Rational Project Research Articles

The effect of using a research-based curriculum on learning basic rational number concepts by Lebanese students

Abstract This research study investigates the effects of using a research-based curriculum, the Rational Number Project (RNP) Curriculum, on the acquisition of basic rational number concepts by 5th grade students in contrast with those using the traditional Lebanese curriculum. The study sample comprised five schools randomly selected from a population of 14 schools. Eighteen 5th grade classrooms were randomly assigned to experimental (RNP) and control (TRAD) groups. Two instruments were used for data collection: a RNP post-test and a school test. Both tests were administered to assess students’ achievement after curricular intervention. After a series of six-hour professional training sessions, RNP teachers were given a culturally relevant Arabic version of the RNP curriculum lesson plans and materials for implementation. Three techniques were employed for data analysis: reliability, fidelity and multi analysis of variance (MANOVA). Results showed that students instructed using the research-based curricu...

Does Socio-Technical Congruence Have an Effect on Software Build Success? A Study of Coordination in a Software Project

Socio-technical congruence is an approach that measures coordination by examining the alignment between the technical dependencies and the social coordination in the project. We conduct a case study of coordination in the IBM Rational Team Concert project, which consists of 151 developers over seven geographically distributed sites, and expect that high congruence leads to a high probability of successful builds. We examine this relationship by applying two congruence measurements: an unweighted congruence measure from previous literature, and a weighted measure that overcomes limitations of the existing measure. We discover that there is a relationship between socio-technical congruence and build success probability, but only for certain build types, and observe that in some situations, higher congruence actually leads to lower build success rates. We also observe that a large proportion of zero-congruence builds are successful, and that socio-technical gaps in successful builds are larger than gaps in failed builds. Analysis of the social and technical aspects in IBM Rational Team Concert allows us to discuss the effects of congruence on build success. Our findings provide implications with respect to the limits of applicability of socio-technical congruence and suggest further improvements of socio-technical congruence to study coordination.

Brown Spider (Loxosceles genus) Venom Toxins: Tools for Biological Purposes

Venomous animals use their venoms as tools for defense or predation. These venoms are complex mixtures, mainly enriched of proteic toxins or peptides with several, and different, biological activities. In general, spider venom is rich in biologically active molecules that are useful in experimental protocols for pharmacology, biochemistry, cell biology and immunology, as well as putative tools for biotechnology and industries. Spider venoms have recently garnered much attention from several research groups worldwide. Brown spider (Loxosceles genus) venom is enriched in low molecular mass proteins (5–40 kDa). Although their venom is produced in minute volumes (a few microliters), and contain only tens of micrograms of protein, the use of techniques based on molecular biology and proteomic analysis has afforded rational projects in the area and permitted the discovery and identification of a great number of novel toxins. The brown spider phospholipase-D family is undoubtedly the most investigated and characterized, although other important toxins, such as low molecular mass insecticidal peptides, metalloproteases and hyaluronidases have also been identified and featured in literature. The molecular pathways of the action of these toxins have been reported and brought new insights in the field of biotechnology. Herein, we shall see how recent reports describing discoveries in the area of brown spider venom have expanded biotechnological uses of molecules identified in these venoms, with special emphasis on the construction of a cDNA library for venom glands, transcriptome analysis, proteomic projects, recombinant expression of different proteic toxins, and finally structural descriptions based on crystallography of toxins.

