Context
There are inconsistent claims made about the effectiveness of the flipped classroom (FC) in medical education; however, the quality of the empirical evidence used to back up these claims is ...not evident. The aims of this review are to examine the scope and quality of studies on the FC teaching approach in medical education and to assess the effects of FCs on medical learning.
Methods
A literature search was conducted using the major electronic databases in 2016. Peer‐reviewed papers were screened and reviewed according to explicit inclusion criteria. The scope and quality of all resultant studies were evaluated. Studies identified as using controlled designs were further synthesised to assess the effects of FCs on learning.
Results
A total of 118 articles were obtained. Full texts of 82 articles were reviewed. Nine of the included 46 articles used a controlled design when examining the effects of the FC. There were generally positive perceptions of the FC approach. However, the effects of FCs on changes in knowledge and skills were less conclusive as the effect sizes ranged from d = −0.27 to 1.21, with a median of 0.08. The varying direction and magnitude of the effect sizes, together with their 95% confidence interval, which contained zero, suggested the lack of strong evidence for the effectiveness of FCs in promoting knowledge acquisition above and beyond the traditional learning methods.
Conclusions
There has been a recent increase of research rigor and variety in measures of effectiveness in studies on the FC in medical education. The FC is a promising teaching approach to increase learners' motivation and engagement. More solid evidence on its effect on changes in knowledge and skills are warranted. Further studies should also examine the long‐term effects of FCs with regard to knowledge retention and transfer of knowledge to professional practice and patient care.
•Vessel tracking devices (e.g. VMS/AIS) are widely used to monitor fishing activity.•Data from these devices allow the estimation of fishing pressure indicators.•VMS and AIS data were compared on a ...large national fleet.•Important differences in spatial, temporal and fleets coverage were detected.•Combined use provides a significant improvement of indicators computation.
Different tracking devices are currently used to record the activity of fishing vessels in space and time and to analyse the pattern of fishing effort with respect to sea substrates, resources, or socio-economics factors. Among these devices, the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) and the Automatic Identification System (AIS) represent the most interesting and fertile data sources for fisheries investigations but an integration of these two sources was never explored. Two large VMS and AIS datasets, covering the activity of the Italian fishing vessels with length-over-all ≥15m for the whole year 2012, were used to perform the first assessment of the features characterizing each data source, and ultimately the properties of the estimators of ecological indicators of fishing pressure obtained using these data. In this way, a dataset related to five vessels equipped by a third high frequency device (the Fishing Observing System) was used as reference for a comparative analysis of fishing activity as reconstructed by VMS and/or AIS. Moreover, the ecological indicator 5 of fishing pressure as spatial extent of fishing activity (defined within the Data Collection Framework for Fisheries—DCF) was used as a reference to test the separate and integrated usage of VMS and AIS data. Results evidenced important differences in spatial, temporal and fleet coverage between VMS and AIS. Namely, VMS is affected by a lower frequency with respect to AIS but covers a larger portion of the fleet. Furthermore, AIS mainly operates near the harbours, so that offshore activity is underrepresented. The integration of VMS and AIS data, however, allows valorising the strengths and minimizing the limits of each source. In fact, the assessment of the total spatial extent of fishing activities (as captured by the DCF indicator 5) is significantly improved by the integrated usage of VMS and AIS data.
Entanglement is an essential quantum resource for the acceleration of information processing as well as for sophisticated quantum communication protocols. Quantum information networks are expected to ...convey information from one place to another by using entangled light beams. We demonstrated the generation of entanglement among three bright beams of light, all of different wavelengths (532.251, 1062.102, and 1066.915 nanometers). We also observed disentanglement for finite channel losses, the continuous variable counterpart to entanglement sudden death.
