Beyond the Spoken Word: Examining the Nature of Teacher Gesturing in the Context of an Elementary Engineering Curriculum for English-Learner Students

Our research team performed an exploratory analysis of teacher gesturing via a case study of an elementary teacher. We focused on gesturing, a practice found to support both bilingual English learner students’ linguistic development and mathematics achievement, during the teacher’s engineering and science lessons. The research team systematically analyzed teacher video data using McNeill’s gestural dimensions framework and found variation of gesturing types and rates when comparing engineering and baseline science lessons. Additionally, specific types of teacher-gestures appear to be associated with either behavioral or classroom management practices, procedural instructions, and discussion facilitation. We suggest that teacher-gestures such as these have the potential to facilitate bilingual English learners’ language acquisition, while also developing their STEM literacy in general and engineering capacity in particular. Further exploration of teacher-gestures in elementary engineering curricula could lead to an integrated STEM pedagogy that incorporates gesturing as a fundamental teaching strategy, bridging STEM instruction with linguistically responsive instructional practices.Educatio

A study on Hispanic college students\u27 mathematics anxiety, study habits, and academic performances on mathematics

Mathematics anxiety has been described as a feeling of apprehension, fear, tension, and discomfort when confronted with mathematics. Mathematics anxiety has also been shown to interfere with mathematics performance; therefore, for our research we investigated what portions of individuals seem to suffer higher levels of mathematics anxiety and to what extent they are affected by it. We also investigated the study habits of the students and how these affect their mathematics anxiety levels and overall mathematics performance. Our data was obtained from Hispanic undergraduate students (n=405) who took Elementary Algebra (Math 1300), Intermediate Algebra (Math 1334), College Algebra (Math 1340) or Elementary Statistics (2330) in Spring 2015 at the University of Texas Pan-American. Our mathematics anxiety score was obtained from the Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale-Brief (MARS-B), a 30-question survey with 5 levels of agreement

Characterisation of the mechanical and thermal degradation behaviour of natural fibres for lightweight automotive applications

It is well established that light-weighting of automotive parts leads to reduced carbon emissions over vehicle lifetime. Mineral fibres and fillers have a relatively high density and may require high levels of energy in their production, resulting in a large carbon footprint. Natural fibres have been identified as a potential candidate to substitute mineral fillers in automotive application of thermoplastic matrix composites. This paper focuses on the characterisation of the mechanical and thermal degradation of two types of natural fibres (date palm and coir fibres) as part of an evaluation of their potential for the substitution of high density mineral fillers with more environmentally friendly lower density natural fibre reinforcements

A multi-layered Bayesian network model for structured document retrieval

New standards in document representation, like for example SGML, XML, and MPEG-7, compel Information Retrieval to design and implement models and tools to index, retrieve and present documents according to the given document structure. The paper presents the design of an Information Retrieval system for multimedia structured documents, like for example journal articles, e-books, and MPEG-7 videos. The system is based on Bayesian Networks, since this class of mathematical models enable to represent and quantify the relations between the structural components of the document. Some preliminary results on the system implementation are also presented

