Friday, January 25, 2013

evaluation criteria Critical Thinking


Critical thinking is a "complex process of consultations involving. A broad range of skills and attitudes" The first time I became aware of. Critical thinking as a practice for many years as a student at the University, in the preparation of evaluation missions

Was developed, which was for me a lifelong habit of questioning: Who says what, why, and what can I say?

Also constantly ask questions, I learned that critical thinking involves verification bias. One of the few books I remember college days Darrell Huff's How to Lie with Statistics, which I highly recommend.

So what?

I always have a diploma frames, never worked students. As a matter of priority, and in advance, I think the stated evaluation criteria and important skills that people will be expected to develop and demonstrate, including how they are expected to comply with the evaluation criteria.

Critical thinking in the field of higher education in collaboration with the complexity, uncertainty, and dynamic interactions. It is above all a constant challenge and the knowledge about alternatives. In detail, critical thinking is as follows:

a systematic approach to the scale and identification of interacting elements of a strategic problem

The risks in the process of

Difficult cases (ours and others)

Reviewed various strategic options

Identify and defend the selection criteria

Reflect the impact of the paradoxes, limitations and incomplete knowledge

Using evidence to draw conclusions valid and entitled to plead the cause of the draw.

The content of this framework has been learning has always been a means to an end, in my opinion. The only reason to attend a graduate is to develop high-level skills of thinking and learning to work in communities of practice with his teammates at the top of the complex knowledge.
The ability to work and life?

The ability to think critically is obviously important, of all the possible things that affect our lives are informed, so that the media and advertising we believe that the politicians want to tell us. What is the truth? Where is the hidden agenda? We are being manipulated?

Critical thinking is a core set of skills that should be learned by anyone who went to college. Why, when so many people with college education, no critical thinking and the challenge seems lacking in organizations so many years?

The current global financial crisis is a rich source show of historical evidence that social and cognitive barriers to critical thinking and action are deeply rooted in our individual tendency to avoid conflict, where a delay in the development of social habits and rigid organizational structures .
Individual barriers

Cognitive bias is a problem. Our prejudices (often unknown), and the assumptions we make. Based on these prejudices affect the conclusions that they reach and the choices we make

Another obstacle is the individual tendency to make decisions that may be driven by emotions or ideology that can be justified post-rational.
Obstacles to group dynamics

Group dynamics can lead to think only when it becomes difficult to contradict a prevailing view or request the status quo. Question of power is not for the faint of heart. For those who have the courage to go against the grain and talk, you run the risk of public condemnation.

Said Gillian Tett of the Financial Times that in the economic form 2007 in Davos:

"One of the most powerful people in the U.S. government at the time was on the podium and praised my article, the article predicted the problems of Northern Rock, for example, of the fear-mongering"

Construction of silos and mental models

The combination of rigid mental models and organizational structures barriers rooted in the system of critical thinking. Limited prospects in silos, rather than one or more organizations Eco-system.

Gillian Tett, spoke about the impact of bunker mentality in the Guardian article referenced above. Financial analysts are focusing on their own experiences could not see the bigger picture. But for me, an example of the failure of the CIA and the Defense community in the context of the atrocity is 9/11 is the simplest irrigation.

John Farmer as a senior adviser 9/11. In his opinion, the old settings and modes of operation of the Cold War era in secret, imposed including the CIA, the FBI and the Department of Defense. ". Defective by design" unwilling and unable to provide information on agencies shares were systemic failures and results of systems, farmers were told:

"The boundaries between and within the different sections of the country came to the knowledge of knowledge acquired abroad, the findings from the human intelligence of electronic skills and knowledge acquired by investigation leads to criminal behavior, the effects of awareness of the situation and general intelligence. .. each line rises on a fault line, condemned an opportunity for the system to fail. "

It also examines the responses to Katrina in 2005, and in the epilogue to the second edition of the book, the attempted attack on a plane at Schipol Airport Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas 2009th Katrina said:

"The unwillingness or inability bureaucratic cooperation between ministries paralyzed efforts to anticipate and respond to Katrina, not unless it was efforts to intercept and respond to crippled 9/11, the opportunity which a unified chain of command."

