No abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of integrating aesthetic understanding in reflective inquiry activities. Three typical classes of Taiwanese eighth graders (n = 106) and nine additional low-achieving students in the same school participated in the study. The treatment for experimental students emphasized scaffolding aesthetic understanding and reflections on inquiry strategies. It was found that the experimental group students consistently outperformed their counterparts on the post-test and the delayed post-test in conceptual understanding and application of science knowledge. In addition, the low-achieving students were motivated by the treatment and made significant progress on the two tests. The results of interview and classroom observation also revealed that the intervention made a difference in students' affective perceptions.

Yrast superdeformed bands of A ≈ 190 nuclei are systematically described by the projected shell model. The calculated γ-ray energies are compared with experimental data for which spins are unambiguously assigned. The excellent agreement between the calculation results and available data provides a microscopic description of the different behaviours of the moment of inertia between even–even and odd–even nuclei in this mass region.

A systematic description of the yrast superdeformed (SD) bands in N = 114, Z = 80–84 isotone nuclei using the projected shell model is presented. The calculated γ-ray energies, moment of inertia and M1 transitions are compared with the data for which spin is assigned. Excellent agreement with the available data for all isotones is obtained. The calculated electromagnetic properties provide a microscopic understanding of those measured nuclei. Some predictions in superdeformed nuclei are also discussed.

By investigating numerically a circle map with two cubic inflection points, we find that the fractal dimension D of the set of quasiperiodic windings at the onset of chaos has a variety of values, instead of a unique value like 0.87. This fact strongly suggests that a family of universality classes of D appears as the map has two various inflection points. On the other hand, at the quasiperiodic transition with the golden mean winding number, the ratios δn of the width of the mode lockings when going from one Fibonacci level to the next do not converge to a fixed value or a limit cycle in most cases. In this sense, local scaling is broken due to the interaction of the two inflection points of the map. Based on the above observations, it seems that the global scaling is more robust than the local one, at least for the maps we considered.