Exploring Delays in Victoria-Based Astralian Pipeline Projects

Concerns for delays and disruptions are common in almost all projects including linear constructions such as pipeline projects. Due to various inherent complexities in such projects, delays could be resulting from several reasons and in most cases the resultant impacts are significantly detrimental. For example, delays could lead to some serious time and/or cost overrun issues thereby adversely affecting the contractors, clients and other stakeholders in different degrees. Consolidating useful knowledge from related research and lessons from recent projects will be beneficial for rationalized project management. Especially, identifying significant root causes of delays and accordingly developing suitable management methods (e.g. prevention measures) are essential to effectively ensuring successful project outcomes. Thus, an ongoing research by the authors aims to study specific cost overrun and time overrun issues in the linear construction projects in Victoria, Australia so as to develop suitable knowledge-based management by rational project planning protocols, control and prevention measures. The research methods considered include detailed literature reviews, targeted interviews with several project managers, and case-study based knowledge mining from some pipeline projects. This paper reports interim key findings from ongoing research, which includes discussions on root causes of delays and management approaches in linear construction projects.

"Nothing But Wind"? The Past and Future of Comparative Corporate Governance

Corporate law scholarship has come a long way since Bayless Manning some four decades ago famously pronounced it dead. Not only has doctrinal scholarship continued its project of critique and rationalization, but empirical and economic approaches have injected new life into the field. Recent years have seen the rise of comparative corporate governance (CCG) as an increasingly mainstream approach within the world of corporate governance studies. This is a function partly of an increasing international orientation on the part of legal scholars and partly of an increasingly empirical turn in corporate law scholarship generally. Different practices in other jurisdictions present at least the possibility of natural experiments that attempt to find causal relationships between particular features of a corporate governance regime and real-world outcomes. This body of research has become particularly relevant as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century. The financial crisis has called into question many of our traditional ways of thinking about corporate governance and the relationship between business enterprises and the state. Are there other countries that do it better? This Article discusses what is unique about CCG as an approach to corporate governance studies. It begins by examining the concepts of corporate governance and comparative corporate governance, making the point that comparative corporate governance has in general been focused on agency problems between shareholders and managers but need not be so. It then looks at methodological issues in comparative corporate governance, critiquing in particular economic Darwinist theories and the failure of theories of international competition in corporate governance to incorporate the notion of comparative advantage. Finally, it reviews major lessons learned from this body of work and suggests direction for future research. Among other things, it calls for more comparative research into alternative business entities dubbed “uncorporations” by Larry Ribstein and into corporate governance in increasingly important economies such as China and India.

An Error Analysis for Rational Galerkin Projection Applied to the Sylvester Equation

In this paper we suggest a new formula for the residual of Galerkin projection onto rational Krylov spaces applied to a Sylvester equation, and establish a relation to three different underlying extremal problems for rational functions. These extremal problems enable us to compare the size of the residual for the above method with that obtained by ADI. In addition, we deduce several new a priori error estimates for Galerkin projection onto rational Krylov spaces, both for the Sylvester and for the Lyapunov equation.

