What kind of modern school system do we need?

The marketization of education cannot serve as the guiding principle in constructing the modern school system, nor can it be directly transplanted from modern enterprise system. Because the modern school system is a kind of “educational institution” rather than an “economical institution”, what it should focus on is not the ownership of property or the distinction of property, but on the core educational issue, that is, the students’ development. Such a kind of modern school system requires that the government delegates power to schools to realize academic autonomy in schools (selfgovernance). Translated from Jiaoyu Yanjiu 教育研究 (Educational Research), 2004, (12): 32–38     

教育并存生产性与服务性

Neither of the “Three Industry” Theory nor the “General Agreement of Trading Service” (GATS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) can be the essential criteria to analyze the property of education. The property of education can be defined from consumers’ perspective. The direct consumers of education are students; but the ultimate consumers of education include parents, employers, society and governments as well. From the perspective of consumers, education is both a service and a productive institution. Translated from Beijing Shifan Daxue Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban) 北京师范大学学报 (社会科学版) (Journal of Beijing Normal University (Social Sciences)), 2006, (2): 5–10     

DNA’s new avatar as nanoscale construction material

DNA is fast taking on a new aspect utilizing it’s physical property of persistence length and chemical property of base pairing to build architectures in 1D, 2D and 3D. This field is called structural DNA nano-technology and is poised to revolutionize several areas ranging from materials science to cell biology.     

Mobile agents

A software agent is an intelligent program that acts as a user’s personal assistant. Software agents endowed with the property of mobility are called mobile agents. Mobile agents perform a user’s task by migrating and executing on several hosts connected to the network.     

A financial perspective: categories of higher education institutions

From a financial perspective, the criteria for category distinction of higher education institutions should be based on the ownership of institution property and income for recurrent expenditure. The development of modern higher education witnessed the period wherein higher education institutions have both private property and private payment for recurrent expenditure. The development also saw the period wherein all the institution properties were owned by the state and all the recurrent expenditure were paid by the government. Accordingly, universities could be divided into two categories of “public” and “private” institutions until the 1970s. However, things have been changing greatly over the past 20 years. Property ownership and payment for recurrent expenditure have been separated. The public institutions appeal to more and more individuals sharing recurrent expenditure, while private institutions ask for more and more public financial support. Therefore, some financially mixed institutions came into being and “three categories with sub-groups” has become a new phenomenon. __________ Translated from Peking University Education Review, 2004 (2)     

Bochner-Orlicz序列空间的λ性质

The sufficient and necessary conditions of the Bochner-Orlicz sequence spaces equipped with the Luxemburg norm,which have λ property,are given.The result shows,which is not as usual,that the λ property of the Bochner-Orlicz seauence spaces can not be lift from X.     

Orthogonal polynomials and Padé approximation

The diagonal Padé approximants for exp (x), tan x and tanh x are obtained in a simple manner by using the property of Legendre polynomials that on [−1,1] P _r1(x) is orthogonal to every polynomial of lower degree. Gauss’s quadrature formula is used to find the denominators of some functions.     

On international trade in educational services: an interpretation of the regulations and China’s WTO commitments

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) covers educational trade services. Hence, all the regulations of the GATS have to be followed in the international trade of educational services. Having acceded to the WTO, China is starting to fulfill the rights and obligations as a member by completely respecting international trade, services and intellectual property laws. At the same time, it is also starting to fulfill some of the commitments it made in the GATS, such as expanding activities on trade in educational services. Comprehending the fundamental regulations and China’s commitments is significant towards promoting China’s international trade in educational services. __________ Translated from Journal of Beijing Normal University (Social Sciences), 2004 (1)     

Generalized fairing algorithm of parametric cubic splines

INTRODUCTION In Computer Aided Design, fairness is one of the basic requirements for designing curves. If the curves are not fair, the design will be unsatisfactory and the producing process will be discommodious. In practice, there are all kinds of errors such as modelling error and measuring error. It means that the information on the data points may not be accurate. In order to obtain fair curves by interpolating these data points, we should fair the data points first. This is the so…     

Prospective teachers’ insights towards scaffolding students’ writing processes through teacher–student role reversal in an online system

