Search results for " Methods"

What is ‘good’ mentoring? Understanding mentoring practices of teacher induction through case studies of Finland and Australia

2015

Mentoring is a practice widely utilised to support new teachers. However, in locally formed systems, the practice of mentoring is conditioned by traditions and arrangements specific to the site. To understand ‘good’ mentoring, these local arrangements cannot be ignored. In this article, the theory of practice architectures is employed to make explicit the prefiguring arrangements of mentoring practices in Finland and NSW Australia. The findings suggest that mentoring practices are shaped by their ontological specificity and this makes reproducing mentoring practices in different sites problematic. Explicating the prefiguring architectures of practices is critical to understanding the contes…

Relational analysis and the ethnographic approach : constructing preschool childhood

2021

This article elaborates the relational ontology in an ethnographic study. The aim is to seek relational construction of preschool practice and how children’s positions are constructed in it. The study is based on the understanding that ethnography and relational sociology share the idea that society emerges through repeated relations. The ontological thinking of relational sociology is applied in a micro-level analysis of three episodes from a Finnish preschool. We propose that relations appear in every single ethnographical episode and that carefully analysed repetitive relations can reveal a stabilised organisational structure. The analysis shows how the position of one child is structuri…

Parenting culture(s): Ideal-parent beliefs across 37 countries

2022

What is it to be “an ideal parent”? Does the answer differ across countries and social classes? To answer these questions in a way that minimizes bias and ethnocentrism, we used open-ended questions to explore ideal-parent beliefs among 8,357 mothers and 3,517 fathers from 37 countries. Leximancer Semantic Network Analysis was utilized to first determine parenting culture zones (i.e., countries with shared ideal-parent beliefs) and then extract the predominant themes and concepts in each culture zone. The results yielded specific types of ideal-parent beliefs in five parenting culture zones: being “responsible and children/family-focused” for Asian parents, being “responsible and proper de…

Fast vibrational configuration interaction using generalized curvilinear coordinates and self-consistent basis

2010

In this paper, we couple a numerical kinetic-energy operator approach to the direct-vibrational self-consistent field (VSCF)/vibrational configuration interaction (VCI) method for the calculation of vibrational anharmonic frequencies. By combining this with fast-VSCF, an efficient direct evaluation of the ab initio potential-energy surface (PES), we introduce a general formalism for the computation of vibrational bound states of molecular systems exhibiting large-amplitude motion such as methyl-group torsion. We validate our approach on an analytical two-dimensional model and apply it to the methanol molecule. We show that curvilinear coordinates lead to a significant improvement in the VSC…

An improved immersed boundary method for curvilinear grids

2009

Abstract In the present paper we propose an extension of the direct-forcing immersed boundary technique, recently developed and employed by Verzicco and co-authors [Fadlun EA, Verzicco R, Orlandi P, Mohd-Yusof J. Combined immersed-boundary finite-difference methods for three-dimensional complex flow simulations. J Comput Phys 2000;161:35–60; Verzicco R, Fatica M, Iaccarino G, Moin P, Khalighi B. Large eddy simulation of a road vehicle with drag-reduction devices. AIAA J 2002;40(12):2447–55; Cristallo A, Verzicco R. Combined immersed boundary/large-eddy-simulations of incompressible three-dimensional complex flows. Flow Turbul Combust 2006;77(1–4):3–26.] and successively improved by Balaras …

Three-dimensional numerical simulations on wind- and tide-induced currents: The case of Augusta Harbour (Italy)

2014

The hydrodynamic circulation in the coastal area of the Augusta Bay (Italy), located in the eastern part of Sicily, is analysed. Due to the heavy contamination generated by the several chemical and petrochemical industries active in the zone, the harbour was declared a Contaminated Site of National Interest. To mitigate the risks connected with the industrial activities located near the harbour, it is important to analyse the hydrodynamic circulation in the coastal area. To perform such analysis, a parallel 3D numerical model is used to solve the Reynolds-averaged momentum and mass balance, employing the k-e turbulence model for the Reynolds stresses. The numerical model is parallelized usi…

Quantifying and Processing Biomedical and Behavioral Signals

2019

Customer data collection infrastructure and Customer Experience Management:The SAQ Case Study

2017

Channel integration makes Customer Experience Management more complex and requires from retailers a regeneration of their value proposition. A longitudinal case study reveal a hierarchical sequence of operant resource triad: cultural mindsets, strategic directions for designing value propositions, and a dynamic system of capabilities for continually renewing customer experiences. The implementation of a customer data collection infrastructure, the adoption of an iterative and sequential innovation process, and the mobilization of cross-functional and multidisciplinary project teams, will help develop the firm’s dynamic system of capabilities.

Comparison of virtual high-throughput screening methods for the identification of phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors.

2011

Reliable and effective virtual high-throughput screening (vHTS) methods are desperately needed to minimize the expenses involved in drug discovery projects. Here, we present an improvement to the negative image-based (NIB) screening: the shape, the electrostatics, and the solvation state of the target protein’s ligand-binding site are included into the vHTS. Additionally, the initial vHTS results are postprocessed with molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area (MMGBSA) calculations to estimate the favorability of ligand-protein interactions. The results show that docking produces very good early enrichment for phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE-5); however, in general, the NIB and the ligand-…

Comparison of some dispersion-corrected and traditional functionals as applied to peptides and conformations of cyclohexane derivatives.

2012

We compare the energetic and structural properties of fully optimized α-helical and antiparallel β-sheet polyalanines and the energetic differences between axial and equatorial conformations of three cyclohexane derivatives (methyl, fluoro, and chloro) as calculated using several functionals designed to treat dispersion (B97-D, ωB97x-D, M06, M06L, and M06-2X) with other traditional functionals not specifically parametrized to treat dispersion (B3LYP, X3LYP, and PBE1PBE) and with experimental results. Those functionals developed to treat dispersion significantly overestimate interaction enthalpies of folding for the α-helix and predict unreasonable structures that contain Ramachandran φ and …