If this lack of willingness to cooperate and the inability to change the mindset of an earlier, exceeded bureaucratic arise in the defense of a nation and a city, you certainly can occur in research income.

Carriage agreement

It is in this context that Margaret Heffernan "willful blindness" describes in this TED conference to oppose Dare, where people do not see or know to choose. Face blindness means questioning skills development and disagreements, but he says, while against a Nero-biological unit goes forces us to look for people like us. He also said that most people are instinctively afraid of conflict. His conclusion is that we do. The skills, habits and moral courage to participate in this challenge and overcome our fear of conflict need to develop

Practice allows

Like any other skill requires the development of critical thinking and behavioral skills a lot of practice and deliberate. Challenging the status quo is never will be easy, but it can and must be done. I know it can be done because I have been working to transform with extraordinary people who challenged the status quo to the cultures of the power in their workplace.

One of my goals for the company to work at an early alpha smart community open learning is a place where critical thinking is to experience a safe place to reflect, share and discuss together. We are practicing against another - without being disagreeable, of course! There is something to do.

The examples given here are spacious, with serious consequences, but we all face similar challenges to think critically and to act accordingly when making decisions in increasingly complex environments. Margaret Heffernan talks about winning allies courage. I hope to develop supportive relationships within the community open learning, to promote the need to look in the help of allies in their workplace.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Increasing requirements for ESD protective breathing innovative architecture Strategies


  • The higher data rates through the new I / O, such as HDMI, SATA, DisplayPort, MIPI and engineers are needed studying ways to reduce the ability of electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection devices. Manufacturer, but are willing to a higher level through finer process geometries offer are vulnerable to attack by EDS.

    EDS is now struggling with traditional architectures to ensure adequate protection and support the desired speeds, the design community before a big dilemma. As a result, engineers are forced to difficult trade-offs between reliability and quality of the signal, which threatens an element of the overall system performance. Chip design that can meet the new demands for both higher throughput and better ESD protection has become a difficult task for manufacturers.

    The development of the ESD protection

    The landscape of the ESD protection has undergone a dramatic change with the acquisition of producing smaller geometries, the lined and the protection of the changing environment of the application:

    Small geometries: What process node semiconductors for advanced nowadays integrated circuits (ASICs) and 90 nm fell below the level of voltage and power outages occur that discharge also produce lower. Interfaces widespread adoption of high-speed data increases the complexity of maintaining signal integrity and maintaining an adequate level of ESD protection. Robust ESD protection usually means higher capacity, which threaten to adversely affect the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), forcing developers to one or the other.

    Reduces chip protection: ESD damage sensitivity was well known. For example, the Industry Council on ESD Targets recently announced an initiative to reduce the level of standard on-chip ESD protection, so that the external ESD protection circuits against the more critical for system reliability.

    Changes in the application environment: laptops, cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and other portable consumer devices to be used in uncontrolled environments (ie, without the use of adhesive tape to the ground strap or polished driver / tops). In these environments, user I / O connector pins when connecting / disconnecting cables. Portable device also charge can accumulate during normal use and then discharged when power to another device, such as for example, connected to a computer or a television.

    Equalization impedance

    A matched impedance of the total transmission line is a critical factor in the drawings, a high speed. The characteristic impedance is affected by many factors, including the line width, the thickness of the dielectric plate, sheet materials, and components of the traces.

    The characteristic impedance of a transmission line is the square root of L / C, where L is the inductance and C is the capacitance, the. Therefore, if the additional capacity to a point, then the impedance is reduced at this point. Conversely, when the inductance is added to increase the impedance. The inclusion of an ESD protection circuit is due to its own ability to influence the impedance of the line. Consequently, it must be compensated by an impedance matching.

    Although the main goal of an optimized design matches the impedance of the line, is entitled to 100 Ω ± 15% in the HDMI standard. Each guard added to. The line when a diode varistor suppressor or polymer inserts, the ability to not only from the device itself, but also the connection points of the printed circuit board unit (PCB)

    Increased capacity and distorts the signal of poor quality video and even failure of the compliance test result. Therefore, the ESD protection vendors have concentrated on reducing the capacity of their plants. However, as already mentioned, this negative impact on the performance of the ESD protection. For example, the capacitance of the diode can be reduced by reducing its size. This may lead to increase the resistance, but this will result in a higher voltage and leakage current terminal to reach the protected device.

