Big Books: Big, Bold, and Beautiful with Impacts

Some Indonesian elementary schools include English as a local content subject. However, one aspect that is often missing in the process of teaching and learning is supporting teaching media. This is often found in schools based in remote areas, including the one at SD Negeri 6 Tambak Ukir, which is included in this study. The teaching and learning at this school is not fully accommodated because of the unavailability of teaching media. The students are not fortunate enough to afford commercial learning media. The problems worsen with the fact that the teachers have never been professionally prepared and trained to teach English. Such problems lead to meaningless learning. Concerning the issues, we developed five big books to be used by English teachers and students of SD Negeri 6 Tambak Ukir with the aim to provide supplementary learning media for the students, particularly in learning English vocabulary. The research adopted the development model proposed by Gall, Gall, and Borg (2003). There are four simplified stages in this development process: problem analysis, product development, product trials, and product revisions. In the first stage, the researchers planned to develop 10 books, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, only five books (including a manual user) could be developed. The topic covers numbers, colours, alphabets, animals, and the human body. The provision of the books helped the teachers in delivering the topics. The books could also create a new learning experience for the students. Besides, the students also felt that they could get closer to their friends because they could learn together and felt extra motivated. In other words, having been validated and tried out, the books were proven to be valid, effective, and practical. They were valid as they were developed based on strong theories, effective as they can fulfil students’ needs, and practical as they can facilitate both teachers and students during the teaching and learning process. Briefly, the big book can describe itself well. It is big, bold, and beautiful with impacts. Keywords: big book, English teaching medium, research and development, SD Negeri 6 Tambak Uki

Too big to succeed?

Bigger is not necessarily more beautiful when big pharma mergers are at issue

Viewpoints: Environment, Spirituality and Women

Modern-day homes, offices and places of amusement are decorated with portraits of beautiful landscapes, flora and fauna. In some cases the walls are adorned with beautiful and exotic wallpapers to get a feeling of staying or living in the natural environs. Roadside hawkers are very busy selling beautiful pictures of nature in all its glory as they attract shoppers. People living in concrete jungles in big cities and towns crave for a refreshing glimpse of nature to enliven their drooping spirits

Templated mesoporous materials: expectations, facts and challenges

This presentation included an overview of the main types of the mesoporous structures that can be generated via template processes, addressing the role of surface chemistry on their formation and implications in their properties and applications. Some aspects considered involved the introduction of catalytic functionalities, the important contributions that these model porous solids brought to the testing of fundamentals underlying gas adsorption, previously developed with common mesoporous materials having broad pore size distributions, and also their potential as molecular sieves for big molecules in the liquid phase. Together with the beautiful aspects, some challenges still to overcome, were also mentioned

Big and beautiful? On non-parametrically measuring scale economies in non-convex technologies

Knowledge on the scale economies drives the incentives of regulators, governments and individual utilities to scale-up or scale-down the scale of operations. This paper considers the returns to scale (RTS) in non-convex frontier models. In particular, we evaluate RTS assumptions in a Free Disposal Hull model, which accounts for uncertainty and heterogeneity in the sample. Additionally, we provide a three-step framework to empirically analyze the existence and extent of RTS in real world applications. In a first step, the presence of scale (and scope) economies is verified. Secondly, RTS for individual observations are examined while in a third step we derive the optimal scale for a sector as a whole. The framework is applied to the Portuguese drinking water sector where we find the optimal scale to be situated around 7 to 10 million m3.Free Disposal Hull, economies of scale, optimal size, water sector

Editorial: \'Big is beautiful\' - and unhealthy and confusing?

No abstract. South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol. 18 (1): 4-

Big and beautiful? On non-parametrically measuring scale economies in non-convex technologies.

Knowledge on the scale economies drives the incentives of regulators, governments and individual utilities to scale-up or scale-down the scale of operations. This paper considers the returns to scale (RTS) in non-convex frontier models. In particular, we evaluate RTS assumptions in a Free Disposal Hull model, which accounts for uncertainty and heterogeneity in the sample. Additionally, we provide a three-step framework to empirically analyze the existence and extent of RTS in real world applications. In a .rst step, the presence of scale (and scope) economies is veri.ed. Secondly, RTS for individual observations are examined while in a third step we derive the optimal scale for a sector as a whole. The framework is applied to the Portuguese drinking water sector where we .nd the optimal scale to be situated around 7 to 10 million m3.

Loewner's "forgotten" theorem

Let $f(t)$ be a smooth and periodic function of one real variable. Then the planar curves $t\mapsto \big(f'(t),f(t)\big)$ and $t\mapsto \big(f''(t)-f(t),f'(t)\big)$ both have non-negative rotation number around every point not on the curve. These are the two simplest cases of a beautiful Theorem by C. Loewner. This article is expository, we prove the two statements by elementary means following work by Bol [3]. After that, we present Loewner's Theorem and his proof from [7].Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure