Student Attitudes and Calculus Reform

This paper compares the attitudes about mathematics of students from traditionally taught calculus classes and those from a “reformed” calculus course. The paper is based on three studies, which together present a consistent picture of student attitudes about calculus reform. The reformed course appeared to violate students' deeply held beliefs about the nature of mathematics and how it should be learned. Although during their first months in the reformed course most students disliked it, their attitudes gradually changed. One and 2 years after, reform students felt significantly more than the traditionally taught students that they better understood how math was used and that they had been required to understand math rather than memorize formulas.     

The completely positive and doubly nonnegative completion problems

We prove the following. Let G be an undirected graph. Every partially specified symmetric matrix, the graph of whose specified entries is G and each of whose fully specified submatrices is completely positive (equal to BB^T for some entrywise nonnegative matrix B), may be completed to a completely positive matrix if and only if G is a block-clique graph (a chordal graph in which distinct maximal cliques overlap in at most one vertex). The same result holds for matrices that are doubly nonnegative (entrywise nonnegative and positive semidefinite).     

Partition Lattice q-Analogs Related to q-Stirling Numbers

We construct a family of partially ordered sets (posets) that are q-analogs of the set partition lattice. They are different from the q-analogs proposed by Dowling [5]. One of the important features of these posets is that their Whitney numbers of the first and second kind are just the q-Stirling numbers of the first and second kind, respectively. One member of this family [4] can be constructed using an interpretation of Milne [9] for S[n, k] as sequences of lines in a vector space over the Galois field F _q. Another member is constructed so as to mirror the partial order in the subspace lattice.     

Introduction to the proceedings of the thirteenth symposium on biotechnology for fuels and chemicals

Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology -     

Range reliability in random walks

This paper introduces a definition of reliability based on a process range. Thus, process failure is defined when the range of a process first reaches a given and unacceptable level. The Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) which is denned as the mean of the first time for a range to attain a given amplitude is then calculated for an asymmetric random walk process. The probability distribution of the range is then given and the process reliability over long periods of system operations are then calculated. Applications such as the control of wings movements, stock price and exchange rates volatility (defined in terms of reliability) are also used to motivate the usefulness of range processes in reliability studies. Finally, we point out that there is necessarily a relationship between the range reliability and the propensity of a series to become chaotic.     

Contributions of Spin–Lattice Relaxation to the Echo Decay of Planar Cu in High-Temperature Superconductors

Measurement ofT_2G, the Gaussian component of the spin-echo envelope of planar Cu nuclei in high-temperature superconductors, gives important information about the real part of the Cu electron spin susceptibility. In the traditional picture of the planar Cu echo decay, the internuclear coupling is assumed to remain static with respect to spin–lattice relaxation and mutual exchange fluctuations. In some circumstances, however, this assumption breaks down. We calculate the internuclear corrections arising from spin–lattice relaxation to the conventional theory ofT_2Gand show thatT_2Gcan be easily corrected for these effects. We argue that mutual exchanges due to the perpendicular indirect couplings are suppressed in these materials. For YBa₂Cu₄O₈, we find a correction on the order of 10% inT_2Gand using the corrected values we find that the isotope ratio⁶³T_2G/⁶⁵T_2Gagrees with theory.     

Synthesis and cationic photopolymerization of new fluorinated,polyfunctional propenyl ether oligomers

New fluorinated, polyfunctional propenyl ether functionalized resins were synthesized, and their behavior in cationic photopolymerization was investigated. The photopolymerization proceeded efficiently with a high double‐bond conversion (>90%), giving rise to UV‐cured coatings characterized by low glass‐transition temperatures (?33 °C ≤ glass‐transition temperature ≤ ?15 °C) and hydrophobic surface properties. A fluorinated additive was also employed as a reactive additive in the cationic photopolymerization of trimethylolpropane tripropenyl ether, increasing the double‐bond conversion, polymer network flexibility, thermal stability, and surface hydrophobicity. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 44: 6943–6951, 2006     

Algebraic properties of discrete box splines

The central objective of this paper is to discuss linear independence of translates of discrete box splines which we introduced earlier as a device for the fast computation of multivariate splines. The results obtained here allow us to draw conclusions about the structure of such discrete splines which have, in particular, applications to counting the number of nonnegative integer solutions of linear diophantine equations.