    Compensation techniques

    In order to compensate for the additional protection device performance, system designers often try to reduce the capacity elsewhere on the board, or add an additional inductance. Compensation techniques typically include:

    • Adding a common mode choke or filter: The inductance of a coil can compensate additional capacity ESD device. Unfortunately, the high speed Common Mode Inductors design can be very costly and should be avoided.

    • Reducing the width of the track in the protection (increased inductance trace): Often referred to as "trace necking", this technique can be very effective if only small amounts of compensation are required, however, a restriction thin dielectric. occurs and the capacity of the ESD protection device is too high, it may be difficult to achieve a suitable impedance.

    • Reduce trace capacitance: This can by removing the lower ground plane and reduce the possibility of plot done in the field of ESD.

    Although each of these techniques has been successful at best suboptimal due to the additional complexity of the design and cost. You need good design and control of manufacturing processes and environments, the use of expensive external components (such as common mode chokes) or complex PCBs increased total bill. Another drawback is that many engineers do not have enough experience in the design of controlled impedance layout. This lack of experience often leads to errors in design and development costs and snowballs as schedule multiple grafts and checkerboard design and production. Finally, many large manufacturers favor with several suppliers of PCBs that make it difficult to handle a unique design that makes making works with all providers.

    A new approach

    Given the significant shortcomings of these compensatory techniques to investigate further semiconductor manufacturers for innovative architectures to ensure the integrity, even at high data rates required by the industry today. And they do this without the possibility of ESD protection element is of paramount importance in doubt.

    One example is the architecture PicoGuard XS. According to the developers, ON Semiconductor, the integrity of the interface data signals defend at a high speed while improving the ESD protection. This eliminates the parasites, routing and tracking on the package, instead of the bottom. We reject any compensation from the integration of external inductors with the ESD diode, corresponding to the impedance of the signal line. Inductors integrated ESD to improve performance by reducing the voltage and residual current seen blocking the ASIC.

    Standard packaging structure allows the soil around the lower part of the body (Fig. 1). That is, the wire bond pads of the die is still very long, which. An adjustment of the inductance So the motherboard manufacturer does not need to make a compensation method. In addition, with respect to the dynamic resistance (RDYN) surpass using product architecture PicoGuard XS other traditional flow through parts that says protecting high speed differential data lines ON Semiconductor.

    The architecture eliminates the need to change or inductances wide traces on the board. Also not on the stacked card, the system designer with multiple providers, configure without an impedance table for each supplier to make depend. Capable of an impedance is independent of the number of layers of the circuit board game, the thickness of the dielectric, and other variables provide specific design.

    Here Comes The Science Bit

    ESD protection device for an inductor standard provides the parasitic inductance of the wire and the conductor paths leading to the protective device (Figure 2). The inductive element has a high impedance high impact ESD download speed, which limits the ability of the guard to quickly absorb energy. As a result, more energy reaches the protected ASIC.

    In contrast, the inductive elements of the architecture PicoGuard XS series with the conduction path for the protection ASIC (Fig. 3). What actually limiting current and voltage of the device deprotection. Firstly, the inductive reactance is L1 connector holding an electrostatic discharge. It acts in the opposite direction of the current ESD, helps to limit the peak voltage type. The inductive reactance in L2 firepower pull side ASIC ESD current limited then by ESD protection diodes. The same time the voltage drop across the two elements in series to reduce the voltage in the ASIC parameters as protected.

    Completion

    The next generation of electronic devices that support data transfer marry at high speed with high signal integrity and chain of custody of electrostatic discharge. This requires a fundamental change in the design of ESD protection, because now is the point where the borders of traditional techniques capacitance compensation are too large, achieved. It was the advent of advanced architectures, requires the signal integrity for high-speed interfaces and provides ESD protection required for reliable operation possible.


Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Results to Stimulate Self-help 20 Minutes of Exercise a Day



. "We are what we repeatedly do excellence then is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

Since I am old enough to understand a few things about the world, the law of cause and effect and reward punishment, I already knew how to better.

