Early Geometrical Thinking in the Environment of Patterns, Mosaics and Isometries

This book discusses the learning and teaching of geometry, with a special focus on kindergarten and primary education. It examines important new trends and developments in research and practice, and emphasizes theoretical, empirical and developmental issues. Further, it discusses various topics, including curriculum studies and implementation, spatial abilities and geometric reasoning, as well as the psychological roots of geometrical thinking and teacher preparation in geometry education. It considers these issues from historical, epistemological, cognitive semiotic and educational points of view in the context of students' difficulties and the design of teaching and curricula

An Empirical Study of the Mexican Banking System's Network and Its Implications for Systemic Risk

With the purpose of measuring and monitoring systemic risk, some topological properties of the interbank exposures and the payments system networks are studied. We propose non-topological measures which are useful to describe the individual behavior of banks in both networks. The evolution of such networks is also studied and some important conclusions from the systemic risks perspective are drawn. A unified measure of interconnectedness is also created. The main findings of this study are: the payments system network is strongly connected in contrast to the interbank exposures network; the type of exposures and payment size reveal different roles played by banks; behavior of banks in the exposures network changed considerably after Lehmans failure; interconnectedness of a bank, estimated by the unified measure, is not necessarily related with its assets size

Co-removal of P-nitrophenol and nitrate in sulfur-based autotrophic and methanol-fed heterotrophic denitrification bioreactors

P-nitrophenol (PNP) can co-occur with nitrate (NO3-) in industrial and municipal wastewater due to effluent discharges from industry and agricultural activities. In this study, the simultaneous removal of PNP and NO3- was investigated under autotrophic and heterotrophic denitrifying conditions in two bioreactor columns at laboratory scale. Autotrophic denitrification with elemental sulfur showed efficient elimination of both PNP (85 % on average for 5-50 mg/L) and NO3- (99 % on average) even at feed PNP concentration of 50 mg/L. In contrast, the heterotrophic column showed significantly lower PNP removal (53 % on average for 5-50 mg/L) despite denitrification efficiency being >= 95 %. ORP was identified as a possible control parameter to modulate PNP removal efficiency. The autotrophic column showed better resiliency than the heterotrophic one under intermittent feeding of 50 mg/L of PNP. Absorbance spectra and HPLC results revealed no accumulation of PNP by-products, i.e., aminophenol, in the autotrophic column during transient feeding conditions