Regardless of the fact that people are born with innate sense of number, mathematical thinking requires certain intellectual effort for which many children are not ready. While children investigate and discover new issues in everyday life, they meet the world of mathematics although they are not aware of it. As mathematics is becoming more and more important in today's age of technology, it is very important that children are introduced to the spells of mathematics before they start attending school, and to continue to learn mathematics with that knowledge throughout school education. As well as reading, mathematics is a subject necessary for adequate functioning in society. What is more, mathematics is a subject that develops logical thinking and perception, thus mathematical teaching of children ought to be on more accessible level than it is currently. Parents and educators have access to various games and activities that involve children into mathematical thinking and creative resolving, which develops their self-confidence.Through the research that has been conducted with both preschool and primary school children using various mathematical examples appropriate for their age, it has been found out that the children of younger age have early math skills, whereas, regarding primary school children, their later math achievement is fading over time or their conclusions are grounded upon the "expected". The traditional way of teaching mathematics and extensive material can cause poor mathematical achievement and cause a well-known fear of mathematics.Keywords preschool and school children, mathematics skills, sense of space, number and quantity, math anxiety

Quantum dots (QDs) are novel class of inorganic fluorophore with superior photophysical properties. Superior optical properties are a promising alternative to organic dyes for fluorescence biomedical applications. These nanoparticles have size-tunable emission, strong light absorbance, and very high levels of brightness and photostability. Highly luminescent QDs are prepared by coating the core with another material, resulting in core-shell quantum dots that are more stable in various chemical environments. These core-shell QDs are hydrophobic and only organic soluble as prepared. Hydrophobic QDs are insoluble in aqueous solution and cannot be directly employed in biomedical applications. They are necessarily made water soluble by surface modifying them with various bifunctional surface ligands or caps to promote aqueous solubility and enhancing biocompatibility. To make them useful for biomedical applications, QDs need to be conjugated to biological molecules without disturbing the biological function of these molecules. Most of the current studies were designed to ask questions concerning the physicochemical properties of novel QD products, not QD toxicity per se. The potential toxicity of the QDs is a cause for concern because they are made of heavy metals. The limitation of heavy metal-containing QDs stimulates extensive research interests in exploring alternative strategies for the design of fluorescent nanocrystals with high biocompatibility.

The performance of seventeen sunshine-duration-based models has been assessed using data from seven meteorological stations in Croatia. Conventional statistical indicators are used as numerical indicators of the model performance: mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean bias error (MBE), mean absolute error (MAE), and root-mean-square error (RMSE). The ranking of the models was done using the combination of all these parameters, all having equal weights. The Rietveld model was found to perform the best overall, followed by Soler and Dogniaux-Lemoine monthly dependent models. For three best-performing models, new adjusted coefficients are calculated, and they are validated using separate dataset. Only the Dogniaux-Lemoine model performed better with adjusted coefficients, but across all analysed locations, the adjusted models showed improvement in reduced maximum percentage error.

During their preschool age children discover natural phenomena in their environment. In their consciousness, they form the basic physical concepts based on experience. Their ideas can be right, but they can also be wrong because they take into consideration only what they see and thus, they come up with wrong ideas or misconceptions. At the very beginning of their primary education, teachers of class teaching directly witness their ideas related to basic physical concepts through various subjects: mathematics, natural sciences, art and physical education. Frequently, neither teachers nor their pupils consider these notions, thus their wrong ideas remain firmly rooted and present a barrier to the adoption of the correct physical ideas. Research of basic concepts related to motion, space and time was carried out as part of the workshop Class Teaching Course Open Days at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Education of the University of Mostar. The sample consisted of pupils of primary education of Herzegovina-Neretva and West-Herzegovinian Cantons. It has shown that pupils have the correct ideas about many physical phenomena, but it has also shown the presence of intuitive ideas which are not in accordance with physical ideas and need to be corrected in time

To create conditions which ruled one billionth of a second after the Big Bang, it is necessary to heat and compact the nuclear matter. During the first microseconds after the Big Bang the universe went through such a phase transition at very high temperatures but very low net baryon density. At very high temperatures or densities, the hadrons melt and their constituents, the quarks and gluons, form a new phase of matter, the so called quark-gluon plasma. Relativistic heavy ion collisions aim to create a quark gluon plasma where quarks and gluons can move freely over volumes that are large in comparison to the typical size of a hadron. When the particles collide at high energies, it leads to the conversion of particle collision participants in a much heavier particle. If the energy density is large enough, after a collision occurs the formation of quark-gluon plasma. In the dense nuclear medium, it comes to collective phenomena such as increased production of strangeness, damping charmonium and collective motion of particles. In nuclear medium, it comes to individual collision of quarks, which also hadronize. Using simulation package Pythia, we analyzed the reaction system that results in individual collisions of quarks and antiquarks, and emergence of collective phenomena.