Concrete Instruction Research Articles

Assessments of Air Pollution Control Effectiveness Based on a Sharp Regression Discontinuity Design —Evidence From China’s Environmental Big Data

The Assessment andAppraisal Method for Ecological Construction Targets (the Method) was promulgated in 2016, which provided a concrete instruction for China’s air pollution control and established an explicit standard for reducing air pollutant concentration. This study implements a sharp regression discontinuity (RD) design and makes an assessment on air quality control effectiveness of the Method based on the high-volume big data acquired from 173 cities in China. The results show that the Method has significantly improved air pollution control on the overall air quality index (AQI) and reducing concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, SO2, NO2, and CO across the country in the observation periods. However, no reduction effect was observed for O3. The robustness tests support the conclusion as well. Besides, the heterogeneity analysis illustrates that the policy had a significant short-term treatment effect in East, South, Central, North, Northwest, Southwest, and Northeast China. However, the Method’s effect is found to decline over time either nationwide or regionally according to the persistence analysis. Therefore, this article puts forward several suggestions regarding the formulation of long-term regulations for air pollution control, the transformation of the growth model for sustainable development, and optimization of the incentive system for improved pollution control and prevention.

“Neural differences in expert guitarists during over-learned non-standard visuomotor mapping of abstract versus concrete information”

Using visual information to perform actions is a fundamental aspect of human behavior. Musicians commonly translate visual information into action using both concrete and abstract visual information. We exposed expert guitarists to four types of familiar visual depictions of action instruction including musical notation (very abstract), tablature (abstract), chord diagrams (more concrete), and actual pictures of guitars chords being formed (very concrete). These were shown during fMRI scanning as the guitarists formed the appropriate chords (as visually depicted) on a magnet safe guitar fret board with strings, or where they simply viewed the visual stimuli without an action. Whole brain contrasts revealed that the right precuneus was more active for abstract instruction while an occipito-insular circuit was more active for concrete instruction. The current findings highlight that the degree of over-learned visual abstraction is an important factor modulating visual-motor processing.

Combining of Concrete and Abstract Instruction for Teaching Strategies for Solving Two-digit Multiplication Problems

Combining of Concrete and Abstract Instruction for Teaching Strategies for Solving Two-digit Multiplication Problems

Evaluating Environmental Impact in Foundations and Structures through Disaggregated Models: Towards the Decarbonisation of the Construction Sector

Having a tool in Spanish regulations to evaluate the sustainability of the construction process in a simple and efficient way (Annex 13 of the Structural Concrete Instruction EHE-08) means an advance with respect to regulations in other countries. However, the complexity of homogenising the conditions that affect the execution of each structure, which are of a very heterogeneous and variable nature, in order to be able to evaluate their contribution to sustainability within the same reference framework, is the greatest obstacle and can have a great influence on the representativeness of the obtained results. However, there are variables that, given their specificity and nature, are not contemplated in this methodology (dust, noise and vibration emission, transportation). This paper proposes a complementary disaggregated model to evaluate the sustainability of variables that are not considered, namely the transportation of materials to the worksite, the commute of workers, the construction process, the emissions of dust, noise and vibrations, as well as the necessary load tests. The results of the application of this model to the real case of the foundations of two singular buildings, show the importance that these previously unexamined variables can have when choosing the most sustainable technical solution in terms of CO2 emissions.

University Students’ Actually Writing Situation and Teaching Methods―Focusing on ‘Thought and Expression’ at Soonchunhyang University

