Designing Curriculum-Based Mathematics Professional Development for Kindergarten Teachers

This study examines the influence of a year-long mathematics professional development program on Kindergarten teachers’ beliefs, content knowledge, instructional practices, and their students’ achievement. The professional development program is grounded in the theoretical construct of learner-centered professional development and focuses on supporting teachers’ integration of standards-based pedagogies aligned with the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. Data analysis included examining 15 Kindergarten teachers’ mathematics content knowledge, their beliefs about mathematics, their enactment of student-centered pedagogies, and student achievement on curriculum-based assessments. Findings indicated that teachers adopted more student-centered pedagogies and embraced more student-centered beliefs about mathematics teaching during their time in the project. Further, Kindergarten teachers also demonstrated gains in their mathematical content knowledge, and those content knowledge gains were linked to gains in student achievement.     

Improving content area reading comprehension of Spanish speaking English learners in Grades 4 and 5 using web-based text structure instruction

Reading and comprehending content area texts is important for academic and professional success as well as life skills necessary to maintain good health and quality lifestyle. Spanish speaking English language learners have shown poor performance on high-stakes assessments in reading comprehension. The number of Spanish speaking English learners (ELs) in our schools continues to increase at a fast pace, and therefore it is imperative that we address their reading comprehension needs swiftly and effectively. The text structure strategy has shown positive results on comprehension outcomes in many research studies with students at Grades 2, 4, 5, and 7. This study is the first implementation of instruction about the text structure strategy expressly designed to accommodate the linguistic and comprehension needs of Spanish speaking ELs in Grades 4 and 5. Strategy instruction on the web for English learners (SWELL) was designed to deliver instruction about the text structure strategy to Spanish speaker English learners. A randomized controlled study with pre and post-tests was conducted with 14 classrooms at fourth-grade and 17 classrooms at fifth-grade in high poverty schools where over 85% of students were Spanish speaking bilinguals or ELs. Analysis of data using multi-level models show moderate to large-effects favoring the students in the SWELL classrooms over the business as usual control classrooms on important measures such as a standardized reading comprehension test and main idea and cloze tasks. This research has practical implications for the use of web-based tools to provide high-quality and supportive instruction to improve Spanish speaking ELs reading comprehension skills.     

Electronic Databases for Technical and Professional Communication Research

Electronic databases provide access to resources in business, communication, education, applied science and technology, and the social sciences. This article identifies the databases that monitor the journals most frequently cited by technical and professional communication researchers.     

CIDE gene expression in adipose tissue,liver, and skeletal muscle from obese and lean pigs

The expression of the cell death-inducing DNA fragmentation factor α-like effector (CIDE) family including Cidea, Cideb, and Cidec was significantly increased in mouse and human models of obesity. However, there was less information on these genes’ expression in pigs. Here, we hypothesized that different fat accumulation between lean (Duroc×Landrace×Yorkshire gilts, DLY) and obese (Lantang) pigs was attributed to porcine CIDE-modulating lipid metabolism. Our data showed that Cidea and Cidec were expressed at a high level in adipose tissue, and at a relatively high level in skeletal muscle, whereas Cideb was mainly expressed in the liver in both breeds of pig. Lantang pigs had higher white adipose and skeletal muscle Cidea and Cidec mRNA abundance, and hepatic and muscle Cideb mRNA than DLY pigs. Lipid metabolism-related genes including sterol regulatory element binding protein 1c (SREBP-1c), hepatocyte nuclear factor-4α (HNF-4α), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ coactivator-1α (PGC-1α), fatty acid synthase (FASN), diacylglycerol O-acyltransferase 1 (DGAT1), and DGAT2 showed a higher expression level in adipose tissue from obese pigs than in that from lean pigs. Lantang pigs exhibited higher mRNA abundance for liver SREBP-1c, HNF-4α, and PGC-1α, and higher skeletal muscle SREBP-1c, HNF-4α, PGC-1α, and DGAT2 expression, as compared with DLY pigs. However, the perlipin2 mRNA levels in adipose tissues, liver, and skeletal muscle were significantly lower in obese pigs than in their lean counterparts. Furthermore, plasma non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA), glucose, and triacylglycerol (TAG) levels were greater in obese pigs than in lean pigs. Finally, data from correlation analysis further found that CIDE mRNA expression was positively correlated with back fat thickness (BFT), abdominal fat mass (AFM), and the levels of NEFA, TAG, and glucose in the two breeds. Collectively, these data revealed that the porcine CIDEs possibly modulated lipid metabolism and contributed to the development of fat deposition and obesity in Lantang pigs.     

Pedagogical and technological augmentation of mobile learning for young children interactive learning environments

The ubiquity and educational potential of mobile applications are well acknowledged. This paper proposes six theory-based, pedagogical strategies to guide interaction design of mobile apps for young children. Also, to augment the capabilities of mobile devices, we used a humanoid robot integrated with a smartphone and developed an English-learning app that applied the design strategies to this environment. Our observations of children's one-on-one use support the promise of the strategies and the combined use of robots and mobile devices to be a viable option to help optimize mobile learning.     

Conversion of CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> to useful substances with composite iron,nickel, and copper catalysts

Composite materials of Fe/Al₂O₃, which consist of small particles of iron supported by thermally stable alumina even at 500–700 °C, have been widely used in the water-gas shift reaction for natural gas reforming. Therefore, Fe/Al₂O₃ is one of the promising candidates for re-transformation of exhausted CO₂ into fuels such as alcohols and hydrocarbons. The development of a CO₂ reforming system using the composite materials of Fe/Al₂O₃ through CO₂ reduction to CO, dissociation of water into hydrogen, and methanol synthesis has been investigated. It was found that dry and steam (i.e. wet) reforming of CO₂ produced almost the same amount of CO. At a temperature above 500 °C, maximal and saturated yields of CO and H₂ from CO₂ and water were obtained. However, this CO₂ reforming system requires higher-pressure conditions from several tens to hundreds standard atmospheric pressure in order to achieve high yield and selectivity for methanol production. In this study we developed the modified CO₂ reforming system by the utilization of Ni and/or Cu instead of Fe in order to obtain other types of useful products such as CO, CH₄, and carbon, more efficiently and selectively under atmospheric pressure. When Ni or Cu was used, conversion of CO₂ was reduced to 76%, while 9% of methane was detected in the case of Ni. On the other hand, though the CO₂ conversion reduced half of the Fe, the selectivity of CO from CO₂ increased to 95% in the case of Cu.     

Numerical investigation of cavitating flow behind the cone of a poppet valve in water hydraulic system

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of cavitating flow through water hydraulic poppet valves were performed using advanced RNGk-epsilon turbulence model. The flow was turbulent, incompressible and unsteady, for Reynolds numbers greater than 43000. The working fluid was water, and the structure of the valve was simplified as a two dimensional axisymmetric geometrical model. Flow field visualization was numerically achieved. The effects of inlet velocity, outlet pressure, opening size as well as poppet angle on cavitation intensity in the poppet valve were numerically investigated. Experimental flow visualization was conducted to capture cavitation images near the orifice in the poppet valve with 30° poppet angle using high speed video camera. The binary cavitating flow field distribution obtained from digital processing of the original cavitation image showed a good agreement with the numerical result. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 59835160) and Scientific Research Foundation for Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry of China (No. 50175097)