When I. Not an "A" in my test article, and I thought I needed to improve in order to achieve better performance

If I wanted to get a toy, either I had to convince my parents about why I deserved. That was the golden rule I grew up as an adult.

You only get something if they tried, and only if it improves. This is true for many of us, regardless of age or condition, we are in the present.


This does not mean that the world is a brainwashed us with a system of incentives and threats has.

Instead, it is a reality that we must accept if we are to try that for us, we will never change our bad habits.

In a world where we are bombarded with technical improvements, we feel overwhelmed us and even ask if it was time for them.

However, there are three basic exercises, the implementation and not even an hour of the day can.

I hope that these simple exercises you can change to a good start for the better in 2013.

Relaxation (10 minutes per day)

An article from the University of Maryland Medical Center mentioned how relaxation techniques can help you cope with stress and promote the long-term health by lowering the body and the mind calm.

These exercises help to concentrate the mind and body consciousness and connects the body and mind. This leads to a greater willingness to improve themselves.

One such technique is the breathing. Anyone can do it anywhere. As a daily ritual reflection, the preferred environment is private and quiet, to avoid distractions.

"Put one hand on your chest and the other in the abdomen. Take a deep breath slowly and deeply, inhaling as much air as possible. As you do this, you can do that, your stomach should be pressed against your hand. Hold your breath and then exhale slowly "- relaxation techniques, the University of Maryland Medical Center.

I used this technique, of all places, while I was preaching at a church. The priest used the method before preaching his parish.

What I learned from this experience is that my spirit soar and to remove all doubts. I always do when I feel stressed or when you can not sleep.

Reflection (10 minutes per day)

Reflection or meditation has started to become a popular way to restore the balance to be in life. Although there have been associated with religious practices, but it is also known to have psychological benefits.

Groups of Alcoholics Anonymous and other support continue to exercise personal moral inventory of their resentments and character flaws to achieve personal change.

Allen McConnell, a professor at the University of Miami, wrote in Psychology Today, our ability to increase our objectives, we have to be self-experience in a position to see where we need from our current performance and our ideals.

Recommended Interestingly, one of the gurus in my life, Stephen Covey, and a way of thinking as an effective way to get the best results from their books. Defend, as he did the usual eight, read his books like "The annual growth and personal development."

Usually you can begin the reflection, a book to use his personal notes on the map or dreams / long-term goals. As they take a break and ask yourself:
 While reading a book (per day): reflect on specific areas that you have to read and see what is relevant to you. See how this connects with their goals.
 When considering personal notes (daily as monotherapy or in combination with a book) to reflect what they have done. (For the day or for the week) and how it connects to the realization of its goals To be more precise about what you are going to do for the day in order to achieve this goal and connect with your weekly goals or to-do list.
 If you look on your card or your dream to look at long-term goals (weekly), and determine the specific area you are. During the week and specific actions that have been done so far and what can be done, work to achieve Make a list of things to do this week.
 Re-Telling (20 minutes, once a week)

This is preferably done once a week and can replace the thought process.

In the manifesto, the confidence of the people I wrote the reasons you express and share their improvement process with a trusted friend or have a family member:
 Humor: You can find an explanation you get, and make sure you are on the right track.
 Accountability: You nailed your account their goals and then go to a push to get what to do and not get lost in laziness or procrastination.
 You need a good support system, if you really want to take your serious face.

Not everyone can go one step further and get organized. There are three things you need to consider when looking for a good media
 Reliability: trust you know and believe sincerely wants emotional support.
 Empathy: someone who worked a level of experience in the same number to tell you, or at least in a project of self-improvement.
 A method for assembling: it is necessary to determine how the follow-up session (online or face to face). This should not be a formal context. It can be done with a cup of coffee, a conversation in the park or a call via Skype.
 The plan

Make at least a daily exercise, if at all. Usually within a week I would be six days of reflection and relaxation and history someday.

It does not take much time to do it, but will give you a wide range of personal change. Of course, these exercises serve only the first part of the plan. It is necessary to implement its resolutions and things to do at work.

This exercise serves as a reinforcement for their own improvement plan because it predisposes to improved performance and keep your goals.

Are you ready to dive into a real change? What exercises do you have now? What you seem to be a challenge?