Gatekeepers in Social Science

in Wright, James D. (Ed.) The International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. 2nd edition (2015)

A gatekeeper is an individual or collective actor who is in a position to control access to resources and rewards relevant in a particular social system. The term’s usage in the sociology of science goes ... [more ▼]

A gatekeeper is an individual or collective actor who is in a position to control access to resources and rewards relevant in a particular social system. The term’s usage in the sociology of science goes back to Robert K. Merton, who defines gatekeeping as one of the four complementary roles in the role set of scientists and scholars. Gate-keeping activities are relevant in different arenas of scholarship such as between scientific masters and apprentices, in collective mentoring programs, in publishing and in research funding. [less ▲]

The Gateway Science: A Review of Astronomy in the OECD School Curricula

in Research in Science Education (in press)

Astronomy is considered by many to be a gateway science owing to its ability to inspire curiosity in everyone irrespective of age, culture or general inclination to science. While the inclusion of ... [more ▼]

Astronomy is considered by many to be a gateway science owing to its ability to inspire curiosity in everyone irrespective of age, culture or general inclination to science. While the inclusion of astronomy in the school curriculum has waxed and waned over the years, in the current era, where there is a global push to get more students engaged in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), astronomy provides an invaluable conduit to bring about this shift. This paper highlights the results of a study which has reviewed the presence and extent to which astronomy has been incorporated into the school curriculum of the Organisation for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD) member countries as well as two non-OECD countries strong in astronomy research, China and South Africa, and one international curriculum, the International Baccalaureate Diploma programme. A total of 52 national curricula from 37 countries were reviewed. The results revealed that overall astronomy and its related topics are prevalent in at least one grade in all curricula across the OECD, China and South Africa. Of the 52 national curricula, 44 of them had astronomy related topics in grade 6. Out of the 52 national curricula, 40 introduced astronomy-related topics in grade 1, while 14 of them had astronomy-related topics explicitly mentioned in all grades. The most common keywords were related to basic astronomy concepts, such as the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and the stars, all have occurrences of over 100. Relational textual analysis also revealed that all the major concepts could be encompassed across two broad themes of Earth and Physics. [less ▲]

Gather childrens experiences from grounded theory to methodological innovation Violence, bullying and empathy: the point of view of pupils of 9 to 12 years old

Scientific Conference (2016, July 13)

The aim of this presentation are:To discuss the process of data collection tools in researching the topic of violence, bullying and empathy experiences of children between 9 to 12 years old in 20 classes ... [more ▼]

The aim of this presentation are:To discuss the process of data collection tools in researching the topic of violence, bullying and empathy experiences of children between 9 to 12 years old in 20 classes of Elementary School. To discuss how the use of grounded theory and how the specificity of the field and topics lead to methodologic inovation. To present the methodological work for collecting children experiences that could allow avoiding researcher’s impact/ imposition. To encode qualitative data to quantitative data. In this presentation I talked about some step by step processes; moveover we developed these steps at the stage of collecting qualitative data from the perspective of children, we have later verified these results with the statistical analysis. Out quantitative data show that: 24% of our population (children betwen 9 and 12 years) have already been involved in bullying situations (victim, author or witness) and 15,2% have already been victims of bullying. In another research with teenagers (11-16 years) Debardieux, counted 10% (2011). Differences between girls and boys show the ambivalence betwen discourse and act. By anticipation, we assume a specific population. We interprete a number of facts that are linked to children. Yet the comparison of non comparable groups allows us to produce a formal general theory (Glasser and Strauss, 2010:152). It allows us to compare bullying at school and suffering at work. We could use methodological inovation for all kinds of population [less ▲]

Gattung und Geschichte : Zur Einleitung

in Kohns, Oliver; Liebrand, Claudia (Eds.) Gattung und Geschichte : Literatur- und medienwissenschaftliche Ansätze zu einer neuen Gattungstheorie (2012)

Gauge-invariant theory for semiclassical magnetotransport through ballistic microstructures

in Physical Review B (1999), 59(4), 2956-2967

Within the semiclassical theory of magnetotransport through ballistic cavities, fluctuations in the transmission amplitude and in the conductance originate from the Aharonov-Bohm phase of directed areas ... [more ▼]

