The Beauty of Mathematics: Learning Mathematics by Questioning

Mathematics problems may seem to have no real use in life, but this could be further from the truth. The use of mathematics is everywhere in our daily lives and, without discovering it; we apply mathematics ideas, as well as the skills we learn from executing mathematical challenges every day. Unfortunately, mathematics feedback at national examinations is deficient. A mean of between 23 to 29 percent for 5 years in a row from 2014 to 2018 is a clear indication that the training of students today for tomorrow’s workplace with concept development in context, problem solving through interactive experiences and understanding through application is missed. Over this period, the evaluation of the outcome has also shown a standard deviation almost equal to the mean or even greater than the mean for instance 2016 for paper 2 (refer to Kenya National Examinations Council Report) is a clear sign that there is a big disparity from the mean and a likelihood of a number of students scoring zeros or below 10 percent. This dismal performance in national examinations particularly in mathematics demonstrates that contextual curricula and instructions that encourage numerous structures of learning like relating, transferring, applying, experiencing and collaborating are not achieved. Therefore, this article looks into different contexts in which students learn and how they broaden their abilities to make connections, enjoy discovery, and apply the knowledge learnt. These are abilities they will need throughout their daily lives and careers. Being able to do arithmetic is of little ultimate use to an individual unless he or she can apply it. Each arithmetic operation is explored in detail for its applications in the real world problems. Real life challenges motivate ideas and provide additional settings for practice.

Inter and intra-seasonal, variation of thermodynamic parameters of the atmosphere over coastal Tamilnadu during northeast monsoon

The thermodynamic structure of the atmosphere over coastal Tamilnadu during the northeast monsoon season has been studied in detail based on the daily 0000 UTC upper air data between 1000 and 500 hPa levels of Madras for October-January for the l0 year period 1976-77 to 1985-86. Normal upper air soundings have been computed for dry and wet spells of northeast monsoon and for the brief period of southwest monsoon prior to northeast monsoon onset. The moisture flux crossing Madras and the liquid water content over Madras have been computed for various categories of monsoon activity. It has been shown that the onset of easterlies over Madras is accompanied by a cooling of 1C of the atmosphere over Madras at all levels upto 500 hPa. An east to west moisture flux of 21.1 x 108 metric tons per day across one degree wall over Madras has been found to cross coast during typical wet spell of northeast monsoon. The moisture flux crossing coast for good northeast monsoon and also the normal flux computed for the period of study compared fairly well with the moisture flux crossing west coast during southwest monsoon obtained in various other studies. The energy of an air column over coastal Tamilnadu was found to decrease subsequent to the onset of northeast monsoon. Analysis of variation of liquid water content revealed that even during deficit rainfall years there was considereable amount of low level moisture in the atmosphere. Neither during dryspells of northeast monsoon nor after its retreat was there any clear sign of spreading of continental air mass over coastal Tamilnadu.

Investigating the impact of Covid-19 on stock markets

This paper aims to examine the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on stock markets. This paper also analyses the stock market cointegration of selected global equity indices that performed better and have a quick speed of recovery during the pandemic. This paper also questions how increasing uncertainty and volatility deters investors’ perception of the diversification of equity investments. The dataset for the selected 12 global equity indices has been used from Thompson Reuters’s EIKON database in a given period of time between 2010 and 2021. This paper employs Vector Error Correction Models to assess the relationship among the selected global equity indices. Findings demonstrate that (i) there is an adverse impact of Covid-19 on the Global Equity markets, (ii) there is a clear sign of cointegration in global equity indices, (ii) investors can benefit from investing in particular equity indices that have exhibited quick speed of recovery from the pandemic records lows. The findings finally provide a strong foundation for constructing a resilient equity portfolio in a highly uncertain market environment.

Diversification of Escherichia albertii H-Antigens and Development of H-Genotyping PCR

Escherichia albertii is a recently recognized human enteropathogen that is closely related to Escherichia coli. As E. albertii sometimes causes outbreaks of gastroenteritis, rapid strain typing systems, such as the O- and H-serotyping systems widely used for E. coli, will be useful for outbreak investigation and surveillance. Although an O-genotyping system has recently been developed, the diversity of E. albertii H-antigens (flagellins) encoded by fliC genes remains to be systematically investigated, and no H-serotyping or genotyping system is currently available. Here, we analyzed the fliC genes of 243 genome-sequenced E. albertii strains and identified 73 sequence types, which were grouped into four clearly distinguishable types designated E. albertii H-genotypes 1–4 (EAHg1–EAHg4). Although there was a clear sign of intraspecies transfer of fliC genes in E. albertii, none of the four E. albertii H-genotypes (EAHgs) were closely related to any of the 53 known E. coli H-antigens, indicating the absence or rare occurrence of interspecies transfer of fliC genes between the two species. Although the analysis of more E. albertii strains will be required to confirm the low level of variation in their fliC genes, this finding suggests that E. albertii may exist in limited natural hosts or environments and/or that the flagella of E. albertii may function in a limited stage(s) in their life cycle. Based on the fliC sequences of the four EAHgs, we developed a multiplex PCR-based H-genotyping system for E. albertii (EAH-genotyping PCR), which will be useful for epidemiological studies of E. albertii infections.

Non-Prototypical Structurally Separate Conditional Constructions in Catalan (In Comparison with Spanish and French)

The article is devoted to non-prototypical structurally separate conditional constructions (NSCC) in Catalan in comparison with Spanish and French. These represent two (or more) separate sentences, one of which expresses condition and the other – consequence without conditional conjunctions. The relevance and novelty of this study follows from the fact that NSCCs have not received sufficient attention yet which is particularly true for Catalan. There is no consensus in specialist literature as regards the terms used to describe this kind of constructions or define their scope. The list of terms for NSCCs in Russian linguistics is too long, and includes the following: “non-prototypical constructions”, “conditional constructions formed as a “syntactic unity”, “supraphrasal unity”, among others. The paper states that it’s necessary to distinguish prototypical conditional constructions from the constructions with conditional con-junction “si”, on one hand, and non-prototypical constructions, on the other. And integral conditional constructions should be distinguished from structurally separate constructions (also referred to as formally separate). There are also non-prototypical structurally separate conditional constructions with interrogative words expressing condition in the protasis and imperatives constructions expressing consequence in the apodosis, constructions with imperatives (verbs like ‘suppose’) expressing condition in the protasis and interrogative sentences expressing consequence in the apodosis. NSCCs can use different moods: imperative, indicative, subjunctive, and conditional. Imperative forms are compatible both with semantics of conditions and consequences. There are also NSCCs without imperatives. And besides that, between the first sentence expressing the condition and the second sentence expressing the consequence filler utterances can occur. As typically in prototypical conditional constructions, in NSCC the condition and the consequence expressed also belong to the same subject of speech (speaker), though in some rare cases may be inserted, as a link be-tween the first and the second sentences of the construction, an interrogative sentence asked by another subject. NSCCs don’t allow the use of subordinating conjunctions, the opposite being a clear sign of prototypical constructions, but the consequence can be introduced with markers meaning ‘then’. The study is based on the texts by Catalan authors, excerpts from Catalan journals and their translations into Spanish and French; texts generated by the author’s informers, native speakers have also been used.

Radiative and microphysical responses of clouds to an anomalous increase in fire particles over the Maritime Continent in 2015

The year of 2015 was an extremely dry year for Southeast Asia where the direct impact of strong El Niño was in play. As a result of this dryness and the relative lack of rainfall, an extraordinary amount of aerosol particles from biomass burning remained in the atmosphere over the Maritime Continent during the fire season. This study uses the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry to understand the impacts of these fire particles on cloud microphysics and radiation during the peak biomass burning season in September. Our simulations, one with fire particles and the other without them, cover the entire Maritime Continent region at a cloud-resolving resolution (4 km) for the entire month of September in 2015. The comparison of the simulations shows a clear sign of precipitation enhancement by fire particles through microphysical effects; smaller cloud droplets remain longer in the atmosphere to later form ice crystals, and/or they are more easily collected by ice-phase hydrometeors, in comparison to droplets under no fire influences. As a result, mass of ice-phase hydrometeors increases in the simulation with fire particles, so does rainfall. On the other hand, we see no clear sign of temperature differences between the two simulations that could stem from the semi-direct effects of aerosols by absorbing the incoming solar radiation. Clouds are more reflective in the simulation with fire particles as ice mass increases. Combined with the direct scattering of sunlight by aerosols, the simulation with fire particles shows higher albedo over the simulation domain on average. The simulated response of clouds to fire particles in our simulations clearly differs from what was presented by two previous studies that modeled aerosol-cloud interaction in years with different phases of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), suggesting a further need for an investigation on the possible modulation of fire-aerosol-convection interaction by ENSO.

