List of Titles

Asymptotical stability of optimal paths in nonconvex problems

- Mammadov, Musa

Authors: Mammadov, Musa
Date: 2009
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Optimization Chapter 5 p. 95-134
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Description: In this chapter we study the turnpike property for the nonconvex optimal control problems described by the differential inclusion . We study the infinite horizon problem of maximizing the functional as T grows to infinity. The purpose of this chapter is to avoid the convexity conditions usually assumed in turnpike theory. A turnpike theorem is proved in which the main conditions are imposed on the mapping a and the function u. It is shown that these conditions may hold for mappings a with nonconvex images and for nonconcave functions u.
Description: 2003007899

Subgradient and bundle methods for nonsmooth optimization

- Makela, Marko, Karmitsa, Napsu, Bagirov, Adil

Authors: Makela, Marko , Karmitsa, Napsu , Bagirov, Adil
Date: 2013
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Numerical methods for differential equations, optimization, and technological problems p.
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Description: The nonsmooth optimization methods can mainly be divided into two groups: subgradient and bundle methods. Usually, when developing new algorithms and testing them, the comparison is made between similar kinds of methods. The goal of this work is to test and compare different bundle and subgradient methods as well as some hybrids of these two and/or some others. The test set included a large amount of different unconstrained nonsmooth minimization problems, e.g., convex and nonconvex problems, piecewise linear and quadratic problems, and problems with different sizes. Rather than foreground some method over the others, our aim is to get some insight on which method is suitable for certain types of problems.

European employers policies concerning career management and learning from a life-span perspective

- Taylor, Philip, Brooke, Elizabeth, Di Biase, Tia

Authors: Taylor, Philip , Brooke, Elizabeth , Di Biase, Tia
Date: 2010
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Soziale Lebenslaufpolitik p. 474-497
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Description: This chapter considers the characteristics of employer practices concerning age management, with specific reference to career management and learning among European employers. Using data collected for a recent European study of employer behaviour regarding workforce ageing we conceptualise the policy approach in organizations and how this is manifested in the experiences of employees. The chapter begins by examining recent changes in the way career management and learning are viewed, particularly the shift away from conceptualisations based on the notion that career management and learning are the prerogative of the young towards a perspective based on a more inclusive notion of career management learning taking place at different transition points in the lifecycle.

The longitudinal effects of midwife-led postnatal debriefing on the psychological health of mothers

- Selkirk, Rosemary, McLaren, Suzanne, Ollerenshaw, Alison, McLachlan, Angus, Moten, Julie

Authors: Selkirk, Rosemary , McLaren, Suzanne , Ollerenshaw, Alison , McLachlan, Angus , Moten, Julie
Date: 2010
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Transitions theory p. 590-602
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Description: To assess the effect of midwife-led postpartum debriefing on psychological variables, 149 women were recruited in the third trimester of their pregnancy and were randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions. Women in the treatment group received midwife-led postpartum debriefing within 3 days postpartum, whereas women in the control group did not receive formalised debriefing. Background information and psychological variables were assessed in the prepartum, and birthing information was gathered 2 days postpartum. The psychological variables, plus a measure of birth trauma, were re-assessed at 1 month, and again, together with a measure of parenting stress, at 3 months postpartum. Although the majority of women reported positively on their debriefing experience, statistical analyses indicated that only on the measure of dyadic satisfaction was there some suggestion that debriefing was effective. There were no significant differences between the treatment and control groups on measures of personal information, depression, anxiety, trauma, perception of the birth, or parenting stress at any assessment points, postpartum. On the other hand, the effect of medical intervention on women's perceptions of their birthing was evident, with women who experienced more medical intervention reporting more negative perceptions of their birthing than women who had experienced less medical intervention. Surprisingly, this difference was more marked among the women who had been debriefed than among the control group. Generally, the results did not support midwife-led debriefing as an effective intervention postpartum. © Society for Reproductive and Infant Psychology.

Science teachers' understanding of the college entrance examination in a climate of national curriculum reform in China

- Ma, Hongming

Authors: Ma, Hongming
Date: 2013
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Valuing Assessment in Science Education: Pedagogy, Curriculum, Policy p. 183-205
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Description: In China, the College Entrance Examination (CEE) is often likened to a conductor’s baton in that it directs and controls almost every every decision-making in the educational system. The positive or negative impact of CEE on the development of individual student and society as a whole has been much debated. In the absence of a fairer selection mechanism for college entrance, the long-time dominant CEE has led to an unspoken consequence of Chinese educational practice—‘education for examination’. CEE is, without doubt, the most influential factor that shapes teachers’ pedagogical practice. However, few discussions go into detail about what values promoted by CEE are reflected in teachers’ pedagogical practice. This chapter reviews a body of literature about strategies suggested by secondary school science teachers in dealing with CEE and identifies the connection between these strategies and the values advocated by the science curriculum standards. The discussion will be in relation to the current reform in China’s educational system which promotes quality-oriented education. This reform echoes the trend in many English-speaking countries which values education for not only knowledge but also process and attitudes.

