A comparative study of lower secondary mathematics textbooks from the Asia Pacific region

The rationale behind this study concerns the issues school administrators and teachers of expatriate students face over the progress and placement of the growing number of these students in mathematics classrooms in various countries brought about by the demographical changes occurring in this globalization era. This study aimed to present a method of examining lower secondary school mathematics textbooks with the purpose of evaluating students' expected past learning and comparing students' expected mathematics learning across the different curricula. It is anticipated that such an investigation will be of value to those responsible for the correct level of placement of these students.Six sets of textbooks from four countries on the Asia-Pacific rim, namely Australia, Brunei, China and Singapore, were selected for this study. The textbook content of each country was analyzed in terms of strand weighting and content details, and then coupled with information gained from interviews with teachers. This led to the findings which addressed the various issues raised.The findings facilitated a comparison of the learning paths offered by the various textbooks, fleshed out the differences and similarities of the various curricula and made available detailed comparisons of the textbooks' content in terms of topics covered. The analytical procedure of the examination of text content as presented in this study is itself a diagnostic technique for assessment of the students' past learning, which addressed the main objective of the study.The findings will be of interest to all who are interested in the mathematics taught in the countries involved.Outcomes will be particularly useful to curriculum planners and textbook writers as well as the administrators and teachers of International Schools and other schools enrolling expatriate students from these countries. The study offers a 'simplistic' way of evaluating textbooks to assess students' learning progress, and highlights the traits of the countries' curricula to provide a general idea of the mathematics ability expected from the expatriate students residing in these countries

William Blake's Laocoon: The Genealogy of a Form

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the relationship between the British artist and poet William Blake and the art of Antiquity, in particular the Laocoön sculpture group in the Museo Pio-Clementino in Rome. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Blake never saw the work firsthand, but he knew of it through the writings of such prominent eighteenth-century art theorists as Winckelmann, Lessing and Fuseli, and from plaster casts in the Royal Academy collections. The recurrence of the Laocoöntic gesture in his art and illuminated poetry testifies to its powerful hold on his imagination, and my goal is to ascertain the significance of this gesture in relation to his own theories of art and, more particularly, his prophetic writings. The first two chapters discuss the sculpture in the broader context of late eighteenth-century aesthetic theory, art historiography, and Anglo-French nationalism. This includes a detailed discussion of the popular debate surrounding the semiotics of graphic and textual representation, a debate that has long been at the center of Blake studies, since his prophetic books consist of both visual and verbal elements. Further attention is given to the prominence of the sculpture in the development of neoclassical taste and the privileging of the Greek ideal in the art academies of England and France. Both countries adopted this ideal as a way to give cultural legitimacy to their respective geopolitical and economic ambitions. Blake's writings on art reveal his keen awareness and interest in these debates, culminating in his remarkable engraving of the Laocoön surrounded by a dense, disjointed textual apparatus that addresses all these concerns. Chapters three and four deal specifically with the recurrence of the Laocoöntic gesture in Blake's graphic work and illuminated poetry. I begin by explaining the rationale behind such formulaic repetitions as the foundation for an elaborate expressive code that assigns specific meanings to the gesture, and then trace these meanings in several of the illuminated prophecies, starting first with the shorter Lambeth books (America, Europe, and The Book of Urizen), and then proceeding to a chapter-length study of the Four Zoas manuscript, a work that has received less critical attention than his two other epic-length prophecies, Milton and Jerusalem. My primary point in these readings is that, in the same way the sculpture came to symbolize for Blake ideal beauty degraded by imperialism and war, in the illuminated poetry the same figure represents humanity in both its fallen and redemptive states

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

William Blake and the visionary poetry of the law.

