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LOAIZA QUINTERO, Osmar Leandro. LA DEMANDA AGREGADA Y LA DISTRIBUCIÓN DEL INGRESO: UN ESTUDIO A PARTIR DE LOS MODELOS DE CRECIMIENTO KALECKIANOS. Cuad. Econ. [online]. 2012, vol.31, n.58, pp.23-47. ISSN 0121-4772.
The aim of this paper is to study the mechanisms through which aggregate demand and income distribution affect the rate of growth, in a post-Keynesian framework rooted in the works of Michal Kalecki. Thus, this paper addresses some issues that are put aside by neoclassical theory, which focuses on supply side phenomena to explain growth. The Say's law refusal implied by the framework employed allows the reader to determine the influence that demand exerts on economic growth, which also depends upon the sensibility of saving and investment decisions to changes in the income shares of workers and capitalists.
Keywords : economic growth; demand; neoclassical theory; post-Keynesian theory; Say's law; income distribution. | http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0121-47722012000300003&lng=en&nrm=iso |
Disequilibrium macroeconomics is a tradition of research centered on the role of disequilibrium in economics. This approach is also known as non-Walrasian theory, equilibrium with rationing, the non-market clearing approach, and non-tâtonnement theory. Early work in the area was done by Don Patinkin, Robert W. Clower, and Axel Leijonhufvud. Their work was formalized into general disequilibrium models, which were very influential in the 1970s. American economists had mostly abandoned these models by the late 1970s, but French economists continued work in the tradition and developed fixprice models.
In the neoclassical synthesis, equilibrium models were the rule. In these models, rigid wages modeled unemployment at equilibria. These models were challenged by Don Patinkin and later disequilibrium theorists. Patinkin argued that unemployment resulted from disequilibrium. Patinkin, Robert W. Clower, and Axel Leijonhufvud focused on the role of disequilibrium. Clower and Leijonhufvud argued that disequilibrium formed a fundamental part of Keynes's theory and deserved greater attention.
Robert Barro and Herschel Grossman formulated general disequilibrium models, in which individual markets were locked into prices before there was a general equilibrium. These markets produced "false prices" resulting in disequilibrium. Soon after the work of Barro and Grossman, disequilibrium models fell out of favor in the United States and Barro abandoned Keynesianism and adopted new classical, market-clearing hypotheses. However, leading American economists continued work with disequilibrium models, for example Franklin M. Fisher at MIT, Richard E. Quandt at Princeton University, and John Roberts at Stanford University.
While disequilibrium economics had only a supporting role in the US, it had major role in European economics, and indeed a leading role in French-speaking Europe. In France, Jean-Pascal Bénassy (1975) and Yves Younès (1975) studied macroeconomic models with fixed prices. Disequilibrium economics received greater research as mass unemployment returned to Western Europe in the 1970s. Disequilibrium economics also influenced European policy discussions, particularly in France and Belgium. European economists such as Edmond Malinvaud and Jacques Drèze expanded on the disequilibrium tradition and worked to explain price rigidity instead of simply assuming it.
Malinvaud used disequilibrium analysis to develop a theory of unemployment. He argued that disequilibrium in the labor and goods markets could lead to rationing of goods and labor, leading to unemployment. Malinvaud adopted a fixprice framework and argued that pricing would be rigid in modern, industrial prices compared to the relatively flexible pricing systems of raw goods that dominate agricultural economies. In Malinvaud's framework, prices are fixed and only quantities adjust. Malinvaud considers an equilibrium state in classical and Keynesian unemployment as most likely. He pays less attention to the case of repressed inflation and considers underconsumption/unemployment a theoretical curiosity. Work in the neoclassical tradition is confined as a special case of Malinvaud's typology, the Walrasian equilibrium. In Malinvaud's theory, reaching the Walrasian equilibrium case is almost impossible to achieve given the nature of industrial pricing. Malinvaud's work provided different policy prescriptions depending on the state of the economy. Given Keynesian unemployment, fiscal policy could shift both the labor and goods curves upwards leading to higher wages and prices. With this shift, the Walrasian equilibrium would be closer to the actual economic equilibrium. On the other hand, fiscal policy with an economy in the classical unemployment would only make matters worse. A policy leading to higher prices and lower wages would be recommended instead.
"Disequilibrium macroeconometrics" was developed by Drèze's, Henri Sneessens (1981) and Jean-Paul Lambert (1988). A joint paper by Drèze and Sneessens inspired Drèze and Richard Layard to lead the European Unemployment Program, which estimated a common disequilibrium model in ten countries. The results of that successful effort were to inspire policy recommendations in Europe for several years.
In Belgium, Jacques Drèze defined equilibria with price rigidities and quantity constraints and studied their properties, extending the Arrow–Debreu model of general equilibrium theory in mathematical economics. Introduced in his 1975 paper, a "Drèze equilibrium" occurs when supply (demand) is constrained only when prices are downward (upward) rigid, whereas a preselected commodity (e.g. money) is never rationed. Existence is proved for arbitrary bounds on prices. A joint paper with Pierre Dehez established the existence of Drèze equilibria with no rationing of the demand side. Stanford's John Roberts studied supply-constrained equilibria at competitive prices; similar results were obtained by Jean-Jacques Herings at Tilburg (1987, 1996). Roberts and Hering proved the existence of a continuum of Drèze equilibria. Then Drèze (113) proved existence of equilibria with arbitrarily severe rationing of supply. Next, in a joint paper with Herings and others (132), the generic existence of a continuum of Pareto-ranked supply-constrained equilibria was established for a standard economy with some fixed prices. The multiplicity of equilibria thus formalises a trade-off between inflation and unemployment, comparable to a Phillips curve. Drèze viewed his approach to macroeconomics as examining the macroeconomic consequences of Arrow–Debreu general equilibrium theory with rationing, an approach complementing the often-announced program of providing microfoundations for macroeconomics.
Disequilibrium credit rationing can occur for one of two reasons. In the presence of usury laws, if the equilibrium interest rate on loans is above the legally allowable rate, the market cannot clear and at the maximum allowable rate the quantity of credit demanded will exceed the quantity of credit supplied.
A more subtle source of credit rationing is that higher interest rates can increase the risk of default by the borrower, making the potential lender reluctant to lend at otherwise attractively high interest rates.
Labour markets are prone to particular sources of price rigidity because the item being transacted is people, and laws or social constraints designed to protect those people may hinder market adjustments. Such constraints include restrictions on who or how many people can be laid off and when (which can affect both the number of layoffs and the number of people hired by firms that are concerned by the restrictions), restrictions on the lowering of wages when a firm experiences a decline in the demand for its product, and long-term labor contracts that pre-specify wages.
Disequilibrium in one market can affect demand or supply in other markets. Specifically, if an economic agent is constrained in one market, his supply or demand in another market may be changed from its unconstrained form, termed the notional demand, into a modified form known as effective demand. If this occurs systematically for a large number of market participants, market outcomes in the latter market for prices and quantities transacted (themselves either equilibrium or disequilibrium outcomes) will be affected.
Examples include:
The debate between protagonists of the equilibrium paradigm and the disequilibrium paradigm has a strong ideological flavor. Proponents of one view frequently think that the alternative view is worthless or downright silly. A few years ago, one of us gave several seminars on the question of how one would test the null hypothesis that [potential data is generated] from an equilibrium as opposed to a disequilibrium specification. On some occasions (mostly in the U.S.), five minutes into the seminar it would be interrupted with the remark, 'What you are trying to do is silly, because everybody knows that prices always clear markets and therefore there is nothing to test.' At other times (mostly in Europe) the interruption took the form, 'What you are trying to do is silly, because everybody knows that prices never clear markets and therefore there is nothing to test.'
Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics focusing on the determination of goods, outputs, and income distributions in markets through supply and demand. This determination is often mediated through a hypothesized maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits by firms facing production costs and employing available information and factors of production, in accordance with rational choice theory, a theory that has come under considerable question in recent years.
In economics, general equilibrium theory attempts to explain the behavior of supply, demand, and prices in a whole economy with several or many interacting markets, by seeking to prove that the interaction of demand and supply will result in an overall general equilibrium. General equilibrium theory contrasts to the theory of partial equilibrium, which only analyzes single markets.
New Keynesian economics is a school of macroeconomics that strives to provide microeconomic foundations for Keynesian economics. It developed partly as a response to criticisms of Keynesian macroeconomics by adherents of new classical macroeconomics.
This aims to be a complete article list of economics topics:
In economics, effective demand (ED) in a market is the demand for a product or service which occurs when purchasers are constrained in a different market. It contrasts with notional demand, which is the demand that occurs when purchasers are not constrained in any other market. In the aggregated market for goods in general, demand, notional or effective, is referred to as aggregate demand. The concept of effective supply parallels the concept of effective demand. The concept of effective demand or supply becomes relevant when markets do not continuously maintain equilibrium prices.
In economics, the Pigou effect is the stimulation of output and employment caused by increasing consumption due to a rise in real balances of wealth, particularly during deflation. The term was named after Arthur Cecil Pigou by Don Patinkin in 1948.
Constantine Christos "Costas" Azariadis is a macroeconomist born in Athens, Greece. He has worked on numerous topics, such as labor markets, business cycles, and economic growth and development. Azariadis originated and developed implicit contract theory.
Monetary disequilibrium theory is a product of the monetarist school and is mainly represented in the works of Leland Yeager and Austrian macroeconomics. The basic concepts of monetary equilibrium and disequilibrium were, however, defined in terms of an individual's demand for cash balance by Mises (1912) in his Theory of Money and Credit.
Edmond Malinvaud was a French economist. He was the first president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium modeling is a method in macroeconomics that attempts to explain economic phenomena, such as economic growth and business cycles, and the effects of economic policy, through econometric models based on applied general equilibrium theory and microeconomic principles.
New classical macroeconomics, sometimes simply called new classical economics, is a school of thought in macroeconomics that builds its analysis entirely on a neoclassical framework. Specifically, it emphasizes the importance of rigorous foundations based on microeconomics, especially rational expectations.
Involuntary unemployment occurs when a person is willing to work at the prevailing wage yet is unemployed. Involuntary unemployment is distinguished from voluntary unemployment, where workers choose not to work because their reservation wage is higher than the prevailing wage. In an economy with involuntary unemployment there is a surplus of labor at the current real wage. This occurs when there is some force that prevents the real wage rate from decreasing to the real wage rate that would equilibrate supply and demand. Structural unemployment is also involuntary.
Macroeconomic theory has its origins in the study of business cycles and monetary theory. In general, early theorists believed monetary factors could not affect real factors such as real output. John Maynard Keynes attacked some of these "classical" theories and produced a general theory that described the whole economy in terms of aggregates rather than individual, microeconomic parts. Attempting to explain unemployment and recessions, he noticed the tendency for people and businesses to hoard cash and avoid investment during a recession. He argued that this invalidated the assumptions of classical economists who thought that markets always clear, leaving no surplus of goods and no willing labor left idle.
Jacques H. Drèze is a Belgian economist noted for his contributions to economic theory, econometrics, and economic policy as well as for his leadership in the economics profession. Drèze was the first President of the European Economic Association in 1986 and was the President of the Econometric Society in 1970.
Robert Wayne Clower was an American economist. He is credited with having largely created the field of stock-flow analysis in economics and with seminal works on the microfoundations of monetary theory and macroeconomics.
In macroeconomic theory, general disequilibrium is a situation in which some or all of the aggregated markets, such as the money market, the goods market, and the labor market, fail to clear because of price rigidities. In the 1960s and 1970s, economists such as Edmond Malinvaud, Robert Barro and Herschel Grossman, Axel Leijonhufvud, Robert Clower, and Jean-Pascal Benassy investigated how economic policy would impact an economy where prices did not adjust quickly to changes in supply and demand. The most notable case occurs when some external factor causes high levels of unemployment in an economy, leading to households consuming less and firms providing less employment, leading to a rationing of both goods and work hours. Studies of general disequilibrium have been considered the "height of the neoclassical synthesis" and an immediate precursor to the new Keynesian economics that followed the decline of the synthesis.
Don Patinkin was an Israeli-American monetary economist, and the President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation is a charitable foundation whose aims are to promote Finnish research in economics and medicine and to maintain and support educational and research facilities in Finland. It was established in 1954 by the wife of Yrjö Jahnsson, Hilma Jahnsson. It supports the award of the Yrjö Jahnsson Award and Yrjö Jahnsson Lecture series. These lectures have been delivered by noteworthy economists since 1963. 10 of the Yrjö Jahnsson Lecture series scholars have gone on to win the Nobel prize in economics, making it a top predictor for future recipients.
Huw David Dixon, born 1958, is a British economist. He has been a professor at Cardiff Business School since 2006, having previously been Head of Economics at the University of York (2003–2006) after being a Professor of economics there (1992–2003), and the University of Swansea (1991–1992), a Reader at Essex University (1987–1991) and a lecturer at Birkbeck College 1983–1987.
The Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) is an interdisciplinary research institute of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) located in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Since 2010, it is part of the Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Quantitative Modelling and Analysis (IMMAQ), along with the Institute for Economic and Social Research (IRES) and the Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA). | https://wikimili.com/en/Disequilibrium_macroeconomics |
The term externalities refer to situations when an individual’s actions affect another person’s well-being with the referred benefits and costs not shown in the market prices. This can be positive or negative. The externality becomes positive when an individual benefits after another individual cleans up the yard without charging the benefits as after regulation of power plant emissions. On the contrary, a negative externality occurs when ones actions damages those of the other. For instance, a factory can negatively affect other micro companies by polluting the environment.
The aspect of public goods is also economically referred to as nonrivalrous consumption. Moreover, according to the chapter, public goods can be referred to as nonexcludability where non payers are not excluded from good service benefits. Concepts on second hand smoke deprive a business of an effective environment to perform its duties and benefit from them. They deprive a firm or micro business of its property rights over nature hence encountering liabilities all the time. Moreover, other sources of funds for a micro economy include fund raisers on public broadcasts and speaking. Tying up to these aspects are the theories of Marxist and the institutional economic theory.
Marxist theory on ideas and public goods
According to Marxist theory, capitalism is one of the evolutionary phases in the development of economy right from the olden days. Capitalism involves cases where economists are able to vent ways and means of developing economy in their own perspectives using their individual means. According to Marxist, this is actually the real and practical way in which economic development got into the world based on individual ideas and public goods. It also exemplifies that every individual in a business or market set up has a sense of property rights and nature. Marxist believed that capitalism will eventually be the root cause of its own destruction within a world that has no private property. The theory relays that individual and private developers take a center stage in the development of economy. This sums up the various micro economic sectors in the world (Nicholson 256).
Within a society, workers are responsible for production of belongings hence the theory advocates for the labor theory of value. Labor is subtle to every production in the society. According to this theory, an existing system in the market paves way for capitalists to explore and own many of them. This is because of the fact that they are rich in machinery and factories. In the meant time, they participate in the exploitation of workers by depriving them a good share of what they have managed to produce. According to this theory, Marxist predicts that this rate of capitalism will lead to growing miseries among workers since they will engage in less economy machinery hence declaring workers jobless or of low income. In the meant time, the jobless workers will rough up and demand for the every means of production (Nicholson 79).This theory has varied pros and cons. It gives workers exposure to duly participate in bringing out the facets of economy hence contributing to the economy of a nation. Basing on the chapter, the theory looks like a free piece for many people to participate in the development of economy. It does not give room for a few numbers of individuals to take up the parameters of economy as done by other theories. On the contrary, the economy benefits only small scale economies or micro economies. It is only in rare cases that this state of economy adds up into a macro economy without an involvement of an outer hand.
Institutional theory of economics on Externalities and public goods
Institutional theory of economics perceive micro economic individual behavior as a sub set of the larger social structure influenced by present means of living and methodologies of thought. The theory gives no consideration to the narrow classical perception that people are influenced by their own self interests towards economic success. As a matter of fact, the theory proposes equity in terms of resource distribution within a given country. Moreover, according to this theory, human income comes as a result of an equitable resource allocation that will enable workers manage and produce in their own capacities and time.
This theory presents a variance of pros and cons. First, the theory assumes that individual motivations are pertinent to the successes to be achieved within a given sector of economy. This offers an enormous contribution to the entire parameters of economy within a nation. Moreover, the theory is normally easy to be understood by many people not like other theories of economy. On the contrary, the theory presents that economic development is subject to worker or small participants of economy alone. However, macro economics gets it way when larger companies and economies operate at a scale higher than that posed by the theory.
The theories discussed are quite relevant to the mainstream economics though they pose a number of differences and extensions. Considering facets attached to the neoclassical economics, a distinction is made between economics and its parameters as supply and demand within an individual’s rationality and potential to maximally generate profit or benefit. According to these theories, mathematical facets have offered appropriate methods to study different aspects of the economy of a given place. As relayed by the two theories above, it will take a mathematical figure for one to duly realize the merits of any theory as applied in the field.
As presented by the above theories, neoclassical economics is entwined in the modern forms of economy as those on Externalities and public goods. It has entirely grown and become one of the modern scales of economy being used by both macro and micro businesses. The main detractors of this economy as presented by the previous theories are that neoclassical economics is made up of many unrealistic and impractical assumptions that have not been tasted in the global market (Snyder 12-18). They fail to present real situations that actually meet the demands of the workers and customers in the market. Apart from this, these theories overlooks the fact that human beings are vulnerable to forces that make them make irrational choices. They pose many inequalities within the global debt and interrelations. To improve on these theories, more practical assumptions should be presented and tested over time. Besides this, these theories should be directed to serve varied forms of economies as both macro and micro economics together with Externalities and public goods within a large extends of market.
Works cited
Nicholson, W. and Snyder, C., Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application, New York, Centage, 2005. Print.
Nicholson, Walter. Intermediate Microeconomics and Its Application, London, Thomson/South-Western, 2004. Print.
Snyder, Chrostopher. Microeconomic Theory: Basic Principles and Extensions, Boston, Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.
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Don Patinkin was born January 8, 1922, in Chicago, to a family of Jewish emigrants from Poland.[ citation needed ] While doing his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, he also studied the Talmud at the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago. He continued at Chicago for his graduate studies, earning a Ph.D. in 1947 under the supervision of Oskar R. Lange. Patinkin was a strong Zionist and, while doing his graduate studies, planned to immigrate to Palestine; in his graduate research he studied Palestinian economics, although he did not complete his thesis in this subject.
After graduating he held lecturer positions at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois until he succeeded in emigrating to Israel in 1949, where he was hired by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1956 he was appointed the research director of the Falk Institute for Economic Research, which was established by Simon Kuznetz with the support of the Falk Foundation.
He remained at the Hebrew University. becoming university president from 1982 to 1986, following Avraham Harman. He resigned due to the poor state of the university's finances and was succeeded by Amnon Pazy. He retired in 1989, and died August 7, 1995, in Jerusalem.
Patinkin's work explored some of the microfoundations of Keynesian macroeconomics, particularly the role of money demand. His monograph Money, Interest, and Prices (1956) was for many years one of the most widely used advanced references on monetary economics.
Huw Dixon believes that: "Money, Interest and Prices is perhaps as great in its vision as Keynes' General Theory. Whilst the latter has a greater abundance of originality, the former has a greater clarity of insight and formal expression. Don Patinkin states his theory of the labour market and corresponding notion of the full employment equilibrium in just three pages of Money, Interest and Prices (in the 1965 edn. pp. 127–30). These pages deserve great attention: they state the labour market model that became the standard foundation for the aggregate supply curve in the aggregate demand/aggregate supply (AD/AS) model. Although Patinkin himself did not formulate the AD/AS representation, it is implicit in his Money, Interest and Prices."
Patinkin was awarded the Israel Prize in 1970. In 1989, a conference was held in honor of Patinkin's retirement.
Keynesian economics are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand strongly influences economic output and inflation. In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy. Instead, it is influenced by a host of factors – sometimes behaving erratically – affecting production, employment, and inflation.
Macroeconomics is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, and government spending to regulate an economy’s growth and stability. This includes regional, national, and global economies. According to a 2018 assessment by economists Emi Nakamura and Jón Steinsson, economic "evidence regarding the consequences of different macroeconomic policies is still highly imperfect and open to serious criticism."
In economics, general equilibrium theory attempts to explain the behavior of supply, demand, and prices in a whole economy with several or many interacting markets, by seeking to prove that the interaction of demand and supply will result in an overall general equilibrium. General equilibrium theory contrasts to the theory of partial equilibrium, which analyzes a specific part of an economy while its other factors are held constant. In general equilibrium, constant influences are considered to be noneconomic, therefore, resulting beyond the natural scope of economic analysis. The noneconomic influences is possible to be non-constant when the economic variables change, and the prediction accuracy may depend on the independence of the economic factors.
IS–LM model, or Hicks–Hansen model, is a two-dimensional macroeconomic tool that shows the relationship between interest rates and assets market. The intersection of the "investment–saving" (IS) and "liquidity preference–money supply" (LM) curves models "general equilibrium" where supposed simultaneous equilibria occur in both the goods and the asset markets. Yet two equivalent interpretations are possible: first, the IS–LM model explains changes in national income when the price level is fixed in the short-run; second, the IS–LM model shows why an aggregate demand curve can shift. Hence, this tool is sometimes used not only to analyse economic fluctuations but also to suggest potential levels for appropriate stabilisation policies.
New Keynesian economics is a school of macroeconomics that strives to provide microeconomic foundations for Keynesian economics. It developed partly as a response to criticisms of Keynesian macroeconomics by adherents of new classical macroeconomics.
Sir John Richards Hicks was a British economist. He is considered one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. The most familiar of his many contributions in the field of economics were his statement of consumer demand theory in microeconomics, and the IS–LM model (1937), which summarised a Keynesian view of macroeconomics. His book Value and Capital (1939) significantly extended general-equilibrium and value theory. The compensated demand function is named the Hicksian demand function in memory of him.
The Stockholm School is a school of economic thought. It refers to a loosely organized group of Swedish economists that worked together, in Stockholm, Sweden primarily in the 1930s.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is a book by English economist John Maynard Keynes published in February 1936. It caused a profound shift in economic thought, giving macroeconomics a central place in economic theory and contributing much of its terminology – the "Keynesian Revolution". It had equally powerful consequences in economic policy, being interpreted as providing theoretical support for government spending in general, and for budgetary deficits, monetary intervention and counter-cyclical policies in particular. It is pervaded with an air of mistrust for the rationality of free-market decision making.
A liquidity trap is a situation, described in Keynesian economics, in which, "after the rate of interest has fallen to a certain level, liquidity preference may become virtually absolute in the sense that almost everyone prefers holding cash rather than holding a debt which yields so low a rate of interest."
A macroeconomic model is an analytical tool designed to describe the operation of the problems of economy of a country or a region. These models are usually designed to examine the comparative statics and dynamics of aggregate quantities such as the total amount of goods and services produced, total income earned, the level of employment of productive resources, and the level of prices.
Neutrality of money is the idea that a change in the stock of money affects only nominal variables in the economy such as prices, wages, and exchange rates, with no effect on real variables, like employment, real GDP, and real consumption. Neutrality of money is an important idea in classical economics and is related to the classical dichotomy. It implies that the central bank does not affect the real economy by creating money. Instead, any increase in the supply of money would be offset by a proportional rise in prices and wages. This assumption underlies some mainstream macroeconomic models. Others like monetarism view money as being neutral only in the long run.
In macroeconomics, the classical dichotomy is the idea, attributed to classical and pre-Keynesian economics, that real and nominal variables can be analyzed separately. To be precise, an economy exhibits the classical dichotomy if real variables such as output and real interest rates can be completely analyzed without considering what is happening to their nominal counterparts, the money value of output and the interest rate. In particular, this means that real GDP and other real variables can be determined without knowing the level of the nominal money supply or the rate of inflation. An economy exhibits the classical dichotomy if money is neutral, affecting only the price level, not real variables. As such, if the classical dichotomy holds, money only affects absolute rather than the relative prices between goods.
Michael Dean Woodford is an American macroeconomist and monetary theorist who currently teaches at Columbia University.
The neoclassical synthesis (NCS), neoclassical–Keynesian synthesis, or just neo-Keynesianism was a neoclassical economics academic movement and paradigm in economics that worked towards reconciling the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Keynes in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). It was formulated most notably by John Hicks (1937), Franco Modigliani (1944), and Paul Samuelson (1948) dominated economics in the post-war period and formed the mainstream of macroeconomic thought in the 1950s 1960s, and 1970s.
New classical macroeconomics, sometimes simply called new classical economics, is a school of thought in macroeconomics that builds its analysis entirely on a neoclassical framework. Specifically, it emphasizes the importance of rigorous foundations based on microeconomics, especially rational expectations.
Paul Davidson is an American macroeconomist who has been one of the leading spokesmen of the American branch of the post-Keynesian school in economics. He is a prolific writer and has actively intervened in important debates on economic policy from a position critical of mainstream economics.
Frank Horace Hahn FBA was a British economist whose work focused on general equilibrium theory, monetary theory, Keynesian economics and critique of monetarism. A famous problem of economic theory, the conditions under which money, which is intrinsically worthless, can have a positive value in a general equilibrium, is called "Hahn's problem" after him. One of Hahn's main abiding concerns was the understanding of Keynesian (Non-Walrasian) outcomes in general equilibrium situations.
Macroeconomic theory has its origins in the study of business cycles and monetary theory. In general, early theorists believed monetary factors could not affect real factors such as real output. John Maynard Keynes attacked some of these "classical" theories and produced a general theory that described the whole economy in terms of aggregates rather than individual, microeconomic parts. Attempting to explain unemployment and recessions, he noticed the tendency for people and businesses to hoard cash and avoid investment during a recession. He argued that this invalidated the assumptions of classical economists who thought that markets always clear, leaving no surplus of goods and no willing labor left idle.
Robert Wayne Clower was an American economist. He is credited with having largely created the field of stock-flow analysis in economics and with seminal works on the microfoundations of monetary theory and macroeconomics.
Disequilibrium macroeconomics is a tradition of research centered on the role of disequilibrium in economics. This approach is also known as non-Walrasian theory, equilibrium with rationing, the non-market clearing approach, and non-tâtonnement theory. Early work in the area was done by Don Patinkin, Robert W. Clower, and Axel Leijonhufvud. Their work was formalized into general disequilibrium models, which were very influential in the 1970s. American economists had mostly abandoned these models by the late 1970s, but French economists continued work in the tradition and developed fixprice models. | https://wikimili.com/en/Don_Patinkin |
Microeconomics: microeconomics is the observe of macroeconomics it is the analysis of the economy’s constituent elements—’micro’, of course, being greek for ‘small’ as the name suggests, it is not aggregative but elective it seeks to explain the working of markets for [. Basic economic concepts and microeconomics macroeconomics, economic theories, and international economics economic inquiry skills the basic elements of the money supply (ie, m1, m2, and m3) examining examining the effects of tariffs and quotas on international trade and on. The process by which businesses make decisions is as complex as the processes which characterize consumer decision-making business draws upon microeconomic data to make a variety of critical. Microeconomics is the study of the behaviour of individuals and small impacting organisations in making decisions on the allocation of limited resources the modern field of microeconomics arose as an effort of neoclassical economics school of thought to put economic ideas into mathematical mode.
Eco 201: elements of microeconomics sample questions and answers demand, supply and elasticities 1) consider the demand equation where q represents quantity demanded and p the selling price a calculate the arc – price elasticity of demand when and. Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of how companies make decisions on their limited resources it is very vital that we learn economics for its benefits can help us in economical crisis. Introduction to microeconomics contains elements of more than one system - us economy is a mixed system (capitalism, command, and socialism are the major elements, with some communism and tradition) 1 all of the high income, industrialized economies are mixed economies. In economics, industrial organization or industrial economy is a field that builds on the theory of the firm by examining the structure of (and, therefore, the boundaries between) firms and markets.
Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and small impacting organizations in making decisions on the allocation of limited resources this app is developed to introduce the basics of microeconomics in the interface of the app the user can see the content clicking the content the users can get the details of this app. Microeconomics the objective of microeconomic theory is to analyse how individual decision-makers, both consumers and producers, behave in a variety of economic environments examples of such environments are bidding in an auction, collectively deciding whether to build a public project, or designing a contract that will induce a worker to. Write a paper of 750-1,000 words examining your personal values and beliefs include the following: describe your personal values and spiritual beliefs using the elements of cost , quality, and social issues to frame your description, differentiate your beliefs and opinions about health.
Microeconomics is the social science that studies the implications of individual human action, specifically about how those decisions affect the utilization and distribution of scarce resources. Download solution microeconomics and behavior solution microeconomics and behavior pdf this paper integrates elements from the theory of agency, the theory of property rights and the theory of consumer behavior - utility theory at this point we want to start examining the economic decision-making of individual entities in the economy. Strategic business management - microeconomics from university of california, irvine this course weds business strategy with the principles of microeconomics it offers valuable a powerful toolbox together with cases and lessons across all major. Econ1000 basic microeconomics a course examining the development of basic economic institutions in western society emphasis is placed on key problems of historical interpretation an introduction to the concept of the labor market, and the elements that distinguish it from commodity or other factor markets the economic theory of. Microeconomics branch of economics that deals with the behavior of individual economic units—consumers, firms, workers, and investors—as well as the markets that these units compromise macroeconomics.
Don't show me this again welcome this is one of over 2,200 courses on ocw find materials for this course in the pages linked along the left mit opencourseware is a free & open publication of material from thousands of mit courses, covering the entire mit curriculum no enrollment or registration. Basic economic concepts and microeconomics 2 macroeconomics, economic theories, and international economics 3 economic inquiry skills examining how market prices are determined (eg, price elasticity of demand and supply) and examining how price demonstrating knowledge of the functions of money and the basic elements of the. Examining factors of competitiveness construction of a data collection, and a drawing out of non-quantifiable elements to provide a more complete picture of regional competitiveness more than the other chapters, the a study on the factors of regional competitiveness regional competitiveness.
Eco 201: elements of microeconomics sample questions and answers the theory of consumer behaviour 1) dorcas a level 200 student of ketasco, calls her parent to send her money to buy milo which by examining the utility function we can see that u increases whenever x or y increases. Microeconomics and macroeconomics are not the only distinct subfields in economics econometrics , which seeks to apply statistical and mathematical methods to economic analysis, is widely considered the third core area of economics. Principle of microeconomics page 4 in which government decisions drive most characteristics of a country's economic activity the example of a country with a market economy is brazil 1.
Provides knowledge and understanding of the basic principles and concepts of microeconomics and macroeconomics and to be able to apply this knowledge and understanding in the analysis of a range of economic problems. Free essays on plot, setting, point of view, and tone in bartleby the scrivener essay, dance is a sport essay, defining crime in psychology essaylooking at binary mixture criminology essay, teaching mathematics for social justice education essay, examining the elements of microeconomics essay. Introduction to microeconomics (econ 1001) course code econ 1001 basic elements of microeconomics including the concepts of demand and supply and the functioning of markets, including the assumptions that underlie such concepts assessments are aimed at examining students' grasp of the course material and ensure that.
2018. | http://thhomeworkmhle.alisher.info/examining-the-elements-of-microeconomics.html |
ABSTRACTThis toolkit explores open educational resources (OER) and some aspects of open educational practice. It is designed for those new to teaching and those new to open approaches to resources who may be more generally experienced. It aims to cover some of the current discussions, topics and material of most relevance to those new to OER as well as providing signposts to further guidance and examples of effective practice.
|Keywords||case studies · licenses · MOOCs · OER accessibility · OER cost · OER creation tools · OER definition · tool kits · Twitter|
|Rights||© The Higher Education Academy, 2014|
|URL||https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/resources/oer_toolkit_0.pdf|
|Export options||BibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar|
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WikiEducator: Visualising open education futures
Mackintosh, Wayne
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Organization (Website) Origin: Institute for Healthcare Improvement (www.ihi.org)
Topic Brief:
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement provides resources and educational tools to improve the quality of all aspects of healthcare. One key program is the IHI Open School with Online Courses to learn patient safety competencies and quality improvement methodologies. They have a free online "talk shows" on current topics with leaders in the field who are making an impact in the quality of the care delivered at their institution. Individuals may also sign up for a free email newsletter.
URL: | https://connect.ascls.org/blogs/catherine-otto/2018/01/20/advocate-excellence-quality-improvement-and-patien?CommunityKey=25c30ae5-e625-4372-b358-f9109552e1a8&tab=recentcommunityblogsdashboard |
ABSTRACTWhile MOOCs are recognized nowadays as a potential format for professional development and lifelong learning, little research has been conducted on the factors that influence MOOC participation of professionals and unemployed in MOOCs. Based on a framework developed earlier, we conducted a study, which focused on the influence of background variables such us digital competence, age, gender and educational level on MOOC participation. Occupational setting was considered as a moderator in the analysis of the impact of digital skills. Results of the study showed that MOOCs were an important tool for unemployed participants who were more likely to enroll in MOOCs than employed learners. MOOCs were also a way for workers who do not received employer support for other training activities to get professional development training. Results of the regression analysis showed that a person’s level of digital competence was an important predictor for enrolment in MOOCs and that specifically interaction skills were more important than information skills for participating in the MOOC context.
|Keywords||digital competence · employer support · MOOCs · open education · professional development|
|ISSN||1867-1233|
|Refereed||Yes|
|Rights||by/4.0|
|DOI||10.1007/s12528-016-9123-z|
|Other information||J Comput High Educ|
|Export options||BibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar|
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This explorative study aimed to get an understanding of MOOC-success as seen from the perspective of the MOOC-taker and the types of barriers which might stand in the way of this success. Data of two MOOCs was used to ...
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(please put OT in the subject line).
Some of the members of the Training and Research Steering Group have made the education materials they have developed available online.
Kew's learning programme offers opportunities for students at all stages in education. From curriculum visits for students to specialist training courses for science, horticulture and conservation professionals and informal talks and courses for adult learners.
Three teaching resources have been created using the rich and diverse species of the Overseas Territories, the threats they face and in-situ conservation initiatives as illustrative examples. The three resources cover key science topics taught within the UK, the UKOTs and globally. By making these resources accessible to educators worldwide (as well as being of great use to educators within the territories) it is hoped that the importance of the Territories' biodiversity will be recognised by young people across the globe.
A variety of other, non-UKOT-specific educational resources are also available.
The GLOBE Programme is a unique practical environmental education project for schools linking students, teachers and scientists in 111 countries around the world, supporting Science, Geography, Maths, ICT and International relations.
There are free resources for teachers to support using GLOBE data in the classroom.
The UKOTCF Environmental Education Resources Database brings together information on environmental education resources which may be suitable (or easily adaptable) for use in a particular Territory. The database provides summaries and links for a wide variety of resources, including climate change, invasive species and sustainable use. More resources are continually being added. Searches can be made using criteria such as geographical region, major taxa, major ecosystems, territories and keywords. The initial development of the database was partly supported by OTEP. | http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-5131 |
The idea that educational contents could be seen as “objects” to be reused in multiple contexts dates back to the late 60’s but it started to become a reality only by the middle of the 90s with the generalization of the Internet . In 1995, an international consensus arose around the necessity of e-learning standards to promote tools’ interoperability and learning objects reusability. The aim was to insure the reuse of educational objects jeopardized by the diversity of referencing metadata schema around the world. This goal was shortly concretized by the Dublin Core (DC) metadata initiative proposing a first set of standardized metadata, expressed in XML. In June 2002, on the basis of a joint IMS Global and ARIADNE proposal, IEEE approved a LOM standard that was largely accepted internationally. From then on, major resource repository initiatives bloomed rapidly: ARIADNE in Europe, MERLOT in the USA, EdNA in Australia. In Canada, the eduSource initiative networked the first LOM repositories from coast to coast. It was followed by our own LORNET research network, which joined the GLOBE international consortium. GLOBE operates actually a large repository of nearly one million resources, mostly OERs.
After a decade of research and practice in this field, there are still a number of limitations to a larger use of OER repositories part of which is the heavy resource indexing load required by LOM application profiles. These profiles try to reduce the load to a limited set of metadata useful locally, at the expense of resource reusability from various repositories.
The ISO/IEC 19788 standard , in short ISO-MLR, is intended to provide optimal compatibility with both DC and the LOM. It presents the following advantages.
Insuring the coherence of metadata concepts by proposing an RDF-based data model.
Preventing the proliferation of non interoperable application profiles.
Supporting the extension of description vocabulairies while preserving interoperability.
Supporting multilingual and cultural adaptability requirements from a global perspective.
Integrating referencing and search with other data sets wihin the Web of linked data.
The fundamental thing here is that ISO-MLR proceeds from a different vision than previous standards like the IEEE-LOM, where resources as seen only as documents. ISO-MLR uses technologies like RDF and RDF schema to integrate well in a Web of linked data, instead of simply a Web of documents. In the Web of linked data, the URLs who provide locations on the Web are generalized to URIs that can also represent people, real-world objects or abstract concept and properties. These entities and the values of their properties are linked together by declaring RDF triples. It then becomes possible to describe the meaning, the semantic of Web pages beyond the syntax of natural languages and their inherent ambiguity. A Web of linked data enables computer agents to follow the links and perform more intelligent operations using the knowledge behind the words. For this, the SPARQL RDF Query Language enables queries within the huge graph of RDF triples that constitutes the Web of linked data.
COMÈTE is a second generation learning resource repository manager based on the RDF approach. It allows locating, aggregating and retrieving educational resources that constitute the heritage of an organization. Basically, it runs a triple store containing metadata triples about learning resources on which users can perform queries to find and discover educational material that they can reuse for their various needs. The integration of resources inside a COMETE repository is done by processing metadata records from repositories that use Dublin Core, IEEE LOM, ISO-MLR and other application profiles. The result of this process is a homogeneous graph of data within COMETE’s internal metamodel based on ISO-LMR like schemas.
As a semantic network, the resulting RDF graph represents the entities as nodes. Mains nodes are learning resources, persons and organizations and SKOS vocabulary elements: concepts and properties. By various techniques, the system maximizes the inner coherence of the graph. The Identity module implements the management of metadata about persons or organizations). This includes importation of identities, identity resolution of triples that represent the same person or organization, making sure it stays unique, and completing it as new details are known). Manual merge of identities is also provided within a set of administrative tools for a better control of data integrity.
The Vocabulary module implements the management of vocabularies, thesauri and ontologies, which involve importing from VDEX or SKOS formats, unambiguously identifying the vocabulary that a term is from, and finding a computer readable representation of the whole vocabulary, transparently converting from one format to another, replacing a vocabulary when updates are available, publishing vocabularies automatically and providing user interface elements reusable by other modules, including for queries to the repository. This module manages also correspondences between taxonomies. Indeed, SKOS concept alignment between different ontologies (or vocabularies) can be taken into account by the query engine. A useful example of alignment is the mapping between different school-level taxonomies of different countries to promote the interoperability of resources between national repositories. For instance we can search resources which target audience is Junior High School in the United States and the results may contain pertinent Secondary School I-III tutorials produced in Québec.
COMÈTE constructs rich graphs of data that allow doing sophisticated search based on authors, organization, concepts or properties describing knowledge, using various kinds of search interfaces. All of the queries expressed in forms and menus are translated in SPARQL language by the QueryEngine module and then run on the triple store. By combining different conditions, mixing keyword-based approach, using negative prefixes, more complex queries can be performed thant in traditional OEF managers..
In this final section, we present two use cases where COMETE is used to interoperate with a MOOC platform like OpenEdX. Within such a platform, the role of COMETE is twofold: enabling designers to search and reference OERs within a MOOC; reference MOOC themselves to produce a searchable standardized MOOC portal.
At Télé-université, we have adapted to our needs OpenEdX, the open-source release of the edX platform developed by a non-profit organization founded by Harvard and MIT in the USA. It provides essentially two server-based applications. The first one, edX-STUDIO, is the application where designers build courses. Resources and activities are grouped in course modules and stored in a Mongo no-sql and MySQL databases. Students interact at runtime with the second application, the Learning Management System (LMS) that performs learner authentication and learning scenario support at runtime .
Designing a MOOC using the COMETE OER Manager. A typical OpenEdx course is subdivided in sections (e.g. modules) and each module in sub-sections (e.g. lessons). For each lesson, an upper menu provides access to the lessons’ sequential components: discussion components, HTML content components, problem/quizz components, and video components. As a principle, all these components should be open educational resources (OER). All these OER components are found mainly on the Web. Actually, most designers use search engines like Google or Bing to find open resources to reuse or adapt for their course. As explained previously, there are many advantages in using a learning resource repository manager like COMETE to find suitable resources. Using REST web services, a call to COMETE from OpenEdX studio could start efficient search operations and facilitate the selection of resources of the four categories proposed in STUDIO. Conversely, STUDIO could be upgraded to provide forms to edit metadata for the resources in a standardized DC, LOM or ISO-MLR application profile suitable for Studio. This would enable designers to automatically create a RDF resource repository for a course, for a whole program or for all its edX users. The creation of this local repository would produce a URI where the edX resources can be harvested by COMETE or other OER Managers and integrated into larger repositories for future use.
Referencing a MOOC using COMETE. When a new MOOC is created in OpenEdX, a course registration screen is offered to the designer. Actually, only four metadata are asked: the course name, the organization that supports it, the course number and the periods when it will be offered. This form could be easily extended to fields from a DC, LOM or ISO-MLR application profile that would take into account the differences between small resources within a MOOC, compared to large OERs: MOOC courses or modules. Then, automatically, each time a new MOOC is created, it would have a URI on the Web of data together with its component resources. COMETE could then provide a searching facility is MOOC repositories like Class Central , which is a free online course aggregator from universities like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc., offered via Coursera, Udacity, edX, NovoED, & others.
Actually, in a MOOC portal, courses are classified by subject, universities, level and provider, which are the only meta-data entries available to browse for a course. Most of the time one must open each course (or register) to know what’s in it. With standardized metadata, COMETE could power a MOOC portal with various kinds of search and navigation capabilities, combining metadata queries and knowledge navigation on the Web of data.
We have presented a solution to one of the main problems in Open Educational Resources repositories, which is the multiplicity of norms, standards and application profiles that preclude efficient search for resources within multiple repositories. We have built a first Linked data OER repository manager, COMETE, relying on semantic web techniques, largely complying to the new ISO-MLR standard. Its use for MOOC and MOOC components referencing using RDF triples would become an asset as the number in massive online courses is growing rapidly in most countries. Our next work will be to investigate various integration of COMETE tools with MOOC platforms as indicated in the present contribution.
DC – Dublic Core Metatdata initiative. http://dublincore.org .
IEEE-LOM – Learning Object Metatda, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_Object_Metadata .
GLOBE – Global Learning Object Brokered Exchange, http://globe-info.org .
Coulombe C. (2014) Expérimentation de la plateforme OpenEdX, rapport technique LICEF, Télé-université du Québec. | https://conference.oeconsortium.org/2015/presentation/opening-up-moocs-for-oer-management-on-the-web-of-linked-data/ |
FHSU’s Nickerson selected as SPARC Open Education Leadership fellow
Fort Hays State University’s Claire Nickerson has been selected as a fellow in the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Open Education Leadership Program.
Nickerson, Learning Initiatives and Open Educational Resources Librarian at Forsyth Library, is one of only 21 fellows selected from a competitive applicant pool for the program’s 2020-2021 cohort. This intensive professional development program is designed to empower academic professionals with the knowledge, skills and community connections to lead successful open education initiatives that benefit students.
SPARC is an international organization of professionals around the globe who focus on policies and practices that support open education, open access to research, and open data sharing.
“The SPARC fellowship is a significant and well-deserved honor reflective of Ms. Nickerson’s professional knowledge and expertise,” said Deborah Ludwig, library dean.
The leadership program spans two semesters, beginning with an intensive online course in the fall to build open education subject matter mastery. In the spring, Nickerson will work with a mentor to implement a capstone project that will help advance open education at Fort Hays State and contribute to the broader open education field.
“I am very excited about the program,” Nickerson said. “It provides the opportunity to become a stronger advocate for open education both at Fort Hays State and in Kansas, and I am enjoying being immersed in a community of other professionals passionate about OER (Open Educational Resources).”
Nickerson is currently the chair of the FHSU OER Committee and is also serving on the statewide OER Steering Committee made up of representatives across Kansas public institutions. The group convenes once a month to discuss statewide initiatives, including collaborative events, grant applications, system participation in regional and national OER organizations, OER platforms and best practices.
Delivering an affordable and accessible education has long been a focus of FHSU. The campus OER committee, in conjunction with Forsyth Library, hosted a mini-conference in fall 2018 and in spring 2019 to support faculty interested in creating, adapting or adding supplementary materials to an open textbook. Another mini-conference is being planned for spring 2021.
In addition to supporting faculty with advanced professional development opportunities, the Open Textbook Grant Program provides funding opportunities for faculty to create openly licensed supplementary materials, revise existing open textbooks or write new open textbooks.
Additionally, the Z-Course program launched a grant this year, designed to support the conversion of courses that currently use paid course materials into Z-courses (courses that use zero-cost course materials). The program also provides an opportunity to recognize departments that have embraced zero-cost course materials in their curriculum.
“The COVID-19 crisis has brought deeper scrutiny to many of the inequities that already exist within higher education, and open education is a key enabling strategy to help level the playing field,” said Nicole Allen, director of Open Education for SPARC. | https://www.hdnews.net/story/news/2020/11/23/fhsursquos-nickerson-selected-as-sparc-open-education-leadership-fellow/43190715/ |
Compiled by: Irina Ibraghimova, Library and Information Management Specialist,
HealthConnect International
[email protected]
The guide was produced by the American International Health Alliance as part of its Knowledge Management Program. This guide provides information on how to obtain access to a variety of free and low-cost online training resources in health care, social work, medicine and related fields. The following online resources are included:
Training from International Organizations and Projects
- African Health Open Educational Resources (OER) Network
- BMJ Learning • Building Leadership for Health program
- CDC Training and Continuing Education Online
- CDC Learning Connection Quick Learn Lessons
- Cochrane Learning
- eCancer Educational Modules
- Education Development Center (EDC)
- eInstitute for Development from the World Bank Institute
- FHI 360
- Global Health eLearning Center
- Global Health Epidemiology
- Global Health Media Project
- HINARI Training Modules
- HiT Training Information Hub
- HRH Global Resource Center (GRC)
- Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK)
- I-TECH's Clinical Education Modules
- The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health OpenCourseWare
- JSI e-Learning
- K4Health
- MedlinePlus African Tutorials
- Research for Life Training Portal
- ReproLinePlus
- Supercourse
- Training Resource Package for Family Planning (TRP)
- Tutorials for Africa
- World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Academy
Training from Professional Organizations
- ADVANCE for Nurses
- BioMed Central Author Academy
- CORE (Curricula Organizer for Reproductive Health Education)
- End of Life/Palliative Education Resource Center (EPERC)
- GeneEd
- Health IT Workforce Curriculum Components American International Health Alliance
- Life in the Fast Lane
- MedEdPORTAL
- Medscape
- PedsUniversity
- PRIME Education
- Portal of Geriatrics Online Education
MOOCs (massive online open courses)
- Class Central
- Coursera
- FutureLearn
- EdX
Finding Online Training Resources
- Online Tutorial Resources
- Continuing education for health professionals
- E-learning Resources for Global Health Researchers
- Training Resources Bulletin
Last update: August 2014
Training from International Organizations and Projects
African Health Open Educational Resources (OER) Network
Description: Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational resources that are openly licensed, so that they can be used, adapted, integrated, and shared any time and place. The African Health OER Network fosters co-creation of resources, enabling institutions to share knowledge, address curriculum gaps, and use OER for improving the delivery of health education in Africa. Network aggregates the results of multiple health education initiatives by collecting, classifying, indexing, and then actively distributing African-initiated resources with the global health community.
Access: Participation in the African Health OER Network is open to all. The primary contributors and audience are African health academics, faculty and students, first focusing on those whose language of operation is English.
http://www.oerafrica.org/healthoer
BMJ Learning
Description: BMJ Learning is one of the leading international online learning resources for medical professionals. It offers high-quality CME/CPD and postgraduate training for doctors and other American International Health Alliance healthcare professionals. It contains over 1000 evidence based modules in text, video, and audio formats, which are written by experts, and cover a range of clinical and non-clinical topics. Modules take 60 minutes to complete and you receive a personalised certificate on completion of each module Access: Register to view free modules. Full access by paid subscription
Building Leadership for Health
Description: The Building Leadership for Health program was first developed in the UK by a team at a major international consulting firm. They worked with the Aga Khan Foundation and 5 East African Universities on an EU funded program to develop a common curriculum for Nurse Leadership and Advanced Nursing Practice in East Africa. On the web-site you can find materials that you can use for delivering training to your students: PowerPoint presentations for all 10 modules, links to other resources and programs to support health leadership development:
- Leadership and Management Development in Health
- Leading Change and Innovation for Heath
- Leading Community Engagement for Health
- Leading Information and Communications for Health
- Leading Knowledge Management for Health
- Leading Negotiations and responses to Globalization for Health
- Leading Health Finance and economics
- Leading Project Management for Health
- Leading Strategic and Business Planning for Health
- A Guide to Mentoring and Coaching in Health
Access: Free
http://www.building-leadership-for-health.org.uk/building-leadership-for-health-course/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Training and Continuing Education Online
Description: Catalog includes training workshops, web-based courses, self-inctructional cases.studies and webinars.
Access: After registration you can - Search the calendar and catalog of courses; Select a downlink site for satellite broadcasts; Register for courses; Complete course evaluation and exam; View and print your transcript; Print your continuing education certificate
http://www2a.cdc.gov/TCEOnline/
CDC Learning Connection Quick Learn Lessons
Description: Public health-related learning products and activities that take 20 minutes or less to complete. Products are also accessible from your mobile device, so you can learn on the go. Quick Learn lessons help you develop basic public health knowledge and skills in specific areas through interactivity and practice. Listen to public health-related podcasts on your computer or download them and listen to information on your mobile device. Training Videos are from a variety of sources, including TED Talks and CDC’s YouTube channel, CDCStreamingHealth.
Access: Free
http://www.cdc.gov/learning/quick_learns.html
Cochrane Learning
Description: Cochrane Learning from the Cochrane Collaboration is where health professionals can continue their professional development and improve their clinical practice. Dr Cochrane activities include an engaging and memorable patient story, five multiple choice questions, and a Cochrane Review. The activity should take you around one hour to complete. You are not expected to read the Cochrane Review from start to finish, but we recommend that you read the abstract before you launch the activity. You can then keep the Cochrane Review open as you answer the multiple choice questions in a separate window. At the end of the activity you will be asked to evaluate and reflect upon your learning experience and how you might apply the information to your clinical practice
Access: Registration on Wiley Health Learning is free and will give you access to all of the activities available from Wiley and their publishing partners. Wiley Health Learning enables you to, start, save, and complete activities anytime you're online, and digitally store completed activities to retrieve your certificates whenever you need them.
https://www.wileyhealthlearning.com/cochrane.aspx
eCancer Educational Modules
Description: ecancer is an oncology channel committed to improving cancer communication and education with the goal of optimizing patient care and outcomes. The elearning education modules have been produced in association with the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care and are part of an initiative funded by the BMS Foundation’s Bridging Cancer Care program which aims to eliminate disparities in cancer treatment by building healthcare capacity, training healthcare workers and increasing patient awareness, screening and treatment. Available in Italian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian and English.
Access: Free, after you register for the ecancer club it is possible to record your learning. The ePortfolio is where you can access content that you manually selected to shortlist on this site. You can also access content that you've recently viewed, and any Modules from the Education section that you started / completed will be listed here, along with any CME points, reflection notes and/or evaluation recorded against these.
http://ecancer.org/education/education.php
Education Development Center (EDC)
Description: EDC advances formal and informal education, health promotion and care, workforce preparation, communication technology, and civic engagement. EDC’s work is organized by individually funded projects that are housed in three divisions: Health and Human Development, International Development, and Learning and Teaching. It offers web-based courses, webinars, and curricula on numerous topics in health and human development, including: Mental Health; Posttraumatic Stress Disorder; Suicide; Violence; Injuries; Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs; Pandemic Influenza; Sexuality and Reproductive Health; HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections; and Nutrition and Fitness.
Access: Free
http://hhd.edc.org/
The e-Institute for Development from the World Bank
Description: The e-Institute offers both self-paced and facilitated courses that aim to make learning engaging and accessible by offering innovative choices tailored to multiple workplace cultures and learning styles. More than forty-five e-Learning courses address complex real-world problems in priority areas such as governance, health, cities, climate change, and public private partnerships. Learners also have access to free monthly podcasts and webinars, video success stories, multimedia toolkits, and other resources.
Access: Free and for fee courses. You will be emailed a certificate of completion after you have successfully completed facilitated e-courses.
http://einstitute.worldbank.org/ei/
FHI 360
Description: FHI 360 is a nonprofit human development organization dedicated to improving lives in lasting ways by advancing integrated, locally driven solutions. Its staff includes experts in health, education, nutrition, environment, economic development, civil society, gender equality, youth, research and technology — creating a unique mix of capabilities to address today's interrelated development challenges. FHI 360 serves more than 70 countries and all U.S. states and territories. It provides a variety of training and education materials, ranging from toolkits to interactive modules in the following categories: Service Provider Training and Job Aids; Ethics Training; Youth Reproductive Health and HIV Prevention; Gender and Reproductive Health; Journalism Training; Training of Trainer Materials.
Access: These training materials are provided asynchronously and for free, although users may order a hard copy of certain materials.
http://www.fhi360.org/
Global Health e-Learning Center
Description: The Global Health eLearning Center offers more than 70 courses aimed at increasing knowledge in a variety of global health technical areas, such as Health systems, HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Child survival, Family planning, Infectious diseases, monitoring and evaluation, mHealth and more. Individual courses are also part of certificate programs, listed on the Certificate Program page. Courses that have been translated can be found on the Translation page.
Access: Free
http://www.globalhealthlearning.org/courses
Global Health Epidemiology
Description: It has been created to support collaboration and capacity building in the practice of epidemiology globally. It is a professional network for researchers running epidemiology studies in the field of Global Health for the sharing of knowledge, methods and tools. E-learning short courses are designed to cover every step, process, and issue that needs to be understood in order to conduct a high quality clinical study. These courses should take about 45 minutes to complete and a certificate is issued on completion. Every course is written to be globally applicable, so for all diseases and all regions. They are also highly pragmatic and adaptable. Each course is carefully researched to provide up to date and high quality material that is peer reviewed and regularly reviewed and updated. Also links to other training resources and a series of e-seminars on topics related to conducting clinical trials in the field of Global Health. They are MP3 (audio) and MP4 (video) files. You will need a media player to play them.
Courses: Introduction to Clinical Research; ICH Good Clinical Practice Course; Setting the Research Question; The Research Protocol: Part one; The Research Protocol: Part two; Data Safety Monitoring Boards for African Clinical Trials; Introduction to Consent; Introduction to Data Management For Clinical Research Studies; Introduction to Collecting and Reporting Adverse Events in Clinical Research
Access: Free. Some are available also in Swahili and other languages
https://globalhealthepidemiology.tghn.org/elearning-centre/
Global Health Media Project
Description: A growing collection of online training videos on a variety of clinical global health topics created and distributed by the nonprofit Global Health Media Project, designed to reach low-resource health workers who have no other access to this clinical information. It was founded to put practical, life-saving knowledge into the hands of healers at the point of care. The newborn care series provides the target audience of frontline health workers with visual clinical guidelines for training and review in the clinic setting. The films are meant as complementary training tools, covering the key points of topics that can be visually conveyed. They can be used in pre-service and in-service education and be kept by health workers for review in their clinic settings
Access: Free. For health workers without internet connectivity, training NGOs and ministries of health can distribute them via a USB flash drive or a memory chip in a mobile phone. Available in English, Swahili and several other languages.
http://globalhealthmedia.org/
HINARI Training Modules
Description: Access to Research in Health Programme /The HINARI Programme, set up by WHO together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of biomedical and health literature. More than 7,500 information resources are now available to health institutions in 105 countries, areas and territories benefiting many thousands of health workers and researchers, and in turn, contributing to improved world health.
Training modules on Internet search, use of HINARI resources, resources on evidence-based medical practice, authorship skills. The individual training modules are continually refined following workshops throughout the world. The training material can be used by librarians and researchers alike, and in an individual or group environment. These PowerPoint presentations and Word documents are downloadable from the Training page. Each module presented builds on the previous, is supplemented by tutorial sessions and can be adapted for local training. The material is also available in CD-ROM format by emailing HINARI. The CD-ROM may be used on-line or without an Internet connection when not available.
The HINARI Short Course (for users) and the HINARI Train the Trainers Course (for trainers from developed countries) are online on the Medical Library Association (USA) distance learning server. These courses are self-paced, take 4-6 hours. Upon completion of the exercises, students will receive certificates. Video Series consist of short videos that users at HINARI institutions can watch to learn HINARI basics, such as what is HINARI, how to access e-journals via HINARI, and how to search PubMed via HINARI. Videos are available online, and can also be freely downloaded or ordered on CD for no charge. Audio and text files are included. The website includes optional online quizzes and exercises. The whole series can be watched in under 30 minutes.
Access: Free
http://www.who.int/hinari/training/en/
HiT Training Information Hub (formerly RATN)
Description: Training Information Hub (HIT) is a web-based source of information on HIV and AIDS training in the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region. HIT is an initiative supported by UNAIDS/RST and was developed in response to the demand for information on training resources in the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region as a one stop regional resource centre for information on training and capacity building. It aims at providing HIV and AIDS frontline workers, managers and specialists (at community, national and regional levels) with access to information on where and how to access trainers, training programs, study scholarships and training resources on HIV and AIDS in Eastern and Southern Africa region and beyond.
You too can market your training information on HIT. Your programs will not only be available to members within your country but also within the ESA region and beyond.
Access: Free
http://www.ratn.org/HIT/index.php?option=com_content&view=featured&Itemid=435
HRH Global Resource Center (GRC)
Description: The Human Resources for Health Global Resource Center, a management service of CapacityPlus, a USAID-funded project led by IntraHealth International. The HRH Global Resource Center eLearning platform offers free courses developed by technical experts in the fields of human resources for health, health informatics and health service delivery to build the capacity of countrybased users in critical skills development.
Access: Users will create an account for free, providing them with an "enrollment key," which will allow them to access a variety of courses, some of which are offered in cohort over the course of several weeks.
http://www.hrhresourcecenter.org/elearning/
Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK)
Description: IMARK is mobilizing and building upon existing resources to create a comprehensive suite of distance learning resources for information management and exchange. IMARK supports agencies, institutions and networks world-wide, and helps them to work together and share information more effectively. This Kit is a series of 10 online modules, including: Management of Spatial Information; Knowledge Sharing for Developing; Digital Libraries, Repositories, and Documents; Web 2.0 and Social Media for Development; Networking in Support of Development; Building Electronic Communities and Networks; Investing in Information for Development; Digitization and Digital Libraries; and Management of Electronic Documents.
Access: Free after registration. Anyone having problems with Internet access can order a CD version of the available modules
http://www.imarkgroup.org/
I-TECH Clinical Education Modules
Description: I-TECH's Clinical Education Modules are designed for mid-level health care providers in resource-limited settings, and available online for learners worldwide. The topics and speakers are varied, but each module typically presents cutting-edge research and thinking from university-based clinicians. The Modules are designed to be useful both for self-study and as the foundation of an hourlong classroom training session. They are optimized for online use in low-bandwidth settings, and also available for download and use offline.
Each module consists of: 30-40 Minute Online Educational Unit, 5 Minute Concept-Reinforcing Online Quiz Unit is intended for online self-paced learners, or as homework for classroom learners, this online interactive quiz uses questions, cases, or interactive methods to reinforce the learning objectives of the main educational unit, 3 Page PDF Teaching Guide which includes: an overview of learning objectives and intended audience for the unit, suggested discussion topics and class activities, additional resources and references.
Access: Free
http://edgh.washington.edu/clinical-education-modules
The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health OpenCourseWare
Description: The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's OPENCOURSEWARE (OCW) project provides access to content of the School's most popular courses. The Bloomberg School's OCW: Does not require that participants register; Does not grant degrees or certificates; Does not provide access to JHSPH faculty; Requires acceptance of conditions of use. More than 100 courses in public health, epidemiology, research design and other topics.
Access: Free. OCW offers open materials and images from more than a hundred courses developed by the faculty of JHSPH
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/
JSI e-Learning
Description: John Snow, Inc., and its nonprofit JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc., are public health management consulting and research organizations dedicated to improving the health of American International Health Alliance individuals and communities throughout the world.JSI e-Learning offers courses commissioned by its clients and developed by John Snow, Inc. and JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. Choose from available courses: Developing gender-responsive HIV Health Programs , Adolescent Brain, Logistics.
Access: Free. If you are new to JSI e-Learning, click "Create new account", it will take a few minutes.
http://elearning.jsi.com/
K4Health
K4Health's current eLearning activities include:
- Global Health eLearning (GHeL): Over 50 courses on a range of public health topics vetted by technical experts.
- PEPFAR eLearning: Courses focused on critical technical and programmatic guidance for PEPFAR implementing partners and national HIV/AIDS program staff around the world.
- Field-based eLearning: K4Health is involved in eLearning activities in Bangladesh, Nigeria, and the Southern Africa region.
Visit the eLearning Tookit for a step-by-step guide to developing and implementing an eLearning strategy, highlighting key decision making junctures and linking to templates and additional resources
https://www.k4health.org/product/elearning
Research4Life Training Portal
Description: In this section you will find different Research4Life training material to download for free, information about local workshops and advanced courses for four programs: HINARI, AGORA, OARE and ARDI. The content of this portal is aimed at librarians, information specialists, scientists, researchers and students.
Access: Free
http://www.research4life.org/training/
ReproLinePlus
Description: The site offers evidence-based materials and state-of-the-art learning opportunities in a range of technical areas and programmatic approaches. ReproLinePlus is sponsored and developed by Jhpiego (http://www.jhpiego.org). Jhpiego is an international non-profit health organization affiliated with The Johns Hopkins University. For more than 35 years and in over 150 countries, Jhpiego has worked to prevent the needless deaths of women and their families. Jhpiego works with health experts, governments and community leaders to provide high-quality health care for their people. Jhpiego develops strategies to help countries care for themselves by training competent health care workers, strengthening health systems and improving delivery of care. You can find: Trainer and Educator Resources (Learning packages, Case studies, Exercises, Assessmnet tools, Nodel course schedules and more) and Learning opportunities (courses on different aspects of reproductive health)
Access: Free
http://reprolineplus.org/resources/trainer-educator
http://reprolineplus.org/learning-opportunities
Supercourse
Description: Supercourse is a repository of lectures on global health and prevention designed to improve the teaching of prevention. Supercourse has a network of over 65000 scientists in 174 countries who are sharing for free a library of 5710 lectures in 31 languages. The Supercourse has been produced at the WHO Collaborating Center University of Pittsburg. There are also lectures devoted to information technologies in health care, use of Internet, e-learning methods, developing web-based courses, and other related topics.
Access: Free
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1
Training Resource Package for Family Planning (TRP)
Description: The Training Resource Package for Family Planning (TRP) is a comprehensive set of materials designed to support up-to-date training on family planning and reproductive health. The TRP was developed using evidence-based technical information from World Health Organization (WHO) publications: Family Planning: A Global Handbook for Providers; the latest WHO Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use; and Selected Practice Recommendations for Contraceptive Use. The TRP contains curriculum components and tools needed to design, implement, and evaluate training. It provides organizations with the essential resource for family planning (FP) and reproductive health trainers, supervisors, and program managers. The materials are appropriate for pre-service and inservice training and applicable in both the public and private sectors. Games, energizers, and how-to references are to help trainers feel more confident in designing and conducting trainings. They can be useful supplements to any of the TRP Modules.
Access: Free
http://www.fptraining.org
Tutorials for Africa
Description: The National Library of Medicine (NLM) in collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda initiated the MedlinePlus African Tutorials as a teaching tool. Medical students, health workers and staffs of clinics can use the tutorials in both electronic and hard copy formats to educate the general public. An advisory group of African scientists and physicians from across the continent identified top health concerns.
The MedlinePlus African Tutorial topics reflect those concerns identified by the group. NLM created the first MedlinePlus African Tutorial on malaria in collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine and a team of Ugandan doctors, medical students, artists, and translators. Faculty members worked with an artistic team to create locally meaningful text and illustrations for the tutorials. The malaria tutorial was then field tested in villages by medical students and translated into five local languages - Japadhola, Luganda, Luo, Runyankole and Swahili. The second tutorial is devoted to diarrhea.
Access: Free
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/africa/
World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Academy
Description: The academy's eLearning package of health courses provides more than just distance education. The graphics, animation and interactive features have been designed to engage people so that they can enjoy the learning experience. The package introduces basic principles of health awareness and encourages students to build on their knowledge, which helps them to develop critical thinking. Through its courses, the academy provides health guidance in terms easily understood by a wide range of people, and in consideration of cultural sensitivities and traditions. Information is first prepared in English and then translated into other languages as required. The CD-ROM edition of the Health Academy eLearning program provides essential information on Tuberculosis, Malaria and Food Safety especially designed for secondary level and higher school-age children. The scientific content of the courses is presented in easy-to-understand language and made compelling with the use of sound, animation, games, activities, and quizzes. Courses are intended for one-on-one self-based learning and can be integrated into the school health education curriculum under the supervision of trained educators who act as mentors.
Access: Online - free. CD-ROM (Price: 21CHF)
http://www.who.int/healthacademy/en/
WHO eLearning resources for health workforce training
Description: A compendium of eLearning resources available online or on CD-ROM (by order). This list also includes blended learning degree programs available through partner institutions.
Access: Free
http://www.who.int/healthacademy/courses/en/
Training from Professional Organizations
ADVANCE for Nurses
Description: Continuing nursing education courses, webinars. New material added every week
Access: Low-cost and free, registration required
http://nursing.advanceweb.com/CE/TestCenter/Main.aspx
BioMed Central Author Academy
Description: Online learning resource for authors on writing and publishing in scientific journals. As well as advice on how to structure and write a good research article, the author academy includes help on choosing a target journal and publication ethics. The academy is aimed at authors who are less experienced in writing for English-language international journals, to help increase the chance of successful publication.
Access: Free
http://www.biomedcentral.com/authors/authoracademy
CE Medicus
Description: The mission of CE Medicus is to provide healthcare professionals with convenient online access to continuing education programming in a personalized setting. CE Medicus provides over 9,000 hours of free CME from multiple sources. CE Medicus provides a secure, personal account through which healthcare professionals can access and complete activities for professional development. This system allows users to search for relevant content, maintain a personal curriculum, store continuing education credits from both online as well as offline activities, track and print a professional transcript and more.
Access: Registration is required.
http://www.cemedicus.com
CORE (Curricula Organizer for Reproductive Health Education)
Description: CORE is a collaborative effort of many organizations working to improve the quality and quantity of reproductive health information included in health professions education. CORE is managed by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP). The Curricula Organizer for Reproductive Health Education (CORE) is a collection of peer-reviewed, evidence-based teaching materials. CORE can help you develop comprehensive educational presentations and complete curricula on a variety of reproductive health issues.
You can use CORE to:
Access up-to-date materials on reproductive health topics; Build your own curricula and other educational presentations; Download activities, case studies, and handouts for learners; Enhance your knowledge about current issues in reproductive health care
Access: Free. To submit your training materials you have to create an account
http://core.arhp.org/
End of Life/Palliative Education Resource Center (EPERC)
Description: This site is intended to support individuals involved in the design, implementation, and/or evaluation of End-of-Life/Palliative education for physicians, nurses and other health care professionals. There is also a collection of pre-selected articles, books, teaching materials and web resources. The site has been designed for use by medical school course/clerkship directors, residency and continuing education program directors, medical faculty, community preceptors, or other professionals who are (or will be) involved in providing EOL instruction to health care professionals in training. You can browse materials by format: Medical Education Experiences, Palliative Care Modules, Pocket Instructional Aids, Presentations, Standardized Patient Materials, Web-based Online Training, Education Manuals, Cases, and Evaluation forms.
Access: Free
http://www.eperc.mcw.edu/EPERC.htm
GeneEd
Description: Developed in collaboration with the National Human Genome Institute (NHGRI), teachers and experts in genetics and genetic counseling, GeneEd is a useful resource for students and teachers. Lesson plans, genetic educational materials, printable activity sheets, and other teaching resources for educators seeking to increase genetic and genomic literacy. GeneEd allows students and teachers to explore topics such as Cell Biology, DNA, Genes, Chromosomes, Heredity/Inheritance Patterns, Epigenetics/Inheritance and the Environment, Genetic Conditions, Evolution, Biostatistics, Biotechnology, DNA Forensics, and Top Issues in Genetics
Access: Free
http://geneed.nlm.nih.gov
Harvard Medical School Continuing Education Online
Description: Multimedia enriched, comprehensive, and interactive courses in the following areas:
Aging/Geriatrics, Behavioral Health, Cardiovascular Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Gastroenterology, Genetics , Lifestyle Medicine, Medicine , Neurology, Oncology, Ophthalmology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Radiology, Rheumatology, Risk Management.
Harvard Medical School Department of Continuing Education offers a variety of distance learning formats for CME activities. CME Online is comprised of case-based, interactive American International Health Alliance activities that you can access on demand. Other distance learning programs include webcasts, DVDs, and innovative, virtual events.
Access: Participants living in developing nations receive a 50% discount. Participants living in most African countries receive courses free of charge.
http://cmeonline.med.harvard.edu/
Health IT Workforce Curriculum Components
Description: From the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (US). The purpose of the Curriculum Development Centers Program, one component of the ONC Workforce Program, is to provide funding to institutions of higher education to support health information technology curriculum development. The materials developed under this program have been used by the member colleges of the regional Community College Consortia as well as made available to institutions of higher education across the country. This set of teaching materials is now in use by thousands of instructors and students around the world. 9 gigabytes of information across more than 200 units, these teaching materials offer a robust set of tools for health IT instructors
Access: To view or download materials simply sign in with name and email address
http://knowledge.amia.org/onc-ntdc
Life in the Fast Lane
Description: Open access medical education resources in critical care and emergency medicine
Access: Free
http://lifeinthefastlane.com/
MedEdPORTAL
Description: MedEdPORTAL is an archive of peer-reviewed educational materials and teaching tools. Supported by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in partnership with the American Dental Education Association (ADEA). In the directory you can find evidence-based online activities for continuing education credit in different medical specialties.
Access: Free (registration required)
https://www.mededportal.org/
Medscape
Description: Medscape is a web resource for physicians and health professionals. Medscape is built around practice-oriented content. It features peer-reviewed original medical journal articles, CME (Continuing Medical Education), daily medical news, major conference coverage, and drug information. Each of 35 Specialty Sites pools, filters, and delivers pertinent, continually updated content from more than 125 medical journals and textbooks, and expert-authored state-of-the-art surveys in disease management, next-day summaries from major medical meetings, and more. Medscape Education is offering thousands of free CME/CE courses and not-for-credit activities for physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Accessible via the desktop and mobile platforms, Medscape Education is always available to inform and educate clinicians, through a variety of formats that include Clinical News Briefs, Patient Simulations, Clinical Cases, Expert Commentary Videos, Conference Coverage.