Canonical dual solutions for fixed cost quadratic programs

- Gao, David, Ruan, Ning, Sherali, Hanif

Authors: Gao, David , Ruan, Ning , Sherali, Hanif
Date: 2010
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Optimization and Optimal Control p. 139-156
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Description: This chapter presents a canonical dual approach for solving a mixed-integer quadratic minimization problem with fixed cost terms. We show that this well-known NP-hard problem in R2n can be transformed into a continuous concave maximization dual problem over a convex feasible subset of R2n with zero duality gap. The resulting canonical dual problem can be solved easily, under certain conditions, by traditional convex programming methods. Both existence and uniqueness of global optimal solutions are discussed. Application to a decoupled mixed-integer problem is illustrated and analytic solutions for both a global minimizer and a global maximizer are obtained. Examples for both decoupled and general nonconvex problems are presented. Furthermore, we discuss connections between the proposed canonical duality theory approach and the classical Lagrangian duality approach. An open problem is proposed for future study.

Implementing and evaluating interventions

- Finch, Caroline

Authors: Finch, Caroline
Date: 2012
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Injury research: Theories, methods, and approaches p. 619-639
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Description: Real-world implementation of injury prevention interventions and evaluation of their effectiveness need to take into account the broad ecological context in which they are introduced. This chapter provides perspectives and guidance on (1) the design, conduct, and evaluation of studies that are concerned with the effectiveness of injury prevention and safety promotion interventions and (2) research to better understand the context for intervention delivery. It begins with an overview of why research into intervention delivery and evaluation of its outcomes is necessary for the broad field of injury prevention and control. This includes a comparison of the aims and approaches of efficacy and effectiveness studies and the recognized gap between the two. The ecological context for injury prevention is summarized and the implications for intervention delivery and evaluation are described. The chapter then covers key theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues involved in evaluation research and introduces some of the current thinking about translation research. Particular emphasis is given to Intervention Mapping as a tool to assist in the intervention development process, Diffusion of Innovations theory to guide efforts in the planning of intervention strategies and the RE-AIM (reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, maintenance) health promotion framework and their reported applications to injury prevention interventions to date.

A new stochastic model based approach for object identification and segmentation in textured color image

- Islam, Mofakharul, Watters, Paul

Authors: Islam, Mofakharul , Watters, Paul
Date: 2010
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Technological Developments in Networking, Education and Automation p. 309-314
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Description: We investigate and propose a novel stochastic model based approach to implement a robust unsupervised color image content understanding technique that segments a color textured image into its constituent parts automatically and meaningfully. The aim of this work is to detection and identification of different objects in a color image using image segmentation. Image segments or objects are produced using precise color information, texture information and neighborhood relationships among neighboring image pixels. As a whole, in this particular work, the problem we want to investigate is to implement a robust Maximum a posteriori (MAP) based unsupervised color textured image segmentation approach using Cluster Ensembles, MRF model and Daubechies wavelet transform for identification and segmentation of image contents or objects. In addition,Cluster Ensemble has been utilizedfor introducing a robust technique for finding the number of components in an image automatically. The experimental results reveal that the proposed model is able to find the accurate number of objects or components in a color image and can produce more accurate and faithful segmentation of different meaningful objects from relatively complex background. Finally, we have compared our results with another similar existing segmentation approach.

