Building reflective practices in a pre-service math and science teacher education course that focuses on qualitative video analysis

The use of video for in-service and pre-service teacher development has been gaining acceptance, and yet video remains a challenging and understudied tool. Many projects have used video to help pre-service and in-service teachers reflect on their own teaching processes, examine teacher–student interactions, and develop their professional vision. But rarely has video been used in ways more akin to qualitative education research that is focused on student learning. Even more rarely has this focus occurred at the earliest stages of pre-service teaching when students have not yet decided to pursue teaching careers. Yet here we argue that there are benefits to our approach. We examine a course for prospective pre-service math and science teachers at the University of California, Berkeley, that engages participants in qualitative video analysis to foster their reflective practice. This course is unique in that the prospective pre-service teachers engage in qualitative video analysis at a level characteristic of professional educational research, in that their analysis focuses on student learning of math and science content. We describe classroom activities that provide opportunities for the preservice teacher participants to better observe, notice, and interpret their students’ sociocognitive activity. The course culmination project involves participants developing and teaching lessons in a high school classroom. The participants then videotape the lessons and conduct qualitative video analysis. Results include detailed examples of two selected prospective pre-service teachers demonstrating coherent and effective approaches to conceptualizing the learning and teaching of mathematical and science content along with some potential design principles for building reflective practices through qualitative video projects. © 2018 Association for Science Teacher Education

A Search for Optical Variability of Type 2 Quasars in SDSS Stripe 82

Hundreds of Type 2 quasars have been identified in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data, and there is substantial evidence that they are generally galaxies with highly obscured central engines, in accord with unified models for active galactic nuclei (AGNs). A straightforward expectation of unified models is that highly obscured Type 2 AGNs should show little or no optical variability on timescales of days to years. As a test of this prediction, we have carried out a search for variability in Type 2 quasars in SDSS Stripe 82 using difference-imaging photometry. Starting with the Type 2 AGN catalogs of Zakamska et al. (2003) and Reyes et al. (2008), we find evidence of significant g-band variability in 17 out of 173 objects for which light curves could be measured from the Stripe 82 data. To determine the nature of this variability, we obtained new Keck spectropolarimetry observations for seven of these variable AGNs. The Keck data show that these objects have low continuum polarizations (p<~1% in most cases) and all seven have broad H-alpha and/or MgII emission lines in their total (unpolarized) spectra, indicating that they should actually be classified as Type 1 AGNs. We conclude that the primary reason variability is found in the SDSS-selected Type 2 AGN samples is that these samples contain a small fraction of Type 1 AGNs as contaminants, and it is not necessary to invoke more exotic possible explanations such as a population of "naked" or unobscured Type 2 quasars. Aside from misclassified Type 1 objects, the Type 2 quasars do not generally show detectable optical variability over the duration of the Stripe 82 survey.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in A

Glycine-induced neurotoxicity in organotypic hippocampal slice cultures

The role of the neutral amino acid glycine in excitotoxic neuronal injury is unclear. Glycine coactivates glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors by binding to a distinct recognition site on the NR1 subunit. Purely excitatory glycine receptors composed of NR1 and NR3/NR4 NMDA receptor subunits have recently been described, raising the possibility of excitotoxic effects mediated by glycine alone. We have previously shown that exposure to high concentrations of glycine causes extensive neurotoxicity in organotypic hippocampal slice cultures by activation of NMDA receptors. In the present study, we investigated further properties of in vitro glycine-mediated toxicity. Agonists of the glycine recognition site of NMDA receptors (D-serine and D-alanine) did not have any toxic effect in hippocampal cultures, whereas competitive blockade of the glycine site by 7-chlorokynurenic acid was neuroprotective. Stimulation (taurine, β-alanine) or inhibition (strychnine) of the inhibitory strychnine-sensitive glycine receptors did not produce any neurotoxicity. The toxic effects of high-dose glycine were comparable in extent to those produced by the excitatory amino acid glutamate in our model. When combined with sublethal hypoxia/hypoglycemia, the threshold of glycine toxicity was decreased to less than 1mM, which corresponds to the range of concentrations of excitatory amino acids measured during in vivo cerebral ischemia. Taken together, these results further support the assumption of an active role of glycine in excitotoxic neuronal injur

The String Deviation Equation

The relative motion of many particles can be described by the geodesic deviation equation. This can be derived from the second covariant variation of the point particle's action. It is shown that the second covariant variation of the string action leads to a string deviation equation.Comment: 18 pages, some small changes, no tables or diagrams, LaTex2

Optimized Effective Potential Model for the Double Perovskites Sr2-xYxVMoO6 and Sr2-xYxVTcO6

