Students' mental prototypes for functions and graphs

This research study investigates the concept of function developed by students studying English A-level mathematics. It shows that, while students may be able to use functions in their practical mathematics, their grasp of the theoretical nature of the function concept may be tenuous and inconsistent. The hypothesis is that students develop prototypes for the function concept in much the same way as they develop prototypes for concepts in everyday life. The definition of the function concept, though given in the curriculum, is not stressed and proves to be inoperative, with their understanding of the concept reliant on properties of familiar prototype examples: those having regular shaped graphs, such as x2 or sin*, those often encountered (possibly erroneously), such as a circle, those in which y is defined as an explicit formula in x, and so on. Investigations reveal significant misconceptions. For example, threequarters of a sample of students starting a university mathematics course considered that a constant function was not a function in either its graphical or algebraic forms, and threequarters thought that a circle is a function. This reveals a wide gulf between the concepts as perceived to be taught and as actually learned by the students

Saints, heroes, sages, and villains

This essay explores the question of how to be good. My starting point is a thesis about moral worth that I’ve defended in the past: roughly, that an action is morally worthy if and only it is performed for the reasons why it is right. While I think that account gets at one important sense of moral goodness, I argue here that it fails to capture several ways of being worthy of admiration on moral grounds. Moral goodness is more multi-faceted. My title is intended to capture that multi-facetedness: the essay examines saintliness, heroism, and sagacity. The variety of our common-sense moral ideals underscores the inadequacy of any one account of moral admirableness, and I hope to illuminate the distinct roles these ideals play in our everyday understanding of goodness. Along the way, I give an account of what makes actions heroic, of whether such actions are supererogatory, and of what, if anything, is wrong with moral deference. At the close of the essay, I begin to explore the flipside of these ideals: villainy

Origin of molecular oxygen in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Molecular oxygen has been detected in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with abundances in the 1-10% range by the ROSINA-DFMS instrument on board the Rosetta spacecraft. Here we find that the radiolysis of icy grains in low-density environments such as the presolar cloud may induce the production of large amounts of molecular oxygen. We also show that molecular oxygen can be efficiently trapped in clathrates formed in the protosolar nebula, and that its incorporation as crystalline ice is highly implausible because this would imply much larger abundances of Ar and N2 than those observed in the coma. Assuming that radiolysis has been the only O2 production mechanism at work, we conclude that the formation of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is possible in a dense and early protosolar nebula in the framework of two extreme scenarios: (1) agglomeration from pristine amorphous icy grains/particles formed in ISM and (2) agglomeration from clathrates that formed during the disk's cooling. The former scenario is found consistent with the strong correlation between O2 and H2O observed in 67P/C-G's coma while the latter scenario requires that clathrates formed from ISM icy grains that crystallized when entering the protosolar nebula.Comment: The Astrophysical Journal Letters, in pres

Towards a resolution of some outstanding issues in transitive research: an empirical test on middle childhood

Transitive Inference (deduce B > D from B > C and C > D) can help us to understand other areas of sociocognitive development. Across three experiments, learning, memory, and the validity of two transitive paradigms were investigated. In Experiment 1 (N = 121), 7-year-olds completed a three-term nontraining task or a five-term task requiring extensive-training. Performance was superior on the three-term task. Experiment 2 presented 5–10-year-olds with a new five-term task, increasing learning opportunities without lengthening training (N = 71). Inferences improved, suggesting children can learn five-term series rapidly. Regarding memory, the minor (CD) premise was the best predictor of BD-inferential performance in both task-types. However, tasks exhibited different profiles according to associations between the major (BC) premise and BD inference, correlations between the premises, and the role of age. Experiment 3 (N = 227) helped rule out the possible objection that the above findings simply stemmed from three-term tasks with real objects being easier to solve than computer-tasks. It also confirmed that, unlike for five-term task (Experiments 1 & 2), inferences on three-term tasks improve with age, whether the age range is wide (Experiment 3) or narrow (Experiment 2). I conclude that the tasks indexed different routes within a dual-process conception of transitive reasoning: The five-term tasks indexes Type 1 (associative) processing, and the three-term task indexes Type 2 (analytic) processing. As well as demonstrating that both tasks are perfectly valid, these findings open up opportunities to use transitive tasks for educability, to investigate the role of transitivity in other domains of reasoning, and potentially to benefit the lived experiences of persons with developmental issues