Teachers are encouraged to plan their teaching based on students’ needs from the student-centered perspectives. Of the many teacher training programs, teacher–student role reversal is regarded as one of the most effective avenues to help teachers identify students’ learning difficulties and further provide adaptive instruction. However, as the role reversal process is difficult to document in the face-to-face environment due to its interactive and dynamic property, very few studies on teacher–student role reversal have been empirically conducted. Studies on this issue thus were mainly presented in the form of position papers or experience sharing entries. The purpose of this study was to explore prospective teachers’ (PT) role reversal experience within the computer-supported (CS) environment. In the CS environment, 14 PT were invited to play the role as student Writers, Editors, and Commentators. The results showed that the teacher–student role reversal activities provided the PTs with a first-hand experience to formulate and reformulate their professional knowledge through reflection. By reflecting on their role-reversal, the PTs could identify the difficulties that impeded students’ writing and generated the insights on how they could better scaffold their students’ writing, editing, and revising process. With the feature of the process data, the CS environment was found to effectively support teacher–student role reversal as the PTs employed the process data, such as action logs or written texts, to reflect on their role play process to probe into the students’ writing problems and develop insights into pedagogy.     

Pupils’ conceptions of force in inanimates and animates

The objective of this work was to highlight the conceptions of force held by students aged 10–17 years old, in situations where animate and inanimate objects interact. In the proposed experimental situations, we varied parameters such as the motion and position of an object and the agent’s effort. We asked questions about both inanimate and animate objects. Results show that pupils are able to use a small number of conceptions coherently, but that these are influenced by the context. For inanimate objects, conceptions develop gradually. Initially, force is regarded as a property of objects related to their weight and/or motion/position. With age, however, pupils begin to regard it as a process of interaction. For animates, conceptions evolve much more slowly, insofar as all pupils consider force to be a human property related to the result that is obtained and/or the agent’s effort.     

Graphenes — Aromatic giants

Recently, extremely large benzenoid hydrocarbons have been synthesized. These compounds resemble graphite in many ways, and have been named graphenes. Because of their nonstandard properties, graphenes have already found numerous applications, especially as special-purpose materials in electronics. In this article we outline the basic chemical facts on graphenes. Ivan Gutman is Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Faculty of Science, Kragujevac, Serbia. Among his interests are mathematical methods in chemistry and the theory of polycyclic aromatic compounds. Boris Furtula is secretary of the journal ‘MATCH Communications in Mathematical and in Computer Chemistry’.     

Extraction of DNA suitable for PCR applications from mature leaves of Mangifera indica L.

Good quality deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the pre-requisite for its downstream applications. The presence of high concentrations of polysaccharides, polyphenols, proteins, and other secondary me- tabolites in mango leaves poses problem in getting good quality DNA fit for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) applications. The problem is exacerbated when DNA is extracted from mature mango leaves. A reliable and modified protocol based on the cetyl- trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) method for DNA extraction from mature mango leaves is described here. High concentrations of inert salt were used to remove polysaccharides; Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and β-mercaptoethanol were employed to manage phenolic compounds. Extended chloroform-isoamyl alcohol treatment followed by RNase treatment yielded 950?1050 μg of good quality DNA, free of protein and RNA. The problems of DNA degradation,contamination, and low yield due to irreversible binding of phenolic compounds and coprecipitation of polysaccharides with DNA were avoided by this method. The DNA isolated by the modified method showed good PCR amplification using simple se- quence repeat (SSR) primers. This modified protocol can also be used to extract DNA from other woody plants having similar problems.     

柴油添加剂的机理对比实验

介绍了加入1#、2#和3#柴油添加剂的油品1#、2#和3#和未加添加剂的油品0#,分别进行十六皖值等物理性质的机理实验,以及3种柴油添加剂的除碳能力实验。实验结果显示,加入不同柴油添加剂,油品的各项物理性质均有变化。经分析,十六烷值的提高和表面张力的降低对油品有积极的影响。胶质实验和柴油添加剂除碳能力实验的结果显示,柴油添加剂在一定程度上具有减少胶质生成和去除积碳的功效。     

An Author as a Counter-Storyteller: Applying Critical Race Theory to a Coretta Scott King Award Book