Psychoéducation et attitude phénoménologique en psychothérapie de groupe

Objectives Psychoeducation contains the risk of a misunderstanding in the effective experiences of recognition. We want to show that group psychotherapy can be a means to reconcile recommendations in disease prevention aimed by psychoeducative measures, the vivid and lively dimension of experience found in phenomenological attitudes and aspects, turned to the community world of therapeutic mediation. Method To articulate these various domains, we approach the principles of psychoeducation, the risks which this one can contain and the contributions of clinical phenomenology. Phenomenological method is different from what we call collectively clinical intuition which is always implicitly colored by the typical contexts of meanings of what appears (meanings which have a practical and effective reach for example) and stay, in spite of the critical distance which we can put it, stuffed with various emotional and theoretical predicates muddled between them. The phenomenological attitude aims as much as possible to a suspension of these predicates, that these predicates arise from the common sense of everyday life or that they arise from a detailed specialized knowledge, and this to remove the “coats of sense” which settled on the perception. Results The group, by its multiple interactions, aims at an optimization of the articulation of the self-relationship with relationship socially adapted to the others. The therapist constantly has to attend to dialectical dynamics which reigns between a certain self-dissolution in the group and a return to oneself from the meshing which build up itself within the group. For certain patients, it is particularly difficult to maintain a just balance between the two moments of identity, the one which is peculiar to oneself and the one which emanates from relations with the others towards which we are normally constantly turned. The interest of this psychotherapeutic work in group is here to offer to each of participants the possibility of holding, with a little more confindence, an existential position within a meshing of social links, that is a capacity to seize oneself as existing among the other beings having themselves an own existence. From there, the subjective capacities of each can be better recognized, what can also give place to adjustment of these capacities with individual aspirations. The active implication of patients, so looked for by psychoeducation, is all the more tangible as we were so able to appeal, by the phenomenological attitude, to what feels immediately and without distance as much in an intimate self-relation as in relationship to the others. Conclusions Phenomenological attitude allows not to get stuck in imaginary expert skills, in rational projects of organization and other methodical constructions of the science. This attitude is particularly interesting for group psychotherapy which privileges the opening rather than a work of elaboration. The stake is so the authenticity of a real therapeutic alliance based on fine regulations of the global situation of co-presence taking into account the interlacing of the implicit and the explicit in the exchanges which weave with the patients. We privilege a fertile step rather than rigorous observance of a method which would lead only to a systematization against the spirit of phenomenology. The clinical experience shows that this psychotherapeutic method allows in particular a regular attendance of the group, what is one of major ingredients of its efficiency.

Molecular docking: The role of noncovalent interactions in the formation of protein-nucleotide and protein-peptide complexes

Knowledge of 3D-structure of protein-ligand complex is a major prerequisite for understanding the functioning mechanism of cellular proteins and membrane receptors. This is also of a great help in rational drug design projects. In the present paper we briefly review the molecular docking approaches used to predict possible orientation of a ligand in the protein binding site. The recent trends to improve the accuracy and efficiency of docking algorithms are demonstrated with the results obtained in Laboratory of Biomolecular Modeling. Particular attention is paid to protein-ligand hydrophobic and stacking interactions responsible for molecular recognition of ligand fragments. Such type of interactions are not always adequately represented in scoring criteria of docking applications that leads to mismatch in 3D-structure complexes predictions. That is why further inquiry of methods to account for these interactions is now the area of active research.

Imagining Things as They Are

Modern history indeed we ought to peruse, because all that we wish must be connected with all that we are, and because it is incumbent upon us to explore the means by which the latter may be made, as it were, to slide into the former. But modern history, for the most part, is not to be perused for its own sake. --William Godwin, Of History and Romance (1797) (1) 1. So that's life, then: as they are? (2) READERS OF CALEB WILLIAMS (1794) HAVE LONG SINCE DISCOVERED THE novel's core interest as also its salient problem. That problem lies in the work's unresolved fusion of literary romance with Godwin's late-enlightenment republican political philosophy, Recent commentators begin with the growing consensus that no pat shift away from the rational project of Political Justice (1793) is implied in Caleb Williams, A fated quality on the level of narrative voice and plot evidences the author's famous philosophical determinism. Essays and chapters written from such a premise, however, still tend to arrive in their treatments of the work's distinctly literary mode a contingency that unseats Godwin's earlier philosophical foundation, a strong version of less flexible necessitarian claims. (3) Caleb Williams does not so much abandon the ideas of Political Justice as construct for imagination a vexed but necessary role in their delivery: a literariness essential to its politics (Kaufman 559) that leaves the novel--much like Percy Shelley's rationalist enthusiasm in The Revolt of Islam (1817)--as a revolutionary effort that actually requires failure so as to proceed with its larger historical mission. Godwin's confidence in reform is tied paradoxically to Caleb Williams' success depicting the appalling totality of present injustice, or things as they are. This increasingly dark sense of enlightenment may be instructively linked to Foucault's. In his response to Kant's famous essay, Foucault locates enlightenment at the crossroads of and on history. (4) Both he and Godwin's novel treat enlightenment as an of contemporary critical reflection more than as a body of truths-an toward what, for Godwin, must always be radically contemporary when evoked under the heading things as they are. At once enigmatic and plain, that phrase implicitly asks us to grasp how are as the means to oppose them and reimagine life. There is a nurturing of ontological inquiry that the same time seeks to violate reality's prescriptive inheritance. Godwin's novel anticipates Foucault's stance on a deliberate, difficult attitude that consists in recapturing something eternal that is not beyond the present instant, nor behind it, but in Foucault continues: For the of modernity, the high value of the present is indissociable from a desperate eagerness to imagine it, to imagine it than it is, and to transform it not by destroying it but by grasping it in what it Baudelairean modernity is an exercise in which extreme attention to what is real is confronted with the practice of a liberty that simultaneously respects this reality and violates it. (310-11) Godwin too had reimagined the present otherwise than it is ... by grasping it in what it is. But the name of this effort was not the book we read as Caleb Williams; it is Things as They Are. Kelvin Everest and Gavin Edwards' 1981 essay, William Godwin's 'Caleb Williams': Truth and 'Things As They Are,' remains the best starting place for a joint discussion of the novel's narrative technique and its politics, while also proving notable for redirecting commentary back upon the book's first tire. (5) As the author of the first part, Everest draws a pointed analogy between a division on the British Left in the 1970s and the philosophical stakes of early British Romanticism. In either period, free human agency chafes against theory and structural determination (Everest 129). …

