Impact of a New Introductory Mathematical Modeling Course on Student Confidence in Mathematical Ability and Skills

Interdisciplinary mathematics and science courses are increasing in popularity. Faculty teaching these courses are given the opportunity to show how mathematics plays an important role in science and how it can be used to improve our understanding of mathematics and science. This paper discusses a new course in mathematical modeling that focuses on environmental issues. Course content and format are presented, as well as the results of a study on the changes in students’ perceptions of their mathematical abilities as a result of taking this new course

Adventures in Invariant Theory

We provide an introduction to enumerating and constructing invariants of group representations via character methods. The problem is contextualised via two case studies arising from our recent work: entanglement measures, for characterising the structure of state spaces for composite quantum systems; and Markov invariants, a robust alternative to parameter-estimation intensive methods of statistical inference in molecular phylogenetics.Comment: 12 pp, includes supplementary discussion of example

Spatially Explicit Estimates of Crop Rotation Responses

Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Malathion Resistance in Larvae of Some Southern Minnesota Populations of the Indianmeal Moth,\u3ci\u3e Plodia Interpunctella\u3c/i\u3e (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae), Infesting Bulk-Stored Shelled Corn

Larvae of 21 field collected populations of the Indianmeal moth, Plodia interpunctella, infesting stored shelled corn in southern Minnesota were tested for their susceptibility to malathion in the laboratory. A population that was a composite of the 21 populations and a malathion susceptible population were also tested for their susceptibility to malathion, pirimiphos-methyl and chlorpyrifos-methyl. Comparison of the LDso values of the field populations with the malathion susceptible population indicated that the field populations were ca. 33- to 625-fold resistant to malathion. The composite field population was ca. 243-fold resistant to malathion, and this population was 3.2-fold cross-resistant to pirimiphos-methyl, but was highly susceptible to chlorpyrifos-methyl