A New Paradigm for a New Field: Communicating Representations of Engineering Education Research

Based on a three‐year experience of developing, facilitating, and assessing NSF‐funded workshops on Rigorous Research in Engineering Education (RREE), the authors present four representations of engineering education scholarly work in the United States, specifically teaching and research. Many of the representations describe the relationships between engineering research, education research, teaching, and assessment. For each of the representations, assessment data are presented to evaluate which aspects resonated with workshop participants and which needed to be changed for wide acceptance by a U.S. engineering education audience. It was found that participants preferred continua to dichotomy and were more receptive to models that were introduced inductively through active learning exercises. Lessons learned, implications for the field, and future plans for further development of the paradigm are also included.     

Chemotaxis of pathogenic Vibrio strains towards mucus surfaces of gilt-head sea bream (Sparus aurata L.)

Vibrio anguillarum and Vibrio alginolyticus exhibited significant adhesion to and chemotactic abilities towards mucus collected from the skin, gills, and intestine of gilt-head sea bream. Quadratic polynomial models for chemotaxis designed to estimate the influence of temperature demonstrated a differential bacterial chemotaxis depending of the source of the mucus, with the chemotaxis towards intestinal mucus being the least influenced.     

Electrosynthesis and characterization of o‐phenylenediamine oligomers

The contribution of electrochemical methods to the development of conducting polymers has been most relevant, although the electropolymerization mechanism has not yet been totally elucidated. The formation of a high‐density oligomeric region in the electrode–solution interface has been clearly established as formed by oligomers with different chain lengths. It has been confirmed that, depending on the variables governing the process (applied potential, electrolysis time, concentration, etc), it is possible to control to some extent the oligomer to be generated. In this present work, the electrosynthesis of oligomers of o‐phenylenediamine is proposed. A saturated solution of the monomer was electrolysed at 0.95 V versus SCE over 1 min, using stainless steel as the working electrode material. Under these conditions, a mixture of the dimer and tetramer, relatively easy to separate by thin layer chromatography, was deposited. The products were characterized by mass spectrometry, UV–vis spectroscopy, elemental analysis and ¹H NMR spectroscopy. This approach allows the synthesis of oligomers in a fast and simple way. In addition, the product is directly obtained on the electrode surface, hence making its separation and purification very straightforward. Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry     

A bibliometric study of psychological research on tourism

The psychology of tourism is a new, multidisciplinary research field. However, no systematic analyses of the scientific production in this field have been carried out to date. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of the area of psychology of tourism between 1990 and 2005. The evolution of scientific production during this period, Price’s, Lotka’s and Bradford’s laws and citation patterns were studied. The results show a significant growth in the literature on the subject, as well as an increase in coauthorship and institutional collaboration. Bibliometric laws and empiric regularities observed in other disciplines are also present in this new research field.     

Modulation spectroscopy characterization of InP and GaAs solar cells

We used modulation spectroscopy to characterize InP and GaAs photovoltaic solar cells. The clear-cut Franz-Keldysh oscillations displayed by solar cell modulation spectra make it possible to directly measure the electric field at the p-n junction of typical devices. Byperforming this measurement under different bias conditions, the impurity concentration in the base of the solar cells was obtained. Measurements were made both using electrical modulation and electrical bias and, alternatively, using contactless optical modulation and optical bias.     

Low-temperature fabrication of amorphous BaTiO3thin-film bypass capacitors

Amorphous BaTiO₃ thin-film capacitors suitable for integration into a multichip module packaging process were fabricated. The multilayer capacitor structure consisted of an adhesion layer (TiO _xN_y or Ti), a bottom electrode (Cu), a dielectric (amorphous BaTiO₃), and a top electrode (Cu). A 3000-Å amorphous BaTiO₃ film was deposited onto the electrode by the reactive partially ionized beam (RPIB) technique at near room temperature. After a 300°C postdeposition anneal, the capacitors had the following properties: ε_r=17-18 and tanδ<0.01 up to 600 MHz, J_leak=0.06-0.5 μA/cm² at 0.5 MV/cm, and breakdown field E_max=3.3 MV/cm     

Effect of neutron and gamma irradiation on the low-frequency noise in GaAs m.e.s.f.e.t.s

Low-frequency noise in GaAs m.e.s.f.e.t.s has been measured from 2 kHz to 1.5 MHz as a function of fast neutron fluence and gamma dose. From 5 × 1013 to 8 × 1014 n/cm2, the noise increases appreciably, with the noise enhancement from 2 to 10 kHz attributed to generation-recombination noise in the gate depletion layer and from 500 kHz to 1.5 MHz to channel trapping effects. There was comparably little change with gamma irradiation up to doses above 107 rad (Si).     

Accelerated kinetics study of neohesperidine DC hydrolysis under conditions relevant to high-temperature-processed dairy products

 The degradation of neohesperidine DC in solution as a function of temperature (70–100 °C) and pH (6–7) was studied in order to estimate losses during thermal processing of non-fermented milk-based products. First order rate constants were observed in all the conditions tested. An increase in the pH from 6 to 7 produced an increase in rate constants by a factor of 5. These data were used to predict losses that would occur during conditions prevailing during the manufacture of non-fermented dairy products. Results indicate that neohesperidine DC would withstand these heat treatments without significant degradation. Received: 19 December 1995/Revised version: 14 June 1996