7,781 research outputs found

    Using performance assessment in secondary school mathematics: an empirical study in a Singapore classroom

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    This article reports an exploratory study on using performance assessment in mathematics instruction in a high-performing secondary school in Singapore. An intact mathematics class participated in the study, and received chapter-based performance tasks as intervention during regular mathematics lessons for about one and a half school years. The performance tasks used included authentic and/or open-ended tasks. The students’ academic achievements and attitudes in mathematics were compared with a comparison class that did not receive the intervention. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected, mainly through questionnaire surveys, performance task tests, conventional school exams, and interviews with students and teachers. The results suggest that the students receiving the intervention performed significantly better than their counterparts in solving conventional exam problems, and in general they also showed more positive changes in attitudes towards mathematics and mathematics learning. The students from the experimental class also expressed positive views about the benefits of using performance tasks in promoting their ability in higher order thinking, though no statistically significant difference was detected between the two classes of students in solving unconventional tasks before and after intervention. Overall, the results appear to support teachers’ using contextualised problems in real life situations and open-ended investigations in students’ learning of mathematic

    Richardson, Barbauld, and the construction of an early modern fan club

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    MPhilMuch has been written about the life and long works of the eighteenth century epistolary novelist, Samuel Richardson, but the prospect of his position as the first celebrity novelist – responsible for courting his own fame as well as initiating his own fan club – has largely been ignored. The body of manuscripts housed at the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London provides the modern scholar with evidence of the skeletal beginnings of an early fan club. This thesis aims to show how these manuscripts were turned into a saleable commodity by the publisher and entrepreneur Richard Phillips, while under the guiding hand of another, slightly later, literary celebrity, Anna Laetitia Barbauld. In order to restore Richardson’s reputation amongst a new nineteenth century audience, Barbauld was required to construct her own idea of him as an eighteenth century celebrity author, and in doing so the insecurities of a self-professed, apparently diffident man, are revealed. Barbauld’s capacious, but heavily edited selection of letters is analyzed in this thesis, providing ample evidence that Richardson’s correspondents were more than just eager letter writers. By using Barbauld’s biography of Richardson this thesis aims to show how she manipulates the genre of life writing in her construction of him. This thesis offers an alternative reading of how the Richardson manuscripts are viewed, redefining them as not simply a collection of letters, but as a collective entity, deliberately selected and archived as evidence of an early modern fan club, and its celebrity managing director

    Development of a rotor model for the numerical simulation of helicopter exterior flow-fields

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    Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-85).A numerical methodology is developed to model the effect of a rotor on the surrounding flow-field. The model calculates the time-averaged aerodynamic forces exerted on the air by the fan blades within the blade-swept region, and permits the user to specify blade properties such as cross-sectional profile and orientation at a particular radial and azimuthal location. The calculated forces are included as source terms within the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations for an incompressible fluid, which are solved by the commercial CFD solver, FLUENT. The effects of turbulence are incorporated through the use of Launder and Spalding's k-g turbulence model. This method is selected as being the most efficient use of the resources available, giving the economic advantages of a steady simulation, while allowing radial and azimuthal variations of rotor characteristics. In order to validate the accuracy of the numerical model for both aligned and non-aligned inflow conditions, results are compared with experimental data reported for an axial flow fan. Agreement between experimental and numerical results is excellent to good. Fan static pressure rise is closely predicted by the numerical solution, while fan power consumption and fan static efficiency are under and over-predicted respectively. This error may be attributed to frictional losses not accounted for in the numerical model. These include physical rotational instabilities, leading to increased mechanical losses, and tip effects due to the clearance between the fan blade tips and the fan casing. Trends are nevertheless consistently predicted by the numerical model for inflow angles up to 45°, and for the range of blade pitch settings used. The adverse effect of off-axis inflow on the fan static pressure rise is numerically predicted, while fan power consumption is found to remain independent of inflow angle, as had been experimentally observed. The rotor model is finally integrated with the fuselage of the CIRSTEL (Combined Infra-Red Suppression and Tail rotor Elimination) prototype in an analysis of the helicopter exterior flow-field. No experimental data for this configuration was available for validation purposes. However, the model is used in the simulation of several common helicopter flight conditions. Results are presented graphically, and generally indicate good agreement with physically observed phenomena

    Hua Ying fan yi jin zhen : er bian /

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    Has added title: Translation exercises, by Li Wenbin. Book I. From Chinese into English; Book II. From English to Chinese.Xia bian, 1914 zai ban.Mode of access: Internet

    Correction: Synthesis of <i>Z</i>-alkenes <i>via</i> visible light promoted photocatalytic <i>E</i> → <i>Z</i> isomerization under metal-free conditions

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    Correction for ‘Synthesis of Z-alkenes via visible light promoted photocatalytic E → Z isomerization under metal-free conditions’ by Wenbin Cai et al., Chem. Commun., 2017, DOI: 10.1039/c7cc07984b.</p

    Fan Fiction and Copyright: Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection

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    As long as there have been fans, there has been fan fiction. There seems to be a fundamental human need to tell additional stories about the characters after the book, series, play or movie is over. But developments in information technology and copyright law have put these fan stories at risk of collision with the content owners’ intellectual property rights. Fan fiction has long been a nearly invisible form of outsider art, but over the past decade it has grown exponentially in volume and in legal importance. Because of its nature, authorship, and underground status, fan fiction stands at an intersection of key issues regarding property, sexuality, and gender. In Fan Fiction and Copyright, author Aaron Schwabach examines various types of fan-created content and asks whether and to what extent they are protected from liability for copyright infringement. Professor Schwabach discusses examples of original and fan works from a wide range of media, genres, and cultures. From Sherlock Holmes to Harry Potter, fictional characters, their authors, and their fans are sympathetically yet realistically assessed. Fan Fiction and Copyright looks closely at examples of three categories of disputes between authors and their fans: Disputes over the fans’ use of copyrighted characters, disputes over online publication of fiction resembling copyright work, and in the case of J.K. Rowling and a fansite webmaster, a dispute over the compiling of a reference work detailing an author's fictional universe. Offering more thorough coverage of many such controversies than has ever been available elsewhere, and discussing fan works from the United States, Brazil, China, India, Russia, and elsewhere, Fan Fiction and Copyright advances the understanding of fan fiction as transformative use and points the way toward a safe harbor\u9d for fan fiction

    Surrogate-based aerodynamic shape optimization of a civil aircraft engine nacelle

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    In this paper, we present a study on the aerodynamic shape optimization of a three-dimensional subsonic engine nacelle using computational fluid dynamics simulations. Gaussian process-based surrogate modeling (kriging) and parameter screening techniques are combined to tackle the high cost associated with both computational fluid dynamics simulations and the large number of design variables involved, with a multi-objective genetic algorithm being used to obtain the Pareto fronts. The primary goal of the study was to identify the tradeoff between aerodynamic performance and noise effects associated with various geometric features within practical computational costs. The fan face total pressure recovery is used to measure the aerodynamic performance, and the scarf angle is used as an indicator of the noise impact on the ground. The geometry is modeled using a feature-based parametric computer-aided design package. An unstructured tetrahedral mesh is generated for the subsequent solution using the Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes flow equations. Analyses of variance techniques are used to identify the dominant geometry parameters, thereby reducing the number of design variables and computational cost in the trade study. Multiple Pareto fronts are constructed using progressively built kriging models based on simulation data with the reduced parameter set. A full-scale search was also carried out for comparison with the results produced using the reduced parameter set. The procedures outlined can be further applied to other optimization problems with significant numbers of parameters and high-fidelity analysis codes

    Learning of algorithms: a theoretical model with focus on cognitive development

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    Taking a broad perspective on algorithm in mathematics, the author presents a theoretical model about the learning and teaching of algorithm with focus on students’ cognitive development. The model consists of three cognitive levels: 1. Knowledge and Skills, 2. Understanding and Comprehension, and 3. Evaluation and Construction. The model suggests that teaching and learning of algorithm does not simply mean routine learning, memorization, or lead to a low level of cognition. The paper also discusses different teaching strategies and activities that can be used to support students’ cognitive development at different cognitive levels

    sj-docx-1-tau-10.1177_17562872231213720 – Supplemental material for Association of obesity and different metabolic status with prognosis in patients with bladder cancer: a retrospective cohort study

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    Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-tau-10.1177_17562872231213720 for Association of obesity and different metabolic status with prognosis in patients with bladder cancer: a retrospective cohort study by Yingchun Dong, Yiping Cheng, Honglin Guo, Jiaxing Sun, Junming Han, Fang Zhong, Qihang Li, Dawei Wang, Wenbin Chen, Xiude Fan and Jiajun Zhao in Therapeutic Advances in Urology</p

    Study on methane hydration process in a semi-continuous stirred tank reactor

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    The methane hydration process is investigated in a semi-continuous stirred tank reactor. Liquid temperatures and reaction rates without stirrer are compared with those occurring with stirrer, while at the same time better stirring conditions of the methane hydration process are given by the experiments. Some basic data of fluid mechanics, for example, stirring Reynolds number, Froucle number and stirrer power, are calculated during the methane hydration process, which can be applied to evaluate stirrer capacity and provide some basic data for a scaled up reactor. Based on experiment and calculations in this work, some conclusions are drawn. First, the stirrer has great influence on the methane hydration process. Batch stirring is helpful to improve the mass transfer and heat transfer performances of the methane hydration process. Second, induction time can be shortened effectively by use of the stirrer. Third, in this paper, the appropriate stirring velocity and stirring time were 320 rpm and 30 min, respectively, at 5.0 MPa, for which the storage capacity and reaction time were 159.1 V/V and 370 min, respectively. Under the condition of the on-flow state, the initial stirring Reynolds number of the fluid and the stirring power were 12,150 and 0.54 W, respectively. Fourth, some suggestions, for example, the use of another type of stirrer or some baffles, are proposed to accelerate the methane hydration process. Comparing with literature data, higher storage capacity and hydration rate are achieved in this work. Moreover, some fluid mechanics parameters are calculated, which can provide some references to engineering application. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
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