Using Inquiry to Improve Pedagogy through K‐12/University Partnerships

This article focuses on the impact a collaborative project between university graduate fellows and K‐12 classroom teachers had on improved pedagogy in the classroom and in the future at the university. Nine teams participated in a yearlong professional development project to improve pedagogy and communication skills of the participants. This study shows that the participants, the fellows and the K‐12 teacher partners, made changes in planning, implementation, and even motivation for using inquiry‐based methods in their classroom. External observations of the teams further support the individuals' claims of improved pedagogy using inquiry and impact on student conceptual understanding. The Horizon Classroom Observation instrument was used for these observations. The teams showed an overall increase in scores, as well as overall effective and exemplarily implementation of their planning. The program design, the implementation, and the results of this three‐year study will be elaborated in this article.     

The Riesz decomposition of finely superharmonic functions

This paper answers a question of Fuglede about minimal positive harmonic functions associated with irregular boundary points. As a consequence, an old and central problem of fine potential theory, concerning the Riesz decomposition, is resolved. Namely, it is shown that, on certain fine domains, there exist positive finely superharmonic functions which do not admit any positive finely harmonic minorant and yet are not fine potentials.     

Total synthesis of malayamycin A and analogues

The total synthesis of the bicyclic C-nucleoside malayamycin A is described starting with d-ribonolactone. A new method was developed to obtain preparatively important quantities of β-pseudouridine, which was used as an intermediate. The synthesis of a carba N-nucleoside analogue of malayamycin A is also described.     

Sums of Two Exact Powers

An asymptotic formula is obtained for the number of representations of an element of a finite field as a weighted sum of two prescribed powers of primitive elements. This generalises previous work on sums of primitive elements, including that relating to some conjectures of Golomb.