I was never much good at writing: Trainee Teachers' Attributions in Writing

It might be thought that, in order to successfully teach a skill or process to others, teachers would need to be fairly competent in that process themselves, and fairly confident in their competence. There is evidence, however, that, in the case of the teaching of writing, this may not actually be true. This article explores some of the background to this problem and reports an investigation into the self-perceived competence in writing of teachers in training. It goes on to argue that, in the attributions these young teachers make about their success or failure in writing, there are important implications for the teaching and development of writing

Problems with Using Evolutionary Theory in Philosophy

Does science move toward truths? Are present scientific theories (approximately) true? Should we invoke truths to explain the success of science? Do our cognitive faculties track truths? Some philosophers say yes, while others say no, to these questions. Interestingly, both groups use the same scientific theory, viz., evolutionary theory, to defend their positions. I argue that it begs the question for the former group to do so because their positive answers imply that evolutionary theory is warranted, whereas it is self-defeating for the latter group to do so because their negative answers imply that evolutionary theory is unwarranted

Developing a web 2.0 GIS website for the Gauteng city-region

Successful Web GIS (Geographical Information System) applications are achieved by the right combination of GIS layers symbolised in a visually dynamic way, with an easy to use application, that is stable and responsive and meets the user requirements of both GIS and non-GIS users. Web 2.0 has produced a flood of development starter kits, sample viewers and APIs (Application Programming Interface), with the result that almost anyone involved in GIS or IT (Information Technology) – even with limited or no programming experience – can build a GIS website. This has lead to an exponential growth of Web GIS applications and data, which although a necessary step in increasing accessibility to spatial data and GIS applications, may result in online mapping applications that do not satisfy user requirements. The Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) identified a business need to develop a Web 2.0 GIS website to enable users to attain a better understanding of the Gauteng City-Region (GCR). The website makes use of data mashups to integrate data from various sources, and is one of the first government GIS websites in South Africa to utilise open datasets such as Google Maps to provide the base data. The website was built using rich Internet application (RIA) technology provided by the ESRI Adobe Flex viewer to offer an enhanced user experience, with popup windows and dynamic graphs linked to the maps. A five step Web GIS development methodology was employed to build the GCRO GIS website. This paper will examine each of the GIS development design steps that were followed to ensure an optimal functioning application, with responsive and secure map services. Specific Web mapping optimisation techniques, such as applying specific cartographic techniques and map designs to assist in overcoming the additional layer of Web design complexity introduced by spatial data will be reviewed

Charge collective modes in an incommensurately modulated cuprate

We report the first measurement of collective charge modes of insulating Sr14Cu24O41 using inelastic resonant x-ray scattering over the complete Brillouin zone. Our results show that the intense excitation modes at the charge gap edge predominantly originate from the ladder-containing planar substructures. The observed ladder modes (E vs. Q) are found to be dispersive for momentum transfers along the "legs" but nearly localized along the "rungs". Dispersion and peakwidth characteristics are similar to the charge spectrum of 1D Mott insulators, and we show that our results can be understood in the strong coupling limit (U >> t_{ladder}> t_{chain}). The observed behavior is in marked contrast to the charge spectrum seen in most two dimensional cuprates. Quite generally, our results also show that momentum-tunability of inelastic scattering can be used to resolve mode contributions in multi-component incommensurate systems.Comment: 4+ pages, 5 figure

On the determination of optimal price break procurement policies

The concave case (the case of economies of scale) associated with both Cases I and II will be studied both from a mathematical point of view and from the standpoint of applying two computational algorithms to obtain the optimum solution. The advantages of the computational procedures over the method of total enumeration will be demonstrated for several test problems by using a computer program to enumerate all feasible solutions and then to apply the simplifications called for by these algorithms to demonstrate what the savings would have been if these techniques had been applied