Indexing Distributions of Data: Preservice Teachers' Notions of Representativeness

The purpose of the study was to identify strategies used by preservice elementary teachers to index distributions of data. A secondary purpose of the study was to investigate whether representational form influenced the type of representative values constructed. Two hundred eighty‐three preservice teachers were administered a selection of tasks requiring them to construct representative values for a variety of distributional shapes. Participants were asked to provide justifications for their chosen representative measures. Data were analyzed from two perspectives: nature and adequacy of representative measure. Results indicated that when presented with skewed data sets, over half of the participants constructed poorly representative values. Symmetric data sets were best indexed with 67% of participants constructing highly representative values. Representational form played a significant role in determining representative values. Data presented graphically were more likely to be represented using measures of variability than were those presented nongraphically. Conversely, measures of central tendency were more frequently used to represent nongraphical data. The information arising from this study indicates that many preservice teachers construct poorly representative values to index data sets and utilize identical measures of representativeness regardless of distributional shape. The findings of the study highlight the need for exploratory data activities at the preservice level, call for provision of experiences affording insights into construction of representative values, and thus, have implications for the design of preservice mathematics education curricula.     

Non-protein amino acids in peptide design

An overview of the use of non-protein amino acids in the design of conformationally well-defined peptides, based on work from the author’s laboratory, is discussed. The crystal structures of several designed oligopeptides illustrate the useα-aminoisobutyric acid (Aib) in the construction of helices, D-amino acids in the design of helix termination segments and^DPro-Xxx segments for nucleating ofβ-hairpin structures.β- andγ-amino acid residues have been used to expand the range of designed polypeptide structures. Dedicated to Professor C N R Rao on his 70th birthday     

Three-dimensional structure of Saccharomyces cerevisiae inorganic pyrophosphatase complexed with cobalt and phosphate ions

Crystals of Saccharomyces cerevisiae inorganic pyrophosphatase suitable for X-ray diffraction study were grown by cocrystallization of the enzyme with cobalt chloride and imidodiphosphate. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a metal-dependent enzyme which catalyzes hydrolysis of inorganic pyrophosphate to orthophosphate. The three-dimensional structure of this enzyme was solved by the molecular-replacement method and refined at 1.8 Å resolution to an R factor of 19.5%. Cobalt and phosphate ions were revealed in the active centers of both identical subunits (A and B) of the pyrophosphatase molecule. In subunit B, a water molecule was found between two cobalt ions. It is believed that this water molecule acts as an attacking nucleophile in the enzymatic cleavage of the pyrophosphate bond. It was demonstrated that cobalt ions and a phosphate group occupy only part of the potential binding sites (two chemically identical and crystallographically independent subunits have different binding sites). The arrangement of ligands and the structure of the nucleophile-binding site are discussed in relation to the mechanism of action of the enzyme and the nature of the metal activator.     

Transition flow of rarefied gases: Current models and methods of simulation

Transition (molecular-viscous) isothermal channel flow of rarefied gases is considered. Present-day engineering physical models of transition gas flow and methods of simulation are analyzed and verified in terms of the kinetic theory on the micro-and macrolevels.     

A grid‐free upwind relaxation scheme for inviscid compressible flows

A new grid‐free upwind relaxation scheme for simulating inviscid compressible flows is presented in this paper. The non‐linear conservation equations are converted to linear convection equations with non‐linear source terms by using a relaxation system and its interpretation as a discrete Boltzmann equation. A splitting method is used to separate the convection and relaxation parts. Least squares upwinding is used for discretizing the convection equations, thus developing a grid‐free scheme which can operate on any arbitrary distribution of points. The scheme is grid free in the sense that it works on any arbitrary distribution of points and it does not require any topological information like elements, faces, edges, etc. This method is tested on some standard test cases. To explore the power of the grid‐free scheme, solution‐based adaptation of points is done and the results are presented, which demonstrate the efficiency of the new grid‐free scheme. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Supersymmetric spin glass

The manifestly supersymmetric four-dimensional Wess-Zumino model with quenched disorder is considered at the one-loop level. The infrared fixed points of a beta function form the moduli space ℳ=RP ², where two types of phases are found: with and without replica symmetry. While the former phase possesses only a trivial fixed point, this point become unstable in the latter phase, which may be interpreted as a spin glass phase. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 65, No. 8, 657–662 (25 April 1997) Published in English in the original Russian journal. Edited by Steve Torstveit.     

Shell effects in the symmetric-modal fission of pre-actinide nuclei

Mass distributions of fragments in the low-energy fission of nuclei from ¹⁸⁷Ir to ²¹³At have been analysed. This analysis has shown that shell effects in symmetric-mode fragment mass yields from the fission of pre-actinide nuclei could be described if one assumes the existence of two strongly deformed neutron shells in the arising fragments with neutron numbers N₁ ≈ 52 and N₂ ≈ 68. A new method has been proposed for quantitatively describing the mass distributions of the symmetric fission mode for pre-actinides with A ≈ 180–220.     

Time-resolved synchrotron X-ray study of crystalline phase transition in poly(aryl ether ketone ketone) containing alternated terephthalic/isophthalic moieties

Unique crystallization and melting behavior in poly(aryl ether ketone ketone) containing alternated terephthalic and isophthalic moieties were studied by time-resolved synchrotron x-ray methods. Recently, this material has been shown to exhibit three polymorphs (forms I, II, and III). In this work, we further investigated their distinctive thermal properties and found that form I is the dominating and the most thermally stable phase while form II is favored by fast nucleation conditions and is the least stable phase. On the other hand, form III represents a minor intermediate phase that usually coexists with form I and can be transferred from form II and to form I. Structural and morphological changes in form I have been followed by simultaneous wide-angle x-ray diffraction (WAXD)/small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) measurements during cold- or melt-crystallization and subsequent melting. In all cases, a larger dimensional change was found in the crystallographic a-axis than the b-axis during heating and cooling. This may be due to the greater lateral stress variation with respect to temperature along the a direction of the primary lamellae which is induced by either the formation of secondary lamellae or the preferential chain-folding direction in poly(aryl ether ketone ketone)s. During the phase transitions of form II ← III in the cold-crystallized specimen and form III ← I in the melt-crystallized samples, lamellar variables (long period, lamellar thickness, and invariant) obtained from SAXS remain almost constant. This indicates that the density distribution in the long spacing is independent of the melting in form II or III. For melt-crystallization, the corresponding changes in unit-cell dimensions and lamellar morphology during the annealing-induced low endotherm are most consistent with the argument that these changes are due to the melting of thin lamellar population. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.