Standard Embeddings of Smooth Schubert Varieties in Rational Homogeneous Manifolds of Picard Number 1

Smooth Schubert varieties in rational homogeneous manifolds of Picard number 1 are horospherical varieties. We characterize standard embeddings of smooth Schubert varieties in rational homogeneous manifolds of Picard number 1 by means of varieties of minimal rational tangents. In particular, we mainly consider nonhomogeneous smooth Schubert varieties in symplectic Grassmannians and in the 20-dimensional $F_4$-homogeneous manifold associated to a short simple root.Comment: 22 page

Exploring American Indian Students’ Problem-Solving Propensity in the Context of Culturally Relevant STEM Topics

This study presents an out-of-school problem-solving lesson we designed for American Indian students using a culturally relevant STEM topic. The lesson was titled “Shelter Design for Severe Weather Conditions.” This shelter design lesson was developed based on an engineering design allowing us to integrate STEM topics within a traditional indigenous house-building context. This problem context was used to encourage students to apply their prior knowledge, experience, and community/cultural practice to solve problems. We implemented the lesson at a summer program on an American Indian reservation. Using the lesson, this study explores how American Indian students use cultural knowledge and experience to solve a STEM problem. We collected student data through pre- and post-STEM content knowledge tests, drawings and explanations of shelter models on the students’ group worksheets, and classroom observations. We used interpretive and inductive methods to analyze the data. This study demonstrates that our culturally relevant, STEM problem-solving lesson helped the American Indian students solve a complex, real-world problem. This study examines how students’ prior experiences and cultural knowledge affect their problem-solving strategies. Our findings have implications for further research on designing problem-solving lessons with culturally relevant STEM topics for students from historically marginalized populations

Solution structures of RseA and its complex with RseB

Conformational changes of RseA and RseB were observed by circular dichroism and small-angle X-ray scattering upon the formation of their complex

Base extrusion is found at helical junctions between right- and left-handed forms of DNA and RNA

Base extrusion is a major structural feature at the junction between B- and Z-DNA (the B–Z junction) where a base pair is broken, and the two bases are extruded from the double helix. Despite the demonstration of base extrusion at the B–Z junction, it is not clear whether a similar base extrusion occurs at other types of junctions involving the left-handed Z conformation. Here, we investigate structural changes of bases at three Z-form junctions: DNA B–Z and Z–Z and RNA A–Z junctions. By monitoring fluorescently labeled duplex nucleic acids using 2-aminopurines at various positions relative to the junction point, we show that base extrusion occurs not only at the DNA B–Z junction, but also at the RNA A–Z and DNA Z–Z junctions. Our data suggest that base extrusion is a general feature of Z-form nucleic-acid junctions.Korean Science and Engineering Foundation (grant NRL-2006-02287)Korea (South). Ministry of Science and Technology (21C Frontier Functional Proteomics Program FPR08B2-270)Korean Science and Engineering Foundation (Ubiquitome Research Program M105 33010001-05N3301-00100)Korea Research Foundation (MOEHRD, Basic Research Promotion Fund; KRF-2005-070-C00078

A Qualitative Study on the Difference in Organizational Fit of IT Supporting Organizations

For many years, factors that increase the competitive advantage of organizations have been studied in organizational research. For an Information Technology (IT) organization, the main issues are the fitness of the IT and organization strategies and methods for revitalizing IT knowledge management (Earl, 2001; Rathnam, Johnsen, & Wen, 2005; Zack, 2002). However, there are few studies that have evaluated the competitiveness of an organization with reference to the correspondence of these constituent factors with organizational objectives. In this research a multi-contingency view was applied to Korean agencies, and the regional agencies with good performance and those with poor performance were compared with regard to this measure of fitness. The results of this study confirmed that the regions that received a favorable evaluation from experts exhibited good fit overall, and the constituent parts of the organization were consistent with the firm’s objectives