Access: free, but requires a one-time membership registration.
http://www.medscape.org/
MyCME
Description: Online hub for digital CME and CE courses developed by Haymarket Medical Education. Free online CME/CE/CEU and CPD courses for physicians, general practitioners, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals. It offers certified CME/CE programs through ACCME-accredited providers, makes it easy for users to find courses pertinent to their specific clinical interests, with search capabilities organized by Disease, Specialty, and Profession. Provides instant grading of tests and issuance of certificates for CME/CE credit
Access: Registration required. myCME application is now also free to all healthcare professionals on Apple and Android mobile phones and tablet computers.
http://www.mycme.com/
PedsUniversity
Description: PEDSUniversity.org evolved from the Nemours website PedsEducation.org. PedsEducation.org has been providing free online education to the medical community since 2000 and is a service of Nemours. Nemours is one of the nation’s leading pediatric health systems, dedicated to advancing higher standards in children's health.
Access: Free (registration required)
http://www.pedsuniversity.org/Home.aspx
PRIME Education
Description: PRIME's mission is to enhance the physician's and the interprofessional health team's knowledge, competence and performance in caring for patients; and to provide quality, continuing professional development across a health care professional's lifetime commitment of service, from residency training through practice, it offers online courses and quality improvement video toolkits for CE/CME to various health care professionals.
Access: free and low cost
http://primeinc.org/cmecourses/
Portal of Geriatrics Online Education (POGOe)
Description: A repository of geriatric educational materials in various e-learning formats, including lectures, exercises, virtual patients, case-based discussions, simulations, as well as links to other resources. POGOe's mission is to promote geriatric education through the provision and encouragement of free exchange of teaching and assessment materials that support the fields of geriatrics and gerontology. Funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, POGOe is managed by Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, on behalf of the Association of Directors of Geriatric Academic Programs.
web-GEMs is a series of interactive case modules based on the AAMC Geriatrics Competencies. Individual cases can be integrated into third year clerkships with emphasis on “core topics” in, e.g., neurology, psychiatry, internal medicine, emergency medicine, surgery, OB/GYN, or the curriculum can be used as a whole within a geriatrics, internal medicine, or family medicine clerkship. The purpose of the web-GEMs cases is to develop learners’ understanding of geriatric medicine, and to integrate that understanding as they expand their skills within other specialties. Faculty can assign to students and receive reports on their progress.
The purpose of ReCAP (Repository of Electronic Critically Appraised Papers) is to provide a forum for geriatrics fellows and faculty where they can discuss the practice of evidence-based medicine in a systematic way, and hone their skills of clinical decision-making by critically examining evidence presented in recent clinical research papers.
Access: Free
http://www.pogoe.org
MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES
Class Central
Description: Three online learning initiatives are offering university-level education for free. Class Central unifies available courses from these different platforms in to a single page overview: Coursera founded by Stanford Professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng; Udacity founded by three roboticists, including Sebastian Thrun, a research professor of computer science at Stanford University; MITx created by MIT and led by MIT Professor Anant Agrawal. Currently the courses are focused in the field of Computer Science, Civil Engineering, Complex Systems, Electrical Engineering, American International Health Alliance Entrepreneurship and Medicine. University credits cannot be earned but each initiative provides a statement of accomplishment or a certificate.
Access: Free
http://www.class-central.com/
Coursera
Description: Coursera is an education platform that partners with top universities and organizations worldwide, to offer courses online, and offers courses in physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, and other subjects. Coursera has an official mobile app for iPhone and Android. Coursera offers now 732 courses from 110 institutions.
Access: Free (sometimes there is a need to purchase recommended textbooks)
https://www.coursera.org/
FutureLearn
Description: A collection of free, open, high quality online courses from leading universities powered by The Open University (OU) in partnership with the U.K. government. Courses are accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop.
Access: Free
https://www.futurelearn.com/
EdX
Description: EdX offers interactive online classes and MOOCs from the world’s best universities. Online courses from MITx, HarvardX, BerkeleyX, UTx and many other universities. Topics include biology, business, chemistry, computer science, economics, finance, electronics, engineering, food and nutrition, history, humanities, law, literature, math, medicine, music, philosophy, physics, science, statistics and more. EdX is a non-profit online initiative created by founding partners Harvard and MIT.
Access: Free
https://www.edx.org/
Finding Online Training Resources
Online Tutorial Resources
A collection of links to free on-line tutorials, learning objects, open courses and self-paced learning modules on a variety of skills and topics on the Internet. (Last updated in August 2010)
http://www.khake.com/page67.html
WHO Genomic Resource Center
Continuing education for health professionals
In this resource section, you can find directories with various educational resources, self-training modules, information about advanced degree courses, research and fellowship opportunities, and links to various conferences and meetings around the world.
http://www.who.int/genomics/professionals/education/en/
E-learning Resources for Global Health Researchers
A collection of annotated links prepared by Fogarty international Center. Many organizations offer no- and low-cost e-learning resources to those working in the field of global health research. Resources include training courses, MOOCs and course materials (presentations, videos, reading lists, visual aids, articles), resource centers and resource networks.
http://www.fic.nih.gov/Global/Pages/training-resources.aspx
Training Resources Bulletin
Bimonthly bulletin produced by the American International Health Alliance since 2012. It is intended to assist institutions and individuals who are seeking free online training options in the field of medicine, public health, social work, and related topics. | http://healthconnect-intl.org/TRG_jul14.html |
This informational packet is designed to give you an overview of the resources that the St. Louis County Library (SLCL) provides, as well as some of the rich homeschool resources you can find in the area.
The St. Louis County Library has countless tools that can help homeschoolers, from our physical and emedia collections to programs to free digital courses. Since students operate at a variety of skill levels, this guide is only meant to give a rough idea of what resources are good for which educational level. It is recommended that the educator looks at the resources before letting their student explore them on their own.
Please keep in mind that the resources listed in the Local Resources section are not connected to the St. Louis County Library. If you have questions about their mission or services, please contact them.
|Download PDF/Print this information packet|
SLCL Resources
Virtual Programs
The Library is offering a range of virtual programming that you can enjoy from anywhere you have a device and internet connection. Browse the Events and Classes page on our website for a list of upcoming virtual programs.
Access a wide variety of digital books, audiobooks, magazines, movies, music, and more using the library’s eMedia offerings. The following emedia platforms can be accessed using an internet browser or by downloading the platform’s app.
Please note that Hoopla and Kanopy (marked with a *) are available to residents of the St. Louis County Library district only. If you are outside our district, you may be able to access Hoopla or Kanopy through your local library district (St. Charles, St. Louis Public, Municipal Consortium).
Flipster
Check out a variety of popular magazines, including Allrecipes, The Atlantic, Do It Yourself, and Travel & Leisure. The magazines also have years of back issues available, as well.
Hoopla*
Access streaming books, audiobooks, music, movies, TV shows, and more. A variety of books on homeschooling are available, as well as many educational books, tv shows, and more that can be incorporated into students’ curriculums. Each card is limited to 10 checkouts a month. Only available to residents of the St. Louis County Library district.
Kanopy*
Check out movies and TV shows. Each card is limited to 10 checkouts a month, with the exceptions of anything in Kanopy Kids, including many educational videos, and The Great Courses, which are college-level courses on a wide variety of subjects. Only available to residents of the St. Louis County Library district.
Overdrive / Libby
Our largest emedia platform. Check out books, audiobooks, and some movies, including plenty of fiction and nonfiction for kids and teens and a variety of books on homeschooling. Overdrive is the desktop version and is also an app, while Libby is the newer version of the app. Each card is limited to 20 checkouts and 50 holds at one time.
Tumblebooks
Tumblebooks is an early literacy platform. It primarily offers picture books with animations and audio. These are excellent for young students learning how to read. There is also a section on language learning which is good for elementary school students and a variety of games designed to encourage literacy.
The library provides a variety of free eCourses, many of which are helpful to students and educators. The majority of these are best for students who are in middle school or above. In particular, LearningExpress Library has great ACT and SAT prep resources for high schoolers. Gale Courses and Lynda.com both have classes targeted towards educators.
All ecourse platforms are provided through third parties and require that you create an account with a username (usually an email) and password.
Creativebug
Creativebug is a video course platform. Choose from over 1000 arts and crafts classes taught by recognized artists and professionals, including classes directed towards kids and beginners. The platform has unlimited viewing.
Driving-Tests.org
Driving-tests.org offers practice exams for the Missouri driver's licence, as well as motorcycle and commercial driver's licence tests. Read DMV manuals or view the materials in Spanish.
Gale Courses
Gale Courses are interactive and instructor-led. Classes start on the third Wednesday of every month and run for six weeks, with two lessons published each week. You must complete the first two lessons within thirteen days of the start date or you will be dropped. Final exams require a minimum grade of 65% in order to receive a certificate. Courses cover a wide variety of topics, including business, writing, test prep, education, software instruction, and more. There is a class called Homeschool with Success that is excellent for those just starting to homeschool.
LearningExpress Library
LearningExpress Library offers access to more than 800 tutorials, practice exams, and eBooks for academic and career advancement. Practice tests include a variety of college admissions tests and occupational exams. There is also information on the U.S. Citizenship tests and the GED.
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com, offers video tutorials on software, technology, business, and more. There is no limit to how many videos you can watch. There are transcripts for the videos, and many have exercise files so you can follow along with the instructor. Please keep in mind that if you are learning how to use a software program, you will need to get access to that program yourself.
Mango Languages
Mango Languages offers access to 60+ foreign language courses and 17 English courses taught completely in the user's native language. Watch foreign-language movies in Movie Mode if you just want to sit back and enjoy or in Engage Mode if you want to learn about dialogue, culture, and grammar. Due to the simple flashcard style and focus on basic dialogue, this is an excellent ecourse option for elementary school students.
Tutor.com
Tutor.com offers free and unlimited live one-on-one tutoring for all ages from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. every day of the week. Work with tutors in over 100 subject and test prep areas including study skills coaching. Tutor.com also offers 24/7 drop-off for review of written assignments and math questions, over 400 video lessons in math and language including AP classes, and tons of practice quizzes. Use Princeton Review material to prepare for the ACT, SAT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT exams with practice tests, video lessons, and skill drills. In addition to school, Tutor.com offers job search assistance including help creating resumes and cover letters, completing applications, and interview prep. Create a free optional Tutor.com account to save your sessions and list your favorite tutors. Available to anyone with a valid SLCL library card.
The library provides access to a wide variety of databases. Databases enable students to find reliable resources quickly and engage with fun educational content. We also have databases that provide resources for educators, as well. Some databases contain vast amounts of general information, such as World Book and Explora, where you can look up any topic. Others have a very specific focus, such as A to Z World Food or Opposing Viewpoints in Context.
All databases are located on our website under Research. The following list is only a small selection of the databases offered. They are grouped by educational level, but please note that these categories are very flexible. As with all library resources, parents should examine the databases first if they are concerned about the content.
Educator
Novelist
Novelist is a searchable database of fiction and nonfiction titles. It contains book reviews, recommended reading lists, and book discussion guides.
Scholastic Teachables
Scholastic Teachables is one of the best educational resources the St. Louis County Library offers. Access thousands of searchable and printable educational materials for Pre-K through 8th grade, including skills and activity sheets, mini-books, and lesson plans by topic. Download and print as many resources as possible.
Elementary School
Explora - Elementary
Explora - Elementary enables students to find information in a variety of formats on a vast number of topics. It is better suited to older elementary students, as it is not as straightforward a database to search in as World Book is. However, the number of resources almost guarantees that students will be able to find something on their topic.
World Book Kids
World Book Kids is our easiest database for students to use. With a colorful interface, fun activities, and simple, clear articles, this resource is a great first stop for an elementary school student just starting to research. Students who are still learning how to read will appreciate the read-aloud feature.
Middle School
A to Z World Food
Can also be used for High School
This database details cuisines and food customs from around the world. Each country has dozens of recipes available, and they are typically very easy to make. You can also research ingredients and learn where they are from, how they are used, and what their flavor profile is. The reference section contains a variety of historical timelines, foreign language dictionaries, and more.
Access World News
Can also be used for High School
Access World News is great for students doing research on current events. It provides searchable full text and indexing of many U.S. and international newspapers, including print and online-only resources. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is included. The topic centers are helpful for students, while teachers will appreciate the Daily Headlines and Lesson Plans.
Explora - Middle School
Explora, like World Book, has a variety of levels, so students of every grade will find resources that they are comfortable with. After World Book, this is our best student resource. It is also general in scope, so any topic can be researched. It provides a wide variety of resources, from videos to ebooks to academic, magazine, and newspaper articles.
World Book Student
World Book is the library's best student resource. Each interface is designed to be engaging and easy-to-use, with lots of interesting features. Because it is an encyclopedia, research is very easy, as students can quickly find the one article that best matches their keyword. World Book Student includes some lovely features, such as Behind the Headlines and the Biography Center. Students can also create an account and save their research to folders.
High School
Credo Reference
Credo Reference contains reference resources like encyclopedias, dictionaries, and biographies. The Mind Map feature, which takes the keyword and explodes it outwards into a web of related concepts, is fantastic for broadening/narrowing a topic or just for exploring. In addition to providing great resources within the database, it is also linked to a variety of other databases we subscribe to, making it a great launching pad for research.
Explora - High School
Explora, like World Book, has a variety of levels, so students of every grade will find resources that they are comfortable with. After World Book, this is our best student resource. It is also general in scope, so any topic can be researched. It provides a wide variety of resources, from videos to ebooks to academic, magazine, and newspaper articles.
Global Road Warrior
Global Road Warrior has in-depth information on each of the 170+ countries included. Profiles go into detail on history, culture, climate, geography, language, and more. Some fun features include vintage maps and postcards, recipes, and a video dictionary for 30 different languages.
History in Context (US and World)
US History in Context and World History in Context contain primary and secondary sources in a variety of formats. The topic centers are a great place for students to start their research. Once in one database, students can navigate between both US and World using the search bar.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context
Opposing Viewpoints in Context covers current social issues. It gives students access to a variety of viewpoints on hot button issues and includes a wide variety of media, such as radio, video, statistics, and newspaper and magazine articles.
World Book Advanced
World Book is the library's best student resource. Each interface is designed to be engaging and easy-to-use, with lots of interesting features. Because it is an encyclopedia, research is very easy, as students can quickly find the one article that best matches their keyword. World Book Student includes some lovely features, such as Behind the Headlines and Today in History. Students can also create an account and save their research to folders.
The library has many physical materials for checkout, including fiction and nonfiction titles for children and adults, audiobooks, CDs, DVDs, and more. Educators can find books on homeschooling for themselves and books to supplement their students’ curriculums. These resources can easily be found by searching the library catalog or calling 314-994-3300; materials can be picked up curbside at all 20 branches during curbside service hours.
Highlighted below are some of the specialized kits and items available for checkout.
Book Discussion Kits
The library has a number of book discussion kits ready to be checked out. You can browse the kit lists on our website under the Reader’s Corner. If we do not have a kit for the title you are looking for, our Readers’ Advisory Department can pull together a kit from our collection.
Flip Kits
FLIP (Family Literacy Involvement Program) kits are a fun, interactive way for young children to engage with picture books. Each kit contains a book and materials for a related activity. The library replenishes the materials upon the kit’s return. FLIP Kits are available for checkout at all St. Louis County Library branches.
Games
The library has a collection of tabletop games for checkout, from Bananagrams to Ticket to Ride. We also check out puzzles. You can find games by looking for “tabletop game” in our catalog. Puzzles vary from location to location; ask the desk staff and they can check one out for you.
Musical Instruments
The library currently offers ukuleles, acoustic guitars, banjos, bongos, keyboards, xylophones, bass guitars, box drums, electric guitars, and djembes. Musical instruments often come with instructional books or DVDs. They check out for two weeks. Please keep in mind that you must pick them up at either Daniel Boone, Headquarters, Florissant Valley, or Grant’s View.
Parent Packs
Parent Packs are designed to help young children and their caregivers have meaningful, age-appropriate conversations about important topics. Each Parent Pack includes books and a resource list on a specific theme, such as First Day of School, Death, Potty Training, and Friendship. The kits can be checked out for two weeks. Parent Packs are geared towards families with children in second grade or younger.
Sci-Finders Kits
Sci-Finders Kits are a fun, hands-on activity kit. They center on a variety of science and technology topics, from levers to robotics. Some particularly noteworthy kits are the programmable Ozobots, the microscope kit, and our Lego sets. All kits check out for two weeks at a time and can be picked up at any location. You can find them in our catalog by searching “sci-finders.”
Telescopes and Binoculars
Check out a telescope or a pair of binoculars. Telescopes come with a pocket guide, a book of constellations, and a headlamp. Binoculars come with several pocket guides. Both check out for seven days at a time and can be picked up at any location.
In addition to offering a variety of digital resources, the library also provides services that can be very helpful to homeschoolers.
Book-a-Librarian
Meet virtually one-on-one with a reference librarian using Zoom. Let us know what you are researching or what databases you want to learn about and we will tailor the session to your needs. This service is available to educators and students alike.
Virtual Class Visits and Library Tours
Have a reference librarian visit your virtual classroom, co-op, meetup, or group to do a presentation on library resources. Presentations can be created around any grade or subject area.
Educator Bundles
Allow our Youth Services department to pull together a bundle of educational books related to a specific topic. They need at least two weeks’ notice to gather materials, and materials included will depend on availability. To request an Educator Bundle, please fill out the form on our website. Although the form is structured for traditional classrooms, homeschoolers are also encouraged to submit requests.
Organizations & Resources
Arnold Region Christian Home Educators (ARCHE)
Site: https://www.homeschool-life.com/590/
Address: 12995 Tesson Ferry Rd, St. Louis, MO 63128
Represent families from Jefferson County, South County, and the surrounding areas. The purpose of ARCHE is to support Christian parents who are, or will be, educating their children at home. Membership required.
Fun 4 STL Kids
Site: https://fun4stlkids.com/Programs-Classes/Homeschool/
Find homeschool activities throughout the St. Louis area, including sports teams, educational programs, and fun events.
Homeschoolers Encouraging, Learning, and Providing Support (HELPS)
Site: https://www.helps-stl.org/
A board-run homeschool support group whose goal is to provide educational and social encouragement and support. Membership required to unlock full access.
Leftovers etc.
Site: http://www.leftoversetc.com/about-us-2/
A recycle/reuse/repurpose nonprofit resource center that serves local educators, including homeschoolers, by providing them with resources for crafts and projects.
St. Louis Homeschooling, Activities, Resources, and Encouragement (SHARE)
Site: https://www.homeschool-life.com/mo/share/
An organization for individuals or families interested in the concepts of educating children in the home and in providing a support group to encourage the highest standards and excellence throughout its membership. In addition, this organization furthers the appreciation of home education in the local communities through educational forums and other media communications.
St. Charles County Christian Home Educators (SCCHE)
Site: https://www.homeschool-life.com/mo/scche/
This organization provides information, support, and fellowship for homeschooling families throughout the community. Membership required to participate in activities.
St. Louis Catholic Homeschool Association
Site: http://stlouiscatholichomeschool.com/
This association exists to support and connect Catholic families who have made the decision to homeschool, as well as those families who may be contemplating homeschooling. The association sponsors two learning cooperatives: St. John Bosco Co-op and St. Gianna Co-op. Membership needed to get email updates.
St. Louis Homeschool Network
Site: https://stlouishomeschoolnetwork.org/wp/
A support group for homeschooling families and an information source for prospective homeschoolers. The group is diverse with many religious, political and educational philosophies.
West County Christian Home Educators (WCCHE)
Site: https://www.homeschool-life.com/370/
Email: [email protected]
A homeschool organization seeking to provide educational opportunities for our children that will support Christian principles and virtues. Provides support, wholesome family activities, information, and educational resources that will aid Christian homeschooling. Membership required.
Families for Home Education (FHE)
Site: https://fhe-mo.org/
Address: P.O. Box 3096, Independence, MO 64055
Phone: 877-696-6343
Email: [email protected]
FHE’s purpose is to protect the inalienable right of the parents of Missouri to teach their own children without state regulation or control. FHE represents and supports the rights of all home educators in the state and is not affiliated with any religious or political organization, or special interest group. There are chapters throughout Missouri. Membership required to unlock full access.
Missouri Association of Teaching Christian Homes, Inc. (MATCH)
Site: https://www.match-inc.org/
This group offers service and support to home educators and support groups within the state of Missouri.
Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Site: https://dese.mo.gov/communications/frequently-asked-questions-and-educational-topics
The department does not regulate or monitor home schooling. There is no registration required with the state. There is no program for the inspection, approval, or accreditation of home schools in Missouri.
State of Missouri: Education
Site: https://www.mo.gov/education/k-12/
Find the laws related to homeschooling in Missouri.
Time for Learning: Homeschooling in Missouri
Site: https://www.time4learning.com/homeschooling/missouri/
A good overview of homeschooling in the State of Missouri.
Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)
Site: https://hslda.org/
Address: P.O. Box 3000 Purcellville, VA 20134
Phone: 540-338-5600
A nonprofit advocacy organization that offers legal help to the homeschool community. Membership required.
Classical Conversations
Site: https://www.classicalconversations.com/
A Christian organization that provides classes with a classical focus. There are several local chapters. You can find your local chapter and its contact information on the Classical Conversations website.
DaySpring Arts and Education
Site: https://www.dayspringarts.org/
Address: 2500 Metro Blvd. Maryland Heights, MO 63043
Phone number: 314-291-8878
DaySpring offers dance, performing arts, music, and fine arts classes. They also offer classes through DaySpring Academy for all grades. While not specifically for homeschoolers, they welcome homeschoolers into their classes.
Eagle Learning Center
Site: https://www.homeschool-life.com/mo/elc/
Address: The Rock Church, 15101 Manchester Rd, Ballwin, MO 63011
Email: [email protected]
The Eagle Learning Center is a Christian organization that offers enrichment and core classes for Grades K-12. Classes run for two 12-week semesters and cover a variety of subjects. Costs vary per class.
The Pillar Foundation
Site: https://www.thepillar.org/
Address: 15820 Clayton Rd. Ellisville, MO 63011
Phone number: 636-386-7722
Email: [email protected]
An educational foundation that provides instruction, seminars, and conferences to Christian homeschool families. Semester classes are offered to the homeschooling community free of charge. Classes cover STEM, social studies, literature, and more.
FHE St. Louis Area Homeschool Resource Fair
Local businesses and organizations table at the Homeschool Resource Fair. It is a good place to find co-ops, learning centers, support groups, and activities. Dates and location can change; view the events page of the FHE website to find details.
Missouri Homeschooling Convention
The Missouri Homeschooling Convention typically runs for three days in March at the St. Charles Convention Center. It is the largest homeschool conference in Missouri, with a large exhibit hall and multiple workshops about a variety of topics. It is not a free conference; please check the website to see up-to-date prices. | https://www.slcl.org/homeschool?qt-homeschool_resource_guide_2020_l=2&qt-homeschool_resource_guide_2020_s=3 |
The Urban League is a non-profit organization in Madison County that helps people in the community with housing, education, and employment opportunities. The organization offers emergency financial aid for rent, prescriptions and utility bills, however the focus of the agency is on helping people find jobs and providing job training.
Financial aid from the Urban League
Outreach specialists from the agency will help coordinate an assessment process. If the client’s needs cannot be met by the services offered, they will be referred to another service. This can include giving money for expenses such as rent to help someone get a job or even help them be self-sufficient by giving them services such as credit counseling.
The people at the resource center help people from Madison County get the social services they need. The staff uses information from conversations with clients to suggest resources that the family may need to deal with their current situation. As outreach specialists, we help connect people in the Madison region to various assistance programs and community-based services that they may be eligible for.
The Madison County Urban League has been certified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) since the early 1980s and housing is an essential part of their programs. The agency can help individuals and families who are homeless, at risk of foreclosure or eviction. There are government programs that may be able to help people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Oftentimes, case workers help stabilize their clients by finding money to pay for their overdue expenses, or by finding new, low income housing for them to reside in.
The MCUL also works to prevent foreclosures in Illinois. The organization offers mortgage delinquency counseling to homeowners who are struggling to make their payments and are at risk of foreclosure. This service provides people with the knowledge and tools they need to stay current on their mortgage payments and avoid foreclosure.
The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, can help you pay your heating bill and other utility bills. The government provides financial assistance in the form of grants to low-income households in Madison to help with the cost of heating and cooling their homes. In order to qualify for LIHEAP, the applicant must be an individual who is a member of an eligible household and the household’s energy bills must be in the applicant’s name.
This means that if a family is in need of emergency assistance, they can receive it. This assistance is available to families who may not have a lot of money or who are struggling to make ends meet. The Madison County Urban League family development advocates help people with their rent payments, prescription medications, utility expenses and other needs by providing them with financial aid or short-term loans. Emergency services are funded by the community through donations.
The local family-planning clinic is another resource from MCUL. This website provides a variety of services for both men and women. The clinic has been open for more than 30 years and has helped thousands of people during that time. Staff members give clients information about ways to plan their families, and offer laboratory services, private counseling, physical examinations, education and outreach.
Madison area employment and educational services
There are also educational programs in the area. The Urban League created these programs to give young people the skills they need to succeed. The program includes services to help students learn and be aware of nutrition, as well as transportation to school or other classes. The Madison County Urban League strives to get parents more involved in their children’s education.
The agency provides a GED program with free, personalized tutoring. The credit union offers periodic workshops and classes, as well as financial assistance for GED testing. Obtaining one of these degrees improves your employment opportunities and allows you to pursue higher education.
The organization provides a free service that helps employers to connect with potential employees who live in the surrounding community. These locations provide job seekers with access to local resources to help them find employment, ideally full-time positions.
Staff work with clients to create plans detailing the steps they need to take to find employment, as well as providing them with information on training and educational resources that may be helpful to them. Workshops are offered to provide support during job searches, and training services include entry-level courses, English-as-a-second-language classes, and also certificate programs. These programs aim to help individuals land a job, improve their language skills, or earn a certificate that will help them get ahead in their careers.
Some employers or non-profits in the area offer on-the-job training opportunities. These are some other services that can be provided: helping with applications and resumes, finding job postings, exploring different careers, talking to someone about job choices, and practicing or doing fake interviews.
These services are available for individuals or small groups. The job and career centers have computers that clients can use for free. The computers have printers and fax machines. The centers have electronic job listings and information on careers and high-demand occupations.
In addition, MCUL offers job fairs throughout Madison County. The organization partners with businesses in the community to find people who fit the description of what the business is looking for. This organization also puts on job fairs for community members to meet with different businesses, organizations, and government agencies.
The Urban League has multiple offices in Madison County. If you need more information about any of our services, you can contact us at 502 Madison Avenue, Madison, Illinois 62060. Our phone number is (618) 877-8860. The other office is located at 408 East Broadway in Alton, Illinois. The mailing address is P.O. Box 8093. The phone number for this office is (618) 463-1906. | https://normaforcongresswoman.com/emergency-assistance-from-madison-county-illinois-urban-league/ |
Its centuries-old history dates back to 13th March 962, when Emperor Ottonian I conferred on Uberto, the Bishop of Parma, the initiation of the University in the 'Diploma': this document was the foundation for an educational institution that would last centuries later, and is still preserved in the Bishop's Archives in Parma today.
The University holds 18 Departments, 36 First Cycle Degree Courses, 6 Single Cycle Degree Courses, 38 Second Cycle Degree Courses, as well as many Postgraduate schools, Postgraduate Teacher Training courses, several Master Programmes and PhD Research Projects.
The University of Parma incentivizes scientific research in many different fields, promoting international collaboration and partnerships with foreign universities and centres. Our University is committed to building research excellence through high quality staff and students, as well as network projects financed by European and international institutions.
The Careers counselling office is open to assist both high-school and postgraduate students in choosing the best faculty according to their wishes and abilities or in making decisions about their professional career.
The office provides information about the courses offered by the University of Parma, as well as about all the other available services. It also provides guides and brochures about all Faculties. It organises individual interviews by appointment, as well as visits to the Faculties. It cooperates with the faculties lecturers to organize careers counselling meetings at high schools. It also works with high schools for the organization of careers counselling activities.
The Global Student Satisfaction Awards empower students across the globe to determine the best universities of 2019. By rating institutions on a scale from 1 to 5, on multiple studies-related questions, we found the top educators in the world.Learn more about the Global Student Satisfaction Awards
The Student registry office deals with the administrative part of student careers (admission/enrolment, exams registration, certificates, transfer requests, requests for admission to final examinations, etc.).
The HousingAnywhere service is a free housing platform for international students where demand and supply of short term accommodation can come together.If you are an outgoing student, you can use the service to:
The literary resources of the University of Parma are kept in the many libraries. The implementation of web information services, including bibliographic data and electronic magazines, has significantly increased the range and quality of the services offered by the University Libraries, that offer literary resources up to around 1,000,000 books and 8,000 magazine subscriptions.
The different locations of the University allow students to study in comfortable, efficient structures even near green areas, such as the Campus: a 77-hectare area in the south of the city hosting scientific departments, modern and well-equipped lecture halls, comfortable study areas, technologically advanced laboratories, and a CNR centre - as well as several sports facilities, a conference centre, and a canteen.
In the heart of the city, the University's central building houses the rector's office, administrative offices and Law. The Medical school is also in the city, located in the Hospital, while Economics and the Political Sciences are next to the Parco Ducale.
Physical activity is an integral part of education. The University of Parma thus provides opportunities to combine sport with study through its CUS.
The University CUS manages the sport facilities, amateur and competitive sports activities, and provides sports services to the students of the University of Parma.
The University of Parma promotes cultural, sports and recreational activities for students, also by setting up services and facilities in cooperation with public or private bodies and students’ associations.
Associations or groups of students may apply for funding of cultural and social activities.
Together with the ISIC Association and British Council IELTS, Studyportals offers you the chance to receive up to £10000 to expand your horizon and study abroad. We want to ultimately encourage you to study abroad in order to experience and explore new countries, cultures and languages.
Un ambiente internazionale e con un forte legame con la realtà imprenditoriale ed industriale locale
In my university there is a really complete study plan that prepares you in the field of risk management, securities management, real estate and insurance.
My university is good, but I think that there are not many laboratories, workshop and link with the word. | https://www.mastersportal.com/universities/697/university-of-parma.html |
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) provides ready access to education literature to support the use of educational research and information to improve practice in learning, teaching, educational decision-making, and research. It is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education.
D O A J : Directory of Open Access Journals
Covers free, full-text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals in many languages. |Education|
Ed/ITLib Digital Library (EdITLib Digital Library for Information Technology and Education)
Peer-reviewed and published articles and papers on the latest research, developments, and applications related to all aspects of Educational Technology and E-Learning.
Sage Open
SAGE Open publishes peer-reviewed, original research and review articles in an interactive, open access format. Accepted articles span the full extent of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities.
Association of Mexican-American Educators (AMAE) Journal
The AMAE Journal is a national peer-reviewed journal which is published biannually. It provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Current Issues in Education
An open access peer-reviewed academic education journal sponsored by the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College of Arizona State University and is produced by ASU graduate students. It publishes articles on a broad range of education topics that are timely and have relevance in the field of education (pre-K, K-12, and higher education) both nationally and internationally.
Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA/AAPE)
A peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies.
Education Review
A multi-lingual journal of book reviews.
CK-12
Provides open-source content and technology tools to help teachers provide learning opportunities for students globally. |Teachers | Students |
Connexions
A place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, an other entities. | About | Search |
Creative Commons- Education
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.
Curriki
A nonprofit K-12 global community for teachers, students, and parents to create, share, and find free learning resources that enable true personalized learning. | About | Resources & Curricula |
DPLA Primary Source Sets (The Digital Public Library of America )
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop critical thinking skills by exploring topics in history, literature, and culture through primary sources.
OER Commons (Open Educational Resources Commons)
Open access class learning materials from around the world since 2007. | Advanced Search |
OER Africa
Innovative initiative established by the South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide) to play a leading role in driving the development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) across all education sectors on the African continent. | About | Search | Browse |
The Right to Education Global Database (UNESCO)
A unique portal designed to be a practical tool for monitoring, research and advocacy. It hosts a library of over 1,000 official documents, including constitutions, legislation, and policies on education from nations across the globe.
Open Education Week (every March)
Coordinated by the OpenCourseWare Consortium, an association of hundreds of institutions and organizations around the world committed to the ideals of open education. Its goal is to raise awareness about free and open educational opportunities.
Education Statistics (World Bank EdStats)
The World Bank EdStats (Education Statistics) portal is your comprehensive data and analysis source for key topics in education. EdStats tools, resources and queries help users visualize and analyze education data.
Education Data (UNESCO)
From pre-primary school enrolment to tertiary graduation rates, the UIS is the leading source for international education statistics. Covering more than 200 countries and territories, the UIS database covers all education levels and addresses key policy issues such as gender parity, teachers and financing.
Education GPS (OECD)
The source for internationally comparable data on education policies and practices, opportunities and outcomes. Accessible any time, in real time, the Education GPS provides you with the latest information on how countries are working to develop high-quality and equitable education systems.
Education Policy and Data Center
Serves as a resource for education data, profiles, and data reports on education status at the country and subnational level, research papers on issues and challenges in education in developing and transitional countries, as well as medium-term education projections.
Infonation (UN)
Enables comparison of statistical data among U.N. member states, such as the illiteracy rate, primary and secondary school enrollment, newspaper circulation, and spending on education across countries. More UN statistical resources
National Center for Education Statistics
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education.
Nationmaster - Education
Comparison of education statistics across countries. Includes education spending, average schooling years of adults, female literacy rate, school enrollment, etc. Sources are U.N. publications, OECD, etc. | https://libguides.asu.edu/openaccessresources/openaccess-education |
Graduation address by Armando Maggi, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago
CHICAGO –On Saturday, May 19 at 1:00 PM at Alliance Française de Chicago (54 West Chicago Avenue), the Illinois Humanities Council (IHC) will celebrate the graduation of The Odyssey Project‘s class of 2007. The Odyssey Project — now completing its seventh year — is a free college-level humanities course for people living in poverty. Students in the class of 2007 took classes from September through May at the North Kenwood/Oakland Charter School on the South Side and at the Howard Area Community Center in Rogers Park on the North Side.
Armando Maggi, Associate Professor, Italian Literature and the College, and Committee on History of Culture, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, at the University of Chicago, will give the graduation address. Professor Maggi’s scholarship includes works on Renaissance and Baroque culture, literature, and philosophy with particular focus on treatises on love, religious texts, and the relationship of word and image. He is also an expert on Christian mysticism, with works on medieval, Renaissance, and baroque women mystics. A native of Italy, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. He has taught in The Odyssey Project for four years.
In addition to Professor Maggi, The Odyssey Project graduates will select a student speaker from each location to address the graduation audience.
Founded on the premise that engagement with the humanities can offer a way out of poverty, The Odyssey Project, in partnership with the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities, offers course participants 110 hours of instruction in four humanistic disciplines. Students explore masterpieces in literature, art history, philosophy, and United States history. Writing instruction is also integral to the coursework. The Bard Clemente Course in the Humanities (of which The Odyssey Project is a part) is in its tenth year, with almost two dozen courses operating around the country, and it is part of a larger Clemente movement offering humanities courses to the poor on five continents.
Classes meet two evenings a week at host sites located in the community. Syllabi and reading lists at all sites are roughly equivalent to those a student might encounter in a first-year humanities survey course at a first-rate university. Tuition is free; books, childcare, and transportation vouchers are provided. Bard College in New York grants a certificate of achievement to any student who completes the course and six college credits to those completing it at a high level of performance. Next year’s courses will begin in September 2007 at sites on the South Side, the North Side, and Champaign-Urbana.
For more information about The Odyssey Project, or to request an application, please call 312.422.5580, email [email protected], or visit www.prairie.org and click on “The Odyssey Project” under “Educational Programs and Grants.”
The Illinois Humanities Council is an educational organization dedicated to fostering a culture in which the humanities are a vital part of the lives of individuals and communities. Through its programs and grants, the IHC promotes greater understanding of, appreciation for, and involvement in the humanities by all Illinoisans, regardless of their economic resources, cultural background, or geographic location. Organized as a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1973, the IHC is now a private nonprofit (501 [c] 3) organization that is funded by contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations; by the Illinois General Assembly; and by the NEH. | https://www.ilhumanities.org/news/2007/05/the-illinois-humanities-council-announces-graduation-for-the-2007-odyssey-project/ |
A professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has created an online platform to store and share work from the academic realm. Curricula, quizzes, assignment sheets and studies can all be made available at prof2prof.com.
“I wanted to establish a cloud-based platform for the higher education community, designed to support a repository of tools and resources created by academics around the globe,” says Kristen Slack, founder of Prof2Prof.
“The mission of Prof2Prof is to recognize a broad range of academic professionals and the many contributions they make, across and for the higher education arena,” says Slack.
The platform is free to members, who can network and share resources with academics across disciplines and different types of institutions.
Site members have contributed items such as class assignments, group exercises, syllabi, videos and podcasts, in addition to research and administrative tools.
Faculty typically are the start of value creation in higher education, since they are usually the ones who develop the tools and strategies for helping students learn, says Slack. “The resources shared on Prof2Prof contribute to the growing trend of ‘open access’ content,” which embraces the creation and use of free and low-cost educational materials.
Slack sees Prof2Prof as a higher education ecosystem, where it is easier to discover highly relevant resources and to create networks and collaborations. She was especially motivated to represent academic contributions by those with tenuous ties to higher education institutions, such as adjunct faculty, who may teach multiple courses on short notice, sometimes at several institutions. Having a central place to maintain a professional presence and a time-saving tool for finding course material is particularly important for this segment of the academic workforce.
Since prof2prof.com went live, membership has increased steadily and includes participants from multiple countries across six continents. Members must be academic professionals affiliated with a postsecondary institution, doctoral students or emeritus professors.
The platform is free to individual members, who can network and share resources with academics across disciplines and different types of institutions, including community and technical colleges, teaching colleges and research universities. Features planned during 2018 will further enable resource sharing and academic networking in unprecedented ways.
Slack’s business, Information Escalator LLC, received some initial funding from Doyenne, a Madison, Wisconsin organization that supports businesses owned by women. Slack is part of the group’s yearlong accelerator program. Additional support was provided by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s UpStart Program for entrepreneurs, and the Small Business Development Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. | https://news.wisc.edu/new-ed-tech-platform-recognizes-professors-contributions-to-higher-education/ |
OER Websites and Repositories to Which Africa Contributes
This section provides links African repositories and international repositories to which African Higher Education Institutions may contribute. This collection of OER and open access repositories was collected in relation to our themes, namely, Agriculture, Health, Teacher Education and Foundation Skills. There are also however repositories covering all subjects.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open Courseware
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity. It has search tabs where you can look for specific courses or content.
Universia OCW
This is courseware that has been translated from English to other languages including Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish and traditional Chinese.
Community College Consortium for Open Education Resources (CCCEOR)
CCCOER provides links to journals, articles and other sites that have different subjects and topics for OER purposes
SOFIA (Sharing of Free Intellectual Assets) Opencourseware
SOFIA allows the user to download any of their 8 courses
Open Learning Initiative
Opening Learning Initiative is a website providing free online courses. It offers courses and learning material for fields such as Anatomy, physiology , biology, biochemisty and psychology.
Open Learn (The Open University UK)
OpenLearn is an Open University initiative offering free courses to the public. These courses are comprised of Articles, educational packages including images and videos on a range of fields including Psychology,Sports and Health.
OpenSource.com
Opensource.com is an OER Search site that contains a comprehensive list of OER sites that are freely accessible to the public in list format ranging from junior,senior to tertiary education pages.
Commonwealth of Learning (COL)
COL was created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies.COL is helping developing nations improve access to quality education and training. The search feature gives you access to thousands of journals and articles which you can apply filters to for a refined search.
University of South Africa (Unisa) Open
University of South Africa UNISA has a OER section under UNISA Open, where they have made available resources and journals open to the public. These journals contain different subjects including agriculture, health and law. There are also links to other African OER's
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate agreements and debate policy. FAO is also a source of knowledge and information. | https://oerafrica.org/african-oer-sites-and-repositories?page=5 |
Open Education: The Many Ways to Target World Disparities
This month, the Open Anniversary initiative covers education. It's universally recognized that education is the basis for solving problems everywhere: poverty, the status of women, adaptation to environmental disruption, and more. Anything that can spread high-quality education—and nowadays, we must specifically call for accurate education—is therefore contributing to saving our world.
Education has many aspects, including teaching itself, stand-alone materials such as books and videos, and access to the internet or other media. We'll cover a variety of contributions to expanding education in this article.
The article is part of a monthly series on the LPI blog to celebrate the anniversaries of several key open source projects, by exploring different angles and directions of the broad open source movement.
Open Educational Resources
The most widespread and well-known phenomenon in open education is free course materials. The official term, Open Educational Resources (OER), was launched as an international movement by UNESCO in a 2012 declaration. The declaration was covered in an article by Creative Commons, which has a site devoted to OER. The Hewlett Foundation is another long-time backer of OER.
OER commonly offers a bundle of resources in many media to support the teaching of a single course. The materials may include documents, videos, suggested readings, and curricula. One of the oldest and largest such archives is OpenCourseWare at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The university started accumulating syllabuses, lecture notes, videos, and other materials from its professors in 2002, and now claims to serve millions of visitors every year.
One of the reasons OpenCourseWare makes a good case study, besides its size and longevity, is that MIT released a major study of its impact in 2005, followed by smaller annual reports since then.
One intriguing finding in the study is that many visitors redistribute the materials, in print or electronic form, to students who lack internet connections (page 8). We will see other projects in this article that tap educational materials online and bring them to people who can't get online themselves. This phenomenon illustrates how the internet intersects with other distribution media in the modern world.
What's truly significant about OER sites such as OpenCourseWare is the dynamic adaptation of materials made by professors and others. Anyone is free to modify and redistribute the materials, as with free software. The 2005 MIT study found that "62% combine OCW materials with other content; 38% adapt course syllabi; 26% adapt assignments or exams" (page 3). This means, for instance, that instructors and even students can add material of local interest. And they can do translations: in fact, MIT is cooperating with several institutions to do translations into several languages (page 7).
Despite the radically open approach to modifications, I've found that most OER sites prohibit noncommercial use. The free software movement generally wants commercial use to be allowed. One OER site that does permit commercial use is OpenStax, from Rice University.
MIT, as a science institution (with departments in economics, marketing, and some other topics as well) has an advantage in designing open source materials because their courses cover topics that have no geographic limitations. Other institutions, which may offer courses on history or policy-making in a single country, would find their courses to be of less interest on a world market.
LinuxTips is a training program in Brazil that focuses on populations who are under-represented in computing by race or gender. According to Cesar Brod, LPI's Community Engagement Director for Spanish and Portuguese Regions, 75 percent of LinuxTips students receive full scholarships. All of their learning materials are released cost-free. EDUCATRANSFORMA is another Brazilian project, friendly to transgender people, that offers bootcamps about Linux.
Many other institutions offer OER, including a large collection are Reynold Community College and some edX courses.
Educational Platforms
We turn next to open computer systems designed for educational use. These systems are based on GNU/Linux, both because the licensing allows widespread, free distribution and because the systems themselves are open. Teachers and students can fix bugs, make enhancements, and learn valuable software skills along the way.
Some of these distributions are more finely tuned for educational use than others. In general, they contain games, educational resources, useful tools for content creation, and sometimes tools for organizing and conducting classes. Many distributions are useful in homes as well as schools, and often other institutions.
A notable example of these efforts is So.Di.Linux, a free-of-charge distribution of digital educational resources that can be used as a live USB/DVD or installed directly on a computer. The name comes from "software didattico libero" (free educational software in Italian) and denotes an initiative designed for Italian schools. The project was initiated by the Institute for Educational Technology of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-ITD) and was initially funded in 2003 as a research project by AICA (Italian Association for Automated Calculation).
So.Di.Linux offers a comprehensive range of educational apps and resources (both online and offline) supported by informative documentation from CNR-ITD’s educational resources database, Essediquadro. In addition, it provides several FLOSS assistive technologies (e.g., screen reader, magnifiers, on-screen keyboard) together with guides and tutorials about how to use them.So.Di.Linux users can navigate learning resources by following specific themes (for instance, “Developing computational thinking”, “Producing interactive lessons”, or “Teaching how to use the web”), a feature that helps new users to find the resources they need more easily.
CNR-ITD continues to develop and maintain So.Di.Linux; the latest version, “So.Di.Linux Orizzonti (Horizons) 2025,” was published in February 2021.
Since 2007, a concerted effort has been made to render So.Di.Linux more inclusive by adopting Universal Design principles. Italian teachers and students can now customize the environment to make it more suitable to their specific needs.
Some other distributions include:
- EducatuX from Brazil. It is used in many public K-12 classrooms, being currently the only software package that contains all the materials required by the Ministry of Education for those classes.
- Endless OS. It includes a large collection of Wikipedia entries and educational materials, and is distributed to areas lacking internet access.
- Nova Linux from Cuba. This also is commonly used in schools.
- Escuelas Linux from Mexico. It is designed to be easy to use out of the box and contains a lot of educational apps.
- Huayra from Argentina. Its contents are fairly general, but it is promoted by the government of Argentina for use in all secondary education. According to Juan Ibarra, LPI's Partner Success Manager for Spanish and Portuguese Regions, the government has delivered more than 5 million netbooks with Huayra to students. The distribution has been reviewed in an English-language article.
- Guadalinex from Spain. It is used in education, along with other settings.
Learning Materials from Linux Professional Institute
The publisher of this article, Linux Professional Institute, has been developing an educational resource with important ramifications in free software: LPI Learning Materials. These cover a wide range of free and open source information required to pass LPI certification exams. Their organization matches the organization of the exams, topic by topic. Therefore, they are particularly apt for training programs.
Because Learning Materials are closely mapped to certification exams and LPI is concerned about maintaining quality for both the original English texts and the numerous translations, the license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) does not allow derivative products (changes to the original). They appear in this article because of their free availability for private use and their role in opening up knowledge about free software in general.
Furthermore, Learning Materials are notable for being a communal effort, developed by experts around the world. (I have done some reviewing myself.) One contributor, Alejando Egea Abellan, said, "Together we create a cool, passionate and diverse community whose main goal is the creation of updated quality materials that can be used by [LPI] candidates living anywhere on the planet."
Even though the first Learning Materials appeared in 2019, they have made inroads into professional training sites as well as university programs. For instance, Franz Knipp teaches bachelor-level courses in the computer science program at the University of Applied Sciences, Burgenland, Austria. He makes heavy use of the LPI Learning Materials for Linux Essentials, and offers the certification exam at the end of the course.
Peer-to-Peer Education
Another kind of openness consists of people coming together to learn without a teacher. This has been happening throughout human history, and among animals before it, so here we'll just look at a popular, highly organized process called Learning Circles, coordinated by a group known as Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU).
Learning Circles have traditionally been held in person. Libraries are typical meeting places.
Each class has a facilitator, who does not have to know the subject and who helps to keep the class moving along productively on-topic. At a library, the librarian may take on this role. The role of the facilitator is group dynamics, not teaching. The students mostly teach each other, but may invite a subject-matter expert occasionally. In addition to helping each other learn, students provide peer support for sticking to a plan. Their shared goal of learning a particular topic provides both structure and motivation.
Learning Circles are a powerful form of empowerment in isolated places without access to teachers in a particular subject. The curricula and materials are often designed by schools and offered free to participants in the program.
P2PU, based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, runs courses using open source tools such as Moodle, a learning management system.
Conclusion
This article has covered only a few aspects of expanding education in our time. Hopefully, I've suggested the creativity that dedicated educators and technologists have shown. The very existence of digital resources and networks promotes learning. Although some studies question the quality of online education, it has been found successful in many places and has certainly kept education going during the COVID-19 lockdowns, even if in diminished form.
Ultimately, open education is about equal access regardless of demographics, geography, and economic status. It is an important counterforce to the tendency of education nowadays to flow to those who already have more resources and privilege. I think the trends in this article are helpful in bridging the gap. | https://www.lpi.org/blog/2021/07/20/open-education-many-ways-target-world-disparities |
Law of Multiple Proportions:
- in two compounds made of the same elements, if the amount of one element is the same in both compounds, then the second element is in a whole number ratio
Law of Definite Proportions:
- any compound will contain elements in the same proportions by mass, regardless of the sample size
Law of the Conservation of Matter:
- matter cannot be created or destroyed in a chemical reaction
5 Ideas of Atomic Theory
1. All matter is composed of atoms
2. all atoms of the same element will be the same in mass, size and other properties; all atoms of different elements will be different in mass, size and other properties
- proven wrong: atoms of the same element can differ in mass, size and other properties
3. Atoms cannot be subdivided, created or destroyed chemically
4. Atoms of different elements combine to for compounds in whole number ratios
- proven wrong: some elements don't
5. In chemical reactions, atoms are combined, separated or rearragned
Thomson's Experiment
- used cathode rays
- discovered the electron
- positively charged metal plates attract cathode rays, concluded they have a negative charge
- cathode rays can create force, must have mass
- cathode rays come from all substances
Rutherford's Experiment
- shot alpha particles at a thin sheet of gold foil
- most of the time the alpha particles went through the sheet, but some bounced off
- they bounced off because they were hitting the nuclei of the gold atoms
- discovered the atomic nuclei
- said the bouncing off was as common as how often a missile would bounce off of a tissue
Dalton's Model
a single dot of any shape
Thomson's Model
negatively charged electrons contained in a cloud of positively charged matter
Rutherford's Model
A positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons
Proton
- positively charged
- in the nucleus
- about the same size as a neutron, much bigger than the electron
- there are the same number of protons as there are electrons
Neutron
- no charge
- in the nucleus
- about the same size as a proton, much bigger than the electron
Electron
- negatively charged
- outside the nucleus
- much smaller than both the proton and the neutron
- there are the same number of electrons as there are protons
Mass Number
the number of nucleons in the nucleus of an atom
Atomic Number
the number of protons in an atom
Number of Protons in an Atom
mass number - number of neutrons = number of protons
Number of Neutrons in an Atom
mass number - number of protons = number of neutrons
Number of Electrons in an Atom
the same as the number of protons
Nuclear Symbol
Mass Number
Atomic Symbol
Atomic Number
Avogadro's Number
6.022e23 atoms
1 mole
- 6.022e23 atoms
- the mass of 6.022e23 atoms of a certain element
- molar mass of a certain element
Binding Energy
- the energy released when the nucleus of an atom is broken apart
- the energy needed to break the nucleus of an atom apart
How Binding Energy is Related to Nuclear Stability
the more binding energy the more energy needed to break apart the nucleus, so the more binding energy, the more stable the nucleus
Belt of Stability
the line on the neutron-to-proton ratio graph that is made of stable nuclei
Stable Nucleus
nucleus who's neutron-to-proton ratio is 1:1 or 1.5:1
Alpha Decay
the element loses one He-4 atom
Beta Decay
the element loses one electron (beta particle)
Positron Decay
the element loses one positron (positively charged electron)
Electron Capture
one electron flies into the nucleus and fuses with a proton to form a neutron
Gamma Decay
a high energy nucleus loses its high energy and gains a gamma particle
Nuclear Fission
a heavier nucleus splits into two , lighter nuclei, usually with neutrons left over
Nuclear Fusion
two lighter nuclei combing into 1, heavier nucleus
Mass Defect
Mass of Products - Mass of Reactants = Mass Defect
- the mass of the neutrons and protons of a nucleus added together minus the mass of the whole nucleus put together
Binding Energy per Nucleon
the binding energy divided by the number of nucleons
Nucleon
any particle in an atom's nucleus (proton or neutron)
Half Life
the amount of time needed for half of the remaining radioactive atoms to decay
Atom
the smallest particle that will keep the chemical properties of its element
Nuclear Force
an attractive force that exists between protons and neutrons that are extremely close
Relative Mass Standard
C-12
Mass Spectrometer
- a machine that sends atoms down a tube with a large magnet near the curve, which sends an atom of each element in a different course
- the heavier the atom, the less it moves
Isotope
an element that has the same number of protons, but a different number of neutrons
Nuclear Reaction
Reactions involving the changing of the nucleus of an atom
Nuclide
atomic nucleus
Decay Series
a series of radioactive nuclides that continually decay in a chain until a stable nucleus is obtained
∆E = ∆m*c^2
equation used to relate mass defect to binding energy
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE... | https://quizlet.com/79724176/chemistry-unit-2-flash-cards/ |
In every atom, the positive charge and mass is densely concentrated at the centre of the atom forming its nucleus. Nuclear radius is of the order of 10-15 m. In nucleus, the number of protons is equal to the atomic number of that element and the remaining particles to fulfil the mass number are the neutrons i.e. number of protons = atomic number Z (say) and number of neutrons.
Composition and Size of Nucleus
As mass of an atom is very small, hence we define a new unit of mass, called as 1 atomic mass unit (1u),
which is the mass of one atom of carbon-12.
lu = 1.660539 X 10-27 = kg = 1.66 x 10-27 kg
= 931.5 MeV
A nucleus has a structure of its own. It consists of protons and neutrons. Electrons cannot exist inside the nucleus. A proton is a positively charged particle having mass (Mp) of 1.007276u and charge (+ e) = +1602 x 10-39 C.
Number of protons (Z) inside the nucleus of an atom is exactly equal to the number of electrons revolving around the nucleus of that atom. This number is called the atomic number. A neutron is a neutral particle having mass Mn = 1008665 u. The number of neutrons in the nucleus of an atom is called the neutron number N.’ The sum of the number of protons and neutrons is called the mass number A Thus, A = N + Z.
The radius of a nucleus depends only on its mass number A according to the relation r = r0A1/3, where r0 is a constant having a value of 1.2 fm.
Isotopes, Isobars and Isotones
- Isotopes
Isotopes of an element are nuclides having same atomic number Z but different mass number A (or different neutron number N). Isotopes of an element have identical electronic configuration and hence, identical chemical properties. and , etc, are isotopes.
- Isobars
Nuclides having same mass number A but different atomic number Z are called isobars. Isobars represent different chemical properties. In isobars number of protons Z as well as number of neutrons N, differ but total nucleon (or mass) number A = N + Z is the same. are
isobars.
- Isotones
Nuclides with different atomic number Z and different mass number A but same neutron number are called isotones. Thus, for isotones, N = (A – Z) is constant.
are examples of iSotones.
Properties of Nucleus
The nuclear properties are described below
- Nuclear size
(a) Size of the nucleus is of the order of fermi (1 fermi = 1015m )
(b) The radius of the nucleus is given by r = r0A1/3,, where r0 = 1.3 fermi and A is the mass number.
(c) The size of the atom is of the order of 10-19 m.
- Volume
The volume of nucleus is
- Density
- where, Mp = 1.6 x10-27 kg = mass of proton and R0 =1.3 fermi.
- Density of nuclear matter is of the order of 1017kg/m3
- Density of nuclear matter is independent of the mass number.
- Nuclear Binding EnergyThe minimum energy required to Seperate the nucleons upto an infinite distance from the nucleus, is called nuclear binding energy. | https://www.cbsetuts.com/neet-physics-notes-optics-atoms-nuclei-concept-nucleus/ |
In nuclear physics, the nuclear shell model is a theoretical model to describe the atomic nucleus. The nuclear shell model was proposed by Dmitry Ivanenko in 1932 and further developed independently by several physicists such as Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Eugene Paul Wigner and J. Hans D. Jensen in 1949. It must be noted this model is based on the Pauli exclusion principle to describe the structure of the nucleus in terms of energy levels.
The nuclear shell model is partly analogous to the atomic shell model which describes the arrangement of electrons in an atom, in that a filled shell results in greater stability. Nucleons are added to shells which increase with energy that orbit around a central potential. In the atomic shell model the central potential around which the electrons orbit is generated by the nucleus. Nucleons are added to shells which increase with energy that orbit around a central potential.
In comparison to atomic shell model, the atomic nucleus governed by two different forces. The residual strong force, also known as the nuclear force, acts to hold neutrons and protons together in nuclei. In nuclei, this force acts against the enormous repulsive electromagnetic force of the protons. The term residual is associated with the fact, it is the residuum of the fundamental strong interaction between the quarks that make up the protons and neutrons. The strong interaction is very complicated interaction, because it significantly varies with distance. At distances comparable to the diameter of a proton, the strong force is approximately 100 times as strong as electromagnetic force. At smaller distances, however, the strong force between quarks becomes weaker, and the quarks begin to behave like independent particles. In particle physics, this effect is known as asymptotic freedom.
With the enormous strong force acting between individual nucleons and with so many nucleons to collide with, how can nucleons orbit a central potential without interacting? This problem is explained by the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that two fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state. In other words, the interaction will not occur, if the higher energy shells are fully occupied and the energy imparted to the nucleon during the collision is insufficient to promote the nucleon to an unfilled orbit. As a result, the nucleons orbit independent of one another.
The nuclear shell model was able to describe many phenomena like the magic numbers, the ground state spin and parity etc..
A magic number is a number of nucleons in a nucleus, which corresponds to complete shells within the atomic nucleus. Atomic nuclei consisting of such a magic number of nucleons have a higher average binding energy per nucleon than one would expect based upon predictions such as the mass formula of von Weizsaecker (also called the semi-empirical mass formula – SEMF) and are hence more stable against nuclear decay. Magic numbers are predicted by the nuclear shell model and are proved by observations that have shown that there are sudden discontinuities in the proton and neutron separation energies at specific values of Z and N. These correspond to the closing of shells (or sub-shells). Nuclei with closed shells are more tightly bound than the next higher number. The closing of shells occurs at Z or N = 2, 8, 20, 28, (40), 50, 82, 126. It is found that nuclei with even numbers of protons and neutrons are more stable than those with odd numbers. Nuclei which have both neutron number and proton number equal to one of the magic numbers can be called “doubly magic“, and are found to be particularly stable.
Higher abundance in nature. For example, helium-4 is among the most abundant (and stable) nuclei in the universe.
The stable elements at the end of the decay series all have a “magic number” of neutrons or protons. The nuclei He-4, O-16, and Pb-208 (82 protons and 126 neutrons) that contain magic numbers of both neutrons and protons are particularly stable. The relative stability of these nuclei is reminiscent of that of inert gas atoms (closed electron shells).
Nuclei with N = magic number have much lower neutron absorption cross-sections than surrounding isotopes.
These nuclei appear to be perfectly spherical in shape; they have zero quadrupole electric moments.
Magic number nuclei have higher first excitation energy.
A neutron star is the collapsed core of a large star (usually of a red giant). Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars known to exist and they are rotating extremely rapidly. A neutron star is basically a giant atomic nucleus about 11 km in diameter made especially of neutrons. It is believed that under the immense pressures of a collapsing massive stars going supernova it is possible for the electrons and protons to combine to form neutrons via electron capture, releasing a huge amount of neutrinos. Since they have some similar properties as atomic nuclei, neutron stars are sometimes described as giant nuclei. But be careful, neutron stars and atomic nuclei are held together by different forces. A nucleus is held together by the strong force, while a neutron star is held together by gravitational force.
On the other hand, neutron stars are partially supported against further collapse by neutron degeneracy (via degeneracy pressure), a phenomenon described by the Pauli exclusion principle. In general, in a highly dense state of matter, where gravitational pressure is extreme, quantum mechanical effects are significant. Degenerate matter is usually modelled as an ideal Fermi gas, in which the Pauli exclusion principle prevents identical fermions from occupying the same quantum state. Similarly, white dwarfs are supported against collapse by electron degeneracy pressure, which is analogous to neutron degeneracy. | https://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power/reactor-physics/atomic-nuclear-physics/atom-properties-of-atoms/atomic-nucleus/nuclear-shell-model/ |
Basic structure of atoms Basic Structure of an Atom • Nucleus and electron cloud • Nucleus: very small, dense core which consists of protons and neutrons (nucleons) Nucleons • Protons: – Positive charge +1 – Mass= 1.763 x10-24 grams – Symbols include +, p, 1H1 • Neutrons: – Neutral charge 0 – Mass= 1.765 x10-24 grams – Symbols include n, 0n1 Electron cloud • Electrons move very rapidly in complicated paths called orbitals. • Because of this motion, they appear to form a cloud. – Negative charge -1 – Mass: 9.1 x10-28 grams – Symbols include e-, -1e0 • Normally, atoms are electrically neutral. – This means that for each proton in the nucleus, there is one electron on the outer surface • Atoms which don’t have this balance are called ions – Atoms with extra electrons are negatively charged and called anions – Atoms with a deficiency of electrons are positively charged and called cations Atomic Number (Z) • Number of protons which an atom contains – Always a whole number – Determines which type of element an atom is Atomic Mass Number (A) • Found by adding mass of protons and neutrons – Whole number Determining the number of neutrons • Atomic mass number= neutrons + protons • Atomic mass- atomic number = neutrons 40.078 Ca 20 How many protons are in … 7 Li 3 35 207 Cl Pb 82 ? Isotopes • Atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons • Isotopes of an element do not exhibit chemical differences • They do exhibit physical differences (i.e. mass) Atomic Weight • Represents the average weight of an element taking into account the different weights of any naturally occurring isotopes for that element Calculating Atomic Weights • Example: Chlorine has 2 naturally occurring isotopes- Cl-35 and Cl-37 – 75% Cl-35 (.75)(35) + (.25)(37)= 35.5 Chromium occurs in 4 isotopic forms with the following approximate distribution: 6% Cr-50, 85% Cr-52, 8% Cr-53, and 1% Cr54. Calculate the atomic weight. | https://studyres.com/doc/8520495/basic-structure-of-atoms |
6.251. Find the greatest possible angle through which a deuteron is scattered as a result of elastic collision with an initially stationary proton.
6.252. Assuming the radius of a nucleus to be equal to R = 0.13 sqrt(A;3) pm, where A is its mass number, evaluate the density of nuclei and the number of nucleons per unit volume of the nucleus.
6.253. Write missing symbols, denoted by x, in the following nuclear reactions:
6.254. Demonstrate that the binding energy of a nucleus with mass number A and charge Z can be found from Eq. (6.6b).
6.255. Find the binding energy of a nucleus consisting of equal numbers of protons and neutrons and having the radius one and a half times smaller than that of Al27 nucleus.
6.256. Making use of the tables of atomic masses, find:
6.258. Find the energy required for separation of a Ne20 nucleus into two alpha-particles and a C12 nucleus if it is known that the binding energies per one nucleon in Ne20, He4, and C12 nuclei are equal to 8.03, 7.07, and 7.68 MeV respectively.
6.259. Calculate in atomic mass units the mass of
6.260. The nuclei involved in the nuclear reaction A1 + A2 → A3 + A4 have the binding energies E1, E2, E3 and E4. Find the energy of this reaction.
6.261. Assuming that the splitting of a U235 nucleus liberates the energy of 200 MeV, find:
6.262. What amount of heat is liberated during the formation of one gram of He4 from deuterium H2? What mass of coal with calorific value of 30 kJ/g is thermally equivalent to the magnitude obtained?
6.288. How many neutrons are there in the hundredth generation if the fission process starts with N0 = 1000 neutrons and takes place in a medium with multiplication constant k = 1.05?
6.289. Find the number of neutrons generated per unit time in a uranium reactor whose thermal power is P = 100 MW if the average number of neutrons liberated in each nuclear splitting is ν = 2.5. Each splitting is assumed to release an energy E = 200 MeV.
6.290. In a thermal reactor the mean lifetime of one generation of thermal neutrons is τ = 0.10 s. Assuming the multiplication constant to be equal to k = 1.010, find: | http://exir.ru/solutions/Nuclear_Reactions.htm |
Isotopes are atoms of the same element that differ in the number of neutrons in their atomic nuclei. All atoms of the same element have the same number of protons, which is the atomic number of that element. However, because different isotopes have different numbers of neutrons, they can differ in mass number, which is the sum of the protons and neutrons in the nucleus.
Isotope notation, also known as nuclear notation, is important because it allows us to use a visual symbol to easily determine an isotope's mass number, atomic number, and to determine the number of neutrons and protons in the nucleus without having to use a lot of words.
Additionally,
#"N"="A"-"Z"#
Example 1: What is the isotopic notation for the isotope carbon-14?
From the periodic table, we see that the atomic number (number of protons) for the element carbon is
#6#. The name carbon-14 tells us that this isotope's mass number is #14#. The chemical symbol for carbon is #"C"#. Now write the isotopic notation for carbon-14. #""_6^14"C"#
We can determine the number of neutrons as
#14-6=8#neutrons.
Example 2. Given the isotopic notation
#""_22^48"Ti"#, identify the following:
a) Name of the isotope
b) Mass number
c) Atomic number
d) Number of protons
e) Number of neutrons.
Answers:
a) titanium-48
b)
#48#
c)
#22#
d)
#22#
e)
#48-22=26#
-
Isotopes are basically atoms which have the same no. of protons but different no. of neutrons at its nucleus.
OR...
Isotopes are atoms that have the same proton no. but different nucleon no.
The chemical properties of an element is determined by its electronic configuration, which is then determined by the no. of protons it has. Since isotopes have the same no of protons at its nucleus, they have the same chemical properties.
However the fact that they have different no. of neutrons means that the isotopes will have different physical properties (e.g. density, mass). For example, if there are two isotopes with different nucleon no., the one which has a higher nucleon no. will be more dense than the other one, since it has more no. of neutrons at its nucleus. | https://socratic.org/chemistry/nuclear-chemistry/isotope-notation |
The atomic nucleus is one of the densest and most complex quantum-mechanical systems in nature. Nuclei account for nearly all the mass of the visible Universe. The properties of individual nucleons (protons and neutrons) in nuclei can be probed by scattering a high-energy particle from the nucleus and detecting this particle after it scatters, often also detecting an additional knockedout proton. Analysis of electron- and proton-scattering experiments suggests that some nucleons in nuclei form close-proximity neutron-proton pairs(1-12) with high nucleon momentum, greater than the nuclear Fermi momentum. However, how excess neutrons in neutron-rich nuclei form such close-proximity pairs remains unclear. Here we measure protons and, for the first time, neutrons knocked out of medium-to-heavy nuclei by high-energy electrons and show that the fraction of high-momentum protons increases markedly with the neutron excess in the nucleus, whereas the fraction of high-momentum neutrons decreases slightly. This effect is surprising because in the classical nuclear shell model, protons and neutrons obey Fermi statistics, have little correlation and mostly fill independent energy shells. These high-momentum nucleons in neutron-rich nuclei are important for understanding nuclear parton distribution functions (the partial momentum distribution of the constituents of the nucleon) and changes in the quark distributions of nucleons bound in nuclei (the EMC effect)(1,13,14). They are also relevant for the interpretation of neutrino-oscillation measurements(15) and understanding of neutron-rich systems such as neutron stars(3,16). | https://www.cheric.org/research/tech/periodicals/view.php?seq=1681907 |
An atom is the smallest particle of an element that retains its (elements) chemical properties. An atom of one element is different in size and mass from the atoms of the other elements. These atoms were considered "indivisible" by Indian and Greek Philosophers in the beginning and the name "atom" emerged out of this basic philosophy.
Today, we know that atoms are not indivisible. They can be broken down into still smaller particles although they lose their chemical identity in this process.
Atoms are very small, they are smaller than anything that we can imagine or compare with. Atoms of different elements not only differ in mass as proposed by Dalton but also they differ in size.
Every matter is made of atoms. It is difficult to imagine the real shape of an atom but for all practical purposes it is taken as spherical in size and that is why we talk of its radius. Since size is extremely small and invisible to the eyes, we adopt a scale of nanometer (1 nm = 10–9 m) to express its size.
Dalton gave the concept of atomic mass. According to him, atoms of the same element have same atomic masses but atoms of different elements have different atomic masses. Since Dalton could not weigh individual atoms, he measured relative masses of the elements required to form a compound. From this, he deduced relative atomic masses.
For example, you can determine by experiment that 1.0000 g of hydrogen gas reacts with 7.9367 g of oxygen gas to form water. If you know formula of water, you can easily determine the mass of an oxygen atom relative to that of hydrogen atom.
Dalton did not have a way of determining the proportions of atoms of each element forming water during those days. He assumed the simplest possibility that atoms of oxygen and hydrogen were equal in number. From this assumption, it would follow that oxygen atom would have a mass that was 7.9367 times that of hydrogen atom. This, in fact, was not correct. We now know that in water number of hydrogen atoms is twice the number of oxygen atoms (formula of water being H2O). Therefore, relative mass of oxygen atom must be 2 × 7.9367 = 15.873 times that of hydrogen atom.
After Dalton, relative atomic masses of several elements were determined by scientists based on hydrogen scale. Later on, hydrogen based scale was replaced by a scale based on oxygen as it (oxygen) was more reactive and formed a large number of compounds.
In 1961, C-12 (or 126C ) atomic mass scale was adopted. This scale depends on measurement of atomic mass by an instrument called mass spectrometer. Mass spectrometer invented early in 20th century, allows us to determine atomic masses precisely. The masses of atoms are obtained by comparison with C-12 atomic mass scale. In fact C-12 isotope is chosen as standard and arbitrarily assigned a mass of exactly 12 atomic mass units.
One atomic mass unit (amu) equals exactly one-twelfth of mass of a carbon-12 atom, Atomic mass unit (amu) is now-a-days is written as unified mass unit and is denoted by the letter "u".
The relative atomic mass of an element expressed in atomic mass unit is called its atomic weight. Now-a-days we are using atomic mass in place of atomic weight. Further, Dalton proposed that masses of all atoms in an element are equal. But later on it was found that all atoms of naturally occurring elements are not of the same mass. Atomic masses that we generally use in our reaction or in chemical calculations are average atomic masses which depend upon relative abundance of isotopes of elements.
Dalton considered an atom as an indivisible particle. Later researches proved that an atom consists of several fundamental particles such as electrons, protons and neutrons. An electron is negatively charged and a proton is positively charged particle.
Number of electrons and protons in an atom is equal. Since charge on an electron is equal and opposite to charge of a proton, therefore an atom is electrically neutral. Protons remain in the nucleus in the centre of the atom, and nucleus is surrounded by negatively charged electrons.
The number of protons in the nucleus is called atomic number denoted by Z. For example, there are 8 protons in the oxygen nucleus, 6 protons in carbon nucleus and only one proton in hydrogen nucleus. Therefore atomic numbers of oxygen, carbon and hydrogen are 8, 6 and 1 respectively.
There are also neutral particles in the nucleus and they are called neutrons. Mass of a proton and of a neutron is nearly the same.
Total mass of the nucleus = mass of protons + mass of neutrons
Total number of protons and neutrons is called mass number (A). By convention atomic number is written at the bottom of left corner of the symbol of the atom of a particular element and mass number is written at the top left corner. For example, symbol 126C indicates that there is a total of 12 particles (nucleons) in the nucleus of a carbon atom, 6 of which are protons. Thus, there must be 12-6 = 6 neutrons.
Similarly 168O indicates 8 protons and 16 nucleons (8 protons + 8 neutrons). Since atom is electrically neutral, oxygen has 8 protons and 8 electrons in it. Further, atomic number (Z) differentiates the atom of one element from the atoms of the other elements.
An element may be defined as a substance where all the atoms have the same atomic number.
