The Impact of Elementary Mathematics Specialists

Elementary Mathematics Specialists are placed in schools to construct leadership roles and to provide on-site professional development addressing mathematical content and pedagogy in order to enhance instruction and to improve student achievement. A three-year, randomized, control study found that, over time, Specialists had a significant positive impact on student achievement in Grades 3, 4, and 5. This effect on student achievement was not evident at the conclusion of the Specialist\u27s first year of placement. It emerged as knowledgeable Specialists gained experience and as the schools\u27 instructional and administrative staffs learned and worked together. Specialists who were highly engaged with a teacher significantly impacted those teachers\u27 beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning. In addition addition, teachers in schools with a Specialist were more likely to participate in a non-coaching professional activity (attending mathematics-focused grade-level meetings, observing peers\u27 teaching, or attending schoolwide mathematics workshops). The Specialists in this study had substantial programmatic responsibilities that influenced their amount of available time for coaching teachers. Further, the Specialists in this study engaged in a high degree of professional coursework prior to and during at least their first year of placement. Findings should not be generalized to Mathematics Specialists or coaches with less expertise

Immunoadsorbents - Preparation and use of cellulose derivatives

Antibody isolation from blood by linking antigens to insoluble cellulose derivative

Permanent and Transitory Components in Macroeconomic Fluctuations

Fluctuations in real GNP have traditionally been viewed as transitory deviations from a deterministic time trend. The purpose of this paper is to review some of the recent developments that have led to a new view of output fluctuations and then to provide some additional evidence. Using post-war quarterly data, it is hard to reject the view that real GNP is as persistent as a random walk with drift. We also consider the hypothesis that the recent finding of persistence are due to the failure to distinguish the business cycle from other fluctuations in real GNP. We use the measured unemployment rate to decompose output fluctuations. We find no evidence for the view that business cycle fluctuations are more quickly trend-reverting.

A Knowledge-Based Optimization Method for Aerodynamic Design

A new aerodynamic design method, CODISC, has been developed that combines a legacy knowledge-based design method, CDISC, with a simple optimization module known as SOUP. The primary goal of this new design system is to improve the performance gains obtained using CDISC without adding significant computational time. An additional objective of this approach is to reduce the need for a priori knowledge of good initial input variable values, as well as for subsequent manual revisions of those values as the design progresses. Several test cases illustrate the development of the process to date and some of the options available at transonic and supersonic speeds for turbulent flow designs. The test cases generally start from good baseline configurations and, in all cases, were able to improve the performance. Several new guidelines for good initial values for the design variables, as well as new design rules within CDISC itself, were developed from these cases