Dalgarno and Leibniz on the Particles

This article discusses the treatment of linguistic particles in various contexts by seventeenth-century philosophers, linguists and logicians. Starting out with a discussion of the logical tradition which formed the background to many of these treatments, the article then focuses on the approach to the subject taken by George Dalgarno, author of the first artificial language published in the seventeenth century, and on Leibniz's study of particles in the context of his grand rational grammar project. The article argues that in spite of a shared background, Dalgarno's and Leibniz's work in this area was informed by widely different aims.

Exile from national identity: memory exclusion as political

Historiography and national memory are not social institutions that formed spontaneously, democratically or pluralistically, but rational projects featuring power relationships, shaped by actors promoting political interests through it and legitimizing their preferential social status and political dominance. The research follows the Israeli Labor Movement's attempts to present the statehood project and the war for independence as achievements owed solely to the Hagana (an underground organization affiliated to the labor movement on the eve of statehood). Insistent efforts distanced from national memory any mention of two other underground movements, affiliated with the rival Revisionist Movement, that after statehood became political Party. The article indicates the memory-screening strategies applied, illuminating the ruling party's conscious attempts to make the public memory and public historiography controllable resources and to exclude political rivals from the national pantheon. Also described is the establishment's meticulousness supervision of national historiography, including history textbooks and commemorative literature. The paper tracks failed attempts by marginalized groups to enter the public memory, and their subsequent launch of an ‘alternative memory arena’ competing with the establishment's memory.

Solid propulsion for space applications: An updated roadmap

For the last 50 years solid propulsion has successfully created a multitude of small launchers and many first stages or boosters for heavy launchers with low risk, high performance, competitive cost, superb storability, and “instant” readiness in many countries. Technical support for these successes arose from simple designs, very high thrust levels, and low development and operation costs/risks. The first solid propulsion roadmap based on these foundations and rational projections was published in 2000 [A. Davenas, D. Boury, M. Calabro, B. D’Andrea, A. McDonald, Solid propulsion for space applications: a roadmap, in: 51st International Astronautical Congress, paper IAA-00-IAA.3.3.02, October 2000]. Moreover, subsequent information supports its enabling technologies (high strength composite cases, energetic material processing based on continuous mixing, low density insulation, reduced actuator energy requirements, and advanced detailed simulations) and applications (first stages, strap-on, add-ons, small launchers, and niche space applications). Missions currently devoted to solid propulsion and plans for present and future launchers and exploration mission developments in the USA, Japan, and Europe are sketched and targeted improvements, and potential breakthroughs are discussed.