But the nuclei of all the atoms of a given element do not necessarily contain the same number of neutrons. For example, atoms of oxygen, found in nature, have the same number of protons which makes it different from other elements, but their neutrons (in nucleus) are different. This is the reason that the masses of atoms of the same element are different. For example, one type of oxygen atom contains 8 protons and 8 neutrons in one atom, second type 8 protons and 9 neutrons and the third type contains 8 protons and 10 neutrons. We represent these oxygen atoms as 168O , 178O and 188O respectively.
Atoms of an element that have the same atomic number (Z) but different mass number (A) are called isotopes. In view of difference in atomic masses of the same element, we take average atomic masses of the elements. This is calculated on the basis of the abundance of the isotopes.
Example: Chlorine is obtained as a mixture of two isotopes 3517Cl and 3717Cl. These isotopes are present in the ratio of 3:1. What will be the average atomic mass of chlorine?
Out of four atoms, 3 atoms are of mass 35 and one atom of mass 37. Therefore,
Average atomic mass = (35×3 + 37×1)/4 = 142/4 = 35.5 u
Thus, average atomic mass of chlorine will be 35.5 u. | https://www.studypage.in/general-science/atom-and-atomic-mass |
A proton is a positively charged subatomic particle within the atomic nucleus of atoms. The number of protons in the atomic nucleus is what determines the atomic number of an element, as indicated in the periodic table of the elements.
The proton is not an elementary particle but a compound particle. It consists of three gluon-bonded particles, two quarks above and one quark below, making it a baryon.
Protons are present in atomic nuclei, generally attached to neutrons by strong interaction. The only exception in which it forms an atomic nucleus without any neutrons is the nucleus of ordinary hydrogen - the most abundant nuclide in the universe.
However, hydrogen has other isotopes that do contain neutrons. This is the case of the nuclei of the heavy hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium) that contain a proton and one or two neutrons, respectively. These two isotopes of hydrogen are used as nuclear fuel in nuclear fusion reactions. All other types of atoms are made up of two or more protons and different numbers of neutrons.
How Is a Proton Formed?
Protons are made up of three 1/2 spin quarks . They are a type of baryon that are a subtype of hadrons. The two quarks above and one quark below are held together by strong nuclear interaction. It has a positive charge distribution and decays exponentially.
Quarks are massive elemental fermions that strongly interact to form nuclear matter and certain types of particles called hadrons. A fermion is one of the two basic types of elementary particles that exist in nature.
In turn, baryons are a family of subatomic particles made up of three quarks. Precisely, the most representative are protons and neutrons.
The corresponding antiparticle, the antiproton, has the same characteristics as the proton but with a negative electric charge.
What Are the Characteristics of a Proton?
The main characteristics are:
- Mass: They have a mass about 1,674 x 10 -24 g . About the same mass as neutrons. Compared to the electron, the mass of the proton is approximately 1,836 times greater.
- Electric charge: The proton has a positive charge of 1,602 x 10 -19 coulombs . Exactly the same absolute charge as the electron, which has a negative charge.
- Load radius: 0.8775 (51) fm
- Electrical dipole moment: <5.4 × 10 −24 e · cm
- Magnetic dipole moment: 1.410606743 (33) × 10 −26 J · T −1
- The proton is a stable particle, which means that it does not decay into other particles. This means that his life is eternal within experimental limits.
This last point is summarized in the conservation of the number of baryons in the processes between elementary particles. In fact, the lightest baryon is precisely the proton and, if the baryon number is to be stored, it cannot decay into any other lighter particle.
Why Are Protons Important?
Protons are important because they define what element an atom is from.
The atomic number of an atom is the number of protons in its nucleus .
The atomic number determines the chemical properties of the atom. For this reason, chemical elements are represented by the number of protons in a nucleus (Z), that is, the atomic number. To determine the isotopes of an element, the number of neutrons (N) is also used by adding all the nucleons, and is known as the mass number (A).
Another important feature is that the proton helps capture electrons and keep them orbiting around the nucleus. That property is because it has a positive charge that attracts negatively charged electrons. This property does not have neutrons since neutrons do not have an electric charge.
What Are Nucleons?
Nucleons are the subparticles that make up the nucleus of an atom (protons and neutrons). Protons and neutrons are nucleons. Both are united in the nucleus by a strong nuclear force.
Nucleons are known to make up the atomic nucleus, but they can also exist in isolation, without being part of larger nuclei. If they are not free there is an important difference: protons are stable or highly stable while isolated neutrons decay by beta decay. The half-life of an isolated neutron is 15 minutes.
What Is the Life of a Proton?
The life of a proton is greater than 2.1 x 10 29 years , which is why it is considered eternal on an experimental level. Protons are stable from the point of view of the standard model of particle physics. The laws of physics do not allow a proton to decompose spontaneously due to the preservation of the number of baryons.
In some rare types of radioactive decay they emit free protons, and the result of free neutron decomposition in other decays.
As a free proton , it has the facility to pick up an electron and convert to neutral hydrogen . Subsequently, neutral hydrogen can react chemically very easily.
Free protons may exist in:
- Plasmas . Plasma is the fourth state of aggregation of matter: a fluid state similar to the gaseous state but in which a certain proportion of its particles are electrically charged (ionized) and do not possess electromagnetic balance.
- The cosmic rays , which are subatomic particles coming from the space with a very high kinetic energy.
- Solar wind. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the Sun's upper atmosphere.
Who Discovered the Protons?
The proton was discovered by Rutherford in 1919.
The history of its discovery dates back to 1886, when Eugen Goldstein discovered anodic rays and showed that they were positively charged particles ( ions) produced from gases.
By varying the gases inside the tubes, Goldstein observed that these particles had different values of the relationship between charge and mass. For this reason the positive charge with a particle could not be identified, unlike the negative charges of the electrons, discovered by Joseph John Thomson.
Following Ernest Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus in 1911, Antonius Van den Broek proposed that the location of each element on the periodic table (its atomic number) was equal to its nuclear charge. This theory was experimentally confirmed by Henry Moseley, in 1913, using X-ray spectra.
In 1917, Rutherford demonstrated that the hydrogen nucleus was present in other nuclei, a general result that is described as the discovery of the proton .
With What Experiment Did Rutherford Discover the Proton?
Rutherford noticed that by bombarding alpha particles in pure nitrogen gas, his scintillation detectors showed signs of hydrogen nuclei. Rutherford determined that hydrogen could only come from nitrogen and that they must therefore contain hydrogen nuclei.
A hydrogen nucleus disintegrated under the impact of the alpha particle, and formed an oxygen atom in the process. The hydrogen nucleus is therefore present in other nuclei as an elementary particle, what Rutherford called the proton. | https://nuclear-energy.net/what-is-nuclear-energy/atom/proton |
ISOTOPES History of the term: In the bottom right corner of JJ Thomson’s photographic plate are the separate impact marks for the two isotopes of neon: neon-20 and neon-22. The term isotope was coined in 1913 by Margaret Todd, a Scottish physician, during a conversation with Frederick Soddy (to whom she was distantly related by marriage). Soddy, a chemist at Glasgow University, explained that it appeared from his investigations as if each position in the periodic table was occupied by multiple entities.
Hence Todd made the suggestion, which Soddy adopted, that a suitable name for such an entity would be the Greek term for “at the same place”. Soddy’s own studies were of radioactive (unstable) atoms. The first observation of different stable isotopes for an element was by J. J. Thomson in 1913. As part of his exploration into the composition of canal rays, Thomson channeled streams of neon ions through a magnetic and an electric field and measured their deflection by placing a photographic plate in their path. Each stream created a glowing patch on the plate at the point it struck.
Thomson observed two separate patches of light on the photographic plate (see image), which suggested two different parabolas of deflection. Thomson eventually concluded that some of the atoms in the neon gas were of higher mass than the rest. F. W. Aston subsequently discovered different stable isotopes for numerous elements using a mass spectrograph. Isotopes are different types of atoms (nuclides) of the same chemical element, each having a different number of neutrons. In a corresponding manner, isotopes differ in mass number (or number of nucleons) but never in atomic number. 1] The number of protons (the atomic number) is the same because that is what characterizes a chemical element. For example, carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14 are three isotopes of the element carbon with mass numbers 12, 13 and 14, respectively. The atomic number of carbon is 6, so the neutron numbers in these isotopes of carbon are therefore 12? 6 = 6, 13? 6 = 7, and 14–6 = 8, respectively. A nuclide is an atomic nucleus with a specified composition of protons and neutrons. The nuclide concept emphasizes nuclear properties over chemical properties, while the isotope concept emphasizes chemical over nuclear.
The neutron number has drastic effects on nuclear properties, but negligible effects on chemical properties. Since isotope is the older term, it is better known, and is still sometimes used in contexts where nuclide might be more appropriate, such as nuclear technology. An isotope and/or nuclide is specified by the name of the particular element (this indicates the atomic number implicitly) followed by a hyphen and the mass number (e. g. helium-3, carbon-12, carbon-13, iodine-131 and uranium-238). When a chemical symbol is used, e. g. “C” for carbon, standard notation is to indicate the number of nucleons with a superscript at the upper left of the chemical symbol and to indicate the atomic number with a subscript at the lower left (e. g. 32He, 42He, 126C, 146C, 23592U, and 23992U). Some isotopes are radioactive and are therefore described as radioisotopes or radionuclides, while others have never been observed to undergo radioactive decay and are described as stable isotopes. For example, 14C is a radioactive form of carbon while 12C and 13C are stable isotopes.
There are about 339 naturally occurring nuclides on Earth, of which 288 are primordial nuclides. These include 31 nuclides with very long half lives (over 80 million years) and 257 which are formally considered as “stable”. About 30 of these “stable” isotopes have actually been observed to decay, but with half lives too long to be estimated so far. This leaves 227 nuclides that have not been observed to decay at all. Numbers of isotopes per element Of the 80 elements with a stable isotope, the largest number of stable isotopes observed for any element is ten (for the element tin).
Xenon is the only element that has nine stable isotopes. Cadmium has eight stable isotopes. Five elements have seven stable isotopes, eight have six stable isotopes, ten have five stable isotopes, eight have four stable isotopes, nine have three stable isotopes, 16 have two stable isotopes (counting 180m73Ta as stable), and 26 elements have only a single stable isotope (of these, 19 are so-called mononuclidic elements, having a single primordial stable isotope that dominates and fixes the atomic weight of the natural element to high precision; 3 radioactive mononuclidic elements occur as well). 5] In total, there are 257 nuclides that have not been observed to decay. For the 80 elements that have one or more stable isotopes, the average number of stable isotopes is 257/80 = 3. 2 isotopes per element. Even/odd N| Mass| E| O| All| Stable| 145| 101| 246| Longlived| 20| 6| 26| Primordial| 165| 107| 272| Even and odd nucleons numbers The proton:neutron ratio is not the only factor affecting nuclear stability. Adding neutrons to isotopes can vary their nuclear spins and nuclear shapes, causing differences in neutron capture cross-sections and gamma spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance properties.
Even mass number Beta decay of an even-even nucleus produces an odd-odd nucleus, and vice versa. An even number of protons or of neutrons are more stable (lower binding energy) because of pairing effects, so even-even nuclei are much more stable than odd-odd. One effect is that there are few stable odd-odd nuclei, but another effect is to prevent beta decay of many even-even nuclei into another even-even nucleus of the same mass number but lower energy, because decay proceeding one step at a time would have to pass through an odd-odd nucleus of higher energy.
This makes for a larger number of stable even-even nuclei, up to three for some mass numbers, and up to seven for some atomic (proton) numbers. Double beta decay directly from even-even to even-even skipping over an odd-odd nuclide is only occasionally possible, and even then with a half-life greater than a billion times the age of the universe. Even-mass-number nuclides have integer spin and are bosons. Even proton-even neutron Even/odd Z, N| p,n| EE| OO| EO| OE| Stable| 140| 5| 53| 48| Longlived| 16| 4| 2| 4| Primordial| 156| 9| 55| 52|
For example, the extreme stability of helium-4 due to a double pairing of 2 protons and 2 neutrons prevents any nuclides containing five or eight nucleons from existing for long enough to serve as platforms for the buildup of heavier elements during fusion formation in stars (see triple alpha process). There are 141 stable even-even isotopes, forming 55% of the 257 stable isotopes. There are also 16 primordial longlived even-even isotopes. As a result, many of the 41 even-numbered elements from 2 to 82 have many primordial isotopes.
Half of these even-numbered elements have six or more stable isotopes. All even-even nuclides have spin 0 in their ground state. Odd proton-odd neutron Only five stable nuclides contain both an odd number of protons and an odd number of neutrons: the first four odd-odd nuclides 21H, 63Li, 105B, and 147N (where changing a proton to a neutron or vice versa would lead to a very lopsided proton-neutron ratio) and 180m73Ta, which has not yet been observed to decay despite experimental attempts.
Also, four long-lived radioactive odd-odd nuclides (4019K, 5023V, 13857La, 17671Lu) occur naturally. Of these 9 primordial odd-odd nuclides, only 147N is the most common isotope of a common element, because it is a part of the CNO cycle; 63Li and 105B are minority isotopes of elements that are rare compared to other light elements, while the other six isotopes make up only a tiny percentage of their elements. Few odd-odd nuclides (and none of the primordial ones) have spin 0 in the ground state. Odd mass number
There is only one beta-stable nuclide per odd mass number because there is no difference in binding energy between even-odd and odd-even comparable to that between even-even and odd-odd, and other nuclides of the same mass are free to beta decay towards the lowest-energy one. For mass numbers 5, 147, 151, and 209 and up, the one beta-stable isobar is able to alpha decay, so that there are no stable isotopes with these mass numbers. This gives a total of 101 stable isotopes with odd mass numbers.
Odd-mass-number nuclides have half-integer spin and are fermions. Odd proton-even neutron These form most of the stable isotopes of the odd-numbered elements, but there is only one stable odd-even isotope for each of the 41 odd-numbered elements from 1 to 81, except for technetium (43Tc) and promethium (61Pm) that have no stable isotopes, and chlorine (17Cl), potassium (19K), copper (29Cu), gallium (31Ga), bromine (35Br), silver (47Ag), antimony (51Sb), iridium (Ir), and thallium (81Tl), each of which has two, making a total of 8 stable odd-even isotopes. There are also four primordial long-lived odd-even isotopes, 8737Rb, 11549In, 15163Eu, and 18775Re. Even proton-odd neutron There are 54 stable isotopes that have an even number of protons and an odd number of neutrons. There are also four primordial long lived even-odd isotopes, 11348Cd (beta decay, half-life is 7. 7 ? 1015 years); 14762Sm (1. 06 ? 1011a); and 14962Sm (>2 ? 1015a); and the fissile 23592U. The only even-odd isotopes that are the most common one for their element are 19578Pt and 94Be.
Beryllium-9 is the only stable beryllium isotope because the expected beryllium-8 has higher energy than two alpha particles and therefore decays to them. Odd neutron number Even/odd N| n| E| O| Stable| 188| 58| Longlived| 20| 6| Primordial| 208| 64| The only odd-neutron-number isotopes that are the most common isotope of their element are 19578Pt, 94Be and 147N. Actinides with odd neutron number are generally fissile, while those with even neutron number are generally not, though they are split when bombarded with fast neutrons.
Atomic mass of isotopes The atomic mass (mr) of an isotope is determined mainly by its mass number (i. e. number of nucleons in its nucleus). Small corrections are due to the binding energy of the nucleus (see mass defect), the slight difference in mass between proton and neutron, and the mass of the electrons associated with the atom, the latter because the electron:nucleon ratio differs among isotopes. The mass number is a dimensionless quantity.
The atomic mass, on the other hand, is measured using the atomic mass unit based on the mass of the carbon atom. It is denoted with symbols “u” (for unit) or “Da” (for Dalton). The atomic masses of naturally occurring isotopes of an element determine the atomic weight of the element. When the element contains N isotopes, the equation below is applied for the atomic weight M: M = m1x1 + m2x2 + … + mNxN where m1, m2, … , mN are the atomic masses of each individual isotope, and x1, … , xN are the relative abundances of these isotopes. | https://hstreasures.com/isotopes-and-its-uses-47929/ |
Likewise, how many neutrons and protons are in oxygen?
8
How many neutrons are in an atom of oxygen 18?
10 neutrons
How do you find electrons in oxygen?
2, 6
How much does a gram of oxygen cost?
Name Oxygen Normal Phase Gas Family Nonmetal Period 2 Cost $.30 per 100 grams
What is the Bohr model for oxygen?
The Bohr model for oxygen shows eight protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the atom, with eight electrons orbiting the nucleus in two energy levels.
How many neutrons does nitrogen have?
7
What particles are in oxygen?
Also neutrons and protons are made up of even smaller subatomic particles. The most common isotope of Oxygen has 24 basic subatomic 8 protons 8 electrons and 8 neutrons.
What do neutrons do?
Neutron is charge less particle in an atom. It has mass but slightly less than proton. It is present in nucleus which plays important role to stable an atom. The neutrons and protons are together in a nucleus due the strong nuclear force which makes them to remain in the form.
How many neutrons are in hydrogen?
Hydrogen has no neutron, deuterium has one, and tritium has two neutrons. The isotopes of hydrogen have, respectively, mass numbers of one, two, and three. Their nuclear symbols are therefore 1H, 2H, and 3H. The atoms of these isotopes have one electron to balance the charge of the one proton.
How many nucleons are in oxygen?
16
Does oxygen have 8 electrons?
Oxygen is #8 in the periodical table. First electron shell can hold 2 electrons; second, 8. Therefore, out of 8 electrons, 2 go to the first shell and 6 to the second; valence electrons are the ones on the outermost shell (there are some exceptions, but they are much further down the table).
How do u find neutrons?
This means to find the number of neutrons you subtract the number of protons from the mass number. On the periodic table, the atomic number is the number of protons, and the atomic mass is the mass number.
How many protons neutrons and electrons are in an oxygen 18 atom?
To get the number of neutrons, simply subtract the number of protons from the atomic mass. So for oxygen-17, there are 8 protons because it is oxygen, there are probably 8 elections if it is uncharged, and there are 17–8 = 9 neutrons. Similarly, oxygen-18 has 8 protons and 8 electrons, and 10 neutrons.
How many inner electrons does oxygen have?
So for the element of OXYGEN, you already know that the atomic number tells you the number of electrons. That means there are 8 electrons in an oxygen atom. Looking at the picture, you can see there are two electrons in shell one and six in shell two.
What is the protons of oxygen?
8
What is the energy level of oxygen? | https://chrysalisrecordings.com/what-is-the-neutron-of-oxygen/ |
U.S.A.
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The Origin of the Near-Spherical|
Appearance of Nuclei
The neutrons and protons of nuclei are separately organized in shells. Remarkably however the maximum occupancies of the shells are the same for neutrons and protons. Other than the shell structures the spatial organization of neutrons and the protons has been a mystery.
Nuclei are believed to have near-spherical shapes; i.e., ellipsoidal. A quantity called the electrical quadrupole moment (EQM) has been defined. The crucial matter is how can it be measured. There are numerous methods that have been proposed for measuring the EQM of nuclei. While often these various methods give approximately the same that is not always the case. N.J. Stone tabulated these measurements from individual studies published in the journals of physics. They are available in his Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables which is updated every few years.
The expectation was that nuclei with filled shells would be spherical and thus have an electrical quadrupole moment of zero. This expectation is examined in the table below. The table for the smaller nuclides includes only those measurements obtained by the method labled NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance), including β-NMR (NMR with beta detection). A few cases in which Stone re-evaluated the data were included.
The EQM has the dimensions of electric charge times area. The area unit used for the tabulation is 10−24 cm², known as a barn, as in "big as a barn door."
|The Electric Quadrupole Moments of the Smaller Nuclides|
|Number of|
protons
|Number of|
Neutrons
|Absolute Value of|
Electric Quadrupole
Moment
(barns) |Q|
|1||1||0.00286|
|3||3||0.0008|
|3||4||0.0406|
|3||5||0.0317|
|3||6||0.036|
|3||6||0.0253|
|3||8||0.031|
|4||5||0.0529|
|5||3||0.063|
|5||5||0.0847|
|5||6||0.0407|
|5||7||0.0134|
|5||8||0.037|
|5||9||0.0298|
|5||10||0.038|
|5||12||0.0386|
|6||5||0.032|
|7||5||0.0098|
|7||7||0.0208|
|7||9||0.018|
|7||11||0.0123|
|8||9||0.02578|
|8||10||0.036|
|8||11||0.0037|
|9||8||0.058|
|9||10||0.072|
|9||11||0.042|
|10||10||0.23|
|10||12||0.19|
|11||15||0.0053|
|11||16||0.0072|
|11||17||0.0395|
|11||18||0.086|
The absolute values of the EQMs are given because in Stone's table in some cases the sign was not determined.
There is no clear pattern to the values and no apparent tendency for zero values at the magic numbers of nucleons.
It is not possible to create a polyhedral structure of overall spherical shape that can maintain its structure by rotation against attraction toward the center of the structure. If the rotation of the particles at or near the equator balances the force on them the ones near the poles experience unbalanced force. What follows below is an explanation of how the dynamic appearance of ellipsoidal shapes can be created in nuclei.
The mass of a nucleus is less than the sum of the masses of the protons and neutrons that it is made of. The difference is called its mass deficit. When the mass deficit is expressed in energy units via the Einstein equation E=mc² it is called the binding energy of the nucleus. The binding energy has been computed for 2931 nuclides (types of nuclei).
The incremental binding energy of a neutron in a nuclide with n neutrons and p protons is its binding energy less that of a nuclide having one less neutron. The incremental binding energy of a neutron can be computed for about 2820 (2931−111) nuclides. For all of the incremental binding energies of neutrons (IBEN) there is a sawtooth, odd-even pattern in which the IBEN is higher for an even number of neutrons than for an odd number because of the formation of a spin pair of neutrons. This means that whenever possible two neutrons form a spin pair. Here is an example of the sawtooth pattern for IBEN.
Likewise the incremental binding energies of protons (IBEP) can be computed for 2769 (2931−162) nuclides. For all of these as well there is the sawtooth odd-even pattern indicating that that proton-proton spin pairs are formed whenever possible. Here is an example of the sawtooth pattern for IBEP.
Whenever the number of protons is less than the number of neutrons the addition of another proton will result in the formation of a neutron-proton spin pair. When the number of protons exceeds the number of neutrons no neutron-proton spin pair is formed and so the level of the IBEP drops. The same thing happens to the IBEN when the number of neutrons passes from a level below the number of protons to a level above it. The following graph shows the drop in incremental binding energies when the number of one type of nucleon exceeds the number of the other type.
Thus whenever possible a proton and neutron form a neutron-proton spin pair. The fact that the level of incremental binding energy drops when there is no excess of the other nucleon means that neutron-proton spin pair formation is exclusive; i.e., a proton can form a neutron-proton spin pair with only one neutron, and likewise for a neutron.
This means that neutrons and protons are linked into chains. A neutron is linked to one other neutron. That neutron is linked through a spin pairing to a proton, which in turn is linked to another proton. Thus there has to be a chain comprised of modules such as -n-p-p-n-, or equivalently -p-n-n-p-. These can appropriately be called alpha modules. An alpha particle is just an alpha module in which the end nucleons link up. More generally there are several alpha modules contained in a ring. Here is a depiction of a ring of four alpha modules. It is not intended to depict realistically the arrangement of the nucleons; instead it is a symbolic representation.
These chains of alpha modules must close. Otherwise there would be a nucleon at one end of the chain or the other without a linkage. An odd nucleon of one type is left out of the chain
In addition to the binding energies reflecting the energies involved in the formation of substructures like spin pairs there is the energies involved in the interaction of nucleons through the nuclear strong force. As noted previously neutrons and protons are organized in shells. When one shell is filled any additional nucleon goes into the next shell. The higher shells are at a greater distance from the nucleons in the other shells and therefore the interaction energies are less. Therefore the incremental binding energies decrease for higher level shells.
The neutrons and the protons in the same shell numbers are attracted to each other through the nuclear strong force. In order to maintain stability these nucleons must rotate about their centers of mass. This means that the neutrons and protons in a shell must rotate like a vortex ring; i.e., a so-called smoke ring.
A substructure linked together such as in a ring can be subject to motions that cannot occur for a single particle. For example, a ring can rotate about a diameter line. For a circular ring this produces the dynamic appearance of a sphere. There can be rotation about more than one diameter line. This reenforces the appearance of the rotating ring as a sphere. A ring can also rotate about an axis through its center perpendicular to its plane. This gives alone a trajectory for a single particle that is a toroidal helix. When this motion is combined with the flipping motion of rotation about a diameter the trajectory of all the particles becomes very complicated and it is easy to believe that each particle more or less covers a spherical shell.
These alpha module rings rotate in four modes. They rotate as a vortex ring to keep the neutrons and protons (which are attracted to each other) separate. The vortex ring rotates like a wheel about an axis through its center and perpendicular to its plane. The vortex ring also rotates like a flipped coin about two different diameters perpendicular to each other.
The above animation shows the different modes of rotation occurring sequentially but physically they occur simultaneously. (The pattern on the torus ring is just to allow the wheel-like rotation to be observed.)
Aage Bohr and Dan Mottleson found that the angular momentum of a nucleus (moment
of inertia times the rate of rotation) is quantized to
h(I(I+1))½, where
h is Planck's constant divided by 2π and I is a positive integer. Using this result
the rates of rotation are found to be many
billions of times per second. Because of the complexity of the four modes of rotation each nucleon
is effectively smeared throughout a spherical shell. So, although the static structure of a nuclear shell is that
of a ring, its dynamic structure is that of a spherical shell.
At rates of rotation of billions of times per second all that can ever be observed concerning the structure of nuclei is their dynamic appearances. This accounts for all the empirical evidence concerning the shape of nuclei being spherical or near-spherical.
When there is an odd nucleon the appearance would be a sphere with a string or ribbon wrapped around it. This would create a nonzero value for the quadrupole moment. | http://applet-magic.com/sphericalnuclei.htm |
Concept Question: What is an isotope?
The basic structure of the atom is a nucleus surrounded by electro-magnetic fields in which moving electrons reside. Inside the nucleus reside nucleons: neutrons and protons. When an atom is characterized by a unique number of nucleons, we refer to it as a nuclide. Different numbers of neutrons and/or protons result in different nuclides.
If two atoms have different numbers of protons, they are different elements. However, if two atoms have the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons we refer to them as isotopes.
Two terms we use to identify nuclides (isotopes) are atomic number and mass number. Two atoms with the same atomic number, but different mass numbers (same number of protons, different number of neutrons), are called isotopes, or isotopic nuclides.
Having different numbers of neutrons changes the mass of these atoms, so isotopes have slight variations in their physical and chemical behavior. Some elements have many different isotopes, some only have a few, and some have no stable isotopes at all.
A particular isotope can be described in several ways. If we were discussing the isotopes of carbon and wanted to specify the isotope with a mass number (A) of 12 we would say "carbon twelve," and this could be written as carbon-12, or in a symbolic form with the mass number as a superscript: 12C. This symbolic form can also include the atomic number (Z) as a subscript, as in . | http://isotopesmatter.ca/lessons/1_1.html |
What is an Isotope, Isotone and Isobar?
Most of us are only familiar with the term isotope and don’t know about isotones and isobars. Basically all these 3 terms are related in some sense and easy to remember, as single alphabet in these words indicates the difference. Before knowing about these terms, let’s remind that an atom is the basic unit of matter which is indivisible, but with the passage of time and research, the further division of atom into protons, neutrons and electrons was confirmed and even into quarks. So basically an atom consists of a nucleus, which consists of protons and neutrons, and out of this nucleus there are electrons which are in shells. Interior of a nucleus: neutron and proton is also termed as nucleons. Number of protons is called proton number or atomic number (Z) and the number of neutrons is called neutron number (N). The sum of neutron and protons is called mass number (A).
Alpha Decay, Sources, Properties, Uses and Hazards of the Alpha Particle
In these 3 terms, “iso” means “same” and next to it, gives it a proper definition.
In isotope, the alphabet “P” indicates proton number, so in isotopes proton number is same.
In isotone, the alphabet “N” indicates number of neutrons, so isotones have same number of neutrons.
In isobar, the alphabet “A” indicates the mass number, so isobars have same mass number. Since mass number is indicated by “A”.
The key difference in these 3 terms is that isotopes are the “atoms of same chemical element”, which have same atomic number but different mass number i.e. neutron number is different. Whereas, isobars are the “atoms of different chemical elements”, which have same atomic masses. Lastly, isotones are those “atoms of different elements” which have same number of neutrons. Let’s now discuss all these terms, separately, in detail.
Isotope
Isotope are those atoms of same chemical element, which have same number of protons, but different number of neutrons, thus mass number is also different. Since isotopes have same source element, so their chemical properties are also same but their physical properties alter from each other. There are almost 275 known isotopes of 81 stable elements. An element can have stable as well as radioactive isotopes (unstable). The examples of isotopes are given as follows:
Hydrogen: 1H1 (protium) , 1H2 (deuterium) , 1H3 (tritium)
Helium: 2He3, 2He4
Carbon: 6C12, 6C13, 6C14
Nitrogen: 7N14, 7N15
Sulfur: 16S32, 16S33 , 16S34 , 16S36 , these are stable isotopes of sulfur, unstable isotopes include S31, S35, S38, S44.
Beta Particle Overview, Beta Decay, Radioactivity of Bananas
Isobar
Isobars are defined as the atoms of different chemical elements which have same mass number (A). Since atomic mass is sum of number of nucleons, so in isobars the number of nucleons is same. Since different chemical elements have different atomic numbers so, clearly, isobars have different atomic numbers.
According to Mattauch rule for isobar, if the 2 adjacent elements in periodic table have isotopes with same mass number i.e. they are isobars, then one of these elements will be radioactive and other will be stable. In case of 3 elements, 1st and last element will be stable and middle element will be radioactive.
Examples of isobars are given below:
- Series 58: 26Fe58 , 27Ni58
- Series 76: 32Ce76 , 34Se76
- Series 40: 18Ar40 , 19K40 , 20Ca40
- Series 24: 11Na24 , 12Mg24
X-rays: Working, Properties, Types, Comparison, Applications
Isotone
The atoms of different chemical elements which have same number of neutrons in nucleus. Atomic numbers of isotones are different, thus mass numbers are also different.
Examples of isotones are given below:
- Series 20: 18Ar38 , 19K39 , 20Ca40
- Series 50: 36Kr86 , 38Sr88 , 39Y89 , 40Zr90 , 42Mo92
- Series 7: 5B12 , 6C13
There are no stable isotones for series 19, 21, 35, 39, 45, 61, 89, 115, 123, 127 and many more.
O2: Di-Oxygen, Ozone and Tetra-Oxygen Comparison
In isobars and isotones, series number actually indicates the atomic number and neutron number, respectively, which are fixed in respective cases. For example in isotone series 50, each element will possess 50 number of neutrons. | https://www.informationpalace.com/what-is-an-isotope/ |
... Error! Objects cannot be created from editing field codes. where Vj(r) is the scattering potential of this process, Ek and Ek’ are the initial and final state energies of the particle. The delta function results in conservation of energy for long times after the collision is over, with hω the energy ...
39 The Atomic Nucleus and Radioactivity
... • When two nucleons are just a few nucleon diameters apart, the nuclear force they exert on each other is nearly zero (small force vectors). • This means that if nucleons are to be held together by the strong force, they must be held in a very small volume. • Nuclei are tiny because the nuclear forc ...
39 The Atomic Nucleus and Radioactivity
... • When two nucleons are just a few nucleon diameters apart, the nuclear force they exert on each other is nearly zero (small force vectors). • This means that if nucleons are to be held together by the strong force, they must be held in a very small volume. • Nuclei are tiny because the nuclear forc ...
39 The Atomic Nucleus and Radioactivity
... A beta particle normally moves at a faster speed than an alpha particle and carries only a single negative charge. It is able to travel much farther through the air. They will lose their energy after a large number of glancing collisions with atomic electrons. Beta particles slow down until they bec ...
transmutation of nuclides
... nuclide, because this nuclide no longer exists in the planet Earth. Studies of radioactive decays led to theories of nuclear stability and nuclear structure. Some of these theories will be examined as we take a closer look at atomic nuclei. Concepts such as energy states of nucleons, angular momentu ...
Radioactive Decays – transmutations of nuclides
... 3. A plutonium bomb used 500 kg of 239Pu in 1959. This bomb is sitting in a warehouse silo in the US desert. How much 239Pu is left in the bomb today? (The overall half-life for 239Pu is 24400 y, and it has several decay modes) 4. A hydrogen bomb used 5 kg of 3T in 1959. This bomb is sitting in a wa ...
Slide 1
... When an atom ejects an alpha particle, the mass number of the resulting atom decreases by 4, and the atomic number by 2. The resulting atom belongs to an element two spaces back in the periodic table. When an atom ejects a beta particle from its nucleus, it loses no nucleons, its atomic number incre ...
eXtremely Fast Tr
... While low-energy cosmic rays such as the solar wind cause ionization in the upper atmosphere, muons cause most of the ionization in the lower atmosphere. When a muon ionizes a gas molecule, it strips away an electron, making that molecule into a positive ion. The electron is soon captured, either by ...
Estimation of the fluence of high‐energy electron bursts produced by
... The avalanche is initiated by 10 energetic electrons at the bottom of the high‐field region, which might correspond to the injection of energetic electrons by a lightning leader. The simulation calculates but does not plot the X rays produced by bremsstrahlung emission. For a realistic thundercloud ...
Topic 7_2__Radioactive decay
... What this means is that an unstable nucleus may spontaneously decay into another nucleus (which may or may not be stable). Given many identical unstable nuclides, which precise ones will decay in any particular time is impossible to predict. In other words, the decay process is random. But rando ...
PRINCIPLES OF RADIATION DETECTION AND QUANTIFICATION
... living tissue is emitted as the unstable atoms (radionuclides) change ('decay') spontaneously to become different kinds of atoms. The principal kinds of ionizing radiation are: Alpha particles These are helium nuclei consisting of two protons and two neutrons and are emitted from naturally-occurring ...
Beta decay is a type of radioactive decay in which a beta
... charge, Z. Therefore the set of allnuclides with the same A can be introduced; these isobaric nuclides may turn into each other via beta decay. A beta-stable nucleus may undergo other kinds of radioactive decay (for example, alpha decay). In nature, most isotopes are beta-stable, but there exist a f ...
radioactivity and radioactive decay - rct study guide
... electrons existed, then when they encountered an ordinary negative electron, the Coulomb force would cause the two particles to accelerate toward each other. They would collide and then the two equal but opposite charges would mutually cancel. This would leave two neutral electrons. Actually, a posi ...
Magnetic and Electric Deviation of the Easily Absorbed Rays
... that the atoms of these substances sire made up, in part at least, of rapidly rotating or oscillating systems of heavy charged bodies large compared with the electron. The sudden escape of these masses from their orbit may be due either to the action of internal forces or external forces of which we ...
THE ATOMIC NUCLEUS AND RADIOACTIVITY
... energy equivalence. Particles decay spontaneously only when their combined products have less mass after decay than before. The mass of a neutron is slightly greater than the total mass of a proton plus electron (and the antineutrino). So when a neutron decays, there is less mass after decay than be ...
PART I TORT LIABILITY AND RADIATION INJURIES
... in its most common form, has a weight, or mass, of approximately one. The heaviest naturally occurring element is uranium, with an atomic weight (mass number) of 238, derived from 92 protons (atomic number 92) and 146 neutrons in its nucleus. Between these two naturally occuring elements 90 others a ...
Critical Thinking Questions 2
... (b) β decay: a neutron in the nucleus is converted into a proton and an electron. The electron is ejected from the nucleus. (c) Positron or β+ emission: a proton in the nucleus is converted into a neutron and a positron. The positron is ejected from the nucleus. (d) Electron capture: the nucleus cap ...
4 Radioactive Elements
... chemical reaction will not convert one element into a different element. Such a change happens only during nuclear reactions (NOO klee ur)—reactions involving the particles in the nucleus of an atom. Remember that atoms with the same number of protons and different numbers of neutrons are called iso ...
University of Victoria Radiation Safety Refresher Course
... • Very high-energy ionizing radiation. • Have no mass and no electrical charge. • Occurs when the nucleus of a radioactive atom has too much energy. Often follows the emission of a beta particle. • Highly penetrating – requires lead or concrete shielding. • Causes severe damage to internal orga ...
Pdf - Text of NPTEL IIT Video Lectures
... having the same number of protons, but different number of neutrons. So, we will discuss this in detail a little later isotopes of an element have seem characteristic atomic number, so that means it have same number of protons in their atomic nuclei, but they have different mass number. So, these at ...
Physics and Chemistry 1501 – Nuclear Science Part I VO Atomic
... we’re going to keep things simple and omit it. Beta particles have higher penetrating power than alpha. They go right through paper and are stopped by a sheet of aluminum. The third type of radioactive emission is the gamma ray. We use the Greek letter gamma as its symbol. Since gamma rays are energ ...
Nuclear Physics - Assam Valley School
... (ii) How is it possible for an element to decay into another element of higher atomic number ? (iii) Is it possible for hydrogen atom isotope to emit alpha particle ? Explain. Ans. (i) γ-radiations are electromagnetic in nature and as such obey the laws of reflection, refraction and are not affected ...
AP Revision Guide Ch 18
... 4. X-radiation which consists of high-energy photons emitted when fast-moving electrons are stopped in an x-ray tube. 5. Mesons from cosmic rays striking the atmosphere. Alpha radiation The alpha particles from any one type of decay all have the same energy, typically a few MeV. Being relatively mas ...
Radiation Safety - 7
... exposed to radiation record Photons (X & d Rays) in the 5 keV / 40 MeV range & Beta Particles in the 150 keV / 10 MeV range. During analysis, the Al2O3 is stimulated with selected frequencies of laser light, which cause it to become luminescent in proportion to the amount of radiation exposure recei ...
Radioactive Decay
... Radioactive Decay Example: Assuming a half-life of _________, how many years will be needed for the decay of ________ of a given amount of radium-226? Amount remaining = 1/16 = 0.0625 = (½)4 = ____________ Years needed for decay of 15/16 = (1599 years) (__) = ___________ ...
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Gamma ray
Gamma radiation, also known as gamma rays, and denoted by the Greek letter γ, refers to electromagnetic radiation of an extremely high frequency and therefore consists of high-energy photons. Gamma rays are ionizing radiation, and are thus biologically hazardous. They are classically produced by the decay of atomic nuclei as they transition from a high energy state to a lower state known as gamma decay, but may also be produced by other processes. Paul Villard, a French chemist and physicist, discovered gamma radiation in 1900, while studying radiation emitted from radium. Villard's radiation was named ""gamma rays"" by Ernest Rutherford in 1903.Natural sources of gamma rays on Earth include gamma decay from naturally occurring radioisotopes, and secondary radiation from atmospheric interactions with cosmic ray particles. Rare terrestrial natural sources produce gamma rays that are not of a nuclear origin, such as lightning strikes and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. Additionally, gamma rays are produced by a number of astronomical processes in which very high-energy electrons are produced, that in turn cause secondary gamma rays via bremsstrahlung, inverse Compton scattering, and synchrotron radiation. However, a large fraction of such astronomical gamma rays are screened by Earth's atmosphere and can only be detected by spacecraft.Gamma rays typically have frequencies above 10 exahertz (or >1019 Hz), and therefore have energies above 100 keV and wavelengths less than 10 picometers (10−12 meter), which is less than the diameter of an atom. However, this is not a hard and fast definition, but rather only a rule-of-thumb description for natural processes. Electromagnetic radiation from radioactive decay of atomic nuclei is referred to as ""gamma rays"" no matter its energy, so that there is no lower limit to gamma energy derived from radioactive decay. This radiation commonly has energy of a few hundred keV, and almost always less than 10 MeV. In astronomy, gamma rays are defined by their energy, and no production process needs to be specified. The energies of gamma rays from astronomical sources range to over 10 TeV, an energy far too large to result from radioactive decay. A notable example is extremely powerful bursts of high-energy radiation referred to as long duration gamma-ray bursts, of energies higher than can be produced by radioactive decay. These bursts of gamma rays, thought to be due to the collapse of stars called hypernovae, are the most powerful events so far discovered in the cosmos. | https://studyres.com/concepts/8168/gamma-ray |
Chemistry (The Atom (Protons,Neutrons and Electrons (Proton (Is a…
Chemistry
The Atom
Atomic Number (Z)
The atomic number of an element is the number of protons present in each nucleus of each atom of that element
Isotopes
Definition: An Isotope is an atom with a varied number of neutrons in it's nucleous (more or less ammount)
The nuclide referst to the nucleous of a given isotope element
Mass Number (A)
The mass number is defined by the sum of protons and neutrons in an atom.
Ions
Anions
Negatively charged Ions
Cations
Positively charged Ions
Protons,Neutrons and Electrons
Proton
Is a positively charged subatomic particle that is present all atoms(p+)
Neutron
Is a subatomic particle with no charge that's present in all of the atoms (nº)
Electron
Is a negatively charged particlethat's present in all atoms (e-)
Amu
How to calculate
(Percent of natural abundance/100)*Atomic mass=amu
Meaning: The unified atomic mass unit or dalton is a standard unit of mass that quantifies mass on an atomic or molecular scale (atomic mass). One unified atomic mass unit is approximately the mass of one nucleon (either a single proton or neutron) and is numerically equivalent to 1 g/mol.
The Mole
The mole is the unit of measurement for amount of substance in the International System of Units (SI). The unit is defined as the amount or sample of a chemical substance that contains as many constitutive particles, e.g., atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, or photons, as there are atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12 (12C), the isotope of carbon with standard atomic weight 12 by definition. This number is expressed by the Avogadro constant, which has a value of approximately 6.02214076×1023 mol−1. The mole is an SI base unit, with the unit symbol mol.
6.02×10^23
The history of the mole is intertwined with that of molecular mass, atomic mass unit, Avogadro number and related concepts. | https://coggle.it/diagram/W79PwxyZUTVnXGz6/t/chemistry |
Pure Substances= Elements and Compounds Classification of Matter Clicker Question 1 Which of the following is a pure substance? a. Grain alcohol b. Sparkling water c.
14-carat gold d. Chocolate chip Clicker Question 2 What is a root beer float? a. Compound b. Element c. Homogeneous Mixture
d. Heterogeneous Mixture Lets ponder the Root Beer Float some more Root beer float deconstructed* Ice cream
Sugar Cream Vanilla Root beer Carbonated water
Water Carbon Dioxide Sugar Root extracts (sassafras, sarsparilla root, liquorice, anise, etc.) * An homage to a great book, Twinkie Deconstructed, by Steve Ettlinger Chapter 2: Modern Atomic Theory Matter consists of atoms
Atoms consist of three fundamental particles, found in the nucleus and the space around the nucleus Chapter 2- Elements and Compounds Modern atomic theory All matter is composed of small particles called atoms Atoms are made up of three subatomic particles Arrangement of Particles in the Atom Small nucleus contains nucleons:
Positively charged protons Neutrons with no charge Vast majority of mass Outside the nucleus
Negatively charged electrons Large volume of (mostly empty) space relative to nucleus Atoms All atoms of an element have the same atomic number = number of protons In a neutral atom (no charge), the number of positively and negatively charged particles must be equal # protons = # electrons
The mass number = protons + neutrons Isotopes IsotopesAtoms with same number of protons but different number of neutrons Isotopes When two atoms have the same atomic number (Z), but different atomic masses (A), they are called isotopes
Isotopes differ in the number of neutrons ATOM SYMBOLS mass numberA atomic numberZX 35 17 Cl
17 protons 35-17=18 neutrons EXAMPLE: How many neutrons does Molybdenum-90 have? # protons=42 90 # neutrons= 90-42=48 Mo
42 Isotopes Most elements have multiple isotopes 1H, 2H (deuterium), 3H (tritium, radioactive) 79Br, 81Br 64Zn, 66Zn, 67Zn, 68Zn, 70Zn Atomic mass is the mass of a single atom Average atomic mass takes into account isotopes and natural abundance We use atomic mass units (u)
1 amu = 1u = 1.661 x 1024 g (about the mass of a proton) Its Time For Some Donut Math! Dunkin Donuts sells both regular-sized donuts and Munchkins Lets say that of all the donuts sold: 78.3% are regular-sized (mass= 57g)
21.7% are Munchkins (mass= 10g) What is the weighted average mass of a Dunkin Donut? Isotopes and Average Atomic Mass all isotopes Average atomic mass =
(fractional abundance) (mass of isotope) A Non-Edible Example Chlorine has two isotopes: Isotope Mass (u) % Abundance 35
34.969 75.78 37 36.966 24.22 Cl
Cl What is the average atomic mass of Chlorine? What do these things have in common? Floyd Landis Case Landis won 2006 Tour de France Tested positive for testosterone doping Does Landis have an high testosterone level? testosterone
epitestosterone Floyd Landis Case Is the excess testosterone natural or synthetic? Isotope-ratio mass spectrometry (CIR) used to determine the ratio of 13 Photosynthesis prefers
C to 12 12 C in Landis testosterone C
C3 plants: Strong preference for C4 plants: Less of a preference for 12 C C
12 Normal diet= mixture of C3 and C4 plants Synthetic testosterone comes from soy, contains less 13 C 13C:12C reduced Landis positive for doping What do these things have in common?
What holds an atom together? Coulombs Law of electrostatic interactions. General Behavior: Like charges repel. Opposite charges attract. What holds an atom together? Coulombs Law of electrostatic interactions. If we double a charge from +1 to +2, the force will: 1.
2. 3. 4. Double Halve Quadruple Quarter What holds an atom together? Coulombs Law of electrostatic interactions. If we double the distance, the force will:
1. 2. 3. 4. Double Halve Quadruple Quarter Whats wrong with this picture?
Electrons are held near the nucleus by the electrostatic attraction between them, but The forces of nature: Were not just making it up! How could we possibly know that the nucleus is small compared to the size of the atom? Why not think the protons, electrons and neutrons are all mixed together? | https://darkhavenbookreviews.com/slide/general-chemistry-1-sections-7-12-oneonta-6cmnt8 |
# Nuclear drip line
The nuclear drip line is the boundary beyond which atomic nuclei decay by the emission of a proton or neutron.
An arbitrary combination of protons and neutrons does not necessarily yield a stable nucleus. One can think of moving up and/or to the right across the table of nuclides by adding one type of nucleon to a given nucleus. However, adding nucleons one at a time to a given nucleus will eventually lead to a newly formed nucleus that immediately decays by emitting a proton (or neutron). Colloquially speaking, the nucleon has leaked or dripped out of the nucleus, hence giving rise to the term drip line.
Drip lines are defined for protons and neutrons at the extreme of the proton-to-neutron ratio; at p:n ratios at or beyond the drip lines, no bound nuclei can exist. While the location of the proton drip line is well known for many elements, the location of the neutron drip line is only known for elements up to neon.
## General description
Nuclear stability is limited to those combinations of protons and neutrons described by the chart of the nuclides, also called the valley of stability. The boundaries of this valley are the neutron drip line on the neutron rich side, and the proton drip line on the proton-rich side. These limits exist because of particle decay, whereby an exothermic nuclear transition can occur by the emission of one or more nucleons (not to be confused with particle decay in particle physics). As such, the drip line may be defined as the boundary beyond which proton or neutron separation energy becomes negative, favoring the emission of a particle from a newly formed unbound system.
### Allowed transitions
When considering whether a specific nuclear transmutation, a reaction or a decay, is energetically allowed, one only needs to sum the masses of the initial nucleus/nuclei and subtract from that value the sum of the masses of the product particles. If the result, or Q-value, is positive, then the transmutation is allowed, or exothermic because it releases energy, and if the Q-value is a negative quantity, then it is endothermic as at least that much energy must be added to the system before the transmutation may proceed. For example, to determine if 12C, the most common isotope of carbon, can undergo proton emission to 11B, one finds that about 16 MeV must be added to the system for this process to be allowed. While Q-values can be used to describe any nuclear transmutation, for particle decay, the particle separation energy quantity S, is also used, and it is equivalent to the negative of the Q-value. In other words, the proton separation energy Sp indicates how much energy must be added to a given nucleus to remove a single proton. Thus, the particle drip lines defined the boundaries where the particle separation energy is less than or equal to zero, for which the spontaneous emission of that particle is energetically allowed.
Although the location of the drip lines is well defined as the boundary beyond which particle separation energy becomes negative, the definition of what constitutes a nucleus or an unbound resonance is unclear. Some known nuclei of light elements beyond the drip lines decay with lifetimes on the order of 10−22 seconds; this is sometimes defined to be a limit of nuclear existence because several fundamental nuclear processes (such as vibration and rotation) occur on this timescale. For more massive nuclei, particle emission half-lives may be significantly longer due to a stronger Coulomb barrier and enable other transitions such as alpha and beta decay to instead occur. This renders unambiguous determination of the drip lines difficult, as nuclei with lifetimes long enough to be observed exist far longer than the timescale of particle emission and are most probably bound. Consequently, particle-unbound nuclei are difficult to observe directly, and are instead identified through their decay energy.
### Nuclear structure origin of the drip lines
The energy of a nucleon in a nucleus is its rest mass energy minus a binding energy. In addition to this, there is an energy due to degeneracy: for instance, a nucleon with energy E1 will be forced to a higher energy E2 if all the lower energy states are filled. This is because nucleons are fermions and obey Fermi–Dirac statistics. The work done in putting this nucleon to a higher energy level results in a pressure, which is the degeneracy pressure. When the effective binding energy, or Fermi energy, reaches zero, adding a nucleon of the same isospin to the nucleus is not possible, as the new nucleon would have a negative effective binding energy — i.e. it is more energetically favourable (system will have lowest overall energy) for the nucleon to be created outside the nucleus. This defines the particle drip point for that species.
### One- and two-particle drip lines
In many cases, nuclides along the drip lines are not contiguous, but rather are separated by so-called one-particle and two-particle drip lines. This is a consequence of even and odd nucleon numbers affecting binding energy, as nuclides with even numbers of nucleons generally have a higher binding energy, and hence greater stability, than adjacent odd nuclei. These energy differences result in the one-particle drip line in an odd-Z or odd-N nuclide, for which prompt proton or neutron emission is energetically favorable in that nuclide and all other odd nuclides further outside the drip line. However, the next even nuclide outside the one-particle drip line may still be particle stable if its two-particle separation energy is non-negative. This is possible because the two-particle separation energy is always greater than the one-particle separation energy, and a transition to a less stable odd nuclide is energetically forbidden. The two-particle drip line is thus defined where the two-particle separation energy becomes negative, and denotes the outermost boundary for particle stability of a species.
The one- and two-neutron drip lines have been experimentally determined up to neon, though unbound odd-N isotopes are known or deduced through non-observance for every element up to magnesium. For example, the last bound odd-N fluorine isotope is 26F, though the last bound even-N isotope is 31F.
## Nuclei near the drip lines are uncommon on Earth
Of the three types of naturally occurring radioactivities (α, β, and γ), only alpha decay is a type of decay resulting from the nuclear strong force. The other proton and neutron decays occurred much earlier in the life of the atomic species and before the earth was formed. Thus, alpha decay can be considered either a form of particle decay or, less frequently, as a special case of nuclear fission. The timescale for the nuclear strong force is much faster than that of the nuclear weak force or the electromagnetic force, so the lifetime of nuclei past the drip lines are typically on the order of nanoseconds or less. For alpha decay, the timescale can be much longer than for proton or neutron emission owing to the high Coulomb barrier seen by an alpha-cluster in a nucleus (the alpha particle must tunnel through the barrier). As a consequence, there are no naturally-occurring nuclei on Earth that undergo proton or neutron emission; however, such nuclei can be created, for example, in the laboratory with accelerators or naturally in stars. The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University came online in mid-2022 and is slated to create novel radioisotopes, which will be extracted in a beam and used for study. It uses a process of running a beam of relatively stable isotopes through a medium, which disrupts the nuclei and creating numerous novel nuclei, which are then extracted.
### Nucleosynthesis
Explosive astrophysical environments often have very large fluxes of high-energy nucleons that can be captured on seed nuclei. In these environments, radiative proton or neutron capture will occur much faster than beta decays, and as astrophysical environments with both large neutron fluxes and high-energy protons are unknown at present, the reaction flow will proceed away from beta-stability towards or up to either the neutron or proton drip lines, respectively. However, once a nucleus reaches a drip line, as we have seen, no more nucleons of that species can be added to the particular nucleus, and the nucleus must first undergo a beta decay before further nucleon captures can occur.
#### Photodisintegration
While the drip lines impose the ultimate boundaries for nucleosynthesis, in high-energy environments the burning pathway may be limited before the drip lines are reached by photodisintegration, where a high-energy gamma ray knocks a nucleon out of a nucleus. The same nucleus is subject both to a flux of nucleons and photons, so an equilibrium is reached where mass builds up at particular nuclear species.
As the photon bath will typically be described by a Planckian distribution, higher energy photons will be less abundant, and so photodisintegration will not become significant until the nucleon separation energy begins to approach zero towards the drip lines, where photodisintegration may be induced by lower energy gamma rays. At 109 Kelvin, the photon distribution is energetic enough to knock nucleons out of any nuclei that have particle separation energies less than 3 MeV, but to know which nuclei exist in what abundances one must also consider the competing radiative captures.
As neutron captures can proceed in any energy regime, neutron photodisintegration is unimportant except at higher energies. However, as proton captures are inhibited by the Coulomb barrier, the cross sections for those charged-particle reactions at lower energies are greatly suppressed, and in the higher energy regimes where proton captures have a large probability to occur, there is often a competition between the proton capture and the photodisintegration that occurs in explosive hydrogen burning; but because the proton drip line is relatively much closer to the valley of beta-stability than is the neutron drip line, nucleosynthesis in some environments may proceed as far as either nucleon drip line.
#### Waiting points and time scales
Once radiative capture can no longer proceed on a given nucleus, either from photodisintegration or the drip lines, further nuclear processing to higher mass must either bypass this nucleus by undergoing a reaction with a heavier nucleus such as 4He, or more often wait for the beta decay. Nuclear species where a significant fraction of the mass builds up during a particular nucleosynthesis episode are considered nuclear waiting points, since further processing by fast radiative captures is delayed.
As has been emphasized, the beta decays are the slowest processes occurring in explosive nucleosynthesis. From the nuclear physics side, explosive nucleosynthesis time scales are set simply by summing the beta decay half-lives involved, since the time scale for other nuclear processes is negligible in comparison, although practically speaking this time scale is typically dominated by the sum of a handful of waiting point nuclear half lives.
#### The r-process
The rapid neutron capture process is believed to operate very close to the neutron drip line, though the astrophysical site of the r-process, while widely believed to take place in core-collapse supernovae, is unknown. While the neutron drip line is very poorly determined experimentally, and the exact reaction flow is not precisely known, various models predict that nuclei along the r-process path have a two-neutron separation energy (S2n) of approximately 2 MeV. Beyond this point, stability is thought to rapidly decrease in the vicinity of the drip line, with beta decay occurring before further neutron capture. In fact, the nuclear physics of extremely neutron-rich matter is a fairly new subject, and already has led to the discovery of the island of inversion and halo nuclei such as 11Li, which has a very diffuse neutron skin leading to a total radius comparable to that of 208Pb. Thus, although the neutron drip line and the r-process are linked very closely in research, it is an unknown frontier awaiting future research, both from theory and experiment.
#### The rp-process
The rapid proton capture process in X-ray bursts runs at the proton drip line except near some photodisintegration waiting points. This includes the nuclei 21Mg, 30S, 34Ar, 38Ca, 56Ni, 60Zn, 64Ge, 68Se, 72Kr, 76Sr, and 80Zr.
One clear nuclear structure pattern that emerges is the importance of pairing, as one notices all the waiting points above are at nuclei with an even number of protons, and all but 21Mg also have an even number of neutrons. However, the waiting points will depend on the assumptions of the X-ray burst model, such as metallicity, accretion rate, and the hydrodynamics, along with the nuclear uncertainties, and as mentioned above, the exact definition of the waiting point may not be consistent from one study to the next. Although there are nuclear uncertainties, compared to other explosive nucleosynthesis processes, the rp-process is quite well experimentally constrained, as, for example, all the above waiting point nuclei have at the least been observed in the laboratory. Thus as the nuclear physics inputs can be found in the literature or data compilations, the Computational Infrastructure for Nuclear Astrophysics allows one to do post-processing calculations on various X-ray burst models, and define for oneself the criteria for the waiting point, as well as alter any nuclear parameters.
While the rp-process in X-ray bursts may have difficulty bypassing the 64Ge waiting point, certainly in X-ray pulsars where the rp-process is stable, instability toward alpha decay places an upper limit near A = 100 on the mass that can be reached through continuous burning. The exact limit is a matter presently under investigation; 104–109Te are known to undergo alpha decay whereas 103Sb is proton-unbound. Even before the limit near A = 100 is reached, the proton flux is thought to considerably decrease and thus slow down the rp-process, before low capture rate and a cycle of transmutations between isotopes of tin, antimony, and tellurium upon further proton capture terminate it altogether. However, it has been shown that if there are episodes of cooling or mixing of previous ashes into the burning zone, material as heavy as 126Xe can be created.
### Neutron stars
In neutron stars, neutron heavy nuclei are found as relativistic electrons penetrate the nuclei and produce inverse beta decay, wherein the electron combines with a proton in the nucleus to make a neutron and an electron-neutrino:
As more and more neutrons are created in nuclei the energy levels for neutrons get filled up to an energy level equal to the rest mass of a neutron. At this point any electron penetrating a nucleus will create a neutron, which will "drip" out of the nucleus. At this point we have:
And from this point onwards the equation
applies, where pFn is the Fermi momentum of the neutron. As we go deeper into the neutron star the free neutron density increases, and as the Fermi momentum increases with increasing density, the Fermi energy increases, so that energy levels lower than the top level reach neutron drip and more and more neutrons drip out of nuclei so that we get nuclei in a neutron fluid. Eventually all the neutrons drip out of nuclei and we have reached the neutron fluid interior of the neutron star.
## Known values
### Neutron drip line
The values of the neutron drip line are only known for the first ten elements, hydrogen to neon. For oxygen (Z = 8), the maximal number of bound neutrons is 16, rendering 24O the heaviest particle-bound oxygen isotope. For neon (Z = 10), the maximal number of bound neutrons increases to 24 in the heaviest particle-stable isotope 34Ne. The location of the neutron drip line for fluorine and neon was determined in 2017 by the non-observation of isotopes immediately beyond the drip line. The same experiment found that the heaviest bound isotope of the next element, sodium, is at least 39Na. These were the first new discoveries along the neutron drip line in over twenty years.
The neutron drip line is expected to diverge from the line of beta stability after calcium with an average neutron-to-proton ratio of 2.4. Hence, is predicted that the neutron drip line will fall out of reach for elements beyond zinc (where the drip line is estimated around N = 60) or possibly zirconium (estimated N = 88), as no known experimental techniques are theoretically capable of creating the necessary imbalance of protons and neutrons in drip line isotopes of heavier elements. Indeed, neutron-rich isotopes such as 49S, 52Cl, and 53Ar that were calculated to lie beyond the drip line have been reported as bound in 2017–2019, indicating that the neutron drip line may lie even farther away from the beta-stability line than predicted.
The table below lists the heaviest particle-bound isotope of the first ten elements.
Not all lighter isotopes are bound. For example, 39Na is bound, but 38Na is unbound. As another example, although 6He and 8He are bound, 5He and 7He are not.
### Proton drip line
The general location of the proton drip line is well established. For all elements occurring naturally on earth and having an odd number of protons, at least one species with a proton separation energy less than zero has been experimentally observed. Up to germanium, the location of the drip line for many elements with an even number of protons is known, but none past that point are listed in the evaluated nuclear data. There are a few exceptional cases where, due to nuclear pairing, there are some particle-bound species outside the drip line, such as 8B and 178Au. One may also note that nearing the magic numbers, the drip line is less understood. A compilation of the first unbound nuclei known to lie beyond the proton drip line is given below, with the number of protons, Z and the corresponding isotopes, taken from the National Nuclear Data Center. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_drip_line |
Objectives: Dysfunction of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is one of the most consistent findings in the pathophysiology of mood disorders. The potential role of genes related to HPA axis function has been investigated extensively in major depression. However, in bipolar disorder (BPD) such studies are scarce. We performed a systematic HapMap-based association study of six genes crucial for HPA axis function in relation to BPD.
Methods: Haplotype tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (htSNPs) were selected in order to identify all haplotypes with a frequency of more than 1% in the genes encoding the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), mineralocorticoid receptor (MR), corticotrophin releasing hormone receptor 1 (CRH-R1) and 2 (CRH-R2), CRH binding protein (CRH-BP), and FK binding protein 5 (FKBP5). This resulted in a total selection of 225 SNPs that were genotyped and analyzed in 309 BPD patients and 364 matched control individuals all originating from an isolated northern Swedish population.
Results: Consistent evidence for an association with BPD was found for NR3C1, the gene encoding GR. Almost all SNPs in two adjacent haplotype blocks contributed to the positive signal, comprised of significant single marker, sliding window, and haplotype-specific p-values. All these results point to a moderately frequent (10-15%) susceptibility haplotype covering the entire coding region and 3 > untranslated region (UTR) of NR3C1.
Conclusions: This study contributes to the growing evidence for a role of the glucocorticoid receptor gene (NR3C1) in vulnerability to mood disorders, and BPD in particular, and warrants further in vitro investigation of the at-risk haplotypes with respect to disease etiology. However, this association might be restricted to this specific population, as it is observed in a rather small sample from an isolated population without replication, and data from large meta-analyses for genome-wide association studies in BPD do not show the GR as a very strong candidate. | http://umu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A468124&c=25&searchType=SIMPLE&language=sv&query=&af=%5B%5D&aq=%5B%5B%7B%22personId%22%3A%22authority-person%3A62951%22%7D%5D%5D&aq2=%5B%5B%5D%5D&aqe=%5B%5D&noOfRows=50&sortOrder=author_sort_asc&sortOrder2=title_sort_asc&onlyFullText=false&sf=all |
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2005
Background. Excessive worry is required by DSM-IV, but not ICD-10, for a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). No large-scale epidemiological study has ever examined the implications of this requirement for estimates of prevalence, severity, or correlates of GAD.
Method. Data were analyzed from the US National Comorbidity Survey Replication, a nationally representative, face-to-face survey of adults in the USA household population that was fielded in 2001–2003. DSM-IV GAD was assessed with Version 3.0 of the WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Non-excessive worriers meeting all other DSM-IV criteria for GAD were compared with respondents who met full GAD criteria as well as with other survey respondents to consider the implications of removing the excessiveness requirement.
Results. The estimated lifetime prevalence of GAD increases by ~40% when the excessiveness requirement is removed. Excessive GAD begins earlier in life, has a more chronic course, and is associated with greater symptom severity and psychiatric co-morbidity than non-excessive GAD. However, non-excessive cases nonetheless evidence substantial persistence and impairment of GAD, high rates of treatment-seeking, and significantly elevated co-morbidity compared with respondents without GAD. Non-excessive cases also have sociodemographic characteristics and familial aggregation of GAD comparable to excessive cases.
Conclusions. Individuals who meet all criteria for GAD other than excessiveness have a somewhat milder presentation than those with excessive worry, yet resemble excessive worriers in a number of important ways. These findings challenge the validity of the excessiveness requirement and highlight the need for further research into the optimal definition of GAD. | http://core-cms.prod.aop.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/should-excessive-worry-be-required-for-a-diagnosis-of-generalized-anxiety-disorder-results-from-the-us-national-comorbidity-survey-replication/CF3B562F40B2FA3C0F4D639FCA923CCE |
Research in the field of healthcare is important not only because it is able to provide insight into the progress of the healthcare industry but also because it explores possible changes that can be made to better enhance the way patients and health is treated.
However, research is not simply limited to experimentation and investigation. The articles that are written in order to spread the information and knowledge garnered from studies is also very important.
Writing a good research article is of the highest priority in research because it is here where others are able to get data regarding the investigation’s discoveries. It is also through this that others may acquire information in order to validate the study.
This paper is a review on a healthcare research paper. The article will be reviewed according to its title, abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion and conclusion, and references.
Title
The article’s title, Hospital Progress in Reducing Error: The Impact of External Interventions, (Hosford, 2008) is very straight to the point. It is able to describe the study clearly in only ten words.
There are no unnecessary or distracting words. In fact, the words that make up the title are key words for the study’s elements and articles needed to make these key words into a cohesive whole.
Hospital progress, reducing, error, impact and external interventions, are all key words within the title which show the reader the direction the study will take. These are very effective in bringing the message of what the study is about. Simply reading the title will let one know what can be gained from reading the body of the text.
Abstract
The article’s abstract is composed of 109 words. The purpose, method, and findings of the study are clearly stated here. However, the variables included in the study are not all indicated. The independent variables are presented although they are not introduced as such. The moderating variable was mentioned in the statement of the purpose of the study but was unclear in its statement.
The dependent variables were also stated in the presentation of the findings but were also not very straightforward in their presentation. All the major categories of the study’s findings, however, were stated in the abstract albeit having only reported whether these categories were successful or not with regards to the study’s aims.
Overall, the abstract was able to provide enough information about the study to engage the interest of someone who is looking for this specific type of study. However, it seemed to lack in the vigor of its presentation to encourage the further reading of one who is simply browsing health care literature.
Introduction
The introduction only offered a review of past literature as well as implications as to why reduction of hospital errors is important. Through the introduction, the author was able to present a rationale for why the study was conducted.
The authors of the article failed to state the research problem in their introduction. The author also did not present the hypotheses and the research questions in this section. Rather, these were placed inappropriately in the Results section of the paper. These were logical and based on previous works.
The hypothesis was clearly stated, albeit in the wrong section, and was even given a subheading in order to differentiate it from the rest of the paper. It was directional in that it posited that hospitals were not able to effectively implement medical error management systems.
The introduction was clearly lacking in depth and scope. It did not present the research problem and hypothesis. The literature review cuts off prematurely and the transition into the Method section was not smooth because it did not guide the discussion back to the study in question.
Method
The sample used in the study were clearly described in the methods section. The numbers of participants involved as well as the characteristics of the population were explicitly stated. The number and types of hospitals where the participants were located were also enumerated clearly.
The author also states the criteria used for choosing the participants of the study. The instrument that was used in the study, a survey developed by the author, was an appropriate measure of the variables being investigated and was comprehensively described by the author.
The methods by which this instrument was developed are clearly described. The metric properties of the survey were evaluated by two focus groups and were affirmed through a pilot study. However, reliability and validity measurements for the survey were not indicated in the article. The research design, however, was stated clearly at the beginning of the section.
A quantitative, cross-sectional, ex post facto study was conducted. This was highly appropriate for the purposes of the study and would be able to meet the author’s goals.
Although the methods section was able to comprehensively present the research design and sample, replication of the study would be hard because the survey developed by the author was not shown. A replication study could probably be conducted but a different survey would need to be developed.
This is possible because the author described thoroughly the method by which he was able to develop his own survey. However, a different survey instrument would not be an exact replication of the present study.
Results
One of the winning points of the article is its Results section. The section was clearly written and was very well organized as evidenced by the appropriately headed subsections. The statistical methods employed to analyze the results of the conducted survey were appropriate and were able to clearly show the condition of the variables under investigation.
The tabular and graphical presentations of the results of the statistical analyses were also highly comprehensive and very easy to understand. Labels were specific and described exactly what was shown in the tables and figures. Individuals who only have a basic grasp of statistics would be able to clearly interpret the results of the study.
The text and the presentations complemented each other and were not simple repetitions of data. Although the hypotheses was stated in the Results section, even having its own subsection, the results were not directly related to it in presentation.
The null hypotheses and the alternative hypotheses were simply presented and then rejected and accepted accordingly. However, the presentations of the results of each variable were no longer linked to the original hypotheses, on whether these supported or rejected the hypotheses.
Discussion and Conclusion
The ending portion of the paper is well-organized. The Discussion section is able to tackle the findings according to the exact conceptual framework of the Results section, in particular, and of the study, in general.
This made the reading of the discussions easier and allowed for readers to more closely follow the author’s train of thought. In the Discussion section, the author made sure to relate the study’s findings with that of previous work but was unable to connect this to explicitly state how these were related to the hypotheses.
Also, the lack of an explicitly stated research problem in the article made it harder to identify whether the findings and the discussion of these findings were able to effectively answer the investigation’s research problems. With regard to the study’s variables and their relationship with each other, however, the author’s discussion was able to comprehensively and clearly address the relevant issues.
In the Conclusions section, the author was able to provide a general conclusion that was based on the results of the study. He was able to provide a succinct summary of the results in general statements that were valid and founded on the statistical findings.
The limitations of the study were also presented in this section as a subsection on its own. The study’s limitations were enumerated clearly and were also explained thoroughly. Another subsection in the conclusion included the author’s recommendations for future research. The author was able to provide input with regards to the direction and probable courses of action of future researchers on the same subject matter.
References
The references used were sufficiently current. All 21 sources were published or accessed within the past 10 years. The oldest was published in 1998 while the newest was published in 2006. The study was able to provide essential answers to the issue of medical errors in health care. The importance of this study is that it was able to explore factors leading to a reduction of medical error.
If these are identified and backed up by empirical data, the status of healthcare may be improved and the risk of committing errors in the medical field may be drastically reduced if not completely eliminated. The strengths of this study is in its clear presentation of the variables that could contribute to the reduction or elimination of medical errors.
The referral to previous works and the incorporation of the results of these previous studies also add to the vigor of the study’s conclusions. However, the inability to present a clear research problem and a direct hypothesis with regards to the variables weakens the study. Formulation of a problem and placing this with the hypotheses in the article’s introduction would strengthen the presentation.
What I found surprising in the study was that the public’s awareness of medical errors did not decrease the frequency of occurrence of these events. It was not a significant determinant of progress in the medical error management systems employed in hospitals. Overall, the study was successful in its investigation of medical error management systems.
Reference
Hosford, S. B. (2008). Hospital progress in reducing error: the impact of external interventions. Hospital Topics, 86(1), 9-19. | https://tracisbio.org/healthcare-issues/ |
Read the background materials for this module and, after doing so, address the following
questions in a four-page paper:
- The sampling frame is arguably the most critical element of a study’s sampling plan.
Why is this so?
- How might a poorly specified sampling frame forestall the research process?
- Are studies that employ convenience sampling invalid? Please explain.
- of the sampling methods presented in this module, which optimize external validity (if
this term is unfamiliar, revisit the Module 2 home page)? Please explain.
Sampling Techniques
The sampling frame as an essential facet of a sampling plan
Sampling frame is defined as a list, record or register of the entire eligible members or
constituents of a populace where the sample will be strained. It is not the sample in itself but it
forms a boundary within which the sample will be picked. The sampling frame should be
representative of the whole population (Morse, 2010).
Sampling frame is a very important tool in a study especially when planning for a sample. The
sample frame chosen will determine if the sample picked is relevant or not. For instance, some
individuals may be picked in a population and fail to respond to the questionnaire or observation.
Others may even not be traced at all for the response. Every element of the population should be
evident in the sampling frame and only once not more than that (Morse, 2010).
In our case study, a population is taken in which epidemiology is to be done. Therefore, the
sampling plan should posses as enough information as possible about the population to which an
inference is being sought. Some of this information is used to track the responses from various
individuals in a population. For instance, those who will fail to respond can be investigated in
terms of their age, may be they moved to a new residence. Also their level of education may be
checked to see if they are illiterate enough to respond. Also their habit in smoking or alcohol
SAMPLING TECHNIQUES
may be observed to see if they failed due to fear of exposure and many others (European Journal
of Epidemiology, 2005).
