Assessing students' conceptual understanding using an online three‐tier diagnostic test

When solving a mathematical problem, students who do not have sufficient conceptual understanding may perform poorly and exhibit misconceptions. This study was aimed to examine students' conceptual understanding and significant misconceptions when solving number sense‐related problems. An online three‐tier diagnostic test was administered to 125 fifth‐grade students with varied socio‐economic backgrounds in Hong Kong. Only 14.40% of the students exhibited high performance with high confidence, indicating that these students had a profound conceptual understanding of number sense. In addition, the majority of the students (66.40%) did not demonstrate number sense; these students exhibited several significant misconceptions and could solve the questions only by using a rule‐based method or guessing. Accordingly, most students performed unsatisfactorily on number sense‐related problems. This study is imperative in identifying early predictors and provides information for further compatible interventions in the teaching and learning of number sense in Hong Kong in particular and worldwide in general.     

Evolution of Local Structural Ordering and Chemical Distribution upon Delithiation of a Rock Salt–Structured Li1.3Ta0.3Mn0.4O2 Cathode

Lithium‐rich disordered rock‐salt oxides have attracted great interest owing to their promising performance as Li‐ion battery cathodes. While experimental and theoretical efforts are critical in advancing this class of materials, a fundamental understanding of key property changes upon Li extraction is largely missing. In the present study, single‐crystal synthesis of a new disordered rock‐salt cathode material, Li_1.3Ta_0.3Mn_0.4O₂ (LTMO), and its use as a model compound to investigate Li concentration–driven evolution of local cationic ordering, charge compensation, and chemical distribution are reported. Through the combined use of 2D and 3D X‐ray nanotomography, it is shown that Li removal accompanied by oxygen oxidation is correlated with the development of morphological defects such as particle cracking. Chemical heterogeneity, quantified by subparticle level distribution of Mn valence state, is minimal during Mn redox, which drastically increases upon the formation of cracks during oxygen redox. Density functional theory and bond valence sum mismatch calculations reveal the presence of local short‐range ordering in the pristine oxide, which gradually disappears along with the extraction of Li. The study suggests that with cycling the transformation into true cation–disordered state can be expected, which likely impacts the voltage profile and obtainable energy density of the oxide cathodes.     

Fair‐Weather Friends: Evidence of Lipoxin Dysregulation in Neurodegeneration

Lipoxins (LXs) are autacoids, specialized proresolving lipid mediators (SPMs) acting locally in a paracrine or autocrine fashion. They belong to a complex superfamily of dietary small polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA)–metabolites, which direct potent cellular responses to resolve inflammation and restore tissue homeostasis. Together, these SPM activities have been intensely studied in systemic inflammation and acute injury or infection, but less is known about LX signaling and activities in the central nervous system. LXs are derived from arachidonic acid, an omega‐6 PUFA. In addition to well‐established roles in systemic inflammation resolution, they have increasingly become implicated in regulating neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative processes. In particular, chronic inflammation plays a central role in Alzheimer's disease (AD) etiology, and dysregulated LX production and activities have been reported in a variety of AD rodent models and clinical tissue samples, yet with complex and sometimes conflicting results. In addition, reduced LX production following retinal injury has been reported recently by the authors, and an intriguing direct neuronal activity promoting survival and homeostasis in retinal and cortical neurons is demonstrated. Here, the authors review and clarify this growing literature and suggest new research directions to further elaborate the role of lipoxins in neurodegeneration.     

Reducing the complexity of distance measurement methods for circular turbo codes that use structured interleavers

The knowledge of turbo code's minimum Hamming distance (d_min) and its corresponding codeword multiplicity (A_min) is of a great importance because the error correction capability of a code is strongly tied to the values of d_min and A_min. Unfortunately, the computational complexity associated with the search for d_min and A_min can be very high, especially for a turbo code that has high d_min value. This paper introduces some useful properties of turbo codes that use structured interleavers together with circular encoding. These properties allow for a significant reduction of search space and thus reduce significantly the computational complexity associated with the determination of d_min and A_min values. © 2014 The Authors. International Journal of Communication Systems published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Delay compensated control of the Stefan problem and robustness to delay mismatch

This paper presents a control design for the one‐phase Stefan problem under actuator delay via a backstepping method. The Stefan problem represents a liquid‐solid phase change phenomenon which describes the time evolution of a material's temperature profile and the interface position. The actuator delay is modeled by a first‐order hyperbolic partial differential equation (PDE), resulting in a cascaded transport‐diffusion PDE system defined on a time‐varying spatial domain described by an ordinary differential equation (ODE). Two nonlinear backstepping transformations are utilized for the control design. The setpoint restriction is given to guarantee a physical constraint on the proposed controller for the melting process. This constraint ensures the exponential convergence of the moving interface to a setpoint and the exponential stability of the temperature equilibrium profile and the delayed controller in the norm. Furthermore, robustness analysis with respect to the delay mismatch between the plant and the controller is studied, which provides analogous results to the exact compensation by restricting the control gain.     

Fabrication of core–shell nanocomposites with enhanced photocatalytic efficacy

The current study establishes the unprecedented involvement in the evolution and production of novel core–shell nanocomposites composed of nanosized titanium dioxide and aniline‐o‐phenylenediamine copolymer. TiO₂@copoly(aniline and o‐phenylenediamine) (TiO₂@PANI‐o‐PDA) core–shell nanocomposites were chemically synthesized in a molar ratio of 5:1 of the particular monomers and several weights of nano‐TiO₂ via oxidative copolymerization. The construction of the TiO₂@PANI‐o‐PDA core–shell nanocomposites was ascertained from Fourier transform IR spectroscopy, UV–visible spectroscopy and XRD. A reasonable thermal behavior for the original copolymer and the TiO₂@PANI‐o‐PDA core–shell nanocomposites was investigated. The bare PANI‐o‐PDA copolymer was thermally less stable than the TiO₂@PANI‐o‐PDA nanocomposites. The core–shell feature of the nanocomposites was found to have core and shell sizes of 17 nm and 19–26 nm, respectively. In addition, it was found that the addition of a high ratio of TiO₂ nanoparticles increases the electrical conductivity and consequently lowers the electrical resistivity of the TiO₂@PANI‐o‐PDA core–shell nanocomposites. The hybrid photocatalysts exhibit a dramatic photocatalytic efficacy of methylene blue degradation under solar light irradiation. A plausible interpretation of the photocatalytic degradation results of methylene blue is also demonstrated. Our setup introduces a facile, inexpensive, unique and efficient technique for developing new core–shell nanomaterials with various required functionalities and colloidal stabilities. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry     

Lecture capture with real‐time rearrangement of visual elements: impact on student performance

The primary goal of this study is to create and test a lecture‐capture system that can rearrange visual elements while recording is still taking place, in such a way that student performance can be positively influenced. The system we have devised is capable of integrating and rearranging multimedia sources, including learning content, the instructor and students' images, into lecture videos that are embedded in a website for students to review after school. The present study employed a two‐group experimental design, with 153 participants (145 females and 8 males) making up an experimental group in which lecture courses were recorded using the new lecture‐capture system, and 149 participants (140 females and 9 males) forming a control group whose lectures were recorded by traditional means. All participants were in the freshman college and studying Introduction to Computer and Information Science in one of six classes, and were randomly assigned to one of the two groups. The participants' midterm examination and final examination scores were collected as indicators of their academic performance, with their mathematics entrance scores used as a pre‐test. The findings obtained from analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) suggest that appropriate rearrangement of visual elements in lecture videos can significantly impact students' learning performance.