Becoming a teacher educator: Voices of beginning teacher educators

- Swennen, Anja, Shagrir, Leah, Cooper, Maxine

Authors: Swennen, Anja , Shagrir, Leah , Cooper, Maxine
Date: 2008
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Becoming a Teacher Educator: Theory and Practice for Teacher Educators p. 91-102
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Description: This chapter is about the readers of this book, about the rewards and challenges of beginning teacher educators. As was outlined in the 'Introduction and Overview' of this book, teacher educators are not an easily recognisable group and their problems and rewards during their first years as teacher educators may vary a great deal. Nevertheless, from the limited research that has been done, and from our own experience as teacher educators, we know that the transition from teacher to teacher educator can be more challenging and difficult than beginning teacher educators may expect. This chapter is based on three sources of data. As there has not been a lot of research about beginning teacher educators, we first analysed self-study literature of teacher educators who described their first years in teacher education and the problems they encountered. In their articles, these teacher educators look back and reflect on their transition from teacher to teacher educator. Looking back from a distance gives them a wide perspective on the challenges and problems they encountered. Moreover, these teacher educators were and are involved in self-study and publish about their own development and other issues concerning teacher educators (Guilfoyle, Hamilton, Pinnegar, & Placier, 1995; Knowles & Cole, 1994; Zeichner, 2005). We will refer to these teacher educators as 'the self-study teacher educators'. A second source we drew upon was Australian research on teacher educators and their career trajectories. These narrative and collaborative studies are based on structured and unstructured interviews, written stories, descriptive metaphors of journeys in teacher education, time lines of careers and professional documentation such as curriculum vitas and diaries (Cooper, Ryan, Gay, & Perry, 1999; L. Ling, P. Ling, Burman, & Cooper, 2000; L. Ling, Burman, Cooper, & P. Ling, 2002; Perry & Cooper, 2001). For the purposes of this chapter, we used the data from these studies and focussed on the beginning years of the participants' careers as teacher educators. We will refer to these studies as the 'narrative studies'. A third source we examined was a small-scale study about the induction of beginning teacher educators that was conducted by members of the Research and Development Centre (RDC) 'Professional Development of Teacher Educators', which is one of the many RDCs of the Association of Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE). Eleven members of the RDC, all experienced teacher educators, interviewed 11 beginning colleagues, 8 women and 3 men from 26 to 50 years of age (see for a full description of this study Van Velzen, Van der Klink, Swennen, & Yaffe, 2008). Characteristic of these 11 teacher educators is that they were undergoing their own induction period at the time of the interviews. These beginning teacher educators were not involved in research, let alone self-study about their own development. We will refer to these teacher educators as the 'interviewed teacher educators'. In the chapter, we will describe the transition from teacher to teacher education based on the limited research that is available about this topic. If we want to understand the transition from teacher to teacher educator, we have to understand some of the aspects of the work of teacher educators and we will describe the complexity of the work of teacher educators and the fact that they are always a model for student teachers. We will then describe the main challenges of the beginning teacher educators through the self-study, narrative studies and interviewed teacher educators. These challenges include a heavy teaching workload, pressure to engage research, isolation and a clash of ideas and ideals. Beginning teacher educators do not just face challenges and difficulties; they also experience joys and rewards and these help them to develop their identities as teacher educators. They know about teaching, and this gives them strength to deal with their challenges. Most rewarding, though, is working with students and collaborating with colleagues, and we will describ these aspects of the first years of teacher educators as well. We also discuss if and how beginning teacher educators expand their identity from teacher to teacher educator. As induction for teacher educators is a relatively new idea, beginning teacher educators often have to organise their own networks of support (see Chapter 7). We conclude this chapter with some suggestions for beginning teacher educators on how to organise this support to survive and thrive in the first years as beginning teacher educators and on how to improve and enhance their work and lives as teacher educators.

Training and high performance work systems: A case study in synergy

- Smith, Andy

Authors: Smith, Andy
Date: 2008
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Handbook of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Research p. 641-647
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Description: Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) research has become a recognized and well-defined area of interdisciplinary research. This is the first handbook of its kind that specifically concentrates on research and research methods in TVET. The book’s sections focus on particular aspects of the field, starting with a presentation of the genesis of TVET research. They further feature research in relation to policy, planning and practice. Various areas of TVET research are covered, including on the vocational disciplines and on TVET systems. Case studies illustrate different approaches to TVET research, and the final section of the book presents research methods, including interview and observation methods, as well as of experimentation and development. This handbook provides a comprehensive coverage of TVET research in an international context, and, with special focus on research and research methods, it is a cutting-edge resource and reference.

Chinese teachers' views of teaching culturally related knowledge in school science

- Ma, Hongming

Authors: Ma, Hongming
Date: 2011
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: The Professional Knowledge Base of Science Teaching p. 153-171
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Description: Cultural studies in science education have been gaining more attention in recent years. One much-debated theme in this area is teaching culturally related knowledge in modern school science. Within the context of science education, “culturally related knowledge” refers to the knowledge that can be treated as science, but has different cultural origins from that of Western Modern Science (WMS) or Euro-centric science (Aikenhead and Ogawa 2007). Different points of view about the nature of science and the relationship between science education and culture have a direct influence on people’s opinions of the content and pedagogy of science teaching in school. "From introduction"

RM and RDM, a preliminary evaluation of two prudent RDR Techniques

- Maruatona, Omaru, Vamplew, Peter, Dazeley, Richard

Authors: Maruatona, Omaru , Vamplew, Peter , Dazeley, Richard
Date: 2012
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Knowledge Management and acquisition for intelligent systems: 12th Pacific Rim Knowledge Acquisition workshop p. 188-194
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Description: Rated Multiple Classification Ripple Down Rules (RM) and Ripple Down Models (RDM) are two of the successful prudent RDR approaches published. To date, there has not been a published, dedicated comparison of the two. This paper presents a systematic preliminary evaluation and analysis of the two techniques. The tests and results reported in this paper are the first phase of direct evaluations of RM and RDM against each other.

European employers policies concerning career management and learning from a life-span perspective

- Taylor, Philip, Brooke, Elizabeth, Di Biase, Tia

Authors: Taylor, Philip , Brooke, Elizabeth , Di Biase, Tia
Date: 2010
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Soziale Lebenslaufpolitik p. 474-497
Full Text: false
Reviewed:
Description: This chapter considers the characteristics of employer practices concerning age management, with specific reference to career management and learning among European employers. Using data collected for a recent European study of employer behaviour regarding workforce ageing we conceptualise the policy approach in organizations and how this is manifested in the experiences of employees. The chapter begins by examining recent changes in the way career management and learning are viewed, particularly the shift away from conceptualisations based on the notion that career management and learning are the prerogative of the young towards a perspective based on a more inclusive notion of career management learning taking place at different transition points in the lifecycle.

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