This Resource Letter provides a guide to the literature on research-based active-learning instruction in physics. These are instructional methods that are based on, assessed by, and validated through ...research on the teaching and learning of physics. They involve students in their own learning more deeply and more intensely than does traditional instruction, particularly during class time. The instructional methods and supporting body of research reviewed here offer potential for significantly improved learning in comparison to traditional lecture-based methods of college and university physics instruction. We begin with an introduction to the history of active learning in physics in the United States, and then discuss some methods for and outcomes of assessing
pedagogical effectiveness. We enumerate and describe common characteristics of successful
active-learning instructional strategies in physics. We then discuss a range of methods for introducing active-learning instruction in physics and provide references to those methods for which there is published documentation of student learning gains.
INTRODUCTIONThe rate of decline in physical performance for women is thought to be faster than that for men at any age in the Masters age classes in weightlifting and other sports. We quantified the ...age-associated decline in Olympic weightlifting separately for women and men and investigated possible impact of perimenopausal years on the performance decline.
METHODSResults from Masters Weightlifting competitions from 1993 to 2018 were compiled from original score sheets and meet results made available by International Weightlifting Federation. Quantile curves were estimated for the age-related performance decline, and confidence intervals (CI) for the fractional performance with reference age 35 yr were calculated. Age-related decline curves were estimated for different periods to examine changes in performance levels.
RESULTSA total of 10,225 performance results for male and female weightlifters age 35 to 90 yr from 71 countries were included in the analysis. At age 40 yr compared with age 35 yr, the fractional performance is 0.947 (95% CI, 0.926–0.975), for men and 0.952 (95% CI. 0.898–0.986) for women while this is reduced to 0.723 (95% CI0.651–0.800) at age 60 yr for men and 0.604 (95% CI. 0.543–0.706) for women. Female performance levels before 2000 were worse; however, they have stabilized since 2013.
CONCLUSIONSThe performances of women weightlifters have improved over the last 25 yr. Thus, previous publications do not reflect current physical capabilities of women. The age-associated performance decline for female weightlifters mirrors the decline for men except for an accelerated decline during a 10-yr period across the age range from late 40s to late 50s thus coinciding with a transition into menopause.
We developed a scale for comparison of performances by weightlifters of different body mass and compare this scaling formula to current systems.
Data from Olympics and World and Continental ...Championships from 2017 to 2021 were obtained; results from athletes with doping violations were excluded, resulting in performances from 1,900 athletes from 150 countries for use in analysis. Functional relationships between performance and body mass were explored by testing various transformations of body mass in the form of fractional polynomials that include a wide range of non-linear relationships. These transformations were evaluated in quantile regression models to determine the best fit, examine sex differences, and distinguish fits for different performance levels (90th, 75th, 50th percentiles).
The resulting model used a transformation of body mass with powers -2 and 2 for males and females and was used to specify a scaling formula. The small percentage deviations of predicted from actual performances confirm the high accuracy of the model. In the subset of medalists, scaled performances were comparable across different body masses, while both Sinclair and Robi scalings, currently used in competitions, were more variable. The curves had similar shapes for the 90th and 75th percentile levels were similar but were less steep for the 50th percentile.
The scaling formula we derived to compare weightlifting performances across a range of body mass can easily be implemented in a competition software to determine overall best lifters. This is an improvement over current methods that do not accurately account for differences in body mass and result in bias or yield large variations even with small differences in body mass despite identical performances.
...our economic analysis points to a different population (all acute dizziness or vertigo) than might initially have been targeted based on commonsense approaches (subset at high stroke risk).
Sequence polymorphisms linked to human diseases and phenotypes in genome-wide association studies often affect noncoding regions. A SNP within an intron of the gene encoding Interferon Regulatory ...Factor 4 (IRF4), a transcription factor with no known role in melanocyte biology, is strongly associated with sensitivity of skin to sun exposure, freckles, blue eyes, and brown hair color. Here, we demonstrate that this SNP lies within an enhancer of IRF4 transcription in melanocytes. The allele associated with this pigmentation phenotype impairs binding of the TFAP2A transcription factor that, together with the melanocyte master regulator MITF, regulates activity of the enhancer. Assays in zebrafish and mice reveal that IRF4 cooperates with MITF to activate expression of Tyrosinase (TYR), an essential enzyme in melanin synthesis. Our findings provide a clear example of a noncoding polymorphism that affects a phenotype by modulating a developmental gene regulatory network.
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•Sequence variation in IRF4 is associated with pigmentation features including freckles•This sequence is located in an enhancer element that affects expression of IRF4•The transcription factors MITF and TFAP2A regulate expression from this element•Together, MITF and IRF4 affect regulation of the pigmentation enzyme TYR
A polymorphism in a noncoding region of IRF4, a transcription factor involved in immune signaling, is found to affect human pigmentation. This polymorphism affects the ability of the transcription factors TFAP2A and MITF to regulate IRF4 levels, which in turn results in reduced levels of the pigmentation enzyme Tyrosinase.
Many readers of this journal are probably familiar with calls from governmental, business, and educational authorities to expand and improve the preparation of science teachers, with a particular ...focus on the shortage of highly qualified physics teachers. It may seem as if this problem has been around forever, and in fact similar expressions of alarm have been heard for well over a century. Why, then, does this shortage persist? Has the physics community been negligent in offering possible solutions? In fact, the opposite is true: physics educators long ago arrived at a consensus and pointed to a way forward, with a consistent set of recommendations. By tracing the history and elucidating those recommendations, we hope to help motivate physics educators to promote these goals more clearly, and with greater specificity and urgency.
Marianne Huebner, David E. Meltzer and Aris Perperoglou explain how statistics can be used to compare weightlifting performances between athletes of different ages and weight categories, and how the ...increase in female weightlifters has led to more data and more appropriate comparisons
Marianne Huebner, David E. Meltzer and Aris Perperoglou explain how statistics can be used to compare weightlifting performances between athletes of different ages and weight categories, and how the increase in female weightlifters has led to more data and more appropriate comparisons.
There have been many investigations into the factors that underlie variations in individual student performance in college physics courses. Numerous studies report a positive correlation between ...students’ mathematical skills and their exam grades in college physics. However, few studies have examined students’ learning gain resulting from physics instruction, particularly with regard to qualitative, conceptual understanding. We report on the results of our investigation into some of the factors, including mathematical skill, that might be associated with variations in students’ ability to achieve conceptual learning gains in a physics course that employs interactive-engagement methods. It was found that students’ normalized learning gains are not significantly correlated with their pretest scores on a physics concept test. In contrast, in three of the four sample populations studied it was found that there is a significant correlation between normalized learning gain and students’ preinstruction mathematics skill. In two of the samples, both males and females independently exhibited the correlation between learning gain and mathematics skill. These results suggest that students’ initial level of physics concept knowledge might be largely unrelated to their ability to make learning gains in an interactive-engagement course; students’ preinstruction algebra skills might be associated with their facility at acquiring physics conceptual knowledge in such a course; and between-class differences in normalized learning gain may reflect not only differences in instructional method, but student population differences (“hidden variables”) as well.
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