The sampling frames used in this case study were Population Register (PR), Health Register
(HR) and Electoral Register (ER) all of which contained information about the population to be
studied. Population register was seen to be more reliable in providing all information required for
the study. It contained more contact numbers for the population and more information on chosen
sample. The frame will restrict the population under study to a handy figure through which
unbiased and precise conclusion is drawn (European Journal of Epidemiology, 2005).
A scantily specified sampling frame can preclude the research process
Setting up an apparent sampling frame is significant to the accomplishment of any investigation
or study because a flawed sampling frame will lead to incoherent or erroneous results, findings
or conclusions. A sampling frame should have a specific boundary within which the sample will
be picked. It should not include those outside the specifications, nor should it leave out anyone
eligible for responses. The sampling frame should not have clusters inside but just individuals. It
is erroneous to survey a member in the frame more than once also. Such problems as mentioned
can hinder the research process (Morse, 2010).
Response rate (rr) of the sampled survey is majorly dependent on the quality of sampling frame
and the recruitment strategy. The quality of sampling frame is mostly measured by use of the
contact rate (cr). Enrolment rate (er) will also depend on the convincing power of the researcher,
recruitment strategy used as well as sampling frame to some extent. For instance PR showed a
lot of people who could be contacted because it was regularly updated while for the other
sampling frames, there was a low correlation between recruitment strategy and contact rate hence
SAMPLING TECHNIQUES
the major problem might have arose from poor quality sampling frame (European Journal of
Epidemiology, 2005).
Also a certain age of people who showed less response were 35-44 years which is mainly young
people at the start of career with many job prospects hence always on the move relocating. Those
who were non-respondents were asked questions on their age, schooling level and smoking
status. Low cr would be as a result of people having relocated hence could not be contacted. It
could also be as a result of the sampling frame being out of date hence some people might also
have died hence could not be contacted (European Journal of Epidemiology, 2005).
Therefore proper selection of a sampling frame is vital to getting good results in a sample to be
examined and extrapolate it as representative of the whole population. Failure to do so, the
research process can easily be forestalled and data collected will be inappropriate and misleading
(Morse, 2010).
Convenience sampling
Studies that make use of convenience sampling are not automatically invalid. Convenience
sampling is also referred to as accidental or opportunistic sampling. It is a non probabilistic
sampling method that entails the sample being taken from that fraction of the population which is
in close proximity to the researcher. Such a sample is generally picked because it is convenient
and readily available for study. However, a researcher cannot use convenient sampling to be a
scientifically generalize his sample as a representative sample of the whole population. Thus, he
can only use such a sample to study the characteristics of that sample alone (Lohr, 2010).
For instance, a researcher may decide to study a sample of the people who go to a bank in
automated teller for transactions. The behavior exhibited by such customers may not necessarily
SAMPLING TECHNIQUES
represent what also happens with a human teller. Therefore such a sample can be studied for that
particular instance only and not as a representative of the whole population (Lohr, 2010).
In our case study, a convenient sampling would be picked from the population register showing
people who are near and can easily be contacted. The researcher could just call the available
contacts and just study that. Scientifically, this sample would not be a representative of the total
population but just a small fraction (European Journal of Epidemiology, 2005).To be a
representative sample, it should be picked systematically and using probability methods.
Convenience sampling is advantageous in that it saves time and at the same time it is cost
effective hence it can only be used where a researcher just want to save time and money but not
necessarily representing the total population (Lohr, 2010).
Sampling method which optimize external validity
The eventual goal of a sampling design is come up with a set of elements or parameters of a
population in which their description precisely portrays the distinctive features of the population
from which it was singled out. Another goal for doing a sample design is to ensure maximum
precision by minimizing variance in results (Dattalo, 2010).
From the sampling methods given in this module, the use of population register is gives optimal
externally validity since the sample picked 21 regions out of the total 37 regions which are
approximately 57% of the total. The PR is also regularly updated hence giving up to date
information on the population (European Journal of Epidemiology, 2005).
To maximize external validity, an appropriate population of a proper sample size in composition
with an appropriate formulated sampling strategy is necessary. External validity is the degree to
SAMPLING TECHNIQUES
which the outcome of a study can be generalized to represent the total population. It is the
validity of scientific generalized inferences (Dattalo, 2010).
Mostly, the loss of external validity especially when dealing with human population is evident
when the size picked is too small as compared to the total population and basically when the
sample is picked from one or a few small geographical areas. This sample will not represent the
characteristic of the whole population because other geographical areas may portray different
characteristic from ones observed (Dattalo, 2010).
References
Dattalo, P (2010). Ethical dilemmas in sampling. A journal of Social Work Values and Ethics,
vol.7
European Journal of Epidemiology (2005) 20: 293–299 Ó Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s10654-
005-0600-3
Lohr, S. L. (2010). Sampling: design and analysis. Cengage Learning.
Morse, J. (2010). Sampling in grounded theory. The Sage handbook of grounded theory, | https://nursingwritingservice.com/sampling-techniques/ |
Dissertation Discussion Help
What Is A Dissertation discussion ?
The dissertation discussion is a group discussion of any contentious or unresolved problem in order to determine the truth. The argument should end with a consensus that is free of conflict. It is a question of establishing the facts without presuming that one of the viewpoints is accurate. It is always time constrained and necessitates meticulous planning.
The advantages of discussion are as follows: on the one hand, it lowers the moment of subjectivity; on the other hand, it ensures that an individual’s or a group’s beliefs are widely supported, resulting in absolute validity. Even if it does not lead to universal agreement among the participants, it inevitably promotes a greater understanding of opponents. The section addressing your manuscript may be the most challenging to write because it will demand you to consider the significance of your study. A useful discussion section will explain what your research implies and why it is important to the reader.
In a nutshell, your response to the question “what do my results mean?” . The discussion part of your dissertation should come after the “Methods and Results” section and before the conclusion. It should directly address the issues highlighted in your introduction, and your results should be considered in the context of the literature in your literature review. You should include the following information in your discussion area to make it appealing:
- The most important findings from your research
- The significance of these findings
- How do these findings compare to those of others?
- Limitations to your outcomes
- Any contradictory, surprising, or inconclusive outcomes must be explained.
- Suggestions for future research
The dissertation discussion chapter is the component of the dissertation that interprets the article’s findings. Although the introduction, techniques, and consequences are all discussed in the paper, it is equally important to explain the outcomes for your audience. As a result, the “discussion” section seeks to provide an answer to the question “so what?” Explain the significance of the findings and how they relate to the research challenge you’re tackling.
The discussion of your dissertation analyses your research findings and generates conclusions based on them. The goal of the “discussion” is to comprehend and explain the relevance of your research findings in light of what has already been discussed in the literature on this topic, as well as to express fresh thoughts about the problem based on your research findings.
Here are a few of the tasks that the discussion section solves:
- Discussion of the study topic and whether the answer was given in the research activity based on the findings;
- Highlight unexpected or intriguing results, as well as their relevance to the research topic.
- Indication of previous studies and the gap between your education and that of others;
- Evidence of the study’s flaws, gaps, or limits;
- A recommendation on how you can utilize analysis to increase knowledge in your field.
Approaches to writing Dissertation discussion
There are various approaches to writing a helpful, engaging, and relevant dissertation discussion about your study. The results of your study should be listed in descending order of importance, according to most guidelines. You don’t want the reader to lose sight of the important findings you acquired..
Help with Dissertation Discussion
Do you require assistance with dissertation discussion? Then carefully read this section. Unlike the Introduction, which only provides generalized thematic information from well-developed scientific primary sources, the literature review section of the Discussion of Results focuses solely on other scientists’ work that is directly or indirectly related to the specific experimental data presented in the study. Furthermore, they are closely tied to the solution of specific scientific difficulties in order to achieve the study’s purpose, according to the author’s perspective.
Additional arguments, auxiliary empirical relationships, and theoretical solutions that contribute to the right assessment of the author’s results might be included in the dissertation’s discussion part. You can use drawings, diagrams, and constructs to persuade others.
The analysis and discussion dissertation portion is crucial because it is here that the article’s major conclusion is given, the novelty of the gained scientific knowledge is formulated, and the writers future work direction is decided.
The suggestions for writing the “Discussion of Results” portion of a scientific article will assist the student in better interpreting his experimental data and demonstrating the validity of the applied approach to the research’s scientific purpose. This type of interpretation might be used to develop a new hypothesis or theory for characterizing the situation under investigation.
Structure of Dissertation Discussion
Although there is no set framework for writing Dissertation Discussion, you may follow a few basic procedures to make the section have a strong impact on readers.
1.Give a very brief overview of the main topic:
A good “Discussion” section expands on the specific findings to their broader implications, which can then be linked to the general background provided in the Introduction to enhance the article’s impact. As a result, begin the “discussion” by giving the most important information previously known about the research topic.
2.Interpret your findings as follows:
Because not all of your readers will grasp the topic in depth, discuss the meaning of your most important study findings as clearly as possible. Examine the following connections between observations: Is there a pattern to the outcomes, and can you summarize them? However, instead of imposing an interpretation on your readers, perform an objective analysis of the data.
3.Report on prior research findings:
Before beginning any research, a thorough review of the literature is required. Explain what has been missing from past studies and how your findings are based on their findings.
4.Discussion of a psychology dissertation:
This is possibly the most important aspect of the discussion. The reader should be able to see why your research is important. What role has research had in advancing our knowledge of a particular subject? It would be helpful if you could explain how your research adds to existing knowledge and how it can spur future research.
5.Describe the research’s limitations:
Indicate the study’s shortcomings and explore concerns that were left unanswered or unaddressed in the study. Perhaps you could collect data in a different way? Self-criticism and acceptance of the study’s limits will demonstrate that you are aware of its limitations.
6.Finish with a warning about what to avoid:
After “Discussion,” some journals include a separate “Conclusion” section, while others put the conclusion in the last paragraph of the argument. You might be able to recommend a research perspective that would assist dispel any residual uncertainties about the study topic, or you might be able to test a new hypothesis based on your findings. | https://facileessays.com/dissertation-discussion-help/ |
Link to open access PlosOne article:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0109019
Information about typical sample sizes is informative for a number of reasons. Most important, sampling error is related to sample size. Everything else being equal, larger samples have less sampling error. Studies with less sampling error (a) are more likely to produce statistically significant evidence for an effect when an effect is present, (b) can produce more precise estimates of effect sizes, and (c) are more likely to produce replicable results.
Fraley and Vazire (2014) proposed that typical sample sizes (median N) in journals can be used to evaluate the replicability of results published in these journals. They called this measure the N-pact Factor (NF). The authors propose that the N-pact Factor (NF) is a reasonable proxy for statistical power; that is, the probability of obtaining a statistically significant result that is real rather than a simple fluke finding in a particular study.
“The authors evaluate the quality of research reported in major journals in social-personality psychology by ranking those journals with respect to their N-pact Factors (NF)—the statistical power of the empirical studies they publish to detect” (Abstract, p. 1).
The article also contains information about the typical sample size in six psychology journals for the years 2006 to 2010. The numbers are fairly consistent across years and the authors present a combined NF for the total time period.
CSV To HTML using codebeautify.org
|Journal Name||NF (median N)||Pow/d=.41||Pow/d=.5|
|Journal of Personality||178||0.78||0.91|
|Journal of Research in Personality||129||0.64||0.8|
|Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin||95||0.5||0.67|
|Journal of Personality and Social Psychology||90||0.49||0.65|
|Journal of Experimental Social Psychology||87||0.47||0.64|
|Psychological Science||73||0.4||0.56|
The results show that median sample sizes range from 73 to 178. The authors also examined the relationship between NF and the impact factor of a journal. They found a negative correlation of r = -.48, 95%CI = -.93, +.54. Based on this non-significant correlation in a study with a rather low NF of 6, the authors suggest that “journals that have the highest impact also tend to publish studies that have smaller samples” (p. 8).
In their conclusions, the authors suggest that “journals that have a tendency to publish higher power studies should be held in higher regard than journals that publish lower powered studies—a quality we indexed using the N-pact Factor.” (p. 8). According to their NF-Index, the Journal of Personality should be considered the best of the six journals. In contrast, the journal with the highest impact factor, Psychological Science, should be considered the worst journal because the typical sample size is the smallest.
The authors also make some more direct claims about statistical power. To make inferences about the typical power of statistical tests in a journal, the authors assume that “Statistical power is a function of three ingredients: a, N, and the population effect size” (p. 6).
Consistent with previous post-hoc power analyses, the authors set the criterion to p < .05 (two-tailed). The sample size is provided by the median sample size in a journal which is equivalent to the N-pact factor (NF). The only missing information is the median population effect size. The authors rely on a meta-analysis by Richard et al. (2001) to estimate the population effect size as d = .41. This value is the median effect size in a meta-analysis of over 300 meta-analyses in social psychology that covers the entire history of social psychology. Alternatively, they could have used d = .50, which is a moderate effect size according to Cohen. This value has been used in previous studies of statistical power of journals (Sedlmeier & Gigerenzer, 1989). The table above shows both power estimates. Accordingly, the Journal of Personality has good power (Cohen recommended 80% power) and the journal Psychological Science would have low power to produce significant results.
In the end, the authors suggest that the N-pact factor can be used to evaluate journals and that journal editors should strive towards a high NF. “One of our goals is to encourage journals (and their editors, publishers, and societies that sponsor them) to pay attention to and strive to improve their NFs” (p. 11). The authors further suggest that NF provides “an additional heuristic to use when deciding which journal to submit to, what to read, what to believe, or where to look to find studies to publicize” (p. 11).
Before I present my criticism of the N-pact Factor, I want to emphasize that I agree on several points with the authors. First, I believe that statistical power is important (Schimmack, 2012). Second, I believe that quantitative indicators that provide information about the typical statistical power of studies in a journal are valuable. Third, I agree with the authors that everything else being equal, statistical power increases with sample size.
My first concern is that sample sizes can provide misleading information about power because researchers often tend to conduct analyses on subsamples of their data. For example, with 20 participants per cell, a typical 2 x 2 ANOVA design has a total sample size of N = 80. The ANOVA with all participants is often followed by post-hoc tests that aim to test differences between two theoretically important means.For example, after showing an interaction between men and women, the post-hoc tests are used to show that there is a significant increase for men and a significant decrease in women. Although the interaction effect can have high power because the pattern in the two groups goes into opposite directions (cross-over interaction), the comparisons within gender with N = 40 have considerably less power. A comparison of sample sizes and degrees of freedoms in Psychological Science shows that many tests have smaller df than N (e.g., 37/76, 65/131, 62/130, 66/155, 57/182 for the first five articles in 2010 in alphabetical order). This problem could be addressed by using information about df to compute median N of statistical tests.
A more fundamental concern is the use of sample size as a proxy for statistical power. This is only true, if all studies had the same effect size and all studies used the same research design. These restrictive conditions are clearly violated when the goal is to provide information about the typical statistical power of diverse articles in a scientific journal. Some research areas could have larger effects than others. For example, animal studies make it is easier to control variables, which reduces sampling error. Perception studies can often gather hundreds of observations in a one-hour session, where social psychologists may end up with a single behavior in a carefully staged deception study. The use of a single effect size for all journals benefits journals that use large samples to study small effects and punishes journals that publish carefully controlled studies that produce large effects. At a minimum, one would expect that the information about sample sizes is complemented with information about the median effect size in a journal, but the authors did not consider this option, presumably because it is much harder to to obtain than information about sample sizes, but this information is essential for power estimation.
A related concern is that sample size can only be used to estimate power for a simple between-subject design. Estimating statistical power for more complex designs is more difficult and often not possible without information that is not reported. Applying the simple formula for between-subject designs to these studies can severely underestimate statistical power. A within-subject design with many repeated trials can produce more power than a between-subject design with 200 participants. If the NF were used to evaluate journals or researchers, it would favor researchers who use inefficient between-subject designs rather than efficient designs, which would incentivize waste of research funds. It would be like evaluating cars based on their gasoline consumption rather than on their mileage.
AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF NF AS A MEASURE OF POWER
The problem of equating sample size with statistical power is apparent in the results of the OSF-reproducibility project. In this project, a team of researchers conducted exact replication studies of 97 statistically significant results published in three prominent psychology journals. Only 36% of the replication studies were significant. The authors examined several predictors of replication success (p < .05 in the replication study), including sample size.
Importantly, they found a negative relationship between sample size of the original studies and replication success (r = -.15). One might argue that a more appropriate measure of power would be the sample size of the replication studies, but even this measure failed to predict replication success (r = -.09).
The reason for this failure of NF is that the OSF-reproducibility project mixed studies from the cognitive literature that often use powerful within-subject designs with small samples and studies from social psychology that often use the less powerful between-subject design. Although sample sizes are larger in these studies, studies with small samples in cognitive psychology are more powerful and tended to replicate at a higher rate.
This example illustrates that the focus on sample size is misleading and that the N-pact Factor would have led to the wrong conclusion about the replicability of research in social versus cognitive psychology.
CONCLUSION
Everything being equal, studies with larger samples have more statistical power to demonstrate real effects, and statistical power is monotonically related to sample size. Everything else being equal, larger samples are better because bigger statistical power is better. However, in real life everything else is not equal and rewarding sample size without taking effect sizes and design features of a study into account creates a false incentive structure. In other words, bigger samples are not necessarily better.
To increase replicability and to reward journals for publishing replicable results it would be better to measure the typical statistical power of studies than to use sample size as a simple, but questionable proxy.
_____________________________________________________________
P.S. The authors briefly discuss the possibility of using observed power, but reject this option based on a common misinterpretation of Hoenig and Heisey (2001). Hoenig and Heisey (2001) pointed out that observed power is a useless statistic when an observed effect size is used to estimate the power of this particular study. Their critique does not invalidate the use of observed power for a set of studies or a meta-analysis of studies. In fact, the authors used a meta-analytically derived effect size to compute observed power for their median sample sizes. They could also have computed a meta-analytic effect size for each journal and used this effect size for a power analysis. One may be concerned about the effect of publication bias on effect sizes published in journals, but this concern applies equally to the meta-analytic results by Richard et al. (2001).
P.P.S. Conflict of Interest. I am working on a statistical method that provides estimates of power. I am personally motivated to find reasons to like my method better than the N-pact Factor, which may have influenced my reasoning and my presentation of the facts. | https://replicationindex.com/2016/01/16/is-the-n-pact-factor-nf-a-reasonable-proxy-for-statistical-power-and-should-the-nf-be-used-to-rank-journals-reputation-and-replicability-a-critical-review-of-fraley-and-vazir-2014/?replytocom=715 |
In the past two years, the genome-wide association (GWA) approach to identifying genetic loci related to disease risk has matured from an intriguing concept to a widely-used scientific tool. In a number of cases, novel insights have emerged from initial studies and, critically, have been confirmed by replication in additional cohorts. A comprehensive NIH policy has been developed, setting unprecedented expectations for data sharing. The NIH Database of Genotype and Phenotype (dbGaP) has been established, and already contains a large amount of data from a number of disease areas. For example, investigators supported by the NIAMS to study the genetics of psoriasis have contributed to dbGaP through participation in the Genetic Association Information Network (GAIN).
Initiatives such as GAIN and the on-going Genes, Environment and Health Initiative (GEI) have explored the potential of GWA studies (GWAS) through broad, centrally-managed competitions. The GWAS area is now in transition to a mode in which many GWAS efforts are likely to be proposed in unsolicited applications, and will be considered for direct support by individual NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs). There are many areas of the NIAMS mission in which GWAS could furnish critical new insights. However, the nature and scale of GWAS-based investigations may require the NIAMS to take specific steps or develop new policies to ensure that the potential of this approach is realized in NIAMS mission areas.
Recent advances in GWAS have borne out the need for large population samples, to provide sufficient statistical power for this approach. The design of a study must not only consider the demands of the initial genome-wide scan, but, because initial scans yield many false positives, also provide for the replication of initial results in additional population samples. As a result, successful studies have frequently depended upon broad consortia, sometimes crossing international boundaries. There are clearly multiple paths to successful consortia. In some cases, long-standing professional relationships between investigators have provided the basis for the formation of these groups. Often, seed funding from patient advocacy organizations has proven crucial in developing the patient registries and sample repositories necessary to launch GWAS efforts. In other situations, the NIH has provided resources, and even mandated collaboration, in order to achieve the necessary scale of operations.
GWAS projects in the NIAMS mission areas are in various stages of development. Recent findings in rheumatic diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus ( SLE ) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), have originated in studies of simple case-control design. However, some diseases in the NIAMS portfolio may require more complex approaches to phenotype. Some disorders, such as osteoarthritis (OA), are characterized by multiple subtypes. Specific categorization (e.g., bilateral hand OA vs. knee OA) is required for a well-designed GWAS, but this specificity reduces the number of applicable cases significantly. Both initial scans and replication studies will require rigorous subtype descriptions. Bone mineral density, an important factor in osteoporotic fracture risk, could be treated as a continuously variable trait or, alternatively, used to define cases and controls at the extremes of the distribution. In such areas, considerable discussion and planning are likely to be necessary in order to arrive at optimal study designs.
Research teams are navigating a variety of genotyping platforms. Reliability, efficiency, cost, and availability are important considerations in selecting technologies. Some replication studies deliberately use different genotyping platforms from the initial scan, to reduce bias or artifacts from a single approach. Lack of consistent standards for genotyping and other data gathering at multiple study sites raises concerns about pooling results or replication studies. A single, designated reviewer of information (such as subtype categorization data) from all of a consortium's sites can help ensure uniformity.
Population stratification, or genetic differences from ancestry rather than genes associated with a disease, is a concern throughout GWAS, due to the risk of generating false positives. Although analytical strategies, such as the use of ancestry-informative markers, can minimize these potential errors, it becomes more challenging when replication studies utilize very different racial and ethnic populations from those of the initial scan. Similarly, many initial scans have had predominantly Caucasian patient populations, but some control populations-which may be from the general population-have had more racial and ethnic diversity. These might be hidden through erroneous self-reporting of ancestry, and may generate apparent associations with variants that are unrelated to the disease risk. Some GWAS designs deliberately select control groups from the same geographic region as the patient sample in order to reduce the potential for error.
Control groups constructed for specific disease GWAS are screened carefully to eliminate individuals with the condition under study. The same control group may sometimes be used for multiple studies, and some investigators have successfully used shared control groups to increase statistical power. However, shared control groups may not be suitable for use in all studies, because of differing prevalence of disease subtypes in populations of different ancestry.
Because GWAS generally reveal marker polymorphisms rather than the actual genetic variant associated with disease, attention must ultimately shift to identifying causal variants and understanding the biological mechanisms of their effects. "Deep sequencing," or medical sequencing, reveals detailed information of an entire genomic region. It provides important confirmation of gene variations identified by GWAS, and may uncover variants and causal targets that elude broader mapping efforts. However, at present, it is labor-intensive and expensive, particularly for large populations. In time, high-throughput sequencing techniques may become standard, affordable, commercial services that will be used to identify therapeutic targets. Other approaches to associating biological mechanisms with GWAS results will require multidisciplinary teams that can test specific genetic variants in animal models and structure-function studies.
It will be important to look beyond the initial genome-wide studies, as shared data resources grow and the number of reported disease associations increases. Independent analyses of existing data, testing of reported associations in new populations, and the combination of existing datasets into larger studies of greater power may require targeted support.
Sample ownership and individual institutions' policy differences (e.g., institutional review boards, data sharing requirements) may create problems in these research collaborations. Many projects involving clinical samples grapple with historic informed consent forms which restrict sample use to the specific, initial research project; this issue eliminates their availability as control samples for another disease's study or for replication studies. International consortia also encounter differences between countries in intellectual property policies and database security. Authorship can also become controversial; some collaborative groups agree that the named consortium should be the author, but individual recognition remains an important criterion of professional advancement in many scientific communities.
Distribution of credit in GWAS is important, if not essential for investigators in critical stages of their careers, to encourage participation in collaborative efforts. Junior investigators can be positioned to lead important follow-up studies, particularly for functional studies linked to previously-identified causal variants. However, analytical scientists-many who are pioneers in this new field and early in their careers-may have a more difficult time in obtaining individual recognition. Clinicians, who play important roles in developing and characterizing patient cohorts, face increased clinical duties that leave little time for participation in research. Seasoned investigators are also challenged to juggle the logistics and politics of assembling multidisciplinary teams, in addition to other research duties.
Researchers conducting NIH-supported GWAS are expected to deposit data into dpGaP in a timely fashion. It is an important resource for sharing information with the broader scientific community, which may be utilized for further study, after requests are reviewed and approved by NIH staff. The investigators providing the data retain exclusive rights to publish for no more than 12 months after the data are made available, but many authors have found it difficult to produce significant, high-quality research articles within this brief period. Researchers also encounter disparate views on GWAS standards among funding and journal reviewers, which affect the timely launch or reporting of GWAS.
GAIN and other early GWAS efforts have yielded useful lessons for current and future projects. Steering committees are important entities, for gaining consensus on a wide range of topics, from defining disease subtypes to distribution of resources. Because of the difficulty in changing databases and repositories after they have been implemented, it is valuable to think ahead when they are under development. Although many funding agencies need to impose policies for such projects, particularly to orchestrate large, complex initiatives, overly restrictive rules may hamper novel or multiple strategies in the future. Many efforts have seen success by maintaining flexibility, to take advantage of new approaches in this rapidly developing field. A resource pool (including funding) within a consortium can be beneficial for launching individual studies that make important contributions to the collective effort. Large, international collaborations have been essential to important, recent discoveries.
The NIAMS could provide additional central coordination of research efforts in particular diseases, such as the development or funding of central repositories, or even organize the formation of consortia. It could also hold a workshop to explore different consortium models, or provide planning grants to help develop collaborative groups.
As noted, many NIH-supported GWAS have been centrally organized. However, NIH is receiving a growing number of individual, investigator-initiated GWAS proposals. It is recognized that individual investigators remain the key driving force for NIAMS-supported research. Still, collaborative approaches to GWAS design seem most likely to produce studies that have adequate statistical power and make efficient use of additional populations for replication . Many investigators feel strongly that the current peer review system is successful in identifying the most scientific meritorious proposals, based on the criteria that are essential for good GWAS design. Not withstanding, one way the NIAMS could manage the GWAS portfolio and encourage collaboration would be to require prior acceptance of applications proposing GWAS. Many GWAS applications are already subject to such a requirement, imposed on applications requesting more than $500,000 per year. Advance consideration of proposed GWAS applications could help to ensure efficient use of existing resources, such as data, samples, control populations, and bioinformatics expertise. | https://www.archive.niams.nih.gov/about/meetings-events/roundtables/roundtable-discussion-genome-wide-association-studies |
MedWire News: People with the skin condition psoriasis may have an increased risk for developing cancer, including tumors of the bladder and skin, shows research conducted in Taiwan.
The study is reported in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology by Yun-Ting Chang (Taipei Veterans General Hospital and National Yang-Ming University) and colleagues, who explain: "Whether psoriasis is associated with a greater risk of cancer development is an ongoing controversy.
They continue: "An increased risk of skin cancers in Caucasian psoriasis patients receiving extensive psoralen plus ultraviolet A phototherapy has been reported. A higher risk of lymphoma in psoriasis has also been demonstrated. However, no studies on the cancer risk among psoriasis patients in Asian populations have been reported."
To address this gap in the evidence, Chang's team used a national health insurance database to find information on 3686 Taiwanese people with psoriasis and 200,000 people without psoriasis, who served as a comparison group.
None of the study participants had previously been diagnosed with cancer. However, between the start and end of the study - a period of around 7 years - there were 3574 new cases of cancer.
The researchers calculated that psoriasis sufferers were on average 1.6 times more likely than people without psoriasis to be diagnosed with cancer.
Males and younger people with psoriasis (ie, those aged between 20 and 39 years) faced an even higher risk for developing cancer; in both of these groups, the risk for cancer was around twice as high as in the general population - albeit still low in absolute terms.
Psoriasis was associated with specific types of cancer, including tumors of the skin, bladder, blood/lymphatic system, and lungs.
Based on their findings, Chang and colleagues conclude that psoriasis patients in Taiwan, especially those who are younger and male, are at an increased risk for development of certain cancers.
They say that this is the first time such a link has been observed in an Asian population and note that the findings are important for both patients and doctors. "Dermatologists should be aware of the link to malignancies when assessing the comorbidities of psoriasis," they stress. | https://www.medwirenews.com/psoriasis-patients-may-face-elevated-cancer-risk/97878 |
06 Jan Antipsychotics Raise Risk of Respiratory Failure in COPD
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Meng-Ting Wang, PhD
Associate Professor
School of Pharmacy
National Defense Medical Center
Taipei, Taiwan
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: During the past decades, there have been multiple case reports about acute respiratory distress or acute respiratory failure (ARF) from the use of antipsychotics. Nevertheless, no population-based studies have been conducted to examine this potential drug safety issue. We aimed to investigate the association between use of antipsychotics and risk of ARF in a population of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), who is vulnerable to ARF and frequently prescribed with antipsychotics.
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings?
Response: In this study, we retrospectively analyzed the healthcare claims records and medication history for antipsychotics among 5,032 patients with COPD who had developed incident and idiopathic ARF (excluding cardiogenic, traumatic, and septic causes). We adopted a case-crossover study design that compares antipsychotic use during 1-14 day before the ARF event and an earlier period among each ARF case, and observed an overall 66% increase in the risk of ARF.
Also, a dose-dependent association was found, in which the ARF risk started from 0.25 defined daily dose (DDD) and exceeded three-fold when given more than one DDD. This is the strongest evidence today to suggest an adverse respiratory effect from antipsychotics.
MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?
Response: These findings have important implications to the management of COPD patients.
- First, we urge healthcare professionals to be vigilant about the development of ARF in COPD patients receiving antipsychotic treatment, especially during the initial phase of treatment.
- Second, antipsychotic use needs to be justified given we noticed a high proportion of off-label use in our population.
- Third, according to our dose analysis, high daily dose of antipsychotics with more than one DDD should be avoided, and the risk should not be overlooked even in patients at a dose as low as a quarter of 1 DDD.
- Fourth, this novel finding of respiratory adverse events from antipsychotics should be considered when weighing benefits against risks of using antipsychotics in COPD patients, but patients are not suggested to discontinue antipsychotics without consulting their physicians.
- In addition, we advise COPD patients on antipsychotics not to neglect symptoms of breathing difficulty or respiratory abnormalities and should seek medical help as soon as possible.
MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Response: Future studies are needed to extend our findings. Due to the adopted study design, we could only observe the acute effect of antipsychotics on ARF. It is not sure if the risk still exists with long-term use of antipsychotics. Also, it is not clear if the observed ARF risk from antipsychotics can be generalized to a different population.
MedicalResearch.com: Thank you for your contribution to the MedicalResearch.com community.
Citation:
Wang M, Tsai C, Lin CW, Yeh C, Wang Y, Lin H. Association Between Antipsychotic Agents and Risk of Acute Respiratory Failure in Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online January 04, 2017. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.3793
Note: Content is Not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care provider regarding your specific medical condition and questions. | https://medicalresearch.com/mental-health-research/antipsychotics-raise-risk-of-respiratory-failure-in-copd/30977/ |
Discoveries from the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) have identified a new cellular protection pathway that targets a common vulnerability in several different pandemic viruses, and collaborators at Case Western Reserve University, Boston University School of Medicine and MRIGlobal have shown that this pathway can protect cells from infection by Ebola virus and coronaviruses, like SARS-CoV-2.
Published today in Science, these new findings provide a better understanding of cellular mechanisms involved in viral resistance that can inform future treatments and therapies for viral infectious diseases.
The research illuminates a completely new role for the two genes identified and a unique approach to inhibiting virus fusion and entry into human cells – getting us one step closer to the next generation of antiviral therapies. Researchers used a transposon-mediated gene-activation screen to search for new genes that can prevent infection by Ebola virus.
This new screening strategy – that serves as a blueprint for uncovering resistance mechanism against other dangerous pathogens – found that the gene MHC class II transactivator (CIITA) induces resistance in human cell lines by activating the expression of a second gene, CD74.
One form of CD74, known as p41, disrupts the processing of proteins on the coat of the Ebola virus protein by cellular proteases called Cathepsins.
This prevents entry of the virus into the cell and infection. CD74 p41 also blocked the Cathepsin-dependent entry pathway of coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2.
“Uncovering these new cellular protection pathways is incredibly important for understanding how we disrupt or change the virus infection cycle to illicit better protection against viruses like Ebola or SARS-CoV-2,” said Adam Lacy-Hulbert, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, BRI and lead author on the study. “And our new strategy helps us find mechanisms that have eluded conventional genetic screens.”
The findings illustrate a new role for genes previously thought to be involved in more conventional T cell and B cell mediated immune responses.
For example, CIITA was understood as important for communication between immune cells, but it had not previously been seen as a way for cells to defend themselves against viruses.
“As a virologist, I am excited not just about what this means for Ebola virus, but about the broader implications for other viruses,” said Anna Bruchez, Ph.D., Instructor in Pathology, Case Western Reserve University and co-author on the study.
“Many viruses, including coronaviruses, use cathepsin proteases to help them infect cells. Fortunately, when SARS-CoV-2 emerged, I had recently moved to Case Western, and was able to use their specialized BSL3 laboratories to show the CD74 pathway also blocked endosomal entry by this virus.
Thus, this anti-viral mechanism has evolved to work against many different viruses.”
“We really don’t understand the cellular mechanisms that block viral infections which has limited our ability to effectively respond to pandemics, including this year’s coronavirus,” said Lynda M. Stuart, M.D., Ph.D., Deputy Director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BRI Affiliate Investigator and co-author on the study.
“We really need therapies that can block all viruses, including unknown future pathogens.
To do that we need to find common pathways that viruses target and then develop approaches to block those vulnerabilities.
Our work demonstrates one way in which cells can be modified to do this, and we hope that our insights will open up new avenues for scientists developing therapies and interventions to treat viral infectious diseases that impact millions of lives around the world.”
HCoV-EMC was isolated from a patient who died from an acute respiratory disease similar to that caused by SARS-CoV. However, there are several indicators that the host responses to these two viruses may be significantly different. Several cases of HCoV-EMC infection have resulted in renal failure, which has rarely been ob- served in SARS-CoV infection.
In addition, SARS-CoV and HCoV-EMC do not use the same cell receptor, and there are im- portant differences in their genomic sequences. This study adds strength to the assertion that “HCoV-EMC is not the same as SARS-CoV” (23).
Indeed, even though we identified specific char- acteristics of the SARS-CoV response in the HCoV-EMC signa- tures, HCoV-EMC induced robust and specific transcriptional re- sponses that were distinct from those induced by SARS-CoV, including the broad down-regulation of MHC molecules.
This study is the first global transcriptomic analysis of the cel- lular response to HCoV-EMC infection. Kindler et al. performed RNA-Seq on human airway epithelium (HAE) cells infected with HCoV-EMC (24).
However, their analysis was focused on viral sequences and did not include a genome-wide analysis of the host response. They did, however, use RT-qPCR (quantitative PCR) to compare expression levels of a set of 15 genes, including IFN, RNA sensor molecules, and IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs), following in- fection with HCoV-EMC, SARS-CoV, or HCoV-229E (MOI 0.1).
In our study, we confirm that SARS-CoV and HCoV-EMC induce a similar up-regulation of RNA sensor molecules, such as RIGI, MDA5, and two of three genes of ISGF3 (IRF9 and STAT1) (genes in cluster I [Fig. 3]).
Of note, HCoV-EMC titers were up to 102- fold higher than those of SARS-CoV in HAE cells (24), whereas we observed similar viral replication of the two CoVs in Calu-3 cells. Lower replication of SARS-CoV in HAE cells might be explained by the mixed cell population in these primary cultures, with likely nonuniform expression of SARS-CoV receptor (ACE2).
In con- trast, Calu-3 2B4 cells used in our study are a clonal population of Calu-3 cells sorted for ACE2 expression which support high rep- lication of SARS-CoV. In addition, while Kindler et al. noted the absence of induction of IFN-β at 3, 6, and 12 hpi (24), we found a specific up-regulation of IFN–a5 and IFN– β 1 by HCoV-EMC at 18 and 24 hpi (genes in cluster III) and an up-regulation of IFN– a21 by both SARS-CoV and HCoV-EMC at 24 hpi (cluster I) (expression values for all DE genes are available at http://www.systemsvirology.org).
These data illustrate that HCoV-EMC and SARS-CoV both trigger the activation of pattern recognition re- ceptors but may subsequently induce different levels of IFN. Moreover, there were stark differences in global downstream ISG expression following infection with SARS-CoV or HCoV-EMC; this analysis is discussed in detail elsewhere (V. D. Menachery et al., submitted for publication).
Activation of similar innate viral-sensing pathways by HCoV- EMC and SARS-CoV is not surprising given the conservation of this mechanism to detect foreign RNA and familial relationships of the viruses. We also found that both viruses induced proinflam- matory cytokines related to IL-17 pathways.
It has previously been shown that IL-17A-related gene expression exacerbates severe re- spiratory syncytial virus (RSV) or influenza virus infection (25, 26).
IL-17A was predicted to be activated throughout infection with HCoV-EMC and may induce immune-mediated pathology that possibly contributes to a high mortality rate. IL-17A is known to be produced by T-helper cells, but its expression in Calu3 cells was increased up to 2-fold at 24 hpi after HCoV-EMC infection.
Interestingly, IL-17C and IL-17F, which can be produced by epi- thelial cells under certain inflammatory conditions and which ac- tivate pathways similar to IL-17A-mediated responses (27), were increased earlier and to a greater extent following HCoV-EMC infection (up to 3-fold at 18 hpi for IL-17C and 4-fold at 7 hpi for IL-17F).
Therefore, further study of the IL-17 response may pro- vide interesting targets to limit lung injury (26).
A main difference between responses to HCoV-EMC and SARS-CoV was the specific down-regulation of the antigen pre- sentation pathway after HCoV-EMC infection.
In contrast, these genes were found to be up-regulated after SARS-CoV infection. Several viruses have evolved mechanisms to inhibit both the MHC class I (reviewed in references 28 and 29) and class II (reviewed in reference 30) pathways. While expression of MHC class II is usu- ally limited to professional antigen-presenting cells, human lung epithelial cells constitutively express this complex (31).
Our data demonstrated down-regulation of the MHC class II transactivator (CIITA) after HCoV-EMC infection, a finding that possibly ex- plains decreases in MHC class II molecule expression; this is a common viral strategy used to block that pathway (30).
MHC class II inhibition can prevent class II-mediated presentation of endogenous viral antigens produced within infected cells and im- pair the adaptive immune response. Similarly, MHC class I genes were also down-regulated after HCoV-EMC infection; decreasing expression of MHC class I can attenuate CD8 T-cell-mediated recognition of infected cells and could allow immune evasion by HCoV-EMC. Finally, PSMB8 and PSMB9, parts of the immuno- proteasome, were also down-regulated by HCoV-EMC; these components replace portions of the standard proteasome and en- hance production of MHC class I binding peptides (32).
In their absence, proteins targeted for degradation may not generate pep- tides that robustly bind MHC class I, thus limiting their presenta- tion. Down-regulation of PSMB8 and PSMB9 could counteract the host response to viral infection, including up-regulation of ubiquitins and ubiquitin ligases observed during HCoV-EMC infection (Fig. 3B) that may ineffectively target viral protein for deg- radation. Together, the inhibition of MHC class I and II as well as immunoproteasome construction may have an important impact on the in vivo adaptive immune response against HCoV-EMC.
While there is no proven effective antiviral therapy against SARS-CoV (33), several molecules have in vitro antiviral activity, including ribavirin, lopinavir, and type I IFN, but their benefits for patients are unclear (33).
IFN-a pretreatment of cells has been shown to inhibit HCoV-EMC replication (24), but no direct an- tiviral therapies have been reported. Targeting host factors important for the virus, instead of the virus itself, has been investigated for HIV (34) and influenza virus (13).
For example, inhibiting upstream regulators (such as NF-KB) that control the host re- sponse to influenza virus infection has been shown to reduce virus replication in vitro and in mice (35).
Inhibition of immunophilins that interact with the viral nonstructural protein 1 (Nsp1) resulted in potent inhibition of SARS-CoV replication (36, 37).
In this study, we characterized upstream regulators predicted to be acti- vated (e.g., NF-KB and IL-17, which could be targeted with spe- cific inhibitors) and upstream regulators predicted to be inhib- ited.
The top five inhibited regulators included one glucocorticoid and four kinase inhibitors; these drugs may be able to directly block part of the host response and impact viral replication/patho-genesis. Among them, LY294002, a potent inhibitor of phospha- tidylinositol 3 kinase (PI3K), has known antiviral activity, inhibiting the replication of influenza virus (38), vaccinia virus (39), and HCMV (40).
SB203580, an inhibitor of p38 MAPK, is also an effective antiviral against the encephalomyocarditis virus (41), RSV (42), and HIV (43). LY294002 and SB203580 were also iden- tified in Connectivity Map, a database of drug-associated gene expression profiles (22), as molecules reversing components of the HCoV-EMC gene expression signature. Finally, SB203580 showed promising antiviral results against both HCoV-EMC and SARS-CoV in our in vitro assay (Fig. 4C).
Further extensive studIes, including dose-response tests and tests of other kinases inhib- itors, are ongoing. Nonetheless, these results validate our genome-based drug prediction, which allows rapid identification of effective antivirals. Despite central roles of PI3K and MAPK pathways in regulating multiple cellular processes, many kinase inhibitors targeting these pathways have been shown to be safe and well tolerated in vivo (reviewed in references 44 and 45).
It has been hypothesized that mitogenic MAPK and survival PI3K/Akt pathways may be of major importance only during early development of an organism and may be dispensable in adult tissues (13).
Several drugs targeting JNK, PI3K, and MEK have shown promising therapeutic potential in humans against a variety of diseases, including cancer and inflammatory disorder (44, 45). p38 MAPK inhibitors have also been evaluated in humans, but the first gen- eration of molecules, including SB203580, has a high in vivo toxicity (liver and/or central nervous system).
However, develop- ment of novel nontoxic inhibitors (e.g., ML3403) (46), more selective molecules (e.g., AS1940477) (47), and administration via inhalation (48) are promising strategies for use of this class of inhibitor for treatment of pulmonary disease. Overall, these results indicate that kinase inhibitors could be used as broad anti-CoV agents which might be combined with other host-targeting molecules, like peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor a (PPARa) agonists, to better inhibit HCoV-EMC replication.
In conclusion, using global gene expression profiling, we haveshown that HCoV-EMC induces a dramatic host transcriptional response, most of which does not overlap the response induced by SARS-CoV. This study highlights the advantages of high- throughput “-omics” to globally and efficiently characterize emerging pathogens.
The robust host gene expression analysis of HCoV-EMC infection provides a plethora of data to mine for further hypotheses and understanding. Host response profiles can also be used to quickly identify possible treatment strategies, and we anticipate that host transcriptional profiling will become a general strategy for the rapid characterization of future emerging viruses. | https://debuglies.com/2020/08/29/covid-19-and-virus-gene-mhc-class-ii-transactivator-ciita-induces-resistance-in-human-cell-lines/ |
Context: Large genomic copy number variations have been implicated as strong risk factors for schizophrenia. However, the rarity of these events has created challenges for the identification of further pathogenic loci, and extremely large samples are required to provide convincing replication. Objective: To detect novel copy number variations that increase the susceptibility to schizophrenia by using 2 ethnically homogeneous discovery cohorts and replication in large samples. Design: Genetic association study of microarray data. Setting: Samples of DNA were collected at 9 sites from different countries. Participants: Two discovery cohorts consisted of 790 cases with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder and 1347 controls of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and 662 parent-offspring trios from Bulgaria, of which the offspring had schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Replication data sets consisted of 12 398 cases and 17 945 controls. Main Outcome Measures: Statistically increased rate of specific copy number variations in cases vs controls. Results: One novel locus was implicated: a deletion at distal 16p11.2, which does not overlap the proximal 16p11.2 locus previously reported in schizophrenia and autism. Deletions at this locus were found in 13 of 13 850 cases (0.094%) and 3 of 19 954 controls (0.015%) (odds ratio, 6.25 [95% CI, 1.78-21.93]; P = .001, Fisher exact test). Conclusions: Deletions at distal 16p11.2 have been previously implicated in developmental delay and obesity. The region contains 9 genes, several of which are implicated in neurological diseases, regulation of body weight, and glucose homeostasis. A telomeric extension of the deletion, observed in about half the cases but no controls, potentially implicates an additional 8 genes. Our findings add a new locus to the list of copy number variations that increase the risk for development of schizophrenia. Uncovering the genetic factors underlying schizophrenia (SZ) has proven difficult despite heritability estimates of up to 80%.1 Copy number variations (CNVs) at several loci show consistently replicated evidence for association with SZ.2- 3 These CNVs are individually very rare, are not fully penetrant, and are found cumulatively in approximately 2% of SZ cases; therefore, large samples were required to establish their association. Given their low baseline frequency, further CNV susceptibility loci likely have yet to be discovered. In the present study, we report the identification of a CNV locus at distal 16p11.2 that increases the risk for SZ. Findings pointing to a possible association between this locus and SZ were obtained independently by 2 teams of investigators. During the process of obtaining replication data, the 2 groups became aware of each other's work and decided to combine results from their discovery and replication cohorts. Using high-resolution microarrays, one group (from New York and Israel) examined an SZ case-control cohort from the Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) population, whereas the other group (from Cardiff, Wales) examined a cohort of parent-offspring trios from Bulgaria (BG). Because of the need for large-scale replication, we contacted research groups worldwide who were willing to share raw data from microarray-based CNV studies in cohorts of SZ cases and controls and obtained data from a total of approximately 34 000 individuals. | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/48836/ |
Factors Associated With Mortality Among Homeless Older Adults in California
1. Premature mortality was common amongst homeless older adults in the United States.
2. Factors contributing to premature mortality amongst homeless adults included heart disease, cancer, and drug overdose.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
Homeless individuals have been known to experience more accelerated aging, premature onset of chronic diseases, impairments in cognition and function, as well as mortality. With the increased overall age of the homeless population in the United States, further research discussing factors contributing to their mortality is vital. This prospective cohort study examined 450 homeless adults older than 50 years of age to assess prevalence, causes, and associated factors of mortality. Participants were interviewed at baseline and follow-up interviews were conducted every six months. The results showed that a total of 26% of participants died through the study timeline and median age at death was 64.6 years. As such, an increased risk of mortality was associated with homelessness over the age of 50 years (aHR 1.62, 95%CI 1.13-2.32). After death certificates of the decedents were analyzed, the most common causes of mortality were found to be heart disease, cancer, and drug overdose. In conclusion, this cohort study confirms that premature mortality is common among homeless older adults. Given these disparities that do exist among this population in the United States as confirmed by this present study, further initiatives to prevent and end the growing homelessness crisis is crucial, especially considering the early mortality in this group. However, this study still has several limitations. For instance, given the small number of deaths that occurred in this study, there may have been a lack in power to detect clear factors associated with mortality. Nevertheless, as premature mortality is likely very common in older homeless adults, there is an urgent need for new policies to address the homelessness endemic in the United States.
Comparative Safety and Effectiveness of Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass and Sleeve Gastrectomy for Weight Loss and Type 2 Diabetes Across Race and Ethnicity in the PCORnet Bariatric Study Cohort
1. While patients with Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass had increased weight loss and higher type 2 diabetes remission compared to sleeve gastrectomy, the variability of effectivity was minimal across race and ethnicity.
2. Racialized patients undergoing RYGB had increased risk of hospitalization, mortality, and major adverse events compared to SG.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
While bariatric surgery continues to be very effective for managing severe obesity, various operations differ in long-term safety and effectiveness. As severe obesity is rapidly increasing in prevalence among racialized populations, more research into this area is essential. In this retrospective observational cohort study, 36871 adults and adolescents undergoing a Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass (RYGB) or sleeve gastrectomy (SG) were included. The outcomes examined include percentage total weight loss, type 2 diabetes remission and relapse, as well as safety and utilization among various racialized groups. The results of this study showed that weight loss was more significant in the RYGB group than SG group (mean difference in percent total weight loss in Black patients was -7.6%, 95%CI -8.0 to -7.1). However, the magnitude of these differences was clinically small amongst different racialized groups. With respect to type 2 diabetes remission, only Hispanic patients were shown to have higher remission rates with RYGB compared to SG (HR 1.19, 95%CI 1.08-1.32). Black, Hispanic, and White patients had higher risk of operation and adverse events at year 5 with RYGB compared to SG (HR 1.45, 95%CI 1.17-1.79; HR 1.48, 95%CI 1.22-1.79; and HR 1.34, 95%CI 1.16-1.54, respectively). As well, risk of all-cause mortality was greater in Hispanic patients compared to other races (HR 2.41, 95%CI 1.24-4.70). In conclusion, this large multicenter cohort study shows that there was increased improvement in weight loss and type 2 diabetes remission in patients who underwent RYGB than SB surgery, with higher rates of adverse events observed in racialized populations. However, this study remains limited as it was not able to identify specific reasons why disparities among various racialized and ethnic groups. Additionally, in this study, more Hispanic and Black patients preferred SG compared to RYGB which may have potentially biased the results. Nevertheless, further research exploring factors involved in these racial differences with regards to outcomes after bariatric surgery can be very useful.
Regular Proton Pump Inhibitor Use and Incident Dementia: Population-Based Cohort Study
1. Regular proton pump inhibitor (PPI) use contributed to an increased incidence for all-caused dementia.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are commonly used for managing gastric acid-related disorders including gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), peptic ulcer disease, and for the eradication of Helicobacter pylori. Several countries promote the purchase of PPIs over the counter, and these are additionally often prescribed in hospitals for incorrect indications and long-term use. Given the increased use of PPIs, more research has been conducted exploring potential adverse effects. However, the association between PPI use and dementia has not been investigated in detail. In this population-based prospective cohort study, 501,002 participants from the UK Biobank were followed for their PPI use, and all-cause dementia. Amongst PPI users, the incident rate of all-cause dementia was 1.06 events per 1000 person-years versus 0.51 events per 1000 person-years among PPI non-users. Individuals who regularly used PPIs were at a greater risk for developing dementia compared to individuals who did not regularly use PPIs (HR 1.20, 95%CI 1.07-1.49). In conclusion, this population-based cohort study showed that regular PPI use was associated with an increased incidence of all-cause dementia, which is consistent with prior research in this field. This study had several strengths including its large sample size and extended follow-up period. However, there were challenges with assessing correct dosage and duration of PPI use which may present a source of bias. As well, only 10% of the total study population used PPI regularly and this was not preassigned to participants. Given various clinical indications for PPI use, it is difficult to determine whether other comorbidities contributed to dementia in individuals using PPIs regularly. Further randomized controlled trials and experimental research can be valuable to assess and confirm the relationship between PPI use and dementia proposed in this study.
Transitions Between Degrees of Multidimensional Frailty Among Older People Admitted to Intermediate Care: A Multicenter Prospective Study
1. Frailty status upon admission to intermediate care was a strong predictor of mortality.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
Frailty can be defined as a significant reduction in function and health in older adults secondary to a dysregulation in multiple physiological systems. This can have negative implications for health outcomes such as mortality and hospitalization in geriatric populations. Transitions in level of frailty can be further propagated by hospitalization; however, these specific transitions have not been specifically discussed in literature. In this prospective observational study conducted in Spain, 483 participants admitted to intermediate care (IC) facilities were assessed for degree of frailty using a frailty index (Frail-VIG). Degree of frailty was assessed 30 days prior to admission, within 48 hours following admission, at discharge, and 30 days post discharge. The results show that compared to baseline, most patients worsen in frailty after admission. As well, a higher frailty status upon admission was associated with an increased risk of mortality (HR 1.16, 95%CI 1.10-1.22). In conclusion, frailty status changed after admission to intermediate care, and this was a significant predictor for mortality. Further research exploring various factors contributing to worsening frailty amongst hospitalized individuals could be very valuable. However, this study is limited in its methodology. As the focus of this study was on individuals admitted to intermediate care, these findings cannot be generalized to all hospitalized patients. Additionally, frailty is often affected by other factors including socioeconomic status, race, gender, and psychological wellbeing. The effect of these factors on the participants in study were not discussed in detail. Nevertheless, this study provides great insight into frailty and how it can be exacerbated by hospitalizations in elderly patients, ultimately causing poor health outcomes.
Physical Function and Subsequent Risk of Cardiovascular Events in Older Adults: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study
1. A higher physical function among community-dwelling older adults was associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
Leading a sedentary lifestyle with minimal physical activity has been shown to be associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. However, there is currently a gap with regards to research investigating individual cardiovascular outcomes amongst older adults in community settings, such as physical activity level. In this community-based prospective cohort study, 5570 participants between 45 and 64 years of age were asked to perform a short physical examination with a wide variety of actions and were assessed for coronary heart disease, stroke, and heart failure. After the physical examination, patients were divided into low, intermediate, and high groups based on their physical function ability. Patients in the low and intermediate scoring categories were more likely to be older in age, female, Black, or have a lower education level. The results of this study show that low and intermediate physical examination groups had an increased risk of cardiovascular disease compared to the high physical examination group (HR 2.41, 95%CI 1.99-2.91 and HR 1.58, 95%CI 1.36-1.84, respectively). In conclusion, amongst older adults living in the community, a lower physical activity score is associated with an elevated risk of developing cardiovascular disease outcomes such as coronary heart disease, stroke, or heart failure. This was independent of pre-existing cardiovascular risk factors. However, there are several limitations that should be discussed in this study. For instance, while the physical activity test had various maneuvers and actions that were tested, a positive performance on this examination may not be an accurate indication of true physical activity level. As well, the study population only consisted of white and black adults so these results cannot be generalizable to other races or age groups. Nevertheless, these findings do demonstrate the importance of physical activity in reducing cardiovascular risk regardless of pre-existing “traditional” risk factors. As such, further research into this area, including randomized trials and experimental studies could be valuable in assessing the exact efficacy of physical function in reducing cardiovascular risk.
Image: PD
©2022 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved. No works may be reproduced without expressed written consent from 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. Inquire about licensing here. No article should be construed as medical advice and is not intended as such by the authors or by 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. | https://www.2minutemedicine.com/2-minute-medicine-rewind-august-8-2022-3/ |
Report Reader Checklist: Sample
Information on study participants (i.e., the people who filled out a survey, were interviewed or whose learning outcomes were measured) is usually included in the methodology section of a report. It is important that you look for information specific to a study’s participants. When this information is missing, you may not be able to understand where the results come from or to whom the results apply. In addition, without this information, it is difficult to evaluate whether a study’s results are relevant to other populations. For example, studies with too few participants, participants who are homogeneous or participants recruited through convenience rather than appropriateness cannot be as broadly applicable as studies with high numbers of diverse participants who more closely resemble the general population. The following are important things to look for when you are reading about a study’s participants:
As a report reader, you should be able to easily see who the participants were or where the data for the study originated. It should be clear who was asked to participate, how many chose to participate and the overall demographics of those participants (such as gender, race, etc.) who participated. In the case of existing data, it should be clear how the data were collected and when. Having this information allows you to determine how generalizable the study results may be to larger populations than the smaller sample included in the study results.
In order to assess whether or not the study participants were individuals who were appropriate for the particular study, it is important to know how the participants were recruited or selected. You will want to look in the report to see what specific procedures were used for recruitment (e.g., email, word of mouth, etc.). It is also important to know whether participants received any form of incentive or compensation.
Take note of whether the participant sample resembles the population that is being studied. The population includes everyone that the study is supposed to apply to (i.e., a study about college student learning is supposed to apply to all college students). For example, if you are studying the habits of college students, does the participant sample include an appropriate number of students at all class levels? In order for you to evaluate the study and generalize the findings, you need to understand if the participant sample adequately represents the population under study. In other words, would the results likely hold if all people in the population had been included in the study?
If the report includes subgroups (e.g., participants organized by gender, race, age, institution type or other variables), they are clearly labeled in all places where data regarding the subgroups is presented. This includes the use of any graphs, charts or tables to describe subgroup results. When subgroups are included in results reported, the size of the group(s) should always be included for you to reference in relation to the larger study participant sample.
Examples
- See pages 5-9 for a summary and table with Ns of the credential granting programs in the United States.
b. It is clear how the participants were recruited for the study.
- See page 36 for a description of participant recruitment.
c. The participant sample represents an appropriate level of diversity for the study aims.
- See pages 48-56 for information on this study’s sample. This study recruited a large sample that represented a range of higher education personnel including instructors, instructional designers, and administrators.
d. If subgroups are included in analyses, they are appropriately defined and labeled.
- Data visualizations on pages 11 and 12 clearly label undergraduate and graduate students, and separate sections report results for each group respectively (i.e. some results for undergraduate students are reported on pages 13-15, some results for graduate students are reported on pages 16-18).
- See the data visualization (tables and graphs) in this report for the identification of subgroups used in the analyses. For example, the graph on page 13 and the tables on pages 31 and 33 clearly label whether the percentages presented are for “all students” or for “undergraduate” and “graduate” students separately.
Checklist areas
What are theoretical frameworks?
What are qualitative research methodologies?
What are quantitative research methodologies?
What are mixed methodologies?
What is validity?
What is the difference between a population and a sample?
What is generalizability in research?
Information about a study’s participants, methods and limitations of the research can help you evaluate whether findings may generalize to broader populations. For example, if a report identifies that their entire sample of participants were recruited from one university, that information can identify a possible limitation to generalizing the findings to university students in general. | https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/research/projects/report-reader/checklist/sample/ |
Sometimes, it can begin in the womb.
For decades, researchers have observed that people whose mothers had complicated pregnancies have higher rates of schizophrenia, but no one knew why this was. Could traumatic pregnancies somehow compromise the brain development of the fetus, causing schizophrenia? Or was it the reverse: Did something about the genes that cause schizophrenia also lead to adverse events in utero? Now, for the first time, scientists have evidence that serious pregnancy complications can activate certain schizophrenia genes. The findings have major implications for further research into how certain events in a woman’s pregnancy may change the way her child’s genes behave.
The study, published earlier this week in Nature, describes how a team of researchers at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development in Baltimore looked at a population of 2,038 people with schizophrenia and 747 without the disease. They analyzed the participants’ genetic makeup, looking for the presence of certain genes that are associated with the disorder. Then, they cross-referenced the genetic findings with detailed medical histories of the participants’ mothers’ pregnancies, looking for serious complications like preeclampsia, growth restrictions, water breaking prematurely, and emergency cesarean sections. The team found that among people who carried the schizophrenia genes, rates of the actual disease were five times more common in those whose mothers had experienced pregnancy problems.
It’s important to note that even in the group that had both risk factors—schizophrenia genes and mothers with pregnancy problems—the overall rate of schizophrenia was still only about 15 percent, compared to less than 1 percent in the general population.
The findings raise interesting questions about the interplay between the uterine environment and gene expression. Weinberger points out that schizophrenia—as well as other brain disorders such as ADHD and autism—are more common in males. Researchers have observed for some time that male newborns are less resilient than females. “We think that male placentas may be more sensitive to environmental stress,” said Weinberger. | https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/05/researchers-just-made-a-disturbing-discovery-about-your-childs-risk-of-schizophrenia/ |
Operant conditioning is a type of associative learning that utilizes reinforcement or punishment to teach or modify a behavior. The consequences of a behavior can be used to either increase or decrease the occurrence of that behavior.
Operant conditioning is a learning process in which the consequences of an action determine the likelihood that the behavior will occur again in the future. This type of learning by association involves using reinforcement or punishment to either increase or decrease the chances that a behavior will occur again.
In this article, learn more about the history of operant conditioning and how it works. Explore factors that influence the operant conditioning process, look at examples of this type of learning in action, and consider some ways that operant conditioning can be used in real life.
Table of Contents
How Operant Conditioning Was Discovered
The operant conditioning process was first described by an American psychologist named B. F. Skinner, a behaviorist. Behaviorism was a school of thought in psychology that suggested that all human behavior could be understood in terms of conditioning processes rather than taking internal thoughts and feelings into account.
Ivan Pavlov discovered the classical conditioning process, which had an important impact on behaviorism and was heralded by other behaviorists such as John B. Watson. While Skinner agreed that learning through unconscious associations was an important part of learning, he also noted that this couldn’t account for all types of learning.
Classical conditioning is primarily concerned with what happens before a behavior. Instead, Skinner was interested in how the consequences that follow a behavior affect the learning process.
As Skinner developed his theory, he developed a number of tools to help him study how consequences affected behavior. One tool he frequently used was a Skinner box, in which an animal subject could press a lever to receive a reward. He would then record the rate of responding (i.e., how often the lever was pressed) to determine how well and how quickly a response was learned.
How Operant Conditioning Works
Skinner’s operant conditioning, also known as Skinnerian conditioning or instrumental conditioning, was based on Edward Thorndike’s law of effect. The law of effect states that behaviors followed by desirable outcomes are more likely to be repeated, while behaviors followed by undesirable outcomes are less likely to be repeated.
According to Skinner, an “operant” is any active behavior that affects the environment and leads to consequences.
In operant conditioning, reinforced actions become more likely to occur again in the future, while punished become less likely to occur again.
Reinforcement in Operant Conditioning
Reinforcement is any event that increases the likelihood that a response will occur again. Skinner observed that two different forms of reinforcement could be used to increase the chances that behavior would occur in the future.
Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement involves the addition of a desirable reward or outcome. For example, offering a treat or praise following an action will make it more likely that the action will occur again.
For example, a rat in a Skinner box might receive a food pellet as a reward every time it presses a lever. The first time the behavior happens, it might be an accident. The rat might bump the lever and receive the reward. After this happens a few times, the rat quickly learns that it would receive a reward every time it pushes the lever.
Negative Reinforcement
Negative reinforcement involves taking away an undesirable outcome after a behavior. Skinner utilized negative reinforcement by adding an unpleasant electrical current to his Skinner box. In order to turn off the current, the rats had to press the lever.
Other real-world examples of negative reinforcement include cleaning your room or putting away your things before your roommate gets home, which means you’ll avoid an argument. Removing the unwanted outcome reinforces the behavior (cleaning up).
Primary vs. Conditioned Reinforcers
Different kinds of reinforcers may produce differing effects. Primary reinforcers are things that naturally reinforce because they fulfill some need. This can include such things as food and water.
Conditioned reinforcers are things that become associated with primary reinforcers through learning. Money is an example of a conditioned reinforcer. Because we have learned that it can be used to acquire primary reinforcers, it becomes reinforcing on its own.
Punishment in Operant Conditioning
Punishment involves anything that decreases a behavior. Like reinforcement, there are two different types of punishment.
- Positive punishment involves the addition of an adverse outcome to decrease a behavior. Spanking is an example of positive punishment.
- Negative punishment involves taking away a desirable outcome to make a behavior less likely. An example of negative punishment would be taking away a child’s favorite toy because they hit their sibling.
While punishment can be useful, it is generally less effective than reinforcement when it comes to learning. This is because reinforcement offers information and feedback about which behaviors are desirable.
Punishment can tell someone what they shouldn’t do, but it doesn’t provide any information about what should be done instead.
Punishment can also lead to undesirable effects. For example, it may lead to increased aggression or fear that might generalize to other situations or stimuli.
Schedules of Reinforcement
Through his research, Skinner also discovered that there were factors that could impact the strength and rate of response. What he found was that the timing and frequency of reinforcement affect how a subject responds.
These are referred to as schedules of reinforcement. Two primary types of schedules can be used; continuous reinforcement and partial reinforcement.
Continuous Reinforcement in Operant Conditioning
Continuous reinforcement involves rewarding a behavior every single time it occurs. This schedule is often used when a response is first being learned. It produces a steady but slow rate of response. If the reinforcement is withdrawn, extinction tends to occur quite quickly.
Partial Reinforcement in Operant Conditioning
Partial reinforcement involves providing reinforcement periodically. Some of the different types of partial reinforcement schedules include:
- Fixed-ratio schedule: In this schedule, reinforcement is given after a set number of responses. For example, a reward would be given after every five responses. This leads to a steady response rate that tends to slow slightly immediately after the reward is given.
- Fixed-interval schedule: This schedule involves delivering reinforcement after a fixed amount of time has passed. For example, a reward might be given every five minutes. This schedule leads to a steady rate of response that increases right before the reward is given, but slows briefly after the reinforcement is given.
- Variable-ratio schedule: In this schedule, reinforcement occurs after a variable number of responses. This type of schedule leads to a high response rate that is also resistant to extinction.
- Variable-interval schedule: In this schedule, reinforcement is given after a varying amount of time has passed. This schedule also tends to produce a strong response rate that is resistant to extinction.
Examples of Operant Conditioning
It can be helpful to look at some examples of how the operant conditioning process works. While Skinner described many examples of how operant conditioning could be used to train behavior in a lab setting under controlled conditions, operant conditioning also happens all the time in real-world learning situations.
Homework Incentives
Parents may use operant conditioning to increase the likelihood that a child completes their homework. For example, a parent might give a child a favorite treat once this homework is done each night. If the reward is given every time the behavior is successfully performed, this would be an example of continuous reinforcement.
Reward Charts
Rewards charts used in classrooms are an example of operant conditioning on a fixed-ratio schedule. Once a child fills up their chart by performing the desired behavior, they are given a reward.
Work Bonuses
Employers also use operant conditioning to encourage employees to be productive. For example, employees might be able to earn monetary rewards in the form of bonuses by meeting specific production targets.
Encouraging Behaviors With Praise
If a teacher wants to encourage students to engage in a behavior, they might utilize praise as positive reinforcement. For example, after a student raises their hand to ask a question, the teacher might praise them for following classroom rules.
Applications for Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning can have a variety of real-world applications when it comes to teaching or modifying behavior. Some of the ways that it might be used in different situations include:
Classroom Behavior
Operant conditioning can help manage student behavior in classroom settings. Teachers can utilize reinforcement and consequences to encourage students to engage in positive behaviors such as being on time, turning in assignments, and paying attention in class.
Behavioral Therapy
Operant conditioning is commonly used in behavioral therapies that modify behaviors, either by encouraging desirable behaviors or discouraging undesirable behaviors. Some strategies might include:
- Token economies: A token is a system that utilizes tokens that can be exchanged for a reward. For example, a child might get a sticker every time they engage in the desired behavior, and they can later exchange those stickers to earn a treat.
- Behavior modeling: An observer might watch a model engage in a behavior and note the consequences of those actions. Seeing the model being rewarded will increase the behavior while seeing the model being punished will decrease the behavior.
- Contingency management: This approach rewards people for evidence of positive behavioral change. It is often used in substance use treatment, in which people may be rewarded for showing evidence that they have not been using substances. For example, they might receive vouchers for retail goods or financial compensation if they pass a drug screening.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who discovered operant conditioning?
B.F. Skinner was the behavioral psychologist who first described the operant conditioning process.
How is operant conditioning different from classical conditioning?
There are a number of key differences between classical and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning involves involuntary behaviors and creating associations between a stimulus that naturally produces a response and a previously neutral stimulus. Operant conditioning involves voluntary behaviors and utilizes reinforcement and punishment to modify behavior.
How do you distinguish between reinforcement and punishment?
Reinforcement increases the likelihood that a behavior will occur while punishment decreases the likelihood that it will occur.
Summary
Operant conditioning is an important learning process that utilizes reinforcement and punishment to shape or modify behavior. First described by B. F. Skinner, operant conditioning had an important impact on behaviorism and continues to be widely used today.
Sources:
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Bouton, M. E. (2019). Extinction of instrumental (Operant) learning: Interference, varieties of context, and mechanisms of contextual control. Psychopharmacology, 236(1), 7–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-018-5076-4
Overskeid, G. (2018). Do we need the environment to explain operant behavior? Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 373. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00373
Petry N. M. (2011). Contingency management: what it is and why psychiatrists should want to use it. The psychiatrist, 35(5), 161–163. https://doi.org/10.1192/pb.bp.110.031831
Skinner, B. F. (1965). Science and human behavior (First Free Press Paperback edition). The Free Press. | https://www.explorepsychology.com/operant-conditioning/ |
Although, for obvious reasons, he is more commonly known as B. If, however, the main consequence was that you were caught, caned, suspended from school and your parents became involved you would most certainly have been punished, and you would consequently be much less likely to smoke now.
Skinner found that the type of reinforcement which produces the slowest rate of extinction i. The consequence of escaping the electric current ensured that they would repeat the action again and again. It took me about two weeks to teach her how not to bite.
Skinner showed how negative reinforcement worked by placing a rat in his Skinner box and then subjecting it to an unpleasant electric current which caused it some discomfort.
Punishment weakens behavior Punishment is defined as the opposite of reinforcement since it is designed to weaken or eliminate a response rather than increase it. Positive reinforcement strengthens a behavior by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding.
Watson had left academic psychology, and other behaviorists were becoming influential, proposing new forms of learning other than classical conditioning. It is not always easy to distinguish between punishment and negative reinforcement.
Negative Reinforcement The removal of an unpleasant reinforcer can also strengthen behavior.
Immediately it did so a food pellet would drop into a container next to the lever. The Extinction Rate - The rate at which lever pressing dies out i. It is an aversive event that decreases the behavior that it follows.
Skinner identified three types of responses, or operant, that can follow behavior. The conditioning was very consistent to be exact the times she received the treats was 7: The Response Rate - The rate at which the rat pressed the lever i.
The rats soon learned to press the lever when the light came on because they knew that this would stop the electric current being switched on.
In fact Skinner even taught the rats to avoid the electric current by turning on a light just before the electric current came on. Negative reinforcement strengthens behavior because it stops or removes an unpleasant experience.
She would receive one treat in the morning before school, at lunch and after I got home. As a child you probably tried out a number of behaviors and learned from their consequences. Get Full Essay Get access to this section to get all help you need with your essay and educational issues.
Does not necessarily guide toward desired behavior - reinforcement tells you what to do, punishment only tells you what not to do. Reinforcers can be either positive or negative. Responses from the environment that decrease the likelihood of a behavior being repeated.
Over all my experiment was successful, because now she will take the treat with out biting or jumping all over me just to have a bone. Every time I would give her I would tell her come here, as I reached for the box of treats she started jumping up and down, and when I would go give her the treat she would almost bite my finger off trying to get it.
These two learned responses are known as Escape Learning and Avoidance Learning. Then it started getting easier as it went along because she knew that if she went to bite me just for the bone she would get in trouble or not receive a bone. He called this approach operant conditioning.
More essays like this: Responses from the environment that increase the probability of a behavior being repeated. Perhaps the most important of these was Burrhus Frederic Skinner.
There are many problems with using punishment, such as: By the s, John B. An example is being paid by the hour. A device called an operant box also called a Skinner Box was designed by B. Another example would be every 15 minutes half hour, hour, etc. Positive and Negative Reinforcement Essay Sample Operant Conditioning is a process of behavior modification in which the likelihood of a specific behavior increased or decreased through positive or negative reinforcement each time the behavior is exhibited, so that the subject comes to associate the pleasure or displeasure of the reinforcement.