The Role of Stacking Interactions in Complexes of Proteins with Adenine and Guanine Fragments of Ligands

The biological function of proteins is closely connected to interactions with their ligands and substrates. Proteins acting as receptors and enzymes bind these small molecules. Knowledge of the molecular mechanisms of protein-ligand interactions, particularly in the spatial structure of the protein-ligand complex, is a prerequisite for understanding the structure-functional properties of proteins and their role in biochemical pathways in the living cell. The availability of such a structure serves as a basis for rational drug design projects and greatly assists the search for new inhibitors (the ligands of certain protein-targets in an organism). Experimental tools for determining the spatial structure of proteins and their complexes with ligands (such as X-ray crystallography or NMR spectroscopy) have particular limitations. Even if the structure of a protein is available, determining the structure of its complex with ligands may be experimentally demanding. Problems with purification and crystallization become especially difficult in studies of transmembrane proteins, which include a biologically important class of G-protein coupled receptors. However, recent successes in determining the structure of beta-adrenergic and adenosine receptors [1] are cause for optimism. The technical difficulties restraining experimental methods stimulated computational molecular modeling. One of them (molecular docking) is a method aimed at predicting the spatial structure of a protein-ligand complex by docking a ligand molecule into the known atomic-resolution structure of a protein-binding site and estimating the reliability of the results. Nowadays, molecular docking has become an integral part of both fundamental studies aimed at understanding the structure-functional role of protein amino acids and applied drug-design programs [2, 3]. Docking approaches are further improved by implementing new algorithms of the conformational search and new scoring functions (methods to estimate the free energy of ligand binding). Scoring functions may include either components of molecular mechanics force fields [2] or empirical terms, e.g. hydrogen bonds described by their geometrical parameters [4]. In this work we studied stacking interactions, which usually are not properly taken into account in widely used scoring functions.

Sex and the limits of enlightenment: The irrationality of legal regimes to control prostitution

To assess the reasonableness of projects to improve the governance of commercial sex, the author explores how rationality in its current hegemonic Western sense is a cultural construction, perceived differently across time and space within Europe. The author examines some aspects of how varying conclusions are reached about which legal prostitution regime to impose, taking into account the role of cultures, worldviews, and interpretation. The author avoids the conventional classification of policy by country that results in unsubtle and overdetermined nationalistic explanations. Current projects to govern prostitution show how the traditional Western idea of rationality fails to lead to social betterment. Worldwide, social policy on prostitution tends to follow Western cues, in seeming acceptance that West is the best, with the most progressive, most enlightened approach. The rational project is, therefore, not limited to European geography.

Touch, and the Limits of the Rational Museum or Can Matter Think?

ABSTRACTLike many other museums, the Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum provides handling objects for visitors. As Enlightenment notions of science and rational thought have all been predicated upon a shift away from multisensory experience towards objective vision, the introduction of these tactile objects could be read as a premodern anachronism. In contrast, this paper uses a close analysis of the Hans Sloane's approach to collecting and John Locke's empirical philosophy to ask whether it is possible to locate touch as part of the Enlightenment rational project. If so, then how do our conceptions of empiricism, museums and visitors change?I argue that for Sloane and Locke touch functions in rational terms, indeed it may be the basis of rational thought. At the same time, a careful reading of Locke and of Condillac's work on Locke shows that touch simultaneously opens up other, imaginative, speculative and emotional ways of knowing material objects. Crucially, these forms of knowing are not in opposition to rationality but form part of the rational project. Thus, this analysis of touch disputes the accepted transition from multisensory, non-rational and premodern experience to visual, rational and modern knowledge, questions accepted characterizations of empiricism and also considers contemporary visitors' complex understandings of museum objects.