Within the semiclassical theory of magnetotransport through ballistic cavities, fluctuations in the transmission amplitude and in the conductance originate from the Aharonov-Bohm phase of directed areas. We formulate the semiclassical transmission amplitude in gauge-invariant form. The gauge invariant phases can be visualized in terms of areas enclosed by classical paths, which consist of the real path connecting the entrance point to the exit point and a virtual path leading back to the entrance point. We implement this method on different levels of a semiclassical description of magnetotransport with applications to magnetoconductance fluctuations and correlations. The validity of the semiclassical theories is analyzed. [S0163-1829(99)10903-2]. [less ▲]

Gaussian approximations of nonlinear statistis on the sphere

in Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications (2016), 436(2), 1121-1148

Gaussian Filtering for Enhanced Impedance Parameters Identification in Robotic Assembly Processes

in 20th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2015), Luxembourg 8-11 September 2015 (2015, September 08)

Robot interaction with the environment is normally described as a mass-spring-damping impedance model and the estimation of such interaction impedance parameters requires the computation of the joint (or ... [more ▼]

Robot interaction with the environment is normally described as a mass-spring-damping impedance model and the estimation of such interaction impedance parameters requires the computation of the joint (or task) space velocity and acceleration. In many cases, the velocity and acceleration are computed by numerically computing the first and second derivatives of the sensed position signal. The numerical differentiation results in approximation errors when computing the velocity and acceleration signals that would have a direct impact on the estimation of the impedance parameters. This article proposes enhancing the estimation of the impedance parameters by smoothing the velocity and acceleration signals prior to the considered estimation process. Gaussian Smoothing Filter (GSF) is employed in smoothing the considered signals. After the smoothing process, impedance parameters estimation becomes more feasible using the available strategies like the Least Mean Square (LMS) or any other estimation approach. Experiments are conducted on a KUKA Lightweight Robot (LWR) doing the assembly of the air-intake manifold of an automotive powertrain. The impedance parameters are estimated for the smoothed and unsmoothed cases in order to show the enhancement in the estimation process. [less ▲]

Gaussian limits for vector-valued multiple stochastic integrals

in Séminaire de Probabilités XXXVIII (2005)

Gaussian Phase Transitions and Conic Intrinsic Volumes: Steining the Steiner Formula

in Annals of Applied Probability (2017), 27(1), 1-47

Intrinsic volumes of convex sets are natural geometric quantities that also play important roles in applications, such as linear inverse problems with convex constraints, and constrained statistical ... [more ▼]

Intrinsic volumes of convex sets are natural geometric quantities that also play important roles in applications, such as linear inverse problems with convex constraints, and constrained statistical inference. It is a well-known fact that, given a closed convex cone $C\subset \mathbb{R}^d$, its conic intrinsic volumes determine a probability measure on the finite set $\{0,1,...d\}$, customarily denoted by $\mathcal{L}(V_C)$. The aim of the present paper is to provide a Berry-Esseen bound for the normal approximation of ${\cal L}(V_C)$, implying a general quantitative central limit theorem (CLT) for sequences of (correctly normalised) discrete probability measures of the type $\mathcal{L}(V_{C_n})$, $n\geq 1$. This bound shows that, in the high-dimensional limit, most conic intrinsic volumes encountered in applications can be approximated by a suitable Gaussian distribution. Our approach is based on a variety of techniques, namely: (1) Steiner formulae for closed convex cones, (2) Stein's method and second order Poincar\'e inequality, (3) concentration estimates, and (4) Fourier analysis. Our results explicitly connect the sharp phase transitions, observed in many regularised linear inverse problems with convex constraints, with the asymptotic Gaussian fluctuations of the intrinsic volumes of the associated descent cones. In particular, our findings complete and further illuminate the recent breakthrough discoveries by Amelunxen, Lotz, McCoy and Tropp (2014) and McCoy and Tropp (2014) about the concentration of conic intrinsic volumes and its connection with threshold phenomena. As an additional outgrowth of our work we develop total variation bounds for normal approximations of the lengths of projections of Gaussian vectors on closed convex sets. [less ▲]

Gaussian source coding based on variance-mismatched three-level scalar quantisation using Q-function approximations

in IET Communications (2020), 14(4), 594-602