Sand pictures : what's missing?
This activity opens with pictures of traditional African sand paintings called sonas. A sona is comprised of dots and loops. One design is missing, and students are asked to study the patterns and determine the appearance of the missing design. The activity, part of the Figure This! collection of 80 math challenges emphasizing real world math, explains the importance of mathematical patterns in archaeology and cultural anthropology. The Hint suggests that students examine the number and arrangem
Decorating boxes : how do you print a ribbon on a box?
This activity begins with an illustration showing four boxes opened flat and decorated with two-dimensional ribbon patterns. Each box pattern shows a ribbon crossing several sides of the box. Students are asked to decide which of the patterns can be folded into a box that has a ribbon running continuously around it. The activity, part of the Figure This! collection of math challenges, notes that visualizing three-dimensional objects from drawings or plans is important in the work of architects,
Thirteen? Oh, no! : Are you superstitious? Do you avoid the number 13?
This activity asks student to determine if there a Friday the 13th in every year. The activity, from the Figure This! collection of 80 math challenges, also considers superstitions associated with the number 13. It suggests that the student make lists and examine calendars to determine the total number of possible calendar arrangements. The usefulness of reasoning with number patterns and dates is noted. The page features links to a solution hint, the solution, related math questions, and resour
Dynamic Remodeling of Individual Nucleosomes Across a Eukaryotic Genome in Response to Transcription
The eukaryotic genome is packaged as chromatin with nucleosomes comprising its basic structural unit, but the detailed structure of chromatin and its dynamic remodeling in terms of individual nucleosome positions has not been completely defined experimentally for any genome. We used ultra-high–throughput sequencing to map the remodeling of individual nucleosomes throughout the yeast genome before and after a physiological perturbation that causes genome-wide transcriptional changes. Nearly 80%
A semaphorin code defines subpopulations of spinal motor neurons during mouse development.
In the spinal cord, motor neurons (MNs) with similar muscle targets and sensory inputs are grouped together into motor pools. To date, relatively little is known about the molecular mechanisms that control the establishment of pool-specific circuitry. Semaphorins, a large family of secreted and cell surface proteins, are important mediators of developmental processes such as axon guidance and cell migration. Here, we used mRNA in situ hybridization to study the expression patterns of semaphorins
Learning to Use Visualizations (an example with elevation and temperature)
The purpose of this activity is to introduce students to visualizations as a tool for scientific problem-solving, using elevation and temperature as an example. Students color in visualizations of elevation and temperature so that important patterns in the data become evident. The relationship between the two quantities is studied by using them to compute the lapse rate, the rate at which temperature falls with increasing elevation. Intended outcomes are that students can identify and communicat
A First Look At Phenology
The purpose of this resource is to increase students' awareness of the qualitative changes in plants during green-up and green-down from which they will be collecting quantitative leaf change data, and to develop an understanding of the patterns and differences among plants at the same location. Students will observe, compare, and classify plants during green-up or green-down and then make inferences based on the patterns they observe.
What Are Some Factors That Affect Seasonal Patterns?
The purpose of this resource is to have students use GLOBE data and graphing tools to compare the influence of latitude, elevation, and geography on seasonal patterns. Students analyze the graph of the past year's maximum and minimum temperatures at their site. They compare this graph to similar graphs for two other sites and list which factors that might cause the patterns to be different and investigate one in depth.
Imagination, Creativity And Entrepreneurship
This is a course about the courage to create, and to risk making mistakes in the quest for ideas that lead to a true innovation of a product, service or process. Creativity is the central focus, which might be defined as "the application of a person's mental ability and curiosity to discover something new. The act of relating previously unrelated things." More specifically, we are concerned with capitalist creativity, which means that solutions must be generated that are profitable and reflect b
Phylogenetic Investigator
Phylogenetic Investigator (PI) is a software package designed to facilitate creative problem-solving in phylogenetic analysis for the purpose of teaching and learning phylogenetic inference. Users can identify characters and states, polarize characters, and engage in directed-search phylogenetic tree construction.