Immediately it did so the electric current would be switched off. Causes increased aggression - shows that aggression is a way to cope with problems. An early theory of operant conditioning was proposed my Edward Thornlike, he used instrumental learning because the response is instrumental when receiving the reward, another name is S-R learning Stimulus S, has been paired with response R.
Creates fear that can generalize to undesirable behaviors, e.
In the beginning of my experiment it was a little difficult because all she wanted was the treat instead of behaving in the proper manner.Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of UK Essays.
Published: Mon, 5 Dec Within the scope of psychotherapy, therapists employ many different approaches to handling the client’s issues. Operant Conditioning: A Behaviour modification program and whilst shopping by modifying Claire's operant response, the behaviour that can be modified through reinforcement.
Over time, Claire has learnt a new behaviour or operant response, this being the temper tantrums, that has been positively reinforced. Based on operant conditioning, an effective behavior modification program would include a target goal and rewards for behaviors that drive his progress.
It will require a combination of positive and negative reinforcement, and given his issues with consistency, also consist of fixed and variable ratios/schedules.4/4(1). Skinner’s Theory of Operant Conditioning and Behavior Modification Theory: Behaviorism Theorist: B.F.
Skinner The Theory of Operant Conditioning Essay Results obtained during the follow-up period indicated a substantial success for the intervention program. Behavior Intervention 3 Behavioral intervention of a schoolboy.
Operant Conditioning: Positive and Negative Reinforcement Essay Sample. Operant Conditioning is a process of behavior modification in which the likelihood of a specific behavior increased or decreased through positive or negative reinforcement each time the behavior is exhibited, so that the subject comes to associate the pleasure or displeasure of the reinforcement.
Behavior modification is a set of therapies / techniques based on operant conditioning (Skinner,). | http://wyqilocexipyfopy.mint-body.com/operant-conditioning-a-behaviour-modification-program-essay-1528015280.html |
Flashcards in Chapter 5 - Behavioral Theories of Learning Deck (45):
0
Behavioral Learning Theories
Explanations of learning that emphasize observable changes in behavior.
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Social Learning Theories
Learning theories that emphasize not only reinforcement but also the effects of cues on thought and of thought on action.
2
Cognitive Learning Theories
Explanations of learning that focus on mental processes.
3
Learning
A change in an individual that results from experience.
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Stimuli
Environmental conditions that activate the senses; the singular is stimulus.
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Unconditioned Stimulus
A stimulus that naturally evokes a particular response.
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Unconditioned Response
A behavior that is prompted automatically by a stimulus
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Neutral Stimuli
Stimuli that have no effect on a particular response
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Conditioned Stimulus
A previously neutral stimulus that evokes a particular response after having been paired with an unconditioned stimulus
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Classical Conditioning
The process of repeatedly associating a previously neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus in order to evoke a conditioned response
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Operant Conditioning
The use of pleasant or unpleasant consequences to control the occurrence of behavior
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Skinner Box
An apparatus developed by B.F. Skinner for observing animal behavior in experiments of operant conditioning
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Consequences
Pleasant or unpleasant conditions that follow behaviors and affect the frequency of future behaviors
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Reinforcer
A pleasurable consequence that maintains or increases a behavior
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Primary Reinforcer
Food, water, or other consequence that satisfies a basic need
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Secondary Reinforcer
A consequence that people learn to value through its association with a primary reinforcer
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Positive Reinforcer
Pleasurable consequence given to strengthen behavior
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Negative Reinforcer
Release from an unpleasant situation, given to strengthen behavior
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Premack Principle
Rule stating that enjoyable activities can be used to reinforce participation in less enjoyable activities
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Intrinsic Reinforcers
Behaviors that a person enjoys engaging in for their own sake, without any other reward
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Extrinsic Reinforcers
Praise or rewards given to motivate people to engage in behavior that they might not do otherwise
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Punishment
Unpleasant consequences used to weaken behavior
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Aversive Stimulus
An unpleasant consequence that a person tries to avoid or escape
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Presentation Punishment
An aversive stimulus following a behavior, used to decrease the chances that the behavior will occur again
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Removal Punishment
Withdrawal of a pleasant consequence that may be reinforcing a behavior, designed to decrease the chances that the behavior will recur.
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Response Cost
Procedure of charging misbehaving students against their free time or other privileges
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Time Out
Procedure of removing a student from a situation in which misbehavior was being reinforced
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Shaping
The teaching of a new skill or behavior by means of reinforcement for small steps towards the desired goal
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Extinction
The weakening and eventual elimination of a learned behavior as reinforcement is withdrawn
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Extinction Burst
The increase in levels of a behavior in the early stages of extinction
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Schedule of Reinforcement
The frequency and predictability of reinforcement
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Fixed-Ration (FR) schedule
Reinforcement schedule in which desired behavior is rewarded following a fixed number of behaviors
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Variable-Ratio (VR) Schedule
Reinforcement schedule in which desired behavior is rewarded following an unpredictable number of behaviors
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Fixed-Interval (FI) Schedule
Reinforcement schedule in which desired behavior is rewarded following a constant amount of time. | https://www.brainscape.com/flashcards/chapter-5-behavioral-theories-of-learning-1344561/packs/2309017 |
Behaviorism is the theory that behaviors are a response to a stimulus or stimuli in the environment. It emphasizes external behaviors and responses to the outside world as opposed to internal feelings and emotions.
While those in education are likely to be familiar with behavioral learning, it is a way of learning used in many areas of life. Behavioral learning theory has a long history and is significant to learning and in the field of psychology.
John Watson And Behaviorism
Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on studying behaviors that can be observed rather than on internal feelings, emotions, thoughts, or consciousness. Behaviorism began as a theory of psychology by the American psychologist John Watson in 1913. At the time, the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and his student Carl Jung ruled the psychological landscape. Psychoanalysis stresses the importance of the unconscious mind, which can be interpreted through internal occurrences like dreams and past early childhood experiences. In contrast, behaviorism stresses the external—what is happening in the environment—rather than the internal—what is in mind. Behaviorists like Watson believed that if psychology—then increasingly popular but still a fairly new science—were to be taken seriously, it would need to emphasize the study of observable behaviors and data.
Pavlov, Classical Conditioning, And Behavioral Learning
Behavioral learning is a school of study that focuses on how individuals learn and how an individual’s learning can be measured. One of Watson’s early tenants of behaviorism was that humans learn in the same way animals do. This opened the door to some of the earliest animal studies and animal experiments in psychology.
“Pavlov’s dogs” and “Pavlovian response” are terms that may sound familiar. Pavlov’s dogs were the subjects of Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov’s famous behavioral experiments. Pavlov found that he could train dogs to associate sounds with feeding. He calculated the degree to which dogs associated food with the sound of a bell based on the volume of saliva that dogs produced when they heard the sound. This satisfied the behaviorism priority of measuring the response through observation rather than through a hypothesis or theory.
Associating a concept (like, in the case of Pavlov’s dogs, food, or being fed) with repeated exposure to a stimulus (like the sound of the bell, for instance) is called “classical conditioning.” Classical conditioning is one of the main concepts in the theory of behavioral learning.
B.F. Skinner, Operant Conditioning, And Behavioral Learning
Another early contributor to behavioral learning theory was B.F. Skinner. While his term “operant conditioning” may not sound familiar, positive and negative reinforcement components may be. Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement are sometimes confused with “rewards” or “punishments.” While positive reinforcement involves someone receiving something in response to a behavior, negative reinforcement involves taking something away in response to a behavior. Both types of reinforcement can strengthen or encourage behaviors.
A practical example of negative reinforcement involves seat belt warnings in cars. Once you buckle your seat belt, the loud and bothersome beeping noise stops or is taken away. As a result, positive behavior (wearing a seatbelt for safety) is reinforced. In the future, the behavior of putting on the seatbelt may become more regular because of the motivation to avoid hearing the beeping.
Another example of negative reinforcement is that a child might be reprimanded for not doing their homework. When they do their homework, the reprimands are taken away, which reinforces the behavior of doing their homework. On the other hand, positive reinforcement would involve offering verbal praise to a child for doing their homework, increasing the likelihood of positive behavior in the future.
Albert Bandura and Observational Learning
Classical and operant conditioning are forms of associative learning, which involves a response associated with an outside stimulus. Associative learning involves the direct experiences of the subject. However, a later psychologist, Albert Bandura, proposed that a subject doesn’t’ need to experience a stimulus to learn a behavior directly. According to Bandura’s theory, a subject can learn behavior by watching someone else perform that behavior. This process is called “social learning” or “observational learning.”
Observational learning is not completely different from associative learning. The behavior that a subject learns by observing someone else (whether in person or the media, for instance) can serve as a model for behavior. That behavior may then be encouraged or discouraged in ways that are similar to classical or operant conditioning. This may sound not very easy, but it happens in everyday life. For example, a child may learn behavior from watching a certain tv show or observing someone else. This is an example of observational learning. Let’s say a young child observes a tv character being silly and throwing food, which prompts the young observer to laugh. Through observation, the laughter may reinforce or encourage the child’s behavior. The child may decide to throw food at dinner to make the family laugh. If the family does laugh, the behavior may be reinforced further. However, if praise for the child is removed temporarily, this negative reinforcement may strengthen or reinforce the child’s motivation to refrain from throwing food. If the child does not throw food the next night, praise from the parents may further positively reinforce the child’s more appropriate dinnertime behavior. If siblings see the behavior and the positive and negative reinforcements, they may learn about behavior and consequences from their observations, another example of social or observational learning.
Behavioral Learning as an Educational Tool—In and Out of the Classroom
In several areas of life, behavioral learning is used:
Behavioral learning at school: Behavioral learning has been influential in education, especially in early childhood education. Positive and negative reinforcement are often used to teach children how to behave and encourage modification of behaviors. Schools may also utilize observational learning; for instance, a student’s success, other behaviors, and the subsequent consequences, whether negative or positive, are often used as examples for other students.
Behavioral learning in person and virtually: Of course, behavioral learning isn’t’ only used in the classroom. Behaviors and social norms can result from observing others throughout life. Behaviors may be observed in person or, in our increasingly connected world, maybe observed virtually. For example, consider the number of people whose behavior may be influenced by watching how-to videos or following “influencers” on social media.
Behavioral learning and criminal justice: Behavioral learning is employed in the criminal justice system, where undesirable actions earn undesirable consequences. This is an example of operant conditioning. Prisons are also often used for social learning. Legal consequences given to a criminal can serve the purpose of discouraging illegal actions by the public and giving the offender a legal punishment or penalty.
The twentieth-century philosopher Michel Foucault turned the idea of observational learning in criminal justice on its head with his “panopticon” theory. This theory suggested that the average person is so afraid of being observed doing something undesirable that creating the illusion that being observed is enough to prevent that behavior.
Behavioral learning and biology: Operant conditioning is often used to teach lessons, but it is also used in animal experiments about topics like memory and learning. The idea is that if a subject can perform an action that results in an award, it’s’ probably safe to assume that the subject has learned that it can get a reward by performing that action. If the subject doesn’t respond to rewards, it is often assumed that the subject is cognitively incapable of forming connections between the action and the reward.
Behavioral learning and psychology: Behaviorism has contributed to understanding how we and other living beings on earth learn, but it isn’t’ limited to educational psychology. Behaviorists have also contributed to understanding how the mind works, why we do what we do, and adjusting our behaviors. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is one of the most common kinds of talk therapy. In cognitive-behavioral therapy, the patient or client understands the internal and external motivations that drive their behavior, feelings, and thoughts. This can be helpful to them as they strive to develop them to positive behaviors, thoughts, and feelings and work on stopping or coping with the negative in their lives.
Seeking Help for Behavioral or Mental Health Concerns
For help learning to manage behaviors or if you or a loved one has a mental health concern, please reach out for support. Licensed mental health professionals are available to connect with you online through BetterHelp. Online cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as other types of therapy, are very effective. A recent publication looked at more than 350 peer-reviewed studies. It determined that online cognitive behavioral therapy is just as effective as traditional in-person therapy and helps improve access to mental healthcare. Through BetterHelp, you can connect with a counselor wherever you’re comfortable and have secure internet. Accessible, affordable, compassionate help is available to support you as you strive to live your best life. | https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/behavior/what-is-behavioral-learning/ |
Within behavioural procedures, operative or instrumental conditioning is probably the one with the most numerous and varied applications.
From the treatment of phobias to overcoming addictions such as smoking or alcoholism, the operating scheme allows to conceptualize and modify virtually any habit from the intervention on a few elements.
But what exactly is operant conditioning? In this article we review the key concepts to understand this paradigm and detail its most frequent applications, both to increase behaviors and to reduce them.
History of operant conditioning
Operant conditioning as we know it was formulated and systematized by Burrhus Frederic Skinner based on ideas previously put forward by other authors.
Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson had described classical conditioning, also known as simple or Pavlovian conditioning.
For his part, Edward Thorndike introduced the law of effect, the clearest antecedent to operative conditioning. The law of effect states that if a behavior has positive consequences for the person who performs it, it will be more likely to be repeated, while if it has negative consequences this probability will decrease. In the context of Thorndike’s work, operant conditioning is called “instrumental”.
Difference between classical and operant conditioning
The main difference between classical and operant conditioning is that the former refers to learning information about a stimulus, while the latter implies learning about the consequences of the response .
Skinner believed that behavior was much easier to modify if its consequences were manipulated than if stimuli were simply associated with it, as in classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is based on the acquisition of reflex responses, which explains a smaller amount of learning and its uses are more limited than those of the operator, since the operator refers to behaviors that the subject can control at will.
Concepts of Operant Conditioning
We will now define the basic concepts of operant conditioning to better understand this procedure and its applications.
Many of these terms are shared by behavioural orientations in general, although they may have specific connotations within the operating paradigm.
Instrumental or Operant Response
This term designates any behaviour that entails a certain consequence and is liable to change as a result of it. Its name indicates that it serves to obtain something (instrumental) and that it acts on the medium (operant) instead of being provoked by it, as in the case of classical or respondent conditioning.
In behavioral theory the word “response” is basically equivalent to “behavior” and “action”, although “response” seems to refer more to the presence of background stimuli.
Consequence
In behavioral and cognitive-behavioral psychology a consequence is the result of a response. The consequence may be positive (reinforcement) or negative (punishment) for the subject carrying out the behaviour; in the first case the probability of the response being given will increase and in the second case it will decrease.
It is important to take into account that the consequences affect the response and, therefore, in the operating conditioning what is reinforced or punished is that behavior, not the person or the animal that carries it out. At all times, work is carried out with the intention of influencing the way in which stimuli and responses are related , since from a behavioural philosophy, we avoid starting from an essentialist vision of people, placing more emphasis on what can change than on what always seems to remain the same.
Reinforcement
This term designates the consequences of behaviours when they make it more likely to recur. Reinforcement can be positive, in which case we will be talking about obtaining a reward or prize for the execution of a response, or negative, which includes the disappearance of aversive stimuli.
Within the negative reinforcement we can distinguish between avoidance and escape responses . Avoidance behaviours prevent the appearance of an aversive stimulus; for example, a person with agoraphobia who does not leave the house because he does not feel anxiety is avoiding this emotion. On the other hand, escape responses make the stimulus disappear when it is already present.
The difference with the word “enhancer” is that it refers to the event that occurs as a result of the conduct rather than the procedure of rewarding or punishing. Therefore, “reinforcer” is a term that is closer to “reward” and “prize” than to “reinforcement”.
Punishment
A punishment is any consequence of a determined behavior that decreases the probability of its repetition.
Like reinforcement, punishment can be positive or negative. Positive punishment corresponds to the presentation of an aversive stimulus after the response has occurred, while negative punishment is the withdrawal of an appetite stimulus as a result of the behavior.
Positive punishment can be related to the general use of the word “punishment”, while negative punishment refers more to some kind of sanction or fine. If a child does not stop shouting and gets slapped by his mother to shut up, he is being punished positively, while if he takes away the console he is playing instead, he is being punished negatively.
Discriminatory and delta stimulation
In Psychology, the word “stimulus” is used to designate events that provoke a response from a person or animal. Within the operating paradigm, the discriminative stimulus is one whose presence indicates to the subject of learning that if he carries out a certain behaviour it will have as a consequence the appearance of a reinforcer or a punishment .
On the other hand, the expression “delta stimulus” refers to those signals that, being present, inform that the execution of the response will not entail consequences.
What is operant conditioning?
Instrumental or operant conditioning is a learning procedure based on the fact that the probability of a given response being given depends on the expected consequences . In operant conditioning, behaviour is controlled by discriminative stimuli present in the learning situation that convey information about the probable consequences of the response.
For example, an “Open” sign on a door tells us that if we try to turn the knob it will most likely open. In this case the sign would be the discriminative stimulus and the opening of the door would work as a positive reinforcement of the instrumental response of turning the knob.
B. F. Skinner’s applied behavioral analysis
Skinner developed techniques of operant conditioning that are included in what we know as “applied behavior analysis”. This has proved to be particularly effective in the education of children, with a special emphasis on children with developmental difficulties.
The basic scheme of applied behavioural analysis is as follows. Firstly, a behavioural goal is set, which will consist of increasing or reducing certain behaviours. Based on this, the behaviours to be developed will be reinforced and the existing incentives to carry out the behaviours to be inhibited will be reduced.
In general the removal of reinforcers is more desirable than positive punishment since it generates less rejection and hostility from the subject. However, punishment can be useful in cases where the problem behaviour is very disruptive and requires a rapid reduction, for example if violence occurs.
Throughout the process it is essential to monitor progress systematically so that we can objectively check whether the desired objectives are being achieved. This is done mainly through data recording.
Operating techniques for developing behaviors
Given the importance and effectiveness of positive reinforcement, operative techniques to increase behavior have a proven usefulness. Below we will describe the most relevant of these procedures.
1. Instigation techniques
Instigation techniques are considered to be those that depend on the manipulation of discriminatory stimuli to increase the probability of behaviour occurring.
This term includes instructions that increase certain behaviors, physical guidance, which consists of moving or placing parts of the trained person’s body, and modeling, in which a model is observed performing a behavior in order to imitate it and learn what the consequences are. These three procedures have in common that they focus on directly teaching the subject how to perform a given action , either verbally or physically.
2. Molding
It consists of gradually bringing a given behavior closer to the target behavior, starting with a relatively similar response that the subject can make and modifying it little by little. It is carried out by steps (successive approximations) to which reinforcement is applied .
Molding is considered especially useful in establishing behaviors in subjects who cannot communicate verbally, such as people with profound intellectual disabilities or animals.
3. Fading
Fading refers to the gradual withdrawal of aids or instigators that had been used to reinforce a target behaviour. It is intended that the subject consolidates a response and can subsequently carry it out without the need for external help.
It is one of the key concepts of operant conditioning , since it allows the progress made in therapy or training to be generalized to many other areas of life.
This procedure basically consists of replacing a discriminatory stimulus with a different one.
4. Chaining
A behavioural chain, i.e. a behaviour composed of several simple behaviours, is separated into different steps (links). The subject must then learn to execute the links one by one until the complete chain is achieved.
Chaining can be done forward or backward and has the peculiarity that each link reinforces the previous one and works as a discriminating stimulus of the next one.
In certain aspects, many of the skills that are considered talents because they show a high degree of skill and specialization in them (such as playing a musical instrument very well, dancing very well, etc.) can be considered the result of some form of enchainment, since from the basic skills one progresses to others that are much more worked on.
5. Reinforcement programs
In an operative learning procedure, reinforcement programs are the guidelines that establish when behavior will be rewarded and when it will not.
There are two basic types of reinforcement programs: reasoning and interval programs. In reason programs, the booster is obtained after a specific number of responses are given, while in interval programs this happens after a certain time has passed since the last booster behavior and it occurs again.
Both program types can be fixed or variable, indicating that the number of responses or the time interval required to obtain the booster can be constant or fluctuate around an average value. They can also be continuous or intermittent; this means that the reward can be given every time the subject carries out the target behaviour or from time to time (though always as a result of a desired response being given).
The continuous reinforcement is more useful for establishing behaviours and the intermittent one for maintaining them. Thus, theoretically a dog will learn to give the paw faster if we give it a prize every time it offers us the paw, but once it has learned the behaviour it will be more difficult for it to stop if we give it the booster one out of every three or five attempts.
Operating techniques to reduce or eliminate behavior
When applying operative techniques to reduce behaviour it is advisable to keep in mind that, as these procedures can be unpleasant for subjects, it is always preferable to use the least aversive ones when possible. Likewise these techniques are preferable to positive punishments .
Below is a list of these techniques in order of lowest to highest potential for generating aversion.
1. Extinction
A behaviour that had been reinforced previously is no longer rewarded. This decreases the probability that the response will occur again. Formally, extinction is the opposite of positive reinforcement.
In the long term, extinction is more effective in eliminating responses than punishment and the rest of the operating techniques for reducing behaviour, although it may be slower.
A basic example of extinction is getting a child to stop kicking by simply ignoring it until he realizes that his behavior does not have the desired consequences (e.g. parental anger, which would work as a reinforcer) and gets fed up.
2. Skip training
In this procedure, the subject’s behavior is followed by the absence of the reward; that is, if the answer is given, the booster will not be obtained . An example of the omission training could be that some parents prevent their daughter from watching TV that night because she has spoken to them in a disrespectful way. Another example would be not going to buy the toys the children ask for, if they misbehave.
In educational settings, it also serves to encourage that the efforts that other people make to please the children are valued more, and that the children, having become accustomed to these treatments, do not value.
3. Differential reinforcement programs
They are a special subtype of reinforcement program that is used to reduce (not eliminate) target behaviors by increasing other alternative responses. For example, a child could be rewarded for reading and exercising rather than playing a game if the latter behaviour is intended to lose reinforcing value.
In the differential reinforcement of low rates, the response is reinforced if a certain period of time passes since the last time it occurred. In the omitted differential reinforcement, the reinforcement is obtained if, after a certain period of time, the response has not occurred. The differential reinforcement of incompatible behaviours consists of reinforcing responses that are incompatible with the problem behaviour ; this last procedure is applied to tics and onychophagy, among other disorders.
4. Response cost
Variation of the negative punishment in which the execution of the problem behaviour causes the loss of a booster . The point card for drivers that was introduced in Spain a few years ago is a good example of a response cost programme.
5.Time out
Time out consists of isolating the subject, usually children, in a non-stimulating environment in case the problematic behaviour occurs. Also a variant of the negative punishment, it differs from the response cost in that what is lost is the possibility of accessing the reinforcement , not the reinforcer itself.
6. Satiation
The reinforcement obtained by carrying out the behaviour is so intense or substantial that it loses the value it had for a subject. This can take place by response satiation or mass practice (repeating the behaviour until it is no longer appetizing) or by stimulus satiation (the reinforcer loses his appetite due to excess).
7. Overcorrection
Over-correction consists of applying a positive punishment related to the problem behaviour . For example, it is widely used in cases of enuresis, in which the child is asked to wash the sheets after urinating on them during the night.
Contingency management techniques
Contingency organisation systems are complex procedures through which some behaviours can be reinforced and others punished .
The token economy is a well-known example of this type of technique. It consists in giving out tokens (or other equivalent generic reinforcers) as a reward for the performance of the target behaviors; subjects can then exchange their tokens for variable value prizes. It is used in schools, prisons and psychiatric hospitals.
Behavioral or contingency contracts are agreements between several people, usually two, by which they agree to perform (or not perform) certain behaviors. The contracts detail the consequences if the agreed conditions are met or not met.
Bibliographic references:
- Domjam, M. (2010). Basic principles of learning and behavior. Madrid: Thomson.
- Labrador, F. J. (2008). Behavior modification techniques. Madrid: Pirámide. | https://virtualpsychcentre.com/operating-conditioning-main-concepts-and-techniques/ |
Learning that certain events occur together. The event may be two stimuli (classical conditioning) or a response to consequences (as in operant conditioning).
A type of learning in which an organization comes to associate stimuli. A neutral stimulus that signals an unconditioned stimulus begins to produce a response that anticipates and prepares for the unconditional stimulus. Also called Pavlovian or respondent conditioning.
The view that psychology (1) should be an objective science that (2) studies behavior without reference to mental processes. Most research psychologists today agree with (1) but not (2).
In classical conditioning, the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus, such as salivation when food is in the mouth.
In classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally --naturally and automatically-- triggers a response.
In classical conditioning, the learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus.
In classical conditioning, an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with an unconditional stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response.
The initial stage in classical conditioning; the phase associating a neutral stimulus with an unconditional stimulus so that the neutral stimulus comes to elicit a conditioned response. In operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response.
The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.
The tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses.
In classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.
A type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher.
Behavior that occurs as automatic response to some stimulus; Skinner's term for behavior learned through classical conditioning.
Behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences.
Thorndike's principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.
A chamber also known as the Skinner box, containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer, with attached devices to record an animal's rate of bar pressing or key pecking. Used in operant conditioning research.
And operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.
In operant conditioning, any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.
Increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli, such as food. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response.
Increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli, such as shock. A negative reinforcer is any stimuli that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response.
An innately reinforcing stimulus, such as one that satisfies a biological need.
A stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer; also known as secondary reinforcer.
Reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs.
Reinforcing a response only part of the time; results in slower acquisition of a response but much greater resistance to extinction than does continuous reinforcement.
In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses.
In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable amount of time.
In operant conditioning, a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals.
An event that decreases the behavior that it follows.
A mental representation of the layout of one's environment. For example, after exploring a maze, rats act as if they have learned a cognitive map of it.
Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is incentive to demonstrate it.
A desire to perform a behavior for its own sake.
A desire to perform a behavior due to promised rewards or threats of punishment.
The process of observing and imitating a specific behavior.
Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation, language learning, and empathy.
Positive, constructive, helpful behavior. The opposite of antisocial behavior. | https://www.studyblue.com/notes/note/n/chapter-8-learning-and-conditioning/deck/1266997 |
Can some psychologists prescribe psychotropic medications?
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Yes, if they have the proper training
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What are the arguments against allowing psychologists to prescribe medication
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-some argue that clinical psychologists should focus on what they do best: providing psychological interventions and treatments that help people acquire more effective patterns of thinking and behaving -others concerned that the safety and well-being of patients could be at risk if psychologists receive inadequate training to prescribe the medication
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Clinical psychologist
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-has an academic doctorate degree and must be licensed to practice -assess and treats mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders -expertise in psychological testing and evaluation, diagnosis, psychotherapy, research, and prevention of mental and emotional disorders -may work in private practice, hospitals, or community mental health centers
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counseling psychologist
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-has academic doctorate and must be licensed to practice -assesses and treats mental, emotional, and behavioral problems and disorders, but usually disorders that are of lesser severity
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psychiatrist
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-has medical degree and must be licensed to practice -able to diagnose, treat, and prevent mental and emotional disorders -often trained in psychotherapy -may prescribe medications, electroconvulsive therapy, or other medical procedures
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psychoanalyst
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-a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist who has received additional training in psychoanalysis
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licensed professional counselor
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-has at least a master’s degree in counseling, with extensive supervised training in assessment, counseling, and therapy techniques -may be certified in specialty areas
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psychiatric social worker
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-master’s degree in social work -training includes internship in a social service agency or mental health center -most states require certification or licensing -may or may not have training in psychotherapy
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marriage and family therapist
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-usually has master’s degree, with extensive supervised experience in couple or family therapy -have also have training in individual therapy -many states require license
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psychiatric nurse
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-has RN degree and has selected psychiatry or mental health nursing as a specialty area -typically works on a hospital psychiatric or in a community mental health center -may or may not be trained in psychotherapy
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psychoanalysis
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-developed by Sigmund Freud -free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts
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free association
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-patient spontaneously reports all her thoughts, mental images, and feelings while lying on a couch -psychoanalyst usually sits out of view, occasionally asking questions to encourage the flow of associations
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resistance
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-patient’s conscious or unconscious attempts to block the process of revealing repressed memories and conflicts -a sign that the patient is uncomfortably close to uncovering psychologically threatening material
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dream interpretation
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-because psychological defenses are reduced during sleep, Freud believed that unconscious conflicts and repressed impulses were expressed symbolically in dream images -often, the dream images were used to trigger free associations that might shed light on the dream’s symbolic meaning
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interpretations
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-a technique used in psychoanalysis in which the psychoanalyst offers a carefully timed explanation of the patient’s dreams, free associations, or behaviors to facilitate the recognition of unconscious conflicts or motivations -if the interpretation is offered before the patient is psychologically ready to confront an issue, she may reject the interpretation or respond defensively, increasing resistance
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transference
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-the process in which the patient unconsciously responds to the therapist as though the therapist were a significant person in the patient’s life, often a parent -the psychoanalyst encourages transference by purposely remaining as neutral as possible by not revealing personal feelings, take sides, make judgments, or actively advise the patient
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traditional psychoanalysis
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-is a slow, expensive process that few people can afford
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short-term dynamic therapies
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-type of psychotherapy that is based on psychoanalytic theory but differs in that it is typically time-limited, has specific goals, and involves an active, rather than neutral, role for the therapist
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interpersonal therapy (IPT)
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-focuses on current relationships and social interactions rather than on past relationships -based on the assumption that psychological symptoms are caused and maintained by interpersonal problems -four categories of personal problems: unresolved grief, role disputes, role transitions, and interpersonal deficits
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humanist perspective
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-emphasizes human potential, self-awareness, and freedom of choice -content that the most important factor in personality is the individual’s conscious, subjective perception of his or her self -see people as being innately good and motivated by the need to grow psychologically -if people are raised in a genuinely accepting atmosphere and given freedom to make choices, they will develop healthy self-concepts and strive to fulfill their unique potential as human beings
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client-centered therapy (person-centered therapy)
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-A type of psychotherapy develop by human mystics psychologist Carl Rogers in which the therapist is non directive and reflective, and the client directs the focus of each therapy session -Patient implied that people in therapy were sick
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Carl Rogers
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-Believed that the therapist should not exert power by offering carefully timed interpretations of the patients unconscious conflicts -the therapist should be nondirective
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Non directive
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-The therapists should not direct the client, offers solutions, or pass judgment on the clients thoughts or feelings
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Qualities of a humanistic therapist
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1. genuineness – therapist honestly and openly shares her thoughts and feelings with the client 2. unconditional positive regard – therapist must value, accept, and care for the client, whatever the problems or behavior 3. empathic understanding – reflecting content and personal meaning of the feelings being experienced by the client. Goal is to help the client explore and clarify his feelings, thoughts, and perceptions. In the process, the client begins to see himself, and his problems, more clearly
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Motivational interviewing
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-Designed to help clients overcome the mixed feelings or reluctance they might have about committing to change -Usually lasting only session or two, this is more directive than traditional client centered therapy
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Behavioral therapy (behavioral modification)
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-The type of psychotherapy used to modify specific problem behaviors, not to change entire personality -Rather than focusing on the past, behavior therapists focus on current behaviors -Uses basic learning principles and techniques
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Mary Cover Jones
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-One of watson’s students who explored ways of reversing conditioned fears -Use a procedure known as counter-conditioning -First behavior therapist -Pioneering effort in the treatment of children’s fears
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Counter conditioning
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-The learning of a new condition response that is incompatible with a previously learned response
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Systematic desensitization
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-Developed by South African psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe -The more standardize procedure to treat phobias and other anxiety disorders -The type of behavior therapy in which phobic responses are reduced by pairing relaxation with a series of mental images of real life situations that the person finds progressively more fear provoking -Often combined with other techniques such as observational learning
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Basic steps of systematic desensitization
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1. Progressive relaxation -involves successively relaxing one muscle group after another until a deep state of relaxation is achieved 2. Anxiety hierarchy -a list of anxiety-provoking images associated with the feared situation, arranged in a hierarchy from least to most anxiety-producing 3. Patient develops an image of a relaxing controls scene 4. Actual process of desensitization
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aversive conditioning
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-Attempting to create an unpleasant conditioned response to a harmful stimulus like cigarette smoking or alcohol consumption -Generally not very effective
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Operant conditioning
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-This model of learning by B.F. Skinner is based on a simple principle that behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences -Treatment involves shaping, positive and negative reinforcement, and extinction
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Shaping
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-reinforcing successive approximations of the desired behavior -Often used to teach appropriate behaviors to patients who are mentally disabled by autism, mental retardation, or severe mental illness
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Positive and negative reinforcement
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-Increase incidence of desired behaviors
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Extinction
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-Absence of reinforcement, used to reduce the occurrence of undesired behaviors
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Baseline rate
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-How often each problem occurred before treatment began
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Token economy
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-An example of the use of operant conditioning techniques to modify behavior -It is a system for strengthening desired behaviors through positive reinforcement in a very structured environment -Tokens or points are awarded as positive reinforcers for desirable behaviors and withheld or taken away for undesirable behaviors -The tokens can be exchanged for other reinforcers, such a special privileges
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Contingency management
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-similar to token economy but are typically and more narrowly focused on one or a small number of specific behaviors
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Cognitive therapies
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-A group of psychotherapies based on the assumption that psychological problems are due to illogical patterns of thinking -Treatment techniques focus on recognizing and altering these unhealthy thinking patterns -Most people blame their unhappiness and problems on external events and situations, but the real cause of unhappiness is the way the person thinks about the events, not the events themselves
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Albert Ellis
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-Trained as both a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst -Developed rational emotive therapy (RET) -Believes that it is perfectly appropriate and rational to feel sad when you are rejected, or regrettable when you make a mistake
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Rational emotive therapy (RET)
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-Based on the assumption that people are not disturbed by things but rather by their view of things -The key premise is that people’s difficulties are caused by their faulty expectations and irrational beliefs -This therapy focuses on changing the patterns of irrational thinking that are believed to be the primary cause of the clients emotional distress and psychological problems -Therapist tries to vigorously dispute irrational beliefs The-similar to token economy but are typically and more narrowly focused on one or a small number of specific behaviors -This therapy is a popular approach in clinical practice, partly because it is straightforward and simple -It has been shown to be generally effective in the treatment of depression, social phobia, and certain anxiety disorders -Also useful in helping people overcome self defeating behaviors, such as an excessive need for approval, extreme shyness, and chronic procrastination
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Aaron T beck
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-initially train as a psychoanalyst -Developed cognitive therapy (CT) -discovered the depressed people have an extremely negative view of the past, present, and future (negative cognitive bias) -unlike Ellis’s emphasis on irrational thinking, Beck believes that depression and other psychological problems are caused by distorted thinking and unrealistic beliefs
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Cognitive therapy (CT)
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-therapy grew out of Beck’s research on depression -clients learn to identify and change their automatic negative thoughts -this technique has also been applied to other psychological problems, such as anxiety disorders, phobias, and eating disorders -CT therapist acts as a model initially to show the client how to evaluate the accuracy of automatic thoughts -also strives to create a therapeutic climate of collaboration that encourages the client to contribute to the evaluation of the logic and accuracy of automatic thoughts, which contrasts to the confrontational approach used by an RET therapist, who directly challenges the client’s thoughts and beliefs
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Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
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-refers to a group of psychotherapies that incorporate techniques from RET and CT -based on the assumption that cognitions, behaviors, and emotional responses are interrelated -thus, changes in thought patterns will affect moods and behaviors, and changes in behaviors will affect thoughts and moods -along with challenging maladaptive beliefs and substituting more adaptive cognitions, the therapist uses behavior modification, shaping, reinforcement, and modeling to teach problem solving and to change unhealthy behavior patterns -hallmark of CBT is its pragmatic approach where therapists design an integrated treatment plan, utilizing techniques that are most appropriate for specific problems -used in the treatment of children, adolescents, and elderly -studies have shown CBT is a very effective treatment for many disorders -the treatment involves offering patients alternative explanations for their delusions and hallucinations, and teaching them how to test the reality of their mistaken beliefs and perceptions
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Group therapy
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-involves one or more therapists working with several people simultaneously -may be provided by a therapist in private practice or at a community mental health clinic -often, group therapy is an important part of the treatment program for hospital inpatients -virtually any approach – psychodynamic, client-centered, behavioral, or cognitive – can be used in group therapy and just about any problem that can be handled individually can be dealt with there
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Advantages of group therapy
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1. very cost-effective 2. therapist can observe client’s actual interactions with others, which may provide unique insights into their personalities and behavioral patterns 3. support and encouragement provided by the other group members may help a person feel less alone and understand that his or her problems are not unique 4. group members may provide each other with helpful, practical advice for solving common problems and can act as models for successfully overcoming difficulties 5. working within a group gives people an opportunity to try out new behaviors in a safe, supportive environment
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self-help groups and support groups
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-typically conducted by nonprofessionals while group therapy is conducted by a mental health professional -very cost-effective -ie Alcoholics Anonymous -common 12 step program from AA
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Family therapy
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-focuses on the whole family rather than on an individual -major goal is to alter and improve the ongoing interactions among family members -typically, family therapy involves many members of the immediate family and may also include important members of the extended family -based on the assumption that the family is a system, an interdependent unit, not just a collection of separate individuals -the family is seen as a dynamic structure in which each member plays a unique role -unhealthy patterns of family interaction can be identified and replaced with new “rules” that promote the psychological health of the family as a unit -often used to enhance the effectiveness of individual psychotherapy, ie patients with schizophrenia
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Couple therapy
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-therapy conducted with any couple in a committed relationship, whether they are married or unmarried, heterosexual or homosexual -goal of improving communication, reducing negative communication, and increasing intimacy between the pair
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Spontaneous remission
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-when some people eventually improve on their psychological difficulties with the passage of time
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meta-analysis
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-a statistical technique that combines and interprets the results of large numbers of studies -reveals overall trends in the data -conclusion: psychotherapy is significantly more effective than no treatment -on average, a person who completes psychotherapy treatment is better off than about 80% of those in the untreated control group -benefits of psychotherapy usually become apparent in a relatively short time -the gains that people make as a result of psychotherapy also tend to endure long after the therapy has ended, sometimes for years -both individual and group therapy are equally effective in producing significant gains in psychological functioning
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Factors that contribute to effective psychotherapy
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1. quality of the therapeutic relationship. When psychotherapy is helpful, therapist-client relationship is characterized by mutual respect, trust, and hope. 2. certain therapist characteristics are associated with successful therapy. Helpful therapists have a caring attitude and the ability to listen emphatically. They are genuinely committed to their clients’ welfare. 3. client characteristics are important. If the client is motivated, committed to therapy, and actively involve in the process, a successful outcome is much more likely. 4. external circumstances, such as a stable living situation and supportive family members, can enhance the effectiveness of therapy. | https://studyhippo.com/psy101-ch-14/ |
Why is Skinner’s theory important?
Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning played a key role in helping psychologists to understand how behavior is learnt. It explains why reinforcements can be used so effectively in the learning process, and how schedules of reinforcement can affect the outcome of conditioning.
Why was Skinner so important?
B. F. Skinner was one of the most influential of American psychologists. A behaviorist, he developed the theory of operant conditioning — the idea that behavior is determined by its consequences, be they reinforcements or punishments, which make it more or less likely that the behavior will occur again.
What does Skinner’s theory focus on?
Skinner insisted that humans were controlled by their environments, the environments which humans themselves built. Skinner’s main aim in analysing behavior was to find out the relationship between behavior and the environment, the interactions between the two.
What role does Skinner’s behaviorism have in how we learn?
Skinner (1904–90) was a leading American psychologist, Harvard professor and proponent of the behaviourist theory of learning in which learning is a process of ‘conditioning’ in an environment of stimulus, reward and punishment.
What is the significance of BF Skinner’s theory of child development?
Skinner’s Contributions to Child Development. B. F. Skinner, a noted behaviorist, developed the concept of operant conditioning – the idea that you can influence your toddler or preschooler’s behavior with positive and negative reinforcement.
Skinner’s Theory of Behaviorism: Key Concepts
How do you apply Skinner theory?
- Step 1: Set goals for behavior. …
- Step 2: Determine appropriate ways to reinforce the behavior. …
- Step 3: Choose procedures for changing the behavior. …
- Step 4: Implement said procedures and record your results.
What was Skinner’s influence in operant conditioning?
Skinner was more interested in how the consequences of people’s actions influenced their behavior. Skinner used the term operant to refer to any “active behavior that operates upon the environment to generate consequences.” Skinner’s theory explained how we acquire the range of learned behaviors we exhibit every day.
What is the major purpose of operant conditioning?
Operant conditioning (also known as instrumental conditioning) is a process by which humans and animals learn to behave in such a way as to obtain rewards and avoid punishments. It is also the name for the paradigm in experimental psychology by which such learning and action selection processes are studied.
What impact did behaviorism have on psychology?
Despite these criticisms, behaviorism has made significant contributions to psychology. These include insights into learning, language development, and moral and gender development, which have all been explained in terms of conditioning. The contribution of behaviorism can be seen in some of its practical applications.
What are the advantages of behaviorism?
An obvious advantage of behaviorism is its ability to define behavior clearly and to measure changes in behavior. According to the law of parsimony, the fewer assumptions a theory makes, the better and the more credible it is.
What is Skinner’s theory of personality?
B.F. Skinner is a major contributor to the Behavioral Theory of personality, a theory that states that our learning is shaped by positive and negative reinforcement, punishment, modeling, and observation. An individual acts in a certain way, a.k.a. gives a response, and then something happens after the response.
What are Skinner three main beliefs about behavior?
In the late 1930s, the psychologist B. F. Skinner formulated his theory of operant conditioning, which is predicated on three types of responses people exhibit to external stimuli. These include neutral operants, reinforcers and punishers.
What is Skinner’s theory of cognitive development?
Skinner theorized that if a behavior is followed by reinforcement, that behavior is more likely to be repeated, but if it is followed by punishment, it is less likely to be repeated. He also believed that this learned association could end, or become extinct if the reinforcement or punishment was removed.
What is Skinner’s reinforcement theory?
Skinner (operant conditioning). Reinforcement theory says that behavior is driven by its consequences. As such, positive behaviors should be rewarded positively. Negative behaviors should not be rewarded or should be punished.
How do behaviorist think behavior can be changed?
Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable and measurable aspects of human behavior. In defining behavior, behaviorist learning theories emphasize changes in behavior that result from stimulus-response associations made by the learner. Behavior is directed by stimuli.
What is the main idea of social learning theory?
Social learning theory proposes that individuals learn by observing the behaviors of others (models). They then evaluate the effect of those behaviors by observing the positive and negative consequences that follow.
Is behaviourism still relevant today?
It is still used by mental health professionals today, as its concepts and theories remain relevant in fields like psychotherapy and education.
How did behaviorism affect research on the mind?
How did behaviorism affect research on the mind? Behaviorism basically halted research on the operations of the mind and focused solely on stimulus-response connections. Watson did the Little Albert experiment that, along with Pavlov, developed theory of classical conditioning.
How does behaviorism affect personality?
THE BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVE
Behaviorists do not believe personality characteristics are based on genetics or inborn predispositions. Instead, they view personality as shaped by the reinforcements and consequences outside of the organism. In other words, people behave in a consistent manner based on prior learning. B. F.
How is operant conditioning used in everyday life?
A child is scolded (unpleasant event) for ignoring homework (undesirable behavior.) A parent gives a child a time-out (unpleasant consequence) for throwing tantrums (unwanted behavior.) The police gives a driver a ticket (unpleasant stimulus) for speeding (unwanted behavior.)
In what way does Skinner’s theory be useful for you as a future teacher?
Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning uses both positive and negative reinforcements to encourage good and wanted behavior whilst deterring bad and unwanted behavior. Psychologists have observed that we every action has a consequence, and if this is good, the person is more likely to do it again in the future.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Behaviourism?
- STRENGTH: Scientific credibility. …
- STRENGTH: Real-life application. …
- WEAKNESS: Mechanistic view of behaviour. …
- WEAKNESS: Environmental determinism. …
- WEAKNESS: Ethical and practical issues in animal experiments.
What is the most important limitation of the behavioral theories when applied to the classroom?
What is perhaps the most important limitation of the behavioral theories when applied to the classroom? Learning processes such as concept formation, learning from text, and thinking are difficult to observe directly.
What is the greatest strength of behaviorism?
One of the greatest strengths of behavioral psychology is the ability to clearly observe and measure behaviors. Because behaviorism is based on observable behaviors, it is also sometimes easier to quantify and collect data when conducting research.
What are the main criticisms of Behaviourism?
Among the most common criticisms of behaviorism are that it is mechanistic and reductionistic. Critics feel this case is obvious prima facie while behav- iorists find it groundless. Perhaps we can find the key to these opposing views. | https://infobg.net/why-is-skinners-theory-important/ |
- Observation during the interview, with emphasis on communication, interaction, range of interests, repetitive movements, feeding habits, and maladaptive behaviors (aggression towards self or others, tantrums, crying, etc.), observing and recording situational factors surrounding a problem behavior (e.g., antecedent and consequent events).
- Psychometric evaluation of assets and deficits, using psychometric instruments such as:
- Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), a semi structured parent interview
- Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), uses observation and interaction with the child
- Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), used to assess severity of autism based on observation of children
- DSM-IV-TR criteria: exhibiting at least six symptoms total, including at least two symptoms of qualitative impairment in social interaction, at least one symptom of qualitative impairment in communication, and at least one symptom of restricted and repetitive behavior. Onset must be prior to age three years, with delays or abnormal functioning in either social interaction, language as used in social communication, or symbolic or imaginative play. The disturbance must not be better accounted for by Rett Syndrome or Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. ICD-10 uses essentially the same definition.
- Functional analysis of behavior, to identify the contextual factors that contribute to behavior (including certain affective and cognitive behaviors which may be the trigger, or antecedent for the behavior, as well as an analysis of typical consequences to the behavior)
- Operational definition of behaviors to be modified, in concrete and observable terms.
- Functional analysis of targeted behaviors, with topographic descriptions, based on baseline observation of assets and deficits derived from observation processes and psychometric testing (with special emphasis on Onset, Location, Duration, Character [sharp, dull, etc.], Precipitating factors, Alleviating/Aggravating factors, Radiation, Temporal pattern [every morning, all day, etc], Symptoms or behaviors associated, Severity, Progression, Cessation, Periodicity), that is, using a variety of techniques and strategies to diagnose the causes and to identify likely interventions intended to address problem behaviors. In other words, functional behavioral assessment looks beyond the overt topography of the behavior, and focuses, instead, upon identifying biological, social, affective, and environmental factors that initiate, sustain, or end the behavior in question.
- Determine whether or not there are any patterns associated with the behavior. If patterns cannot be determined, review and revise (as necessary) the functional behavioral assessment plan to identify other methods for assessing behavior.
- Establish a hypothesis regarding the function of the behaviors in question. This hypothesis predicts the general conditions under which the behavior is most and least likely to occur (antecedents), as well as the probable reinforcers (consequences) that serve to maintain it. In other words, formulate a plausible explanation (hypothesis) for the behavior. It is then desirable to manipulate various conditions to verify the assumptions made regarding the function of the behavior.
- Development of a behavior intervention plan to address behavioral assets and deficits, based on the functional analysis of behavior, with the following primary goals, objectives, activities, and tasks:
- Control and reduction of aggressive behaviors towards self or others, if required, by use of:
- Harm-limiting devices such as helmets, gloves, face masks, etc.
- Differential reinforcement of other (adaptive) behaviors as opposed to reinforcement by providing attention to maladaptive behaviors
- If required by circumstances and harmfulness of behavioral aggression towards self or others, provide the following consequences to maladaptive behavior (with prior approval in writing of Ethics Committee, of which at least one member must be external to the institution, and all registered professionals qualified in this area of intervention):
- Restriction of movement
- Aversive stimulants, such as a few drops of lime juice by mouth
- Faradic aversive counter conditioning with the introduction of escape behaviors which are positive or adaptive
- Instauration and/or habilitation of adaptive behaviors, with emphasis on communication, interaction, range of interests, repetitive movements, and feeding habits, as per the functional analysis of behaviors, to:
- Initiate adaptive behaviors not in repertoire
- Strengthen adaptive or appropriate behaviors already present
- Generalization of learned responses to other persons, situations and environments
- Options for positive behavioral interventions may include:
- Replacing problem behaviors with appropriate behaviors that serve the same (or similar) function as inappropriate ones
- Increasing rates of existing appropriate behaviors
- Making changes to the environment that eliminate the possibility of engaging in inappropriate behavior
- Providing the supports necessary for the child to use the appropriate behaviors
- Use of behavior modification techniques as follows:
- Positive reinforcement with edible (e.g., M&M’s, non-sugar candy tidbits, popcorn, and raisins), tangible (e.g., paper stars, rubber stamps such as smiley face, tokens for exchange of privileges or goods, activities, toys, and free time), or social (e.g., smile, positive phrase, and pat on the back) consequences for adaptive, proactive or prosocial behaviors
- Shaping by systematic reinforcement of successive approximations
- Modeling procedures by role playing and vicarious learning procedures
- Behavioral contracting with daily, graded consequences depending on performance
- Time out from reinforcement as consequence to maladaptive behaviors (one minute per year of age with a maximum of five minutes in secluded area without external stimuli or social reinforcement)
- Manipulation of the antecedents and/or consequences of the behavior
- Teaching of more acceptable replacement behaviors that serve the same function as the inappropriate behavior
- Implementation of changes in curriculum and instructional strategies
- Modification of the physical environment
- Care should be given to select a behavior that likely will be elicited by and reinforced in the natural environment
- Program of academic instruction, as per the recommendations of specialist
- Program of speech habilitation/rehabilitation, as per the recommendations of specialist
- Provide support from parents and caretakers, peers, and other professionals as required
- Periodic evaluation of behavior intervention plan by:
- Systematic gathering of data via direct observations and permanent products (e.g., audio and video recordings, produced documents, records of interventions)
- Daily charting of frequency of use of procedures and of the production of targeted behaviors
- Reports from primary worker and specialists
- Meeting of stakeholders as required
- Meeting with parents, tutors, teachers, and social agency representatives, if involved
- The point is to predicate all evaluation on the person’s success. Thus, periodic revision of behavior intervention plan until goals are attained, upon:
- Reaching behavioral goals and objectives, and new goals and objectives need to be established
- The “situation” has changed and the behavioral interventions no longer address the current needs of the student
- When a change in placement is made
- When it is clear that the original behavior intervention plan is not bringing about positive changes in the person’s behavior.
_______________
© 2010 Angel Enrique Pacheco, Ph.D., C.Psych. All Rights Reserved.
[i] The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the reproduction, with permission, of excerpts from: Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice (16 January 1998). Addressing Student Problem Behavior. Washington, D.C.: Author. | http://learntolivebetter.org/publications-in-psychology/publications-to-help-you-learn-to-live-better/a-behavioral-model-for-clinical-intervention-in-autism-spectrum-disorder-asd/ |
Behaviorism Psychology Theory, Examples, Images, (Pdf Link)
Hello, learners today I will give you Full Information About the Topic of Behaviorism, Behaviorism Psychology Theory, Examples, Images, (Pdf Link), and behaviorism as an approach to learning with examples.
Behaviorism as an Approach to Learning
Let’s Start From the Beginning. As we know that psychology has different schools of thought that have influenced our knowledge perception and understanding of various aspects of psychology.
- Structuralism: the main school of thought is structuralism through which psychology tries to understand the structure or track listings of the mind.
- Functionalism: which deals with the nature of the mental state.
- Behaviorism: emphasizes the learning of behavior.
- Psychoanalysis: there is another school of thought psychoanalysis that deals with the study of unconscious mental processes.
- Cognitive psychology: cognitive psychology mainly deals with the scientific study of mental processes.
- Gestalt psychology: we have a different school of thought which is Gestalt psychology which emphasizes on mind and behavior as a whole.
- Humanistic psychology: humanistic psychology looks at an individual as a whole.
Out of these schools of thought today I will discuss I’ll focus only on behaviorism, first of all, a question comes to our mind.
What is behavior?
Behavior consists of reactions and movements that an organism gives and does during a certain situation, according to the behaviorist approach nobody is good or bad from birth it depends on what kind of environment experiences and situations one is getting, and accordingly, behaviors are acquired, now the next important concept is behaviorism.
What is Behaviorism?
It is an approach to say ecology which emphasizes that all behaviors can be learned or acquired through interaction with the environment, if we look back into the history of the behaviorist approach there was An article psychology as the behaviorist views it, this article was written by the famous psychologist JB Watson who is also considered As the father of behaviorism in this paper he outlined behaviorism as an objective branch of science he clearly states that it is not scientific for psychologists to study an observable phenomenon rather Miserability and observability of human behaviors are more important, now this concept of behaviorism is very helpful when we take it as a source of learning.
Behaviorist’s views of learning
Behaviorist views learning as a psychological approach to learning which is mainly based on the idea that all behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment, the behavioral view generally assumes that the outcome of learning is changing in behavior and as the interaction takes place with the environment, therefore, external events of the environment also have an impact on individuals learning, it means the kind of experience any individual is getting in a particular environment it affects the learning of that individual.
Basic Assumptions of Behaviorism
Now there are some basic assumptions of behaviorism as an approach to learning.
Points of assumptions:
- Environment plays a key role in the learning of all behaviors: it means whatever learning takes place interaction with the is a necessary aspect.
- This approach is scientific in nature: it means that measurement and observation of behavior are important to point it, and it emphasizes the importance of observable behavior.
- There is a little difference in the learning process of humans and animals this is evident from the many experiments of behaviorist theories where animals were taken to the process of learning and their behavior was modified with the various laws of learning.
Behavior is the result of the Association of stimulus and response.
Now, these two terms stimulus and response are very important to understand if we want to see the association between these two terms
What is a Stimulus?
Stimulus is any event that activates behavior and response is, the observable reaction to that stimulus, so, there are many psychologists other than Watson who had contributed a lot to the development of the behaviorist approach as a source of learning such as –
- Ivan Pavlov
- BF Skinner (Burrhus Frederic Skinner)
- E.L Thorndike (Edward Lee Thorndike)
As per the behaviorist approach of these psychologists, the concept of learning is a process where the association between stimulus and response occurs, to understand the concept of this learning it is very important to discuss the concept of conditioning.
What is conditioning?
Conditioning is a process that occurs in a way when an organism associated a stimulus with the response, this process of conditioning can be divided into two types –
- Classical conditioning
- Operant conditioning
When we talk about stimulus and response Association it also indicates Towards the principle of contiguity which states that whenever two or more sensations occur together and repeat again and again they will become associated, further later on when only one sensation occurs the second will be remembered automatically to make this point more clear let us discuss the classical conditioning theory of learning given by Ivan Pavlov.
Classical conditioning theory
Classical conditioning theory describes learning by associations and helps in learning psychological responses such as fear, salvation or sweating, etc.
Pavlov through his experiments provided evidence of a form of learning based on the repeated Association of two different stimulate, there are many key concepts in this classical conditioning theory.
Pavlov’s classical and Operant conditioning theory with Image
Pavlov’s classical conditioning theory with Explanation
let us understand this theory with the explanation of these points –
Unconditioned stimulus
The first key element is the unconditioned stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus is any stimulus that constantly produces a naturally occurring automatic response, in Pavlov’s experiment the unconditioned stimulus was the food, which was presented to the dog.
Unconditioned response
The next important element is the unconditioned response the unconditioned response is the response that occurs automatically whenever the unconditioned stimulus is presented it means that it is caused by the unconditioned stimulus.
In Pavlov’s experiment meant unconditioned response was salivation which occurs because of the food given to the dog and this process is considered as the natural process that whenever food is given to the dog there is a natural response that Saliva will occur.
Neutral stimulus
Now next element is the neutral stimulus it is a stimulus that is not responsible for the desired response if it is not associated with an unconditioned stimulus in Pavlov’s theory sound of the well is initially considered as the neutral stimulus because there is no salivation in the dog produced by the presentation of sound of the bell.
Process of conditioning
The next important process comes to the process of conditioning which happened during the process of conditioning, The neutral stimulus was associated with an unconditioned stimulus and the same association was repeated again and again which ultimately results in conditioning, So, what happened in Pavlov’s classical conditioning theory, the sound of the bell and the food, the association takes place between these two –
Pavlov rang the bell first and then provided food to the dog so this combination was repeated, again and again, after the process of conditioning, there was a change in the status of neutral stimulus the neutral stimulus become a conditioned stimulus.
Conditioned stimulus
The conditioned stimulus is the stimulus that is neutral at the start but through repeated association with the unconditioned stimulus, it produces a similar response to that caused by and stimulus in conditioning theory the sound of the well becomes a conditioned stimulus when it’s repeated Association is done with an unconditioned stimulus.
Unconditioned stimulus
Now because of this unconditioned stimulus, there is a conditioned response the conditioned response is that response that is learned by the organism and caused by the conditioned stimulus, In this experiment of Pavlov, the conditioned response is this elevation produced by the dog when only the sound of the Bell is presented that time there was no food which means there was no unconditioned stimulus so it was the association between the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response.
Mechanism of the whole theory
let us have a look at the mechanism of the whole theory.
Before Conditioning
First what happened whenever a neutral stimulus was presented there was no response from the organism which means whenever there was this sound of the Bell there was no salivation from the organism.
During Conditioning
During the conditioning, Pavlov was done that he associated neutral stimulus with unconditioned stimulus and there was an unconditioned response that the dog generated the saliva and when this combination of this association of neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus was repeated, again and again, there was a process of conditioning.
After conditioning
It means after conditioning conditioned stimulus which was earlier taken as the neutral stimulus produces the conditioned response from the organism, So this was the theory that emphasizes the behaviorist view of learning through the association of stimulus and response.
Operant conditioning theory
This theory was associated with behaviorism and is given by BF Skinner, according to this approach of behaviorist theory if we need to understand the behavior of an organism it is very important to look at the cause of action and its consequences it is a form of learning in which behavior is changed through consequences.
What is the nature of these consequences?
Nature of these consequences: the main point is that if the outcome is the consequences of any action or behavior are pleasant or successful find in nature there is more chance of repetition of the same behavior by the organism, whereas if the behavior is followed by unpleasant consequences there are fewer or less chances of occurrence of that behavior in the future, here the type and timing of the consequences can strengthen or weaken the behaviors.
The important point in operant conditioning
There are some important points like in operant conditioning behavior is first then on the basis of consequences it depends organism will repeat that behavior or will not repeat that behavior, so what happened in operant conditioning there is a very important concept of reinforcement, so if we want to understand how consequences can help in strengthening behavior we have to understand the concept of reinforcement which generally means “a reward”. A reinforcer is there for any consequences which help in strengthening behavior.
2 Types of Reinforcement
There are two types of reinforcement
- Positive reinforcement (+ive)
- Negative reinforcement (-ive)
Positive reinforcement with example
If we want to increase the chances of behavior or the desired response we provide rewards to the individual whose behavior we want to strengthen so, it is a kind of stimulus which helps to increase the probability of desired response
For example – in the teaching-learning process when we praise the students for good work or for their performance or sometimes we give a prize to the student for their performance there is a possibility that the student will repeat that desired behavior again in the future because of that positive reinforcement.
Negative reinforcement with example
In the case of negative reinforcement if a particular action leads to avoiding an aversive situation then that action is likely to be repeated in a similar situation and the process is called negative reinforcement.
For example – if we sit in a car and do not put the seat belt, there is a buzzing sound which will irritate us until we put on this seatbelt therefore to avoid that aversive experience we repeat the desired behavior, here it is very important to mention that negative reinforcement is different from the concept of punishment which involves in decreasing the behavior.
Punishment
So, punishment is the process that decreases the behavior, again punishment is of two types
- Type 1 punishment
- Type 2 punishment
- Type 1 punishment is a kind of presentation punishment where punishment is given on the occurrence of eye desirable behavior.
- Whereas in type 2 punishment which is removal punishment here pleasant stimulus is removed on the occurrence of certain behavior.
Conclusion
- On the basis of this discussion we can say that behaviorism has contributed a lot in the field of learning, it has mainly contributed to shifting the focus of psychology from the mentalistic approach to behavior
- It is also very useful in shaping the behavior of children and developing good habits among them
- This concept has also proved effective in developing positive attitudes and deconditioning emotional fears
- One of the important contributions to the development of programmed learning is a new methodology of teaching, therefore behaviorism is an approach that is very helpful in shaping the behavior of the organism and gaining the desired response from the organism
So, dear learners in this session we have discussed how we can acquire how we can modify and how we can bring desirable change in the behavior of the students through the association of stimulus and response thank you so much, If you Like this Post Please Share it with your Friends and Bookmark this Website Testbookpdf.com.
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Remember it takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to send a message to your brain that it is full. That is, when a desired behavior is exhibited, teachers frequently respond with a consequence that is likely to increase the reoccurrence of that behavior. A second alternative involves the use of differential attention or ignoring. A child that throws a tantrum because he or she doesn't want to eat vegetables and has his or her vegetables taken away would be a good example. Bushell 1973 referred to consequences that are irrelevant as noise, neutral consequences that have no effect on the behavior. This may also be the case for children who are experiencing anxiety or depression. Deciding to Change Behavior In this phase, commitment to the program is developed and the groundwork for a successful program is laid.
This may be accomplished using the formula provided in Figure 4. What negative things happen if you don't change? Positive reinforcement programs should begin at the level at which children can succeed and be positively reinforced. Some people change easily, but most of us are not accustomed to change or using behavior modification as an effective technique for personal growth. You can provide a list of enjoyable or free time activities and ask the child to rank them by preference. If this is an issue for you, I recommend you set up a computer journal that is password protected. In classroom settings, a student's response to modeling is influenced by three factors: 1 the characteristics of the model e.
Measure the behavior to get precise data for the above questions. In order to effectively analyze the organizational behavior of the, it is essential to understand its components. Surprisingly, this strengthens rather than weakens the noncompliant behavior. Up on knees does not count as out-of-seat behavior. A study that examined the differential effects of incentive motivators administered with the O.
The technology of behavior modification has been applied with success in schools, businesses, hospitals, factories. Work should not be missed due to time-out. Take breaks to reflect and have conversation. The Child and His Image: Self Concept in the Early Years. One rat took part in.
The basic approach I used to change this behavior was to start going to the library more often rather than leaving and going straight home after class. The controlling behavior involves implementing self-management strategies in which the antecedents and consequences of the target behavior or alternative behaviors are modified; these strategies make the controlled behavior target behavior more likely. This project supports all of the Terminal Course Objectives in the course. Don't let a child out of time-out when he or she is crying, screaming, yelling, or having a tantrum. Mod has been found to have a significant positive effect on task performance globally, with performance on average increasing 17%.
Students respond well to short reprimands followed by clear, directed statements. This should be a last effort technique. When students who become bankrupt quickly or who are oppositional from the start are placed in a group contingency situation with built-in failure e. Describe it so an actor could display the exact behavior. If, in the beginning, there is a great deal of inappropriate behavior to which the teacher must attend, positive reinforcement and recognition of appropriate behavior must be increased accordingly to maintain the desired three or four positives to each negative. Select a goal you are most likely to be able to reach.
For example, if you decide to use differential attention for a child's out-of-seat behavior but become sufficiently frustrated after the child is out of his or her seat for 10 minutes and respond by directing attention to the child, the behavior will be reinforced rather than extinguished. Instead, it only focuses on changing the behavior, and there are various different methods used to accomplish it. Ask for a doggie bag to take extra food home. How we learn to change our behaviors and reactions is called behavior modification, and it's accomplished through various different methods. According to Linder 1998 , motivated employees help organizations to be survival and adapt to the rapid changing business environment.
Suddenly, when you are faced with a situation such as the birth of new family member, loss of income, a cheating spouse or perhaps a business partner stealing from you, something must change! If not, you run the risk of intermittently reinforcing the negative behavior, thereby strengthening its occurrence. Does the subject smoke the cigarette down to the filter or takes a few puffs and puts it out? Criminal justice, Language, Operant conditioning 565 Words 2 Pages The management of disruptive behavior problems is a familiar concern for many schools. They may be intentional or unintentional. Over time, eye contact may become reinforcing in and of itself. The Attention Training System is a remote-controlled counter that sits on the student's desk. | http://bagskart.com/self-behavior-modification.html |
Learning theories are conceptual frameworks describing how information is absorbed, processed, and retained during learning. Cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences, as well as prior experience, all play a part in how understanding, or a world view, is acquired or changed and knowledge and skills retained.
Behaviorists look at learning as an aspect of conditioning and will advocate a system of rewards and targets in education. Educators who embrace cognitive theory believe that the definition of learning as a change in behavior is too narrow and prefer to study the learner rather than their environment and in particular the complexities of human memory. Those who advocate constructivism believe that a learner's ability to learn relies to a large extent on what he already knows and understands, and the acquisition of knowledge should be an individually tailored process of construction. Transformative learning theory focuses upon the often-necessary change that is required in a learner's preconceptions and world view.
Outside the realm of educational psychology, techniques to directly observe the functioning of the brain during the learning process, such as event-related potential and functional magnetic resonance imaging, are used in educational neuroscience. As of 2012, such studies are beginning to support a theory of multiple intelligences, where learning is seen as the interaction between dozens of different functional areas in the brain each with their own individual strengths and weaknesses in any particular human learner.
Learning and conditioning
There are three types of conditioning and learning:
Classical conditioning, where the behavior becomes a reflex response to an antecedent stimulus.
Operant conditioning, where an antecedent stimuli is followed by a consequence of the behavior through a reward (reinforcement) or a punishment.
Social learning theory, where an observation of behavior is followed by modeling.
Classical conditioning was discovered by Ivan Pavlov. He observed that if dogs come to associate the delivery of food with a white lab coat or with the ringing of a bell, they will produce saliva, even when there is no sight or smell of food. Classical conditioning regards this form of learning to be the same whether in dogs or in humans.Operant conditioning reinforces this behavior with a reward or a punishment. A reward increases the likelihood of the behavior recurring, a punishment decreases its likelihood.Social learning theory observes behavior and is followed with modeling.
These three learning theories form the basis of applied behavior analysis, the application of behavior analysis, which uses analyzed antecedents, functional analysis, replacement behavior strategies, and often data collection and reinforcement to change behavior. The old practice was called behavior modification, which only used assumed antecedents and consequences to change behavior without acknowledging the conceptual analysis; analyzing the function of behavior and teaching new behaviors that would serve the same function was never relevant in behavior modification.
Behaviorists view the learning process as a change in behavior, and will arrange the environment to elicit desired responses through such devices as behavioral objectives, Competency-based learning, and skill development and training.Educational approaches such as Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention, curriculum-based measurement, and direct instruction have emerged from this model. | https://www.miscw.com/dont-you-think-what-is-learning-theory-2068.html |
Casting is a technique used to encourage learning, especially in children with special needs. It was first described by psychologist BF Skinner, the father of operant conditioning, and marked a milestone in the development of this behavioral paradigm.
In this article we will explain what is molding, also called “method of successive approximations” because it essentially consists in reinforcing a behavior selectively so that it ends up adopting a certain topography and a certain function. We will also talk about some of the operating techniques commonly used in conjunction with molding.
What is molding?
Casting is a framed learning paradigm in operant conditioning. In Applied Behavior Analysis, which was developed by Burrhus Frederick Skinner, behavioral molding is typically performed by the method of differential reinforcement by successive approximations.
These procedures are based on the progressive modification of an existing response in the behavioral repertoire of the learning subject. By selectively reinforcing behaviors more and more similar to those intended to be established, these are reinforced while less precise ones tend to die out due to the lack of contingency with the reinforcements.
like that, the fundamental mechanism of these behavioral techniques is the reinforcement, In particular the differential type. Since the mid-twentieth century, we have known that it is more effective to focus educational processes on reinforcing desirable behavior than on punishing incorrect behavior, both for ethical and purely practical reasons.
Casting is one of the surgical techniques used to develop behaviors. In this sense, it is akin to chaining, in which learning consists of combining simple behaviors present in the subject’s repertoire in order to form complex behavioral chains, such as starting a vehicle or playing a musical instrument. .
A special variation of this operating paradigm is self-molding, in which a conditioned stimulus is combined with another unconditioned stimulus without the behavior of the learning subject influencing the process. Therefore, self-molding is not included in operant or skinneria conditioning but classical or Pavlovian.
The method of successive approximations
To apply the casting and the successive approach method, it is first necessary to determine which is the final drive that the subject will have to learn to perform. Their repertoire of responses is then assessed, usually through behavioral testing, to identify one that may be a good starting point for learning.
More precisely, the objective is select a behavior that the subject can perform without problem and that it resembles the objective response as much as possible, as much in its topographic facet (pi type of muscular movements involved) as in the functional facet; this term refers to the objective or function that fulfills a given behavior.
The next step is to determine the steps that will lead from the initial behavior to the final behavior, i.e. successive approaches to objective behavior. It is advisable to test the sequence before applying it and, if necessary, it is also advisable to review it during the molding process in order to improve its effectiveness.
Molding has been used successfully in a number of different applications. Among the most relevant are special education (such as autism and functional diversity in general), motor rehabilitation after injuries and sexual dysfunctions; Masters and Johnson’s method of treating erectile dysfunction is a good example.
Techniques associated with work
In general, molding is not applied in isolation, but in a broader intervention context: that of the operative conditioning paradigm, and in particular in the analysis of applied behavior, which was developed by Skinner and in which many operating techniques which we now know arose originally. This was based on the association of certain actions with the stimuli produced by the effects that this behavior has on its application to the environment.
To improve the efficiency of the successive approximation method, this usually combined with other procedures. In this sense, it is necessary to emphasize the application of discriminatory stimuli that inform the subject that if he emits the correct conduct will obtain a strengthening and gradual attenuation of these.
The ultimate goal is that the target behavior is controlled by natural reinforcements, such as social behaviors (like smiles and even attentive looks), and not by discriminatory stimuli, which are a good way to develop behaviors, but not to keep them. This process can be referred to as “stimulus control transfer”.
Other exploitation techniques often associated with molding are modeling, Which involves learning by observing the behavior of others, verbal instructions and physical advice, which would be given when a psychologist moves the hands of the child she is helping to educate to instruct her on how to use a zipper. | https://psychologysays.net/psychology/casting-or-successive-approach-method-uses-and-characteristics/ |
What is a psychiatrist?
a medical doctor (M.D.) who can prescribe medicine and perform surgery
These individuals have their Ph.D. or Psy.D. and treat patients using a variety of therapeutic approaches.
clinical psychologists
Counseling psychologists have earned a Ph.D., Ed.D., Psy.D., or M.A. and deal with what types of issues?
Counseling psychologists deal with less severe mental health problems, including marital therapy.
What type of mental health practitioners follow the teaching of Sigmund Freud?
psychoanalysts
What type of degree do social workers typically hold?
Social workers must earn their Master's degree in social work (M.S.W.).
What current approach is most similar to the beliefs of ancient Greeks, such as Hippocrates and Galen?
biological
2000 years ago, Greek physicians believed psychological problems had physical causes.
deinstitutionalization
a 1950s movement which relocated nonthreatening patients from mental hospitals to community centers
What was the main consequence of deinstitutionalization?
Deinstitutionalization created an increase in the homeless population.
The process of __________ synthesizes the results of several research studies about the same variables.
meta-analysis
psychotherapy
therapy that treats the mind, not the body
__________ therapies help clients become self-aware of their problems in order to change behavior.
Insight
List the five types of insight therapy.
- psychoanalysis
- psychodynamic therapy
- interpersonal psychotherapy
- humanistic client-centered therapy
- Gestalt therapy
According to the psychoanalytic approach, where does abnormal behavior come from?
unconscious internal conflict and early childhood trauma
What is the goal of psychoanalysis?
to give the patient insight by bringing their conflicts into the conscious mind
Describe traits of traditional psychoanalysis.
