause-and-effect relationships, offering vivid windows into different versions of the future. I'm not the first to note this. John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor claimed that we learn best from hearing stories that strike a chord within us, arguing that leaders who fail to grasp the power of stories risk failure.Beyond the emotional appeal of stories, narrative structure can help guide thinking about breakthrough innovation. Stories typically unfold in three acts. Act one begins with the set-up, laying out the players, their relationships to one an- other, and their situation. …

Addressing the Construction of Z and Object-Z with Use Case Maps (UCMs)

A Use Case Map (UCM) is a scenario-based visual notation facilitating the requirements definition of complex systems. A UCM may be generated either from a set of informal requirements, or from a set of use cases normally expressed in natural language. Natural languages are, however, inherently ambiguous and as a semi-formal notation, UCMs have the potential to bring more clarity into the functional description of a system. It may furthermore eliminate possible errors in the user requirements. The semi-formal notation of UCMs aims to show how things work generally, but is not suitable to reason formally about system behavior. It is plausible, therefore, that the use of a UCM as an intermediate step may facilitate the construction of a formal specification. To this end this paper proposes a mechanism whereby a UCM may be translated into Object-Z.

Totem and taboo: the embarrassing epistemic work of things in the research setting

Recent research on multimodal communication in the material world shows how things matter in social contexts and make a traceable difference in the unfolding of interactions. Interestingly enough, the artifacts typically used as tools of inquiry (i.e. the recording devices) are rarely deemed worthy of similar analytical attention, as if they were irrelevant or inconsequential to the organization of social interaction taking place in the field. Adopting a theoretical framework on distributed and hybrid agency, this article discusses and empirically shows how these objects play a crucial role in defining the institutional goal of the interaction and, therefore, contribute to the crafting of the data. The analysis of examples from a collection of references made to the recording devices in different research interactions illustrates the circumstances in which these references occur and the activities accomplished by participants by referring to these ‘embarrassing’ objects. In the discussion we propose that the analytical underestimation of the role of things ‘talked-into being’ in the research setting is consistent with and can contribute to a vision of research practices as a mirror of the social reality out there.

Increasing Professional Self-Understanding: Self-Study Research by Teachers with the Help of Biography, Core Reflection and Dialogue

There is growing interest in self-study methods being used by teachers and teacher educators to improve their own practice. The focus of these self-studies seems to be more on acting than on understanding, and here we focus on a group of teachers who explore their professional identities. Teachers participating in a Master’s degree study were asked to formulate critical moments in their development in which they felt their values were challenged and they were faced with a dilemma connected to these challenges. They then used different self-study research methods to dig deeper into their reports. This article focuses on exploring the normative dilemmas that teachers face in their daily practice and how their self-understanding is influenced by studying these dilemmas. We found that participating teachers faced two main dilemmas between external guidance and self-regulation, and between self-consciousness and relatedness. We also found that the effects of self-study research are connected to a deeper understanding of how things work and that finding core values such as trust, connectedness, and creating space can generate a breakthrough in the two main dilemmas.

Hedy's Folly [Book Review

This book examines the research and scientific achievements of Hollywood movie star, Hedy Lamarr. In addition to her keen mind, she knew music and mathematics. She was encouraged by her father to understand how things work, which led her to think about how ideas might be translated into concrete form. According to the author, Hedy, and her collaborator, the avant-garde composer George Antheil (1900–1959), invented and patented at least two original ideas that helped the World Warr II war effort. But it was only after the war that the most original of these, a guidance system for an anti-ship torpedo, was taken seriously by the scientific community. In this book , the author aims to show us how the independent tinkerer – the non-scientist who brainstorms with a like-minded person (think Jobs and Wozniak ) – can find a new solution to an old problem.