In attempt to explore half-metallic properties of the double perovskites Sr2-xYxVMoO6 and Sr2-xYxVTcO6, we construct an effective low-energy model, which describes the behavior of the t2g-states of these compounds. All parameters of such model are derived rigorously on the basis of first-principles electronic structure calculations. In order to solve this model we employ the optimized effective potential method and treat the correlation interactions in the random phase approximation. Although correlation interactions considerably reduce the intraatomic exchange splitting in comparison with the Hartree-Fock method, this splitting still substantially exceeds the typical values obtained in the local-spin-density approximation (LSDA), which alters many predictions based on the LSDA. Our main results are summarized as follows: (i) all ferromagnetic states are expected to be half-metallic. However, their energies are generally higher than those of the ferrimagnetic ordering between V- and Mo/Tc-sites (except Sr2VMoO6); (ii) all ferrimagnetic states are metallic (except fully insulating Y2VTcO6) and no half-metallic antiferromagnetism has been found; (iii) moreover, many of the ferrimagnetic structures appear to be unstable with respect to the spin-spiral alignment. Thus, the true magnetic ground state of the most of these systems is expected to be more complex. In addition, we discuss several methodological issues related to the nonuniqueness of the effective potential for the magnetic half-metallic and insulating states.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

The Voluntary Adjustment of Railroad Obligations

Automatic memory management techniques eliminate many programming errors that are both hard to find and to correct. However, these techniques are not yet used in embedded systems with hard realtime applications. The reason is that current methods for automatic memory management have a number of drawbacks. The two major ones are: (1) not being able to always guarantee short real-time deadlines and (2) using large amounts of extra memory. Memory is usually a scarce resource in embedded applications. In this paper we present a new technique, Real-Time Reference Counting (RTRC) that overcomes the current problems and makes automatic memory management attractive also for hard real-time applications. The main contribution of RTRC is that often all memory can be used to store live objects. This should be compared to a memory overhead of about 500% for garbage collectors based on copying techniques and about 50% for garbage collectors based on mark-and-sweep techniques

Formation of Concretions Occurring in the Ohio Shales Along the Olentangy River

Author Institution: 139 Westview Ave., Columbus, Ohio 4321

Inducing imperfections in germanium nanowires

Nanowires with inhomogeneous heterostructures such as polytypes and periodic twin boundaries are interesting due to their potential use as components for optical, electrical, and thermophysical applications. Additionally, the incorporation of metal impurities in semiconductor nanowires could substantially alter their electronic and optical properties. In this highlight article, we review our recent progress and understanding in the deliberate induction of imperfections, in terms of both twin boundaries and additional impurities in germanium nanowires for new/enhanced functionalities. The role of catalysts and catalyst–nanowire interfaces for the growth of engineered nanowires via a three-phase paradigm is explored. Three-phase bottom-up growth is a feasible way to incorporate and engineer imperfections such as crystal defects and impurities in semiconductor nanowires via catalyst and/or interfacial manipulation. “Epitaxial defect transfer” process and catalyst–nanowire interfacial engineering are employed to induce twin defects parallel and perpendicular to the nanowire growth axis. By inducing and manipulating twin boundaries in the metal catalysts, twin formation and density are controlled in Ge nanowires. The formation of Ge polytypes is also observed in nanowires for the growth of highly dense lateral twin boundaries. Additionally, metal impurity in the form of Sn is injected and engineered via third-party metal catalysts resulting in above-equilibrium incorporation of Sn adatoms in Ge nanowires. Sn impurities are precipitated into Ge bi-layers during Ge nanowire growth, where the impurity Sn atoms become trapped with the deposition of successive layers, thus giving an extraordinary Sn content (>6 at.%) in Ge nanowires. A larger amount of Sn impingement (>9 at.%) is further encouraged by utilizing the eutectic solubility of Sn in Ge along with impurity trapping

Buchbesprechungen

Besprochen werden die beiden folgenden Werke: (1) Handbuch der Bodenkunde - Grundwerk. Von H. P. Blume , P. Felix-Henningsen, W.R. Fischer, H.-G. Frede, R. Horn u. K. Stahr. (2) Thienemann, Johannes: Rossitten - drei Jahrzehnte auf der Kurischen Nehrung. Reprint der Ausgabe Melsungen, Neumann-Neudamm von 1930 (3.Aufl.)

The correlation potential in density functional theory at the GW-level: spherical atoms

As part of a project to obtain better optical response functions for nano materials and other systems with strong excitonic effects we here calculate the exchange-correlation (XC) potential of density-functional theory (DFT) at a level of approximation which corresponds to the dynamically- screened-exchange or GW approximation. In this process we have designed a new numerical method based on cubic splines which appears to be superior to other techniques previously applied to the "inverse engineering problem" of DFT, i.e., the problem of finding an XC potential from a known particle density. The potentials we obtain do not suffer from unphysical ripple and have, to within a reasonable accuracy, the correct asymptotic tails outside localized systems. The XC potential is an important ingredient in finding the particle-conserving excitation energies in atoms and molecules and our potentials perform better in this regard as compared to the LDA potential, potentials from GGA:s, and a DFT potential based on MP2 theory.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure