化学类拔尖学生培养与高校青年教师成长协同发展实践*

在高等教育大众化的背景下,通过教学改革培养高素质的拔尖人才已显得非常重要。介绍一种以新入职的青年教师为实施主体的“理论课助教+实验课教学+科研训练”相结合的教学形式。通过连续、跟踪式的教学,不但可以选拔、培养出拔尖的化学类本科生,而且能够促进新入职的青年教师快速成长进步,起到“教学相长”的作用。     

广西经济增长、金融发展与城乡收入差距的实证研究

探讨了经济增长及金融发展与城乡收入差距之间互动影响,刻画了三者间的逻辑关系,并基于广西1990-2017年的统计数据,运用状态空间模型及卡尔曼滤波算法对三者间动态关系进行了实证分析.结果显示:经济增长对城乡收入差距呈现倒U型曲线形态,而金融发展则显示出具有不断缩小城乡收入差距的趋势.     

In Vitro Calli Production Resulted in Different Profiles of Plant-Derived Medicinal Compounds in Phyllanthus amarus

The efficient production of plant-derived medicinal compounds (PDMCs) from in vitro plants requires improvements in knowledge about control of plant or organ development and factors affecting the biosynthesis pathway of specific PDMCs under in vitro conditions, leading to a realistic large-scale tool for in vitro secondary metabolite production. Thus, this study aimed to develop an in vitro technique, through the induction and proliferation of calli, for production of plant fresh weight, and to compare the PDMC profile obtained from the plants versus in vitro calli of Phyllanthus amarus. It was successfully possible to obtain and proliferate two types of calli, one with a beige color and a friable appearance, obtained in the dark using Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium plus 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), and a second type with a green color, rigid consistency, and nonfriable appearance obtained under light conditions and MS medium plus 6-benzyladenine (6-BA). In vitro micropropagated plants that gave rise to calli were also acclimatized in a greenhouse and cultivated until obtaining the mass for PDMC analysis and used as a control. While the micropropagated-derived plants concentrated the lignans niranthin, nirtetralin, and phyllanthin, the Phyllanthus amarus calli proliferated in vitro concentrated a completely different biochemical profile and synthesis of compounds, such as betulone, squalene, stigmasterol, and β-sitosterol, in addition to others not identified by GC-MS database. These results demonstrate the possibility of applying the calli in vitro from Phyllanthus amarus for production of important PDMCs unlike those obtained in cultures of differentiated tissues from field plants.     

Purity determination of a new antifungal drug candidate using quantitative 1H NMR spectroscopy: Method validation and comparison of calibration approaches

Quantitative nuclear magnetic resonance (qNMR) is an analytical technique that offers numerous advantages in pharmaceutical applications including minimum sample preparation and rapid data collection times with no need for response factor corrections, being a powerful tool for assaying drug content in both drug discovery and early drug development. In the present work, we have applied qNMR, using both the internal standard and the electronic reference to access in vivo concentrations 2 calibration methods, to assess the purity of RI76, a novel antifungal drug candidate. NMR acquisition and processing parameters were optimized in order to obtain spectra with intense, well-resolved signals of completely relaxed nuclei. The analytical method was validated following current guidelines, demonstrating selectivity, linearity, accuracy, precision, and robustness. The calibration approaches were statistically compared, and no significant difference was observed when comparing the obtained results and their dispersion in terms of relative standard deviation. The proposed qNMR method may, therefore, be used for both qualitative and quantitative assessments of RI76 in early drug development and for characterization of this compound.     

Unexpected Secondary Nucleation in Poly(Vinyl acetate) Nanoparticle Synthesis by Ab Initio Batch Emulsion Polymerization Using Poly(Vinyl alcohol) as Surfactant

Kinetic aspects of the vinyl acetate ab initio batch emulsion polymerization using poly(vinyl alcohol) to produce polymer nanoparticles are studied. The initial nucleation step is followed by limited coagulation and then by the generation of new particles. It seems that this is the first report of secondary nucleation phenomenon occurring in the system under study in batch mode. To explain this phenomenon, a mathematical model that allows to determine whether certain polymerization conditions and the presence/absence of a steric barrier, can lead or not to significant secondary nucleation is developed. It is deduced that the effect of such steric barrier on the free‐radical entry process plays a key role on the observed phenomenon.     

Asymptotic behavior toward nonlinear waves for radially symmetric solutions of the multi-dimensional Burgers equation

The present paper is concerned with the asymptotic behaviors of radially symmetric solutions for the multi-dimensional Burgers equation on the exterior domain in ${\mathbb{R}}^n,n\ge 3$, where the boundary and far field conditions are prescribed. We show that in some case where the corresponding 1-D Riemann problem for the non-viscous part admits a shock wave, the solution tends toward a linear superposition of stationary and rarefaction waves as time goes to infinity, and also show the decay rate estimates. Furthermore, we improve the results on the asymptotic stability of the stationary waves which are treated in the previous papers [2], [3]. Finally, for the case of $n=3$, we give the complete classification of the asymptotic behaviors, which includes even a linear superposition of stationary and viscous shock waves.     

Academic maturity of students in an extended programme in mathematics

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the students who are registered in the University of Pretoria’s academic development programme, named the Four-year Programme (FYP). The programme was introduced as a gateway for students who are underprepared but have the potential to succeed and then continue their studies into the mainstream science programmes. Our research focuses on measuring the change in the academic maturity of these students. In the theoretical framework that we developed, academic maturity is subdivided into two components namely non-subject based maturity and subject based maturity (mathematical maturity). This paper focuses on measuring non-subject based academic maturity. The survey used for this purpose is called the Student Academic Readiness Survey (STARS), taken at the beginning of the year and after the first semester respectively. The results of the surveys are compared to measure the change in students’ views. Results show that in all constructs there is a surprising decline in students’ perceptions regarding their own abilities over the first semester at university. We use the Dunning–Kruger effect to explain this unexpected decline, in that students seem to develop a more realistic view of their own maturity, which in itself can be seen as a growth in academic maturity.     

System bandwidth and the existence of generalized shift-invariant frames

We consider the question whether, given a countable family of lattices ${({\mathrm{\Gamma }}_j)}_{j\in J}$ in a locally compact abelian group G, there exist functions ${(g_j)}_{j\in J}$ such that the resulting generalized shift-invariant system ${(g_j(??\gamma ))}_{j\in J,\gamma \in {\mathrm{\Gamma }}_j}$ is a tight frame of $L^2(G)$. This paper develops a new approach to the study of generalized shift-invariant system via almost periodic functions, based on a novel unconditional convergence property. From this theory, we derive characterizing relations for tight and dual frame generators, we introduce the system bandwidth as a measure of the total bandwidth a generalized shift-invariant system can carry, and we show that the so-called Calderón sum is uniformly bounded from below for generalized shift-invariant frames. Without the unconditional convergence property, we show, counter intuitively, that even orthonormal bases can have arbitrary small system bandwidth. Our results show that the question of existence of frame generators for a general lattice system is rather subtle and depends on analytical and algebraic properties of the lattice system.     

Uniqueness of isometric immersions with the same mean curvature

Motivated by the quasi-local mass problem in general relativity, we study the rigidity of isometric immersions with the same mean curvature into a warped product space. As a corollary of our main result, two star-shaped hypersurfaces in a spatial Schwarzschild or AdS-Schwarzschild manifold with nonzero mass differ only by a rotation if they are isometric and have the same mean curvature. We also prove similar results if the mean curvature condition is replaced by an ${\sigma }_2$-curvature condition.