문장은 글을 구성하는 핵심 단위이다. 주제 분석, 내용 생성 및 정리, 개요 작성 등에 많은 노력을 기울여도 문장을 제대로 쓰지 않으면 글쓴이가 가진 생각을 독자에게 제대로 전달할 수 없다. 이 논문은 대학생들이 작성한 글에서 빈번하게 나타나는 문장 오류의 양상을 파악하여 이를 바탕으로 실질적인 지도 방안을 모색한 것이다. 이 과정에서 순천향대학교 ‘사고와 표현’의 교재이자 지침(guideline)인 􋺷사고와 표현􋺸의 문장 관련지도 내용(‘단어’, ‘문장’)을 검토하였다. 순천향대학교 학생들이 작성한 글을 분석ㆍ검토한 결과, ‘띄어쓰기, 호응, 문법 요소(조사, 어미) 오용, 문장 성분 생략, 피동ㆍ사동 표현, 같거나 비슷한 어휘 중복, 구어체 표현, 표기’ 등의 오류 양상이 빈번하게 나타났다. 이 논문은 문장 오류 양상을 확인하고, 문장 쓰기 교육의 필요성ㆍ중요성을 강조하는 것에서 그치지 않고 구체적인 지도 방안까지 제안한 것으로 대학생 문장쓰기 관련 연구 자료 또는 글쓰기 강의 보조 자료로 활용할 수 있을 것이다.This study investigates sentence error patterns that frequently appear in university students’ writing and, based on this exploration, provides practical guidance. In this course, I reviewed the contents (“words” and “sentences”) related to sentence instruction in Thought and Expression, a textbook of Soonchunhyang University. After analyzing and reviewing the text written by Soonchunhyang University students, it was found that errors such as the following frequently appeared in students’ writing: spacing, response, grammatical elements(postposition, ending), omitted sentence components, passive and causative expressions, overlapping of same or similar vocabulary, colloquial expressions, and notations. This study not only emphasizes the necessity and importance of sentence writing education; but also suggests a concrete instruction plan, which can be used as a study material for sentence writing by university students or for developing supplementary lecture materials.

Profile of elementary school science teacher instruction in disaster risk reduction: case study of volcano disaster

This study examined the profile of science' teacher instruction in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), as a feature of instructional quality, on students’ learning experiences. A qualitative study was done to observe teacher activities in teaching of disaster preparedness. Science teacher and 14 students at grade 4 of SDN (elementary school) Kiyaran 2 are involved as the subject of this study. Teacher’ instruction was coded with regard to preparation, action, and evaluation using observation sheets and documentation. Data analysis results showed a positive significant effect of the readiness during preparation on learning process of disaster risk reduction and an indirect effect of teacher’ action on students’ learning experiences. There is a lack of teaching materials about volcano disaster in the elementary school. Teacher found difficulties on evaluation of student achievement in disaster preparedness. These findings highlight the importance of DRR in uphold science teachers’ education. Items of teachers’ skill in preparing of DRR may be used to offer model of concrete instruction situation during university workshop for maintain teacher education.

The Role of Primary Care Providers in Encouraging Older Patients to Change Their Lifestyle Behaviors

ABSTRACTObjectives: This study sought to identify older patients’ perceptions of primary care providers’ influence on their likelihood of improving diet and physical activity.Methods: 104 adults ages 65 and older were interviewed immediately following a routine primary care visit about their plans and motivations for behavior change and how their clinic visit would influence their likelihood of making lifestyle changes. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using a constant comparison approach.Results: Participants reported that their providers influence their health behaviors by developing strong relationships, addressing concerns and encouraging change, and providing concrete instruction. When providers did not discuss diet or physical activity, or mentioned these topics only briefly, participants often perceived the message that they should continue their current behaviors.Conclusions: Whether and how diet and physical activity are discussed in primary care influences the likelihood that older adults will make changes in these behaviors.Clinical Implications: These findings highlight the need for a patient-centered counseling approach and caution providers to think twice before omitting discussion of the need for lifestyle change.

The Doctrinal Approach in International Human Rights Scholarship

Studies reveal that academics who engage in doctrinal research in the discipline of law rarely describe their reasons for doing so or how they go about it. Perhaps this is because doctrinal research does not lend itself to straightforward explanation but rather is a genre of research." That is largely intuitively, rather than rationally, understood amongst lawyers and researchers”. Doctrinal legal research in the field of international human rights scholarship appears to be no different; while this method of research infuses a great deal of human rights scholarship, there is a dearth of reflection on its intrinsic value or indeed purpose in the field and even less concrete instruction on what it entails in terms of its methodological requirements. In an attempt to fill this lacuna, this chapter begins with an overview of the doctrinal method in general terms, highlighting its strengths as well as its weaknesses. It goes on to consider the specific challenges facing the doctrinal analyst when researching in the field of international human rights, before analyzing some concrete examples of the doctrinal method in action in this context.