- several meetings a week for years
- therapist is not visible to client
- free association
- dream interpretation
Asking the patient to say whatever comes to mind without censoring is asking the patient to engage in a psychoanalytic technique called __________.
free association
Define manifest content as it relates to psychoanalysis.
surface information recalled about a dream
Define latent content as it relates to psychoanalysis.
hidden, underlying meaning of content in dreams
In psychoanalytic dream interpretation, the surface information is called the __________ content, while the hidden, underlying meaning is termed the __________ content.
manifest; latent
Define resistance as it relates to psychoanalysis.
Resistance is the blocking of feelings or experiences that provoke anxiety.
Projecting emotional feelings onto the psychoanalyst is known as __________.
transference
Define countertransference as it relates to psychoanalysis.
psychoanalyst projects emotional feelings onto the patient
Define catharsis as it relates to psychoanalysis.
the release of emotional tension and anxiety after reliving an emotionally charged experience
How does psychodynamic therapy compare with psychoanalysis?
Psychodynamic therapy:
- is shorter in duration
- occurs less frequently
- invovles the client facing the therapist
- does not stress the importance of childhood trauma
What type of therapy aims to relieve present symptoms by focusing on the patient's current situation?
interpersonal psychotherapy
According to the humanistic approach, where does abnormal behavior come from?
external factors have affected the patient's ability to grow emotionally
What is the goal of humanistic therapy?
to reduce the difference between the ideal self and the real self
Define self-actualization as it relates to humanistic therapy.
the process of fulfilling one's individual potential
Explain how humanistic therapy is non-directive.
Humanistic therapy is client-centered. Non-directive therapy encourages the client to control the therapeutic route.
Define active listening as it relates to humanistic therapy.
Active listening involves echoing, restating, and clarifying what the client says and does.
Define accurate empathic understanding as it relates to humanistic therapy.
therapists try to view the world through the eyes of the client
Humanistic therapy provides an atmosphere of acceptance, known as __________.
unconditional positive regard
Who invented client-centered therapy?
Carl Rogers
The emphasis on organizing the world in a meaningful way is a principle of __________ psychology.
Gestalt
Describe traits of traditional Gestalt therapy.
-
directive questioning
-
discarding of feelings that lack personal meaning
-
dream interpretation
-
present behavior, feelings, and thoughts
Who created Gestalt therapy?
Fritz Perls
Sigmund Freud is to psychoanalysis as __________ is to behavioral therapy.
B.F. Skinner
According to the behavioral approach, where does abnormal behavior come from?
reinforcement of maladaptive behavior
What is the goal of behavior therapy?
to replace unwanted behavior with adaptive behavior
How does classical conditioning treat abnormal behavior?
process of creating associations between neutral stimuli and desired responses
Describe the classical conditioning experiment with Little Albert.
-
conditioned a nine-month-old baby named Albert to fear a rat
-
Albert wouldn't cry from the sight of the rat, but cried from loud noise
-
loud noise was played when Baby Albert reached for the rat
-
Albert eventually cried at sight of the rat
List three types of classical conditioning.
-
systematic desensitization
-
flooding
-
aversive conditioning
Systematic desensitization, developed by Joseph Wolpe, is a step-by-step type of classical conditioning that associates feared stimuli with __________.
relaxation
What is an anxiety hierarchy?
a rank of fears associated with a stimulus from least-feared to most-feared
Example:
- thinking about a spider
- seeing a picture of a spider
- touching a toy spider
- being in the same room as a real spider
- touching a real spider
Define flooding as it relates to classical conditioning.
-
exposure technique used to eliminate phobias and anxiety issues
-
patient directly confronts the stimulus they fear
In an attempt to stop drinking, you take a pill that makes you nauseous only when there is alcohol in your system.
aversive conditioning
counterconditioning
-
replacing undesired conditioned responses with desired responses
-
type of classical conditioning
-
developed by Mary Cover Jones
operant conditioning
rewards are used to reinforce target behavior
List two examples of operant conditioning.
-
behavior modification
-
token economies
small steps are rewarded until the intended goal is achieved
behavior modification
desired behaviors are rewarded with symbolic secondary reinforcers that can be exchanged for valued objects, such as food or money
token economy
Social skills training helps people get readjusted to society. List the three steps involved.
-
modeling
-
rehearsal
-
shaping
Define modeling as it relates to social skills training.
observing socially skilled people to learn acceptable behavior
Define rehearsal as it relates to social skills training.
practicing appropriate behavior through role-playing
Define shaping as it relates to social skills training.
reinforcing and giving feedback about behavior
According to the cognitive approach, where does abnormal behavior come from?
irrational and flawed thought patterns
What is the goal of cognitive therapy?
cognitive restructuring, or the process of correcting faulty thoughts and replacing them with positive, realistic thoughts
In Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), treatment involves confronting absurd thoughts about the client's ABCs.
What are the ABCs?
-
actions
-
beliefs about actions
-
consequences of beliefs
What is the tyranny of the "shoulds" and how do cognitive therapists treat it?
-
Individuals engage in absurd or unrealistic behavior because they believe they must
-
Therapists challenge the client's belief so in defending it, he or she will recognize the absurdity
__________ created Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, while __________ developed the cognitive triad.
Albert Ellis; Aaron Beck
The cognitive triad examines what a person thinks about his or her __________, __________, and __________.
self; world; future
How does Martin Seligman relate the cognitive triad to depression?
Individuals with depression believe they caused the negative events, the events will affect everything they do, and will last forever.
Define dichotomous thinking as it relates to cognitive therapy.
-
creating all-or-none conceptions of scenarios
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maladaptive schema
Define arbitrary inferences as they relate to cognitive therapy.
-
conclusion drawn without evidence
-
maladaptive schema
According to the biological approach, where does abnormal behavior come from?
a chemical imbalance of hormones or neurotransmitters; possibly genetic
What is the goal of psychopharmacotherapy?
Psychotropic drugs are used to restore chemical balance and treat mental disorders.
What do psychopharmacologists do to counter the effects of drug tolerance?
It is necessary to supplement biomedical treatment with therapy if a patient builds a tolerance to the drug.
List the four types of psychotropic drugs.
-
anxiolytics
-
antidepressants
-
stimulants
-
neuroleptics
anxiolytics
tranquilizers and antianxiety drugs that contain benzodiazepines, which increase the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA
anxiolytics
-
Valium
-
Xanax
-
BuSpar
-
Librium
What disorders are anxiolytics used to treat?
-
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
-
panic disorder
-
generalized anxiety disorder
-
agoraphobia
antidepressants
elevate mood by making monoamine neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine more available
antidepressants
-
monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)
-
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
-
Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro
- Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro
What disorders are antidepressants used to treat?
-
major depression
-
obsessive-compulsive disorder
-
panic disorder
-
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
-
seizures
stimulants
psychoactive drugs that increase activity of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine
stimulants
-
Ritalin
-
Dexedrine
What disorders are stimulants used to treat?
-
narcolepsy
-
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
neuroleptics
antipsychotics that reduce psychological tension, stop hallucinations and delusions, improve sleep, and produce appropriate behavior by blocking dopamine receptors
neuroleptics
-
Thorazine
-
Haldol
-
Clozaril
What disorders are neuroleptics used to treat?
-
schizophrenia
-
psychosis
What drug is used to treat bipolar disorder?
lithium carbonate
What are the symptoms of tardive dyskinesia?
Tardive dyskinesia, a possible symptom of neuroleptics, leaves people with difficulty walking and involuntary muscle spasms.
Define electroconvulsive shock treatment (ECT) as it relates to psychopharmacotherapy.
Patients, while under anesthesia, receive an electric shock. Sometimes causing temporary memory loss, ECT is a last resort for treating major depression.
How is repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) different from electroconvulsive shock treatment?
Although both procedures treat depression, rTMS is:
- painless
- pulses travel through magnetic coil attached to area above right eyebrow
- given daily
What is a prefrontal lobotomy?
-
popular during 1935-1955
-
psychosurgery (removal of brain tissue)
-
cut neural tracts connecting lower brain regions to frontal lobes
-
treat violent schizophrenia
-
patients left impassive
List examples of issues community psychologists help clients cope with.
-
unemployment
-
poverty
-
well-baby care
-
suicide prevention
-
sexual health
-
child abuse prevention
List four advantages of group therapy, as compared with individual therapy.
-
meet people with similar issues
-
less verbal patients can open up
-
input from both therapist and other group members
-
cheaper
What is the main goal of both couples and family therapy?
improving communication in relationships
A peer support group where sessions are led by the group members themselves is known as a __________.
self-help group
Name an example of a self-help group. | https://m.brainscape.com/flashcards/treatment-of-abnormal-behavior-17262/packs/98097 |
Behavioral Issues Counseling
A behavioral change can be a temporary or permanent effect that is considered a change in an individual’s behavior when compared to previous behavior. It is sometimes considered a mental health issue, yet it is also a strategy used to improve such issues. Behavior change can refer to any transformation or modification of human behavior.
Five stages of change have been identified for a variety of problem behaviors.The five stages of change are precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. The theories of change support interventions by describing how behaviors develop and change over time.
Behavior Modification
Behavior modification is a treatment approach that replaces undesirable behaviors with more desirable ones by using the principles of reinforcement. Behavior is modified with consequences, including positive and negative reinforcement to increase desirable behavior, or administering positive and negative punishment to reduce problematic behavior.
Behavior Management
Similar to behavior modification, behavior management is a less-intensive form of behavior therapy. Unlike behavior modification, which focuses on changing behavior, behavior management focuses on maintaining positive habits and behaviors and reducing negative ones. This form of management aims to help professionals oversee and guide behavior management in individuals and groups toward fulfilling, productive, and socially acceptable behaviors. Behavior management can be accomplished through modeling, rewards, or punishment.
Examples of Behavior Change
Reducing drinking. Reduction in stress, anxiety, depression and increasing a sense of subjective well-being. Increasing physical activity and exercise. Improving nutrition. Change is a complex and often challenging process but can be accomplished with motivation, support, and an individualized plan to make the changes. | https://www.qualitylifecenter.com/counseling-services/behavioral-issues/ |
# Punishment (psychology)
In operant conditioning, punishment is any change in a human or animal's surroundings which, occurring after a given behavior or response, reduces the likelihood of that behavior occurring again in the future. As with reinforcement, it is the behavior, not the human/animal, that is punished. Whether a change is or is not punishing is determined by its effect on the rate that the behavior occurs. This is called motivating operations (MO), because they alter the effectiveness of a stimulus. MO can be categorized in abolishing operations, decrease the effectiveness of the stimuli and establishing, increase the effectiveness of the stimuli. For example, a painful stimulus which would act as a punisher for most people may actually reinforce some behaviors of masochistic individuals.
There are two types of punishment, positive and negative. Positive punishment involves the introduction of a stimulus to decrease behavior while negative punishment involves the removal of a stimulus to decrease behavior. While similar to reinforcement, punishment's goal is to decrease behaviors while reinforcement's goal is to increase behaviors. Different kinds of stimuli exist as well. There are rewarding stimuli which are considered pleasant and aversive stimuli, which are considered unpleasant. There are also two types of punishers. There are primary punishers which directly affect the individual such as pain and are a natural response and then there are secondary punishers which are things that are learned to be negative like a buzzing sound when getting an answer wrong on a game show.
Conflicting findings have been found on the effectiveness of the use of punishment. Some have found that punishment can be a useful tool in suppressing behavior while some have found it to have a weak effect on suppressing behavior. Punishment can also lead to lasting negative unintended side effects as well. Punishment has been found to be effective in countries that are wealthy, high in trust, cooperation, and democracy.
Punishment has been used in a lot of different applications. Punishment has been used in applied behavioral analysis, specifically in situations to try and punish dangerous behaviors like head banging. Punishment has also been used to psychologically manipulate individuals to gain control over victims. It has also been used in scenarios where an abuser may try punishment in order to traumatically bond their victim with them. Stuttering therapy has also seen the use of punishment with effective results. Certain punishment techniques have been effective in children with disabilities, such as autism and intellectual disabilities.
## Types
There are two basic types of punishment in operant conditioning:
positive punishment, punishment by application, or type I punishment, an experimenter punishes a response by presenting an aversive stimulus into the animal's surroundings (a brief electric shock, for example). negative punishment, punishment by removal, or type II punishment, a valued, appetitive stimulus is removed (as in the removal of a feeding dish). As with reinforcement, it is not usually necessary to speak of positive and negative in regard to punishment.
Punishment is not a mirror effect of reinforcement. In experiments with laboratory animals and studies with children, punishment decreases the likelihood of a previously reinforced response only temporarily, and it can produce other "emotional" behavior (wing-flapping in pigeons, for example) and physiological changes (increased heart rate, for example) that have no clear equivalents in reinforcement.
Punishment is considered by some behavioral psychologists to be a "primary process" – a completely independent phenomenon of learning, distinct from reinforcement. Others see it as a category of negative reinforcement, creating a situation in which any punishment-avoiding behavior (even standing still) is reinforced.
### Positive
Positive punishment occurs when a response produces a stimulus and that response decreases in probability in the future in similar circumstances.
Example: A mother yells at a child when he or she runs into the street. If the child stops running into the street, the yelling ceases. The yelling acts as positive punishment because the mother presents (adds) an unpleasant stimulus in the form of yelling. Example: A barefoot person walks onto a hot asphalt surface, creating pain, a positive punishment. When the person leaves the asphalt, the pain subsides. The pain acts as positive punishment because it is the addition of an unpleasant stimulus that reduces the future likelihood of the person walking barefoot on a hot surface.
### Negative
Negative punishment occurs when a response produces the removal of a stimulus and that response decreases in probability in the future in similar circumstances.
Example: A teenager comes home after curfew and the parents take away a privilege, such as cell phone usage. If the frequency of the child coming home late decreases, the privilege is gradually restored. The removal of the phone is negative punishment because the parents are taking away a pleasant stimulus (the phone) and motivating the child to return home earlier. Example: A child throws a temper tantrum because they want ice cream. Their mother subsequently ignores them, making it less likely the child will throw a temper tantrum in the future when they want something. The removal of attention from his mother is a negative punishment because a pleasant stimulus (attention) is taken away.
## Versus reinforcement
Simply put, reinforcers serve to increase behaviors whereas punishers serve to decrease behaviors; thus, positive reinforcers are stimuli that the subject will work to attain, and negative reinforcers are stimuli that the subject will work to be rid of or to end. The table below illustrates the adding and subtracting of stimuli (pleasant or aversive) in relation to reinforcement vs. punishment.
## Types of stimuli and punishers
### Rewarding stimuli (pleasant)
A rewarding stimuli is a stimulus that is considered pleasant. For example, a child may be allowed TV time everyday. Punishment often involves the removal of a rewarding stimuli if an undesired action is done. If the child were to misbehave, this rewarding stimulus of TV time would be removed which would result in negative punishment.
### Aversive stimuli (unpleasant)
Aversive Stimuli, punisher, and punishing stimulus are somewhat synonymous. Punishment may be used to mean
An aversive stimulus The occurrence of any punishing change The part of an experiment in which a particular response is punished.
Some things considered aversive can become reinforcing. In addition, some things that are aversive may not be punishing if accompanying changes are reinforcing. A classic example would be mis-behavior that is 'punished' by a teacher but actually increases over time due to the reinforcing effects of attention on the student.
#### Primary punishers
Pain, loud noises, foul tastes, bright lights, and exclusion are all things that would pass the "caveman test" as an aversive stimulus, and are therefore primary punishers. Primary punishers can also be loss of money and receiving negative feedback from people.
#### Secondary punishers
The sound of someone booing, the wrong-answer buzzer on a game show, and a ticket on your car windshield are all things society has learned to think about as negative, and are considered secondary punishers.
## Effectiveness
Contrary to suggestions by Skinner and others that punishment typically has weak or impermanent effects, a large body of research has shown that it can have a powerful and lasting effect in suppressing the punished behavior. Furthermore, more severe punishments are more effective, and very severe ones may even produce complete suppression. However, it may also have powerful and lasting side effects. For example, an aversive stimulus used to punish a particular behavior may also elicit a strong emotional response that may suppress unpunished behavior and become associated with situational stimuli through classical conditioning. Such side effects suggest caution and restraint in the use of punishment to modify behavior. Spanking in particular has been found to have lasting side effects. Parents often use spanking to try make their child act better but there is minimal evidence suggesting that spanking is effective in doing so. Some lasting side effects of spanking include lower cognitive ability, lower self-esteem, and more mental health problems for the child. Some side effects can reach into adulthood as well such as antisocial behavior and support for punishment that involves physical force such as spanking. Punishment is more effective in increasing cooperation in high-trust societies than low-trust societies. Punishment was also more effective in countries that have stronger norms for cooperation, high in wealth, and countries that are high-democratic rather than low-democratic.
## Importance of contingency and contiguity
One variable affecting punishment is contingency, which is defined as the dependency of events. A behavior may be dependent on a stimulus or dependent on a response. The purpose of punishment is to reduce a behavior, and the degree to which punishment is effective in reducing a targeted behavior is dependent on the relationship between the behavior and a punishment. For example, if a rat receives an aversive stimulus, such as a shock each time it presses a lever, then it is clear that contingency occurs between lever pressing and shock. In this case, the punisher (shock) is contingent upon the appearance of the behavior (lever pressing). Punishment is most effective when contingency is present between a behavior and a punisher. A second variable affecting punishment is contiguity, which is the closeness of events in time and/or space. Contiguity is important to reducing behavior because the longer the time interval between an unwanted behavior and a punishing effect, the less effective the punishment will be. One major problem with a time delay between a behavior and a punishment is that other behaviors may present during that time delay. The subject may then associate the punishment given with the unintended behaviors, and thus suppressing those behaviors instead of the targeted behavior. Therefore, immediate punishment is more effective in reducing a targeted behavior than a delayed punishment would be. However, there may ways to improve the effectiveness of delayed punishment, such as providing verbal explanation, reenacting the behavior, increasing punishment intensity, or other methods.
## Applications
### Applied behavior analysis
Punishment is sometimes used for in applied behavior analysis under the most extreme cases, to reduce dangerous behaviors such as head banging or biting exhibited most commonly by children or people with special needs. Punishment is considered one of the ethical challenges to autism treatment, has led to significant controversy, and is one of the major points for professionalizing behavior analysis. Professionalizing behavior analysis through licensure would create a board to ensure that consumers or families had a place to air disputes, and would ensure training in how to use such tactics properly. (see Professional practice of behavior analysis)
Controversy regarding ABA persists in the autism community. A 2017 study found that 46% of people with autism spectrum undergoing ABA appeared to meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a rate 86% higher than the rate of those who had not undergone ABA (28%). According to the researcher, the rate of apparent PTSD increased after exposure to ABA regardless of the age of the patient. However, the quality of this study has been disputed by other researchers.
### Psychological manipulation
Braiker identified the following ways that manipulators control their victims:
Positive reinforcement: includes praise, superficial charm, superficial sympathy (crocodile tears), excessive apologizing, money, approval, gifts, attention, facial expressions such as a forced laugh or smile, and public recognition. Negative reinforcement: may involve removing one from a negative situation Intermittent or partial reinforcement: Partial or intermittent negative reinforcement can create an effective climate of fear and doubt. Partial or intermittent positive reinforcement can encourage the victim to persist - for example in most forms of gambling, the gambler is likely to win now and again but still lose money overall. Punishment: includes nagging, yelling, the silent treatment, intimidation, threats, swearing, emotional blackmail, the guilt trip, sulking, crying, and playing the victim. Traumatic one-trial learning: using verbal abuse, explosive anger, or other intimidating behavior to establish dominance or superiority; even one incident of such behavior can condition or train victims to avoid upsetting, confronting or contradicting the manipulator.
### Traumatic bonding
Traumatic bonding occurs as the result of ongoing cycles of abuse in which the intermittent reinforcement of reward and punishment creates powerful emotional bonds that are resistant to change.
### Punishment used in stuttering therapy
Early studies in the late 60's to early 70's have shown that punishment via time-out (a form of negative punishment) can reduce the severity of stuttering in patients. Since the punishment in these studies was time-out which resulted in the removal of the permission to speak, speaking itself was seen as reinforcing which thus made the time-out an effective form of punishment. Some research has also shown that it is not the time-out that is considered punishing but rather the fact that the removal of the permission to speak was seen as punishing because it interrupted the individual's speech.
### Punishment in children with disabilities
Some studies have found effective punishment techniques concerning children with disabilities, such as autism and intellectual disabilities. The targeted behaviors were self-injurious behaviors such as head banging, motor, stereotypy, aggression, emesis, or breaking the rules. Some techniques that were used are timeout, overcorrection, contingent aversive, response blocking, and response interruption and redirection (RIRD). Most punishment techniques were used alone or combined with other punishment techniques; however, the use of punishment techniques alone was less effective in reducing targeted behaviors. Timeout was used the most even though it was less effective in reducing targeted behaviors; however, contingent aversive was used the least even though it was more effective in reducing targeted behaviors. Using punishment techniques in combination with reinforcement-based interventions was more effective than a punishment technique alone or using multiple punishment techniques. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_punishment |
Extinction, in psychology, has a different meaning than the traditional sense of the word. However, to an extent, they are also similar in some ways. In this article, you will learn about extinction as it relates to behavior, especially when making changes to one's thoughts and feelings.
Extinction And Psychology
Extinction is formally defined as "the omission of previously delivered unconditioned stimuli or reinforcers," but it can also describe the "absence of a contingency between response and reinforcer." Essentially, this means that learned behaviors will gradually disappear if they are not reinforced.
Source: upload.wikimedia.org
For example, if a mother's child exhibits bad behavior, such as throwing a tantrum because he does not want to go to school and she provides him with toys and sweets in an effort to pacify him or her, she is reinforcing poor behavior. The child has learned that misbehaving will lead to rewards, and thus, will continue to do so in order to get what he or she wants.
Now, if the mother decides to stop reinforcing it by refusing to give out any rewards, her child will eventually stop acting up, because he or she will no longer associate it with a positive outcome.
This is extinction, and it relates heavily to operant conditioning, a theory developed by Dr. Ivan Pavlov, a significant figure in the school of behavioralism, or behavioral psychology along with the likes of John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner.
Because extinction works to make specific behaviors disappear, this is where it does have similarities with the general definition of the word. However, where it is different is that extinction in psychology is not the erasure of behavior, which will be discussed in the next section.
Extinction Vs. Erasure
Unlike extinction in biology, which refers to the eradication of a species, such as what happened with the dinosaurs millions of years ago, psychology's definition of extinction does not mean that behaviors will be entirely removed from existence.
In fact, it is possible for someone to "relapse" back into old behaviors through "spontaneous recovery, renewal, reinstatement, rapid reacquisition, and resurgence." This is because the original learning is still present in an organism's long-term memory, and if enough time passes after extinction, responding can eventually return, and this refers to spontaneous recovery.
Spontaneous recovery is a term coined by Pavlov that means that if time is able to elapse after extinction, it can also return.
Renewal refers to the return of extinguished responding returns when the conditioned stimulus is removed from the extinction context and tested in another one. On the other hand, the event of being presented with an unconditioned stimulus once again after extinction has passed is reinstatement and is this one of the easiest ways old behaviors can return.
Rapid reacquisition means that responding can return to the conditioned stimulus quickly if conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus pairings are resumed after the extinction.
Lastly, the term resurgence is defined as "the reappearance of previously reinforced and then extinguished responses during a period of extinction for a subsequently learned response."
An example of this is, according to the American Psychological Association, if a rat is presented with two levers, pressing on Lever A first will be reinforced then later subjected to extinction which will lead to reinforcement of pressing Lever B.
Eventually, pressing A will stop entirely, and pressing on B will happen. However, extinction will be arranged for Lever B, which will cause a decline in pressing B, but this will then cause an increase, or resurgence, for pressing A.
Therefore, through each of these mechanisms, conditioned responses can return after extinction. If a specific behavior was once learned before, it could be relearned again if certain circumstances are provided.
Extinction As A Tool For Changing Maladaptive Behaviors
Source: pxhere.com
Earlier in this article, the scenario with a mother and her child was an example of extinction, and strategies like these can be put into practice for behavioral changes. These are called extinction procedures, and if put into practice consistently, they can be highly successful.
Extinction procedures are deliberate and are typically part of a therapy program called Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), which is based on the science of behavior and learning, which was developed by Pavlov and other behavioral psychologists.
In order for extinction to occur, target behaviors need to be identified, and new ones need to be established, and procedures typically take on one of three different forms based on :
- Negative Reinforcement
- Positive Reinforcement
- Automatic Reinforcement
The example mentioned earlier is a form of extinction behavior based on negative reinforcement, because instead of rewarding her child for acting up, she lets him or her continue to do so and insists that he or she goes to school whether they like it or not, because eventually, the tantrums will lead to nowhere due to the lack of reinforcement. Because of this, it is sometimes referred to as escape extinction.
However, positive reinforcement is one of the primary ways people use extinction procedures because it allows changing negative, maladaptive behaviors into ones that are positive and adaptive.
Now, if the mother's goal is to have the child have better manners and be willing to help out around the house with chores, she will reward these behaviors, and over time, these new behaviors will be repeated because they are positively reinforced through rewards. Eventually, the tantrums will be phased out in favor of productive actions.
Automatic reinforcement, also known as sensory extinction, is slightly more straightforward but can be used in certain scenarios. For instance, if someone is fascinated by the feel and sound of clicking a pen, the act of doing so is stimulating and a form of automatic reinforcement. However, if a parent were to take these pens away and replace them with ones that do not click, the action will inevitably disappear because they can no longer perform that behavior.
ABA and its extinction techniques are flexible and can be applied to just about any behaviors. By using them, not only can a person reduce problem behaviors and replace them with productive ones such as various skills, like communication, social, and focus skills, which can improve outcomes in everyday life.
The Side-Effects Of Extinction
Using extinction is an excellent way to manipulate behavior change. However, it does come with adverse effects, especially in the initial stages of the process.
Some of the most common side effects of extinction are anger, frustration, and sometimes even depression. When a particular behavior stops being reinforced, it will cause some backlash in the beginning, and it usually manifests in this manner.
When a procedure is introduced, there will be an increase in adverse behavior. For example, screaming and tantrums may become louder, things might get destroyed. This initial phase of heightened negative reaction is known as an extinction burst.
Source: flickr.com
For people who are brand new to using extinction techniques, like parents, this is often worrisome, and it makes them wonder if they are doing the right thing, or the negative behaviors become too intense, and they stop trying to fix them.
However, it is crucial that anyone who uses extinction therapy to stick with the plan regardless of how poorly a person reacts or behaves, aside from specific circumstances, like violence and self-injury. Nonetheless, If someone goes back and continues to reinforce maladaptive behaviors, extinction cannot occur and the target will not learn.
Additionally, once extinction is successful, it is also essential to be aware that old behaviors can return long after the process has ended. This goes back to how extinction does not mean erasure, and if a specific behavior was learned once before, it can be relearned again.
Conclusion
Using extinction behavior to help bring about change despite the side-effects can be done without professional assistance in many cases, but others find the help of a therapist useful and might decide to meet with one that specializes in Applied Behavior Analysis.
A therapist can especially be useful in helping to treat problem behaviors in those with mental conditions such as autism and Down syndrome, and more. ABA is not a typical form of psychotherapy, and it is not a one-size-fits-all approach, but with some trial and error and data collection, behavioral change can occur.
Source: picryl.com
At BetterHelp, online therapists are available who specialize in modifying problematic behaviors in people of all ages, and can give you the skills and strategies you need to implement extinction procedures successfully. For instance, if extinction burst is present or is expected to happen, a therapist can provide advice on how to pass through this phase.
Nonetheless, extinction can be applied just about any type of behavior, and hopefully, this article has taught you what it entails. Many people are unfamiliar with the psychological meaning of extinction or even operant conditioning; however, these concepts have been put into practice for generations and will continue to be used to modify behaviors. | https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/behavior/what-is-extinction-behavior-modification-for-reducing-problematic-behaviors/ |
Reinforcement theory states that a response followed by a reward is more likely to recur cornell university employee compensation: theory, practice. In addition to good instruction, reinforcement strategies — such as stickers or small prizes, social or sensory activities and special privileges — engage students in lessons, motivate learning and encourage success with tasks. Start writing remarkable essays with guidance from psychology assignment 1 describe and evaluate one or more theories relating to the formation and/or maintenance the reinforcement affect model and the social exchange theory the reinforcement affect model the reinforcement affect. In bf skinner's theory, positive reinforcement is defined as a presented stimuli that works to increase or strengthen the probability of a. Essays on reinforcement the reinforcement is one of the most popular assignments among students' documents if you are stuck with writing or missing ideas reinforcement theory reinforcement theory my area of interests is business.
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Behaviorism & education early psychology (the use of nonobjective methods such as theory bandura (focus on learning by observation) 25th essays response rate rapid response rate pause after reinforcement. Goal setting theory was born out of aristotle's theory of final causality and was researched further by edwin a locke in the 1960s to understand how goals can influence an individual's performance. Reinforcement theory motivation • classical versus operant conditioning • a positive reinforcer is a stimulus which when added to a situation strengthen the probability of an operant response • the folly of rewarding a while hoping for b. Social learning theory social learning theory: (learning to be a criminal) thesis : what types of associations carry the greatest weight in influencing our behavior and why reinforcement and punishment play an important role in motivation.
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Reinforcement theory is the process of shaping behavior by controlling the consequences of the behavior in reinforcement theory a combination of rewards and/or punishments is used to reinforce desired behavior or extinguish unwanted behavior. Motivating employees can be difficult, as each employee has a distinctive personality and different goals finding a motivational system that works for an entire group might seem impossible using the reinforcement theory of motivation can help you to manage a group with disparate personalities because it focuses. Essays - largest database of quality sample essays and research papers on reinforcement theory.
Read this essay on motivation and reinforcement theory come browse our large digital warehouse of free sample essays get the knowledge you need in order to pass your classes and more only at termpaperwarehousecom. In this episode, we're talking about joseph klapper's reinforcement theory in the early days of communication, people thought that the media had a powerful and direct influence on audiences. Reinforcement theory reinforcement is a term in operant conditioning and behavior analysis for a process of strengthening a directly measurable reinforcement theory concentrates on the relationship between the operant behaviour and the popular essays living your values hamlet. Reinforcement in concrete structures a compilation and evaluation of ambiguities in eurocode 2 master of science thesis in the master's programme structural engineering and building technology unclear in the code however, knowledge about the fundamental theory and required. Discuss how the principles of job design and reinforcement theory apply to the performance problems at the hovey and beard company thesis/dissertation chapter. This free education essay on essay: learning theories - behavioural, social & cultural, constructivism, cognitive is perfect for education students to use as an example. | http://mshomeworktvhq.skylinechurch.us/thesis-on-reinforcement-theory.html |
“Predictive and Proactive Pipelines: Approaches to Monitoring and Optimizing CG Film Production” Moderated by
Conference:
Entry Number: 01
Title:
- Predictive and Proactive Pipelines: Approaches to Monitoring and Optimizing CG Film Production
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Abstract:
OVERVIEW
A primary goal of animation and visual effects studios is to create fully realized characters, worlds and experiences that immerse the audience in our storytelling. Delivering groundbreaking visuals in a tight production time-frame creates challenges that push the limits of hardware and software resources.
Critical to the success of this process are the groups that work to monitor, optimize, and strategize ways to deliver creative work at large-scale, often multi-site, facilities. This encompasses multiple areas of focus, including, but not limited to, monitoring current practices to identify inefficiencies and waste (e.g. broken data and bad renders), implementing more optimal processes (e.g. level-of-detail and multi-processing techniques) and creating production-facing tools to better inform artists and managers of the state of their work. Some types of systemic waste, such as storing unnecessary or redundant data, inefficient process, overly-complex deliverables, and lost render cycles due to broken data, create real-world problems, affecting not only the cost of production, but artist well-being and ultimately the sustainability of the filmmaking process.
This panel will bring together industry experts from multiple visual effects and animation studios to share and debate ideas, anecdotes, and approaches to identifying both problems and opportunities around efficiency improvements in the filmmaking process. They come from varied backgrounds and roles, including rendering and software optimization, data and analytics, and pipeline and project supervision. In addition to tools and techniques, we will also explore the cultural and production challenges around fostering greater responsibility for efficient deliverables.
While the high-level goals largely align, there are notable differences in each studio’s production model, including their department and pipeline design, single versus multi-site make-up, client and vendor structure, etc., which in-turn informs their approaches to team structures, tools and techniques employed, areas of focus in the pipeline, degrees of technical versus cultural emphasis, and more. This will foster an engaging dialogue on the merits of each approach and how our unique histories and needs have driven our current innovations and challenges. Comparing and contrasting each studio’s process during panelist and open audience discussion may reveal new insights and opportunities, providing value to the wider graphics community as a whole. | https://history.siggraph.org/learning/predictive-and-proactive-pipelines-approaches-to-monitoring-and-optimizing-cg-film-production-moderated-by/ |
The purpose of the cyFLEX joint project is to develop viable OLED materials for mass-market applications that can be integrated into luminescent packaging for all types of products.
Readily available source materials, such as copper, and new, efficient OLED manufacturing processes will help get luminescent packaging to market soon. The consortium formed by the German enterprise cynora GmbH and the Light Technology Institute at KIT will cover the value chain from material development all the way to the finished component. The project will explore ways of adapting OLED materials for efficient printing and coating processes as well as optimizing the manufacturing process for OLED components.
Working closely together with the leading-edge cluster Forum Organic Electronics, the plan is to complete a small volume production run of printed flexible OLED film at InnovationLab GmbH (iL), a regional research and knowledge transfer platform.
The project will draw on the cluster’s expertise in the field of printed organic electronics to successfully combine material and process development in one application.
cyFLEX will run with a timeline of two years and a budget of 619 000 EUR given to cynora GmbH, from which 309 000 EUR is financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF – Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung). | https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/project-cyflex-aims-to-deliver-oled-based-luminescent-smart-packaging/ |
Businesses in the manufacturing sector have the same goals as most other businesses. These typically include improving productivity, decreasing costs, and increasing profits. However, manufacturing companies are more likely to focus on developing greater efficiency to achieve these goals.
Even though some manufacturers view cutting costs to the maximum as the key to improving efficiency. It can soon lead to problems such as lower quality products, an unhappy workforce, and dangerous working conditions.
Rather than solely identifying costs to reduce, managers and owners of businesses can also implement other more positive solutions to improve efficiency, seven of which you can read more about below.
1. Review and Upgrade Your Machinery
Advanced and state-of-the-art equipment and machinery are a must in a manufacturing plant aiming for greater efficiency. For example, some manufacturers are using a carton to automatically cover and pack a range of products such as drinks and food in cardboard sleeves. High-tech automated machinery is vital to running an efficient plant. Employing highly trained staff and implementing streamlined processes will have little effect on a manufacturer’s efficiency if the machinery is outdated and regularly in need of repairs.
Manufacturing by definition covers a broad area. However, if you look at the production of something everyone is familiar with, food and drink. Then there are some clearly defined functions that machines can automatically complete. These are preparation, mechanical processing, heat processing, preservation, and packaging.
To ensure your plant is using the most efficient and reliable machinery with little to no downtime. Plant managers must constantly monitor and review equipment so that it can upgrade if needed. Installing newer and upgraded equipment will help to reduce the lead time on orders, power usage, and repair costs.
2. Review the Current Workflow
One of the key tasks in developing better efficiency in a manufacturing business is taking time to highlight and identify aspects of the current workflow that need improving. Typically, managers focus on improvements in three important areas; equipment, labor, and processes.
Reviewing a factory’s equipment, infrastructure, machinery, and technology should involve a careful inspection to establish points of constant repair and high energy consumption.
Evaluating the performance of your current staff can help to highlight if a lack of experience and training is slowing down the production process or causing waste, during a review, plant managers should check if each employee has the relevant skills for their tasks and take note of how long they take to complete them. Reports created in the labor review can use to tailor-make a training plan.
After reviewing a factory’s equipment and staff, plant managers should evaluate the processes involved in every step of production to discover and record any points where production is slowed, Once the review process is complete, managers can use the insights from the reports to list several required changes and implement a plan to improve efficiency.
3. Use Supply Chain Management Software
Manufacturing businesses depend on effective and reliable supply chain management software to ensure costs are controlled. Risks such as late shipping are avoided, decision-making is informed and customer service excellence is maintained. Supply chain management software is a versatile tool that plant managers can use to perform some efficiency-improving tasks, including:
- Creating performance reports
- Fast communication with distributors and suppliers
- Automation of invoicing, order processing, and shipment tracking
- Forecasting demand
- Inventory management
- Identifying areas of inefficiency and waste
- Sharing information across a network of distribution centers, plants, storage sites, and suppliers
4. Maintain Organized Work Spaces
The level of organization and the care put into a plant layout can have a big impact on the efficiency and safety of a factory. During the review process, managers should pay close attention to the layout of the plant, employees’ workspaces. And how the staff moves around the floor. Ideally, equipment and tools should be easy to operate and goods moved around conveniently and safely.
Factories that have been set up optimally, organize the plant as a fast operating production line, therefore all unnecessary obstructions and hazards should be removed as it is essential that the products can move along the line uninterrupted and staff can work without the risk of injury.
5. Preventive Maintenance
The costs related to machinery breaking down and halting production can soon add up to huge amounts. For this reason, even manufacturing plants with relatively new and advanced machinery opt to undertake preventative maintenance to reduce the risk of downtime during peak production hours.
To assist plant managers, many manufacturers use asset management software to track the condition of machinery, record maintenance checks and repairs, and automate the scheduling of maintenance.
6. Ensure Staff Are Fully Trained
Another aspect of improving efficiency in manufacturing is the quality of employee training. Which management should view as an ongoing process of development and reinforcement of skills.
To ensure staff is the most productive they can be, plant managers should ensure employees are fully trained on all the equipment they need to do their job. In addition to increasing efficiency, training will also create a safer workplace. And happier employees, typically resulting in fewer accidents and better staff retention. Ideally, training shouldn’t be limited to equipment and technology. If the staff is educated and trained about other policies and activities of the business it can help to develop greater loyalty, better communication, and positive company culture.
7. Implement Better Waste Management
Material wastage can be a huge problem in some manufacturing plants that can end up costing thousands when totaled up at the end of the year. However, there are several ways factories can reduce or recycle their wasted material left over from the production process. So, these include identifying reductions in material use, reclaiming the cost of scrap material by selling it to recycling centers and using waste material to make new products.
The packaging required for your products should be regularly reviewed to check if unnecessary material can be removed or replaced with something more cost-effective and eco-friendly.
To improve the performance of their business, manufacturing firms must conduct efficiency reviews and highlight areas to improve before implementing some changes similar to the seven solutions in this article, these change such as upgrading machinery, improving staff training, carrying out preventive maintenance, and managing the supply chain with software. | https://press.farm/improve-manufacturing-efficiency/ |
85 Research Article Developing an optimization model for CO 2 reduction in cement production process S O Ogbeide Department of Mechanical Engineering Ambrose Alli University PMB 14 Ekpoma Edo State Nigeria...
Optimization Oof Cement Mill - optimization oof cement mill - iipecoin cement mill optimisation pdf Crusher South Africa cement mill optimization Strategy 2fishygirl on Scribd optimization oof cement mill Here you can get...
Energy optimization in cement manufacturing English - pdf - Brochure Modernization and upgrade to the latest technology English - pdf - Brochure Model predictive control of the calciner at Holcim s Laegerdorf plant with the ABB Expert Optimizer Reprint ZKG 0307 German English - pdf - Brochure...
optimization of cement production pdf Process optimization solutions for the cement industry Optimization of the technology of cement production on the CONTROL Optimisation Shree Cement Plant - PROMECON...
Download PDF Download Export Advanced Cement manufacturing is a process that combines varieties of unit operations including raw meal handling pyrometallurgy and comminution These can be either through innovating a new product or through a process optimization that can be accomplished by replacing the old technologies or...
116 Portland Cement Manufacturing 1161 Process Description1-7 Portland cement is a fine powder gray or white in color that consists of a mixture of...
process optimization of cement grinding mill cement mill process pdf Process Optimization Of Cement Grinding Mill Description Energy optimization in cement manufacturing English pdf Abb To optimize the overall perfor 2014-9-22...
Optimization in Production Operations Optimal Lean Operations in Manufacturing Process Optimization In manufacturing it is the extreme of Lean Operations one of the decisions made outside the scope of optimization which process components are operating coal mills sprayers in a tower demand speed load on a boiler...
Modeling of Sokoto Cement Production Process Using A Finite Automata Scheme An Analysis Of The Detailed Model A detailed approach to modeling a cement production process should include all production systems as well as to undertake an optimization of the process The model will therefore be based on...
cement manufacturing process step by step throughout the factory Module 1 The participants will gain knowledge of different technologies and their advantages in connection with optimization of the process Module 2 In this module the participants will gain knowledge of which factors influence the cement quality and how...
Optimization of the clinker making process is usually done to reduce the heat consumption installation of a process control and optimization system required an investment of 990 thousand RMB and took one month discusses energy efficiency practices and technologies that can be implemented in cement manufacturing...
See figure Flow chart of raw meal production from publiion Effective Optimization of the Control System for the Cement Raw Meal Mixing Process II Optimizing Robust PID Controllers Us on ResearchGate the professional network for scientists Read More cement manufacturing process flow chart pdf Odysseus Project...
Advanced process control for the cement industry provides advanced process control and optimization for cement plants so they can achieve maximum efficiency and higher profitability production Optimization control The ball mill application automatically...
Agricultural waste for cement production optimization an in-depth analysis on effect of using conventional fuel mineral coal pet-coke Heavy oil and Natural gas and Agricultural waste This mixture is intended for use in a rotary kiln of clinker production dry process The optimization model used was Particle Swarm Optimization PSO...
Process Optimization in Cement Industry - Download as PDF File pdf Text File txt or read online Scribd is the world s largest social reading and publishing site Explore...
Energy optimization in cement manufacturing Reprint from ABB Review 2/2007 Cement producers are large consumers of thermal and electrical production related data process vari-ability energy indexes and run-time quality parameters to produce com-prehensive operation and production...
Hybrid simulation and energy market based optimization of cement plants Authors Authors and affiliations Afterwards the cement production process and the cement plant setup as well as the application of ancillary services and further Graphical user interface of the interactive hybrid simulation and energy market based optimization...
Effective Optimization of the Control System for the Cement Raw Meal Mixing Process II Optimizing Robust PID Controllers Using Real Process Simulators...
Executive summary ii Cement and Lime Manufacturing Industries At present about 78 of Europe s cement production is from dry process kilns a further 16 of production is accounted for by semi-dry and semi-wet process kilns with the remainder of...
This paper focuses on modelling and solving the ingredient ratio optimization problem in cement raw material blending process A general nonlinear time-varying G-NLTV model is established for cement raw material blending process via considering chemical composition feed flow fluctuation and various craft and production constraints...
cement industry For design and optimization of rotary kiln it is In a modern dry process cement plant preheated raw meal from 4500 t/d clinker production capacity was studied in ANSYS Fluent combining the models of gas-solid flow heat and mass transfer and pulverized coal combustion...
OPTIMIZATION IN THE CEMENT INDUSTRY Increase of production capacity Reduction of specific heat consumption Reduction of specific power consumption Compliance with more stringent emission regulations CIMPOR ALHANDRA - PORTUGAL SITUATION BEFORE 5 stages preheater with precalciner...
This study Development of State of the Art-Techniques in Cement Manufacturing Trying to Look Ahead was commissioned by the Cement Sustainability Initiative CSI a...
Cement production process could be roughly divided into three stag The first stage is to make cement raw material which contains raw material blending process and grinding process The second stage and third stage are to burn the raw material and grind cement To some extent modelling and optimization of the cement raw material...
on the design and optimization of a large scale biopharmaceutical facility using process simulation and such as process simulators and production scheduling tools1 2 3 4 Figure 1 Monoclonal Our design project involved the modeling and optimization of a facility equipped with two production lines each capable...
Optimization of the Cement Ball Mill Operation Optimization addresses the grinding process maintenance and product quality The objective is to achieve a more efficient operation and increase the production rate as well as improve the run factor...
Preventive Maintenance Optimization of Critical Equipments in Process Plant using Heuristic Algorithms production cost in capital intensive industri Scheduling is a crucial component of maintenance management Raw-mill process is one of the critical processes in a cement industry In this process lime ore is pulverized in...
INTRODUCTION PROBLEM DEFINITION Scheduling is a decision-making process thay plays an important role in most manufacturing and service industries The scheduling function aims to optimally allocate resources available in limited supplies to processing tasks over time Each task requires certain amounts of specified resources for a...
We have set up a team with hundreds of technical engineers to resolve a series of problems during project consultation, on-site surveys, sample analysis, program design, installation, commissioning and maintenance guidance. | https://www.klubpiaskownica.pl/quarry/7788/oit1ix43c6pn.html |
In this study, the model concerning a negative binomial sampling inspection plan is proposed and applied to an imperfect production system with assemble-to-order configuration, where the production system is subject to a Weibull deteriorating process and is operated under an in-control or an out-of-control state. The proposed model of this study contributes to developing an approach which can effectively integrate the considerations of the production system status, the defective rate, the working efficiency of employees, and the market demands with an aim to determine the optimal number of conforming items for inspection with minimum total cost, and the results can be practically applied to the assembly of products in various industries, especially for the prevalent Industry 4.0 in manufacturing.
12. LAPSE:2021.0506
An Agricultural Products Supply Chain Management to Optimize Resources and Carbon Emission Considering Variable Production Rate: Case of Nonperishable Corps
June 10, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: agri-supply chain management, eco-efficient production, imperfect production, optimal resources, variable production rate
The management of the man−machine interaction is essential to achieve a competitive advantage among production firms and is more highlighted in the processing of agricultural products. The agricultural industry is underdeveloped and requires a transformation in technology. Advances in processing agricultural products (agri-product) are essential to achieve a smart production rate with good quality and to control waste. This research deals with modelling of a controllable production rate by a combination of the workforce and machines to minimize the total cost of production. The optimization of the carbon emission variable and management of the imperfection in processing makes the model eco-efficient. The perishability factor in the model is ignored due to the selection of a single sugar processing firm in the supply chain with a single vendor for the pragmatic application of the proposed research. A non-linear production model is developed to provide an economic benefit to the firms in... [more]
13. LAPSE:2021.0439
Sustainable Production−Inventory Model in Technical Cooperation on Investment to Reduce Carbon Emissions
May 26, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: carbon cap-and-trade, carbon tax, sustainable production–inventory model
Carbon cap-and-trade and carbon offsets are common and important carbon emission reduction policies in many countries. In addition, carbon emissions from business activities can be effectively reduced through specific capital investments in green technologies. Nevertheless, such capital investments are costly and not all enterprises can afford these investments. Therefore, if all members of a supply chain agree to share the investments in the facilities, the supply chain can reduce carbon emissions and generate more profit. Under carbon cap-and-trade and carbon tax policies, this study proposes a production−inventory model in which the buyer and vendor in the integrated supply chain agree to co-invest funds to reduce carbon emissions. We planned to integrate production, delivery, replenishment, and technology to reduce carbon emissions so as to maximize the total profit of the supply chain system. Several examples are simulated and the sensitivity analysis of the main parameters is car... [more]
14. LAPSE:2021.0399
Minimizing Tardiness Penalty Costs in Job Shop Scheduling under Maximum Allowable Tardiness
May 25, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: job shop scheduling, maximum allowable tardiness, probabilistic dispatching rules, semiconductor, tardiness penalty
In many manufacturing or service industries, there exists maximum allowable tardiness for orders, according to purchase contracts between the customers and suppliers. Customers may cancel their orders and request compensation for damages, for breach of contract, when the delivery time is expected to exceed maximum allowable tardiness, whereas they may accept the delayed delivery of orders with a reasonable discount of price within maximum allowable tardiness. Although many research works have been produced on the job shop scheduling problem relating to minimizing total tardiness, none of them have yet considered problems with maximum allowable tardiness. In this study, we solve a job shop scheduling problem under maximum allowable tardiness, with the objective of minimizing tardiness penalty costs. Two kinds of penalty costs are considered, i.e., one for tardy jobs, and the other for canceled jobs. To deal with this problem within a reasonable time at actual production facilities, we p... [more]
15. LAPSE:2021.0320
A Joint Optimization Strategy of Coverage Planning and Energy Scheduling for Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks
April 30, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: coverage optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization, queuing game, virtual force, wireless rechargeable sensor network
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have the characteristics of large-scale deployment, flexible networking, and many applications. They are important parts of wireless communication networks. However, due to limited energy supply, the development of WSNs is greatly restricted. Wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs) transform the distributed energy around the environment into usable electricity through energy collection technology. In this work, a two-phase scheme is proposed to improve the energy management efficiency for WRSNs. In the first phase, we designed an annulus virtual force based particle swarm optimization (AVFPSO) algorithm for area coverage. It adopts the multi-parameter joint optimization method to improve the efficiency of the algorithm. In the second phase, a queuing game-based energy supply (QGES) algorithm was designed. It converts energy supply and consumption into network service. By solving the game equilibrium of the model, the optimal energy distribution str... [more]
16. LAPSE:2021.0238
Material Requirements Planning Using Variable-Sized Bin-Packing Problem Formulation with Due Date and Grouping Constraints
April 27, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: bin-packing problem, material requirements planning, mixed-integer linear programming
Correct planning is crucial for efficient production and best quality of products. The planning processes are commonly supported with computer solutions; however manual interactions are commonly needed, as sometimes the problems do not fit the general-purpose planning systems. The manual planning approach is time consuming and prone to errors. Solutions to automatize structured problems are needed. In this paper, we deal with material requirements planning for a specific problem, where a group of work orders for one product must be produced from the same batch of material. The presented problem is motivated by the steel-processing industry, where raw materials defined in a purchase order must be cut in order to satisfy the needs of the planned work order while also minimizing waste (leftover) and tardiness, if applicable. The specific requirements of the problem (i.e., restrictions of which work orders can be produced from a particular group of raw materials) does not fit the regular p... [more]
17. LAPSE:2021.0227
Decision-Making of Port Enterprise Safety Investment Based on System Dynamics
April 27, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: decision-making, port enterprises, safety investment, SD
Safety is the premise of efficiency and effectiveness in the port operation. Safety investment is becoming a vital part of port operation in current era in order to overcome different types of hazards the port operation exposed to. This paper aims to improve the safety level of port operation through analyzing its influencing factors and exploring the interactions between the safety investment and system risk level. By analyzing the key factors affecting the port operation and their mutual relationship within a man−machine−environment−management system, a decision-making model of safety investment in port enterprise was established by system dynamics (SD). An illustration example and a sensitivity analysis were carried out to justify and validate the proposed model. The results show that increasing the total safety investment of port enterprises, improving the safety management investment on personnel, and strengthening the implementation effect of investment can improve the degree of... [more]
18. LAPSE:2021.0181
Carbon-Efficient Production Scheduling of a Bioethanol Plant Considering Diversified Feedstock Pelletization Density: A Case Study
April 16, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: bioethanol plant, carbon emission, dual-objective optimization, Scheduling
This paper presents a dual-objective optimization model for production scheduling of bioethanol plant with carbon-efficient strategies. The model is developed throughout the bioethanol production process. Firstly, the production planning and scheduling of the bioethanol plant’s transportation, storage, pretreatment, and ethanol manufacturing are fully considered. Secondly, the carbon emissions in the ethanol manufacturing process are integrated into the model to form a dual-objective optimization model that simultaneously optimizes the production plan and carbon emissions. The effects of different biomass raw materials with optional pelletization density and pretreatment methods on production scheduling are analyzed. The influence of demand and pretreatment cost on selecting a pretreatment method and total profit is considered. A membership weighted method is developed to solve the dual-objective model. The carbon emission model and economic model are integrated into one model for anal... [more]
19. LAPSE:2021.0055
Assessing Supply Chain Performance from the Perspective of Pakistan’s Manufacturing Industry Through Social Sustainability
February 22, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: Pakistan, qualitative research, social sustainability, sustainable supply chain management (SSSCM)
The industry is gradually forced to integrate socially sustainable development practices and cross-social issues. Although researchers and practitioners emphasize environmental and economic sustainability in supply chain management (SCM). This is unfortunate because not only social sustainable development plays an important role in promoting other sustainable development programs, but social injustice at one level in the supply chain may also cause significant losses to companies throughout the chain. This article aimed to consolidate the literature on the responsibilities of suppliers, manufacturers, and customers and to adopt sustainable supply chain management (SSSCM) practices in the Pakistani industry to identify all possible aspects of sustainable social development in the supply chain by investigating the relationship between survey variables and structure. This work went beyond the limits of regulations and showed the status of maintaining sustainable social issues. Based on se... [more]
20. LAPSE:2021.0038
Exploring E-Waste Resources Recovery in Household Solid Waste Recycling
February 22, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: household solid waste, metal recovery value, socio-economic benefits, waste composition of Karachi-Pakistan, waste management, waste recycling
The ecosystem of earth, the habitation of 7.53 billion people and more than 8.7 million species, is being imbalanced by anthropogenic activities. The ever-increasing human population and race of industrialization is an exacerbated threat to the ecosystem. At present, the global average waste generation per person is articulated as 494 kg/year, an enormous amount of household waste (HSW) that ultimately hits 3.71×1012 kg of waste in one year. The ultimate destination of HSW is a burning issue because open dumping and burning as the main waste treatment and final disposal systems create catastrophic environmental limitations. This paper strives to contribute to this issue of HSW management that matters to everyone’s business, specifically to developing nations. The HSW management system of the world’s 12th largest city and 24th most polluted city, Karachi, was studied with the aim of generating possible economic gains by recycling HSWs. In this regard, the authors surveyed dumping sites... [more]
21. LAPSE:2021.0015
Scheduling Two Identical Parallel Machines Subjected to Release Times, Delivery Times and Unavailability Constraints
February 3, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: Cmax, delivery times, genetic algorithm (GA), Optimization, parallel machine scheduling, preventive maintenance, release times
This paper proposes a genetic algorithm (GA) for scheduling two identical parallel machines subjected to release times and delivery times, where the machines are periodically unavailable. To make the problem more practical, we assumed that the machines are undergoing periodic maintenance rather than making them always available. The objective is to minimize the makespan (Cmax). A lower bound (LB) of the makespan for the considered problem was proposed. The GA performance was evaluated in terms of the relative percentage deviation (RPD) (the relative distance to the LB) and central processing unit (CPU) time. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the GA parameters, namely, population size, crossover probability, mutation probability, mutation ratio, and pressure selection, which simultaneously minimize the RPD and CPU time. The optimized settings of the GA parameters were used to further analyze the scheduling problem. Factorial design of the scheduling problem input v... [more]
22. LAPSE:2021.0004
Simulation-Based Optimization of a Two-Echelon Continuous Review Inventory Model with Lot Size-Dependent Lead Time
February 3, 2021 (v1)
Keywords: Arena, dependent lead time, simulation-based optimization, stochastic inventory problem
This study analyzes a stochastic continuous review inventory system (Q,r) using a simulation-based optimization model. The lead time depends on lot size, unit production time, setup time, and a shop floor factor that represents moving, waiting, and lot size inspection times. A simulation-based model is proposed for optimizing order quantity (Q) and reorder point (r) that minimize the total inventory costs (holding, backlogging, and ordering costs) in a two-echelon supply chain, which consists of two identical retailers, a distributor, and a supplier. The simulation model is created with Arena software and validated using an analytical model. The model is interfaced with the OptQuest optimization tool, which is embedded in the Arena software, to search for the least cost lot sizes and reorder points. The proposed model is designed for general demand distributions that are too complex to be solved analytically. Hence, for the first time, the present study considers the stochastic invento... [more]
23. LAPSE:2020.1186
Real-Time Decision-Support System for High-Mix Low-Volume Production Scheduling in Industry 4.0
December 17, 2020 (v1)
Keywords: decision-support system, HMLV production, Industry 4.0, real-time production-scheduling techniques, risk analysis, RPA
Numerous organizations are striving to maximize the profit of their businesses by the effective implementation of competitive advantages including cost reduction, quick delivery, and unique high-quality products. Effective production-scheduling techniques are methods that many firms use to attain these competitive advantages. Implementing scheduling techniques in high-mix low-volume (HMLV) manufacturing industries, especially in Industry 4.0 environments, remains a challenge, as the properties of both parts and processes are dynamically changing. As a reaction to these challenges in HMLV Industry 4.0 manufacturing, a newly advanced and effective real-time production-scheduling decision-support system model was developed. The developed model was implemented with the use of robotic process automation (RPA), and it comprises a hybrid of different advanced scheduling techniques obtained as the result of analytical-hierarchy-process (AHP) analysis. The aim of this research was to develop a... [more]
24. LAPSE:2020.1150
A Process-Based Modeling Method for Describing Production Processes of Ship Block Assembly Planning
November 9, 2020 (v1)
Keywords: block assembly planning, process-based modeling, production process, ship production, shipbuilding manufacturing
Ship block assembly planning is very complex due to the various activities and characteristics of ship production. Therefore, competitiveness in the shipbuilding industry depends on how well a company operates its ship block assembly plan. Many shipbuilders are implementing various studies to improve their competitiveness in ship block assembly planning, specifically regarding technology usage, such as modeling and simulation (M&S) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Although these technologies are successfully applied in some production planning systems, it is difficult to tailor ship production planning systems with flexibility due to unexpected situations. Providing a flexible plan for these production planning systems requires a way to describe and review the organic relationships of ship production processes. In this research, a process-based modeling (PBM) method proposes a novel approach to describing the production process of ship block assembly planning by redefining production... [more]
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25. LAPSE:2020.1108
Multi-Objective Optimization of Workshop Scheduling with Multiprocess Route Considering Logistics Intensity
November 9, 2020 (v1)
Keywords: logistics intensity, multi-objective optimization, multiprocess route, workshop scheduling
In order to solve the problems of flexible process route and workshop scheduling scheme changes frequently in the multi-variety small batch production mode, a multiprocess route scheduling optimization model with carbon emissions and cost as the multi-objective was established. At the same time, it is considered to optimize under the existing machine tool conditions in the workshop, then the theory of logistics intensity between equipment is introduced into the model. By designing efficient constraints to ensure reasonable processing logic, and then applying multilayer coding genetic algorithm to solve the case. The optimization results under single-target and multi-target conditions are contrasted and analyzed, so as to guide enterprises to choose a reasonable scheduling plan, improve the carbon efficiency of the production line, and save costs. | http://psecommunity.org/lapse/subject/8 |
SR MANUFACTURING ENGINEER
At TE, you will unleash your potential working with people from diverse backgrounds and industries to create a safer, sustainable and more connected world.
Job Overview
Job Responsibilities
A senior process engineer will implement, develop, and optimize production methodologies in the manufacturing operations of TE Connectivity. This engineer will be responsible for optimizing product flow though the factory though process optimization that may include tool /fixture selection, line layouts, ergonomic study, material presentation, and other relevant factors. He/She will interface with design, test, and quality engineering to solve problems, improve manufacturability, and implement continual improvement. He/She will sustain products with cost reduction and yield improvements. In addition, the process engineer will work with quality to compile and evaluate data to determine appropriate limits and variables for process or material specifications.
- Develop expertise in manufacturing processes. Understand process capabilities through critical data analysis and in depth understanding of the product. Develop and modify line layouts, including material flow, waste reduction, and ergonomics, utilizing Lean Manufacturing best practices. Participate in the transition of a product from concept to pilot line production and into mass manufacturing.
- Analyze and optimize production processes to ensure safety while maximizing Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) in cost effective means while driving to achieve world-class quality levels. Champion continuous improvement projects (CIP) to maximize yield, capacity, and capability.
- Responsible for diagnosing issues found during the part manufacturing process and drive corrective action back to source, resulting in root cause identification and elimination. Utilize structured problem solving techniques such as DMAIC, Ishikawa, Five Why (5W) and Eight Disciplines (8D).
- Analyze data from various sources to identify trends in build quality and efficiency. Develop robust and clear data collection, visualization, and analysis tools. Enable data driven operational and financial decisions through predictive insights into tool and process performance, including integration of factory data systems and use of software such as MySQL, Python, R, JMP, Minitab, Tableau and Ignition.
- Perform supporting activities for engineering and manufacturing including 5S and Lean manufacturing activities, material handling improvements, production line configuration, and safety procedures.
- Monitor and reduce process variation using techniques such as Statistical Process Control (SPC) and Measurement Systems Analysis (MSA). Monitor and audit manufacturing processes to ensure product specifications and standards are achieved. Participate in the development and maintenance of FMEAs and Control Plans. Analyze, develop, process, and implement Engineering Change Orders.
- Create and maintain Manufacturing Instructions, routings, and associated processes. Develop and train sustaining technicians, assist in the training of operators as needed. Manage activities for process sustaining technicians to support day to day coverage of production line, including developing and documenting appropriate rework procedures.
- Support 24 by 7 production operations
"This position requires access to information which is subject to stringent controls under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) or Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Applicants must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. lawful permanent resident, person granted asylee status in the U.S., or person admitted into the U.S. as a refugee."
What your background should look like:
- BS degree in engineering, mathematics, physical science, or other applicable degree (advanced degree preferred)
- Experience developing and improving Process. Have a demonstrated track record of Overall Equipment Effectiveness improvement activities.
- Good understanding of Bill of Materials, Manufacturing Execution System, Specification Management, Change Point Management
- Data collection and analysis experience. Ability to develop data driven root cause analyses and solutions.
- Strong problem solving skills and an aptitude for learning systems quickly. Able to utilize structured problem solving techniques such as DMAIC, Ishikawa, Five Why (5W) or Eight Disciplines (8D). Able to resolve high level performance issues into addressable actions.
- Knowledge of Statistical Process Control and its application
Additional Attributes
- Exceptional capacity for managing simultaneous activities, competing priorities and challenges.
- Strong ability to work and communicate effectively with team and peers within a manufacturing and engineering organization. This includes excellent communication skills: written and verbal.
- Creative capacity for developing new ways to do things better, cheaper, faster in alignment with the TE Connectivity approach to revolutionary product development.
- Passion for making fantastic new products and using testing as a means to enable an engineering organization to achieve outstanding quality, reliability and excellence.
Competencies
About TE Connectivity
TE Connectivity is a global industrial technology leader creating a safer, sustainable, productive, and connected future. Our broad range of connectivity and sensor solutions, proven in the harshest environments, enable advancements in transportation, industrial applications, medical technology, energy, data communications, and the home. With more than 85,000 employees, including over 8,000 engineers, working alongside customers in approximately 140 countries, TE ensures that EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS. Learn more at www.te.com and on LinkedIn, Facebook, WeChat and Twitter.
What TE Connectivity offers:
We offer competitive total rewards compensation. Our commitment to our associates includes offering benefit programs that are comprehensive, competitive and will meet the needs of our associates.
- Generous 401(k) Plan
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Benefits start on day one
- Charity Donation Matching Program
- Competitive Paid Time Off
- Employee Resource Groups
- Employee Stock Purchase Program
- Healthcare for Associates and Families
- Health and Wellness Incentives
- Life Insurance and Disability Protection
Throughout our Global reach and various Business Units, we take a balanced approach to the benefits we provide. Many benefits are company-paid, while others are available through associate contribution. Specific benefit offerings can vary by location. | https://careers.te.com/job/HAMPTON-SR-MANUFACTURING-ENGINEER-VA-23666/883989800/ |
Abstract:What are the core competences necessary in order to sustain manufacturing in high-wage countries? Aspiring countries all over the world gain market share in manufacturing and rapidly close the productivity and quality gap that has until now protected some parts of the industry in Europe and the United States from dislocation. However, causal production planning and manufacturing, the basis for productivity and quality, is challenged by the ever-greater need for flexibility and customized products in an uncertain business environment. This article uses a case-study-based approach to assess how production managers in high-wage countries can apply decision-making principals from successful entrepreneurs. 'Effectuation' instead of causal decision making can be applied to handle uncertainty of mass customization, to seek the right partners in alliances and to advance towards virtual production. The findings help managers to use their resources more efficiently and contribute to bridge the gap between production research and entrepreneurship.
Keywords: Production Planning, Case studies, decision-making behavior, effectuationProcedia PDF Downloads 239
12 Optimal Production Planning in Aromatic Coconuts Supply Chain Based on Mixed-Integer Linear Programming
Authors: Chaimongkol Limpianchob
Abstract:This work addresses the problem of production planning that arises in the production of aromatic coconuts from Samudsakhorn province in Thailand. The planning involves the forwarding of aromatic coconuts from the harvest areas to the factory, which is classified into two groups; self-owned areas and contracted areas, the decisions of aromatic coconuts flow in the plant, and addressing a question of which warehouse will be in use. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model within supply chain management framework. The objective function seeks to minimize the total cost including the harvesting, labor and inventory costs. Constraints on the system include the production activities in the company and demand requirements. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of coconuts supply chain model compared with base case.
Keywords: Supply Chain Management, Production Planning, mixed-integer linear programming, aromatic coconutProcedia PDF Downloads 319
11 Reducing Inventory Costs by Reducing Inventory Levels: Kuwait Flour Mills and Bakeries Company
Authors: Dana Al-Qattan, Faiza Goodarzi, Heba Al-Resheedan, Kawther Shehab, Shoug Al-Ansari
Abstract:This project involves working with different types of forecasting methods and facility planning tools to help the company we have chosen to improve and reduce its inventory, increase its sales, and decrease its wastes and losses. The methods that have been used by the company have shown no improvement in decreasing the annual losses. The research made in the company has shown that no interest has been made in exploring different techniques to help the company. In this report, we introduce several methods and techniques that will help the company make more accurate forecasts and use of the available space efficiently. We expect our approach to reduce costs without affecting the quality of the product, and hence making production more viable.
Keywords: Simulation, Production Planning, Inventory Management, Inventory Control, facility planning and design, engineering economy and costsProcedia PDF Downloads 337
10 Production Planning for Animal Food Industry under Demand Uncertainty
Authors: Pirom Thangchitpianpol, Suttipong Jumroonrut
Abstract:This research investigates the distribution of food demand for animal food and the optimum amount of that food production at minimum cost. The data consist of customer purchase orders for the food of laying hens, price of food for laying hens, cost per unit for the food inventory, cost related to food of laying hens in which the food is out of stock, such as fine, overtime, urgent purchase for material. They were collected from January, 1990 to December, 2013 from a factory in Nakhonratchasima province. The collected data are analyzed in order to explore the distribution of the monthly food demand for the laying hens and to see the rate of inventory per unit. The results are used in a stochastic linear programming model for aggregate planning in which the optimum production or minimum cost could be obtained. Programming algorithms in MATLAB and tools in Linprog software are used to get the solution. The distribution of the food demand for laying hens and the random numbers are used in the model. The study shows that the distribution of monthly food demand for laying has a normal distribution, the monthly average amount (unit: 30 kg) of production from January to December. The minimum total cost average for 12 months is Baht 62,329,181.77. Therefore, the production planning can reduce the cost by 14.64% from real cost.
Keywords: Production Planning, animal food, stochastic linear programming, aggregate planning, demand uncertaintyProcedia PDF Downloads 240
9 Application of Production Planning to Improve Operation in Local Factory
Authors: Bashayer Al-Enezi, Budoor Al-Sabti, Eman Al-Durai, Fatmah Kalban, Meshael Ahmed
Abstract:Production planning and control principles are concerned with planning, controlling and balancing all aspects of manufacturing including raw materials, finished goods, production schedules, and equipment requirements. Hence, an effective production planning and control system is very critical to the success of any factory. This project will focus on the application of production planning and control principles on “The National Canned Food Production and Trading Company (NCFP)” factory to find problems or areas for improvement.
Keywords: Production Planning, Inventory Management, operations improvement, National Canned Food Production and Trading Company (NCFP)Procedia PDF Downloads 298
8 Production Planning, Scheduling and SME
Authors: Markus Heck, Hans Vettiger
Abstract:Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are the backbone of central Europe’s economies and have a significant contribution to the gross domestic product. Production planning and scheduling (PPS) is still a crucial element in manufacturing industries of the 21st century even though this area of research is more than a century old. The topic of PPS is well researched especially in the context of large enterprises in the manufacturing industry. However, the implementation of PPS methodologies within SME is mostly unobserved. This work analyzes how PPS is implemented in SME with the geographical focus on Switzerland and its vicinity. Based on restricted resources compared to large enterprises, SME have to face different challenges. The real problem areas of selected enterprises in regards of PPS are identified and evaluated. For the identified real-life problem areas of SME clear and detailed recommendations are created, covering concepts and best practices and the efficient usage of PPS. Furthermore, the economic and entrepreneurial value for companies is lined out and why the implementation of the introduced recommendations is advised.
Keywords: Production Planning, SME, central Europe, PPSProcedia PDF Downloads 243
7 A New OvS Approach in Assembly Line Balancing Problem
Authors: P. Azimi, B. Behtoiy, A. A. Najafi, H. R. Charmchi
Abstract:According to the previous studies, one of the most famous techniques which affect the efficiency of a production line is the assembly line balancing (ALB) technique. This paper examines the balancing effect of a whole production line of a real auto glass manufacturer in three steps. In the first step, processing time of each activity in the workstations is generated according to a practical approach. In the second step, the whole production process is simulated and the bottleneck stations have been identified, and finally in the third step, several improvement scenarios are generated to optimize the system throughput, and the best one is proposed. The main contribution of the current research is the proposed framework which combines two famous approaches including Assembly Line Balancing and Optimization via Simulation technique (OvS). The results show that the proposed framework could be applied in practical environments, easily.
Keywords: Production Planning, assembly line balancing problem, optimization via simulationProcedia PDF Downloads 326
6 Systematic Approach for Energy-Supply-Orientated Production Planning
Authors: F. Keller, G. Reinhart
Abstract:The efficient and economic allocation of resources is one main goal in the field of production planning and control. Nowadays, a new variable gains in importance throughout the planning process: Energy. Energy-efficiency has already been widely discussed in literature, but with a strong focus on reducing the overall amount of energy used in production. This paper provides a brief systematic approach, how energy-supply-orientation can be used for an energy-cost-efficient production planning and thus combining the idea of energy-efficiency and energy-flexibility.
Keywords: Production Planning, Production Control, Energy-Efficiency, energy-flexibility, energy-supplyProcedia PDF Downloads 491
5 A Simulation-Optimization Approach to Control Production, Subcontracting and Maintenance Decisions for a Deteriorating Production System
Authors: Héctor Rivera-Gómez, Eva Selene Hernández-Gress, Oscar Montaño-Arango, Jose Ramon Corona-Armenta
Abstract:This research studies the joint production, maintenance and subcontracting control policy for an unreliable deteriorating manufacturing system. Production activities are controlled by a derivation of the Hedging Point Policy, and given that the system is subject to deterioration, it reduces progressively its capacity to satisfy product demand. Multiple deterioration effects are considered, reflected mainly in the quality of the parts produced and the reliability of the machine. Subcontracting is available as support to satisfy product demand; also overhaul maintenance can be conducted to reduce the effects of deterioration. The main objective of the research is to determine simultaneously the production, maintenance and subcontracting rate which minimize the total incurred cost. A stochastic dynamic programming model is developed and solved through a simulation-based approach composed of statistical analysis and optimization with the response surface methodology. The obtained results highlight the strong interactions between production, deterioration and quality which justify the development of an integrated model. A numerical example and a sensitivity analysis are presented to validate our results.