PhDThis dissertation examines the meaning of law in Blake's work. I argue that Blake's poetry intersects with contemporaneous challenges to the traditional model of the ancient constitution, a debate which I present as a conflict between custom and code. Blake's support for the French Revolution's overthrow of the customary systems of the ancien regime is countered by his nervousness about the rights-based discourse advanced by leading radical intellectuals such as Thomas Paine, a belief that the new systems which they proposed merely re-stated those which they sought to replace within an even narrower compass. Law is also a contested ground within radical political discourse of this period; although the dominant proposals advocated the enshrinement of fundamental rights and the codification of law, there was also a tendency towards a more enthusiastic radicalism These millenarian groups, emerging from antinomian heresy, rejected the notion of life being framed within a set of moral laws. I argue that Blake cannot easily be placed in either group; his work exhibits a fidelity to the redemptive potential of law, coupled with a real concern that to define freedoms in legal terms serves to limit rather than to liberate. Blake's work thus engages with a problem of the period: how to understand the new discourses of law. The customary account of the ancient English conunon law is predicated on the idea that it is codified, yet not written down; secular, though grounded in divine principle. These ambivalences are exploited by Blake in his poetic exploration of the law in the 1790s. In his nineteenth-century epics, Blake finds increasing help in dissenting religion's reconstruction of a radicalized Jesus. Through this radical prophetic voice, Blake is able to construct a redemptive legality founded on a deinstitutio-nalized Christianity, a constitutionalism that is also recovered from the conventional customary account

MATLAB

This excellent book represents the final part of three-volumes regarding MATLAB-based applications in almost every branch of science. The book consists of 19 excellent, insightful articles and the readers will find the results very useful to their work. In particular, the book consists of three parts, the first one is devoted to mathematical methods in the applied sciences by using MATLAB, the second is devoted to MATLAB applications of general interest and the third one discusses MATLAB for educational purposes. This collection of high quality articles, refers to a large range of professional fields and can be used for science as well as for various educational purposes

Geological survey in Dakota. Memorial from the Legislature of Dakota relative to a geological survey of the territory.

39-2AppropriationsAnnual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. [1302] Research relating to the American Indian; Indian pottery; notes on the Tinneh or Chepewyan Indians of British and Russian America.1867-2

Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, showing the operations, expenditures, and condition of the institution for the year 1866.

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. [1302] Research relating to the American Indian; Indian pottery; notes on the Tinneh or Chepewyan Indians of British and Russian America

Time and the quest for knowledge in the poetry of William Blake: a discussion of Tiriel, the Book of Urizen, the Song of Los and the Four Zoas