Developmental toxicity and brain aromatase induction by high genistein concentrations in zebrafish embryos

Genistein is a phytoestrogen found at a high level in soybeans. In vitro and in vivo studies showed that high concentrations of genistein caused toxic effects. This study was designed to test the feasibility of zebrafish embryos for evaluating developmental toxicity and estrogenic potential of high genistein concentrations. The zebrafish embryos at 24 h post-fertilization were exposed to genistein (1 × 10−4 M, 0.5 × 10−4 M, 0.25 × 10−4 M) or vehicle (ethanol, 0.1%) for 60 h. Genistein-treated embryos showed decreased heart rates, retarded hatching times, decreased body length, and increased mortality in a dose-dependent manner. After 0.25 × 10−4 M genistein treatment, malformations of survived embryos such as pericardial edema, yolk sac edema, and spinal kyphosis were also observed. TUNEL assay results showed apoptotic DNA fragments in brain. This study also confirmed the estrogenic potential of genistein by EGFP expression in the brain of the mosaic reporter zebrafish embryos. This study first demonstrated that high concentrations of genistein caused a teratogenic effect on zebrafish embryos and confirmed the estrogenic potential of genistein in mosaic reporter zebrafish embryos

A genistein derivative, ITB-301, induces microtubule depolymerization and mitotic arrest in multidrug-resistant ovarian cancer

PURPOSE: To investigate the mechanistic basis of the anti-tumor effect of the compound ITB-301. METHODS: Chemical modifications of genistein have been introduced to improve its solubility and efficacy. The anti-tumor effects were tested in ovarian cancer cells using proliferation assays, cell cycle analysis, immunofluorescence, and microscopy. RESULTS: In this work, we show that a unique glycoside of genistein, ITB-301, inhibits the proliferation of SKOv3 ovarian cancer cells. We found that the 50% growth inhibitory concentration of ITB-301 in SKOv3 cells was 0.5 μM. Similar results were obtained in breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and acute myelogenous leukemia cell lines. ITB-301 induced significant time- and dose-dependent microtubule depolymerization. This depolymerization resulted in mitotic arrest and inhibited proliferation in all ovarian cancer cell lines examined including SKOv3, ES2, HeyA8, and HeyA8-MDR cells. The cytotoxic effect of ITB-301 was dependent on its induction of mitotic arrest as siRNA-mediated depletion of BUBR1 significantly reduced the cytotoxic effects of ITB-301, even at a concentration of 10 μM. Importantly, efflux-mediated drug resistance did not alter the cytotoxic effect of ITB-301 in two independent cancer cell models of drug resistance. CONCLUSION: These results identify ITB-301 as a novel anti-tubulin agent that could be used in cancers that are multidrug resistant. We propose a structural model for the binding of ITB-301 to α- and β-tubulin dimers on the basis of molecular docking simulations. This model provides a rationale for future work aimed at designing of more potent analogs

The link between job satisfaction and organizational commitment:differences between public and private sector employees

Employees in the public and private sectors experience different working conditions and employment relationships. Therefore, it can be assumed that their attitudes toward their job and organizations, and relationships between them, are different. The existing literature has identified the relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction as interesting in this context. The present field study examines the satisfaction–commitment link with respect to differences between private and public sector employees. A sample of 617 Greek employees (257 from the private sector and 360 from the public sector) completed standardized questionnaires. Results confirmed the hypothesized relationship differences: Extrinsic satisfaction and intrinsic satisfaction are more strongly related to affective commitment and normative commitment for public sector employees than for private sector ones. The results are discussed, limitations are considered, and directions for future research are proposed