Keywords: Simulation, Production Planning, Optimal Control, deterioration, subcontractingProcedia PDF Downloads 415
4 Development of Industry Sector Specific Factory Standards
Authors: Peter Burggräf, Moritz Krunke, Hanno Voet
Abstract:Due to shortening product and technology lifecycles, many companies use standardization approaches in product development and factory planning to reduce costs and time to market. Unlike large companies, where modular systems are already widely used, small and medium-sized companies often show a much lower degree of standardization due to lower scale effects and missing capacities for the development of these standards. To overcome these challenges, the development of industry sector specific standards in cooperations or by third parties is an interesting approach. This paper analyzes which branches that are mainly dominated by small or medium-sized companies might be especially interesting for the development of factory standards using the example of the German industry. For this, a key performance indicator based approach was developed that will be presented in detail with its specific results for the German industry structure.
Keywords: Production Planning, Factory Planning, factory standards, industry sector specific standardizationProcedia PDF Downloads 258
3 Production and Leftovers Usage Policies to Minimize Food Waste under Uncertain and Correlated Demand
Authors: Esma Birisci, Ronald McGarvey
Abstract:One of the common problems in food service industry is demand uncertainty. This research presents a multi-criteria optimization approach to identify the efficient frontier of points lying between the minimum-waste and minimum-shortfall solutions within uncertain demand environment. It also addresses correlation across demands for items (e.g., hamburgers are often demanded with french fries). Reducing overproduction food waste (and its corresponding environmental impacts) and an aversion to shortfalls (leave some customer hungry) need to consider as two contradictory objectives in an all-you-care-to-eat environment food service operation. We identify optimal production adjustments relative to demand forecasts, demand thresholds for utilization of leftovers, and percentages of demand to be satisfied by leftovers, considering two alternative metrics for overproduction waste: mass; and greenhouse gas emissions. Demand uncertainty and demand correlations are addressed using a kernel density estimation approach. A statistical analysis of the changes in decision variable values across each of the efficient frontiers can then be performed to identify the key variables that could be modified to reduce the amount of wasted food at minimal increase in shortfalls. We illustrate our approach with an application to empirical data from Campus Dining Services operations at the University of Missouri.
Keywords: Production Planning, Environmental Studies, Food Waste, uncertain and correlated demandProcedia PDF Downloads 246
2 Multi-Stage Multi-Period Production Planning in Wire and Cable Industry
Authors: Mahnaz Hosseinzadeh, Shaghayegh Rezaee Amiri
Abstract:This paper presents a methodology for serial production planning problem in wire and cable manufacturing process that addresses the problem of input-output imbalance in different consecutive stations, hoping to minimize the halt of machines in each stage. To this end, a linear Goal Programming (GP) model is developed, in which four main categories of constraints as per the number of runs per machine, machines’ sequences, acceptable inventories of machines at the end of each period, and the necessity of fulfillment of the customers’ orders are considered. The model is formulated based upon on the real data obtained from IKO TAK Company, an important supplier of wire and cable for oil and gas and automotive industries in Iran. By solving the model in GAMS software the optimal number of runs, end-of-period inventories, and the possible minimum idle time for each machine are calculated. The application of the numerical results in the target company has shown the efficiency of the proposed model and the solution in decreasing the lead time of the end product delivery to the customers by 20%. Accordingly, the developed model could be easily applied in wire and cable companies for the aim of optimal production planning to reduce the halt of machines in manufacturing stages.
Keywords: Production Planning, goal programming approach, serial manufacturing process, wire and cable industryProcedia PDF Downloads 35
1 Classification Framework of Production Planning and Scheduling Solutions from Supply Chain Management Perspective
Authors: Kwan Hee Han
Abstract:In today’s business environments, frequent change of customer requirements is a tough challenge to manufacturing company. To cope with these challenges, a production planning and scheduling (PP&S) function might be established to provide accountability for both customer service and operational efficiency. Nowadays, many manufacturing firms have utilized PP&S software solutions to generate a realistic production plan and schedule to adapt to external changes efficiently. However, companies which consider the introduction of PP&S software solution, still have difficulties for selecting adequate solution to meet their specific needs. Since the task of PP&S is the one of major building blocks of SCM (Supply Chain Management) architecture, which deals with short term decision making in the production process of SCM, it is needed that the functionalities of PP&S should be analysed within the whole SCM process. The aim of this paper is to analyse the PP&S functionalities and its system architecture from the SCM perspective by using the criteria of level of planning hierarchy, major 4 SCM processes and problem-solving approaches, and finally propose a classification framework of PP&S solutions to facilitate the comparison among various commercial software solutions. By using proposed framework, several major PP&S solutions are classified and positioned according to their functional characteristics in this paper. By using this framework, practitioners who consider the introduction of computerized PP&S solutions in manufacturing firms can prepare evaluation and benchmarking sheets for selecting the most suitable solution with ease and in less time. | https://publications.waset.org/abstracts/production-planning-related-abstracts |
What is Design for Manufacturing?
Design for Manufacturing (DFM), also known as Design for Fabrication (DFF), is the engineering practice of designing products to facilitate the manufacturing process and reduce manufacturing costs. It means taking actual manufacturing capabilities into account when creating a product design and reviewing designs to ensure that they meet manufacturing specifications.
In principle, DFM can benefit any manufactured product, from the relatively small and simple, such as a wooden toy, to the largest and most sophisticated, such as electronic systems used for automotive and aerospace. In this article, we’re focusing on DFM in the electronic manufacturing process, and specifically on DFM for printed circuit boards – PCB DFM.
DFM is critical in the electronics industry. Electronics manufacturers must keep prices low in order to stay afloat in today’s competitive market, a demand that requires optimization of every aspect of production, including manufacturing. In addition, the fast pace of innovation in the electronics industry is driving companies to introduce new products at a dizzying pace. Without proper DFM, electronics manufacturers are forced to correct errors during pre-production manufacturing which creates significant delays and additional costs that no electronics manufacturer can afford.
What should be reviewed in PCB DFM?
PCB DFM looks at all factors that may impact the manufacturability of a PCB design, such as assembly, fabrication, flex/rigid-flex, microvia, panel and substrate. It should also consider whether SMT component placement and soldering can be conducted automatically to reduce costs. DFM can involve general manufacturing specifications and/or the specifications of a specific manufacturer.
Given the complexity of the electronic manufacturing process, DFM principles are applied in specific ways to several key stages within the PCB design-to-manufacturing workflow, and even beyond it. This has given rise to several subsets of DFM, each of which focuses on optimizing different aspects of the manufacturing process.
Design for assembly (DFA) – Focuses on facilitating assembly operations, minimizing the number of parts, improving the ease of handling and using standardized parts to make assembly more efficient
Design for testing (DFT) – Incorporates features in the design that make it easier to test the product for defects that could impact its functioning
Design for excellence (DFX) – Implemented in the concept design phase; includes methods, guidelines, and standards for creating better-quality products
When should PCB DFM reviews be done?
DFM reviews can be conducted at various stages in the PCB design and manufacturing process, but as a general principle, the earlier, the better. Ideally, DFM reviews should be done during the design stage, especially when introducing a new product. This is known as shift-left. The timing is critical because the sooner a potential issue is identified, the less costly fixing it will be.
Reviewing the design for fabrication issues in the design stage enables designers to create a more mature design and catch errors and violations early on, before time and valuable materials have been wasted on a problematic design. Additionally, when a design is reviewed at an early stage, it can also be optimized for specific production volumes, including high mix, low volume production.
Accelerating new product introduction with Valor NPI
DFM is no longer a post-layout process in PCB design. It is now considered throughout the shift-left concurrent design flow. From test-point definition and validation to DFM analysis during layout, designers can eliminate errors before PCB assembly. DFM validation ensures a seamless and error free design-to-manufacturing hand-off.
Who should be involved in DFM?
DFM isn’t solely the responsibility of designers. Shift-left of DFM requires that all stakeholders, including engineers, designers, contract manufacturers, and material suppliers challenge the design and inspect it on every level to ensure that every element has been optimized and all unnecessary costs have been eliminated. A full DFM review can also determine if the board can be efficiently produced by a given manufacturer according to the manufacturer’s specific manufacturing capabilities and constraints.
Involving all stakeholders minimizes board spins and iterations, saving the tedious back and forth between designers and manufacturers, and accelerating the time to market and reducing costs. When all stakeholders review the design for reliability, assuring that the PCB will perform as expected for its projected lifetime, it helps to streamline the handoff between design and manufacturing and ensure that the manufacturing team receives complete PCB design data.
PCB DFM moves to the cloud
DFM can be a cumbersome process, as designs need to be sent back and forth between the designer and each manufacturer until all of the problems are corrected according to the specifications of that manufacturer. However, new advances that move many aspects of PCB DFM to the cloud have vastly simplified and sped up DFM reviews. Cloud-based DFM platforms enable designers and manufacturers to easily define custom DFM rules and safely share sensitive data in real-time, ensuring a smart and seamless handoff. They also allow designers to submit designs to several manufacturers and compare results before selecting a manufacturer.
PCB DFM—a critical component of a smart electronics manufacturing process
Innovation has accelerated the pace of electronics manufacturing exponentially and profit margins are smaller than ever before. Everything in the electronics manufacturing process must be optimized—there is simply no time for multiple late-stage iterations or for costly mistakes that waste time and material. DFM is a critical to speeding up the process and minimizing costs by optimizing the handoff between design and manufacturing and ensuring first-time-right PCB production.
Valor NPI online DFM trial
Try our free 30-day trial. No installation required.
With this virtual lab, you will be able to explore the capabilities and features of Valor NPI at your own pace. You’ll have immediate, hands-on access to many of the Valor NPI features. Data files and tutorials help you become familiar with the tool, its features and functionality.
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You must be logged in to post a comment. | https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/valor-dfm-solutions/2022/01/04/what-is-design-for-manufacturing/ |
How to Avoid Wasting Raw Materials in Manufacturing
Does your factory waste more raw materials than it should? Do you need to know how to avoid wasting raw materials in manufacturing to reduce costs in your operation? Below we discuss five ways that manufacturers can succeed in achieving this vital goal.
Imagine how much money a conscientious manufacturing company could save by eliminating or minimizing raw material waste in its operations. Without a doubt, it is an objective that every production facility that is seeking to be the best in class must carefully consider.
To achieve this, it is essential to aim for the modernization of manufacturing installations and the use of quality technological resources. In addition, they must optimize the development of production processes in general terms and facilitate the operational management of the manufacturing plant.
Among the solutions that contribute to reducing raw material, and waste is digital checklist systems. These guidelines consist of comprehensive platforms for managing industries and other types of companies to avoid wasting raw materials in manufacturing.
Five ways to avoid wasting raw materials in manufacturing
The following text will examine the top five ways to prevent waste in a production environment. It is important to remember that all these points can be met using an electronic checklist platform.
- Real-time data collection
One of the requirements to avoid wasting raw materials in manufacturing is to have relevant optimal, constant, and efficient information flows built into the production system.
To comply with this principle, establishing a digital checklist system will enable you to collect data in real-time on different areas of the business, most notably in the area of production.
Thanks to this dynamic, you will be able to detect various failures that usually cause waste of materials and supplies at the right time.
In turn, the collection of valuable data in real-time is accompanied by the possibility of creating immediate action plans for rectifying any adverse conditions found in the manufacturing facility. These must include comments and images that instruct operators and workers on the tasks they must perform to correct any existing problems and inefficiencies.
- Adaptation to ISO standards
The International Society for Standardization (ISO) standards promote standardization and sustainable quality improvement in manufacturing and other organizations.
Among other things, these standards promote maximum efficiency in using inputs, limiting losses, and reducing waste to low levels.
By adapting your factory operations to these universal production principles, you will use the amount of raw material to the exact specification of your requirements. In addition, adherence to these principles will guarantee a good management of the plant and lead to success in avoiding wasting materials in manufacturing.
Standardization is also synonymous with fewer workplace accidents and a better operational flow in the industrial sector. These two features of standardization, in turn, facilitate supervision and management tasks. As a result, everything on the shop floor runs more smoothly and efficiently.
- Efficiency control checklists
Efficiency control focuses on determining whether a company makes the most of its raw material resources. This includes an assessment of the degree of success the organization has achieved in minimizing waste.
Through a checklist system, production managers will be able to create digital lists in this area, which focus on continuous review and analysis of the information that has been generated in real-time.
This will allow best-in-class manufacturers to analyze the use of inputs and secure future profitability for the company during the process of transforming raw materials into finished products. Thus, shop floor managers will be able to make timely corrections or redirect operational flows toward more efficient methods to improve their capacity to avoid wasting raw materials in manufacturing.
Of course, manufacturing managers can apply the efficiency control provided by a checklist system in many other areas, which go beyond the productive tasks themselves.
For example: through the use of this principle, in addition to creating a greater capacity to avoid wasting raw materials in manufacturing, companies will be able to analyze the results of other important things, such as the performance of the sales force’s work.
- Centralization of information to avoid wasting raw materials in manufacturing
Information management is directly related to reducing raw material waste and operational optimization in best-in-class companies. Good command of data and related indicators allows for making the necessary decisions to optimize production processes and helps detect operational failures before they occur. Failures of this type can translate into significant losses and lower profitability.
Considering this, a digital checklist platform emerges as a necessity. This is because another of its capacities is linked to the centralization of critical information.
Such as system will house an easily accessible database of both the data collected in real-time and the historical information used to evaluate the behavior and evolution of the processes over a period of time.
In addition, companies must be sure to utilize good software that complies with strict computer security parameters. This guarantees the confidentiality of data and information, which is a critical component of a company’s competitiveness in the marketplace.
- Inspection lists
Another task that helps avoid the waste of raw materials in manufacturing and that can be digitized or disseminated through a checklist system is the inspection of the operating cycle.
Of course, one of the primary missions of these evaluations is to guarantee the use of resources with a maximum level of productivity and efficiency. But, of course, this is a benefit gained beyond reducing raw material waste.
Thanks to the checklist that a company should maintain, this type of inspection can be established as an internal company policy. Furthermore, plant personnel can do it through a practical and scalable schedule of executions, which the personnel in charge can easily visualize and follow.
Why is it so important to look for a checklist system?
As we explained earlier, conducting these evaluations and audits is a practical and systematic process due to the easy access to reliable information that keeping a computerized checklist can provide.
As stated throughout this article, keeping a quality checklist system can help reduce raw material waste and increase the profitability of your company’s operations.
In addition to offering software that has the functionality to maintain digital checklists, a good provider has an effective support service. This allows customers to communicate via email and online chats to request help and raise concerns.
The most reputable providers maintain a customer success team that will monitor all your requirements and the questions you have regarding the use of the platform.
Even if the company does not have extensive experience in managing digitalized information and communication technology solutions, conscientious manufacturers will be able to get the most out of such a system thanks to the support of professionals working for the provider of the software. In order to provide optimal results, a checklist software platform has to have an intuitive, simple and practical interface, which enables ease of use.
Are there any important qualities to take into account?
Another important quality that characterizes a good provider of digital checklist platforms is that they offer the system implementation at no additional cost and guarantee free training for a company’s workforce.
These elements make the migration of quality information and data from paper to digitization natural, effective and sustainable. A sound system will translate into tangible benefits in the medium and even short term. | https://princemanufacturing.com/how-to-avoid-wasting-raw-materials-in-manufacturing/ |
Jurnal Riset Teknologi Pencegahan Pencemaran Industri (Research Journal of Industrial Pollution Prevention Technology) seeks to promote and disseminate original research as well as review, related to following area: Environmental Technology : within the area of air pollution technology, wastewater treatment technology, and management of solid waste and harzardous toxic substance Process technology and simulation: Technology and/or simulation in industrial production process aims to minimize waste and environmental degradation. Design Engineering : Device engineering to improve process efficiency, measurement accuracy and to detect pollutant Material fabrication : Environmental friendly material fabrication as subtitution material for industry Energy Conservation : process engineering/ technology/ conservation of resources for energy generation.
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Minimizing the environmental impact of our operations is essential to promoting healthy communities that thrive on a clean and sustainable planet.
At Catalent, our environmental sustainability efforts focus on mitigating the impacts of our operations on climate, water, and waste, as well as complying with environmental regulations. We know that our key stakeholders share our values of operational excellence and environmental responsibility, and we are working diligently to make progress against our goals.
In 2021, we committed to the Science Based Targets initiative and set a new goal of reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 42% by 2030.
We achieved our initial carbon reduction goal ahead of time through site-based energy reduction projects and transitioning the majority of our sites to renewable electricity. Soon after, we signed a letter of commitment with the Science-Based Target initiative (SBTi), joining a growing list of companies setting actionable, science-based greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to limit global warming.
OUR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY TARGETS
- 42% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions by fiscal 2030
- Water intensity reduction to 500 cubic meters per million dollars of revenue (m3/M$) by fiscal 2024
- No residual active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) above Predicted No Effect Concentration (PNEC) in wastewater by fiscal 2024
- Zero waste sent to landfill by fiscal 2024
Our approach to environmental management
Our sustainability culture is fueled by robust Environmental Health, Safety and Sustainability (EHS&S) policies and systems. We are committed to managing the environment with care, which supports the integration of responsibility and sustainability into our operations and our decision-making process. The EHS Policy, signed by our President and COO, outlines our company- wide environmental stewardship objectives, commitments, and our expectations for employees to comply.
Across every aspect of our work globally, we are streamlining operating standards, procedures, and training through an ISO14001-accredited environmental management system. In fiscal 2021, we increased the scope of our accreditation to 46 sites, up from 33 in fiscal 2020.
How we measure and drive progress
Our sites report environmental data through a central platform and our sustainability progress is tracked with an internal sustainability scorecard by the EHS&S Team. The data guides our environmental strategy, helping our sites improve operational best practices and minimize our footprint.
Reducing our carbon footprint
Catalent is a science-based and science-driven company: As such, we recognize the urgency to operate responsibly, and we will continue working towards minimizing our impact on the planet.
Energy efficiency helps us meet our carbon reduction goals
Our carbon reduction strategy involves:
- Sourcing renewable electricity.
- Investing in energy efficiency projects.
- Replacing on-site equipment with more energy-efficient models.
We’re proud that in fiscal 2021, 20 Catalent sites were powered by 100% renewable electricity, including 14 sites that transitioned during fiscal 2021. In early fiscal 2022, we transitioned another 15 sites. In other words, 35 Catalent sites are currently being powered by 100% renewable electricity.
In fiscal 2021, we conducted 114 site-based energy efficiency projects. These projects are designed to help our team identify and implement new ways to be more efficient and sustainable in our day-to-day work.
Compared to our fiscal 2018 baseline, our total direct and indirect emissions have decreased 20.1%, surpassing our goal to achieve a 15% reduction by 2023.
You can learn more and access our energy and emissions data in our latest CR report.
WATER STEWARDSHIP
At Catalent, we work to minimize water use and eliminate the risk of adverse environmental effects from wastewater discharge. With a goal of reducing our water intensity to $500m³ per million dollars of revenue by fiscal 2024, we are optimizing manufacturing processes and conservation initiatives at our sites. For instance, we are currently reviewing water use linked to equipment cleaning, as an opportunity to reduce water usage across the network.
In fiscal 2021, our total water use was 1.9 million m³, unchanged from fiscal 2020.
In our latest Corporate Responsibility Report, you can learn more and access our water usage, water source, and intensity data.
You can learn more in our latest CR report.
GOING ABOVE AND BEYOND RESPONSIBLE DISPOSAL OF WASTEWATER
As a member of the pharmaceutical sector, we regularly manage and dispose of products that include active pharmaceutical ingredients, or APIs, on behalf of our customers. Some of our activities—such as cleaning manufacturing equipment—may introduce APIs into wastewater, which must be properly disposed so as not to harm the environment. Catalent currently follows all regulatory requirements for wastewater disposal and our new target pushes us to a water disposal standard beyond the legal requirements.
Our goal is that by fiscal 2024, all sites will discharge wastewater with API concentrations below predicted no-effect concentration (PNEC) levels.
Improving waste management
Manufacturing life-saving and life-enhancing products also produces waste. We are committed to reducing our waste generation and maintaining compliance with all regulatory requirements for the disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste. At Catalent sites globally, we limit the volume of nonessential material brought onto our sites, segregate waste streams, and divert waste from the landfill. Hazardous waste is disposed of through incineration, as required per regulations of our sector. You can learn more and access our waste management data in our latest CR report.
Some of our most recent waste recycling initiatives include increasing the amount of excess gelatin that we recycle or reuse. For example, in fiscal 2021, we diverted 19% of the total gelatin by-product we generated during the year.
Shipment of gelatin waste, a by-product of Softgel manufacturing process at our Benheim site, to third parties who recycle the material into new products.
WASTE DIVERSION
As of fiscal 2021, 18 of 33 sites no longer send waste to landfills. To reach our fiscal 2024 goal of sending zero waste to landfill, we are implementing actions and plans at our remaining sites to divert landfill material to recycling, reuse, or incineration. You can learn more and access our waste diversion data on our latest CR report.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF OUR SUPPLY CHAIN
As a member of the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI)—a group of companies from the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector dedicated to improving the industry’s social and environmental impacts—we are engaging with peers in our industry on best practices in social and environmental programming.
Our suppliers are critical to the operation of our business. In fiscal 2021, our internal Procurement team distributed social and environmental assessments to select suppliers and conducted an assessment of human rights risks in our operations and supply chain. The results of the various assessments will guide our approach to scaling our responsible supplier audit program in the future.
CATALENT GREEN TEAMS
Catalent team members contribute to building Catalent’s culture of corporate responsibility & sustainability. Green Teams bring employees together, share best practices and raise sustainability awareness at our sites and in our communities.
For more information on Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability at Catalent, email us or follow #catalentcares on social media. | https://www.catalent.com/about-us/corporate-responsibility/environment/ |
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Reduction and Simplification of Material Flows in a Factory: The Essential Foundation for JobshopLean
What is Flow?Flow is the progressive movement of product/s through a facility from the receiving of raw material/s to the shipping of the finished product/s without stoppages at any point in time due to backflows, machine breakdowns, scrap, or other production delaysSource: Suzaki, K. (1987). The new manufacturing challenge: Techniques for continuousimprovement. New York, NY: Free Press.
Role of Flow at Toyota++ Ohno, T. 1988. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Portland, OR: Productivity, Inc. ISBN 0-915299-14-3.(Page 11) I was manager of the machine shop at the Koromo plant. As an experiment, I arranged the various machines in the sequence of machining processes (Page 33) We realized that the (kanban) system would not work unless we set up a production flow that could handle the kanban system going back process by process (Page 39)It is undeniable that leveling becomes more difficult as diversification develops
Role of Flow at Toyota++ Ohno, T. 1988. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Portland, OR: Productivity, Inc. ISBN 0-915299-14-3.(Page 54) Toyotas main plant provides an example of a smooth production flow accomplished by rearranging the conventional machines after a thorough study of the work sequence (Page 54) It is crucial for the production plant to design a layout in which worker activities harmonize with rather than impede the production flow (Page 100)By setting up a flow connecting not only the final assembly line but all the processes, one reduces production lead time
Role of Flow at Toyota++ Ohno, T. 1988. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Portland, OR: Productivity, Inc. ISBN 0-915299-14-3.(Page 123) When work flow is properly laid out, small isolated islands do not form (Page 125) For the worker on the production line, this means shifting from being single-skilled to becoming multi-skilled (Page xxx)The first aspect of the TPSmeans putting a flow into the manufacturing processNow, we place a lathe, a mill and a drill in the actual sequence of the manufacturing processing
Are these 500 Forgings Flowing?
Is this One Forging Flowing?Building 1Building 2Building 3
Value Stream Analysis for the ForgingValue Added Ratio = Value-Added Time/Flow Time = 17.88%
Computer
C/T= 45/hr
C/O= 0
S/U= 15 min
C/T= 1 day/ht #
C/O=
S/U=
951
C/T= 20/hr
C/O= 10 min
S/U= 15 min
760
C/T= 10min/cycle
C/O= 0
S/U= 10min
510
810
C/T= 1/hr
C/O= 1.5 hr
S/U= 1.5 hr
310
C/T= 15min/cycle
C/O= 0
S/U= 10 min
510
C/T=
C/O=
S/U=
952
C/T= 15min /20pcs
C/O=
S/U=
570
Number of shift: 1
Waste NVA Time Flow Time
Dominant Wastes that Flow Time
TOTAL TIME ON MACHINES5%
TOTAL TIME IN MOVING AND WAITING95%
TOTAL TIMEIN THE FACILITY
IN CUT30%
POSITIONING, GAGING, ETC.70%
TOTAL TIMEON MACHINES
Littles Law+WIP ($) = Throughput ($/day) * Flow Time (days)Therefore, a common sense strategy to eliminate waste, lower costs and increase order fulfillment on a daily basis should be to: Reduce average flow time per order+ Little, J.D.C. 1961. A Proof for the Queuing Formula: L=W. Operations Research, 9, 383-387.
Impact of Facility LayoutGiven a poorly-designed facility layout, the Average Travel Distance per order therefore Transportation Waste therefore WIP Waste therefore Waiting Waste therefore Flow Time , Throughput and Cost
How to reduce the Dominant Wastes
Design For Flow (DFF)Maximize Directed Flow Paths Eliminate backtracking Eliminate crossflows and intersections among pathsMinimize Flows Eliminate operations Combine operations Minimize multiple flowsMinimize Cost of Flows Eliminate handling Minimize handling costs Minimize queuing delays Minimize Pick-Up/Drop-Off delays Minimize in-process storage Minimize transport delaysAdapted from: Tompkins, J.A., et al. (1996). Facilities planning. New York, NY: John Wiley.
Strategies to Minimize FlowModify product designs to eliminate non-functional featuresAdopt new multi-function manufacturing technology to replace conventional machinesDeliver materials to points of use which will minimize warehouse storage spaceModularize the facility into flowlines, cells and focused factories
Strategies to Minimize FlowProcess parts or subassemblies in parallel Combine several transfer batches into unit loadsSelect process plans with minimum number of operationsEliminate outlier routings by rationalization of the product mixPrevent proliferation of new routings - Use variant process planning to generate new routings
Types of Directed Flow PathsForward and in-sequenceflows in one aisle are bestForward flows between parallel and adjacent lines of machines separated by a single aisle are okayCross flows across multiple aisles are NOT okayBacktrack flows to an immediately previous machine are okayCross flows across a single aisle are okay
Duplicate machines of the same type at multiple locations
Use hybrid flowshop layouts
Cascade flowlines in parallel
How to Maximize Directed Flow Paths
Bend flowlines into U,W or S shapes
Develop the layout based on the complete assembly operations process (flow) chartHow to Maximize Directed Flow Paths
How to Minimize Cost of FlowsDesign all material flow paths using or (linear) contoursDesign layouts to minimize travel distances for heavy/large unit loadsUtilize relevant principles of material handlingUnit loadUtilization of cubic spaceStandardization of equipment and methodsMechanization of processes (if possible, automation of processes)Flexibility of equipment and methodsSimplification of methods and equipmentIntegration of material, people and information flowsComputerization of material, people and information flowsUtilize gravity to move materials
Minimize all buffer/storage spaces at machines
Balance consecutive operations - Use buffers (safety stock) strategically
Maximize use of small transfer batches - Use roving forklifts to serve zones on the shopfloor on a First Come First Served (FCFS) basis
Release materials in controlled quantities - Rely on kanbans (visual scheduling), production rate of bottleneck machines only, firm orders not production forecasts, etc. How to Minimize Cost of Flows
Guidelines for Design For FlowSource: Apple, J. M. (1977). Plant layout and material handling. New York, NY: John Wiley.
Guidelines for Design For FlowSource: Apple, J. M. (1977). Plant layout and material handling. New York, NY: John Wiley.
21. Provisions for expected
a. In-process material storage
b. Scrap storage and transport
22. Flexibility in regard to
a. Increased or decreased production
b. New products
c. New processes
d. Added departments
23. Amenable to expansion in pre-planned directions
24. Proper relationship to site
a. Orientation
b. Topography
c. Expansion (plant, parking, auxiliary structures, etc.)
25. Receiving and shipping in proper relation to
a. Internal flow
b. External transportation facilities (existing and proposed)
26. Activities with specific location requirements situated in proper spots
a. Production operations
b. Production services
c. Personnel services
d. Administration services
27. Supervisory requirements given proper consideration
a. Size of departments
b. Shape
c. Location
28. Production control goals easily attainable
29. Quality control goals easily attainable
30. Consideration given to multi-floor possibilities (existing and proposed)
31. No apparent violations of health or safety requirements
Strategies from DFMA PracticesInside-Out: In high mix environments, keep standard modules and components on the inside and bolt on the special features and options on the outside; keep the product variation as far to the end of the line as possible Monument Avoidance: Avoid component designs that require a new and unique process that has to serve multiple product linesBatch Early: If processes that necessitate batching (plating, painting, heat treat, ovens, drying/aging) are absolutely necessary, try to design products where these batch processes can be used as early as possible (Nothing is worse than requiring an oven/drying cycle in the middle of the Final Assembly Process)Standardize Modules,not necessarily Products: Offering a broad product mix is a competitive advantage, so reducing product SKUs may not be a good idea. However, reducing module and component SKUs should be a core strategyCourtesy of Ray Keefe, VP-Manufacturing, Emerson Electric Co. | https://vdocuments.site/reduction-and-simplification-of-material-flows-in-a-factory-the-essential.html |
We live in an age where technology is everywhere. It continues to change our lives and the way we do our work.
When computers entered the engineering industry, it simply became easier to accomplish tasks that had formerly been completed using pencil and paper. Designers were able to make changes faster—with a simple click of a button. While computers offered a convenient digital solution, however, the overall workflow was not altered all that drastically. Designs still required detail, and the time to ensure a successful segue to the tangible finished product.
Yet now, in a new age of technology, we see the demand for more in a shorter amount of time. Our global dependence on immediate data and at-our-fingertips results has transcended into the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry and affects the way we complete our projects. When creating renderings or developing concepts for a client’s consideration, two or three options are no longer sufficient. We need the capacity to explore more alternatives, to optimize the most favorable ones and remain nimble in response to changing project needs. This immediacy is a clear positive within the profession, but it also ups the ante on the types of deliverables our clients are coming to expect.
But, how — in the world of design — do we fulfill the demand for more options, the call for higher sophistication and the request for a condensed delivery timeline when our product is not a physical object? Other industries such as manufacturing have migrated towards streamlining processes and optimizing output with the aid of robots and precision machinery. We can now begin to translate a similar process into the AEC industry with such tools as generative design and automated-aided design.
Generative Design
Generative design is an innovative concept that was pioneered in the manufacturing sector and is now being applied to the AEC industry. A single definition of generative design may not exist, but Anthony Hauck, president of Hypar — a company specializing in generative design tools for the AEC industry —summarized it nicely with:
“Generative design is the automated algorithmic combination of goals and constraints to reveal solutions.”
Let’s break that down. The constraints are defined by the designer at the start of the process. Constraints might include design speed, grade requirements, or minimum and maximum depths for a pipe. Then, a computer iterates through a variety of possible solutions, learning from each step and optimizing results to meet the predetermined parameters. This mimics the traditional process that designers typically use on projects, but it allows for significantly more options to be explored.
Generative design is not a substitute for a professional’s hand, but rather a tool that augments the knowledge and judgment of the designer. From a sustainability aspect, generative design also allows the designer to evaluate more efficient structures or ones that utilize less material. For clients, generative design aids project stakeholders in making more informed decisions about which solution they should proceed with. It also helps explain and promote the project to members of their community.
Automated-aided Design
When it comes to automated-aided design, production tools such as Autodesk Revit and Civil 3D are now offering solutions that allow non-programmers ways to automate repetitive processes by using visual programming. The value associated with automation comes not only in the form of time-saving, but also in the dynamic nature of design; it allows design data to be directly mapped to outputs—inherently reducing errors.
Let’s say, for example, a designer is working on utility placement within a new building. They could develop a script within a visual programming tool for placing pipe penetrations through walls and floors. The script recognizes the conflict point between all of the walls, floors and pipes within the structure. Then, it automatically pulls different parameters such as the pipe material, wall/floor material, wall/floor thickness, pipe size, rotation, etc., to place the correct penetration. If the placement of the walls or floors were to change during the design process, the script automatically updates the location and information associated with the pipe penetrations, resulting in a highly efficient and fluid project evolution.
Smart solutions
So, is doing more in less time a good thing? Utilizing generative design and automated-aided design, designers in the AEC industry can more promptly and wholly meet their clients’ visions. They can spend more energy focusing on structure that is energy- and cost-efficient, resilient and aesthetically pleasing. They can give due attention to improving municipal infrastructure, addressing aging utilities or optimizing systems performance. Instead of spending countless hours developing spreadsheets to compare a few alternatives and mapping design data to tables for output, they can focus knowledge and experience on the goal of delivering the best possible, value-added solutions for the challenges clients face. The age of smarter working is upon us. We embrace it. | https://www.msa-ps.com/design-technology-age-of-automation/ |
Clean-in-place (CIP) is a widely used technique applied to clean industrial equipment without disassembly. Cleaning protocols are currently defined arbitrarily from offline measurements. This can lead to excessive resource (water and chemicals) consumption and downtime, further increasing environmental impacts. An optical monitoring system has been developed to assist eco-intelligent CIP process control and improve resource efficiency. The system includes a UV optical fouling monitor designed for real-time image acquisition and processing. The output of the monitoring is such that it can support further intelligent decision support tools for automatic cleaning assessment during CIP phases. This system reduces energy and water consumption, whilst minimising non-productive time: the largest economic cost for CIP.
One third of energy consumption is attributable to the industrial sector, with as much as half ultimately wasted as heat. Consequently, research has focused on technologies for harvesting this waste heat energy, however, the adoption of such technologies can be costly with long payback time. A decision support tool is presented which computes the compatibility of waste heat source(s) and sink(s), namely the exergy balance and temporal availability, along with economic and environmental benefits of available heat exchanger technologies to propose a streamlined and optimised heat recovery strategy. Substantial improvement in plant energy efficiency together with reduction in the payback time for heat recovery has been demonstrated in the included case study.
the identification of their structural growth and the detection of defects which occur during the deposition process.
comparing two different deposition techniques, Close Space Sublimation (CSS) and Magnetron Sputtering (MS).
implemented through the utilisation of an infrared (IR) camera. A features extraction procedure, based on statistical parameters calculation, was applied to temperature data generated by the IR camera. The features were utilised to build a fuzzy c-means (FCM) based decision making support system utilising pattern recognition for tool state identification. The environmental benefits deriving from the application of the developed monitoring system, are discussed in terms of prevention of rework/rejected products and associated energy and material efficiency improvements.
to identify and evaluate both in terms of quantity and quality.
In the UK, 25% of final energy consumption is attributed to the industrial sector (DECC, 2013) which also accounts for one third of the electricity consumption. However it is estimated that between 20 to 50 percent of industrial energy consumption is ultimately wasted as heat (Johnson et al., 2008). Unlike material waste that is clearly visible, waste heat can be difficult to identify and evaluate both in terms of quantity and quality. Hence by being able to understand the availability of waste heat, and the ability to recover it, there is an opportunity to reduce energy costs and associated environmental impacts. This research describes the design of a novel framework that aids manufacturers in making decisions regarding the most suitable solution to recover Waste Heat Energy (WHE) from their activities. The framework consists of four major sections: 1) survey of waste heat sources in a facility; 2) assessment of waste heat quantity and quality; 3) selection of appropriate technology; 4) decision making and recommendations. In order to support the implementation of the framework within the manufacturing industry, an associated software tool is discussed.
There is a growing body of evidence which increasingly points to serious and irreversible ecological consequences if current unsustainable manufacturing practices ad consumption patterns continue. Recent years have seen a rising awareness leading to the generation of both national and international regulations, resulting in modest improvements in manufacturing practices. These incremental changes however are not making the necessary progress toward eliminating or even reversing the environmental impacts of global industry. Therefore, a fundamental research question is `how can future of manufacturing industry` A common approach adopted in such cases is to utilize exercises to develop a number of alternative future scenarios to aid with long-term strategic planning. This paper presents the results of one such study to create a set of `SMART Manufacturing Scenarios` for 2050.
Energy is an inextricable part of life in the 21st century, thus its availability and utilisation will become increasingly important with the concerns over climate change and the escalation in worldwide population. This highlights the need for manufacturing businesses to adopt the concept of ‘lean energy’ based on the use of the most energy efficient processes and activities within their production facilities. The energy consumption in manufacturing facilities can be reduced by either using more efficient technologies and equipment, and/or through improved monitoring and control of energy used in infrastructure and technical services. The research reported in this paper adopts a novel approach to modelling energy flows within a manufacturing system based on a ‘product’ viewpoint, and utilises the energy consumption data at ‘plant’ and ‘process’ levels to provide a breakdown of energy used during production.
Green sources of power generation and efficient management of energy demand are among the greatest challenges facing manufacturing businesses. A significant proportion of energy used in manufactuirng is currently generated through fossil fuels. Therefore in the foreseeable future, the rationalistion of nergy consumption still provides the greatest opportunity for the reduction of greenhouse gases. A novel approach to energy efficient manufacturing is proposed through modelling the detailed breakdown of energy required to produce a single product. This approach provides greater transparency on energy inefficiencies throughout a manufacturing system and enables a 20-50% reduction of energy consumption through combined improvements in production and product design.
Many manufacturing organizations while doing business either directly or indirectly with other industrial sectors often encounter interoperability problems among software systems. This increases the business cost and reduces the efficiency. Research communities are exploring ways to reduce this cost. Incompatibility amongst the syntaxes and the semantics of the languages of application systems is the most common cause to this problem. The process specification language (PSL), an ISO standard (18629), has the potential to overcome some of these difficulties by acting as a neutral communication language. The current paper has therefore focused on exploring this aspect of the PSL within a cross-disciplinary supply chain environment.
The paper explores a specific cross-disciplinary supply chain scenario in order to understand the mechanisms of communications within the system. Interoperability of processes supporting those communications are analysed against PSL. A strategy is proposed for sharing process information amongst the supply chain nodes using the ‘PSL 20 questions wizard and it is concluded that, although there is a need to develop more effective methods for mapping systems to PSL, it can still be seen as a powerful tool to aid the communications between processes in the supply chain. The paper uses a supply chain scenario that cuts across the construction and manufacturing business sectors in order to provide a breadth to the types of disciplines involved in communication.
Convenience food manufacture generates considerable waste due to the planning of production being undertaken based upon forecasted orders. This problem is particularly acute for products that have a very short shelf-life and are subject to considerable volatility in demand, such as ready-meals. Overproduction wastes (OPWs) typically result in finished products being disposed of through commercial waste channels, which is both costly for manufacturers and represents poor and unsustainable use of resources. This paper reports on a hybrid two-stage planning technique for the reduction of OPW by utilizing the advantages offered through both static and dynamic approaches to production scheduling. The application of this planning approach to a case study ready-meal manufacturer through the development of commercially available planning software is also described.
reviews the on-going developments and research activities in this domain.
quality of the information exchanges within the supply chain.
Convenience food manufacture generates considerable waste through poor planning of production. This problem is particularly acute for products that have very short shelf-life and will be disposed of as waste should their shelf-life expire. Chilled ready-meals are convenience foods with relatively short shelf-lives and volatile consumer demands; their manufacture is based on forecasted volumes and when demand has been over-predicted, considerable wastes are created. This is referred to as overproduction waste( OPW), which typically sees finished products disposed of through commericial waste channels as a result of lack of demand. The research reported in this paper has investigated the generation of a reponsive demand management framework for the reduction of OPW's.
The European shoe industry has experienced significant challenges in the last 20 years, mainly due to the pressures of modern global markets in which the industry has to compete with competitors from low labour cost countries in Asia and the Far East. A new trend is now forecast concerning the mass customisation of shoes, where customers choose and order customised shoes from a range of predefined materials and designs. This is to be achieved through the ‘shoe shop of the future’ with combined capabilities of obtaining 3D models of customer’s feet together with the exciting developments offered through the latest advancement in e-commerce. However, such a novel approach for the customisation of shoe design and production will have a significant influence on the batch sizes and expected lead times, and will reduce the average batch size of shoe production from 500–1000 pairs to about 10–20 pairs per batch. Consequently, customised shoes will result in an enormous increase in the number of batches, leading to an increase in the complexity of planning, scheduling and tracking of orders both across the supply chain and internally within various production departments of a shoe factory. This research proposes a distributed scheduling approach to provide the required autonomy in decision making and flexibility in job sequencing at departmental level to deal with the complexity of planning a large number of small batch production orders. | https://www.centreforsmart.co.uk/publications?research_area=3 |
As the prospect of quantum computing-based attacks grows, the need for stronger encryption increases. Expert Michael Cobb discusses lattice-based cryptography as an option.
between two parties are authenticated and private.
Certain encryption algorithms that underpin these protocols -- like RSA, Diffie-Hellman and elliptic curve -- are based on difficult-to-solve mathematical problems and are classified as asymmetric cryptographic primitives.
RSA, for example, is based on the principle that it is easy to calculate the product of two large prime numbers, but finding the factors of a large number, if it has only very large prime factors, is very difficult.
For example, it is easy to check that the product of 31 times 37 is 1,147, but trying to find the factors of 1,147 is a much longer process. The time and resources required to solve these problems are prohibitive, meaning information encrypted using modern encryption algorithms is deemed secure. That is, unless you have a quantum computer, as they can easily solve existing asymmetric cryptographic primitives using Shor's factorization quantum algorithm.
As computing power increases, algorithms need to be retired and replaced. So, for example, the Data Encryption Standard was once the standard algorithm used for encryption, but a modern desktop computer can easily break it. MD5 and SHA-1 were popular hash algorithms, but they are now considered weak, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has already published the successor to SHA-2: SHA-3.
NIST decided the time has come to prepare critical IT systems so they can resist quantum computing-based attacks and has initiated a process to solicit, evaluate and standardize one or more quantum-resistant, public key cryptographic algorithms.
Is lattice-based cryptography the answer?
Many security experts believe that lattice-based cryptography is one way to deliver quantum-resistant encryption. Lattice-based cryptography uses two-dimensional algebraic constructs known as lattices, which are not easily defeated with quantum computing schemes.
A lattice is an infinite grid of dots, and the most important lattice-based computational problem is the Shortest Vector Problem, which requires finding the point in the grid that is closet to a fixed central point in the space, called the origin. This is easy to solve in a two-dimensional grid, but as the number of dimensions is increased, even a quantum computer can't efficiently solve the problem.
The fact that lattice-based cryptography provides fast, quantum-safe, fundamental primitives and enables the construction of primitives that were previously thought impossible, makes it a front runner.
Lattice-based primitives have already been successfully plugged into the TLS and Internet Key Exchange protocols. This means that all the important security protocols can be made quantum-safe by substituting vulnerable problems with problems that are hard for quantum computers to solve using just a couple of extra kilobytes of data per communication session.
Lattice-based cryptography is also the basis for another encryption technology called Fully Homomorphic Encryption or FHE, which could make it possible to perform calculations on files without ever having to decrypt them.
Quantum computing is going to have a profound effect on today's security infrastructure, and enterprises need to consider how they will tackle the security implications sooner rather than later.
What do you think about lattice cryptography as the new encryption standard?
Lattice cryptography appears to defend against the prevailing encryption weaknesses to quantum defeats. And while durable encryption is essentially important, the question still arises whether malware intrusions might still discover the keys. But with SecureServer-X(.com) , intrusions can be eliminated. Therefore SSX is essential to fully hardened invulnerable information security. | https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/tip/How-lattice-based-cryptography-will-improve-encryption |
Quantum computers can be made more reliable with an algorithm developed by Hungarian researchers
Industry and science have repeatedly found themselves faced with tasks of such complexity that can no longer be solved with the resources of classical informatics sufficiently enough. With the advent of quantum computers, these mathematical problems can be seen from a new perspective. Researchers have developed algorithms based on quantum principles to solve them. Technologies utilizing quantum mechanical resources may become applicable in many fields of industry, including pharmaceuticals production, materials design, process optimization, cryptography, and portfolio optimization.
At the same time, today’s quantum computers are advanced enough to play a role in solving the mathematical problems in question. Since quantum properties such as superposition or entanglement are very fragile and their maintenance represents serious experimental challenges, the operation of quantum computers is still characterized by significant noise levels these days. The most possible efficient use of the resources of quantum processors is also among the currently actively researched areas. Physicists working at the ELTE Faculty of Science and the Wigner Research Centre for Physics have recently achieved outstanding results in the latter field.
Using a self-developed algorithm and translation software, Hungarian researchers
are able to run quantum programmes with fewer quantum logic operations than with any previously published method.
Péter Rakyta, an assistant professor at the ELTE Institute of Physics, said that “by reducing the number of logic gates, we can significantly decrease the noise level of the results obtained from quantum processors. This is also clearly indicated by the preliminary test results of the university students taking part in our research.” The essence of the method lies in compressing the quantum circuits implemented on quantum processors during adaptive machine learning iterations, reducing the number of logical operations in the quantum circuits per iteration.
Zoltán Zimborás, a research fellow at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics, emphasized that there is a constant interest in the software package published on the GitHub code share website. The noise reduction method developed by Hungarian experts –
and published in the international journal Quantum – can play a significant role in the work of researchers engaged in the development of quantum algorithms.
The quantum processor recently installed at the ELTE Faculty of Science is used by the experts of the university in several research projects that can offer new, revolutionary opportunities for society and the economy, alike. The processor arrived at the university in April 2022.
The Quantum Information National Laboratory brings together internationally renowned Hungarian research groups and human resources (physicists, engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists) in order to achieve new results in the theoretical and applied fields of quantum technology research. Gábor Vattay, full university professor, and Tamás Kozsik, associate professor, both affiliated with ELTE and engaged in the work of the Quantum Information National Laboratory, have recently spoken about the use of the high-tech equipment in research and education in the Science Podcast of the ELTE Faculty of Science. | https://www.elte.hu/en/content/quantum-computers-can-be-made-more-reliable-with-an-algorithm-developed-by-hungarian-researchers.t.2341 |
Researchers used an algorithm to evaluate potential speed in classical computation. Called the matrix multiplicative weights update method, it was developed from research in two mathematical fields of study, combinatorial optimization and learning theory.
The researchers showed that “for a certain class of semi-definite programs you can get not the exact answer but a very good approximate answer, using a very small amount of memory.
Scott Aaronson said that the algorithm could be used in commercial fields of computing, particularly in the field of semi-definite programming, which looks at ways of solving optimization problems. “These are very common in industrial optimization,” he said.
Using an innovative argument based on polynomials over finite fields, the authors showed that IP contains PSPACE (Polynomial Space), the class of problems solvable by a classical computer using a polynomial amount of memory but possibly an exponential amount of time. PSPACE is known to encompass games of strategy, such as chess and Go. And thus, we get the surprising implication that, if aliens with infinite computational powers came to earth, they could not only beat humans at chess, but could also mathematically prove they were playing chess perfectly. Since it’s not difficult to show that every IP problem is also a PSPACE problem, we obtain one of the most famous equations in CS: IP = PSPACE. This equation paved the way for many advances of a more down-to-earth nature: for example, in cryptography and program checking.
The authors have finally pinned down the power of quantum interactive proofs: they show that QIP = IP = PSPACE. In other words, quantum interactive proofs have exactly the same power as classical interactive proofs: both of them work for all problems in PSPACE but no other problems. In proving this, the authors confronted an extremely different challenge than that confronted in the earlier IP = PSPACE proof. Instead of demonstrating the power of interactive proofs, the authors had to show that quantum interactive proofs were weak enough to be simulated using polynomial memory: that is, QIP Í PSPACE.
To achieve this, the authors use a powerful recent tool called the multiplicative weights update method. Interestingly, computer scientists originally developed this method for reasons having nothing to do with quantum computing and, completing the circle, the QIP = PSPACE breakthrough is already leading to new work on the classical applications of the multiplicative weights method. This illustrates how advances in quantum and classical computing are sometimes increasingly difficult to tell apart.
Communications of the ACM : QIP = PSPACE
Communications of the ACM – QIP = PSPACE Breakthrough
Researchers have discovered quantum algorithms for a variety of problems, such as searching databases and playing games. However, it is now clear that for a wide range of problems, quantum computers offer little or no advantage over their classical counterparts.
The following paper describes a breakthrough result that gives a very general situation in which quantum computers are no more useful than classical ones. The result settles a longstanding problem about quantum interactive proof systems showing they are no more (or less) powerful than classical interactive proof systems.
What is an interactive proof system? Basically, it’s an imagined process in which a prover (named Merlin) tries to convince a skeptical verifier (named Arthur) that a mathematical statement is true, by submitting himself to interrogation. Merlin, though untrustworthy, has unlimited computational powers; Arthur, by contrast, is limited to performing computations that take polynomial time. By asking Merlin pointed questions, Arthur can sometimes convince himself of a statement more quickly than by reading a conventional proof.
When confronted with a new model of computation, theoretical computer scientists’ first instinct is to name the model with an inscrutable sequence of capital letters. And thus, in 1985, Goldwasser, Micali, and Rackoff as well as Babai defined the complexity class IP (Interactive Proofs), which consists of all mathematical problems for which Merlin can convince Arthur of a “yes” answer by a probabilistic, interactive protocol. They then asked: how big is IP? In a dramatic development in 1990, Lund et al. and Shamir showed that IP was larger than almost anyone had imagined.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements. | https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2010/12/esearchers-have-found-parallel.html |
Abstract:
In this talk, I explore how group theory playing a crucial role in cyber security and quantum computation. At the same time, how computer science for example machine learning algorithms and computational complexity could help group theorists to tackle their open problems, as such this could help with cryptanalysis of the proposed primitives.
Symmetry is present in all forms in the natural and biological structures as well as man-made environments. Computational symmetry applies group-theory to create algorithms that model and analyze symmetry in real data set. The use of symmetry groups in optimizing the formulation of signal processing and machine learning algorithms can greatly enhance the impact of these algorithms in many fields of science and engineering where highly complex symmetries exist.
At the same time, Machine Learning techniques could help with solving long standing group theoretic problems. For example, in the paper [J. Gryak (University of Michigan, Data Science Institute), R. Haralick (The City University of New York, the prize recipient of International Association for Pattern Recognition), D. Kahrobaei, Solving the Conjugacy Decision Problem via Machine Learning, Experimental Mathematics, Taylor & Francis (2019)] the authors use machine learning techniques to solve the conjugacy decision problem in a variety of groups. Beyond their utilitarian worth, the developed methods provide the computational group theorist a new digital “sketchpad” with which one can explore the structure of groups and other algebraic objects, and perhaps yielding heretofore unknown mathematical relationships.
Graph theoretic problems have been of interest of theoretical computer scientists for many years, especially the computational complexity problems for such algorithmic problems. Such studies have been fruitful for one of the millennium problems (P vs NP) of the Clay Math Institute. Since graph groups are uniquely defined by a finite simplicial graph and vice versa, it is clear that there is a natural connection between algorithmic graph theoretic problems and group theoretic problems for graph groups. Since the graph theoretic problems have been of central importance in complexity theory, it is natural to consider some of these graph theoretic problems via their equivalent formulation as group theoretic problems about graph groups. The theme of the paper [Algorithmic problems in right-angled Artin groups: Complexity and applications, R. Flores, D. Kahrobaei, T. Koberda, J. of Algebra, Elsevier 2019.] is to convert graph theoretic problems for finite graphs into group theoretic ones for graph groups (a.k.a. right-angled Artin) groups, and to investigate the graph theory algebraically. In doing so, new approaches to resolving problems in complexity theory become apparent. The authors are primarily motivated by the fact that some of these group theoretic problems can be used for cryptographic purposes, such as authentication schemes, secret sharing schemes, and key exchange problems.
In the past couple of decades many groups have been proposed for cryptography, for instance: polycyclic groups for public-key exchanges, digital signatures, secret sharing schemes (Eick, Kahrobaei), hyperbolic groups for private key encryption (Chatterji-Kahrobaei), p-groups for multilinear maps (Kahrobaei, Tortora, Tota) among others. [J. Gryak, D. Kahrobaei, The Status of the Polycyclic Group-Based Cryptography: A Survey and Open Problems, Groups Complexity Cryptology, De Gruyter (2016).]
Most of the current cryptosystems are based on number theoretic problems such discrete logarithm problem (DLP) for example Diffie-Hellman key-exchange. Recently there has been some natural connections between algorithmic number theoretic and algorithmic group theoretic problems. For example, it has been shown that for a different subfamily of metabelian groups the conjugacy search problem reduces to the DLP. [J. Gryak, D. Kahrobaei, C. Martinez-Perez, On the conjugacy problem in certain metabelian groups, Glasgow Math. J., Cambridge Univ. Press (2019).]
In August 2015 the National Security Agency (NSA) announced plans to upgrade security standards; the goal is to replace all deployed cryptographic protocols with quantum secure protocols. This transition requires a new security standard to be accepted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
One goal of cryptography, as it relates to complexity theory, is to analyze the complexity assumptions used as the basis for various cryptographic protocols and schemes. A central question is determining how to generate intractible instances of these problems upon which to implement an actual cryptographic scheme. The candidates for these instances must be platforms in which the hardness assumption is still reasonable. Determining if the group-based cryptographic schemes are quantum-safe begins with determining the groups in which these hardness assumptions are invalid in the quantum setting.
In what follows we address the quantum complexity of the Hidden Subgroup Problem (HSP) to determine the groups in which the hardness assumption still stands. The Hidden Subgroup Problem (HSP) asks the following: given a description of a group G and a function f from G to X for some finite set X is guaranteed to be strictly H-periodic, i.e. constant and distinct on left (resp. right) cosets of a subgroup H < G, find a generating set for H.
Group-based cryptography could be shown to be post-quantum if the underlying security problem is NP-complete or unsolvable; firstly, we need to analyze the problem’s equivalence to HSP, then analyze the applicability of Grover’s search problem. [K. Horan, D. Kahrobaei, Hidden Subgroup Problem and Post-quantum Group-based Cryptography, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science 10931, 2018].
Speaker Bio:
I am currently the Chair of Cyber Security at the University of York, a position I have held since November 2018. While at York, I founded and am the director of the York Interdisciplinary Center for Cyber Security. Before coming to York, I was Full Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) in New York City. I was at CUNY for 12 years, among other duties, I supervised 7 PhD computer science and mathematics students. In addition to my position at York, I am also an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the Center for Cyber Security at New York University (NYU). I have been an adjunct at NYU since 2016. I was a lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the University of St Andrews before New York.
I am an associate editor of the of the Advances of Mathematics of Communication, published by the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences, the chief editor of the International Journal of Computer Mathematics: Computer Systems Theory, Taylor & Francis, and an associate editor of SIAM Journal on Applied Algebra and Geometry, The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. I also have entrepreneurial experience as President and Co-founder of Infoshield, Inc., a computer security company.
My main research area is Post-Quantum Algebraic Cryptography, Information Security, Data Science, Applied Algebra. My research has been supported by grants from the US military: US Office of Naval Research, Canadian New Frontiers in Research Fund Exploration, American Association of Advancement in Sciences, National Science Foundation, National Security Agency, Maastricht-York Investment Fund, Research Foundation of CUNY, London Mathematical Society, the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, Swiss National Foundation, Institut Henri Poincare, and the Association for Women in Mathematics. I have 70 publications in prestigious journals and conference proceedings and several US patents. I have given about 240 invited talks in conferences and seminars around the world. | https://blogs.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/csblog/2019/12/19/delaram-kahrobaei/ |
YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y., Feb. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – Scientists at IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) / (#ibmresearch) have achieved major advances in quantum computing device performance that may accelerate the realization of a practical, full-scale quantum computer. For specific applications, quantum computing, which exploits the underlying quantum mechanical behavior of matter, has the potential to deliver computational power that is unrivaled by any supercomputer today.
Using a variety of techniques in the IBM labs, scientists have established three new records for reducing errors in elementary computations and retaining the integrity of quantum mechanical properties in quantum bits (qubits) – the basic units that carry information within quantum computing. IBM has chosen to employ superconducting qubits, which use established microfabrication techniques developed for silicon technology, providing the potential to one day scale up to and manufacture thousands or millions of qubits.
IBM researchers presented their latest results at the annual American Physical Society meeting taking place February 27-March 2, 2012 in Boston, Mass.
The Possibilities of Quantum Computing
The special properties of qubits will allow quantum computers to work on millions of computations at once, while desktop PCs can typically handle minimal simultaneous computations. For example, a single 250-qubit state contains more bits of information than there are atoms in the universe.
These properties will have wide-spread implications foremost for the field of data encryption where quantum computers could factor very large numbers like those used to decode and encode sensitive information.
“The quantum computing work we are doing shows it is no longer just a brute force physics experiment. It’s time to start creating systems based on this science that will take computing to a new frontier,” says IBM scientist Matthias Steffen, manager of the IBM Research team that’s focused on developing quantum computing systems to a point where it can be applied to real-world problems.
Other potential applications for quantum computing may include searching databases of unstructured information, performing a range of optimization tasks and solving previously unsolvable mathematical problems. | http://www.infohq.com/Tech_Help/2012/02/28/ibm-research-advances-error-correction-for-quantum-computing/ |
If the Theory of making Telescopes could at length be fully brought into Practice, yet there would be certain Bounds beyond which Telescopes could not perform.
Isaac Newton, Opticks
2.1 Basics
The branch of theoretical computer science known as computational complexity is concerned with classifying problems according to the computational resources required to solve them. Informally, a problem is computationally more complex than a problem if the solution of requires more resources than does the solution of . This informal idea can be turned into a formal theory that touches the very foundations of science (What can be calculated? What can be proven?) as well as practical problems (optimization, cryptography, etc.). This chapter can only provide a short exposition, too short to do justice to the richness and beauty of the theory of computational complexity, but hopefully inspiring enough to whet your appetite for more. For a real understanding of the subject, we recommend (1).
The theory of computational complexity is a mathematical one with precise formal definitions, theorems, and proofs. Here, we will adopt a largely informal point of view. Let us start with a brief discussion of the building blocks of the theory: problems, solutions, and resources.
2.1.1 Problems
Theoretical computer scientists think of a “problem” as an infinite family of problems. Each particular member of this family is called an instance of the problem. Let us illustrate this by an example that dates back to the eighteenth century, wherein the city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) seven bridges crossed the river Pregel and its two arms (Figure 2.1). A popular puzzle of the time asked if it was possible to walk through the city crossing each of the bridges exactly once. In theoretical computer science, the “puzzle of the Königsberg bridges” is not considered a problem, but an instance. The corresponding problem is given as follows:
This generalization qualifies as a problem in theoretical computer science since it asks a question on arbitrary graphs, that is, on an infinite set of inputs. It was Leonhard Euler who solved the Königsberg bridges puzzle for general graphs and, en passant, established what is now known as graph theory. In honor of Euler, the problem and the path bear his name. In theoretical computer science, a problem is, to a lesser extent, something that needs to be solved, but an object of mathematical study. We underline this view by writing problem names in elegant small capitals.
2.1.2 Solutions
To a computer scientist, a solution is an algorithm that accepts an instance of a problem as input and returns the correct answer as output. While the notion of an algorithm can be defined precisely, we will settle for an intuitive definition: namely, a series of elementary computation steps, which, if carried out, will produce the desired output. You can think of an algorithm as a computer program written in your favorite programming language. The main point is here that an algorithm has to work on every instance of the problem to qualify as a solution. This includes those worst‐case instances that give the algorithm a hard time.
2.1.3 Resource Consumption
The main resources are time (number of elementary steps) and space (size of memory). All we can measure (or calculate) is the time (or the space) that a particular algorithm uses to solve the problem, and the intrinsic time‐complexity of a problem is defined by the most time‐efficient algorithm for that problem. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of problems, we do not know the most efficient algorithm. But every algorithm we do know gives an upper bound for the complexity of a problem. The theory of computational complexity is, to large extent, a theory of upper bounds. As we will see in the next section, even the definition of an algorithmic bound requires some care.
2.2 Algorithms and Time Complexity
The running time of an algorithm depends on the problem's size and the specific instance. Sorting 1000 numbers takes longer than sorting 10 numbers, and some algorithms run faster if the input data is partially sorted already. To minimize the dependency on the specific instance, we consider the worst‐case time complexity ,
where is the running time of the algorithm for input data and the maximum is taken over all problem instances of size . The worst‐case time is an upper bound for the observable running time, which harmonizes with the fact that an algorithm gives an upper bound for the intrinsic complexity of a problem.
A measure of time complexity should be based on a unit of time that is independent of the clock rate of a specific CPU. Such a unit is provided by the time it takes to perform an elementary operation such as the addition of two integer numbers. Measuring the time in this unit means counting the number of elementary operations executed by your algorithm. This number, in turn, depends strongly on the implementation details of the algorithm – smart programmers and optimizing compilers will try to reduce it. Therefore, we will not consider the precise number of elementary operations but only the asymptotic behavior of for large values of as denoted by the Landau symbols and :
- We say is of order at most and write if there exist positive constants and such that for all .
- We say is of order and write if there exist positive constants and such that for all .
Let us apply this measure of complexity to an elementary problem: How fast can you multiply? The algorithm we learned at school takes time to multiply two ‐bit integers. This algorithm is so natural that it is hard to believe that one can do better, but in fact one can.
The idea is to solve the problem recursively by splitting and into high‐order and low‐order terms. First, write
where are ‐bit integers. If we write out in binary, then and are just the first and second halves of its binary digit sequence, respectively, and similarly for . Then
The grade‐school method of adding two ‐digit numbers takes just time, and, if we operate in binary, it is easy to multiply a number by or simply by shifting it to the left. The hard part of 2.2 then consists of four multiplications of ‐digit numbers, and this gives the recurrence
Unfortunately, the solution to this recurrence is still . So, we need another idea.
The key observation is that we don't actually need four multiplications. Specifically, we don't need and separately; we only need their sum. Now
Therefore, if we calculate , , and , we can compute by subtracting the first two of these from the third. This changes our recurrence to
which yields , or roughly .
This divide‐and‐conquer algorithm reduces our upper bound on the intrinsic time complexity of multiplication: before, we knew that this complexity was , and now this is sharpened to . In fact, this algorithm can be improved even further, to for arbitrarily small (3). Thus, multiplication is considerably less complex than the grade‐school algorithm would suggest.
2.3 Tractable Trails: The Class
P
Let us return to the problem from the first section. What is the time complexity of EULERIAN PATH? One possible algorithm is an exhaustive (and exhausting) search through all possible paths in a graph, but the intractability of this approach was already noticed by Euler. More than 200 years before the advent of computers, he wrote “The particular problem of the seven bridges of Königsberg could be solved by carefully tabulating all possible paths, thereby ascertaining by inspection which of them, if any, met the requirement. This method of solution, however, is too tedious and too difficult because of the large number of possible combinations, and in other problems where many more bridges are involved it could not be used at all.” (cited from (4)). Euler was, of course, referring to the manual labor in creating an exhaustive list of all possible tours. Today this task can be given to a computer, which will generate and check all tours across the seven bridges in a blink, but Euler's remark is still valid and aims right at the heart of theoretical computer science. Euler addresses the scaling of this approach with the size of the problem. In a graph with many bridges, you have more choices at each node, and these numbers multiply. This leads to an exponential growth of the number of possible tours with the number of edges. The resulting table will soon get too long to be exhaustively searched by even the fastest computer in the world. Solving the “Venice bridges puzzle” (ca. 400 bridges) by exhaustive search would surely overstrain all present‐day computers. But Euler proposed an ingenious shortcut that allows to solve problems much bigger than that.
Euler noticed that in a path that visits each edge exactly once you must leave each vertex on the way via an edge different from the edge that has taken you there. In other words, the degree of the vertex (that is, the number of edges adjacent to the vertex) must be even, except for the vertices where the path starts and ends. This is obviously a necessary condition, but Euler noticed that it is also sufficient:
Euler's theorem allows us to devise an efficient algorithm for EULERIAN PATH: Loop over all vertices of the graph and count the number of odd‐degree vertices. If this number exceeds 2, return “no”, otherwise return “yes”. The precise scaling of the running time depends on the data structure we used to store the graph, but in any case it scales polynomially in the size of the graph.
The enormous difference between exponential and polynomial scaling is obvious. An exponential algorithm means a hard limit for the accessible problem size. Suppose that with your current equipment you can solve a problem of size just within your schedule. If your algorithm has complexity , a problem of size will need twice the time, pushing you definitely off schedule. The increase in time caused by an or algorithm, on the other hand, is far less dramatic and can easily be compensated for by upgrading your hardware. You might argue that a algorithm outperforms a algorithm only for problem sizes that will never occur in your application. A polynomial algorithm for a problem usually goes hand in hand with a mathematical insight into the problem, which lets you find a polynomial algorithm with a small degree, typically with or 3. Polynomial algorithms with are rare and arise in rather esoteric problems.
This brings us to our first complexity class. Given a function
,
denotes the class of problems for which an algorithm exists that solves problems of size
in time
. Then, the class
P (for polynomial time) is defined as
In other words,
P is the set of problems for which there exists some constant
such that there exists an algorithm that solves the problem in time
. Conversely, a problem is outside
P if no algorithm exists that solves it in polynomial time; for instance, if the most efficient algorithm takes exponential time
for some
.
For complexity theorists,
P is not so much about tractability as it is about whether or not we possess a mathematical insight into a problem's structure. It is trivial to observe that EULERIAN PATH can be solved in exponential time by exhaustive search, but there is something special about EULERIAN PATH that yields a polynomial time algorithm. When we ask whether a problem is in
P or not, we are no longer just computer users who want to know whether we can finish a calculation in time to graduate: we are theorists who seek a deep understanding of why some problems are qualitatively easier, or harder, than others.
Thanks to Euler's insight, EULERIAN PATH is a tractable problem. The burghers of Königsberg, on the other hand, had to learn from Euler, that they would never find a walk‐through their hometown crossing each of the seven bridges exactly once.
2.4 Intractable Itineraries: The Class
NP
Out next problem is associated with the mathematician and Astronomer Royal of Ireland, Sir William Rowan Hamilton. In 1859, Hamilton put on the market a new puzzle called the Icosian game (Figure 2.2). Its generalization is known as
EULERIAN PATH and HAMILTONIAN PATH have a certain similarity. In the former, we must pass each edge once, whereas in the latter, each vertex once. Both are decision problems, that is, problems with answer “yes” or “no”, and both problems can be solved by exhaustive search, for which both problems would take exponential time. Despite this resemblance, the two problems represent entirely different degrees of difficulty. The available mathematical insights into HAMILTONIAN PATH provide us neither with a polynomial algorithm nor with a proof that such an algorithm is impossible. HAMILTONIAN PATH is intractable, and nobody knows why.
The situation is well described by the proverbial needle in a haystack scenario. It is hard (exponentially) to find the needle in a haystack although we can easily (polynomially) tell a needle from a blade of hay. The only source of difficulty is the large size of the search space. This feature is shared by many important problems, and it will be the base of our next complexity class. The “needle in a haystack” class is called
NP for nondeterministic polynomial:
What is nondeterministic time? It is the time consumed by a nondeterministic algorithm, which is like an ordinary algorithm, except that it may use one additional, very powerful instruction:
goto both label 1, label 2
This instruction splits the computation into two parallel processes, one continuing from each of the instructions indicated by “label 1” and “label 2”. By encountering more and more such instructions, the computation will branch like a tree into a number of parallel computations that potentially can grow as an exponential function of the time elapsed (see Figure 2.3). A nondeterministic algorithm can perform an exponential number of computations in polynomial time! In the world of conventional computers, nondeterministic algorithms are a theoretical concept only, but this could change in quantum computing. Solubility by a nondeterministic algorithm means this: All branches of the computation will stop, returning either “yes” or “no”. We say that the overall algorithm returns ‘yes’, if any of its branches returns ‘yes’. The answer is ‘no’, if none of the branches reports ‘yes’. We say that a nondeterministic algorithm solves a decision problem in polynomial time, if the number of steps used by the first of the branches to report ‘yes’ is bounded by a polynomial in the size of the problem.
There are two peculiarities in the definition of
NP: First,
NP contains only decision problems. This allows us to divide each problem into ‘yes’‐ and ‘no’‐instances. Second, polynomial time is required only for the ‘yes’‐branch of a nondeterministic algorithm (if there is any). This asymmetry between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ reflects the asymmetry between the ‘there is’ and ‘for all’ quantifiers in decision problems: a graph
is a ‘yes’‐instance of HAMILTONIAN PATH, if there is at least one Hamiltonian path in
. For a ‘no’‐instance, all cycles in
have to be non‐Hamiltonian.
Note that the conventional (deterministic) algorithms are special cases of nondeterministic algorithms (those nondeterministic algorithms that do not use the goto both instruction). If we restrict our definition of
P to decision problems, we may therefore write
.
There is a second, equivalent definition of
NP, based on the notion of a succinct certificate. A certificate is a proof. If you claim that a graph
has a Hamiltonian path, you can prove your claim by providing a Hamiltonian path, and you can verify your proof in polynomial time. A certificate is succinct, if its size is bounded by a polynomial in the size of the problem. The second definition then reads
It is not hard to see that both definitions are equivalent. The idea is that the path taken by a nondeterministic algorithm to a ‘yes’‐instance is a succinct certificate. And conversely, a succinct certificate can be used to deterministically select the branch in a nondeterministic algorithm that leads to a ‘yes’‐output.
The definition based on nondeterministic algorithms reveals the key feature of the class
NP more clearly, but the second definition is more useful for proving that a decision problem is in
NP. As an example consider
A certificate of a ‘yes’ instance of COMPOSITENESS is a factorization . It is succinct, because the number of bits in and is less than or equal to the number of bits in , and it can be verified in quadratic time (or even faster, see above) by multiplication. Hence, COMPOSITENESS .
Most decision problems ask for the existence of an object with a given property, like a cycle which is Hamiltonian or a factorization with integer factors. In these cases, the desired object may serve as a succinct certificate. For some problems, this does not work, however, such as for
PRIMALITY is the negation or complement of COMPOSITENESS: the ‘yes’‐instances of the former are the ‘no’‐instances of the latter and vice versa. A succinct certificate for PRIMALITY is by no means obvious. In fact, for many decision problems in
NP no succinct certificate is known for the complement, that is, it is not known whether the complement is also in
NP. An example is HAMILTONIAN PATH: there is no proof of “non‐Hamiltonicity” that can be verified in polynomial time. This brings us to our next complexity class:
From
we get
, but is
? In fact, it is, a succinct certificate can be constructed using Fermat's Theorem (5). Euler's Theorem can be used to prove the presence as well as the absence of an Eulerian path, hence
. This is generally true for all problems in
P: the trace of the polynomial algorithm is a succinct certificate for both ‘yes’‐ and ‘no’‐instances. Hence, we have
The class
NP is populated by many important problems. Let us discuss two of the most prominent members of the class.