The physical appearances and specific behaviour of the characters in Tiriel , even the subtly ironical choice of names, suggest Blake's persistent opposition to the prevalent materialist-determinist philosophy of his day and to any form of dogmatism. This opposition accounts for the imaginative assimilation of originally unrelated literary material within a new symbolic context. Human misery does not originate from innate limitations or from a primordial fall from Divine Grace. It is caused by the immanent phenomenon of legalism in thought,, ethics and aesthetics. Physical, intellectual and emotional oppression deformation and corruption begin in childhood and are primarily perpetrated and perpetuated by repressive methods of education. Har and Tiriel are self-centred promulgators and, together with the other members of their family, warped products of Natural Law and Natural Religion. Tiriel's quest demonstrates that an increase in empirical knowledge is not necessarily accompanied by spiritual progress, nor does it improve the human condition. The complex vagueness of aspects of the poem contributes toward a more definite shaping of Blake's thought and symbolism in his later 'prophecies.' Portions of The Book of Urizen may be read as satire directed against the philosophic premises of seventeenth and eighteenth-century rationalism in general, and of Locke's theory of knowledge,. in particular. Theme,, structure and symbolism of the poem reflect this opposition and implicitly affirm Blake's own idealist metaphysics of reality. Abstracted from Eternity, Urizen's monolithic world has no extrinsic cause. It is a projection of his limited self-awareness. However, his solipsism fails to resolve the persistent contradiction between ideality and reality, thought and thing, subject and object. Los imposes temporal order and physical form on Urizen's disorganised thoughts. The limited anthropomorphic universe, produced by this intervention is a prison for mind and body, thought and desire. Henceforth, sensation and reflection determine the will to act. Man has rendered himself dependent on the fictitious 'substance' of matter, and on an equally mysterious remote deity. Both are only known by their 'accidents.' Natural science and Natural Religion are their respective rationalised form of worship. Both the pursuits of knowledge and of happiness require the suspension of desire. In The Song of Los Blake adopts a supra-historical perspective. Representative personages from biblical history, the history of religions generally,, philosophy and science are associated by their common failure to sustain their visionary powers. Blake incorporates into his poetic typology of decline,, structural elements derived from biblical, classical and modern conceptions of history without adopting their respective philosophical backgrounds. The notion of scientific progress and the advance of civilisation, concurrent with linear historical process, are dismissed. The achievements of empirical science, organised religion and autocratic government--synonymous with intellectual and physical oppression--kindle Orcls "thought creating fires." Despite its apocalyptic connotations, his violent outburst is of a highly ambivalent nature. The Four Zoas adumbrates the spiritual history of mankind. The poem is also a complex epic phenomenology of the human mind. Eden is an aspect of ideal reality where natural and human organisms are identified, and where life is sustained by loving self-sacrifice. After the Han's Fall elemental uproar reflects the mind's regression to the level of a perturbed oceanic consciousness which can no longer integrate the dissociated phenomena of the generative world into a living human form, thriving on love and understanding. Nature is transformed into a self-engendering monster. The human mind is englobed by the illusion of reality conceived as external and material, and by a fatalistic view of temporal process. Nevertheless, both misconceptions impose a degree of stability and order on the anarchic forces released by the cosmic catastrophe. Man's Fall is due to the dissociation of reason and affection. "Mental forms" are externalised and idolised. Eventually, under Urizen's control, imaginative energy in forced into rigid geometric form and regular motion. The beautiful illusion of the pseudo-Platonic "Mundane Shell" reflects the essential structure of Urizen's intelligence. however, it does not provide a lasting solution to the human dilemma. after the Fall. After the collapse of his creation, Urizen explores his alien environment by empirical means. he is a prisoner of his own restricted conception of reality. Unexpectedly, in Night VII(a), the Spectre of Urthona and Los are transformed into labourers of the Apocalypse. Regenoration starts with the annihilation of 'self.' Aware of his responsibilities, Los builds Golgonoozat the city of art. Emulating Christ's self-sacrifice, visionary activity is a form of self-denial. Time becomes a function of imaginative creativity. The imaginative world created by Los incorporates visionary time and space. Natural existence is realised as being endowed with regenerative qualities. Los no longer rejects Orc but sublimates his energies. Orc's destructive powers become an integral aspect Of the Last Judgment. Throughout Night VIII the providential and redemptive character of mortal life is stressed. Plunging into "the river of space" is a baptismal, if painful, experience. Although guided by Divine Providence, individual man has to work for his own salvation. In Night IX prophetic and apocalyptic views are fused as Los acts in a temporal context when tearing down the material, social and metaphysical barriers to vision erected by Urizen. The symbolism of Revelation is employed to adumbrate the artist's ultimate task in history. History is not beyond human control. Submission to the "Divine Vision" is an active ethical achievement capable of generating a powerful social dynamic, rather than tentatively removing it. Tyranny is overthrown because once the visionary poet has revealed its deceptions, mankind follows his example and removes it physically. This optimistic vision of the Last Judgment is an affirmation of the poet's absolute faith in the power of inspired vision to regenerate and humanize all aspects of life in this world

Multiphase modelling of desiccation cracking in compacted soil

PhD ThesisThe development of cracking as a result of desiccation is increasingly under investigation. This work is set within the context of climate change effects on surface processes influencing infrastructure slope stability. The inherent changes to the mechanical and hydrological behaviour of clayey soils subjected to desiccation are significant. The preferential transmission of water due to cracking is widely cited as a source of strength reduction that leads to infrastructure slope failure. In order to gain a better understanding of the cracking mechanism in typical compacted fill conditions, finite difference continuum modelling has been undertaken using FLAC 2D. The two-phase flow add-on has enabled the unsaturated behaviour of the desiccating soil to be included within the mesh. Physical behaviour observed in laboratory experiments has informed the development of the numerical model by allowing better constraint of boundary conditions. Model development has featured the inclusion of several non-linear processes that are fundamental to the changing soil response during drying. The influence of significant parameters has been identified and by means of a varied experimental program, the design, manufacture and testing of a laboratory test apparatus and procedure to define the tensile strength of compacted fills under varying saturation conditions was undertaken and subsequently validated. The factors affecting crack initiation and propagation have been investigated via parametric study. This demonstrated the significant influence of basal restraint on the generation of tensile stresses conducive to cracking and the fundamental importance of the tensile strength function within the proposed modelling methodology. Experimentation with the shape of the SWRC has shown the model to be very sensitive to the hydraulic properties of the material with not only the occurrence of primary cracking being affected but also the development of the desiccated crust. The findings of this work are relatable to the incorporation of desiccation effects in the development of coupled hydrological-mechanical continuum models where atmosphere-soil interactions are increasingly significant.Newcastle University with contribution from the EPSRC project, iSMART