Marcel Breuer y el sueño de la cabaña americana

Marcel Breuer arquitecto húngaro y afamado diseñador de mobiliario procedente de la Bauhaus, emigra a Estados Unidos en 1937, invitado por Gropius como profesor en Harvard. Allí comienzan, Breuer y Gropius, una nueva etapa basada en la experimentación de la casa como revisión de los postulados de la arquitectura moderna: la casa como máquina de habitar, propuesta por Le Corbusier, procedente de la vieja Europa; versus la humanización de la máquina a través del efecto del material sobre la estructura y la forma extendidas y en contacto con el territorio, propuesta por Frank Lloyd Wright procedente de la nueva América. Sus experimentos domésticos sobre la casa-cabaña acercaron los métodos tradicionales de la construcción americana a una visión renovada abstracta y pura, donde los modos de vida, los requerimientos básicos, prácticos y funcionales se transformaron en la conexión del "Arte de Construir" a través del material y su puesta en obra. La búsqueda de una respuesta clara del habitar que satisfacía objetivos opuestos y necesidades humanas, llevó a su arquitectura de la abstracción a reconciliar al hombre con la naturaleza, dotarla de arte y vida, arquitectura y paisaje que pasaron a convertirse en los ideales modernos de la cabaña americana. ABSTRACT. Marcel Breuer, Hungarian architect and famed to furniture's designer of the Bauhaus emigrated to America in 1937, invited by Gropius as a professor at Harvard. Breuer and Gropius, there begin a new stage based on the experimentation of the house as a revision to the postulates of modern architecture: the house as a dwell machine proposed by Le Corbusier from old Europe; versus the humanization of the machine through the effect of material on the structure and form extended and in contact with the territory, proposed by Frank LI. Wright from the new America. His experiments on the house-cottage approached traditional methods of the American construction methods to a new vision, abstract and pure, where ways of life, and basic, practical and functional requirements became the connection to "Art of Building" trough the material and its placing. The search for a clear answer of dwelling that satisfied conflicting objectives and human needs, led to the architecture of abstraction to reconcile man with nature, endow it with life and art, an architecture and a landscape that became the modern ideals of American cottage

Latinx Students’ Mathematics Anxiety and Their Study Habits: Exploring Their Relationship at the Postsecondary Level

Increasing Latinx students’ success in college-level mathematics calls for exploration on their mathematics anxiety as it relates to study habits. Using a sample of Latinx students in a Hispanic Serving Institution and their levels of mathematics anxiety, pairwise analyses revealed significant differences among subgroups. Moreover, regression analyses showed Latinx students’ study habits being predictive of mathematics anxiety. As a result, recommendations are provided that could alleviate mathematics anxiety and its effects on Latinx college students

Coherent states for a generalization of the harmonic oscillator

Coherent states for a family of isospectral oscillator Hamiltonians are derived from a suitable choice of annihilation and creation operators. The Fock-Bargmann representation is also obtained

Reinforcement Learning Based Modulation for Balancing Capacitor Voltage and Thermal Stress to Enhance Current Capability of MMCs

Balancing DC capacitor voltage of many submodules (SMs) is one of the important issues in modular multilevel converter (MMC) systems. In addition, the balance of thermal stress between SMs should be considered to equalize the lifetime expectation of semiconductors and to enhance the current capability of MMC systems. However, it is complicated to balance all the various factors satisfactorily at the same time. Recent machine learning (ML) techniques can achieve optimal results through learning using numerous data acquired in complex environments. Therefore, this paper proposes a new modulation based on reinforcement learning (RL), which is a subclass of ML methods, to optimally balance the capacitor voltage and thermal stress of SMs. A deep Q-network (DQN) agent, which is one of the RL algorithms, is applied in accordance with a nearest-level modulation (NLM), and main features of the DQN agent are described in this paper. The effectiveness of the proposed modulation based on RL is verified by simulations results

3D high definition video coding on a GPU-based heterogeneous system

H.264/MVC is a standard for supporting the sensation of 3D, based on coding from 2 (stereo) to N views. H.264/MVC adopts many coding options inherited from single view H.264/AVC, and thus its complexity is even higher, mainly because the number of processing views is higher. In this manuscript, we aim at an efficient parallelization of the most computationally intensive video encoding module for stereo sequences. In particular, inter prediction and its collaborative execution on a heterogeneous platform. The proposal is based on an efficient dynamic load balancing algorithm and on breaking encoding dependencies. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed algorithm's ability to reduce the encoding time for different stereo high definition sequences. Speed-up values of up to 90× were obtained when compared with the reference encoder on the same platform. Moreover, the proposed algorithm also provides a more energy-efficient approach and hence requires less energy than the sequential reference algorith