The Use of Concrete Experiences in Early Childhood Mathematics Instruction.

Addressed are four key issues regarding concrete instruction: What is concrete? What is a worthwhile concrete experience? How can concrete experiences be used effectively in early childhood mathematics instruction? Is there evidence such experiences work? I argue that concrete experiences are those that build on what is familiar to a child and can involve objects, verbal analogies, or virtual images. The use of manipulatives or computer games, for instance, does not in itself guarantee an educational experience. Such experiences are worthwhile if they target and further learning (e.g., help children extend their informal knowledge or use their informal knowledge to understand and learn formal knowledge). A crucial guideline for the effective use of concrete experience is Dewey's principle of interaction-external factors (e.g., instructional activities) need to mesh with internal factors (readiness, interest). Cognitive views of concrete materials, such as the cognitive alignment perspective and dual-representation hypothesis, provide useful guidance about external factors but do not adequately take into account internal factors and their interaction with external factors. Research on the effectiveness of concrete experience is inconclusive because it frequently overlooks internal factors.

Perceptions of Supervision in an Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic.

There is little guidance regarding best practices in supervision of psychiatric residents. As a result, expectations for both supervisors and trainees are often unclear. This study explored the experiences of trainees and supervisors in outpatient supervision, in order to identify areas for potential improvement. The authors conducted focus groups of residents and faculty members. The sessions were transcribed and analyzed via established methods of qualitative data analysis. A number of themes emerged. In general, residents desire an explicit structure to supervisory sessions, with more specific and concrete instruction. Attendings prefer to let residents lead discussion in supervision and focus on interpersonal aspects, such as the mentor-mentee relationship. Findings were situated within an established model of skill acquisition, the five-stage progression described by Dreyfus and Dreyfus. The differing experiences of trainees and supervisors reflect their respective stages of skill development as ambulatory psychiatrists. Potential interventions to improve the educational value of supervision include explicit agenda-setting at the beginning of supervision, regular bidirectional feedback, and more frequent opportunities for residents to observe attending interviews with patients.

Opportunities and obstacles to consider when using peer- and self-assessment to improve student learning: Case studies into teachers' implementation

Peer- and self-assessment (PASA) are student-led assessment practices with the potential to positively affect achievement. Case studies of three New Zealand classrooms were examined to explore teacher and student perspectives of and purposes for PASA. Four themes (i.e., improvement, accountability, social interaction, and accuracy) were identified. Teachers cited mainly improvement purposes for PASA, with students primarily focused on accuracy and social interaction concerns. Data indicated that these teachers and students needed deeper understanding of how to use PASA for improvement and self-regulation purposes. This suggests teachers must provide concrete instruction in PASA and carefully manage interpersonal issues for successful implementation.

Las curvas tensión-deformación de hormigones ensayados bajo compresión uniaxial monotónica: una revisión sistemática

La existencia de mas de una treintena de expresiones matematicas distintas que pretenden representar la evolucion tenso- deformacional de una probeta de hormigon sometida a compresion uniaxial monotonica (incluidas las propuestas en las normativas oficiales de los distintos paises que tienen regulado por ley el empleo del hormigon como material estructural), parece requerir un esfuerzo adicional a la hora de formular una expresion universalmente aceptada. Como primer paso hacia ese objetivo, en este trabajo se muestran y analizan de manera sistematica las distintas dinastias de ecuaciones publicadas, desde las primeras propuestas de Ritter y Bach (1897- 1899), pasando por los truncamientos polinomicos mas o menos complejos de la ecuacion de Smith y Young (1956), hasta las aportaciones basadas en distribuciones estadisticas del modelo de dano, concluyendo con el analisis del tratamiento dado a la cuestion por las distintas versiones del Codigo Modelo y la Instruccion de Hormigon Estructural espanola (EHE-08).

