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Interdisciplinary Field (interdisciplinary + field)
Selected AbstractsLie Theory for Quantum ControlGAMM - MITTEILUNGEN, Issue 1 2008G. Dirr Abstract One of the main theoretical challenges in quantum computing is the design of explicit schemes that enable one to effectively factorize a given final unitary operator into a product of basic unitary operators. As this is equivalent to a constructive controllability task on a Lie group of special unitary operators, one faces interesting classes of bilinear optimal control problems for which efficient numerical solution algorithms are sought for. In this paper we give a review on recent Lie-theoretical developments in finite-dimensional quantum control that play a key role for solving such factorization problems on a compact Lie group. After a brief introduction to basic terms and concepts from quantum mechanics, we address the fundamental control theoretic issues for bilinear control systems and survey standard techniques fromLie theory relevant for quantum control. Questions of controllability, accessibility and time optimal control of spin systems are in the center of our interest. Some remarks on computational aspects are included as well. The idea is to enable the potential reader to understand the problems in clear mathematical terms, to assess the current state of the art and get an overview on recent developments in quantum control-an emerging interdisciplinary field between physics, control and computation. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source] Future eating and country keeping: what role has environmental history in the management of biodiversity?JOURNAL OF BIOGEOGRAPHY, Issue 5 2001D.M.J.S. Bowman In order to understand and moderate the effects of the accelerating rate of global environmental change land managers and ecologists must not only think beyond their local environment but also put their problems into a historical context. It is intuitively obvious that historians should be natural allies of ecologists and land managers as they struggle to maintain biodiversity and landscape health. Indeed, ,environmental history' is an emerging field where the previously disparate intellectual traditions of ecology and history intersect to create a new and fundamentally interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Environmental history is rapidly becoming an important field displacing many older environmentally focused academic disciplines as well as capturing the public imagination. By drawing on Australian experience I explore the role of ,environmental history' in managing biodiversity. First I consider some of the similarities and differences of the ecological and historical approaches to the history of the environment. Then I review two central questions in Australian environment history: landscape-scale changes in woody vegetation cover since European settlement and the extinction of the marsupials in both historical and pre-historical time. These case studies demonstrate that environmental historians can reach conflicting interpretations despite using essentially the same data. The popular success of some environmental histories hinges on the fact that they narrate a compelling story concerning human relationships and human value judgements about landscape change. Ecologists must learn to harness the power of environmental history narratives to bolster land management practices designed to conserve biological heritage. They can do this by using various currently popular environmental histories as a point of departure for future research, for instance by testing the veracity of competing interpretations of landscape-scale change in woody vegetation cover. They also need to learn how to write parables that communicate their research findings to land managers and the general public. However, no matter how sociologically or psychologically satisfying a particular environmental historical narrative might be, it must be willing to be superseded with new stories that incorporate the latest research discoveries and that reflects changing social values of nature. It is contrary to a rational and publicly acceptable approach to land management to read a particular story as revealing the absolute truth. [source] Reflections on "Real-World" community psychology,JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2008Tom Wolff Reflections on the history of real-world (applied) community psychologists trace their participation in the field's official guild, the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA), beginning with the Swampscott Conference in 1965 through the current date. Four benchmarks are examined. The issues these real-world psychologists bring to the field include academic and community legitimacy, community psychology as an interdisciplinary field, and politics and advocacy. Challenges these issues create among community psychologists,real-world and academic,are briefly addressed. These reflections end with a vision of the future of community psychology that includes a strong recommitment to social change and social justice. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Eighteenth-Century Cartographic Studies: A Brief SurveyLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2007Adam Sills Eighteenth-century cartographic studies is a interdisciplinary field that has been and continues to be shaped by the Foucauldian approach popularized by J. B. Harley, who argues for a decidedly political and ideological interpretation of the map and its history. Within this theoretical paradigm, the map is seen as a form of knowledge that facilitates the hegemonic and unilateral exercise of power, especially as it relates to the formation of the British nation-state and its colonies. Recent work, however, has called this approach to the history of cartography into question by arguing for a more expansive and pluralistic understanding of the map and its place within eighteenth-century British society. Works exploring the intersection of cartographic and literary studies have broadened the field by moving away from the previous model in which the map was seen only as an expression of British national and imperial power. [source] Comparing health care delivery systems , initiating a student exchange project between Europe and the United StatesMEDICAL EDUCATION, Issue 7 2001Elizabeth G Armstrong Background Cross-cultural contact among different health care systems can provide a framework for identifying the strengths and weaknesses of one's own healthcare system. However, such contact has rarely had much impact upon medical education curricula. Despite intense debate on reforming the healthcare delivery systems (HCDS) in Europe and the United States, there is very little formal representation of this interdisciplinary field in our educational programs. Description To address this problem, a medical student exchange program was conducted in which students developed case studies that produced comparative analyses of HCDS in Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the United States. Each case is intended to highlight critical differences among the systems. Evaluation Students and their faculty preceptors completed pre- and post-exchange questionnaires to assess perceived knowledge of the HCDS and the adequacy of time devoted to it in their curricula. Both perceived that too little attention was devoted to this content in their programs. Following the exchange, students described clear increases in perceived knowledge. Discussion Our common interest in curriculum reform was key to implementing the exchange. The written cases generated by the students are being developed as course material in some of the schools and a conference is planned to disseminate the cases