This article analyzes the 2002 Coretta Scott King Award book by Mildred Taylor entitled The Land. The novel and its author are situated within a tradition of historical fiction written by and about African Americans. I then offer an analysis that utilizes Critical Race Theory as an interpretive tool for examining the ways Taylor embeds meanings of land ownership into the novel. In particular the following themes emerged: (1) inspiration and adoration, (2) entitlement and privilege, and (3) freedom and security. The conclusion addresses the importance of applying Critical Race Theory to literary studies as well as identifying ways to purposefully incorporate African American young adult historical fiction within today’s classrooms. In this article, the ownership of land as property is foregrounded although the term “property” is both literally and metaphorically understood in Critical Race scholarship (Harris 1993).     

Jacobus Henricus van’ t Hoff

J H van’ t Hoff is considered as one of the greatest chemists of all time. He started his career as an organic chemist. He solved the vexing problem of optical isomerism by proposing an asymmetric tetrahedral carbon bonded to form different groups. He extended this to include geometric isomerism, and to compounds with heteroatoms in place of asymmetric carbon. Thus he established the ‘chemistry in space’ or stereochemistry. He moved on to work on reaction kinetics, equilibria, thermodynamic properties of dilute solutions and related areas. He laid the foundation for physical chemistry through these discoveries and was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1901. van’ t Hoff died of tuberculosis at a relatively early age of 59.     

Odd behaviour of the even integer 2

It is always of interest when one finds a property that is true only of some given object, or some given class of objects. For example, if n > 1 is an integer, then (n − 1)! + 1 is divisible by n just when n is a prime number. In this article we look at some properties that are true only for the integer 2. Shailesh Shirali has been at Rishi Valley School, Andhra Pradesh (Krishnamurti Foundation India) since the 1980’s. He has a deep interest in teaching and writing about mathematics at the high school/post school levels, with particular emphasis on problem solving and on historical aspects of the subject. He has been involved in the Mathematics Olympiad movement at the national and international level for the past two decades. He is the author of several expository books and articles aimed at interested high school students.     

Intensification of university–industry relationships and its impact on academic research

This paper analyses the intensification of university–industry relationships and its impact on university research. The paper consists of recent follow-up research to an international comparative research project conducted in the 1990s. It deals specifically with the Québec (Canada) situation. Twenty-eight in-depth interviews were conducted in the winter of 2003 with university researchers and an additional five interviews with technology transfer officers. The interviews were conducted in six francophone higher education institutions in Québec. With regard to university–industry relationships, the interviews revealed that university researchers in scientific and technological fields conducted innovation-oriented research, which benefits their graduate students and the institution itself. Freedom of publication is somewhat conditioned by intellectual property constraints. Thus, a majority of university researchers adopt an “entrepreneurial ethos” which they find compatible with their academic values. The intensification of university–industry relationships may also have latent dysfunctional effects with regard to conflicts of interest, as some university researchers have created start-up companies which act both as research funding sources and as beneficiaries of research results. Thus, intellectual property and conflict of interest issues evolve in a grey zone and are often sources of stress and tension for researchers. However harsh some disputes may become over these issues, they are resolved, at least in the context analysed in this research, in ways that satisfy both the researcher and the institutions.

A low-power Rijndael S-Box based on pass transmission gate and composite field arithmetic

Using composite field arithmetic in Galois field can result in the compact Rijndael S-Box. However, the power con- sumption of this solution is too large to be used in resource-limited embedded systems. A full-custom hardware implementation of composite field S-Box is proposed for these targeted domains in this paper. The minimization of power consumption is implemented by optimizing the architecture of the composite field S-Box and using the pass transmission gate (PTG) to realize the logic functions of S-Box. Power simulations were performed using the netlist extracted from the layout. HSPICE simulation results indicated that the proposed S-Box achieves low power consumption of about 130 μW at 10 MHz using 0.25 μm/2.5 V technology, while the consumptions of the positive polarity reed-muller (PPRM) based S-Box and composite field S-Box based on the conventional CMOS logic style are about 240 μW and 420 μW, respectively. The simulations also showed that the presented S-Box obtains better low-voltage operating property, which is clearly relevant for applications like sensor nodes, smart cards and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.