This study is based on research on secondary textbook and school library provision in Botswana, Cameroon, Cote dIvoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Togo, as well as existing recent ...country reports on textbook provision and an extensive desk research. Considerable variations exist in Sub-Saharan African textbook requirements needed to meet secondary curriculum specifications just as significant differences exist between and within countries in regard to the average price of recommended textbooks. Some countries have no approved textbooks list. This study aims to discuss the textbook situation in Sub-Saharan Africa with a special focus on secondary textbook availability, cost and financing, distribution and publishing, as well as, the status of school libraries. Its objective is to analyze the issues in secondary textbook and school library provision and to provide some options and strategies for improvement.
This volume explores Nordic textbooks chronologically and empirically from the Protestant reformation to our own time. The chapters are written by scholars from Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, ...and deploy a wide range of methods, representing different academic fields.
Thermal quantum field theory Khanna, Faqir C; Khanna, Faqir C; Malbouisson, Adolfo P. C ...
2009., 2009, 2009-02-06
eBook
This monograph presents recent developments in quantum field theory at finite temperature. By using Lie groups, ideas from thermal theory are considered with concepts of symmetry, allowing for ...applications not only to quantum field theory but also to transport theory, quantum optics and statistical mechanics. This includes an analysis of geometrical and topological aspects of spatially confined systems with applications to the Casimir effect, superconductivity and phase transitions. Finally, some developments in open systems are also considered. The book provides a unified picture of the fundamental aspects in thermal quantum field theory and their applications, and is important to the field as a result, since it combines several diverse ideas that lead to a better understanding of different areas of physics.
Background: The 3500-kcal rule, though often overly simplistic, is used to linearly predict weight or adipose change in clinical or research settings. We sampled textbooks to assess how quantitative ...energy balance models (QEBM) are taught, emphasizing the 3500-kcal rule. Methods: Top 15 Amazon best-selling textbooks in nutrition, diet therapy, preventive medicine, physiology, and physical therapy were identified resulting in 53 unique recent editions. QEBM text was identified and extracted via manually reviewing weight-or energy-balance- related sections and keyword searching in hardcopy-and e-textbooks. Ten books were piloted for text extraction and double coded via a semi-structured coding template. QEBMs (e.g., 3500-kcal rule) were compared to the validated NIDDK body weight planner (BWP) and the Weight Loss Predictor Calculator by Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) for the average 30 y.o. adult American female (63.5"; 170.8 lbs) and male (69.0"; 199.8 lbs) from NCHS. Results: We developed 16 coding items, including energy amount; amount and time of weight change; positive/negative QEBM; whether predicting body weight (BW)/fat mass/adipose tissue; approximate/exact predictions; and whether the text prominently acknowledged weight change complexity. Six of 10 piloted textbooks included QEBMs, five of which proposed a 3500-kcal based equation to change BW; specifically, lowering caloric intake by 200-1000 kcal/d to lose 0.4-2 Ibs BW/wk. Four of six models presented approximate changes; three of six acknowledged physiological complexity. Compared to BWP and PBRC, the 3500-kcal rule underestimated energy deficits required to lose weight in relatively longer durations (e.g., at 500 kcal/d deficit for 180 days, 3500-kcal rule predicts 26 Ibs loss in the average male, while BWP and PBRC predict 18.2 and 14.8 Ibs, respectively). We identified at least five other textbooks mentioning the 3500-kcal rule through digital previews; extraction of texts is ongoing. Conclusions: Our pilot sample of top-selling textbooks suggests despite availability of more sophisticated-yet-accessible web-based tools to estimate weight change dynamics, the 3500-kcal rule continues to be a basis for energy balance education.
The functional equation of associativity is the topic of Abel's first contribution to Crelle's Journal. Seventy years later, it was featured as the second part of Hilbert's Fifth Problem, and it was ...solved under successively weaker hypotheses by Brouwer (1909), Cartan (1930) and Aczel (1949). In 1958, B Schweizer and A Sklar showed that the “triangular norms” introduced by Menger in his definition of a probabilistic metric space should be associative; and in their book Probabilistic Metric Spaces, they presented the basic properties of such triangular norms and the closely related copulas. Since then, the study of these two classes of functions has been evolving at an ever-increasing pace and the results have been applied in fields such as statistics, information theory, fuzzy set theory, multi-valued and quantum logic, hydrology, and economics, in particular, risk analysis. This book presents the foundations of the subject of associative functions on real intervals. It brings together results that have been widely scattered in the literature and adds much new material. In the process, virtually all the standard techniques for solving functional equations in one and several variables come into play. Thus, the book can serve as an advanced undergraduate or graduate text on functional equations.
A continuation of the author's previous book “An Introduction to the Theory of Piezoelectricity” (Springer, New York, 2005) on the three-dimensional theory of piezoelectricity, this volume covers ...lower dimensional theories for various piezoelectric structures and device applications. The development of two-, one- and zero-dimensional theories for high frequency vibrations of piezoelectric plates, shells, beams, rings curved bars and parallelepipeds is systematically presented. In addition to linear piezoelectricity, certain nonlinear effects are also considered and examples for device applications are provided. The material emphasizes dynamic theories and high frequency motions as well as device applications as there are relatively few books on piezoelectric structures, especially for high frequency theories. The volume is destined to be one of the most systematic and comprehensive books on piezoelectric structures.
Unlike most introductory texts that take a topical approach to studying sociology, this smart, challenging, and accessibly written text looks at the core principles of the discipline, making links to ...a contemporary context.
The second edition of this award-winning book has been substantially revised, making more direct connections between Generation Z, Mills’s concept of the sociological imagination, and the challenges students face in higher education today. The section on popular culture contains a new chapter on the history of popular music from early rock ’n’ roll to contemporary pop and R&B. New chapter objectives, end-of-chapter review and reflection questions, key terms, and glossary, as well as an instructor’s manual, make this text much more useful in the classroom.
Based on the findings of an error analysis revealing that Indonesian ninth-and tenth-graders had difficulties in solving context-based tasks, we investigated the opportunity-to-learn offered by ...Indonesian textbooks for solving context-based mathematics tasks and the relation of this opportunity-to-learn to students' difficulties in solving these tasks. An analysis framework was developed to investigate the characteristics of tasks in textbooks from four perspectives: the type of context used in tasks, the purpose of context-based tasks, the type of information provided in tasks, and the type of cognitive demands of tasks. With this framework, three Indonesian mathematics textbooks were analyzed. Our analysis showed that only about 10 % of the tasks in the textbooks are context-based tasks. Moreover, at least 85 % of these tasks provide exactly the information needed to solve them and do not leave room for students to select relevant information by themselves. Furthermore, of the context-based tasks, 45 % are reproduction tasks requiring performing routine mathematical procedures, 53 % are connection tasks requiring linking different mathematical curriculum strands, and only 2 % are reflection tasks, which are considered as tasks with the highest level of cognitive demand. A linkage between the findings of the error analysis and the textbook analysis suggests that the lacking opportunity-to-learn in Indonesian mathematics textbooks may cause Indonesian students' difficulties in solving context-based tasks. Based on the results of this study, recommendations are given for improving the opportunities-tolearn to solve context-based tasks as well as for doing further research on this topic.
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