A Valuable Resource for All Palliative Care Disciplines

Drs. Puchalski and Ferrell have written a fine book on Integrating Spirituality Into Patient Care, which should be useful and accessible to palliative care clinicians of all disciplines. The authors, a physician and a nurse, are well known and respected in palliative care. As a hospice and palliative care chaplain, I found their perspectives on spirituality refreshing and informative. Works on spirituality can suffer from an excessive focus on lofty ideals at the expense of specific details, and the authors, to their great credit, avoid this mistake. This book presents specific and practical strategies for better integration of spiritual care into clinical work. In the chapter entitled “Spiritual History Taking and Assessment,” concrete instruction is provided on how best to perform a history and initial assessment. As a hospice chaplain, I found the clinical suggestions well informed, effective, and empowering for all members of the interdisciplinary team, to identify and explore spiritual issues facing patients. Suggestions for taking a history and doing an assessment are well summarized in a handy appendix. Although the advice offered is practical, the task at hand should not be taken lightly. As the authors stress, skilled spiritual assessment and care requires compassion and deep respect for the patient’s unique expression of his or her spirituality. It also takes a lot of practice. I was struck by the book’s handling of the difficult, but important, balance between the specific and the transcendental. The authors note that patients often want to address existential questions, whether there are “answers.” Some patients find answers to their questions, but many do not, and that is acceptable. Simply listening, hearing, and respecting their questions can bring comfort, even when there is no clear answer. This is particularly relevant for those of us working in palliative care. When faced with suffering, we tend to want to provide specific answers and fix things. The authors of this book remind us that this is not always optimal for honoring patients’ concerns. They also note that spiritual beliefs and concerns are expressed differently across cultures. Therefore, a deeper understanding of these cultural differences will inform our work in addressing and alleviating suffering. The book addresses a number of topics not commonly found in books on spirituality. For example, Chapter 9 presents an excellent discussion of the value of understanding the professional training and qualifications of other palliative care team members. Too often we do not know enough about each other’s backgrounds. Specific to chaplaincy, there are significant differences among chaplains in the nature of their training and different certification levels, which are of relevance to their work in palliative care and yet unfamiliar to other team members. Chapter 10 provides a useful reference on specific training programs for clergy, psychologists, physician assistants, and nurses that have been implemented and address spiritual care. In summary, this book provides a well-written practical discussion of how to improve the quality of spiritual care delivered by clinicians and palliative care teams. As the authors state, “All members of the palliative care team should be trained in spiritual care. This training should be part of continuing education for all clinicians.” I wholeheartedly agree and believe that this book will be a valuable asset and tool for others working toward that end. Penny V. Phillips, MA, MDiv, BCC, is a Hospice and Palliative Care Chaplain at the Palo Alto VA Hospice Care Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA.

Dynamic Concrete Instruction in an Inclusive Classroom

NCTM advocates the use of multiple representations and manipulatives for building mathematical understanding (NCTM 2000). Engaging students in mathematics using manipulatives can have a powerful effect on learning. The use of manipulatives is especially effective for students with high-incidence disabilities, such as learning disabilities (LD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and mild to moderate mental disabilities (MD). Allowing students to use manipulatives gives them the opportunity to experience multisensory learning, which helps promote success for students with highincidence disabilities. Experiences with manipulative objects can help students develop conceptual understanding. If used appropriately, manipulatives can also help those with high-incidence disabilities connect conceptual understandings of mathematics to the process of doing mathematics (i.e., using effective problem-solving strategies) throughout their K–12 education.

Contextualized Approach to Language and Literacy (Project CALL)

In a federally funded early literacy project, various instructional activities were embedded into an array of classroom contexts to provide supplemental literacy instruction and to contrast children's engagement and participation in different contexts and participant structures. The study was conducted with English- and Spanish-speaking children from four Head Start classrooms. In a crossover project design, children were trained on similar sets of rhyme and letter targets at different times. Three-way ANOVAs with rhyme and letter difference scores as the dependent variables revealed a significant time-of-test effect for rhyming and significant Time × Order × Set interactions for rhyme and letter generation. Children performed better on trained than untrained targets. Observations of children revealed growth in performance and spontaneity of rhyme skills in classroom contexts. Qualitative analyses documented high levels of engagement, illustrating the value of varying activities and contexts for instruction. Both groups demonstrated their ability to gain from concrete instruction and interactive participation.

