Graphs in the COVID-19 news: a mathematics audit of newspapers in Korea

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Visual displays in the news media become critical during escalating events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, as they facilitate the communication of complex...     

Is the postwar state melting down?: an East Asian perspective on post-Fukushima Japan

Prime Minister Abe’s return to power in Japan dealt a blow to the anti-nuclear movement and returned the country to broadly pro-nuclear policies. Meanwhile, eight years on, although the effects of the Fukushima disaster are still being felt, Japan’s anti-nuclear movement has struggled to move forward or effect changes in policy. This article argues that prospects for change will not emerge until Japan’s anti-nuclear movement is able to look beyond its national borders and articulate a perspective on nuclear power that takes into account other countries within East Asia. The 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake revealed heretofore hidden aspects of the Japanese state and society. The truth is that Japan’s postwar state (Sengo-kokka) is actually a nuclear power state (Genpatsu-kokka), a byproduct of the US-Japan alliance under the East Asian Cold War system, which insulated nuclear policy from the standard operation of democratic politics. As a product of the Cold War, the issue of nuclear power and development extends beyond Japan’s national borders and relates to the questions of US superpower sponsorship and the armistice system in East Asia that pertain broadly to the politics of East Asia. It is important to understand that Japan’s nuclear energy is a product of the Cold War in East Asia, and the armistice system that constitutes the international system in East Asia must be discarded if Japan is to become a post-nuclear energy state.     

Performance degradation due to measurement noise in control systems with disturbance observers and saturating actuators

Augmenting feedback control systems with disturbance observer (DOB) is a widely used technique in system design to compensate for the effect of exogenous disturbances as well as plant model uncertainties. In practice, actuator saturation should be taken into account in the design of control systems with DOB. In such cases, we have observed performance degradation due to zero mean measurement noise in the form of tracking loss. This phenomenon has never been reported in DOB literature. This paper reports the phenomenon, analyzes the conditions under which the tracking loss occurs, and also presents design guidelines to avoid the tracking loss. Experimental verification is also provided using a BLDC motor drive testbed.     

Cumulative strategic capability and performance of early movers and followers in the cyber market

Today, the cyber market is evolving rapidly in the networked age. In the cyber market, the traditional competitive strategy appears to no longer be effective. This study investigates the strategic choice differences of online firms based on their strategic capabilities and performance. More specifically, the study reviews the advantages and disadvantages of early movers and followers based on Porter's strategic topology, as well as strategic capabilities derived from Sand Cone model. The results show that early movers have more cumulative strategic capabilities than followers do in market differentiation, innovative differentiation, and cost leadership. However, early movers have better focus strategy than followers. These results have provided new insights for the scholars and entrepreneurs to reexamine traditional strategic approaches and the order of entrance effects in the cyber market.     

Changes in Sugar Metabolism and Fruit Quality of Different Pear Cultivars During Cold Storage

Transactions of Tianjin University - This study evaluated the changes in sugar metabolism and fruit quality of different pear cultivars during cold storage using seven major commercial pear...     

Waiting to decide helps in the face of probabilistic uncertainty but not delay uncertainty

A first-person shooter video game was adapted for the study of causal decision making within dynamic environments. Participants chose which of three potential targets in each of 21 groups was producing distal explosions. The source of the explosion effect varied in the delay between the firing of its weapon and its effect (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 s), the probability that the weapon caused the effect (50%, 75%, and 100%), and the occurrence of auditory events that filled the delay. In Experiment 1, participants’ choice accuracy was highest with short delays but was not affected by probability; participants often compensated for lower probability by increasing their latencies, and thus the number of outcomes sampled. In Experiment 2, a broad range of delays (0–2 s) and probabilities (20%–100%) were randomly sampled for each cause; the results largely replicated those of the prior experiment. The experiments demonstrate people’s ability to successfully modulate their environmental sampling in the face of uncertainty due to lower cause–effect probabilities, but not in the presence of longer cause–effect delays.     

The Effect of a Collaborative Mentoring Program on Beginning Science Teachers' Inquiry-based Teaching Practice

This study investigated how a collaborative mentoring program influenced beginning science teachers' inquiry-based teaching and their reflection on practice. The one-year program consisted of five one-on-one mentoring meetings, weekly science education seminars, weekly mentoring group discussions, and self-evaluation activities. The participants were three beginning science teachers and three mentors at the middle school level (7–9th grades) in an urban area of South Korea. For each beginning teacher, five lessons were evaluated in terms of lesson design/implementation, procedural knowledge, and classroom culture by using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol. Five aspects of the beginning teachers' reflections were identified. This study showed that a collaborative mentoring program focusing on inquiry-based science teaching encouraged the beginning teachers to reflect on their own perceptions and teaching practice in terms of inquiry-based science teaching, which led to changes in their teaching practice. This study also highlighted the importance of collaborative interactions between the mentors and the beginning teachers during the mentoring process.