Cover Picture: Laves Phases, γ‐Brass, and 2×2×2 Superstructures: A New Class of Quasicrystal Approximants and the Suggestion of a New Quasicrystal (Chem. Eur. J. 22/2008)

Crystals in hyperspace! The mysterious quality of many large unit-cell inorganic crystal structures reminds us that chemists do not yet have a unified understanding of what drives certain structures to exist over others. S. Lee et al. show, in their Full Paper on page 6627 ff., that several common intermetallic structure types and their more complex superstructures are rational projections of a single higher dimensional crystal lattice.

The Role of Representations in Fraction Addition and Subtraction

Why do so many middle school students find fraction addition and subtraction difficult despite the fact that they have studied this topic since third or fourth grade? The Rational Number Project (RNP) (Cramer and Henry 2002; Cramer, Post, and delMas 2002) with support from the National Science Foundation is currently engaged in a teaching experiment with sixth graders from a large urban district in the Midwest to address this question.

Krylov projection framework for Fourier model reduction

This paper analyzes the Fourier model reduction (FMR) method from a rational Krylov projection framework and shows how the FMR reduced model, which has guaranteed stability and a global error bound, can be computed in a numerically efficient and robust manner. By monitoring the rank of the Krylov subspace that underlies the FMR model, the projection framework also provides an improved criterion for determining the number of Fourier coefficients that are needed, and hence the size of the resulting reduced-order model. The advantages of applying FMR in the rational Krylov projection framework are demonstrated on a simple example.

Control and change—Analysing the process of institutionalisation

This paper studies the process by which a change in the institutional logic of an organisational field diffuses through the management control system of a firm. The theoretical framework proposed by Hasselbladh and Kallinikos (2000. The project of rationalization: a critique and reappraisal of neo-institutionalism in organization studies. Organization Studies, 21, 697–720) enables us to describe the institutionalisation process of management control systems in more detail by observing how ideals are translated into discourses and control techniques. We argue that both the process by which institutional changes are implemented inside organisations and the process of decoupling are two aspects of the same issue. Revisiting core notions of new-institutional theory such as internalisation and decoupling, our findings question the systematic as well as the linear nature of the institutionalisation process. Empirical findings, based on a field study conducted in the French subsidiary of a pharmaceutical laboratory, highlight how the discourses of organisational actors contradict new ideals and control techniques. More particularly, it appears that, when a discourse cannot be heard, it can be partly bypassed using techniques. It is also argued that intra-organisational change builds on stable discourses and ambivalent technology, which foster insidious dissemination of the new institutional logics when “what can be done cannot be said”.

A Conversation With Zoltan P. Dienes

The name of Zoltan P. Dienes (1916–) stands with those of Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Edward Begle, and Robert Davis as a legendary figure whose work left a lasting impression on the field of mathematics education. Dienes’ name is synonymous with the multibase blocks that he invented for the teaching of place value. Among numerous other things, he also is the inventor of algebraic materials and logic blocks, which sowed the seeds of contemporary uses of manipulative materials in instruction. Dienes’ place is unique in the field of mathematics education not only because of his theories on how mathematical structures can be effectively taught from the early grades onwards using manipulatives, games, stories, and dance (e.g., Dienes, 1973, 1987), but also because of his tireless attempts for over 50 years to inform school practice through his fieldwork in the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Papua New Guinea, and the United States. Dienes’ theories on the learning of mathematics have influenced many generations of mathematics education researchers, particularly those involved in the Rational Number Project (http://education.umn.edu/rationalnumberproject/), and more recently those working in the models and modeling area of research. Dienes championed the use of collaborative group work and concrete materials, as well as goals such as democratic access to the process of mathematical thinking, long before the words constructivism, equity, and democratization became fashionable. In this rare interview, Dienes (see Figure 1) reflects on his life, his work, the role of context, language, and technology in mathematics teaching and learning today, and on the nature of mathematics itself. Figure 1 Zoltan P. Dienes, April 25, 2006, Wolfville, Nova Scotia.