PI also allows the user to
* make inferences and represent them one step at a time
* vary representational features of their trees (such as angle of divergence and time betwee
Counting on Art
In Counting on Art, students will explore the paintings of Horace Pippin and Wayne Thiebaud and the mobiles of Alexander Calder to discover and practice math and visual art concepts.In Pippin's Story, young children (grades K–3) focus on a painting by African American artist Horace Pippin. They will learn how to "read" the clues in a painting and write a story about the work. Students will also solve counting and time problems and create their own "secret number" painting.Calder's Balancing Ac
Gender, sexual orientation and victim blame regarding male victims of sexual assault
Although research has found that between 5% to 20% of adult men in non-institutionalized and non-military populations have been the victimes of a sexual assault, these victims are largely ignored by society and mental health professionals. Factos that may account for this lack of attention may be due to the small number of victims (as compared to female victims) and rape myths that promote the denial that male rape can occur. The psychological literature also reflects this neglect as the majorit
Model testing of passive site stabilization
Passive site stabilization is a new technology proposed for use in mitigation of liquefaction risk at developed sites. Liquefaction is the rapid loss of strength caused by earthquakes, typically found in saturated sands or loose fills, which causes the formation to flow like later. Liquefaction has been known to be a very costly occurrence claiming many lives, damaging structures and businesses, and costing billions of dollars in repairs; however, sites can be remediated to prevent liquefaction.
Fault-tolerant distributed shared memory on a broadcast-based interconnection architecture
This thesis focuses on the issue of reliability and fault tolerance in Distributed Shared Memory Multiprocessors, and on the performance impact of implementing fault tolerance protocols that allow for Backward Error Recovery through the use of synchronized checkpointing. High Performance Parallel computing systems that implement Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) require interconnection networks capable of providing low latency and high bandwidth and efficient support for multicast and synchronizat
Arts and Literature: Peace Corps
features lessons about stories, folk tales, poems, and letters from the experiences of Peace Corps volunteers. Examine writing style and techniques: vivid images, powerful descriptions, balanced sentences, parallelism, and more. Read folk tales from Togo, Macedonian, Romania, and Russia; learn about structure and patterns in the tales.
Africa: Peace Corps
offers lessons on stories, letters, photos, and study units from experiences of Peace Corps volunteers across Africa. Topics include folk tales and patterns in them, racial prejudice in South Africa, life in a village of Tanzania, traditional healers and HIV/AIDS, the meaning of wealth, sharing and generosity, what it takes to be a hero, time and punctuality, perspectives of different cultures, and water.
Comparing and Contrasting Political Change through Map Making
In this lesson, students will work in cooperative groups to compare and contrast the following presidential elections: 1876, 1896, 1948, 1964, 1972, 1980, and 2008 through the creation of political maps. In addition, each group will provide explanations of campaign platforms for different political parties, voting patterns, and why the election is important for understanding changes in Southern Politics. Students will then present their map and detailed explanations to the class.
One Nation: Two Futures?
Since the mid-l970s, economic reforms have transformed China from one of the most egalitarian societies into one of the most unequal in the world. Wide disparities currently exist between the income levels of a relatively few rich and middle-class Chinese and their fellow citizens who number in the hundreds of millions. This "wealth gap" is particularly acute when one compares the incomes of urban and rural residents, between Chinese living in the interior of the country and those living in the
Earth Exploration Toolbook Chapter: Using GLOBE Data to Study the Earth System
This Earth Exploration Toolbook chapter guides users through the process of locating and graphing data that has been collected by students who participate in the GLOBE Program. Users access the online GLOBE graphing tool and produce a graph comparing four Earth system variables over two complete years. Data include Maximum Air Temperature, Soil Moisture (at depths of both 10 cm and 90 cm), and Rainfall recorded in Greenville, Pennsylvania. As they investigate this specific case study, users disc
Earth Exploration Toolbook Chapter: Investigating Earthquakes: GIS Mapping and Analysis
This activity describes the technique of preparing latitude-longitude based data so it can be imported into a geographic information system (GIS). The chapter describes the steps to create a map to display data and guides users through some basic geographic analyses. The focus of the chapter's case study is earthquake prediction. Users download and format near real-time and historical earthquake data from the USGS. They import the data into ArcVoyager Special Edition GIS software, and analyze pa