Reflections on the Symptoms of Humanitarian Principles in the Investigations of International Crimes – A Study on Admissibility of Electronic Evidences in International Trials

The establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal's post-World War II is the clear sign of augmented figure of International Crimes especially. The culmination of flagship tribunals like Yugoslavia and Rwanda opened the new phase for several significant questions such as the maintenance of humanitarian principles throughout the investigation, relevancy of evidence, authenticity, and overall mechanism and its legality too. The chances of an independent investigation mechanism for international crimes may also not be denied. Under such a state of affairs, the issues of collection, preservation, and scrutiny of the evidence of the most serious International Crimes and violations of normative principles set out by International Criminal Law becomes crucial to know to ensure fair and transparent justice. Indeed, the investigation procedure required for such fairness and transparency demands unequivocal maintenance of humanitarian principles throughout the process and legality for the sake of legal authority behind. Consequently, the present paper counts the impact of the investigation mechanism on criminal for international crimes and the existence of the symptoms of humanitarian principles with its legality by analyzing several International Instruments, Judicial Decisions, and other fact findings on the record.

Shifting Paradigms of Sadness, Brain Disease or Emotional Distress: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Late Antiquity and the 21st Century. What psychologists can learn from ascetics in Late Antiquity and why historians should or should not buy DSM 5

In this article, we address expressions of sadness, grief and social alienation from two different perspectives and on an interdisciplinary level. The various forms of perceiving these experiences and the method for classifying emotions (particularly emotional distress) in modern psychiatry represent the starting point for comparison. Special attention will be paid to the current method of classification in psychiatry―the DSM 5. This framework will be juxtaposed with a historical methodology, which will be applied to examine late antique narrative descriptions of sickness and alienating behaviour in a religious context. Combining modern psychological and historical approaches will shed light on how different cultural and historical discourses have shaped the perception and interpretation of sadness and grief down through the ages, and lead to these emotions being characterized in various ways ranging from depression to a clear sign of sanctity. Additionally, working on the intersection of religion and medicine, this article will, on the one hand, further psychologists’ understanding of how religious ideas shaped individual behaviour and vice versa in past societies, and, on the other hand, inform historians more about modern classification methods in psychiatry and how these might have influenced the way of looking at certain behaviour.

Modified Key Derivation Function for Enhanced Security of Speck in Resource-Constrained Internet of Things

Randomness is an imperative component in every cryptographic algorithm to guarantee secret keys are unpredictable and secured against all forms of attacks. Speck generated sequence is non-random, a clear sign that it falls beyond the acceptable success rate when tested in statistical analysis. Thus, this study resolves the non-randomness by integrating a novel key derivation function that uses elementary operators designed for lightweight application. This design aims not to compromise performance when implemented on software and hardware. As a result, the modified Speck successfully passed the NIST SP 800 - 22 and Dieharder v3.31.0 Statistical Test Analysis as no p-value is flagged as failed during testing. Hence, making modified Speck cryptographically secured. Nevertheless, a 1.06% decrease in the figure of merit of the modified Speck still makes it worthier in a resource-constrained Internet of Things application as contrasted to Speck because it is proven to be beyond cryptographically secured.

Absolute Configuration Sensing of Chiral Aryl- and Aryloxy-Propionic Acids by Biphenyl Chiroptical Probes

The absolute configuration of chiral 2-aryl and 2-aryloxy propionic acids, which are among the most common chiral environmental pollutants, has been readily and reliably established by either electronic circular dichroism spectroscopy or optical rotation measurements employing suitably designed 4,4′-disubstituted biphenyl probes. In fact, the 4,4′-biphenyl substitution gives rise to a red shift of the diagnostic electronic circular dichroism signal of the biphenyl A band employed for the configuration assignment, removing its overlap with other interfering dichroic bands and allowing its clear sign identification. The largest A band red shift, and thus the most reliable results, are obtained by employing as a probe the 4,4′-dinitro substituted biphenylazepine 3c. The method was applied to the absolute configuration assignment of 2-arylpropionic acids ibuprofen (1a), naproxen (1b), ketoprofen (1c) and flurbiprofen (1d), as well as to the 2-aryloxypropionic acids 2-phenoxypropionic acid (2a) and 2-naphthoxypropionic acid (2b). This approach, allowing us to reveal the sample’s absolute configuration by simple optical rotation measurements, is potentially applicable to online analyses of both the enantiomeric composition and absolute configuration of these chiral pollutants.