Reforming Ontario's Family Justice System: An Evidence-Based Approach

Commissioned by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Ontario Chapter.This Report summarizes research about justice system responses to family disputes, makes recommendations for government action based on that empirical evidence, and identifies some as yet unanswered system design questions requiring further study. This document is provocative as it is premised on a realistic appreciation of the nature of family disputes and the limits of government action, especially in the present fiscal environment, and the fact that there are issues related to family justice that research has not adequately addressed and hence development of public policy must be undertaken in the face of uncertainty.There are interrelated challenges in addressing the problems in the family justice process, not only for governments, but also for the professionals who work in the justice system. There are issues related to laws, structures and policies that governments need to address, as well as issues of professional culture and practice that need to be addressed by legal educators, professional organizations and individual practitioners. There is, however, also a need for a realistic appreciation of what can be done to better resolve family disputes, both in terms of what any programs, policies or professionals can do to reduce the stress and suffering that is a common feature of these cases, and in terms of the resources that governments can and will commit to dealing with these issues given present fiscal realities.This Report focuses on measures that governments, in particular in Ontario, should be undertaking to improve access to family justice and the functioning of Ontario’s family justice system. The Report especially considers how empirical research informs how the government should respond to family relationship breakdown. Part 1 of the Report identifies the criteria by which the efficacy of separation-related interventions should be evaluated. It is argued that three processes are most clearly demonstrated to be effective in achieving these goals. These responses are then discussed in detail: enforced adjudication (Part 2); mediation (Part 3); and providing information to those involved in family disputes (Part 4). The Report considers each of these three responses, identifying evidence of their efficacy, alternative ways to provide them, ways to improve their delivery and their limitations. Knowing that these three things work leaves several important questions unanswered, and Part 5 identifies and discusses these challenging issues. These are questions for which, to this point, research has not adequately determined clear answers. Should services be delivered under a triage model, or through tiers? To what extent should the state seek to consolidate and simplify separation-related services? In what circumstances should users be required to pay for family justice services? Should adjudicative functions and settlement-seeking/relationship-building functions be kept in separated spheres, or brought together?

Talking SSIT: Society President Jacob Focuses on Engagement [Women to Watch

Laura Jacob, president of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT), first became interested in engineering when she was a young girl. "I was always interested in how things work," she says. Savvy with technology, Jacob says she always knew she could excel at it and thought it would be a great career field to pursue. She went to the University of Connecticut and transferred to Pace University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in computer science. After college, Jacob explains that she stayed involved in IEEE, partly because her professors encouraged her to do so. "Being involved in the IEEE has been very good for my career, it's a great place to meet other professionals and share ideas," she adds.

When best evidence is rarer than the disease

To the Editor, Dr. Bryson raises important questions in his editorial, ‘‘Rarity and review: evidence-based practice for uncommon diseases’’. For many rare disorders, such as carcinoid heart disease, ‘‘Best Evidence’’ is a case series that took 18 years to assemble! Animal models of rare diseases provide another source of evidence. The porcine model of malignant hyperthermia (MH) has been used to develop human diagnostic tests and showed the efficacy of dantrolene therapy at a time when human MH mortality was 80%. Most of what we know about MH comes from such studies and from epidemiologic work. There will never be a human randomized controlled trial (RCT) to determine the optimal dose of dantrolene to treat MH. Instead, MH in susceptible swine was considered similar enough to human MH to extrapolate those results with dramatic effect on mortality. Now new ex vivo models, such as tissue myotubes or cell cultures, provide functional assays to study MH pathophysiology and therapeutics. The Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (OCEBM) Levels of Evidence (2011) and the PRISMA statement, cited by Dr. Bryson, are silent on such nonclinical studies. The OCEBM lists systematic review of human RCTs as an example of Level 1 evidence but describes ‘‘mechanism-based reasoning’’ as the lowest level (Level 5). It does not dismiss such weaker evidence, but it does not specify how it should be evaluated. Recently, the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released a white paper outlining a framework to evaluate ‘‘the evidential weight of mechanistic knowledge’’. It provides a definition of evidence based on inferential effect (how things work), not study design (how information was produced), as is the case in evidence-based medicine (EBM). It suggests that the strength of inferential evidence is ‘‘represented by the degree to which the probability of a clinical effect is modified by evidence from the component steps’’. Those steps are a formalized evaluation of mechanistic evidence that includes seeking a ‘‘translation’’ step that significantly raises the probability that the evidence could be applied to humans. Pharmaceutical companies already practice in a similar way to bring new compounds to market. The AHRQ considers that such a framework could link basic science, EBM, and comparative effectiveness research. The translation of evidence from such mechanistic knowledge could help strengthen systematic reviews of rare disorders.