2.4.1 Coloring Graphs
Imagine we wish to arrange talks in a conference in such a way that no participant will be forced to miss a talk he/she would like to attend. Assuming an adequate number of lecture rooms enabling us to hold as many parallel talks as we like, can we finish the programme within time slots? This problem can be formulated in terms of graphs: Let be a graph whose vertices are the talks and in which two talks are adjacent (joined by an edge) if and only if there is a participant wishing to attend both. Your task is to assign one of the time slots to each vertex in such a way that adjacent vertices have different time slots. The common formulation of this problem uses colors instead of time slots (Figure 2.4):
Despite its colorful terminology, is a serious problem with a wide range of applications. It arises naturally whenever one is trying to allocate resources in the presence of conflicts, like in our conference example. Another example is the assignment of frequencies to wireless communication devices. We would like to assign one of frequencies to each of devices. If two devices are sufficiently close to each other, they need to use different frequencies to prevent interference. This problem is equivalent to on the graph that has the communication devices as vertices, and an edge for each pair of devices that are close enough to interfere.
If a graph can be colored with less than colors, the proper coloring is a proof of this fact that can be checked in polynomial time, hence . For very few colors, the problem is tractable:
Finding a polynomial algorithm for this case is left as an exercise. For three or more colors, no polynomial algorithm is known, and exhaustive search through all possible colorings seems to be unavoidable.
2.4.2 Logical Truth
We close this section with a decision problem that is not from graph theory but from Boolean logic. A Boolean variable can take on the value 0 (false) or 1 (true). Boolean variables can be combined in clauses using the Boolean operators
- – NOT (negation): the clause is true ( ) if and only if is false ( ).
- – AND (conjunction): the clause is true ( ) if and only if both variables are true: and
- – OR (disjunction): the clause is true ( ) if and only if at least one of the variables is true: or .
A variable or its negation is called a literal. Different clauses can be combined to yield complex Boolean formulas, e.g.
A Boolean formula evaluates to either 1 or 0, depending on the assignment of the Boolean variables. In the example above, for , and for . A formula is called satisfiable, if there is at least one assignment of the variables such that the formula is true. is satisfiable,
is not satisfiable.
Every Boolean formula can be written in conjunctive normal form (CNF) that is, as a set of clauses combined exclusively with the AND‐operator
where the literals in each clause are combined exclusively with the OR‐operator. The examples and are both written in CNF. Each clause can be considered as a constraint on the variables, and satisfying a formula means satisfying a set of (possibly conflicting) constraints simultaneously. Therefore,
can be considered as prototype of a constraint‐satisfaction problem. Obviously, a Boolean formula for a given assignment of variables can be evaluated in polynomial time, hence . The same is true for the special variant of SAT where one fixes the number of literals per clause:
Again polynomial algorithms are known for and (6), but general SAT and for seem to be intractable.
2.5 Reductions and
NP‐Completeness
So far, all the intractable problems seem to be isolated islands in the map of complexity. In fact, they are tightly connected by a device called polynomial reduction, which lets us bound the computational complexity of one problem to that other.
We will illustrate this point by showing that general SAT cannot be harder than 3‐SAT. We write
which means that the computational complexity of SAT cannot exceed that of 3‐SAT. In other words: if someone finds a polynomial algorithm for 3‐SAT, this would immediately imply a polynomial algorithm for SAT. To prove 2.11, we need to map a general SAT‐formula to a 3‐SAT‐formula such that is satisfiable if and only if is satisfiable. The map proceeds clause by clause. Let be a clause in . If has three literals, it becomes a clause of . If has less than three literals, we fill it up by repeating literals: etc., and copy the augmented clause into . If has more than three literals, with we introduce new variables and form the 3‐SAT‐formula
Now assume that is satisfied. This means that at least one of the literals is true. If we set for and for , all clauses in are satisfied. Now assume that is satisfied and all literals are 0. The first clause in forces to be 1, the second clause then forces to be 1 and so on, but this chain reaction leaves the last clause unsatisfied. Hence is satisfiable if at least one of the literals is 1, which, in turn, implies satisfaction for . Hence, we have proven , and we add to . Obviously, this map from to can be done in polynomial time, hence a polynomial time algorithm for 3‐SAT could be used as a “subroutine” for a polynomial time algorithm for SAT. This proves 2.11.
Since is a special case of SAT, we have and by transitivity
By a more complicated reduction, one can prove that
Eqs. 2.12 and 2.13 are reductions from a class of problems to one special member ( ) of that class, but there are also reductions between problems that do not seem a priori to be related to each other, like
To prove 2.14, one has to construct a graph
for a 3‐SAT‐formula
such that
is 3‐colorable if and only if
is satisfiable, and this construction must not take more than polynomial time. For 2.15, one needs to map a graph
in polynomial time to a graph
such that
is 3‐colorable if and only if
has a Hamiltonian path. Reductions like these can be tricky (1), but they reveal an astounding structure within
NP. Imagine that after decades of research someone discovers a polynomial time algorithm for HAMILTONIAN PATH. Then the reductions 2.11
2.12
2.13
2.14
2.15 immediately imply polynomial time algorithms for
and SAT. And this is only part of the story. Cook (7) revealed polynomial reducibility's true scope in 1971 when he proved the following theorem:
This theorem means that
- No problem in
NPis harder than SAT, or SAT is among the hardest problems in
NP.
- A polynomial algorithm for SAT would imply a polynomial algorithm for every problem in
NP, that is, it would imply .
It seems as if SAT is very special, but according to transitivity and equations 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15, it can be replaced by 3‐SAT, 3‐COLORING, or HAMILTONIAN PATH. These problems form a new complexity class:
The class of
NP‐complete problems collects the hardest problems in
NP. If any of them has an efficient algorithm, then every problem in
NP can be solved efficiently, that is,
.
Since Cook proved his theorem, many problems have been shown to be
NP‐complete. The Web provides a comprehensive, up‐to‐date list of hundreds of
NP‐complete problems (8).
2.6
P Versus
NP
At this point we will pause for a moment and review what we have achieved. We have defined the class
NP whose members represent “needle in a haystack” type of problems. For some of these problems we know a shortcut to locate the needle without actually searching through the haystack. These problems form the subclass
P. For other problems, we know that a similar shortcut for one of them would immediately imply shortcuts for all other problems and hence
. This is extremely unlikely, however, considered the futile efforts of many brilliant mathematicians to find polynomial time algorithms for the hundreds of
NP‐complete problems. The general belief is that
. Note that to prove
it would suffice to prove the nonexistence of a polynomial time algorithm for a single problem from
NP. This would imply the nonexistence of efficient algorithms for all
NP‐complete problems. As long as such a proof is missing,
represents the most famous open conjecture in theoretical computer science. It is one of the seven millennium problems named by the Clay Mathematics Institute, and its solution will be awarded with one million US dollar (9).
Usually, a problem from
NP is either found to be in
P (by a mathematical insight and a corresponding polynomial time algorithm), or it is classified as
NP‐complete (by reducing another NP‐complete problem to it). Every now and then, however, a problem in
NP resists classification in
P or
NP‐complete. COMPOSITENESS and PRIMALITY for example have been proven to be in
P only very recently (10). The related problem of factoring an integer in its prime factors can be formulated as a decision problem
:
Note that the conventional version of the integer factorization problem (find a nontrivial factor) can be solved in polynomial time if and only if
. This follows from the fact that
instances of FACTORIZATION with properly chosen thresholds
(bisection method) are sufficient to find a nontrivial factor of
. Despite many efforts, no polynomial time algorithm for FACTORIZATION has been found. On the other hand, there is no proof that FACTORIZATION is
NP‐complete, and the general belief is that it is not. FACTORIZATION seems to lie in the gap between
P and
NP‐complete. The following theorem ( 1,11) guarantees that this gap is populated unless
:
This theorem rules out one of three tentative maps of
NP (Figure 2.5). Another problem that– according to our present knowledge – lives in the gap between
P and
NP‐complete is this:
Two graphs are isomorphic if and only if there is a one‐to‐one mapping from the nodes of one graph to the nodes of the other graph that preserves adjacency and nonadjacency.
Both FACTORIZATION and GRAPH ISOMORPHISM are problems of considerable practical as well as theoretical importance. If you discover a polynomial time algorithm for one of them, you will get invitations to many conferences, but you will not shatter the world of computational complexity. The true challenge is to find a polynomial time algorithm for an
NP‐complete problem like SAT or HAMILTONIAN PATH. The consequences of
would be far greater than better algorithms for practical problems.
First of all, cryptography, as we know, it would not exist. Modern cryptography relies on the idea of a one‐way function: a function (encryption) that is in
P, but whose inverse (decryption) is not. For instance, RSA cryptography (12) relies on the fact that multiplying two numbers is easy, but factoring seems to be hard. However, it is easy to see that finding the inverse of a polynomial time function is in
NP. Therefore, if
there are no one‐way functions, and we can break any polynomial time encryption scheme. To break the RSA method in particular, however, you “only” need
.
Secondly, and most profoundly, if
then mathematics would no longer be the same. Consider the problem of finding proofs for the most difficult and elusive mathematical problems. Finding proofs is hard, but checking them is not, as long as they are written in a careful formal language. Indeed, checking a formal proof is just a matter of making sure that each line follows from the previous ones according to the axioms we are working with. The time it takes to do this is clearly polynomial as a function of the length of the proof, so the following problem is in
P:
Then the following decision problem is in
NP:
Now suppose that
. Then you can take your favorite unsolved mathematical problem – the Riemann Hypothesis, the Goldbach Conjecture, you name it – and use your polynomial time algorithm for PROOF EXISTENCE to search for proofs of less than, say, a million lines. The point is that no proof constructed by a human will be longer than a million lines anyway, so if no such proof exists, we have no hope of finding it. In fact, a polynomial algorithm for PROOF EXISTENCE can be used to design a polynomial algorithm that actually outputs the proof (if there is one). If
, mathematics could be done by computer. This solution of the
P versus
NP millennium problem would probably allow you to solve the other six millennium problems, too, and this, in turn, would get you far more than just invitations to conferences.
2.7 Optimization
So far we have classified decision problems. This was mainly for technical reasons, and the notions of polynomial reductions and completeness apply to other problems as well. The most prominent problems are from combinatorial optimization. Here the task is not to find the needle in a haystack, but the shortest (or longest) blade of hay.
As an example consider the following problem from network design. You have a business with several offices and you want to lease phone lines to connect them up with each other. The phone company charges different amounts of money to connect different pairs of cities, and your task is to select a set of lines that connects all your offices with a minimum total cost.
In mathematical terms, the cities and the lines between them form the vertices and edges of a weighted graph , the weight of an edge being the leasing costs of the corresponding phone line. Your task is to find a subgraph that connects all vertices in the graph, that is, a spanning subgraph, and whose edges have minimum total weight. Your subgraph should not contain cycles, since you can always remove an edge from a cycle keeping all nodes connected and reducing the cost. A graph without cycles is a tree, so what you are looking for is a minimum spanning tree in a weighted graph (Figure 2.6).
How do you find a minimum spanning tree? A naive approach is to generate all possible trees with vertices and keep the one with minimal weight. The enumeration of all trees can be done using Prüfer codes (13), but Cayley's formula tells us that there are different trees with vertices. Already for there are more trees than atoms in the observable universe! Hence, exhaustive enumeration is prohibitive for all but the smallest trees. The mathematical insight that turns MST into a tractable problem is this:
The theorem allows us to grow a minimum spanning tree edge by edge, using Prim's algorithm, for example:
The precise time complexity of Prim's algorithm depends on the data structure used to organize the edges, but in any case is an upper bound. (See (14) for faster algorithms.) Equipped with such a polynomial algorithm you can find minimum spanning trees with thousands of nodes within seconds on a personal computer. Compare this to exhaustive search! According to our definition, MST is a tractable problem.
Encouraged by an efficient algorithm for will now investigate a similar problem. Your task is to plan an itinerary for a traveling salesman who must visit cities. You are given a map with all cities and the distances between them. In what order should the salesman visit the cities to minimize the total distance he has to travel? You number the cities arbitrarily and write down the distance matrix , where denotes the distance between city number and city number . A tour is given by a cyclic permutation , where denotes the successor of city , and your problem can be defined as:
TSP is probably is the most famous optimization problem, and there exists a vast literature specially devoted to it, see (15) and references therein. It is not very difficult to find good solutions, even to large problems, but how can we find the best solution for a given instance? There are
cyclic permutations, calculating the length of a single tour can be done in time
, hence exhaustive search has complexity
. Again this approach is limited to very small instances. Is there a mathematical insight that provides us with a shortcut to the optimum solution, like for MST? Nobody knows! Despite the efforts of many brilliant people, no polynomial algorithm for TSP has been found. The situation reminds of the futile efforts to find efficient algorithms for
NP‐complete problems, and, in fact, TSP (like many other hard optimization problems) is closely related to
NP‐complete decision problems. We will discuss this relation in general terms.
The general instance of an optimization problem is a pair , where is the set of feasible solutions and is a cost function . We consider only combinatorial optimization where the set is countable. A combinatorial optimization problem comes in three different types:
- The optimization problem : Find the feasible solution that minimizes the cost function.
- The evaluation problem : Find the cost of the minimum solution.
- The decision problem : Given a bound , is there a feasible solution such that ?
Under the assumption that the cost function can be evaluated in polynomial time, it is straightforward to write down polynomial reductions that establish
If the decision variant of an optimization problem is
NP‐complete, there is no efficient algorithm for the optimization problem at all – unless
.
How does this help us with the TSP? Well, the decision variant of TSP is
NP‐complete, as can be seen by the following reduction from HAMILTONIAN PATH. Let
be the graph that we want to check for a Hamiltonian path and let
denote the vertices and
the edges of
. We define the
distance matrix
Then
has a Hamiltonian path if and only if there is a tour for our salesman of distance strictly less than
. If we could check the latter in polynomial time, we would have a polynomial algorithm for HAMILTONIAN PATH, and hence a proof for
. Problems like the TSP that are not members of
NP but whose polynomial solvability would imply
are called
NP‐hard.
Now that we have shown TSP to be
NP‐hard, we know that a polynomial time algorithm for TSP is rather unlikely to exist, and we better concentrate on polynomial algorithms that yield a good, but not necessarily the best tour.
What about the reverse direction? If we know that the decision variant of an optimization problem is in
P, does this imply a polynomial algorithm for the optimization or evaluation variant? For that we need to prove the reversal of Eq. 2.18,
can be shown to hold if the cost of the optimum solution's cost is an integer with logarithm bounded by a polynomial in the size of the input. The corresponding polynomial reduction evaluates the optimal cost by asking the question “Is ?” for a sequence of values that approaches , similar to the bisection method to find the zeroes of a function.
There is no general method to prove , but a strategy that often works can be demonstrated for the TSP: Let be the known solution of TSP(E). Replace an arbitrary entry of the distance matrix with a value and solve TSP(E) with this modified distance matrix. If the length of the optimum tour is not affected by this modification, the link does not belong to the optimal tour. Repeating this procedure for different links, one can reconstruct the optimum tour with a polynomial number of calls to a TSP(E)–solver, hence . In that sense would also imply efficient algorithms for the TSP and many other hard optimization problems.
2.8 Complexity Zoo
At the time of writing, the complexity zoo (16) housed 535 complexity classes. We have discussed (or at least briefly mentioned) only five:
P,
NP, co‐
NP,
NP‐complete, and
NP‐hard. Apparently we have seen only the tip of the iceberg! Some of the other 530 classes refer to space (i.e., memory) rather than time complexity, others classify problems that are neither decision nor optimization problems, like counting problems: how many needles are in this haystack? The most interesting classes, however, are based on different (more powerful?) models of computation, most notably randomized algorithms and, of course, quantum computing. As you will learn in Julia Kempe's lecture on quantum algorithms, there is a quantum algorithm that solves FACTORIZATION in polynomial time, but as you have learned in this lecture this is only a very small step toward the holy grail of computational complexity: a polynomial time quantum algorithm for an
NP‐complete problem.
References
- 1 Moore, C. and Mertens, S. (2011) The Nature of Computation, Oxford University Press, www.nature‐of‐computation.org (accessed 05 November 2017).
- 2 Euler, L. (1736) Solutio problematis ad geometrian situs pertinentis. Comm. Acad. Sci. Imper. Petropol., 8, 128–140.
- 3 Schönhage, A. and Strassen, V. (1971) Schnelle Multiplikation grosser Zahlen. Computing, 7, 281–292.
- 4 Lewis, H.R. and Papadimitriou, C.H. (1978) The efficiency of algorithms. Sci. Am., 238 (1), 96–109.
- 5 Pratt, V.R. (1975) Every prime has a succinct certificate. SIAM J. Comput., 4, 214–220.
- 6 Aspvall, B., Plass, M.F., and Tarjan, R.E. (1979) A linear‐time algorithm for testing the truth of certain quantified boolean formulas. Inf. Process. Lett., 8 (3), 121–123.
- 7 Cook, S. (1971) The complexity of theorem proving procedures. Proceedings of the 3rd Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, pp. 151–158.
- 8 Crescenzi, P. and Kann, V. (1736) A Compendium of NP Optimization Problems, https://www.nada.kth.se/viggo/problemlist/compendium.html.
- 9 Clay Mathematics Institute (1986) Millennium Problems, http://www.claymath.org/millennium (accessed 05 November 2017).
- 10 Agrawal, M., Kayal, N., and Saxena, N. (2004) PRIMES is in P. Ann. Math., 160 (2), 781–793.
- 11 Ladner, R.E. (1975) On the structure of polynomial time reducibility. J. ACM, 22, 155–171.
- 12 Rivest, R., Shamir, A., and Adleman, L. (1978) A method for obtaining digital signatures and public key cryptosystems. Commun. ACM, 21, 120–126.
- 13 Bollobás, B. (1998) Modern Graph Theory, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 184, Springer‐Verlag, Berlin.
- 14 Gabow, H.N., Galil, Z., Spencer, T.H., and Tarjan, R.E. (1986) Efficient algorithms for finding minimum spanning trees in undirected and directed graphs. Combinatorica, 6, 109–122.
- 15 Applegate, D.L., Bixby, R.E., Chvátal, V., and Cook, W.J. (2007) The Traveling Salesman Problem, Princeton Series in Applied Mathematics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ and Oxford.
- 16 Aaronson, S., Kuperberg, G., Granade, C., and Russo, V. (1971) Complexity Zoo, https://complexityzoo.uwaterloo.ca (accessed 05 November 2017). | http://devguis.com/2-computational-complexity-quantum-information-2-volume-set-2nd-edition.html |
What can quantum computers do for us? In this blog, I will explain from a technical point of view how a quantum computer performs an optimization using a classic routing challenge as an example.
Solving optimization problems faster
Consider a company that needs to deliver thousands of packages to addresses in the Netherlands. They have a fleet of trucks and they want to optimize the route that each truck takes. This is a huge problem that is difficult to solve for classical computers given the massive number of possible routes. Quantum computers however, take a completely different approach to this problem. To illustrate the power of quantum, let’s look at a scaled down version of this problem.
Using a quantum algorithm to find the fastest
route
Suppose we have 1 truck that is tasked with driving to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Den Haag, starting in and returning to Utrecht. What is the best order of visiting the cities? The table below contains all travel times between the cities in minutes. We will represent each of these segments with a qubit. Recall that a qubit is in a superposition of 1 and 0. Only upon measuring will the qubit take on one of these two values. If we measure a 1, we will travel over the corresponding segment, if the outcome is zero, we do not. The quantum algorithm is therefore responsible for manipulating the qubits in such a way that if we measure each qubit, it will give 1 for segments that are part of the optimal route, and 0 for segments that are not part of the optimal route.
|
|
|
|
Amsterdam
|
|
Den Haag
|
|
Rotterdam
|
|
Utrecht
|
|
Amsterdam
|
|
|
|
53
|
|
59
|
|
46
|
|
Den Haag
|
|
53
|
|
|
|
32
|
|
56
|
|
Rotterdam
|
|
59
|
|
32
|
|
|
|
51
|
|
Utrecht
|
|
46
|
|
56
|
|
51
|
|
Table 1: Travel times between cities in minutes.
Figure 1: A schematic view of all possible segments connecting the cities Amsterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag and Rotterdam. The segments are labelled S0 to S5.
Step 1: formulate the problem
The first step now is to formulate the problem as a mathematical equation. I will skip the mathematics here, but I will sketch the idea behind it. If you are interested, the Traveling Santa blog explains very well how to get this equation.
Each segment of the route that we will take has a cost associated to it. In our case it is the number of minutes it will take to travel between two cities. Let’s assume the measurements on our qubits yields 101011. That would mean we travel over segments S0, S2, S4, and S5, which corresponds to a route from Utrecht to Den Haag, then to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and finally back to Utrecht (see Figure 1). This will take us 219 minutes of driving time. The goal is to minimize the number of minutes, however because these are qubits, we could also measure 000000. This route will take 0 minutes, so that’s better right? To ensure that the quantum algorithm that minimizes the driving time optimizes for a valid route, we add constraints in the form of penalties. For example, we can add a penalty of 100 minutes for each city that is not on the route. After you have identified all constraints, you end up with a lengthy equation as input for the algorithm.
Step 2: manipulate qubits
The next step is to find a way to manipulate our qubits such that upon measuring, the qubits that belong to segments that are part of the optimal route have a high probability to yield a value of 1. This will be done using a hybrid algorithm; it consists of a quantum part and a classical part. The quantum part manipulates the qubits based on the lengthy equation and a set of parameters passed to the algorithm. The purpose of these parameters will become evident in a little. The quantum part returns an estimate of the driving time for the current quantum state, including the penalties for invalid routes, to the classical part. Note the word ‘estimate’ in the previous sentence. The stochastic nature of quantum mechanics causes measurements on the exact same state to return different routes, with different duration.
As a simple example, consider a two-qubit quantum state that has a probability of 25% to be measured as 01, and 75% to be measured as 10 (and 0% for 00 and 11). Let’s say route 01 takes 9 minutes, and route 10 takes 5 minutes, then we will measure the 5-minute route 3 times more often than the 9-minute route. On average, we can say that measurements on this state yields a route that takes 6 minutes. It is impossible however, to know the probabilities of the individual routes. All we know is that the way this state is currently prepared will yield a driving time of 6 minutes on average, if we were to perform many measurements on it. The important realization here is that the lower average driving time, the higher the probability of measuring a short route.
Figure 2: The rescaled driving time as a function of the number of steps of the optimizer.
Information of the average driving time is then passed to the classical part. The classical part is an optimizer that tweaks the set of parameters passed to the quantum algorithm as to minimize the average driving time. In Figure 2 you can see the optimizer lowering the estimated driving time. Since we are running on a simulator, we can also inspect the quantum state during the optimization. So, to better understand what is happening, we plot in Figure 3 the probability of measuring each state during the optimization. On an actual quantum computer, we would not have access to this information.
Figure 3: Probability of measuring each state for 6 qubits after 0 optimization steps (top-left), 500 optimization steps (top-right), 3400 optimization steps (bottom-left), and 5000 optimization steps (bottom-right). The peaks in the bottom-right picture occur at 010111, 101011, and 111100.
In the top left picture, no optimization has been done, and each combination of routes to take and not to take have equal probability. The average driving time is relatively high (Figure 2 at 0 optimization steps). After approximately 3400 optimization steps, three states start to stand out. And in the final picture, we can see that 010111, 101011 and 111100 have a significantly higher probability to be measured than any other state. These 3 states are the only states that correspond to valid routes that visit each city exactly once. Among each other, 111100 has the highest probability to be measured. This state corresponds to driving along segments S0, S1, S2 and S3, or in words: starting in Utrecht, go to Rotterdam, then Den Haag, Amsterdam, and finally back to Utrecht (or in the exact opposite order). Indeed, we can calculate that of these three routes, this is the fastest with a total travel time of 182 minutes.
Step 3: measure the optimized route
In step 2 we found a way to manipulate the qubits such that, upon measuring, there is relatively high probability to find the shortest route, but that is still a probability. So the final step is to repeat the optimal manipulation found by the optimizer multiple times. With enough measurements, the result that pops up the most corresponds to the optimal route.
Using better optimization and preparation algorithms than the ones currently implemented, it is possible to prepare a quantum state that has a larger than 80% probability to give an optimized solution to the problem.
In these series on quantum computing I tried to give a practical introduction to quantum computing as concise as possible. If you want to learn more, don’t hesitate to contact me. I am more than happy to talk in more depth about quantum computing and programming.
Ruben van Drongelen
Sorry, I thought I replied to this earlier, but me response seems to have been lost on the internet somewhere. First thing I would like to say on this topic is that quantum computing is not a solution to everything, but optimization is an area where quantum computers have a lot of potential. Quantum algorithms scale better with problem size, but that doesn't mean that they are always faster. Also, there are several quantum optimization algorithms, so choosing the right one for your problem is important as well. The algorithm I discussed here is a hybrid solution called Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA). But you could also chose an algorithm that rely on adiabatic evolution or quantum annealing. At this point I can't really help which argument is best for which specific scenario. However the advantage of the QAOA algorithm is that it doesn't rely on deep quantum circuits, and is therefore expected to be able to run on near quantum hardware.
Nurdan Anilmis
Hello, I was wondering if quantum computation could be used for any kind of optimization problem. For example, lets suppose we would like to find the deformable mirror actuator voltages that needs to be applied to get a certain function to be maximized. Thanks very much! | https://www.avanade.com/nl-nl/blogs/be-orange/technology/quantum-computing-an-optimization-example |
Excited by the role of mathematics in securing the modern electronics and communications that we all rely on? This intensive MSc programme explores the mathematics behind secure information and communications systems, in a department that is world renowned for research in the field.
You will learn to apply advanced mathematical ideas to cryptography, coding theory and information theory, by studying the relevant functions of algebra, number theory and combinatorial complexity theory and algorithms. In the process you will develop a critical appreciation of the challenges that mathematicians face in facilitating secure information transmission, data compression and encryption. You will learn to use advanced cypher systems, correcting codes and modern public key crypto-systems. As part of your studies you will have the opportunity to complete a supervised dissertation in an area of your choice, under the guidance of experts in the field who regularly publish in internationally competitive journals and work closely with partners in industry.
We are a lively, collaborative and supportive community of mathematicians and information security specialists, and thanks to our relatively compact scale we will take the time to get to know you as an individual. You will be assigned a personal advisor to guide you through your studies.
Mathematicians who can push the boundaries and stay ahead when it comes to cryptography and information security are in demand, and the skills you gain will open up a range of career options and provide a solid foundation if you wish to progress to a PhD. These include transferable skills such as familiarity with a computer-based algebra package, experience of carrying out independent research and managing the writing of a dissertation.
Course structure
Core Modules
-
You will carry out a detailed study into a topic of your choosing in mathematics, analysing information from a range of sources. You will submit a written report of between 8,000 and 16,000 words in length.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the mathematical and security properties of both symmetric key cipher systems and public key cryptography. You will look at the concepts of secure communications and cipher systems, and learn how to use statistical information and the concept of entropy. You will consider the main properties of Boolean functions, their applications and use in cryptographic algorithms, and the structure of stream ciphers and block ciphers. You will examine how to construct keystream generators, and how to manipulate the concept of perfect secrecy. You will also analyse the concept of public key cryptography, including the details of the RSA and ElGamal cryptosystems.
-
To investigate the problems of data compression and information transmission in both noiseless and noisy environments.Entropy: Definition and mathematical properties of entropy, information and mutual information. Noiseless coding: Memoryless sources: proof of the Kraft inequality for uniquely decipherable codes, proof of the optimality of Huffman codes, typical sequences of a memory less source, the fixed-length coding theorem.Ergodic sources: entropy rate, the asymptotic equipartition property, the noiseless coding theorem for ergodic sources. Lempel-Ziv coding.Noisy coding: Noisy channels, the noisy channel coding theory, channel capacity.Further topics, such as hash codes, or the information-theoretic approach to cryptography and authentication.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the theory of error-correcting codes, employing the methods of elementary enumeration, linear algebra and finite fields. You will learn how to calculate the probability of error or the necessity of retransmission for a binary symmetric channel with given cross-over probability, with and without coding. You will& prove and apply various bounds on the number of possible code words in a code of given length and minimal distance, and use Hadamard matrices to construct medium-sized linear codes of certain parameters. You will also consider how to reduce a linear code to standard form, find a parity check matrix, and build standard array and syndrome decoding tables.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the mathematical ideas that underpin public key cryptography, such as discrete logarithms, lattices and elliptic curves. You will look at the RSA and Rabin cryptosystems, the hard problems on which their security relies, and attacks on them. You will consider finite fields, elliptic curves, and the discrete logarithm problem. You will examine security notions and attack models relevant for modern theoretical cryptography, such as indistinguishability and adaptive chosen ciphertext-attack. You will also gain experience in implementing cryptosystems and cryptanalytic methods using software such as Mathematica.
Optional Modules
There are a number of optional course modules available during your degree studies. The following is a selection of optional course modules that are likely to be available. Please note that although the College will keep changes to a minimum, new modules may be offered or existing modules may be withdrawn, for example, in response to a change in staff. Applicants will be informed if any significant changes need to be made.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the basic theory of field extensions. You will learn how to classify finite fields and determine the number of irreducible polynomials over a finite field. You will consider the fundamental thorem of Galois theory and how to compute in a finite field. You will also examine the applications of fields.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the principles of quantum superposition and quantum measurement. You will look at the many applications of quantum information theory, and learn how to manipulate tensor-product states and use the concept of entanglement. You will consider a range of problems involving one or two quantum bits and how to apply Grover's search algorithm. You will also examine applications of entanglement such as quantum teleportation or quantum secret key distribution, and analyse Deutsch's algorithm and its implications for the power of a quantum computer.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the fundamental principles of algorithm design, including basic data-structures and asymptotic notation. You will look at how algorithms are designed to meet desired specifications, and consider the importance of algorithmic efficiency. You will also examine fundamental problems such as sorting numbers and multiplying matrices.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic family of models in time series and the ideas behind the use of the BDS test and the bispectral test for time series. You will consider the partial differential equation for interest rates and its assumptions, and model forward and spot rates. You will consider the validity of various linear and non-linear time series occurring in finance, and apply stochastic calculus to interest rate movements and credit rating. You will also examine how to model the prices for Asian and barrier options.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the standard techniques and concepts of combinatorics, including methods of counting and the principle of inclusion and exclusion. You will perform simple calculations with generation functions, and look at Ramsey numbers, calculating upper and lower bounds for these. You will consider how to calculate sets by inclusion and exclusion, and examine how to use simple probabilistic tools for solving combinatorial problems.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the major methods used for testing and proving primality and for the factorisation of composite integers. You will look at the mathematical theory that underlies these methods, such as the theory of bionary quadratic forms, elliptic curves, and quadratic number fields. You willl also analayse the complexity of the fundamental number-theoretic algorithms.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the different classes of computational complexity. You will look at the formal definition of algorithms and Turing machines, and the concept of computational hardness. You will consider how to deduce cryptographic properties of related algorithms and protocols, and see how not all language are computable. You will examine the low-level complexity classes and prove that simple languages exist in each, and use complexity theoretic techniques as a method of analysing communication services.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the mathematical theory underlying the main principles and methods of statistics, in particular, parametric estimation and hypotheses testing. You will learn how to formulate statistical problems in rigorous mathematical terms, and how to select and apply appropriate tools of mathematical statistics and advanced probability. You will construct mathematical proofs of some of the main theoretical results of mathematical statistics and consider the asymptotic theory of estimation.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of what it means for knots and links to be equivalent. You will look at the properties of a metric space, and learn how to determine whether a given function defines a metric. You will consider how topological spaces are defined and how to verify the axioms for given examples. You will examine the concepts of subspace, product spaces, quotient spaces, Hausdorff space, homeomorphism, connectedness and compactness, and the notions of Euler characteristic, orientability and how to apply these to the classification of closed surfaces.
-
In this module you will develop an understanding of the principal methods of the theory of stochastic processes, and probabilistic methods used to model systems that exhibit random behaviour. You will look at methods of conditioning, conditional expectation, and how to generate functions, and examine the structure and concepts of discrete and continuous time Markov chains with countable state space. You will also examine the structure of diffusion processes.
Teaching & assessment
You will initially choose 8 courses from the list of available options, of which you specify 6 courses during the second term that will count towards your final award. You will also complete a core research project under the supervision of one of our academic staff.There is a strong focus on small group teaching throughout the programme.
Assessment is carried out through a variety of methods, including coursework, examinations and the main project. End-of-year examinations in May or June will count for 66.7% of your final award, while the dissertation will make up the remaining 33.3% and has to be submitted by September.
Entry requirements
2:1
Mathematics as a main field of study and good marks in relevant courses.
Normally we require a UK 2:1 (Honours) or equivalent in relevant subjects but we will consider high 2:2 or relevant work experience. Candidates with professional qualifications in an associated area may be considered. Where a ‘good 2:2’ is considered, we would normally define this as reflecting a profile of 57% or above. Exceptionally, at the discretion of the course director, qualifications in other subjects (for example, physics or computer science) or degrees of lower classification may be considered.
International & EU requirements
English language requirements
All teaching at Royal Holloway (apart from some language courses) is in English. You will therefore need to have good enough written and spoken English to cope with your studies right from the start.
The scores we require
- IELTS: 6.5 overall. No subscore lower than 5.5.
- Pearson Test of English: 61 overall. No subscore lower than 51.
- Trinity College London Integrated Skills in English (ISE): ISE III.
- Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) grade C.
Country-specific requirements
For more information about country-specific entry requirements for your country please see here.
Your future career
By the end of this programme you will have an advanced knowledge and understanding of all the key mathematical principles and applications that underpin modern cryptography and communications. You will have advanced skills in coding, algebra and number theory, and be able to synthesise and interpret information from multiple sources with insight and critical awareness. You will have learnt to formulate problems clearly, to undertake independent research and to express your technical work and conclusions clearly in writing. You will also have valuable transferable skills such as advanced numeracy and IT skills, time management, adaptability and self-motivation.
Graduates from this programme have gone on to carry out cutting-edge research in the fields of communication theory and cryptography, as well as to successful careers in industries such as: information security, IT consultancy, banking and finance, higher education and telecommunications. Our mathematics postgraduates have taken up roles such as: Principal Information Security Consultant at Abbey National PLC; Senior Manager at Enterprise Risk Services, Deloitte & Touche; Global IT Security Director at Reuters; and Information Security Manager at London Underground.
The campus Careers team will be on hand to offer advice and guidance on your chosen career. The University of London Careers Advisory Service runs regular, tailored sessions for mathematics students, on finding summer internships or vacation employment and getting into employment.
Fees & funding
Home (UK) students tuition fee per year*: £8,100
EU and International students tuition fee per year**: £17,200
Other essential costs***: There are no single associated costs greater than £50 per item on this course.
How do I pay for it? Find out more about funding options, including loans, grants, scholarships and bursaries.
* and ** These tuition fees apply to students enrolled on a full-time basis. Students studying on the standard part-time course structure over two years are charged 50% of the full-time applicable fee for each study year.
All postgraduate fees are subject to inflationary increases. This means that the overall cost of studying the programme via part-time mode is slightly higher than studying it full-time in one year. Royal Holloway's policy is that any increases in fees will not exceed 5% for continuing students. For further information see tuition fees see our terms and conditions. Please note that for research programmes, we adopt the minimum fee level recommended by the UK Research Councils for the Home tuition fee. Each year, the fee level is adjusted in line with inflation (currently, the measure used is the Treasury GDP deflator). Fees displayed here are therefore subject to change and are usually confirmed in the spring of the year of entry. For more information on the Research Council Indicative Fee please see the RCUK website.
** For EU nationals starting a degree in 2021/22, the UK Government has recently confirmed that you will not be eligible to pay the same fees as UK students. This means you will be classified as an international student. At Royal Holloway, we wish to support those students affected by this change in status through this transition. For eligible EU students starting their course with us during the academic year 2021/22, we will award a fee reduction scholarship which brings your fee into line with the fee paid by UK students. This will apply for the duration of your course.
*** These estimated costs relate to studying this particular degree programme at Royal Holloway. Costs, such as accommodation, food, books and other learning materials and printing, have not been included. | https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/postgraduate/mathematics/mathematics-of-cryptography-and-communications/ |
Classical Cryptography in a Post-Quantum World
Large scale quantum computing has always been “ten years away” since it has become apparent a quantum computer could be built. Something quite unexpected has happened recently: This moving timeline has changed.
If you ask an arbitrary quantum computing scientist at a conference, they’re now more likely to tell you that large quantum computers are “five years away” or even less. Some may claim that such quantum computers have already arrived, but those who have them would not tell you about it so that they can spy on you. Conspiracy theories aside, the fact is that no-one knows when quantum computers will become powerful enough to break classical cryptography. It is becoming inevitable. Based on the estimates of many experts, it is likely to happen within this decade.
In 2019, Google claimed that its Sycamore processor completed a task faster on a 54-qubit quantum computer, which means that quantum supremacy has been reached, according to Google’s claims. The quantum computer solved a problem that would take 10,000 years to a supercomputer in 200 seconds. So, should we start getting concerned about the security of our classical ciphers?
The theory of quantum computing is evolving much faster than hardware implementations. In 1994, Peter Shor discovered an algorithm that can factorize large prime numbers in polynomial time on the quantum computer. This algorithm not only breaks RSA, but it also breaks elliptic curve cryptography by providing a polynomial-time solution for the discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP). This means that the popular asymmetric cryptography algorithms such as ECDH and ECDSA will be broken once a quantum computer powerful enough is built.
In 1996, Lov Grover discovered a quantum search algorithm with a speedup from O(N) to O(√(N)). While seemingly unrelated, this algorithm has quite a significant impact on the symmetric cryptography algorithms, such as AES, and it even affects some of the hash functions. To see how the search speedup affects the security of the symmetric encryption, simply substitute N=2^k (where “k” is the encryption key length) to the formula.
Besides these two well-known impacts of quantum computing advances, there will be many less visible impacts. The classical random generators may prove not to be quantum-safe, because they may rely on weak hashing algorithms. Many cryptanalysis tasks will become easier for an attacker with a quantum computer. We are only at the beginning of the quantum computing revolution. Indeed, new algorithms and improved versions of Shor’s and Grover’s algorithms will be discovered. So yes, we should get concerned whether our classical cryptography is still safe to use today.
Is Cryptography Apocalypse Coming or Not?
We know that quantum computing will break asymmetric cryptography and weaken symmetric cryptography. Luckily, we still have some time, because there are inherent challenges with the physical implementation of quantum computers, such as:
- Quantum decoherence — the quantum processor needs to operate in a deeply frozen environment so that there is minimal interaction with the surrounding environment. This makes the computer very expensive and unfit for large scale public use (except for experimenting, which you can currently even do for free).
- Too few qubits are available — to crack a 4,096-bit RSA key, you need approx. 8,200 stable qubits. Elliptic curve cryptography can be broken easier on a quantum computer (unlike on regular computers), so you need approx. 2,300 stable qubits to break ECC.
- Note: The D-Wave quantum computers cannot solve generic quantum computing tasks, we are talking about qubits in universal quantum computers, such as those built by IBM.
- Too many errors when executing quantum algorithms — getting reliable results from a quantum computer is very tricky. While algorithms for the quantum computers are often stochastic by nature, sometimes, the undesired errors that are outside of the expected stochastic model accumulate as well. Special (and top-secret) error-correcting codes are being researched to tackle this problem. Right now, for every stable qubit, you may need hundreds to thousands of ancillary qubits. It is also quite challenging to execute algorithms with long execution time because the errors may compound over time. This is why the current state of quantum computing is often labeled as Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ).
On the other hand, technological evolution cannot be stopped. Remember that the first classical computers needed a large air-conditioned room to perform tasks you can do now much faster on your mobile phone.
Inevitably, quantum computers with thousands of stable qubits capable of running Shor’s and Grover’s algorithms will be available. We just don’t know exactly when. We can use the time we have to get ready, because unlike the previous cryptography algorithm migrations (such as SHA-1 to SHA-2), the breaking of existing algorithms may happen suddenly.
Broken and Weakened Algorithms
Let’s analyze how a powerful quantum computer would break all these algorithms. We will also mention the mitigation strategy for each of the algorithm families, with more details coming later on.
These algorithms are known not to be quantum-safe, providing a large enough quantum computer is available:
- DH, RSA, DHIES, ElGamal — Completely broken due to polynomial integer factorization using Shor’s algorithm.
- Mitigation: Short term — update algorithm parameters. Long term: migrate to PQC or use a hybrid classical/PQC solution.
- ECDH, ECDSA, EdDSA, ECIES — Completely broken due to polynomial ECDLP solution using Shor’s algorithm.
- Mitigation: Short term — update algorithm parameters. Long term: migrate to PQC or use a hybrid classical/PQC solution.
- AES-128, CHACHA20-POLY1305 — Partially broken, need 2x bigger key sizes due to Grover’s algorithm.
- Mitigation: Use AES-256 instead of AES-128.
- SHA2, SHA3, HMAC-SHA — Only slightly affected, migrating to a stronger variant of the hash function is a good idea.
- Mitigation: Use SHA-384 instead of SHA-256.
- PRNG / DRBG random algorithms — Depends on the underlying algorithm. If the algorithm can be attacked, the randomly generated keys may not be quantum-safe.
- Mitigation: Update the random generator algorithm, if needed.
If you are in doubt about which parameters to choose, you can check out the Transitioning the Use of Cryptographic Algorithms and Key Lengths document. This NIST document provides guidelines before the final PQC algorithms are announced.
The Path to Quantum-Safe Cryptography
The previous chapter might have scared you a bit. Indeed, quantum computers will break algorithms which are used for e-government solutions or digital banking security. There is some good news to share, though:
- Many algorithms exist that do not have known attacks using a quantum computer. These algorithms are called post-quantum algorithms, and most of them have been under development for many years already.
- There is still quite a lot of time available to migrate to post-quantum algorithms, given all the physical implementation issues with current quantum computers (most likely several years, but we do not know for sure). This, of course, does not mean we can just relax and wait for the powerful quantum computers to arrive, we need to prepare for their arrival actively.
- NIST is running a competition for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms. Similar competitions were run in the past with success. For instance, the AES and SHA-3 algorithms were standardized thanks to NIST efforts. Although NIST had a questionable reputation in the past, it is now well regarded among cryptologists, and some of the top experts are now participating in analyzing the post-quantum algorithms.
NIST PQC Competition Status
We are currently in “round 2” of the NIST competition, and it is expected that the “round 3” will start later this year. Currently, 26 algorithms are still in the game with candidates for two families of algorithms:
- Public-key encryption and key-establishment algorithms.
- Digital signature algorithms.
NIST published an API that is common for either of the families of algorithms. The beautiful thing about this API is that once the winners are announced, it should be possible to switch the algorithms rather easily, in case your favorite algorithm does not make it.
Note: The key-establishment algorithms differ from the traditional DH or ECDH algorithms. The new protocols are key encapsulation protocols, rather than key exchange protocols. NIST has additional security requirements on these protocols including perfect forward secrecy, which ensures that decryption is not possible using stolen private keys. Furthermore, resistance to side-channel attacks is a desirable property. The complete list of evaluation criteria is published on the NIST website.
It is expected that multiple winners will be announced because each of the algorithms has some benefits and some drawbacks. There is no clear winner yet because of various aspects, such as key sizes, performance, signature sizes, security levels, etc.
The PQC Algorithm Zoo
Post-quantum algorithms are based on different types of underlying mathematical problems:
- Lattice-based cryptography — 12 algorithms are competing in this category for both key agreement and digital signatures. The cryptography is based on finding the shortest distances in lattices, which are special mathematical structures. The most well-known candidate is NTRU.
- Code-based cryptography — 7 algorithms are competing in this category, but only for the “key agreement” category. The cryptography is based on error-correcting codes, which are used as one-way functions. The most well-known candidate is McEliece.
- Multivariate cryptography — 4 signature schemes are computing in this category. The problems are based on solving many multivariate polynomial equations. All of these signature schemes are stateless. Stateful signatures were removed from the NIST competition. The most well-known candidate is Rainbow.
- Hash-based signatures — SPHINCS+ is the only candidate in this category. It uses SHA-2, SHA-3, or Haraka as the underlying hash function.
- Zero-knowledge proofs — Picnic is the only candidate in this category. The signature scheme uses zero-knowledge proofs, which provide the proof with a single message.
- Supersingular elliptic curve isogenies — SIKE is the only candidate in this category. The scheme is based on the elliptic curve cryptography. However, it uses the computation of isogenies instead of ECDLP as the underlying hard problem.
What Can We Do Now?
As you can see, there is still a wide choice of post-quantum (PQC) algorithms to choose from. For this reason, we expect that the “round 3” of NIST competition will be announced later this year. We also expect that the final winners will be announced between the years 2022 and 2024.
However, some steps can be taken right now, independent of the result of the NIST PQC competition. These are our recommendations:
- Update the random generator algorithms, so that they use a strong cryptographic function. This change will guarantee that keys generated now are strong enough to withstand quantum attacks on the underlying cryptographic function. An example would be migrating from SHA1PRNG (potentially insecure) to DRBG_HMAC_SHA512. This change is quite easy and has only a minimal impact on performance.
- Update key sizes for symmetric encryption algorithms. The general advice is to double the key sizes for symmetric encryption algorithms. This means using AES-256 instead of AES-128, and so on — key sizes need to be doubled for symmetric algorithms. For hash functions, use the recommended variant, such as SHA-384 or better. Allow only the stronger suites in TLS protocol. Your backends should not allow weak algorithm suites for the TLS protocol. Changing the allowed suites for TLS should not be difficult on the backend, as long as the clients support the newest suites. Increasing the key sizes for symmetric encryption may be more challenging, but still not rocket science.
- Update the parameters of asymmetric algorithms. Did you know that the commonly used P-256 NIST curve is no longer recommended for ECC? Although migrating to a curve with a bigger field prime will not make it quantum-resistant, it will make the attackers’ life harder. If you still use RSA, using a bigger key size is a good idea before you are ready to deploy a PQC algorithm.
- Note: These changes should be only temporary — for the transition period. The end goal is replacing RSA or ECC-based cryptography with PQC algorithms because neither of these algorithms is going to stay secure in the long term.
- Start experimenting with PQC algorithms for key encapsulation and build a proof of concepts. We have done the same in Wultra already, and it has helped us immensely to understand what we need to do to migrate to PQC algorithms. The security of key agreement algorithms is critical from the point of view of quantum attacks because the attacker will potentially be able to decrypt all recorded traffic from the past.
- Note: The PQC algorithms are still under development. It is probably not a good idea to deploy any of the algorithms in production before they get properly reviewed. Unfortunately, there exists no mathematical proof that the algorithms are quantum-safe (or even safe against classical attacks), so we may have to wait for the “test of time” with the PQC algorithms.
- Educate yourself about PCQ signature schemes. It may be a bit too early to start integrating PQC signature schemes into your solution. Currently, most of the schemes provide less than optimal signature sizes. Depending on the PQC algorithm family, they may require extra key pairs, which may also be quite large. There is much less rush in getting the PQC signature schemes adopted because the harm will be done only once a large enough quantum computer exists. This is very different from the case of key agreement (including TLS!), where all recorded traffic is already problematic. You can wait until the algorithms are reviewed, optimized, and the signature/key sizes become smaller. However, as a proactive step, we also recommend having a look at the Long-Term Validation (LTV) schemes for validating the signatures. By using an LTV scheme, you will be able to easily update your signatures later as needed.
Conclusion
Powerful quantum computers are coming whether you like it or not. It is time to get ready and start educating yourself about post-quantum algorithms and prepare the migration path if you use classical cryptography. Some migration steps can already be done today. But the most important steps still need some time till it is clear which PQC algorithms survive the NIST competition as well as the test of time.
We prepared this post in close cooperation with the Cryptology and biometrics competence center of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) led by Tomáš Rosa. RBI is one of the few financial institutions with their own in-house theoretical research capabilities. As an innovator of the field, RBI actively examines the potential use of quantum computers and the application of post-quantum cryptography. Cooperation with the RBI competence center provides a solid background for educational posts like this one and practical implementations of proof-of-concept solutions.
Ready for Post-Quantum Cryptography?
We hope this article helped you learn about the migration to PQC crypto. We are currently preparing the migration of the products which we use in our digital banking security solutions, and we will share our experiences in a future post. If you have any questions or feedback on this topic, send us a message at [email protected]. | https://www.wultra.com/blog/classical-cryptography-in-a-post-quantum-world |
My research is in the area of elliptic curve cryptography and related finite field arithmetic. I am interested in new cryptographic primitives, new algorithms in computational number theory, new protocols, efficient hardware and software implementations, and side-channel attacks and countermeasures.
Post-Quantum Cryptography
Presence of quantum computers is a real threat against the security of currently used public key cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and Elliptic curve cryptography. Post-quantum cryptography refers to research on cryptographic primitives (usually public-key cryptosystems) that are not efficiently breakable using quantum computers. This research investigates design, analysis, and implementation of quantum-safe cryptographic algorithms. For more information refer to PQCryptARM.
Finite Field Arithmetic
The arithmetic operations in the finite fields over prime fields and binary extension fields are largely utilized for cryptographic algorithms such as point multiplication in elliptic curve cryptography, exponentiation-based cryptosystems, and coding. This research investigates efficient algorithms and efficient architectures for the computation of finite field operations.
Efficient Implementations of Cryptographic Primitives
Providing security for the emerging deeply-embedded systems utilized in sensitive applications is a problem whose practical mechanisms have not received sufficient attention by the research community and industry alike. This research investigates efficient implementations of elliptic curve cryptography on embedded devices with extremely-constrained environments.
Machine-Level Optimization for the Computation of Cryptographic Pairings
High-speed computations of pairing-based cryptography is crucial for both desktop computers and embedded hand-held devices. This research investigates the machine-level and assembly optimizations for the computation of lower level finite field arithmetic used in pairings.
Highly-parallel scalable architectures for Cryptography Computations
Highly-parallel and fast computations of the widely-used cryptographic algorithm is required for high-performance applications. However, a challenge to cope with is that most applications for which parallelism is essential, have significantly large scale that is not commonly supported by today’s algorithms. Therefore, new algorithms are required to investigate parallelization. | http://faculty.eng.fau.edu/azarderakhsh/research/ |
The method was developed by richard bellman in the 1950s and has found applications in numerous fields, from aerospace engineering to economics. Introduction to dynamic programming with examples david. Check out a linkedin learning course on pdf form elements. While the rocks problem does not appear to be related to bioinformatics, the algorithm that we described is a computational twin of a popular alignment algorithm for sequence comparison. Create interactive pdf documents with buttons, movies and sound clips.
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You can create interactive documents with buttons, movies and sound clips, hyperlinks, bookmarks, and page transitions. Dynamic programming and reinforcement learning this chapter provides a formal description of decisionmaking for stochastic domains, then describes linear valuefunction approximation algorithms for solving these decision problems. These are often dynamic control problems, and for reasons of efficiency, the stages are often solved backwards in time, i. Tutorials, tools, scripts and samples for scripting acrobat and pdf. Dynamic programming solutions are faster than exponential brute method and can be easily proved for their correctness. Typically, a solution to a problem is a combination of wellknown techniques and new insights. Dynamic programming is a very powerful algorithmic paradigm in which a problem is solved by identifying a collection of subproblems and tackling them one by one, smallest rst, using the answers to small problems to help gure out larger ones, until the whole lot of them is solved. Dynamic programming is both a mathematical optimization method and a computer programming method. Each class of problem typically has associated with it a general form of the solution. Dynamic programming problems can be made stochastic.
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Lecture notes on dynamic programming economics 200e, professor bergin, spring 1998 adapted from lecture notes of kevin salyer and from stokey, lucas and prescott 1989 outline 1 a typical problem 2 a deterministic finite horizon problem 2. The implementation of algorithms requires good programming skills. You can also set up documents in indesign that can be converted to forms in acrobat. Solve practice problems for introduction to dynamic programming 1 to test your programming skills. Remarks on the dynamic programming approach steps form the basisof a dynamic programming solution to a problem. It should be pointed out that nothing has been said about the specific form of the. Rather, dynamic programming is a general type of approach to problem solving, and the particular equations used must be developed to fit each situation. The closest pair problem is an optimization problem. It begins with dynamic programming approaches, where the underlying model is known, then moves to reinforcement. Dynamic programming is also used in optimization problems. | https://adinyllo.web.app/1354.html |
When the Robert Redford film Sneakers hit theaters in 1992, most moviegoers had never heard of the Internet. They’d have guessed “World Wide Web” was a horror film involving spiders. And nobody knew that the secret code-breaking box that the Sneakers plot centered on was a quantum computer. All you learned from the movie was that it involved a “shortcut” for solving the mathematical problem on which codes were based.
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But then 20 years ago, in 1994, Bell Labs mathematician Peter Shor discovered that shortcut in real life. He showed how a quantum computer — if one could be built — could crack supposedly uncrackable codes. Shor’s discovery electrified the small community of physicists who studied quantum information — the kind of information that quantum computers would process.
Just a few weeks after Shor announced his result, many of the world’s quantum information experts met in Santa Fe, N.M., for a workshop that had been planned months earlier on “Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information.”
For five days, about 40 physicists and mathematicians, a philosopher and a journalist (me) attended to presentations on everything from information-swallowing by black holes to chaos in arithmetic. But the bombilation was about Shor’s new method for factoring large numbers, the key to breaking codes.
“It’s a truly dramatic result,” proclaimed Umesh Vazirani a mathematician from the University of California, Berkeley. “This is the first really useful problem that has been shown to be solvable on a quantum computer.”
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Among the participants was Benjamin Schumacher of Kenyon College in Ohio. Just two years earlier, he had introduced the key concept of quantum information theory: the quantum bit, or qubit. Just as ordinary computers process bits —1s and 0s — a quantum computer would process qubits. But unlike ordinary bits, always either 0 or 1, a qubit is both 0 and 1 at the same time, with some probability of turning up one way or the other when a measurement is made. In other words, a bit is like a stationary coin, either heads or tails; a qubit is like a flipped coin that is still spinning.
Shor found an algorithm that showed how manipulating qubits could be used to decode encrypted messages. All of a sudden, one of the most esoteric fields of physics became relevant to military communication, financial transactions and governmental espionage. And encryption’s vulnerability to quantum computing raised the profile of another quantum information project, quantum cryptography. Work over the previous decade had shown that quantum information could be used to transmit perfectly secure keys for coding and decoding. In a world with quantum computers, today’s keys used for encrypting messages would be worthless. So the problem became finding a way to make keys immune to quantum computing. “That is exactly what quantum cryptography solves,” Artur Ekert of Oxford University said at the Santa Fe workshop.But for all the talk of practical applications, the deeper concern at that workshop was the implications of quantum information for understanding the meaning of quantum physics itself. On the first day, John Archibald Wheeler articulated his vision of “It from Bit,” the idea that existence itself is at its roots a manifestation of information.
For Wheeler, quantum physics was about posing questions to nature. Reality arises in the transformation of qubits into bits. Observations convert probabilities into actualities — “iron posts of observation” around which the rest of reality is constructed as if of papier-mâché.
“That leaves us with many questions in the air,” Wheeler acknowledged. “Most of all, where does the whole show come from?”
After all, Wheeler pointed out, making the world from observations always runs into the problem of how you get observers there.
“The issues that trouble me, and for which I have no answer, are, How come existence? How come the quantum?” Wheeler said. “One has hope that one can find reasoning of such a kind to build the whole show from nothing. That would be the dream.”
Wheeler’s concerns led naturally to further discussions of quantum physics and its interpretation, especially with regard to the “quantum measurement problem.” It remains a mystery how an observation transforms possibility into actuality, how the quantum math describing multiple realities allows the sudden shift to only one of the possibilities when a measurement is made. On the workshop’s last day, a general discussion of matters related to the measurement problem revealed a diversity of viewpoints on this issue among the world’s leading experts. Then (as now), after decades of quantum research, its practitioners cannot agree on how to interpret quantum physics.
“I think this discussion shows that quantum measurement is quite a horse,” said Seth Lloyd, now at MIT. “You can beat it for 50 years and it still isn’t dead yet.”
But as Anton Zeilinger, a leading quantum experimentalist, pointed out, multiple interpretations have their value.
“I think all the interpretations are important because for two reasons,” he said. “Number 1, even if they are isomorphic in terms of predictions, they might lead our intuition in a different way. So we might invent different experiments with interpretation A or with interpretation B. And the second reason … is that I still feel that someday we might understand, in John’s (Wheeler’s) words, Why the quantum? And we have not the foggiest idea, I think, which interpretation will finally help us.”
Others took up various points during the discussion. Some involved quantum decoherence, the interaction of the environment with a quantum system. Decoherence destroys the multiple quantum possibilities, leaving one reality, and has been advocated as one way of solving the measurement problem without observers.
The discussion was initiated by John Denker of Bell Labs. He posed a question about projection operators, mathematical expressions involved in representing the quantities that can be observed in a quantum measurement. Much of the ensuing conversation was quite technical. Nevertheless it strikes me as something of important historical interest, as it captured the thoughts of the best quantum thinkers at a key time in quantum history. I transcribed my tape at the time but have never had an opportunity to publish it. So I’m making it available here. | https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/shors-code-breaking-algorithm-inspired-reflections-quantum-information |
"... Abstract. The performance of the linear consensus algorithm is studied by using a Linear Quadratic (LQ) cost. The objective is to understand how the communication topology influences this algorithm. This is achieved by exploiting an analogy between Markov Chains and electrical resistive networks. In ..."
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graph whose associated LQ cost is well-known. Key words. Multi-agent systems, consensus algorithm, distributed averaging, large-scale graphs AMS subject classifications. 68R10, 90B10, 94C15, 90B18, 05C50 1. Introduction. The
A Comparison of Methods for Multiclass Support Vector Machines
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classifiers. Some authors also proposed methods that consider all classes at once. As it is computationally more expensive to solve multiclass problems, comparisons of these methods using large-scale problems have not been seriously conducted. Especially for methods solving multiclass SVM in one step, a much
Convergence Properties of the Nelder-Mead Simplex Method in Low Dimensions
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"... Abstract. The Nelder–Mead simplex algorithm, first published in 1965, is an enormously popular direct search method for multidimensional unconstrained minimization. Despite its widespread use, essentially no theoretical results have been proved explicitly for the Nelder–Mead algorithm. This paper pr ..."
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methods, Nelder–Mead simplex methods, nonderivative optimization AMS subject classifications. 49D30, 65K05
Stochastic Perturbation Theory
, 1988
"... . In this paper classical matrix perturbation theory is approached from a probabilistic point of view. The perturbed quantity is approximated by a first-order perturbation expansion, in which the perturbation is assumed to be random. This permits the computation of statistics estimating the variatio ..."
Abstract - Cited by 907 (36 self) - Add to MetaCart
and the eigenvalue problem. Key words. perturbation theory, random matrix, linear system, least squares, eigenvalue, eigenvector, invariant subspace, singular value AMS(MOS) subject classifications. 15A06, 15A12, 15A18, 15A52, 15A60 1. Introduction. Let A be a matrix and let F be a matrix valued function of A
On Positive Harris Recurrence of Multiclass Queueing Networks: A Unified Approach Via Fluid Limit Models
- Annals of Applied Probability , 1995
"... It is now known that the usual traffic condition (the nominal load being less than one at each station) is not sufficient for stability for a multiclass open queueing network. Although there has been some progress in establishing the stability conditions for a multiclass network, there is no unified ..."
Abstract - Cited by 357 (27 self) - Add to MetaCart
, multiclass feedforward networks and first-buffer-first-served preemptive resume discipline in a re-entrant line are positive Harris recurrent under the usual traffic condition. AMS 1991 subject classification: Primary 60K25, 90B22; Secondary 60K20, 90B35. Key words and phrases: multiclass queueing networks
Universal One-Way Hash Functions and their Cryptographic Applications
, 1989
"... We define a Universal One-Way Hash Function family, a new primitive which enables the compression of elements in the function domain. The main property of this primitive is that given an element x in the domain, it is computationally hard to find a different domain element which collides with x. We ..."
Abstract - Cited by 351 (15 self) - Add to MetaCart
schemes were based on the stronger mathematical assumption that trapdoor one-way functions exist. Key words. cryptography, randomized algorithms AMS subject classifications. 68M10, 68Q20, 68Q22, 68R05, 68R10 Part of this work was done while the authors were at the IBM Almaden Research Center. The first
Quantum Circuit Complexity
, 1993
"... We study a complexity model of quantum circuits analogous to the standard (acyclic) Boolean circuit model. It is shown that any function computable in polynomial time by a quantum Turing machine has a polynomial-size quantum circuit. This result also enables us to construct a universal quantum compu ..."
Abstract - Cited by 320 (1 self) - Add to MetaCart
that the majority function does not have a linear-size quantum formula. Keywords. Boolean circuit complexity, communication complexity, quantum communication complexity, quantum computation AMS subject classifications. 68Q05, 68Q15 1 This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under
Public-key Cryptosystems Provably Secure against Chosen Ciphertext Attacks
- In Proc. of the 22nd STOC , 1995
"... We show how to construct a public-key cryptosystem (as originally defined by Diffie and Hellman) secure against chosen ciphertext attacks, given a public-key cryptosystem secure against passive eavesdropping and a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof system in the shared string model. No such secure ..."
Abstract - Cited by 284 (19 self) - Add to MetaCart
. No such secure cryptosystems were known before. Key words. cryptography, randomized algorithms AMS subject classifications. 68M10, 68Q20, 68Q22, 68R05, 68R10 A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proc. of the Twenty Second ACM Symposium of Theory of Computing. y Incumbent of the Morris
Large-scale
"... IOS Press ..."
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Abstract not found
A Large-Scale Evaluation of Acoustic and Subjective Music Similarity Measures
- Computer Music Journal , 2003
"... this paper, we examine both acoustic and subjective approaches for calculating similarity between artists, comparing their performance on a common database of 400 popular artists. Specifically, we evaluate acoustic techniques based on Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients and an intermediate `anch ..." | http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/search?q=large-scale%20graph%20am%20subject%20classification&submit=Search&sort=rlv&t=doc |
Talking about quantum machine learning algorithms is a tricky subject considering the divergent views experts hold on it. Critics consider machine learning to be predominantly a linear algebra subject with little resonance with quantum computing. Proponents comment that the methods of quantum computing can help train datasets that are too large for classical methods. Seth Lloyd of MIT recently gave a talk citing an example. He suggested that analyzing all the topological features for a dataset with 300 × 300 points will require two to the 300th power processing units, an insolvable computing problem. He argued that a quantum machine learning algorithm could achieve the feat with mere 300 × 300 quantum bits, a scale he considers is attainable within the next few years. What Lloyd implied was that algorithms that take exponential time currently would take only polynomial time using quantum methods. Sounds really promising if it can succeed.
But this isn’t as straightforward as many would like us to believe. For starters, the biggest hurdle to advances in machine learning is limited data. Quantum computing, or any other method, will not solve that. Even advocates agree that quantum machine learning has limited applicability. On the bright side, evidence suggest that many problems in machine learning can be cast as Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO), a NP hard problem. For other cases, things are mostly speculative right now.
But even if quantum machine learning succeeds in elementary form, it won’t alter the machine learning landscape majorly. There will be no generic quantum machine learning tool. At best, hard optimization problems could be tackled in polynomial time via tunneling between optima. For the uninformed, quantum computers are believed to have the ability to rise above the local minima in optimization problems using tunneling to attain global minima. Some of the attempts at this form of algorithm include D-Waves quantum annealing, Quantum Bayesian Nets and Quantum Boltzmann Machines.
Also, scalability of qubit entanglement is still just a hypothesis, despite some successes such as Grover’s Algorithm and Shor’s Algorithm. With some success, we might see vendors develop implementation libraries for machine learning developers, reducing the need for the latter for in-depth understanding of quantum computing skills. So it is important to be aware that some of the witnessed journalistic romanticism that links human cognitive powers, machine learning and quantum logic is far-fetched. Also, at small scale, quantum computing hardly has a query complexity (oracle) advantage over classical methods. To an extent, utility of quantum methods will depend a lot on how visible the order of magnitude of query gap count is between classical and quantum methods. However, a recent paper discusses machine learning in quantum computing without needing an oracle.
Another interesting development is the upcoming subfield of Quantum Deep Learning. This field is based on the hypothesis that complex machine learning tasks requires the machine to learn models that contain several layers of abstraction of the raw input data. Visual object recognition from image pixels is one such task. Google too has shown interest in the field with its launch of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab. Specifically, Google’s effort is focused on adiabatic minima searching (D-Wave quantum systems) in improving machine learning algorithms. We’ve also had other research publications from Microsoft Research and Yale University (Quantum Neurons).
Whatever the current trends are, one thing is undeniable. Both machine learning and quantum computing are fields with still scope for lot of evolution, and we are in definitely in for some really interesting times in the future. | http://thinkbigdata.in/quantum-machine-learning-things-you-should-know/ |
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Purchase individual online access for 1 year to this journal.Price: EUR 410.00
Impact Factor 2019: 1.204
Fundamenta Informaticae is an international journal publishing original research results in all areas of theoretical computer science. Papers are encouraged contributing:
- solutions by mathematical methods of problems emerging in computer science
- solutions of mathematical problems inspired by computer science.
Topics of interest include (but are not restricted to): theory of computing, complexity theory, algorithms and data structures, computational aspects of combinatorics and graph theory, programming language theory, theoretical aspects of programming languages, computer-aided verification, computer science logic, database theory, logic programming, automated deduction, formal languages and automata theory, concurrency and distributed computing, cryptography and security, theoretical issues in artificial intelligence, machine learning, pattern recognition, algorithmic game theory, bioinformatics and computational biology, quantum computing, probabilistic methods, & algebraic and categorical methods.
Authors: Solomakhin, Dmitry | Franconi, Enrico | Mosca, Alessandro
Article Type: Research Article
Abstract: Automated support to enterprise modeling has increasingly become a subject of interest for organizations seeking solutions for storage, distribution and analysis of knowledge about business processes. This interest has recently resulted in approving the standard for specifying Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR). Despite the existence of formally grounded notations, up to now SBVR still lacks a sound and consistent logical formalization which would allow developing automated solutions able to check the consistency of a set of business rules. This work reports on the attempt to provide logical foundations for SBVR by the means of defining a specific …first-order deontic-alethic logic (FODAL). The connections of FODAL with the modal logic QK and the description logic 𝒜ℒ𝒞𝒬ℐ have been investigated and, on top of the obtained theoretical results, a special tool providing automated support for consistency checks of a set of 𝒜ℒ𝒞𝒬ℐ-expressible deontic and alethic business rules has been implemented. Show more
Keywords: business rules, deontic rules, consistency, reasoning, ORM2
DOI: 10.3233/FI-2013-848
Citation: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 124, no. 4, pp. 543-560, 2013
Authors: Zhou, Neng-Fa | Dovier, Agostino
Article Type: Research Article
Abstract: This paper presents our program in B-Prolog submitted to the third ASP solver competition for the Sokoban problem. This program, based on dynamic programming, treats Sokoban as a generalized shortest path problem. It divides a problem into independent subproblems and uses mode-directed tabling to store subproblems and their answers. This program is very simple but quite efficient. Without use of any sophisticated domain knowledge, it easily solves 14 of the 15 instances used in the competition. We show that the approach can be easily applied to other optimization planning problems.
DOI: 10.3233/FI-2013-849
Citation: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 124, no. 4, pp. 561-575, 2013
Article Type: Miscellaneous
Citation: Fundamenta Informaticae, vol. 124, no. 4, pp. 577-578, 2013
IOS Press, Inc. | https://content.iospress.com/journals/fundamenta-informaticae/124/4?start=10&rows=10 |
A sudoku-style mathematical puzzle that is known to have no classical solution has been found to be soluble if the objects being arrayed in a square grid show quantum behavior . The problem, posed by Swiss mathematician Leonard Euler in 1779, involves finding a way to arrange objects in a grid so that their properties don’t repeat in any row or column. The quantum solution might be useful for problems in quantum information processing, such as creating algorithms for correcting errors in quantum computing.
Euler imagined a group of 36 army officers, six from each of six regiments, with each officer having one of six different ranks. Can they be arranged in a square formation such that no regiment or rank is repeated in any row or column?
Solutions can be found for all squares ( 3×33×3, 4×44×4, and so on, assuming the appropriate number of officers) except for 2×22×2 and Euler’s case of 6×66×6. In 1900, the impossibility of a 6×66×6 solution was proven by the French mathematician Gaston Tarry. But Suhail Rather of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Adam Burchardt of Jagiellonian University in Poland, and their colleagues wondered if the problem could be solved if the objects were quantum mechanical instead of classical. Then the objects could be placed in combinations (superpositions) of the various possible states: a single officer could be, say, partially a colonel from the red regiment and partially a lieutenant from the blue regiment.
This quantum version requires an adjusted definition of when two such states can be considered “different.” Quantum superpositions can be represented as vectors in the space of possible states of the components, and the team assumed that two superpositions are mutually exclusive if their vectors are perpendicular (orthogonal) to one another.
The researchers used a computer algorithm to search for such quantum solutions of Euler’s “36 officers” problem. They started from a classical configuration that had only a few repetitions in the rows and columns and tried to improve it by adding in superposition. They found that a full quantum solution to the 6×66×6 problem exists for a particular set of superposition states.
A superposition between two quantum objects often implies that they are entangled: their properties are interdependent and correlated. If, say, one quantum officer is found (on inspection) to be a colonel, the other with which it is entangled might have to be a lieutenant. The quantum solution requires a complicated set of entanglements between officers, reminiscent of the entanglements created between quantum bits (qubits) in quantum computing.
The researchers realized that their solution is closely related to a problem in quantum information processing involving “absolutely maximally entangled” (AME) states, in which the correlation between any pair of entangled qubits in the group is as strong as it can possibly be. Such states are relevant to quantum error correction, where errors in a quantum computation must be identified and corrected without actually reading out the states of the qubits. AME states are also important in quantum teleportation, where the quantum state of one particle in an entangled pair is recreated in the other particle.
Qubits have two possible readout states, 0 and 1, but quantum objects can, in principle, also have three (qutrits) or more states. Theorists have derived mathematical expressions for AME states for different-sized groups of quantum objects, but an AME state for four six-state objects (so-called quhex objects, like quantum dice) has proven curiously elusive. Rather and colleagues found that their quantum solution to the 6×66×6 Euler problem shows how to entangle four quantum dice to also produce this so-called AME(4,6) solution. The lack of an AME(4,6) state had been puzzling to theorists, but the solution required an approach that had not been previously considered. The result shows a new design principle for creating states with entangled particles, an essential element of error-correcting codes, says team member Arul Lakshminarayan of the IITM.
Finding the AME(4,6) state solves “a problem that has been investigated by several researchers within the last few years,” says quantum information theorist Barbara Kraus of the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Quantum technologist Hoi-Kwong Lo of the University of Toronto says the work is potentially significant. “The argument looks plausible to me, and if the result is correct, I think it is very important, with implications for quantum error correction.” But he admits that it’s not easy to understand intuitively why the six-state case turns out to be so special, both for Euler’s problem and for the AME states.
References
- S. A. Rather et al., “Thirty-six entangled officers of Euler: Quantum solution to a classically impossible problem,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 080507 (2022). | https://www.practicalintroduction.com/2022/02/Euler-Imagined-Group%20-of-36-Army-Officers-A-Quantum-Solution-to-an-18th-Century-Puzzle.html |
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