Improving students’ use of argumentation is front and center in the increasing emphasis on scientific practice in K-12 Science and STEM programs. We explore the construct validity of scenario-based assessments of claim-evidence-reasoning (CER) and the structure of the CER construct with respect to a learning progression framework. We also seek to understand how middle school students progress. Establishing the purpose of an argument is a competency that a majority of middle school students meet, whereas quantitative reasoning is the most difficult, and the Rasch model indicates that the competencies form a unidimensional hierarchy of skills. We also find no evidence of differential item functioning between different scenarios, suggesting

In this paper a new structure for the AVR of the power system exciter is proposed and designed using digital-based LQR. With two weighting matrices R and Q,  this method produces an optimal regulator that is used to generate the feedback control law. These matrices are called state and control weighting matrices and are used to balance between the relative importance of the input and the states in the cost function that is being optimized. A sample power system composed of single machine connected to an infinite- bus bar (SMIB) with both a conventional and a proposed Digital AVR (DAVR) is simulated. Evaluation results show that the DAVR damps well the oscillations of the terminal voltage and presents a faster respo

Optical fiber chemical sensor based surface Plasmon resonance for sensing and measuring the refractive index and concentration for Acetic acid is designed and implemented during this work. Optical grade plastic optical fibers with a diameter of 1000μm were used with a diameter core of 980μm and a cladding of 20μm, where the sensor is fabricated by a small part (10mm) of optical fiber in the middle is embedded in a resin block and then the polishing process is done, after that it is deposited with about (40nm) thickness of gold metal and the Acetic acid is placed on the sensing probe.

Background: MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is a global health problem. Many people are looking for new ways to combat MRSA, for example by using bacteriophages (phages). It has been extremely challenging to isolate a sufficient quantity of lytic anti-MRSA phages. Therefore, new techniques for separating, refining, and reworking anti-MRSA phages were sought in this study.

Methods: Of 437 S. aureus isolates, nine clinical MRSA isolates were obtained from three hospitals in Baghdad, Iraq and two ATCC MRSA strains were used to separate wild anti-MRS

In this paper, we investigate and characterize the effects of multi-channel and rendezvous protocols on the connectivity of dynamic spectrum access networks using percolation theory. In particular, we focus on the scenario where the secondary nodes have plenty of vacant channels to choose from a phenomenon which we define as channel abundance. To cope with the existence of multi-channel, we use two types of rendezvous protocols: naive ones which do not guarantee a common channel and advanced ones which do. We show that, with more channel abundance, even with the use of either type of rendezvous protocols, it becomes difficult for two nodes to agree on a common channel, thereby, potentially remaining invisible to each other. We model this in

In this research, has been to building a multi objective Stochastic Aggregate Production Planning model for General al Mansour company Data with Stochastic  demand under changing of market and uncertainty environment in aim to draw strong production plans.  The analysis to derive insights on management issues regular and extra labour costs and the costs of maintaining inventories and good policy choice under the influence medium and optimistic adoption of the model of random has adoption form and had adopted two objective functions total cost function (the core) and income and function for a random template priority compared with fixed forms with objective function and the results showed that the model of two phases wit