Resettlement as Rebirth: How Effective Are the Midwives?

Resettlement as Rebirth: How Effective Are the Midwives?

Indispensable Outsider

Richard Garwin has helped advise U.S. presidents, IBM, and secret agencies on how to make things work.

Howyland

A huge amount of time and money is wasted on a grants system few perceive as fair. Howy suggests a simplified approach that could produce a more satisfactory outcome.

Expanding Policy-Based Conceptualizations of ‘Successful Integration’: Negotiating Integration through Occupation following International Migration

The immigration of French-speakers to Canada and their successful integration into Francophone minority communities has become a priority for the country's federal government. A critical ethnography served to challenge assumptions regarding successful integration embedded within government documents and to raise awareness of the challenges faced by French-speaking immigrants from visible minority groups residing within London, Ontario, Canada. A theoretical framework applying Goffman's concept of performance and Bourdieu's concepts of field, habitus, and capital guided the study. Eight migrants participated in up to five sessions including narrative and in-depth interviews, Occupational Mapping, and participation in occupations. Findings highlight that integration involves a process of ‘starting over,’ which entails becoming aware of differences in fields and habitus within and between home and host societies, learning ‘how things work’ in the host community, and negotiating performances in social interactions. This negotiation, enacted primarily through occupation, is influenced by differential access to forms of capital. It is further related to ways immigrants' intersecting identity markers are constructed within particular places and embedded in broader social systems and structures. These findings challenge the linear and individualized process of integration identified within government documents, and the narrow focus on economic productivity as the occupation-based marker of integration.

Units of compatible nearrings, IV

This is the fourth in a sequence of papers originating in a effort to study the units of a compatible nearring \(R\) satisfying the descending chain condition on right ideals using a faithful compatible module \(G\) of \(R\). A key point in this endeavor involves determining \(1 + Ann_R(G/H)\) where \(H\) is a direct sum of isomorphic minimal \(R\)-ideals where success in doing so gives us not only information about the units of \(R\), but also information about \(R\) and \(J_2(R)\). In the previous papers, \(1 + Ann_R(G/H)\) has been determined whenever \(G/H\) does not contain a minimal factor isomorphic to the minimal summands of \(H\). In this paper we determine \(1 + Ann_R(G/H)\) when \(G/H\) does contain a minimal factor isomorphic to the minimal summands of \(H\). With the completion of the determination of \(1 + Ann_R(G/H)\) in all cases, we illustrate how things work in practice by considering the nearrings generated by the inner automorphisms of a finite dihedral group, special linear group, and general linear group and nearrings of congruence preserving functions on an expanded group.

From personal dream to national scene: The creation of the National Museum of Mathematics

<xhtml:span xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> MoMath founding director Glen Whitney hopes that the fun and wonder experienced by museum visitors will pique their interest in the math behind how things work. </xhtml:span>

The Singapore Mass Rapid Transport: Α case study of the efficacy of a democratised political humour landscape in a critical engagement in the public sphere

Political cartoons can function as a means of monitoring the level of press freedom, of government’s tolerance of free speech, and their resistance to challenges posed by opposition. It may also be argued that in this digital age the aforesaid barometric utility can extend to other satirical visual forms like memes and videos. Singapore has a long reputation for its strict media control, iron-grip on the mainstream media, and zero-tolerance for any form of spontaneous public protest. However, the arrival of the digital information age effectively eroded the government’s hegemony over the public sphere, resulting in a revitalisation of democracy and the empowerment of a traditionally docile and acquiescent citizenry with regards to politics. As with most socio-political struggles in the past, political humour can be seen playing once again an important role in the expression of dissent and criticism of the establishment in the island-state. However, unlike in the past when such political humour was the domain of a small group of professional artists and writers, the new media with its immense capabilities like powerful search engines, social networks, YouTube, Twitter and various computer applications like Photoshop and Macromedia Flash, has for the first time provided tools for ordinary people who hitherto may have lived in fear of voicing their dissatisfaction all their lives, but are now empowered to create their individual and personalised expressions of protest through the use of Internet memes and other techniques, sometimes within hours of a piece of news breaking. This paper presents a case study that demonstrates how political humour “of the people, by the people” helped fuel a public outcry against the incompetence and negligence of a Singapore public transport provider that had resulted in a series of major breakdown that brought great embarrassment to a country known for its ability to “make things work”. The public’s demand for accountability has led to the unprecedented resignation of the Chief Executive Officer.