and the implementation strategies for their inclusion in medical curricula. [source] Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, and the Teaching of Foreign LanguagesMODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 3 2000Claire Kramsch Given the current popularity of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) as a research base for the teaching and learning of foreign languages in educational settings, it is appropriate to examine the relationship of SLA to other relevant areas of inquiry, such as Foreign Language Education, Foreign Language Methodology, and Applied Linguistics. This article makes the argument that Applied Linguistics, as the interdisciplinary field that mediates between the theory and the practice of language acquisition and use, is the overarching field that includes SLA and SLA-related domains of research. Applied Linguistics brings to all levels of foreign language study not only the research done in SLA proper, but also the research in Stylistics, Language Socialization, and Critical Applied Linguistics that illuminates the teaching of a foreign language as sociocultural practice, as historical practice, and as social semiotic practice. [source] IUSAM-APdeBA: A higher education institute for psychoanalytic trainingTHE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 5 2009Hector Ferrari The history of the last century shows the almost constant presence of psychoanalysis in the academic setting and, simultaneously, the incredible absence of analytic training at the universities. This paper outlines the project of the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association (APdeBA) to create a higher education institution of its own (IUSAM) specifically aimed at lodging psychoanalytic training within a university setting. The project was approved by the Argentine educational authorities in 2005 and received the economic support of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). The academic structure of the university is described, whose goal is broadened to the interdisciplinary field of mental health with psychoanalysis as an integrating axis. Some of the characteristics of the traditional ,university model' as well as its relationship with psychoanalysis are pointed out. With the IUSAM, psychoanalytic training is not included as a part of an already established university, it rather creates a new one, with the support of a well-known psychoanalytical association (APdeBA) which endorses its activities and guarantees its identity. IPA's requirements for analytic training (didactic analysis, supervisions and seminars) have been fully preserved in this new context. Finally, some of the advantages and disadvantages of including analytic training into an academic environment are listed. [source] Black Metropolis and Mental Life: Beyond the "Burden of ,Acting White' " Toward a Third Wave of Critical Racial StudiesANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2008A. A. Akom In this article, I reflect on Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu's classic research on the "burden of ,acting White' " to develop a long overdue dialogue between Africana studies and critical white studies. It highlights the dialectical nature of Fordham and Ogbu's philosophy of race and critical race theory by locating the origins of the "burden of ,acting White' " in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, who provides some of the intellectual foundations for this work. Following the work of F. W. Twine and C. Gallagher (2008), I then survey the field of critical whiteness studies and outline an emerging third wave in this interdisciplinary field. This new wave of research utilizes the following five elements that form its basic core: (1) the centrality of race and racism and their intersectionality with other forms of oppression; (2) challenging white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and other dominant ideologies; (3) a critical reflexivity that addresses how various formulations of whiteness are situated in relation to contemporary formulations of Black/people of color identity formation, politics, and knowledge construction; (4) innovative research methodologies including asset-based research approaches; and, finally, (5) a racial elasticity that identifies the ways in which white racial power and pigmentocracy are continually reconstituting themselves in the color-blind era and beyond (see A. A. Akom 2008c).[oppositional identity, Black student achievement, youth development, acting white, Du Bois, critical whiteness studies, critical race theory, race, Black metropolis, double consciousness, twoness, hip-hop] [source] Pulsed electromagnetic fields affect osteoblast proliferation and differentiation in bone tissue engineeringBIOELECTROMAGNETICS, Issue 7 2007Ming-Tzu Tsai Abstract Bone tissue engineering is an interdisciplinary field involving both engineers and cell biologists, whose main purpose is to repair bone anatomical defects and maintain its functions. A novel system that integrates pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMFs) and bioreactors was applied to bone tissue engineering for regulating osteoblast proliferation and differentiation in'vitro. Osteoblasts were acquired from the calvaria of newborn Wistar rats and isolated after sequential digestion. Poly(DL -lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) scaffolds were made by the solvent merging/particulate leaching method. Osteoblasts were seeded into porous PLGA scaffolds with 85% porosity and cultured in bioreactors for the 18-day culture period. Cells were exposed to PEMF pulsed stimulation with average (rms) amplitudes of either 0.13, 0.24, or 0.32 mT amplitude. The resulting induced electric field waveform consisted of single, narrow 300 µs quasi-rectangular pulses with a repetition rate of 7.5'Hz. The results showed that PEMF stimulation for 2 and 8 h at .13 mT increased the cell number on days 6 and 12, followed by a decrease on day 18 using 8 h stimulation. However, ALP activity was decreased and then increased on days 12 and 18, respectively. On the other hand, PEMF-treated groups (irrespective of the stimulation time) at 0.32 mT inhibited cell proliferation but enhanced ALP activity during the culture period. These findings suggested that PEMF stimulation with specific parameters had an effect on regulating the osteoblast proliferation and differentiation. This novel integrated system may have potential in bone tissue engineering. Bioelectromagnetics 28:519,528, 2007. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Studies on microwaves in medicine and biology: From snails to humansBIOELECTROMAGNETICS, Issue 3 2004James C. Lin Abstract This d'Arsonval Medal acceptance presentation highlights several research themes selected from Dr. Lin's published works, focusing on the microwave portion of the nonionizing electromagnetic spectrum. The topics discussed include investigation of microwave effects on the spontaneous action potentials and membrane resistance of isolated snail neurons, effects on the permeability of blood brain barriers in rats, the phenomenon and interaction mechanism for the microwave auditory effect (the hearing of microwave pulses by animals and humans), the development of miniature catheter antennas for microwave interstitial hyperthermia treatment of cancer, the application of transcatheter microwave ablation for treatment of cardiac arrhythmias, and the use of noninvasive wireless technology for sensing of human vital signs and blood pressure pulse waves. The paper concludes with some observations on research and other endeavors in the interdisciplinary field of bioelectromagnetics. Bioelectromagnetics 25:146,159, 2004. © 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] | |||||||||||||