Instruction in Reliability and Magnitude of Evaluation Parameters at Each Phase of a Sit-to-Stand Movement

The sit-to-stand movement strategy of each subject is different depending on whether the subjects perform voluntary movements or have concrete instructions (i.e., stand quickly), which is strongly reflected in the performance of each sit-to-stand movement phase. Thirty young-adult male subjects participated in this study (M age=20.7 yr; SD=2.6). Subjects performed the two movements from a chair height adjusted to the subject's lower thigh length. In the self-administered (SA) condition, subjects voluntarily stood up from the chair without instruction, and in the assigned-ordered (AO) condition subjects stood up from the chair as fast as possible. Vertical floor reaction force and electromyograms of the rectus femoris and tibialis anterior muscles were measured, and 15 parameters were selected. The parameters in the phase between the peak value of the floor reaction force and completion of the movement was highly reliable regardless of instruction. However, other parameters had different reliabilities between the instruction conditions. In particular, the parameters in the phase between starting the movement and the peak value of the floor reaction force under the assigned-order were higher than those of the self-administered condition. Moreover, the sit-to-stand movement was conducted faster in the assigned-order condition during the phase between starting the movement and buttocks-syneresis, and the peak value of the floor reaction force and completion of the movement. From the above, in the assigned-order condition "as fast as possible," the anteflexion bending movement and extension of knee and trunk joints were faster, and anteflexion movement was repeated more similarly under a concrete instruction such as moving as fast as possible.

A Case Study of Development of a Java Bytecode Analyzer Framework Using AspectJ

Aspect-orientation is a new programming paradigm that can localize a cross-cutting concern in a single module. This paper proposes a new type of Java bytecode analyzer framework based on aspect-orientation. It includes several new design and implementation techniques that are general or specific to the domain of language systems. We also observe that aspect-orientation improves extensibility, type safety, execution efficiency, and simplicity of the API, when compared with existing analyzer frameworks based on object-orientation such as Soot. This paper reports the following: structural extension of elementary objects maintaining type safety and execution efficiency; separation of a bytecode parser and concrete instruction sets; a visitor based on the stack-machine model; binary operations that are simple, extensive, and easy to maintain; and separation of nonfunctional concerns such as verification. We also observe that AspectJ currently has two limitations: it is not sufficiently expressive to structure aspects strongly depending on the inner structure; and it does not provide a general approach to write advice that cannot be described with information of its pointcut only.

The "EHE" code innovations

This document make a general review of de new Structural Concrete Instruction EHE. It describe the aspects that supose a modification or a new contribution in relation to previous Reinforced Concrete and Prestressed Concrete Instructions.

Moral Exploration: The Relation Between Moral Exhortation and Doctrinal Exposition in the Letter to the Hebrews

It is almost a truism to say that the moral teaching of the New Testament exhibits wide diversity. While the Synoptic Gospels and the letters of Paul are marked by an abundance of concrete instruction, the contribution of other writings is more in the realm of motivation and exhortation. Instead of emphasizing concrete moral instruction, they focus on why Christians should persevere in the moral life. This essay examines the relationship between exhortation and doctrinal exposition in the Letter to the Hebrews, a relationship of no little import for contemporary Christian ethics.

AIDS Risk and Prevention for the Chronic Mentally Ill

Some chronic mentally ill populations are at high risk for infection with human immunodeficiency virus. The authors argue that stereotypes of the mentally ill as asexual or neutered have had dangerous consequences, namely the absence of sex education and AIDS prevention as an integral part of treatment. To counter this neglect, the authors developed an AIDS prevention program in a large inner-city mental health center that serves primarily black and Latino patients. Prevention efforts include individual risk assessments and an innovative drop-in group. Central to effective patient education are the distribution of condoms and concrete instruction in their use.