Explanation Fiends and Foes: How Mechanistic Detail Determines Understanding and Preference

People differ in their threshold for satisfactory causal understanding and therefore in the type of explanation that will engender understanding and maximize the appeal of a novel product. Explanation fiends are dissatisfied with surface understanding and desire detailed mechanistic explanations of how products work. In contrast, explanation foes derive less understanding from detailed than coarse explanations and downgrade products that are explained in detail. Consumers' attitude toward explanation is predicted by their tendency to deliberate, as measured by the cognitive reflection test. Cognitive reflection also predicts susceptibility to the illusion of explanatory depth, the unjustified belief that one understands how things work. When explanation foes attempt to explain, it exposes the illusion, which leads to a decrease in willingness to pay. In contrast, explanation fiends are willing to pay more after generating explanations. We hypothesize that those low in cognitive reflection are explanation foes because explanatory detail shatters their illusion of understanding.

Finding Your Passion for Discovery

As a nurse scholar who has mentored numerous doctoral students, junior faculty, and visiting scholars, I have often been sought out for advice on developing a program of research and/or a research career. As you might imagine, the questions have been many and various, often revealing to a careful listener much information about a given individual's intellectual curiosity, clinical and research expertise, personal motivations, work ethics, self-assessment, and the like. Many times, factual information or is not really what the inquirer is seeking or needs, but rather some assurance that they are up to the task. For any individual seeking guidance about pursuing a research career, but especially for those who might benefit from an insider's experience, I offer this editorial.Undoubtedly, a plethora of excellent resources on this topic already exists often written from a technical or skill set point of departure. I have a well-used collection of them on my shelves. Such resources are not hard to locate for the person who really wants or needs that kind of guidance, for example, proposal development, research approaches and methodologies, writing for publication, time management, and the like. The advice I am talking about is not in those resources-it is far more about cultivating a passion for discovery than finding any shortcuts or sure-fire formulas for getting to the goal by the shortest and surest way possible. The advice I have to offer comes from reflecting on my own career, on what worked and what didn't, and on where I failed and where I succeeded. Surely, skills are necessaiy- but insufficient-to sustaining a lifetime career's worth of scholarly productivity.Many budding scholars who come to me for advice are seeking to select or refine a focal area or topic to study and develop. All have heard the adage about selecting something one loves, because by the time the project is completed, one often comes to hate even that! I find this advice to be only mildly, if at all, helpful. Why? Well, it's because this adage conveys the expectation that the process is going to be a difficult and frustrating one. It is! If it were easy, most people who are currently involved in research would not have chosen to do so! That said, it is better to begin not with selection of an intriguing topic but with first assessing and cultivating one's passion for discovery, intrigue, or fascination itself. The best scholars I know have a passion or drive to discover, know, or test the limits of our understanding. Such passion is necessaiy to sustain one's pursuit of an answer through a challenging process, regardless of the topic. Love of a topic is insufficient, but it can help some.Individuals who are passionate about discoveiy share some characteristics. Generally, they want to know how things work or why they are as they are. …

Enablers and Inhibitors of Expediting Systems Engineering

Rapid fielding or expedited systems development plays a major role in developing systems to provide a quick response to the organization. Instead of polishing and perfecting all requirements with possible delivery delays, these urgent needs programs must adapt themselves to have a life cycle that is driven by a “Faster, Faster and Faster” concept. Surprisingly, schedule has become more important than cost. Organizations have to fight with the “time to market”, “respond to competitor's threats”, and “urgent needs”. On one hand, project managers will not only have to find a way to make things work through the expedited lane, but also have to understand what factors are the accelerators and what are hindrances to the system development schedules. On the other hand, they have to ensure that these expedited processes will not lead to technical debt, especially in the areas of future flexibility, degradation of existing capabilities, or rework. This paper will report about the enablers and inhibitors and their estimated impact levels of three types of the expedited systems and software development a) New Single System b) Existing Single System and c) System of Systems.