We present a new isogeometric method for the discretization of the Reissner–Mindlin plate bending problem. The proposed scheme follows a recent theoretical framework that makes possible the ...construction of a space of smooth discrete deflections Wh and a space of smooth discrete rotations Θh such that the Kirchhoff constraint is exactly satisfied at the limit. Therefore we obtain a formulation which is natural from the theoretical/mechanical viewpoint and locking-free by construction. We prove that the method is uniformly stable and satisfies optimal convergence estimates. Finally, the theoretical results are fully supported by numerical tests.
We present the first measurement of two-mode squeezing between the twin beams produced by a doubly resonant optical parameter oscillator (OPO) in an above threshold operation based on parametric ...amplification by nondegenerate four wave mixing with rubidium (85Rb). We demonstrate a maximum intensity difference squeezing of −2.7 dB (−3.5 dB corrected for losses) with a pump power of 285 mW and an output power of 12 mW for each beam, operating close to the D1 line of Rb atoms. The use of open cavities combined with the high gain media can provide a strong level of noise compression and the access to new operation regimes that could not be explored by crystal based OPOs. The spectral bandwidth of the squeezed light is broadened by the cavity dynamics, and the squeezing level is robust for strong pump powers. Stable operation was obtained up to 4 times above the threshold. Moreover, operation of the OPO close to the atomic resonances of alkali atoms allows a natural integration into quantum networks, including structures such as quantum memories.
In this paper we discuss the use of the sum-factorization for the calculation of the integrals arising in Galerkin isogeometric analysis. While introducing very little change in an isogeometric code ...based on element-by-element quadrature and assembling, the sum-factorization approach, taking advantage of the tensor-product structure of splines or NURBS shape functions, significantly reduces the quadrature computational cost.
•We discuss the use of the sum-factorization for the calculation of the integrals arising in Galerkin isogeometric analysis.•We give an estimate of the quadrature computational cost and compare with the standard approach.•We perform numerical tests.•Sum-factorization significantly reduces the quadrature computational cost.
The drift in the redshift of objects passively following the cosmological expansion has long been recognized as a key model-independent probe of cosmology. Here, we study the cosmological relevance ...of measurements of time or redshift derivatives of this drift, arguing that the combination of first and second redshift derivatives is a powerful test of the Lambda CDM cosmological model. In particular, the latter can be obtained numerically from a set of measurements of the drift at different redshifts. We show that, in the low-redshift limit, a measurement of the derivative of the drift can provide a constraint on the jerk parameter, which is j= 1 for flat Lambda CDM, while generically jnot = 1 for other models. We emphasize that such a measurement is well within the reach of the ELT-HIRES and SKA Phase 2 array surveys.
We calculate the quantum correlations existing among the three output fields (pump, signal, and idler) of a triply resonant nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator operating above threshold. By ...applying the standard criteria P. van Loock and A. Furusawa, Phys. Rev. A 67, 052315 (2003), we show that strong tripartite continuous-variable entanglement is present in this well-known and simple system. Furthermore, since the entanglement is generated directly from a nonlinear process, the three entangled fields can have very different frequencies, opening the way for multicolored quantum information networks.
We propose a novel method to measure flavor oscillations and charge-parity ( C P ) violation in charm mixing. The approach applies to multibody charm decays, such as D0 → K0Sπ+π−, and avoids the need ...for a fit of the decay amplitudes while suppressing biases due to nonuniform signal reconstruction efficiencies as functions of phase space and decay time. Data are partitioned in decay-time and Dalitz-plot regions (bins). The Dalitz-plot bins are symmetric with respect to the principal bisector and chosen to ensure nearly constant values of the strong interaction phases in each. The ratios of signal yields observed in each symmetric bin pair are fit as functions of decay time, using independent auxiliary measurements of the strong interaction phases as constraints, to determine the relevant physics parameters. Simulation shows a 35% improvement in sensitivity to the normalized charm-eigenstate mass difference with respect to existing model-independent methods. In addition, we introduce a parametrization of oscillation and CP-violation effects in charm mixing that has attractive statistical properties and may find wider applicability.
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