Knowing and Teaching Middle School Mathematics: A Professional Development Course for In‐Service Teachers

This article describes a professional development course intended to improve the content understanding of middle school mathematics teachers. The design of the course included three professional learning strategies: problem solving, examination of student thinking, and discussion of research. The concepts studied in the course included multi‐digit subtraction, multi‐digit multiplication, operations with fractions, and concepts of area and perimeter. Results from pre‐ and post‐tests administered to the nineteen participants indicate a significant increase in the mean score for each concept and document growth in the teachers' content understanding. In particular, their solutions moved from primarily procedural to more conceptual. Responses to an open‐ended survey indicate other important aspects of the professional development. Examples of teachers' work and comments are included.     

Unsteady MHD flow of a non-Newtonian fluid on a porous plate

This paper deals with the study of the MHD flow of non-Newtonian fluid on a porous plate. Two exact solutions for non-torsionally generated unsteady hydromagnetic flow of an electrically conducting second order incompressible fluid bounded by an infinite non-conducting porous plate subjected to a uniform suction or blowing have been analyzed. The governing partial differential equation for the flow has been established. The mathematical analysis is presented for the hydromagnetic boundary layer flow neglecting the induced magnetic field. The effect of presence of the material constants of the second order fluid on the velocity field is discussed.     

The free Malcev superalgebra on one odd generator and related superalgebras

A base of the universal multiplicative envelope of the free Malcev superalgebra ℳ on one odd generator is constructed. Some corollaries for skew-symmetric functions and central elements in free Malcev and free alternative algebras are obtained. Moreover, a base of the Poisson-Malcev superalgebra of ℳ is constructed. As a corollary, a set of elements that spans the free alternative superalgebra on one odd generator is obtained. __________ Translated from Fundamentalnaya i Prikladnaya Matematika, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 97–106, 2004.     

Inhomogeneous configurations of magnetization of ferromagnetic films with biaxial anisotropy

The system of the Landau-Lifshitz equations and magnetostatic equations for a ferromagnetic film with biaxial anisotropy and a Q-factor smaller than unity is reduced to a single scalar equation for the magnetostatic potential. Such a procedure is possible if the magnetization modulation scale in the sample considerably exceeds the characteristic magnetic length. The solutions to this equation describing inhomogeneous periodic magnetic configurations are obtained. The energy analysis of these configurations is carried out.     

Possible spectroscopic manifestation of the angular group induced bond alteration (AGIBA) effect in toluene

The most obvious consequence of the concept of aromaticity is the common confidence that in aromatic compounds, bond lengths do not alternate and are between typical to the single and double ones. However, in 1994, performing crystal structure investigations of substituted pyridines and their salts, Krygowski and co‐workers have discovered a very surprising angular group induced bond alteration (AGIBA) effect: It appears that some angular substituents, like methoxy or nitrozo groups, can induce bond alternation in aromatic rings. Crystal studies do not allow one to operate with liquids that are more common in organic chemistry. This paper presents the first possible evidence of spectroscopic manifestations of the AGIBA effect. Raman spectra of the liquid toluene are analyzed. It is found that instead of being single, the line corresponding to the ring breathing vibrations is clearly split by 1.0–1.4 cm^?1, thus indicating the presence of two (cis‐ and trans‐) AGIBA isomers. The energy difference between these isomers estimated in temperature dependent Raman studies is found equal to 6.68 kJ mol^?1. The low‐wavenumber line therefore corresponds to the cis‐AGIBA isomer and the high‐wavenumber line to the trans‐AGIBA isomer stabilized by the AGIBA effect. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The diameter of randomly perturbed digraphs and some applications

The central observation of this paper is that if εn random arcs are added to any n‐node strongly connected digraph with bounded degree then the resulting graph has diameter 𝒪(lnn) with high probability. We apply this to smoothed analysis of algorithms and property testing. Smoothed Analysis: Recognizing strongly connected digraphs is a basic computational task in graph theory. Even for digraphs with bounded degree, it is NL‐complete. By XORing an arbitrary bounded degree digraph with a sparse random digraph R ∼ 𝔻_n,ε/n we obtain a “smoothed” instance. We show that, with high probability, a log‐space algorithm will correctly determine if a smoothed instance is strongly connected. We also show that if NL ⫅̸ almost‐L then no heuristic can recognize similarly perturbed instances of (s,t)‐connectivity. Property Testing: A digraph is called k‐linked if, for every choice of 2k distinct vertices s₁,…,s_k,t₁,…,t_k, the graph contains k vertex disjoint paths joining s_r to t_r for r = 1,…,k. Recognizing k‐linked digraphs is NP‐complete for k ≥ 2. We describe a polynomial time algorithm for bounded degree digraphs, which accepts k‐linked graphs with high probability, and rejects all graphs that are at least εn arcs away from being k‐linked. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2007     

Effect of a Shock Pulse on a Floating Ice Sheet

The vibrations of a viscoelastic plate lying on an elastic liquid base subjected to pulse loading have been studied theoretically and experimentally. The effect of the variable depth of the reservoir, plate thickness, and strain relaxation time on the value of the plate vibration amplitude and the length and curvature of the flexural gravity wave profile are analyzed. Good agreement of theoretical and experimental results is obtained.     

Effect of residual stresses on the inelastic properties of metallic composites

The stressed state of in metallic composite systems is analyzed. It is analytically shown that the temperature dependences of the internal friction in the composites may have extrema that are caused by internal stresses. The analytical results are supported by the experimental temperature dependences of the internal friction in (Cu-13% Sn)-30% Nb and Cu-1.3% Cr composites.